I must tell you, it wasn’t until I posed the question of holiday flavors and someone said figs that I even thought about fig pancakes. I love having a blog and being able to ask and comment with others about cool new things to try and do. I hadn’t really ever tried figs, let alone make a pancake with them. If I don’t like something, I’m not going to post a blog with a recipe…that’s silly. I’m also not going to post a recipe that takes more than 15 minutes and has 100 ingredients because that isn’t my style. So with that I decided to attempt to make some figcakes. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to try making a savory fig recipe or sweet (both are apparently pretty common?). But sweet always captures my heart so I chose them.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup figs (I bought a bag of already chopped because I’m of the simple type)
1/4 cup walnuts
1 egg
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon oil
1/2-1 cup milk depending on the consistency you like (either thick or more thin crepe like pancakes)
1 teaspoon cinnamon, vanilla extract and nutmeg
Sweetner to taste (I added ¼ cup stevia cup for cup as well as 2 tablespoons of brown sugar)
Mix and cook on the griddle.
Topped with some peanut butter.
These were actually surprisingly good. I was pretty surprised since a week prior I had no idea or clue what figs were. So certainly a pancake in the rotation de LOLZ.
So as part of the Monday pancake series, instead of a recipe this week I am actually posting a few helpful hints of how to make recipes healthier. Let’s face it-pancakes are not always the healthiest recipes but that doesn’t mean you can’t make them that way. While I’m not saying diner pancakes are made in this regard…you can! While I realize not everyone wants to lighten up their pancakes, many people do.
Instead of adding oil you can substitute a half cup of pumpkin, applesauce or greek yogurt. All three make the pancakes especially moist and delicious.
pumpkin pancakesGreek yogurt pancakes
If you don’t want to consume a lot of carbohydrates, think about using a high protein flour such as peanut flour.
Instead of using high sugary maple syrup top your pancakes with sugar free syrup, peanut butter, greek yogurt, Nutella (well…that is just me), jam and jellies, fruit.
topped with basically an entire container of greek yogurt…maybe there is pancakes in there? maybe…greek yogurt sandwich pancakes.topped with apples
Another thing you can do (disclaimer…I personally don’t prefer the taste) is switch an egg to egg whites saving fat cholesterol. You need something to bind the pancake together and make it fluffy but if you would prefer egg whites to egg that is for you.
Here’s the thing. Like my pumpkin pancake recipe, I thought I had a chocolate pancake or waffle recipe on the blog. Sadly, if I did I can’t find it anywhere and I have close to 700 posts so I’m not about to look through all of them. Similar to all recipes, it has a very small list of ingredients and very small amount of directions…because more then 5 directions and I’ll mess it up.
Anyways, I love chocolate.
I love peanut flour.
I love pancakes.
Therefore, I love chocolatepeanut flour pancakes.
Ingredients:
½ cup peanut flour (you can sub in 2/3 cup flour of choice…)
¼ cup cocoa powder (I prefer hershey’s cocoa powder)
1 tablespoon baking powder (more is needed for peanut flour pancakes)
½ cup-3/4 cup milk (depending on if you like thicker/thinner pancakes)
1 egg
Sweetener to taste
I love that this recipe is 6 ingredients. Mix the dry to the wet and pour on the griddle. Cook at 375. It’s that easy!
I like topping it with greek yogurt (milk and chocolate…yes please) or peanut butter (because who doesn’t love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate).
Or nutella. Because we all know I’m addicted to that…
I had written up the perfect blog post for today. What I ate…what happened when I tried something new..it was simply perfectly (okay yeah…no not really) but alas I don’t save my work, I never learn my lessons and closed Microsoft word before transferring into wordpress. Whoops…Typical Hollie moment. Better that then the 1500 list of names I had to manually go through…as always worse things in the world.
So this week, I got outside my comfort zone and bought some new peanut butter. Why? Because I was out and needed peanut butter. But this isn’t just any peanut butter, this was peanut butter and co ( read so many blogs about how great it is…LOL) and tried a weird flavor. (I literally have been a normal peanut butter fan for…well all my life). This peanut butter was on sale at the grocery store (price chopper) so I thought…eh it’s the same price and I’ll be adventurous.
I’ll save said story for breakfast. You should know by now I have a chocolate waffle most mornings. With about 500 calories per waffle without any peanut butter, it keeps me moving in the morning. I actually enjoy going to work out on the elliptical with a somewhat full stomach. If it’s empty I cramp up. So I normally eat breakfast around 6, go to the gym from 7-8:30 and have work at 9 (most days).
So this peanut butter I bought was actually spicy. As in my mouth burned and then I had heart burn an hour later. So with that I’m sticking with normal peanut butter. Has anyone tried this stuff?
Lunch was with the work gang. Two of these salads. Though I do enjoy balsamic dressing , I was feeling very Italian today and got Italian dressing. My staple work salad at the dining hall is spinach, feta cheese (at least ½ cup), banana peppers, olives (love olives), chicken (and lots of it), dried cherries and walnuts. It’s so good I always go back for a bonus round. I really think I have about 1000 calories of salad…I don’t care or mind.
SaladX2
After a rather stressful day at work, I wanted to come home and eat all the cookies in every dining hall for dinner. Since that might be inappropriate I just made myself a roast beef sandwich. This might be the greatest sandwich I’ve ever made in my life…partially why I chose to do my WIAW today because normally my food looks like crap.
Grilled on my George Foreman. Duh.
Afterwords, I went to the gym and did my core routine. Nothing too exciting there… Upon finishing that I was craving something sweet since I forwent all of the cookies. I was going to get ice cream but they were out of my favorite flavors at Stewerts (upon grumbling) I just went to the fastrack and got a decaf coffee with whip cream and had my greek yogurt protein shake (ie: 1 cup greek yogurt, ½ cup milk, some blueberries, ice cubes and some sweetener). It sufficed.
Piggybacking off of last weeks not shopping at super organic with a hint of specialty only found on the second Tuesday of every other month stores…(I don’t even know what that means reading it back to myself) but anyways this is what I’m currently eating on my fourth (and it looks like it will be much longer) of being injured.
Though my bone is healed in my foot, my cyst has grown larger which is no bueno. They want me to do some treatment options similar to those for plantar fasciitis to reduce the cyst before draining it.
Anyways all of that to tell you that I’m still injured and eating less. Where I was eating roughly 2600 calories daily, I’m now eating about 2000 most days. I don’t actually count calories but do have a rough estimate daily. So right then.
Sorry not sorry but I still have a waffle daily. I’ve been craving a lot more chocolate lately so I had a chocolate waffle. Basically it’s a standard waffle with ¼ cup cocoa powder. There are a few recipes on my recipe page, but I keep meaning to update it when I’m not so busy. I have a ton of new recipes that I’ve made and loved…I just haven’t posted them yet…All in due time.
Fage 2% yogurt and syrup is on top incase you wondered….
As normal, I still have coffee and 75% of the time it’s from a gas station.
and it always has whip cream. Everytime. Best 1.73 that I will ever spend.
Lunch I’m still having sandwiches and yogurt. Though I’ve mellowed down from nutella (mostly because I’m out) and had peanut butter all week. With my greek yogurts…because I’ve been just keeping them in my work fridge. Risky but oh well. Though there is only one pictured, I always have two sandwiches. One at 11 and one from 1-2.
On my way to the gym at four, I realized I was pretty hungry so I had a quest bar. These are probably one of my most specialized foods (I guess) but you can get them Vitamin shoppee or GNC. They have really good stats, the only thing I wish for is a bit more calcium.
For dinner, I was feeling more lazy then usual and decided to make eggs and add all the vegetables in my fridge that I assumed were going bad in the next day. I would make an omelet but everytime I flip them…they break. In there is also some goat cheese because I like that.
4 eggs+kale, mushrooms, tomatoes and goat cheese and yes this bowl is as big as one of the stove burners that it is sitting on. I love bowl plates.
I ended up falling asleep really early because my anti-inflammatory medicine (think 8:30pm) so I never had anything else. This added up to be around 1800. I probably would have ate more if I hadn’t fallen asleep but alas it happened.
Until next time I talk about food…
Question for you:
1. Do you have a staple lunch?
Mine is two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as well as two greek yogurts…simple and fast to make because I’m always running late.
It’s Wednesday already? Okay well, I feel I made an effort for taking some food photos from the last week rather then just throwing them all together and calling it a day. Mostly because I like to instagram things. Though if you follow me on instagram you probably think I only have coffee.
I haven’t been able to have salmon in a couple of weeks and boy did I miss itGoat cheese salads are my favorite
Fish and green beans…what I had in my house before going grocery shopping.chocolate waffle topped with peanut butterhoarding gas station coffees…
Finally, as you guys know I’m having a GIVEAWAY. So please check it out as I have less then 200 towards my goal.
I feel like as bloggers we must think that our lives are so interesting all of the time. That if we have down time, how the freak will you ever blog if your life is…dare I say it “normal”.
Sometimes I wonder if as a blogger, people really think I live some exciting and always joyful life that I can plug an interesting life post everyday. Or that I’m motivated to post everyday because my life is just that fabulous.
Well my life is fabulous but I must say, even when my blogging has been lacking. So with that I’ll just post some photos of my eats. Not sure how recent they are and time stamping them won’t do anything for you or me. I will tell you though what I’ve been enjoying since returning to eating by myself.
Actually that is a dirty lie,I have been eating a lot on the campus with people I’m working with. I promise I’ll do a full internship post soon but why do one when I haven’t been there long enough to accurately judge. Seeing as I haven’t done a WIAW in a few weeks is all I’ve eaten since last time…
I think I’m now in love with garlic pizzaThe campus actually has a great salad barI went out to eat and had a goat cheese salad (the key to my heart)
