Hold the French Toast: A P90x Breakfast

Diet advice is like a handshake. Regardless of height, weight, or general physical condition, everybody has one and will probably give you their's if you so much as say "Hi, my name is..."

I've listened to a lot of diet advice in my day. A metric butt ton of it, if you will.

But as I listen, I am usually saying an emphatic, "Yes, I know!" in my head.

This is not my first rodeo. I've lost a total of 60 lbs since college and not one of those pounds just "fell off" like I keep hearing happens to some lucky, mythical creatures on infomercials.

And what works?

Eating right and exercising. Go effin' figure.

So... I keep on keeping on and sometimes I bump it up, sometimes I slack off... but for the most part I stay on the level. This tells me that I've probably found my body's comfort zone. I'm slowly becoming okay with that.

Now that I'm P90x-ing though, I'm seeing results and getting demanding. I see some results so I want to see more! I see progress, so I want to see perfection!

I didn't - I know you're wondering - start following the P90x Nutrition Plan by the letter this week.

I thought about it. And if I had a personal chef and loads of money, I would probably be on board. I've heard both good and bad things about it, but I prefer to try things for myself.

So why am I not doing it?

I can't get over the "but diets don't work!" mantra, and I don't know that I want to. What if I find a diet that really does work? I'm either stuck on it (which isn't healthy) or I get off it, flounder a bit, and gain weight (which isn't healthy). And please, for the love of all that's good, don't tell me that the P90x Nutrition Plan isn't a diet, it's a lifestyle. Because... just think about it... I'm getting stronger and so is my right hook. Kthanks. Right now I feed my body what it needs and what it tells me it wants.

Basically... I'm better off doing me.

And while I'm P90x-ing, it wants good food and a lot of it.

When trolling around BeachBody.com, I found an article on big breakfasts and fell in love.

The author explains things like feeding your body the most when it is the most hungry. And eating certain fats, carbs, and proteins in the morning to set the tone for the rest of the day. I tell my students to choose strategies that make sense to them and their writing styles... Well, this big breakfast thing? Makes TOTAL sense to me and my cooking style.

I mean... hello... Have you been paying attention the "breakfast" tag on this blog?

So today while I did Yoga X in the livingroom, I was roasting a turkey breast tenderloin in the kitchen. Man, oh man, did it smell good.

The meal as posted on BeachBody was:

1 package plain instant oatmeal, prepared, with 1 scoop BeachBody Whey Protein Powder
1 cup fresh blueberries
3 oz. roasted turkey breast
1 large hard-boiled egg
1 oz. dark chocolate

Delicious, right?

I certainly thought so. But... being fitness (read: not food) bloggers, they left it at that. No instructions, no cooking times, just a good luck. Thankfully, I'm good at googling and experimentation. *ahem*

What I came up with was this:


So... allow me to make it easier on you than BeachBody made it on me. Here's my long-hand, food blogger version of their above breakfast. Also, if you're interested, there are a few other big breakfasts on the above link. I'll be making them soon, no doubt.

An hour and a half before you're ready to eat:

- Preheat oven to 350.
- Prepare turkey breast by placing in an oven-proof dish with 1/4 cup water.
- Sprinkle with basil, oregano, black pepper, and garlic powder.
- Bake covered for 30 minutes.

While the turkey roasts, do something else. Anything else (I did yoga) to distract you from the unadulterated protein you can't eat for another hour.

When the timer goes off...

- Remove foil from turkey and continue to roast for another 30 minutes.
- Put egg(s) in pot and cover with cold water.
- Set pot to boil but pull immediately from heat and cover as soon as it does.
- Let egg(s) sit in hot water for 17 minutes.

When those timers go off... (they'll probably be pretty close together)

- Remove turkey from oven. Cover with foil and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Remove eggs from hot water and place in bowl of ice water until cool.

While waiting for turkey and eggs...

- Gather chocolate & fruit and prepare oatmeal. (I didn't have fresh blueberries, so I had strawberries, which I nommed during the epic cooking event. Annnnd... I didn't have chocolate so I had 1 oz. of a chocolate power bar. Since I didn't have the Whey Protein to add to the oatmeal, I figured this balanced out.)

