I FUDGE-ING Love You, Mr. Grumpy

Many people love to travel, adventure, climb mountains, jump off rocks, etc. What do I love? (Other than my Grumpy fam, duh) – I LOVE to eat at new places and try new things. So as such, when Mr. Grumpy told me he had made DINNER RESERVATIONS (literally… he made these like two weeks in advance which is romantic in and of itself) at Lago in the Flats for our Valentine’s date, I was pumped. I immediately started thinking about what I was going to order and how much wine I was going to drink. Tomorrow I start a 21-day clean eating and fitness challenge as part of my Beach Body challenge groups. I am so excited to see the results 21 days from now – my goal is to be at 121 pounds by the end, which is the weight I was on our wedding day. BUT, as my last meal with cream and cheese, you better believe I went all out!

Fun Fact: did you know Mr. Grumpy and I met the eve of Valentine’s Day? Cupid decided to send us both to the same bar – and at about 1:30 in the morning, Mr. Grumpy and his friends had the liquid courage to approach me and my friends. Needless to say, I did not remember his name but DID remember that they were all very nice and told me they were TRAIN ENGINEERS. And yes, I believed them – in fact, I told my mom I had met the nicest boys who were train engineers, and she pointed out they were likely lying. Which, they were. Lucky for them, I stayed around and about a year and a half later, I tricked Mr. Grumpy into our first date. The rest is history. So, lucky girl that I am – Mr. Grumpy always sends me flowers on Feb. 13:

I love getting flowers the day before – and thought I was pretty set for Vday gifts, until I woke up on Saturday to get ready for our 5K and found a box of Shari’s Berries sitting on the counter with a giant Hershey kiss and my favorite – Reese cups shaped like HEARTS.

Then, after eating everything… I felt like this:

 

 

So, I went to the 5K ready to run my little heart out. And guess what – I ran my fastest 5K yet!! At 32:30!!!! I was so proud of myself and excited at how much I’d improved since my last race.

Look! I got a medal! (It’s a participatory medal… I DON’T CARE I AM A WINNER IN MY OWN HEAD!). Ok, yes – I told the nice man at the market that I got first place in the race… but I’ll never see him again. So do I feel guilty? NO!

Here’s a peek at our yummy dinner – Mr. G’s lasagna, my tortelloni, and our dessert martinis!

Anyway – for Mr. Grumpy’s gift, I wanted to bake him something sweet. He’s been so nice about all our healthy eating – and has lost a ton of weight (nearly 10 lbs!!) and he deserved a night off too. In all actuality, these cookies are really not that bad for you – why? Because I replaced the oil with almond oil and there’s no butter needed! You are going to love how easy it is to make these – and how MOIST (I hate that word) that turn out!

I Double Fudge Love You, Mr. Grumpy Cookies!  

I adapted this recipe from this one on Sally’s Baking Addiction

What You’ll Need:

• 1 box of Duncan Hines Double Fudge Cake Mix
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/3 cup almond oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Combine the cake mix and baking powder in a large bowl. Set aside. Then, in another bowl, mix the eggs, oil and vanilla extract. Mix in slowly to the cake mix/baking powder (do not use your electric mixer as you want to fold it in my hand). Stop once the concoction forms a soft dough.

Using an ice cream scoop, plop the dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 15-18 minutes at 350 degrees. You want them to be slightly dough-y when you take them out of the oven. Leave them on the pan to set. They should be soft and fudgy-licious after about 5-10 minutes out of the oven.

Yum yum! What did you all do over Valentine’s Day weekend? Share your romantic moments!! And remember, Ryan loves you no matter how bad at crafting you are:

Mom says, “Eat Yer Greens!” We say, “Drink ’em!” #drinkurgreens #organicgirl

organicgirl sent me a package of their kale in exchange for this post. all the rest of it was totally on me, and man are you going to be impressed! now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about smoothies!

