holiday weekend = detox
I am not a big fan of of over indulging then feeling the need to detox, but I have over, over indulged this weekend, so I am looking forward to healthier fare. My brother-in-law and his lovely fiance were in town this weekend. We did a day trip to Seattle and I tried a famous crab roll and chowder while there. They were pretty dang awesome. Side note: these are not both mine- I shared.
Group Shot:
Somehow those were the only eats I managed to photograph until Monday later in the day. Something tells me I was too caught up in the actual consuming of said eats to stop and capture the moment.
On Monday, after family left, the husband, pug and I took a drive out to Hagg lake.
This picture cracks me up. Burt the co-pilot.
Upon our return, we decided that we were not ready to be healthy, so pizza was ordered:
a tiny amount of veggies were also consumed
and several bites of hemp milk ice cream were devoured (no photo).
I usually have Greek yogurt in some form everyday. However, he did not make an appearance in my eats for three whole days! The horror! I was craving the Greek this AM.
Fage 2% Greek yogurt + canned pumpkin+ground flax seed+ stevia+ homemade granola = one helluva breakfast
And with that, I am off.
Happy Tuesday!
breakfast from a box
I frustrate myself. I made all of these homemade goodies on Sunday to eat for the week for breakfast and all I could think about all week was how bad I wanted frozen waffles with peanut butter and banana. So last night, I picked up some frozen waffles. I am a sucker.
Breakfast this AM:
He did not disappoint.
followed by coffee w/ coconut creamer.
So I give in to cravings. I am cool with that, but I am not cool with the amount of snacking I am doing as of late. Lately, while I am preparing anything, I start munching on everything, so I am bringing one rule into my eating: NO EATING WHILE STANDING. To chew I must be sitting.
On a completely unrelated note, since we have moved into to our house, I hate cleaning. I think because there are more nooks and crannies to get after. Our apartment was so straight forward. I feel like it will take me days and nights to get our whole house clean. Keep in mind our entire house is under 1500 square feet and I am a neat nick, so I am being extremely dramatic. However, I think the power of overwhelm has me by the neck. I think I just made that saying up. Wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway, the more I have to do, the less I want to do it. This does not make sense. To get through this debacle, I am telling myself that I only need to do 1 hour and we’ll see where it takes me. I am so sneaky.
Now that I have confessed my sins, I am off to clean our abode like a mad woman. Hopefully.
I hope everybody has superb and sunny holiday weekend!
Happy Friday!
kitchen domination
I had my first kitchen domination in our new abode. This was the first time I have put this oven to use and I almost burned the house down in doing so. Apparently, the drawer below the oven heats up at the same rate as the oven (I have never had an oven do this before) and a paper instruction manual resided in this very drawer. We are down an instruction manual and the house smelled lovely for a good 2-3 hours, but other than that all went swimmingly.
After bathing the fruits and veggies, I began the domination:
I have been craving granola lately, but I did not want to pay $8 for a bag of it and the gluten-free oats were on sale for $4.50, so homemade granola became my first domination task.
Easy, peasy gluten-free granola:
The Goods:
- 3c gluten-free granola
- 1/3c raw honey (melted)
- 1/3c coconut oil (melted)
- 3/4c raw walnuts
- 3/4c raw cashews
- 1/2c raw pecans
- 2T ground flaxseeds
- 20-25 liquid stevia
- 1/4t sea salt
- 1t cinnamon
- 1/2t nutmeg
- dash of ground cloves
- 2T pumpkin puree (you can leave this out)
How to:
- pre-heat oven to 300 (don’t burn your house down)
- combine all ingredients in medium size bowl
- put mixed medley on a parchment lined baking sheet
- bake for 15-20 min stirring every 5 min
After the granola was completed I moved on to baking some brown bread
I have made a version of this bread before and posted it in skinspot’s newsletter and I also made it in muffin form. However, this fella was a little different than both of those.
I bring you grain-free, spice bread. This bread does not look the prettiest, but I assure you he is delish. I adapted the recipe from this recipe at Eat the Cookie.
The Goods:
- 2c (packed) almond flour
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 spiced hemp protein powder (you could also use any vanilla or regular flavored protein powder)
- 1c pumpkin puree
- 1/4c molasses
- 1/4 c maple syrup
- approx 20 drops of liquid stevia
- 1/2t baking soda
- 1t cinnamon
- 1/2t nutmeg
- 1/4t ground cloves
- 1/2t sea salt
How To:
- pre-heat oven to 350
- line 9×5 loaf pan w/ parchment paper or grease w/ coco oil
- combine all ingredients in medium size bowl
- pour medley into loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes
I enjoyed a slice of this delight this morning for breakfast alongside a little coconut yogurt and berries.
This bread is awesome. It is like good-for-you cake.
After the bread was done, I tried my hand at making raw date balls.
Sadly, these were a fail. They taste pretty good, but they are hideous and really sticky. I will modify and post a recipe for them someday.
I decided that I was donezo with the sweets and moved on to steaming all of the veggies, so we could have veggies on hand for a few days;
And that concludes this week’s kitchen domination.
On a different note, every Tuesday for the past three Tuesdays, I have had the pleasure of having Abby White kick my fanny. Abby is the personal trainer, yoga instructor and holistic health coach over at Bliss Holistic Health. I cannot express what a great inspiration Abby is. First of all, she looks amazing, so she definitely walks her talk, but more importantly her breadth of knowledge on fitness and nutrition is unreal. If you live in Portland, I highly recommend working with Abby. She is shaking up my fitness routine and I couldn’t be more tickled about it.
