Great family vacation

We've been so busy now that school is out. We took a drive to Missouri and Kansas. We had a College visit for Taryn and got to see my Dad and two of my Great Aunts on Father's day in Kansas. It was a great trip. We even got to see the St. Louis Arch on our return trip home. I have some great pictures I will post soon.

I've been experimenting by adding more raw into my diet. I'm really loving the extra greens. Tonight for dinner I had a spinach dip (spinach, avocado, lemon juice and salt) that I put in the food processor and then I put it on a sprouted grain Ezekiel 4:9 tortilla. It was a little mushier than it should have been. I think I put too much lemon juice on and left it processing too long.

Check out Justine's blog - she has a great contest going for her 100th post for Artisana Coconut butter. Have you tried Artisana's coconut butter? You must - it's such a treat and I can eat it out of the jar with a spoon - yep it's that good :)

Raw Veggie Heaven and 12 Grueling Miles

Monday 6/15/09

Breakfast:

Breakfast this morning was another Orange Veggie/Fruit Smoothie. This time I added cauliflower (yogurt, apple, banana, baby carrots, cauliflower). I didn't put ice in it, and I already had my blender washed by the time I realized it wasn't cold. It wasn't as good as yesterday's orange smoothie, but not bad. Unfortunately I didn't get to drink it..............the floorboard of my passenger seat got more than 1/2 of it. It was an ugly site and I got up as much as I could, but need to do some extra cleaning tonight.

Note to self: Don't use a big cup that you can't fit in the cup holder.


Since I really didn't get to drink much of my smoothie, I had a Larabar Jocalat Chocolate Coffee bar instead.



Lunch was raw veggie heaven:

A friend of mine at lunch has been talking about taking me to a raw food restaurant for a while. I didn't bring a lunch today since I left so early and didn't have my act together. I e-mailed my friend and we decided to head over to the raw food restaurant she wanted me to try. Unfortunately I did not take pictures.

Arnold's Way Vegetarian Organic Cafe

Protein Shake
Energy abound with purified water, bananas, Dates, & premium Hawaiian Spirulina

Cheze Burger
Our Raw Veggie Bruger served with a Sunflower Cheze on our classic Buckwheat – Flax Bread. Toppings include Lettuce, Tomato, Pickles, Onions, Olives, & Red Sauce (Tomato, Beet, Olive Oil, Green Olives).

It was absolutely fantastic and out of this world. The green olives he used were totally incredible and a wonderful addition to the dish. The buckwheat-flax bread was out of this world. The sunflower cheze and red sauce was absolutely incredible. It was art on a plate (I love food that reminds me of being edible art). I wish I had pictures to show you. The best part was the prices, it was under $12 for all that.

12 Grueling Miles:

Last night after a 10 hour work day (working four 10 hour days to have Friday off for an extended mini vacation this coming weekend), I went on a 12 mile bike ride with Bill & Ryan.

I got home around 6:40pm and we left around 7pm. I probably should have eaten something, but we left before I got to eat dinner. Our path took us on part of the Perkiomen Trail, but most of it was on open road. I really hate riding on the open rode because the cars come speeding by and when you start to get tired and your legs are like noodles it's a bit scary. We finished around 8:30pm and went 12 miles. What a great workout, although I realized when I got home the gears got shifted up and it was probably harder going up the hills than it should have been. I remember at one point telling Bill that when I was going up a hill that it was as if the brakes were on during the middle of the hill. I think that is when the shifting happened and I didn't even realize it.

My butt is totally sore this morning, lol! I'm so glad we went though. It was super great exercise.

Dinner:

I was tired and just wanted to eat.

I took some rice wrappers (think fresh vietnamese spring roll wrappers) and put soem rice noodles (think vietnamese bun or Pho noodles) inside with thinly cut zucchini.

I wanted to make a peanut sauce, so I took some organic peanut butter and added a small amount of organic soy sauce and stired. It was still thick so I added some water. Not what I wanted, but it wasn't bad. Since it wasn't dippable I put the peanut butter mixture on top of each roll. I ate two before I took a picture.


