“Greek-Style” Tabbouleh Salad

This weekend I had some cucumbers and other veggie odds and ends to use up in my fridge so I decided to make a tabbouleh salad. Based on some of the items I needed to use up, I decided to make a Greek version. Plus, making tabbouleh salad means I have a great excuse to buy naan bread (yum!) and make my favorite – tandoori chicken! I also whipped up a batch of my classic hummus because I feel like all these foods go together in my mind. I love spreading a little hummus on some warm naan bread, adding some tabbouleh and chicken and eating it all together.

This version was 100% based on the items I had available to use up in my fridge – but it turned out great!

”Greek-style” Tabbouleh Salad
Serves six to eight.

– 1 cup bulgur wheat
– 2 cucumbers, chopped
– 1 lemon
– 1 tablespoon grated shallot or onion (or you can substitute a tablespoon of granulated onion)
– 1 clove garlic, minced or pasted
– 2 cups chopped tomatoes (I used about 5 Roma tomatoes)
– 3 green onions, chopped
– ½ red bell pepper, chopped
– 1, 6 ounce container feta cheese
– ½ cup olive oil (or less, just enough to coat the salad)

First, start by preparing your bulgur wheat. Combine a cup of bulgur wheat with one cup boiling water in a heat-safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit until the bulgur wheat has absorbed the water.

While the wheat is working, chop the ingredients for the salad. Peel and seed the cucumbers. The way I do this is to peel the cucumbers, then slice them in half and scoop the seeds out with a spoon. They will look like this:

Then chop them into bite-sized pieces and mix into the wheat.

Next, add the grated garlic, grated shallot or onion, lemon zest, and lemon juice.

Core, seed, and chop the tomatoes and add to the bowl. Do the same with the red bell pepper. Finally slice the green onion (greens and whites) and add to the bowl. Add the feta cheese and olive oil and stir to combine. At this point I was almost overflowing the bowl so I had to stir carefully! 🙂

Delicious! I love the addition of the salty feta! Cheese isn’t usually an ingredient in tabbouleh but I had some in my fridge that I wanted to use up, and I’m glad I did. 🙂

As I mentioned at the beginning on this post, this salad is great as an accompaniment to tandoori chicken – but it’s also great served on top of some lettuce leaves as a salad (that was my Meatless Monday lunch this week! :-)) I’m sure it would also be delicious stuffed into a pita with some hummus and chickpeas. Yum 🙂 I might have to make that next!

If you like this recipe, you might also like my recipes for:
~ Classic Hummus
~ Tabbouleh Salad
~ Tabbouleh Salad, Remix

Green Smoothies and Race Readiness!

Last night I tried out the Aqua Fitness class at my gym with my friend Heather. It was actually on the schedule as Aqua Zumba, but they had a last minute substitution to Aqua Fitness. I was kind of thankful for this because the idea of Zumba doesn’t really appeal to me. It was a blast! We did some cardio running around the pool and holding on to the side and kicking – and did some exercises with foam weights that really provide some resistance once you’re in the water! It was a neat way to change it up and get a work-out in. At one point, we did an exercise where we ran across the pool with a partner holding on to a noodle around our waist, to add resistence. (Hopefully that painted a decent mental image) It was a ton of fun – a lot harder than I thought – and Heather was such a great cheerleader!

During my research on training for races, I read time and time again that you need to incorporate non-running cardio into your training. Non-running cardio? That was definitely not a part of my life before and sounded sort of, well, terrible. My solution? Just start taking every fitness class I could fit into my schedule to find something that I love – or even if I hated all of it then I would at least get myself through several weeks of cardio in the “taking classes” process.

So far the experiment has been a big success. I’m in love with the cycling classes – especially now that I have my new gel bike seat cover! And I’m going to invest in a pair of cycling shoes in the next couple of weeks. Because I enjoy cycling so much, I don’t know if I’ll get around to all the classes. Zumba and step have never really appealed to me, but who knows? Maybe I’ll take them and they’ll end up being favorites too! 🙂

This morning, I whipped up my usual green smoothie for breakfast – but I’ve made some big changes to the recipe this week because of my cold. I’ve been leaving out the yogurt/milk since that always seems to make my throat feel worse. I’m losing a lot of protein due to this, but I figure it’s ok for just this week – and look at the awesome green color!

