Bronchitis comeback

Bronchitis has taken its toll on Ariz and me for the last three weeks. We’re finally coming off the cocktail of antibiotics and medicine we’ve been on, and have slowly begun making our own food again (note: making six different meals a day when you’re in bed with a 39+ fever doesn’t really happen. Maybe in the movies). Because I’ve been so sick, though, I’ve fallen way behind at university, and since semester is coming to its end, there is just so much to do. Which equals not enough time for religiously following Clean Eating Mag’s weekly menu.

Our solution is still clean. My friend, Shereen, forwarded me a link to thehealthychef.com not long ago, which is a website founded by Teresa Cutter. She’s a leading Australian cook of the healthy sort, and showcases some absolutely delicious recipes that are still made from scratch, and still composed of lovely ingredients. We decided then, to quite simply steal some of Cutter’s recipes and combine them with the tricks we’ve learnt from the clean eating crew. So simple! 

And on the note of clean eating, I realise I’ve actually never divulged much on this topic. I’m sure most of you know kind of what it entails, but here’s an easy definition anyway. In its most simplistic form, clean eating means: eating lots of plants (veggies!); including meats in your diet; enjoying grains (like brown rice, pasta, cereal); reading the labels on what you buy; eating fewer ingredients by trying to purchase food that has no more than 3-6 ingredients in it (this is the toughest one!); eating 5-6 small meals per day.

(from http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/what-is-clean-eating/, which also lists a couple of other methods for clean eating, and some excellent recipes)

Of course, a direct effect of following these principles is that you cook everything from scratch, at home. It usually takes a lot of time, but the finished product is so delicious, and so good for you, and you feel just fantastic for having spent the extra time and effort on your health. What I’ve done this week is cook three different main dishes, but cook them in large portions to provide lunch the next day, or dinner a few days later. This is great if you’re a student or have a busy week ahead of you; just cook loads on a Sunday or another spare day, and freeze the food for later enjoyment. 

First off, Ariz made an absolutely delicious chilli con carne, filled with gorgeous vegetables like celery and carrots, extra lean beef mince, beans, and of course lots and lots of chilli. This lasted us for three meals, and was really good on its own. We tried it with quinoa too, for some added protein, which I thought completed the dish. The recipe is here:

http://www.thehealthychef.com/2012/04/chilli-con-carne/ 

On Thursday I had a full-on cooking session by myself, in which I made both a lean bolognese and a beef stroganoff. The stroganoff was my absolute favourite; carrots, onion, lean beef (cut off ALL the fat from a big piece of steak), rosemary upon rosemary, whole button mushrooms, garlic, beef stock, and some yummy port made it full of flavour. Perfect for autumn time in Norway, for those of you reading from there ;) Here’s the recipe:

http://www.thehealthychef.com/2012/05/lean-beef-stroganoff/ 

Then I went on to cook a bolognese, a dish I usually associate with grease and white pasta, so I was a bit surprised to find it on Ms Cutter’s recipe page. This thing is so full of vegetables, though, that it’s hardly your regular Italian restaurant dish. Celery, grated carrots, red onions, brown mushrooms, and lots of tomato puree were just a few of the delectable ingredients in this very clean bolognese. Here’s the recipe:

http://www.thehealthychef.com/2011/10/low-carb-spaghetti-bolognaise/ 

In total, these dishes covered us for approximately three dinners and three lunches each. Pretty good and time manageable.

Because of my stupid bronchitis I haven’t been allowed (by my own lungs; imagine that, your own lungs telling you off for exercising) back into the gym, but I’ll hopefully start going again next week with a very calm start-up. I’ll let you know how that one goes later. Enjoy the food! Thanks for reading :)

Food, glorious food

On Monday, I got sick. Again. So, no appraisal at the gym on Tuesday, and no workouts this week; just bedtime, bedtime, and more bedtime. I’m currently on antibiotics (not so clean eating, I guess), and waiting for my fever to leave, though the guy seems to like sticking around. He’ll just have to suck it up once I evict him; who likes a fever tenant anyway? 

As a result of my health, then, this week has been all about the food. And my oh my what delicious food we’ve eaten this week. Our shopping list included another round of absolutely glorious groceries, and we’ve become quite the shopping experts, dancing from aisle to aisle with our colourful A4 paper of vegetables, meats, and healthy carbohydrates. As I’m typing, I’m eating an exquisite snack of ricotta, banana, and peanut butter. And that’s just a snack.

