Oatmeal is like a blank canvas – there are so many different and delicious things you can do with it. Yesterday I had the idea to make Mexican Hot Chocolate oatmeal and nothing gets me out of bed on a Saturday morning like having a small mission to complete. Here’s the final result:

It turned out really well and keeps you going for hours, so I thought I’d share the recipe. I gave my husband a taste and he thought it was too sweet for morning food. But hey, it’s Saturday. If you want a breakfast under 400 calories that tastes like dessert, then here’s your ticket:

Mexican Hot Chocolate Oatmeal

2013-04-27 21:56:18

Serves 1

A healthy, filling breakfast

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Prep Time

1 min

Cook Time

5 min

Prep Time

1 min

Cook Time

5 min

Ingredients

1/2 cup Old Fashioned Oats

1 cup Unsweetened Almond Milk

1 tbsp Unsweetened Baking Cocoa

1 tbsp Brown Sugar

1-2 tsp Cinnamon

1 small Banana

Instructions

Make the oatmeal as directed on the box, substituting almond milk for the water. While it's cooking on the stove, add your baking cocoa, brown sugar, and cinnamon to an empty bowl. Once the oatmeal is cooked, transfer it to the bowl and mix with the other ingredients. Top with bananas.

Notes

Total Calories: 372

Breakdown

1/2 cup Old Fashioned Oats (150 kcal)

1 cup Unsweetened Almond Milk (60 kcal)

1 tbsp Unsweetened Baking Cocoa (20 kcal)

1 tbsp Brown Sugar (52kcal)

1 small Banana (90kcal)

By Sarah Gooding

Pollyplummer.com http://pollyplummer.com/

If you’re trying to lose that winter weight in time for summer, this 372 calorie breakfast is perfect and ridiculously filling. Leave out the banana and you’re at just 290 kcal. It’s very satisfying for anyone who has a sweet tooth at breakfast – although you should probably just leave that sugar out.

“I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no power, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection”

My muffin recipe is a modified version of a recipe posted at She Brews Good Ale. Here’s how they looked after coming out of the oven:

Spent Grain Apple Cinnamon Muffins

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup spent grains
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk with 1 tbsp white vinegar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 5 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 small apple cut into small, thin pieces

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Whisk flour, grains, baking powder,
baking soda and salt in one bowl. If you have buttermilk, use it instead of the milk. If you only have milk, put 1 tbsp of white vinegar in it and set it aside for 5 min. In another bowl, whisk eggs, sugar and melted butter, and 1 tsp vanilla, followed by the milk/vinegar. Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir in apples, but do not
overmix. Divide into a greased jumbo muffin pan or use a regular muffin pan. Sprinkle brown sugar on top. Bake for approx 14 – 16 minutes.

When a toothpick comes out clean, remove from oven and let cool for a couple minutes before taking the muffins out of the pan.

On Labor Day weekend, just a couple weeks after we got him, Luca broke his leg in two places after jumping off the couch. He ended up needing an orthopedic surgeon to operate on him in order to assure him a good chance of being able to walk normally.

After he broke his leg, we decided to release a free WordPress and BuddyPress theme that that we had on deck. Luca’s Theme is based on Twitter Bootstrap and has support for bbPress.

Donations for the theme helped to raise a bit of money towards his surgery and hospital bills. After we reach our goal we’ll be donating to anything further that comes in through this theme to Hazeljane’s Blessings, our local Italian Greyhound rescue. A very sweet and loving couple runs this rescue and they deal with leg breaks all the time. Having this experience with Luca really gave me compassion for anyone who has to care for a doggy with a broken leg. It’s pretty heartbreaking.

Luca is finally all better after 8 weeks of not being allowed to walk or run. He’s healthy and happy and has a ton of energy. It’s really nice to have him with me when my husband is gone hiking in the woods or out for the evening.

If you are thinking about adopting an Italian Greyhound, I would encourage you to get in touch with a rescue. If you are local to the Tulsa/Arkansas area, there are many Iggys at Hazeljane’s who are looking for their forever homes. You can also help by providing a foster home. This breed is perfect for someone who wants a dog that will be a smart, cuddly companion. There’s also a very tight knit community of Italian Greyhound owners in the USA and worldwide who share tips and stories and pictures. Feel free to drop me a note in the comments or get in touch with me via Twitter if you have any questions.

