3-Ingredient Protein Pancakes

Tuesday, 23 May 2017Monday, 22 May 2017 StarrLeave a comment

After many, many years on the internet, I have become the kind of person who regards “life hacks” and Pinterest/Instagram foods with suspicion. Sometimes, I just outright dismiss a lot of them. Make ice cream by blending frozen banana? That’s not ice cream, it’s just frozen banana? And yet there I was, very happily enjoying the soft-serve-esque texture of a blitzed-up frozen banana, begrudgingly admitting that the curated photos on social media didn’t lie this one time.

A similar recipe that I had many doubts about were the paleo-friendly 2-or-3 ingredient pancakes. In its simplest iteration, you mash up a banana with a beaten egg and fry up pancakes with the mixture — without it tasting like scrambled eggs with banana. I believe I attempted this once several years ago by beating an egg with a fork in a bowl and then mashing a banana into the egg with that fork. It was… meh.

But I kept seeing this recipe get touted over and over again, and other people’s photos of these pancakes looked a lot more like pancakes than my initial attempt. Maybe I did something wrong? This recipe came back into my life as I started to remember why I am not the kind of person who is able to skip breakfast. These days, I am trying to be better about making sure I have a protein-filled breakfast so that I have fuel for when I do actually go work out in the mornings, since I have been feeling myself struggle a lot physically when I try to exercise on an empty stomach. I also feel myself thinking about lunch at about 10:30, which is pretty early to have your mind on lunch, if we’re all being honest here! While these pancakes are not allowed on Whole30, they are paleo, and I’ve found 2 added components have improved the entire process enough to make this a new breakfast staple for me:

A blender (I use this super cheap personal blender)
Protein powder

The blender makes mixing it a much easier and smoother process, so I’m not left with a scrambly-egg + mushy-banana consistency. The protein powder makes it more like a pancake and less like banana-y eggs. I’ve also been adding spinach to the whole thing for a bit more nutrition. Occasionally I also add a bit of cinnamon to see if I can get any of its purported health benefits. I fry them up in some coconut oil (who am I…) and I have some healthy green protein-packed pancakes for breakfast so that I have some fuel in the morning!

Here’s the recipe, adapted from PaleOMG:

1 ripe banana – the browner and riper, the sweeter!
2 eggs
1-2 scoops of vanilla/chocolate protein powder
Coconut oil (or oil/fat of your choosing)
Optional: handful of spinach
Optional: pinch of cinnamon
Optional: pinch of baking soda

In a blender, pulse your eggs and banana until you have a smooth, consistent mixture.
Add in your protein powder, starting with 1 scoop and adding 2 if the consistency is too liquid, depending on the size of your banana and eggs. (You want the batter to be a bit viscous.)
If the mixture is still fairly runny with the added protein powder, add a bit of baking soda to help add fluffiness and rise to your pancakes.
Add spinach and/or cinnamon if you’d like green pancakes or a teeny bit of warmth.
In a non-stick pan, heat a small amount of coconut oil.
When the oil is hot, pour small dollops of the pancake into the pan to form 3- or 4-inch wide pancakes. Since they will be runnier than your traditional pancake batter, keeping them small helps them cook through a bit faster and makes them easier to flip.
After about a minute, flip the pancake to the other side; you’ll know it’s ready to flip when the edges are browning and the batter on top is becoming a bit less funny.
Cook on the other side for 30-45 seconds, remove from the pan, and place on some paper towel to get rid of any excess oil.
Serve plain or with syrup, jam, whatever pancake accoutrements your heart desires.

Enjoy

greenpacakes2 — Clean eating green pancakes, a similar recipe from Emily at LouisianaBrideBlog

Have you ever tried a recipe you saw online and didn’t think would work only to be pleasantly surprised?
Are there any super popular internet recipes you think I should try? I haven’t tried very many of them but after some recent successes, I’m trying to have an open mind! Trying to get back into cooking more for myself, and prepping breakfasts and lunches in advance, so any recipe suggestions would be so appreciated!

A lot of things have been happening in the news that are difficult to ignore. I try to keep the tone on this blog positive and upbeat, not only for you, my handful of readers, but so that I have something positive to reflect on myself. Please know that I am staying informed, staying vigilant, and staying active in supporting a world that is good for more people than it was before.

My Youtube Habit

Friday, 19 May 2017Friday, 19 May 2017 Starr4 Comments

When I started browsing Youtube, it was for the sole purpose of watching subtitled anime episodes. (Naruto S3E6 part 2/11 ENG SUB!) It wasn’t until a friend of mine sent me this classic KevJumba video that I even realized there was a world outside of anime on Youtube.

