WIAW #2

Yay for another WIAW! :) I hope all you other WIAWers had good Wednesdays as well.

Here's my eats from yesterday:

My lunch all packed up and ready to go

Lunch: Salad + yogurt + mixture of blueberries and cherries.

Up close & personal

My salad consisted of: spinach, mixed greens, various veggies (cucumber, onion, tomato, mushroom), lentils (which were cooked with garlic and onion), quinoa, feta, and fat free italian dressing. Plus my Trader Joe's 0% Greek yogurt + 1 tbsp flax and my fruit to round it out :)

Snacks!

I love this chocolate almond coconut Mojo bar...mmmm. Plus, still loving my ranch with hot sauce + veggies <3

Healthy gyro

The other day I had a craving for gyros, and I thought to myself: you know what, I bet I can make gyros healthier. Oh my gosh. I was so happy with they way this turned out. I looked up a recipe to season chicken and to make a healthy Tzatziki sauce. I think I need to do a bit of tweaking before I post my recreated healthy gyros, but considering this was my first go at them I was really happy. My boyfriend even said that this was like a comparable healthy version of his favorite Halal place in NYC (sweet!) and asked that this join our regular rotation of meals. And of course we had to top it with some Sriracha for a little zing ;) I also made a Greek inspired salad on the side:

This was just mixed greens, lots of cucumber, tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke, onion, and feta.

And for dessert I threw together this delicious-ness...

Cinnamon Apple oat bowl

Again, I was really happy with the way this came out. I just kind of threw together stuff that sounded good and ended up with this. My boyfriend even asked for one tonight! I'll eventually post a recipe for this too, once I get it down pat. But it's basically just oats, chocolate pb2, apple, cinnamon, apple saucce, and brown rice crispy cereal.

And that's it for my 2nd WIAW...I was very happy with my new creations yesterday :)

With love,

Tuffy

Marvelous Monday #1

Unfortunately my internet was out last night so I wasn't able to make this post, and I was really looking forward to making my first Marvelous Monday post! So rather than postpone it another week I'm posting it on Tuesday :)

My busy Monday was spent reminiscing my lovely weekend. My weekend was kicked off Saturday morning by going to coffee with my love and our pups. Treating ourselves to coffee is one of our favorite things to do on the weekend, and we recently found a new place that is quickly becoming our new favorite place. It was opened up by a young family who was tired of the only coffee place in their neighborhood being Starbucks (sounds like our type of people!). So they opened up their own place. They have good coffee, they're super friendly, and it's just a very good and inviting atmosphere.

My love and our pups. Duddy up top, Chloe on bottom.

Me and our pups. I love the look on their faces.

After coffee I headed to the gym for some cardio and my first 1.5 hour yoga class. I loved it. It was challenging and relaxing and just wonderful. Will def be going back for it. After the gym I made the most delicious protein shake...black forest cake. Omg it was seriously so delicious. I got the idea from Joneacie on InstaGram to use tea as a smoothie base. So I used cherry pomegranate tea by Good Earth and some unsweetened vanilla almond milk. I added a scoop of chocolate whey protein, frozen cherries, ice, spinach, and some oats. And this was the finished product:

Black Forest Cake Protein Shake

Once I downed my shake, it was time to go to one of my favorite places for our friends birthday dinner...Fire Fly.

My love and I, on our way

Us with the birthday boy and his girl <3

Berry infused vodka martini (mine) + Watermelon Mojito (his)

And the very best part of all (other than spending the night with our friends, of course):

The food!

From top left: eggplant cannelloni (eggplant stuffed with goat cheese), stuffed dates (my favorite!), Tierra y Mar skewers (chicken, shrimp, chorizo), and lastly tuna tar tare (oh my this is seriously amazing...reminds me of Poke bowls from Venice Beach...mmm!). 

And that's it...Sunday was just a chill day for us. Did some grocery shopping and hung out with our families. I hope everyone else had something marvelous to think about on Monday as well :)

With love,

Tuffy

How upsetting

At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to post this on here...I usually tend to not share personal things very openly. It's not that I don't want people to know about things...I don't know I'm just not necessarily one to go out of my way to share it. But since this will be a pretty big challenge for me, I decided that I wanted to put it up here. 

