Cold Soup

I enjoy eating cold soup.  Not sure why and not all the time.  And I am not referring to gazpacho, although in the summer, I can definitely devour a good bowl of gazpacho.  I made red pepper cauliflower soup this weekend, and yesterday, I needed a quick snack.  Decided there was no time for heating it up (even though there was) and ate it cold.  It was delicious.  It is delicious hot too.

Week 2 of the Paleo Challenge and everything is going well.  I made even more new recipes this week.  This weekend though is St. Patty’s Day and Savannah has the 2^nd largest celebration, 1^st going to Chicago.  I do plan on drinking a bit on Saturday with friends as this will be the 1^st year I live downtown and do not have to drive anywhere. 

It is also Week 2 of the CrossFit Games.  I did not really know what the CrossFit games were prior to about three weeks ago.  Basically, CrossFit publishes a different workout each week from March 6 – April 7.  People from the entire world compete for a chance to attend Regionals and ultimately “The Games” in July.  I signed up.  Not because I think I am the fittest woman on the planet and plan on attending the games as a competitor, but because it is fun to challenge yourself in new workouts.  You are not allowed to scale the workouts for the games and the 1^st workout which involved Overhead snatches forced me into attempting to lift a weight I did not think I could.  One person compared it to signing up for a 5K.  Most people sign up for a 5K not expecting to win, but expecting to hit a new time goal or just push themselves a little harder or a little faster than normal.  I am having fun!

And going back to cold soup, this is another item you can eat hot or cold – red pepper avocado dressing.  I made this sauce/dressing last night and had it with a steak salad.  It was delicious and very versatile.  It can be a topping for steak, chicken, fish or on top a vegetable salad.  I even paired it with eggs the next day.  The recipe is from www.paleomg.com.  I love her website!

Red Pepper Avocado Dressing

Ingredients

1 Ripe Avocado

½ jar Roasted Red Peppers (drained if you want more of a thick sauce, not drained if you want a salad dressing consistency)

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Instructions

Place all ingredients in a food processor. Blend. Place in bowl to refrigerate.  Done!

~ Savannah FitNut aka Morgan McNeal

Mashed Cauliflower

I always stress to anyone looking to change their diet that planning is a very important piece of the puzzle.  I have been a little lax on the whole planning piece recently, but this week I decided to be a good little planner.  On Saturday before going to the grocery store, I checked out a few recipe blogs, and my binder full of recipes.  From that, I chose the dinners I was going to make for the week.  Wrote them down and published them to my husband, haha.  He likes to know what to expect for dinner.  It did not take very long to do the planning and ensured I had all the ingredients needed for my Sunday Cookathon.  I know everyone hates having to run to the grocery store because you forgot a key ingredient.  It was also 50 degrees in Savannah on Sunday, and I was not going outside!  Brrrrrrr!

I spent $165.21 on groceries for the week.  The amount of food I bought is enough to feed my husband and me for a week for all meals and snacks.  If I break it down and assume 3 meals per day, it equates to $3.93 per person per meal.  Could I spend less?  Yes.  However, I buy grass-fed meats, wild-caught fish, and some organic fruits and vegetables.  It is money I am willing to spend.

Cauliflower was on sale for $2.00 per head this week.  It was not organic (it is not on the dirty dozen list).  I bought 4 heads.  I steamed two heads to have to take to work for lunch.  I also used one head to make mashed cauliflower.  I absolutely love mashed cauliflower.  It is easy to make, tastes delicious, and is a side that goes with a lot of main dishes.  I have used frozen cauliflower to make it before, but I have found the dish is much creamier when I use fresh cauliflower.  We had it alongside turkey burgers and it was a great meal!

Mashed Cauliflower

Ingredients

1 Head of Cauliflower

1 heaping spoonful of minced garlic

1 cup Coconut milk

1 TBSP coconut oil or EVOO

1 TBSP Italian Seasoning

Salt, Pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Cook the cauliflower.  Steam it; microwave it, whatever you want to do.
2. While the cauliflower is cooking, add garlic, coconut milk, oil, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper to a bowl.  Heat in microwave for about 1 min.
3. When the cauliflower is done, throw it in the food processor along with the rest of the heated ingredients.
4. Let the food processor mix it all up and voila!  Mashed Cauliflower.

Note: This does not taste like mashed potatoes.  It tastes like cauliflower, but believe me, it is delicious!

