Month: December 2011

MIRACLE WEIGHT LOSS PILL

YES I FOUND IT!

It seems that most people who want to know “HOW” I’ve lost weight want a simple answer. Something along the lines of – I sat on my couch watching TV, drinking a glass of wine and poof I woke up thinner. The truth of it all is that I found a MIRACLE WEIGHT LOSS PILL and I’m not sharing!

Hahahhahahahahahha YOU WISH, I WISH! But it just ain’t gonna happen that way. Not for you. Not for me. Not for anyone. Not anytime soon either. I’m sure the medical field will find something and someone will prove me wrong but it won’t be the right way and I’m sure there will be consequences that we the people, society don’t know how to deal with if and when that “pill” is developed.

So if there isn’t a “fad” diet or a 2 week solution, what’s the answer? The short answer is hard work and determination. The long answer is hard work and determination with life, will power, struggle, fatigue, sore muscles, kids, money, faith, courage, stamina, fear, want, desire, failing, laughing, crying, smiling, yelling, loss, emergency, sickness, choices, and everything else you can think of MIXED in. I’m not an expert. I’m just a girl that is winging it and researching on her own. Learning from others. Taking advice. Disregarding some advice and using what is best for me.

If you’ve read my “NO EXCUSES” page then you know where I’m coming from and I feel that it’s important to re-iterate the issues every now and then. Some people can DIVE right in and do everything the right way right off the bat. Ernie (boyfriend and the before/after pics you saw in previous posts) did just that. He turned on the switch and BAM he was on track. His thought process is why would I half ass it. You just gotta do.

Other folks can’t do that. It’s too much for their brains/lives to handle. So it’s baby steps for you folks. Don’t say well I can’t go ALL IN so I might as well not try. You gotta try. You may stumble. You may flat out fail. Who cares… just get back up and keep going.

The best analogy I heard that has resonated with me for at least 7 years now is something I heard at Weight Watchers meeting (yes I’ve done WW and it worked and then I failed at it). The WW Rep said to us… If you’re driving down the road and you get a flat tire, do you get out and say OH GEEZ I have a flat. Sucks for me, I guess I’ll slash my other 3 tires because my car is useless now. I’m stuck. UH NO YOU DON’T do that because it’s dumb! You’d be a moron! (ok she didn’t say that but you know where I’m going by now) What you do is YOU FIX THE FLAT. YOU CHANGE THE TIRE but you don’t go destroying the other tires. You keep on.

Same thing applies with whatever lifestyle change you decide to make for the betterment of your body. YES you will have flat tires but you fix the flat and keep going. You don’t just give up and say I quit.

I am choosing to go the PALEO route. It’s working for me, it’s going good. I feel good. I feel GREAT actually not just good. I sleep well, I have energy, and I feel strong. Not roided up strong, but overall health strong. The kind of strong that makes you feel like you can do anything! It’s awesome. Not everyone is willing to give up the grains. It’s ok for now if you aren’t ready but I hope you would do research on why the grains are bad for you. I started out initially but just cutting out processed foods and a lot of sugar. I did great with that, I lost weight and still ate grains. And I feel now that I have evolved from that thought process and moved forward. I’ve had several “bring you down” kind of people tell me “well you know the food pyramid has “grains” on the bottom for a reason?” So you should be eating more grains than anything. WHY? CAUSE THE GOVERNMENT TOLD ME? SO WHAT!?! And ya my whole life I thought they were right… NOW I believe otherwise.

This is an interesting article I read and it’s just one of many. Just like there are articles for the GRAIN there are the opposites. There’s a lot of knowledge out there and it isn’t always correct so you have to do the legwork and sift through the crap. I could be the wrong one but right now I don’t feel wrong.


http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/09/20/on-the-evils-of-wheat-why-it-is-so-addictive-and-how-shunning-it-will-make-you-skinny/

So I dare you… challenge you… to give up grains, legumes and dairy for 30 days! Eat lean meats, veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds. There’s lots of challenges and programs out there and I’m not fancy enough to reward you with free stuff. Just do it for yourself though. If anything just give up the GRAINS… 30 days! If you don’t like it after and only AFTER 30 days then you can go back to your grain eating ways. Roll around in oats, rice and wheat all you want. I’m not here to hold your hand, I’m just here to share my experience. But if my experience can help yours then YAY for everyone 🙂 And let me know. PLEASE share with me if you start saying NO to the Grains!

