Relaxing end

Hey all~

Today turned out to be a pretty relaxing but productive end to my 3 day weekend. Right before going to bed last night I received an invite to a brunch my friend was throwing at 10 am. Just what I needed, the motivation to get going early in the morning.

Which is exactly what I did! I woke at 6:30, had a snack, read for an hour, did 3 loads of laundry, and baked a coffee cake! Originally I was planning on running to the grocery store to pick up fruit, but I would really like to start saving a bit more money and I really need to work on eating through the leftovers currently in the fridge...so after a quick search on the web I came up with Pilsbury's Golden Pineapple Carrot Coffee Cake. I had all the ingredients on hand and since it used juice for most of the moisture it only called for 3 tablespoons of oil. The only change to Pilsbury's recipe was 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of all purpose rather than all, all purpose.

Look how beautiful the wet ingredients come together:

Sprinkled with sugar and peacans on top:

25 minutes later:

While the cake was cooking I also ground up some fresh coffee beans. While in general I would say I'm a tea drinker, since accidently buying whole beans and having to grind them myself, I've been drinking coffee each morning. The flavor is out of this world! Someone should have shared the wonders of fresh beans with me :)

The brunch itself was amazing! My friend did a superb job cooking up eggs benedict and my cake was super moist. I'm pretty sure everyone went back for seconds :)

After brunch I went into lab and stayed until 3:30ish, came home, put away all the laundry, thought about working out but decided to call today a rest day and did some reading and caught up on a few TV shows instead. How did you spend your President's Day?

Have a great week,

Nicole