my new favorite breakfast

maple/banana/nut butter toast!

Seriously, it is THE best.

I’m on a maple-kick right now, inspired both by my Justin’s Maple Almond Butter and the unopened maple spread that has been sitting in my pantry since last fall when Andrew and I spent a week in Quebec.

Get thee to a grocery store and find some maple spread as fast as you can! It is THAT good. You won’t find the specific brand I was using, but you might be able to find something like it, either with the maple syrups, honey or in the jam aisle. Or in the specialty/gourmet/organic foods section. And if you absolutely can’t find it, just drizzle some (real) maple syrup over the top.

Here’s what I did:

Toast a slice of whole grain bread, spread with your maple butter/spread/whatever you’re using, top with half a sliced banana, then drizzle with whatever nut butter you currently have open. Almond butter isn’t as rich to me as some peanut butters and sunflower seed butter, so I find it pairs well with other things. If you’re using syrup instead of maple butter, spread your nut butter on your warm toast, then add the banana and syrup.

I had this for breakfast two or three times and just raved to Andrew about it. He’s Mr. Picky and rarely strays from plain jam on toast, so I was floored this morning when he requested this concoction for breakfast! I called later to see how he liked it, and he said it was “outstanding.” This is big, people.

BIG breakfast & weekend re-cap

Wireless is back at the hotel! Hallelujah! Seriously, I was really beginning to miss it. Pathetic, I know, but for a blogger without a day job, what the heck else was I going to do?

After going almost three days (gasp!) with only one picture-less post, I feel I owe my loyal readers (ha!) a bit of a re-cap:

First, this morning (since it’s more timely–it’s the journalist in me):

BIG BREAKFAST! Plain yogurt flavored with 1/2 banana, mashed, and 1/2 tbsp Trader Joe’s Mango Butter, blueberries and granola, AND Great Harvest whole-grain cinnamon raisin bread with 1 tbsp Justin’s Maple Almond Butter, the other half of the banana and a tablespoon of maple syrup. I was craving maple this morning.

It was 526 calories and felt pretty heavy in my stomach on the way to the gym, but I’m glad I had it! It powered me through an hour of Pilates, 45 minutes of hard swimming (did some sprints!), and kept me going for an additional two hours of putzing around after I got back from the gym. Usually I’m RAVENOUS by the time I pull out of the parking lot of the gym, if not before!

Back to Saturday:

This was my post-run breakfast on Saturday. I went out for a quick three miles while Andrew took Hadrian on a walk/ball-throwing session, then we both did a nice four-miler in the neighborhood near our hotel. This is one of my best shots yet, so I had to share.

I love granola. LOVE. This is Wegmans Granola with Raisins, and unfortunately, it’s only OK. I mean, what did I expect? It’s just light and not very cluster-y. I’d rather it be chock-full of goodies and in big chunks. Alas, it was cheap. It was the peach, blueberries and coconut milk that really did it for me!

(I did order the OpenSky cherry chocolate granola fundraiser that Kath recently sent out in support of another blogger–I would want some nice stranger to order granola to raise money if I got cancer, too–so that should be here soon. Will post when it arrives!)

The rest of Saturday, as I said here, was filled with laziness and movies. Mad Max is STILL on TV as of yesterday and if Andrew puts it on one more time, I might go through the roof.

We tried a new church Sunday, and liked it enough to go back. We’ve been a bit discouraged in the church department, so we’re excited that we found something we felt was authentic and like it could be ‘home’ to us. If we decide it is, I’ll let you know!

As Abigail will be leaving for college in less than a week (where did the summer go?), we popped over there for an impromptu visit. I brought the computer and snagged some of their internet to catch up on calorie-counting (I was trying not to get obsessive about it, but I’m less than a pound from my goal and my OCD tendencies make it hard to just ‘let things go.’) and check my email.

Did you know you can pickle things just by putting them in the juice from your pickles? I didn’t…I think I read it in this month’s Shape. I’ve pickled green beans before, but always using the canning method and pickling salt. The article said you basically just throw veggies into the juice after you finish off a jar of pickles. Go figure.

So, I bought a half-pound of green beans (for 50 cents!) and blanched and shocked them before packing them into the jar:

Don’t they have great color?

I also made two batches of Jeni’s sorbets, but they will get their own post 🙂

pre-run breakfast

On running mornings, I eat two breakfasts. I start with coffee (lately I’ve been using 1 tbsp creamer and 2 tbsp coconut milk–yay for just as sweet with fewer calories!) and either a banana or toast with peanut butter.

This morning is a morning I’ve been waiting for for a LONG time. Well, since my birthday, to be exact.

Justin’s nut butter!!!! Susy gave this to me for my birthday and my mouth has been watering ever since! It’s a huge splurge (like $10 at the grocery store!), so it’s not the kind of thing you just go and grab willy-nilly.

And it’s maple. I LOVE maple-anything. I caved a week or so ago and bought Bobby Flay’s recommended Deep Mountain Maple Syrups on OpenSky and received them last night. It was $25 for three bottles of the best, straight-from-the-tree-maple syrup (which came to more like $35 with tax and shipping–yikes!), but when I saw that the set included Regular (Grade A Medium), Grade B (which is uber dark and strong and hard to find in the grocery store) and GINGER Maple, I had to. I tried to find it online, but alas, as all the very best local/small farms go, there are only two places in the country you can get it: Union Square Greenmarket in NYC and a little shop in West Glover, VT. Since I wasn’t heading to either of these places anytime soon and I just HAD to gave the ginger variety, I succumbed. (Andrew wasn’t thrilled when he heard about it, but when he saw them last night he changed his tune! He’s super excited about them as well. At least he can sometimes appreciate good food.)

If anyone wants to know what OpenSky is, use the link above or ask me and I’ll let you know!

Anyway, back to breakfast.

I had to get dog food yesterday, which requires a trip to Hamburg, a village a lot like East Aurora, about 15-20 minutes away. It has both a Tractor Supply and a Clyde’s Feed (apparently it’s more rural here than I thought!), which are the cheapest places to get Taste of the Wild. The best part? There is a Great Harvest in Hamburg. Dog food trip = Great Harvest trip.

So, I popped in and treated myself to a mini-loaf of their whole wheat cinnamon raisin bread, which was actually a mix of raisins, craisins, flax and groats yesterday. That’s the neat thing about Great Harvest and other small bakeries; they can mix up something new and hand-write a sign if they want to.

So, I’m currently enjoying super fresh, made-by-hand bread with Justin’s Maple Almond Butter. YUM.

After my run I’ll mix up a fruit smoothie with some yogurt and flaxseed meal and then I have a phone date with Emily!