Breakfast has been orange the past couple of mornings.

Sierra Tweeted about having pumpkin oat bran for breakfast yesterday morning and it inspired me to reach into the depths of my pantry and pull out a can of pumpkin. Pumpkin banana oatmeal with pumpkin butter and maple peanut butter for breakfast yesterday.

Pumpkin, banana and blueberry overnight oats topped with pumpkin butter, sunflower seed butter and Crofter’s all-fruit preserves for breakfast this morning. I definitely associate pumpkin more with fall and winter eats but it’s been a good spring treat these past couple of mornings. Sullie is loving it too because I usually put a spoonful in her breakfast!

Pumpkin…eat it all year or eat it seasonally?

You didn’t hear from me yesterday because my arms were too tired to type after doing this workout. We did the CrossFit Regionals workout and it was killer. There was no way I was going to do the prescribed weight so I did band assisted pull ups and used a 55 pound bar for everything except for the overhead squats, I just used the bar for those. I finished in 25 minutes flat and I think I was shaking for an entire hour after finishing this workout. I had that awesome all-over muscle exhaustion feeling. I had to teach yoga after and warned my students not to be alarmed if I dropped them when I was assisting them. (I didn’t.)

To say that I slept well last night would be an understatement. I went into a solid 8 hour coma but woke up feeling amazing and ready to tackle the day. So much to accomplish. I’m headed off to the new location now. They’re finishing up all the final touches on construction. I’ll post a photo in my next post.

Have a great day!

Hey, hey! I hope everyone had a great day. Things are moving full speed ahead over here and every day I get more and more excited about all the amazing things that are happening at Metro. I know I mention this in pretty much every post but I really love my job and I feel so lucky every day for this opportunity. It’s amazing to love going into work every day and for it not even to feel like “work.”

I don’t have much to report from Monday other than these two tidbits…Katie (Sweet Tater) assisted my evening hot class and led the first 10 minutes of class! She’s teaching her very first class all on her own at Y2 Yoga tomorrow. Second, the rest of my night involved wine, birthday cake, yoga poses and late night frozen pizza.

Photo evidence. I celebrated the birthday of a yoga friend last night and when yogis get together you can be sure that we’ll end up with shoes off and in yoga poses.

Breakfast this morning was overnight oats.

After last night’s less than stellar eats, I was craving veggies for lunch. I made a delicious salad with spinach, leftover coconut quinoa and sweet chili tofu, roasted brussels sprouts, beets, avocado, goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette. It sounds like a gross/weird combo but it was so good!

Workout today was CrossFit but I totally half-assed it. I skipped the warm up and skill/strength work and just jumped in for the WOD. It was three rounds for time of 15 front squats and 15 pushups on the barbell. I didn’t do the recommended weight for the front squats and that was a mistake. I finished way too quickly because it just wasn’t challenging. After that we rested five minutes and then ran a timed mile. I ran my mile in 6:59 which I was pleased with but I wish I’d committed more to the overall workout.

Tuesdays are my late nights at the gym so I taught a yoga class after CrossFit and then headed home around 8. Sullie and I walked for about 45 minutes and the highlight was her spotting a bunny. They had a stare down before the bunny finally hopped away. So cute.

Dinner was marinated sautéed chicken breasts with Trader Joe’s Harvest Grains Blend and roasted balsamic asparagus with parmesan.

Dessert was the French lemon yogurt cake that I baked Sunday with ice cream and strawberries. I am in love with this cake and can’t stop cutting slivers of it.

I actually have more work to finish in prep for a full day tomorrow before I can get to bed. Off to knock it out!

I’m short on time but full of inspiration. You’re going to have to be patient with me over the next few weeks because so much of my attention is focused on work and opening our new location right now. Exciting but consuming. So here is a quick look at some things that I am loving lately.

The National Peanut Board for sending me a care package full of peanut-themed goodies. They thanked me for being such a good ambassador of peanuts. I do what I can.

On that note, my package included Peanut Butter & Co.’s Mighty Maple and it’s safe to say I’m obsessed.

Under Armour’s Fly-By Mesh Tank – it’s so lightweight and breathable and it kind of feels like I’m wearing nothing…in a good way. It’s nice not to have a tight workout tank clinging to my stomach (because some days you don’t want your tank to cling!). I really like the racerback and the cut provides for complete freedom of movement throughout the shoulders.

Cooking. Last night’s dinner…sweet chili glazed tofu with coconut ginger quinoa and green beans sauteed with baby portobellos and seasame seeds.

Baking. French lemon yogurt cake with lemon glaze.

And finally, these two songs:

I’ve been playing this one during standing series in my yoga classes.

I’ve been playing this one during seated work and savasana and so many of my students have asked for the name of the song. It’s beautiful!

What are you loving lately? 

I did manage to finally peel myself off the couch and do something last night. I am a little sore from yesterday’s Fight Gone Bad workout but it’s not nearly as bad as I anticipated.

First, I headed over to our new location for a quick meeting about our wall murals. We are having some really cool custom murals painted and met to discuss design and placement so the artist can get started on them. Every time I visit the new space I am shocked by how much things have changed. The construction crew is telling us that everything will be done and the keys will be ready to hand over by Friday. I’ll post pics this week to show you the progress. It’s going to be amazing!

