Long Time No See

Morning everyone!!! I've been sorta absent from the blog world so far this week.....I had gotten a little bit behind on school, so I took some time off to sort it all out. Also, I really haven't been up to too much.....no new recipes or anything, really! I did bake some sugar cookies for my sister's birthday and made some muffins yesterday, but they're both old recipes...what have you been up to so far this week? 


So one thing I did do is try out a new workout...it was pretty tough! As always, if anyone tries this out, please let me know what you thought! Also, definitely modify anything if you feel like it! :D

 

I did do both "optional" cardio segments and the entire thing took me about an hour....oh and I just noticed my typo up there....I meant "Weighted Russian Twist"...whoops! Anyway, the most difficult exercises for me were the russian twist and the dumbbell lunge + overhead press because I tried to up the weight that I was pressing! 

So, I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but I have been doing Blogilates workouts a lot recently. I've been absolutely loving them, and have been actually taking sort of a break from the gym and from the workouts that I was doing beforehand. I noticed a couple of days ago, when I tried out this particular workout that I had more energy and was able to up the weight in a lot of the exercises that I did. 

I really think that switching up my workout routine helped break the rut that I was in, so I did some quick googling and here is what I came up with.

We are animals and so our bodies are highly adaptable.  In other words, when we first start an exercise program our body will work very hard to maintain homeostasis because exercise stresses the body initially.  However, as we continue to exercise our body will begin to adapt to this stress and therefore, it will require less energy to perform the same exercise for the same amount of time.  This is or maybe was a great characteristic, especially years ago when we were hunters and gatherers and we needed to survive.  However, in today’s society where this is not the case, and most of us are trying to maintain our weight or lose weight is has become more of a hindrance.  Because it means it becomes harder and harder to maintain or lose weight since our bodies will use less calories for the same exercise session we did when we started.  This is another reason why it is so important to change up your exercise routine so that you force your body to adapt again.

Tired of the same ol’ same ol’?

You’re not alone. Many people find that doing the same workouts over and over becomes monotonous, and as a result they may begin to lose their desire to continue to exercise on a regular basis. Research has shown however that adding variety to an exercise program can help to improve adherence. Exercise scientists as the University of Florida observed that individuals who modified their workouts every two weeks over an eight-week period appeared to enjoy their workouts more, and were more inclined to stick with their exercise programs when compared to individuals who followed the same workout regimens week after week.

So what’s in it for me?

Aside from alleviating boredom, varying your exercise routine can also help you stay physically challenged. Many of the body’s physiological systems (e.g., the muscular systems) adapt to an exercise program within approximately six to eight weeks. Failure to modify your exercise routine will cause you to reach a plateau, as your body will have adapted to the repetitive training stimulus.

source
 So there ya have it....changing up my exercise routine helped not only kept me from getting bored, but it was also helpful in giving me more energy to go back to doing superset style workouts! Do you like to change up your workout routine? If so, how often? 


I leave ya'll with this picture. My kitten has apparently decided that she loooooves taking naps in the sink. It is just her size.....

Very Special Day

Morning!!
Today is a veeery special day in this house! It is my sister's birthday!!!!!! After school, she and her best friend are coming here for dinner and then the two of them, my mom and I will go to the premiere of The Hunger Games later on tonight! Then tomorrow, we're going to have a little bit of a family celebration! So, so excited!!!! :D

Well, in other news, I have a yummy breakfast recipe to share with you guys today! It is another coffee cake....this time with chocolate!

Chocolate Swirl Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 3 T sugar (only if cocoa is unsweetened)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. 
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition. 
3. In a medium bowl, combine flour and baking powder. In another bowl, combine milk and vanilla. 
4. Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter/sugar mixture, then add about 1/3 of the milk to that. Continue alternating between adding flour and milk to the butter mixture until everything is incorporated. 
5. Combine cocoa and sugar. In a greased 9x9x2 pan, pour about 1/3 of the batter. Sprinkle about 1/2 of the cocoa mixture on top of the batter. Spread another 1/3 of the batter on top, sprinkle on the rest of the cocoa, finish with the remaining batter. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the cake tests done with a toothpick.

