Moves and Eats

Hi everyone, hope most of you enjoy the extra weekend (for those who are in the US). Sorry for the lack of updates but seriously I didn’t do much differently other than usual eats and some moves 😛

Wanna know what I had? Well a little hint, I didn’t exactly have squeaky clean Paleo approved food.

Let’s start off from Sunday
Breakfast/pre workout meal
3 over easy fried eggs sprinkled with Trader Joe’s 21 seasoning salute and sliced of a whole avocado

For lunch I made some grass fed beef patties, seasoned with curry powder, Red Boat fish sauce, green onions, pepper, puree onion/garlic/shallots and an egg, pan fried with coconut oil.

Plus more yuca root fries

You’d think I’ll dig in to the lunch? Er, not so fast. I brazed myself to complete this killer 600 reps fat burner workout, which roughly I finished about 1 hour (including rest in between first and second round). I’ve never sweated so much in my life!

After that workout, it was good to devour this lunch plate 😀

As usual I had my afternoon snack bowl of fruits (strawberries and cherries) and might be some undocumented amount of macadamia nuts.
Can you believe I already finished a bag of these already? I finally decided to do subscribe and save order from Amazon since my local Costco doesn’t carry any of these babies!! 😦

For some reason I didn’t take my dinner pic but I think it was a super simple meal of some steamed broccoli and 2 grass fed beef patties. I wasn’t that hungry. Yuca roots always kept me full for a long time.

Monday
Breakfast
3 over easy fried eggs (seasoned with TJ 21 seasonings) served with steamed broccoli and sliced of a whole avocado

Eggs for breakfast in 2 days in a row? Let me tell you, I’ve been OUT of eggs last week and I missed them so much!

Hubby K brought back his mom’s homemade Chinese sticky rice (zongzi) the night before so I had some bites of it for my lunch, along with last of yuca roots, steamed bok choy and last of Bo Kho.

I love Chinese sticky rice (zongzi) and prior Paleo I could finish the entire thing in a second! It usually filled with some Chinese sausage, peanuts, and some pork meat. My mom’s homemeade zongzhi is something that I missed dearly. Now I know just to have a little bite of it or else I’d be a bottomless pit! Yes, that sticky rice is surely addicting!

As I thought I wanted to take a rest day, but my inner side kept bugging me to at least do some short exercise challenge, so I did 300 reps squats. Boy, I surely felt it today on my lower back and buns!

For dinner, I made Pan Seared Lamb Shoulders seasoned with Homemade Taco seasonings. The direction was exactly the same as this Crispy Taco Chicken.
Served with sliced of whole avocado and Baked Mixed Veggies (cauliflower, carrots, tomatoes, with 2 Tbsp Kerrygold Salted butter)

And I had some bowl of fruits afterward and called it a night!

Have you had any Chinese sticky rice before?

 

Lazy Dog with Friends

For some reason I woke up at 4:30am and tried to go back to sleep, but that didn’t happen. After tossing around for about an hour, I decided to rise up from the bed, played some silly bubble game on my iPod until I got bored. Then I remembered I still “owed” last 2 rounds of the killer 400 reps variations of Burpee workout from Thursday.

Reluctantly, I warmed up then completed the second round. You can read more details about it here if you’re interested 🙂

Despite skipping dinner, not having breakfast, I didn’t crash while doing that intense workout, which amazed me in some ways. But worry not, I’m not going to do intermittent fasting way too often as fat/weight loss is not my fitness goal. On the other hand, it feels good to give your body a little “break” from digesting food.

So here’s the breakfast/post workout snack for the champion 😀

Medium size of baked Japanese yam with a tin of wild sardines in spring water. Yay, I got my natural Omega-3 intake of the day, which what I prefer the most. But getting Omega-3 from supplements is not a bad idea either though. Better than nothing, right?

We went to Farmers Market afterward to restock the strawberries and also bought some cherries (it’s cherry season already. Lots of booths selling cherries)

About noon time I went to meet the gals (Hubby K stayed home since he had to go to his parents place for dinner and I wasn’t sure how long this gathering would be) at The Lazy Dog Cafe in Huntington Beach.

The walls are full of dog pictures..haha hence the name!

I’m not a dog person, but those dogs in the pics surely look cute!

Before went there, I did my little homework for some gluten free friendly menu that I could order so I asked The Lazy Dog Cafe on their FB

And I also snacked bunch of macadamia nuts and some banana chips (from Henry’s Market) to make sure I won’t be too starving.

unsweetened banana chips!

Since our group was kinda small this time (2 birthday gals- total 5 people) we decided to share the food. I still ordered that Bacon Wrapped Coulotte and asked for steamed broccoli and gravy on the side. Hm, I forgot to ask the waitress to sub the mashed potatoes with steamed broccoli, but I think she forgot to separate the gravy on the side.

No biggie, I just ate around it a bit.

The rest of the food that Yen, one of the b’day gal ordered (since she’s been there before)
Sweet Potato Tater Tots with some kind of dip sauce – I couldn’t resist to have a little bite of those (no dipping) – pretty good

Pizza Margherita – looks delish but I didn’t have any

Pesto Chicken and Hummus

The pesto sauce was delicious- I didn’t try the sundried tomato hummus since I can’t handle beans (all kinds of legumes) that well.

Spicy Moroccan Chicken and Couscous

My friend M got the spicy kick from this dish while for me it wasn’t spicy at all (or maybe I was lucky enough not to get the spicy part?) Pretty delicious actually.

And the restaurant gave each 2 birthday gals, Ay and Yen a cup of ice cream sundae!

Our organizer, Sweet J bought this nice Oreo and Cream Cheese Cake from a Korean bakery.

I’m not a sweet tooth gal, but didn’t want to be a stuck up not having a little slice of the cake. Thank goodness my gut didn’t hate me too much. The cake was ok, but a little too sweet for me. My taste buds is very sensitive to sugar now (other than fruits).

When the time for 3 of us to split the bills, M was nice enough asking me if I was ok with the amount. Since she’s technically the only friend that reads my blog, she knows the current situation that Hubby K and I now. I appreciate her concern but I assured her I’m fine with the amount. Besides, it’s not like I’m always splurging all the time.

It was such a GORGEOUS day! Sunny, blue sky and cool breeze!

We hung out a bit, just walked around at the Target store nearby the restaurant then we bid our farewell for the next gathering in July. It’s always nice to catch up with friends and in some ways it’s good that we are keeping in touch by having this once a month gathering. After graduating and start working/family, we tend to be busy with our own schedule. It’s all thanks to M’s idea for having this once a month get together. 🙂

On the way home, I stopped by Walmart to get some avocados. (Gotta LOVE that 50 cents avocado)

I wasn’t too hungry but I am not intend to do another intermittent fasting since I just did it yesterday. It’s not something that I should be doing too often. So for dinner I just whipped some simple spring mix salad with some protein, avocado and sliced of whole tomato. No pic, but you got the idea.

Have a great weekend!

Btw, does your neighbor usually have a party with loud music when it’s long weekend? When I was typing this post, I could hear my neighbor was playing a loud Spanish songs. It’s always like this when it’s a long weekend. *sigh*. It doesn’t bother me much since my room is facing the other way (thank goodness).
And by loud meaning I can actually hear the music from my room if my window is open. Good thing he doesn’t have that heavy base speaker otherwise it’ll be waay too much!

 

Omega-3 and Cassava Facts

Happy long weekend for those who are in the US as this coming Monday is Memorial Day Holiday. What are you up to? I’m going to hang out with my gals tomorrow lunch as part of our usual monthly gathering and also to celebrate two of our friends’ birthdays Ay and Yen (obviously not their real names).

We decided to do our weekly grocery shopping today, figured the market will be very crowded over the weekend due to the holiday (BBQ party anyone?).

On our way, we stopped by Costco to get some non perishable essentials (I usually don’t shop grocery in bulk since we only have 3 people in the house) and I spotted this
Wild Alaskan Salmon Oil

After manufacturing instant rebate, this cost me about $14.00 (originally $16.00)

Ingredients: Fish oil (100% natural, from wild Alaskan Salmon (softgel (gelatin, glycerin, water), Vitamin E (as D-alpha tocopherol).

Not too shabby huh? I’m not a scientist and have ZERO knowledge of drug composition but overall the ingredient list look pretty clean to me. I also visited the manufacturer, Alaska Protein Recovery website to read more info about them.

Here’s the snippet part of their salmon oil processing:

APR’s brand of wild salmon oil, Pure Alaska Omega, is made using a gentle, natural, low temperature process, in a manner very similar to that used for extraction of extra virgin “cold pressed” olive oil. Our process does not thermally, or otherwise, degrade the many oil soluble micro nutrients or the LC-PUFA’s found naturally in Alaska salmon. Our oil is separated by centrifugation at the earliest stages of our fish hydrolysate production process, immediately after the grinding and heating of the salmon. The separation of the liquid phase from the solid phase of a salmon takes place in a food grade decanter (left). The liquid, which contains water, water-soluble proteins, micronutrients, as well as the oil, is immediately passed through a food grade high speed centrifuge (right) which separates the salmon oil from the water. The oil is immediately packed in sterile 1,000 liter IBC bins.

Read more here
Suggested use: take 2 softgels a day or take one with breakfast and another one with the last meal of the day.

For that price, I’m pretty happy to get this Omega 3 supplements, since I consume quite a lot of chicken (see my big chicken recipe list?) compare to ruminants like beef, lamb, elk etc, let alone grass fed ones. Getting wild caught fish is pretty tricky as well and majority of fish that are sold around my regular grocery stores are mostly farm raised, which is something that we should avoid at all costs. Besides wild caught fish is darn pricey and they don’t hold my hunger as well compare to other meat.

Ok enough talk about supplements. Let’s move on the the real food 😀

Today’s lunch was super yummy big ass salad of spring mix, roasted curried cauliflower and sliced of citrus and spices marinated chicken breasts (I’ll post this recipe next time as this one didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to be although still yummy though), topped with macadamia nuts and with sliced of a whole avocado on the side.

O wait, what about breakfast? Well just a boring one small baked Japanese yam.

And I didn’t workout at all for today. I had a brutal workout yesterday, which left my upper body sore today (thanks to 195 burpees push ups plus another 50 push ups).

But that didn’t stop me for having root vegetables, especially not this yummy Yucca Root Fries!

Believe me, these kept me very full! I don’t think I’m going to have dinner tonight. Gotta give my stomach a little break from processing food 🙂 –Intermittent fasting

Speaking of yucca/cassava, I had an interesting day at the grocery store today. When I was picking up 3 cassavas, this middle age man asking me how to cook those, so basically I just told them the way I usually do it: peel them, cut them into fries shapes, then steam for at least 10 minutes, then bake them (after sprinkling with some salt and avocado oil) for about 20 minutes in 400°F. He then asked me what was the benefit of it? I just blurted out that it was a better carbohydrate choice than bread (LOL). Yeah I know..I’m lame.

But after I got home, I did a little google search and found some facts about cassava and here what I found
1. Cassava (yucca) is very rich in starch, calcium, phosphorus and Vitamin C, but very poor in protein and other nutrient. The leaves, however, are rich in amino acids and protein (Wiki)

2. Cassava is the staple food of Eastern part of Indonesia (Maluku Islands (aka Moluccan Islands) and West Papua)

3. Other than being boiled/fried, cassava can also be made into sweet dishes like Indonesian getuk cake or fermented (tapai)

4. Tapioca pearls (boba), the small balls that usually found in Asian milk tea drinks are made from cassava root.

Have great upcoming weekend everyone!

Do you take fish oil? What’s your favorite brand?
I’ve seen people talking about Cod Liver Oil or Krill Oil but those two are super pricey and currently are out of my budget line.

 

Avocado Frenzy

I just realized lately my lunch plate has one similarity.

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

See the similarity there? Yep, it’s the AVOCADO! I’ve been having at least one avocado for every lunch. It’s just so good and it kept me full for quite some time. Although it still didn’t stop me for having fruity bowl for my afternoon snacks 🙂

But it kept my dinner pretty small

Lotus Root Soup

Prior Paleo, I wasn’t a big fan of eating plain avocado. Back in Indo, we used to make an avocado shake (mashed avocado with sugar and ice cubes – yummy, especially in hot and humid weather). Some people even put condensed milk with it (not me, it was waaay too sweet!).

Some avocado fun facts
1. It is a fruit, not a vegetable
2. It has higher content of fat compared to other fruits and mostly are monounsaturated fat
3. It has a slight sweet taste but mostly just bland and fatty. Sprinkle some salt and lemon juice will spice it up a bit
4. Blend avocado with some cocoa powder and medjool dates to create dairy free chocolate mousse (I haven’t tried it yet, but have been having this concept in my head for a while)
5. It has higher potassium content compared to banana (according to Wiki)
6. It is one of Clean Fifteen produce list, so no need to buy organic 🙂 I know Walmart grocery at my neighborhood sell it for 50 cents each.

Here are some good resources about avocado:
20 facts about avocado
California Avocado Commission
Avocado Nutrition Facts

What’s your favorite way of eating avocado (other than guacamole)?

 

Cabbage “Noodles” Five Spice Stir Fry

I put together this recipe based on what I had in my pantry. As usual, there’s no hard rules how to make a vegetable stir fry dish. Almost anything goes 🙂 So why cabbage “noodles”? Well it sounds a hella lot cooler than shredded cabbage, don’t you think?

Cabbage “Noodles’ Five Spice Stir Fry
What I used:
1/4 of cabbage head – discard the heart and thinly sliced to resemble “noodles” 🙂
6 oz cello mushrooms – sliced
1/2 garlic cloves – minced
2 shallots – minced (I used my Magic Bullet to speed things up)
1 big Italian eggplant – peeled and diced
3 zucchinis – sliced
1 tsp five spice powder
1/2 tsp white pepper powder
1/2 tsp black pepper powder
1 Tbsp Red Boat Fish Sauce (optional but it gives that umami taste to the dish!)
3 Tbsp coconut aminos or wheat free soy sauce (tamari)
Salt to taste (use more if not using any fish sauce)
1 Tbsp avocado oil/butter/lard/ghee – never use olive oil for high heat cooking

Directions:
1. Heat 1 Tbsp oil of your choice (I used avocado oil) in high heat
2. Saute the minced garlic/shallots until fragrant
3. Mix in the chopped mushrooms, stir then put the rest of the ingredients – stirring constantly – no need to add water because mushrooms will yield lots of water
4. Season with pepper, fish sauce, coconut aminos and salt to taste
5. When all veggies are wilted and cooked, remove from the heat and serve with any of your favorite dishes 🙂

Enjoy!

 

Reorganizing

Hi everyone, how’s your Monday going?

Not much going on today, except I finally updated my recipe page. Go take a look when you got a chance 🙂 I added and organize the recipes by categories and subcategories. Hopefully it will make it easier for people to search some specific recipes. I realized I actually have tons of chicken recipes…LOL.

Anyway, my morning was started off with a pre workout snack – one small purple yam before I started my morning workout. Usually I exercise in empty stomach because: I didn’t have time to have pre workout snack unless I got up extra early. But since circumstances had changed, I could take this chance to experiment a bit. I got used to exercise in empty stomach but sometimes I think I got wiped out very quickly. Having a pre workout snack in some form of starch (sweet potaotes) actually helped my performance a bit.

Post workout snack – another purple yam – gosh can’t have enough of this!

Lunch: Easy Tandoori Chicken, pan fried sliced zucchini, sliced of a whole avocado on the bed of spring mix, sprinkled with a lemon wedge- -YUM!

Afternoon snack – big bowl of fruity goodness –cherries and strawberries

That kept me full for the entire day, so my dinner was pretty small.
Bok Choy soup (made from homemade chicken broth)

and a small plate of pan fried sliced zucchini and slices of Cheater’s Shish Kabob Chicken

Let me know how you like the recipe page. 🙂 Have a great evening/day – wherever your time zone is

 

Taking It Easy, Way Too Easy?

**UPDATED 5/23/11** Enjoying Healthy Foods is giving away $10 off Applegate Farms coupon. ENTER NOW!!

Hi everyone! Hope you all are having a nice weekend. If you’ve read my blog recently, you would know that weekdays and weekends do not make any difference for me. In some ways, I do enjoy it but on the other hand back in my mind, I do feel a little guilt for taking this way too easy. More on that later.

Apparently, I’ve been in the mood of easy cooking as well.

Like this Easy Tandoori Chicken – which what I had for today’s lunch

With the Cauliflower “Mashed Potatoes”

And yesterday I made a big batch of Bo Kho (Vietnamese Beef Stew) – this time I used Red Boat fish sauce and TONS of lemon grass, 3 huge carrots and 1/2 cabbage head cut into chunks!

I also made a little effort to make my own tomato paste by cooking 8 tomatoes until most of the liquid evaporated.

Boy, I have Bo Kho to feed an army here 😀

I froze some so we won’t be sick eating Bo Kho for the next couple meals.

Now you know what I’ll be having for dinner later 😀

But taking it easy doesn’t apply to my morning workout. Yesterday and this morning workout left me sweaty and pumped up, in a good way.
Yesterday and today’s pre workout snack – 1 small Japanese yam

Yesterday’s post workout snack – 1 small Japanese yam and 1/2 chicken breast left over from Crazy Chicken dinner

Lunch was super yummy and easy as well. Cheater’s Shish Kabob Chicken with sliced of whole avocado, Baked Cabbage and steamed Chinese Kale (gailan)

And I had mid afternoon snack of bowl of fruity goodness: cherries, strawberries and sliced of an orange.

Which kept me full that I almost didn’t need dinner, but couldn’t resist to taste Bo Kho that I made.

Today’s post workout snack was combined as my lunch, which I already posted earlier. And I had some purple yam in the oven and by the time it was done, I couldn’t resist to have some. I only intended to eat half but then ended up consuming the whole purple yam. Gosh, I love purple yam way too much!

Now I wonder if I’ll have a dinner later.
Ok, here’s my dinner

Anyway, back to the topic I mentioned earlier on this post. It’s been a week since that day and to be honest, I haven’t really made an effort to prepare myself for job search. On one hand I’d like to take my time to do it, but on the other hand I’m a little scared that I’m getting a bit too comfortable with my situation now. I’m not saying financial won’t be an issue because eventually it will catch up! We can’t live off on our entire savings forever. I’ve been having this “guilt” at the back of my mind that I should put my act together and stop being a slacker.

Ok enough rant. I just want to write it up to make myself feel better.

Have a great day!

 

Cheater’s Shish Kabob Chicken

I’ve never had the actual Shish Kabob before but that didn’t stop me to try this seasonings when I saw it at my local supermarket. It was super simple and yummy. I didn’t have a grill and I was too lazy to fire up my oven to bake it (it takes longer and I was too starving to wait another 30 minutes) so I opted pan frying this (or should I say pan grilled?)

Cheater’s Shish Kabob Chicken
Ingredients:
2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts (or any protein of your choice) – slice lengthwise to speed up the cooking time
1 oz of Shish Kabob seasonings (granulated onions, salt, garlic, sumac, citric acid, black pepper, saffron)

Directions:
1. Place the meat in a gallon size zip lock bag and coat evenly with the shish kabob marinate. Let it sit for about 1-2 hour at least.

2. Heat the skillet in medium heat with 1 Tbsp coconut oil. Pan fry the chicken until cooked

3. Squeeze some lemon on top, then enjoy with any veggie dish of your choice!

 

Cauliflower “Mashed Potatoes”

I was never a big fan of mashed potatoes but this Cauliflower “Mashed Potatoes” surely won my heart! It’s super easy and you can put any seasonings you want. In my case, I prefer to keep the Cauliflower “Mashed Potatoes’ unseasoned because I like to eat them with another dish that has lots of sauce/gravy.

Cauliflower “Mashed Potatoes”
Ingredients:
1 cauliflower head – cut into chunks

Optional seasonings:
2 Tbsp melted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Coconut milk/yogurt/heavy cream

Directions:
1. Steam the cut out cauliflower for about 5 minutes – set aside and let it cool

2. Puree the cooked cauliflower in your food processor (This is the time you add the seasonings if you want to make seasoned Cauliflower “Mashed Potatoes”)

3. Done!

 

Easy Tandoori Chicken

When I’m going to bake bone-in chicken, I prefer to steam them first for about 15 minutes to make sure the inside will be at least half cooked before baking it in the oven. Besides it cut down the baking time, plus the meat will stay moist. This tandoori recipe is no exception and it turned out yummy!

Ingredients:
About 2 lbs chicken/beef – I used a whole chicken, cut up in to 4 pieces -skins removed
Juice from a whole lemon
1/3 cup yogurt (I used coconut milk)
Salt and pepper
2 tsp garlic powder
1 Tbsp tandoori seasonings

Directions:
1. Mix all the marinate

2. Place the meat in a gallon size zip lock bag, coat evenly with the marinate. Let it sit for about 2 hour or overnight for best taste.

3. Steam the meat for about 15 minutes (If you use boneless meat, you can skip this part and head on to the next one). If you want to skip steaming, make sure to put longer time when baking in the oven.

4. Broil the meat in 400°F for about 20 minutes. If you didn’t steam the meat, bake it for 350°F then change the setting to broil. Time depends on the size of the meat that you use.

Remove from heat and enjoy with your favorite veggie dish. I ate mine with a side of Baked Cabbage.

I submitted this recipe to Primal Cave#3