Recipe of the week: Quinoa Salad

This weeks recipe is by far one of my most favourite new simple recipes. I will say beforehand to cook a batch of quinoa (which can be used for days for salads, or breakfast dishes). I didn't have any quinoa pre-cooked, so before dinner time came, and while I was reading blogs I cooked 

• 1 cup of quinoa
• 2 cups of water
• a splash of coconut oil
• Himalayan salt. 

It cooks just like rice if you've never cooked with it before, so it takes 20 minutes in a pot with a lid. Once its cooked I will take the lid off, and use a fork to fluff up the quinoa before I let it cool a bit with the lid off.

After reading my blogs for the day I took out a nice big salad bowl, and filled it half way with salad greens that I had in my fridge.

                  

Next I took out everything I wanted for the salad

• 4 radishes
• 3 inches of cucumber
• 1 handful of blueberries
• 5 slices of turkey bacon
• 1 cup of cooked quinoa
• Extra virgian olive oil
• Balsalmic vinegar
• Himalayan salt, and my pepper grinder for some fresh pepper 

                  

Mmm, my guilty pleasure- turkey bacon!

                 

Here's my cooled quinoa

                 

                  

Once I chopped up my veggies, and cooked bacon I added it all to the bowl of greens

                  

I don't really measure how much olive oil or balsalmic I use because you either like your salad really saucy, or a bit on the drier side, so I'll leave that to your discretion. 

Salt and pepper to taste.

Here's the final product! It was incredibly yummy, and when I served it to my son he had a great big smile on his face :)

Hope you enjoy! 

                 

Health Cleanse

A couple of posts ago- I mentioned that we are finally going to be setting a date for our long awaited wedding!

As always, things move fast (although, not my wedding plans until just now), I've started this Self Care Series which will run for the next 5 weeks after this week (and also means I'm practicing everything I talk about everyday). We are moving soon, and also buckling in for some great life changes at home for the long haul (I'm talking buying our first home, and expanding our family). So a lot is happening around me as I sit here and blog about it. Oh, did I mention I'm night weaning my toddler? Ah!!

No need for stress, its time for action! I want to feel and look my best not only for my wedding (but yes, it is a major plus to have a date to push towards with some healthy lifestyle goals), but for my life. So what did I do amongst all this chaos? 

I started a liver cleanse.. Was it a great idea for such a busy and hectic time in my life? I'm not so sure about that, but I'm doing it anyways. You know why? Because there's never a time like the present. No, my liver cleanse isn't planned and 100% ready to go (I had such a stressful evening I didn't get around to my tumeric tea- tomorrow is another day!), but I did a little research and instead of perfecting, thinking, dreaming and wishing I would just do it already, I'm doing it.

I've recently been talking to a friend- who is in the nutritional field- about liver function. And it hit me after that conversation that some things needed to change so I could have glowing skin for my walk down the aisle! Because of medication that I used since I was a young child, it has not been good for my poor liver, add in a couple trips to Vegas and free booze in Mexico I think its time I said "hey liver, I love you too!", right? Couldn't we all show some appreciation for such a wonderful organ that is our basic detoxification centre? The skin will usually try and help the liver by expelling toxins through the skin, so its time to give all of my organs the love that they so truly desire.

Amongst other things, here are a couple of links about foods that cleanse the liver, how to boost the functioning of your liver, and release toxins

• 14 Foods that Cleanse the Liver
• 9 Simple Ways to Boost Your Liver
• Get Rid of Toxins

So far, I've started drinking warm water (half boiled, half cold) with half a lemon in the mornings before I do anything (other than make my son gluten free toast with fruit for breakfast), I'll also be adding more liver supportive foods as I go along. I'll be doing more as the days continue, but for now I'm solely focused on my morning routine of lemon water with a tumeric milk tea before bed (yes, sounds a little strange, but the liver absolutely LOVES tumeric- add black pepper for optimal results).

On top of that, from one of the articles above it says to do tumeric milk for 3 months. I plan on doing that, but for at least 21 days I'll be doing a good enough (for my lifestyle, and I'll be doing as well as I can with a toddler, trust me, I'll be happy) liver cleanse.

Here's my recipe with links about tumeric included at the bottom

Tumeric Tea:

1 cup of unsweetened almond milk
1/2 tsp organic tumeric
As much black pepper as you handle (I like my tea a little spicy!)
Honey to taste

Heat milk slowly, add tumeric, black pepper and honey. Once steaming, drink.

Voila!

• Tumeric Milk
• Golden Milk
• Benefits of Tumeric enhanced by Black Pepper

Sorry if this post is a bit lengthy, I think my inner Wellness Geek is coming out to show the world some love :)

This picture is courtesy of Anusorn P nachol/ freedigitalphotos.net

Green Glow Smoothie

We are back for the next addition of Good Food Fridays, where I share not only time saving recipes, but healthy at that! 

I've been working on this one for a while now, so I hope you enjoy it- not only for the taste, but the amazing health benefits. There's a plethora of good fats in this smoothie- which is good for keeping a slim waist line as well as a healthy nervous system- and good greens to amp up your energy levels, and alkalize the body (which is very much needed these days). Also, I've added ginger to this smoothie to rev up your immune system, metabolism and it's also anti-inflammatory in every way possible.


Green Glow
Step 1:

Gather all of your ingredients!

• 1 cup frozen blueberries (I prefer frozen over fresh for this recipe, but if you want to add fresh blueberries add some ice cubes!)
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 avocado
• 2 big handfuls of spinach
• 1/4 c hemp hearts
• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• 1 tsp spirulina
• 1 tsp matcha powder
• 1-2 tsp coconut oil
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2- 1 inch of ginger (depending on your taste)
• 1-1 & 1/2 c of water (depending on how thick/ thin you like it)

And sweetener of choice if needed. I personally find this is sweet enough with banana and blueberries.

Step 2:

Put all ingredients into blender. Look at that deliciousness!

Step 3:

Enjoy! Pretty simple, right? 

Come check out these 2 links for more information on healthy fats, and ginger benefits!

• The big fat truth
• Ginger health benefits

Quick, healthy pizza

As promised, here is the pizza recipe I was talking about earlier on in the week.

Once again, I'd like to add that you can modify any of my recipes with what suits your needs. I have a highly restricted diet that keeps me away from a lot of unhealthy options. So a part of my journey is finding quick, but also very healthy food that I can eat.

I started off with a pre-made pizza dough by Sans Gluten Free. I've used so many different types of pizza crust, and this one is by far my favourite because it caters to all of my needs.

Gluten, corn, egg, gmo, tomatoe, and dairy free. Who would think that someone could make a good pizza crust without all of those ingredients? (P.S. This package is a "pizza kit" so it does include tomato sauce if you want to use it for this quick meal). 

You can opt for any other healthy, whole grain pizza crust at your favourite grocery store if that suits you, and just buy pizza sauce for this recipe.

Next on the list is the ingredients:

• A handful of spinach
• 1-2 handfuls of mushrooms
• Pesto sauce (or tomato paste)
• Coconut oil
• Goat cheese (or cheese of your choice)
• Salt and Pepper

And sometimes I like adding turkey bacon if I have it in the house. I'm in love with turkey bacon :)

Preheat the oven at the temperature suggested on the package.

Slice up the mushrooms and cook with oil, salt and pepper. After mushrooms have cooked for about 8 minutes or so, add the spinach, season again, and cover for 2-3 minutes to let spinach wilt (I found if I just add the spinach to the pizza in the oven it doesn't taste as good so I like pre-cooking my vegetables so it tastes better).

Prepare the pizza crust with

1. Sauce
2. Spinach (should be under other ingredients so it doesn't dry out
3. Mushrooms
4. Cheese

Cook for a few minutes in the oven, and viola! Add a glass of white wine (I had Lindemans 2013 Chardonnay) for hot summer days- you've got yourself a perfect, healthy dinner that takes about 15 minutes to make with very little mess!

6 steps to organizing the perfect day

Photo is courtesy of 2nix/ freedigitalphotos.net

Well, I decided to take back the reins of my life yesterday after what felt like a mini meltdown. It was great to do a self-care night with healthy food, a good book with wine after my day.

