For those of you in the bay area aka Silicon Valley area aka ’round here, the fine people over the hill in Santa Cruz are hosting a Chocolate Festival on Feb 8. Now those are 2 words I like to see together! And it’s just in time for my birthday week. How thoughtful of them. :) (and for those of you not getting older that week… it could be a good pre-Valentine’s event. Think of the great chocolate presents you could pick up for your loved ones. But really, who needs an excuse to attend a chocolate festival?) Chocolate festival. Say it with me. Feels good, doesn’t it? Just imagine how you’ll feel after tasting all of that lovely chocolate…
* thanks for the link D. :)
Tagged as: chocolate, chocolate festival, events
I want to be healthy and eat well. And if I can do these things in 10 minutes a day and without spending a lot of money even better! So when I came across these challenges yesterday I thought I’d give them a shot. I’ll be posting occasional updates on my progress here…
one hundred push ups — It’s a 6 week challenge that takes about 10 minutes a day (every other day) with the end goal of you being capable of doing 100 consecutive push ups. It sounds like a macho goal to do 100 push ups, but then I thought about it in terms of 10 minutes every other day to make me stronger (arms, abs, shoulders) and that sounded like a reasonable goal. I completed Day 1 today (using modified “girlie” push ups).
two hundred sit-ups — Similar to the one hundred push ups, this is a 6 week challenge, takes 10 minutes a day, and in the end you are supposed to be able to do 200 consecutive “sit ups” (really they are talking about crunches). I will start this challenge tomorrow.
In theory I’ll be able to do 100 push up (girlie push ups, that is) and 200 crunches in 6 weeks… wish me luck :)
Tagged as: challenges, fitness
I think I am a little late to the party to actually enter the Iron Cupcake challenge for January (since I just decided today that I would try it out and did not request to be admitted to the group until just now… and the deadline for entry is tomorrow at noon Central time). BUT I decided to do the challenge anyway because it sounded like fun. The January ingredient is wine which did not at first make me think “cupcake”, but then a light went on… I love Zinfandel. And I love to eat chocolate with my Zinfandel. So I made devil’s food cupcakes with a kick.
[Continue reading...]
Tagged as: chocolate, cupcakes, devil's food, iron cupcake, iron cupcake wannabe, zinfandel
Work has been a tad on the crazy side so my oven has been quiet (maybe this is a good thing? It makes the ‘eat fewer sweets’ easier anyway). This unfortunately means I have no new pictures of desserts fresh from my oven. Instead I’ve decided to do a quick roundup of the brownies I’ve spotted recently:
Peanut Butter Nutella Brownies from Cathy on Noble Pig (hello? chocolate and peanut butter… ’nuff said)
Fudgy Mocha Brownies from HoneyB on The Life and Loves of Grumpy’s Honeybunch (bonus: this is a Cooking Light recipe)
Grasshopper Brownies from Deb on smitten kitchen (this one was posted over a month ago, but definitely worth mentioning… minty chocolatey richness)
The pictures are making me hungry… I need a brownie.
Tagged as: brownies
A couple of years ago, while reading French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano, I was inspired to buy a yogurt maker. I started to make my own yogurt using 2% organic milk. And I was hooked. I couldn’t eat store-bought sugary yogurt any more. Well, not back then anyway. Then the work-and-stress-blah-blah-excuses started and I stopped paying attention to my eating and stopped making yogurt and the yogurt maker was left neglected stuffed into the cabinet with my seldom used blender.
Fast forward to this month. While I have been baking all sorts of goodies, I have also been trying to eat healthier. It’s contradictory I know, but c’est la vie. While pondering my predicament, I ran across French Fridays on Joie de Vivre’s blog. She’s been doing a weekly recap of a few chapters from French Women Don’t Get Fat. So I’ve been reading along. And while my “recasting” is going very slowly, I decided to start making yogurt again. So yesterday I started with a fresh (just opened) half gallon of 2% organic milk and organic plain yogurt and set it up over night in the yogurt maker. This morning it was ready for the refrigerator.
And this afternoon I had some for a snack with a teaspoon of lemon curd:
I had almost forgotten how good fresh yogurt could be. I’m also excited to start playing with add-ins again. My favorites are honey or maple syrup (not a lot, just enough to get a little of the flavor). Maybe this is just the incentive I needed to get my eating on track…
Tagged as: french fridays, french women don't get fat, healthy eating, joie de vivre, yogurt