In other thrilling news, we got a patio set. Woot! However, we are back to traditional Portland weather, so it may be a few days before we get to enjoy ‘er.
I am off to walk the pug.
Happy Monday!
summer lovin’
technically it is not summer yet, but it feels like it. We had blue skies and 80 degree temps this past weekend and we are set to enjoy several more days of this bliss. Given the rain that we usually experience this time of year, I am beside myself with glee.
Saturday started out with left over sprouted quinoa, berries, peanut butter and raw protein powder.
I am not sure how I feel about this protein powder. So far, I don’t love it in smoothies or oatmeal/ quinoa. Perhaps it will be a good protein powder to bake with?
After a quick gym sesh, I came home to do computer work in the sun.
Please ignore my pasty limbs
Burt also got his sun on:
On Sunday we had breakfast at a new coffee shop (however, I forgot my camera, so no photos), I got back on my bike for the first time in a looooong time and I discovered that I actually really like riding outside. I would imagine part of this love affair had to with the weather. After our mini bike ride we got to tackling our house, we cleaned, hung a few pictures, worked on the yard (well, Keith worked on the yard), hit up the grocery store, then made our first grill out feast in our new back yard. Woot!
We are still sans patio furniture, so camping chairs and a side table became our dining material
I dined on this medley of homemade cole slaw, kale, grilled veggies and there is a buffalo burger patty underneath there some where. I made this miso tahini dressing for the kale portion and it was amaze.
I also enjoyed half of sir sweet potato
My dining partner:
My other dining partner
I went inside to grab my dessert and this is what I came out to
I need to take a moment to touch on dessert.
I finally purchased Jordan almonds and cinnamon bears. There is a little bulk candy section at the Grocery store we frequent and every time I pass it, I dream of indulging. I am so glad I did. These nuggets of naughty really hit the spot. This may not be the healthiest of choices, but it was exactly what I was craving, so I only needed a few to satisfy me.
And with that, I am off to walk the pug.
Happy Monday!
today is a good day
I am breakfast obsessed. I really do not care how the rest of the day goes as long as I enjoy my breakfast. That is not entirely true, but it is not that far off either.
I have been lovin’ on the “oatmeal” minus the oats, but it does take a while to make, so I save this gem for weekends. I usually do overnight oats because they are quick and filling, but I forgot to prepare them last night, so I busted out the 2% Fage Greek Yogurt (appro 3/4C) with berries, a sprinkling of Nature’s Path Organic Heritage O’s and a few drops of liquid stevia. Fast, Filling and superb! Today is a good day.
Just wait: the day got better. We are out of coffee, so I was forced to get a cup of coffee from the cafe Compote that is a stone’s throw away from our abode. I could just eat this cafe up. I adore everything about it especially their coffee. Their coffee is pricey, but it is so dang tasty and strong!
With all of that caffeine running through ma veins I decided to hit up the gym. When I got to the gym, I discovered that I had put new toons on my playlist. Hot damn! Today is a good day!
48-52 are the newbies. Heaven to Betsy, Back In Time by Pitbull is a gooooood one. I suggest adding this immediately if you would like to sweat profusely. After 10 minutes on the elliptical, 20 minutes of interval sprints on the treadmill, 20 minutes of upper body weight training, and a stretch sesh in the sauna, I called it and felt like a million bucks.
Good breakfast and a good session are the makings of a good day!
side note:
Calling all Portlanders: if you are looking for a brief motivation/ education on how to clean up your diet, get your fanny over to Aleda fitness on Tuesday (May 15th) for our Sugar Buster’s workshop. The workshop begins at 6:30 and runs for one hour. There is a $10 mini fee. If you need more details please contact myself or Aleda.
I hope today is a good day for you! Happy Thursday!
what a difference a week makes
Praise be to Pete the move is over and Burt is healthy as a horse
The first area I tackled was the kitchen.
Day 1:
My obsession with bowls is a little out of hand
Day 2: I finally transferred all of the legumes, grains, flours, and sugars into Mason Jars. My clothes and toiletries had yet to be unpacked, but my grains were organized. This is seriously my favorite part of the whole house. I am a weird duck.
Big fan of our bath tub size sink too:
My fixation has also become the oodles of cords we have collected. I want to get rid of them, but what if they go to something important. How the heck do we have so many damn cords!
After stewing over the plethora of cords, I moved on to unpacking the office:
The living room and bathroom also got some love:
We still have pictures to hang and one room to unpack, but the annoying stuff is behind us. I cannot believe how much I hate moving. Good thing we won’t be doing it for a loooong time.
On a different note: I made the most amazing breakfast this AM. “Oatmeal” minus the oats.
I have seen this recipe on the blog Carrots-N-Cake a lot and I have always wanted to try it, but it always seemed too labor intensive for breakfast. I got a wild hair up my fanny today and decided to give it a whirl. I am thrilled that I did so. This delight was worth all of the blood, sweat and tears and I am going to be full for days. I pretty much followed Tina’s recipe except I used pecans instead of walnuts, unsweetened hemp milk instead of almond milk, and I only used 1T of ground flax. I topped w/ 1.5T of peanut butter. I am obsessed. Turns out I do love eggs for breakfast. Woot!
I am off to walk the pug because he still refuses to go to bathroom in his new backyard
one lonely yard
Happy Saturday!