Tropical Mango Green Smoothie
Serves one

– 4 cups spinach, loosely packed (I use the cup measurement on the side of my blender)
– 1 cup apple juice (or juice of your choice)
– 1 frozen banana
– ½ cup frozen mango

Blend together and enjoy!

This afternoon I drove to Pacers in Arlington to pick up my race packet for the Crystal City Twilighter 5k race tomorrow night in Crystal City. I can’t wait! It’s my first “real” race – meaning it’s timed and there’s not going to be anyone throwing anything at me – at least not officially! 😉

Included in my packet is a glow stick – which I’m pretty excited about wearing and then fully intend on bringing home to put in my freezer to try to keep some glow in it until the next day. Did anyone else do that as a kid? 🙂 I’ve also heard a rumor that there might be some dogs from a local animal shelter at the finish line to greet the runners. I hope this rumor is true! I can’t pass up petting a dog anywhere I see one, and I’d love to soak up some puppie-lovin’ post race! It’s so sad I can’t have a dog in my apartment.

Keep up with all the happenings as they go down by following me on Twitter and Instagram!

Garlic Scape Pesto

While I continue my journey back to health, my eating habits haven’t been particularly exciting. In fact, my life in general hasn’t been very exciting. As I said yesterday, I’ve been living off of soup and Netflix. I did make it to Body Pump last night (my first workout in a week) and it felt great! That hour and a half in thy gym was the only time I didn’t feel all stuffy and terrible, probably because I was too busy focusing on my burning muscles. Have I mentioned I’m ready for this cold to be over and done with already?

In the meantime, I’ve found a few recipes I made over the past few weeks that hadn’t quite made it to the blog yet. Up first, garlic scape pesto!

Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t know what garlic scapes were. But Washington’s Green Grocer has some in the box for the week so I decided to give them a try. After all, anything with the word “garlic” in it is bound to be delicious. I have garlic consumption problems.

I found out that garlic scapes are the green shoots that grow out of the garlic in the spring, and are trimmed so that the garlic bulbs have a chance to grow fatter. Fat garlic bulbs are always a good thing! However, the green scapes that are trimmed are equally edible and delicious! They sort of remind me of green onions (in appearance only) with a light garlic flavor. Yum! 🙂 I also found out that the most common use of these little beauties is to make garlic scape pesto.

It turns out this pesto is ridiculously easy to pull together. Just take the garlic scapes (I had about a cup) and cut them into pieces small enough to fit in the food processor.

Add nuts (I went with walnuts because I thought the flavor would mesh well with the garlic – and it does!)

Then process together with lemon juice, salt, pepper and enough olive oil to form a good pesto-consistency. Yum!

At this point, you can also add about a 1/2 cup of cheese and process together, but I was considering freezing mine so I wanted to wait until I was about to use it before adding cheese.

Garlic Scape Pesto
Makes approximately 1 1/2 cups.

– approximately 1 cup garlic scapes
– 1/2 cup walnuts (or other nuts)
– salt and pepper
– 1 tablespoon lemon juice
– up to 1/2 cup olive oil (stream in until a good consistency is reached)
– 1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Place all ingredients except olive oil (and cheese if freezing) in the food processor and process until combined. Stream in olive oil until an appropriate pesto-like consistency is reached.

You can enjoy on this pesto as you would any other pesto – on pasta, or chicken, or in soup. The possibilities are endless!

“Clean Eating” Banana Bread

For the past six days I have been pretty absent from the world (both real world and online world) as I recover from this nasty cold. I haven’t done much more than camp out on my couch, drink juice, eat soup, and watch endless marathons of TV shows on Netflix, between boughts of sleeping.

As of today, I’m back at work and feeling about half-way back to normal. This has been one heck of a cold! And having a cold in the middle of the summer feels downright unnatural. I guess I just associate a stuffy nose and sneezing with winter weather – do you?

