This is What I Ate

Since I started blogging at some point almost two years ago, I think I have been trying to emulate some of the great, classic food bloggers.  I took pictures of my meals, snacks, coffee cups, and empty nut butter jars to my heart's desire.  I talked about the cookies I inhaled and I also talked about how I loved Mondays simply because it was a fresh start.  While it was a great structure and format to follow, it's just not me. 

I am chaotic, busy, hyper, forgetful and goofy.  Plus, I hate being told what to do (just ask my parents or husband).  Put the word 'diet' in front of me, and I do an ADD-induced mind backflip. 

So why am I telling you this when I randomly took pictures of two of my meals today?  It was not to show you my sub-par photography skillz.  I did it because it was kinda fun.  I always marvel at what people eat on a normal basis because it gives me great ideas and inspires me to eat healthier. 

Garden fresh tomatoes, Persian cucumbers, Arnold®/Oroweat® Sandwich Thins®, part skim mozzarella cheese (I received the Sandwich Thins as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program)
 
I also love preparing myself quick and easy meals, even when it's just for myself.  I enjoy simple, quick meals and I love supplementing them with snacks along the way to keep myself awake, alert, and energized.

Trader Joe's seafood blend, cucumbers, tomatoes, mango salsa, guacamole on a bed of spring mix

There are many, many definitions of what is healthy.  For me, it's being relaxed about food while getting in all my vitamins.  Real food is delicious and tastes great.  It keeps me energized and gives me the energy to live life- which is really all we remember in the end.  Health is about living life, enjoying the sunshine, and capturing memories outside of a smoothie, although that sounds really good right about now!

What does health mean to you?

CSN Giveaway Winner

Hi Guys!  Thanks so much for entering the giveaway.  I hope that you'll stay a while for those who commented the first time!

The lucky number according to my random number generator is #21:

Congrats Tania!  Hopefully you can find some cookie cutters at one of the CSN stores!

Make Your Life Easier

Each week I find myself running around between my job, commute, workouts, and class.  Fortunately or not, my husband has the same exact schedule as I do and this makes for two very busy adults.  I rely on food prep a LOT and have posted about it several times.  We each eat breakfast at home and bring lunch to work at least 4 out of 5 days of the week.  We also bring dinner once or twice a week depending on school schedules.  Are you tired yet?  Me too!

Since it's the start of the school year for many and we are getting back into the regular grind, I wanted to share some of my tips for food prep.  I made all of this on Sunday and it took me 90 minutes.

1. Start with breakfast- the most important meal of the day.  I like to make waffles on Sunday and either refrigerate or freeze them.

You can also make overnight oats ahead of time, prep some smoothie ingredients, or make sure you have everything in your fridge for toast and almond butter (my favorite).

2. Have your grains prepped ahead of time. For lunch, I make some grains to use throughout the week.  I used this multi-grain mix from Trader Joe's for one option:

Another easy option is to cut up and roast some potatoes- instant options when you open your fridge to build some meals.

Once you have a few grains, you can mix and match them with proteins or use them with salads.
Here is an example of Hubby's lunch tomorrow using the multi-grain mix and roasted chipotle honey chicken and carrots:

4. Make a few complete one-dish meals- sometimes we just need to grab and go.  I make at least one complete meal on Sundays to serve as a back-up.  You can always freeze it or keep it in a container to heat up on the extra busy nights.  I make 2-4 servings of the selected dish.  This week I made a pad thai concoction with lots of veggies and chicken.

Here is one stack of my containers for this week.

5. Prep some easy protein- If you live with a boy or are just a protein-loving chic and need to fuel your big guns, you need to have something to go with your carbs.  The easiest thing to do is to make some hardboiled eggs.  They work for salads, snacks, sandwiches, or even breakfast.

6. Be flexible- sometimes you don't feel like eating what you made.  In fact, I usually don't.  I like to keep a lot of staples on hand to make something quick.  A few favorites are listed below:

• Spinach/herb mix for salads
• Sandwich ingredients: bread, cheese, condiments
• Fresh chopped veggies or fruits
• Frozen fruit for smoothies
• Hummus with multi-grain chips/crackers, salsa, guacamole

If none of those work, then stop for frozen yogurt- because you can and life is too short to plan everything out!

Psst....Have you entered my giveaway yet?  DO it!

Who Wants to Win?! CSN Giveaway

Hi Guys!  Hope you are having a great week and getting ready to start your weekends!  It has to be 5:00 PM somewhere, right?  While I would love a cocktail, for now I'm sticking to Nyquil while watching Jersey Shore and vitamin C packets.  It works, trust me.  Who gets colds in the summer? Me!

