Another Cleanse...This Time Smoothies!

She wouldn't even look at me. The shame.

I embarked this morning on the Dr. Oz 3-Day Cleanse with my boyfriend by my side. He recently returned home from a week-long tour of east coast breweries, and he was feeling a little "off". Most likely due to the copious amounts of free beer consumed. We had been thinking about doing a smoothie cleanse for a few months, but we didn't have a good strong blender to work with. Low and behold, my mother had her Vitamix out and waiting to be borrowed when I arrived to Deep Creek on Thursday. I told Tom about our good fortune, and we commenced plans for a detox.

Day one: It is 3 pm and I'm a little bit hungry. I'm also really out of it, but it is my first day back at work after a 5 day vacation, so I'm not attributing it all to the cleanse. Also, I frequently eat green smoothies for breakfast, so the only difference for me today is the lunch shake.

I went home at lunch to meet Tom, and we made both the lunch and the snack smoothie (which I have stored in a thermos in the fridge for 4 pm). I'm going to try to go to the gym straight from work, so I don't have too much time before or after the dinner shake to think about food. I realized about a half hour ago that I forgot to add the celery to the lunch shake...probably why it wasn't as terrible as everyone says it is.

Note: I'm also allowing myself coffee during this cleanse (with soy or coconut milk creamer). We're going to modify the drinks as needed, since raspberries are very expensive right now, and I have some frozen blackberries, frozen blueberries, and fresh black cherries ready to use. I personally don't feel I need a cleanse for weight loss purposes, so it's more about testing my strength and stuffing my mouthhole with the healthiest things possible. At least that's my take on it all.

Day 2: Well yesterday I had the snack smoothie with a spoon, and it seriously tasted and felt like I was eating pancake mix. MMMMmmMMMm. It was the breakfast smoothie again, but it was a completely different color. Strange. Last night we had the dinner smoothie...we only added the amount of cayenne for one smoothie although we were making two at once, and we were glad that we made that decision. It was strangely sweet and then SPICY. In an unsettling way. It took at least an hour to choke it all down, double-fisting a glass of water in the other hand. 

This morning we made the breakfast shake subbing fresh black cherries for one cup of raspberries, and frozen strawberries and blackberries for the other cup (since we're doubling the recipe for the two of us we needed 2 cups of raspberries total). I also added a tiny nub of fresh ginger root, some cinnamon, and a little allspice. It was good this morning. I felt pretty full after about 3/4 of it, and drank the rest in the car on the way to work. It's 9:45 and I'm starting to feel some hunger pains (I usually eat a mid morning snack around 10 so my body is programmed to get hungry now). This morning when we woke up we were both ravenous. 

Note: Neither of us are doing the detox tea or baths. Also, Tom didn't up his water intake extraordinarily yesterday, and so he said he's down two lbs since Monday. Probably due to water loss, but still encouraging for him! Yesterday my parents were over to see my roommates, and they made homemade quiches, melon and ham as an appetizer, as well as these little spinach pastries. I wouldn't eat most of that even if I wasn't doing a cleanse, but it all looked SO GOOD. Needless to say, we weren't very social--we made the dinner smoothie, cleaned up, and took it with us downstairs to finish Gasland and to watch Ted to pass the time until bed. 

This was lunch, done the correct way with celery added. It was the weirdest texture ever. As I typed that (with the smoothie sitting on my desk) a co-worker walking by just stopped in her tracks and stared at it. "That really doesn't look very good". I agreed. 

Good luck with this one, stomach.

Day 3: We caved. I have a work dinner tonight, so we were planning on ending today after breakfast shake, but it didn't work out. The celery in the lunch drink yesterday was just too much. We both felt sick and malnourished (which is obviously ridiculous because it was only one day) and all it took was one suggestion from Tom of stopping this "nonsense" and we were planning a Chipotle dinner. How quickly we crumbled in the face of adversity.

Ah, well, you can't win 'em all. 

In conclusion: I have done juice cleanses before, and found them to be very healthy and helpful, if not for actually resetting your system and eliminating toxins, then for testing your willpower and cutting out caffeine for a few days. I think the main issue with the Dr Oz cleanse, for us, was that we were just so hungry. There weren't enough calories (about 1100 a day) to satiate us while still exercising and working full days. We probably also didn't give it enough time: my hormones to signal hunger were still going off at 10 am when I normally eat a snack, and the plan doesn't allow for food at that time. I'm sure I would have adjusted with a few more days of the schedule, but I just wasn't willing to see it through. I failed.

