Dinner

Rest Day Ramblings

It’s my rest day but I wanted to chit chat via blog rambling to myself and to you the readers if I can hold your interest at all.

Simple Dinners!
I’m just guessing but I would think most people have the excuse of I don’t have time to do everything. Therefore the drive thru it is or even some microwavable turd of a dinner. I’m guilty of it too. I have 3 BOYS! I’m guilty less now more than ever but YES I am a guilty party. I’m tired, I’m over it, blah blah blah, Chif-fil-A here I come. Taco Bell it is. (NOTE: I still eat clean unless I testify otherwise but I force my kids to eat like crap sometimes cause I’m being lazy) And just last night I proved to myself that although the fast food can be fast and easy we all know it’s not healthy and it’s just not worth it!

Kids have practice at 6pm so they only have time to get a snack in them like Almond Butter and Apple Slices and then we don’t get home till 8:45ish. It is a circus in our house. But the past couple of nights I have been Johnny on the spot in getting nutritious, clean meals to my kids bellies. And it only takes a little advanced preparation and some random throwing crap good stuff together. On Sunday I made meatloaf for dinner. Instead of one loaf, I made 2. Voila instant protein for Monday night dinner. I didn’t have enough Mashed Cauliflower to go with it but I had zucchini and made Zucchini Latkes. This is quick and easy and gave my kids enough to fill them up. They each had a KIWI for dessert!

Last week I made meat sauce for zucchini pasta and had an overflow so I froze it up and used it for the kids dinner last night. I shredded up more fresh zucchini and sauteed it a bit in some coconut oil along with some salt, pepper and thyme. Added my heated meat sauce and BAM easy dinner. I didn’t have enough zucchini for Ernie and I but I had Kale! I heated up some pork fat in a pan, did a quick sautee of the kale. All the while I had leftover roasted chicken which I heated up in coconut oil along with mushrooms. Added my kale and BOOM a really yummy dinner for Ernie and I.

Yes it was all leftovers but it didn’t taste like leftovers. With some fresh foods added and the leftover food re-created it was all yummy. And took me 20 minutes to knock out each night. It also helps to be creative with spices!

Also know that if you have chicken to cook but don’t want to bake it FOREVER then just cut it up and sautee it. It cooks in a fraction of the time as baking it or grilling it does. Just don’t over cook it! Add some veggies on the side and you’ll be rockin and a rollin.

Just Do It ALREADY!
In addition to finding simple meals YOU need to start moving. I may scare some of y’all with all the CrossFit terms and the extra workouts but it’s not a scary world out there. I watch Chris Powell’s Extreme Makeover: Weightloss Edition, and if you’ve seen it you know how it goes. He picks a desperate truly OBESE person to help out over the course of a year. He has the same opening routine for them all. He puts them through a FIGHT or FLIGHT workout.

If you’ve never worked out then the stuff he puts them through will hurt. Hell it will hurt those that moderately work out. Picking up weights heavier than 10lbs is gonna hurt. But your body will do so much more than your brain will tell you that you can do. And he shows that person that they will live through it even if they think that they can not. He works with these people on their levels and helps them push through mental and physical barriers for 3 months. He is not always nice but deep down these people know they need the tough love. Then he leaves them to their own where they have to do it on their own for the rest of the year. He checks in on them but he doesn’t have that daily interaction. Some struggle more than others but they all learn and grow.

We all aren’t so morbidly obese as the folks on the show are and we don’t all have that person in our face, in our home and in our lives so we have to take it upon ourselves to do it. And for most of us even if we did have someone telling us what to do we probably wouldn’t listen. Hell so many people ask me HOW I DO IT, or WHY I DO IT and it appears I amp someone up but then I see them in the same ol’ routines or even worse. I can’t make anyone take it on. It takes YOU and only YOU to make the change. I didn’t start out without a support system. I was doing my best to eat right, get up and workout daily and there Ernie was stuffing his face with Sonic, Chic-Fil-A, Braums, etc. It sucked. I smelled all this yummy badness but had to persevere on my own for my own good. I was thinking about my future and my health. A few months later Ernie did come on board and blew my “GOOD HEALTH” out of the water with this Paleo nonsense! I then followed suit and we make a good PALEO team (for the most part).