Anyhoo, this is not about me, this is about getting you some free stuff!

OneHealthyApple and CSN Stores are teaming up to bring you a giveaway for a $40 certificate on anything you want from one of their 200 stores.  There are a bunch of cookware, house decor and other items.  I'm personally obsessed with their fitness site because of all the cool yoga stuff they have that I now want.

Wanna win?  Here are the rules:
Rules:

1) Must live in the US or Canada.
How to ENTER:
1) Leave a comment answering this: What’s your favorite kitchen or exercise gadget/tool?
2) Have a blog? Link back to this post for another chance!
3) Follow me on Twitter and then @onehealthyapple me to announce the giveaway

Ready, set GO!  The winner will be announced at 9:00 AM on Tuesday, August 24.

The Husband Makes a Smoothie

A while back POM Wonderful sent me some free samples of their Pomegranate juice to try out.  This post is a review and expresses my honest opinion- this stuff is good and get ready to spend your dough on POM.

I was thrilled and placed the adorable little bottles in the fridge to cool down. I am not much of a juice drinker, but I know of one guy who is- my husband.  Slowly but surely, my juice stash was disappearing and I had one suspect.

When I checked no more than 2 days later, ALL of them were gone.  Very interesting.  I was  interested in the juice stats (from the POM website) but my husband didn't really care.  He just said it was good.

POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice is a little bit sweet, a little bit tart and a whole lotta healthy. Bursting with superior levels of naturally occurring antioxidants it’s 100% authentic, 100% delicious and 100% pure, meaning there’s no added sugar, colorants or cheap filler juices. We have also provided over $34M in funding to support scientific research on POM products at top institutions around the globe so raise a glass to life. And the pursuit of healthiness.

All of POM Wonderful Juices:

• contain no added sugars, preservatives or colors
• are a good source of potassium
• are gluten-free
• are flash pasteurized to retain both flavor and nutrients
• are certified kosher

Lovely, right? When I asked my husband what he thought of it, he said it worked perfectly in his smoothies, and chugged straight from the fridge.  Before I knew it, this massive bottle started coming home with us almost weekly from Costco.  Below is my husband's smoothie recipe. 
**Please note that he is in a weight gain period for a tournament right now, so please don't come after me if you get all yoked and stuff.

Husband's POM Smoothie:

• 2 scoops Monster Milk
• 1 cup tropical frozen fruit
• 3-4 oz POM Juice
• 3 oz carrot juice
• 1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt
• Scoop of ground flax

Blend all ingredients

Enjoy!

In other news, this weekend wrapped up the end of wedding season as my cousin got married.  I love weddings and I'm also glad the season is over!  Gratuitous photography ahead!

Here is an outfit shot from this weekend.

We also got some pro pictures back from my other friend's wedding earlier this summer and I loved this one.  We seem to have a good time together :)

Question for you: Do you have any good smoothie recipes? 

Overnight Oats Leftovers

Hey Guys!  I hope you are all enjoyed your weekends and have had a great start to the week.  I'm hoping to bring some moderate amusement to you this week with some posts and a giveaway!  I have now joined the cool kids and will  be doing a giveaway shortly with CSN Stores (featuring the le creuset product line in one of their online storefronts).  Please check back here for more details and an opportunity to win soon!

If you have been reading this blog for a while, it is clear to state that I am no culinary genius.  I do like to make things ahead of time so that I can have something to feed my family of two while I'm running like a chicken with my head cut off throughout the week.  This last week I read on Oh She Glows about how making overnight oats ahead of time in a large batch is not only easy, but tastes better.  I went with it, and although it ain't pretty, it was awesome.
Brace yourselves for this picture. This item was clearly for me only as my husband would not even look at it without making a face. More for me.

Recipe:

• 1 heaping cup of oats
• 1.5 cups of milk of your choice
• 4 scoops of protein powder of choice (I used chocolate hemp protein)
• 2 Tbsp chia seeds
• 1 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa
• Optional: nut butter (I didn't use any), ground flax, cinnamon, sweetener, or anything else you put in your overnight oats.

I mixed everything up, hence the very appetizing tupperware and popped it in the fridge.  The next few days I had overnight oats ready for me!  This made about 5 servings and was very filling.
I made myself a breakfast sundae and really enjoyed it

Overnight oats, sliced banana, plain yogurt, and almond butter.

Question: Do you have any favorite time saving breakfast ideas for me? I would love to hear them!

