Cheesy Orzo

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Recipes, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

Yum.

Making this post is reminding me how utterly delicious this dish is.

Tuna and I both looked at each other when we took the first bite with wide eyes – because we didn’t expect it to be as seriously good as it was!

It rich and light at the same time, which is perfect for a summer din din.

This recipe was inspired by Quick Dish.

Ingredients:

4 tbsp butter
1 large shallot, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 small zucchinis, diced
1 1/2 cup of diced tomatoes
2 cups uncooked orzo
2 tsp tomato paste
3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 lb shrimp
2 tbsp freshly chopped chives
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Heat 2 tbsp of butter in a large skillet. Add the minced shallots and sauté for 3 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for 1 minute.

Add the zucchini to the skillet, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and sauté for 6 minutes.

Add half of the tomatoes and sauté another minute.

In a separate pot, cook the orzo.

Once the orzo is cooked, add it to the skillet with the sautéed veggies.

Lastly, add the cheese, the other half of the tomatoes and remaining 2 tbsp of butter. Toss everything to combine.

Add chopped chives as garnish and serve!

Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

6Jun2013

Juice Cleanse, Day 3

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Health, Recipes by chicken nugget girl

After Day 2, I knew I was in the clear. I knew I was going to be able to finish the juice cleanse.

The other problem with Ginger-Gate was that I made the C.A.B. juice for night 2 and 3 at the same time, which means I needed to remake it. That wouldn’t have been an issue except I used my last apple! Ah!

Luckily I was able to improvise with some applesauce I already had in the fridge. I checked the ingredients and saw that the only ingredient was organic apples, and cheered! I think my juicer was happy that it had less work to do.

Day 3 was probably the biggest mental challenge for me. I kept comparing the mental challenge of the juice cleanse to that of running the half marathon. In both cases, I went from doubting myself to gritting my teeth and just getting through it. The only difference is that the half marathon took me around 2 1/2 hours and the juice cleanse was for 72.

As I went on, I starting learning the tricks of the trade and testing out ideas. A new approach was needed for Juice 4, the Spicy Lemonade.

The Spicy Lemonade is:

1-2 lemons
a few squirts of raw agave nectar
a dash of cayenne pepper

Day 1 I drank the Spicy Lemonade as is and it was pretty darn sour and hard to get down. I knew I would dread juice 4 of the day if I didn’t come up with some kind of solution.

My big idea: to freeze it!

And it worked!

I microwaved it for about 45 seconds to make it a little softer, and it was just like a lemon Italian Ice. It still tasted like sour-ass cayenne, but I was so happy to be using a spoon and chewing that it made the experience that much more pleasurable.

Afternoon of Day 3: the stomach problems set in.

I can’t bring myself to discuss bodily functions in depth on here for fear of scarring you for life, so just warning you: you might want to do some research on what a cleanse does to your digestive system before you do it. Unlike me.

Let’s just say it like Tuna said it, I was, “supa’ blown.”

Somehow, I was able to muster the strength to:

1. Prep my food for Day 1 post cleanse.

2. Enter Whole Foods, purchase a few food items, and leave without breaking in to the hot bar and shoving cartons of crab dip into my purse.

I passed the test.

It was finally time for my last “juice,” the Nut Milk.

The real BluePrint juice for this is some fancy cashew milk, but I was pretty content with the vanilla almond milk I bought for $1.99 and dumped some cinnamon into. I drank 1/3 of the carton each night. Day 1 I sipped it and thought it was kind of blah, but by Day 3 I was a whole new person with juice cleanse wisdom and remembering that I could use a microwave.

Microwave it for 2 minutes and you’ve got deliciousness.

Going to bed the night of Day 3 was pretty much like going to bed on Christmas Eve.

But hey – I did it!

5Jun2013

Juice Cleanse, Day 2

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Health, How To, Recipes, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

The night between Day 1 and Day 2 I had lots of really vivid dreams and I remembered them once I woke up! That’s definitely a surprising side effect from the cleanse.

Thank gawwwd I didn’t have a headache anymore, and I was not hungry. Both good things.

I hopped on the scale and was excited to see that I was down 3 lbs. This shit was actually working!

Weirdly enough, I had an easier time getting up in the morning than I usually do. I also felt like my mind was a bit sharper in the morning – even without coffee.