On Saturday I thought I was starting to recover so I mustered up the strength to bake some banana bread. I was going completely stir-crazy from being stuck on the couch and needed some activity to take my mind off things. Also, I tend to eat a lot when I’m not feeling well – is that just me? I feel like my stomach is a black hole and I can just eat and eat. It’s terrible. And I crave the junkiest food when I’m sick – does that happen to anyone else?

So I decided on a better option – this banana bread that is so quick and easy to pull together! 🙂

My go-to banana bread recipe is one that was given to me by my mom. Banana bread was a staple in our house growing up and when I moved out on my own I got the recipe from her to bake for myself. The recipe is labeled “Kona Inn Banana Bread” and I suspect she got it or learned it while we were living in Hawaii when I was younger. While I love the original version, it involves a good bit of butter and sugar and I wanted to see if I could “clean it up” using a few healthier ingredients. It was a big success! The bread was slightly denser and moister than the original, but I really loved the final product! (I didn’t take any pictures of the process of making the bread because I was pretty much the walking dead from my cold)

I converted the recipe by changing the white flour to whole wheat (reducing it by 1/4 cup), using honey instead of sugar (raw, local honey), and applesauce instead of butter. I was really impressed how well it turned out!

“Clean Eating” Banana Bread
Makes one loaf.

– 1/2 cup applesauce (unsweetened)
– 1/2 cup honey (local, if possible)
– 4 ripe bananas, mashed
– 2 eggs
– 1 cup whole wheat flour
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– 1 teaspoon baking soda

Combine all ingredients in a bowl, mashing the bananas into the mixture thoroughly (I use a fork). Do not over-mix. Grease a loaf pan with coconut oil or other oil and pour the batter into the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Note: you can easily convert this to a vegan recipe by substituting “flax eggs” for the eggs.

I hope you enjoy this recipe! It comes together really quickly and is definitely a perfect example of comfort food (that you can feel good about) to get your through a not-so-great day. 🙂

Raw Pad Thai-Style Salad

On Monday before spin class (which was much later in the evening – 7:15) I decided to try out a recipe for a Raw Pad Thai salad that I saw on the blog Oh She Glows. The salad is a mix of carrots, lettuce, zucchini, edamame, and red bell pepper with a peanut garlic sauce. Delicious! If you don’t read her blog, check it out as she makes some gorgeous (vegan) food and takes incredible photos! Her photos of this particular salad are much better than mine so definitely check them out! 🙂

I followed the recipe almost exactly, although I substituted some iceberg for the red cabbage because my grocery store mysteriously didn’t have any cabbage. Oh well. I also substituted soy sauce in for the tamari in the sauce recipe. And let me tell you, the sauce for this salad is delicious! It may be the perfect peanut garlic sauce (although as usual I think it could use more garlic! :-)) that I’ve been looking for.

For the salad itself, I ended up using a peeler to make zucchini and carrot “noodles” instead of julienning them mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to get the julienne blade on my mandolin and I gave up in frustration. Oh well, next time! 🙂 This salad is delicious, crisp, and has just enough of that “Pad Thai” flavor to satisfy a craving – although it can’t replace true Pad Thai from my favorite take out place!

Since I followed her recipe exactly, head over to Oh She Glows for her Rad Rainbow Raw Pad Thai Salad recipe. I enjoyed it! 🙂

Questions of the Day
What are some of your favorite recipe blogs?
Do you get most of your recipes online (from blogs or other sources) or from cookbooks and magazines?

Slow Cooker “Refried” Beans

I took my second-ever spinning class last night and I think I’m in love. My first-ever class was last Wednesday, and I really enjoyed it but boy was my butt sore from that hard, plastic seat! A trip to Sports Authority to buy myself a gel bike seat cover ($20 – totally worth it!) fixed that problem and I was back in the saddle last night.

