Recipe: Gyros

Well, I almost did a post three days in a row...I started writing this last night but then I got too sleepy, and since I haven't been getting a ton of sleep recently I figured I should go to bed early. Granted, I still only got (barely) 7 hours, but its better than the 5-6 I've been getting for the past week or so. Anyways! Now that I'm done ranting about nothing, today I have a new recipe, and I hope it brings some joy to dinner for someone out there other than me!

Does anyone else out there have that one Gyro place that you just love to go to, even though you know damn well that it's not the healthiest option? I most definitely do. I actually had never eaten a gyro until about a year ago, but I immediately loved it. A few months ago my love and I found a really good gyro place down the street from us. Tender meat, tasty tzatziki, and amazing hummus and spicy feta fries on the side.

Well eating at this place inspired me to make a healthier version of a gyro for us to eat. I was actually at the gym getting my stair master on and watching food network when I had the realization that I needed to figure out a way to make healthy gyros. I did some recipe searching because I had absolutely no idea what kind of flavors went into making a gyro. The seasoning tended to be pretty consistent, so I just went from there. It actually wasn't very hard to recreate this into a healthier meal. I used very thinly sliced chicken for the meat, fat free Greek yogurt for the tzatziki, and Joseph's pitas for the bread. This is my second time making it now, and I have to say that I'm very happy with it.

Here's a preview of what our dinner looked like:

Greek gyro dinner

Serves 2

Recipe adapted from: Lizzy217 @ All Recipes

• 2 whole wheat pitas (I used Joseph's)
• 6-8 oz boneless skinless chicken breast (I used 3 large tenders)
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp fat free, reduced sodium chicken broth
• 1 tsp oil of choice (I used the oil in our jar if marinated artichoke hearts)
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp dried marjoram 
• 1/8 tsp dried thyme
• 1/8 tsp dried basil
• 1/8 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced yellow onion
• 1/2 cup fresh spinach
• 2 TBSP Fat free feta cheese crumbles (or more if you'd like)

1. In order to slice the chicken super thinly (like gyro meat), I've found it's easiest to work with slightly defrosted frozen chicken. You want the chicken to be defrosted enough to cut easy, but still frozen enough that cutting very thin sliced is easy. For the amount of chicken we used, we defrosted it for about 2 minutes in the microwave on the defrost setting.
2. Once slightly defrosted cut into super thin slices length wise. It should look like this:
   
3. To a bowl add: sliced chicken, sliced onion, balsamic vinegar, chicken broth, and all spices. This is what your bowl should look like:
   
4. Allow to marinade for at least 30 minutes. (I let it marinade while I was at the gym, so about 1.5 hrs.)
5. After letting it marinade, add to a skillet on high heat. It should only take 5 minutes or so to cook since the chicken is sliced so thin. As soon as the chicken is no longer pink make sure to turn off the heat so as to not over cook. The chicken should come out super tender!
6. Warm up pita bread in microwave for 30 seconds.
7. To assemble: add 1/4 cup fresh spinach to each pita bread. Lay out your chicken on top of spinach. Add feta cheese crumbles and tzatziki sauce. For the tzatziki sauce I used Jenn's recipe from Peas and Crayons (I didn't change a thing...except I didn't have dill so I added dried basil instead...it was delicious!)

Tzatziki sauce

The assembled gyro

On the side I added my home made chili garlic hummus with carrots and cucumber, plus a Greek style salad. 

Also, here is the calculated nutrition info for this recipe as I have listed the ingredients I used :)

Enjoy loves <3


With love,


Tuffy

WIAW #4

Well hello there :) Seems odd doing a post 2 days in a row, not that I wouldn't love to more often, it's just sometimes hard to find the time. But I love WIAW so I must make time. There've been a few weeks that I take pictures of my food so I could do one of these babies, but by the end of the day I just couldn't find the time (but I have been pretty busy and studying like a mad woman lately). I'm still loving this theme, and even though I've been a little stressed lately due to homework and studying I have still made healthy choices. This is a pretty big thing for me, because I tend to seek comfort in food -_-. Also, 2 weeks ago tomorrow I made the goal to go 2 weeks with making healthy food choices with no "cheating" (blech, I hate that word =/). And I did it! I'm really so proud of myself :)
Before I start, I got my new polar FT4 today!!! OMG I'm so excited. Seriously, it's not even funny. I can't way to play with it and use it :D I feel like a kid in a candy shop hehe. 
Anyways, onto the food. 
This morning started by me making lunch for my love and I. For my love I made a huge chicken sandwich. Seriously, I had trouble fitting it in the baggie. In it was: homemade chili garlic hummus, spinach, 2 chicken tenders, peppers, avocado, and sriracha. Looked delicious! (was confirmed later by him)

And here's my stack of food I brought to work with me (including my snack):

Allll for me :)

Here's my lunch closer up:

Quinoa, roasted veggies, and vegetarian refried beans (topped off with Trader Joe's hot sauce!)

