The Cook & The Coach Blog

Flank Steak Salad with Parsley Vinaigrette

8/30/2016

Ladies if you need a way to get your husbands to eat a salad, start with this one. I mean what guy doesn't like steak, then you combine that with mushrooms and gorgonzola cheese, it's a win! The asparagus and tomatoes are there as a way to sneak in some more veggies! The dressing is super simple and adds a fun punch of flavor. It's crisp, it's herbacious, it's delicious.

We would love to know if you try this one out! Leave us a comment below. If you love it don't forget to Pin It so you can save it for later!

Ingredients

Salad Ingredients - Makes 3 salads

6 cups of of mixed greens or spinach
1 lb of flank steak, grilled and sliced
1 1/2 cups of dry mushrooms, sauteed
1 1/2 cups of asparagus, grilled and cut into 1" pieces
1 1/2 cups of cherry tomatoes, halved
6 tbsp of gorgonzola cheese

Dressing Ingredients

1 cup fresh parsely
1/4 cup white wine vineager
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1-2 tsp minced garlic
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

Season the steak and asparagus with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper. Grill until the steak is medium rare- medium and the asparagus is soft but still has a little crunch.
Sautee the mushrooms in a skillet with a little olive oil or butter.
For the dressing, all all the ingredients in a blender and blend on high for 20 seconds or until the everything is well combined.
Put your salad together, 2 cups of greens on the bottom, then layer 1/2 cup of each of your veggies; mushrooms, asparagus, and tomatoes, top with your sliced steak. If you've never cooked flank steak make sure you slice it perpendicular to the grain of the steak.
Top with 2 tbsp of cheese, dressing, and some extra fresh parsley if you still have some.

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1,200 Miles Later - Back in MN

8/30/2016

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Do you ever try to plan your life out? Yeah we do too. Back in May we felt pretty awesome that we had booked parks all way up to the first week in July....and we wouldn't have to stress about where we would be staying. Our plan was to stay on the east coast, then make our way to Asheville for a few weeks before we would end up in Nashville for our Beachbody Summit the end of July.

Well...in comes a curveball. We found out Laura's entire family was coming to Minnesota for the 4th of July. Hearing this, we laid out the pros and cons of making the trip back or sticking to our original plan. If the title of the blog didn't give it away, we chose to head back to MN. All those plans we had, were now up in smoke :) Instead of heading to Asheville, we went to New Jersey for a couple weeks to explore NYC and that area!!

Our first stop on our way back to Minnesota was Hershey, PA. Since we love chocolate as much as we do, this was a no brainer. Although Hershey doesn't exactly make healthy chocolate, we still wanted to check it out. Eli's favorite part was the singing cows on the ride that we went on. So that made it all worth it. We also indulged in a few chocolate treats.

We left Hershey on a Saturday and since most parks are either full or make you pay a premium for a weekend rate, we opted to stay at a Walmart outside of Cleveland. We don't mind doing this as long as it's a quick stay. On our way through Pennsylvania I made Laura a little nervous since we ended up on a bit of a detour due to construction and weight restrictions on the road we were supposed to go on. The roads were a little narrow, a little curvy, and a little hilly. We took it slow and made it through unscathed, other than upsetting a few locals that got stuck behind me.

After our Walmart stay we got on the road fairly early, which was a blessing and a curse. Our plan was to stay on the east side of Chicago since that would have only been about a 4-5 hour drive from where we were but we didn't factor in the time change and also the difference of driving through Chicago on a Sunday vs Monday. The blessing was we opted to push through the to the North side of Chicago but the curse was that meant spending almost 9 hours traveling that day. Which gets to be A LOT with a toddler.

This made our drive the next day super easy though, only about 2 hours to Wisconsin Dells where we stayed for a couple nights. Of course we chose the two coldest days of the summer to be in the Dells, so that meant no waterparks. We did have a nice pool and splash pad at our campground so Eli was able to spend some time in the water. I was even able to sneak in a round of golf one morning since it was only 55 degrees when we woke up. Great golf weather, poor pool weather.