We all liked this cake because the cocoa isn't to sweet and balances out the cake very nicely. Also, the cake itself was very easy to assemble and was pretty, too! Gotta love cute food! :D 

I don't think that I've got too much going on today....school, spin and Hunger Games is pretty much it, I believe! SO glad that today is Friday!!! I'm definitely looking forward to the weekend! What do you have going on this weekend? Tomorrow we're going to watch the Memphis Grizzlies game here at home and celebrate my sister's birthday some more! Speaking of her birthday, check out what I made her (it was her idea originally) last night:

A homemade gummy!! I googled the recipe and combined a couple to make this! Anyone who knows my sister knows that she LOVES gummy anything, and so I made her one with her favorite fruit flavor (passion fruit)! It was actually super easy and took about 30 minutes start to finish, so if anyone wants to make gummies, let me know! :D

Well, that's about it for today....see ya'll later! 

Pretty Nails and Random Thoughts

Wow! Can't believe that it is already Wednesday!!! The week is just flying by! Weird, because I haven't actually done anything out of the ordinary.....oh well. :D How your week been so far?

Last night, my sister and I stayed at home while mom and dad went to visit another church. We ended up hanging out and she did my nails!!!! I saw the idea on Pinterest a while back and have been bugging her to do my nails ever since....what a great sister I am! :D Anyway, here's the final result:

Cute huh? :D I'm hoping that I can actually get them to last.....usually whenever I paint my nails they begin to chip in about 24 hours....I'm hoping these last until Friday at least! 

Anyway, I didn't have any recipes or workouts to share today, so I thought I'd just share a little about things that have been on my mind recently. 

I've really begun to feel comfortable with they way I look. The interesting thing about that is, even when I was at my thinnest, I wasn't happy with myself. Not that I always thought that I needed to lose or even gain weight, I just wasn't happy with me. I didn't always complain about the way I looked....sometimes I was upset about a minor mistake, or frustrated with something/someone else and somehow managed to blame myself. I ended up taking not only my problems on myself, but those of everyone else around me....all while managing to find some way to blame myself for most of it. No wonder I wasn't happy. 

Ya'll might have realized this, but I am an extremely type-A person......a perfectionist. According to this website and many others, that personality trait can be very dangerous and act as a major factor in eating disorders. Here's some info from the site:

What if you were surrounded by media messages inferring that, "people will like you more if you have the perfect body, the perfect smile, the perfect skin.....?" You would then learn that, "being perfect makes people like you." If your life felt chaotic, you might feel safer by forming rules for yourself. 

In contrast, individuals with the negative form of perfectionism exhibit the opposite characteristics. Goals are extreme, rigid, and inflexible. Rather than taking individual preferences and strengths into consideration, "negative perfectionists" often set goals according to external standards or impossible internal standards. When these goals are not achieved, the individual's sense of identity is threatened and they feel like a failure.

So, what is the connection between perfectionism and eating disorders? An eating disorder is an example of negative perfectionism played out in its most destructive form. In this case, the rigid, inflexible rules apply to eating habits, appearance, and body weight regulation, the effects of which are varied and pervasive. The physical consequences, such as low body weight and poor nutrition, affect concentration and motivation. Interests narrow, energy wanes, and the desire for self-exploration deadens.

That's just some of the info on the site....it is really very interesting. And true.

So, to finish, I think that something I am learning and growing in is to accept myself. It is ok to try to do my best, but when I beat myself up for every little thing, I just become miserable. I have been truly blessed by .....God to have a family who saw that before I ever did and that has helped me realize that no, I don't have to be perfect. After all, no one can be.

Well, I had better get going....if you stuck with me for the whole post thanks!!!! :D See ya'll later! :D

Recipe Inspiration

Good morning! Hope you all had a great weekend!! We didn't do a whole lot, but still had a good time! What were you up to this weekend?


Sooo today i wanted to share with ya'll a recipe that
my mom and I made yesterday. My grandmother's chicken and dumplings (or dumplin's, as written in the family cookbook :D)!

That's the only recent-ish picture that I could find....she doesn't really looove cameras. :D 

Anyway, my grandmother has been making chicken and dumplings forever and they're pretty much one of my all time favorite comfort foods! When I was little, almost every time we went to her house, she'd have a big pot of dumplings, some biscuits, and some other stuff and we'd all fill our plates up and sit down at the table (which is actually in the kitchen at her house) and go to town. When I was really struggling with my eating disorder, sadly enough, this was one of the dishes that I had the most trouble eating while we were in the States. So, when my mom and I made it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I was so proud that I could enjoy the food again! When we make it, everything is from scratch....even the broth, but if you don't have a whole lot of time, you can use store-bought and just add some shredded, cooked chicken to it. Here's the recipe for ya'll:

Homemade Chicken and Dumplings

(not my picture..:D)

Ingredients:

• 8 cups chicken broth (more or less)
• 1 whole chicken or 4 to 6 breasts plus 4 thighs
• 2 3/4 cups flour (plus additional flour for kneading)
• 4 tablespoons oil
• 1 cup ice water
• salt, pepper and poultry seasoning to taste

Directions:

1. Boil the chicken in water seasoned with the salt, pepper and poultry seasoning for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (or until chicken is very tender). Remove chicken from pot, cut into pieces or shred,  set aside. Save broth for boiling dumplings. 
2. Mix flour, oil and ice water in a large bowl, and work dough just until everything is incorporated. Take about half of the dough and roll out on a floured surface to "pretty thin" (my grandmother's words). Cut the dough into strips, and drop small chunks of strips into boiling broth. Repeat with the other half of the dough, stirring with a fork every once in a while to prevent sticking. Cook 35-40 minutes, stirring every so often, until the dumplings are tender. Turn stove to low heat and then off. Add diced or shredded chicken. 

And there ya have it....my grandomma's chicken and dumpling recipe!!! We had ours last night with some pasta.....it absorbed all the extra broth from the dumplings, almost as if the broth were a sauce, and was really tasty! Also, these are best when served with some sweet tea! hahahaha

What's a meal that is a sort of comfort food to you??? For me, chicken and dumplings and potato soup are some of my favorite comfort foods! :D Oh and anything chocolate as well. hahaha

Well, I should get studying...see ya'll later!

Time for Plan B

Morning everyone!!! How is your week going??? Mine's pretty good so far....went up in the community on Monday and spent some time with the ladies there, and yesterday, I mostly stayed at home, but ended up getting in a great workout at the gym. Of course, it wasn't the workout that I had initially planned out, because I forgot my piece of paper. So, when I got there, I made up my own superset style workout and it ended up really kicking my butt, so I thought I'd share it with ya'll today!!

I loved throwing a little cardio in the mix....it and the superset style of the workout kept me from getting bored while I worked out! I'd definitely  say that some of the toughest exercises for me were the squat hold with a row, front raise with tricep extension, prisoner squat jumps and the triangle raise. Also, I did the leg presses on the machine. It had been a while since I had done them, and I was able to add 3 kilos (6.6) pounds to my old leg press weight!!! So happy and proud of myself! :D 

Besides that, not too much has been going on....I'm starting my last quarter of my junior year now, so I guess pretty soon I'll really have to start looking in to college and that sort of thing. I just can't believe how quickly time has flown by.....I mean, I moved here when I was 9, and this December  I will turn 18. That's half of my life in Recife! My family has definitely been blessed with wonderful friends and family and support during this time. It is almost weird to think that in a year, we'll all head to the states, but I'll stay for college while the rest of my family stays for only 6 months. 

In another, completely random topic, we got my sister's birthday present yesterday! She has been dying to see The Hunger Games movie, and it just so happens to premiere on her birthday, so we somehow managed to get tickets for the premiere day, and my mom, my sister's friend, my sister and I will all go watch the movie after the girls get back  from school next Friday night. She was soooo excited when we told her yesterday!!!! The friend who will be going with us actually called during dinner, and they ended up talking for a while about the movie and going to the premiere!! 

Well, that's about it for today....

What have you been up to so far this week? 

Chocolate Chip Cream Muffins

Good morning! How is everyone today????

I have never really liked Mondays very much......I mean who wants to go back to school/work after a nice, relaxing weekend? I know I don't! That's one of the reasons that I like to bake on Mondays......having something special for breakfast just puts me in a much better mood!

Something special like these muffins. Now I'm pretty sure that everyone who has ever had a muffin has either seen or eaten a chocolate chip muffin. Nothing new in that respect. However, I made these using my new favorite muffin base that I first tried out a couple of months ago with some mango cream muffins (recipe on the recipe page!). Before that, I had never baked muffins with cream in them......scones, yes, but not anything else. So, when I had some chocolate chips to use up, I decided to "wing it" and see if the cream base worked well with other muffin flavors. It did. :D

Chocolate Chip Cream Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 8 tablespoons butter, melted or oil
• 1/2 cup cream
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• about 1/2 to 3/4 cup chocolate chips....I just finished up a bag that we had opened already

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 and grease 10 muffin tins.In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. 
2. In another bowl, combine sugar, butter or oil, cream, eggs and vanilla. Stir until everything is combined. Add liquid ingredients to dry, mixing just until combined. Gently stir in the chocolate chips until they are more or less evenly distributed. 
3. Spoon some of the batter into each of the tins, you will fill them about 2/3 of the way full. Bake for 20 minutes or until the muffins test done with a toothpick. 
4. Serve with a glaze, butter or plain. Enjoy!!

