Google+ Adventures in Paleo-land: June 2012

Friday, June 29, 2012

Chorizo, Eggs, and Roasted Veggies


Wednesday's post-boot camp dinner: Chorizo, Sunny-side up egg, roasted broccoli, roasted cauliflower, and roasted asparagus.

How To: Roast Veggies
This is an incredibly simple way to roast up some veggies.
  1. Preheat oven to 400F.
  2. Rinse and dry vegetable of choice. Cut into bite-size pieces if applicable (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots)
  3. Tear yourself a piece of tin foil large enough to wrap up your veggies and place your vegetable of choice on the foil.
  4. Season with salt and pepper.
  5. Add 2 tsp of water.
  6. Wrap up in tin foil.
  7. Place tin foil packet in the oven and cook for ~30 minutes (some veggies, such as beets and carrots, require more time). You can also cook the vegetables longer if you prefer your veggies to be extra-tender.
Optional: You can also add a teaspoon of lemon/lime/orange juice if you want to give your veggies some more flavor. Personally I like adding some lemon juice to my asparagus.


Thursday, June 28, 2012

Tips for getting better sleep

My mom forwarded this link to me earlier today. It's about what foods to eat and when to eat them to give you the best possible chance of getting to sleep quickly and sleeping well. Here's the gist:

  • Don't eat less than 4 hours before you intend to go to sleep. Avoid snacks before bed, especially grains and sugars.
  • Avoid alcohol or caffeine before bed
  • Eat a dinner consisting of:
    • High protein foods (L-tryptophan releases melatonin which aids in sleep)
    • Calcium and magnesium (dairy, broccoli, nuts, seeds)
    • Salad with fruit (apples and pears apparently aid in digestion)
    • Comfort foods (like chicken noodle soup; foods that remind you of fond memories)
    • Chamomile tea with ginger
    • Warm milk
The other fun thing is that the the actor for this video overacts like nobody's business. It's amusing.
Good luck catching some... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz's

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Lemon Herb Chicken


Lemon Herb Chicken Marinade
zest of half of a lemon
1 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1 tsp parsley
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil

Place 1 pound of thawed chicken breast into a gallon size Ziploc bag. Mix the ingredients together and pour into the bag with the chicken. Seal the bag and shake to coat evenly. Open the bag slightly and squeeze as much air out as possible without spilling the marinade. Let sit in refrigerator for 2 hours or more. Cook chicken as you normally would. I served mine with roasted cauliflower, and a summer salad with strawberries and blueberries).

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Taco Salad and Guacamole


Taco Salad
Beef
1 lb ground beef
1 tbls each of:
   cumin
   cayenne pepper
   chili powder
   garlic salt
2 tbls cilantro, chopped
pepper to taste
Veggies
1/4 cup olive oil
1 yellow pepper, sliced
1 red pepper, sliced
1 onion, sliced
2 shakes of cumin, chili powder, and pepper
3 shakes of cayenne pepper and garlic salt

Season the ground beef, cover with plastic wrap, and store in the fridge for 2 hours.

Heat large skillet over medium heat. Add the olive oil. [Remove ground beef from the fridge.] Once olive oil is hot, add the yellow and red pepper, and the onion. Season with salt, pepper, Cook for ~8 minutes or until peppers and onions are soft and onion is getting slightly translucent. Add the ground beef and cook until the meat is no longer pink.

Plate over lettuce and serve with guacamole and salsa.

Guacamole


2 avocados, mashed
juice of 1 lime
2 tsp cumin
2 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp chili powder
1 tbls garlic salt
2 tsp black pepper
1/3 onion, chopped
1/2 tomato, chopped
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

Mix everything together. Enjoy.