I absolutely love this. Cottage cheese with 1/2 scoop chocolate whey, 1 tbsp PB2, and half a banana. Oh. My. Gosh. 

My snack was the fruit (in the picture above), plus a quest bar:

PB&J Quest bar

This was my first time ever having one of these babies, and I was beyond excited. I had been hearing so much about these, so my expectations were pretty high. My plan was to eat this on the way home. Yeah, that didn't happen. I was initially slightly disappointed, because the bar was so hard that I practically had to gnaw on it to get a bite. So I set it down and resolved to warm it up in the microwave for a few seconds when I got home. I figured since I kept seeing people say they liked theirs warmed up it couldn't hurt anything. Once warmed up, this bar was actually quite good. Also, upon getting home and feeling the two other flavors I bought I resolved that it was just this PB&J flavor that was so hard to eat. The other bars I got feel softer, plus I feel like when I grabbed this bar in the store it looked like one of the less popular flavors. 
Tonight for dinner I made something for my love and his best friend. We were all pretty happy afterwards :)

Bacon-wrapped honey BBQ chicken, butternut squash, broccoli + green bean saute.

Yummmmy. And lastly, I'm currently working on eating this piece of beauty:

PB2 fro yo topped with Fiber 1 brownie and chocolate PB2

Mmmm. This whole concept is definitely my new favorite way to eat yogurt! And I know that the fiber 1 brownies aren't the very best thing to eat since they are probably fairly processed. But, we have a lot of these that need to be used up and I needed something to top my yogurt.

I hope you all enjoyed your food today <3

With love,

Tuffy

MIMM #2...on Tuesday

So I know I'm a day late on this, but I was up until 3 last night studying 0_0 so I didn't exactly have time for this post. But since my first genetics exam is now over, now I do! 
I am so happy to be done with my first round of exams for this semester...back to a more normal routine where I actually have time for some things I enjoy :)
Even though I was in studying-mode yesterday (and all weekend) I still got some marvelous things in.
My study break this weekend was going grocery shopping. I'm a total nerd for grocery shopping...I love it! I love doing it and I love having a fully stocked fridge afterwards!

Yay!

 I skipped work yesterday so I could get some extra studying in, and while home I got some food prep in while studying. Well, it didn't prove to be an effective way to study, but I'm still very happy I got a bunch of it done...it will make the rest of the week much easier.

Roasted veggies

Big bowl of homemade hummus...a girls best friend ;)

My first attempt at kale chips...I love it.

Chicken + tilapia...I need new tupperware -_-

Iced coffee for the week

I also got to enjoy some delicious meals with my love <3

Southwest egg cups + toast

My love made me dinner while I was studying...so sweet of him. Feta & turkey meatballs with spaghetti squash and garlic pita bread.

An amazing new snack I came up with: PB and "jelly" cottage cheese. "Jelly" = mashed blueberries

 Over the weekend I fell head over heals in love with a new dessert concept...homemade fro-yo! I was inspired by stacieeleep on instagram. So far I've made 3 different fro-yo concoctions and every one has been delicious!

My first, and so far favorite, attempt. Pumpkin Pie fro yo! Greek yogurt with vanilla protein  powder topped with one of my pumpkin pie blondies and almond butter. It tasted like pumpkin pie!

Tropical fro-yo: greek yogurt with mango, pineapple and coconut. Topped with fresh strawberries and Trader Joe's-O's

Greek yogurt with vanilla protein powder topped with a Kashi chocolate square and PB2

 I can't wait to try more combinations...there is just no turning back after you've made your own fro-yo :)

Lastly, on Friday my love surprised me when I came home from work and he started painting our room. When we moved in here our room was hideously painted green and purple...we called it the hulk room. Awful, just awful. Well, he went out and got paint and surprised me. He finished in Monday and it looks SO much better!! I will post pictures later, but this was definitely a marvelous surprise this weekend.


