Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Good evening!

Today I just laid low and worked out in the home gym while watching Oprah. As much as I’ve enjoyed going to classes at the gym here, I will say that the big downfall is not getting home until 7 or 7:30 and still needing to eat dinner, pack lunch, do laundry, read, bible study, blog..…and make it to bed at 9:30 to get my 8 hours of sleep! I checked at one of the yoga studios that I used to frequent in Tampa and they DO offer noon yoga classes daily so I’m pretty sure that’s going to be my new exercise routine once I start my job. I have it all worked out in my head on how it will work but we will just have to see… I did end up having a pretty good upper body workout today though. Here’s what I did:

10 minutes on the pre-cor to warm up

2 sets of stability ball pushups, 10 reps each set

3 sets of assisted pull-ups, 10 reps each set

3 sets of dips on the bench, 10 reps each set

3 sets of shoulder raises, 12 lbs, 10 reps each set

3 sets of chest press with dumbbells on stability ball, 15 lbs, 10 reps each set

3 sets of standing bent-over row with dumbbells, 15 lbs, 10 reps each set

3 sets of crunches with 12 lb dumbbell, 20 reps each set

Total workout= about 40 minutes

After I worked out I made dinner. I, um, “borrowed” this mac&cheese from my parents when I was home:

My mom raved about it and I had never tried it before….I always just stuck to the powdered Annies, which was fine to me. When you get into the squeezy cheese realm, I always tend to compare to Velveeta, which nothing could ever beat. Velveeta shells and cheese was always my FAVORITE growing up…oh man, I can just taste it! These days I try not to eat too much of it, but it does own a piece of my heart :). Anyways, I tried this tonight and really liked it! Granted it’s no Velveeta, but it was really really good! And much creamier than the powdered cheese kind.

I mixed the whole thing (which apparently serves 3) with a can of tuna to up the protein and then served myself a whopping cup.

I like mixing Annies with tuna because it not only tastes really really good (I never thought I would go for this combo!!!) but it also ups the protein from 10 grams, which is the amount of protein per serving in a cup of prepared Annies alone, to about 21 grams with the tuna. Can’t beat that! I also had a small spinach salad drizzled with woodstock dressing. It was an Annies kind of night!

And then for dessert I switched to Amy’s! 🙂

Needless to say, I was SO excited to try this. Having the profession I do, I get asked ALL THE TIME what my favorite dessert it. That’s like asking me what my favorite book is. Its impossible to answer! But, I have to admit, it’s hard to top warm cake and ice cream 😉

The instructions on the box say that you should let the cake sit in the fridge for a few hours to defrost but I skipped that step and just sliced away . Even though it was frozen, it was not that difficult to slice easily and I tried my best to gage portion size because the entire cake serves 6. In cases like this you just need to eyeball it! So, I cut my slice (which was about an inch thick) and zapped it in the micro for 20 seconds. It needed something creamy on top and Betty didn’t have any whipped cream (the REAL stuff…not that cool whip crap made out of lord knows what) so I broke out the coconut milk ice cream and scooped out a tiny scoop for a topper.

Now, I always try my best to give an honest review of products. More times than not its a great review because I know the product line going into it and usually love the new stuff! This was definitely one of those cases. The cake was soft and rich….it had absolutely NO weird frozen taste, which is one of my biggest pet peeves. I’d liken it to one of my beloved vitamuffins, but it had a richer taste….more “birthday-cakish” if you will. Of course topped with ice cream it was marvelous and I had to sit down and remind myself to eat slow and enjoy it because every forkful was so chocolaty, rich and amazingly light at the same time.

Now, a review wouldn’t be fair if I couldn’t find one fault. And, I admit, I’m a tough critic when it comes to desserts. Most of the time I’d rather just make it myself. However, the only thing I can find wrong with this little treasure was that it was hard not to eat the entire cake!!! I would like to see the little cakes portioned out so one can have a quick dessert, pronto, without the stress (well not really stress, but you know what I mean) of trying to slice the cake into a perfect 1 out of 6 slices. It would be very easy to inhale this whole cake…it was that good!

Here are the stats:

And the ingredients:

Amazingly simple, no? Amy’s strikes again!

I need to brush my teeth and get to bed to read before I run back for seconds. Tomorrow is Adam’s day off and on top of all my daily work stuff, I’m going to create a barm, or mother starter, which will in a few days become a sourdough starter that I will use to make my very own sourdough loaves around Christmastime with! The barm needs to be refreshed every couple days for about 2 weeks in order for it to really develop the “sour” flavors that will be present in my sourdough. I’m doing it at work because they have the 100% dark rye flour and hi-gluten flour I need. Once its made, it will last forever really, and I can create sourdough loaves any time I want. Sourdough was my FAVORITE style of bread that I made back in school. If you do it right, the bread will have an almost “cheesy” taste and just be faaaabulous.

See you tomorrow!