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Tasty Tuesday: Sweet Potato Shepherds Pie

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Sweet potatoes are flippin’ awesome. They are fantastic for digestion, heart health, skin health, and blood sugar levels. Specifically, they are high in Vitamin B6, Vitamin A, Fiber, Potassium, Vitamins C and E, and Manganese.

This recipe was my attempt at making my mom’s amazing shepherds pie but without the starch of potatoes. With that in mind, it was GROSS. But once we stopped thinking of it as Shepherds Pie and started thinking of it as a dish on it’s own, SO DELICIOUS. Isn’t it weird how your brain can trick you like that?

This was incredible easy to make and I just kept it in a crockpot in the fridge and reheated it (on the lowest temperature possible) for 3 nights straight. Thank you bulk-cooking!

SweetPotatoPotPie-Published

Sweet Potato Pot Pie (6-8 servings)

Ingredients:

  • 7 organic sweet potatoes, chopped into small chunks
  • 3/4 cup organic milk (almond, coconut, dairy, whatever)
  • 1 organic yellow onion, diced
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 pounds organic ground turkey
  • 1 package of organic gravy mix
  • 8oz organic frozen mixed veggies (carrots, peas, etc)

Instructions:

  1. Boil sweet potato chunks in a large pot until soft. While they are cooking, mix gravy. 
  2. Drain water from pot add the milk and mash it all together. Set aside.
  3. In a separate, deep pan, sauté onions and garlic for 5 minutes on medium-high heat.
  4. Add turkey to pan and cook until brown.
  5. Add gravy and frozen veggies to pan and mix together.
  6. Either in the large pot or in a crockpot, layer the meat mixture, then the mashed sweet potatoes. Heat in the crockpot or oven on low for 10 minutes. This allows the juices to mix together. YUM
  7. Enjoy!

Friday DIY: Brazilian Wax (Ladies Only!)

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Men (and conservative women), you are forewarned: this post contains A LOT of in depth lady jargon. It reveals the dark side of beauty. DO NOT READ THIS. STOP NOW.

If you’re still reading, be prepared. Now ladies, how many of you get waxed down there in your nether regions? How much does it cost you? $30, $40, maybe something like $80? First, let me explain why I wax:

  1. Shaving really sucks. I used to get terrible razor burn and razor stubble is just foul. I don’t want my VJ to feel like sandpaper.
  2. Waxing only needs to be done every 4 weeks, and once you’ve been doing it for several years, you can go as long as 8 weeks!
  3. It actually makes your hair follicles weaker and your hair thinner. I’m to the point where my hair has stopped growing in some spots. Awesome!

Yes, it hurts. But it’s so worth it. And because your hair follicles get weaker, the pain actually gets less the more you do it. One thing I should mention is that, once you start waxing, you should NEVER shave. It reverses all the long term benefits I mentioned above. If you shave once, it’s like starting from zero on the waxing scale.

When I moved from Boston to Peoria, the price of Brazilian waxing went from $40 to $80. WHAT?!? I’ve been searching for months for something cheaper to no avail. I did find a beauty school that did the simple bikini waxes (check out this post) but no one would take it all off without charging an arm and a leg. So I decided to do it myself.

Needless to say, I was VERY nervous. Who the heck takes the chance of buying their own wax, spreading it hot and sticky all over the very sensitive patch between their legs, and then ripping it off with their own two hands? I could be making a very big mistake. But I will say, I’d watched quite a few estheticians do it to me, might as well try and do it to myself right?

Moom

So I did my research on wax and found this great option on Amazon. Of course I had to go natural so I bought sugar wax. It’s water soluble and works great on thick and thin hair. It’s called Moom. It came with everything I needed to wax (except for the sweat-absorbing starch) including microwavable wax, reusable strips, and wooden applicator sticks. And the best part, it was only $14!

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So it arrived and I stared at it on my dresser for several weeks before I plucked up the courage to try it. I set up my little station and went to work. The only things I needed that weren’t included were a towel to sit on, a mirror for when hunching over wasn’t enough, rubbing alcohol to disinfect, starch to soak up the moisture before I got started, and tweezers for post-wax clean up. Here’s how it goes:

  1. Use a cotton ball to spread rubbing alcohol over the region first.
  2. Dab some baby powder, corn starch, or any kind of starch (I used tapioca because that’s all I had) before you get started. It soaks up any moisture and the wax sticks better.
  3. Trim your hair down to 1/2″ (1cm) so the wax can pick up more of it.
  4. Heat up the wax until it’s a honey-like consistency.
  5. Analyze the direction your hair is growing in. Spread the wax in a thin layer in the same direction.
  6. Pull your skin taut and pull the strip off very fast in the opposite direction of hair growth.
  7. For a bit of relief, put pressure on the area immediately after you pull the strip off.
  8. Work methodically in sections so you don’t have to wax any area more than once.
  9. You won’t get every single hair so use the tweezers to snag stragglers.
  10. Rinse off any patches of wax with warm water. Dab dry then apply a light moisturizer to soothe the skin.