One last note: I think that if I genuinely believed that I needed to make a dietary change, had written out my reasons for the diet, and used the diet to start a new, more healthful dietary lifestyle, things might have been different. I can see how using a radical switch to make modest changes afterwards seem like a bargain could really work for some, and I'm interested to see if and how my professors will approach the subject of cleansing in relation to clinical recommendations. I just personally didn't feel I needed much tweaking of my diet, save the last few days before the cleanse eating lots of desserts since my family-in-law was in town. I also didn't see any ahem *results* from the smoothie cleanse like I saw from the juice cleanse, which is (weirdly) a motivating factor for me. 

Anywhoo...if you decide to do the cleanse, let me know how it goes! I hope you have more strength and determination than my puny will!

Easy, Light, Vitamin-Packed:Roasted Beet Salad

Last weekend at the farmers market, I picked up a bunch of beets on a whim. I love beets, but I have never tried to prepare them myself before, so I was going out on a limb. Beets are actually quite cheap: they were about $2 for a bunch of 6 small beets with the greens on. Here's how I made a delicious roasted beet salad!

Preheat oven to 425 F

1) Wash and scrub the beets meticulously. I thought I washed mine well, but I tried roasting the tops along with slices of the beets and they were grainy.

2) Cut off the leafy parts to use in salads and smoothies

3) Slice your beets into quarter inch slices, and discard the tops with fibrous roots. I actually cut up the stalks and roasted those, but the branching stalk immediately attached to the beet was very tough and dirty...so just compost those.

4) Toss beets (and about a half a chopped onion) in a few tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon of sea salt, and any other herb you'd like (rosemary, thyme, dill, or fennel would all be good).

5) Roast in the oven for about 30 minutes. Turn about mid-way through. You know when they're done when you can easily poke them with a fork (sorta like checking potatoes).

6) Load up a plate, top with a little balsamic vinegar, ANY curd cheese (I used queso fresco, but you could also use feta, goat cheese, etc) and enjoy!

So easy and delicious! I roasted all my beets, and now I have an extra-special topping for my lunch salads this week :)

Healthy(er) Strawberry Coffee Cake

This weekend I'm going to my boyfriend's lakehouse with his family, and so I thought I'd bring a treat to share with the group. Last time I brought a traditional coffee cake (which was BALLIN') but this time, since strawberries are in season, I thought I'd do a more original recipe.

This recipe was adapted from mylittlecelebrations recipe which can be found here.

This recipe has WAY less calories, sugar, and fat then other coffee cake recipes, mostly because of the greek yogurt, which takes place of butter and eggs. You could try subbing applesauce or mashed bananas instead of the butter, as well, but it may not be quite as moist. The whole wheat flour adds a little fiber in place of only using all purpose flour. The topping doesn't have even 1/4 as much butter and sugar as most topping, and is JUST as good because of the spices. Seriously, this recipe is the bomb --if I do say so myself :) and I do. Say so.


Ingredients:

-1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
-3/4 cup whole-wheat flour (divided)
-1 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp sea salt
-3 tbsp. sugar
-1 tsp. cinnamon
-1/2 tsp ginger
-1/2 cup rough chopped walnuts
-1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
-2 tbsp softened butter
-3 tbsp virgin coconut oil (divided)
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-1 cup greek yogurt (plain low or non-fat)
-1 3/4 cup strawberries (chopped to bite size)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, mix the all purpose flour, 1/2 cup of the whole-wheat flour, baking soda, and salt. In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to combine the butter, 2 tbsp of coconut oil, and brown sugar. Add and beat eggs in one a at a time. Add and beat in vanilla and yogurt. Consistency will be sort of wet/grainy at this point. Add the dry into the wet in two additions, and stir just until combined. Add your strawberries (make sure you pat them dry) to the (now empty) medium bowl with the remaining 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour and coat all the strawberries. Add the strawberries to the batter and fold in. The batter will be doughy.