It’s awesome if you have a support system but not everyone does so you have to make a support system for yourself. Plan rewards for yourself; make new friends with the same goals; write your own blog (wink wink), find a fitness forum; find an online buddy if you need to do so. JUST START DOING IT ALREADY. Don’t let that wedding or upcoming birthday party delay your start. Start now and deal with whatever upcoming social event when you get to it. It’s not going hurt you to start a path to good health.

But Stephanie I’m happy with myself just the way I am! I’m no expert but I find it rare that someone who says they “could/should” lose weight but don’t “care” because they are “happy” just the way they are lying to themselves and everyone else. Also those who aren’t in need of weight loss but are in need of good health saying they are slender already, I’ll be fine, but will you? You may be a kind caring soul with a happy heart but physically are you happy. So I’m talking to all walks of life from the anorexic to the overweight, to the addicts or to the uneducated. Being overweight (unless a real health concern like thyroid issues) is just as much a sickness as anorexia or even addiction to drugs and alcohol. If you saw a frail disappearing girl that’s starving herself to death you might judge her quicker than you would judge someone who is 50lbs overweight. WHY? I have no idea but our society tends to accept that someone who is overweight doesn’t have similar types of body issues as those are wasting away. People with addiction to food, or alcohol or whatever all are similar in some regard. Again I’m no Dr., nor do I claim to be. I just take in what I see, what I grew up with, what I learn and where I see our society going and take it all in. Yes I am making my own assessments but it doesn’t take a super genius to figure it out. We can see that kids are bigger than EVER and more and more people are diagnosed with disease and more and more pills are being shelled out to FIX all these “bad” things that are suddenly plaguing us. It’s the quick fix. It’s the drive through, the magic microwave, the boxed food with all those chemicals and then we top it off with a cocktail of prescription medications to lower all the bad things that are elevated! Are you kidding me people?

Do you break a sweat walking 100 yards? Does it hurt to get out of bed in the morning? Do you have constant health issues? Migraines, High Blood Pressure, Joint Pain, etc? I’m telling you it’s about food intake, exercise and proper sleep. You can still enjoy life. Eating clean isn’t a death sentence. Feeling GOOD is a future. Getting endorphins flowing from exercise is a new way to happiness – A way better happiness than from getting high off of eating really tasty “bad” food that in the end always leaves you down in the dumps.

No I don’t look like this girl, not even close. I don’t know with my age, shape, etc that I could ever look like her BUT I feel pretty awesome none the less! I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, STRONGER than I’ve ever been and I feel great 99% of the time. The other 1% is girly moments, really sore muscle moments and the occasional STREP THROAT infection that I hope never happens again!

Last Night’s Outdoor WOD
Whew, my ramble took it’s own path. So let me close with my evening fun from last night. DEATH by 10 METERS! The DEATH part sounds scary but the 10m well, it doesn’t sound harsh but it gets ya. I had my youngest help me out with the clock since he didn’t have practice last night. He’s a very encouraging kiddo and even though I’m sucking wind and wanting to pass out, he’s totally telling me I’m doing good and getting faster and just being the best. If you don’t know what Death BY anything means then I’m here to tell you. My apologies to those of you who know and have read it 89787687 times. You start your clock and run 10m for the first minute. On the next minute you run 10m x 2. The next minute 10m x 3 and so forth. You keep adding 10m each minute until you can not fit the amount in the 1 minute. So if you are on your 13th round but it takes you longer than 1 minute to complete your score would be 12. Because the last minute you completed was 12. And the 13th round was just bonus work. (You can do this with any movement like squats, burpees, push ups, pull ups, etc.)

It’s such a short distance and it does get old and little bit of dizzy inducing. But it’s not easy! I completed 14 rounds and was so close to 15 but just didn’t have anything in me. Including my not completed 15th round, I sprinted 1190m! It adds up fast.

After some rest and water, I ended up throwing the football around. It’s not intense work but I was still on my feet moving. It was a good evening!