This week I had to accept a pretty big (mandatory) temporary change to my workouts. I'm just glad it's only temporary. So I went for a short doctor's appointment on Monday before I had a minor out-patient surgery on Wednesday. At my appointment my doctor mentions to me, "oh yeah, by the way you can't do any strenuous or high impact activities or workouts for a while". My first question was "W-w-w-what?! Well what exactly can't I do? And for how long can't I do it?!". So he tells me that you know, I can't do stuff like lifting weights...or just anything that would be too strenuous on the body and proceeds to ask exactly what I do at the gym. When I tell him I usually lift weights and do the spin bike he says "oh yeah, I used to spin. You definitely can't do that". Well great. The only thing my workout is is high-impact and strenuous. And I can't do those things. What the hell am I supposed to do then?! He then tells me that I can do the elliptical and things like that and as long as it isn't strenuous he doesn't care. And when I ask how long? He says "oh, I don't know. At least 6 weeks". Well isn't that just wonderful -_-

Initially I was pretty upset. For the past month or so I've really started to get back into the gym and lifting weights consistently. I was just getting my routine down and really excited about it. And boom. For a month and a half I can't do any of it. The thing is, I know that this is the best thing for my health. There is no question I had to go through with the surgery and I know that I have to give my body time to recover from it. It's just annoying and aggravating (plus, there was one other restriction that was bad enough as it was...but then to add this whole wok-out thing just made it more annoying). 

At least I don't have to give up the gym all together. So, after being upset for a few days I decided that I would take this as an opportunity to do other things. I figured I'd stick to the elliptical, walking, or the stair master (this part I was never too upset about...it's the no lifting weights part that killed me). But I don't want to just do cardio for the next 6 weeks, so I figured I'd supplement it with a lot of pilates, yoga, and any other classes along those lines that aren't too strenuous. Luckily I actually do enjoy yoga and pilates...I would usually try to do yoga or pilates once a week before, but if I ever had to chose between yoga/pilates and weights I would definitely chose weights. So it'll be interesting to take on fitness from a very different perspective. 

I'm definitely excited to see any changes that might occur with 6 weeks of yoga and pilates...with my body, mind...anything at all.  They say that your diet is more important than the type strength training you do (or something like that), so I'm excited to test that theory out! With 2 yoga classes and 1 pilates class behind me I'm definitely enjoying it so far...I just hope I don't get bored of it.

With love,

Tuffy

 

WIAW #1

I always see this on people's blogs, and I've always thought it sounded fun (after all I do love taking pictures of my food...just look at my Instagram and you will understand ^_^). 

So here goes my first WIAW :)

PB&J Protein Pancakes

This was my breakfast/lunch. PB&J protein pancakes :) I used this recipe from the Fitnessista for protein pancakes (so yummy!). Then I made my own jam by just mashing up raspberries with a fork and topped the pancakes with this. I then took about 2 TBSP pb2 and added extra water, until I had the consistency I wanted. I drizzled pb2 and some sugar free syrup on top. This is my new favorite breakfast...plus some turkey bacon from Trader Joe's on the side...perfect!

Cherry Pomegranate Tea Latte

We got some new tea (cherry pomegranate by...Good Earth...I think), and we had some in the fridge left over from last night. I added a packet of Pure Via, 1 tbsp soy creamer, and ~1/4 cup of vanilla almond milk.

This was kind of a random snack for me. It just hit me that I should add some of my Trader Joe's hot sauce (which, btw, is SO much tastier than tobasco) to ranch for a kicked up ranch to dip my veggies in. I was so happy with this...will def be doing this again.

Salad + White Lasagna

This is one of my favorite meals...the White Lasagna (by Hungry Girl) is a bit of work, but 100% worth it. It's so cheesy and flavorful. I pair it with a salad and it's plenty of food.

I nibbled on a few squares of this after dinner. Mmm, I didn't realize how much I missed dark chocolate until I had some of this.

Apple cinnamon cereal

And this was the last of it for me tonight. ~1/2 cup crispy rice cereal + 1/4 cup oats + 1/2 apple, chopped + cinnamon + walnuts + vanilla almond milk. This was pretty tasty too :)

Well that's all for me tonight...now it's off to bed!

Love,

Tuffy

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

Recipe: Stuffed Greek Burgers

This is an original recipe for me, although I did have some inspiration. I made it on a whim a few weeks ago when I was just trying to figure out a way to use up the left over ground turkey and hummus we had in our fridge. My inspiration came from livefiteatclean on Instagram. She had posted multiple things that were topped with both hummus and Sriracha. I know that it initially sounds like a kind of bizarre combination, but let me tell you, it is amazing! It just gives your hummus a little kick...mmmm.

Anyways, so I knew I wanted to use the turkey and top it some how with hummus and sriracha. In trying to stick with the Mediterranean theme of the hummus, I decided to stuff the burgers with marinated artichoke hearts and feta. The combination of all of this turned out to be incredibly tasty, and I will most definitely be making these again. Not only did I surprise myself with these burgers, but the green beans I whipped up to go with the burgers ended up surprisingly tasty as well. I am notorious for just throwing stuff in a pan for a quick veggie saute, but the things I used for this saute ended up working incredibly well together. My boyfriend has asked me to make these veggies again on multiple occasions.

