ABC

I've decided to share another successful recipe with you.  I'm going to give it a fancy title, too!

ABC -- Apple Breakfast Cake

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup water
1/3 cup steel-cut oats
2 eggs
2 small or 1 large apple, grated
2 T honey, maple syrup, or sweetener of choice (optional)
1 T coconut oil (or melted butter or other liquid fat)
1/2 tsp baking soda
dash salt
spices to taste--I used about 1/4 tsp nutmeg, two dashes of cloves, and 3/4 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Grease a 9" round or 8" square pan.

1) In a medium-large bowl, mix the wheat flour and the yogurt.  Let sit for however long you like to soak your grains.  (1-8 hours will do, or longer in the fridge if you have time.)
2) Bring the water to a boil, then add the oats.  Lower the heat to a simmer and cook as long as the oats need to normally cook.  (I used some fast-cooking steel-cut oats that I have, so it only took about 15 minutes.  Alternately, you can soak the oats first in water for several hours, which will shorten the cooking time.)
3) To the flour and yogurt mixture, add the eggs, honey, coconut oil, baking soda, salt, and spices, and mix well to combine.  (I've discovered that you have to do a lot of mixing to incorporate eggs smoothly into a flour-yogurt mixture, so make sure that you get rid of all the lumps.)
4) Mix in the grated apples and cooked oatmeal.  Pour into the pan and bake until an inserted toothpick comes out clean, about 35-40 minutes.  Let cool slightly before cutting.

This cake comes out incredibly moist because of the apples and oatmeal.  I also figure it's a fabulous nutritious breakfast--and totally compact.  I baked mine in a square pan, and have divided it into 4 servings.  Had one quarter this morning, split, toasted, and with a pat of butter.

~ ^_^ ~

Some of you may notice that, holy cow, there's a blog post here!  I have taken to writing down my workouts, fitness ramblings, and health-related thoughts in a journal, but I'm thinking that I can achieve the same thing by blogging here, and pretending that people aren't actually reading.

Today is a two-fer Tuesday!  That's two workouts in one day.  Since, at long last, the planet has tilted enough that the sun is rising before I do, I can wake up early and hit the gym before work.  As I have dance class on Tuesdays, that means I get to exercise twice.  So this morning I did 35 minutes on the elliptical, plus some stretching, and this evening I will do 90 minutes of folklorico.

I don't know why I keep tracking this, but my weight this morning was 149.75 lbs on the gym scale.  There is a certain degree of negative psychological associations with my weight--I'm still a bit stuck on having an emotional response to it.  For instance, today I felt good because I was below 150.  Last week I felt bad because I was above 150, that is, 150.5 lbs or so.  This is crazy, I know, but it's the way my brain, and possibly many of yours, has been trained to work.  I need to either stop weighing myself or stop caring about what the number is.  Even though I know I'm at a very "healthy" weight for my height--as "healthy" can be subjective, since I could still be this weight eating only junk food, never exercising, smoking, and not have any healthy habits--there's still part of me that thinks I should be less, based on the programming I have received from society all my life.  Really, though, I *am* more focused on training for my 7-mile run in August and being able to do five pull-ups.