Banana nut muffin recipe from Leeny

Ingredients

2 cups almond flour
1/3 cup coconut flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup dates (or raisins if you prefer)
3 ripe bananas
1 T. vanilla (I prefer Mexican vanilla)
3 eggs
1/4 cup honey
3 T. coconut oil melted
2 T. almond butter

How to:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  (In a non stick pan, roast pecans on medium heat until fragrant tossing gently as they roast.  This step is not a must but it adds another level of flavor and complexity to the muffin.)  Set aside.
Mash bananas with a whisk or fork, and add honey and almond butter.  Beat eggs and add to banana mixture.  Add oil and vanilla and blend well.  In a separate bowl, mix all dry ingredients, including pecans.  Mix wet with dry ingredients.  Spoon batter into lined muffin cups or a non stick muffin pan. Bake 15-20 minutes.  Makes 12-15 muffins.

Sunday dinner

Caroline is a member of a CSA so she brings vegetables home that we would not normally eat.  She got some beets this week and I haven't had them in ages.  We baked them in the oven and then I sliced them up and added some cherry vinegar from Vom Fass to them (they were really yummy).  We also roasted red onions, turnips, squash and carrots with some tomatoes in olive oil.  Sam grilled some chicken and cut it up with Richard's BBQ sauce.  It was a great Sunday dinner.  Caroline had a box of Mac and Cheese and I cooked it for Ben and Maggie, it made their day!!!!

Apart from dinner, we made a batch of no-oat oatmeal, sweet potato hummus, chocolate pumpkin sun butter treats and kale chips.  We have enough food to last us for a few days.....

End of Whole Life Challenge

	Me	World
Days Recorded Score	55	32 avg
Inches Lost	7	4 avg
Workout Improvement	27	19 avg
Acts of Kindness	7	34,529 total
Minutes of Mindfulness	70	472,060 total

I have finished the Whole Life Challenge.  In some ways it was hard, in others it was easy.  During the 8 weeks, I managed to stay on track for 3 work dinners, John's wedding, John's birthday and a dinner to celebrate my Citizenship.  Amazingly, I also survived a trip to Dallas, including the airport both ways.  It was very strange to be in the airport and not get a Starbucks at every opportunity.  At the end of the challenge, I was surprised to find my workout had improved because I haven't been doing as much Crossfit as I had at the beginning.  I had also lost inches, hopefully won't put them back on!!!

Rank	Name	Community	Total
1	Jane McHowat	None	605
2	Elizabeth Pogostin	None	591
3	Sydney Saito	None	532
4	Leeny Hoffmann	None	302
5	Amy Nash	None	288
6	Marileana Garcia	None	188
7	Anne Bosch	None	118
8	Samara Campen	None	63
9	Gina Stiffler	None	0

This was our Paleo Crossfit team.  It's interesting that one person paid to enter the challenge and then never entered a score at all.  Watching the scores every day, I figured out that most people are like me and once they lose a few points or forget to record a score on any day, they give up completely.  Only one other person stayed the distance and recorded scores and reflections every day.  I think this is probably the reason why most diets fail.....

Chocolate Pumpkin Sunbutter Treats

These have just got to be phenomenal!!!!

Ingredients

• 2 cup Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips (or dark chocolate brand of choice)
• ⅓ cup coconut milk
• ½ cup sunflower seed butter (or other seed or nut butter)
• ⅓ cup pumpkin puree
• ½ cup raw honey
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
• ⅛ teaspoon ground cloves
• ⅛ teaspoon powdered ginger
• pinch of salt, to top

Instructions

1. Melt chocolate chips and coconut milk in microwave or in a double boiler until smooth.
2. Line an 8×8 baking dish with parchment paper (for easy clean up and removal). Pour chocolate into the dish and smooth out.
3. In a bowl, mix together sunbutter, pumpkin, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger until smooth.
4. Spoon sunbutter mixture on top of chocolate and use a knife to spread throughout the chocolate mixture. Just keep making pretty designs in it until it is well mixed. Top with a pinch of salt.
5. Place in freezer and let freeze for 4+ hours. Serve immediately. Store in freezer.

Cauliflower tortillas

Ingredients

• ¾ a head of cauliflower riced or 2 cups riced and packed
• 2 eggs
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
2. For these I actually rice my cauliflower slightly more fine that cauliflower rice. Toss ¾ a head of cauliflower cut up and most of the stem removed and pulse until you get a texture slightly finer than rice. (Once it’s riced measure it to make sure you have 2 cups packed.)
3. Place riced cauliflower in bowl and microwave for 2 minutes and stir, then another two minutes and stir again then place in a dish towel and squeeze excess water out as hard as you can. (You’re going to want to get out as much water as you can and be careful not to burn yourself because it’s going to be very hot.)
4. Place drained cauliflower back in bowl and add two eggs, salt and pepper and mix until well combined.
5. As a note it will be a little bit runny but shouldn’t be pure liquid either. Spread mixture onto a baking sheet into 6 small fairly flat circles.
6. Place in the oven for 10 minutes then pull out of the oven and carefully peel them off the parchment and flip them and place back in the oven for 5-7 more minutes.
7. Once they’re done place them on a wire rack to cool slightly.
8. Heat a medium sized pan over medium heat and place the tortillas into the pan pressing down slightly and brown them to your liking. (Don’t skip this step because it gives them slightly crispy on the edges and gives them a wonderfully nutty taste)

WLC week 8 workouts

Day 1
Repeat 3x:
1 min shuttle run (25 yards)
15 sec rest
1 min max 5 push ups, 10 squats
15 sec rest
1 min max sit ups
15 sec rest 

Day 2
Easy cardio/metabolic conditioning of your choice.  Minimum of 10 minutes.  Keep heart rate in recovery range.  Finish feeling good and fresh, not tired and wiped out. 

Day 3
2 min jumping Jacks
15 squats

10 push up

1 min run in place (high knees)
15 squats

10 push ups

1 min burpees
15 squats

10 push ups
2 min jumping jacks 

Day 4
Easy cardio/metabolic conditioning of your choice.  Minimum of 10 minutes.  Keep heart rate in recovery range.  Finish feeling good and fresh, not tired and wiped out 

Day 5
repeat 2x
2 min squat hold
2 min prone cobra hold
2 min plank hold

Sunday cooking

I cooked in two shifts on Sunday.  I knew we'd run out of no-oat oatmeal in a day so I made more before we headed out to Eckert's to pick Fuji apples.  When we got home, I made this apple cobbler with the apples we had from previous trips.  It's got almond meal, eggs and flour in the topping, so within paleo limits.  I think it's better with the peaches than apples though....

I was looking through old recipes and found this recipe for an oven omelet.  I thought it would be a nice change from the usual fare

I made another batch of Scotch eggs.  This time, I got some bacon apple-wurst from Eckerts and used it, it was really good.  We had beef bourguignon made in the crock pot for dinner and I'm planning on making salmon chowder with coconut milk for dinner tonight.  Definitely making some old recipes this week