Is Cookie Butter the new Gourmet Marshmallow?

22 May

cookie butter 1I’m something of a junk food connoisseur.

I try not to indulge too often, but I can’t resist a loaded up hotdog, warm Krispy Kreme donut or Old Bay coated French fries.

I have not been shy in sharing that I have a special place in my heart for marshmallows – whether they be stale peeps, the gourmet version or just a plain oversized one that I can shove on a stick and roast in my fireplace.

Well, I decided to do some self-improvement and branch out a little bit… with cookie butter.

Apparently cookie butter is where it’s at. I’ve heard about it for months and it’s gotten to be such an “it” item that there were rumors that Trader Joe’s was only offering a small amount for sale each day. On pinterest there are a ton of recipes that use this elusive buttery beast and there are even Facebook fan pages dedicated to its awesomeness.

So as you can imagine, when I was recently cruising the aisles of Trader Joe’s and saw a big display of their Speculoos Crunchy Cookie Butter I grabbed a jar to try for myself. I wasn’t really sure HOW to eat it though, so I asked for suggestions on my Facebook page. According to my followers, the best ways to eat cookie butter are…

  1. On your finger
  2. On a spoon
  3. On everything
  4. With chocolate
  5. On toast or pancakes
  6. On ice cream
  7. On graham crackers or cookies
  8. On a marshmallow (of course!)

With your suggestions in mind, I took one for the team and tested the cookie butter. Yes, it was hard work, but I survived. The Trader Joe’s cookie butter has the texture of slightly crunchy peanut butter. It has a sweet taste which makes it work well with dessert recipes. Although I didn’t have a chance to try it, I think it would probably also be really good on top of freshly baked brownies!

My tasting range goes from 1 (just okay) to 5 (back up from my cookie butter or I’ll cut you!):

cookie butter chart

Although the cookie butter wasn’t terrible on things like marshmallows, cookies and crackers… it was just so much better on a spoon. Whether it be alone or with a dollop of Trader Joe’s Cocoa Almond Butter (like Nutella , but with almonds instead of hazelnuts).

Truth time: the container of cookie butter lasted in my house for exactly 5 days. I didn’t share with anyone and I ate that whole darn thing by myself. I also may have a second jar hiding in my pantry (so my husband can’t find it) for emergencies.

Around day 2 of testing, I thought long and hard about whether it would be inappropriate for me to hide the jar in my purse for an afternoon treat. The evening of day 3 I noticed that my jar was in the front of the pantry and not where I had left it (hiding behind the peanut butter) and threatened my husband that if he wanted to keep his wife he would not eat any of MY cookie butter.

I think I have a cookie butter problem.

Have you tried cookie butter? Do you randomly threaten your family members to stay away from MOMMY’S SPECIAL SNACK if they want to keep their dingle dangles in working condition!?

Disclaimer: Trader Joe’s did not provide me with the cookie butter or ask me to review it. However, I would not be against having them send me some cookie butter with maybe another jar of their cocoa almond butter… for testing purposes, of course.

I’m Busy

16 May

Why is being busy some kind of brag nowadays?

Is it to prove to everyone that we’re so incredibly awesome that we’re in high demand everywhere?

I know that there are a bunch of ways of being “busy” – among those are the people who are actually overextended, those who use busy as a convenient excuse when they don’t really want to do something, and those haven’t figured out how to say ‘no’ or multitask.

My favorite is the people that use “busy” as a way to brag about themselves.

I’ve had full conversations with people where they basically list their task list with the expectation of me just oohing and aahing over their fabulous busyness.

You can really add in the fun if you want to then tell them about YOUR crazy schedule and get into some sort of busy pissing match with them.

You know how it goes:

Busy Person #1: “Sorry I didn’t get back to you by that deadline that you reminded me about three times over the past eight weeks. You need to realize that I’m busy. I work full time, have kids and a husband, run a blog, participate in volunteer activities and also wipe my own butt.”

Busy Person #2: “Oh WOW. You ARE busy. I’m really busy too… I work full time, have kids and a husband, run a blog, participate in volunteer activities, wipe my own butt, bake cakes from scratch and make out with unicorns.”

Busy Person #1: “Oh yeah, I forgot to add that I bake cakes from scratch, make out with unicorns AND ALSO clean the boogers out of my dog’s eyes, make quirky furniture from discarded pizza boxes, place abandoned baby birds into cross-cultural squirrel foster homes and haven’t slept in like 8 months.”

Busy Person #2: “So funny you say that… I haven’t slept in 10 months… and I’m training for a triple marathon.”

We’ve all met them, right?

Do you take the high road and just smile and nod at their bragging or are you like me and enjoy  poking the bear?

Color Running (Kinda)

13 May

jackI had mentioned a while ago that I was super excited to do the Baltimore Color Run 5k. I wanted to do the one they held in DC last year, but it was so incredibly popular that it sold out before I could make up my mind to commit. As soon as the Baltimore run registration opened, I jumped on it like a rabid monkey and signed up.

Fast forward a few months and add in a few germs…

Yeah, that’s right. After months of healthiness in my house, everyone got sick. First Travis fell with the full-on “man sick” version of a cold (sorry honey, but you know it’s true and I love you anyway). Then, I came down with a sneezy nose and scratchy throat. As the cherry on top of our sicky party, Jack got the boogery nose that I had been dreading.

