Veggie Love

If you didn't already know, I love food. The past several weeks have involved coming up with ways to still love food even if it doesn't include gluten! It gets better each day, but it definitely has taken some work.

I found it particularly difficult to come up with office-friendly snacks. Of course, raw veggies are always a great option, but I like being a bit more creative. Also, I'll get to the veggies in a second! 

Enter: homemade popcorn. With some nutritional yeast for bonus taste/nutrition!

Trailmix was my favorite snack last week. I will definitely be going to TJs for lots more of this:

About those veggies! Apparently my body has no problem with those, so my meals have been full of a variety of vegetables. One can never have too many veggies, right?

This was a green lettuce salad along with an egg, red peppers, mushrooms, broccoli, and cauliflower cooked with coconut oil and seasoned with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika:

My new favorite weekend breakfast food: green smoothies. The below included almond milk, mango, frozen banana, frozen spinach, and mint leaves. Delish!

And lastly, I found a new way to enjoy noodles. Tofu noodles! They take two minutes to cook, and I enjoyed them with marinara sauce with added vegetables (of course). 

This picture is the worst. It was late and post-kickboxing. But it was a great post-kickboxing meal.

No fitness videos for you today, but there will likely be one on the next post! 

The GF TFG

Don't mind the cryptic acronyms...I will explain shortly!

Hi friends! It has been a while, and a lot has happened since we last met, which is actually the reason I am providing you with this update today. So, let's get to it!

As I'm sure most of you know - I am not much of a fan of "fad diets," one of which happens to be the gluten-free diet. Obviously, for those people who are diagnosed with Celiac disease, that is a different story altogether. What I mean is going gluten-free for the sake of weight loss, etc.

And then, the craziest thing happened. Due to stomach issues and blood tests and doctor advice (which I could not bear to believe!), I am now on a gluten-free diet.

What?!?! No. It can't be.

At first, it was a tough adjustment, but when I began doing more research, I realized that I just had to bring out my inner creative cook! And I will admit, it has been fun coming up with new GF recipes.

My favorite weekend breakfast usually involves pancakes. This weekend, I experimented with cornmeal and came up with this recipe which is a little reminiscent of cornbread.

Cornmeal Pancakes
(Makes four medium-sized pancakes)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 1/2 cup almond milk (or regular milk)
• 1 tbsp ground flaxseed
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2-3 tsp coconut oil for cooking

Directions:
In a bowl, combine all ingredients except for coconut oil. Add the oil to a non-stick pan, and place on the stove over medium heat. Spoon batter onto pan and cook evenly on both sides until slightly browned.

Serve with honey, maple syrup, or nut butter.

And to conclude, I have a new Zumba choreography video to share with you - one of my originals. Hope you enjoy!

TFG Speaks

Hi friends!

TFG is coming back to life (again). Mostly because I had to make a little recipe video and I figured...I might as well share it with all of you.

First and foremost, can I just announce my love of sweet potatoes? I think I've been eating some form of sweet potatoes every single day for the past couple of months. Quite excessive, I know. But if you know me, I do love my winter root vegetables. Usually it is winter squash. This year, it is sweet potatoes.

The best part about sweet potatoes is that they are extremely versatile. They can be baked (or twice baked!), fried, microwaved, mashed...and combined with pretty much any ingredient ever. The possibilities are endless.

Without further ado, here is my recipe for sweet potato fries. I've been making these for the past few weeks and I never fail to eat the entire batch all at once. The written recipe is below the video. Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Fries

Ingredients:

• 1 large sweet potato 
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder 
• Salt/pepper to taste 

Directions: 

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Slice sweet potato into thin wedges, and mix in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Place the wedges on a lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes. Flip the slices over and bake for 15 more minutes or until the slices are crispy on the outside. 

Serve with condiment of choice. My favorite way to eat these is to arrange them on a place and top with some shredded cheese and jalapeno slices!

Killer tofu

Remember the time two weeks ago I promised you a super exciting recipe? Well here it is...a recipe I came up with three weeks ago. I promise it was delicious. And I promise only half of it involved the steamer aka my favorite new cooking apparatus.

Chili Lime Tofu

• 1 block firm tofu
• 3 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
• Juice of one large lime
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tablespoon chili paste (or more depending on desired spice level
• A small handful of cilantro
• 3-4 teaspoons coconut oil

Cut the block of tofu into desired shape (I cut mine into triangles). Set aside.

In a bowl, combine the remaining ingredients minus the coconut oil.

Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat, and drizzle the coconut oil over the pan. Place as many tofu triangles over the pan as can fit. Allow the tofu to cook for a minute until slightly browned, and add the chili lime sauce.

Flip the tofu and keep on the pan until both sides are fully browned.

I served this along with some steamed eggplant and collards (seasoned with soy sauce and hoisin sauce) and quinoa.

I have to tell you about the crazy workout I decided to do today during my lunch break. If you feel like getting a short burst of cardio in, I would definitely recommend this. But I'm warning you...it is painful. In a good way of course.

And it made it so much better that I was in an almost empty gym. I was so close to quitting, but pushed through and boy did I feel sweaty after that. Too bad I had to go back to work after that...

Jelly arms

Monday Tuesday, we meet again.

