Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Coconut whipped cream

Coconut whipped cream

I saw a wonderful post about how you can use coconut milk to make whipped coconut cream. I thought I would try this. The trick is that you have to whip the thick solid part of the milk from the can. To make this happen, you need to refrigerate the can of coconut milk for about a week. I only did for a few hours, so I only got a few spoonfuls worth of whipped goodness. It was delicious! But... I needed more for the dinner I was going for. So, since I am not a vegan, I decide to add some real whipped cream, made with heavy whipping cream. When all mixed together I had a delicious, light coconut tasting, fluffy delight! Adding the whipping cream made the coconut flavor less intense and I thought it was perfect. Of course, if you are vegan... then try it with just the coconut milk. Like I said, I would recommend leaving it in the fridge for a few days to a week and buying two cans. Good luck!!

Ingredients
Coconut Milk - Full Fat (only use the thick solid part, remove liquid)
Heavy Whipping Cream
Powdered sugar (for sweetness and thickening, you can omit this)
Other optional add-ins: vanilla extract, cinnamon

Mix together and whip!


Shown here with my delicious flourless chocolate cake

Breakfast Quinoa

Hey there! I know I haven't posted for awhile and I have some new ideas! Here is one for now...

Breakfast Quinoa!

I actually had this for dinner tonight. The reason is because I was craving oatmeal from earlier when a drug rep brought McDonald's breakfast for everyone (including oatmeal) at work. As you know from my initial post and some thereafter, I don't eat oats because they are a grain. But... I do eat quinoa, not often, but at least I can because it's technically not a grain. It's a seed! It definitely hit the spot! Here's the ingredients... enjoy!

Breakfast Quinoa

quinoa 
water for boiling
heavy whipping cream or milk
cinnamon
honey
berries or any other fruit

Simply cook the quinoa according to directions (typically it is cooked like rice, 2 parts water to 1 part quinoa (1/2 cup of uncooked quinoa is a nice amount for one). Once the quinoa is cooked, place it in a serving bowl, add the desired amount of cream or milk, then mix in cinnamon and honey if desired until it is sweet to your liking. I think the cinnamon does the trick by itself. Then top with berries or cooked apples! Mmmmmm Mmmmmm!


Note: it takes some time to cook quinoa, so try cooking it the night before so it's ready for a fast go-to breakfast!

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Meal Plans and Snack Ideas


I will try and update this list as I come up with ideas to share. But here is a handy dandy list if you are trying to think of some healthy, grain-free meal or snack options. Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments section!! I’m always looking for new and tasty ideas. J I will post pictures and recipes for some of these as I make them at home… stay tuned.

Breakfast Choices (If I am not running out the door with a plain banana I go with one of these):

1    .     Banana with 2 TBL almond butter (or other nut/seed butter). I love MaraNatha All Natural No Stir Almond Butter Smooth.

2    .     ½ cup of Plain yogurt (I use TJ’s European Style Organic Plain Nonfat) with a large handful of blueberries. Optional add-ins include; slivered almonds, toasted coconut or other berries. Can sweeten with cinnamon or honey or agave syrup.

3    .     Hard-boiled egg (I like to make a few early in the week for an easy grab).

4    .     Scrambled eggs with feta cheese (I started using coconut oil to cook eggs). Go fancy and add some parsley, dill or other herbs. Season with salt/pepper.

5    .     My easy pancake recipe made with just eggs and banana (recipe).

6    .     Sunday brunch usually includes some type of omelet and very crispy bacon! I love bacon!

Lunch Options:

1    .     Romaine lettuce wrap. Can include chicken, turkey or other meat with some hummus or guacamole, sprouts, and cucumber for some crunch. You can also go veggie with red pepper, carrots, green onion and anything else you can fit in there. FYI… Jimmy John’s delivers and you can order any sandwich as an “unwich,” in which they use a huge piece of lettuce instead of bread to wrap up the inside goods. But try to make homemade and try to stick to meats that are not deli-meats. The less processing, the better.

2    .     Tuna salad or chicken salad. I make my chicken salad with some Lemonaise, celery, walnuts, and apple. For the tuna, I like to get the one in oil so I don’t need mayo, and add celery, capers, pickles, scallions and walnuts. Yum yum. You can eat this by itself or in a lettuce wrap.

3    .     Make a salad. Any kind, pile up the veggies. Adding an avocado gives it a little depth. I also like adding some Mediterranean olives (not the seedless ones that you can put on your fingers to make an olive monster). (Blue cheese and cranberries) (make it greek) (arugula with lemon juice, olive oil and parmesan).

