Being prepared

This weekend I've been house/dog sitting for the doctor that owns the clinic I work at. My mom's been his head nurse for the past 13ish years, so I've known him since I was like 12, but I don't think I've ever actually seen where he lived. Wow. Let me just say this place is amazing!! I think the things I love the most are the kitchen:

I'd love to have a kitchen like this one day!

and the view:

I'm a sucker for a pretty view :)

Sometimes it feels like I could reach up and touch the clouds

So pretty.

I would love to be able to cook in this kitchen everyday. Everything's so nice and there's so much space. It's awesome! And if I had a view like this I'd be sitting/eating outside all the time. It's just a really different perspective to see Vegas from up here.

Anyways, I knew I'd be here for the weekend and I didn't really know what they'd have for me to eat (although I did get a little glimpse when I got the tour/instructions a few days before). So I came prepared. The night before I came over I made a batch of this cous cous, without any protein so I could add in whatever, from Janetha (which was super yummy and versatile...will definitely be experimenting more with it). I brought 2 servings worth of that with me and I brought dried lentils, figuring I could just make those to go with the cous cous if all else failed.

Here's some stuff I brought

That's protein powder on top of the PB2. Since I just took this picture, there is some stuff not pictured. Like my vegan chocolate chip cookies from Red Velvet. Or my BCAA's for after my workout yesterday. The cous cous. And I actually had 2 packs of dried seaweed.

The point is that I didn't go cray and bring everything I possibly could with me. But I did bring some good staple ingredients that I might want to use while here. Plus some snacks. And delicious dessert. And I ended up doing really well considering I'm not in my own kitchen.

Here's some meal creations I came up with:

This was my first night here and is the cous cous with lentils and an egg. I forgot my Trader Joe's hot sauce and they didn't have sriracha, so I had to use tobasco to give it a little flavor/spice. It was really tasty and filling. For dessert...my remaining half of my vegetarian icing-filled carrot cake cookie from Red Velvet with Coconut Vanilla white tea I found (omg so good!)

This was my breakfast/lunch after my workout yesterday...I had to get a bit more creative with this.
On top is 1 egg + 1 egg white scrambled with onion, cucumber, and some roasted turkey breast they had (topped with tobasco, of course). I saw that there was organic reduced fat unsweetened coconut in the fridge and I knew I had to use it in some way while I was here. So I decided to make oatmeal with it and the vanilla coconut tea...this turned out so freaking good, I will most definitely be experimenting with this sort of concoction again. I brewed the tea really strong (I probably let it brew for like 7-10 minutes while I did other stuff). I then used the tea to cook the oats, but added in 1 packer of Pure Via and some vanilla extract. After cooking I added 1 tbsp of this vanilla latte creamer and 1 heaping tsp of the coconut. Then I just added some water until it was a creamier consistency. Topped with some ancient grains granola. This was fabulous, I was so happy with this.

I don't have a picture of my dinner last night, but it was just the rest of the cous cous with a slice of chicken breast from a rotisserie chicken and a salad with raspberry balsamic dressing (really good!). For dessert I made protein fluff using PB2 and cookies and cream protein powder, which by the way is really not the same using water instead of milk...but alas I had no choice. I used this as frosting for my Red Velvet cookies...wow that was super tasty.

The point of this whole post is that being prepared is so important to being able to make healthier choices. Obviously it was really helpful for me this weekend to have some of my favorite things with me and some good staples. Even on a day to day basis it is important. At work we get drug reps bringing in lunch probably 2-3 times a month (on top of our work providing us with bagels/doughnuts/pizza every so often) and it is almost always something unhealthy, but always something tempting (although once a drug rep brought Rachel's Kitchen, which is this "natural foods kitchen", I was so freaking happy lol!). When I have a yummy lunch that I made myself waiting for me I am not even tempted to go get any of the food that was brought to us. Some people are able to prep their food for the whole week...I haven't quite gotten to that level yet...but I do always have a yummy lunch with me (on those rare occasions that I don't I will plan on going to Jimmy John's for one of their delicious sandwiches as a lettuce wrap).

Well I suppose that's it for now...now to go play with this adorable doggies :)

Love,

Tuffy

A recent purchase

Up until about 3 weeks ago my boyfriend and I were both pretty big soda drinkers. Well...not "big" really, we only had ~1/day...but nonetheless we very rarely skipped our "soda-a-day" habit. I mean it's not like we were drinking regular sodas, we only drank diet soda...so I always had the mentality of "yes, I know soda isn't good for you. but at least it's diet. that means it's not as bad". It's not that I was wrong...diet soda is a better choice than regular soda. But soda is still soda. It still has chemicals, food coloring, etc.

Before my boyfriend and I started dating he never drank soda...diet or regular. Actually, about 3-4 years ago when I lived in NYC I stopped drinking soda and using artificial sweeteners all together. If I did have soda, I'd consider it a treat and I'd only have regular. For the most part I drank tea, water, and coffee. And then I moved back home to Las Vegas, where my mom is a big diet soda drinker. Slowly but surely I started drinking diet soda again, and before I knew it I was drinking it daily again. And when me and my boyfriend started dating, diet soda slowly became a daily drink for him as well.

Well about 4 weeks ago my boyfriend decided to stop drinking soda. For no real reason, other than there's just a lot of "artificial" things about soda. I thought, "well, good for you. but I am just not interested in giving up my soda every day". That lasted for about a week and then I realized that he really does have a good point, so I decided to start cutting down my sodas. About another week went by and I just wasn't really drinking soda anymore...and it really wasn't hard or bad not having soda. This is about the time that we decided to get this:

We had been eyeing this tea pot at a local Japanese store for a while now...I think since we moved in together last November. But we kept just putting it off, figuring we really didn't drink that much tea so it wasn't really worth the $40 or so. But since we started on this new "no soda" kick, I figured it was about time to get it. Plus, I figured it would motivate us to continue along this path. And it has. Neither of us really drinks soda any more. I mean, rarely we do. Maybe if we are at a restaurant. Or if we need a good mixer ;) (like diet cream soda and whipped cream Smirnoff...o m g...so delicious).

Since we stopped drinking soda, I drink more water (~1.5-2 liters/day) and much more tea. Sometimes I'm able to squeeze a cup of tea in at work, but regardless of that I always come home and make a pot of tea with dinner. The way I see tea, is it's a very natural way to drink flavored water...because that's basically what it is. Plus, tea has a lot of possible health benefits. Most of the health claims that scientists and researchers make are very limited and not fully proven. However, the possibilities are there. and it seems that many health professionals/researchers are in agreement that regularly drinking tea, in conjunction with other healthy habits, can help improve your overall health. I really like this article from Health that explains the possible benefits of tea (and also discusses the lack of research).

So overall, do I really feel any difference in my health since I started drinking more tea and stopped drinking diet soda? Eh...not really to be honest. But, I really do like the idea of making my diet a little bit "cleaner". I haven't stopped with the zero-calorie sweeteners though. I still add stevia to my coffee every morning. I don't know how concerned I am about omitting zero-calorie sweeteners at the moment either. At least I've moved on to an all-natural sweetener!

Love,
Tuffy