Then it was dinner + wine time! We used a Groupon and tried Dolce for the first time. I won’t blog the whole meal because the lighting was so terrible but I have to share my entree. I ordered the Frutti de Mare and it was amazing. Tons of fresh seafood (mussels, shrimp and scallops) with linguine and a spicy tomato sauce. I really enjoyed my entire experience at Dolce and will definitely be making a return service. Everything we ordered was delicious and the service was great.

Recipe time! I have been on a baking kick and in the last week I’ve baked vegan chocolate avocado cake, flourless peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (another batch!), strawberry Nutella muffins and I just took a French lemon yogurt loaf out of the oven.

I baked the strawberry nutella muffins yesterday after the crazy workout while I hung around the house and cleaned. I wanted to bake something with strawberries so off I went to Pinterest for ideas.

They are very easy to prepare and I didn’t even have to break out the stand mixer. You create the Nutella center by placing half the batter in the muffin liner, adding spoonful of Nutella and then covering it with the remaining batter.

Sometimes strawberry muffins can be a bit soggy but the texture of these muffins is great and the combination of chocolate and strawberries is so good!

These muffins are perfect for anything from breakfast to brunch to an afternoon treat. I had one warm out of the oven yesterday afternoon with Chai tea and then I warmed one in the microwave for about 20 seconds this morning for breakfast (warm is key for gooey Nutella!).

Strawberry Nutella Muffins
(Recipe source Two Peas and Their Pod)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1/3 cup buttermilk (I did not have buttermilk so I used almond milk + 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and let sit for 5 minutes)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped fresh strawberries
1/3 cup Nutella

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and either grease a muffin tin or line with paper liners.

Whisk together flour, salt, baking powder and sugar in a bowl and set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk together canola oil, egg, buttermilk and vanilla.

Gradually add wet ingredients to the flour mixture and gently stir, mindful not to over mix. The batter will seem thick but once you add the strawberries it will thin a bit due to the moisture in the strawberries. Fold in the strawberries and mix until just combined.

Fill each muffin tin halfway with batter and then add a spoonful of Nutella. Cover with remaining batter. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until tops are golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Start checking them after 15 minutes. Cooking time will vary depending on your oven temperature.

Yield: 8 muffins

Uh…I’m kind of gross right now. I am sitting on the couch unshowered after nearly dying at a CrossFit event this afternoon. I came home with intentions of showering and then started cleaning and baking and lost motivation. Now I’m too tired to do anything.

Lots to fill you in on. Last night I went out to NoDa Brewery with a big group from work to celebrate on of our coach’s birthdays.

I’ve had NoDa Brewery’s beers in local restaurants but this was my first time visiting the brewery. They have a great selection of different styles of beer.

I went with the Ghost Hop White IPA. It’s kind of a hybrid hefeweizen/IPA. Lighter than your typical IPA but still with the hoppy flavor.

Dinner courtesy of the Maki Taco truck. Steak and crab tacos.

I was up early this morning and eating a bowl of oatmeal in preparation for an active day. I started it with a 90-minute (well, 75 because I’m chronically late) yoga class and then subbed a hot vinyasa class.

This afternoon I had an event to attend for work at CrossFit Steele Creek. They are celebrating their second anniversary and the opening of their new facility and hosted Fight Gone Bad today. Fight Gone Bad is one of the benchmark CrossFit workouts. Here is the explanation of the workout from the CrossFit website.

In this workout you move from each of five stations after a minute. This is a five-minute round from which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. The stations are:

1. Wall-ball: 20 pound ball, 10 ft target (14 lbs for women)
2. Sumo deadlift high-pull: 75 pounds (55 lbs for women)
3. Box Jump: 20″ box (
4. Push-press: 75 pounds (55 lbs for women)
5. Row: calories 

The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of “rotate,” the athlete/s must move to next station immediately for good score. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower where each calorie is one point.

So the point of this workout is to get as many reps as possible. It’s brutal. So very brutal. Luckily, you have someone keeping score for you. It’s so nice to have someone coaching/encouraging you through the workout and counting your reps. It’s tough to keep track of on your own.

I started with sumo dead lift high pulls. I hate these. This might be my least favorite exercise of the workout.

My second station was box jumps. It was hard to come off the SDHP and go straight to box jumps. My legs felt dead for the first couple of reps and I was scared of busting it on the box.

My third station was push press. I felt pretty good on these until the last round. I took a break after 10 and could not clean the bar back up to complete any more reps.

Then it was time to row. This honestly felt like the place where I could take the biggest breather. And recollect for my nemesis…

I finished with wall balls. I am so very bad at these. To the point that my coach told me we were going to have some serious lessons next week so I can get the movement down. I just hate hurling that ball up. It feels terrible.

Before I knew it, three rounds were done!

Sweaty, tired but smiling. These are the owners of my gym, Denise and Dar,and our Director of Crossfit, Sean. We represented Metro well! I think that we had almost 20 athletes participate!

My final score was 220 reps, which I was pleased with especially considering that I did the workout “as prescribed” (did not modify my weight) and my effort was pretty consistent across the rounds. Usually people blow it out on the first round and then have a big dip in performance. This is a fun workout because you can use it as a benchmark to see where you’re getting stronger. I definitely have room for improvement in all the exercises!

Post-workout recovery meal was an open-faced egg sandwich. Hummus, avocado, sautéed spinach, egg and goat cheddar. Chips and watermelon on the side.

I think it’s time to finally get clean. My tired muscles need a hot shower…and more food!