Well, we sure do talk about making smart food choices here a lot on Home with You. Mr. Grumpy and I have been working really hard on getting our butts into shape and making smart choices after those workouts so that we can actually see the fruits of our labor. One of our favorite brands out there for getting our green on is organicgirl, which I know I talk about a lot over here, too! Well, they really are a great company, and man does their produce stay fresh for a long time (which is great for us Grumpy’s because we tend to get very distracted and forget about things in the fridge).

For the month of June, organicgirl is reminding folks out there that you don’t just have to eat a salad every single night of the week. There are more creative ways to get super fresh, power foods into your system – and one of those ways is to DRINK your greens with smoothies! Smoothies can also be an any time of the day snack or meal, depending on how often you eat during the day. For example, you can have a smoothie for breakfast, you can have one as a snack, you can add rum to it after work and have it at happy hour… oh wait.. ok, well do that last one sparingly. As part of their #drinkurgreens contest, you (that’s right, I mean YOU!) can win a year’s worth of organicgirl greens AND a Vitamix blender. Amazing, right? So, get up on that Facebook, and go directly to their page (https://www.facebook.com/iloveorganicgirl) and get to work on your very own smoothie. OR if you’re not feeling like a kitchen genius, you can make one of our ideas we came up with!

Now, Mr. Grumpy was very excited about this challenge. organicgirl sent us an entire package of their amazing 100% baby kale to try out in our smoothies. Me being the smoothie connoisseur that I am (hello, I worked for six years in an ice cream shop) was so excited to get to work, but I cannot tell you how much MORE excited Mr. Grumpy was. So, we went ahead and made soon-to-be Mr and Mrs. Grumpy smoothies for you to try.

Let’s make Mr. Grumpy’s first (first is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the … ok, I will try to grow up a bit).

Mr. Grumpy’s Razzango Smoothie

#drinkurgreens #ormrgrumpywillglareatyou

What You’ll Need:

• 1 cup organicgirl 100% baby kale
• 1 cup coconut water
• 1 tsp chia seeds (for energy!!)
• 1 cup of frozen mango
• 1 1/2 cups raspberries, fresh
• Splash of lime juice

First, combine the kale, chia seeds and the coconut water. Blend until smooth – about 1 minute. Then, add in the fruit, and blend everything again. Pour into a glass, and enjoy!!

Now, I wanted to try something a little sweeter. It took everything I had to not use ice cream – but I think you could totally substitute the vanilla Greek yogurt for vanilla ice cream if you had not been like me and skipped your workout this weekend. So… here is the soon-to-be Mrs. Grumpy smoothie for us gals!

Soon2Be Mrs. Grumpy’s Something Sweet Strawberry Mint Smoothie

#drinkurgreens #becauseisaidso

What You’ll Need:

• 1 cup organicgirl 100% baby kale
• 2 5.2 oz. containers of Chobani Greek vanilla yogurt (or 1 cup of vanilla ice cream)
• 2 tbsp fresh mint (thanks to Suzie Q’s amazing garden this year!)
• 1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries
• 1 cup ice (don’t do this if you use ice cream, ok? Ok…)

First, combine the kale, yogurt, mint and ice. Blend until smooth and all the ice is gone to the human eye. This is just to make sure that you don’t get any ice chunks. Then, add the strawberries and blend one more time until smooth.

Halfway through making my strawberry mint smoothie, another idea occurred to me that you could do the kale, mint, vanilla ice cream and chocolate chips. Like … HOW AMAZING WOULD THAT BE? Right? But, Mr. Grumpy told me we needed to get through the smoothies that I made before I started making more… and he was right because I quickly realized that we had about 45-minutes worth of dishes ahead of us.

So, get to smoothie-ing, and don’t forget to post your own creations over on Facebook (or Instagram, if you’re into that!) using #drinkurgreens. You can find more about the contest here: https://www.facebook.com/iloveorganicgirl/app_448952861833126.

Happy drinking, friends!