Before heading out, we made our way to a train museum to indulge Eli's new fascination with choo-choo's. They had a legit coal powered mini-train that we could ride on. Eli loved it, even thought at times it got kind of loud. We also got him his first choo-choo set which he still loves! After that we made our final push to get back to Minnesota.

Our first couple of nights back in Minnesota we spent at Baker Park, just west of Minneapolis. When we make it back to MN from now on, this will definitely be a home base for us. It's a great park, tons of room and nice playgrounds. We even had some visitors one night for dinner. We miss our friends and family and seeing them made our 1,200 mile journey home SO worth it!

After a couple nights at Baker Park we moved to Laura's brother's empty lot which was conveniently located right on Lake Minnetonka. We were pretty spoiled! We parked on his lot for 5 days over the 4th. Definitely one of the best views we've had in our RV adventures so far.

It was also super fun to get to be "RVing" with Laura's sister, Sara and family again. They parked right behind us on the lot. Over the weekend we spent time on the boat, swimming in the lake, eating delicious food, but most importantly spending time with family. It was fabulous!!!

Look for a blog post in the next couple weeks where we can catch you up on the rest of our adventures in Minnesota, along with our travels down to Nashville for our Beachbody Coach Summit.

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Classic Lemon Vinaigrette

8/25/2016

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One thing we really encourage a lot of our clients to work on is to be more veggies, especially greens. One of the easiest ways to get more greens in is to eat more salads. We love our salads, and try to it one 5 days a week. We aren't just talking about a little side salad with dinner. We are talking full on, stuff my face and stomach salad that is loaded with greens and veggies. We see a lot of people that grasp that concept which is awesome, but then they douse all those quality veggies with some low quality salad dressing.

A couple of tips if you do buy store bought dressings;

Avoid "Low Fat" dressings! Low fat usually just means high sugar or as one of my favorite memes out there states, Low Fat = Chemical Shit Storm!
Try to find dressing with fewer ingredients. Most salad dressings should contain a vinegar and an oil and maybe some seasonings. Avoid artificial colors, sweeteners, and flavors.
Avoid veggie oils, canola and soyben are the big ones used in cheap dressings. These easily oxidize and will likely cause inflammation in your body. Not to mention most canola is genetically modified.

Sound like a lot of work to follow those rules? Well the easy solution is to buy some of those base ingredients and keep them on hand so you can make your own dressings. Here is a simple one to get you started.

Ingredients

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tbsp raw apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp raw honey
Season with salt and pepper

Directions

Combine all ingredients other than the oil in a blender and mix until well combined.
Drizzle the olive oil in slowly over the course of 30 seconds while the blender is running.
Serve over your salad, and store the extra in the fridge. This should be enough dressing to last an entire week at least.

If the idea of eating more veggies and cleaning up your eating sounds like something you would be interested in, we will be hosting a special group on Facebook in a little over a week. The group will revolve around having a salad a day for week. We will provide recipes like the one above and some more tips on how to put together an amazingly healthy salad. If you are interested click on the image below and RSVP.

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Catching Up On Our Travels - New York City

8/23/2016

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It's been awhile since we've shared some of our travels. I wanted to catch up on our posts over the next couple weeks. For now, here is our New York and New Jersey adventures.

We stayed at an RV Park about 2 hours south of NYC but there wasn't really wasn't anything much closer unless you wanted to pay a premium. So we took 2 hours away and camped for free! This was our first 2 week stay with our Thousand Trail membership and it was so nice to slow down a bit and setup shop for longer than 4-5 days.

Both times we came into the city we opted to park on the Jersey side of the river and take the ferry across. If we wouldn't have run into road construction on our second day coming into the city this would have been super slick both days. One day we parked close to the Hoboken ferry terminal and the second day (on the weekend) we parked by the Jersey City ferry terminal. We figured this was the cheaper and more convenient route to explore the city versus driving downtown and paying tolls and parking over there.

