Blueberry-Banana-Walnut Muffins

I love to bake! Especially for other people. Prior to my self-imposed exile from the world of sweets and thus baked goods I would bake just to bring in cookies or brownies to work. It's been a while, but I had some free time yesterday afternoon before going to see The Hunger Games (which was awesome), so I baked some muffins!

Blueberry-Banana-Walnut Muffins

wet ingredients

1 cup almond butter

2 eggs

2 bananas - 1 frozen, 1 very ripe (spotty). I feel like using a frozen banana makes the muffins a tad bit sweeter than just using a ripe banana.

dry ingredients

1 cup almond flour

1/4 cup walnuts

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ginger

2 shakes pumpkin pie spice

1/2 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Mash the two bananas in a large bowl using a fork.

Mix the almond butter and the eggs into the mashed banana. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and fold the blueberries into the batter. For those who bake regularly, it will actually look like non-paleo muffin batter.

Fill paper- or silicone-lined muffin tins 3/4 of the way full, or roughly 2 heaping tablespoons per muffin.

Bake for 13-15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the muffin comes out clean.

Makes a baker's dozen worth of muffins. Enjoy!

No Alarm

I mentioned on Monday that I slept napped for roughly 30 minutes on Sunday night. I lasted all day without falling asleep! (Although my team's 1 o'clock meeting tested my willpower.) I think I survived Monday because I took an Excedrin at 7 a.m. to deal with the headache that I woke up with at 3:45 a.m. For those who don't know, Excedrin Extra Strength contains 65 mg of caffeine... caffeine that has been absent from my body for the past month. My theory is that those measly 65 mg was enough to power my decaffeinated body through the entire work day as well as through a Dave and Busters happy hour, dinner, bowling, and video-gaming. Around 8 p.m., I started to feel a bit lethargic, so I left. I admit that I didn't do P90X on Monday... Stop those judging stares right now! I doubled up on Wednesday and Thursday to make up for the workouts I missed!

By the time I finally got home, I was on auto-pilot. I dumped my dirty Tupperware from lunch into the sink to deal with later and went about my nightly get-ready-for-bed routine. I crawled into bed and realized that it was now the time to decide when to wake up. Knowing how badly my body needed sleep, I said "Screw it. I'll wake up when I wake up." So for the first week night since starting Paleo, I actually followed the sleeping advice of waking up when your body is rested. I fell asleep around 9:15 p.m. after reading 2 of the introductory pages of The Paleo Diet Cookbook, and woke up a glorious 9 hours and 30 minutes later at 6:45 a.m.

When I told Z that I hadn't set an alarm, his response was "Did you not care when you'd wake up?" Well, I'm a very responsible person who plans a lot, so of course I cared about when I would wake up, whether I would have time to fit in P90X before work, and when I would make it in to work. But for once, I chose sleep over everything else. I chose my health over work and working out. Plus, I wake up at 5 a.m. most days, so it was highly unlikely that I'd sleep in until 10 and leave my bosses wondering what happened to me all morning. And I'm sure one of my co-workers would have called me to make sure I was alive. At least I hope they would care.

Waking up without an alarm is pretty awesome though. You don't get jolted awake like those falling dreams we all have (I always wake up before I hit the ground. I don't know if that's good or not). Plus, you're more likely to get the amount of sleep that your bodies needs as opposed to the length of time that you're allowing yourself to have. I urge you to try it at least once. Suggestions for the first time that you try this:

1. Determine when you want to wake up. I ideally like to wake up by 5 a.m. to fit in a workout, cook breakfast, and get to work by 7
2. Set a backup alarm, but plan to wake up long before then. I want to wake up by 5. Because I have to get to work by 8 (core hours), I can sleep until 7 a.m. at the latest. My backup alarm time is therefore 7 a.m. Notice I have 2 hours of time in between my wake up time and my backup alarm.
3. Set a sleep alarm. This is the time that you need to go to bed to get X hours of sleep (fill in the blank here - do 8 or more). I aim for 8 hours of sleep every night, which means that I have to go to bed my 9 p.m. I like to have a warning alarm, so I'll set my alarm for 8:30. This let's me have a 30-minute window to wrap everything up and get ready for bed. 
4. Bright and early. If you must use an alarm consider one that slowly brightens the room. Or, use the actual sunrise (that is, if you wake up at a reasonable hour at which the sun is actually rising unlike the 5 a.m. I do when it's still dark outside).

Ideally I'd like to do this every day, but in order to do so, I need to find more hours in the day. Any suggestions for slowly down time?

How To: Roast Garlic

Roasted Garlic
1 bulb garlic
1-2 tbls olive oil (depends on how large your bulb is)

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Peel away the outer layers of the garlic bulb skin, leaving the skins of the individual cloves intact.

Using a knife, cut off 1/4 to a 1/2 inch of the top of cloves, exposing the individual cloves of garlic.

Place the garlic head on aluminum foil. Drizzle olive oil over each clove; use your fingers to make sure it's well coated. Wrap in the foil and bake at 400°F for 35 minutes. The resulting cloves should feel soft when pressed. Allow the garlic to cool. Use your fingers to squeeze the roasted cloves out of their skins. Use in pasta sauce or eat alone. LR likes to eat them on water crackers with a slice of pepperoni.

I do not recommend eating this when you have an upcoming date, interview, or presentation, etc. You could have really strong breath after this, but on the bright side you won't have to worry about vampires...

Strawberry Spring Salad with Avocado-Orange Dressing

Strawberry Spring Salad with Avocado-Orange Dressing

Dressing:
4 green onions, roughly chopped
1 avocado, peeled and pitted
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbls lime juice
1 tsp garlic salt

Salad:
2 cup sliced fresh strawberries
1 large tomato (on the vine)

1 cucumber, quartered and sliced 

spring greens 

Dressing: Puree green onions, avocado, orange juice, lime juice, and spices in a blender until smooth.

Toss greens, strawberries, cucumber, and tomatoes together. Transfer to plates. Drizzle with dressing.

Pasta a.k.a. Pizza Meat-za

The Pizza Meat-za result

Last Sunday some friends came over to make paleo pasta. My roommate bought me a pasta maker for Christmas and I wanted to give it a try and see if I could make a paleo version of pasta that wasn't a spaghetti squash (I still haven't managed to cook spaghetti squash such that I like the taste of it). Here's what I was planning on doing to make the pasta: 

1 2/3 cup almond flour

2 eggs

1 tsp sea salt

I had some store-bought almond flour and some of the almond flour that I had made myself earlier 

in the day. Unfortunately we learned why I hadn't found a recipe for paleo pasta anywhere... Almonds contain natural oils, which means that it will never really get to the dryness of pasta made with wheat flour. It also means that it's really sticky and heavy and wouldn't have been able to go through the pasta maker without crumbling apart.

What ended up going into the dough was: 

3 3/4 cup almond flour

2 eggs

1 tsp sea salt

We accepted that pasta wasn't going to happen, so we decided to make a pizza out of it. We rolled it out in a pan, and then decided to transfer it to a smaller pan with higher sides to make it a Chicago-style deep dish.

We added a layer of canned fire-roasted organic tomatoes with some basil and parsley mixed in and put the crust plus tomatoes into the oven preheated to 350 F for 15 minutes. While this was baking, we browned some ground beef, sliced sausage, fried and then chopped 2 slices of bacon into 1/2" pieces, wilted some spinach with garlic, and defrosted a handful of frozen artichokes. Once we took the crust with tomatoes out of the oven, we started layering the meats and veggies.

We thought we didn't have enough green, so we topped it off with some spinach

Put the pizza back into the oven for 25 minutes. It looked like this when we took it out:

The first slice...

Pizza Meat-za

I was amazed that the almond crust held it's shape so well

How To: Almond Flour

Today is going to be a rough day. And I mean extraordinarily rough. I got about 30 minutes of sleep (this is an optimistic guesstimate) somewhere around the 3:15-3:45 a.m. time frame. I just couldn't fall asleep and I was woke up at 4:00 a.m. to drive CL to the airport. Yet another friend is moving out of the state, though he's taking it one step further and leaving the country for "America's Top Hat", more commonly known as Canada. (I love Canada and Canadians, and I apologize if I offend anyone with the top hat joke.) Anyways, onto the real topic for today...

Almond Flour

Almond flour (meal) is seriously just ground almonds. In general almond flour uses almonds that have been blanched, meaning the skin has been removed. Almond meal can use blanched or whole almonds. It resembles corn meal more so than wheat flour. Because of the natural oils in almonds, it's not great for foods such as bread that require real dough. Kneading almond flour dough just doesn't work.

Anyways, there are two methods of making almond flour: food processor or blender. I tried both and you can see the comparison below.

Top left: 1 cup of blanched and sliced almonds
Top right: Into the food processor
Bottom left: Results of the food processor
Bottom right: Into the blender

The results:

The blender definitely ground the almonds more finely and did it faster than the food processor could. I think this was because there was just so much space available for the sliced almonds to spins around in the processor without hitting the blades. I recommend using the blender for this and use a half cup or less of almonds at a time (depending on your blender size). Also, be careful not to blend too much or you'll make almond butter. Which is yummy, but maybe not quite what you were going for.

10 to 15 days?

This morning as I relaxed in bed I continued my reading of The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf. What I read today was somewhat eye-opening. Chapter 6 lists the following problems that can be associated with leaky guy and autoimmune response:

1. Infertility
2. Type I diabetes
3. Multiple sclerosis
4. Rheumatoid Arthritis
5. Lupus
6. Vitiligo (loss of pigment in your skin)
7. Narcolepsy
8. Schizophrenia
9. Autism
10. Depression
11. Huntington's
12. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
13. Hypothyroidism (the thyroid gland does not make enough thyroid hormone)
14. Porphyria (manifests as neurological complications or skin problems)

Yikes. I haven't done the research myself, but if even any of this is true, then dear lord, I'm worried.

Also, on page 96 of the book, he encourages you (a.k.a. me, the reader) to reintroduce the foods that are on the "Do not eat" list after 30 to 60 days of following the Paleo diet. This experiment is to see how you feel after eating the "bad" foods again. But this is where I got the disappoining news...

"You only need to be exposed to things like gluten once every ten to fifteen days to keep the gut damaged."

This means that cutting back on gluten doesn't help. And it means that every time I potentially slip up and eat something on the "Do not eat" list (like the beer I had yesterday), it will take another 10 to 15 days for my body to heal itself again. In the words of Scooby Doo: "Ruh roh!"

Note to self: DON'T SLIP UP!

Boomerang!

My buddy KA came back from a trip to Aussie country a couple weeks ago and brought me back a boomerang! Now I just need to learn how to throw one properly so I can go all hunter-gatherer in the wilds of the city! Although, come to think of it... there aren't any wilds in my city, unless you include the sketchy area around my former office building. But that's a different type of wild. I think I'll skip the hunting part of the cavegirl lifestyle; hunting my own food with a boomerang just isn't very appealing. But watch out, I'm armed with a boomerang, so don't make me mad!

All of this hunter-gatherer-ness reminds me of a poem that my friend wrote about me back in junior year of high school. It was titled "Hunter-Killer". I don't remember much about the content of the poem but I feel like this was amazing foresight on his part. And it fits that the HUNGER GAMES comes out tonight at midnight! No, I don't have plans to go at midnight, but I hope to go see the movie sometime this weekend!

Mushroom-Stuffed Chicken Breast

This is the second time that I made stuffed chicken breast. The last time I made it, my friend told me it was the best meal anyone had ever made for him and that he had been worried about what type of food we were going to be eating considering that I was on the paleo diet. Tonight was a slight variation from before, but basically the same.

Mushroom-Stuffed Chicken Breast
1 tsp coconut oil
2 mushrooms, chopped
1 large shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 chicken breast
2 slices bacon
roasted red pepper (See Pistachio-Crusted Chicken Breast for roasting instructions)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Heat coconut oil in skillet over medium-low heat. Once the oil has liquefied (coconut oil is solid at room temp), add shallots and garlic. Cook until the shallots are soft. Add mushrooms and cook for another 5-10 minutes, or until the mushrooms have cooked down. While the veggies are cooking, prep the chicken. To do this, you need two pieces of plastic wrap and a meat tenderizer (you'll want to use the flat end). If you don't have a meat tenderizer, you can use a study pan. Get your hand a little wet and rub it across your counter-top, then place one piece of plastic wrap on your counter (the water will keep the bottom piece from sliding around on you). Place the chicken on the plastic wrap and cover with the second piece of plastic wrap. Take whatever instrument you have available to pound the chicken so that it's roughly 1/4" thick. When the stuffing is fully cooked, place a mound of about 1/3 cup onto the chicken. Top with a few pieces of roasted red pepper, and roll the chicken around the stuffing. Then take your bacon and wrap it around the chicken, using toothpicks to hold the bacon in place and the edges of the chicken together.

Place wrapped chicken on a greased baking pan (I used a tiny amount of coconut oil to do this) and cook for 30-35 minutes. Once the bacon starts to look a little crispy on top, flip the chicken breast over and switch the oven to broil. Watch the bacon closely so that it doesn't burn; this will only take 3-5 minutes. The flip and broil allows the bacon that was under the chicken breast to get a little crispy as well.

Serve over mixed salad greens with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Or over sauteed spinach or kale.

