Sunday, October 9, 2011

Carrot cake pancakes

I know I missed a couple blog posts.  Things have been a little crazy around here (I think I always say that, but I really mean it this time).  We had a busy week in the clinic, and it was kind of a tough one, with lots of acute low back patients.  Those are the challenging ones, who can hardly walk in to see you.  I absolutely hate seeing people in such pain, and I try to do everything I can to help them out.  Thankfully most of them are doing better.  We're also dealing with some family issues, so this week might not be the best for posting.

Yesterday after seeing a patient in the morning I went down to Cedar Rapids for some quick shopping with my friend Erica.  We decided we were in the mood for some salad and breadsticks- Olive Garden!!

After two and a half breadsticks and two bowls of salad, I enjoyed some Venetian Apricot Chicken.  Can you believe I went to Olive Garden and didn't eat any pasta??  They didn't have my favorite meal- Garlic Chicken con Broccoli.   Apparently they don't make it anymore.  Sad face.  This chicken was pretty good though.  And I didn't hate myself after cleaning my plate.



Erica enjoyed her Chicken Scampi.  That looked delicious as well.



After some power shopping, we decided to treat ourselves to some CSC.  Cold Stone Creamery.  I almost always go for some oatmeal cookie batter, but they had some new flavors that I had to try.  It came down to pumpkin and salted caramel.  Pumpkin won me over, and I added some graham cracker pie crust to it.  So good.

 the "like-it" size

Later we headed to a baby shower for some friends of ours, lots of yummy food and cake.  Holy sugar overload on the day.  My cousin Kayla came over to watch Tyler- thank you thank you thank you!!!

This morning Kayla and I went on a short walk with Tyler and stopped by the local coffee shop on the way home for a beverage.  I went with a chai tea and Kayla had a pumpkin latte.  Fall is definitely in the air- I love it.

For breakfast, I decided to try another one of Iowa Girl Eat's recipes, with some very slight modifications.  Carrot cake pancakes.

I didn't feel like lugging out the food processor, so I just used my chopper to chop up the carrots in tiny pieces.  I put them in a bowl with some water and put it in the microwave for a couple minutes to soften them up.  I think there was about 3/4 cup of carrots all together.



As a base, I used some Heart Smart Bisquick mix.  I used about 1 cup, as that was all that was left.  I dumped that in with the carrots, along with 1/2 cup of skim milk, one egg and some spices.  I used 1 tsp of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of nutmeg, 1/2 tsp ginger and 1/4 tsp of cloves.





This made 4 good size pancakes.  I was a little skeptical mixing up the batter, but they turned out great.  I accompanied them with some of my own vanilla honey butter.  I melted 1 T of butter, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 T of honey in the microwave and drizzled over the pancakes.  I also added a little maple syrup.

We like pancakes with a little crisp, hence the canola oil




I highly recommend these.



Rest of the day was pretty uneventful, food-wise.  Had a left-over Chick-fil-a sandwich for lunch before volleyball camp and then later tonight made up some taco meat and had a taco salad.

No workouts besides walking this weekend, my body will feel it this next week.  Just couldn't fit it in this weekend.

In Tyler news, he had his first boo-boo.  Hubby was watching him and Tyler just lost his balance and fell head-first into the wall.  Got a nice little shiner.

This is before it turned black and blue.  Didn't seem to affect him much.


That's all for now... hope to catch up with you soon!

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