Fit Friday :: Guest Post!

June 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

You guys, I am so excited for this Fit Friday, I have Clare from Fitting It All In here with us sharing her YUMMY smoothie recipe with us! How cool, right? If you’ve never been to Clare’s blog, make sure you do it now, she’s awesome and so inspirational AND shares lots of fun CrossFit and outfit photos!

Make sure you go to the bottom for an update on my goals/fitness and for the link-up!

Oh and be sure to stop by tomorrow for the first Small Business Saturday where I’ll be showing you a day in my life!

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My Favorite Smoothie Recipe

Hi everyone! My name is Clare and I blog over at Fitting It All In. I started my blog to share my efforts at living a balanced lifestyle after my eating disorder, and now I write about my favorite workouts, healthy meal ideas, work outfits, and random musings. Come say hi!

I don’t know about where you live, but it is HOT in Dallas. It’s been pool weather for a few months, but now that were in June we’re going to have 100+ days frequently. That means that if I exercise after work, or honestly even just walk from my car to my door, I’m craving something quick, easy, and cold.

I’m sure you already know what I’m going to say: a SMOOTHIE. Ever since I learned about Angela’s Green Monsters a few years ago I’ve never gone back to the plain old fruit kind. I love that even when I’m eating something sweet and creamy I can still be getting in some nutritious veggies. That means I can have smoothies for dinner every night, right?

I change up my smoothie recipe every once in a while, but currently I’m on a berry vanilla kick. Here’s what it takes:

  • ~1 cup frozen berry blend
  • 1 -2 handfuls spinach
  • 1 serving vanilla protein powder (I use Zrii Achieve but also love Jay Robb and SunWarrior)
  • 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk (or milk of choice)
  • 4-5 ice cubes


I layer my ingredients in a blender in that order and stop to stir a few times so all the spinach gets incorporated fully. Then I poor it into a bowl (it’s way more fun to eat it with a spoon!) and dig in.

Enjoy!!

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Isn’t she awesome?!? Thanks so much Clare for stopping by the blog today!

Not much to update you guys on as far as I go, I lost ONE pound this week, which is great…would I have liked to have lost more? Sure, but at least I didn’t gain…right? I hadn’t been to the gym in a WEEK before yesterday, I was a little sick and tired on Tuesday so I didn’t go and didn’t get a chance over the weekend but by-George, I went today and it felt great, oh, and…Casen normally screams when I drop him off at the childcare room and then runs to me when I get back and wants to leave immediately, well, I guess his little 2 week break (my parents were on ‘vacation’ last week so they watched him while I went) really helped him because he didn’t cry at.all, in fact he WANTEd to get down and go play and could have cared less that I left. Oh and when I got back, he didn’t want to leave, I kept saying “Ok, are you ready to go now?” and he’d say “No.”. Well, okay, I’ll take it. I hate making him cry!

Ok ladies, link away!


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Filed Under: blogging, exercise, Fit Friday, Food, guest posts, healthy living, link-up, series Leave a Comment

Homemade lemon-lime soda

May 2, 2012 By 1 Comment

Let me start by saying that this has

ZERO calories &

ZERO grams of sugar…

ZERO, y’all, ZERO.

I am not a big fan of aspartame so I use stevia, I’m sure something will come about in a few years where it’s causing people to grow a 3rd eyeball, but, for now, it’s safe to me!

I LOVE me some Sierra Mist, like, LOVE. I love to buy it in a can so it’s super fizzy and guzzle it down…the problem is, it has calories, empty calories, sugar-filled calories.

So, why not make my own? DUH!

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INGREDIENTS

  • Carbonated Water (3 cups is what I used)
  • About 4 limes
  • 1 lemon
  • Stevia

STEP 1:

Make a sort of ‘simple syrup’ with water and Stevia. Basically, just use a sauté pan, add about 1 cup of water and 1 cup of stevia and bring to a boil, stirring, until the stevia is completely dissolved. Transfer over to another container (a glass bowl works well) and let cool.

This step is necessary so that the stevia is completely dissolved and you don’t get that crappy ‘gathered at the bottom of the pitcher’ thing.

STEP 2:

Squeeze out the juice of about 3-4 small limes or 1/4 of a cup of juice (fresh juice is best). You might be able to get the 1/4 cup out of less limes but I had to hand squeeze.

STEP 3:

Add lime juice and simple syrup and about 1/2 a SLICE (you know, slice it up and put about 1/2 of one of the slices – do not put too much lemon, been there, done that) into your carbonated water.

**I combined all ingredients into a pitcher, it got flat VERY quickly, next time I will DEFINITELY just put everything into the carbonated water “jug”.** Either way, make sure that your container is air tight.

