Wednesday, May 30, 2012

breakfast quinoa!

I have been feeling the need recently to switch up things with my breakfast routine. Get something a bit more substantial in there – something warm and comforting and, I dunno, breakfast-y?

Oh, and something that is grab and go, too. Which is kinda a tall order.

I used to really love the packets of maple brown sugar super sweet disgusting quaker oatmeal, that you just add hot water to and go. But, for one, I’m reaaalllllyyy trying to cut out process shit from my diet wherever possible (beer is still allowed, for example), and I dunno, I was craving something more.

ENTER: breakfast quinoa.

I’m not gonna dive into all the accolades available for quinoa – y’all can google it for yourselves. But, long story short, quinoa is actually a seed, is gluten free, is loaded with protein and some other important crap, and has a mildly cous-cous like consistency. Which makes it less mushy and texturally disgusting than oatmeal (don’t lie – even if you like oatmeal, that shit is kinda disgusting).

I experimented with a few different preparations of the breakfast quinoa before arriving on the perfect recipe, which is not too sweet, but still has flavor. Plus, you can pretty much add anything you want to it. It’s a blank slate.

I like to make a big batch on Sunday, and package it up into individual Tupperware containers, so I have a week’s worth of breakfast. Grab and go, baby. This is how to make enough for 5 days’ worth of yumminess (or, a business week for you nitpickers).
You will need:

- 1 ¼ cups dry quinoa (may I suggest buying it in a package that says “pre-rinsed?” because I can’t tell you what to do with anything that is not rinsed)
- 1 ½ cups of coconut milk (unsweetened)
- Honey
- Pumpkin pie spice (for convenience – you can also use cinnamon, a bit of sugar and nutmeg)
- Vanilla extract
- Chopped nuts of your choosing (optional)
- Almond butter flavor of your choosing (optional)
- Frozen fruit of your choosing (optional – but I suggest raspberries and blueberries)




Dump the quinoa and coconut millk into a sauce pan over high-ish heat. Once you get a nice simmer going, reduce to medium. Add the honey, vanilla and spices. I do, like, 2 nice squeezes of honey, probably 2-3 tsps of vanilla?, and a few dashes of pumpkin pie spice. You want it to smell just delish – its kinda hard to go overboard. But it’s possible, so be careful.




Cover the pot and simmer until all the liquid is absorbed, stirring occasionally. If it stops simmering, turn the heat up a little bit. Once all liquid is absorbed (about 20-25 mins), remove from heat and portion out into 5 tupperware containers. Garnish with chopped nuts (I go with a mix of walnuts and pecans), frozen fruit, and a tbsp of almond butter (I personally love Justin’s Vanilla Almond Butter, but dark chocolate, maple, regular… it would all work). Stick in the fridge, where the fruit will unfreeze itself and leak yummy juices all into your breakfast for an awesome sweet/sour taste. Microwave for 1 min in the morning to reheat. Enjoy!





memorial day murph

After a lovely Memorial Day Weekend spent at Lake LBJ, outside of Austin:




I came home to this:




And this:




Which, secretly, was a bit more lovely than the weekend itself. Heartburn + sunburn + hangover + eating shit all weekend is not a good feeling, amirite?

So, rather than snuggle up on the couch with the pups and indulge in whatever episode of Law and Order happened to be on at the moment, I arrived back in Houston, where the temp was 92 and the humidity was 146%, and thought, “HEY! Let’s go make myself feel even WORSE and do a CrossFit workout at the box!” So off I dragged my ass.

For anyone not familiar with CrossFit, I can’t explain it all without boring you to tears, but basically it’s a kick-ass, high intensity workout designed around functional bodyweight movements (push-ups, squats, pull-ups), Olympic lifting, and gymnastics movements. It is perfect for the ADHD child in me, since you rarely do the same workout twice (and if you do, it will be months apart, as a means of benchmarking your progress). Also, it is infinitely scalable – you can always lift less weight, do push-ups on your knees, etc. In the same vein, there is always room for improvement and always a goal. Plus, what girl secretly doesn’t want to feel bad ass like the boys and throw some weight around?

I’ve been CrossFitting since September 2011, and Memorial Day was the first time I would be tackling one of the most respected benchmark workouts: MURPH. CrossFit has multiple benchmark workouts named in honor of men and women who have lost their lives in combat, and loved to CrossFit. Murph is named for Lt. Michael Murphy, a Medal of Honor winner, who was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2005. It looks a little something like this:

1 mile run
100 pull-ups
200 push-ups
300 squats
1 mile run
(20/12 lb weight vest for men/women)

You can break up the pull-ups/push-ups/squats however you want, but they must be bookended by the mile runs. Other hero workout rules: 1) Don’t cheat 2) Don’t quit

Let me just say – this workout is no joke. Even though I used a band for pull-ups and (duhh) did not wear a weight vest, I wasn’t breezing through this shit. It certainly didn’t help that concrete that has been baking in the sun all day is hot as hell. When I hit the ground for my first push-up, I felt like I was laying on a tanning bed.