We did pretty much everything you would want to do in NYC. We spent some time down around the water watching some of our friends play in the professional volleyball event that was in town and found a couple parks that Eli could play at with some other kiddos.

After some volleyball watching and park playing we headed towards the 9/11 memorial and were blown away. We didn't do the museum but just being on the grounds where it all happened was pretty powerful. From there we walked towards the Brooklyn Bridge and made it half way across before we turned back, LOL!!! We then hit up a NYC pizza place in Little Italy that made gluten free crusts. Pretty tasty but given the price tag, I may have to pass next time. Then we were back to watch more volleyball! Yeah that was all in Day 1, it was a lot of walking!

Day 2 we did a little more volleyball watching then made our way to Bluestone Lane for brunch and lattes! This might have been the highlight of our NYC trip, especially the avocado toast that I got on GF toast!

After brunch, we hopped on the Subway or as Eli calls it, choo-choo, and headed to Central Park. It was a hot day and we were starting to get tired from all of our walking so we didn't get into the park too far but explored the south side and just sat for awhile and let Eli run around.

After sitting a bit we started walking towards Time Square. We hit up a little detour on the way and stopped at Momofuku Milk Bar where Laura got a little treat. Unfortunately they didn't have anything that was gluten free so I was forced to watch Laura and Eli enjoy their ice cream. Which apparently when you get to the bottom it tastes just like the milk in the bottom of a bowl of cereal. We continued on and swung past Rockafeller Center and Radio City Music Hall.

We cruised through/past Time Square...but because it was absolutely nuts and we were starting to get tired frustrated with the crowds...it was literally a "oh hey, there it is" and kept walking. We continued on to the Subway Station which we found out after buying our ticket that we went in on the wrong side of the street and were heading uptown and not downtown. So, we bought ANOTHER ticket, crossed the street and started heading home!

We hit up the salad/hot food bar at Whole Foods and made our way back to our ferry. After watching the sunset from the NYC side of the Hudson River we hopped on the ferry and started heading home after a couple long days in NYC. So fun!

We had a couple whirlwind days in New York but part of our adventures were just hanging out at our RV Park too. It was a great park with a huge playground for Eli and a nice new pool. On top of that Eli (and us) made some new friends. Eli loved playing with Chloe and Carson. They were so nice with him and were really like nice older siblings, not the mean kind that pick on you. Oh and like I said we made new friends too with their parents. We had so much in common and loved chatting while the kids played. Can't wait to meet up with them again in California!

We also explored the Jersey area closer to where we were staying. That included Atlantic City which was about 20 minutes away. We were very underwhelmed with the city. We walked up and down the board walk and explored the beach a little. You could tell that it was hit hard by the economic downturn. So unless you like casinos...it really isn't that great. We did find this statue that recognized that AC was/is the home of Miss America Pageant.

We also took a trip down to Cape May which was a a lot more our style, laid back beach town. We met up with some friends, Laurie and Trey, that actually took a ferry over from Maryland. Trey was racing in a triathlon in the area the next day which sounded like a lot of fun. The beach area was fantastic down there. We also heard, but never went, about a zoo that was down in Cape May that was supposed to be fantastic. By the time we knew about it, we were already too busy to make it down there.

All in all, we really enjoyed our time in this area! Jersey was a good change of pace and was nice to slow down. NYC was fantastic and fun to see all the sights!!

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Fish and Veggie Red Curry

8/17/2016

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Laura loves curry!!! So what do you do when your wife loves curry, you make curry for her. Sometimes I'm all about doing things from absolute scratch. In the case of curry, it would be fantastic to toast my own spices then grind them fresh and use my mortal and pestle to make a paste. But let's be honest that takes time and energy.

Instead we found a pre-made curry paste, added in some fresh veggies and fish and a couple other ingredients and we had a delicious dish in under 30 minutes. This was my first time ever using fish in a curry and it turned out pretty great. If you are completely scared of fish or don't like the flavor, too bad, try it anyways. I think you will be surprised that the curry is the dominate flavor and not the fish, so it is a good way to give fish a try.

Feel free to add your favorite veggies to this dish. You don't have to use what we used, we just had these on hand and that is why we love curry dishes so much, because they are so versatile. You could also sub out the quinoa for rice or even zoodles or sweet potato noodles if you want to go grain free. The possibilities are endless. We hope you enjoy this one as much as we did.

Ingredients

1 lb of your favorite white fish, we used flounder but you could easily use cod, haddock, pollock, even walleye
1 tbsp coconut oil
2 large carrots, chopped into bite size pieces
1 large onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 cups fresh or frozen green beans
3 tbsp Red Curry paste from Thai Kitchen
1 tbsp coconut sugar, palm sugar, or brown sugar
1 15 oz can of coconut milk
1 1/2 cups of water
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 cups dried quinoa
1/4 cup fresh cilantro

Directions

In a large saucepan or dutch oven add the coconut oil and melt over a medium high heat.
Add the carrots, peppers, and onions and cook for 8 minutes.
Add red curry paste and cook and stir for 1 minute, then add the coconut milk, fish sauce, sugar, and water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low.
This is where timing things out comes in handy. Depending on the type of grain; quinoa or rice, you should possibly start that before you start cooking any of the veg and curry sauce. For me I started the quinoa in our pressure cooker when I was cooking the veg. If you are doing it on the stovetop you might need to start sooner. When your grains have approximately 8 minutes left add your fish cut up into 1-2" pieces and your green beans or any other frozen veg.
Simmer the sauce with the fish and all the veg for that final 8 minutes with your pan covered. Try not to cook the fish for much longer than 8 minutes otherwise it will just start to fall apart.
Once your quinoa or rice is done, serve a couple large spoonfuls in the bottom of your bowl and top with the curry sauce. Finish with some freshly chopped cilantro and enjoy.

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Do You, Don't Let The World Miss Out

8/17/2016

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We each have a story. Things that have shaped us and changed us and formed us into the people we are today.

We each have a CHOICE as to what we're going to do with those things. You can choose to continue coasting and taking the easy route...simply accepting what's in front of you, swallowing your dreams and never allowing them to surface OR you can go out and find whatever the hell you're looking for!!!

Four years ago I was ready for a change. A change in my fitness routine which then turned into a COMPLETE change in my life...for the better. I never used to dream or have goals. I would simply coast through my days, my weeks, my months with no vision for what I wanted or the type of impact I wanted to have. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to change lives somehow but I had lost my way and gotten complacent. It happens.

But all of a sudden I was thrust into this crazy Beachbody world filled with these people who were talking about goal setting, dreaming bigger, helping and inspiring others, living with purpose....and all of a sudden...God opened my eyes.

I felt in my gut that my purpose was here somewhere....so I jumped in with both feet and my eyes wide open. I started running online accountability groups and fell in love with encouraging people, supporting them, giving them a kick in the butt when they needed it...and then watching them SUCCEED. Watching them slowly lose weight and believe in themselves again and see that they could do the things they never thought possible.

My vision is to help people LIVE FULLY. To empower others and help them see that they are incredible...and can do ANYTHING. To give them HOPE! To inspire people towards health, sweat and proper nutrition and to most importantly, point people to Jesus with love and encouragement.

Who would have thought that this little side job would ever amount to much?? It's changed both of our lives and our health so much that we want as many people as possible to experience what we have.

If you've been following us for awhile and are feeling that nudge or even a bit of curiosity about whether you could do this too, we would love to hear from you. We know it isn't for everyone but we know if you are a follower of ours you likely have a similar heart to help people and this business has been a perfect outlet for us it could be for you too.

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Beachbody Health Bet

8/5/2016

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One of the coolest things on the horizon for us is a new incentive that was announced last week at our Coach Summit in Nashville. It is called the Beachbody Health Bet. The concept is Beachbody the company and partially us as coaches are challenging you to commit to 2 simple behaviors for 4 weeks starting September 5th, 2016 with a prep week starting on August 29th!