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I did feel a bit like a hunchback after 45 minutes of sitting in front of the mirror but it went really well! I didn’t rip off any skin and my happy triangle is smooth and clean. The tub of wax isn’t even 1/3 gone and I rinsed the strips clean with hot water and can use them again next time. It was a MUCH better experience than I anticipated and I’m so stoked that I found a cheap alternative to salons.

Who wants to try it? Ask me any questions, I’m happy to answer. I hope you all have very wonderful, very sexy weekends 😉

Tasty Tuesday: Chicken Tikka Masala

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Professional cyclists DO NOT eat a healthy diet. Especially not the riders over in Europe. Mike and I saw this first hand when, while following the Giro d’Italia, we picked up their discarded feed bags on the side of the road. All we found were pastries and “energy bars” full of refined sugar and bad carbohydrates. It was unbelievable to us that their team directors think it acceptable and, above all, profitable to fuel their riders with these kinds of food. How much better would they perform on a 5 hour race day if their bodies could actually use the food they were given?

FeedZoneCookbook

This weekend I met two of my favorite chef’s: Dr. Allen Lim and Chef Biju Thomas. They co-authored “The Feed Zone Cookbook.” Allen Lim was the director of sport sciences for professional cycling teams, Radioshack and Garmin. He introduced the idea of gluten-sensitivity and the importance of a healthy diet in a training plan. Biju Thomas is an avid cyclist and chef to some of the top riders in the US. The cookbook is based on very simple but very healthy meals that could be cooked with 3-5 ingredients on one stove-top while on the road. I love it.

One of my favorites (and now perfectly adapted for me) recipes is their Chicken Tikka Masala. Their version uses lots of yogurt which is fine if it’s raw (or at least organic) but I wanted to see if I could get rid of it altogether. So I replaced it with canned coconut milk and OH-EM-GEE. Really, really yummy.

I was always nervous about cooking curry because it’s so tasty that I figured it would be complicated. Absolutely not the case. This is one of the easiest dishes I’ve ever cooked and it now holds a preferred spot on our meal planning menu.

Curry-Published

 

Ingredients (3 servings, double this to make 6 servings and last a couple days)

  • 4 cups of cooked quinoa for the base
  • 2 lbs chicken, cut into bite sized pieces (I used my leftover chicken from my roast last week)
  • 1-cup tomato sauce
  • 1 12oz can organic coconut milk (shake before opening)
  • 2 Tbsp curry powder
  • 1/2 a sliced onion
  • 1 tsp salt
  • a dash of cayenne pepper or 2-4 green chiles, cut into strips (optional)

Instructions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and, if you can, let marinate in the fridge for at least an hour. I didn’t have time for this and it was still delicious.
  2. Pour all ingredients into a deep pan and simmer, uncovered, over medium heat for 30 minutes.
  3. Spoon on top of your quinoa and enjoy!

It’s the simplest and most delicious meal. Definitely one of our favorites. Try to pair it with a spinach salad to get your raw veggies in.

Let me know how it goes! I hope you’re all having very fun and spicy days 🙂

 

Tasty Tuesday: Sushi Night!

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With the holidays and all the other things I have to say, I haven’t posted a recipe in a few weeks. I’m going to bring back the routine with a very easy and very fun recipe you can do with two people or 7 people. Make Your Own Sushi! For Christmas, my siblings and I decided to give my parents something they don’t get very often: all of us together. So we wracked our brains to think of how we could do a cheap, healthy meal and instead of going to a crappy restaurant, we cooked for ourselves!

There is a little hardware involved in this one ($2 bamboo mats you get at the grocery store) but people can share so you don’t need many. The prep is SUPER easy and the dinner making part is really fun. Just try it why don’t you!

photo 3 copy photo 4 copy^ Prep everything in slivers.photo 1 copy< Lay it all out.photo 5 photo 1photo 2^ Roll your sushi!photo 3photo 4^ My brother had the great idea of taking a roll to work the next day 🙂photo 2 copy^ Isn’t my family beautiful. Gosh I miss them so much, this photo makes me want to cry. Blehhhhh.