I’m a big fan of my instructor for this class. He’s got such a great positive energy! 🙂 And his music choices are fantastic. Instead of just one song after another, the songs are all remixed together DJ-style. Last night we did intervals to a mix of “I Love Rock and Roll” by Joan Jett and “TNT” by AC/DC. I’m not sure if this is a remix he bought already made, or if he’s awesome enough to be mixing it together himself. I feel like I should make friends with him and find out. Like, “Hey, be my friend…a.k.a. please send me your playlist”

I’m feeling a little burnt-out on running lately, so I’m thinking of taking the months of July and August “off” (meaning running only once or twice a week, low mileage) and focusing on some new classes like spinning. I find taking a new fitness class to be so refreshing, and it really motivates me to keep up with fitness. Plus, it’s finally entered that time of summer in Virginia where it’s so hot and humid outside that even the drive home from work leaves you needing a shower. I think some indoor-fitness is just what the doctor ordered.

Sidebar: it was only a week ago I announced I was going to try for a “50 Mile July.” Oh how things change so quickly! The “50 Mile July” idea was supposed to bump me out of my running rut but I think since I start official 10k/half marathon training in September that it might be best to take a break until then so I’m not completely sick of running before I even start training.

Now for the recipe I promised you – “refried” beans in the slow cooker! 🙂

This is one of my favorite recipes – and it’s so easy! First of all, I love refried beans. They were one of my favorite parts of “taco night” growing up. And while the kind that comes in a can are perfectly tasty and convenient – these are even tastier, cheaper, and so easy to make! Every few months, I make a big batch and then freeze smaller portion sizes. That way, I can just pull them out a day or two ahead of time when I need beans for dinner. And taco/burrito/nacho night is a pretty frequent occurrence at my house, so I always need beans for dinner.

This recipe makes a huge portion size of beans – I would say 18 to 20 portions. I usually split it into five freezer-safe containers that would serve about four people each.

Slow Cooker “Refried” Beans
Makes 18-20 servings.

– 1, 32 ounce bag dried pinto beans (approximately 4 cups)
– 1 onion, halved (leave the root end intact)
– 2 jalapenos, diced (remove the seeds and ribs if you don’t like your food too spicy)
– 3 teaspoons cumin
– 12 cups water

First, dump the beans into the slow cooker. Always make a quick check through the beans for any rocks or other debris that might have snuck through. I actually found a corn kernel in mine once!

Slice your onion in half and remove the outer skin. Throw the halves into the slow cooker (you’ll remove them when the beans are done). I’m actually thinking of trying a new approach next time where I chop up the onions and leave them in the finished beans – it seems like a waste to throw the onion away! 🙂

Next, slice the jalapenos in half and remove the seeds/ribs (if you want to tone down the spice). You may want to use gloves to handle the peppers, as I learned the hard way this weekend. Spice burns are no fun.

Yep, those innocent looking peppers did me in

Combine all ingredients in the slow cooker and cook on high for 8 hours. No need to soak the beans first! That’s one of my favorite parts of this recipe! 🙂 At first it looks like a lot of water, but over time the beans really soak it up. I took some pictures throughout the afternoon:

Beans don’t photograph very well, do they? 🙂 Sort of a brown mush…but they are delicious! And nutritious!

At the end of the eight hours, pull out the onion and mash the beans with a potato masher to your desired consistency. Drain off a few spoonfuls of water if it looks like there’s a lot, you can always add it back into the mashed beans until they come to your desired consistency. I get mine pretty smooth with a masher, but I suppose if you like really smooth beans, you could use a blender.

Then, I package up my beans for the freezer! They freeze really well and are great to pull out for a variety of Mexican dishes, but they are also great as a dip or on top of salads.

Questions of the Day!
Has anyone else gone through a fitness rut? How did you break out of it?
Is “taco night” a frequent occurrence at your house? What are your favorite taco toppings?

“Berry Green” Smoothie Recipes

This past Friday I worked from home which meant I got a run in first thing in the morning (yay!), got to wear sweatpants all day (double yay!) and got to enjoy my morning smoothie in a real glass instead of a travel mug.

That’s my awesome Hogwarts glass from my trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter earlier this year.

I start every (weekday) morning with a green smoothie. On the weekends I usually treat myself to some eggs, French toast or pancakes.