In the (now empty again) medium bowl, add the remaining tbsp of coconut oil, ginger, cinnamon, and sugar. Mix well, then add the chopped nuts.Transfer batter to an 8x8 greased baking dish (grease with coconut oil if you have it). There will be extra, so you could try using a larger pan, or just make a separate ramekin for the extra ~cup of batter. Top with the nut and sugar mixture.

Bake for about 35 min. Use a tester in several places-- cooking with raw fruit in batter creates pockets, and watch out for the center!

This recipe makes about 10 servings. Nutrition Facts per serving:

Calories: 291 kCal  Fat: 12 g Carbs: 35 g Sodium: 169 mg Protein: 10 g Sugar: 3 g

Baby Shower Favor (Instructions)

My soon-to-be-mother-sister (unecessary?) had her (probably fourth) babyshower today, and I was designated to make a favor for guests to take home with them. Just to clarify, I was told: "you must make your bacon caramel popcorn for party favors". So I obeyed, and here is what the end result was!

I was very pleased with these! The tag says:      

About to POP! Please enjoy this caramel bacon popcorn while considering Erin's upcoming delivery."

I made about 22 of them, and here is how I did it!

Bacon Caramel Popcorn: yield 22 1/2 cup servings (approx.)

Ingredients:

- Corn Kernels (I recommend using something other then Orville, since it's owned by Monsanto...)

- 2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil

- 3/4 stick unsalted Butter

- 10 strips of bacon

- 3 Tbsp. corn syrup

-3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar

- Sea Salt

- 1/4 Tsp. Baking Soda

-1/4 Tsp. Vanilla

Procedure:

Cook your bacon until crisp. I like to do it in the oven on a baking stone at 400 for about 12 minutes (to avoid splatters and stove cleanup!). If you use the oven, set it to 250 F afterwards. 

1 ) For the popcorn: Using a very large pot, add your oil and turn on medium-high heat. Add 2 kernels and wait for them to pop. If your oil starts smoking, turn down your heat and wait for it to subside. Once your kernels have popped, add about 1/2 cup of kernels. I never really measured to determine this, but 1/2 cup seems about right. If you don't get enough popcorn...just pop more!

Keep the lid on your pot while popping, to avoid getting burned by hot pieces. I like to keep it vented, though, so condensation doesn't drip back on the finished product. Spread your popcorn out on through baking sheets, it won't be quite a single layer, but close. 

2) Crumble your bacon strips evenly over the three sheets of popcorn.

3) For the Caramel: Add butter to a medium sauce pan over medium heat. Melt completely and then add the corn syrup and brown sugar. Stir until dissolved (although it may seems a little buttery around the edges). After dissolved, let it sit and bubble around the edges. After about 4 minutes, the whole pot should have bubbles and have an inconsistent color. If it doesn't bubble enough to reach the center, turn up the heat slightly. Take off the heat and add the baking soda and vanilla. Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon while it becomes a lighter brown and magically expands. Using your spoon, ladle the caramel over the popcorn on your baking sheets and try to spread it out evenly. After it's all doled out, carefully stir around the popcorn to coat. Don't worry about getting it perfect, it will become distributed in the oven. 

4) Bake! Put your popcorn in the oven and set the timer for 15 min. After that time, stir the popcorn around to coat the caramel. Do this twice for a total of 30 min. This is actually an important step, because it also makes the popcorn crispier and fully coated with sweetness. After it's done I usually sprinkle a touch of sea salt over the whole thing. 

To make the packaging!

You will need:

-Clear cellophane

-Parchment paper

-Ribbon

-Scissors

-Tag (optional)

1.) Cut straight down the parchment paper so you have two even halves, and make the rectangles about 12 inches long. Wrap them up so they make a cone shape, and fold the tip under to keep it from un-rolling. 

2.) Cut the Cellophane as a rectangle that is about 12 inches wide by 16 inches long. Wrap the cellophane around the parchment cone so that there is extra cellophane at the tip. 

3.) Tie a bow around the tip of the cellophane (but not grabbing onto the parchment tip). 

4.) Fill the popcorn into the parchment cone, and use ribbon to gather the excess cellophane at the mouth of the cone and tie off. 

