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Breakfast is often referred to the most important meal of the day. Some people get this concept some don't. Breakfast for a lot of people actually looks lot more like dessert. Just yesterday we were in a local restaurant and watched a guy sitting in the booth across from us enjoy waffles à la mode. Really, ice cream for breakfast on top of a sweet bread, topped with liquid sugar and whip cream. Why is that even an option for breakfast? Seriously!!!
They all look pretty delicious don't they! You might recognize that waffles à la mode isn't an ideal breakfast but do you know why? #1 - The obvious one is this type of breakfast is packed with sugar. I don't think I need to explain why the sugar in this amount is bad. #2 - We love our fat but we also love getting it from quality sources and this type of breakfast is also extremely fat dense. This combination of high fat and high sugar/carbohydrate is the reason we have the obesity epidemic that faces us in this country. The calorie density is through the roof when you combine sugar and fat, our brains just don't know when to say enough is enough when you combine those things. #3 - Breakfast is also a unique meal. If you look at it's name "Break - Fast" this is the meal that breaks what is likely a 8-10 hour fast depending on when you last ate the previous night. It is because we are in this fasted state that our body is primed to absorb more of the energy that we provide it. This happens mainly due to us being more insulin sensitive after a fast. That means that your body will easily transport blood glucose (carbs) into cells. Now if you worked out at 6 a.m. and you then consume a carb dense breakfast that carbohydrate/glucose will get transported to muscle tissue. That's a good thing! If you roll out of bed and have an Ego waffle, bowl of cereal, or a bowl of oatmeal topped with brown sugar and raisins, that carbohydrate will likely get stored in fat cells. #3 - Lastly, a meal like those mentioned so far is lacking almost all nutritional value. In general, color is a sign of a food's nutritional value. If you didn't cook a waffle, that whole plate would be white = zero nutrition. When you combine combine, calorie dense, blood sugar spiking, and nutrient poor all together in one food/meal you are either having one hell of a treat meal or trying to develop diabetes. How do you upgrade your breakfast?#1 - Eat a balanced meal or for some a lower carbohydrate meal depending on how sensitive you are to carbohydrates. Balanced meal means getting equal amount of calories from protein, fats and carbs. The one that is hardest for most is the protein source. Some of our favorite ways to add protein to breakfast is egg whites, protein powder via a shake or pancakes, or meat of some kind. Studies have even shown that a protein dense breakfast will help stave off hunger throughout the entire day, meaning less snacking and more calories consumed.  Sweet Potato and Black Bean Hash #2 - Add some vegetables! Yeah we said it veggies for breakfast. Not only does this up the nutritional value the meal it also adds some fiber. Try to make 1/3 of your plate a veggie! Our go to is sauteed broccoli slaw or steamed broccoli. By adding fiber you you slow down the digestion process and therefore will avoid blood sugar spikes and as much of that energy getting sent off to fat cells.  Pumpkin Spice Protein Pancakes and Broccoli #3 - Keep it simple. The morning can be a tough time to put a fancy breakfast together. Why do you think cereal is a breakfast staple, convenience. So just make something else that fits the above criteria convenient for you. For a long time this meant have a shake for breakfast that was balanced nutritional and loaded up with some greens to get veggies. Overnight oats that contain some extra protein, greek yogurt with berries, or egg muffins.
#4 - Find something that you like and works for you and stick with it. Variety is important for diet but that means throughout the day, not day to day. Breakfast for us is almost identical 5 days a week, eggs, broccoli of some form and plantains. Find what works for you.  Our Typical Breakfast The common thread that connects all these tips, is having a plan. That starts with maybe building anywhere from an extra 5 minutes up to 20 minutes to prepare an upgraded breakfast. It means having some healthier options stocked in the fridge, freezer and pantry. It means knowing ahead of time what you are going to make or meal prepping earlier in the week. We would love to hear what are your go-to breakfast options?
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Curious what the process of tracking your macronutrients entails. We would like to give you an idea of the process along with the benefits and pitfalls. Video Highlights Counting macros: What is is all about? 0:07 How to you calculate your macro and calorie needs? 1:13 Who is counting macros good for? 5:17 Who isn't it good for? 7:00 Two camps to losing weight... 9:14 Incorporating treats 13:38 Hope that helped you understand tracking macros a little better. There is so much with tracking macros that you just learn through doing. If you feel like you want to start tracking your macros. Head over to our Calorie Calculator, input some personal information then submit the form at the bottom of the page and I will respond with a personalized macro plan for you.