I wrote my very first blog post about my love of green smoothies. Making a green smoothie every morning was one of the first healthy habits that I adopted and I just don’t feel right without them now. It’s a great way to kick-start your morning with fruits and vegetables – and packs fiber and protein to keep you full until lunch. I love that you can get in several servings of dark green leafy vegetables (which are so healthy!) and you can’t even taste them – even if the color of the smoothies can be a little off-putting. I posted my recipe in my original post, but I have definitely fine-tuned it since then and I think it’s almost perfect!

First, I add my greens to my blender. I use kale almost every time I make this smoothie, but I sometimes substitute spinach based on what is in season. I loosely pack the greens up to around the 4 cup line on the blender. In the photo it looks like it’s closer to the 6 cup line but I think it’s just the angle. 🙂

Next, I add milk to just above the 1 cup line on the blender. Since there’s already greens in the blender – it’s not a true “1 cup” measurement, probably closer to 3/4s of a cup. I find this amount of liquid makes the smoothie the perfect consistency, but on some days when it needs a little more, I add a splash of two or water while it’s blending until it’s smooth. I started off making this smoothie with skim milk, and recently switched to soy milk but you could make it with almond milk, juice, green tea, or even water.

Next, I add one tablespoon each of chia seeds, flax seeds and Greek yogurt.

I’m not too particular about getting these exactly at one tablespoon and for the Greek yogurt I make it a huge heaping spoonful which is probably closer to 2-3 tablespoons.

Next, I add a frozen banana and some kind of frozen fruit. I always keep a big bag of frozen bananas in the freezer for smoothies and I buy up fruit when it’s on sale and freeze it or buy frozen fruit when it’s out of season.

Depending on what fruit I have on hand, I either add berries or peaches or mangoes. I was very excited to discover recently that the Harris Teeter brand organic frozen fruit now offers mangoes! I find cutting up a mango to be a pretty frustrating experience – and I never seem to end up with much mango. I think the frozen mango is definitely the way to go.

Depending on what I’m using, I add about a ½ cup of fruit. For large strawberries it ends up being about three berries, or maybe 6-8 blackberries, or about a ½ peach or mango. The smoothie is relatively light on the fruit side.

Then I blend it up really thoroughly. I mean, I let it run for a few minutes at least. If the mixture is a little thick and not blending, add splashes of water until it starts to process correctly. It’s important to blend it thoroughly to not end up with a “chewy” smoothie with chunks of kale in it.

”Berry Green” Smoothie Recipe
Serves one.

– 3-4 cups kale or spinach, loosely packed
– ¾ cup liquid of your choice (milk (skim, soy, almond, etc), tea, juice, water)
– 1 tablespoon ground flax seed
– 1 tablespoon chia seeds
– 2-3 tablespoons Greek yogurt
– 1 frozen banana (if using a fresh banana, add ice to the smoothie)
– ½ cup frozen fruit (strawberries, other berries, mango, peaches, etc)

Here are some tasty combinations to try:

– Pina Colada: Coconut milk or water with frozen pineapple
– Green-Tea Mango: chilled green tea with frozen mango
– Apple Pie: apple juice, frozen banana (double the banana and skip the other fruit), add a dash of cinnamon
– Berry Madness: blueberry or pomegranate juice, mixed frozen berries

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On a different note, I want to announce the winner of the ENERGYbits giveaway!

With the eleventh comment – the winner is Katie!

Please email me with your mailing address to claim your prize! 🙂

Using Lentils As A Meat Substitute & Burrito Filling Recipe!

One of my favorite discoveries on my journey to healthier eating habits has to be lentils. They are now one of my go-to foods, when a year or two ago I definitely would not have been able to tell you what they were. Lentils are part of the legume family and come in a variety of colors (my personal favorite right now is red lentils). Lentils are a great vegetarian source of protein and are also an excellent source of fiber and iron – all important nutrients for proper health! 🙂

Although I love cooking lentils in dishes on their own (see my Indian-Spiced Vegetable and Lentil Stew), another great use for lentils is as a meat substitute. I’m not a vegetarian by any means, but I do try to take a “meat on the side” approach to eating in which vegetables are the focus. I haven’t entirely replaced meat with lentils in a recipe, but I do use lentils to supplement the meat in many of my favorite dishes. Here’s the general rule:

Cook the lentils according to their package directions. For my particular brand, this involves boiling them for about 30 minutes. Drain and add to whatever meat you’re using. One cup of dry lentils makes approximately 2 to 2 ½ cups of cooked lentils. For example, when browning meat for tacos, or meat sauce I add the lentils at the point that the meat is browned – just before I add in other ingredients and spices. For dishes such as meatballs, burgers, or meatloaf – add the cooked lentils to the raw meat with your other ingredients before shaping into the final product. Usually I use lentils in a big batch of a recipe as half of the meat component. For example, the Bolognese recipe I use calls for two pounds of ground meat. I substitute one cup of cooked lentils for one pound of meat. This lightens up the final product, without affecting the flavor or texture of the finished dish. I promise you can sneak some lentils into your next lasagna without anyone noticing! 🙂 Some of the recipes that I’ve tried using lentils in so far are: burritos, tacos, Bolognese (meat) sauce, lasagna, and meatballs.

Last night, I decided to make one of my other favorite lentils-enhanced dishes – burritos! I picked up some ground chicken at the store and was once again shocked at how expensive organic meat is. I really should pay better attention and try to stock up when it’s on sale because this pound of ground chicken was $6.50. Phew! And a pound of ground meat just doesn’t go as far as it should, even in my household of one. But that pound of ground meat mixed with cooked lentils…now that’s a feast! I love that the lentils can really stretch the meat portion of your meal, while adding some great health benefits.

Check out how much the lentils bulk up this meal! Here’s a picture of just the ground meat:

And then the meat with the lentils added:

What a difference!

Chicken, Lentil and Bean Burrito Filling
Makes enough filling for approximately 10 burritos.

– 1 pound ground chicken
– 1 cup dry lentils, cooked (approximately 2 ½ cups cooked)
– 3 tablespoons homemade taco seasoning
– 1 cup chopped onion
– 3 cloves garlic, chopped
– 1 can pinto beans

Brown the meat with the onions and garlic in a few tablespoons of oil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and add the cooked lentils and seasoning to the browned meat and cook for 10 minutes. Add the pinto beans and stir to combine. Allow the beans to heat through (approximately 5 minutes).

Serve in tortillas with your favorite toppings – I went with cheese, a dollop of Greek yogurt and some sliced avocado!

As usual, this recipe made a ton of food so I froze half of the filling mixture in a freezer bag for a later date. This mixture freezes really well and makes having a healthy dinner option on hand a snap! 🙂

Beets & More Beets

Friday night was a dreary one in DC as the remnants of Hurricane Andrea rolled through town. Being from the Hampton Roads area, hurricanes are old friends of mine and I never worry about them much (especially as far north as I am now), but all the rain and grey did put me in a rather dreary mood. Therefore, I decided to camp out in my apartment for the afternoon/evening and not work out. Seeing as I was running my first 5k the next morning, I thought it was the right thing to do to take the night off. I’m not sure if that’s true – somewhere in this running journey of mine I’m going to need to involve a professional, an experienced runner, someone who knows what the heck they’re doing.

But for this particular Friday, I had a stack of magazines calling my name.

Seriously, I subscribe to too many magazines (most of them related to food). Hence why I had to create an organization system for all the pages I rip out of magazines.

So my plan was to “camp out” in my living room with the aforementioned magazines, my cats, Netflix Instant, and a “tapas-style” dinner I whipped up from some leftovers.

It was sort of an Indian/Middle Eastern style tapas. I had a small amount of leftover tandoori chicken which I warmed up along with some naan bread (seriously my favorite thing to eat). I added a few tablespoons of Sabre Greek olive hummus (which was delicious spread on some naan with chicken on top). I also heated up a small serving (because it’s really filling!) of my Indian-spiced vegetable and lentil stew and topped it with some Greek yogurt. Finally, I chopped up some beets that I had roasted a few nights before into a “beet tartare” – a recipe I had conveniently stumbled upon the day before on another blog. I skipped the “cashew cheese” part of the recipe and just served the tartare over hummus. It was a filling dinner! 🙂

I’m happy to have another recipe to use up beets because I currently have a ton of roasted beet to use up. In my box from Washington’s Green Grocer I got two absolutely huge beets. They sort of looked like mandrakes to me.