Ok I’m done now. If you have questions… leave a comment. If you want more, keep on reading this blog, I’m sure I’ll return to the rambling on this subject. It was rest day for me and I felt like rambling. Thanks for coming! Enjoy your day.

Dinner FAIL & BEFORE/AFTER RESULTS

My BIG FAIL for yesterday was not taking out food to cook 😦 How sad was I? I hate when I do that. So I have no poorly photographed dinner shots or dessert shots.

Our evening consisted of watching my oldest do Death By HR Pushups and the other two making up their own WODs which primarily consisted of box (footstool) jumps, pullups, pushups and situps. It was rather hilarious and it never dawned on me to take pictures. So just the memory of my monkeys jumping around is all I have to go on. After weeble wobbling on what to eat where to we go… Can you guess? They have great sweet potato fries…drum roll….. OUTBACK steakhouse. I know I know… it’s not the best BEEF out there and I’m sure they fry up those non organic fries in some horrid oil I shouldn’t be consuming, but it was Ernie’s fault! I blame him 😉 Hahaha, I blame me too… what can I say? I have no excuses.

I know my title says before/after results. I’ll get to those in a minute… Let me recap this mornings WOD.

12/14/11 WOD

I managed to get 10 reps on my last 5+ Press… This is a good sign. I am getting stronger. 🙂 woohooo!

And TABATAS suck just so you know. I thought DL’s would NEVER END!!!!! I’m glad I did 95lbs instead of the RX’d 115. I think I would have died otherwise. I took my time on pushups knowing that I would be too frustrated for DU’s but I still did alright I guess. And then the DUs… I got these, no problem, EXCEPT my rope was in a knot.. How’d that get there? Evil Jump Rope Fairies must have been lurking. So I missed out on my first 20 seconds but I came back the best I could. My best continuous DU effort was put forth today – A whole 26 continuous double unders. Yay ME! I know, I know it sounds like nothing special but believe me for ME it is a good sign!

Key in Dramatic Music…. Ernie started his Crossfit Journey Aug 8th and added Paleo on Aug 15th. He has been dedicated, determined and darn right beast about the whole thing. I am very proud of his progress and his desire to be awesome. Overall he has lost 30lbs and 16 inches! You can see his progress below… He’s a completely different person. Good job 🙂

Ernie Before and After 1


Ernie Before and After 2


Ernie Before and After 3

I AM NOT A RUNNER

I am not a runner NOR do I aspire to be one. I don’t train to “RUN”. I don’t care to run. I don’t take casual runs around my neighborhood or local park to relax or blow off steam. Running is a big ol pain in the ass to me. You get the point, I HOPE!

So when I say I don’t like to run it doesn’t mean I don’t run when requested of me at either iChooseFit bootcamp or CrossFit Boom. I run. I just don’t like it. So Stephanie what are trying to get at? Why do you keep rambling?

Well 9 months ago I took my first ever conditioning type test and I was miserable and felt horrible and hated life. I was a chunk of a girl trying to get through one hell of a workout. Part of the test was a mile run. Yay fun! 1 whole mile and I thought I would die. UPHILL! Well part of the way uphill… it’s called Hamburger Hill and it’s a hill that I have not befriended. In order to make the “mile” we have to run up it twice… EVEN BETTER right? So I ran this MILE in 11:47 in March of this year. Not really horrible but not stellar by any means. This past July I took another conditioning test and low and behold I took off more than 2 minutes off my time. I ran the mile in 9:06! SAY WHAT? Amazeballs! Well, no test today but we timed our mile this morning and believe it or not even more time got shaved off. 8:36 MILE! Are you kidding me? I felt so good about that time you have no idea. 8:36! Yes me, the NON RUNNER who doesn’t train to run. That is the proof in the pudding (proper saying, not sure but it sounded good) that it just takes consistent physical training to get the job done. I know it’s not a 6 min mile or some magical “runner” number but that’s a number I’m damn proud of! Woohooo…. Thank you iChooseFit… Thank you CrossFit BOOM!!

