Healthy Tipping Point

Happy Monday!  How was your weekend?  Mine was GREAT.  Seriously, it was an awesome weekend.  Saturday was particularly memorable!

I started things off with dropping Claire’s crib.  Sure, there are those typical milestones like crawling, walking, talking… But I consider the crib drop a big one, too!  I almost shed a tear while I unscrewed the bottom of the crib.  It’s probably the last crib that I’ll ever drop.  Wahhh.

After breakfast, I headed out on a bike ride and run.  THANKS to the Husband for helping facilitate this long workout.  He practically chased me out the door when I confessed that I really, really needed to do a super long brick workout.  I kept putting it off, but he made sure that I got it done!

My game plan was to do a 1 and 1/2 hour bike and a 3-mile run.  I figured that if I could do that, I’d feel a lot more confident about my upcoming triathlon, which includes a 25-mile bike and a 6.2 mile run.

I really nailed hydrated and nutrition on this ride.  Coach Marni (who trained me back when I did a Half Ironman) taught me to take in tons of LIQUID calories (I used to eat solids on the bike).  I really think liquid calories have made a huge difference in my training.  I aim for 100 calories an hour, which is about what I hit for this workout and felt great during and after!

The run was a little rough in the beginning, but that’s expected after coming off such a long and hilly bike ride.  I was relieved when the whole thing was over and I could come home to the family.

We hit the pool afterwards.  This has been our M.O. for weekend pool fun – we drop the kids off at gym childcare for an hour and go to the pool by ourselves for an hour for adult time.  I usually read.  It’s blissful!  And then we pick the kids up and play together.

But the real excitement of Saturday came in the evening.  A few months ago, I spontaneously bought the Husband tickets to the Sam Smith concert.  Kristien absolutely ADORES Sam Smith and was thrilled when I presented him with the tickets.  I was pretty pumped to go, too – The Lonely Hour is one of the best albums that I’ve heard in a long, long time.  How incredible is Sam Smith’s voice?  This is one of my favorite songs, but I also love this one and this one!

We headed Uptown…

And went to my favorite Thai restaurant (Basil).  I got sweet and sour tofu and it was epiiiic.

I also put a serious dent in this bottle of champagne!

And then it was concert time!  A teenager next to Kristien turned to him right before the show started and said, “I am so sorry if I scream really loudly in your ear, I’m so excited,” and Kristien laughed and said he was probably going to scream, too.  Hah.

This was his first big show back since he had vocal surgery three months ago, and you could tell that he was SO HAPPY to be singing.  He also got really famous really fast (this album, which is his first, won four Grammys) and it was interesting to hear him reflect on everything that comes along with that.  He seems like a cool guy  – and seriously… That voice. 

He closed with this song, and it was so beautiful.

Who’s your favorite artist of the moment? Any other Sam Smith fans out there?

Wahoo! Friday Dance!

How was your week?  Mine was busy – but fun. My schedule looked like this: play, work, run, sleep and repeat. 

Oh, and eating great food! (That’s tofu, potatoes, and spinach with some sort of wonderful curry sauce that Husband whipped up.)

Not so bad of a schedule, huh?

My big highlight was going to the lake with my blog friends Julie and Brittney.  This portion of the lake is very shallow for a long stretch, so the bigger kids could explore with their swim jackets on while the adults talked.

Most of the conversation revolved around Julie’s upcoming birth!  I am soooo excited for her.  It’s fun to watch first time moms become, well, moms.

What else?

Oh, I’ve been doing a lot of running.  I’ve done 10.5 miles so far this week, as well as a swim.  Not too shabby.  I took some of this electrolyte powder on my long run (which was 6.5 miles), and I really liked it!  It was a hand-me-down bag from Brandi because she didn’t like the flavor, but I did!

After the run, I pulled on my Champion CSX sleeves.  And by the way, if you use coupon code HTP2015, you can get 50% off your compression socks or sleeves (only for US shipping addresses)!  Score!

I’ll leave you with some cute pet pics…

Claire is obsessed with Ferguson, and Ferguson is SO tolerant to her.  When she pulls his tail, he just moves away.  He must know that she’s only a baby, because if Henry did that to him… Oh boy.  Henry would be swiped for sure!

James is seriously enjoying my new job. Since I’ve been working more and Claire has a sitter during the day, he gets walked all the time.  Lucky James!

And Maggie is, well, Maggie.  Still dumb as a doorknob and sweet as pie.  Nothing new to report. 

Hah!  Have a good one.

Have you had mammoth (AKA bulletproof) coffee yet?  OMG.  You must.  Okay – I know this is going to sound weird.  But you have to trust me – it’s a combination of butter, coconut oil, and coffee, and it’s truly one of the most delicious ways I’ve ever had coffee.  It’s rich without being sweet, as well as creamy and filling.  If you’re like me and have your coffee an hour or more before you get around to breakfast, it’s extra nice because it’s so filling (hello, healthy fats).

