Lifestyle

Banana “Pancake” Muffins

~ laurensleankitchen ~ 1 Comment

banana pancakeMy dear friend Alex put out a request that I tackle the most important meal of the day, breakfast.

Growing up, I remember my dad always reminding us of how important breakfast was to fuel our mind and body as we headed off to school, and I still believe in that today. Nothing is more important than feeling your best as you tackle whatever your day has in store for you!

So, Alex, I hope you enjoy this breakfast treat I have in store for you today 🙂

Banana “Pancake” Muffins

What you need:

2 very ripe bananas

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

1 egg

1 tsp of pure vanilla extract

1/4 tsp baking powder

a dash of cinnamon

What you need to do:

Preheat the oven at 350.

In a medium sized bowl, peel and mash the ripe bananas with a fork. Don’t mash them to the point where they are puree, but just enough that there are very little lumps in the mix.

Then, add the egg, vanilla, walnuts, baking powder, and cinnamon, and continue to mix the ingredients. Make sure everything is mixed through thoroughly.

Take a cupcake pan and spray with whatever cooking spray you have on hand (I use Trader Joe’s coconut oil cooking spray). Coat each tin entirely, as you don’t want anything to stick.

Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, scoop some of the mixture into each tin. My mixture made  7 muffin cakes.

Place the cupcake tin into the oven and cook for 13 minutes.

You can check on the muffin cakes just as you would when cooking a cake by using a fork and puncturing the center of the cake. When the mixture is no longer sticking to the fork your muffin cakes are done!

Honestly, these muffin cakes had so much flavor that you don’t need to add anything more to them! It was a treat that served as breakfast.

You can certainly make a big batch of these ahead of time and eat them throughout the week.

Enjoy 🙂

Deciding to get lean

~ laurensleankitchen ~ 2 Comments

Love yourself enoughPete and I got engaged on November 7, 2015. I knew right away that it would have to be game on for our wedding diet!

My entire life, I have yo-yoed with my weight. I would lose a few pounds, sustain for a bit, but the second I would allow myself to “cheat” I would gain back my weight, and then some.

I was tired of all of the ups and downs.

I knew the wedding “diet” would have to be something more than just an unsustainable fad. It would have to be a lifestyle change.

In the year prior to getting engaged, I ran 5 half marathons, and 1 full marathon. Running kept me on the “slim” side, but I was eating whatever I pleased because I knew I was burning so many calories. I was getting frustrated as to why I wasn’t seeing a bigger change (hmmmm, wonder why?).

Obviously, how I was feeding myself was not working. I needed to start from scratch. I needed to start all over and relearn the basics of portion control, and what foods I should be taking in on a daily basis.

I had seen some people posting about 21 Day Fix (21DF) on Facebook, and after some research on the program, I was sold. I ordered my program and was ready to go! 30 minutes a day of working out was nothing! Shoot, I ran a marathon in 6 hours and 20 minutes; working out for 30 minutes is CAKE!

Beachbody offers free coaches, and since I’m a sucker for anything free, I signed up.

Within a day I was connected with a wonderful coach named Julie.  I immediately joined her Facebook challenge group. A Beachbody Facebook challenge group is designed to help support others while they are completing various Beachbody programs, share success, share defeats, keep each other accountable, and share recipes.

I quickly realized that this wasn’t a diet, but it was a lifestyle change.

In pressing the “restart” button on my eating habits, I turned to Pinterest for some 21DF recipe help. Although I found some recipes, there was not a ton available that incorporated the ingredients and portions I was looking for. I found myself adjusting the recipes to fit what was going to suit my needs best.

I started making a few new recipes incorporating healthy ingredients with the right portion sizes. And, of course, I made sure that these meals would still be crave-worthy.

Not only do the recipes need to be healthy and crave-worthy, they need to be EASY. I’m a working lady, so meals during the week need to have few recipes, which in turn, do not have a lot of expensive ingredients.

So here we are.

While I am on my own journey to stay lean in the kitchen, and improve my physical condition, I hope that this blog will help others get creative with healthy foods and live a lean lifestyle.