Voila! I did these in steps, i.e., cut out all the parchment and cellophane rectangles, folded all the cones, wrapped all the cellophane, THEN filled and tied off everything. It seemed to take less time that way. Regardless this takes about an hour to do. 

It looks super cute though!! Everyone LOVED this favor. Not to brag or anything ;)

Here's the tag I printed, cut out, and slipped onto the ribbon:

Enjoy!

Easy Gift- Caramel Treats

Over the weekend I made a batch of salted caramel and dark chocolate popcorn and ended up with way too much caramel. What a terrible problem to have. So I decided to pour it on a piece of wax paper and cool it in the fridge to decide what to do with it later.

The popcorn was for my mom for mother's day, and so I decided the caramel was rightfully hers, too. The next day it was nice and hard, so I cut off a piece and tried it: it was the most delicious caramel ever...and I'm not a big fan of caramel candies. It melts in your mouth and doesn't stick to your teeth like others I've tried. Here is the recipe I used:

1 stick of butter (half cup)
1 cup of brown sugar (lightly packed)
1/4 cup of corn syrup
1/4 teas. vanilla
1/4 teas. baking soda

Melt the butter over medium heat with the brown sugar and corn syrup. Let it bubble and then gently boil for a couple of minutes...when it starts to become brown in color take it off the heat and add the vanilla and baking soda. Stir vigorously as it turns a light creamy brown color and pour into a baking dish lined with wax paper (or over popcorn). Let it cool on the counter and then put into the fridge for an hour or overnight...whatever time you have.

Cut into small squares. I cut the wax paper it was sitting on into strips to cover them. The paper sticks if you just press gently with your thumb. Delicious! I only used about 1/3 of the caramel in the recipe for the actual squares, so I would expect the whole shebang makes a ton of candies...around 50? Enjoy!

You can see I got a little popcorn in mine by accident...a delicious mistake!

                           

Also, here's my silly pup on mother's day enjoying the breeze from the window

Microwave Crazy Cake

On Friday I was hanging out with my (very) pregnant sister and we didn't have any good desserts in the house. SO, being the good sister that I am, I offered to try and make a mug cake for her that I had seen on the interwebs. I used this recipe from sweetlittlebluebird.

We used a mug that we thought was pretty standard, but I think something with a little wider/shallower shape would work best--almost like a soup mug.

I was nervous when we had it in the microwave because it started overflowing, but it didn't get messy it just puffed up and stayed there. We have a pretty new and powerful microwave so we did it for 1 minute and 40 seconds. It was still gooey in the bottom, but any longer and it would have overcooked the top part...that's why I think a shallower-ish mug would be perfect!

Here's the part where you make the depressions:

 And then you fill them with the oil, vanilla, and vinegar:

















Here is Erin enjoying a bite :)

Definitely a quick, good dessert for a hangering preggo.

Margarita Night turned to Vodka Cocktail Night: Recipe!

Last night my sisters, myself, my brother-in-law and my Nick got together for fish tacos, guacamole, and margaritas! Such a good time! The fish tacos turned out great, we also had some ground turkey for the hard tacos (throwback!) and some sweet potato fries done two ways (cinnamon/nutmeg route and salt/pepper route).

The margaritas were good, but not very much juice from the 5,000 limes we had. Bummer. So after one margarita each, we went to grapefruit juice/tequila/muddled blackberry cocktails. And then to vodka/berrysoda water/muddled blackberry cocktails. Here is a picture of the last one:

It was very light and refreshing! Here's what you need:

1.5 ounces (1 jigger) Vodka
Berry Sparkling water, about 4 ounces
4 Blackberries
1 tsp. Truvia/sugar/sweetener of your choice


Muddle the blackberries with the sweetener so they release their juice but aren't completely masticated. Add vodka with the berry slurry and stir. Add soda water last. You may want to add some extra sweetener to taste, we like to taste the alcohol (to stay aware of drinking tempo so as to avoid embarrassing slow falls later in the night) (that's a thing that happened to me last weekend).

Calories: 109  Carbs: 6g  Sugar: 1g  Sodium: 1g No fat or protein.