If you want to make the stuffing extra delicious:
Do this before cooking the shallots, garlic, or mushrooms (so before you put it into the pan, possibly even before you chop everything). Cut two slices of bacon into bite size pieces (these two slices are in addition to the two you need to wrap the chicken breast). Pan fry these pieces over low heat so you don't burn them. Once they are fully cooked and crispy, remove the bacon but leave the rendered fat in the pan. Add the shallots and garlic, cooking until the shallots are soft. Then, add the mushrooms and cook for 5-10 minutes. Mix in the chopped bacon and use this stuffing mixture for your chicken.

Low Point

Yesterday was not a great day. Work was super annoying and about as stressful as usual. As I drove home from work, I called my mom to catch up on the weekend. Unfortunately my lack of sleep is catching up to me and I’ve gotten a bit moody (though I’m trying to keep that to myself and not take it out on everyone around me). So my mom and I talked a bit about that as well, she reminded me that keeping everything inside isn’t exactly the best method either. I need to take better care of myself…

Once I got home, LR and I caught up on her weekend out of town with her bf. She was super exhausted from late flights and her awesome trip, so she went to bed early, leaving me with the living room to myself for P90X. I so didn’t want to do Shoulders, Chest, and Triceps, but I did anyways. I felt guilty for missing a few days last week, and I know that I sometimes fall into the trap of “well I missed yesterday, so it won’t matter if I slack off today as well.” So I’m going to try to double up on workouts this week to “catch up.” This morning I did X Stretch and tonight I’m going to do Plyometrics. I try to do Plyo in the evenings so that I don't wake my downstairs neighbors up at 5am by jumping around on their ceiling. Aren't I such a nice neighbor?

Anyways, I was doing P90X and was not clearing my mind and focusing solely on the workouts. Instead, I was thinking about everything that’s been bugging me lately: sleep, work, headaches, apartment hunting, car shopping, etc. I was in the midst of “two-twitch speed push-ups,” at the bottom part of the pushup, and feeling super tired and sore… and I started crying. Now don’t freak out, it wasn’t some uncontrollable sobs with hiccups or anything. This was just a handful of tears rolling off my cheeks and plopping onto the carpet a mere 2 inches under my nose (position 2 below). I couldn’t help but think “Wow. Low point.” (Get it? I actually was at the low point of the pushup. Even in my ridiculous state I had a sense of humor.) I also thought: What in the world? Since when do push-ups make me cry? I used to do much harder workouts for crew, during which I would have cried if I had the energy to do so. A few tears and a few push-ups later, I had gotten myself under control. I finished the workout and completed the entire abs workout without resting. Those 50 Mason twists won't break me, Tony Horton!

http://www.recordholders.org/images/pushup.gif 

This is the first time I've ever cried during a workout and it was an amusing event that I just had to share. I'm assuming that it was the difficultly of the push-ups that caused my emotions to pop up and say hello. And I'm happy to report that X Stretch did not cause the same reaction this morning.

Pistachio-Crusted Chicken Breast

After dropping off a couple friends Sunday morning, I stopped at the grocery store to grab some lunch before heading into work (yes, work on a Sunday = not fun). As I wandered around the bulk foods section, I caught sight of pistachios and decided to grab some to snack on during my Sunday work day. Later, while I was sitting at work, I had the urge to make pistachio-crusted chicken. Why? Who knows; it's not like I even had chicken at home at the time. But I went with my instinct and bought some chicken breast, spinach, and red pepper on my way home. Below is the result.

Pistachio-Crusted Chicken Breast

1 chicken breast
1/2 cup pistachios
Salt and Pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 1/2 cups baby spinach
Plastic wrap









Roasted bell pepper: Set the oven to broil. Place your bell pepper onto a baking pan. After giving the oven a few minutes to heat up, put the pan into the oven, 4-6" away from the top of the oven (aka the heat). After 5 minutes, check the pepper. If the top is starting to get some burnt spots (you want this), turn the pepper to the next side; if not, cook for another minute and check again. Rotate the pepper every 5ish minutes until all sides have the slightly burnt spotty look. Take the pan out of the oven and place the pepper into a bowl, covering with plastic wrap. Let sit for 20 minutes. Cut out the stem and remove the seeds and ribs. You can either cut the pepper in half to do this and scrape the inside to remove the seeds, or you can leave the pepper intact, grab the end of the pepper, and squeeze the pepper from the end you're holding to the open end. This will get rid of most of the seeds. After you do this, cut the pepper into slices.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grab two pieces of plastic wrap and a meat tenderizer/pan. The meat tenderizer is preferred, but a pan will work as well. Wet the counter-top before placing one piece of plastic wrap on your counter (the water keeps the wrap from sliding while you flatten the chicken). Place the chicken on the plastic wrap, and cover with the second piece of plastic wrap. Pound the chicken breast so that it 1/2" thick. Let that aggression out!