Supplies:

  • plastic wrap
  • bamboo mats, 1 per 2 people – $2 at your grocery store

Ingredients (can really be anything you want but this is what we used):

  • short grain rice (brown if you can find it)
  • rice vinegar (or red wine vinegar if you don’t have it)
  • Nori seaweed paper
  • carrots
  • avocado
  • cucumber
  • crab (sushi grade)
  • salmon (sushi grade)
  • mango

Instructions:

1. Prep the rice – sushi rice is prepared in a very particular way.

  • Pour the rice into a bowl and cover with clean water. Slosh the rice around with your hand for 15 seconds then drain it. Repeat several times until the water coming out is pretty much clear.
  • Add rice and more clean water to a pot at slightly more than a 1:1 ratio.
  • Cooking on high heat, stirring every couple of minutes, until the water boils. Lower heat and cover for 6-8 minutes, stop when the water is absorbed. No need to stir.
  • Remove the rice with a wooden spoon so as not to damage it. Also, don’t scrape it off the bottom of the pot, just use what comes out easily.
  • For every 3 cups of rice, add 1/2 cup rice vinegar. Stir it together and you’re done!

2. Cut the fillings into long, thin slivers.

3. Lay it all out on the table and let everyone go to work!

  • Our photos are clearly the work of amateurs. Just check out this link for the best instructions I found on the internet. Sushi rolling takes some serious technique so it’s really funny trying to do it. But everything tastes delicious no matter what it looks like and, eventually, you get the hang of it…on the last roll. Haha.

And that’s all! And when I say “that’s all,” I mean this meal is an adventure. It’s so much more fun than going out to eat though, and so much cheaper!

Has anyone else ever done this? How did it go? Much love everyone. I hope you all have happy Tuesdays 🙂

Workout Wednesday: Don’t Stop Now!

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Yes yes, I know, “It’s the holidays, I spend all my time Christmas shopping, I don’t have the energy to think about myself, there’s too much bad food around, blah blah blah.” THERE ARE NO EXCUSES. If you read this blog, you probably interact at least a little bit with other health conscious people and, right now, they’re all giving you some wonderful information. It is possible to still enjoy the food, just load up your plate with vegetables before you add anything else. Plan your gifting so you can knock it all out in one day. Focus on yourself for a half hour a day, that’s all it takes!

I don’t care what life situation you’re in, it is ALWAYS better to care for your own health before that of others. You know in the airplane, how you’re supposed to “secure your own oxygen mask BEFORE assisting others?” I know it’s hard but it makes sense. If you’re unhealthy/can’t breathe, you’re unfit, unenergized, or dead before you can even help one other person.

Good thing I’m here for you huh? Because there are these awesome 12 or 16 minute workouts I talk about a lot. Maybe you’ve heard me once or twice? They’re all you need during the holidays. Just do this a few times a week, load up on those veggies, and TA DA! You emerge in January looking and feeling just as svelte as you did in August.

Today’s workout:

Beginner through intermediate (12 minutes)

– 20 seconds on/ 20 seconds off

– each exercise 3 times in a row

Advanced (16 minutes)

– 30 seconds on/ 10 seconds off

– each exercise 4 times in a row

Exercises:

LowJacks1 LowJacks2

1) Beginner/Intermediate- side to side step/ jumping jacks, Advanced- low jacks

PlieSquat

2) Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced- plie squat

ToeTaps(High)

3) Beginner/Intermediate- floor toe taps, Advanced- high toe taps

GoodMornings(hands behind head, no weight)

4) Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced- good mornings

WindshieldWipers

5) Beginner/Intermediate- bent-leg windshield wipers, Advanced- straight-leg windshield wipers

MountainClimber

6) Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced- mountain climbers

plank

Bonus) Beginner/Intermediate- elbow and knee plank Advanced- hand and toe plank

Let me know how it went!

Ps. We’re getting SO close to the weekend/holiday/sleep in time. Hope you’re all having happy Wednesdays 🙂

 

Tasty Tuesday: Meal Planning and Taco Night

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A common excuse for why people don’t cook for themselves is that it takes too much time. To these people I say, “NO!” If you want to be healthy, you have to figure out how it works into your schedule. Of course, I can help you with this.

My Solution: Cook three times a week, the nights you have a bit more time. Easy meals that take no more than 30 minutes. Cook double and eat leftovers on nights you really don’t have time to cook. However, make sure that you are reheating the leftovers in the oven and on the stove top, microwaves are BAD. Let the 7th day be your meal vacation day and get a pre-cooked pizza or order in.