I broke the workout up into 20 rounds of 5 pull-ups/10 push-ups/15 squats. More than 10 push-ups in a row would be pushing it for me with this (ha ha, see what I did there? “pushing” it? ha ha). Thanks to not having the ability to do regular pull-ups and having to use a band, my hands didn’t rip. But my quads were on fire about halfway through. And you wanna know what sucked? That last mile run. I thought “oh, haaay, I’ll just jog the last mile real slow, no biggie”. HA. I walked about 1/3 of it.

BUT – I finished. (Without going to my knees for push-ups!!) And so did everyone else. I’m happy to have this workout under my belt, and glad to have done SOMETHING mildly patriotic for Memorial Day, rather than just posting some bullshit on my Facebook timeline and calling it a day. While doing a hero workout may be mildly selfish (because secretly, I was also doing it to burn off the 47 million beers I consumed over the weekend), I think it’s really cool that my CrossFit box, and others around the country, do this workout every Memorial Day to remind us all that, hey, this may kick the crap out of you, but it ain’t SHIT compared to serving in the Middle East, so take your torn hands and sore quads and STFU. Or something like that. Happy summer, y’all!





Wednesday, May 2, 2012

spring spaghetti!!!

I know this blog has about, ohhhh, 3 readers, but for you, dear readers, I have really been at a loss lately, since I have had a bunch of dud recipes and repeats lately. Nothing new going on up in my kitchen.

This week was supposed to be a week of easy dinners (can we say grilled cheese, anyone?), because the fiancĂ© and I are hosting the one party a year I allow him to have this Saturday, and I didn’t feel like stuffing my fridge for the week when it will be stuffed this Friday with party goodies. Don’t worry, the blog will be lit up with party goodies come early next week – pulled pork fo sho, plus whatever pinterest goodies strike my fancy.

So I found this pasta recipe on pinterest that looked simple enough, and called for fresh mint and ramps. All the stupid food blogs out there go apeshit come spring when ramps are available. You’d think they were giving out free truffles at the markets. I was curious, naturally. Except… fucking HEB didn’t have them. Apparently, they are usually just at farmer’s markets. Go figure. A quick google search in the produce aisle sent me home with a giant leek, the afore-mentioned mint, and some pancetta, because who doesn’t love bacon in all its glorious varieties?

Well, I’m pretty sure this recipe is 17x better than the original, mostly because of the pancetta, but whatever, its delish, so try it. Kthanks.

Spring Pasta with Leeks, Mushrooms, Pancetta and Fresh Mint:

- ½ a pound of pasta (spaghetti or linguine is best)
- 1 leek
- A pack of pancetta (umm no idea on the measurement)
- Baby bella mushrooms, to taste, diced
- ¼ cup white wine
- ¼ cup shredded parmesan
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Fresh mint, finely diced (like, a tbsp?)




If you’re like me, you look at a leek and go, “what the fuck do I do with this monster?” I’m gonna tell you. Chop off the dark green leaves. You want only super light green/white stalk left. Then chop up the stalk thinly, and toss into a bowl of cold water. There is a whole bunch of grit and funk between the layers of this thing, so you want to get it out of there. Swirl the bits around in the water, then drain and set aside.




Ok, let’s next salt some water, get it boiling, and toss the pasta in. You want to cook it to jusssstttt al dente. Once it’s there, take it off the stove, drain, and toss with a bit of olive oil to keep it from sticking to itself. Set aside.

Put a large frying pan on the stove, and turn the heat up to medium-high. Once hot, put the pancetta in there (if you’re like me, you buy it in a pack all diced for you – if you’re not like me, well shit, dice that crap up first. Use your head here). Let the pieces get a bit brown and crispy, and the fat render out, about 2-4 mins. Toss the mushrooms in with the pancetta, salt them (to draw the moisture out), and cook for another 1-2 mins.

Put the cooked pasta in the frying pan with the pancetta and mushrooms and let it get a bit toasty, stirring a bit to get all the pieces cooked through. I’d say leave it in, ohhh, 2-3 mins. Yeah.

NEXT toss in the sliced up leeks, as much or as little as you want, and toss constantly, until leeks are wilted. Again, 2-3 mins.

Pour in the white wine. It will bubble up and mostly evaporate. (Confession time – I didn’t have any white wine on hand. I did, however, have an open bottle of Andre that I’m sure was half flat. So I used that. It still tasted good.)

Sprinkle the shredded parm all over the toss the pasta. As soon as the cheese is all melty, turn off the heat, and sprinkle as much mint as you want throughout the pasta. Toss until mint is just wilting. Seriously, maybe taste the pasta and add more mint if you’d like. I wish I’d used more mint.

Serve this up and enjoy! It is seriously yummy and easy easy easy!