You know how you can find yourself tumbling down a strange rabbit-hole on Youtube where you somehow end up watching pimple popping or ASMR or old anime music videos (shout out to all of you OG folks who made AMVs) or animals falling down, etc. etc. etc.? Well that’s how my first foray into Youtube felt. I was chatting with a young Kevjumba when I discovered in the “Suggested” sidebar, back in the oooolden days, charlieissocoollike and his classic video about the new defunct “featured” Youtube video.

That was how I found myself deep in the 2007 UK Youtube scene. Next thing I knew, I was on Stickam, a video chatroom site, with UK Youtubers and fans. The time difference was weird but their accents were great and I loved learning their different perspectives. (I’m still friends with a handful of the people I met during this time on Facebook now and they’re doing really great.)

Late 2007 was a magical time on Youtube and very dangerous for me to get knee-deep in the Youtube scene. The vlogbrothers were finishing up Brotherhood 2.0. With the election coming, we had Obama Girl, Hott4Hill, LisaNova’s Sarah Palin and Alphacat’s Barack, the Phillip DeFranco Show was starting to find its stride. Smosh was at a then unthinkable million subscribers and Youtube still showed ranking by number of subscribers. I’m not going to keep namedropping Youtubers here but it was such an exciting time because it was so new. Youtube personalities were brand new and online personalities were new to me.

The Youtube landscape has changed. A lot. I don’t watch a lot of the Youtubers I used to watch, and some of them don’t make content on Youtube anymore. Many of their channels have changed significantly over the past 10 years, for better or worse.

As with My TV Habit, I’ll leave off with the Youtubers that I regularly watch. I used to watch hours and hours and hours a week when I didn’t have TV, but with my full-time job still not firing me, I don’t that much time and have to go for quality more than quantity, now more than ever. The channels that

Vlogbrothers – I was actually unsubscribed from them for a short while because I started feeling like I was outgrowing them, but I’ve come back for John and Hank and I’m glad for it.
Nerdwriter – Evan was honored as a 30 Under 30 this year and his video essays are beautiful, insightful, and so well-done. With every video of his that I watch, I am just a little bit of a better person. With enough of his videos under my belt, I may even become a great person.
Casey Neistat – I’ve known about Casey’s videos for a really long time, but I only recently started watching more regularly. (Basically when the old daily vlog ended and it was less of a commitment to watch.) He is so hardworking and his hard work shows (or intentionally doesn’t) in so many of the shots that we take for granted as viewers.
MKBHD – Marques Brownlee is my favorite tech reviewer right now, with his clear and fairly objective insights and subtle sense of humor. He’s done so much for himself in the tech space and I can’t wait to see what more is to come from him.
NerdyAndQuirky – Sabrina got the spotlight on her when she was 15 years old and now she’s in university cranking out such high-quality video content that I’m almost scared to know what progress will look like for her. She’s funny and witty and keenly empathetic and I’m so glad the vlogbrothers helped introduce me to her.

What Youtube channels do you like watching?
What channels did you watch when you first started watching Youtube?
When did you start getting into it? 2007 was it for me and I never looked back. It is strange watching the annual Rewind video and recognizing a smaller percentage of the creators featured, but it’s such an exciting time to be alive, when people can make a living on Youtube.

My TV Habit

Tuesday, 16 May 2017Monday, 15 May 2017 Starr2 Comments

For Lent in 2014, I gave up television. (With a few exceptions.) Television has been a habit of mine since I was very young. Even without cable, I would spend hours watching PBS in the mornings, napping after lunch, and then watching hours of UPN and the WB. (Looking back on it, it is a little strange that I watched so much Barney & Friends and Martin! I guess.) My entire day was structured by my shows, and maybe that is where my intense need to stick to a schedule comes from.

At the back of my mind, I knew I watched too much television. (My parents would tell me so. Often.) In college, my TV consumption was reduced because I didn’t have a TV to mindlessly watch in my dorm room. My TV habit changed. I found myself furiously “catching up” on my shows on the weekends. Given that I spent a lot of time with campus organizations, this meant late nights and stolen nights to myself spent with my headphones on and streaming shows.

So. Many. Shows.

It was overwhelming and got to the point where I was begging for shows to end. (I’m so grateful that How I Met Your Mother finally ended, even though I was infuriated by the ending.) (But can Big Bang Theory stop already??) Catching up on shows started feeling like a chore, but I am so bad at quitting things that I kept watching. “I hate this stupid show!” I would shout while angrily tuning in to ABC every Sunday at 7PM EST.

