Is anyone else excited that today is Mardi Gras, aka Fat Tuesday?! I love Mardi Gras Before I get talking about my love for Mardi Gras, I want to talk about yesterday and share a recipe with you all!

 Breakfast (yesterday)After reading about overnight oats on one of my favorite blogs, I decided to give it a try. Who doesn’t love having a tasty and ready to eat breakfast?! I finally got to making overnight oats and…. I hated it. The texture was fine, but it was sooooooooo plain. The fruit barely helped to give it flavor. I think I am going to stick to hot oatmeal!

Practice

As usual, yesterday was a 6k Monday. I usually get really nervous when it is time to take a 6k, but this time I was super calm. As I stretched and warmed up, I told myself to just beat my last 6k score. I had no intentions of beating my PR. After 500 meters into my 6k, something just clicked. I just thought to myself “ok screw just beating last time’s 6k, let’s set a PR today” and BAM. I did it. I still cannot believe how easy it was for me to PR. Last year I had the hardest time beating my 6k from my sophomore year. I was always telling myself that I couldn’t do it. My last 6k of my junior year, I beat my PR by .2 (on my split time for 500 meters) and it was not easy… at all. Yesterday, I beat my PR (from last year) by 1.1 which felt totally manageable. It is amazing how much the mind can hold you back. After yesterday’s 6k I have realized that anything is possible if you set your mind to it. I have always “believed” this, but I needed to experience it in order to truly believe.

After practice, I made myself my latest obsession: whole wheat toast with almond butter and bananas. I can’t get enough of it! Have any of you tried almond butter with bananas?

Red Velvet Cupcakes and Cake Batter Frosting

Ok so I told you all that I would be including a recipe in today’s post, so here we go!

I know that red velvet cupcakes are usually eaten with cream cheese frosting, but I wanted to shake things up a bit and try making them with cake batter frosting. After all, red velvet cupcakes are really just red cocoa cupcakes.

I baked these for today’s bake sale at school. I brought these cupcakes in during my lunch period but the bake sale was already over. WHAT?! Our bake sales usually last for all of the lunch periods, but today’s bake sale ended early. So I had nothing to do with my cupcakes but give them away (which made my friends super happy). When giving them out to classmates and friends, I was told that the frosting was the best part. SCORE! The cupcakes ended up being a huuuuge success. One of my friends, I am not saying whoooo, ate 5. I am not kidding, she loved them! Not only did she love them, but she told me that she usually does not like red velvet cupcakes.

I simply followed recipes when making these amazing cupcakes. Red velvet cupcakes are very basic cupcakes, so any recipe should work (I like Martha Stewart’s recipe). As for the frosting, I used this recipe. The frosting was absolutely amazing. It might have been the best frosting I have ever made.

Mardi Gras

After school today, my mom and I went out to celebrate Mardi Gras. I loooooove Mardi Gras (as mentioned earlier) and so we went to a local restaurant that was decked out in Mardi Gras decorations. We both ordered New Orleans inspired food.

We both shared some fried Okra, which was my first time ever trying it. I ended up really liking Okra!

I ordered a smoked goose breast and spec. I have never tried a sandwich with goose meat, but I enjoyed it. The taste took a little getting used to, but I still liked it

My mom had a Chicken-and-Shrimp Étouffée. She let me try a lot of it some of it and I loooved it. I love Cajun food

Now that Lent is beginning, what will you be giving up (or will you be giving up anything)? This year I plan to give up desserts and Facebook. I have a veeery strong feeling that I will not be able to keep these Lenten promises this weekend (I have some super exciting stuff going on ). Facebook should be easy because I really don’t care about Facebook. I still thought that it would be nice to cut out some computer time though.

Did you celebrate Mardi Gras?

Are you planning on giving anything up for Lent?

 Laissez les bontemps rouler!

Let the good times roll!