Revamping my favorite recipes...

I'm a high school art teacher. Everyone wants to cut our jobs, so I have to prove myself somehow, aside from the normal gold key art shows and full ride scholarship offers. No. I have to really prove my worth. So tomorrow, I'm entering a chili cookoff at my school to help feed a staff of 120 for parent/teacher conferences. I have an all time favorite chili recipe, but alas, it's not Paleo. So I'm revamping the original recipe to meet my health goals. Here is my Paleo Autumn Harvest Chili. Enjoy.

Pre cooking disclaimer: This is NOT a weeknight chili. While the cooking time is minimal, the chopping time is 30-40 minutes alone. I also doubled my recipe to feed more poor starving educators, so my photos may look more bountiful than your actual creation. It does impress though and you have my permission to bring it to ANY chili cookoff and take full credit. Unless you win money. Then I take a 20% cut.

Paleo Autumn Harvest Chili:

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons Coconut Oil
1 1/2 lbs Apple Chicken Sausage
6 green onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into bite sized chunks (about 6 cups)
2 teaspoons chili powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
6 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
3 Granny Smith Apples, peeled, cored and chopped into bite sized bits (save a handfull for garnish)
1 tablespoon fresh snipped sage

Directions:

1. Melt 2 tablespoons of coconut oil in large dutch oven over medium high heat. Add sausage and cook until medium brown (about 3-4 minutes if pre-cooked). Remove from pot with a slotted spoon and set aside.

2. Add onions and garlic to oil in pot and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add butternut squash, stir to coat in oil and oniony garlic goodness. Cook about 6 minutes. Stir in chili powder, salt and cayenne pepper; cook for 1 minute. Return sausage to pan and add broth; bring to boiling; then reduce heat.  Simmer, covered for 8 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, in medium sized skillet, heat remaining oil over medium high heat. Cook apple slices in hot oil for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally until light brown. Transfer apples to chili. Simmer for about 8 minutes, until apples are tender. Top with fresh snipped sage and extra apple slices. Serve and devour.

4. Serve at chili cook off. Kick ass. Take names. 

Cooking tip: Keep your handy dandy Newfoundland around to clean up any delicious morsels that may have accidentally hit the ground while cooking.

Day 7 of 30

I have to admit, I'm having some trouble with all this juggling. Obviously, as I haven't posted in a few days. But I have to say, it's clearly working. I'm down 4 lbs in 7 days. The last time I lost that much weight in one week was when I had the stomach flu. But I haven't cheated on meals. Not once. I even went to Starbucks this morning because I didn't have time last night to make a smoothie for today. And when I say "I didn't have time" I mean "I had NO motivation after the ass kicking I received at Crossfit". Anyhoo, Starbucks called. I got up to the counter and instead of my regular grande-nonfat-sugar free vanilla-no water-chai (yest I'm high maintenance) I grabbed a "green machine" smoothie out of the case. There were a number of factors at work there. 1) 4 lbs people! I can't ruin this now. 2) The juice concoction actually sounded more filling than tea and 3) I might be cheating for dinner tonight by going out for sushi. I'll see how much willpower I have when my favorite Kobe Beef roll gets served. I'll do as much as I can without rice, but it's my favorite. Wish me luck.

Day 4 of 30

This is the easiest diet by far that I've ever done. I'm rocking the socks off of this thing. Although I'm still working on how to make this work for the kids. Here's how I've been managing my time to make the 3 meal a day plus snacks thing work out for my husband and I. In the evenings, I pack our lunch. Some easy things I can just throw in there and reheat are meatballs, andouille sausage and homemade BBQ sauce, etc. I bought these awesome tupperware containers that hold the meal in the bottom and then have a couple of different compartments on the top for fruit and such. Yesterday we had pineapple glazed meatballs and a mix of berries. Today we're having our leftover bison stuffed bell peppers and fruit. Tomorrow I think either meatballs again or sausages in some kind of sauce. Pretty simple and lots of protein to kick start my afternoons. I also prep our breakfasts the night before. I found this protein smoothie base that is made up of 16 oz of brewed and chilled herbal tea (I've used peach and red raspberry so far), a scoop of egg white vanilla protein powder, and any and all fruit I have lying around the house.  Yesterday it was raspberries, strawberries and bananas. Today it was blueberries and bananas. So I blend those all up together with no ice and then put the blender in the fridge. In the morning I add a cup of ice and blend until smooth. It's enough for both of us to have a 12 oz smoothie! Yum. Oh and snacks. I bought a little 11 oz container of almonds, cashews and dried cranberries with sea salt at the store. A serving is a 1/4 cup, so I have snacks for a week.

I've also been drinking at least 64 oz of water (in my starbucks cup with a straw. I don't know what it is about drinking with a straw, but I drink SOOO much more during the day!) and taking 2000mg of fish oil per day. The thing I notice the most is that I'm less sore after workouts. I think I'm properly hydrated, plus the fish oil works like a healing agent. Awesome. Now I just need to find the time to work out. We worked out at home on Sunday doing a air squat/push up/sit up Tabata. I didn't work out yesterday, we have swimming lessons tonight, I have my school club that I sponsor tomorrow...So it looks like Thursday, Saturday, Sunday? Ugh. This is going to be my challenge.

