Sea Salt Almond Bark

Sea Salt Almond Bark

1 1/2 cup dark chocolate, broken in to pieces, or use chips if available
1/3 cup slivered almonds
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbls coconut oil
1/2 tsp sea salt

1. Heat the coconut oil and vanilla in a small pot over low heat.
2. Once the coconut oil has melted, stir in the chocolate pieces. Keep stirring until the chocolate has melted.
3. Stir in the almonds and 1/4 tsp sea salt.

4. Place a piece of wax paper or parchment paper on a baking pan. Use a spatula to transfer all of the chocolate mixture onto the paper. Spread out the chocolate until it's roughly the thickness you want.
5. Sprinkle the chocolate with another 1/4 tsp of sea salt.
6. Place in the freezer for about 20 minutes.
7. Remove from the freezer and break into pieces.

Whole Foods Dinner

Go USA Women Soccer Team! Gold medal! Woo hoo!

As I'm sure most of you know, Whole Foods is pretty awesome. The store provides a wider selection of grass-fed meats as well as organic foods, some of which is local. However, there are some disappointing things about Whole Foods. Their pre-made dishes tend to have tons of hidden surprises for us Paleo followers. Just so you know.

Despite this, LMR and I met up at her local Whole Foods to grab some dinner and head back to her place for former-roomie bonding time. I picked up some plantain chips (I've been craving them lately), some super dark chocolate, as well as some Hatch Chile Chicken Salad, a grilled chicken breast, and some sauteed kale.

My dinner plate ended up like this:

Bad Eating Habits

This past week has been very busy and stressful for me. I haven't had a lot of free time in the evenings to cook food for lunch during work, so I've been snacking at work and eating unhealthily. A couple Mondays ago, I posted about dark chocolate, how eating it made me feel sick, and how I was going to restrict myself... Yeah, that didn't happen. My breakfast for the past couple days has been nonexistent and my lunches have consisted of a dark chocolate covered nuts and single serving packets of nut butter (I tried walnut and cashew this week). If I had a health-o-meter, it would be pointing at the red zone of "Worst idea ever."

Couple my diet this week with the stress levels I have from work and preparing for moving next week (I just arranged for movers today - which is about 2 months behind schedule for me. One week is my version of waiting till the last minute), and it's no surprise that I haven't been feeling great lately. Today I had a headache that was bad enough to have me curled up in bed at 2 p.m., where I stayed until roughly 30 minutes ago. I also had accompanying nausea that would kick in every time I attempted to stand up. Even sitting on my couch right now is leaving the left side of my head throbbing. However after napping sporadically this afternoon, I decided food was probably a good idea. So I made myself some Roasted Brussels Sprouts, though this time I took a slice of bacon and sliced it into small pieces to cook with the Brussels sprouts. Delicious! If my stomach had emotions, eating the Brussels sprouts would make it smile and shout with joy! Even eating some of the raw leaves while I was prepping the Brussels sprouts made my body feel better.

This is why I think that my food habits this week have had a big influence on my health today. I basically set up my own personal perfect storm for migraines:

1. Lack of sleep/changes in sleep patterns
2. High stress levels
3. Unhealthy eating
4. Chocolate (this kind of falls under number 3, but it deserves its own section because chocolate is a common migraine trigger independent of other eating habits)
5. Weather changes

I think I've had a lot of small failures the past couple weeks. I'm hoping to get myself back into line over the next couple weeks.

P.S. I've heard of some people wanting to cut out the core of the Brussels sprout before cooking to promote fast and even cooking. Personally the core is my favorite part, so I suggest trying this cabbage-like veggie with the core.

P.P.S. I saw the trailer for Thundercats today. I find Vin Diesel with face paint very amusing, but give me Brad Pitt, Vin Diesel, and Hugh Jackman any day!

Dark Chocolate...the highs and lows

Dark chocolate is chocolate without (or with very little) milk solids added and can be used to refer to unsweetened, bittersweet, or semisweet. It is produced by adding sugar and fat (like lecithin) to the cocoa, and is classified based on the percentage (by weight) of cocoa solids in the bar.  Unsweetened or bitter chocolate is cocoa solids and fat without added sugar; this type is usually used for baking.

After being removed from their pods, cocoa beans are fermented, dried, and roasted. Their shells are then discarded, leaving the "nib." Chocolate liquor is the paste that results from grinding the nib.

Some studies say that dark chocolate helps to lower blood pressure. But don't think that eating milk chocolate is going to help your blood pressure... it's dark chocolate that's "good" for you and is an antioxidant. Keep in mind that dark chocolate is still ripe with calories, so if you want to incorporate it into your diet, you'll need to make concessions elsewhere.

That little lesson on dark chocolate stemmed from this past weekend being Easter, which in my family means that my mother hides plastic Easter eggs filled with candy or an Easter basket filled with candy and other goodies. Because of this whole "Paleo thing", I don't eat candy, and I haven't had any sweets since Lent started. However, after reading various articles and blogs about Paleo, I noticed that most people on the modern caveman diet will eat dark chocolate. So I told my mom I could have dark chocolate for Easter... and she provided in abundance.

It was delicious!! I used to (and still secretly do) love white chocolate, the sweetest stuff out there, so dark chocolate was always too bitter for me. (In case you were wondering, white chocolate is sugar, milk, and cocoa butter, sans cocoa solids. The use of "chocolate" in describing this treat is a bit of a stretch.) However, after not eating sugar for so long, I didn't think the dark chocolate was bitter at all! Unfortunately, this meant that I ate an entire chocolate bunny throughout the day on Monday. Stop those stares! I didn't eat it all in one sitting! I instead spread it out over my trip home, beginning in Atlanta, continuing on the plane, and finishing it off once I got back to Texas. Even more unfortunately, I ended up curled in a ball on my couch clutching my stomach, with Never again! running through my head. Hence I'm restricting myself to one small piece of chocolate per week, which means that I should run out of dark chocolate sometime in November. I'm putting the chocolate in my freezer now...