 Here's a little treat for ya!! We posted about these in our Instagram stories earlier last week but here's the recipe again. They were SOOO good and honestly tasted just like a Girl Scout Samoa...seriously...I couldn't believe it. Don't be fooled, these are NOT protein bites and to be honest, most of the ones you find on Pinterest aren't either because the fat is higher than the protein....so we'll just call these like they are: Chocolate Coconut Fat Balls. These will make a great little treat to help you curb your sweet tooth! You don't have to be worried about crappy ingredients which is nice. But... there's always a but, right? I would advise that you are aware of the calories and limit yourself to 1, max 2 per day! Well that's unless you are working your tail off to gain weight, then go ahead and eat all 1,600 calories, maybe! MACROS- This batch made 8 balls. 200 cal/ball 14 g of fat 13 g of carbs 6 g of protein 3 g of fiber
Carrot cake is straight up my jam! Hands down, best cake! I love the sweet and spice! I would eat it all the time if it was available.
Given my new gluten free life, I have had to make some sacrifices and cake is one of them. Just this past weekend at my nephews birthday party I was forced to pass on the delicious Mickey Mouse cake. As hard as that was I was just glad I didn't have to say no to carrot cake. That would have just been tough. Avoidance has been my main course of action. Recently though I just had a craving for carrot cake. Maybe it was the fall weather but something made me think of it and that led to a google search... "Gluten free carrot cake recipe" Low and behold I found a really good one and we had all the ingredients so I decided to do some baking. I usually don't bake, that is more Laura's area of expertise! Measuring is tough! I did it though and this muffins turned out awesome! The recipe that I found and tweaked was on a website, Primarily Inspired. Hats off to Kelly for the inspiration for this recipe! We just did the muffin/cupcake recipe but she has an icing that goes along with these too if you want it to be even more desserty, that's a word right??? The following morning Laura was scrolling her IG feed and stumbled across a pic from a local coffee shop and how they do a Orange, Maple Latte. She tried hard to convince me to drive 30 minutes to go get a coffee. I fought hard and told her I would just make her one instead. Since we don't really do dairy either we opted for a "keto coffee." Although given the maple syrup in it, we probably can't call it a "keto" coffee but oh well you get the idea, it has butter in it and other delicious things. This was super simple and super tasty. I have no idea how it compares the the coffee shop latte but we will do this again. It paired perfectly with the carrot muffins too. Pure breakfast bliss!
Yesterday was the first time that Laura and I hosted Easter dinner for either her family or mine. It was my family plus Laura's brother, Michael, that joined us for our Easter festivities this year. I have to be honest and say it is difficult to cook for my family, we have a few picky eaters. We are from a small town and didn't grow up eating a lot of different foods. My mom always made good food but it similar in flavors and familiar so that is how the taste buds of my family developed. Meals became traditional. Just like the sun always rises in the east, we always have ham at Easter. I love tradition and there is something comforting about knowing what you will be eating and those foods will remind you have times long ago. Part of me though loves to take the traditional and tweak it and that is what we did this year with our Easter dinner.
So of course we had to make a ham, but instead of traditional oven baked ham I got the idea to grill/smoke our ham. I love smokey foods. This would also free up our kitchen oven to do other things and not have a giant ham taking up half the space. I did a little research and found that spiral cut hams tend to dry out when cooked on a grill, so opted for non-sliced ham. The process of smoking the ham was actually pretty easy. Prior to putting it on the grill, I did a light rub on it. I first added a layer of dijon mustard and then rubbed in some brown sugar to almost make a paste around the outside of the ham. This helped create a nice layer sweet and smokey on the outside. We have a pretty big grill, so I just turned on the two outermost burners on medium, and placed the ham in the middle of the grill. This provided indirect heat, similar to an oven. As you can see in the picture I used a little smoker box that I picked up at Home Depot and kept it stocked with apple wood chips. This setup kept the temp of my grill around 250. I smoked the ham in a disposable aluminum foil tray for an hour and forty minutes, checking it every 20 minutes to make sure the temp was steady and occasionally add some more wood chips. At the 1:40 mark I added a little apple juice, maybe a cup, to the bottom of the tray, and covered the top with aluminum foil, to essentially steam the ham and keep it from drying out. After 40 minutes or once the ham got to 135, I removed the foil and begin the glazing process. I cheated and just used the glaze that came with the ham, which was a currant glaze and pretty tasty. I turned the heat up to medium high on the two side burners and glazed it twice, keeping it on the grill for another 25 minutes. That was all for the cooking process. I just let it rest for 15 minutes before slicing and serving. 