The day passed in two(ish) hour increments, spent waiting for the next time I could have my juice. Not because I was hungry, I just wanted to consume something. Every hour and a half I would start to feel a little more drained, a little weaker. I could seriously tell that my body was soaking up the nutrients in the juice when I re-fueled, which is kind of a strange feeling and hard to describe!

Here’s the juice schedule I followed:

Juice 1: 9:30 am
Juice 2: 12:00 pm
Juice 3: 2:30 pm
Juice 4: 4:30 pm
Juice 5: 7:00 pm
Juice 6: 9:00 pm

I could not wait for Juice 2, my absolute favorite juice by far.

P.A.M. is a pretty simple juice: a ton of pineapple, and some apple and mint. It was extra cool because I got to use my mint from my mint plant that I harvested and have yet to kill (nbd, hell is freezing over).

I haven’t really tried pineapple before, and I think the only time I’ve ever had pineapple juice was with a bunch of vodka in Hawaii. At least now I have one juice from the cleanse that I genuinely love and will keep making!

Everything continued smoothly the rest of the day until Ginger-Gate.

*Side note: I’m talking about ginger root – which I had to ask the grocery store worker for because I was wandering around looking for pink ginger like the kind that comes with sushi. Turns out that the pink ginger is made from artificial dye. Who knew.*

The first night I had C.A.B. I didn’t put any ginger in the jar because I ran out of room. Beets make a lot of juice.

It wasn’t the best thing in the world, but it was filling, and I liked the carrot juice in it.

The measurements I used were:

1 apple
1/2 lemon
2 giant carrots
3 beets (I did not juice the greens)

On Day 2, I prepped my C.A.B. juice to take to Tuna’s. Since I’ve never used ginger before, I didn’t know how much to put in the juice (and was apparently too lazy to google it for some reason).

So, I proceeded to juice about half of the amount shown in the picture above. *See evil.

The kitchen sure smelled like sushi, but I didn’t think much of it. I packed up my juice and headed on over to Tuna’s.

When I got to his place, I stuck a straw into my mason jar and took a huge gulp.

Omg.

Too. Much. Ginger.

That was the first time I considered stopping the juice cleanse. I needed to have something for dinner, and I was not about to drink that crap. I panicked.

Tuna suggested I water it down. Still foul. I tried to put some ice in it and stir it around. Nope.

All I could do was hold my nose, chug half of it, and try to keep it down. The latter was hard to do, but I did.

I brushed my teeth but was still hurtin’. It was time to resort to Tuna’s mint gum.

You’re not supposed to chew gum on a juice cleanse because it supposedly tricks your stomach into thinking it needs to digest something, but that’s okay. Funny how ginger is supposed to be soothing for your stomach, but it upset mine for the rest of the night.

Day 2 lesson learned: try the juice before you take it to go.

I have now sworn off ginger. For life.

Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I ~~Drank~~ Ate Wednesday!

4Jun2013

Juice Cleanse, Day 1

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Health, Recipes by chicken nugget girl

I woke up the morning of Day 1 with a slight headache from the few glasses of red wine I had the night before (dumb idea, I know).

At least I took some initiative of what I ate and drank pre-cleanse. I did some research that recommended cutting back on coffee, chocolate, and avoiding grains in order to prep your body for the juice cleanse. I drank a smaller cup of coffee than usual on Friday, and didn’t have an coffee on Saturday. Saturday I ate healthily – a smoothie, eggs for dinner, etc.

The BluePrint cleanse I’m following consists of 6 juices a day that you drink about every two hours.

Green Juice
P.A.M.
Green Juice
Spicy Lemonade
C.A.B.
Nut Milk

I’ll outline the recipes for all of juices as the days progress!

I’m so glad I got to do the first day on a weekend day (Sunday) because I totally would not have survived through work

Even though I was excited to start the juice cleanse, I really wanted some FOOD. But once I drank my first Green Juice, my stomach did feel full.

Here’s what’s in the Green Juice:

Since I was jacking the ingredients from BluePrint, I didn’t have the exact recipe, but the juice I ended up with was pretty good! Those measurements are:

1/2 cucumber
2-4 celery stalks
1/2 lemon
1 handful parsley
1-2 small heads of romaine
1-2 small heads of spinach
6 large kale leaves
top off with filtered water

That makes approximately 16 oz. of juice, which is suggested amount for each of the juices in the cleanse. It’s perfect – regular sized mason jars are exactly 16 ounces!

