RECIPE: NUTELLA & BANANA OATMEAL

I had a post all ready about my epic six-layer chocolate and peanut butter cake, but then yesterday was National Nutella Day (as well as Sean's half-birthday) and I just had to celebrate. I've missed every other NND in the past so being home all day (mainly because I was feeling lazy), I felt like yesterday was a NND not to be missed!

Nutella and I have quite the history. When I was really young, I would make myself Nutella sandwiches (Nutella spread inbetween slices of sliced white bread) but every single time I ate those sandwiches, I would get a nose bleed soon after. I knew I wasn't allergic to chocolate and I wasn't allergic to nuts either, so I had no clue why Nutella had this affect on me. I could no longer eat Nutella. I'd watch and sigh as my brothers ate Nutella sandwiches. I'd think about having one and sometimes make one for myself as an afternoon snack, but the same thing always happened, that darned nose bleed. I've ungrown that stage, thank goodness, but it did last a pretty long time.

For 2011's NND, I immediately knew what I was going to make: Nutella hot chocolate from Eat, Live, Run. Two ingredients were all I needed and what I had on hand. I waited until the perfect moment to make it (right after the sun had set) and enjoyed my cup while waiting for my fondant flowers to dry:But then this morning I woke up and decided that Nutella shouldn't just be celebrated on one day and that I would in fact, make this National Nutella weekend by making Nutella & Banana Oatmeal! Sounds good, right? Well it tasted even better!
NUTELLA & BANANA OATMEAL Ingredients:
1/3 cup rolled oats
1 recipe of Nutella hot chocolate, cooled (see first link above for recipe, the recipe makes 1 cup)
1 teaspoon chia seeds
1 teaspoon psyllium husks
1 ripe banana, chopped
Toppings: sliced strawberries, choped hazelnuts, drizzled Nutella, etc

Directions:

1. Place rolled oats and Nutella hot chocolate in a small pot. Cook on medium-high. (I always start my stove at high and then reduce the heat when it starts to boil.)
2. Add chia seeds and psyllium husks and continue to stir.
3. The seeds and husks will thicken the oatmeal. At this point, add your bananas and stir some more until your desired consistency is reached. I like my oatmeal is a little on the thinner, rather than thicker side. If it gets too thick and gloopy, I just tend to stir it around in my bowl and not eat it. If yours gets too thick when you're stirring, just add more milk.
4. Serve in bowl and top with your favourite toppings.
   

My parents had just bought some strawberries the day before and I was dying to dig into 'em. I have no clue where these berries are coming from--probably California, because they are pretty sweet for February.Now if that doesn't sound like the most enticing oatmeal for a Nutella fanatic, I don't know what is. I, myself, thought it was pretty darn tasty:
Breakfast? Check.

RECIPE: BLUEBERRY BANANA MUFFINS

I'm not really a fan of muffins. Their nutritional stats aren't that great and when compared with a cupcake, who wouldn't want a sugary treat topped with icing instead? Actually, I'm not a craver of sweets either but whatevs. Anyway, with a bunch of blueberries and bananas in the kitchen to use up, I got to what I do best: baking! Of course, this recipe was done almost three full weeks ago but whatevs (yet again).

The recipe is quick and easy if you have all the necessary items (if you're a healthy eater you'll probably have them all on-hand). I pulled these together in no-time. The hardest part was waiting for them to bake!

The recipe calls for buttermilk but I didn't have any (I never use buttermilk in recipes) so I subbed milk and vinegar) but then read the buttermilk alternative wrong so I poured that out and started again with milk and lemon juice but then I ran out of milk and used plain yogurt instead. The result was a super moist muffin with a little bit of texture from the cornmeal and plenty of taste from the blueberries and raspberries (frozen from the raspberry picking trip on Canada Day at Whittamore's).

Here are my muffins ready for the oven:And after 28 minutes in the oven, here are the raspberry ones:and the blueberry ones:
Aren't they delicious?
I opted not to top them with sugar as I would have liked since I wanted to share these with my dad who is watching his sugar intake. He's not full-blown diabetic but his life-long passion of seriously indulging his sweet tooth made him borderline diabetic, words from his doctor last fall. Since then, he's seriously curbed his sweet tooth, no longer indulging in any form of sweets (no sugar in his tea/coffee) and anything sweet he now thinks is sugar-overkill. It's kind of a hassle to bake for him but these muffins were a perfect treat. The tablespoon of honey and ripe bananas provided just the right amount of sweetness. They were also great as a breakfast treat, which I ended up enjoying them as for days to follow. They didn't keep in the fridge for very long so sharing is a must--even if you don't want to.
Berry-Banana Muffins
(adapted from Whole Living.com)

Ingredients:
- vegetable-oil cooking spray
- 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably stone ground
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 cup + 2 tsp AP flour, feel free to use whole wheat
- 1 1/2 cups ripe bananas, mashed (approx. 3 large bananas)
- 1/4 cup yogurt + 1/4 milk and 2 Tbsp lemon juice)
- 1 Tbsp honey
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 tsp sanding or turbinado sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a standard (12-cup) muffin tin with paper liners; coat liners with cooking spray.
2. Whisk together cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and 1 cup flour. In a large bowl, stir together bananas, buttermilk, rice syrup or honey, lemon juice, egg, and vanilla. Fold cornmeal mixture into banana mixture just until combined. Toss blueberries with remaining 2 teaspoons flour, and gently fold into batter.
3. Spoon batter into prepared tin, filling to the brims. Sprinkle each muffin with sugar (optional). Bake until a toothpick inserted into center of 1 comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Let cool completely in pan on a wire rack. (Muffins can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.)