Have you had enough of me already? Or did I spark a fire from within? Either way, I got some of what I feel/think out. I get lost in my own thoughts as you can probably tell just from reading. It’s hard to communicate it all at once but rather than go crazy every post I save it for ever couple of weeks/months. I’ll be back to the regular scheduled programming tomorrow. Have an AWESOME day!

TGIF For Real! It’s been a LONG WEEK!

Finally made it to Friday! I wasn’t sure that I would but alas it is here. I totally lied about not making dinner last night. I had to drop some stuff off at a friends house and they don’t live far from Whole Foods. I got to swing by and pick up some fresh beef and bacon before I headed home. Yay for me!

But first let me talk about today’s WOD. I really had a hard time getting up this morning. I typically wake up on my short drive but this morning was HARD. I was dragging bad! We dedicated some time to practicing Muscle Ups. I know I shouldn’t say I won’t ever get them but dang it FEELS like I will never get to that point. It seems like it should be so easy. And they look like fun. I just don’t have it. That’s all there is to be said. It’s definitely a goal though. How will I ever compete in a top level event without MUs? 😦

1/27/11 WOD

Our MetCon changed a little from the picture… well it changed alot! Ha! We did do the Plyo Push Ups but we did V-UP situps instead of flutter kicks and we did Snatch Balance instead of KNEE JUMPS. Why I can’t do Knee Jumps is beyond me. It doesn’t LOOK hard but I could not get my big butt up. My kids however make it look easy! Dang kids. Anyways the MetCon was a 15 min AMRAP (as many rounds as possible). I managed to complete 10 rounds and get 4 push ups into the 11th round. Not bad I suppose. That’s 124 pushups people! My upper body is DEAD!

Once I caught my breath post WOD and post mobility right before I walk out the door I decide to bust out my jump rope. We are having a Double Under Challenge in March. Who can do 100 consecutive DUs and if more than 1 person achieves them then who can do more! Hahah, I’m in it to win it folks. So like I said, I bust out my rope and just GO. I got on roll and then got excited then let my brain get in the way but I got 49 in a row. WOOOOO! I’m so excited! That may not be a lot for some but for me that was big jump. And that made my Friday 🙂

Moving on to dinner last night: I didn’t buy anything fancy or make this amazing culinary delight but it was tasty and did it’s job. I’ve been buying sirloin tip steak – it’s not the “best” cut but it’s grass-fed and it’s not as spendy as the other quality cuts. I know I should marinate it for several hours if not overnight but I’m crunched for time so we make due. I sliced it up as thin as I could with the tools that I have and threw it in a gallon zip lock bag. I tossed in some olive oil, garlic powder, cumin, salt and pepper. I had sliced up one steak and put my oldest to shaking the bag and pretty much massaging the steak while I cut up the other piece. I had him do this for a good 15 minutes. I think it really helped the meat tenderize a bit. I threw it in a pan, sauteed for a couple of minutes and only a couple because I did not want it overcooked. It turned out pretty alright.

Not a BEAUTIFUL pic but HEY at least I remembered to take one!

I had purchased parsnips over the weekend with intentions of mixing them up with cauliflower but I never got around to that. I’ve never eaten a parsnip so I had no clue what to expect. I peeled them and chopped them up. Boiled them in chicken broth with onions and garlic till they were tender. Drained them but kept the broth for later. Threw parnsips, garlic and onion in the food processor and let it get all blended up. I added about 3 TBS of butter, 1/4 cup of reserved broth, salt and pepper. Ended up with a nice consistency more mash potato like than Cauliflower. Parsnips are sweeter than I expected but also have a spice to them. I couldn’t decide on the best word to describe it. It’s just a weird little bite. Still good and different than everything else. I’ll have to experiment more with them. But you should definitely try out some parsnips. 🙂

Have a FIERCE FRIDAY! Make it worthwhile. SMILE! See y’all on Monday 😀

Woohoo it’s Wednesday! (and more yummy goodness)

I feel really good today! I think getting back on track eating wise over the past few days has greatly helped me! After the cake ball frenzy before Christmas I continued to eat stocking stuffer candies and what not. I wasn’t too over the top as I was with the pizza and cookies but it was still MORE than I should have consumed in general. And after a couple of days of CLEAN eating I’m already feeling better.