Coconut Oil Candies

Yesterday was very productive! I ate a snack around 4:30 so I wouldn't be hungry while I ran errands after work and went straight to the gym. When I got home it was only 8:00! I like this set-up better then going home, eating dinner, digesting, then working out until 9. So I had time to try out a recipe I've been thinking about AND give myself a pedicure. Awesome.

Coconut Candies

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of Virgin Coconut Oil
12 tbsp Cocoa Powder
1 tsp. Vanilla extract
Agave nectar (to taste)(about 1 tbsp)
Fillings: Natural Peanut butter (about 1 tbsp divided), Caramelized Walnuts, Sea salt, unsweetened Coconut flakes

Procedure:

Melt coconut oil in a Pyrex bowl in the microwave (about a minute). Add cocoa powder, vanilla extract, and nectar. In a non-stick mini muffin pan, drop about 1 tablespoon of the chocolate mixture into 10 places.

Let freeze for 10 minutes.

Add fillings onto the chocolate (now hardened) disks. Cover with another table spoon of chocolate sauce. For the peanutbutter, make sure the chocolate meets the lower half around the circumference so that the candy stays together.

Let set in the refrigerator overnight. They slide out easily because the chocolate shrinks when chilled.

Nutrition per candy (without fillings):
Calories: 60   Carbs: 2 g   Fat: 6 g  Sugar: 2 g

Delicious!

Mango Bleu Chicken Salad

We've definitely been taking advantage of this Spring weather by grilling! On Sunday we grilled burgers (I visited the farm where I used to work in college and got some of their home-grown beef) and fennel, and then last night we grilled chicken and asparagus for a delicious light dinner.


For the salad:

-Boneless, skinless chicken breasts with olive oil and some Montreal Chicken seasoning (or salt and pepper)

-Baby spinach

-1 Mango

-1/4 Red onion

- 2 Tblp. crumbled bleu cheese (we used a gorgonzola)


For the dressing:

-3 tblsp. Olive oil

- 1 tsp. Grey poupon (or some spicy mustard)

- 1 tsp. vinegar (white wine, rice, balsalmic, take your pick)

- 1 tsp. minced garlic

- 1tsp. lemon juice

- salt

-pepper


On the grilled asparagus we put olive oil, salt, pepper, and minced garlic

Procedure:
Mix diced mango with the bleu cheese and onion. Whisk all ingredients for the dressing. Grill your chicken and asparagus (we use the touch method to see if the bounciness is gone to check the chicken). Top the lettuce with chicken, then the mango mixture, and dressing. We also added some chives to the top, but it's not necessary. Devour.

Such a good combination of sweet and salty and bleu-cheesiness. We also had a Sam Smith's Organic Chocolate Stout to go with this meal. I'm not sure it was the best pair, but it was delicious! There was something undefinable about the flavor of this beer. I called it a "smell taste" and Tom said it could have to do with the well water-- it adds such an element of flavor to beer and makes it specific to the brewing area.

picture taken from realfood.co.uk

I should have taken a gazillion pictures, it was so pretty! Alas I was very hungry.

Missing the Summer...

Not to be a complainerson or anything, but I was looking through some pictures from this past Summer, and I came across some from a short trip I took to Deep Creek Lake. My friend and I went up to clean the carpets of my parents' lakehouse, and to take Sadie to the vet there (Pineview Veterinary is absolutely the best vet I've been to, and they hardly charge over cost for anything). It's about a 3 hour drive for us, but it saves us vet bills like WOAH (even with the added gas money).

Not to mention there's a lake and docks for lying out and enjoying some adult beverages.

I miss dis:

Sadie after swimming in the lake. She only discovered she loves to swim about a year ago. Silly pup. 

About my blog

I am currently sitting at work, listening to Passion Pit and waiting for the phone to ring. This is why I decided to start a blog. Because I browse Pintrest each day to decide on a new project for the evening. Since getting a desk job I live in the evenings. And the weekends, but those are mostly for home improvement shows, eating, and laundry. I read lots of blogs about beauty and health, cooking and fitness, and pictures of dogs with sarcastic captions and think, I could totally do that. So I am. I am deciding to be happier, more open, and busier with taking pictures of all my little projects that keep me titillated with excitement for the evening.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog, along with the many others you probably browse as well. (This is a picture of me and Mu, the emu. He lives on the farm where I worked for the past 3 seasons).