This strategy means I only grocery shop once a week and it’s only for the three meals I need to cook plus a little breakfast and lunchtime stuff. And now nothing goes bad either!

So this week one of the three meals was make-your-own tacos. YUM. It’s cheap and so incredibly delicious.

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Make-Your-Own-Tacos

Side Ingredients (mix or match with whatever you have, and organic is best)

corn tortillas

refried beans

no sugar salsa

cucumbers, chopped

guacamole

pecorino cheese, grated (< hard sheep’s cheese, like parmesan but without the lactose)

Taco Meat Ingredients

ground turkey or chicken (< very important that it’s organic)

1 onion, diced

1 Tbsp coconut oil

garlic, 2 cloves minced or 2 tsp powder

1 Tbsp cumin

salt and pepper

optional: portobello mushrooms, other soft veggies

Instructions

1. Cook the taco meat. Sauté the onion and garlic in the coconut oil on medium heat for 5 minutes.

2. Add the ground turkey/chicken, spices, and veggies. Set to medium-low heat and cover. Stir occasionally while heating side ingredients. Cook for a total of about 15 minutes.

3. Heat refried beans in a pot on stove. Stir frequently.

4. Heat tortillas in oven on lowest setting for 5 minutes. While you’re plating the sides.

5. Put it out all nice and pretty and let people serve themselves! Enjoy.

Hope you’re all having wonderful Tuesdays 🙂

 

Fun Times Friday: Date Night Creativity

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If you’ve been following this blog for a bit, you know that Mike and I go on a date every Saturday night. Each week we switch off planning and paying for them and, if possible, we make it a surprise. So last week was mine and, considering I’m on a VERY tight budget I’ve had to get pretty creative with what we do. My budget most weeks is about $25 for both of us. How the heck do I figure that out??

Well if you keep an eye out for free events going on in your town, you never know what you’ll find! There’s a nice, upper class area called Peoria Heights that I drive through every once in a while and I saw a sign for “Chocolate in the Heights.” You know those signs that you tend to ignore because you’re just too busy going about your day? This was one of those. But since I’ve come to realize my not awesome financial state, I’ve started actually looking at those signs! There was no description of what it was, just that it was the next Saturday (yes!) from 10am-5pm. I did a little searching and found a slightly more detailed poster for the event.

chocmap2012brochure

Using my deductive reasoning, I assumed that each boutique and shop on the main street would have some kind of deal on chocolate and/or something free to offer. Done and done!

As usual, I planned to take him to this event and then bring him home and cook a nice, sit-down meal for us both.

I kept it a surprise until we parked in the Heights and let’s just say Mike looked less than excited. However! I kept the energy going. I gave us $15 to spend on chocolate and whatever else we wanted and, because I had to work late, we had an hour to do it.

It ended up being REALLY fun. Of course we only took one picture because I was too excited to remember to take more. But we discovered a whole street of awesome shops we didn’t know were there: an oil and vinegar shop with about 30 different types of gourmet vinegar (cool!) and a few more specialty shops with random but also really unusual knick-knacks. We got some great gift ideas for Christmas.

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^ Yep, I look like I’ve just discovered gold.

We used this as our food vacation day and got lots of delectable treats. Free stuff we indulged in: chocolate fountain (see above), chocolate pretzel clusters, oil and vinegar samples, cheese, wine, beer, and chocolate cupcakes. With our $15 we bought an amazing triangle of cheese, a bar of specialty chocolate, and some Pear Balsamic Vinegar. And we had such a good time scoping out the options and then going back to the shops to purchase what we wanted.

So it’s possible! To have a few hours of fun and still stick to your budget. You just have to keep an eye out for free things around your town.

Happy Friday everyone! 🙂

Thirsty Thursday: Spiked Peppermint Hot Cocoa

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I don’t drink very much. In fact, I really dislike being drunk. So when I do drink, it’s because I love the taste and the calmness it can sometimes give me. Anyway! I get lots of questions from patients (whispered of course) along the lines of: please please please tell me I can still have a glass of [insert alcohol here]? Good news! While the company I work for may not condone it, I whole heartedly support a solid glass of something alcoholic every once in a while.

Wine is great, beer is great, and liquor is great BUT (you knew it was coming) there are a few rules to remember when drinking:

1. Alcohol is very high in calories and while I don’t think ANYONE should be counting their calories, they should be monitoring the amount of bad calories they take in. And yes, alcohol counts as bad calories. So if you’re trying to lose weight, limit the amount you consume.

2. Most mixed drinks are loaded with sugar. And I mean loaded. If you’re going to have hard alcohol, mix it with soda water, tonic, or just drink it straight. This keeps the calories and the sugar content down. My drink of choice is tequila on the rocks with lime. Delicious, effective, and relatively healthy.

3. Normal beer contains lots of gluten. Some people are unknowingly gluten-intolerant. If you’re getting outrageous hangovers, a bloated belly, stomach pains, or headaches while drinking it may be time to consider the gluten-free option of drinks. Redbridge is my favorite.

4. Non-organic wines have added sulfites and lot’s of people react to it without knowing they’re having a reaction. If you experience any of the symptoms from #3 while drinking wine. Try organic wine and see if they go away. Organic wine has no added sulfites. Any sulfites in organic wine are naturally produced through the fermentation process. If you find that you have less of a reaction with organic wine, try sulfite-free wine next and see if that feels even better.

Side Note: If you feel at risk for addiction, there are special rules that apply. You should limit or completely stop your intake of alcohol until you speak to a psychology professional.

With that said, I recently made one of my favorites. A delicious, holiday drink:

Spiked Peppermint Hot Cocoa (1 serving)

Ingredients

2 cups coconut/almond/raw milk

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

1 oz (half a nip) of peppermint liquor

Instructions (not sure why the photos are so crappy, sorry!)

photo 1

photo 2

1. Heat the milk in a pot on medium heat. Stir in cocoa while heating.

photo 3

2. Remove from heat, stir in liquor.

Enjoy! 🙂

What’s your favorite holiday drink? Let me know and I’ll try to make a healthy version.

Tasty Tuesday: Guacamole!

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Who doesn’t love guacamole? And all you people out there that are shaking their head, “no I hate guacamole, that delicious healthy fat combined with all those savory veggies and awesome spices, I hate it.” Obviously something’s wrong with you. The great thing about making your own dip is that you can take out any flavors you don’t like!

With this batch, I decided to try to add some protein. I put in some black beans and they are so tasty. Definitely be doing that again.

Guac is great to bring to parties with some crackers/chips or to put on top of salads. And it makes taco night SO much better. Plus, it’s so easy! This took me about 20 minutes to make and it will (hopefully with some restraint from Mike) last at least 3 or 4 days.

Easy Black Bean Guacamole

Ingredients

3 ripe avocados

1 small onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, pressed

6 oz salsa or 1 medium tomato, diced

juice from 1/2 lime, 1/2 lemon, OR 1 orange (I didn’t have anything else and it actually worked really well)

1 tsp cumin, to taste

2 tsp sea salt, to taste

1 tsp ground pepper, to taste

dash of chili powder

6 oz black beans

Instructions

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1. Our avocados were unripe yesterday so I took them out of the fridge and wrapped them in a brown paper bag. For some reason they ripen faster in paper bags. This morning they were perfect.

photo 2

2. Cut avocados in half, take out the pit, and scoop into a large bowl. Add all other ingredients besides black beans. Mash it all up with a fork or masher.

photo 3

3. Stir in beans or other add-ins. Taste test it! Mess with the spices however you see fit. It looks kinda gross but it is OH SO GOOD!

What is your favorite way to eat guacamole?

Hope you’re all having happy days 🙂

Just-Try-It Thursday: Frittata

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This recipe is really flippin’ easy. And cheap! (I got it from an awesome blog I read regularly: Once A Month) I cooked it immediately after my workout and was eating within 20 minutes. It is a pretty basic dish though so I also had a couple of pieces of toast. One with almond butter, one with honey. It would be delicious with roasted potatoes though.

Veggie Frittata (serves 4)

Ingredients

8 eggs – keep the yolks! They’re a healthy fat.

Whatever veggies you have – I used green peppers, mushrooms, garlic, tomatoes, and a bit of spinach. Onions would be really good too.

1/2 cup almond, coconut, or full fat milk

salt and peppa

1. Chop up all the veggie and sauté the hard veggies (peppers, mushrooms, garlic, onions) in a Tbsp of oil. Medium heat for 5 minutes.

2. While they’re cooking, scramble the eggs and milk together. Use a big bowl and a whisk. Don’t stop until the eggs get frothy.

3. Add the soft veggies (tomatoes) to your sauté and spread everything out evenly.

4. Pour on the eggs. And top with any green leaves you have. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes. Then transfer to the oven to broil for another 5 minutes.

5. Take it out and cut into it! I kept mine covered for a few minutes before eating it and it went from pretty and fluffy to sadly deflated. But it was still delicious!

Let me know how it goes! (< do this by clicking the title of this blog post and entering your message under “penny for your thoughts)