So now I’ve got that out of the way I have more stuff to share! It’s a good day for blogging but maybe blogging overkill. So I’ll keep it short and just put pictures.

For dinner I had some chicken out to cook. Ernie was starving and really didn’t want to wait but I made him wait anyways. My dad took care of the kids dinner so I didn’t have to worry about them starving. Just Ernie but he lived and all was well. So I sauteed up the chicken with some coconut oil and yummo spices. While that was simmering away I made a mad dash to make FRIED RICE out of cauliflower. I kind of sort of followed this recipe from NON NOM PALEO but I didn’t have all the ingredients so I took what I did have and winged it. You can find the recipe at this link: http://nomnompaleo.com/post/3195098303/asian-cauliflower-fried-rice

"RICE", Onions and Carrots

Crispifying the Bacon 🙂

Chicken with Asian Cauliflower Fried Rice

 

Post dinner I decided to make a go for it with a new cookie recipe I found at elana’s pantry … http://www.elanaspantry.com/double-chocolate-mocha-cookies/

I used all the ingredients except for the coffee because I had none. After burning the bottoms of some of the cookies I was upset. But they still tasted ok for having some char on them. The next batch were burn free and delightful! Added bonus: kid approved! So overall another WIN!

Double Chocolate Cookies = GREAT SUCCESS!

 

Double Chocolate Mocha Cookies
2 ¼ cups blanched almond flour
¼ cup cacao powder
2 tablespoons organic decaf coffee, espresso grind
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
½ cup grapeseed oil
½ cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¾ cup dark chocolate chips

  1. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, cacao powder, ground coffee, baking soda and salt
  2. In a smaller bowl, stir together grapeseed oil, agave and vanilla
  3. Stir wet ingredients into dry and then mix in chocolate drops (or chunks)
  4. Drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet
  5. Bake at 350° for 7-8 minutes
  6. Cool and serve
Makes 24 cookies

Monday, Monday, Monday

So I don’t know why it is that when I get two rest days in a row that my whole body just turns into lazybones but all weekend I was lazy bones! I even managed to get 12 hours of continuous sleep!!!! Who would have ever guessed that I was capable of such things 🙂

In complete honesty I wasn’t total lazybones… we went out to support our coach at the ACO competition in Dallas on Saturday. And let me tell you I’m soooo glad I’m still a newbie because it was a beast of a day. After watching a couple hundred athletes just hit these WOD’s full force I was extrememly exhausted. All I did was casually walk around and wish I had more money to buy an event hoody but I was tired from seeing all of them put their max effort on the court and fields. I know those guys and gals were killing it and I have much respect. Maybe next year I’ll be ballsy enough to register!

Grant moving STONES

Here’s a quick pic of Grant beginning his go at the “atlas stones”. He had to move 5 stones ranging from 116lbs to over 250lbs in 2 minutes. He absolutely KILLED it. It was awesome to watch!!!

It was good to hang out with the “box” peeps outside of our typical days at the Boom Box. Overall it ranked as a super fun day 🙂 ACO put on a good event and I can’t wait till next year.

Our WOD for this morning was:

Skill/Strength

DL 5,5,5+

METCON

15 min AMRAP

200m Run

20 sit-ups

I managed to get 6 on my last round of DL’s at 165. I was having a rough morning for lifts but I managed to get it done… barely! And I got a WHOPPING 10 rounds for my metcon…whooo I thought I was going to die, but clearly I did not. It was dreadful on the way in thinking about the runs but post WOD I was glad we did it. It got me moving and I felt like I pushed myself.

SWEET TREATS! Soooooo, I managed to get the lemon bars made. I found them over at Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations. I made the lemon part on Friday evening before Jonas’ orchestra concert (which by the way was pretty good, I was surprised that 7th and 8th graders performed so well!). I didn’t make the “crust” till last night though. I wish I had made it all the same day but next time I will. Here is the link to his site and the recipe I used. 2 out of 3 kids liked it. I think my youngest thought it was too tart. But he didn’t complain. Forgive me for my poor quality pics. I was in a rush on Friday and I spaced out last night.