Today… I don’t watch too many shows. I watch three HBO shows, which is definitely very different from how I used to watch television, given that I used to watch exclusively network television shows and thought paying for a premium channel was bonkers. I occasionally watch a Netflix show. (Have you watched season 2 of Master of None yet I really want to talk to people about the achievements in film that Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang have accomplished with it!) (But I haven’t finished yet…)

I feel so free. And a bit unfamiliar to myself. Who is this person who isn’t watching shows every day, or a week’s worth of shows in a day or two? I’m not sure, but I think I like her better than who I was before, watching hours and hours of television every day. I know that I don’t watch as much TV now because I just have other things to do with that time, and I’m really glad for it. I have never been one for idle time, but that is how my parents often saw my TV time – valuable minutes and hours that I was wasting away with my eyes glued to a screen.

In any case, if you want to talk to me about any shows, the ones I am keeping up with at the moment are:

Master of None season 2 (still working through this one, as its nice to savor and easy to not-binge)
Silicon Valley
Westworld
Game of Thrones

There are shows I want to revisit and catch up on, but honestly, since Ash Wednesday 2014, I am really behind on most of my shows. I never finished The Legend of Korra! But I get so overwhelmed even thinking about going back and trying to pick up where I left off, and even more overwhelmed thinking about starting from the beginning. And that’s just one of the unfinished shows I have.

Maybe part of why I see everything through rather than cut my losses is partially because how I watched TV. But I’m different now, and if I can watch less TV and be happier for it… I am hopeful about the other positive changes I can make in my life. Like exercising more. And eating fewer potato chips.

What shows are you keeping up with right now? Anything I should start getting into?

Are there any shows you actively quit watching? There is a show that I complained about all the time but kept watching, week after week. Ben had to tell me to just stop watching, but I still feel myself getting pulled in… It’s been hard to resist!

Practicing Patience?

Tuesday, 2 May 2017Monday, 1 May 2017 Starr2 Comments

How do you become a patient person?

I have been reflecting a lot on what kind of person I am and where I can improve. I think I’ve been pretty good about a lot of things I’ve wanted to work on as a person. Right now, the one thing I really lack seems to be patience.

I just… snap. And I do it more often than I’d like. I find myself doing it most often with the people I care about the most: members of my family, my significant other. I am a fairly defensive driver, but I am extremely prone to yelling (with my windows up) at aggressive drivers I share the road with.

This is something I’ve been pretty aware of lately, but I’m not sure how best to address it. I find myself catching myself snapping and immediately regretting not having taken a breath before saying something mean.

So how do you become a more patient person? I thought I would try a simple “count to 5 before you say something” type of trick, and it has improved things… a bit. But I feel this frustration bubbling up inside of me, and it finds its way out via some kind of verbal outburst. It doesn’t help that I’m the kind of person who just has a really strong desire to say what I have to say. That desire is the root cause of other undesirable habits of mine, like interrupting people or talking really fast without pause because I have a lot to say and I want to say all of it before anyone else tries to ruin my momentum by saying what they have to say.

(Maybe I need to revisit that self-improvement resolution about me talking less. It seems these are related areas of self-improvement.)

Being patient has never come super easily to me. I was always a very precocious child, and I didn’t like to wait. Heck, I will straight-up skip a line for the bathroom because I just hate waiting in lines. (My bladder is frequently forced to suffer as a result of this impatience.) (I do not recommend this, I think it’s bad for your health.)

But how do I slow down just enough to remind myself to… slow down? I’m still not sure. And really open to any advice.

Making Fitness a Habit (with ClassPass)

Friday, 28 April 2017Monday, 15 January 2018 Starr5 Comments

Back when I was setting my New Year’s Resolutions for the year, I really wanted to take my fitness resolutions more seriously, as they are pretty consistently the resolutions I take the least seriously and, as a result, see the least amount of progress on.

I set 3 concrete fitness resolutions and follow-up resolutions:

Learn to lift + lift a certain weight once I did
Run a mile without stopping + get that mile within a certain time
Do a full split + both vertically and horizontally

We are almost halfway-through the year, so it is time for me to get to the point of looking at the follow-up resolutions and check in on my progress. While these resolutions have not been the primary focus of my short-term fitness goals, I have been doing really well with making fitness a regular weekly habit for myself since January and I really do have to thank ClassPass for it.

ClassPass is a monthly membership that gives you access to many, many boutique fitness studios and gyms in over 30 cities around the world. It’s great specifically if:

… you want to try out classes at a boutique studio or using the equipment at a gym but don’t want to commit to a membership fee without knowing if you like it
… you would rather go to many different studios and gyms throughout the month than commit to one kind of workout or one facility

In celebration of that “new year, new me” mentality, ClassPass was running a promotion in January: 50% off their usual $55 for 5 classes deal, which meant I got 5 classes a month for $27, with each class being just a little over $6, for 3 months. That’s an awesome deal, so I went for it, hoping that 3 months was enough time for me to form a habit.