While lying in bed and cursing my yet-again-arrived disease on Monday night, Ariz made Provencal Salmon Burgers. Oh. my. god. It took about an hour and a half to prepare the damn things, but once they were finished, I declared it the best meal on our diet so far. Herbes de Provence (substituted by fresh rosemary and thyme by us), capers, olives, salmon fillets, Dijon mustard, and onion all blended together in glorious unison (yes, we own a blender now), and creating a flavour explosion so strong I seriously needed to re-think the word “taste”. Yes, I am a salmon lover, so I might be biased, but goodness me, those things were good. 

Here’s the recipe: http://www.cleaneatingmag.com/Recipes/Recipe/Provencal-Salmon-Burgers.aspx

Then there were two particularly delightful breakfasts among many others. One was porridge, with frozen raspberries, almonds, cinnamon, and some maple syrup. I don’t understand how healthy food can be so astoundingly delectable; well, I can understand it, but the little fat kid in me is wondering why all these fruits and vegetables are so much tastier than mud cake and hamburgers. 

Heavenly porridge breakkie:

Next, Banana Morning Tarts. Yum, yum, yum. Homemade tarts, and no ordinary tarts, mind you; these were made out of blended walnuts, whole-wheat pastry flour, whole-wheat regular flour, frozen macadamia oil, milk, lemon juice, and a bit of baking powder. The result? Little, alien-looking tartlets (we haven’t gotten around to buying tins yet), which were part tarts, part cookie, and part bread. All the gorgeous nuttiness went really well with the filling of: banana, maple syrup, greek yoghurt, walnuts, and cinnamon (yes, we’re suckers for cinnamon, and it’s all over the recipes!). Melted on my tongue like nobody’s business.

Finger-licking tartlets:

Tartlet recipe: http://www.cleaneatingmag.com/Recipes/Recipe/Sweet-Savory-Tarts.aspx 

Last, but certainly not least, I had shrimp this week. And I liked it. Which my mother will tell you is unbelievable. I had a serious shrimp fetish as a kid, but since about twelve I haven’t been able to stand the little things. This week, though, we made broiled shrimp. Over rice. With peas, garlic, lemon juice, and soy sauce. And it was mouthwatering. I ate the whole thing, shrimps and all, and even found myself enjoying the taste I’ve detested for so long. Thank you, clean eating. 

Here it is, shrimp saviour:

Of course, I haven’t been entirely, entirely good this week either. But I’ve been sick, and still am, so I’m going to excuse myself with that fact (terrible, really, considering bad food makes you a lot worse than good food), and not share anything about my misbehaviour. Though there might be, just maybe, a tiny bit of Crunchie lying next to me on the bed. Or maybe the fat kid in me just wants there to be. Either way, I’ll do some extra sit-ups when fever packs his bags.

‘Till next time. Thanks for reading :)

Bali backslip

This week, I’ve been naughty. Coming back from Bali with no more (or less) weight on my bum, I figured all that delicious Indonesian food, while of course being practically fibre and protein empty, couldn’t have been that bad for me. Ensuing this thought, the week has been equally filled with healthy food, and very unhealthy food. On Wednesday, I had a pizza from work (no, no); on Thursday, I had terrible sushi from university (no); on Friday, I even had a cheeseburger from Hungry Jacks (that’s Burger King in Australia). For breakfast. And then we had deep fried chicken at a Chinese restaurant for dinner. No. No. No. 

I think that since we did go for long walks in Bali, and did work out (for 20 minutes one of the days we were there), and did go for one long bicycle trip, we figured that clean eating is good, but not essential for sustained and long-lasting energy. That was until we went to the gym on Thursday and had absolutely zero performance ability. I felt pathetic. And I did try blaming it on the fact that I hadn’t worked out for a long time (go figure, since my activity level was the reason I ate poorly in the first place), but after forty minutes of dragging myself through what used to be a perfectly simple obstacle course, I finally faced the truth. I had no energy, because I’d been eating food with no energy. And so had Ariz. We called it quits after fifty minutes, and decided that when we went grocery shopping next, we’d go back to the dedicated health freaks we had been when first starting this eating project. 