A finished picture of the turkey burger, green beans, and whole wheat cous cous

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb ground turkey (I go with extra lean)
• Quartered, marinated artichoke hearts, about 4 quarters
• 3-4 TBSP crumbled feta cheese (my choice: fat free crumbles from Trader Joe's)
• Salt, pepper, garlic powder
• Hummus (I make my own artichoke hummus, but store bought is fine)
• Sriracha

Directions

1. Separate the ground turkey into two roughly equal lumps of turkey.
2. With each lump of turkey, split in half and flatten out into patty shapes. You'll want to make the patties fairly thin, but not too thin that the stuffing won't stay in the burger while cooking.
3. Chop up the quartered artichoke hearts a bit, just into bite size pieces or so.
4. Add the artichoke hearts to one of each of the burger halves.
5. Sprinkle feta cheese on top. 

   

   It should look like this after step 5.

6. Place the empty patty halves over the halves with the filling.
7. In order to secure the halves together to make one stuffed burger you're going to have to squeeze together the edges of the halves. There isn't really one specific technique here. You will just have to continue to squeeze the edges together and then fold the thinned out edges over a bit and pat down. Basically you just want to create one burger instead of 2 patties sitting on top of each other, so you are trying to meld the edges of the two patties together. (sorry this is a bit of a ramble, I've never actually had to explain this technique...it's much easier to learn from watching!)
8. Once you've formed your burger liberally season the side facing up with garlic powder, salt, and pepper. When seasoning, be very liberal. It will seem like it's too much, but trust me it isn't. Some of the flavor gets lost during the cooking process, which is why you should be liberal.
9. On your heated pan/grill (I cooked on our grill) place the seasoned side down. Repeat the seasoning process on the side that is now facing up.
10. Cook for 4-5 minutes per side. It depends on what kind of heat your using, but that's a good general time. You just want to cook until they aren't pink in the middle (sometimes I have to cut into one of them to be sure).
11. After cooking, add some hummus (~2 TBSP) to each burger and top with sriracha (as much as you can handle!)

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• Fresh green beans (~1/2 lb)
• 1/4 - 1/2 yellow onion, sliced (depends on your taste)
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped (again, depends on taste)
• 1/4 bell pepper, sliced (any color)
• 1/2 mini cucumber, thinly sliced
• ~3 TBSP Fat free feta crumbles
• Marinaded artichoke hearts (add to taste) + some marinade
• Garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper

Directions:

1. Add onions, garlic, and bell pepper to pan and saute a few minutes until they become a little wilted.
2. In the mean time, rinse the green beans and trim the ends.
3. Add the green beans to the pan, cover, and let cook for about 5 minutes.
4. Take cover off, add cucumber and as much artichoke hearts as you'd like.
5. Add about 2 teaspoons of the artichoke marinade.
6. Season liberally with spices.
7. Add feta crumbles and stir. Let cook for another 3-4 minutes. All of the flavors will come together and the cheese will melt a bit.

   

   Green bean saute

   Serve and enjoy!!!
   
   
   Love,
   Tuffy

I <3 nail polish!

These are my most recent nails. I did this fairly quickly before going out last Friday. I am in love with teals and blues at the moment, so I tend to lean towards that color family a lot when I painty nails. I especially love this teal/turquoise (not sure what to call it) with the green. My sister told me the green looks gross, but I really like it...especially when it's paired with this teal/turquoise. Both of these colors are from Forever 21 and were both super cheap (<$5). The polish is lasting fairly well...5 days later they are chipping a bit but nothing awful (and my nails seem to be prone to having polish chip off).

Anyways, I just used a tiny paintbrush to draw the hearts and do the dots. It was simple, cute, and easy!

Love,
Tuffy

Quick and easy dinner

We've been making pizza lately as a super quick and easy (&healthy!) dinner. We get this awesome thin, whole wheat pizza crust from Walmart that ends up being about 270 calories for half of the crust (awesome!). So we each take a half and top it with whatever our hearts desire. It's awesome because we each get to top it our own ways. My half is always overflowing with veggies, whereas my boyfriend usually takes more of a minimal approach.

Some things we like to add:
•Trader Joe's chicken sausage (1 split between both of us)
•Marinated artichoke hearts
•Spinach + basil
•Onions/garlic
•Laughing cow (for me, broken up) or fat free ricotta (for both, if we have it)
•Sliced fresh mozzarella (for him) and low fat mozzarella (for me)
•tomatoes/tomato sauce (for me)

The list could go on and on, there are just so many possibilities. Pair this with a salad and it's the perfect meal!