After a kind of late night out last night I woke up at almost 11am today!!!  That’s just crazy!  I woke up a little after 9am and decided that this was not enough sleep.  I really need to catch up on sleep on the weekends but somehow this never happens.  So, I “forced” myself to go back to bed and woke up well rested about 1.5 hours later.  It was nice to know I had nowhere to rush to, so I took my time thinking about breakfast and today’s eats.  I had an open can of pumpkin hanging around in the fridge for over a week and I decided it was time to use it up.  My favorite way to use up pumpkin is of course by combining it with chocolate!

BREAKFAST

I baked some pumpkin peanut butter chocolate chip muffins based on this recipe from Tina.  I’ve made these before a bunch of times, modifying the recipe slightly.  They always come out delicious!!  Today I realized I only had 1/2 cup of pumpkin left, so I added about 1/2 cup of apple sauce and started playing with the rest of the ingredients.  I also always make big muffins instead of minis (1 big muffin is just more satisfying to me than 2 mini ones) but today I broke out my mini-muffin pan.  Well, when I finally put my muffins into the oven, all proud of myself because those minis looked so cute, I realized I forgot to add the sugar!!!  Nooooo!  I took the pan out of the oven, scooped the batter out back into the bowl, added the sugar and then divided it back into 5 large muffins instead of 10 minis (the mini-muffin was a big mess post scooping).  I guess it wasn’t meant to be!  I won’t share my modifications because I think they are still not perfect.  The muffins tasted incredible (as always) but today they looked a little funny… they concaved in.  Oh well!  Here is one of these guys with a cup of coffee:

And here it is broken into… the chocolate chips melted all together inside.  It was like a malten pumpkin chocolate cake more than a muffin.  So good!

After finishing this yummy breakfast, while sipping on some coffee I browsed through cooking recipes trying to plan the menu for the week.  I love just relaxing like that!  A few hours later we went grocery shopping and I snacked on an apple and this new purchase:

I’ve tried a Mojo bar before (I think the pb flavor) and didn’t think it was anything special.  But after hearing good things about them I decided to try one again and I am so glad I did.  This mountain mix bar was really great!  Here it is up close – there are just so many goodies in there!  Awesome!!!

Being that I woke up super late tonight and dinner was supposed to be on the early side (a friend of mine, Katy, was coming over for dinner) the apple and the bar constituted my lunch.  They were the perfect snack/lunch and did a great job of tying me over until…

DINNER

For dinner tonight I wanted to make a root vegetable dish.  As I’ve mentioned before in this post, after reading the December issue of Eating Well I was dying to make all sorts of stuff with root vegetables.  I bought quite a few at the farmers market.  I made the shredded root vegetable pancakes earlier this week and today I wanted to use up the rest by making the cider-glazed roots with cinnamon walnuts.  These take a little bit of time (about 1.5 hours altogether) so I was glad to make it on a weekend night and especially so since we had company   I also wanted to make some simple grilled chicken for some extra protein and thought that something with maple syrup would go nicely with the sweet roasted veggies.  I marinated 2 lbs of chicken breast with 1T maple syrup, 1T peanut oil and 1.5T of dijon mustard (the marinade idea came from this recipe) for about 40 minutes and then grilled them on a cast iron grill pan.  Both came out so amazingly delicious (I was seriously proud of myself!) and worked together really well!  A really great fall dinner!… My husband and Katy both approved!

Here is my plate (the chicken piece isn’t as gigantic as it looks in this pic – it was about 5.5 oz raw):

Here are the roasted veggies upclose.  The pecans made them even more special!  Oh btw, they tasted like veggie candy

For dessert, I served some white chocolate cranberry bars to Katy but because I decided to make some more for Thanksgiving this Thursday, at the risk of over-eating them, I made another dessert for myself: 1/2 Arnold’s sandwich thin with 1/2 T almond butter, 1/2 small banana + a few choc chips.  This was my first time trying the sandwich thins and I was not impressed at all!  They said they were whole grain white bread and they tasted really white and processed.  I never eat white bread anymore so I guess my taste preference has changed.  My husband will probably love them.  Hehe.  Another weird thing with this dessert, I used the TJ’s almond butter.  I used to be absolutely obsessed with this stuff and had some at least once a day, but for some reason (probably because the single serving Barney Butter packets are so convenient) I haven’t had it in a while and today it tasted so bland.  It’s unsalted and again I used to be obsessed with it, but I guess after all pb and Barney Butter with salt, I can’t go back.  I guess I’ll use it in baking next time… or maybe I’ll just wait until my taste buds change their mind   Here is my little dessert with some vanilla tea:

I am totally stuffed now, which means no workout since it’s getting late and I won’t have time to digest.  It was a nice day though and I am ready for the upcoming week at work (it helps that it’s only a 3-day work week too!).

Total calorie count for the day: 1289 (thats what happens when you wake up late!)

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