Long story short, I think this was one of the better moves I’ve made with my time and money in a really long time. I’ve found studios and classes that I really love. With my ClassPass plan, I’m able to visit a studio 2 times within a month, so I’m able to switch it up while still visiting my favorite workout spots twice a month. It’s added something to my routine and I am seeing physical results. There are little baby pre-muscle bumps on my legs and my arms that weren’t there at the beginning of January, and I cannot tell you how exciting that is!

I won’t mince words: it was, and remains, really hard. I knew that the only time I could regularly commit to working out was in the morning before work, since my post-work schedule varies wildly but usually is filled with other activities. To give myself enough time to work out in the mornings meant I was choosing 7AM classes, which still kills me many mornings. The pain was also intense. I was going from being quite sedentary to working out 1-2 times a week (and up to 4 or 5 times a week some weeks), and that was extremely painful. I felt sore sore sore and the hardest class for me was my first session at a local kickboxing gym where I do high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Because it was so painful for me to just walk out of that gym, on top of the several days where I was so sore that it was difficult to bring food to my mouth, I have made that kickboxing gym one of the spots that I visit twice a month, every month. It’s one of my shortest workouts at 30 minutes and I love it loads.

One thing that has helped with the amount of soreness and reducing my recovery time from days to singular days is consuming protein powder. I know, I KNOW, I hardly recognize myself right now. But there are a lot of fitness and weight-lifting enthusiasts in my office, and I overheard one of them suggesting increasing another person’s protein intake upon hearing that the other person was taking a long time to recover from muscle soreness. I figured it wouldn’t hurt, and whaddya know, I am not feeling as sore for as long. (In fact, sometimes I am suspicious that I’m not working out hard enough because I am not feeling as sore as I did those first 4 weeks I started working out.)

On top of my 5 fitness classes a month, I am also trying to take advantage of the gym in my office building that is available to me free of charge! Especially during weeks that I only have one fitness class scheduled, I’ll try to make time to go to my building gym (again, at 7AM), and lift weights and then run on the treadmill. I’m going to be honest: I never have a real plan when I lift weights. This is a problem that I think may be remedied by me investing in a trainer, as was my original plan back in December, but right now I do essentially every exercise I know I can do with dumbbells and that takes me about 40 minutes. Then I run for about 20 minutes. I move up to heavier dumbbells when the ones I usually use are not on the rack. That is maybe not the best reason to increase weight but that’s what I do!

This is really uncharted territory here. I now own grippy socks and boxing handwraps, because my favorite classes are barre and kickboxing. (?!) I have a tub of protein powder in my pantry. I am increasingly finding myself in the unfamiliar dilemma of needing more workout clothes because I really don’t do laundry frequently enough to get by on how much I have currently.

And I like working out. That is maybe the most bizarre thing to me, but I look forward to my workouts. It’s a time when I am too busy trying to keep myself alive to worry about the myriad of other things I concern myself with usually. Exercise keeps me too physically busy to be anxious. It becomes an almost meditative experience, that I’m able to be so focused on physical activity that my mental activity has to take a backseat.

I’m not expecting to be swole (despite how much I joke about it). (It is maybe not funny how many times I now utter the word “swole” out loud.) I am still in that stage where I talk about my working out pretty often because I’m still in a state of shock that I’m doing it and I kind of need to vocalize it to confirm that it’s really happening. There are weeks where I don’t work out as much as I know I should and I’m still struggling with problem areas on my body that need more attention. I need to really get serious about weight-lifting if I want to set certain weight goals there to reach by December, and that will require me to do something different from just… all the dumbbell exercises I know. I also need to get more serious about running and flexibility.

But I think I like this new version of myself that is exercising and investing time and money and energy into my health. And I hope I like her enough to keep investing in her and making her better.

How do you stay in shape? The studios I have favorited are barre, kickboxing, and yoga. I am a creature of habit, which means I’m actually having a hard time trying out any new classes, so if you’re in the DC area and have specific studios to recommend or you just have a workout to recommend in general (I keep seeing Bodypump pop up!), let me know!

Do you like group fitness or doing your own thing at the gym more? I really love group fitness, because I think the peer pressure of a bunch of strangers really keeps me on track and helps push me a bit farther than if I were just working out on my own. I don’t like working out with friends very much because I know I’m not in shape and I fear judgement from people I know and care about. I am getting better about working on out my own at the gym, but my biggest source of anxiety there is just running into coworkers. This social pressure is all in my head, I know, and I am getting over it little by little as I get stronger, little by little. I also tend to not push myself quite as hard and, of course, not have a particularly good comprehensive workout plan when I am on my own.

This is not a sponsored post, by the way. I just wouldn’t be in the place I am in right now without having paid for a month of exercise upfront for 4 months, and I know that, and ClassPass has been really great for me and my needs specifically. I am including a referral link if you’re interested in trying it out for $30 off.