Happy Friday! This has been one of those weeks when Friday could not get here fast enough. Whew! I am so glad it finally got here.

I started my morning all anxious over work and had a rough morning. My appetite was pretty much gone but at 9:30 I decided to eat a little something anyways.

I ate the leftover yogurt and granola from yesterday morning with a gold nugget orange.

Since I was feeling down I seriously considered eating the cupcake that Sal brought me this morning.

Somehow I resisted the urge and saved it for lunch.

When lunch time rolled around I still wasn’t really hungry but I made myself some lunch anyways. I had some leftover black beans to use up, which of course means I will be eating taco salad. I am so glad that I bought some quick cooking brown rice earlier this week because I love the brown rice/black bean combo. This salad included wilted spinach, mashed black beans, brown rice, salsa, and sour cream with blue corn chips on the side. Delicious. And it turns out that I was hungrier than I realized. I would have regretted coming back to work without eating something.

I couldn’t resist the cupcake any longer and ate about 3/4 of it before heading back to work.

The weekend is almost here. It is so close I can almost taste it! 5PM here I come.

I don’t think I have ever been happier to see Friday. Fortunately last nights blogger dinner was exactly what I needed to turn this week around. Today was much better than the rest if the week and to top it off they closed our office an hour early today!

Work was steady this morning and I was happy they the morning seemed to breeze by.

I had Triscuits with Laughing Cow and an orange. It is good that I portion out these crackers because I think I could eat a whole box in one sitting.

Today’s lunch was leftovers from last night with a little extra sauce. This was a ton of food and there was no room for dessert.

Even though the office closed an hour early the afternoon seemed to drag, but I think that was just sheer anticipation.

Shortly after I got home B and I headed out to run some errands. Earlier today I decided to return the Nikon Coolpix S203 that I got the day after Thanksgiving. I have been kind of iffy on the camera ever since I got it but initially decided that I just need to get used to it and learn to use it. After using the camera for almost 3 months and still having at least 80% of my pictures come out fuzzy I decided to take it back since I had until February 25th. I ended up buying a Canon Powershot SD1200 IS. Does anyone else out these have this camera? What do you think?

After our errands we decided to go to dinner at Maddie’s Southern Bistro in Birkdale Village. I have been having a craving for fried chicken for 2 days and this was the perfect place to satisfy that craving.

I started with the Southern Salad.

Other than being a bit salty this salad was a winner. The lettuce was lightly coated with ranch dressing but not soggy. It was hard to tell what was spiced pecan and what was ham so I kept getting little surprises with each bite.

And of course I had fried chicken for my entree.

  I subbed “seasonal vegetables” for the collards.

Zucchini and summer squash aren’t in season, are they?

B had the fried green tomato BLT.

He chose to get the stone ground grits as his side.

We also had some amazing bread with our meal. Sweet potato muffins. Yum, especially served with honey butter. I really want to find a recipe and attempt these at home.

Even though I was full and packed up plenty of leftovers for home I really wanted to get dessert for the road too. I have been eying this mini cupcake trio for a while. They are made by a local bakery that I have been dying to try. The flavors were lemon, raspberry, and Mississippi Mudd.

They looked amazing!

They tasted awful. The icing was hard and they were dry. Boo. These guys definitely were not fresh. I may be willing to try this bakery again when I can go to their storefront and get something that is fresh, but I will never get a cupcake from Maddie’s again.

Tomorrow is a big day. I am going to a blogger brunch at the house of KERF. I am really looking forward to meeting Kath and several other Charlotte area bloggers. Time to get some beauty sleep so I am nice an refreshed in the morning.

I was so preoccupied with the looming cleaning task when I wrote my last post that I forgot something.

This morning I showed you a box that was left of my desk and was waiting for me when I got to work this morning. Remember…

Well this is what was in it.

A chocolate cupcake! Thanks Sal!

Me and Brian are hungry so he is going to make some mac n’ cheese while I go soak in the tub.