1/04/12 WOD

The BOOM Box did not fail me and I had a great WOD. We worked on kipping and pullups after our warmup. I have the kipping down pretty good considering I suck at pullups. I stole Ernie’s “hand guard” thingies (like the ones gymnasts use) and those helped me out tremendously. I’m such a wussbag when it comes to hanging onto that bar! I’m so close at getting that kipping pullup. I can taste it! I want it so badly but I guess not badly enough to practice at home! Ha! I have to make the effort to work on those at home but I just don’t 😦 So after the kipping practice we had to do 3 sets of 5 strict pullups. I managed to get a few in with just the BLUE band (smallest band there is at our box) then I doubled up blue bands and finished out the reps. It’s hard work but I AM GETTING THERE!

And the MetCon was fantastic! Did I just say it was fantastic? Wow I may have suffered a blow to the head and I don’t recall! With the exception of a few NO REPS on my wall balls, I think I did well. Did I tell you I despise wall balls? Did I also tell you they are my enemy? Hehehe, Yes I know I did, I just wanted to make sure you’re following along! So 7 rounds of 7 wall balls, 7 ring rows and 200m run on rounds 2, 4 and 6. The fatigue really kicked in after the second run. Not sure if it was the cold air in my lungs that was bringing me down or just overall loss in arm strength. Round 6 was weak, but I finished strong in round 7 for an overall finish of 8:45.

Last night Ernie started his new 7pm Box time versus waking up early and being miserable….so I had some time to myself to play with my food processor and get dinner going. The shredding disc on my processor is AMAZING! In no time I had shredded zucchini and carrots! And I loved it. The kids were rather impressed as well! Now that I have shredding down, the plan was to make faux latkes and that is what I did. They fell apart a little too easy so next time I will add more egg to hold them together. I used grapeseed oil to cook them in and the taste was nice. Not sure how “paleo” grapeseed oil is because I haven’t done much research. It’s in several recipes I used but like you know by now there are varying lines of thought on “paleo”. Overall they came out great! Along with my latkes I baked some chicken and steamed a little broccoli. A nice light dinner 🙂

Dinner and testing out "latkes"

I’m a blog troll who randomly finds recipes from oddball places but I found this following recipe from Paleo Parents. I troll their blog regularly and like them on Facebook so this recipe “glowed” at me. And I knew I had to try it out.

A new treat Chocolate Banana Bites!

Dark Chocolate Banana Bites

2 bananas
5 eggs
3/4 C coconut oil
1/2 C maple syrup, we recommend Grade B
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 C almond flour (or coconut flour if you’re nut-free)
1/2 C cocoa powder
1 Tbsp cinnamon

1/2 C dark chocolate chips

Using an electric mixer or food processor, combine all of the wet ingredients (bananas should smooth out)
♥ In a separate bowl, combine all dry ingredients except chocolate chips
While mixing on low, add dry ingredients to wet ingredients until just combined
♥ Sir in chocolate chips to the dough
♥ Using a silicon mini muffin pan or mini muffin liners on a metal pan, scoop the dough until almost full into mini muffin pans
Cook at 350 for 10 minutes

Makes 4 dozen; store chilled and let come to room temperature before serving or eating. This is a super easy recipe and perfect for letting kids help (♥)!

I had a super mini muffin pan and I felt like these just weren’t very pretty but they tasted just fine! I also have a 6 count mini muffin silicone pan that I have never used and it ended up being just perfect! I had to cook those a little longer, closer to 20 minutes but truly I don’t recall. I watched them for a while but I just don’t remember the exact timing. My apologies for being a slacker. A win from the kids and a SUPER WIN from Ernie as he devoured many of the super mini bites!

I’m glad I have another “treat” in my bag of recipes.

I hope y’all have a great day. See ya tomorrow! Woooooohooooo!

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. 🙂