I found it helpful to drink the juices slowwwwly [think 30-40 minutes], which made me feel less deprived and kept my stomach feeling okay. I also drank A LOT of herbal tea – about 1 in between each of the juices. After drinking so many cold juices, all I wanted was something warm!

By far, the worst thing about Day 1 was the bad headache I had all day. I’m pretty sure this was due to caffeine withdrawal, but I’m not positive. There was a lot of massaging my temples going on. I even refrained from watching Real Housewives because I absolutely could not deal with any raised voices or yelling. #juicecleanseproblems

(source)

In addition to the headache, I felt tired, had low energy, and kept sweating. It almost felt like I was sick! I was pretty miserable, but wasn’t hungry – even though I missed eating…and chewing.

Despite all of this, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t feel dizzy and did not feel the need to eat any solid food add-ins. I’ve been carrying around an avocado, banana, and some pecans just in case of emergency.

I literally googled: “What to do if lightheaded during juice cleanse?” before I started, because I was anemic in high school and fear fainting. THIS article warned me, “Light headedness to the point of fainting puts you at serious risk for injury.” Point taken. I’m taking a slow-releasing iron pill and am doing just fine so far.

Plus, during the juice cleanse, I’ve been listening to my body like whoa. I’m hyper-aware of everything I’m feeling because I want to make sure I stay safe!

As the afternoon continued, I started to feel a lot of doubt, wondering if this was the right thing to put my body through. I was poking around my bookshelf, and saw I had a book on juicing that I’ve never even looked at! It came at just the right time, because it helped me validate why I’m doing this.

I fell asleep thinking of pizza and Mexican food (legit images of the cheesy goodness in my head) and crossing my fingers that Day 2 would be easier.

3Jun2013

Juice Cleanse Grocery List

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Health, How To by chicken nugget girl

After our last trip to Eastern Market, I knew I wanted to come back and get lots of produce before my big juice cleanse. So Saturday morning, some friends and I headed on over to check it out!

We found almost everything I needed for a [slightly] cheaper price than Whole Foods and probably a lot fresher too! A lot of the veggies I bought still had the roots on them – and you can’t beat the size of some of this stuff.

Look at the giant carrots!

bigcarrots And I got a huge bushel of beets for $3.50.

My bags started to get pretty dang heavy, so I kept ploppin’ them down while I bought more goodies. Thanks for being my personal photographer for the day, Mal!

I don’t think my fridge has ever been as full as it was after this trip.

Yeah, it’s nice to have really fresh veggies for juicing, but that also meant they were on the dirty side. Solution = wax paper.

I am basing my juice cleanse on BluePrint’s Renovation Cleanse, their three day beginner cleanse.

Making the juices myself is definitely a daunting task, but I’m glad I’m doing it this way. I went to the store to get the last few items and spotted the actual pre-made juices from BluePrint. Look at the prices. Seriously? I was able to get all of the ingredients on the above grocery list for a third of the price that the cleanse would cost if you bought the juices already made.

Here goes nothin’!

30May2013

Fat Sick and Nearly Dead

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Health by chicken nugget girl

Remember how I said I would never do a juice cleanse?

Well, Fat Sick and Nearly Dead made me want to do one.

(source)

Though the documentary could have made its point in half the time, it totally got me amped up about juicing.

It starts off with a big guy, Joe Cross, doing a 60 day (WHAAAA) “fast,” or juice cleanse, meaning he only drinks juice from fresh fruits and veggies. When he started, he was very overweight and had a terrible dermatitis/skin disease that he had to be on lots of the steroid Prednisone for.

By the end of his cleanse, he lost 90lbs and his skin disease was GONE.

After accomplishing his goal, Joe gets hooked on the health benefits of juicing and inspires others to follow suit.

My favorite quote from the movie: 70% of the disease that affects us now are caused by our life choices.

That really stuck with me because it suggests that a lot of the health problems we face can be prevented by the food [and exercise, sleep habits, mental health, etc] that we subject our bodies to.

Just like Hungry For Change, Joe talks about the ridiculous supply of micro-nutrients in fruit/veggie juice and how it nourishes our bodies.

I do wish he told us a little more HOW to juice and what to juice. But I guess that’s what research is for.

Last week I tried adding the juice from a tomato into my green juice. It tasted like shit.

I’ve got my research cut out for me because I am going to try a juice cleanse.