To make sure they wouldn’t go bad, I roasted them in the oven at 350 degrees for about an hour, then let them cool and peeled them. I sliced up half of one beet to make pickled beets. I sliced up half of another to make beet chips (pictured below).

The beet chips were made in a very similar style to my sweet potato chips. Thinly sliced with a mandolin then roasted in a 300 degree over for 15 minutes, or until crisp. And look at how pretty they are when they’re sliced up!

After that, I still had one huge beet to do something with so I just cubed him up and put him in a container for use throughout the week. I used maybe a third of what I had stored up for the “beet tartare.” Delicious! I’m such a huge fan of beets in any form – it baffles me that a lot of people don’t like them.

But I’ll gladly keep eating them up! 🙂

On a completely unrelated note, I ended up watching “Scream” on Netflix Instant which I had somehow never seen before. The movie is hilarious! Completely unintentionally hilarious, but funny all the same. I actually checked IMDB to make sure it wasn’t supposed to be a comedy.

Do you like beets? What are your favorite beet recipes?

Post-Workout Fueling

On Tuesdays and Saturdays I take a class called ‘Body Pump’ which is a strength training class that utilizes a barbell. I’m in love with this class. I was always so intimidated by weight-lifting before, because I had no idea what I was doing – how to target different muscles, what proper form was, how much weight to lift, etc. But this class took away all those fears for me – and set the lifting to awesome music! In just 8 weeks, I’ve already seen so much improvement from this class and I truly look forward to it every time I go. It’s also one hell of a workout! The goal of the class is muscle failure. All-out, gasping for breath, can’t do one more rep, dripping in sweat, muscle failure.

After a class like that, I know you need a recovery period. I try to follow it up the next day with an all-out rest day, a light run, or a yoga class. Except for a few weeks ago when I was possessed by some insane spirit and went to a class called ‘Extreme Abs’ the day immediately following Body Pump. I swear I almost died. Also, immediately after class I know that I need a post-workout recovery snack. But I didn’t know too much about what kind of food your body needs post-workout so I went and did a little research.

Immediately after a moderate to high intensity workout, you should eat a snack that combines complex carbohydrates and protein with a very small amount of good fat in order to rebuild and repair your muscles. Recovery times (when your muscle rebuilds itself) are just as crucial to increasing your fitness levels as the workout themselves! The recommendation by the American Dietetic Association is to consume 1–1.5 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight to allow for maximum replenishment of glycogen stores, the primary fuel or energy used during moderate– to high–intensity exercise; and 10–20 grams of lean protein to help repair muscle tissue.

The other night after Body Pump, I opted for a whole grain English muffin spread with crunchy peanut butter and topped with some raw cocoa nibs (I was going to top it with sliced bananas until I discovered I had (in)conveniently peeled and put all my bananas in the freezer for smoothies earlier that day).

Depending on if you’re going for a post-workout snack or meal, change the portion sizes of the below items.

Here are a few other examples of a great post-workout snack!
· Banana with 1 tablespoon of nut butter
· Dried fruit and nuts mix (1/4 cup serving size)
· Turkey or tuna sandwich on whole wheat bread or pita
· PB&J – or better yet a PB&B (peanut butter and banana)!
· Veggie omelet and whole wheat toast
· Whole wheat toast or English muffin (even a whole wheat pancake! Just skip the butter and syrup) spread with nut butter, top with sliced banana
· Protein shake
· Cheese and whole wheat crackers, can add a slice or two of turkey for more protein
· Cottage cheese or yogurt topped with nuts, fruit, seeds
· Whole wheat bread, English muffin, or pita with hummus (can add a slice of turkey for more protein)

I had no idea what to eat after a workout at first, but now I feel like I have tons of healthy options! I hope you found some inspiration in the list above. 🙂

Also, I went back and updated my “Everything Cookies” recipe since I baked up two cookies from frozen the other night and they turned out fantastically! 🙂 I was pumped to see that freezing the dough and baking up individual portions worked so well.

What is your favorite post or pre-workout snack?