“Happiness is a warm puppy.” – Charles M. Schulz

Our yard is very pleasant – full of butterflies and bunnies. The kitties are enjoying their new cat window door and beds in the window seats. We installed a cat fence on top of our privacy fence so they can be out in the yard at any time without escaping.

I love my new little office and I try to make sure that it’s cozy and dimly lit at all times. I’ve always got a fluffy friend napping in the window, a blanket on my chair and my yoga mat handy for quick exercise breaks.

But my favorite place is probably here:

I cannot wait until winter arrives and I’m hoping we’ll get a couple blizzards this year. If anyone wants to come visit, we’d love to have you. We’re still in the process of decorating but love to have company. I’m quite lucky to have married one of the most friendly, sociable men of all time and our motto is the more the merrier.  At this very moment there are a bunch of singing voices and music coming from the living room. Now all we need is a puppy….

If you’re looking for a place to donate some money, you’d be be hard pressed to find a more efficient ministry. 96.8% of money donated goes directly to feeding the poor. 2.5% goes toward fundraising and 0.7% is spent on administration. Visit the Food for the Poor website today to find out how you can help and donate online.

“For we must never separate the Eucharist and the poor… This is why Jesus made Himself bread, to satisfy our hunger for God. See the humility of God. He also made himself the hungry one to satisfy our hunger for God through our love, our service. Let us pray that none of us will be unfaithful. Let us pray for our poor people. They are also hungry for God.”

- Mother Teresa “Total Surrender”

Last year I worked too hard and had more than a few stress-induced melt downs. I’m learning better boundaries and moving into a new time. Finding a balance at work hinges entirely on getting your insides in order. Otherwise you’re just like a hamster in an ever-spinning wheel, waiting to get out. It leaves you feeling like nothing has any significance.

2012: Quietness, Contentment, Devotion.

This year I am taking more time to do non-work-related things every day. Already I am having a better year spending more time with my husband, not answering emails after hours, not letting everyone else’s emergencies become my own.

Last year nearly every night before I went to bed, I wanted to cry. I always felt so far behind on everything I had intended to do. I’m not going to live like that this year. Thank God for a husband who was able to see the bigger picture and helped me find a better way.

Yoga 21 Day Challenge

I’ve been participating in the 21 Day Yoga Challenge, which basically involves completing 1 yoga practice per day, eating 1 vegetarian meal per day and spending at least 15 minutes in meditation. I’m not sure the reason for the vegetarian meal but I already gravitate towards fruits, grains, and dairy in general so that’s not hard.

Yoga has been a valuable help to my goal of de-stressing this year. It also helps you to be more aware of your body, decrease unhealthy impulses, and improve posture. It’s something I can do every day no matter the weather and sometimes I combine it with P90X (since my husband is doing that) to get more cardio. I’ll post a review of some of the yoga videos I’ve tried in case anyone is looking for recommendations.

2012 Goals:

A few of the less-personal and non-work goals I’m aiming for:

Giving: I want to use the skills I already have to help support the ministries of people who are hands-on in the dark corners of the world. I think that will help to make my work more meaningful. This is a start and there’s more that I want to organize but I don’t have it all worked out yet. My mother-in-law gave me a really good little book for my birthday called “Orphans, Widows, the Poor and Oppressed” by Derek Prince that has tons of verses in it for discovering God’s heart for the needy. I want to find a more strategic way of giving this year.

Reading: There’s a long list of books I want to read this year but never seem to have time to get to. As with most things, I think the best way is to just start giving a few minutes each day.

Getting Up Early: While usually more of a night person, I’ve found that the few days I do get up before 7am, there seems to be so much more time. So this year I’d like to explore the benefits of rising early and see where that goes. Maybe I’ll document that here for accountability’s sake.

Drink More Water: This is kind of silly one but really necessary, because I never drink enough water and it’s really good for your organs, skin and general health.

Make More Things with Pretty Pixels: I want more time to design this year – logos, backgrounds, websites, more time to play with typography. I’m hoping to be able to set aside at least 4 days per month when I can get lost in colors and fonts.

Too much inspiration and no execution drives me mad. That’s something I hope to change this year. What are your new year’s resolutions? I’d love to know. Staying accountable on these types of things really seems to boost motivation.

I wanted to post a few photos from the trip, since we saw so many beautiful things and places while we were there.

