Hi everyone,

Happy belated Mother’s Day! Hope all you moms enjoyed lots of pam­per­ing and love all day long. I spent a relax­ing day at home with my kids which was a real treat, since they’re both teenagers and are always run­ning some­where or mak­ing plans to go out. Yes­ter­day though, I had them all to myself which was really nice. The hockey game was the icing on the cake; my son was over­joyed as I’m sure most 14 year old boys were, last night.

I dab­bled a bit in the kitchen too with some pretty good results. I’ve recently read on a few dif­fer­ent sites about a“muffin” that can be baked in a mug or bowl, in the microwave. Kinda strange, but it actu­ally worked pretty well. I played with a vari­ety of flavour­ings but the basic recipe remains the same. I was think­ing these muffins would make a per­fect high pro­tein snack or after din­ner sweet treat.

On another note, I was mean­ing to do a work­out video for all of you this week­end but unfor­tu­nately, my left glute con­tin­ues to cause me grief. So instead, I was nurs­ing the damn injury with my trusty heat­ing pad and loads of butt strength­en­ing exer­cises. It’s feel­ing bet­ter but I finally caved today and took an Aleve. I’m not a big fan of tak­ing pain med­ica­tion but I fig­ured I’ve suf­fered enough. If you’ve never taken Aleve, I gotta tell you, it blows Advil out of the water. Works effec­tively and extremely fast.

Have a good night every­one. Go Leafs go!!!

Choco­late Muf­fin in a Mug

Ingredients:

¹⁄₂ cup liq­uid egg whites

¹⁄₄ canned pureed pumpkin

1 Tbsp coconut powder

¹⁄₄ tsp bak­ing soda

2 tsp pure cocoa

1 – 2 Tbsp (depends on how sweet you like it) agave, splenda, honey, xyl­i­tol or sweet­ener of your choice

pinch of salt

Spray the inside of a large mug or bowl.

Com­bine above ingre­di­ents and place in microwave for approx­i­mately 3 min­utes or until cooked through.

Care­fully (mug may be hot) remove from microwave; let cool slighty and remove from mug. Enjoy!

Variations:

Replace cocoa with 2 tsp pump­kin pie spice.

Replace pump­kin with mashed banana. Add 1 Tbsp peanut or almond but­ter, chopped wal­nuts or pecans.

Add a hand­ful of rasp­ber­ries to choco­late muf­fin recipe.