Asian Cucumber Salad

If you're looking for a side dish that is perfect for summer, packed with flavor and super refreshing, this is it.  This is a modified (barely) version of a recipe I learned while doing the Beachbody Ultimate Reset (which I highly recommend). It takes all of about 5 mins to prep and is ready to eat right away!

Ingredients:

1 Cucumber, diced

1.5 tbsp Wakame seaweed, rehydrated

2 tbsp Toasted sesame seeds

1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar

2 tbsp Fresh lime juice

Braggs liquid aminos, to taste

Dice up the cucmbers and then add everything together in a bowl and mix. Seriously, it's that easy! The longer it sits the better it tastes, as it has time to soak up the vingear, juice and aminos, but it's really great right away too.  I generally eat it all in one sitting (the above is one serving!). It's the perfect addition to some homemade sushi, or, as you can see below, two eggs over easy and 1/2 a cup of raspberries for breakfast :)

Incredible Zucchini Bread

In my forever attempt to use the insane amount of vegetables we have this summer from the CSA, I found a recipe for a zucchini bread from Danielle Walker at Against All Grain. I did modify it however so below is how I made it.

Ingredients:

2 cups of Almond Flour

2 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Nutmeg

3 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup Sugar

1 ripe Banana

1 cup Shredded Zucchini

So I combined the wet ingredients and sugar in my mixer and mixed until the banana was homogenous.  Add the zucchini and then spices until everything is mixed well.  Finally, I added the flour 1/2 a cup at a time until everything was well mixed.  It's going to be really wet, like completely liquidy, but it works! I didnt have spray to grease my bread pan so I put about 1 tsp of vegetable oil in the pan before I added the batter (which is probably what made the outside of the bread so crispy and delicious.  Finally, add the batter to a bread pan and cook on 350 until a toothpick comes out clean (~35 mins). 

This bread is seriously delicious.  To make it truly paleo you would need to use 1/4 cup of honey instead of sugar, but I didn't have enough honey.  It's slightly sweet, but savory, and perfect for breakfast in my opinion.  Even better is, 1/10th of the bread is only 150 calories! I had two pieces (toasted) and 1/2 cup of raspberries for breakfast this morning!

Now....if you're thinking "paleo baking is gross" (which, in all honesty, it usually is), think again! This bread is so good, I want to eat it all. It's really moist and SO tasty! In order to really convince you (and myself, Josh and Knute) that this was a good recipe, I made a second recipe with "regular" ingredients.  As you can see, I definitely wasn't low on the zucchini department.

Ingredients:

1 cup Flour

2 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Nutmeg

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup Sugar

1/2 cup Butter (softened)

1 cup Shredded Zucchini

I cooked everything the same way as above except I creamed together the eggs, sugar and butter prior to adding the other ingredients.  I also decided to make muffins instead of bread this time.  I'm sure I could adjust the recipe to make them better, but they were a bit dry and just not as tasty as the "paleo" style bread.  I was really impressed. Plus, tweaking the recipe will just make them more unhealthy, so don't fix something that isn't broken, right?!

Creamy Salsa Verde!

One of the things I miss the most from Texas is the incredible Mexican food.  Do you know how hard it is the get a good salsa verde outside of South Texas?! Either way, we got a bunch of tomatillos from the CSA this week and made an awesome salsa verde!

Ingredients:

10-12 Variously sized tomatillos cut in half

1 Jalapeno diced 

1/2 Large onion diced

3 Cloves garlic

1 Avocado

1 Tbsp Olive oil

Salt to taste

Add the tomatillos, jalapeno (seeded to taste), onion, garlic, oil and salt to a large sized ziplock bag and shake.  Lay everything in a single layer on a baking sheet and cook until soft (~20 mins at 350F). Take everything and add to a food processor with the avocado.  Blend until smooth.  Traditionally you would chill it before serving, but we had to try it and it was delicious even hot hahaha.  My only regret is the chips we ate it with werent salty enough :) This makes a TON of salsa.  Probably around 4-5 cups.

Go to Burrito!

This burrito is really delicious, versatile, easy and a great way to get a ton of veggies in one sitting! Plus most the veggies are raw so they have all their great vitamins!