Chunky Guac So Easy Even I Can Make It

It's summer time and nothing tastes as good as a cold drink and some appetizers to go along with it, preferably in the form of dip and chips.  For some reason, restaurants have gotten away with charging me $6 for guacamole and chips and this time I was not going to let them.  I present my guac- so easy even I could make it!

Here is what you need:

• 2 avocados
• 2 limes for juicing (I love extra lime flavor)
• 1/4 diced red onion
• 1/2 cup cilantro
• 1 small spicy pepper
• Salt, pepper, cilantro, and chili powder
• 1 large tomato or 3 small tomatoes

First, cut up your ingredients- make sure that the avocado is chunky when you cut it

A lesson to you all- even if you are proud of the spicy peppers your husband grew in your backyard, do NOT take a bite just to see if it is in fact spicy.  It will save you some expletives thrown in the kitchen.

Add your remaining ingredients after you have recovered.

Close the lid and shake, shake, shake!  This is the easiest way to combine the ingredient if you are lazy like me.

 This was so easy and cheap. Here is the price breakdown:
Avocados- $1.50 for 2
Limes- $.20 for 2
Cilantro- $.25 for the portion I used
Tomatoes and peppers- free if you find a farmer who will share
Spices- check your cupboards
The grand total for this is $1.95.  Take that, fancy, expensive restaurant.

Question for you: What is your favorite thing to make at home that restaurants charge your first child's college tuition for?

Indian Pizza and Yoga

Tonight after yoga all I had on my mind was the whole wheat pizza crust I bought at Trader Joe's this past weekend.  I was also eager to use my new secret ingredient- I'm pretty sure this is new and it's awesome!

This masala lentil dip is like taking Indian food home with you minus the experience of waiting for the food to come to your table and then devouring too much of it along with the fried bread that comes with it.  Or maybe it's just me.  Anyways, pizza it was!

Indian Pizza:
-Heat up some peas, eggplant, artichoke hearts, and spinach in a pan in some water with salt and pepper to soften it up and to make the pizza process quicker.
-Prepare and pre-bake the crust at 350 degrees in the oven for 10 minutes
-Top crust with 1 Tbsp masala lentil dip and then add fresh basil, peas, eggplant, artichoke hearts, and spinach. Sprinkle with chili powder.
-Bake for another 10 minutes

Devour

You have to eat it with a fork because if you are like me, you have overdone it with the toppings.  I overdo everything and had way too many toppings!

While I was making my selfish pizza, I also made husband some cheesy tomato, chicken, carmelized onion, artichoke and eggplant pizza.

The secret ingredient was pesto and clearly I need help on my pizza flipping/shaping skills!

Yoga Class Review- Sculptworks
I've been getting much more than a stretch at my yoga studio.  One of my favorite classes so far is Sculptworks, a class that combines strength training, dance-inspired stretching, pilates, yoga, and interval training.  We use a yoga wall that is used to hold resistance bands and the 55 minute class takes us through upper body and lower body strength including shoulders, bis, tris, back squats, lunges, and even mountain climbers.  There are ab exercises as well, but the instructors emphasize that if the abs are properly engaged, you will do abs all through the class.  I can agree to that since it hurts to sneeze the next day.
I have done this class twice so far and LOVED it!  The 55 minute class goes by so quickly that you don't even have time to look at the clock.  I like how the instructors check each students' form and correct it if they see something wrong.  I also loved the calming but upbeat music and can't wait to do the class again!

Hit the Jackpot

First...an update-I got the green flag to proceed with any physical activities that I wanted to do as long as my foot felt fine and what do I do? YOGA!  I'm hooked guys. I'll be doing some posts on my favorite classes at YogaWorks and am excited to share with you.

My weekend started with a bang when I made a pit stop at Whole Foods right after my yoga class on Saturday morning.  I knew I had to get my hands on the new trendy trend with ya'll.  Look what I got: Jackpot!

They do exhist!  So far I have tried a half of the carrot cake...and it does not taste like carrot cake to me, but still good!  I also got some coconut water to keep myself hydrated like when I'm sitting on my bum at the office and stuff.

We continued our adventure to the beach.  Again, this is a Northern California beach, so I wore sweats and walked along the ocean while my partner in crime surfed.

Today was spent running errands, doing homework, and hanging out with a few of my select posse.  I found this picture on my phone as evidence of two of my favorite boys. Love.

I'm feeling rested and ready to conquer my week!  And since I've kept my face off of here long enough and I got a new summer dress, here is one that hubby snapped of me. 

See you later this week!


Tell me the last new food product you got that you just HAD to try because of the blog peeps?