Well, that's it for now. I suppose I should get some sleep, seeing as I only got four hours last night ^_^


With love,


Tuffy

WIAW #3

Hello there! Whew, it's been a busy few weeks, between work and school...hence why I've failed at posting lately. I'm working on it though! It's still pretty busy, so this will be a quick one. Real quickly though, I want to just say that I really like the idea behind this WIAW banner. Especially because I'm continually striving to make good choices while stressing out from school and studying and what not. So here it goes!
Lunch:

Fruit, yogurt, and hot sauce!

 Bottom is just mixed fruit. For the first time this week I made a big bowl of fruit so that we can just take some as we want it. I really like this idea because fruit is always there when we want it with no work involved. On top is my plain greek yogurt. Within this past week I've decided to make the transition back to plain yogurt. Until I compared the stats on plain yogurt to fruit filled yogurt last week I never realized how much sugar is in the fruity ones! It's nuts! I'd rather just get plain and then have all sorts of options on how to flavor it myself. So today I added 1 tablespoon chocolate PB2 and 1 TBSP ground flax (+ 1/2 packet of Pure Via for a little sweetness). Yum! Plus my hot sauce for the concoction below :)

Butternut squash, green beans, and a veggie burger

The green beans and squash were left overs from last night. Just grilled up a veggie burger this morning while getting ready and topped it with some fat free cheese. Topped it with hot sauce at work...perfect :)
Snacks while studying:

Vanilla maple almonds <3

 I got these in my monthly package from bestowed. If you don't know about bestowed, check them out. They are an awesome company and I was really happy with my box this month. Hopefully I'll be doing reviews of everything later this month once I've used it all. Anyways, these almonds were awesome. There was only 4g of sugar, which seems really good for almonds that are coated with stuff. They were really tasty though.

Lentil chips

I also got these cool chips from bestowed. These were equally as awesome. They were kind of airy and had a delicious garlic Parmesan flavor. I'd love to be able to buy larger quantities of these.

Also, not pictured was about 30 grapes...but I think everyone knows what those look like ;)

Dinner:

Cucumber feta turkey burger, veggies, salad

I made these turkey burgers on a whim from a suggestion from my love. Shredded some cucumber, added 1 egg white, some feta crumbles, and seasonings. They were pretty good but I definitely plan on improving this recipe. On the side was just a veggie saute (cauliflower, sugar snap peas, bell peppers, onion, garlic, artichoke hearts, feta, and seasonings), delicious as usual. And just a typical salad.

Well, that's my quick WIAW for today. I hope you all had a great Wednesday <3

With love,

Tuffy

Recreated Vietnamese Pancake

Yesterday I asked my love what he wanted for lunch and he said he wanted a Vietnamese pancake from our favorite Vietnamese place, Lemon Grass Grill. Instead, I suggested that I make it at home for us since we pretty much had all the ingredients. A Vietnamese pancake (aka Bahn Xeo) is basically a fried omelet/crepe (it's more like an omelet but the egg mixture has rice flour in it to thicken it up) with shrimp, pork, bean sprouts, onion, and it's dipped in fish sauce. Here's a picture of a typical Bahn Xeo:

Bahn Xeo

For myself I decided to just do it omelet style, so I used 1 whole egg + 2 egg whites. For my love I used 2 whole eggs plus some flour and water to thin it out. The egg pancake part is the easiest, it's the filling and the fish sauce that really makes this dish. Also, we didn't have pork so I just used chicken that we already had cooked.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup shrimp, chopped (I used fully cooked and frozen, but any will work)
• 1/2 cup boneless skinless chicken breast, chopped (again, my chicken was already cooked from my food prep that week, but you can use raw as well, just cook a bit longer to cook through)
• 3/4 cup bean sprouts
• ~1/4 white onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• Eggs, depending on how you want to make your egg pancake

Directions:

1. Add garlic and onion to the pan, saute for 2-3 minutes.
2. Add bean sprouts, chicken, and shrimp to pan and saute.
3. Liberally sprinkle garlic and onion powder. Add salt and pepper to your liking.
4. Stir occasionally. Continue to cook until the onions have wilted and all the ingredients have had time to mingle with each other! (~5 minutes).
5. Remove mixture from stove, set aside.
6. Whether you want to use just eggs or the egg +flour mixture, this step is the same. Add egg mixture to a medium-sized pan (make sure to use cooking spray so your eggs don't stick!)
7. Cook until the top of the egg pancake is almost cooked through, but still a little runny, ~2 minutes.
8. Flip the entire pancake over and cook for another 1-2 minutes. 
9. Add half of the mixture prepared earlier to each egg pancake (I made our simultaneously in 2 separate pans). The mixture should only cover half of the egg pancake. Flip the empty half of the egg pancake over the mixture half.
10. Plate the pancake!