There are so many ways you can alter this meal but here's the basics:

Ingredients:

Basic flour tortilla (larger than a taco, smaller than a burrito size)

1/4 cup Hummus

1/4-1/2 cup seasoned black beans rinsed

1/4 Sauteed onions (I really dont like them raw)

1/2 cup Sliced peppers (any variety)

1/2 cup Lettuce

Salt to taste

All you have to do is throw them on and eat! The only thing I do extra is cook the tortilla on a pan until it's crunchy.  Today I actually had this for lunch except that it had hummus, tomatoes, lettuce, kale, basil, red cabbage and cucumbers.  I would have added some avocado but I forgot! oops.  I love the crunch of the veggies and you can stuff so many in there that it seems like you are eating so much food! It's really filling too because of the hummus and black beans.

Too many veggies!!!

Joining a CSA was one of the best google induced ideas I've ever had.  Check out this weeks lot!

....and you can't forget the left overs from subsequent weeks....

Needless to say, we had a crap ton of vegetables.  Since these are fresh and don't contain preservatives, they only stay good for about a week (depending on the veggie).  So I had to be creative and do something with them all!. Now, I didn't come up with these things myself.  As part of the CSA, we get a cheaper price when we pledge "sweat equity".  What that means is, we pay less money, but go to the farm for a minimum of 3 hours to help out.  We harvest, plant, weed, etc.  Basically anything the farmer needs that day.  It's really REALLY awesome! Very cool to see where the food is coming from, and a total learning experience in the art of farming for this city-born girl. That being said, I got most of these ideas from the people in the CSA.  We decided to blanch the rest of the greens we had (different kinds of kale and chard).  What that means is you cut the leaves off the stem and boil them for about 1 min. Then you plunge them in and ice bath, dry them off and they are ready to be frozen! Voila, veggie stores for winter soups! We also did this with our purple beans.  We had so many beans.....

Then we had tons and TONS of basil.  The obvious choice? Pesto!

Pesto is so easy to make (and so delicious) it's ridiculous.  Here's how I did it:

Ingredients

2 cups basil

2-3 cloves garlic

1/4 cup walnuts (traditionally you use pine nuts, but they are insanely expensive)

1/2 cup EVOO

Salt 

Basically, put it all in a food processor and blend until smooth! I also salt to taste after everything has been blended.  This stores great in the fridge or freezer and makes about 1 cup.  Later today I am going to make Thai pesto spring rolls with it...yummmmm

To the cucumbers.....

We have an insane amount of cucumbers.  Those white things you see in the first picture? Also cucumbers....so we decided to make pickles! I forgot to take a picture of them but I got this recipe for "freezer pickles" from a woman named Marsha at the CSA.  She is clearly a wealth of food storage/use knowledge and I basically follow her around with a pen and pad when I'm supposed to be working on the farm.

"Freezer" Pickles by Marsha

Ingredients:

6 cups medium sliced cucumbers

1 cup white vinegar

2 cups white sugar 

1 tsp pickling salts (or Kosher salt)

1 cup thin sliced onions

Take the onions and cucumbers and throw them into a gallon sized ziploc bag.  Put the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and stir until dissolved.  Add the mixture to the bag and seal, getting out as much air as possible.  Let that sit on the counter for 2-3 hours, flipping occasionally so the cucumbers get equal exposure to the vinegar mixture.  Then put them in the freezer! They store pretty much indefinitely, and when you want to eat them just take them out and thaw them.  In retrospect I probably should have aliquoted them into smaller bag so I didn't have to thaw all of them to eat them, but you live and learn! 

Finally, with a little help of a facebook request, I had an idea for some delicious infused water.  I used watermelon, mint (from my garden) and a cucumber.  I dropped some in two of my nalgene bottles, filled it with water and let it sit in my fridge overnight.  It was seriously delicious, I couldn't believe it.  Infused water is THE BEST when you get really bored with drinking tons of water all the time!  This is a small sample I made...

Eat hearty......Winter is coming

Keeping in the theme of "eating more than usual for the triathlon" Knute cooked Josh and I an amazing meal from the Game of thrones cookbook the other day.  I don't know the recipes, and they obviously have a copywrite, so here's a link to the cookbook if you're interested.  I've thumbed through the book and the recipes are amazing.  I'll be buying it eventually.

First on the list was a honeyed wine from across the narrow sea, just like Khalesi would drink... This consisted of a cheap bottle of white zin, about 3 tblsp of honey and some line juice.  Don't they look like queens?

For the meal we had almond crusted trout from House Tully and a Sansa salad with homemade raspberry vinaigrette.  It was incredible!

Finally, we had lemon cakes.  They might be the most incredible baked good I've ever made.  They were really simple to make.  Knute made them but I'm pretty sure they were butter, flour, sugar and lemon zest.  Amazing!

Workout 7/29/14

Leg day....ugh.....

Here is it:

Spinning: 25 mins, intervals at about 80% intensity

Stretch  (5-10 mins depending on what you need)!

Leg workout:

I did three rotations of the below for time

Wall balls with 8lb ball, 15x

(normally I would use 20, but I'm working with a heel injury at the moment)

Single leg wall sits, 1 min total switching every 10 seconds

Tippy toe walking lunges, 20x total

*note combine "tippy toe" video with "walking lunge" video

Burpees, 12x

Finished in 15:27 (with one break that was entirely too long). 

Stretch (same as above stretch)

Workout 7/28/14

One of my biggest flaws in the workout realm (but trust me, there are many) is that I have a really hard time sticking to a particular program for more than, say, a month.  P90x is probably the only thing I've managed to stick with (90 days).  I did pretty well with cross-fit style workouts last year when we had a large group of friends working out together, but everyone had to go and get injured or move away on me. It also different everyday, so that definitely helped. I quit insanity after about 3 weeks (of hell) and am constantly trying to mix it up to avoid boredom.  I know programming is one of the most important things in terms of seeing results but I figure if I get bored I'm going to stop, so as long as I kill myself every day I'll see something, and something is better than quitting.

Right now most of my focus is training for the sprint triathlon I have on Sunday.  The problem with triathlons is you have to do a lot of cardio workouts, and I hate cardio.  SO I've basically spent the entire time trying to avoid cardio while Josh and Knute chased me around yelling at me.  Regardless, I figured 6 days before was a good time to get in the pool (and was forced to bike by josh).  I refuse to not life (because it's my favorite), so I did some of that too.  Josh recently listened to an audiobook about working out, so we have been trying to follow this guys method and training for a little bit.  I think im on week 4 now (big deal, I know) and have definitely seen some gains in strength.  Either way, it was the last day of the cycle (which I'll explain below). So here's what I did:

Workout

Swim - 25 minutes:

2 warm up laps

Stretch

25 mins uninterrupted free-style swimming (I swam 1,100m for reference, i.e. 21 laps)

2 cool down laps

Stretch

Arms:

Bicep Curls - 45lbs (bar), 8-10 reps (x3)

Tricep Extensions - 15lbs (dumbbell), 8-10 reps (x3)

Forearm Curls - 10lbs (dumbbell), 8-10 reps (x3)

*I did the same thing as in the video, just with dumbbells alternating arms

Tricep Pulldowns - weight #7 on the machine, 8-10 reps (x3)

*I used a straight bar, but it doesn't matter. This guy's a lot nicer to look at than mutant forearm curl man huh?

*weights are reflective of what I used. The goal should be to use the heaviest weight so you can get out these 8-10 reps, but your last rep should be almost impossible.

Spin - 15 minutes:

The first ~5 miles of my bike is uphill so I have been training with a lot of constant hills (resistance on a spin bike).  I biked as long as Josh did his ab workout, so the time was relatively arbitrary.  

Admittedly, that was a weird workout.  Not near the normal, but good nonetheless. As for this program we are doing, if goes like this:

Day 1 - Legs and abs

Day 2 - Chest

Day 3 - Back and abs

Day 4 - Off

Day 5 - Shoulders

Day 6 - Arms and abs

Day 7 - Off

I usually workout 6 days a week, so I have just been doing cardio or abs on one of the off days (or something as simple as just riding my bike to school).  