What are those 2 behaviors?

Workout 3 times per week.
Drink Shakeology 5 times per week.

Pretty simple, right??? These two things have been at the cornerstone of our own health and we know that if people can commit to them on a regular basis they will get healthier! The cool thing about this incentive is if you do them Beachbody is going to pay you top of it.

You've maybe heard for the website, www.dietbet.com, where you can wager a certain amount of money and if you lose "x" percentage of weight by the end of the challenge you get a portion of the pot. Part of this is great in that people put a little skin in the game to give you that extra push to get results. The downside is that people can lose weight in some very unhealthy ways. That is why I absolutely love the approach that Beachbody has laid out for this challenge. It's all about creating healthy behaviors, and yeah weight loss might be a side effect of that but you don't have to feel pressure to starve yourself in order to get a piece of this pie.

So what's in the "pie"?

Beachbody is kicking in $1 MILLION up front.
They will ad an additional $5 to the pot for every Challenge Pack sold between July 27th - August 31st with a maximum amount of $3,000,000 in the pot!

How do you get a piece of that pie?

Commit to the 2 behaviors mentioned above
Join our challenge group that will start on September 5th (prep week to start on Aug 29th)
Log those behaviors daily in Beachbody's My Challenge Tracker App

That's free money for just doing stuff that is going to help you get closer to your goals. You don't have to put any of your own money on the line and it isn't contingent on you losing weight. If you are interested in joining our group that starts on September 5th taking and taking part in the Beachbody Health Bet click on the link below.

I WANT TO GET HEALTHY AND MAKE MONEY!

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Fixate Cooking Show

8/5/2016

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So unless you are living under a rock you've most likely heard of the program 21 Day Fix. The concept behind the program is that you combine exercise with a portion control system using color coded containers. The difficulty that some of our customers have had is how to you go from ingredients to meals using the containers. Fixate is the answer to that.

Fixate is a cooking show that will air on Beachbody On Demand. The show will be a cooking show where Autumn's brother who is a professional chef will teach you how to put together meals in a healthy way using the container system. I'm a sucker for cooking shows so I'm pretty excited about this plus I know it will help so many people have more confidence with the container system that is proven to work if it gets used. Each episode/recipe will be 4-7 minutes long and include downloadable instructions and grocery lists. This is scheduled to go live on August 19th, 2016.

“It’s so easy to get stuck in a cooking rut,” Autumn explains. “We designed Fixate to help people get more creative with their healthy, portion-controlled eating plans, so they can try new recipes as well as learn to make and containerize the foods they already love.”

We want to help people get healthy and lose weight and we know sometimes a little incentive is a great way to get people started. Let me explain in a little more detail what we are offering. If you purchase any Challenge Pack (workout + month's supply of Shakeology) you will also receive a free copy of Autumn's cookbook, Fixate. With this Challenge Pack purchase you will also receive a free 30 Day membership to Beachbody On Demand which will give you access to Autumn's new cooking show! Oh and over 400 different workouts if you feel like dabbling with something else.

The other option if you aren't sure if any of this is right for you is to sign up for a FREE 30 Day Club Membership. For 30 days you will have access to 400+ workouts, Autumn's new cooking show, and some other great resources. If on day 30 you haven't used it or didn't like it you can cancel no questions asked. Well we might actually ask you why you didn't like it but just for feedback purposes... :) If you choose this option you will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of Autumn's cookbook Fixate!

We believe in these products and know that they can change lives but they can only do that if you have them and use so hopefully this will be that little push to get you started.

ENTER TO WIN

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Flank Steak Salad with Parsley Vinaigrette

Ingredients

Directions

1,200 Miles Later - Back in MN

Classic Lemon Vinaigrette

Ingredients

Directions

Catching Up On Our Travels - New York City

Fish and Veggie Red Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Do You, Don't Let The World Miss Out

Beachbody Health Bet

Fixate Cooking Show

The Cook & The Coach

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