As soon as my mom took a bite of these muffins she said that I had found one of the best muffin bases that she had ever had! So I'm thinking that I'll hold on to it! :D I've definitely got some more creative ideas floating around, but I wanted to see if the base would work with other ingredients before I got too crazy. 

So, in other news, my dad got home safely at about 1 AM Sunday morning. He was very tired but said that overall, he had a good trip. We were all glad that he was home......after having been gone for the better part of two weeks, it was really nice to spend all of yesterday hanging out! 

Recently, we got a box from some friends in the mail! Among other things, it had some movies in it! My mom, sister and I watched them all on Friday and Saturday, and last night, we rewatched one of them with my dad! We got The Help, Dolphin Tale and Midnight in Paris. I'm pretty sure that of the three, although we enjoyed them all, The Help and Dolphin Tale were our favorites. Both sad and sweet. We watched The Help with my dad last night and he enjoyed it as well. We're also already planning on watching the others with him soon!!!! Have you seen any good movies recently? If so, what were they? I loved the Help so much, that I've now got the book on my ereader!!! :D Already almost done, too!!!! I really think that they did a good job in adapting the book to the screenplay!!!! 

Well, that's about it for today....be back later on this week with some more fun stuff!! :D

Edited to add:

Musings of a Healthy Chocoholic just got a Twitter!!! Check it out: https://twitter.com/#!/GenniferDeLille

How was your weekend? 

Random Friday

Morning! SO glad that today is Friday!!! :D All I've got to do today is take a couple of tests, memorize a poem.....then spin and it is the WEEKEND!!!! Pretty happy about that! My dad gets in at about 1 AM Sunday, so tomorrow is our last full day without him! I really can't believe how fast this week has flown by!

First of all, I've got a great workout to share with ya'll, then I'm gonna do another "Friday Favorite Links" like I did a couple of weeks ago. Kind of random, but hey....it is Friday! :D
Well, here's the workout:

I didn't put this in the picture, but I'd definitely recommend warming up for 5-10 minutes with some light cardio, and then cooling down the same way. By the end of set 2, my arms were killing me....I didn't do whole lot of strength last week.....it felt good to get back in the swing of things somewhat. Also, feel free to change the number of reps or modify anything to make it easier or more difficult. I'm definitely not a professional in the workout area.....what I post is just stuff that I like to do!

Now, for my random Friday links!!!

Tried these workouts yesterday....let me just say, I am now definitely a Blogilates fan!

All of these workouts are great!!!!! I also did a couple of the regular pilates videos this week, but I can't remember which ones....oops! :D

 

Need this cake! It has cookie dough in the middle!!!

 

This workout looks really hard!!!!

:D

Finishing these up today!

And finally:

Yum.

Well, that's about it for today......

Any fun links to share??

What have you got going on this weekend? 

Easy, Yummy Onion Rings

Good morning!! Hope everyone is doing well so far this week! My dad went out of town again yesterday, so now its just me, my mom, my sister and the cats here at home!  We'll all definitely miss dad, but we do have some girly stuff planned for the rest of the week!!! For instance, yesterday my Mom and I went up with some friends to the community and spent part of the afternoon hanging out with the ladies! So much fun! Then, for dinner, we had homemade pizzas and onion rings!!! I actually just perfected my onion ring recipe, so I thought I'd share it with ya'll:

Easy, Yummy Onion Rings (serves 3-4)

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, sliced into rings
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• dash of pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
• dash seasoning salt
• any other seasoning that you like, to taste! :D
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• Oil, for frying

Directions:

1. Slice your onion and place in water while you prep everything else. 
2. In a medium container with a lid, combine your flour and seasonings. In a separate bowl, combine the egg and buttermilk. 
3. Working with a few onion rings at a time, dip into buttermilk mixture, and then place in the flour. Close the container and shake it to coat the onion rings with the flour mixture. Then, dip back into buttermilk mixture and coat with flour again. 
4. Repeat this process with all of the onion rings, placing the finished ones on a plate as you are going. 
5. Heat about 1 inch of oil in a deep skillet until it is hot enough to start frying the onion rings as soon as they are placed in the skillet. Working in small batches, fry the onion rings for about 1-2 minutes each side or until golden brown. 

There ya have it!!! I really liked having the flour in a container with a lid because that way there was a whole lot less mess and it made the process go by faster as well!!! A cool thing about onion rings is that they aren't quite as greasy as french fries, for example, because the batter really soaks up excess oil very well. Also, we like our onion rings pretty well seasoned, so if you want to take anything out or even add in some different seasonings, tell me how it works out!!

