Kitchen Escapades - Pizza

So after a great first day back on 1500 calories, I've managed to go over every day since :/ Tonight we had a movie night so I spent the day in the kitchen preparing for a homemade pizza party for dinner - besides baking bread for the week. Standing in the kitchen for hours and kneading dough should count as some exercise, right? I did Just Dance this morning for about 30 minutes and only burned 178 calories. Fun, but not the most bang for my buck. But I digress....

Twice now I have used this pizza dough recipe. The first time I made it, I thought I overworked the dough and stuck it in the fridge for later. I was really skeptical about it, but once I took it out of the fridge and started working with it, I discovered it was actually a really good dough and a great one to work with once it warmed back up. Pretty forgiving. I used it to make the Pioneer Woman's easy calzones which turned out really yummy (except Aaron didn't like them. He prefers regular pizza.) Though I used white sugar the first time I made the dough, this time I used honey. Calorie wise, sugar was the better way to go (for future reference).

I got 14 large calzones out of the dough. As far as actual pizza dough, it could make two large pizzas or be divided up into smaller ones. We decided to each make our own pizzas, so we ended up with 4 smaller dough balls and two medium sized (put in the freezer for another time). Aaron wanted to use the cookie cutters today, so he made a bunch of little pizzas shaped like Christmas cookies while Jared created the Millenium Falcon. I had a regular round thin crusted Hawaiian BBQ pizza with cilantro, and Matthew had a thick crusted face. It was great fun.

The best part came AFTER the pizza though - dessert. To go along with the pizza theme, I decided it would be nice to do a fruit pizza. I knew the basic concept, but googled for some recipes to nail down the concept and decided on this one for the cream cheese topping because I had all the ingredients. The cookie part seemed simple enough too but I opted to go with a ChocolateCoveredKatie grain free sugar cookie recipe instead. Per a commentor's suggestion from the allrecipes recipe, I used our frozen fruit and added some cream of tartar to thicken the juice as it thawed. Oh. My. Goodness!! It was SO delicous!!!! All 446 calories of it :P (Is it any wonder how I ended up 469 calories over tonight?!)

Here is the ingredient list for CCK's cookie:

• 1 cup finely-ground almond meal (also known as almond flour.) (75g)
• a little over 1/8 tsp salt (1/8 plus 1/16 tsp)
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 2 tbsp pure maple syrup, or stevia to taste (For substitutions, see nutrition link below.) (30g)
• 1 1/2 tbsp coconut or vegetable oil (15g)
• For maple syrup version: up to 2 level teaspoons milk of choice or extra oil, as needed (5-10g). For stevia version: 1 tbsp milk of choice, added with the liquid ingredients. (15g)
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• optional: pure almond extract

What I did:

- Ground up 1 cup of almonds in the food processor, then measured out 1 cup of the meal. Followed the rest of the ingredient list subbing honey for the maple syrup, added 1 tsp of almond extract, and then misread the milk part and added 2 TABLESPOONS!! oops!!! Way too wet at that point, so I added in the rest of the almond meal, about 1/4 cup of white flour, then added an extra 1/8 tsp of salt and baking soda - essentially doubling the recipe for the dry ingredients. It was still sticky, but it was much closer to what I thought the consistency should be at that point so I followed through on the rest of the instructions and it worked!! It was the best dessert I've eaten in a long time!!

Cream Cheese Frosting: (I halved the recipe)

4 oz 1/3 fat cream cheese

1/4 c sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Blueberry Muffin and Lemon Cake for One

Blueberry Muffin for One and Lemon Cake
courtesy of chocolatecoveredkatie.com

As I've been trolling the CCK blog, I decided to make her cupcakes/muffins for breakfast. The boys both chose the lemon flavor and I went with the blueberry. She gives directions for baking them in the oven, but I was in a hurry and used the microwave instead. I cooked them each for one minute. Because mine used frozen blueberries I ended up adding an extra 10-15 seconds (don't remember). From my previous experience with minute muffins, if you put them in too long they turn hard. Apparently the longer these set out while the boys picked at them, the harder they got.

Aaron liked his and Jared said it tasted funny. I used olive oil in theirs and it was easily recognizable by my buds so I told them that's what it was. Jared did say it tasted lemony though. Mine wasn't bad. I subbed regular butter for the oil hoping for a better flavor. It worked, but when I inputted it in MFP I was shocked to see that 1 TB was 100 calories!!! YIKES! This seemingly innocent muffin turned into a 236 calorie breakfast besides the milk to drink it down. I played around just now with some of the oil options and olive oil would have been 120 calories so I definitely got the better deal with the butter. My best bet would have subbed half of it with applesauce (which is how I made Matthew's but it didn't rise as much).