Thankfully I got a decent amount of rest this weekend to make up for the severe lack of sleep that I endured last week. Not only that, but I had a weekend full of food, fun, and productivity, too!

Let's rewind back to last week's workouts. It wasn't as organized as the previous week had been, but even the spontaneity did not hinder me in completing my one exercise per day goal.

Sunday - rest day
Monday - HIIT
Tuesday - weights
Wednesday - 1 mile run/crazy tabata workout
Thursday - Zumba
Friday - weights "ladder" routine (see below)
Saturday - yoga

So the Friday evening weights routine that my friend Deepa and I did was pretty intense...especially for a Friday evening. But I would recommend it - it is short and sweet and will leave your arms feeling like jelly. And your body craving Thai food (or was that just us?).

There are 5 exercises:

1. Bent over row
2. Dead lift
3. Shoulder press
4. Squat
5. Bicep curl 

Do 7 reps of each exercise, and after the last one, take a 30 second break. Then do 6 reps of each, 5, 4, 3, and then go back up to 4, 5, 6, and lastly 7. During the 30 second rest, we sometimes did high knees to make it even more interesting :). Make sure to get some heavy weights for these exercises to make it count!

Let's move on and talk about how I am still loving my steamer. I've been mostly using it to cook vegetables but am thinking I should branch out into eggs and grains soon.

The best part about it is that you can just chop the vegetables and let them do their thing in the steamer while you prepare the rest of the meal, so it does save quite a bit of time. Last week, I steamed tomatoes and spinach, and added them to some cooked brown rice with herbed feta cheese and TJs cooked lentils.

It kept me full after lunch every day! The herbed feta made the dish, I think. This week I used my steamer to make some eggplant...and I must say it exceeded my expectations - recipe to come!

The most important meal of the day.

Today's topic is breakfast.

It may not seem like an exciting topic, but it is. Because I have an announcement. After approximately two years of eating the exact same breakfast every day, I have decided to make a change. Who would have thought I would outgrow overnight oats?!

It just happened one day two weeks ago, when all I wanted for breakfast was some toast and sunflower seed butter. With a little drizzle of honey.

This week I have stepped it up and am adding bananas instead of the honey. Also quite delicious.

So during this strange time of breakfast transition, I was thinking about other quick breakfast ideas that could work for busy weekdays.

Eggs? Probably too much effort to cook in the morning, but that did not stop me from eating them for dinner a few nights last week!

Cereal is always an option, but a little too high maintenance for an on-the-go meal. I have decided to do a bit more research on breakfast ideas...clearly I am a rookie at this!

In other news, last week, I wrote down my workout schedule, not only for organization purposes, but also to keep me on track.

And guess what? It worked like a charm. In fact, I only strayed from it slightly. No yoga on Wednesday, Friday was Zumba, and Saturday was yoga. Rest day came on Sunday instead. I strongly believe in making lists, it really helps me feel more accountable.

So, opinions please, friends! What is your breakfast item of choice? Especially for those who are on-the-go breakfasters like myself?

New beginnings

Hello friends!

I apologize for the lack of posts over the last seven months... I would like to say I have been all around the world and back. But actually, I have been!

I recently made some new goals and wanted to share them with you. For a while, I got so caught up with minute details of life that health and fitness took a back seat. Unfortunately, it's hard to get back into the swing of things after taking a break. I decided to transition gradually which has worked well so far!

Let's first start with the eats. I decided to get back into juicing...hooray for that one, because vegetable juice makes me feel so much healthier on the inside and so energetic. So, I began juicing last week and I am still on the juice train.

Last year, I got a steamer and I never used it because it had so many parts and it was overwhelming to figure it out. (Strange I know). I decided that I would take it out of the box this weekend and do some steaming.

Of course, I had to start my first steaming experience with a fancy recipe. I made some vegetable dumplings with a side of baked brown rice. Yes, baked brown rice. The verdict? Delicious.

Baked brown rice

• 1 cup uncooked brown rice
• 1 2/3 cups water
• 1 tsp salt

Combine all ingredients in a baking pan. Cover with two layers of aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees for one hour.

Vegetable dumplings

• 1 bag broccoli slaw
• 1 egg
• 1/2 block firm tofu, chopped into thin slices
• 1 1/4 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 inch ginger
• 1 1/2 tbsp chopped cilantro
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 package wonton wrappers

In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except for the wonton wrappers. Gently mix. Spoon the mixture into the wonton wrappers and seal the wrappers by brushing the corners with water.

Place the sealed wrappers into a steamer and steam for 12 minutes. I steamed them in batches of 6-7 to ensure that there was enough space between each one in the steamer.

Serve with brown rice, more soy sauce, or chili sauce.

I am quite excited to eat these for lunch all week!

On the workout front, I have been fascinated by tabata recently. Tabata workouts are the definition of short and sweet -- extremely short and extremely sweaty! I have also been doing more yoga, which has been my goal for quite sometime. Last week, I opened up this upper body workout I found in Women's Health. Don't let it deceive you! It was harder than I thought it was, and I was sore for a couple of days afterwards. That's what I like to call success!

Anyone have any new workouts to recommend? How about any recipes that use a steamer?