Spreading a little Nuun Love...

One Nuuncake at a time.

I love Nuun. I am constantly throwing these little tabs in my water bottle, I always have tubes in my purse, my car and a supply in my kitchen. I was excited to put together an application video to be a part of their Hood to Coast team this summer.

I decided that I needed to come up with something good for my video so I decided to combine my love of Nuun with my love of baking. (After all, I am always combining it with my running.) Lots of people use Nuun in their adult beverages, so why not use it in some cupcakes?

Here's how it came together.

As with most good recipes you start with butter and sugar.

Then a couple of egg whites. If you look closely there is a little bit of yellow in my egg whites. Separating eggs is not always an exact science.

Then the flour mixture goes in. Helpful hint: beat slowly when you add the flour or you will end up with a nice cloud of flour in your kitchen. Is White Lung something that bakers suffer from? Instead of coal dust, a combination of flour/baking soda/bakig powder/salt.

Then the buttermilk. Did you know you can make your own buttermilk by adding a little bit of lemon juice to regular milk? I never use regular milk when I bake, so I just add a little bit of lemon juice to almond milk instead. So in goes my fake buttermilk.

Finally I mixed in some Lemonade Nuun. I love, love, love this flavor. So good! The perfect addition to this recipe.

I baked these mini cupcakes for 15 minutes and then topped them with vanilla buttercream. This is my go to frosting. Butter, powdered sugar and vanilla these three simple ingredients make a frosting that is just heavenly.

I am sure you are asking yourself, how did they taste? Seriously, the cake ws so light and fluffy. The combination of the lemonade flavor with the vanilla buttercream really worked well. I took some of these for after our long run on Saturday and got good reviews. My girls loved them, and the one I dropped on the floor was gobbled up by Penny the pig dog.

Does she look like a dog that would eat cupcakes that didn't taste good?

So there you have it, what I am calling Nuuncakes. Cupcakes made with Nuun. Fuel and hydration all in one. I have plans to make some cherry limeade cupcakes this week alog with another batch of these. Spreadig the Nuun love one cupcake at a time.

 

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Failures in the Kitchen...

Do you ever have those days where you just feel off your game? Well I am, definitely.

After eating hard boiled egg sandwiches with avocado for breakfast a few days last week I decided to hard boil some eggs last night so I could have a few more sandwiches this week. I boiled the eggs last night and put them in the sink with cold water to cool down.

That was my first failure. When I got up this morning and I realized that I forgot to put the eggs in the fridge last night. They sat in the sink overnight. First failure of the day.

I decided I had time this morning to make another batch. I put the other half of the dozen eggs I bought on sale at Sprouts this weekend and boiled them while I got ready for work. When I peeled the first one to make my sandwich I discovered failure number two. I guess I didn't boil the water enough because they were not cooked enough. Six more wasted eggs.

I ended up going with a scrambled egg whites sandwich with avocado. Of course, the first avocado was not good when I cut into it. Failure number three.

I didn't get a picture but it was a yummy sandwich. A lot more work than I was hoping for a breakfast on the go.

I remembered to buy more lasagna noodles so I could make crockpot veggie lasagna for dinner tonight. There you have failure number four. I needed a lot more sauce and more seasoning and then it might have been edible. It was not good.

I ended up having this for dinner.

Frosted Mini Wheats (chocolate and regular mini bites) with an almost too ripe banana and almond milk.

It's a good thing I got the eggs on sale at Sprouts, because I have another half dozen on the stove now boiling. I am really hoping these turn out.

 

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Nuun Hood to Coast Application...

Here it is.  My Nuun Hood to Coast application...

Ever heard of a Nuuncake?

March Running, the Orthodontist and WIAW...

Since it's April I thought I would look back and see how March turned out. Total miles for the month were 75.69. Not bad considering I took a week and a half off when I sprained my ankle. My ankle healed up nicely with a minimum amount of time off, and there doesn't appear to be any long term problems.

I did finally make a decision about the OKC Memorial marathon. Last week I submitted my request to change from the marathon to the half marathon, my plan is to just go run the race and have fun. I do love the distance of the half marathon. I am hoping to get a couple longer runs in before the race at the end of the month.

If you are keeping track my total miles for 2013 are now at 269.69. Not a bad start, and on track to run a thousand miles this year. Another month of yoga is also in the books and I am enjoying the small improvements I am seeing. I did a few weights tonight and it reminded me why I am loving the yoga.

Since I am going to talk about Camy I thought I would post a picture I took of her this week after her softball game last Thursday.