The recipe is easy enough that I will have to play around with it a bit and see what I can do to slim it down more and further 'healthify' it. In the meantime, here's the link to all of her single serving muffin/cupcakes.

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As a side note, today I am feeling the 4 mph program I did yesterday. My legs haven't felt this sore for weeks when I quit running as much and mostly walked for long stretches of time for my exercise. It is nice to feel like I worked out yesterday not just be tired. Today I plan to do Chicken Fat to get some calisthenics in and see if we can't begin to get this core back in shape now that I have no physical limitations.

Food intake update

Maybe I'll survive the calorie change after all :) We even ate out for dinner! Although you'll notice I didn't make the iron :/

Quinoa Blueberry Muffin

Quinoa Blueberry Muffin
courtesy of Hillbillyhousewife.com

Quinoa Muffins

• 1 cup quinoa, rinsed
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup packed dark-brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cook the quinoa in a cup of water. Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cover and cook for 10 to 15 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed and the quinoa is tender. You will end up with 2 cups of cooked quinoa. Set it aside to cool.

In the meantime combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the quinoa and stir until you have it worked into the flour mixture.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a cup or small bowl, then pour them into the flour / quinoa mixture. Stir it just until everything is combined.

Spray a regular sized 12 cup muffin pan with nonstick spray. Scoop the batter into the tins. Bake in a preheated 350F oven for 25 minutes.

Quinoa Muffin Variations

Here are a couple of “

add-on” ideas for these rather plain quinoa muffins. Incorporate those ingredients with the quinoa into the flour mixture, then proceed as mentioned above.

• 1/2 cup of raisins
• 1/2 cup of chopped dried dates
• 1/4 cup of dried apricots and 1/4 cup of chopped almonds
• 1/2 cup of chopped apple pieces and a good dash of cinnamon
• 1/4 cup of apple finely chopped apple or raisins and 1/4 cup chopped walnut pieces
• 1/2 cup mashed banana and 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup fresh, frozen or dried blueberries

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LOVE these! They make such a great quick snack. I used 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 all purpose flour so they were pretty dense and didn't raise much. I made them twice and both times I ended up with 22 muffins. Here is the nutritional info for mine:

Calories: 107

Carbs: 16

Fat: 3

Protein: 3

Fiber: 1

Iron: 4

Cheesy Quinoa Mac N Cheese

Quinoa Mac n Cheese
courtesy of http://aroundthetableri.blogspot.com

Serving Size: 8

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups quinoa, rinsed and drained
• Veggies of your choice (optional)
• good pinch of salt
• a few grinds of seasoning salt
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup soy milk or non-fat milk
• 1 1/2 cups grated Cheddar cheese, more for sprinkling
• Optional- Crushed Red Pepper, Panko Bread crumbs for topping
• Toppings (optional)- salsa, hot sauce, sour cream, scallions

I went through a quinoa phase in February and this is one of the recipes I tried. Since most of my experience with mac n cheese is the boxed kind, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. This certainly got mixed reviews. Matthew and Aaron could leave it, but Jared really liked it as did I though as leftovers it took me a few days to be willing to eat it again. I have realized I really don't care for the texture of quinoa except in breads. It has a distinctive flavor too that I am not all too fond of. Since I added garlic to the water the quinoa was cooked in, it absorbed that flavor and really added a nice touch to the overall dish. 

My variation: added 2 oz of cream cheese to enhance the creaminess as suggested by a commenter on the original blog post and bread crumbs for the topping.

Week 11 Weigh in

Weigh in - 174.6

Well, all things considering, not a bad gain. I've adjusted my goals again and only have 1490 calories compared to the 1700 I had before. This is definitely going to take some forethought and effort :P

Back in Action

After not exercising since the 11th and then spending most of the week/end in bed, I finally got back on board yesterday. I felt pretty good and decided with only 2 weeks left of the contest and all the binge-ing I did to feed my emotions, I couldn't delay getting back on the treadmill. I am hoping that I'll be ready to start CardioX again next week. Thurs when I was being productive I tackled some sore spots in our room that will make it easier to exercise in there again.

It was probably a mistake to make all those 'healthy' desserts because they were still full of sugar. It got me back in the habit of eating sweets so now I am needing a fix but trying to abstain. I may have to let a chocolate smoothie satisfy my craving.