Protein Pancake

My sister is three things: an amazing chef, an incredible athlete, and the most social person I have ever known. I call her "The Mayor" because no matter where we go, she always knows someone... And if she doesn't know anyone, she meets them. Apparently on her last flight, she met a guy and somehow learned this recipe for a quick protein fix. She made it for breakfast, my first try was as a post-workout snack.

This is a super easy recipe, and super healthy, and it even tastes good!


Protein Pancake

Ingredients:

• 4 egg whites
• 1 scoop protein powder (I don't like the flavor of the whey protein I am using right now, but they still turned out pretty good with it... Personally my favorite so far--flavor wise--is Pure Protein. You can get a big blue tub at Sam's Club for about $20)

Directions:

Spray a griddle or frying pan with cooking spray and heat on medium. Whisk together the egg whites and protein powder in a small bowl. Add batter to heated pan and cook like a pancake!

I added peanut butter and honey for some flavor, but I bet it would be really good topped with fresh fruits or berries or something like that.

Note: I made this again and added some cinnamon to the batter (cinnamon is a metabolic booster).

Kitchen Trick #3: Orange Peel Candle

This is a pretty cool little craft. I love having candles burning in my apartment. I think they just make everything more cheery... something I really need in this never-ending New York winter. I stumbled upon this on Pinterest and decided to try it out. It took a couple oranges to get a usable half, but it ended up burning for a pretty decent amount of time and, to be honest, it looked awesome.


The hardest part is peeling the orange (or you could use a clementine). I used a knife to cut a line around the equator. I tried to just cut through the rind. I'm not sure if that makes things easier, but I figured it might help to not having juice spraying everywhere.

Now the difficulty comes in removing the rind without tearing it AND pulling out enough "wick" in one piece to make a burn able candle. I used my finger to slowly work the rind away from the flesh of the orange.
When you get a workable half without any holes, fill the bowl with olive oil. I poured it directly onto the wick and let it sit for a few minutes. Light the wick. It took a few times of relighting before it began burning consistently.

I would recommend putting it on a plate or something considering the fact that you are essentially burning an orange peel, but it didn't pose a major fire hazard, and when the olive oil burnt out the flame went out on its own. Just use your head you little pyro you ;)

Spaghetti Squash

I've been wanting to try making Spaghetti Squash for a while now, but couldn't get the courage to try it out. Thankfully, my Super Bowl cook off champion Courtney had some experience with it and helped me out. We were on the phone with her family a couple times while making this, they grow squash so they make it a lot. We were also checking out this page about how to cook spaghetti squash either pre-cut or whole.

I was expecting it to be a little more "spaghetti-ish" but it is a little crunchy... I still really enjoyed it, it just took some getting use to. I think it is really all about the sauce. We made the Roasted Red Pepper Sauce I posted a few weeks ago, sautéed some peppers and onions, and made Turkey Meatballs to go along with it... We even made some of Courtney's Pizza Crescents as an appetizer. It. Was. Awesome. Probably one of the best meals I've ever made. AND it was super healthy, which felt even better after the rough workout we'd had earlier that day.

I would definitely recommend giving this a try.

Spaghetti Squash

Ingredients:

• Spaghetti Squash (which is actually a thing! I thought this was the name of the recipe because it was like pasta, but it is actually a type of squash... learn something new every day!)
• Oregano
• Garlic Powder
• Salt
• Pepper
• (Pretty much anything you think would taste good)

Directions:

We chose to cut it first and cleaned out the seeds and gunk. We then sprayed each half with olive oil, then sprinkled it with salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic powder, and then put a tablespoon of butter into the area we had hollowed out.

Cook at 375 degrees for 30 minutes to an hour until tender. We cooked ours for about an hour, which softened it up enough to separate the strands by running a fork lengthwise. To soften it up just a little bit more we popped it into the microwave for two minutes.