Why had I been dreading it? Well, EVERY SINGLE TIME Jack has come down with a cold he’s ended up with croup. Or bronchiolitis. Or RSV. Or all three. So I was sleeping with one eye open waiting for that tell-tale cough to send us all back to the ER again.

Imagine my surprise (and happy dance) when he got through this sickness with JUST a cold. YAY! NO CROUP! NO ER!

We weren’t really sure what to expect when he woke up on Saturday morning though, so I made an executive decision and decided that we would not do our 9:00 am race.

{sad trombone}

BUT, he woke up and was feeling much better so we decided to go and crash the 2:00 race time!

{Happy trombone! Wait, is there such thing as a happy trombone?}

My brother (Jason) and one sister (Kelsey)* both ran the 9:00 race and stuck around for us to join them at 2:00. So pretty much the majority of the pictures in this post are from Kelsey’s phone. Mine was safe inside a plastic baggy, which means all my pictures were blurry…

When we got there, it was a lot hotter than I had thought it would be which is why Jack is practicing his redneck look of wearing JUST a pair of rolled up sweatpants. We didn’t end up running the run, since we were feeling like poo from our colds (and um…lazy) but we had a great time walking it!

before run

Me, Travis and Jack… before the run (um… walk)

Jason and Kelsey after their run.

Jason and Kelsey after their run.

jack after

Jack after the run — with orange feet.

blurry t

This is how almost all my pictures turned out…

after

Our only “after” shot — I swear, I had color on me!

kelsey

Kelsey at the after-party!

Jason

Jason at the after-party. And yes, his throat hurt like crazy the next day!

OH and in case you are concerned that I took my sick child through those clouds of colorful powder. I’m not an idiot. I threw the rain cover down over the stroller when we went through each color station and we totally avoided the after-party.

Have you done a Color Run? Does it look really awesome to you or like your own version of hell?

* FYI, I have another sister too (Kelsey and Katie are twins) that wasn’t able to come because she was doing an ACTUAL competitive run for her college that day.

Getting Shreddy With It

8 May

It’s been exactly a month since I posted that I was starting the 30 Day Shred program. As with all exercise programs, I did really well at the beginning.

Check out my little progress chart where I kept track of when I exercised and which program I did for the day. I kicked some major Shred butt at first. I mean, the day I started I had a full-on asthma attack and had to sneak (gasping) into my son’s room to borrow his inhaler… but that didn’t stop me!

shred workout progressMy slope into a downfall began when I started the third workout program. Yes, the beginning days of Shred #1 and Shred #2 were hard. But the beginning days of Shred #3 were pretty much impossible for me.

Once I moved on to the third workout, my knees started really hurting and I’m not really a fragile knee kind of girl. I tried to get over it and took a little break after each workout, but there were just some exercises that I just could not do.

Specifically one where you start standing up and somehow throw yourself onto the floor, do a weird ab crunch and then catapult yourself back up into a standing position.

Um… no.

When I attempted the same move I ended up doing this pathetic old lady move where I slowly lowered myself to the ground while clutching our coffee table ottoman for dear life. Once I reached the floor I’d splay my body out to do an awesome crunch and then roll to my knees and end up falling over when trying to stand back up.

So sexy. And such an effective exercise.

After the first couple tries at Shred #3, I decided to substitute some of the moves from previous exercises so that I wasn’t just stopping and staring at the TV with my hands on my hips. That kind of worked, but I still felt like I was kind of half-assing my workout.

So I decided to give up on Shred #3 and return to Shred #1 and just increase the weight of my hand weights. This change worked out wonderfully, until my kid decided to sabotage my exercise plan.

After months of going straight to sleep when I lay him down at 8:00, Jack suddenly decided that it would be more fun to fight me on bedtime. After battling him for an hour or so, I no longer had the energy to workout and would pretty much climb in bed at 9:00 fully defeated.

So I fell off the wagon and haven’t hopped back on yet.

The good news is that I really like the 30 Day Shred and I feel like it was an effective and convenient exercise program for me to follow. Through a combination of the Shred workout and keeping my diet in check (I use an app called MyFitnessPal to keep track of my caloric intake) I lost 5 pounds and have kept it off for a couple weeks now. Well, sometimes the scale says I only lost 4 pounds but I think it’s just jealous.

I’m planning to get back in the groove on Friday and start again with Shred workout #1 and my heavier weights again. Actually, I’m doing The Color Run on Saturday morning, so it’s possible I might not start Shredding again until Sunday night.

It might take a couple more days to start, but I can assure you that I WILL start again. I figure if I can just rotate between the first two Shred workouts I’ll be a happy camper. And hopefully lose some more weight too.

Of course I’ll keep you posted on my progress but no promises on whether anyone EVER sees my before pictures!

How about you – have you done an exercise program where the instructor did something crazy and you just sat there and yelled at the TV?

One time I took a Step class that was so hard that I just started shaking my butt and flailing my arms randomly halfway through… only to be caught when the entire class did some fancy move where they were all suddenly facing the back of the class.

Tell me your stories in the comments!

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