I took Camy to the orthodontist yesterday. It was her third monthly appointment and it was the first time I actually teared up during her orthodontist appointments. I am not sure what they were doing but they weren't happy with how one of the spaces isn't closing like they want and whatever she did looked incredibly painful. I have never seen Camy squirm around that much, and she has never cried at the end of an appointment before. It was a hard day to be a mom, that's for sure. Even if she isn't as small as she used to be, I don't want my babies to be in pain.

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Okay, not for the WIAW portion of the post. I really should call this, what I actually took pictures of.

Here's some of this weeks eats.

 

Veggie pot pie soup, with mini club crackers. This was leftovers from Sunday night. I just love this soup, it's packed with veggies and gnocchi. Great for a cold rainy day.

Breakfast today was a hard boiled egg sandwich, with cheese and mayo. I could have made egg salad, but I was too lazy. Maybe I will have egg salad tomorrow. It does seem weird to have a hard boiled egg sandwich for breakfast, but is it really any different than any other kind of egg sandwich? Can you put pickles on a hard boiled egg sandwich for breakfast? How about if you are working on hydration? Okay, this just really sounds good.

My wonderful mother-in-law made breakfast for us on Sunday. Scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions and some kind of greens that I can't remember. It was not spinach. I know that is what you were thinking, but I would remember that.

Dessert last Thursday was a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of wine. I hadn't slept well all week, and the glass of wine did the trick. I got a great night of sleep on Thursday night.

There is an Easter eggy theme going on with my WIAW post. This is an egg salad sandwich with extra pickles and provalone from Which Wich last week after Camy's softball game. It was so good. You should try it with extra pickles, you won't be disappointed.

Well that's it for now. Got any good recipes for vegetarian foods that you want to share? I'd love some suggestions.

Have a good week!

 

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A Little More Baking...

I have been on quite the baking kick again. It's kinda nice. I made some of my triple chocolate chip cookies to take to Kendra's birthday party Friday night. These are packed with semi-sweet, dark chocolate and milk chocolate M&Ms. I say if one kind of chocolate is good, three is even better.

I baked up these cupcakes Sunday, but I will tell you more about them later. Just know that they were yummy.

I saw the recipe for Peanut Butter-Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips on the Brown Eyed Baker's blog a while ago. I never managed to have ay overly ripe bananas to use in the recipe, but tody I finally did. So I whipped up the batter.

I poured the batter in a lined loaf pan.

And I baked it up until it was golden brown and beautiful.

I have not had a chance to taste it yet, but based on the smells coming out of my kitchen, I think this recipe is going to have to be repeated.

 

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Birthday Cookies...

One of my favorite kiddos celebrated a birthday on Saturday.

I was so excited to make cookies for her to take to her party at school on Friday. What would be better for a four year old's birthday than sparkly sugar cookies shaped like the letter 4?

I started with a batch of my go to sugar cookie dough.

I baked them up on Tuesday night and then got up early on Wednesday morning to decorate them. The beauty of frosted sugar cookies is they can be made a couple days ahead of time. I prefer to give them atleast one day to set up, so there's no worries about messing up the decorations.

If you are going to decorate sugar cookies, this is the meringue powder you should use. I buy it at William's Sonoma, and it makes me very sad when they run out. Don't waste your money on the brand from Hobby Lobby, it doesn't taste as good, and the texture is not always the best.

Start with the outline.

Then flood with thinned out frosting, and then add the rainbow sprinkles.

I love making sugar cookies, it's even better making them for someone that is going to be so excited to get them. I am loving getting back into baking again.

 

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Easter in Tulsa...

We picked the girls up from their friend's house Saturday afternoon and headed up to Tulsa to visit with the in-laws. The dogs were crazy in the car, and we decided that it is best for them to travel in their kennels on road trips.

It is tradition for the girls to decorate Easter eggs at gammy and pop's house. I am sad to say this might be the last year for this tradition because they had very limited interest in the egg decorating.

I did manage to get a few pictures, and they don't look like we were torturing them too bad.

I do love to torture my girls by taking pictures of them.

No one has more egg dacorating supplies then my mother-in-law. The little cups to put the egg dye in have been recycled for years. She said who would want to throw them away. I would.

It was a beautiful day for egg decorating on the back porch.

We even had paint for the eggs. It was pretty messy.

We had pizza delivered and I had a few {three} glasses of wine and I had to call it a night at around 10 o'clock.

The girls were excited about the goodies in their Easter bowls. We hung out for a little while and headed home after noon.

 

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