The ingredients for the Lemon Topping

Finished product before making into bars

http://civilizedcavemancooking.com/grain-free-goodies/lemon-bars/

Servings: 36 1 inch squares
Prep Time: 15 Minutes
Cook Time: 20 Minutes
Cool Time: 2 Hours

Tools you may Need:

Ingredients(Topping):

  • 6 Whole Eggs
  • 1/2 Cup Raw Organic Honey
  • 1/2 Cup Coconut Oil
  • 1 Cup Lemon Juice (8 lemons)
  • Unsweetened Shredded Coconut
Ingredients (Crust):
Process(Topping):
  1. Whisk your eggs, honey, and lemon juice together in a small sauce pan
  2. Place on your stove over medium/high heat and add coconut oil
  3. Stir until coconut oil melts and then continue stirring until the mixture thickens and starts to bubble
  4. Once thick, remove from the heat and place in a bowl in your refrigerator to cool
Process(Crust):
  1. Preheat your oven to 400 Degrees F
  2. Place your almonds and macadamia nuts in a food processor and blend until in small chunks, you do not want a flour consistency, you want little chunks
  3. In a mixing bowl, combine nuts with the honey, melted coconut oil, and eggs and mix well
  4. Grease an 8×12 inch baking pan, I used coconut oil and then spread your nut mixture over the entire pan
  5. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until your crust is done, it will pass the toothpick test
  6. Cool your crust completely before applying your topping
  7. Once your crust is cool, spread your lemon topping over your crust, sprinkle as much unsweetened shredded coconut as you want over the topping, and then return to the refrigerator or freezer, I like mine better frozen
  8. Keep it refrigerated or frozen until you serve it and then return the remaining to the fridge/freezer
  9. Enjoy

WOD-tastic Friday UPDATE!

I do have one picture and it was my early Christmas present! New Inov-8s!!! wooohooo! They are shiny and pretty and I love them… oh ya they feel good too and that is why my WOD today was WOD-tastic! 🙂 Thank you Ernie!

PRETTY INOV-8s

They are brighter in person than the picture lets on. More Aqua in color. Thanks for tuning in on this double post Friday 🙂

WOD-tastic Friday

And a slacker blog day. No photos. No treats. I got nothin for ya today! And I apologize. I figure these things happen so long as I don’t let them happen often, right? Who’s with me on this? Hahaha.

We did go to Outback for dinner. Which is our GO-TO restaurant as of late. If only we had a place that served grass fed steaks! That’s close and not some schamncy fancy place.

We get home, I’m tired and I need to catch up on American Horror Story. Lame excuse I know but I knew I had an early morning and I didn’t want to be up all night. If I haven’t already told you, I get my WODs in at 5 am. M/W/F so it’s early and TV prevailed :/

So let me get to the Boom Box report. We worked on 5RM of Overhead Squat (OHS). This movement/lift takes a lot of flexibility that I still need to build but I’m getting there. Little did I know that today it would feel like my wrists were on FIRE and I had a hard time moving up in weight 😦 Overall I think I could handle the weight but the darn inside of my right wrist was just not having it. So I maxed out only at 60 lbs. I was real sad about that but you have to move on and work on wrist/forearm mobility. I guess.

The MetCon was:

METCON
Team WOD
7 rounds
5 Muscle ups OR 5 chest to bar pullups & 5 bench dips
8 Plyo Push-ups
11 Plyo Air-squats

It was guys vs gals this morning. Melanie and I did pretty good today. It helps that you can have someone finish out the reps for you and we got through our 7 rounds in a little over 8 minutes …. I THINK! I can’t recall. Granted we didn’t do Muscle UPS but we still pushed and worked hard. So Kudos to us 🙂

And that’s all I’ve got folks… This weekend will be one of rest and getting to those treats I’ve been needing to make. Good Luck to our Boom Box Coach at the All Cities Open tomorrow. We’ll be there cheering him on for sure! It’s a beast of a competition so that is why I am not participating. I’m just not a firebreather yet.. hahahah 3 1/2 months in… still a beginner 🙂

Oh and my kid note for the day: I was trying out one of our NEW lara bars, Chocolate Cherry Torte or something like that and it was YUMMO probably cause the chocolate chips had some sugar, ha, ah well. So I expressed that it was tasty and my 12 yr old (Jonas) says “can I have a little of it?” My immediate response was NO sir! And he was all poor poor petri and I said maybe if you’re good Santa will leave some in your stocking… OH that’s right you don’t believe in Santa anymore do you son?” And to his credit he’s become a little more quick witted and responded with “I BELIEVE IN PALEO SANTA!” Are you kidding me! It made me laugh, he will leave him almond milk and a walnut date bar. And straight up carrots for the reindeer! Good times, Good times indeed! Happy Friday people!!!