So tonight is going to be a lot of fun!!!! There's a movie rental place just up the street from us and today is "cheap day", where movies cost about 2-3 reais each!!!! We're going to rent some chick flick and have a girl's night!! Any good chick flick recommendations??? We've seen a lot of movies, but it has been a while since we watched a real chick flick, so I'm excited!

Speaking of girl's night, if that's gonna happen, I need to get on the schoolwork! See ya later!!! :D

Favorite fried food????
Ummm french fries, onion rings, fried dill pickles, heck doughnuts.....basically fry anything and I'll eat it! :D

Computer Scare

Good morning!!! How are ya'll today???? What did you do this weekend?

My parents got in safely yesterday and we spent most of the afternoon just hanging out. However, late Saturday night I had a little bit of a computer scare. I was online, facebook I think, and all of a sudden my internet closed, the screen went black and a BUNCH of error messages popped up saying things like my C drive had crashed, my RAM wasn't functioning properly, etc. Then, a couple of minutes later this popped up:

I don't know if you can tell, put in the top left corner, beside where it says "system check", there is a windows symbol. Well, when it showed  up, I lost access to everything on the computer: files, programs, even the start menu went empty. So I thought initially that something with my computer really had gone wrong, and because the System Check window looked like a windows program, I clicked on fix errors. Well, I was immediately taken to a page where I was asked to pay upwards of 80 dollars just to fix my computer. After that, I began to get a little suspicious. So, I shut the laptop off for the night, and the next morning, turned it on to find the same system check window opened. I then got on the other computer and found out that the whole thing is a virus that manages to block all your computer's files, making it look like you have lost everything on it and really do have a problem. It even blocks you actual antivirus program, so your computer doesn't even register that you have a problem. With the version that hit my computer, you can't even get online because your internet browser is hidden as well. My sister and I managed to connect my computer and the other one via remote access and she sent me a freeware called TrojanKiller that restores hidden files. After that, I just rebooted the laptop and everything was back to normal. It was really scary though and for a while I truly thought that I had lost everything on my laptop. Here's some more info about this virus, because it seems that more and more people are being affected by it:

System Check can really screw up the computer system it gets into. It’s because the program is one of those fake optimization tools whose aim is to trick the user rather than provide some real help. It can infiltrate your PC in a number of ways all of which are backdoor, which means you don’t have many chances to actually notice and prevent this even. As soon as System Check is on board, it executes the programmed sequence of actions, adding new files and changing your registry by creating new entries in there as well. This done, it will get launched each time Windows loads up because one of those new registry values keeps telling your machine to run the malware’s random executable during startup. When running, System Check will kind of scan your computer for errors and, not surprisingly at all, will find lots of those. It triggers bogus alerts like “Failed to save all the components for the file \System32\00004823″, “A potential disk failure may cause loss of files, applications and documents stored on the hard disk”, “Hard drive clusters are partly damaged” etc. These notifications are all part of the general campaign targeting the formation of a wrong impression on the user’s end. In the end of the day, this program always offers you some assistance by stating that it can fix all of those critical errors if you buy its full version. Now, do not even purchase this scam application. The only thing it can ‘repair’ is the bunch of imaginary issues it had made up in the first place. So be wise and get rid of this badware. (source)

 I realize that I'm sort of going on about this, but it is really sad to me how people actually spend a lot of time working on stuff like this just to trick others into paying them significant amounts of money.....and that they're so good at what they do that they can even fool a real antivirus program.

Anyway, if you stuck with me through all of that, you deserve a recipe! :D What I've got for ya today is some chocolate popcorn:
Chocolate Popcorn

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup popcorn kernels, unpopped
• 1/4 cup plus 2 T sugar
• 2 tablespoons corn syrup
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F and grease a cookie sheet.
2. Pop the popcorn and set aside.
3. In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, corn syrup, cocoa and butter. Cook over medium-high until it comes to a boil. Continue boiling for about 2 minutes. Remove from heat. and stir in vanilla. Pour chocolate over the popcorn, stirring to coat all of it. Spread popcorn in an even layer on baking sheet.
4. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring the popcorn every 10 minutes to prevent sticking and to make sure that all of the popcorn is coated. 
5. Remove from oven, let cool. Break up any large clumps and store in an airtight container. 

Everyone really loves this popcorn! Easy and tasty!!!

Do you like sweet popcorn like caramel corn, or do you prefer salty versions??

That's about it for today...see ya'll later!!!!