BLUEBERRY-BANANA YOGURT POPS!

Hot, humid days call for cold treats but because I try to refrain from as much artificial fructose-glucose as possible (ie: anything not in fresh fruit form), I can't consume copious amounts of popsicles and freezies as I used to.

Confession time: I did consume 1/2 a No Name freeze pop with Sean when he picked me up from work on Thursday as we had some in our work freezer. I also consumed a whole one on Friday after work because my dad didn't want to split one with me. I figured that splitting a whole one wouldn't result in a fructose-glucose migraine attack and I was right. So far-so good with the whole freeze pop consumption but the day is still young.

In an effort to make healthy, all-natural popsicles, here's my recipe for blueberry-banana yogurt pops, which are high fructose corn syrup-free, yay!

BLUEBERRY-BANANA YOGURT POPSICLES
Ingredients:
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1/2 cup blueberries (I prefer firm blueberries)
- 3/4 cup of yogurt
- juice of 1/4 of a lemon
- maple syrup (optional, if your bananas are not ripe)

Directions:

1. Blend bananas in Magic Bullet (or your blender/food processor/Vita Mix).
2. Add the rest of the ingredients.
3. Pour into 8 ice-pop molds, pop on the lids and carefully transfer to freezer.
4. Wait. At least 8 hours. Ugh! It's best to leave the house if your house is not air-conditioned like mine, because it's unwise to open the freezer to cool yourself off as the popsicles would take even longer to freeze.

Okay so yeah, that isn't really a recipe per se but there are ingredients and proper measurements, which is a more than I can say for most of the food I post on here. Honestly, this popsicle recipe is dead simple. I took a small taste of my yogurt mixture before pouring into the popsicle molds and cannot wait for them to set. Mmmm...fruity, yogurty goodness.

I'll report back with the results.

===

I'm back as promised. A little bit late, I'll admit...but I've been busy; I've watched the FIFA World Cup, gone to Caplansky's again, seen Despicable Me, cooled down at Sean's air-conditioned house and more.

Here are the finished results of the frozen yogurt pops:As you can see (or maybe not), a non-air-conditioned house on a hot day means that your frozen pop will melt pretty darn quickly. You're going to have to eat this fast. Pretty fast. It's okay though because there will be 7 more waiting for you in the freezer. Yum.

EMPLOYED ONCE AGAIN!

I just signed my new employment contract this morning--wahoo! To be honest, I was getting a little disheartened about the whole job seeking thing--feeling like I was never going to be able to find a job given all the positions I applied for--but on the afternoon of feeling this way, I got a call from my future employer and guess what, I'm now employed! I start on Monday and while I don't want to give away to many details, I'm just really excited about my new position. It's something completely new and thefore, really exciting but at the same time a little bit scary because as I mentioned before, it's completely not within my field, but the work I'll be doing is completely within my range. Woo hooooooooo!

And moving onto the food photos...I opted for a small breakfast...just a banana blueberry muffin with whole wheat flour:
Then after puttering about the kitchen with my dad for quite some time, I decided on some roast veggies for lunch. Here they are all laid out on the baking sheet. We have a sweet potato, white potato, two carrots, a big red onion and a couple heads of garlic.Everything was covered in olive oil, salt, pepper and dried thyme and then roasted for an hour at 350F. For the first 40 minutes I had the above in the oven while the following waited outside:White button mushrooms, with the same seasonings, waiting to be added to the baking sheet. Mmm...roasted mushrooms!

Once the veggies were about 15 minutes away from being done, I realized that I needed something to bulk up my lunch a little bit so I decided to start cooking some wild mixed-grain rice. But once the veggies were done and the rice wasn't, my stomach started nagging at me so I had this in the meanwhile:A Ryvita cracker topped with cream cheese, a couple cloves of roasted garlic smooshed and I topped that off with the sliced cucumbers above. Yummy!!

Finally, an hour and a half after the whole process began, this was my lunch:And then dinner ended up being a LARGE BOWL OF PHO because I am totally crazy and thought that this tiny body could handle a large bowl of pho while Sean ordered a small bowl of pho. Jeebs, what was I thinking? Well, honestly, I was eating sometime afte 2:30 in the afternoon and hadn't eaten anything since then and I was really hungry and thought that my stomach could handle it. And well, to tell you the truth, I took that bowl of pho to town! I did the best I could...this time trying not to slurp up as much soup as I normally do and focusing more on the rice noodles themselves. I managed to finish my noodles but left some of the thinly-sliced beef and beef brisket behind. Sigh...I would have let my dad down.

Anyway, after waddling out of the pho restaurant and heading downtown to (finally) catch Dinosaur Jr. in concert, I told Sean to remind me about this very evening should I ever decide to order another large bowl of pho. EVER! No matter how hungry I say I am.

The End.

PS: The show was awesome!

Money spent: $19+ (pho for two with drinks)