Whining, Excuses and Spending Money

No workout this morning, ugh… Why you ask? Well I’m just a lazy whiny baby. Last night as I was trying to rush around, I burned my poor little ol fingers with hot oil 😦 I know you you’re all taken aback, ha! I was fryin’ up some sweet potato fries and I accidentally dropped a few as I was trying to nicely place them in the pan and SPLISH SPLASH BURN! And dang did it hurt! I felt like poo the rest of the evening. And this morning when I woke up and my fingers still hurt. I thought to myself … there’s no way I’m going to put on boxing gloves to box it up or do much with my hands still ON FIRE! So I reset my alarm and went back to sleep! When I awoke I realized there some blistering going on and figured I should suck it up and quit crying about it. But I still had to vent here, so thanks for still reading!

Finished dinner .. my apologies for the poorly shot picture :/

Now dinner was easy and simple for the most part. Ernie grilled up some grass fed steak for us. I steamed up some broccoli, fried up some sweet potato fries (I know I should have baked them but they are so much better tasting this way), and baked some kale chips. This was my first attempt at kale chips and my first batch burned cause I’m a forgetful person so it was an instant fail, but my 2nd batch came out quite nice. The kids enjoyed them which surprised me and Ernie said they “tasted green” and gobbled them up. But then he had to wash it down with some “orange” (sweet potato fries). Yes we are an odd bunch but we typically have a good ol’ time. Lots of jokes, rockin out and being silly.

Kale "chips" Ready For The Oven

Sweet Potato Ready To Be Cooked

Yummy Honey Drizzled Sweet Potato Fries

So although I’m still in pain from the burns, I had a mission. MISSION: PALEO LEMON BARS! I had printed out the recipe and I was determined to get out and buy the ingredients we were lacking. So off we went. I need lemons, more honey and unsweetened shredded coconut! Easy enough right? I’m thinking $10, no big deal. Well with Ernie and me out and about shopping I should know better by now.

Next to the lemons was a citrus reamer thing which of course I need. Still no worries. An extra few bucks for an item I don’t have and will use. I’m good. Until we get the the “natural foods” section at Kroger. And what do we find? Lara Bars! So many Lara Bars in all sorts of flavors! We typically buy a pack at Costco but to be honest Apple Pie and Cherry Pie get old after a while and we rarely scout out places for different flavors so like children in a candy shop we start picking out what sounds good! Then we say we’ll just get two of everything that doesn’t have peanuts and we’re good. So we had 10 flavors, 2 of each kind, at $1.49 a pop. We just wanted to throw our money away didn’t we?

Lara Bar Christmas

By the end of our shopping excursion I was done. I was tired, I was in pain and I was ready for bed. So no yummy goodness to report on. Hopefully I’ll make some time tonight but one of my kiddos has an orchestra concert tonight and another one has a concert tomorrow night so I’m not making any promises!

One more thing speaking of kids. They are definitely all jumping on the Paleo ship. Lunches have become exciting as we are wanting to get creative. All 3 boys really seem to want to be inventive. Yesterday Justice (10 yr old) took apple sliders. He said they were awesome and can’t wait for me to buy the “green” apples because he thinks they will be much better! It’s a proud momma moment when your kids are stoked about doing right for their body. 🙂

Zucchini-Getti and Baby It’s Cold Outside

It’s midway through the week and the sun finally came out to show it’s pretty face today! Finally! It was a balmy 25° outside and the box inside was good degree warmer coming in at 38° – WOOOO! So cold and not fun. But at the BOOM Box we warmed up rather quickly.

