My New Best Friend...

Extracts.

I was at Safeway yesterday buying groceries (because why else would I really be there, right? Safeway is NOT my version of a teenager mall hangout -- just saying) and I was buying more cinnamon extract. It's delicious in oatmeal and in iced coffees and it's not gritty like the spice which doesn't mix in near as well. When I noticed there are a HUGE amounts (okay 5 - 7, I might be exaggerating a little bit) of different flavored extracts -- two of which were maple and butter. Um, hello...where have you been all my life. So I got a bottle of each filled with liquid calorie and fat-free gold.

I put an 1/8 of a tsp of butter and maple extracts in my oatmeal this morning along with my standard splash of vanilla. I kid you not it was like eating maple and brown sugar flavored oatmeal (which is like my absolute favorite). So now I think I'm becoming an extract junky -- cinnamon and vanilla in my coffee and a random mixture of other flavors in my oatmeal. Hooray for extracts.

My BF from high school, Nunan, Queen of the Jungle (yes we were way awesome back then), gave me a recipe for a chocolate strawberry oatmeal that sounds awesome. I just haven't gotten around to trying it yet. I'm always half asleep when I start making the oatmeal and I'm eating the first bite before I remember that I wanted to try her recipe. A mind is a terrible thing to waste -- so good thing I never had one to begin with.

I also checked out Sugar-free coffee flavoring syrups like Torani (or however you spell it) they are also calorie free and come in delicious flavors but they're like 10 bucks a bottle when I primarily use vanilla and I can get a good bottle of vanilla extract from Costco for like half that price. So cheap wins out and I'll stick with my extracts, thank you very much.

I Zumba'd again last night. I asked the husband if I looked like a total spasmodic freak and he (and I'm sure it's because he loves me) told me it looked like I knew what I was doing and looked good. I know he's lying but I appreciated the effort. I'm hoping to get to an actual class soon -- but with everything I have going I don't know when that's going to be. I know, I know, you have to make time for things like that but 20 minutes in my living room is a lot easier to schedule in than the drive time to a class, the class, and then the drive time home. But I'm going to try to go next Monday. Maybe.