Eat It Up: Lots of Yum!

After baking all those cupcakes last week like a freaking maniac, I took a break from the sweet little cups of glory to work on some new recipes.

On Friday morning I took crazy to a whole new level by going to Boot Camp at 5:45 in the morning, then making quadruple berry muffins before work.

Berrylicious

I was in the shower after Boot Camp washing away the horrors of early morning exercise and it occurred to me that quadruple berry muffins simply needed to happen.  There was really no way out of it. They just had to be made. I knew I had a buttload of buttermilk in the fridge left over from the cupcaking and I had pints of strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries just waiting to be baked into delicious muffins.

My co-workers were thrilled. We just moved to a new office (very suddenly), so I thought it would be nice to surprise everyone with warm breakfast muffins.

These were really some of the best muffins ever. I highly recommend that you make them while berries are in season. They’re super cheap right now! If you’re in the south, Publix has pints for $2 each!

I got the recipe here. I love Joy of Baking recipes. They truly are a joy.

Today I planned on making a barbecue pizza based on this Eating Well recipe that I saw while browsing the site. It looked so good, and my friend Stephen made it and said it was a success, so I made my own and Stephen was right, it was a huge success!  I tweaked the recipe a bit to suit my tastes and my laziness.  I used Pillsbury pizza dough (which is surprisingly delicious) and I added sauteed mushrooms and onions because those are my favorite pizza toppings and were necessary to take this pizza from awesome to AWESOME! I loved it. I’m actually looking forward to eating the leftovers for lunch tomorrow and I am not a leftovers person at all.

Barbecue pizza in my mouth!

I also had a wonderful visit with Eunice from Food4Fitness on Friday. She was visiting a friend and they came to Orlando for the day to go to Islands of Adventure and met up with me for frozen yogurt afterward. Eunice and I actually know each other through mutual friends down in South Florida where I’m from and where Eunice lives. She started her blog two weeks before I started mine, so we’ve been blog buddies since the beginning! I love her writing style and she’s insanely smart about all things nutrition and exercise, which is good since she’s going to be a Registered Dietician in a few short months!

Blogger love!

We swapped stories over delicious frozen yogurt. And get this. I HAD NUTELLA FROYO!!!

NUTELLA FROYO IN MY MOUTH!

Nutella is one of my favorite things in this world, and this was the first time I ever saw it in froyo form. I can’t believe I didn’t lose control of my bladder then and there. It was so amazing. I don’t know if any other froyo will ever match up. Oh man, it was so good.

In between all this yum, I got some really great work outs in and danced my ass off at my friend Dustin’s birthday party this weekend. True story: I participated in a big booty dance-off and lost to a girl who did a split.

Note to self: The girl with the purple hair will always win.

I would only do that for Dustin. No one else. At least I was best dressed on the stage.

Only for Dustin.

What delicious things you eat this weekend? What absurd things did you do with your ass?

One Sweet Compromise: Controlling My Addiction to Frozen Yogurt

Orlando has finally hopped on the frozen yogurt bandwagon, with shops popping up all over town, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.  Talk about a sweet trend!  Tutti Frutti, Yogurtland, Menchies, Mochi, UTopIt–the list goes on.  These sweet shops feature self-serve frozen yogurt machines in a variety of flavors and a full toppings bar featuring fresh fruit, cereals, sauces, sprinkles, crushed cookies, and more.  It’s seriously insane and wondrous and my best friend, her husband, and I have been indulging in our froyo addiction quite frequently since they discovered Tutti Frutti in Winter Park.

The only downside to these glorious pay-by-the-ounce froyo shops is that I seriously cannot stop going to them.  As a result, the number on my scale has suggested that it may start moving up in the world and I’m certainly not in love with that idea.  As a social creature, I hate the idea of having to sit out trips for frozen yogurt, which is a tradition that is here to stay, so I had to come up with a solution.  And oh, did I come up with a solution:

Hear that? An angel just got its wings.

Rather than filling my froyo cups with a buttload of froyo and topping it off with sugary delights, I’ve decided I will start making fruit cups with the beautiful fruit spreads these froyo shops have just sitting out for the taking!  This cup has blackberries, strawberries, mango, kiwifruit, blueberries, and pineapple, and it’s topped with a dollop of vanilla frozen yogurt (for creaminess) and a few dark chocolate chips (for the antioxidants, duh).  Now I can have my yogurt and eat it too!

Have you been enjoying the froyo trend?  What are your favorite combos?