Place the pistachios in a food processor or blender and process until ground. There may be some pistachios that don't get completely ground - that's okay. Place the pistachios grounds into a reseal-able plastic bag. Mix in salt and pepper. If your pistachios have been roasted you may not need to add salt. I used raw pistachios though, so a little salt is needed (~1/4 tsp). Add the chicken breast and shake until the chicken is completely covered. 

Place the chicken onto a baking pan and cook in the oven for 30-35 minutes. The pistachios should be toasted, but not too burnt. This is how mine looked when I took it out of the oven.

Plate your baby spinach and cover with the chicken breast. Top this off with 1/4 cup of your roasted red pepper (or more if you want). Voilà!

Slips, Trips, and Falls...

The old crew (aka former trivia team)

This past weekend was what my friends and I called "Rodeo Weekend." One of my buddies plans a massive celebration pertaining to all things Rodeo. A bunch of his friends fly, drive, and taxi to his place from both in town and out of the state. This year, there were roughly 50 people who took part in Rodeo, his cookout, and the nightlife. He decorated his entire apartment to the point that it was termed the "Barnpartment," and he split us into teams in order to help us make sure we had everyone on the shuttle he rented to get us from his place to Rodeo and back. I was on team "Shoulda Been a Cowgirl," which for the most part consisted of our old crew before a couple of the guys moved away. They came back for the weekend and general awesomeness ensued.

The downside of this weekend is that I slipped up a bit. For the first time since starting Paleo, I succumbed and ate grain products (pretzel) and drank beer. Gah! My willpower for refraining from the pretzel just couldn't survive how little sleep I'd been getting last week, and the long day of working out, being in the sun, getting dehydrated, and going to Rodeo. Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it now. But I'm back on board today. And I'm going to try my darnedest not to slip again.

Everything but the kitchen sink

Yesterday I didn't know what to eat for lunch, so I just grabbed a little of everything and fortunately it turned out pretty well. I used:
1/4 head of cabbage
1/4 yellow bell pepper
2 pickle spears, chopped
2 slices of bacon, cut into bite size pieces
1 mushroom, diced
guacamole
hot salsa

I know it's strange (pickles and guacamole, really?) but I enjoyed it.

Yoga and your wrists

From Wesleyan University student blog

P90X yoga may be my least favorite of all of the routines. In general I like yoga, but doing 90 minutes of yoga can be a bit tedious and boring. I'm not a huge fan of the holding a pose for an extended period of time, and some of those poses are virtually impossible for me. For example, twisting half moon (shown to the right), is quite unpleasant. Somehow you're supposed to balance on one leg with the other parallel to the floor. Then you have to twist your upper body toward the leg which your body weight is resting on. Whenever I do this, my hip decides to lock up and I start to fall over. Did I mention that this is a weekly occurrence? And that it's painful? I know that my yoga time is supposed to allow me to clear my mind and focus just on me and my breathing. But how many of you can really clear your mind when your quads start to shake and your hips ache?

Downward dog is the stepping stone to many of the other poses. We start with sun salutations and chaturangas, push up to upward dog, and make a pit stop at plank before continuing on to downward dog via a military push-up (keep those elbows clenched to your sides!). From downward dog, we raise one foot off of the ground and swing it through to runner's pose. Now this is the juicy cream filling part of the symphony that is Yoga X... From runner's pose we can go to Warrior One, Warrior Two, Reverse Warrior, Warrior Three, Triangle Pose, Right Angle Pose, etc. The bane of my existence (as I mentioned above) stems from Warrior Three.

Downward dog brings me to the topic of wrists. Is there a way to strengthen wrists so that those dogs, chaturangas, and tables are less painful? An article from Bodybuilding.com lists wrist curls, reverse wrist curls, wrist rolls, and wrist rotations as wrist strengthening exercises. I think I need to find the time to do this... if anyone finds a Time-Turner like Hermione had, please let me know so I can borrow it from you... Thanks bunches!

Is Paleo healthy?

The government claims we NEED complex carbohydrates, grains, and dairy. Therefore, the Paleo diet must be bad for you because you're not following exactly what the government says... right?


Using a link from the CDC website, I got to http://www.choosemyplate.gov/ which provides you with your recommended daily food plan. I entered my height (5'3"), weight (like I'd tell you?), age (24), sex (F), physical activity level (60+ min/day), and whether I was looking to maintain or lose weight (the latter please). My result is as follows (2400 calories per day):

Grains - 8 oz
Vegetables - 3 cups
Fruits - 2 cups
Dairy - 3 cups
Protein Foods - 6.5 oz

Aim for 7 tsp of oil per day (nuts, olives, some fish, avocados are foods naturally high in oil)

Limit your empty calories (extra fats & sugars) to 330 Calories.