Serves 4

Adapted from here

Ingredients:

• 1 cup water
• 4 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 packet Truvia (or other sweetener/sugar)
• 5 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• Chili garlic sauce, amount depends on how spicy you want it

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. (FYI, the original recipe calls for the water to be boiled, I think so that the sugar will dissolve, but we didn't do it)

And here's the finished product:

Recreated Bahn Xeo

That's it! It was pretty easy to cook this, and I thought it was just as delicious as in the restaurant. I like that it wasn't greasy and fried like the one at the restaurant. We both enjoyed this healthier creation :)

With love,

Tuffy

Some good news and rambles

I made a new recreation today, and will be posting the recipe shortly! But first I need to ramble a bit :)

First off, I was very disappointed I didn't get to post WIAW this week. I had taken all my pictures and was ready to go post it...and our internet wasn't working -_- WTF cox cable >=| And then I was going to do it on Thursday instead. On Thursday it really wasn't working. But as of this morning, it just might be permanently fixed. For the past 3-4 months our internet has been on the shitty side. It would cut out randomly and then come back. Cox sent out technicians. The first one had no idea what was wrong so they sent out a more experienced one (I guess) who kind of figured out what was going wrong, but could not figure why or how to fix it. He did manage to figure out that if you went and wriggled this one wire outside, it would at least temporarily fix it. So that is what my love has been doing at least once a day. Until last week when it stopped fixing it. So this time Cox sent out a new contracted technician who isn't actually employed by Cox. Apparently he knew what he was doing and it looks like this good man has figured it out. So far today our internet hasn't cut out at all. We are keeping our fingers crossed that it continues this way.

Anyways, enough with that ramble. And on to this one, which includes very good news for me! So it's 2 weeks into the 6 week recovery period for which my Dr told me no weight lifting, and I kind of mentioned to my mom (who is a nurse) how I was sad I couldn't lift weights. She asked me why and I reminded her of what my Dr said. She responded with "What?! No way. You're definitely healed by now. There's no reason you can't lift weights". I sat there with my jaw dropped, staring at her. Really?!? Are you sure???! She told me that it probably took me a week to heal and there's no reason I shouldn't be able to go back to my regular gym stuff. At that point I had the hugest smile on my face. And as much as I love my mom and value her opinion, I couldn't just take her word on it. So I googled it. According to an article I found written by a Doc, she recommended taking it easy (nothing strenuous) for the first week, but after that you can start slowly working in your normal activities. At this point I was just beyond ecstatic and a little annoyed that my Dr was so off in what he told me. It makes sense that he was wrong though, because when I asked him how long I had to wait before doing weights and what not, he looked like he was searching for an answer and just kind of landed on 6 weeks. But I was mostly just happy! I could start actually working out again! I'm sorry but cardio/yoga/pilates just doesn't feel the same as going into the weight room. I definitely enjoy yoga and pilates, but I also definitely crave something more intense. So today my love and I went for a nice chest/tri session. It was wonderful :)

Also, I ran! For 2 miles! I used to run almost every day, 3 miles minimum. And then my knees started bothering me. At first braces helped. And then they didn't. So, much to my dismay, I stopped running. Which is a shame because I really do enjoy it. Every time I've tried it since I stopped sometime last year, my knees start hurting by the time I hit the 1 mile mark. Today I got to 2 miles and had to stop due to knee pain. I really enjoyed those 2 miles and was really sad I had to stop, but I'm just glad I got those 2 miles in. It was a reminder of how much I miss it though. I'm thinking about trying a different type of knee brace. I think the kind I have isn't really meant for my knee pain and I'd really like it if I could continue to run :)

On another note, I started school this week. So far so good, but the first week is always the easiest so that doesn't really mean anything. Ha! This semester I'm taking Molecular Genetics and Nutrition. Genetics is a required course and I'm really excited for it. I find DNA and genetics fascinating, but admittedly I don't know much about it. I'm sure it will be a challenging class, but I'm really excited to learn and I think it will be really interesting (plus it will definitely be useful for my job). Nutrition is not at all a required course, but I needed another class to maintain my part-time status and I've always been interested in nutrition. It should be pretty cool to learn about nutrition from a more scientific stand point. So I'm expecting to be a busy little Tuffy this semester, but I will just have to manage my time properly ;)