4    .     Soup. Vegetable soup, tomato, lentil, etc. (see my hearty soup recipe… )

5    .     Roasted chicken with roasted or steamed vegetables (I love roasting broccolini/broccoli rabe)

6    .     Raw shaved zucchini, asparagus, or mini artichoke salad. Add shaved fennel, spring onions, parsley, goat cheese, lemon juice and olive oil.

Dinners (recipes to follow soon to eventually):

1    .     Basically any meat with a side of vegetables and a small salad if needed.
a.     Baked or roasted chicken thighs/breast with roasted vegetable (onions, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower).
b.     Mashed cauliflower and roasted red cabbage with grilled sausage.
c.      Roasted brussels sprouts, baked sweet potato with cinnamon with pork roast.
d.     Grilled skirt steak with chimichurri sauce and red cabbage slaw.
e.     Lamb chops with arugula salad.

2    .     Ground beef stew with zucchini, tomato, and green beans.

3    .     Roasted vegetable lasagna.

4    .     Omelet for dinner.

5    .     Bean salad with chorizo.

6    .     Flatbread pizza on a cauliflower crust or cheese base.

7    .     Tomato, mozzarella, basil salad.

8    .     Artichokes with a lemon oil sauce for dipping.

9    .     Spaghetti using spaghetti squash.

Snacks:

1    .     Water – don’t underestimate the importance of hydration. Sometimes when you’re thirsty, your brain confuses it for hunger. Hydrate first and foremost!

2    .     Apple with some almond butter

3    .     Navel orange

4    .     Cheese sticks

5    .     Guacamole with Plantain chips (my favorite!)

6    .     Cucumber or carrot sticks with hummus

7    .     Handful of nuts or seeds. Try Pepitas! (Make pre-portioned baggies so you don’t go overboard).

8    .     Beef Jerky

Drinks

1    .     Water, lots of water!

2    .     Green Tea or White Tea

3    .     My Starbucks run is usually for either a Grande Nonfat Latte or Earl Grey Latte. Yum yum.

4     .     Stay away from juices and sodas, especially diet. Yuck for fake sugar. I do admit that on special occasions I do order a regular Coke. Soooo good, but it has corn syrup – which is made from grains, so not good, not to mention all that sugar and carbonation.

5    .     Alcohol you say? I stick to Red Wine. Beer, Vodka, Whisky, etc. made of grains. Swans Neck Vodka is made of grapes and is the only one I like (I think Cîroc has a weird taste). So I can still enjoy my favorite Bloody Marys!!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Just do it!

Here are some simple exercises that you can do while watching television. Try them, I dare you...

(images from Real Simple)

1. Jumping Jacks (try 50 at a time, or 100)

2. Plank or Side Plank for 60 sec intervals
3. Mountain Climbers
4. Wall Sit for 30 or 60 sec intervals (if you have weights, try doing some bicep curls at the same time or use a exercise ball to do wall squats)


5. Sit-ups or curls ups (try bicycle style)
6. Bridge (try on one leg at a time with other held up straight parallel to other leg)
7. Arm circles
8. Walking lunges or squats

**Now if you have additional time... private dance party at home or go enjoy the fresh air and run or fast walk for half an hour for some cardio!!**


Berry Simple Sundae

Here is my go to dessert when I need a little treat. It's sooo super easy and only involves two ingredients...
Frozen berries and vanilla ice cream!

I usually have frozen berries (I like to get the multi-berry pack with strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries) and vanilla ice cream (I buy Haagen Daz vanilla because it has simple ingredients... cream, skim milk, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla extract) in my freezer because they are easy to store.

Simply warm up the desired amount of berries in a bowl in the microwave or in a small pot on the stove top and when warmed through, pour berries with resulting juice on top of a scoop of vanilla ice cream. No added sugar needed to the berries!! Please try it without adding sugar. You'll never go back to adding sugar again! There is enough in the ice cream and in the fruit itself. Okay, as usual... Enjoy!! I know I will. :)


Mediterranean nachos (sans the chips)

I love nachos and I looove Mediterranean food (think gyros or poor man's kebab). So I thought, why not combine the two? Technically what I ate would be the equivalent of the toppings of nachos. But these can be made with "chips." Just take some pita, cut it up into little triangles, coat with olive oil and salt and bake in the oven until crispy. Then put the following on top (or eat by itself)!

Mediterranean Nacho Topping (ingredients for two)

1 onion
1 lb ground beef (or lamb)
1-2 tomato (I used Roma)
2-3 Israeli cucumbers
Handful of olives
Tzatziki sauce (store bought or homemade)
Olive oil for cooking
Salt and pepper for taste

1. Put some olive oil in a pan and add one chopped onion. Sweat the onion until translucent. Then add the ground beef and brown until fully cooked.

2. While the meat is cooking, dice your tomatoes and cucumbers. You can also pit the olives if you like.

3. Once meat is cooked, put in serving plate (if using pita chips, put on top of the chips). On top put the tomatoes, cucumbers and olives on top of that and then top with your tzatziki sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!! Read below for a tzatziki recipe...



Tzatziki or Cacik Sauce

2 cups plain yogurt
2 cloves garlic
3 medium cucumbers
Salt
2 TBL chopped dill

1. Place yogurt in bowl.

2. Grate garlic into yogurt, dice cucumbers or grate and add into yogurt, along with dill. Mix well and add salt and pepper to taste.


Saturday, February 2, 2013

Pesto Pasta (almost)... includes pesto recipe

I used to be quite the pasta girl. To tell you the truth, now that I have been without for quite some time, I don't miss it as much as I thought I would. Though the idea of having some every once in a while pops into my mind. So I have tried a few different grain free options, including buckwheat noodles (or Soba... if you try these make sure the ingredients list only buckwheat, some include wheat flour as well) and black bean noodles. Both of these are grain free, but very starchy. When they cook, the water boils over like crazy (the wooden spoon across the top trick does not work here), so you have to watch it closely. These options are good if you really want pasta, but taste closer to whole wheat pasta. Anyway, I would eat them again, but figure I don't miss pasta that much to make the effort.

Fast forward to this weekend. I picked up something new to try in the noodle arena because I thought I'd give making pasta another try. This time I bought Kelp Noodles. These are made solely of Kelp and salt extracted from Seaweed. They are virtually calorie free (6 calories per serving, 18 in the whole bag). They are very easy to use and don't require any cooking. All you have to do is take them out of the bag and rinse them. If you have any left you are supposed to store them in water.

I decided to try these with pesto sauce, so I will include my recipe for that too.

Here they are before:



Here is my pesto recipe that I used to add to my clear Kelp Noodles...

Delicious Pesto Sauce

Very simple: Blend together 4 cups of basil (you can also use parsley or arugula or a mixture), 1 cup of olive oil, 1/2 cup of toasted pine nuts (you can also use walnuts), 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese, 1-2 cloves of garlic and salt and pepper to taste. Voila! You have your pesto. :)



After rinsing the noodles, add your pesto sauce. Enjoy! The noodles were pretty tasteless and didn't impart any weird taste, so I think they are good to enjoy with any sauce. 



Note: One thing that's a bit different about these noodles is that they are slightly crunchy. I'm kind of weird about textures, so I'm not sure I will use these as a pasta alternative in the future. Because even though they were great and perfectly fine, I couldn't get over the idea of crunchy pasta. But I will definitely use them in soups and salads where a little crunch is possibly expected. :)

Friday, February 1, 2013

Grain-free sausage pancake bites

So I saw this post online and was immediately excited because I love pancakes and I love my sausage. I was a wee bit skeptical of the picture, because it definitely looked like something made with grain. After making it (I'll share my picture compared to the picture I saw on the internet), I am pretty sure that the picture did not display the advertised ingredients. Anyway... despite their funny looking appearance, they were actually quite tasty. Somewhat on the drier side, but with a little syrup they gave me the grain-full pancake breakfast feeling. Now I'm super full! So here is the recipe and the pictures... Enjoy!

Sausage Stuffed Pancake Bites

1 cup Blanched Almond Meal (maybe this is where I went wrong, mine was not blanched)
3 Large Organic Eggs (or non-organic)
2 TBS Oil (I used coconut oil)
3 TBS Water or Milk (I used water, should have used milk)
3 TBS Granulated Sugar
1/4 Tsp. Salt
1-2 Sausage links (I used Trader Joe's Chicken Jalapeño Sausages)

Oil for Cooking

1. Cook cut up pieces of sausage and set aside.
2. Add 3 eggs to a blender and blend until thick and smooth. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until all ingredients are blended well and smooth. 
3. Drizzle a little oil onto a pan if making pancake style. The author used an ebelskiver pan (I don't have one of these). I used a greased muffin tin in the oven (cooked at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes until cooked through). Wherever you pour the batter, put a piece of cooked sausage into each mini pancake. Flip after about 1 minute of cooking. 

Recipe from: http://realsustenance.com/grain-free-sausage-stuffed-pancake-bites/

 Internet Photo

How mine came out. :/