~ Savannah FitNut aka Morgan McNeal

Old Ladies at the Grocery Store

Crab Stuffed Portabella with Asparagus

I am not sure if this is a Georgia thing or what, but does anyone else have random old ladies rummage through your cart and comment on the items you are buying.  This has happened to me numerous times in the past few months.  I am not knocking on the old ladies of GA, but recently, this has been my experience.  Last weekend, I was waiting to buy fish at the counter and an older woman stops at my cart and comments “Wow, you eat very healthy.”  I told her “I try,” as she began leafing through my cart to see what other items I was about to purchase.  As she laid her eyes upon the huge bag of baby spinach, we went into a 10 minute conversation on whether or not she should put spinach in her smoothies.  I tried to convince her she would not taste it at all.  She then began to give me various recipes of smoothies and ask if she could add spinach to those.  “Blueberries, milk, and spinach?”  Yes!  “Strawberries, almond milk, and spinach?” Yes!  “Bananas, peanut butter, coconut milk, and spinach?”  Yes, yes, yes!  She wanted to know if her smoothies would turn green.  I told her in some cases, depending on the amount of spinach she put in it.  After the spinach talk, we then turned to kale.  I am pretty sure I convinced her to eat more kale.  J 

In my previous post, I mentioned my Gym’s paleo challenge starting March 1^st.  It is in full swing now and I am three days into it.  All is well, no cheats yet.  I spent about two hours yesterday making food for the week.  I roasted vegetables, grilled chicken, dehydrated sweet potatoes to make chips, and made egg muffins.  All in all, not too much time to have most meals prepared for the week.

The recipe I wanted to share this week is a really easy one.  Might want to use it for a special occasion, because you want to buy the real crab meat and it is a little expensive.

Crab Stuffed Portabella

Ingredients

1 cup crab meat (please do not buy imitation)

2 Portabella Mushrooms

½ small onion, diced

1 green pepper, diced

2 tsp minced garlic

Salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste

EVOO

Instructions

Preheat the oven to Broil.

Remove the stems and gills from the mushrooms so you have room to stuff them.

While the oven is heating up, heat up the olive oil in a pan on medium heat.  When the oil has heated, add the garlic, onions, and peppers.  Allow them to caramelize, this can take 10 minutes.  After this has caramelized, add the crab meat and the rest of the ingredients (not the mushrooms) into the pan and mix it all together.

On a greased cookie sheet, brush the mushrooms with EVOO and place in the oven for 5-7 minutes.  That will flatten out and get smaller.

Remove the mushrooms from the oven and place the crab meat mixture on top.  Broil for another 5-7 minutes.

Enjoy!

~ Savannah FitNut aka Morgan McNeal

Roasted Cabbage with Red Onions

The 5K is done.  I did not do as well as I had hoped, but I still placed 2^nd in my age group and ran sub 8-min miles for 3.1 miles.  While I was running the race in the rain, I did realize how much I have been missing running.  I did not run with my iPod, but just took in all the scenery of the historic district in Savannah (most of which I have driven by, but it is always different when you are running).  With the weather getting nicer, I will probably be pounding the pavement a little more.

Beginning March 1^st, my gym is starting a Paleo Challenge.  It feels as though the other challenge was not that long ago, but I guess it was about 3 months ago already.  Time flies!  My gym is offering a lot of cool prizes if you win and there are a lot of different ways to earn points, such as posting Paleo recipes on Pinterest, daily entries on a food log, completing workouts five times per week, and ensuring at least one restorative activity per week.  In addition to the food guidelines, there are also sleep guidelines.  It has taken me awhile to realize how important sleep is to your overall health.  I try to sleep 8 hours per night, but sometimes it is less.  For the challenge, I will be tracking my sleep, not simply duration, but quality too.

And now on to the food part of the post…… I really enjoy eating cabbage.  This is a recent thing.  However, the cost of it and the nutritional value cannot be beat.  I have made chicken curry with cabbage, and cabbage soup, but this week, I simply roasted it in the oven with red onions, salt, pepper, and olive oil.  I let it burn a little, but that made it even yummier!

Roasted Cabbage with Red Onions

Ingredients

1 Small Head Green Cabbage

1 Red Onion

Salt and Pepper to taste

Olive Oil

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Chop the cabbage and red onion into pieces (big or small, doesn’t matter).

Toss the cabbage and red onion with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Place the mixture on a greased baking sheet and roast for about 15 - 20 min (keep an eye on it – you do not want it to burn too bad).

~ Savannah FitNut aka Morgan McNeal

Favorite Recipe Websites

I am always in search of new recipes.  My gym is starting another Paleo Challenge in March, and I need to be sure to have recipes in my repertoire.  I have recently started using Pinterest a lot more, even though I have been signed up for a while.  However, there are a few go-to websites I always browse because the recipes are always delicious. 

Here are 5 of my go-to recipe websites:

1. www.paleomg.com – Hilarious posts and wonderful recipes
2. http://www.health-bent.com/ - CF couple concerned with eating real food – mostly Paleo recipes
3. http://paleofood.com/ - Just recipes.  Everything from beverages to dehydrating.
4. http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ - I read this more for the articles, but the recipes are good as well.  Every Saturday, there is a new recipe posted.
5. http://punchfork.com/paleo - Similar to Pinterest for recipes – And that is why the site is shutting down March 15, 2013 because they have been acquired by Pinterest. J

The one recipe I love is Roasted Garlic Red Pepper Pesto Tilapia from www.paleomg.com.  It is easy to make as long as you have a food processor.  There are always leftovers and if you do not mind stinking up the office, you can bring for lunch. Below is the recipe, although I did alter the steps a little bit.

