Legally Blinde: Making Banana Pancakes

"Can't you see that it's just rainin'
There ain't no need to go outside"

It's overcast and rainy here today, but my morning was delightful thanks to these delicious banana bread protein pancakes.

I really love the ingredients in these pancakes: 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats, 1/2 banana, 1/4 cup cottage cheese, 1 egg, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. It's basically oatmeal, but in pancake form. Very healthy! I used a blender to mix everything up, which created an awesome texture. I topped my pancakes with syrup (of course I just recently said I didn't think I'd ever go back to syrup, haha), plus the other half of the banana and a couple sprinkles of pumpkin pie spice.

Growing up, my mom rarely made pancakes, but if she did, it was always with Bisquick. Same goes for waffles. I guess that made me think that making pancakes from scratch would be difficult, but it's not at all! I think I could improve my cooking technique, though - I hid a very ugly pancake under the 3 decent-looking ones for picture purposes, haha. My family used to go on vacation with another family, and I'm still in awe of the awesome pancakes that the other mom made - she could pretty much make any animal you wanted. It was so cool! My favorites were a squirrel and a grasshopper - impressive, right? I'm lucky if I can make a decent circle.

I enjoyed my pancakes with lemon water, my vitamins, coffee with cinnamon and almond milk, and read The Girl Who Played with Fire while I ate. It's the first book I've checked out from the library on my Kindle. Normally I prefer reading an actual book, but I decided to ask for a Kindle this past Christmas for practical purposes of being able to easily take it along with me when I'm traveling, or if I have some time to kill on the go. And when I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I went ahead and put both the book and Kindle versions of the 2nd book in the trilogy on hold at the library because I couldn't wait to start reading it!

Also, happy Earth Day! Are you doing anything exciting to celebrate?

I try to be environmentally conscious in my day-to-day life, but there are always more things I could be doing and things I need to improve upon. Something I try to be really diligent about is taking reusable bags to the grocery store with me, and reusable mugs when I get coffee. And something I need to work on is taking shorter showers.

One thing I started doing recently that is kind of environmentally conscious, as well as economical, is making some of my own cleaning supplies.

When I finished up a bottle of store-bought daily shower spray, I decided to mix up my own solution. I followed the instructions here and used 1/2 cup hydrogen peroxide, 1/2 cup rubbing alcohol, 2 teaspoons dishwashing liquid (I used Method brand, which is what I had on hand at the time), 2 teaspoons JetDri, and filled the rest of the bottle up with water. I also added 10 drops of grapefruit essential oil, which is completely optional but I thought it would be a nice touch. It works just as well as the store-bought stuff!

I also just mixed up some all-purpose cleaner. I was inspired by this idea that I originally found on Pinterest. Since I've been drinking a lot of lemon water recently, I had a lot of leftover lemon wedges. So I filled a mason jar with white vinegar (leaving some room at the top to allow for the citrus to be added) and every time I squeezed a lemon into my water, I would put the leftover wedge into the vinegar.

When I couldn't add any more (which took about 2 weeks, I think) I strained out the lemon and added the citrus-infused vinegar to an empty spray bottle. I filled the bottle halfway and left the remaining vinegar in the mason jar to have on hand for another batch.

I filled the other half of the bottle with water, and that's it! I feel better cleaning with this mixture, especially in the kitchen, because it doesn't have any harmful chemicals. (Neither do Method cleaning products, which I love and is what was in this bottle originally, but they're also pricey.) I tried it out on my counters and it works great.

This was my view last night: