Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick, is to feed your sickness.

Cool dude that Hippocrates ;-)

Short on time this morning due to busy work schedule.
So kept it super simple and with less food in the system the mind is nice and sharp to handle a multitude of tasks.
Breakfast;
2 strips of bacon and half an apple.



Saw this recently and thought it was a neat house sign.

I always was very fond of that movie.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Roasting

Once again focusing on easy prep and.....I cooked a lot over the weekend for other people and was tired of cleaning up the kitchen. So try this with me and see how easy.
Turn on your oven to 400. Grab a cookie tray, cutting board and a large bowl.
Now take a cauliflower and cut it up. Toss into the bowl with a little evoo, sea salt and pepper.
Spread it out on the cookie sheet. Now slice red onion toss in the bowl with left over evoo. I added another tspn.

Use the fish of your choice for the following. (use a fish that grills well) Put fish on a plate and drizzle, evoo, tamari, and some white miso paste (mix miso paste with some water) Toss some of the sliced red onion on top. Now that the cauliflower is getting close to done put the rest of the red onion on the cookie sheet also. Remove from oven, put it back in the bowl and mash it all together. Grill the fish and enjoy a delicious meal. Simple right? And minimal clean up. Bowl, cutting board and cookie sheet. (I did have a small side salad with the meal, consisting of spinach, red leaf lettuce and cucumber.)
Blogspot picture function is down. When up, I will post the pics of this meal.

CREATE A GREAT DAY and.........SMILE ;-)

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Morning grill time



While I was grilling chicken at 7:30 this morning (yes, my neighbors think I'm crazy)
I kept looking up at the palm trees. It looked cool, so thought I'd take a picture to share with you

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Grilled chicken breasts. I marinated them for almost 2 days. Some olive oil, rice vinegar, sake, chilli powder. Great flavor.

Breakfast;
red leaf lettuce with, left over tehina dressing, avocado and grilled chicken. Half an apple.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A little bit more involved perhaps.

BUT, still easy and straight forward.
Last night's dinner was fresh local swordfish. Rubbed with olive oil and simply grilled.
Fresh leeks, olive oil and dash of sea salt. Sliced and grilled in a grill basket. Broccoli, mashed and then mixed with the grilled leeks. On top of the fish I had a nice cilantro butter sauce. In the magic bullet chopped cilantro. in a pan sauteed the cilantro with butter. Pour over the fish.
This is a wonderful meal that you could serve and really impress people with. Tasty and very healthy! A little more prep time, but nothing complicated right?


Breakfast;
Made some tehina dressing (thank you Sarena). In the magic bullet (it's quite handy to have around in your kitchen arsenal) mixed tehina with some olive oil, garlic, capers and cilantro.
Sliced up about 4 stalks of celery a heap of fresh spinach (the produce I use is 99% of the time organic). Topped it of with half a tequila lime chicken sausage (browned in the pan with some butter)

I don't know what it is about celery, but it makes me feel terrific for the rest of the day.
Folic acid maybe?

Monday, April 21, 2008

Nike has always said it best " JUST DO IT"

I had an interesting conversation with a friend this weekend.
She wants to eat "right" as she says, but complains that she just doesn't know what to make.
Or what vegetables to buy and how to make those. So I gave her some tough love, and told her to quit moaning and to "Just Do it"


It's not hard at all, it just takes some effort. Effort in the beginning of a new activity usually gives way to satisfaction and pleasure in no time at all.
For all of you out there that seem to struggle with it; here's my advice. Just go to the store buy what you think looks fresh (whatever, zucchini, squash, spinach, asparagus, Brussels sprouts etc etc) and go home and MAKE IT! Make it any way you like, add some butter, olive oil, or coconut oil, use some of your spices and just experiment. Only by doing this will you figure out what flavors you like and how to make simple healthy dishes.
Breakfast this morning for me was such a meal. I looked in the fridge, saw I had a yellow squash. Next some left over red onion. Sauteed that in some olive oil, added a piece of left over tomato and sliced up some left over steak. Grabbed a to go container made a bed of green lettuce, added 1 teaspoon of balsamic and 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Tossed the squash concoction on top. Easy right? nothing fancy, but the flavor was great.






Sunday morning I was in the mood for an omelet.
Made a big one stuffed with sauteed spinach and dandelion greens.
A little bit of tomato, some cheese and topped with scallions.
10 minutes perhaps?



Let me know how you made out.

On the site reader I'm seeing people reading and checking in from all over the world.
Very cool!
Thanks to everyone out there for reading!

Friday, April 18, 2008

Thank you and Greens

Thank you all, for your positive thoughts and comments for my friend Steve. He's out of the hospital for now, and waiting to find out if he will need a bone marrow transplant. He's doing well.
There was a great post on Mark's Daily Apple about spinach. (link on right)
I eat a lot of spinach because not only is it so good for you, but fits with my approach to keeping things simple and easy.
If you can find some dandelion greens, try it out. You can prepare all your dandelion just like your spinach dishes. It has a nice texture.
One more thing in regards to spinach. When you saute it, don't cook it down all the way, like most restaurants do. Let it wilt, but try and keep the leaves intact a little. Picture shows what I mean.



Breakfast;
Garlic, scallions, asparagus, dandelion, spinach, tomato and bacon. with a dijon mustard drizzle.
Half an organic apple.
I confess, I used the micro wave to make about 7 strips of bacon (as always nitrate and garbage free). I was short on time and had only bacon left in my fridge. I do NOT like the micro at all.

Look how easy, I sauteed some garlic and asparagus with fresh ground pepper. Then added scallions and dandelions. Then added a little bit of tomato for color. Then finally the spinach. crumbled the bacon in and took a tbspoon of dijon mustard and mixed that with a bit of hot water. Drizzle it over and mix. DELICIOUS and ate more veggies for breakfast then most vegetarians do in a day.




Monday, April 14, 2008

Smile, be nice and ENJOY your life!

My best friend is in the hospital with ALL (acute lymphocytic leukemia)
Since I found out Friday a week ago, I've been thinking about him non-stop.
He's a wonderful person, always smiling and laughing and drawing everyone around him into his sphere of comedy. He has a 2 and a half year old and a 7 month old. He turned 40 (like me) in January. Last year I was involved locally with the Leukemia & Lymphoma society. I did fund raising for the Man & Woman of the Year contest. I had no clue it would hit this close to home exactly a year later. Strange how the world works isn't it?
If you have a second to spare, send some positive thoughts his way. His name is Steve.

Breakfast;
Avocado, lettuce, tomato and bacon salad.

For a late afternoon snack I have packed the following;
honeydew, with shredded romaine lettuce, balsamic vinegar and olive oil drizzle. No idea if it will be any good, but it just "creatively" came out in the kitchen this morning. Some almonds to go along with that.

Pictures to return tomorrow.

Monday, April 7, 2008

1, 2 ,3 quick and easy. & Paleo diet observation/experience

Quick and easy.
Spinach, salami (natural and nitrate free), asparagus, 2 omega 3 eggs. In the pan with some butter. Great breakfast after a heavy work out.





Here is an observation/experience in regards to my paleo/primal/evolutionary eating.
Over the last three weeks, I went through a type of brain fog and weak feeling period.
I could not figure out what was wrong. Just not feeling right, if you know what I mean. Being 40, and having my closest friend sick in the hospital does not help keep your own worries at bay necessarily. I had also been doing some IF. After going over many possibilities in my head, I decided that maybe it would be wise to go see a doctor.
Just before I did that, an comment by my mom, gave me a clue as to what might be happening. After my soccer game at night, she always calls me in the morning to see if I'm still around ;-) She told me that she did not know anyone that was as active as I was. She also said that I have always been running and doing and playing actively as far back as she could remember. She then said, that's probably why you could eat a whole loaf of bread with cold cuts in one day. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I have NOT been eating enough!!! So I made a quick change and started eating more. Adding some yams to my diet and FAT. In less then 2 days I was back to my old self. I'm not a very scientific person, well read yes, but not scientific and a lot of the technical info available out there is tough for me to comprehend sometimes. I never took any physiology courses. So they way I learn is by trial and error and common sense. So my observation is as follows; if you are hitting the weights (or crossfit, or anything you like) with heavy intensity 3 times a week, and then for the other 3 -4 days do sprinting, tennis, soccer etc etc, YOU MUST FUEL your body. Anywho; that's what I found out recently and thought I'd share. Looking forward to getting some of your thoughts.


Friday, April 4, 2008

Brain Fade

Happy Friday everyone!
There are some really interesting posts on Art Devany's site in regards to "Brain Fade".
What are your thoughts and feelings on it?

Breakfast;
Mashed sweet potato, splash or organic half and half, organic butter, 1 tsp of hot pepper relish and some scallions. Three free range omega 3 eggs, fried in butter with lots of scallions and 3 cherry tomatoes and olives.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Short on time.....

Rushing about this morning.
Won't really eat until I come home from work.
In the crockpot; garlic, onion, red cabbage, browned ground beef, coconut milk, tandoori spices.
It's going to be a yummy dinner.
(hope the picture does it some justice)