Will post picture tonight.

Another weekend comes to an end:

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. I always hate when the weekend comes to an end. Weekends make me happy since I'm not at work and with my family.

Saturday:

We went shopping today and ended the day seeing UP in 3D. Great movie with some great messages. Some of the movie was pretty sad though, and I hadn't really expected that. 3 Thumbs way up!


Sunday:

Today was Church, hanging around the house and my 4 mile walk.


Exercise:
I had a great 4 mile walk/run today. Over 400 miles were burned.

I was alone and sometimes I love being alone in nature. I ended up taking a road I've never been down today and I saw lots of beautiful birds, beautiful flowers, lots of green trees, plants and grass, lots of bugs that seemed to be attracted to the sweat, and really old home built in 1794 that looked like they have kept it mostly how it looked like back then (simplistic and beautiful). There was even a cave looking area in a small rock next to the house that I'm thinking was something they used to keep food cool back then - something similiar to a root cellar or something.

Racing Alert:
My man Jimmie Johnson ran out of gas again this weekend, two weekends in a row. Come on Jimmie let's not make it a 3rd. It was such a bummer to see him go from 1st to 22nd. SIGH!

Some eat's over the weekend:

Green Smoothie (Yogurt, avocado, spinach, carrots, apple, kiwi)



Ezekiel Tortilla Pizza:

Recipe: Moroccan Spiced Chickpea Soup

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/dave-lieberman/moroccan-spiced-chickpea-soup-recipe/index.html

Moroccan Spiced Chickpea Soup
Recipe by Dave Lieberman from Food Network.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for garnish
• 1 large onion, medium diced
• 6 to 8 cloves garlic, pressed
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 heaping teaspoon sweet paprika
• 1 (28oz-ounce) can chopped tomatoes
• 3 (15-ounce) cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed well
• 1 quart vegetable broth or reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon agave nectar
• Kosher salt & Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1 (5-ounce) package pre-washed baby spinach

Directions
Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and saute until the onions begin to turn translucent; lower heat if browning starts to occur. Add spices and saute a minute or so. Add tomatoes, chickpeas, broth, and agave nectar. Season with a couple pinches of salt and 10 grinds fresh pepper. Stir well. Chickpeas should be just covered with liquid. If level is shy, add some water so the chickpeas are just covered.
Bring to a simmer, then lower heat to low and gently simmer for 45 minutes.
Remove soup from heat. Use a potato masher to mash up some of the chickpeas right in the pot. Stir in the spinach and let heat through until wilted, just a couple minutes.
Season again, to taste, with salt and pepper.
Serve soup, drizzled lightly with extra-virgin olive oil, if desired.

Changes I make:

Changes to original recipe: 1 tbsp olive oil instead of the 1/4 cup, agave nectar instead of sugar, 1/4 tsp cayenne instead of 1/8 and 28oz can of tomatoes instead of 14.5oz can. The agave nectar because its a clean sweetner, more cayenne bumps up the flavor - still very mild and more tomatoes gives more flavor and more liquid.

This is so yummy and the flavors are out of this world. I make this all the time. It's easy, clean and healthy.

Crockpot changes:

I put this in the crockpot. For the crockpot just cook the onions and garlic in the olive oil on the stove, then add the spices and transfer to the crockpot. Add all the rest of the ingredients except for the spinach. When you get ready to eat the soup, add the spinach and stir.

A really good OOPs!

I was making a bowl of oat bran this morning that I had planned on topping with Artisana's Virgin Organic Coconut Oil (another thanks to Heather -where I read about this product).

