Cooking Adventures

One thing you may or may not know about me is that I love to cook.  The bad news is that I'm not very good at it.

Baking, on the other hand, I've got a knack for.  I love muffins, cookies, cakes, pretty much anything with sugar and butter.  My baking passion sparked an interest for learning how to make some of these more delicious items in a "healthy" way.  For example, using baby food instead of oil/butter, substituting stevia for sugar, using greek yogurt, oat flour, etc.  Baking this way has been super fun.

With these things in mind, tonight was eventful for me.  On of my man's favorite meals is Beef Stroganoff... the Hamburger Helper kind.  That's right, I said it.  So I decided that I was going to figure out how to make this home made, because Lord knows if I'm going to eat Stroganoff, I want to put the butter in it myself.  Or at least just not heat it up out of a box.  It's way too weird (although alarmingly easy).

I decided to use Sam from Fitness, Food, and Faith's recipe for my first attempt at Beef Stroganoff.  Her recipe is basic, easy to follow, and because I absolutely can't stand sour cream, it involves one of my favorite foods - greek yogurt!  Since (as I mentioned) I'm a pretty terrible cook, I decided to follow this recipe exactly (except the sour cream).  And the man was happy.  Success!  I think we have a strong easy, weeknight dish for our repertoire.  We will tweek it a little bit, I'm sure, but I'm very proud of my kitchen prowess.

Ironically, the Spice Cake I decided to make from Lara's Simply Irresistible did not turn out as well.  Don't get me wrong, it's delicious.  But it could be a little more moist... and I know exactly why.  Stevia!  I didn't have any real sugar (go figure), so I used 1/4 cup of Splenda and a 1/4 cup of Stevia.  I almost (almost) put in an extra egg, which is usually what you have to do when you use sugar substitutes, but GAH I didn't.  Sad face.  This cake/bread is still DELICIOUS and full of amazing flavor, but I'm just sad that it's not as good as I know it could be.  Tear!  Re-do next weekend, for sure.

In other news, I was supposed to go to a CPR class all day today, but it ended up getting canceled at the very last second.  Instead of CPR class, I ended up at my favorite cardio activity of all time - ZUMBA!  Ditch the workout, join the party!  How can you not love Zumba?!  If you haven't tried it, you absolutely have to.  Just think of it as part of the balance - you work all kinds of muscles you don't work in the tri cardios (which are the most common) and it's definitely more challenging than a 30 minute lope on an elliptical.  So chicas, and chicos, trust me.  Just walk in and go for it.  You will definitely leave smiling, and probably with at least four new best friends.

In honor of the awesomeness of Zumba, check out this sweet video of one of the coolest ladies (and best Zumba teachers) I know - HEIDI GARZA!

HOW ARE YOU FEELING?!?!  SEXY!!!!

PS - In her classes, I purposely always stood out of the mirror and just imagined to myself "I LOOK JUST LIKE HEIDI!"  Haha.