When the final timers go off...

- Slice one half of the turkey breast tenderloin (3 oz) and peel one hard-boiled egg.
- Plate with oatmeal, fruit, and chocolate.
- Nom the hell out of it.

Now... honesty is the best policy, so I'll tell you now that my prep was nothing like this. It took me a whole lot longer to prepare this meal than it should have.

But... I... uh... had never hard-boiled an egg before? I thought it was a quick thing! Eh... now I know. And... more importantly, I made four today instead of one, so I'm set for a bit.

Mid-prep, I worried that I wouldn't be able to eat so much food. It just seemed like a whole lot to have for breakfast.

So how much did I eat?

Oh... only this much:


And the best part is, I feel great! I didn't feel full but I did feel satisfied. I felt like I was good to go. And now, a full four hours later, I'm still feeling good. I had a banana just now and I think my body is asking for more of that leftover PowerBar.

Don't mind if I do...

Video Post: Straw that broke the camel's back, I guess.

I'm a rational person. I keep it on the level. I'm not easily chuffed.

That said... I don't hesitate to share what's on my very rational, very straightforward mind.

That's exactly what happened today while the camera rolled...



Sorry about the angle... you got a lot of chest and only half of my head. I realize that... but I was focusing on the icing until the rant began. Hey... I'm just taking my cues from the professionals.

Like Giada...


This chick... (anyone know?)


Rachael Ray...


and I can't mention Food Network cleavage without my nemesis, Sandra Lee...


Holy Cow. Anyway... see... you came to my blog to see what I was yammering about... but then you got the fringe benefit of cleavage. Don't say I don't love you, reader.

Step-by-Step Braided Bread

It's been a while since I wrote up a labor-intensive step-by-step post of a complicated kitchen endeavor. Well, good sirs and madams, wait no longer. What follows is the 11 pic procedure for baking a gorgeous loaf of braided bread. I made the Cranberry Braided Bread by Two Fat Als with only minor changes.


Whisk 3 c. bread flour, 1/4 c. sugar, 2 envelopes quick-rising yeast, 1 1/4 tsp salt, and 2 T buttermilk powder together in a large bowl.


Add 1/2 c. water, 2 eggs, 2 T melted butter, 1 1/2 T vanilla extract and stir until combined. Gradually add 1/3 c. hot water until the dough forms a soft, sticky ball.


Knead dough until smooth. This will take about 7 minutes. Mine wasn't uber-smooth but I knew I'd keep kneading it in the next step.


About 1/4 c. at a time, knead 1 c. cranberries and 1/2 c. chopped walnuts into the dough.


Place dough ball in lightly greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and a dish towel, and place in a warm place to double in size, about an hour and a half. (While kneading the dough, I heated the oven to about 200 degrees and then turned it off. The residual heat works like a dream.)


See what I mean? Punch down the dough and...


divide it into four equal(ish) parts. Set one part aside and roll the other three into about 13'' long snakes.


Braid the three dough snakes together and turn both ends under. Move the braided loaf to a lightly greased baking sheet. Beat one egg and brush the braided loaf.

Divide your remaining dough ball into three equal parts and roll them into about 10" snakes. Braid the snakes and place this smaller braid on top of the larger. Brush the small braid with egg and allow the loaf to rise a second time, about another hour or so.


After the second rise, brush the loaf with the beaten egg again and bake for 45 minutes at 325 degrees.


And it's just that easy. Two Fat Als insist that you allow the loaf to cool for at least 45 minutes before you slice it, but that didn't happen for me. I was already late to the party since I mis-timed the rises, so I hack the loaf in half and ran out the door. No one was any the wiser.

The bread itself was quite good. The cranberries brought a sweetness to the bread that was refreshing. I'm sure this would have only been bettered by the orange extract that Two Fat Als used (I substituted vanilla extract here), but I didn't have any of that in the house. For me, the bread toed the troublesome line between sweet and... bread... so the next day I used the second half of my loaf to make two other dishes.

I bet regular readers already know what those two dishes were. I'm nothing if not consistent. (I'd appreciate any comments to the contrary. Things like "No way, Amanda! One of the things I love about you is your spontaneity!" will do nicely.)

Ooopsy Daisies

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It has been 30 days since my last blogpost.

There are many reasons for this, but let's just be real with each other... you don't care why I failed. You just want to know that I know, and that I'm going to try to do better.

Revision: I will do better. (In the words of the wise green one, "Do or do not. There is no try.")

So....

Ugh. Breaking the silence is so hard and uncomfortable. I'm gonna go ahead and let YouTube do the work for me.

My winter break in videos:

1. Single Ladies Gone Wrong



No introduction, no explanation. It's just that good. Enjoy it over and over.

2. "Dying Day", Brandi Carlile



I love this girl. So much. And she kept me company alllll semester through Pandora. It should be a surprise to no one that this song got stuck in my head as soon as I got on the first plane on December 10th.

3. "Sisters", White Christmas

Ladies and gentlemen, the Hanes sisters!


A friend of my sister's introduced her to this movie and I watched a bit of it with her over Christmas Eve and Day. I have not seen the whole movie through, but I have seen this one "Sisters" act about five times. It's appropriate both for the holiday and the sheer amount of time I've spent with my sister (and other family members) over the past few weeks.

4. "Sisters on the Lawrence Welk Show", SNL

I had no idea this skit sprung from the "Sisters" act on White Christmas. But having seen one, I can't leave you without sharing the other.



Lolve it. If you so much as say "with my by myself" around my dad, he'll lose it. I say this from experience.



Now... if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get to doing... something. Really anything that will get me away from this living room where my dad is enjoying who-knows-what on the Military channel.

But to you who read this post and decided to forgive me my absence... Thank you for being a friend.

Hmm... maybe I should embed some Golden Girls?

Nah, you know how I do.

Mint Julep Cupcakes, or What Season Are We Having?

Boys and Girls, I have news. It's November. (That's not the news bit.) And Smalltown, Georgia is still enjoying temperatures in the 70s.

I don't get it. I keep getting up in the morning and making tough decisions about which ridiculously patterned sweater to add to my already patterned (sometimes twice) teacher outfit, only to walk out the door and realize I don't need it. A few days I've been glad to have it but then shrugged it off by afternoon again.

So today I asked my chatty 9am class what I should expect. It went something like this...

Student A: "I'm freezing!"
Me: "Really? Tell me, how cold will it get in Georgia?"
Student B: "Oh, it gets pretty cold."
Me: "Now, what do you mean by 'pretty cold'? Because I've been living in Maine for the last two years..."
Student B: "Okay, no, it doesn't get cold. This is about as cold as it will get."
Student A: "No way, it will get a lot cooler! Like in the 40s, probably."

(-_-)

Friends, I can do 40s.

So when I ask what season we are having, I really am asking. Apparently this is fall, but it feels like winter to my students. To a Mainer, this feels pretty dern close to an endless summer.

Since I don't know what season it is and since my Australian friends are having a different season entirely and who knows... they might be confused too... I don't think any of you can sass me for making a seasonally inappropriate cupcake.


Like many before it, this cupcake came to me in a dream. I woke up from an afternoon nap with the startling knowledge that I had all the ingredients to make a bangin' Mint Julep cupcake.

The cake is vanilla mint bourbon with a white chocolate bourbon ganache filling and topped with a mint bourbon marshmallow buttercream.

Overall, the flavor was... bizarre. The cupcake tasted a lot like the drink. Some tasters enjoyed this (one said, "What is this filling? More of that!"), others did not.

I wasn't sold in either direction.

I dropped one off in a colleague's office in the morning and came back from class later to find the following message on my dry erase board:

"How can you stand that much speermint?! It's like eating gum or toothpaste! But I still love you."

Hilarious. There is nothing I love more than an honest review. None of that smile and nod business for me!

As it turns out, the verdict is out on both the season and this Mint Julep Cupcake. To both this cupcake and the season, I say a big "Why you always gotta label things?!"

