Cinnamon Bun Muffins & Zucchini Bread

Yesterday I made coconut flour zucchini bread (technically it has a banana in it, so I'm not sure if it's banana bread, too!) and today I made cinnamon bun muffins with coconut flour. Coconut flour does have a certain texture, but either I'm getting used to it or better at baking with it! 

Here is the zucchini bread. I used honey and it worked out great! The loaf was smaller than I thought. Next time I might double it and make two. 

For the cinnamon buns, I had quite the kitchen adventure. I ran out of honey AND maple syrup after the muffins, so I had to half the cinnamon "topping" and only used it in the middle. With it on top as well, I think the muffins would be phenomenal! 

Then I dropped the jar of coconut oil (after I was done, and after I had put it in the microwave to melt it, so it was liquid at the time....great). Glass shattered everywhere! So the floor was slippery AND spiky! 

Muffin Ingredients
1/2 C coconut flour
1/4 tea baking soda
1/4 tea salt
4 eggs
1/3 C coconut milk
1/2 C honey

Cinnamon Topping
2 T cinnamon
4 T honey or maple syrup
2  T butter (I used coconut oil)
1/4 C chopped nuts (I used pecans-optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Line a muffin pan with paper liners or grease.
3. Combine coconut flour, baking soda and salt and blend well.
4. Add the eggs, milk, and honey to the dry mixture and blend well (coconut flour is hard to incorporate so use a mixer or food processor to speed this step up!)
5. Fill muffin liners 1/4 way with batter
6. Spoon about a tablespoon of topping over each muffin, then top off with more batter, about 3/4 full
 7. Drizzle the remaining topping over the batter (I didn't have any!)
8. Bake about 24 minutes (mine was closer to 30) until a toothpick comes out clean

They ARE really good though! 

If Your Italian Grandma Cooked Paleo

We had the best dinner tonight! "Spaghetti" and meatballs! 

It ended up being a combination of a few recipes.

The noodles:

4 sweet potatoes
1 T extra virgin olive oil
sea salt to taste

Zoodle the sweet potatoes (we ended up with four ends that wouldn't fit through the machine, so it was more like 2 potatoes worth).
Heat a skillet with the olive oil.
Add the sweet potatoes
Season with sea salt (and pepper if you wish)
Cook for 5-7 minutes until the "noodles" are soft and not raw. Stir frequently to avoid burning.

The meatballs (based on this recipe):

1 T olive oil
1/2 C onion, grated
1 carrot, peeled and grated
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tea dried oregano
1 tea. sea sat
1 pound ground turkey
1/2 C coconut flour
1 egg
1 tea sage
1/4 tea. pepper

While you're grating the onion, save the rest to chop for the sauce. 

Add the olive oil, onion, carrot, garlic, oregano and salt to a skillet and cook until sowft. Combine the rest of the ingredients and mix in with the turkey. Roll the mixture into meatballs, about the size of golf balls. (I halved the original recipe and it made 15)

Tomato Sauce:

2 T olive oil
1/4 C onion, diced
2 tea minced garlic
2 cans diced tomato
1 can tomato sauce
1 T basil
1 tea oregano
1 tea salt

Saute the olive oil, onion, and garlic in a large sauce pan til the onion is soft. Add the diced tomato with juice and tomato sauce, and the spices. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low or medium low and add the meatballs. 

Simmer for 30 minutes or until meatballs are cooked through. Serve over zoodles - with Parmesan cheese optional.

It tastes like a restaurant, or like someone who has marinara running through their veins made it. Definitely will make again! 

Comfort Food: Level Chicken

I didn't get to go to the gym yesterday, which ruined my whole workout schedule for the week! (I got the rest of them in so far) It was also so cold there were SNOW FLURRIES this morning! 

The reason I missed the gym? Job interview (so that's something). I swear, I have all these brilliant things to say, and they never ask questions that lead up to any of them! So I stutter and stumble and every answer trails off with, "So...." and I leave feeling completely unemployable. Not sure how I've gotten any of my jobs in the past! Maybe I would have done better if I had gotten to take the class before I had to leave! I almost could have done it, if I didn't take a shower, or a I showed up with wet hair, which makes a great first impression!

To make myself feel better, I bought CHICKEN.

I made the honey mustard chicken legs that I've made before (1/2 C mustard, 1/4 C honey, 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar - chicken breasts - 40 minutes on 375 or until cooked through) and they had thighs on sale as well, so I want to make Greek chicken with them. I'm thinking about this recipe. 

This week I also want to make chicken mofongo but I only bought two plaintains, so I might half it and see if it's any good first! When I bought the plaintains they were yellow, so already a little too ripe, but I thought I'd go with it. They're totally browning this morning! (Which means they'll be delicious fried, but maybe too sweet to go with garlic and chicken and tomato sauce!)

Still freezing today. Where is spring?! I want to run outside without layers! It felt like 28 degrees this morning! That's too cold. Not to mention that lots of people are going to Florida for spring break, and this time, I am not one of them! I want to go back to California, where it was 90 yesterday! 

Eat All the Pork!

So I pinned two new coconut flour recipes to try. I know that they won't taste like the picture looks, but they might be ok! Cinnamon Bun Muffins  - all the cinnamon taste, half the work! And Vanilla Coconut Flour Cookies. Let me know if you try them before I do! 

I have been busy going to as many gym classes as I can, and now I really need to buckle down and RUN to get some miles in. Next half marathon on May 9, and it's a small one, so I need to train if I don't want to be last! 

I talked to someone who ran the Disney Princess half marathon and she said it's really better to run with a friend, so I'm accepting applications for friends who like to run! (Obviously I can't go with her - she already did it!)  