A little warmer than outside

After our warm up, we followed up with more warm up on the rowers. 3 sets of 250M row to get the blood circulating. We then proceeded to KB thrusters. I’m thinking they were 24lb kettle bells but I honestly have blanked :/ 3 sets of 8. A little tougher than I had anticipated but mission accomplished! All this time I’d been staring at the MetCon on the board wondering what weight I would be doing for the Ground to Overhead (GTOH) and thinking the bar will be cold, and just so many random thoughts. Come to find out the GTOH is with a plate. Wow easy enough I thought! Hehe, I wish I wouldn’t have those “easy” thoughts! It is a shoulder burnout then add HR pushups to that! Woooo, It was a good, quick and intense knock you out kind of workout. As you can see in the picture I finished at 6:49. Not bad. I flew the first 2 rounds, then kind of lost all hope after that. Thankfully we only had to do a “buy-in” 400 m run at the start because the air was chilly outside.

WOD 12/07/11

Zucchini-Getti and Meat Sauce

This isn’t my first time to make this dish but of course now that I’ve begun my blogging adventure I will share with you my meal. I don’t have anyone to give true credit to because I’ve just really looked at pictures and got the general idea. I did read somewhere and I feel bad that I don’t recall where I read it that you should let your zucchini dry out some after you slice it up. So leave it on the counter top for 15-20 minutes or put it in the fridge for a few hours (for me it was overnight). This will make more sense in just a few moments.

Tuesday night I decided I would prep the zucchini. I rinsed off about 8 zucchini’s and cut the ends off of each of them. I then slice them in half. I use a mandolin slicer to make thin strips but I’ve just sliced them thinly as well without the slicer so whichever you prefer.  After you have then strips I cut them into even thinner strips. Depending on preference you could have thin or thick “faux” noodles. As mentioned above, I lay them out to dry. I line a cookie sheet with paper towels and lay the zucchini strips on there and for me it is best to keep them in fridge until I was ready to use them last night.

Slicing the Zuchinni

Slicing thin strips to create the Getti part of the Zucchini

Zucchini-Getti Layed out to dry

We buy grass fed beef and I used a little over 1.5 lbs for this meal. I brown it over medium heat with some salt, pepper and cumin. I don’t have the time or patience to make a “homemade” sauce so I go with what looks good at the store. And not only what looks good but what is CHEAP(er). So I found an organic, natural sauce and I get that warming up. While meat is browning and sauce is simmering, I sauteed up some fresh tomato, garlic and mushrooms that I will add to sauce. Once the beef is good I add the beef and veggies to the pasta sauce and let it simmer all together.

Veggies that will be sauteed and added to sauce

Browing Ground Beef and Heating up Sauce

It’s time to get some olive oil in a pan. I sauteed some chopped up garlic then added the zucchini. I season the zucchini with ground thyme, oregano, salt and pepper. The zucchini softens pretty quickly and only takes a few minutes before it’s ready. So plate, spoon out some sauce and you’re good to go.

Sauteing Up the Zucchini-Getti

Finished Meal - Zucchini-Getti and Meat Sauce

And there ya have it. Here’s a rough list of ingredients:

1.5 lbs grass fed beef

8 zucchini

1 tomato

3 cloves of garlic

2 bottles of organic, natural pasta sauce

1 carton of mushrooms

spices you prefer (I used salt, pepper, cumin, ground thyme, oregano)

 

Paleo Cake Ball FAIL and other fun stuff

Before I get to CAKE BALL FAIL… I’ll discuss my workout this morning… then I’ll move on to last nights cookin’!

It was a windchill of 21° this morning as I drove to bootcamp. Thank goodness we have an indoor option! Although we did have a run that included being in the FREEZING COLD – not fun. Come on now, we’re in TEXAS! I’m not made for the cold! As always boxing is my favorite part of the Tuesday workout. We’re always mixing it up and I feel like I’m getting quicker every week. AJ makes sure to keep me on my toes! In addition to boxing we did a 20 minute AMRAP if you will. There were 8 movments where we had to do 25-50 reps of something and then run with a 20 minute time limit. (pushups, bicep curls, alligator plank, burpees, jack knife dead lifts, star jumps, up/down plank, run) I got through 1 round and 4 movements into the second round! Woohoo. I felt good today. I suppose I got some good sleep 🙂

Now for last night…..So my Paleo Cake Balls were an epic FAIL, my kids including myself were sure we would never erase the taste from our mouths. When you get too much unsweetened chocolate in one large ball it’s pretty disgusting! Although they came out just as pretty looking as any NON PALEO cake balls I have ever made. There will be a round 2, I promise, I just have to find a “good” PALEO frosting to mix with my cake crumbles.