Chicken Nugget Failure

Bomb. Big. Fat. Fail. So my idea was to cut chicken into bite sized nuggets of goodness, coat them in raw, organic honey, and then roll them in pecans that I ground up into a fine dust. Only pecans have this funny little thing called "oil" in them. So I did all of the steps I listed above, baked them in a greased baking dish for about 25 minutes and then tossed them on the stove to get them a little browner and crispier. My almost 6 year old son liked them and ate them without complaint. My almost 3 year old gagged and spit them out in my hand. I looked through a bunch of recipes and found a crispy chicken recipe that uses almond meal as the coating, so I think I'll try that next time. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

Yum yum give me some chicken stir fry...

Made a great, easy, yummy meal last night. I bought the "Everyday Paleo" cookbook by Sarah Fragoso and like it a lot. I think it will be a great tool to get started cooking paleo. I will warn you the photos don't do the meals justice. She should probably hire a new photographer for her next cookbook (and I hope there will be one). I adapted her recipe for Skillet Chicken a bit and here's what we came up with:

Chicken Stir Fry

Ingredients:
3 Tbsp coconut oil (really awesome for sauteing. It has no flavor and no smell and best of all, doesn't splatter like other oils! I found it on the very bottom shelf at Whole Foods. I use the refined.
1 orange bell pepper, cut into spears
4 green onions
1 cup chopped cremini mushrooms
1 Tbsp chopped garlic
1 Tbsp dried Thyme
1/2 cup low sodium free range chicken broth
1 1/2 lbs free range boneless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
4 cups Kale
handful of thinly sliced almonds
fresh ground black pepper to taste

 Directions: heat 1.5 Tbsp of coconut oil in pan on med heat. Toss in chicken and garlic and cook until it starts to brown (6-7 minutes for me). Toss in bell peppers, onions and mushrooms and saute until tender (3-4 minutes). Add chicken broth and thyme and bring to a simmer. Continue to cook until most of the liquid has evaporated (3-4 minutes). Pour everything from pan into a bowl and set aside. Heat the other 1.5 Tbsp of coconut oil in pan on medium-low heat. Add Kale and cook down until tender (will be bitter if you undercook) about 3-4 minutes. Put Kale on plates and add your portion of chicken stir fry on top. Top with black pepper and a sprinkling of almonds. 

Super yum! Next time I think I'll throw in some broccoli too. Now did the kids eat this? No. They had mac n cheese. Actually they probably would've eaten the chicken solo, but not all the yumminess surrounding it. But I have a plan damnit! I'm inventing some paleo chicken nuggets this weekend and will keep you posted. 

And it begins...

It's 2012 and I'm committing. Well, "we" actually. And by "we" I mean my family. All four of us. We're not unhealthy people in general, but we don't have the best habits. It's pretty easy for us to fall into making a pasta and garlic bread dinner every night for a week. This year needs to be different, and it needs to be a long term plan. I've dieted in the past and have struggled every moment. I'm not bad at working out, but tend to plateau within the regime I choose. My husband has never struggled with weight or fitness; if anything he's struggled to keep weight on. Our bodies are completely different, so in general, sharing workouts and diets haven't been beneficial to the both of us. Until now.

So here's our plan. We're going to commit to health in 2012. We're doing that in 2 ways. 1) We've been going to a Crossfit gym. It's perfect because it's something we can do together and even bring the kids. They can play in the kid pit in the back of the gym while we work our buns off. We're hoping for 3-4 workouts per week. People say it takes 24 repetitions of an action to create a habit. This puts us at 2 months until it becomes a regular part of our lives. 2) We're going to eat Paleo. That's right, the caveman diet. I like to cook and so does my husband. This isn't really a diet, it's a lifestyle change. No dairy, no grains, no major starches. Lots of lean meats, fish, poultry, veggies and fruit. The most important aspect is that I can keep bacon in my diet. And alcohol. Phew.

Here are our challenges: 1) We have 2 great, but picky kids. Our son is in Kindergarten and our daughter is almost 3. They are really mac n cheese and chicken nugget kind of kids and I'm not sure how we'll adapt our new meal plan to them.  2) We work full time. I'm a high school art teacher and my husband is an Administrator at a high school. Our schools are between 25 minutes to an hour away each, depending on the time of day we're attempting to drive. 3) Eating paleo is likely to be more expensive than our existing diet.

Here's what I'm hoping to accomplish with this blog: During the course of one year, I want to prove that a busy working mom can create a healthy home environment for her family without going broke. I want to share recipes, links, planning techniques and general ideas to show that it's not impossible to cook something nutritious every night for your family and it's not impossible to fit fitness into your schedule. 4) And lets be honest, I'd like a safe place to vent my frustrations as well as celebrate my accomplishments. I'll share with you my progress, weight loss, fat loss, muscle gain and overall health benefits. Some of the info might be TMI. Just fair warning.

So if you'd like to come along for the ride, I'd love to have you!