Scoring Summer Workout Clothes at Half Price: $25 Buys a $50 Voucher For Reebok

The summer heat is beating down this week - yesterday it was 90 degrees outside by about 10 a.m. Whew! Even for the early morning classes at my Crossfit box it's right around 70 degrees in the mornings. We have some gigantic fans going during those workouts, but I'm still sweating through my tees and capris.

Right now Groupon has a smashing Fourth of July deal - $25 buys you a $50 voucher good on the Reebok website! This voucher can be used on sale and clearance items, also. Shipping and returns on the Reebok website are free. Vouchers are limited in quantity.

Thanks to Crossfit and a paleo-style diet, I've managed to drop about 30 lbs. since Thanksgiving. So, I can safely say that this is the first summer in ages that I'm up for more breathable workout gear that allows a little more skin to show...like the Reebok long bra top! Some of my Twitter peeps have long vouched for the Reebok long bra tops as a great choice for a no-show midriff because of its extra long body.

I really like this version of their long bra top - it has a cute light blue graphic pop, a breathable v-neck neckline (which also happens to flatter bustier wide-shouldered builds like mine), and a non-racerback v-back, which goes well with the my favorite nonracerback underwire sports bras. There are lots of styles and variations on the long bra tops, including racerbacks, so there is something for everyone.

There's also a ton of Crossfit gear on the Reebok website, including summertime-appropriate workout wear for men and women both! I'm also eyeing the 5" inseam WOD shorts these days.

I just ordered the blue long bra top shown above with my half price Groupon voucher this morning. Here's how I got it deeply discounted.

• Purchase the Groupon voucher for $25.
• Optional: Go to the ebates site and search for "Reebok" in the stores search field. I got 5% cash back posted to my ebates account by clicking to the Reebok store through ebates.
• Load your cart with at least $50 worth of Reebok material. (In my case the long bra top was retail at exactly $50.)
• Redeem your coupon code in the promotion code box in the checkout process (the voucher code is good to use on the Reebok site 24 hrs. after purchase on the Groupon website).

Since my top was an even $50 retail, I paid $25 for the Groupon voucher, plus whatever comes back from the ebates cash back (the cash back amount seems to vary between vendors and on types of promotional deals). Since Reebok long bra tops go for $35 and up on Amazon.com, that's quite a deal!

What workout wardrobe updates are you shopping for this summer?

~

Gluten Free Dairy Free Egg Free Peanut Butter Pie Chocolate Cupcakes

My husband is basically a big kid at heart. When there were rumblings about him wanting a peanut buttery dessert, I thought, who am I to stand in the way of birthday boy's desires? Peanut butter shows up rarely at our house - I usually go with sunbutter instead (a fabulous stand-in, by the way, tastes very, very similar to peanut butter).

Though I frequently use Primal Palate's dark chocolate coconut cake in our celebrations, this is also a gluten free recipe that works really well for cupcakes - we did the same cupcake recipe for my oldest's birthday party earlier this spring. I've noticed that for my oldest daughter, often the big draw of grocery store creations is the bright colors and characters. Though I no longer use the artificially colored frostings that show up on these kinds of birthday cakes and cupcakes, that doesn't stop me from using colorful decorations to punch up the visual excitement factor on an otherwise neutral hued peanut butter chocolate cupcake.

In no way would I consider these cupcakes paleo or especially nutritious - just a very rare gluten free dairy free egg free treat that our whole family (extended nonpaleo family included) thoroughly enjoyed. I originally got the cake recipe from an egg free gluten free mama friend after tasting it at her daughter's party! (This one is my adaptation of the original, shared here with her permission - thanks mucho, A!)

You could make this version below that much more allergen friendly by switching around to another nutbutter or seed butter of your choice, depending on your guests' food allergies or sensitivities.

Wacky Chocolate Cake


Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar (you can play with refined sugar substitutes here, too)
• 1  ½ cups Arrowhead Mills all purpose gluten free flour - this is available at Whole Foods and Wegmans, as well as other grocery stores
  (You can also use King Arthur all purpose gluten free flour, if you also add 1/2 tsp. xanthan gum)
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons melted coconut oil
• 1 tablespoon vinegar (I've used apple cider vinegar and rice vinegar in the past)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup cold water
• 1/2 bag semisweet allergen-appropriate dark chocolate chips of your choice

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Put all dry ingredients in mixing bowl and blend them well, then add oil, vinegar, vanilla and water.

Beat well with mixer until smooth.

Stir in chocolate chips until evenly distributed.

• For 8" round cake: Pour batter into 8" greased pan (square or round).
  Bake 35-40 minutes.
  (You can double the recipe to make an 8" round layer cake.)
  
• For a bundt pan: double recipe and bake 45-60 min.
  
• For cupcakes: Makes one dozen, depending how full they are. Bake at 350 for about 25-30 minutes. If desired, you can fill your cupcake cups halfway, add  ½ tsp. of your peanut butter, and then top with the other half of your batter. That leaves a little peanut buttery bite in the middle.

Peanut Butter Frosting
Can sub sunbutter or nut butter of choice


Ingredients:

1 ½ cups smooth peanut butter, room temperature (if you can, try this with trans fat free natural/organic peanut butter)
½ palm shortening, room temperature
1/4 cup coconut nectar
1/3 cup powdered sugar

Blend all ingredients thoroughly.

Peanut Butter Pie Bonus Decoration: I picked up a 2 pack of Justin's dairy free gluten free organic dark chocolate peanut butter cups and sliced each of the two cups into six little pie-shaped pieces to use as decorative "peanut butter pie" toppers.

What are birthday cakes looking like at your house lately? How are you tinkering with recipes to make them allergen friendly?


~


This post participates in the Life As Mom Creative Birthday Cake Round-Up. Head over there to check out more fun decorating ideas, like the DIY Angry Birds cake! This post is also participating in the Daily Dietribe's Gluten Free Birthday Cake Roundup.

The Summer of GAPS, Water Filtration, and (Hopefully) Retaining My Sanity

Weigh in time. I know how he feels.
Courtesy of the Dutch National Archive on Flickr.

I'm back. Life, as it often happens, got in the way of blogging. The inconveniently late hour of summer sunset has my girls up a lot later these days, so I frequently find myself tucking my youngest in with that last nursing session, only to cross the hallway to brush my teeth and collapse into bed myself, in the hopes of scoring a decent 7 or 8 hours before Crossfit. I also am sitting on quite the backlog of lunchbox pictures to post, once I get my dates and lunchbox numbers straightened out, so stay tuned as those slowly get filled in.

There's been a lot going on during the daytimes, too. As I mentioned in the last post, I recently finished my second ever whole30. It was a successful run - I dropped my body fat 3.58%, which was gaining 4.59 lb. of lean mass while losing 7.59 lb. of fat mass. I'm now at 135.82 lb. of lean mass, while I continue to slowly chip away at my fat mass. I also lost 2.5 inches off my hips and 3/4 of an inch off my waist.

As always, I was so happy to have the commiseration of my fellow Crossfitters this time around. There were similar stories of fat loss and lean mass gained in the other folks doing the whole30 - it truly is a great all-purpose detox/reboot/grounding effort if you're looking to regain your dietary center in terms of viewing food as fuel first.

My husband recently spent last weekend installing a Watts reverse osmosis water filter. Water filtration has always been one of those things that I thought of as "I'll look more into that in a few years..." I was definitely putting it off. I even had a Weston A. Price Foundation oriented friend ask a few months back what I thought of water filtering, and at the time I said that it was too big of a leap for me to take.

Funnily enough, though, we've found ourselves looking at doing the GAPS diet for at least one family member this summer, and that consideration functioned as a major catalyst. If you haven't heard of the GAPS diet, its main premise is healing and sealing the lining of the gut, and promoting the growth of good bacteria while preventing the overgrowth of bad bacteria. It also happens to be a very paleo-friendly approach, based in a refined carb free whole foods diet, and lots of homemade bone broth - at least a little bit served at every meal! But...it is recommended that the broth is made with filtered water. Why is this? Tap water (like ours) often has fluoride and chlorine - the fluoride cited by the government as an addition for general population dental health, and the chlorine being there to begin with to kill pathogens (it's simply never removed after the fact). So, both of these function as bacteria killers, and if you're trying to promote the flourishing of good intestinal bacteria, that unfiltered tap water can get in the way of your efforts. So, those factors considered, we found our motivation about looking into filtered water galvanized. While you can hire a plumber to install this kind of water filter (ours fits under the kitchen sink), you can definitely tackle it as a DIY project, too. In addition to reading through the included installation instructions, my husband also spent a bit of time browsing online DIY forum advice for installation tips. He did a great job! I must say, though we weren't as motivated by taste reasons, the taste difference between our old tap water and the reverse osmosis filtered water is astonishing. I love our deliciously clean-tasting new filtered water!

Have you been motivated to make a major change in your kitchen routine lately? What projects are on your plate for the summer?




This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Shopping Amazon through Primal Kitchen affiliate links supports Primal Kitchen at no additional cost to you, so thank you!! We purchased our water filter of our own volition, with no incentives or discounts from Amazon or the manufacturer.