Cake Balls lookin pretty .... TASTE HORRIBLE!

So now that’s off my chest and I admitted my failure, lets move on to the goodness that did pan out last night. PALEO PUMPKIN CREAM CHEESE which I took from PaleoOMG blog http://paleohmygoodness.blogspot.com/2011/10/paleo-pumpkin-cream-chicken-casserole.html

It turned out quite tasty and the family seemed to agree. I feel that I liked it best since I scarfed it down or maybe I was just that hungry.

Paleo Pumpkin Cream Chicken Casserole

Paleo Pumpkin Cream Chicken Casserole Served!

What you need:
1-1.5 lbs chicken breasts, chopped into 1 inch cubes
1 medium sized spaghetti squash cooked and shredded
1 head cauliflower, chopped
1 can pumpkin puree
1/2 can canned coconut milk
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 yellow onion, diced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
salt and pepper, to taste

What you do:
Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
Time to roast our veggggggies! Chop your cauliflower and put it in a baking dish topped with a little bit of olive oil and salt and pepper. Then cut your spaghetti squash in half, use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and extra threads, place face down on a baking pan. Add the cauliflower and spaghetti squash to the oven, side by side if possible, to roast for around 25 minutes. (Depending how big your spaghetti squash is, the cauliflower made roast a little quicker, but mine cooked at the same time) You will know your spaghetti squash is cooked when you can poke the outside skin and it gives a bit.

While the squash and cauliflower are cooking, it’s time to cook up your chicken. Pull out either a LARGE saucepan or a large pot and put under medium-high heat.

Add olive oil to it along with your minced garlic. Once the garlic begins to smell, add your chopped onions and cook until translucent.

Add your chopped chicken to the cooking onions, cover and let steam for around 5 minutes.
Once the chicken is about 2/3 cooked through, add your can of pumpkin, half can of coconut milk, and spices directly to the pan. Mix thoroughly. Taste to see if you need any more spices or salt.

Once your squash and cauliflower is done cooking, and chicken saucey mixture is heated up, de-thread spaghetti squash with a fork, running the fork the opposite way of the threads.

Add your spaghetti squash threads, roasted cauliflower, and chicken saucey mixture to a 9×11 glass baking dish and add dish to the oven under the broiler. Cook for about 5 minutes, getting a little dark on the top.

Remove from oven and let sit for around 10 minutes to help the sauce thicken up. Then EAT! It’s good stuff and rather easy to make.

AFTER I had cleaned up dishes and had my cake ball disaster I decided I would get a jump start on tonight’s prepping and got zucchini all sliced up to cook as my “spaghetti”. It’s just prepped and in the fridge for now

But post prep I had some zucchini ideas, ran it past the kiddos and they were on board so we made tiny zucchini sandwiches! This was quickly packed away into containers for their lunches. They were very excited about them and tried out a couple. There’s one for the WIN column. I hope they enjoy them today at lunch. MY 8 year old says the kids at school think what he eats at lunch is GROSS! Then he procedes to tell me “they have no idea what GOOD food is… raspberries are awesome and my sandwiches are going to be good today! They all eat chips and crackers, and sugar stuff. That’s stuff isn’t good for you” He’s a good kid that Jakob. 🙂

So I’ll leave you with a pic of our little zucchini sandwiches. They have all natural, minimally processed, nitrate free ham, carrot slice and of course zucchini. Have a great Tuesday!

Zucchini Sandwiches for Kids Lunch

 

It’s a Gloomy and Rainy Monday… boooooo!