Beach Reflection


I learned a few things while I was on my vacation...
  • St. George Island is the fourth best beach in the southeast according to Dr. Stephen P Leatherman (most of the previous winners were either in Hawaii or Florida). There was a ton of seaweed when we went though, so the beach didn't look quite so nice, nor was it pleasant to be in the water with seaweed brushing against you and tangling around your legs.
  • I freak out if seaweed touches me, especially when it tangles around my legs (I was stung by a jellyfish at a young age and unseen things brushing against me in water makes me think of jellyfish). 
  • I'm slightly allergic to one of the following: seaweed, sunscreen, sunlight (sunburn), sea, or a combination of the previous. My mother and I are leaning toward sunscreen as the culprit.
  • Every time I drive to Pensacola I get rained on. Every time! And each time I leave, I encounter blue skies, which definitely doesn't match my mood at the thought of ending my visit and returning to work. That's life though.
  • Running at 10:00am in 90+°F weather and high humidity makes my feet swell and gets really uncomfortable after only half of a mile.
  • Sometimes it's best to move your mattress on the floor so you get enough support for your back while sleeping.
  • Yorkies are adorable, even when they wake you up at 1am to be taken outside.
They just got groomed today and
are now ready for the Fourth of July!

Friday, June 22, 2012

Paleo Popsicles

Last week, project management decided to reward us worker bees with ice cream. We got an email at 8 Wednesday morning saying that there would be an ice cream cart on every floor of our building (as well as our office in St. John's, Newfoundland) starting at 1pm. I tried to resist the temptation, but I ended up eating a strawberry popsicle. It was as healthy as I could get and even had strawberry chunks in it. Unfortunately, it contained sugar, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, beet color, etc. On the bright side, it did remind me of how wonderful and refreshing popsicles can be. And it led me to make my own Paleo Popsicles, which are super easy and tasty:

Orange-Berry Popsicles
1/2 cups 100% orange juice (Simply Orange)
1 cup chopped strawberries
1 cup blueberries

Blend ingredients together and pour into a popsicle mold. I bought a 4-popsicle mold from H-E-B for $1. Place in the freezer for 3-4 hours. When you're ready to eat them, dunk the entire mold into some warm water to loosen the sides so you can get the popsicle out. VoilĂ ! A simple refreshing popsicle for the beach.








Thursday, June 21, 2012

Sunburn for the Pale



By Monday evening, I had already managed to get sunburned. It's a really unfortunate sunburn on the back of my thighs and my upper back, so it makes sitting and laying down very uncomfortable. By some miracle, I'm not sunburned down the middle of my back. My sides? Yes. Center of the back where I can't actually reach? Nope. The thing I really don't understand is how I always get sunburned despite reapplying sunscreen repeatedly. I also want to know how my parents are so much tanner than I am. I mean, I am the product of them, so shouldn't my skin tone be at least the same as one of theirs, if not somewhere in between? Ah, genetics... how I don't fully understand you. Yes, I spend a significant amount of time hiding from the sun at work, whereas my mom takes the puppies for walks and plays tennis on the weekends. But even during winter she seems to have more color to her. And my dad? He's just naturally more tan. He's like me and spends an exorbitant amount of daylight hours locked inside an office building and yet, if you take a photo of him and me, you see my white skin boldly declaring my paleness!

Monday night dinner was burgers that my mom had brought. My dad chose to have his with bread, but my mom and I stuck with the Paleo version.  I served mine on a bed of romaine hearts and is topped (from bottom up) with tomato, cucumbers, roasted onions, orange bell peppers, mushrooms, and Spicy Kale Chips (recipe below). These kale chips gave the burger a real kick. I also topped the burger with some spicy Dijon mustard just because.

Spicy Kale Chips
1 bunch kale chips
2 tbls olive oil
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp garlic salt
2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp paprika

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Rip the kale into small one-inch pieces. Place into a gallon size Ziploc bag with the other ingredients and toss to coat evenly. Spread onto greased baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes, stirring halfway through to make sure that the kale chips don't stick to the baking sheet.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Almond Chicken Scrambled Eggs

Monday was my first full day on the beach, so I had to start off my vacation the right way. After going for a short 2-mile jog with my dad (I'm slowly working my way up to half-marathon distance by next January), I came home and made some breakfast for my mom and me (my dad chose to eat cereal for breakfast). Here's what I whipped together.

Almond Chicken Scrambled Eggs (serves 2)
4 eggs
1/2 orange pepper, cut into 1 cm pieces
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp chili powder
Salt and pepper to taste (~3/4 tsp each)
2 tsp olive oil

Heat the olive oil over medium heat on the stove. Add the orange pepper, season with a couple sprinkles of salt and pepper, and cook for 5 minutes before adding the chicken. Season the chicken and pepper with paprika, chili powder, salt, and pepper. Add in the whisked eggs. Once the eggs are cooked through, plate and top with salsa (optional).

More Almond-Crusted Chicken Scrambled Eggs...

Tuesday's breakfast included 1/2 zucchini, sliced and halved, 2 cups of spinach, 1/2 of a red pepper, 1/3 of an onion, and 2 chicken breasts, sliced. Start with the onions in the pan because they require more cook time, then add, in this order: the red pepper, zucchini, and chicken, about 2 minutes apart. Mix in 6 eggs. Heap onto a plate, add a porch on the beach, and enjoy! It tastes particularly good after a three-mile jog.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

It's a small world after all

Before I hit Panama on my way from Pensacola to St. George Island on Sunday, my mother called me to tell me that she ran into one of my high school friends, JM, at the rental agency. Apparently, my family and his decided to go to the same beach at the same time. Small world, huh? JM and I bonded during 10th grade math and had a pretend marriage during high school. We even were "married" on facebook for most of our freshman year of college (despite the fact that I went to Georgia Tech and he went to the University of Georgia). I even had a couple friends ask me why they weren't invited to the wedding.

So over the course of one weekend, I saw a friend from preschool (CA), a friend from middle school (KM), a friend from high school (JM), and also saw a fellow Georgia Tech grad walking down the beach. All I need is elementary school to round out the mix.



Almond-Crusted Chicken Breast
1 lb chicken breast, thawed
2 eggs, whisked
1 cup almond flour
1 cup almonds, chopped
2 tsp parsley
2 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp paprika

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Mix the almond flour, almonds, parsley, garlic salt, black pepper, and paprika in a bowl; transfer to a plate/pan.
Pat dry the chicken breasts, then coat each chicken breast with the eggs, using a pastry brush if you have one. Place the chicken into the almond mixture, making sure the chicken is thoroughly and evenly coated. While you're doing this, heat 2 tbls of olive oil over medium heat on the stove. Place the chicken breast into the heated pan and brown each side (~4 minutes per side).
Transfer the chicken to a baking dish and bake for 25 minutes.
Optional: line the bottom of the pan with sliced zucchini before baking.

Serve over a salad of romaine hearts, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and yellow peppers.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Pensacola

I stopped in Pensacola Saturday night to visit KM again! It's amazing that we get to see each other again so soon after my last trip.

Some background on KM and I... We met at the tender age of 12 in choir. Over our first two-week choir tour to Scotland, we were inseparable. During our 11th grade choir tour to Nova Scotia, we spent so much time together that people used to call us by the wrong names. So we switched names for the rest of the tour. And we didn't have any problems responding to the other name (we were normally together anyways). Over the past few years, we usually manage to see each other once every 3-6 months, which is why seeing her twice within one month is crazy awesome!

While in Pensacola we went to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. After dinner, we went to see the new movie Rock of Ages. I love musicals. Did I mention that? I wish everyone would break out into choreographed song and dance numbers.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Easy Livin' in New Orleans

Friday was the start of my drive to the beach. My drive took me to the exciting city that is New Orleans. I've been to NOLA once before in July 2010 for a crazy weekend with SD, MN, and JP (Pepe). When I went that time, the four of us got a hotel room, with SD and I sharing one bed and the boys sharing the other. I found it hilarious that the boys found it necessary to build a wall of pillows between them. JP claimed that he is a cuddler and didn't want an awkward morning-after. SD and I headed to bed early (~3am) whereas the boys stayed out and went to Harrahs. When SD and I woke up in the morning at 8am, we found a giant traffic cone hanging out in front of the bathroom door.  Let me tell you, that is not something that you expect to walk into right after you wake up. Not to be out-done the next night, the boys hid one of the hotel luggage carts in our hotel room, again in front of the bathroom door. Why? I have no clue; those are the boys for ya. All in all, it was an awesome two-night stay in NOLA.

Now that you know what my first trip was like, I can tell you that this visit was much more tame, but consisted of much better food. My preschool friend CA was kind enough to let me crash on his couch for a night. CA and his girlfriend are huge foodies, so CA sent me a long list of places we could try out. They're awesome. See below for that list:
We ended up going to Maurepas Food, where I had Gulf Grilled Fish.
Here's the photos of our dinner:
 
Mexican Winter: Tequila, Apple, Lime, Lillet, Curacao, Honey
Pickle Plate: (clockwise from front left): Shitake Mushrooms, Blueberries, Cantelope, Mushrooms, something from the onion family)
Peaches and Peppers. The mint pulled it all together.
Gulf Grilled Fish with blueberries and squash
Squid sausage sandwich - CA's dinner
Gingerbread, mint chocolate-chip ice cream sandwiches - CA's dessert
We then headed down to Frenchman Street, which is much less touristy than Bourbon Street. Though of course we did end up walking down Bourbon Street for a little bit. Next time I want to stop in at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar.

Friday, June 15, 2012

That's Just Beachy

My parents and I are going to St. George Island for the next week. I leave today to drive to New Orleans and stay the night with my preschool buddy CA and his girlfriend. Tomorrow I'm going to Pensacola for a night, and then on Sunday I make the last segment of my journey to St. George Island.

Unless things have changed since I last went to St. George Island in 2009, there's only one small grocery store on the island, which means we have to bring food if we don't plan on eating out for every meal. I don't want to cart around food on what sums up to a 13-hour drive, so I plan on stopping in Panama City to go to a Publix or Sam's Club to pick up whatever I need. In order to figure out what I need to bring separate from my parents, I came up with a meal plan for the week.

Sunday:
--- drive to the beach ---
D- Chicken and veggies

Monday:
B - Scrambled Eggs with veggies and leftover chicken
L - Salad
D - Burgers

Tuesday:
B - Frittata
L - Leftover Burgers
D - Chicken with steamed carrots and salad

Wednesday:
B - Leftover Frittata
L - Salad w/ Leftover Chicken
D - Zucchini with Pesto

Thursday:
B - Sausage and Eggs
L - Ground Beef Taco Salad with Guacamole
D - Salmon with roasted broccoli

Friday:
B - Scrambled Eggs and leftover ground beef
L- Beef tips
D - Dinner out

Saturday:
B - Meat and veggies
--- drive home ---

My shopping list:

Proteins
Veggies/Herb
Fruits
Other
Eggs
Peppers
Avocado
Honey
Chicken
Celery
Apples
100% Orange Juice
Ground Beef
Carrots
Oranges
Wine
Sausage
Mushrooms
Lemons
Lime Juice

Spinach

Pine Nuts

Cabbage



Lettuce



Kale



Zucchini



Artichokes



Brussels sprouts



Cilantro



Basil


Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Slow-Cooker Paleo Shredded Beef

Paleo Shredded Beef
Doesn't that look gorgeous?
2 1/2 lb beef shoulder (or whatever is on sale), grass-fed, free-range
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Pepper
1 tsp Chili Powder
1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1 tsp Paprika
1 tsp Garlic Salt
1 onion, sliced
10 carrots, peeled and cut into ~3" chunks
3/4 cup chicken or beef stock


Season the beef, using your hand to rub in the spices.
Layer the carrots followed by the onions in the crock-pot/slow-cooker. Place the beef shoulder on top of the veggies and pour the stock in over the meat and veggies. Cover and set your slow cooker to 8 hours. Rake a fork over the beef; it should easily fall apart, resulting in your shredded/pulled beef. Eat by itself, in a lettuce wrap, mixed into eggs for breakfast, or however you want to eat it. (I do recommend a fork unless you plan on choosing the lettuce wrap option).

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Painting and Eating Out

This past weekend my friends and I went to Vino Artino for a painting class. In the past few years wine and painting classes have become pretty popular and I've enjoyed using LivingSocial and Groupon to snag deals. Below are a bunch of pictures of us and our paintings. Before the painting class, LR, KAOS, and I went to Panera Bread for dinner. Going to Panera has made me realize how difficult it can be to stay Paleo while eating out, especially if you get tired of salads.

Speaking of which, Tex-Mex restaurants really irritate me. Here's some of the reasons why:

  1. They taunt me by putting chips and salsa right in front of me. Sometimes I really want that salsa, but I have nothing with which to eat it. And while I apparently used to drink salsa as a child when my parents and I went out to eat, I don't really have the desire to do that in public these days.
  2. Everything comes with cheese, rice, beans, and tortillas.
  3. My food options consist of:
    1. "Faijitas, hold the tortillas, cheese, sour cream, rice, and beans" (a.k.a. "meat with guacamole, please") I guess I just get tired of paying ~$20 for meat and guacamole when I could cook my own food and have more veggie options.
    2. "Salad, no cheese, sour cream, or tortilla strips/flour tortilla bowl" (a.k.a. "meat with guacamole and lettuce [and maybe tomatoes]"). 

It amazes me how different each of our paintings are.
My mom was very impressed by how precise my bridge is (thank you OCD).

I'm a fan of the trunk of my willow tree:

Monday, June 11, 2012

Pumpkin Spice Muffins



Pumpkin Spice Muffins


Bowl 1
1/2 cup coconut flour
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin spice
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp cloves
Bowl 2
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1/4 cup honey
2 tbls coconut oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla


Streusel
1/2 cup choppen pecans
1/4 cup almond flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbls coconut oil, melted

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Sift the ingredients of Bowl 1 together. Set aside. Put pumpkin puree into a bowl and mix in eggs, one at a time. Add honey, coconut oil, and vanilla, stirring well. Add in the dry ingredients, beating until no large lumps remain. Fill muffin tin 2/3 of the way and top with a spoonful of the Streusel mixture.

Bake 20-25 minutes.

YUMMMM!!!

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Roasted Purple Cauliflower



I was meandering through the grocery store the other evening (oh, who am I kidding, I went with a thorough list of what I needed), when I found purple cauliflower. I've read blogs and seen photos of purple cauliflower, but this was the first time that I've actually seen it in person. Anyways, I decided to buy some. Once I got home, I roasted it in the oven; and OMG, it was amazing. If you haven't tried it, you should! I was snacking on it right when I took it out of the oven and it was so delicious that my mind combined wow and amazing to WOW-MAZ-ING! I know I'm kind of raving, but it was soooo good!

Roasted Purple Cauliflower
1 head purple cauliflower
2 Tbls Extra-virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 350 F. Rinse the cauliflower and remove the leaves and stem. Chop the cauliflower into bite-size pieces (it's white on the inside). Put into gallon-size ziploc bag. Add EVOO, garlic salt, and pepper. Spread onto baking sheet and bake for 35 minutes.

I did the same thing with broccoli but added red pepper flakes. Again, delicious! And a little spicy.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Paleo Braised Chicken

Paleo Braised Chicken
2 Tbls bacon fat
1 lb chicken thigh fillets
(you can use chicken thighs or chicken legs)
1 cup pearl onions, frozen or fresh
2 shakes each of:
    parsley
    coriander
    marjoram
    thyme
    salt
    pepper
pinch of cloves
2 large cloves of garlic, sliced
1 cup artichokes, frozen
3/4 cup Brussels sprouts, frozen
1 cup chicken stock
2 Tbls balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 325F.
Heat bacon fat in pan on medium heat. Season chicken with spices, then sear chicken in pan.

Remove chicken and set aside. Do NOT clean out the pan. Put the onions into the pan from which you just removed the chicken. Once the onions are carmelized, add the artichokes, garlic, and season with more salt and pepper.


Transfer to a covered baking dish. Add chicken, chicken stock, and vinegar. Cover and put into the oven for 50 minutes.



Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Insomnia


Insomnia? Is it caused by stress? What can I do to help my insomnia?
Stress can be the cause of insomnia, but that doesn't mean that it is the cause of your insomnia. Stress causes hyperarousal (see below), which can affect your ability to fall asleep. The National Sleep Foundation recommends that you slowly increase the amount of time you spend asleep each night via 15-minute increments. So for the first night you aim to get the same amount of sleep (n minutes) that you normally do. The second night, you go to bed/set your alarm so that you get 15 more minutes of sleep (n + 15 minutes). Repeat until you reach the amount of sleep you're aiming for. For example, if I get 3.5 hours of sleep, or 210 minutes (like I did Sunday night), and I'd like to get 8 hours of sleep (480 minutes)... Using the equation below it will take me...
t = n+(15*d), or d = (t-n)/15 where:
     t = desired amount of sleep
     n = amount of sleep I currently get
     d = days required
... 18 days to work my way up to the amount of sleep that I want.
This process may be a bit longer than you want to wait, but if insomnia is a serious issue for you then 15 minutes more per night may be hard for you. As I'm sure you all remember from Aesop's Fables, slow and steady wins the race.

hyperarousal /hy·per·arou·sal/ (-ah-rou´z'l) a state of increased psychological and physiological tension marked by such effects as reduced pain tolerance, anxiety, exaggeration of startle responses, insomnia, fatigue, and accentuation of personality traits. It is produced by hormones released during the fight-or-flight reaction.

References:
(1)  Kavey, Neil B. "Stress and Insomnia." National Sleep Foundation. 2001. <http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/ask-the-expert/stress-and-insomnia>

Monday, June 4, 2012

Sleep Deprivation


The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report put out by the CDC on April 27, 2012 focuses on sleep deprivation. According to their research, roughly 20% of automobile crashes are linked to drowsy driving. Using data collected from the 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the CDC determined that 30% of employed American adults get six or less hours of sleep per night. The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7-9 hours of sleep for healthy adults.

An article by Williamson and Feyer concludes that a lack of sleep can cause similar behavioral effects as being intoxicated (1):
17 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of .05
21 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of .08
24 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of .10

The above information agrees with an article published by Australians Drew Dawson and Kathryn Reid, which relayed the results of two experiments conducted using forty participants where performance due to sleep deprivation and performance due to alcohol consumption were compared. To analyze sleep deprivation, they were kept awake for 28 hours (from 8:00 until 12:00 the following day), and in the other they were asked to consume 10–15g of alcohol at 30-min intervals from 8:00 until their mean blood alcohol concentration reached 0.10%. Cognitive psychomotor performance was measured at 30-minute intervals for both experiments.


The Results
For each 0.01% increase in blood alcohol content, performance decreased by 1.16%.
The decrease in performance for each hour awake between 10 and 26 hours was equivalent to the decrease in performance observed from a 0.004% rise in blood alcohol concentration.

References:
(1) Williamson, A.M.; Feyer, Anne-Marie. "Moderate sleep deprivation produces impairments in cognitive and motor performance equivalent to legally prescribed levels of alcohol intoxication." Occupational and Environmental Medicine 57 (2010): 649-655. 4 June 2012. <http://oem.bmj.com/content/57/10/649.full>

(2) Dawson, Drew; Reid, Kathryn."Fatigue, alcohol and performance impairment." Nature (388): 235. 17 July 1997. <http://www.fatiguescience.com/assets/pdf/Alcohol-Fatigue.pdf>

Sunday, June 3, 2012

5am, How I Have Not Missed You

I managed to get up at 5a.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday before work last week to go to the gym (though that didn't happen Thursday or Friday). I know that doesn't sound terribly fun or exciting... well, I guess "fun" isn't really the best description either... but I'm excited to get back to working out. Plus, exercise makes me feel like I've accomplished something throughout the day, which is desperately needed when I spend 10 hours at work and feel like all I do these days is re-do things I had just finished 2 weeks ago. Progress? What's that?

In exciting exercise news, on Tuesday I just signed up for the Houston Aramco Half Marathon being held on January 13, 2013, so I'm going to have to get back into running shape. Hal Higdon Training Programs provide a few options for workout routines based on your current fitness/running level. The last time I trained was with Team in Training (TNT) though. TNT is a great idea for those who are struggling to break past the 6-mile mark (or any mileage).

Anyone want to train with me?

Friday, June 1, 2012

Dijon-Pecan Chicken Breast

Dijon-Pecan Chicken Breast

2 large chicken breasts, sliced open (butterfly-style)
1/2 cup hot Dijon mustard
2 Tbls honey
1 cup pecans, ground
Sea salt

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking pan with tinfoil for easy clean-up.

Use a blender or food processor to grind the pecans, but don't grind to the point of making pecan butter or flour - texture is good. Mix the mustard, honey, and pecans together.
Before the oven
Spread resulting paste over both sides of the chicken breasts. Sprinkle with sea salt. Place chicken breasts on baking pan and bake for 45 minutes or until the juices run clear.

The first picture shows the chicken plated on a bed of baby spinach and cucumber tossed in a splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil with a couple shakes each of oregano, parsley, and cumin. It may not look terribly appealing, but it's really good, especially with the hot Dijon mustard.