Chubby Bunnies and First TNT Fundraising Event!

Hi guys! Happy Humpday!

Today has been much been the norm…..non-stop! I like my days busy but definitely count down til the weekend and I’m sure most of you are the same way. I couldn’t fall asleep last night (so much on my mind with fundraising!) and around 8:00, made my way back downstairs for my standard “night-cap” aka 1 weetabix biscuit with reduced fat milk. Sometimes a tiny bowl of cereal is all you need to get to sleep and it has worked every time so far! Sorry no picture because I was in a daze!

This morning when the alarm went off it felt like someone had hot glued my eyes shut. Seriously, I could not open them. I read Psalms with one eye!! I think God understood. After reading, email checking and throwing on my uniform, I headed downstairs and made a snack:

A NEW bar

And 1/3 cup egg white fluffies made in the microwave and sprinkled with sea salt

I have to admit, I was a little hesitant about trying this new bar after my experience branching out with new things the other morning. But, I have seen these on Gina’s blog and we seem to have the same taste so I forged ahead! SO GLAD I DID because this bar was a-m-a-z-i-n-g!!!!! All raw and made with brown rice protein to give a little boost. I LOVED this bar and liked it even more than larabars and pure bars because it had 7 grams of protein that helped me work strong all morning. This was the cinnamon raisin kind and it tasted heavenly. I am so glad I picked up a couple of these last weekend at Whole Foods! Definitely a keeper in my book!

This morning I also had this yummy concoction to drink (which I drank about half of):

Around 4:45 this morning, my boss looked at my coworker and I and told us that “we looked tired and could use some juice”. We sort of just stared at him and then he told us to go pick any juice we wanted off the shelf to drink and wake up! I chose carrot juice because I had never had it before and it looked very interesting! It turned out to be really yummy actually…very cool and creamy.

Breakfast was around 8:00 and was pretty much standard oatmeal—-3/4 cup oats with 1/2 banana, 1/2 scoop chocolate protein powder and……………

I finally busted out my new sunflower seed butter, courtesy of my friend, VeggieGirl!

I had never tried sunflower seed butter before but it was total yum this morning. I would liken it a lot to peanut butter because it had the same sort of nutty taste. Very delicious and really gave my oatmeal a staying power punch!

At work today we DID try the new multigrain bread, although we are re-working the recipe a bit and trying a new one tomorrow. Today we used a starter of oats, quinoa, millet and bulgar wheat-–

And the finished product included bread flour, whole wheat flour, honey and starter….

It turned out SUPER SOFT….like a multigrain bunny bread!! We thought it was too fluffy though and needed to be bit more “seedy” so I made a new starter, which I will use to create a new bread tomorrow containing oats, millet, flax, oat groats and wheat berries.We’ll see how it works tomorrow!!

Ryan posed the challenge the other day of eating 5 saltines in 1 minute. Apparently it cannot be done. Well, no one tells Jenna that it can’t be done, so today at work we had a little saltine-eating showdown.

Well, I cheated. I stuffed all five saltines into my mouth in a minute but I couldn’t swallow them all because they became like dust in my mouth! I put them all in my cheeks and then was laughing so hard that I almost choked. I spit them all out after the minute was over. It was prettyyyyy amusing.

After my bad experience yesterday with exercising too soon after lunch (cramps and side-stitches galore!), I decided to eat something light this morning while I was working and then have a big snack after exercise. The plan worked! I chowed down on this delicious Odwalla bar and banana around 11:30—

And then I swam my heart out! It was much more difficult without my cute little coach there to give me constant drills and motivation, but I tried to drill myself by giving myself exercises to do. For instance, I would swim four laps and then use the kickboard and kick for two laps. I did that a couple times and it really got my heart rate up there (yes, I wore my hrm today!). At points, my heart rate was in the 170s and I was really workin’ it! However, after what felt like FOREVER, I glanced down at my hrm and saw I had only been going for 25 minutes. Sigh. 25 minutes it was though because the pool closed at 2:00 today and I was beat at that point! I guess I’m not quite at Micheal Phelps level yet

When I got home, I was excited to test out a new flavor of Better Whey of Life Yogurt with a weetabix!

I tried out the Acai Mixed Berry and LOVED it. This was super creamy and totally delicious. Two thumbs up!

I worked all afternoon on emails, fundraising ideas and making fliers to post in the employee break room at work. I finally broke around 3:45 (I know, so early) for dinner! Tonight for dinner I defrosted and heated up leftover meatless sloppy joe and served it on top of a big baked garnet yam with a sprinkle of mozzarella cheese

I also had a HUGE salad with romaine, grape tomatoes, celery and red pepper with Annie’s dressing

The baked spud turned out to be so huge that I couldn’t finish all my salad!

But I still had you-know-what for dessert!

Let’s get this Team in Training season kicked off right!!!! I am proposing the idea of a blogger dessert e-cookbook.

Basically, if you would like to participate (and I urge you to…this will be a blast!) please email me a simple dessert that you have come up with and love! Yes, it has to be created by you...but it can be as simple as graham crackers, marshmallow fluff and peanut butter. Anything goes….just make it sweet! Once I receive all your recipes, I will type them all up together and create an e-cookbook!! Then, I will put the cookbooks up for donations on the blog. I think this will be a HUGE success and it will be awesome having a real cookbook with everyone’s dessert recipes in it. Perfect for parties, friends or just when you get the sweet craving after dinner! Am I convincing you yet?!

I will be open to receiving recipes from RIGHT NOW until April 1st at 5:00 pm. From April 2nd on, the book will be ready and available to be purchased for a donation price. If this is a success, I would love to do more cookbooks in the future but for right now, this is desserts only!

Now this is important…listen up! EMAIL THE RECIPES (and a picture if you can!) TO HelpJennaRun@gmail.com . I created a new gmail account just for this purpose so please use that for dessert recipes ONLY! I look forward to hearing from you….this is such a great cause and I thank you all ahead of time for your participation in making this great!

**A HUGE thank you to those than contributed donations last night……we are now $500 up and going strong!!