A Day in the Life

Many people in my life ask me what I eat on a daily basis.  My eating habits are pretty good, of course I slip every now and then because I'm human, but they didn't happen over night. I've been conscious of what I put into my body for well over ten years now. I'd say they have been the most refined in the last 2-3 years, but like anything that is worth doing, they are a constant work in progress.  Although most of my posts will be individual meals I eat, I'll post daily menus every once in a while so you can get an idea of my days as a whole. I will also preface these posts by saying I've been having a really hard time staying on track these last few weeks with eating well all day long. It's so hard to not eat all the food when I get home from work! Also, I've been intaking a few more calories and carbs than I usually would because I have my first triathlon coming up on Sunday, woohoo!! Anyway, here it is:

Breakfast

I usually try to stay away from large amounts of dairy at any one sitting because it tends to mess with my stomach.  I've done a bunch of "exclusion" diets over the years to try to get a better idea of what works for my system and what doesnt, dairy is in the "doesn't" column. BUT I've been really in the mood for yogurt recently, so this week I decided that was going to be my breakfast.  I usually go for the non-fat (one of the only times I will get something this processed), organic plain yogurt by Stonyfield.  It's delicious and reasonably priced for organic yogurt (usually $2.99-$3.49), but I went with non-fat plain greek yogurt this week for the extra calories and protein (triathlon, serious workouts). I try to get as many fruits, veggies and other good things for you into my breakfasts, I feel like it's a good way to start the day, so this is how it went: 

The supplies:

Oops, forgot the cereal

So whats the most important part of a healthy lifestyle and/or losing weight? In my opinion, it's portion control.  With that being said, MEASURE YOUR FOOD PEOPLE. It's key to everything.  A giant pain in the ass? Yes. Are you constantly washing measuring equipment? Yes.  But buy two sets of everything and get over it.  Most of the time things can just be rinsed out anyway.  Ok so here's what went into my yogurt:

Ingredients:

1 cup non-fat plain greek yogurt

1/4 cup crispy cocoa rice

1/2 blueberries

1/2 strawberries

1 tbsp ground flax seed 

*If the fruit and cereal aren't enough sugar for you, add 1 tsp honey, but i didn't use it here. The honey pictured about was used as a sweetener for my coffee. I take it black with 1 tsp of honey (again, real food, no processed sugars or artificial sweeteners)

What did it look like? Deliciousness.  Looks like a bowl of mess, but pretty darn tasty looking when it's mixed up. Even Zoox was begging for a bite (which he didn't get). Approximately 355 calories.

Lunch

Just ate it and it was delicious. Excellent concoction if you ask me. Josh and I joined a CSA (http://thornapplecsa.com/) this year so we have  A LOT of veggies we have to be creative with.  It's supposed to be enough for a family of four for a week! Anyway, here ya go: 

Ingredients:

2 slices of any kind of whole grain bread (the above is flax and fiber bread from Kroger)

About 1/2 of a cumcumber, sliced (the above are some kind of white cucumber species)

1 "slice" original swiss laughing cow cheese (stray from my usual "real foods")

1/4 small avocado

Handful of fresh basil

2-3 pieces lettuce of choice 

Directions are pretty simple, toast the bread, put it all together, BAM. 

Deliciousness coming in at approximately 405 calories

WATER CHECK!

Alright everyone, in the words of the ever genius Tony Horton, drink your water people!!! Besides coffee, and the occasional beer, all I drink is water.  At this point in the day (1pm) I've had 5 glasses of water (1 glass = 8oz).  This is pretty typical, but some days it's less and others more. I have an original nalgene bottle that I use to drink water in at my desk. It holds about 4.5 glasses of water in it.  Drinking lots of water is good for your skin, hair, organs, LIFE. So do it. Plus it makes you get off your butt and walk to the water cooler (and bathroom 8,000 times a day if you're like me).  Although I've read that it's not good to drink while you are eating (it dilutes your digestive enzymes and decreases optimal digestion and uptake of vitamins and nutrients!!), it's good to drink at least 8oz of water 30 mins before you are going to eat.  A lot of the times I think I'm hungry when I am just thirsty.  If I drink a bunch of water before I eat I end up hydrating, find that I'm not actually that hungry, and over eat less often! 

