Tropical Mix Smoothie! Yum...

This is a smoothie I created last week. I kept meaning to post it but with work and a lovely sinus infection, I haven't had a chance. It's very good and thick, but not too sweet. Hubby liked it a lot too! Definitely something I will be making more often. :)
It makes two medium sized smoothies or one very large one.

Yummy!

On to the recipe!

Tropical Mix Smoothie
 2/3 cup Campoverde Tropical Mix frozen fruit (from Wal-Mart)
3-4 ice cubes
1/2 cup Fit & Active Vanilla Grade A Nonfat Yogurt (From Aldi-love that store!)
water or juice-optional. Use only if you want a thinner smoothie.

1) Since this was for breakfast, I didn't have a lot of time to wait for the fruit to defrost so I popped 2/3 of a cup into the microwave for about a minute. It will depend on your microwave and how powerful your blender is. You may not need to warm it up. My Oster blender is a few years old and not strong enough to blend frozen fruit (I tried. It does not like it!)

2) Scoop out 1/2 cup of the yogurt and put it in the blender. I tried the fruit first, but it blended better with the yogurt going in first.

3) Drop in the fruit next along with the ice.

4) Blend it up! I pulsed it slowly, mixing it up with a spoon in between so as not to kill my blender. :) It should look like this:

5) If you want to add the water or a bit of juice, go ahead and do it now. I don't know what it tastes like with juice but it's fantastic just as it is. So portion out and drink up!

I had mine with a slice of bread covered in peanut butter. It was delicious! :)

Did you try out the recipe? Let me know what you thought of this quick and easy breakfast smoothie in the comments!

Kayley

Flake Stacks

You know those haystack candies made outta Chow Mein noodles and butterscotch and peanut butter? Well, I made my own version on Saturday. I was bored and I've had the idea in my head for a while now. I call 'em Flake Stacks. They're made from Honey Bunches of Oats© and peanut butter and I added some chocolate. Why? Because everything is better with chocolate! I'm pretty sure you could use any flaky cereal in this yummy recipe.

I will warn you, it is a bit of a mess. You might want to have a plate or a paper towel under it. I'm not sure why it fell apart so much. Maybe they were too big?

Anyway, moving on! Here's the recipe! I'm not sure how long it took me to prepare it though.

• 3 Cups of Honey Bunches of Oats © Honey Roasted
• 9 Tablespoons of peanut butter( I used some reduced sugar peanut butter I had stuffed in my cabinet that I wasn't going to eat. It tasted good in the recipe. I just don't like it because of the added fat and calories it has to make up for the sugar loss)
• 4 Tablespoons of semi-sweet chocolate morsels
• Cool time: 1 1/2 - 2 hours
• Makes 15 candies

Pop the peanut butter into the microwave for 45 secs to one minute, just enough til it's liquidy.

Measure out 3 cups of cereal then add in the peanut butter.

Next, heat up the chocolate chips for 1-1 1/2 minutes until it's become a liquid. I'm sure you could use a double boiler but I don't have one of those...

Put aluminum foil down on a cookie sheet. Trust me, it'll be easier this way. Then dollop out the cereal mixture. I didn't exactly measure, but my guess is it's a heaping tablespoon full, if not 2 tablespoons.

Then drizzle the chocolate over the top. It doesn't have to be perfect. Mine certainly aren't.

Last, put the stacks in the fridge to harden for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.


My hubby was bugging me to try it every half hour or so. I didn't blame him because I was excited to try it out too. As soon as I could, I took 2 out to try them. They're yummy, of course. :) I ended up leaving the rest of them in the fridge overnight. They hardened up a little bit more but not by much. I think they would have been harder if I could have put them in the freezer but I didn't have any room...

Well, that's it! If you try them, tell me what you think!

Love,

Kayley

 

Snow!!

There's a white blanket of snow on everything outside. It started yesterday afternoon and was still going around 7 last night. I think there's about 2, maybe 3 inches of snow outside. Nothing too bad but it stuck. My guess is it'll start melting when the sun comes up. There is a winter weather advisory from accuweather.com for my area. I'm not too worried about the snow though. It's the way people drive around here that make me nervous. There are crazies here! Haha!

Me and my hubby went outside yesterday and walked in the snow for a bit. We exchanged a few snowballs too, until he shoved a little snow in my face. Yeah, that wasn't fun, but I did get him in the back of the head with a decent sized snowball. ;)

The 24 hour fast food restaurant I work at even closed down because of the snow. They're re-opening this morning around 7:30 but since I don't drive, I'm not going to be there. My wonderful hubby is at work though. I guess they didn't shut down since he hasn't called me to tell me his supervisors sent him home. All the schools are closed here too. Not that I care. I don't have any kids to send off or take care of.

I'm hoping to be able to do Day 2 of my exercises today. My knee is sore from Monday. I try not to do anything that would bother those joints since I have problems with them without working out. So pray for me! I don't know if I'll be able to do Day 3 at all this week because of the way my work schedule is. If I have a long day of running around working, I tend to be too tired to exercise, especially if it's going to be a bunch of cardio. Of course, I burn calories running around at my job so at least I'm doing something! :)

For now I'm just Pinning and watching cooking videos. I love food and I love learning about it. I realized the other day that while I don't want to go to culinary school, I like to cook and learn about food. I guess I just like being filled with knowledge about strange things! Haha! I get obsessed with something and I want to learn all I can about it before finding something new to learn about. But with food, I think it's going to be awhile before I run out of material! :)

Now back to my videos!
Kayley

Why?

So today at work, I notice what shouldn't exist yet. I mean, it is the middle of January and in the 20's for Pete's sake! A spider was dangling from it's web outside the window. Granted, it was tiny and barely noticeable, but I mean COME ON! I'm so not ready for these bugs!

It wasn't my only encounter with bugs today. Oh, no. A stupid gnat had the nerve to bother me during my lunch break and I was INSIDE! Please tell me I'm not the only one not ready for this...

On a better note, I'm drinking a delicious peach smoothie. I think it would be better with fresh peaches but all I had on hand was the little fruit cups in 100% juice. I mixed it up with milk and it foamed up on top. This is the second time a smoothie has done this to me recently. I need to figure out why because a smoothie shouldn't be half-foam. I'm thinking it might be the milk. Not that I think it's gone bad because it better not be. I just opened it! But I've made protein shakes in the blender with milk, the powder, and some peanut butter and they would foam up too. I thought it was the protein powder. I guess not. Stupid milk. Why does it have to separate?

Well, I guess I better finish it off before it gets warm!
Love,
Kayley