Sorry, I took this photo with my phone, my camera was MIA at this time. And, yes, it has two whole lemon slices in it, that’s how I know only to put 1/2 of one.

picplz_upload

Filed Under: Food, healthy living 1 Comment

Healthy Deserts…is that possible?

February 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

So, recently, I’ve been trying to eat healthier, just be healthier in general, no diet or anything but just trying to get where I need to be on the health meter and not eat a whole bag of Sweethearts in one sitting (I haven’t mastered that yet).

Sugar is my biggest weakness, seriously, I have a sweet tooth and it’s BIG! I’m all about cookies and candy, mmmmm.

So, when I stumbled onto a healthy deserts blog called Chocolate Covered Katie, I was like “woah woah woah, wait just a minute!”. Katie is a vegan and usually includes a completely sugar-free & gluten free recipe with all of her recipes. She is SUPER inventive and smart and uses BEANS to make things like chocolate chip cookie dough dip or chocolate chip cookie pie.

Katie has no idea I’m writing this post or that I exist but I just love her blog so much!

Anyway, I am in LOVE with one of her recipes, the Cookie Dough Dip. OMG, heavenly! I served it at my recent Pampered Chef party with graham crackers and most of the folks loved it too! My friend Kati, she wasn’t sold, but she’s strange, haha! I could literally sit down and eat an entire bowl of this stuff, no joke and it’s actually healthy for you, I mean, I do put brown sugar in it so it’s not THE most health thing ever but it’s WAY better than any alternative to it.

cookie-dough-dip

Photo courtesy of Chocolate Covered Katie

Another one of the recipes on her blog that I’ve made COMPLETELY sugar free (with stevia) are the Healthy Chocolate Chip cookies and I really loved them too…Jonathan and Little Man loved them too! It took me a few times to make them with just the right portion of Stevia (my other newest obsession) but once I got it right, they were HEAVENLY!

Oh and one more obsession from her blog? Sure….the Oatmeal recipes. I am not a huge fan of oatmeal, I don’t like “cooked fruit” so a lot of the instant oatmeal doesn’t appeal to me so I started using rolled oats and making my own with stevia and a dab of vanilla extract…yum yum yum! Seriously good, I have to get it JUST the right texture because that’s a big thing with me (I’m a food snob, for sure) but once I do, it’s totally good!

I’m headed to the store today to see if I can find some spelt flour and other “health food” items and I’m so excited! I’m hoping I can incorporate it into all of our eating and we can ALL (the hubs doesn’t need to) eat healthier.

Do you guys have any favorite “healthy desserts” recipes????

Forgive me for the next few weeks if I’m a little ‘absent’, I am working on getting about 8 clients finalized AND working on a new Business venture for myself that’s going to take about, oh, 100 hours of designing and coding (that might be an exaggeration but, then again, it might not). I’m so excited to show you all this NEW thing but I can’t yet and it’ll probably be next month before it’s released…so excited though and you’re all going to LOVE it! So, anyway, I am going to have to neglect this little ol’ blog a bit to get everything done by my deadlines, I mean, it’s not like I’m not going to post at all, just not 5 days a week like I was a few weeks ago. Thanks for understanding and GET EXCITED over something new coming soon!

Filed Under: Food Leave a Comment

Sausage Balls

December 20, 2011 By 1 Comment

Yummy Yummy Yummy!

I love sausage balls and I love to make sausage balls because they’re super easy and you can make a ton at once.

INGREDIENTS:

2 lbs of sausage (I get Jimmy Dean Regular because I don’t like spicy but you can use any kind)
4 cups (1 large bag/2 small bags) of shredded cheddar cheese
4 cups of Bisquick
ingredients
Ok, so those are totally clean clothes hanging off the couch in the background here, I”m crackin’ up that I got that in the photo. Oh well.

GET READY:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

**this recipe makes 9 dozen so it can easily be cut in 1/2 or even doubled for more**

Combine all ingredients in a LARGE bowl.

combine

Smoosh (totally a word) together ingredients with hands (clean please) until completely combined. This part is super messy and was SUPER hard to take photos of since I didn’t want sausage all over my camera and will give you a bit of a workout. You’ll totally think you have too much Bisquick & Cheese but you don’t, keep going!

after combining

Break off and roll out balls that are smaller than a golf ball in size and place on a baking sheet. I LOVE my Pampered Chef stoneware and my ‘balls’ seem to turn out better on that than metal but you can use whatever you’d like. Place these fairly close together if you want.

before oven

Place in oven for 20 minutes. I found that using the stoneware there’s no need to move the balls around or spray the pan but if you’re using metal, I’d recommend spraying the pan AND taking a spatula and rolling the balls around about 1/2 way through cooking so they don’t stick.

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If you have a sausage ball recipe, link it up for me in the comments, I’d love to see it!

Filed Under: Food 1 Comment