Why I <3 Today

1. I fell asleep before 11pm last night. Soporific Project Runway episodes FTW!

2. My radio station played "(I Had) The Time of My Life" during my 6 minute commute to campus. I didn't even have to ask! I sang every word with all the verve and gusto I could summon.

3. Even after shaving my legs, I was ready early enough this morning to get a bagel for my mid-office hours brunch.

4. During my office hours, I'm going to start reading my new book, How to Be a People Magnet by Leil Lowndes. If you've had more than 2 conversations with me, you will probably recall my love for How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You. Same author.

5. At 1:50pm (on the dot), I'll be off until Wednesday at 8am. I plan to fill my time with a roadtrip complete with book on tape, a book festival complete with crazy high school roommate, and countless scoops of Bruster's icecream... complete with dinosaur cookies. I'm also going to test my magnetism, if you get my drift.


So... Can your good day top mine?


Update: At 10:30pm, while eating Turtle ice cream at Bruster's with Kira and her socially anxious but still adorable dog, Lila, "Hungry Eyes" played over the loud speaker. It was damn poetry.

Wilton Course II Finale

After many pounds of icing and probably more complaining than was necessary, I finished Wilton Course II and built this graduation cake.


Today, I learned how to do the basketweave and the rope border that goes around the top and bottom there.

That bird was made early in Course II with color flow icing; he's not my favorite, but he was a large part of the course so I had to include him to graduate legitimately. You'll not see him in the following pics. :)


Course II's main focus is flowers and borders. Each class we learned a few new flowers and a couple of borders. We used royal icing for these flowers, so they are nonperishable and they set up hard. (That's what... never mind.)


I used all the flowers I learned to do in the class on this cake. You can hopefully recognize Victorian roses, pansies, violets, apple blossoms, daisies, and primroses. The only flower I didn't include (only because I forgot) was the chrysanthemum.


Even though I complained about the homework (each class requires a different amount of icings in various colors and consistencies, some classes require cakes), the Wilton courses have both been fun and super helpful. I couldn't have done any of this when I started... so that should tell you a lot.

In conclusion, if you are thinking about taking a Wilton cake decorating class, stop thinking and just do.

[Incidentally, this is pretty much exactly what my classmate told me when I was nervous about starting the basketweave on my cake. So... I just started... and immediately did it wrong and had to have my instructor straighten me out. :)]

The Best Hot Dogs Ever (acc. to some)

And now for something really different...

This dish is not one that I would ever have thought I would post. I have nothing against meat, but it really isn't my favorite thing to cook. I consider myself a vegetable enthusiast. I love them. But we're not quite exclusive. So... wrapping one meat in another is not really my idea of a great time.

But... tonight... it's what the family wanted.

Without further ado, I present you the family recipe for what they call The Best Hot Dog Ever.

Step 1: Bake bacon on a broiler pan in a 400 degree oven for about 8 minutes. This will begin to cook the bacon but still keep it really soft for wrapping.


Step 2: While bacon is in the oven, cut a slit down the length of each hotdog and fill with cheddar cheese.


Step 3: Remove bacon from oven and blot on paper towels. (Ew.)


Step 4: Wrap each hot dog with one piece of bacon. Secure each end of each piece of bacon with a toothpick. Line hot dogs up on pan, cheese down.(don't these dogs look like they are tanning?)




Step 5: Wait forever for the oven light to go off to signal broiler readiness. Learn from sister about ten minutes later that oven indicator light does not ever go off when broiling. (oops) Broil hot dogs for about 7 minutes until the bacon looks crispy. Turn hot dogs over (this is why you want to start cheese down) and broil for about another 7 minutes.


Step 6: Remove from oven and blot on new paper towels.


And there you have it. A pile of cheese-filled, bacon-wrapped hot dogs. According to my family, The Best Hot Dogs Ever.

Oh, and it should be noted that even though I made an ew face the entire time I was assembling these disasters, I ate two of them. And they do taste pretty good.

Per the family's request, we had Ore Ida from-the-bag french fries with these dogs. Because I couldn't leave well enough alone, we also had roasted broccoli. :) [Vegetable! Enthusiasm!]