Pumpkin Almond Pancakes

Ah... Sunday mornings...the perfect day to start off with a stack of pancakes.

"But wait, Kanwal, pancakes will leave you feeling tired and sluggish all day!!!"

No, my dear. Not.My.Pancakes. My pancakes are packed with nutrients, fiber and tasty goodness. The best part, of course I had to Fallify my pancakes by adding pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice.

Start your Sunday morning off with a delicious nutrient packed breakfast and make a batch of my Pumpkin Almond Pancakes!
Deets:

Ingredients:
1tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/4c pumpkin purée
1/2c almond flour
1tsp baking soda
1TB pumpkin pie spice
1/2tsp salt

Preparation:
Combine wet ingredients. Incorporate the dry ingredients next. Lightly spray a pan with oil. Place on medium heat. Add a big spoonful of batter to pan. Allow to cook for a couple of minutes until batter starts to bubble. Flip pancake and cook. Repeat. This batter should make 6 pancakes.

Servings: 2

Enjoy with almond butter and jam or with maple syrup.

Pumpkin Pie Coffee

Anyone that knows me, knows my Fall obsession is pumpkin coffee. I just love the pumpkiny goodness in taste it has to offer. Of course a lot of this has to do with the spices mixed in with the pumpkin. Mmm.... the cloves, cinnamon, ginger... so warm and comforting on a crisp Fall morning.

I try to make my pumpkin coffee an indulgence and get it once a week. I know most coffee joints put in a sweetened pumpkin syrup and sometimes just one cup of black pumpkin coffee can rack up to 200 calories because of the syrup.

I decided to make a less expensive, non sweetened pumpkin coffee on my own. Boy, was this super easy and super pumpkiny spicey :-) I did good.. real good with this one! This was so super easy and not sugary! I can now make this a regular, all year round and not just have an indulgence!

Here are the deets:

Ingredients:
Ground coffee
Pumpkin Pie Spice

Preparation:
Prepare coffee as you normally would. Add pumpkin pie spice to your liking. The more you add the more pumpkiny it will taste. I added one tablespoon for 5 cups of coffee and had great flavor. Stir the coffee grinds and pumpkin pie spice to combine. Make coffee as you normally would. Enjoy!

Last Night's Dinner: Curried Apple Squash Soup

Last night was pretty relaxing. After coming home from work, showering, taking my contacts off and putting my glasses on I set out for the kitchen to make some soup! I wanted to make soup because it was a little chilly last night. Also, I'm trying to make more of an effort to get more fiber in and eat more veggies.

Of course, first I had to get my Bollywood on and streamed music from Pandora while cooking :-) I wanted to keep dinner light and easy. I had an acorn squash from my CSA that I wanted to use. I decided to make a pot of Curried Apple Squash Soup. This soup was delicious and filling and of course...very easy! Here are the deets:

Ingredients:
1 onion, diced
1TB crushed garlic
1 acorn squash, quartered
2 apples, quartered
Quart of vegetable stock
Curry powder ( I used Madras Curry powder)
Olive oil
Pepper

Preparation:
Toss the acorn squash with a little bit of olive oil. Sprinkle thyme on top. Bake for 45 minutes at 475 in the oven. In the mean time, sauté the onion and garlic in a pot with a little olive oil. Sauté for 10 minutes then add a tablespoon of curry powder. Sauté for another couple of minutes. Add about a cup of stock to the pot and stir on low heat. Once the squash is cooked place in a blender to purée. Add a little bit of stock to get things moving along. Pour the purée in the pot and stir. Next purée the apples, add a little bit of stock to get things moving. Pour the purée in the pot. Pour remaining stock in the pot. Continue to let this simmer for another twenty minutes, stirring every so often. Check seasonings. Add more curry or black pepper to taste.

Enjoy this soup hot with some crusty bread!

Fall In A Bowl: Pumpkin Porridge

Good Morning!

This morning I was craving a hot bowl of oatmeal. Being all out of oats I decided to Fallify my breakfast and make a healthy bowl of Pumpkin Porridge! This breakfast was nutritious and delicious and very hearty! Here are the deets:

Ingredients:
1/2c of pumpkin purée
1 ripe banana, mashed
1/4c of almond meal
1/2c if unsweetened almond milk
1tsp vanilla extract
1TB of pumpkin pie spice

Preparation:
Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Place in microwave and microwave for two minutes or until porridge starts to bubble. Enjoy hot!

Servings: 1

This breakfast has less than 400 calories and 8 grams of filling fiber!

Food Log: Breakfast, 8:30am

2 slices of almond butter bread
Almond butter
Sliced banana
Coffee

Food Log: Dessert, 9:45pm

Strawberry Ice Cream Smoothie

Ingredients:
1/3c of coconut milk
2/3c unsweetened almond milk
Handful of frozen strawberries

Preparation:
Blend all ingredients in a blender!

Food Log: Dinner, 9:00pm

Stewed veggies over spaghetti squash:

Food Log: Lunch, 12:45pm

Sushi: cucumber wrapped instead of rice. Eel and Yellowtail roles.

Before & After shot...

Food Log: Breakfast, 9:10am

Two slices of almond butter bread smeared with almond butter!

Food log: Breakfast, 8:30 a.m

Chicken sausage with Paleo bread (still tweaking recipe), smeared with almond butter.

Lethargic Morning...

Yesterday I woke up EXTREMELY lethargic. I'm pretty sure I woke up feeling like this because of all the crap I ate the night before (heavy, oily Indian food with tons of rice). I'm telling you, I really do feel physically horrible when I don't eat well. Anywho, I woke up feeling like crapola and I was absolute dreading my 1:00pm bootcamp class. First of all, I had not been to bootcamp in two weeks. I feel this military style class is so fierce yet so AWESOME! You are definitely pushed and leave accomplishing obstacles you never thought you could.

So, I made it to bootcamp. Yesterday's class was a four person class. This was both good and bad. Good because the instructor was able to give me great attention and advice for the workout. Bad because the instructor was able to give me great attention :-p

We did our usual military style workout and then headed to the obstacle course. The obstacle course always scares me because I need help getting over the higher walls. I'm also pretty slow at hurdles. Yesterday however, I was about to go over the Discipline wall with assistance. That is, until my trainer came over to me and said no assistance, you can do this! With all the doubts in my mind and thinking if I fell at least I would land on a rubber padded ground :-p With that in mind, I jumped up, grabbed the top of the wall, "walked" up, threw my right leg over and hurled myself over the discipline wall. Once over... I was ecstatic!!!! I had so much energy and was on cloud nine :-)

I think I have a chance in conquering Tough Mudder!

The Start of Fall? ...

Officially, Fall does not begin until September 22nd but I'm already starting to feel the crisp fall air in the morning :-/.  Why the :-/ ? Well, I don't like Fall.  Fall brings cooler weather, jackets, more bags to carry and shudders of coldness up my spine.  I like running in warm weather, circuit work outs in the park, going to the beach on a hot day and eating ice cream when it's unbelievably hot outside. I don't like eating ice cream in the cold.

With that said, I am trying to focus on the finer things in life :-)  I have quite a few goals that I'd like to accomplish within the next three months.

Here they are:

• Submit my training videos to dhoonyaFit
• Train for Tough Mudder
• Finish up bootcamp classes
• Document what I eat and how I feel after wards

I am going to try to keep up with documenting on how I am doing with my goals.  

PS: One thing I do like about Fall, pumpkin coffee :-)