I’m going to the beach in a week and a half, so I might as well try it now! My plan so far is to start on Sunday so that I don’t go brain dead at work, and then see how Monday and Tuesday go. I’m convincing myself that it is not a challenge that I have to complete and am not a failure if I don’t. It might not work for me. So 3 days is definitely all I want to start with!

More details on my cleanse to come – don’t worry, I’ll fill ya in on every little detail. 🙂

If you’d like to watch Fat Sick and Nearly Dead, watch it for free HERE!

Have you ever done a juice cleanse?

29May2013

Thai Quinoa Lettuce Wraps

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Recipes, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

This is one of those recipes that I could definitely see myself being scared of a year or two ago.

It involves making your own dressing! Omg. Scary.

I promise it isn’t that hard to make though: the secret ingredient is – peanut butter. And paired with quinoa? Gotta love that protein.

This recipe was inspired by Ambitious Kitchen.

Ingredients:

¾ cup uncooked quinoa
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 cup shredded red cabbage
½ red onion, diced
1 cup shredded carrots
½ cup chopped cilantro
fresh lime juice, to taste
handful of green onion, chopped
garnish with chives, chopped
head of romaine lettuce

Dressing:

¼ cup peanut butter
1 tbsp honey (sub with agave if vegan)
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp water

Directions:

Cook quinoa and let cool.

Make the dressing: add peanut butter and honey to a medium microwave safe bowl. Heat in microwave for 20 seconds. Stir in soy sauce, vinegar, water, sesame oil, and olive oil. Stir until smooth.

Add the dressing to quinoa.

Mix red pepper, cabbage, onions, carrots, and cilantro into the quinoa. Squeeze a little fresh lime juice and garnish with chives. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

It looks good…but I didn’t feel like eatin’ it straight up.

Luckily, I remembered I had a bag of romaine lettuce in the fridge!

The best part? Lots of leftovers!

Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

15May2013

Guac Deviled Eggs

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Recipes, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

Um. So. Delicious.

Tuna and I agree that these are going in the regular rotation.

The texture of the guac/yolks is perfect and the contrast with the cool eggs is super refreshing. The only thing I think I’ll add next time is a little bit of lime juice and a teensy bit of cilantro.

Another pro – they’re filling! And don’t forget: a good source of healthy fats and protein.

Ingredients:

6 hard boiled eggs
1 avocado
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp olive oil
pepper to season

Makes 12 deviled eggs.

Recipe adapted from HERE. (The name – ha).

They were surprisingly great as an added filling to a bed of lettuce and a side of sweet corn.

I need to have a summer dinner party to go to soon so I can bring these.

Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!

14May2013

Toms for Ten

Posted in Clean Eating, Health by chicken nugget girl

Alright, we’re dealing with two realities here:

1. I “need” some new Toms because I love mine and they are so cute and perfect for spring. Mine seriously smell and are getting holes in them because I’ve worn them so much in the past year and a half.

And even though we all know that Toms are awesome because they give a pair of shoes to a child in need, they are not cheap (at 50-60 bucks a pop).

2. I’d like to lose 10 lbs asap. Yeah – and that’s not even my goal weight (though almost!) Yes, I’ve been running, though not as far as I was when I was training for the Shamrock Half. And I’ve been eating healthy and clean during the week, but can’t seem to stop eating junk food on the weekends.

(source)

I hopped on the scale this morning and muttered several indecencies before remembering that I shoveled my face with lots and lots of takeout this weekend.

*Note: Yes, yes, I know weight isn’t supposed to be the only measure of healthiness, yes, my weight is fine right now but not where I’d like to personally be.*

Apparently I need more incentive to lose a few lbs because I’m not really losin’ anything right now.

Sooo, I made a deal with myself this morning.

(source)

I lose 10 lbs, I get my Toms.

Now which ones to get……..

(original via)

8May2013

Homemade Hummus

Posted in Clean Eating, Food, Recipes, WIAW by chicken nugget girl

Here’s another money saver for ya. Once you buy the ingredients to make hummus the first time, most of them last for awhile.

It’s def a little more work, but I’m on the homemade trend now!

The past few weeks I’ve been scrutinizing my diet to make sure I’m getting everything I need, especially since I’ve been trying to work out on a more regular basis. I’m not a big fan of cooking meat, so I like bringing hummus with me to work for some extra protein to get me through the day.

Tuna helped me make this first batch, and we were quite proud of ourselves. 🙂