Saturday funday WOD 12/03/11

Of course it’s weekend recap time! After crashing hard friday night EARLY cause I’m an old fart, I woke up to a very chilly morning. I started the day off right with iChooseFit bootcamp. We were inside most of the time but we had some running and boxing outside in the drizzly dreary morning. Then because I’m super awesome I went home, put dry clothes on and headed out to the Boom Box for the Saturday Funday WOD and HELLO fun shoudn’t be the word for it but more like a beating. As you can see from the picture it was a 10 min AMRAP of insansity! I chose to do the 60 BFB, 20 Front Squats and 10 Ring Rows/10 Ring Dips. I barely got through one round and just for grins got that one burpee in before time was called.

I will tell you I had already done about 60 burpees at iChooseFit, then I had to do another 60 for the WOD!!!??!!! Those burpees were a beating and took up most of the 10 minutes in the WOD. I was spent!

Oh ya, and prior to that we had our 90 sec max rep Hand Release Push Ups! I ousted Coach Grants MOM (she’s a tough one to beat)! She had the wall record for 40 in 90 seconds and I barely scraped by with 43!!!! Woohoooo! I think with better pacing I could have pushed out 45. Maybe next time 🙂

The rest of Saturday consisted of one of my son’s football parties and lots of “rest” the rest of the day. As always Sundays are our shopping days. We gather up all that we need for the week, it just happened to be not as fun because it wouldn’t stop raining/drizzling. I did however buy some items to make for Christmas events for the kids, for work, for parties, etc. I hope to do some trial baking to see if it’s worthy to the NON PALEO folks out there.

My first trial was an almond flour chocolate cake. The batter tasted good so I was hopeful for a great outcome. And low and behold it was pretty tasty, I just overcooked it a tad bit 😦 While I was overcooking my cake I was whipping up a chocolate frosting to mix with the cake because my end goal was to make some paleo cake balls! For the past several years I turn into a cake ball machine in December. Well seeing as that I’ve changed my whole eating lifestyle cake balls just weren’t going to be my thing this year but if I can get this paleo style cake ball going it might be worth if for the holidays! So I used the cake that was still edible and mixed it with my frosting (that may be a little too bitter since the chocolate bar had zero sugar) and rolled out little balls. I set them in the freezer and hopefully tonight I’ll get them dipped in some dark chocolate and get my taste testing on! I’ll let you know how it goes. In the mean while I’ll share my PRE BAKED cake and the recipe. I forgot to do an after picture because I was so sad it was overdone. Trust me it would not have been a pretty picture.

Almond Flour Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Cake (makes about 24 balls)
(From “the Gluten-free Almond Flour cookbook”)

2 cups almond flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup raw honey
2 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla
(I added grapeseed oil because the batter was thick, and to be honest I didn’t measure it out. I’ll modify this when I bake again, but I’d say I did at least 1/3 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease (with coconut oil!) and flour (with almond flour!) an 8 inch cake pan.
Combine the almond flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the honey, eggs and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake completely.

Courtesy of http://paleobrat.blogspot.com/2011/04/paleo-party-with-cake-pop-demo.html

I did not follow their cake ball directions but feel free to try your own thing. Below is the frosting I made that I mixed in with my crumbled up cake.

Chocolate Frosting:
1 cup of dark chocolate. I tried to use 75% cacao or higher, but only had this 60% one laying around, so I used that
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
2 tbs agave nectar
1 tbs vanilla extract
pinch sea salt

Chop dark chocolate up and place into a small saucepan
Pour out half cup of grapeseed oil and mix with chocolate in saucepan
Heat over low heat until melted and blended
Stir in agave, vanilla and salt

Once the chocolate is melted, place in mixing bowl to cool. When it is warm to the touch I put it in fridge to cool more quickly. This still wasn’t quick enough for me so I put in freezer for a little bit as well.

Once chilled, place in mixer and mix on a high speed until its rich, fluffy, and creamy. It will lighten up in color quite a bit and almost have a light buttercream consistency.

Courtesy of: http://www.instructables.com/id/Gluten-Free-Paleo-Friendly-Delicious-Vanilla-Cu/

I have not tried the cupcakes that went with the frosting yet but I’m sure they are yummy.

Once I taste test the cake balls I will be more detailed about making them and show you some pictures. Wish me luck! And if you have any questions or things to add about anything I’ve shared just leave a comment 🙂 Happy Monday