Before I hit the sack that night, I decided to get my life back on track by organizing a perfect day. It was quite a simple one at that (you can also check out more information on organizing your life in a later post I did called To do list)

1. Make a green- fatty smoothy for breakfast- I'll recipe this one at a later date and give you more details on the 'fatty' aspect of it- also, prepare my sons breakfast
2. Clean my house
3. Have a cup of coffee and blog for an hour
4. Get outside with my son 
5. 5 minute meditation (with my 5 min relax app)
6. Exercise and read my new book while my son takes his afternoon nap

And I accomplished every single one if those! My silent chant after I finished my list (silent because the last of it had to be accomplished while my son Toli slept) was "I did it, I did it, I did it!!" And boy was I a happy camper! I felt good about my day. I got my sweat on with this HIIT workout that I talked about recently, got all my work done and most importantly-contributed to natural stress relief with meditation which is very calming, and also got some endorphins running through my body again. I like to think that I'm very proactive when it comes to getting out of a funk. I don't like staying down very long, even if its only a day I go a little bonkers- so I'm glad I had my 'to-do' list ready.

I find that writing things down on paper helps so much when we need to get stuff done. Just the act of scratching it out makes me feel accomplished. What helps you get through tasks of the day?

Baked Quinoa Burgers

I may just die a little bit on the inside after eating these! The other day I found this recipe through Super Healthy Kids who has AMAZING recipes for kids of all ages- but I knew that if I made these I'd be eating them too, they just looked so good!

Super Healthy Kids found the original by Vegetarian Times who did the Crunchy Quinoa Cake recipe.

I had to tinker with it because I can't eat eggs or flour, and I didn't have any red/ white vinegar in my cupboard so I used what  I had at hand (a usual in this household).

• 1 tbsp of chai seeds with 3 tbsp water (egg replacement)- stir and let this sit for 6-7 minutes to thicken into egg consistency
• 2 tbsp rice flour
• 1 1/2 tsp tahini
• 1 1/2 tsp olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups cooked quinoa (I boiled mine in a vegetable broth which I think gave it amazing flavour)
• 1/2 cup finely grated yam
• 1 handful of fresh spinach diced
• 2 oz. regular cheese
• 2 tbsp finely diced onion
• 1/2 tsp salt

If you don't want to sub the rice flour or chia seeds you can follow the original recipe from their website Crunchy Quinoa Cakes

The method to follow this recipe is all just taken from their site. What an easy dish to make!

"Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat baking sheet with cooking spray. Combine egg (or chai seed mix), flour, tahini, and vinegar (I used olive oil) in bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients, then mash together until mixture is firm enough to shape into cakes. Shape mixture into 1/4-cup patties with wet hands. Bake on prepared baking sheet 25 minutes, turning once, or until cakes are browned."

I must say, this dish was a HIT! We even had a friend drop by to help us move some boxes into our new place, and he loved them too! Toli was a bit wary at first and started on the spinach, yes, every mothers dream. He started with the spinach! It didn't take long for him to try them out though, and once he started he didn't stop until he was full :) He even brought some to his Dada who came home full already- such a little sweet pea he is!

For the sauce I used a little dollop of mayo (yes, I know I said I can't eat eggs, but I'm a tad obsessed with mayo for burgers especially so I eat just a little).

I think this dish is going to become a staple in my home. Our friend said it would make a nice side to some protein (even though quinoa already has protein- I can see his point).

Back in Vancouver

Well, now that we're back home it's time to feel healthy again. I'll admit I had one, or two burgers sent to my room for dinner (I ate maybe just a tiny smidgen of the bread), and a few margaritas for Cinco De Mayo during the days with lunch (that's a complete excuse). I will also admit to feeling nutritionally depleted on one day -so I had a salad. 

Still, I'm ready for some good ol' smoothies, and dark leafy greens to feel energized. I'm happy as can be back home with my baby. How much I missed his face, hugs, kisses and snuggles. Nothing will ever beat being with this kid. 

I was listening to Marie Forleo on a Super Soul Sunday episode before I left Las Vegas. She talked about doing EVERYTHING with passion. We think we need to find it, and that's just not the case -according to Marie- she says to exercise it like a muscle, and put passion into everything that we do, so I vowed that day, as we left Vegas, to do just that. 

I must admit, I started off really strong. I passionately ironed the last clean, wrinkled dress I had for the trip, and brushed my teeth as passionately as I could, but as the day went on I got tired. It IS like exercising a muscle!

To be passionate, you must exercise that feeling like a MUSCLE!
- Thanks Marie!

So I will keep up this fantastic practice and put forth more passion to my morning. Because I usually wake up with the first thought of 

"uuhhh, I'm tired" 

And of course, I figured this out after reading some good ol' "The Desire Map". How did I wake up? Feeling exhausted. What did that do to me? It took me a looong time to wake up and get my ass outta bed every morning. How do I WANT to feel? Alive, refreshed, rested, and ready for the day! So tomorrow morning I will wake up with enthusiasm and passionately start off my day by making my bed, and preparing breakfast for Toli and I before we head out for a walk, and go to his toddler dance class.

Here's a smoothie that is one of my current favourites that I've been obsessed with for the past few weeks- so I'm gonna stay simple, and hop back on the health train with a smoothie.
I call this one my

Simple Green Energizing Smoothie

1 banana 
1 cup of blueberries
1 rib of celery
1 tsp of spirulina
1 cup of water
2 tbsp of hemp protien
2 tbsp of chia seeds

Try it out, and let me know what you think!

Quick 20 minute recipe

Last week on a beautiful, sunny day in Vancouver, I decided while cleaning my home that I needed to refuel, so I needed a simple lunch idea. This one took me about 20 minutes to make.

I needed something really quick, so I could continue to focus my energy on spring cleaning. If your like me, and want to eat healthy, but also like simplicity I urge you to try out this recipe!

Here's what you need:

2-3 Chicken thighs

1 tsp for each pan of Coconut oil

1/2 c. Bread crumbs (I use gluten free)

1/3 c. Flour (I'm using what I have on hand for gluten free which is potato flour

3 handfuls of Spinach

2 cloves of Garlic

handful of Nut or seed of choice (I'm using pinenuts)

Salt & pepper to taste

Seasoning of choice (I'm using "no salt added- table shake seasoning")

And sliced avacado on the side (I need to use mine up, so whatever is on hand- use)

If you want to bake- preheat the oven to 350f, and bake for about 30 mins. Or warm on medium heat a large and small pan. For my "quickness" I'm frying the thighs. 

Throw the flour and bread crumbs in a bowl with salt pepper and seasoning. Mix and add rinsed thighs to coat. Put into oven or frying pan with a tsp. of coconut oil. 

As the chicken cooks, put about 3 big handfuls of spinach into the large pan with a tsp of coconut oil salt and pepper. Put a lid on the spinach to steam. 

While the chicken and spinach is cooking press garlic, and add to spinach with a touch more salt and pepper (I find when I layer the seasoning it seems to balance the flavour in steaming the spinach). Mix spinach, and put lid back on for another minute or so- until wilted. 

Slice avocados, and place food on plate with the rest of the food (I decorated my dish with pinenuts)

I wanted to add my reason for using coconut oil. Coconut oil is heat stable, so it's very safe to use over other oils (even my favourite olive oil) for cooking- along with an array of awesome healthy benefits and uses.

Enjoy! 

Toddler hunting season

Is your toddler gluten/ dairy/ whatever else free? Or, maybe you're just looking for healthier options aside from the usual chocolate Easter egg hunt (p.s.- I LOVED that as a child! But my teeth sure didn't!).

My Easter egg hunt- which is happening at my Gramma and Papa's will be inspired by hunts I had at my grans place when I was a kid. 

The hunt will start from the bedroom where he find his Easter basket, and a trail of plastic easter eggs with healthy goodies inside, and the trail will lead the living room with some books, and other small fun toys. Below is a brainstorm:

Easter hunt ideas: (inspired by Adventures with the Little Man)

• Easter basket
• Easter inspired books
• Magnets- alphabet/ other
• Bubbles
• Bath toys
• Bunny ears (something I already have laying around the house)

For plastic eggs

• Freeze dried fruits (apple, pear, pineapple)
• Chick pea snacks (I'll be baking them with cinnamon and raw sugar)
• Homemade gluten free playdoe 

This week I'm off to collect what I need at 

• Michaels
• Walmart
• Dollarama

Nice and cheap for the most part. I've been seeing people talk about buying Ipad's, bikes and whatnot on Facebook. That's not really what I remember from Easter egg hunts as a child. I look at Easter as a time of creative fun! I may come up with some crafty projects if I feel so inclined to.

Happy shopping, and creating for the Easter hunt!