Ok, you know what I "should" be eating. Now let me share a story of my diet for a while in college:

After my first crew (rowing) practice on the water, my coach held a party/gathering for my novice women's team as a motivational welcome thing. He let us shave his hair. It was his way of showing how dedicated he was to the team. He provided pizza, salad, and desserts such as brownies and cookies. At the end of the evening he told us that he hoped that we enjoyed the food but that from here on out we really need to ask ourselves "Do I really need this extra piece of food? Do I really need this brownie?"


For crew your weight is really important. You're rowing in a boat and the heavier your team is collectively, the lower the boat will sit in the water and the slower you'll go. In other words, you have to work harder to go as fast as some other lighter teams. Also, rowing events are split into lightweight and heavyweight (or openweight). To have a lightweight women boat, every girl in the boat must be below 135 pounds. There was one regatta we went to where one girl on my team was just over 135. She spent the next hour or so running around in the warm weather wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants to sweat off that extra pound. My team was relatively short (I think we averaged 5'5"), so being in a heavyweight group may it harder for us to be competitive against other heavyweight boats where the average height was 5'9" (longer legs + longer arms = longer drive and more power).


Therefore, we were all "watching" what we ate. My diet for most of that semester consisted of a protein shake for breakfast, a protein shake for lunch, and dinner at the dining hall. Healthy? Not so much. Did it work? Yes. Weight down, muscle up. I was in great shape, but I was in no way close to meeting my recommended food group breakdown.

For those of you who say the Paleo diet/lifestyle isn't healthy, I ask is your diet healthy? I know mine hasn't always been. Take the time to compare what you eat with what you "should" eat.  I honestly believe that I'm eating better now than when I wasn't following the Paleo diet. Sure I have my doubts about Paleo, but the more and more I read up on it coupled with how much better I feel after doing this diet for 3ish weeks, I still say you should give Paleo a try. I enjoy my food more; I feel full sooner and stay full longer so I don't overeat like crazy. I'm not eating lots of preservatives or candy so I skip out on the sugar highs and crashes, because I stick to fresh foods. In general I feel more energetic (minus these past few days and my lack of sleep). I feel healthy. Tell me where the downside is.

OMG Meat!

One of my good friends works for Hormel foods, and he routinely goes through phases where he needs to dispose of the meat that he currently has in the fridge/freezer, mush to the benefit of our other friends and me. This is a photo of all of the meat that he gave me. There are three packages of bacon, one package of sausage, one of breakfast sausage, one package of rib tips, and one ham. Basically I have more meat than I know what to do with. I'm not really sure how to cook rib tips. I don't even truly know what rib tips are. Who knows what I should do with so much pork? So far I've just had bacon and breakfast sausage mixed with eggs for breakfast. I need to work toward creating new ideas for recipes.

Anyways, I got my eyes dilated today, so I basically looked like a vampire with incredibly large black pupils. I never realized this before, but apparently, getting your eyes dilated means that you can't read anything up close.  For instance, it's slightly difficult to read text messages, and I had to hold my menu at arm's length so that I could actually read the menu. Definitely difficulty. And my friends made fun of me for wearing sunglasses inside the restaurant we were at. Thanks buddies!

Chicken Fajita Salad

What do you think of when you imagine fajitas? If you're like me, you picture that sizzling plate of chicken, onions, and peppers that the servers at Chili's carry to your table. Everyone turns to watch the sizzling plate as it's placed in front of you, along with the tortillas, guacamole, sour cream, rice, and pico de gallo. Well, I'm not doing the tortillas, the sour cream, or the rice, but the rest can be made into a nice salad.

Chicken Fajita Salad
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, sliced
2 chicken breasts, in strips
1/2 tsp cumin
2 tsp oregano
1/2 cup bell peppers, sliced
spring green mix (you can use shredded lettuce as well)
6 grape tomatoes (1 regular tomato will work as well)
guacamole

Heat olive oil in skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, and sauté until soft. Add the chicken and spices, tossing frequently.

Once the chicken is cooked, add the peppers, and sauté for another 6 minutes. While the peppers are cooking, slice the grape tomatoes in half and toss with the spring greens.

Add the chicken fajita mix and top with guacamole.

This was my dinner at work tonight. Sigh... late nights are very unfortunate. And daylight savings time has not been very kind to me. I couldn't fall asleep until 1am last night so I decided not to survive on 4 hours of sleep and instead set my alarm to 6 am. Yay for 5 hours of sleep! (If only there was an easy way to express sarcasm via words.) Anyways, I did my workout this evening from 8:30 to 10:00 tonight. Man, it was rough!

Chicken, Cabbage, and Apple Salad

This recipe is based on one that I found in The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf (I varied the quantities a bit). I'm not usually a fan of cabbage, but boy does this taste good.

Chicken, Cabbage, and Apple Salad

• 2 chicken breasts, diced
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 1/3 head of cabbage, shredded
• 1/2 Granny Smith apple, thinly sliced
• pepper to taste
• sea salt to taste

Heat olive oil in skillet on medium heat. Add the chicken, allspice, and cloves; sauté until chicken is cooked. Once the chicken is done, mix it with the shredded cabbage and apple. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil (I used about a teaspoon). Eat and enjoy.

You know how I hate touching raw chicken... Well I managed to dice the chicken for this recipe without any issues. I didn't even think about the fact that it was raw chicken until I had this nice pile of diced meat. Oh yeah! I'm improving!

I want chocolate...

Do you ever have those days when no matter what your possible food choices are, you don't want anything that you have? Today was one of those days for me. I spent much of the day looking blankly at the contents of my fridge and pantry, trying to decide what to eat. Most of these times resulted in me closing the fridge door without grabbing anything. This morning I settled for two eggs over-easy with bacon. Lunch was a bit random. I mixed canned tuna fish, guacamole, celery, pickles, mixed greens, and tomatoes to form a tuna fish salad. It was my alternative to a tuna fish sandwich since I'm not eating bread. Dinner was left over broccoli soup. It's yummy, but not quite what I was wanting. Lately I've been wanting sweets, which, if you remember, I gave up for Lent. My closest alternative is fruit, which trust me I've been eating, but it's just not the same as a chocolate bar. So far I've stayed strong fortunately. Hopefully I can last!

The benefits of being nice and Mason jars

Tonight M and I went to Rodeo right after work. We carpooled in his car, leaving my car in our building's parking garage. Figuring that it would be safer to leave our stuff in my car, which would be sitting in a secure garage that you can't get into unless you have a badge or tailgate someone, we dropped off my bag and his backpack, grabbing my umbrella at the same time. We made our way to Rodeo and had a great time. We now have the urge to ride horses... at least at first. Step 1: learn to ride horses. Step 2: learn how to rope a calf. Step 3: learn how to ride a bucking bronco. Step 4: learn to jump off of a horse and wrestle a steer to the ground. Step 5: Bull riding!!! Back to the story... ZZ Top wraps up their performance and we head back to the car. As we get into M's car, I realize that I left my work ID badge (and RFID card necessary to access the garage in my car, currently locked in the garage). M then realizes that he put his badge in his backpack... in my car ... to which we don't have access... Oops!

On the drive back, we start plotting ways to get into the garage. When we admit that breaking into our building's parking deck isn't going to happen, we start trying to figure out how to get my car and our stuff back. One idea was to have M go back home, grab his roommate's ID badge, and return to the deck. This option might have involved convincing J that M was sleep-walking. A second idea was to deal with it in the morning, so M would again have to use J's badge to get into work and I would have to rely upon either my roommate (LR) or M to drive me to work in the morning, so that I could get my car and allow M to grab his bag/ID. I was also considering possibly having to bike to work in the rain. The third idea we considered was to hope that the security guard I normally talk to about working out and running was on duty tonight and was in the lobby so that we could kindly ask him to let us in.

Option three was the fortunate winner in our circumstance. We had scoped out the parking deck entrances and quickly realized there was no chance of us getting in without either the help of someone else or learning how to teleport (which would be totally awesome!!). Pulling into a visitor parking space outside, we scanned the lobby and noticed someone standing inside. "It looks like him!" M and I walked to the front door and I timidly knocked on the glass. The security guard immediately walked over and let us in. He didn't ask any questions, just said "I didn't recognize you at first." Easy peasy. M and I were both prepared to go into a long-winded explanation about why we needed someone to let us in to get to my car in the deck at 11 o'clock at night. Instead, we thanked him, said "have a good night," walked through the lobby, headed toward the exit to the parking deck, and made for my car. What a relief!

This brings me to the benefits of being nice and friendly. Simply spending some time talking to the security guard those late nights at work and saying hello and "have a great evening" allowed M and I to get into the garage. What would have happened if I didn't know the guard? He may not have opened the door to let us in. Or he may have let us in, but not trusted our story that we both left our badges in my car which was locked in the deck. Who knows? But being friendly definitely paid off.

