Pumpkin Spice Pancakes Recipe

For some reason, any time I make a healthy pancake for my husband, it comes out round, perfect, and fluffy. Any time I make one for myself, it barely holds its shape, or sticks to the pan, or remains too dense. I can only attribute this failure to cooking when I'm hungry, and I don't take the time for my own food that I do for my husband's. Today I remedied this failure, and kept making smaller and smaller pancakes until they came out right. YAY pancake breakfast!

They were delicious, by the way. I'm gonna share my recipe here, because everyone deserves to enjoy light, healthy, delicious breakfasts all through fall, without turning to the sugar laden atrocities that emerge from Starbucks. (Maybe I'm just bitter they don't have a "skinny" pumpkin latte.)

The following recipe has approximately 290 calories (plus 10 for the chocolate sauce), and 24 grams of protein, and 25 grams of carbs.

Pumpkin Spice Protein Pancakes with Ginger Chocolate Sauce

1/2 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, just the pumpkin)
3 egg whites
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup water
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 - 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (to taste)
Pinch ground clove
1/3 cup oatmeal (ground fine to flour texture)
1/2 Scoop Syntha6 Isolate vanilla protein powder
Pam cooking spray

1. Blend together dry ingredients
2. Blend together wet ingredients
3. Blend together wet and dry ingredients
4. Heat a nonstick (if you have one) pan, or a nonstick griddle, or generously coat a cooking pan with Pam.
5. Pour pancake batter, flip pancakes after they begin to bubble, remove from heat after each side has browned and crisped.

To make ginger chocolate sauce, combine:
2/3 cup water
3 packets stevia
1 tablespoon Hershey's unsweetened chocolate powder
Two dashes dried ground ginger

Allow to boil, then lower heat and continue to reduce liquid as you cook the pancakes. After pancakes are finished, pour chocolate sauce over pancakes and enjoy!

Halloween: Slutty ain't Sexy

An Open Letter to Females This Halloween,

      Pumpkin Spice Lattes, the smell of fireplaces starting up, and the inevitable billboards featuring a hooded skeleton have arrived. It’s the time of year when Halloween approaches, and we wonder if we’ve dieted enough to fit into that half-sized mini-costume we believe is what we should wear on a day which USUALLY winds up cold enough to want a sweater by the end of the night. You know the costume.

     You buy it at that Halloween Store that cropped up mid-September; it has a mini-dress, and a headpiece to identify you as the Sexy-Whatever. You may have gone all out and bought the matching thigh-high tights (which you already doubt will stay up right) and/or 6-inch let’s-be-honest-they’re-for-strippers heels to accompany the look. All of your friends coordinated which Sexy-Whatever they were going to be, so at least in YOUR group, there are no repeats. Maybe you did the same last year, and saw your costume repeated in at LEAST six other girls before the night was over. Remember that? Remember not being individual on the one night where you can really break out of the box (or the cheap plastic bag-costume?!) and be something unique?

     Did you watch Miley Cyrus this year, when her performance sparked a HUGE internet blow-up about her performance, her costume, and her choices? Where with one unanimous voice, the internet screamed, “Yeah, you CAN, but maybe you SHOULDN’T. Learn, little girl, the difference between “skanky” and “sexy”.

            There is a huge discrepancy between what you CAN wear, and maybe what you SHOULD wear. Before buying the $19.95 polyester costume that 800 other girls have already bought from that Halloween Store, think for a moment about two things.

One – was this what I would have wanted for myself when I was five? And Two – Will I even be comfortable in this? If your wide-eyed, still-believes-in-magic self at 5 would think you actually look like a lady bug, chances are you’re not in a skintight spotted mini-dress with hooker heels.  Let’s face it, walking or dancing in those heels is gonna hurt within 10 minutes. Let’s not pretend that’s comfortable.

     Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for corsets, thigh-highs, and stripper heels. It’s called the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and happens with just such costumes frequently around Halloween. Go. Dress up, enjoy. But maybe, after you do that, give some more thought to what you can be for Halloween, beyond a trying-to-hard near-stripper outfit.

       Frankly, it’s boring. The Mean Girls quote, “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it” is from 2004. 2004 is almost ten years ago. Ten years of stripper-bees and stripper-firemen is enough, don’t you think? 

     Let’s stop glorifying “looking like a total slut” and instead get creative. Get unique. Break out of your complacent comfort zone of plastic bag costume, and create something that could actually place in a contest. Learn a new makeup technique. Create a contest with your friends that excludes bag-buying. “Trick or Treat” shouldn’t refer to your outfit. Rebel this year, and be something your five-year-old-self would have been proud of. Take pictures that you’ll be proud to show to your own children. Be creative. Be unique. Exhibit your costume skills this year, not your ability to, like every other person, buy a bag for $19.95. I dare you.