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I’ve been a bad, bad blogger lately, but some things have come up recently that must be a priority for my future 🙂  Most of the past week Chris and I have been coming up with random lunch and dinner selections since I didn’t get a chance to get to the grocery store.  I won’t spare you the details and frankly I forgot to take pictures eek!  I feel like pretty soon, my head with sure spin off and fly away somewhere never to be seen again!  Has anyone seen my brain?  

Ah well, hopefully it will turn up here soon.  I’ve been trying to keep up with a summer statistics II course, which thank goodness will be online for one more week, working, getting ready for in-laws, a possible new side job, and a possible new business venture that I’m more than excited about.  Can’t really say, but I sure do love sports nutrition & cycling 😉

I did make a batch of lemon pesto (minus the tofu in the recipe) which looked something like this . . . well, I just threw it together so it wasn’t this pretty.  I just love homemade pesto.

And also some incredible apricot jam with some local apricots!  Instead of using pectin or tons of sugar, I tried to use chia seeds.  They worked out wonderfully!!!  I will always use these in jams from now on 🙂  There was also a recent article in JADA which concluded that up to 25% of eggs/oil in cakes can be replaced by chia gel, while maintaining sensory characteristics and improving the nutritional quality.  Pretty neat!

Here’s all that went into the jam:

• 2.5 lbs apricots, pits removed & chopped (smallish ones)
• 1.5 cups sugar (the regular stuff)
• 2 tbsp chia seeds

My bread machine has a jam setting, so I just threw everything in there and voila!  instant jam!  I don’t have a canning doo-hikkie thing, so I put it in tupperware and store it in the freezer or fridge.  I don’t like my jams/jellies too sweet, so this was great.  Most recipes called for at least 3 cups of sugar with 2.5-3lb of fruit and I was like heck no that won’t do.

Friday for lunch I had the pleasure of joining Chris at his work where the Slidin’ Thru Truck was serving up gourmet sliders.  This concept is so neat!  They have this giant truck with a kitchen in the back that travels around the LV Valley serving up great sliders. They also can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

It took quite some time since they are made to order, but it was sure worth it, yum!

I ordered a Caprese, Yaya and Captain’s Orders.  I ate about 2 and gave the rest to Chris.  I think the Yaya was my fav with lettuce, tomato, feta, ziki and white wine vinaigrette.  They have all kinds of great creations to choose from.

Oh and the sweet tater fries were out of this world!  They sprinkle theirs with a little bit of cinnamon and suga’

aaaaand to top it off Chris’ work was giving out some tasty cupcakes from Cupcake Lane.  Holy moly sugar rush.  I had a bite of this smores one, then gave the rest to Chris.  I really had my eye on the peanut butter banana one!  I must have scarfed that bad boy down quick to get back to my work and didn’t take a picture!

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Did you see the Consumer Reports on Protein Drinks?  This infuriates me to no end and I continue to ask the question as to why oh why there is not more regulation in place to assure that products and supplements are safe for the public and athletes?  I guess I took my chances when I bought the BSN Dessert Whey Chocolate Fudge Pudding, but I don’t think I will be featuring that in my smoothies again.  I am going to talk with BSN on the phone on Monday and see what they have to say about it.  I also tried to contact consumer reports to see exactly how they did their testing and how reliable it is, but they explained they can’t release that information to the general public.  Interesting.

One supplement certification that is recognized by collegiate sports is NSF.  Muscle Milk was actually tested by NSF in an ISO 17025 lab which is accredited and qualified for heavy metal testing.  NSF’s statement regarding this recent report even shows that they are not sure how Consumer Reports did their testing, which is pretty lame to me.  If you are going to make a report like this for many different well-known protein supplements, wouldn’t you at least want to have a strong backing as to how you came up with these results?

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Well, anyway . . . Happy Weekend!  Chris and I got a nice bike ride in this morning and the weather gave us a little cooling break!  Yesss!  Well, cool as in 87 F for a high.  It wasn’t too long since we wanted to grab breakfast with Chris’ dad and step mom, but it was nice to get back at it.  I can already tell that I need to get back in cycling shape!

• 27.3 miles in 1:40
• 16.6 mph average

After breakfast and taking a little break at home, we were off for our first swim lessons!!! I was a little nervous but excited, and while I have A LOT  to learn, hopefully I will get the hang of it within the next 6 weeks 🙂  We just did simple stuff like treading water and trying to breath under water.  I managed to swim about 1/2 the length of the pool a few times, but I’m sure it didn’t look so smooth and pretty at all ha!  Next week we will start some drills.

Oh yes, those goggles are HOT!  The water was actually pretty chilly and most of the class I was trying to control my shivers.

Can you say someone needs a tan?! yikes.  Granted it was after getting out of that chilly pool brrrr

It was fun and I’m excited to get it down to where I can actually swim for longer than 1/2 of a 1/2 of a lap!  Swimming always makes me ravenous for some reason.  Even though I probably only burned about 20 kcals from shivering, I came home and tried out my new Magic Bullet from CSN Stores!  Don’t ask me why I decided to make a smoothie when I was already chilly from swimming.

I really wanted to review the Magic Bullet because most of the time I like to make individual smoothies and my larger, dinky blender was 1. pretty big, 2. a pain to clean, and 3. making a burning smell, so I wanted something that would be fairly easy and powerful with frozen fruit.  And the verdict?  Actually, not too shabby and I’m impressed!  I had to take it off the base a few times and shake it around, but it blended the frozen fruit really well.

Do you have a favorite recipe you like to make in the bullet?

This time I just threw in:

• 1/2 cup NF milk
• 1/3 cup Vanilla Wallaby Yogurt
• 1/2 frozen naner
• 1/3 cup frozen sliced strawberries
• 1/3 cup frozen blueberries
• 1 tbsp hemp seed and blueberry flax

It was refreshing and easy to clean up!  Now, it’s time for a shower and chillin’ before body pump in the am!

Anyone surprised from the Consumer Report?  What are your plans for the weekend?