Snack:

I usually leave work at 5 and go straight to the gym so there's no way I cant eat before I workout.  My snacks alternate, but nine times out of ten I eat a clif bar. On the menu today is a crunchy peanut butter bar coming in at 250 calories. I say every week that I'm going to make my own protein bars to decrease sugars and preservatives but I've only gotten around to it once..... oops.  I usually eat this between 3 and 5 depending on (1) how hungry I am from lunch, (2) what time I'm planning to workout because I like to give myself an hour to digest and (3) how busy I was in the afternoon!

UPDATE: So I had quite a few snacks today. In addition to the bar I had some peanuts (~100 calories worth) and this crazy korean rice snack I got from the asian market (buying supplies for some spring rolls coming soon....). They were lightly sweetened rice puffs basically, but they were chewy. It was strange.  The entire package was 110 calories but Josh had a few, so I say I ate about 90 calories worth.

After the gym I usually have a protein shake (1 cup unsweetened plain almond milk and 1 scoop protein powder, 160 calories), today I know I did a little damage with the snack so I has it with water so save a little. Finally, I had some frozen watermelon after dinner, technically a snack (50 calories)

Dinner:

I didn't get the chance to actually make myself dinner until around 9 :( so needless to day it was nothing spectacular, but it was tasty

Ingredients:

2 large eggs

1/2 cup mushrooms

1/2 cup yellow squash

2 full leaves dinosaur kale

5-6 fresh basil leaves

1/2 oz blue cheese

1 tsp olive oil

Garlic salt to taste

I sauteed the hard veggies in the oil and garlic salt, when they were about done I added the basil and kale (which I ripped into smaller pieces) and covered for 1 min or so to "steam" then I added the eggs.  I usually let that cook for a little bit until the eggs are just about cooked through.  Then I added the blue cheese and mixed everything together.  It's supposed to be scrambled eggs of sorts but in all honesty I don't like to make another dish by scrambling the eggs in a bowl/cup so I do it in the pan.  I like the break the yolks at the last minute because I get some less cooked yolk and it's delicious. For being so last minute (and low calorie, ~250), I enjoyed it, and I'd say someone else really wanted a chance to as well....

So that's it, for the most part.  I drank about 10 glasses of water (80 oz). I would like to have drank more but that's the daily recommended intake for women so I'm ok with that. Plus the watermelon helps with hydration. My total calorie intake comes in around 1,631 and adjusted with the ~398 calories I burned during my workout, I netted approximately 1,233.  Not too shabby.  I usually aim for 1,200-1,300 if I'm trying to actively lose weight, but with the tri coming up I'm not too concerned! WOD (workout of the day) post to come soon.....

The squashburglar!

We got home from the gym around 7:30 and I was absolutely starving. There was no way I was cooking anything extravagant so this is what it ended up being:

Ingredients: 

4 oz 20% fat ground beef

1 tomato

1 yellow summer squash

4 pieces dinosaur kale 

A little less than 1 oz crumbled blue cheese 

1 cheddar hamburger bun

Franks red hot sauce 

Heinz ketchup 

1 teaspoon coconut oil 

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce 

Garlic salt

Ground red pepper 

How to get it done: so the ingredients are for one burger, we made 4 originally, but I'll explain it for one serving. First, take the raw meat and mix it with the worcestershire sauce, hot sauce and garlic salt to taste. Form patties. Slice the squash into two slices and sauté with coconut oil, garlic salt and red pepper over a medium-high heat. When it is just about done (soft inside but crisp outside), put the buns in the toaster oven on medium and put the meat on the same pan. Cook burgers 3-5 minutes each side depending on your preference (OR based on your primal instincts, according to josh). Add the kale (separated from the stalks) to the pan to sauté it about 2 mins and add the blue cheese on top of the burger to melt. When the burger is done, layer ingredients on the bun and add some hot sauce and ketchup. Voila, deliciousness! 

Of course this could have been way healthier.  Use ground turkey instead of beef, or use a leaner ground beef.  The meat was left over from a BBQ we had a ways back though, so I took what I could get.  I'm also a big proponent of eating real food, so no low fat cheese or bread for this gal. But according to my estimations, and a little help from MyFitnessPal, this burger was 581 calories. A little out of my typical calorie meal range, but hell, it was delicious and I had a good workout!

PS: We had frozen watermelon for dessert and it was awesome.