I got the idea while watching a barista at Whole Foods make a mammoth coffee; she dumped a cup of coffee and a little container of pre-measured butter and coconut oil into a blender and whirled everything up before serving it in a coffee mug.  What a process!

This method WAY easier, a lot faster, and less messy.  All you have to add to these pods is boiling hot water – instant mammoth coffee! 

Instant Mammoth Coffee Pods

Ingredients (for 12 LARGE pods; more butter and coconut)

• 12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) of grass-fed unsalted butter
• 12 tablespoons (3/4 cup) of coconut oil
• 12 scoops of 1 and 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee, divided

Ingredients (for 12 SMALL pods; less butter and coconut)

• 6 tablespoons of grass-fed unsalted butter
• 6 tablespoons of coconut oil
• 12 scoops of 1 and 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee, divided

Directions:

• Grease a cupcake tin.
• Melt coconut oil and butter in a pan.
• Using a tablespoon measuring cup, evenly distribute the melted coconut oil and butter into the 12 cupcake tins.
• Add 1 and 1/2 teaspoon of instant coffee on top of each pod of oil and butter.
• Put in freezer for half an hour. 
• Use a knife to pop pods from the cupcake tin and place in freezer-safe plastic bag for storage (**store in the freezer!**).
• To make a cup of coffee, put pod in the bottom of a coffee mug and fill with boiling hot water. Stir and drink!

You lose a bit of the instant coffee because it sinks through the oil/butter to the bottom of the cupcake tin.  So if you were feeling ambitious, you could freeze half the oil/butter in the tins, put the scoop of instant coffee on top of the solid surface, and then pour the remainder of the oil/butter on top and refreeze.  This way, the coffee is sandwiched between the oil/butter.  It looks prettier, but it’s an extra step, and I’m not really willing to do extra steps unless I’ve already had my coffee.  Hah.  

Other awesome coffee recipes:

Winter Blend Spice Mix

Coffee Face Scrub

Ice Coffee Cubes

Coconut Milk Creamer

I love cupcakes… I love color… And what I really love is making colorful icing without artificial colors and with fruit and veggie juices!  Does the spinach juice outweigh the sugar?  Probably not… But less artificial stuff is always something to celebrate, right?

I was inspired to do this by the roll-out of the new HP Pavilion 17-inch notebooks, which go on sale this Friday on HSN (yup, the shopping channel).  These notebooks come in bright pops of color (bold red, blue, silver, purple, and white) and feature a very cool gradient design on the keyboard.  I love that the notebook is so wide that it includes a numeric keypad – that’s missing from a lot of laptops!  AND these babies come with the new Windows 10.  Happy Birthday, Windows 10!

So back to those colorful cupcakes.   Would you believe I created those colors with beets, carrots, blueberries, and spinach?  Yup.  And here’s the best part – although the juices give the icing a bit of a flavor, it doesn’t taste like spinach cupcakes or anything like that. 

Honestly – a kid would never, ever guess that her pink cupcakes were made from beets or his orange ones contained a bunch of carrots.   It is really nice to be able to serve a colorful treat that doesn’t contain artificial colors.  Nature is colorful enough!

Here’s how to make the icing…

Basic Buttercream Icing + Colorful Juice

• 1 stick unsalted butter. room temperature
• 1 pound confectioner’s sugar (about 3.5 – 4 cups)
• 1/4 cup juice (beet, spinach, carrot, or blueberries work well)

Directions:

• In a mixing bowl, beat butter until smooth and fluffy.
• Add in sugar and beat for another minute.
• Extract fruit or veggie juice using a juicer.  Add in 1/4 cup juice of your choice to the frosting.  Mix well.  If too thick and stiff, add a small amount of juice and re-blend.  Don’t add too much at a time unless, of course, you kind of like drippy icing (which I do and created for the yellow and purple cupcakes, as you can see in some of the pictures).  You can also create drippy icing by adding it to a warmed cupcake.
• To pipe the icing onto the cupcakes (like the pink and green ones), scoop the icing into a small plastic bag, cut the corner off, and swirl onto the top of a cooled cupcake.

If you’re looking for a good gluten-free cake recipe, here’s one.  But I really like Betty Crocker’s GF box mix!

And don’t forget to tune into HSN on Friday for the sale of these awesome HSN-exclusive HP notebooks.  You can even do HSN’s Flex Pay to purchase one (it’s like layaway but nicer because you get the product straight away).  You can browse other HP products available on HSN right here. 

What’s your favorite kind of cake?  I’m all for colorful icing, but my favorite of all-time is probably yellow cake with chocolate icing.  Yum.

This post is sponsored by HP.  Thanks, as always, for reading sponsored content. I appreciate it a lot!