As for the sides there was one side that I had to keep pretty close to the original, my moms Scalloped Corn. Think gooey cornbread. We did modify a little bit and used greek yogurt instead of sour cream and almond milk instead of regular cow's milk. Sorry this is the one thing that isn't pictured above.
The other sides included mashed potatoes. Obviously I had to do something to dress up just regular mashed potatoes. I added a couple parsnips to the pot of boiling potatoes. I also sauteed some leeks and garlic in some butter, which I added to our Vitamix and blended with some more butter and almond milk, which I added as we mashed the potatoes. I couldn't sneak these past my older brother however, he knew something was up with his "regular" mashed potatoes. Fail on my part. I also did a really easy roasted carrot that I tossed with a little honey and ground ginger. If you make the carrots make sure to toss them in the honey after they are done cooking otherwise you will have a sticky burnt mess in the oven. Baked beans aren't a traditional side for our Easter dinner but I thought what goes better than ham and beans... Also I have always wanted to make some beans from scratch. This process involved soaking dry beans and then I cooked them in the crockpot overnight. I quasi followed a recipe by The Beeroness for her Slow Cooker Maple Bacon Beer Baked Beans. I did tweak the some things in the recipe. I added some beef broth instead of water. I also ended up adding a small can of tomato paste and a little brown sugar after tasting them in the morning. I like the tomato flavor and richness that the tomato paste added. 
The last couple of items in the picture above are what we refer to "individual" corn and a broccoli salad. The individual corn is named for my younger brother that never liked the Scalloped Corn so my mom always had to make a little side dish of regular steamed corn for him. That tradition has continued. The broccoli salad was a spin on the traditional broccoli salad with a mayo dressing. I opted to make a clementine vinaigrette, then added bacon, clementines, dried cherries, slivered almonds, and fresh mint. Flavor-wise I really liked it but the dressing got a little thing so it didn't coat the broccoli quite as well as I hoped.
Of course we had to finish off with some dessert. We didn't go crazy, with anything elaborate even though my mom was mentioned she wanted us to recreate a salted caramel cheesecake that she recently had vacation. We kept it simple with angel food cake and berry syrup, some fresh strawberries and fresh whipped cream. 
If you have some picky eaters in your family, I would encourage you not to shy away from foods that they might not like but instead try to find ways that you can "sneak" them into dishes. Chances are their distaste for a food is probably based on either a poor preparation of it or memory from when they were 9 years old and they lived off of Fun Dip instead of broccoli. If you are a picky eater, I encourage you step out and try some new things. It's not going to kill you, unless it is sushi made from raw chicken, don't do that it might actually kill you. Who knows you might actually really like something and be missing out. Just like life you tend to regret the things you didn't do/try versus the ones you did do/try. If you want specific recipes for anything I mentioned I would be happy to share, just comment below.
Have a Great Monday!!!  Does anyone else use the app Timehop? Yep...I do and it's so much fun. I love to see what I was posting about 1 year ago, 2 years ago or even 6 years ago on Facebook or Instagram. |
The Original | The New Version |
Healthy Version Ingredients | Healthy Version Directions |
Unhealthy Version Ingredients |
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The original version of this bar is one of my all time favorites. How can you go wrong with chocolate, peanut butter, crispy Special K cereal, and tons of sugar? Given our new found healthy living lifestyle eating bars like that isn't a frequent occurrence. That doesn't necessarily mean I will never eat the original version again, but try to make it a very infrequent indulgence. Not to say the Paleo version is necessarily healthy, but there isn't the guilt of eating a bunch of processed food and sugar.
So ever since the 4th of July where a friend of ours made the original version, I had the idea of wanting to try to find a healthier option. I will be the first one to admit that I'm not a baker and have never been one to make desserts. With cooking I don't mind experimenting and just throwing things together. With stuff like this though I have no idea how to balance flavors so I had to do a little research, so this recipe was found on The Paleo Mom's website. The ingredients listed below is a slight modification from hers, due to the bars being a little bit on the gooey side and a little bit on the sweet side. I think that could have been because we used a Justin's Maple Almond Butter, it was all we had in the house. So if you can try to find a plain almond butter to cut a little bit of that sweet, unless you really like sweet desserts.