Visiting the many breweries was definitely the highlight of the trip for me. My tastes have moved more in the direction of IPAs lately, the hoppier the better. Walnut Brewery was the first place we visited:

Boulder was covered in snow when we arrived. I fell in love with this city instantly – it’s almost like a cleaner, mountain version of Eugene, Oregon.

A cute store on Pearl Street

Delicious hops!

We did a tiny bit of shopping…

The wine festival was held at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, a beautiful venue full of old fighter planes:

This is a picture of my husband drinking a tiny martini made from American Harvest organic vodka. We’re more of a gin family, but this was probably the best vodka I’ve ever tasted. We also had the pleasure of meeting the maker of the Roadhouse Spirits later on in the trip. He let us tour his facility and taste some of his latest work. This was my first time to ever visit a distillery. The Roadhouse barrel-aged gin has an extraordinarily masculine flavor, and I wish we could get this in other parts of the country. The laws are too restrictive in Oklahoma for us to be importing this gin anytime soon.

After the festival we traveled up into the mountains to enjoy some skiing at Loveland and a cozy stay at the Chateau Chamonix in Georgetown. We hopped around a few cities in the mountains and then headed back towards Boulder to tour some more breweries, including Left Hand Brewing Company, a personal favorite.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the dogs. People in Colorado take their fluffy friends everywhere with them and we met many fine puppy dogs on our travels. Driving through the snowy mountains with my best friend was probably the best part. Every day we cranked the tunes and hunted for places on maps like regular tourists. Overall it was a really fun trip, full of beautiful beers and landscapes.

Getting Back to Basics…

Meditation really helps when me when I need to get back on track and have a number of conflicting voices shouting in my ears. I’ve been thinking on this one for the past few weeks:

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. – Psalm 52:8 NKJV

Wikipedia says that the olive leaf was used as “a symbol of abundance, glory and peace …used to crown the victors of friendly games and bloody wars.” I like that, but this is what I found to be the most inspiring:

The olive tree is very hardy: drought-, disease- and fire-resistant, it can live to a great age. Its root system is robust and capable of regenerating the tree even if the above-ground structure is destroyed. The older an olive tree is, the broader and more gnarled its trunk appears. Many olive trees in the groves around the Mediterranean are said to be hundreds of years old, while an age of 2,000 years is claimed for a number of individual trees, and in some cases this has been verified scientifically.

I want to be like that. Also, it seems that the olive rarely thrives at a distance from the sea. Maybe I need a little holiday on the ocean? Since that’s not an option right now, I’ve been doing everything to try to de-stress this weekend.

Lately I’ve been addicted to watching the Longyearbyen 360 Livecam throughout the day. It’s stunningly beautiful. Longyearbyen is the administrative center of the Norwegian island of Svalbard.

I find stark landscapes to be calming and invigorating and I end up reading everything I can of the history of these kinds of places. Every morning this week I’ve turned on that livecam just to see what’s happening over there.

I also spent the weekend catching up on my Youtube subscriptions, cleaning, marinating ribs for Sunday, and getting lost in Kakuzo Okakura’s Book of Tea, which is full of little thought-provoking gems, like this one:

“Slavish conformity to traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over the senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan. We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing through an age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.”

There’s an artistic challenge in there that I think we’d all do well to consider, although I’m not sure I’m entirely in agreement. I’ll come back to it when I review the Book of Tea on this blog in a few weeks. That’s it for this stream of consciousness ramble. I’m going to take an antihistamine and pass out.

It just so happened that NY Craft Beer Week coincided with our visit and we made the most of our Beer Passports while we were there, purchased from The Pony Bar:

I think my favorite thing about New York is the food. We had Thai, Russian, French, German, Italian, Greek, so many different kinds. We also got to see lots of old friends and make new ones. Football and brunch were a must every weekend.

We took a quick weekend trip down to DC to see my best friend from high school and her family and got to meet their adorable little girl. 48hrs is not nearly enough time to see everything in DC, but we did make the rounds on some memorials. The Jefferson Memorial was so moving. I was totally inspired by the selections from his writings.

God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these people are to be free.

At times it was super stressful trying to get work done while being in New York, but overall we had a really fun time. I ended up with more than a few realizations about life, business, friends, dreams and goals – mostly through having the chance to sit and talk with my husband over drinks nearly every night of the week. He is simply the best.

Being away helped me gain a new perspective on our lives here and I’m grateful to be home. The brutal summer heat that we endured has definitely caused me to be excited about winter. I’m hoping for lots of blizzards and inclement weather.