I made the most amazing breakfast this morning that was a total Oops!
I put the oat bran (1/3 cup) in my bowl and added water (1/3 cup - but it should have been 2/3 cup) in the microwave (yep I micro it - because I have to run out the door to work, so every second counts) and hit 3 minutes. Yesterday I had to end early because it almost bubbled out, but it didn't today. I was busy cooking and putting a soup in the crockpot and noticed it didn't come close to boiling over. I didn't think twice till I took it out of the microwave and it had a firm top on it. Upon further investigation I realized it looked like a cake. I took a bit and WOW - it tasted like a little spongy oat bran cake in a bowl. I topped it with 1 tbsp of the Artisana Raw Virgin Coconut oil and it made sort of a frosting.
All I can say is YUMMO! I'm so glad for this Oops and it will become a dessert and breakfast for me.

Breakfast and Dinner eat's are thanks to two other blogger's.

Breakfast:

Thanks to some great blog's I've been reading, I've been seeing some yummy pictures of blended oat bran's with varying toppings.

One blog in particular has really influenced me to not only make oat bran, but to try making my own nut butter. Heather makes the yummies breakfasts and snacks.

I started this morning with trying to make organic sunflower seed butter. I read on her blog that you have to leave the nuts or seeds in the processor for 7-8 minutes in order to get past the "powder" stage. I tried using the magic bullet and while it wasn't too bad, it wasn't the creamy smooth sunflower butter I was hoping for. I think the motor gets overheated too much on the magic bullet. I'll try again in my food processor in the small bowl. All in all it wasn't too bad. It was just past the powder stage and starting to get wet and smooth. It still tasted wonderful with the oat bran.

The oat bran itself was wonderful. I use this as a breading along with some other items for chicken nuggets. I've never had oat bran as an oatmeal type cereal before and it was sort of similiar to the Malt-O-Meal that I ate as a kid. I definately like the oat bran better than oatmeal, although I do like oatmeal too. I think I'm going to work on finishing some of the oatmeal and make the oat bran my fall too breakfast grain.

Lunch:

Lunch was a hummus egg salad sandwich on an Ezekiel sprouted grain tortilla (sorry no pictures).

Pre Dinner Shopping Snack:

Lara Bar -Coconut Cream Pie

Dinner:

Here's my dinner and I'll tell the story of who influenced it below.

Salad: organic romaine lettuce, organic shredded carrots, sliced organic strawberries, organic raw sunflower seeds, and organic feta cheese.

Dressing: 2 tbsp organic balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp organic olive oil, sea salt and pepper.

I must admit that I've been in food rut lately. Partly because we've been trying to use stuff in the house before going shopping, but also because it just got easy to eat simple quick foods that didn't require that much preparation. It's so hard to keep fresh fruits and vegetables in the house because it seems that it constantly goes to waste and since I try to eat only organic it gets so expensive.

This afternoon I made a comment on Maria's blog about a great post she had about making goals. She had taken a look at my blog and noticed that I really wasn't getting much fruit and veggies in. I'm so thankful she reminded me that I need to increase them.

I just happened to be going to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods after work, so the timing of her comment was really a God send. So after spending $160 at both stores combined, mostly on produce that was all organic (man did that add up fast - and I'm sure Bill is going to freak when he see's the amounts, lol). The good thing is, that I've got plenty of fruits and veggies. Bill thought I was nuts for the amount of fruit I have in the house. He says there is no way I can eat that much since it probably will last only a week. Note to self.......buy less and go back the second week.

After Dinner Snack: 1 organic Kiwi

Saturday's Eat's

I found these pictures when I downloaded my camera from breakfast and lunch on saturday. They actually say 6/5/09 on them.....but I was working Friday for lunch and had a quesadilla for dinner - so I'm not sure why the date is wrong.

6/6/09
Breakfast:

Ezekiel 3:9 Sprouted Grain Sesame Bread with organic peanut butter from Trader Joe's.




Lunch:

Tuna Patty with Sweet Potato Fries.




Tuna Patty

• 1 can tuna
• 1 small purple onion chopped
• 1 Ezekiel 3:9 slice bread ground in food processor or coffee grinder
• 1 organic whole organic egg
• juice of 1/2 organic lemon or 1 tbsp organic Santa Cruz lemon juice
• sea salt and pepper to taste
• Dried terragon to taste

Shape into patties and cook in 2 tsps of olive oil till brown on both sides.