Also, Mason jars are pretty awesome. I've been using some 16 oz ones to bring in soup and zucchini "pasta." The picture to the right was tonight's dinner of curried cream of broccoli soup that I made on Tuesday. I just took off the metal lid and heated the whole thing in the microwave. I ended up drinking the soup straight from the jar. They aren't very expensive and you can buy them on Amazon or at Walmart. I've also used them for making hot chocolate mixes and bread mixes for friends at Christmas. One thing to note when heating in the microwave is that the glass can get hot, so if you need to cook something for a while, I recommended heating in increments. Heat for a minute. Stir. Heat for another minute, etc.

Spaghetti Squash with Basil Pesto

Spaghetti Squash

2 spaghetti squash

Cut squash in half (lengthwise). 

Scrape out the seeds and pulp as if you were carving a pumpkin. Bake rind side up about 35 to 40 minutes at 375 F.

After baking 

Separate the strands by running a fork through it in the direction of the stem to the base of the squash.

Use the basil pesto recipe in my previous post. You can add Parmesan cheese to the pesto if you're eating dairy.

Final Result!

 

It's 5 o'clock in the morning...

Good morning, Bright and Early. Today was my 30th workout with P90X. 30 days!! Which means I'm 1/3 of the way done! This also means that for the last 4 weeks, I've been waking up every weekday morning at 5:00 a.m. I no longer set an alarm for the weekends, because I still wake up relatively early when I "sleep in." Nothing new there.

I used to wake up early for work, but now I wake up early for working out, which is vastly preferred. However, it's still difficult to wake up every morning especially when I don't go to bed until midnight. To deal with that early morning "Do I have to? Five more minutes...", I've set two alarms. My cell phone is set for 5:00 a.m. This first one is next to my bed so I don't have to move very far to turn it off, and it's only vaguely annoying. At 5:01 a.m., my second alarm located on my dresser across the room goes off. This one is vastly more annoying and will get louder and louder the longer I ignore it. It's a pretty good incentive to get out of bed. Fortunately I don't have one of those alarm clocks that rolls around until you catch it to shut it off. I feel like that would be a really frustrating way to wake up. I mean, who really wants to fumble around under the bed searching for a stupid alarm that won't stop? My system works well for me. For one minute I have a debate with myself over whether I should let myself sleep in or get out of bed and do P90X. My second alarm goes off and it's problem solved. I'm already out of bed, so I might as well start my day.

Tonight I made Curried Cream of Broccoli Soup. The recipe is from Nom Nom Paleo. I changed up the proportions a bit, but not much (mainly just with regards to the leeks, onion, and shallots). I had planned on making basil pesto with spaghetti squash, but apparently basil farmers in Texas have decided to conspire against me so that isn't any fresh basil available at the grocery store. I even tried two stores today.

Curried Cream of Broccoli Soup
2 tbls of butter
3 leeks, white parts only, sliced thinly
1/2 large onion, roughly chopped
2 medium shallots, roughly chopped
1.25 pounds of trimmed and roughly chopped broccoli
¼ apple, diced
1 quart of organic free-range chicken broth
1 heaping tsp of curry powder
1 cup of coconut milk
Sea salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Sliced leeks

Melt the butter in a large soup pot. Then add and sauté the leeks, onions, and shallots until soft. 

After sauteing

  Add the broccoli, apple, and chicken broth.

 

 

Cover and bring to a boil for 4 minutes (start timing once you get to the boil). Reduce heat to low, uncover, and simmer for 25 minutes.

After boiling and simmering

Once the broccoli is soft, transfer the veggies and chicken broth to a blender and blend until smooth (you'll probably have to do this in batches).

Put back into the pot, add the curry powder, salt, and pepper. Add coconut milk and bring to a boil again. Boil for 5 minutes.

The result!

I also made banana bread, paleo style. This recipe was taken from Health-Bent.

Paleo Banana Bread

1 cup almond butter (I used a little less than 1 cup because I ran out)

1 cup almond flour

3 medium brown, spotty bananas (I had two bananas in the freezer intended for banana bread, plus one ripe banana)

2 eggs

1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Mix all of the ingredients together, making sure the banana is mashed and there aren't any visible chunks.

Batter should look like this when before pouring into loaf pan. 

Fill a loaf pan with the mixture and cook for 30-40 minutes, or until the center is firm to the touch. Let cool. Eat.

(I sprinkled my slice with cinnamon and I think 1 tsp of cinnamon in the bread would suffice. Test it out for yourself to see what you prefer.)