Here's what my workouts look like this week, in case you're curious:

Monday: Zumba, kickboxing, yoga (gym from 5-8)

Tuesday: Zumba, toning (gym from 5-7)

Wednesday: Run 7 miles

Thursday: Run 3 miles in the morning
Piyo + TurboSport (gym from 5 - 6:30) but this week will probably be another toning class since the regular instructor is in FLORIDA! Jealous!) 

Friday: Run 3 miles + Bodyworks (gym 9:30 - 10:30 in the morning and go to the park afterward)

Saturday: Piyo + Zumba (gym 8:30 to 10)

Sunday: Run 5 miles after church + Zumba (gym 1:30-3)

Menu Planning: Tonight for dinner I have to finish the pork that's in the fridge because it's been there a suspicious amount of time, and any that's left, I need to throw out for trash day tomorrow! 

This morning I had eggs and sausage for breakfast. Tomorrow I'm going to have a date shake! 

Steve is out of town, so I want to get Bobby's frozen custard once (if the special is still blackberry pecan!) and Chipotle once. Otherwise, I usually end up having cereal for dinner after the gym! So breakfast will be eggs, or a date shake, or oatmeal, lunch will be a tortilla wrap sandwich, and I might make some chicken so I have something else easy for dinner! As long as there's enough for the Chihuahua, we'll be happy (and here's a picture of Chico).

St. Paddy's Day

It's a good thing my FitBit is green! It saved me from a pinching! Ouch! 

We did circuits in the Toning class again last night. They were awesome, as always. Today I'm sitting here, watching the weather channel, hoping it gets a little warmer and the sun comes out so I can run outside but it doesn't look good. Hello, treadmill, my old friend.

I'm going to make this chunky soup today because I have to use the ground turkey in the fridge! Expiration dates? Oops! 

Chunky Soup My Way:

1 package ground turkey
1 onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 tea. minced garlic
1 can diced tomatoes
3 C chicken broth
1 bell pepper, diced
4 carrots, sliced
1 sweet potato, chopped
3 T tomato paste
1/2 tea. oregano
1/2 tea. chili powder
salt and pepper 

Brown the meat. Add the onion, garlic and celery (if you remember). Transfer the meat to your soup pot with the remaining ingredients (the original said to use a saucepan....not sure what they mean by that, but I needed a big pot!). Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer until the sweet potatoes are soft (original recipe says 15 to 20 minutes. I think it took us longer than that).

GF Tips:

We had an event on Monday, and someone made delicious green chocolate chip mint cookies (YUM!). I made gluten free brownies from a mix (that was too dark chocolate for me - not the best I've ever had), gluten free cookies from a Full Circle mix (I added cinnamon, raisins and pecans, and they were really good "coffee cookies"), and rice krispy treats using Erewhon rice cereal. (I've gotten the gluten free Kellog's brand before, but I think Erewhon tastes more like the original!) Unfortunately, they didn't all get gobbled up, so we have a LOT of leftovers (I'm taking them to church tonight!) Gluten free doesn't necessarily mean healthy, but at least Steve had some things to choose from while everyone else was eating their coffee and cookies. 

I'm always impressed with the Full Circle brand and we've had good luck with the Hodgson Mills bread mix, as well.

Paleo Pi Day

Finally, the best day of the year! Of the millennium, even! It's Pi Day! And we had pie! Well, ok, to be technical, it was a Paleo apple tart.... and it was delicious! 

See that crust? It's pecans! I am continually amazed by my awesome food processor. I just pulsed some pecans (1 1/2 cups) til they were crumbled, added 1 T coconut flour, 1/4 tea. salt, and an egg and pulsed until it became a ball. So easy! 

Then I spread it in a 9 inch pie pan (after oiling with coconut oil). Next time I'm going to add a couple dates and pulse them in with the pecans to sweeten it up a little. 

I figured an apple "pie" would be easiest. That's 4 apples, 1 T honey, 1 T coconut flour, and 1 T lemon juice. 

I baked for an hour at 350, covered with foil except for the last 10 minutes. 

I put sharp cheddar cheese on mine, and Steve ate his plain. .It would be good with whipped cream too. The pecan crust is kind of awesome. It would work with pumpkin too (as the original link suggests) and probably lots of other things. 

I went to yoga again this morning where I didn't quite manage the crane pose, and she corrected me a few times, which makes me wonder if I do the moves at home, with a video, how much am I actually getting right?! I'm sure the stretch is still good, but I'm apparently far from a yogi, and I'm starting to think there might be something wrong with my arms because apparently I can't hold them out straight without pushing them up or forward or some other wonky configuration that feels right, but really really isn't! At least I look good screwing up! Very graceful. 

Fun Foto Friday

So I saw this on Facebook and thought it was funny. I mostly get "I could never run that far. It's so boring." Followed by "it's bad for your knees."

But since runners need cross-training too....I tried yoga last week and this week I went to a Core class during the day (which is why I can't usually go). I was a little worried when the first two people were older, but we did a lot of resistance band stuff, so you can set your own level of difficulty. My arms and legs are sore! Then I came home and did all kinds of stuff, trying to get my steps up! Oh, Fitbit, you are running my life! (Literally.) I can't figure out how people get 30,000 steps in a day without running a half marathon! 

BUT one of my college friends added me and commented, "I didn't know you had so many steps or I wouldn't have added you," so I feel much better about my meager 16k average!! 

Steve was out of town, so I've been eating hamburger patties and rice (one package of ground beef made 5 hamburgers). We had crock pot pork and sweet potatoes for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow I'm going to make an apple pi(e) for Pi Day, using this recipe for the crust. I think I'll arrange apples in a circle and top them with honey and cinnamon and bake til they're soft.