Food!

Trying to be healthy after this past weekend...

Over the weekend I made an...ahem..unexpected late night trip to Ben's Chili Bowl in DC. I have no idea what would allow me to throw my inhibitions out the window like that?! Although by some force of muscle memory my mouth formed the words "turkey burger" instead of "Double High Chili Dog with Extra Grease". That is something I'm slightly proud of. My friends did not follow suit and of course I unabashedly stuffed chili cheese fries down my gullet anyways. Sigh.

Now I'm detoxxing, and for good reason. I keep a food diary anyways, so it's really easy to see where my calories/fat/sodium/carbs are coming from. Today I'm going to make a grocery trip at lunch to get, well, tequila since it's MARGARITA NIGHT tomorrow. Whoo! But also some good detox foods. Blueberries, Grapefruits, Coconut water etc. I made some all natural bread substitute  (recipe on my main page) and am having a super healthy lunch. I want to be perfect since I'm already allowing a cheat day only 3 days into this detox plan. 

So Here was my menu for yesterday:

Breakfast: 2 eggs, scrambled with a little part skim shredded mozz on top, a homemade latte with skim milk (I love my latte maker), and 1 cup of fruit and protein drink by Silk (masks the flavor of my vitamins). 

Snack: Activia vanilla yogurt

Lunch: Leftove Tilapia over raw baby spinach, clover sprouts, a little guac, a little leftover coleslaw all mixes together (with the fish heated up)

Snack: Banana

Dinner: Leftover sauteed squash, onions, and peppers with about 3 oz of pork chop, 1 medium baked yam with 2 tblsp natural peanut butter.

Snack: Chocolate meringues :)

It was a pretty good day for eating...I also had 2 cups of coffee throughout the day with cream and no sugar, lots of water, and 2 cans of flavored selzer (I'm addicted).

2 Sweet treats for different purposes

Time for a new food post :)

Tonight I'm going to try two new things, both of them hopefully pretty easy. The first one is a healthy dessert, a take on mounds bars.

Here is the recipe I'm going to follow, courtesy of Chocolate Covered Katie's food Blog. I went to Wegman's yesterday and got some things I didn't have, like agave, coconut oil, and more coconut flakes. I'm so excited! I do not have a good food processor, however, so I see lots of stirring in my futures...

Ingredients:

• 1 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened) (80g)
• 3 1/2 to 4 tbsp agave or pure maple syrup (48g) (or 3 tbsp water and 2-3 nunaturals stevia packs)
• 2 tbsp virgin coconut oil (20g) (See nutrition info link below, for all substitution notes on this recipe.)
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup plus 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder (22g)
• a few stevia drops, or up to 1 1/2 tsp pure maple syrup
• 1/4 cup liquid virgin coconut oil (Or omit these last three ingredients and simply melt 2/3 cup chocolate chips instead.) (57g)

Directions:

Combine first 5 ingredients in a food processor. (You can try to mix by hand if you don’t have a food processor, but the dough won’t stick together as well.) Press the filling into the bottoms of mini muffin cups. (Press HARD!) Freeze at least 25 minutes. Meanwhile, make the chocolate coating by mixing the last three ingredients together to make a thin sauce. Line a tray with wax or parchment paper, then pop out the now-hardened coconut treats and coat in chocolate. Immediately put them in the fridge or freezer, as coconut oil melts when warm. These last at least a week.

photo courtesy of chocolatecoveredkatie.com

I'll let you know how it goes!

UPDATE: OMG this were sooo good. I didn't use a muffin tin as suggested, Instead I just made little balls with two spoons. They are a little on the sweet side, so next time I probably won't use as much agave. The chocolate didn't get quite runny enough, so I added a little coconut oil to it and it did the trick! I also microwaved the coconut mixture so the coconut oil would melt enough to mix it (since I don't have an adequate food processor).

Good recipe! Yummy, simple, fast, healthy (ish).

The Second Recipe for tonight 

I've got a bunch of pearl barley that I need to use up, and I know that oatmeal is my favorite thing in the whole world, but I eat it EVERYDAY so I'm going to try some slow-cooked breakfast barley.

I don't have a recipe per say, but I know it's about 4 cups of water to 1 cup of barley, and I'm just going to slow cook it over night with that in mind. In the morning I'm going to add some milk, coconut oil, chopped walnuts, coconut flakes, dark chocolate chips, chia seeds, and some agave syrup. There's no WAY this won't be good. Meaning it will be good for sure.

COOKIES with whatever I have on hand...

Last Saturday I got really bored, so I tried a new recipe. This pretty much uses things I had on hand! here is a recipe I adapted from The Neelys' original recipe

Ingredients

Cookie:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup oat-flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) salted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 medium sweet potato

Topping:

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Before doing anything, poke the sweet potato several times and wrap it in a paper towel to throw in the microwave. I use the "potato" setting on mine, but just cook it so it's very soft. Combine the dry ingredients (I didn't bother sifting since the oat flour is a little thicker by nature).  Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until incorporated. Peel the skin off of the sweet potato and mush it up in a separate bowl (should be about 1 cup of potato). Mix into the wet ingredients. Using a wooden spoon, mix the dry ingredients into the wet in about 3 batches. Drop generous amounts spaced out on two cookie sheets.  They should be about 2 inches in diameter once dropped and pressed down. Top cookies with the crumb topping and bake for 14 minutes.

They won't look browned or anything, they get nice and cakey and thick mmmm SOOO good :) You could probably add some chia seeds or flax and not even notice!

Enjoy :)


UPDATE: These were BALLIN good. SO good. Just sayin :D