So ever since the 4th of July where a friend of ours made the original version, I had the idea of wanting to try to find a healthier option. I will be the first one to admit that I'm not a baker and have never been one to make desserts. With cooking I don't mind experimenting and just throwing things together. With stuff like this though I have no idea how to balance flavors so I had to do a little research, so this recipe was found on The Paleo Mom's website. The ingredients listed below is a slight modification from hers, due to the bars being a little bit on the gooey side and a little bit on the sweet side. I think that could have been because we used a Justin's Maple Almond Butter, it was all we had in the house. So if you can try to find a plain almond butter to cut a little bit of that sweet, unless you really like sweet desserts.
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We have definitely tricked a few people with this recipe before because these brownies look, smell, and taste just like the ones your grandma use to make with butter and flour. Laura found the recipe on Instagram for the brownies and we are drawing a blank on where she found it otherwise we definitely give props to you. So if this looks like your recipe shoot us a message and we will give you shout out.
So we technically made up this dessert for our #weirdvegwednesday but there isn’t really any veggies in it. I’m going to modify and call it weird produce Wednesday because of the avocados in the frosting. If you try this recipe out on unknowing subjects we would love to hear what their response was when you told them what was actually in these. The pan I made was a double batch, so the ingredients listed below are for just a single batch. So don’t follow my directions below and put them in a 9″ x 13″ like my pic otherwise you will be a brownie flatbread. Ooh I might be on to something with that…
So we technically made up this dessert for our #weirdvegwednesday but there isn’t really any veggies in it. I’m going to modify and call it weird produce Wednesday because of the avocados in the frosting. If you try this recipe out on unknowing subjects we would love to hear what their response was when you told them what was actually in these. The pan I made was a double batch, so the ingredients listed below are for just a single batch. So don’t follow my directions below and put them in a 9″ x 13″ like my pic otherwise you will be a brownie flatbread. Ooh I might be on to something with that…
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So we like to our vegetables, so we started up a deal a few weeks ago that we would try to use a weird vegetable each week. We also thought it would be fun to take semi-normal vegetables prepare them in a weird way. So we have all had cucumbers, but have you had cucumber ice cream? On top of that we decided to go a step further and make a vegan ice cream using coconut milk. We have the luxury of having an ice cream maker so if you don’t have one you may need to get creative on how you can make it without one.
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I was skeptical. I almost didn’t make them. How in the HECK could brownies made out of black beans be good?
Well…they were better than good. They were AMAZING. I loved them…I really don’t think I’ll ever go back to normal brownies!! I topped these with a little pb2 sauce but they really didn’t need it.
We took these over to my hubby’s brother’s house for dinner and I thought it’d be hilarious to play a trick on them and not tell them what they were made of. They know me so well though…before I could even dish them up they asked me what kind of vegetable was in them. Seriously…who do they think I am??! I told them there were no vegetables but they knew something was up. I didn’t care though because they LIKED them!!
Recipe courtesy of @angelamccafferty on IG. Thanks Angela!
Well…they were better than good. They were AMAZING. I loved them…I really don’t think I’ll ever go back to normal brownies!! I topped these with a little pb2 sauce but they really didn’t need it.
We took these over to my hubby’s brother’s house for dinner and I thought it’d be hilarious to play a trick on them and not tell them what they were made of. They know me so well though…before I could even dish them up they asked me what kind of vegetable was in them. Seriously…who do they think I am??! I told them there were no vegetables but they knew something was up. I didn’t care though because they LIKED them!!
Recipe courtesy of @angelamccafferty on IG. Thanks Angela!
ingredients1 scoop chocolate protein powder (about 30g – I used Chocolate Shakeology) 1 – 15 oz can of black beans 1/4 c baking stevia (didn’t have any so I used turbinado) 1/4c cacao powder or cocoa 1/4 c melted coconut oil 1/4 c almond butter (I used Justin’s maple almond butter) 2 tbsp honey 2 tbsp maple syrup 1 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp xanthan gum (optional – gives better texture I guess…but I didn’t use any and thought it was fine) 2 tsp vanilla 2 large eggs 1/4 c dark chocolate chips (optional) | directions1) Preheat oven to 350. 2) Rinse beans off very well. 3) Add all ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend well. You want the beans as smooth as possible. 4) Bake for approximately 20-22 minutes in an 8×8 pan sprayed with nonstick spray. 5) Store in the refrigerator. |
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