After some napping yesterday afternoon it was time to bake. Some of the apples I carried to Brian’s Mom had started to get bad spots so I figure I better get to using them.

After searching the internet for recipes I found  2 that I wanted to try.

First I made Caramel Apple Cupcakes that I found on a blog thanks to Foodbuzz. I made some modifications to fit may taste. I have noted those in purple below.

Caramel Apple Cupcakes
Cupcakes
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
2 medium apples, cored and grated (~2 cups)
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour (I used 3/4 cup whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup all purpose white flour)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup toffee bits (ie. Heath or Skor)
Topping
1/4 cup toffee bits
1/4 cup sliced hazelnuts (I did not have any hazelnuts on hand so I used chopped walnuts)

Preheat oven to 375F and butter the cups of a 12-cup muffin tin. (I used a mini muffin pan).
In a large bowl, beat together sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Stir in the eggs, one a time, beating until combined. Add grated apple, milk and vanilla extract, and stir to incorporate.
In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add to the wet ingredients, stirring until just barely combined. Gently fold in the toffee bits.
Scoop batter into the prepared muffin tin, distributing evenly between the cups. Combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl, and sprinkle evenly overtop of the muffins.
Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until hazelnuts are lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in centre of a muffin comes out with a moist crumb. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing from the tin, then set on a wire rack to cool completely.

They came out super moist and delicious!

I also made some Pumpkin Apple Bread. This was another recipe that I found online.

I only made a half recipe and I did not make the topping and it still came out really well.

For topping:
1 TBSP all-purpose flour
5 TBSP sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 TBSP unsalted butter, softened

For bread:
3 cups all-purpose flour (I used half whole wheat flour and half all purpose)
3/4 tsp salt
2 TSP baking soda
1 1/2 TSP ground cinnamon
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves (I left this out because I hate clove)
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 (15-oz) can solid-pack pumpkin (I am not sure what solid pack means, so I just used some Libby canned pumpkin that I had in my pantry)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups sugar (I used only 1 cup in my half recipe instead of 1 1/8 cup and I think I could have used less)
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 Granny smith apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (2 cups)

MAKE THE TOPPING: Blend together flour, sugar, cinnamon, and butter in a small bowl with your fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal.

MAKE THE BREAD: Put a rack in the middle of oven and preheat oven to 350F. Butter two 9 X 5 inch loaf pans. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice into a medium bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, oil, sugar, and eggs in a large bowl. Add flour mixture, stirring until well combined. Fold in apples. Divide batter between buttered loaf pans. Sprinkle half of topping evenly over each loaf. Bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center of bread comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes. Cool loves in pans on a rack for 45 minutes, then turn out onto rack and cool completely, about 1 hour.

Unfortunately when I took the bread out of the oven I sat in on the back right burner of my stove. This is the vent burner and kept baking the bottom of my bread with the heat from the oven. As a result some of the bread stuck to the bottom resulting in a semi-crumbly mess. But it still tasted good!

As a post cooking snack I used some left over refried beans to make some bean dip. It was about 1/4 cup refried beans with 2 TBSP low fat sour cream, diced grape tomatoes and jalapenos. I ate with some tortilla chips.

I have some leftovers to munch on today after work.

For dinner we made pizza. We used some TJ’s Whole wheat pizza dough, TJ’s pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella, slice orange bell pepper, mushrooms, and black olives.

After all this cooking I was whooped and it was time to get rested up for another week at work.

For lunch I had leftover gumbo.

I thinned it out with a little low sodium chicken broth and chopped up half an smoked chicken andouille sausage link for some flavorful protein. We found out after we made it that we did not use nearly enough shrimp.

And then I finished things of with mini cupcakes and milk. Only 2 more left at the house to finish off (but that doesn’t count the one sitting at the break room at work, hopefully they will get polished off so I don’t have to waste them).

And ever since I got back from lunch the halloween candy stash in the break room has been calling my name. So far I have resisted. Hopefully I can make it another hour!