Birthday Pancakes and Strawberry Sauce

Weekends just keep getting shorter and shorter and with the days getting nicer it's even harder to hold on to the weekend.

I visited a couple friends this weekend for their birthdays and conveniently it was also the weekend of my high school's 50th Anniversary. We visited the school and wandered the halls looking in our old classrooms and hangouts. Surprisingly the school was quite empty so we didn't run into any old friends or teachers. It was a little odd to be honest but fun none the less. Luckily I had a great high school experience so I can walk down those halls and look back fondly. Not much has changed there, that's for sure.

I made my friends a special birthday breakfast on Saturday morning. It was very appropriate for a birthday and was a good excuse to eat dessert for breakfast.

First I'll tease you with the topping. Strawberry sauce!

This took 10 minutes to make and was delicious! Simple slice or chop a pint of strawberries and heat in a sauce pan with sugar and vanilla. I made this the night before we needed it so I just microwaved it in the morning to serve warm.

So what was the main attraction? Pancakes of course!

I've been seeing a lot of recipes out there with sprinkles and cake mix to I decided to get on the bandwagon and try my hand at birthday pancakes.

These pancakes are almost as easy as using a pancakes mix, they just require a couple more ingredients and a little bit of love and fun.

As if sprinkles weren't enough I also made some with chocolate chips!

And the only thing missing is whipped cream. But the icing sugar glaze I whipped up made up for it. I'm not sure any of us used maple syrup. These beauties were sweet enough!

Strawberry Sauce

1 pint strawberries chopped

1/3 cup sugar

1t vanilla

1t corn starch 

In a saucepan over medium high heat, combine all ingredients. Cook, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.  Added a couple freshly sliced strawberries after the others were cooked to make sure I had a few big chunks of berries. They softened up in the already cooked berries.

Birthday Pancakes

1.5 cups white flour
2/3 cup french vanilla cake mix
1T sugar
3/4t baking powder
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1t vanilla
1.5 cups milk
sprinkles (lots!)

Combine the dry ingredients and mix. In another bowl wish together the eggs and vanilla then add to the dry mix. Slowly add 1 cup of milk until smooth adding more milk as needed. It will look just like regular pancake batter. Once smooth fold in as many sprinkles as your heart desires and spoon onto your frying pan (I was luck enough to use my friends electric frying pan, *swoon). Cook on one side until the top bubble a little, then flop onto the other side for another minute.

Serve with your favourite toppings like whipped cream, chocolate sauce, vanilla glaze, strawberries, bananas, even ice cream and more sprinkles!

Here's a little hint of what's coming later this week...

Overnight Oatmeal

Oh that potato salad sure is treating me well. It was a nice addition to lunch today! Although, I've kind of been grazing all day and haven't had a full meal really.

I got up this morning and felt a little tired and hungry from working out last night. I relaxed a bit on the couch and ate a bit of breakfast then did a 20 Minute Yoga Quickie with a nice woman on the beach on YouTube. It felt pretty great to stretch like that in the morning. Got my heart pumping and was even a little sweaty!

At about 10am, after my green tea, I had my second breakfast and since then I've only eaten a pear and a bit of that potato salad. What is this magic breakfast that kept me so full?

Overnight Banana Oatmeal!

I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. It's the quickest and easiest breakfast ever! Not to mention delicious. And as usual this dish can be modified to include your favourite ingredients.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it. But, I used this Banana-Blueberry recipe as a guide and she's got a nice picture that doesn't just look like brown mush!

Get a load of how easy this is.

Ingredients
1/3 cup of steel-cut oats
1/3 overflowing cup of milk
1/3 cup of plain Greek yogurt
1 mashed banana
1/4t of cinnamon (or to taste)

Directions
Mash the banana, then mix everything together in a sealable bowl or container. Pop it in the fridge overnight. In the morning trow it in the microwave for 1 minute and and enjoy! You can top it with more fresh fruit, granola, almonds or cereal if you're feeling really hungry :)

This is a new favourite for sure, and I've been telling everyone about it today. I just can't believe how easy it is. I loved that I could take it to work and top it with almonds and not even think about it!

You can experiment with all flavours here too. Add some honey, peanut butter, raisins or flax seed. Use chia seeds and non-dairy milk to make it vegan. Some apple slices or strawberries would also be great! This is definitely a recipe you can play with.

  

Hearts of Palm

What a nice weekend! I hope you all had as nice a weekend as me. I got in my workouts, friend time, family time and relax time. Still got to worry about cleaning thought...who wants to do that on a sunny afternoon?

I am so excited because I bought some new runners. I've been needing them for a while. I picked up purple and gray Nike Lunarglide 2 at National sports in the clearance section (yay!) and kinda knew as soon as I saw them that they were meant to be on my feet. I did a quick google search for reviews and ran around the store a bit with them on before buying. I broke them in today as I did my errands and workout this afternoon.

I worked out in the pool area of my building. It's an above ground pool that's surrounded by grass and gets a lot of sun. So it was a nice area to workout! There were some kids playing in the yard and I think they thought I was nuts. I was doing plank at one point and they came around a corner and each of them one at a time said "whoa!!!" It's a little awkward having an audience sometimes.

I also got these little cuties (or creepers depending on how you look at them) out of the car today!

I'd bought them last weekend at the antique store in Fenelon Falls and forgot them in the car. The red eyes look like they may have been added on long after its original purchase and they definitely bring out the creepy in these. I may touch them up. I'm still not even sure if they are supposed to be bears or gofers or what. Still, I couldn't eave the store without them! They are a nice little addition to my small S&P shaker collection!

So I tried something new today. Hearts of Palm. I was only able to get canned ones so they were quite salty. I'd like to try them fresh one day to see how they are really supposed to taste. In the can they were sort of like canned artichoke hearts with the same texture and subtle flavour. I've really only seen recipes where they are used in salads, so tonight I made a potato salad with hearts of palm!

I intended on making this Potato Artichoke Salad recipe from Delementals but could not find artichoke hearts anywhere at the grocery store! So I sort of had to improvise. I still managed to make a creamy potato salad with lots of leftovers for the week but I'm looking forward to making this particular recipe again.

I managed to grab a snapshot of what was left of my serving with Bryan's phone. I gobbled it up.

This recipe turned out to be really simple but not the most waist-line conscious - though potato salad rarely is. 

Ingredients

2 lbs potato, diced (I used baby yellow and red potatoes)

1 onion, diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

2T butter

1 can diced hearts of palm

1 container PC Artichoke & Asiago dip

Directions

Boil your potatoes until tender, drain and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, saute the onions until translucent in the butter then add the garlic and heat for another minute or two.

In a large bowl mix the cooled potatoes (throw them in the fridge if you have to), onions & garlic, hearts of palm and potatoes until the potatoes are covered. I added in 2 tbsp of greek yogurt just to make sure it was all well covered, this works well is you don't have enough dip for your liking.

Store in the fridge until you serve it.

See, super quick and easy! That dip is a good trick if you need to make a large amount for a picnic or potluck. I might even try this with spinach dip.