Roasted Garlic Red Pepper Pesto Tilapia

Ingredients

1lb tilapia

½ cup blanched almonds (Check the baking aisle)

1 bundle cilantro, stems removed

½ 7oz jar of roasted red peppers

6-8 garlic cloves

2 zucchini, chopped (I usually use 2 really large zucchini to ensure I have lots of veggies)

1 red onion, chopped

1 orange pepper, chopped

1 teaspoon paprika

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons pepper

½ teaspoon onion powder

EVOO

Instructions

1. Season fish on both sides with 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper, and set aside.
2. Roast the garlic (try not to skip this step; it does give the dish a little bit of extra flavor).  If you are in a rush, just throw in some minced garlic out of the jar.
3. When your garlic cloves are done roasting, add the cloves along with your cilantro, roasted red peppers, and blanched almonds to a food processor. Once all the ingredients are incorporated, slowly start pouring in the salt, pepper, and onion powder.  You can add olive oil if you want, but there is usually enough liquid from the roasted red peppers, that I do not need to use any EVOO.
4. With the red pepper pesto done, add your veggies to a pan (I use my wok) with EVOO, toss with a bit of salt and pepper.  Allow the veggies to cook thoroughly.  Once they are cooked, add about half of the garlic red pepper pesto to the veggies. Cover, place on low heat, and let simmer for 7-9 minutes until veggies are soft.
5. While the veggies finish cooking, cook your fish. I always cook it on the grill, but you can bake it at 400° for about 15 minutes (or until it is flaky).  You also have the option to cook in a pan over medium-high heat for 3 minutes per side.
6. Once fish is done cooking, add veggies to a plate, top with your tilapia and add a bit more of the leftover garlic red pepper pesto on top of the fish.

In other news, I had grilled avocado for the 1^st time this weekend, absolutely delicious.  It was topped with a little bit of spicy salsa.  Excellent side dish!

~ Savannah FitNut aka Morgan McNeal

Bulletproof Coffee

I did it, I made the “Bulletproof Coffee.”  I used unsalted grass-fed butter, coconut oil, and added some cinnamon.  My initial thoughts were that it was okay, tasted creamy, but also tasted like coffee with yummy butter.  Well, I have had it for four straight mornings and I think I am enjoying it more now.  I do not love it, because I miss eating eggs in the morning.  However, it is a very quick breakfast.  It did keep me satiated in the morning.  I will continue to experiment with different spices to add, maybe some nutmeg, vanilla, etc.

In other news, I signed up for a 5K on February 23, 2013.  I ran the same race last year and I placed 1^st in my age group.  I am not sure that will happen this year as I have not been running nearly as much since recovering from the stress fracture.  It will be fun though to see what I can accomplish.

We are already 1.5 months into 2013, and here are the updates on my 2013 goals:

1. Read more books – Definitely reading at least 2 books per month – The nice thing about traveling, you read a lot on the plane
2. 2 Unassisted Pull-ups (No band assistance) – Consistently using purple band, would like to be using the pink band by the end of May (FYI in case you do not know - difference between purple and pink band is less assistance)
3. Prescribed weights on 90% of CF workouts – Judging from the workouts I completed in the last 1.5 months, only 55% of my workouts were prescribed – Room for improvement on this one
4. Cook 90% of meals at home (that equates to a maximum of 2 meals out per week) – Check! Hubby and I have been very diligent about making meals at home.
5. Maintain my blog – at least one post per week – I give myself a B+ on this one, I missed a week here and there

Overall, not too bad on the goals, still lots of 2013 left!

~ Savannah FitNut aka Morgan McNeal

168 Hours

Wow, I have been really busy lately, specifically with work. I had a huge event I led last week and then traveled to California this week. Not too much free time. However, as I write this, I just read an article on time management and it referenced the book “168 hours: You have more time than you think” by Laura Vanderkam.  It is a book about making time for the things we want to do, whether that's work, sleep, exercise, cooking, or iPhone surfing. I think I am going to put this book on my reading list. I will let you know the tips they give.

Along the same lines as time management, have you ever tried “bulletproof coffee?”  On my travels, I was in San Diego and was able to meet up with a cousin who told me about it.  It is organic coffee blended with grassfed butter and coconut oil.  He said he is not hungry until lunch.  It would definitely be a time saver for me in the morning.  No egg prep or trying to dig around the fridge to see what I can chow down 5 minutes before I have to leave for work.  I am going to try it this weekend.  Who knows, maybe I will have a new go-to breakfast?

~ Savannah FitNut aka Morgan McNeal