I started my Thursday off with an hour of swimming in the rain! It was great. I am very sore from my earlier workouts this week, and I was looking forward to swimming. From the tips I got last week in the comments after writing about swimming, I structured the hour rotating kicking with the armboard (don’t know what it’s called), arm strokes with the buoy between my legs, front stroke, and breast stroke. I repeated that series over and over. It was really nice to have a good workout that was not hard on my body, and not be dripping in sweat at the end. Just dripping in pool water. Then I spent 5 minutes in the outdoor jacuzzi watching it rain. A great start to the morning!

Next up–Rachael Ray and food inspirations

I used to be a big fan of Rachael Ray way back in the bad hairdo, bad outfit 30 Minute Meal days. I would watch her at 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. during college, print recipes, and then recreate them in my kitchen. I really learned how to cut properly, put food flavors together, and use normal ingredients by watching her show. I was definitely on the Rachael Ray bandwagon from the start!

Then I taped every single one of her daily talk show episodes, and I was an inaugural subscriber to her magazine . I dog eared pages and added them to my recipe book, and got ideas all along the way to answer “what’s for dinner?” Now I have less time to watch her daily show, but I still use lessons I learned before she became a food brand powerhouse.

I write about Rachael because she was the first Food Network chef I started to watch, and because her menus are simple, easy to replicate, and crowd pleasers. I particularly like her 5 ingredient recipe page in her magazine, and her bottom of the jar recipes from her talk show. Long ingredient recipes are a big turnoff for me!

Anyway, Oats in a Jar recipes are so popular in the food blogging world, and are exactly what RR does for bottom of the jar recipes. Here is a recipe that I created with the last bit from the bottom of a peanut butter jar.

Overnight Bottom of the Jar Oats:

1/3 C Old Fashioned Oats

1/2 C Vanilla Oikos Yogurt

1/3 C Milk

pinch chia seeds

~1T remainder of Maranatha Peanut Butter Jar

Stir above together to get PB off of the bottom, let refrigerate overnight.

Add blueberries in morning

Here’s what I like about this:

You prep the night before

Super portable and no cleanup–no extra bowls for prep like for hot oats

High in protein (milk and yogurt), simple ingredients I always have, good calories for after workout–(~325 for mine), good fats, good carbs

Super tasty with blueberries and refreshing to have cold oats.

I am taking my jar home to clean it out and use again! So many variations you can do. And I can’t wait to do this again with the remainder of my Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter!