GF Pasta Primavera with Chicken

For one of my projects for nutrition class, we had to make a "healthy" recipe. I was expecting him to be tricky and make all the parameters really challenging. It was the complete opposite, haha.

The recipe had to be:

-less than 1000 calories

-less than 25 grams of fats

-less than 3 grams of saturated fats

-less than 1000 milligrams of sodium

-greater than 6 grams of fiber

ALL IN ONE SERVING!

It amazes me that this is suppose to be considered a challenge in our society? Less than 1000 calories?!

Sometimes I am so disappointed in the health and nutrition education in our societies...sigh.

So, because I had so much wiggle room for the "light and healthy" dinner recipe, I decided to do a gluten-free Italian splurge ;)

Gluten-Free Pasta Primavera with Chicken

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rice pasta
• 8 oz chicken breast
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 cup broccoli
• 1 cup mushrooms
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 garlic clove

Preparation:

1. Boil a medium-size pot of water
2. When water is boiling, pour pasta in the water and boil for 10 minutes.
3. Cook chicken breast on a pan with garlic & pepper on medium heat for 7-10 minutes, flipping half way through.
4. While pasta is cooking, chop up the carrots, mushrooms, and broccoli into thin slices.
5. Steam the vegetables on a pan or pot with minced clove of garlic.
6. After pasta is done cooking, strain out the water, and pour the vegetables and chicken over the pasta and combine together on low heat for 5-10 minutes with olive oil until ready to serve!

So that's it! A really BIG serving of pasta for:

(Haha realistically, this could have fed both Dalton and me comfortably)

21 grams of fat

111 carbs (a LOT I know, but he didn't specify, so I just made it easy on myself and went big, haha)

58 grams of protein

865 calories

2 grams of saturated fat

14 grams of fibers

11 sugars

750 grams of sodium

I kinda challenged the system and picked a "less healthy" meal that I would usually eat for the healthy assignment...but that was for my personal entertainment, haha

It's definitely a good carbo-loading meal to get ready for a bike hike or heavy work out day though! 

:)

[This is obviously not the whole amount for my "one healthy serving", haha]

Lazy Gluten-Free & Dairy-Free Pizza

Who doesn't love pizza? I have been lactose-intolerant for over 4 years now, and within the past year, I've completely cut out any products that contain any traces of milk. If my body doesn't like it and can't digest in, I really shouldn't be having any of that put into me. Even with taking lactase enzyme pills. That undigested gunk has to go somewhere! Just sitting there in my intestines, messing up my insides and good digestive system!

So, after a lot of searching and trial and error, I've found some gluten-free and dairy-free alternatives that are CLOSEST (as close as I have found) to almost tasting like real pizza.

Haha, it's good enough to me!

Lately, I've been happy with my lazy version of GF pizza. Making crust is annoying sometimes, and when I want pizza, I usually want it to happen fast. We made homemade crust one time, but we haven't perfected it yet. Another thing on my summer of freedom to-do list.

Here are my "lazy" pizza ingredients:

 

Pre-made Udi's gluten-free crust. It's already cooked so all you have to do is throw your toppings and bake for less than 10 minutes. Fast and easy ;)

Add your favorite pizza sauce (I used organic pasta sauce since we keep that in stock at home all the time) and then sprinkle this cheese on top. It's dairy free AND soy free and it's not expensive, whaaat?

I'm kinda really anti-soy. Mainly because unless it states it's organic, it's probably GMO (along with canola oil and corn), and I hate GMO. Even organic soy give me a weird stomach reaction, so this cheese made out of tapioca starch and organic oils is amazingggg for me!

:)

Add whatever toppings you like and cook for just under 10 minutes! Depending on how crispy you want it!

To this one, I added garlic, mushrooms and green bell peppers...YUM!

To get even lazier, when we don't have any crust at home and don't wanna go to the store...we use our GF english muffins and make mini pizzas! Haha

It's definitely not your homestyle, delicious homemade Italian pizza, but after craving pizza for so long, this is good enough for me!

:D

Guacamole with Jicama Chips

Soooo, I've had a recent guacamole addiction that is directly connected to my endless study marathons. I usually just mashed up some avocados and added whatever I wanted or thought would taste good and did that. But my favorite yoga instructor posted this recipe for guacamole (delicious! that amount of tomatoes is perfect!) and even gave me the idea of making jicama chips in place of corn tortilla chips...WAY more fibers and less carbs! :)

The only thing I'm not too sure on is what to do with the jicama slices...I've never eaten raw jicama, and thought it would be tasty if I baked them to turn to chips, but I haven't had time quite yet to try!

Mom, here ya go! That guac recipe you wanted! ;)

Guacamole With Jicama Chips:

- 1 or 2 avocados

- 1/2 tomato

- 1/8 onion (or 1 green onion)

- 1/2 lemon (remove seeds)

- 1/4 jicama

- 1/4 bunch cilantro (optional)

- like it spicy? add a chopped jalepeno or serrano chile 

Mash the avocado (remove peels and seed first)

Chop onion, tomato and cilantro

Stir the onion, tomato and cilantro into the mashed avocados, squeeze 1/2 lemon in the mix and you have delicious guacamole!

(you can add salt, pepper, cayenne to taste if you wish)

Peel and then slice up jicama to resemble thick chips

Dip the jicama slices in the guacamole and enjoy!

YAY!

Lots of good omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids, vitamin E, B and some fiber for my poor little brain in over drive! :D

[I'll try the whole baked jicama thing and get back to you! For now, tortilla chips is good enough for me!]

Another whiny Snapchat with my crazy hair on a study day ;)

Chocolate Chip Protein Pancakes

While I'm on the pancake fix, I just had to try protein pancakes!

I was temporarily getting tired of my protein shake, and wanted to change it up a little.

This is the protein powder I've been using for about 6 months, and so far, I love it! It's organic chocolate flavored rice protein. Because I'm lactose intolerant, I really shouldn't have been using the whey protein, even if it was protein isolate (which is suppose to have most of the lactose "filtered" out), but I still felt the bloating with the whey isolate. 

If my body doesn't like milk products, I shouldn't be putting any in there! That's my motto when it comes to anything that makes you feel "uncomfortable, sluggish, or gross" afterwards! It's only slowing your body and its efficiency down!

 Anyway, we added a little of these allergy-free chocolate chips (surprisingly delicious) to the new pancake recipe I found (with 1 cup of the protein powder substituting 1 cup of the flour...that's 75 grams of protein in 4 pancakes!)

And chocolatey protein pancakes for me! They didn't come out too pretty, but there were tasty enough for me!

A nice alternative to a protein shake after a workout too! ;)

I need to start taking pictures with my real camera. These iPhone quality pictures are just not going to cut it for long...

Strawberry Blueberry Replacement "Syrup"

So, I've been on a little pancake fix lately. Gluten-free and dairy free of course ;)

I'm blaming it on all the studying and overworking myself at school. My brain is craving the carbs in the mornings!

Anyway, I've finally found a good gluten-free pancake recipe...well at least the flour, because the weird  GF flours I've been trying is what was ruining the taste on everything. But I just kept putting up with it and covering it up for the sake of my small college student budget. (You pay for quality, I guess!)

Pamela's is THE BEST! My mom made GF Christmas cookies with another one of her flours, and they tasted just like the gluten-full ones! MMMM! So, I'm sold! 

SO GLAD, this was on sale the other day at Sprout's! Even if it weren't, it's worth the extra $2 for treats!

Here is the recipe I've decided I like...I might be tweaking it a little more, but we'll see when I have time for more morning kitchen experiments!

Dry ingredients:

2 1/2 cups Pamela's Artisan Flour Blend

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (I used corn starch instead because of the metals in baking powder)

3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

Wet ingredients:

1 cup milk (I chose rice milk, but usually choose almond milk)

1 cup water (I just did double the milk instead, since rice milk is watery anyway)

2 organic free-range eggs, beaten

4 tablespoons organic coconut oil (I did extra virgin olive oil)

1 tablespoon honey or raw agave nectar (I used xylitol, since I've been experimenting with it's taste)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract (or one more teaspoon vanilla)

Mix the wet ingredients together, pour in the dry, and cook 'em up!

For the original Gluten-Free Pancake Recipe that I adjusted my recipe from, click the link!

Here is the xylitol I mentioned to replace the other sweeteners. Sometimes, I have issues with my hypoglycemia, and this is the first time I've tried low glycemic sugar in my food. I wanted to try Stevia first (the organic kind, not the one they add weird things to), but they were out of it at the store. It's not the calories I'm concerned, it's the glycemic index I'm trying to keep low. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, so I'll have to try it out on more things and do some more research on it!

Speaking of lower glycemic index sweeteners, we're always out of syrup whenever we're craving pancakes. I'm not a huge fan of eating a lot of syrup anyway, so one day when we were out of syrup, I made my own strawberry-blueberry "syrup" replacement. 

It's easy!

Pick the fruits you'd like to add on top of your pancakes (or whatever else you'd like), chop them up and put them in a pot. I picked strawberries and blueberries this time.

 Boil the fruits on high for 5-10 minutes...depending on how much there is. Add a tablespoon or two of sugar (or xylitol!) once it starts to becoming more liquid, to add more sweetness. You can mass up the fruits more to get rid of the chunks, but i was lazy this time.

 Add it to the top of your pancakes and that's it!

We're addicted! I almost prefer this over maple syrup! :)

Welcome!

Hi everyone!

I've had my own personal blog for a few years now. It was mainly for family to see what I'm up to while I'm busy in school. But I found that I had urges to make a bunch of posts about my weird health and fitness activities: cooking, baking, working out, fitness adventures...all things I'm not sure my family wants to hear about all the time. 

SO! I added this new blog (there is a link from my personal blog to my health blog on the top tabs...and vice versa) so I can share my passion and hear what others do and think, as well! I'm not sure if this will be popular or not, but I'll give it a try. 

Worst case scenario: it will be a nice mental distraction from school 

;)

As for now, this is what a majority of my "health & fitness" life consists of:

yoga

outdoors/hiking adventures
  

beach time (sunny or cloudy!) 

clean eating

 but MOSTLY: nursing school (for now...)