Friday, October 1, 2010

Fall is a good time to bake and run!

The start of the Littleton 1 mile "Fun Run"
Food
I was in a baking mood this week. I drooled over recipes on Tastespotting, Foodgawker, and my latest find, foodphotoblog.com, dreaming of all the delicious recipes I wanted to make. Then I thought about my waistline and decided against it. But really, I could have baked something tasty everyday. My sweet tooth is killing me. I need to invite people over for dessert more often.


While perusing these sites, I did decide on what cake to make for my father's 75th(!) birthday on October 16. It's a chocolate oreo cake...it looks so yummy and I bet will taste yummy too. You can find a link to the cake recipe here. Though the more I think about it,  the more want to make the Preacher's Chocolate Cake I made for my brother, and just make the frosting from this recipe. That Preacher's cake was delicious.


This week, I baked some applesauce (yes, baked) and left it slightly on the tart side and chunky. It's time to start eating oatmeal for breakfast again, and I like it with homemade applesauce swirled in. In the end, I couldn't just let the sauce sit in my fridge and I decided to bake some muffins with it instead. They were moist, and it wasn't until I ate one, that I realized that I didn't put any butter or oil in the recipe. They're not very sweet, but make a nice breakfast muffin or afternoon snack with a cup of tea. These definitely fall into the "healthy" category.


Whole Wheat Apple Muffins with Toasted Oat Bran
adapted from Taste and Tellmakes 14 muffins

1 cup Toasted OatBran (I used Trader Joe's)
1 cup Light Vanilla SoyMilk
1 1/4 cup homemade slightly sweetened applesauce
1 Farm Fresh egg (this one had a double yolk)
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Turbinado sugar



The original recipe said to soak a cup of old fashioned oats in milk for an hour. Since I used oat bran, I did not do this step. I just combined the oat bran and soy milk together and then proceeded with the rest of the recipe.

Preheat the oven to 400F and line or spray a muffin tin.

Combine the oat mixture, applesauce and egg; mix until well combined. Add directly to this bowl... brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Add the flour last and whisk to combine.  DO NOT OVERMIX. Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin tin or liners; about 2/3 full. Sprinkle the sugar on top of the muffins.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from pan, and cool on a wire rack. I froze all but four for future snacking. It's best either refrigerate or leave the muffins in a ziploc bag overnight before taking wrappers off, otherwise the muffins will stick to the wrapper.



Whole Wheat/Oat Bran Chocolate Chunk Cookies - Take Two
I also made another batch of those wonderful cookies from my previous post. This time I made them for Isabella's snack day at school. Minor changes include: 


1. a single egg with a double yolk (I got two double yolk eggs in my dozen from one of the local farm stands!)
2. Increase the flour to a  1 1/2 cup
3. Increase oat bran to 1 1/4 cup 
4. Substituted turbinado sugar for the white sugar
5. Substituted about a 1/2 package of Nestle mini chocolate chips instead of the Hershey's milk chocolate bar chunks


Overall I was really happy with the results. The turbinado sugar made the texture a little crunchy, which I'm not quite sure I liked. Izzy's classmates sure enjoyed them. Here is the original post and recipe. 


Fitness
I had two good runs this past week; a 10k and a 5 miler. I did the 10k as a progression run. I didn't originally set out to do it, but after seeing my time on the first mile, I picked up the pace and each subsequent mile showed improvement and I ended up with a pretty decent run. 





That afternoon, I set out to buy some new running sneakers. I really should have bought them before the half marathon. I knew about a month before the race it was time to buy a new pair, but I put it off, until it was too late to transition them into race. I knew if I bought them, I would want to wear them on race day, so I didn't. I'm on my 4th pair of Saucony's ProGrid Omni 9. They do the trick and even though it would be cool to try something a bit more flashy, I don't want to mess anything up. Next time I'm sure they'll be Omni 10 or something like that... 


Nashoba Hospital/Flanagan Pond (10k) by mappy17 at Garmin Connect - Details


5 Miles in Ayer by mappy17 at Garmin Connect - Details


I also got in a nice weights workout, something I've been neglecting since school started. I haven't really wanted to get out of bed at 5:15 in the morning and quite frankly, that's a problem. Fortunately this week, Isabella had a field trip/extra day of preschool and that's how I fit this workout in. Pretty soon I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get myself out of bed. Strength training has been an important part of my weight loss success. I need to make sure I don't slack off in this area.


Well I have a 5k tomorrow and I hope to do a nice long run on Sunday morning (10 miles?) before heading out to the last Red Sox Game of the season. They're playing the Yankees. Unfortunately the Red Sox did not make the playoffs this year, but Ben and I will enjoy the game...pictures and a writeup to come.








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