Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend. I was bizzy in my kitchen on Saturday, and then yesterday went to the Windy City Smokeout – which will be a yearly tradition for me to go to their Sunday brunch – more about that later in the post.
On Friday I made a Red Velvet Protein Smoothie and it was delicious! But now I have an opened bag of red velvet brownie mix from Safe + Fair and I am trying to figure out different ways to use it and still be within my daily WW points.
The brownies are amazing, but 11 points each. These red velvet pancakes? Only 2 points each, well, until you get to four then it adds another point, but these are filling and two are plenty.
Look at how pretty the pink batter is! I used a stick blender to blend this pancake mix, but a good whisking for a couple minutes should be fine.
I used just shy of a 1/3 measuring cup per pancake, which gave me 14 pancakes out of this batch.
These are light, and fluffy and simply delicious! Best part is that I’ll be having these three times this week for breakfast and still had 3 servings worth to freeze for later. I just take the frozen pancakes straight from the freezer into a toaster, much like a frozen waffle – it may take a couple passes in the toaster, but they will taste as if you just made them.
How delicious does that look? With the bacon and syrup that’s 7 points.
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Yesterday I had a chance to see my friend Chef Michael from Certified Angus Beef at the Windy City Smokeout. It was such a fun time and I am going to make their Sunday brunch my new tradition. I was only sad Jacob wasn’t with me because he would have loved all this meat!
That is Chef Michael on the left and Chef Bryan on the right – he was traveling when I was at the Culinary Center so it was nice to finally meet him.
I sat at a table with two couples – one from Palatine and one from downtown. We obviously all have a love of food and had great conversation. Check out the size of those beef ribs!
Did I mention that it was all you can eat and drink for two hours? They had a spread of all different things on the perimeter of the venue – bacon and cheese biscuits, bacon wrapped jalapenos, pork belly. Then all of a sudden servers were bringing us trays of beef, grits, scrambled eggs, bloody mary’s and mimosas – oh my!
All the beef was provided by Certified Angus Beef – I am not normally a prime rib fan, but this was spectacular.
And would it have been a complete event if I didn’t see my Chicago boyfriend Dan and his wife Erica? So fun to see you guys again.
I tracked everything I ate at the BBQ, and it was 35 points. I didn’t eat breakfast, and had popcorn for dinner because I wasn’t that hungry. I still have 10 weeklies left – whoop!
I am also doing a 500 flights in 7 days challenge with my Instagram friend Marlena – she’s about 7 pound to goal and inspires me on the daily. I went both Saturday and Sunday – it takes me about 37 minutes to do 100 flights.
I’ll have time to go tonight after dinner to the gym, but tomorrow night I’ll be doing a live with Erica – it’s a skinny pizza throw down!
You have to follow Everything Erica – she will be doing the live stream – you can find her on Instagram here. While it will be live at 6:00 p.m. CST tomorrow night, it will save on her feed for 24 hours. If you have any questions about skinny pizza dough, now is your chance to ask away!
After having a short week before 4th of July and then my vacation, this week I have to work FIVE days in a row – what?!
Oh well, it’s all good. I hope you planned your food today and if you ate like an asshole over the weekend, today is a new day!