On the floor on Thursday afternoon, struggling with my twelve sit-ups (thinking, ‘Oh my god, I’m so unfit’), and taking a break halfway through, I hear the deepest grandfather voice I’ve ever heard uttered in that ground level gym. 

“You know, you won’t get any training done if you just stare out into the universe,” the old man says, laughing sympathetically at my distress. 

I am mildly annoyed. “I know. I’m just out of energy.” I carry on with my sit-ups. 

After a while, I pass him again, and smile, trying to reprimand my rudeness. 

“You know, I can’t place your accent,” he says silently this time, and I laugh at his sweet, almost childlike approach. 

“Norwegian,” I say. 

“Oh, lovely. Do you like Grieg?” Jason goes to the gym every days, and is 70 years old. Impressive. I’m going to stop winging about my 36 sit-ups now.

Yesterday, we bought groceries. They were 244 dollars and 56 cents, which is more than half of my weekly salary at the bar.  But there’s so much of them. Ariz calls me the Tetris Queen now; we have a three-shelf fridge. It’s tiny, but somehow I manage to fit all the food anyway; all ten bags of it. Lovely, lovely food. Artichokes, strawberries, capers, kalamata olives, shrimp, walnuts, mozzarella, turkey breast, thyme, red wine, broccoli, salmon fillets, rosemary, Greek yoghurt, mango, pork chops. All these things (and at least forty more) are on our grocery list. Yum. 

Here’s the shopping list: http://agilityfiles.cleaneatingmag.com/PDFS/ShoppingLists/CE19ShoppingListsWeek1.pdf, which goes with week 1 of this meal plan: http://agilityfiles.cleaneatingmag.com/PDFS/ShoppingLists/ce19mealplan.pdf. 

Today, we went to the gym, after two days of eating deliciously healthy food again. The difference is, to say the least, incredible. Because there is literally more healthy energy in my body, guess what? I have more of it to spend too. I spent 45 minutes on the treadmill, and another 35 doing weight work; I burnt 620 calories. I’m back. We had hummus, scrambled eggs, brown rice cakes, and tomatoes for breakfast; an unblended pomegranate banana smoothie for snacks (that is, yoghurt, banana, pomegranate juice, and protein shake) - we don’t actually own a blender yet; and now, I’m about to make a couscous lemon salad. We’re having shrimp for dinner. De-li-cious. 

I also thought I’d show you what I look like, just to prove that I’m very normally built. Kind of normally built, anyway. I have crooked legs, enormous hips, a thin waist and green eyes. If I look any fitter further down the track, I’ll let you know. 

See you next week :)

Hungry, healthy, happy

So, I started this project a couple of weeks ago, but that was before I went to Bali for five days and completely submerged myself in delicious, fatty, Indonesian food. Totally worth it. But here I am again: square one. Or at least one and a half. 

Me and my fiancé got pretty serious about working out a few months back, and started going regularly to the gym at least two times a week. Even though we’re both health freaks (sort of), we were still eating regular food, which was too fatty, too low in protein, too high in carbs, and just not nutritious enough. Having opposite metabolism systems, my fiancé was losing weight, and I was gaining. 

Now, don’t get me wrong; I do not care what I weigh. I’m 176 cm tall, and weigh 79 kgs at the moment, which any BMI chart would tell you is overweight. My lovely gym instructor, Lou, however, tells me that you really shouldn’t care about the weight; as long as you don’t look obese, you probably aren’t. So when we got back from a six week food splurge in Norway, Ariz and I decided it was time to get serious about health; we started going to the gym three to four times a week, and I was given a full appraisal with an accompanying workout program. Our diet was still a problem, though, and we didn’t really do anything to actively change it. 

Until one night, when I was surfing the web (that is, Facebook), and came across the Ashy Bines bikini challenge. The page was covered in gorgeous before and after shots of girls apparently having tried this amazing diet that worked. I was almost about to buy the 70-dollar Bines starting pack when my critical, web-smart half kicked in, and I eventually found a complete uncovering of this scam. I mean, this chick actually tells girls that lettuce is bad for you, cause it’s high in sugar levels. Not so much, perhaps. What Ashy did mention time and time again, though, was clean eating. 

I googled the term, and discovered the Clean Eating Magazine online, which was full of meal plans and shopping lists. Absolutely brilliant, I thought, and introduced the idea to my fiancé, who was sceptical at first, worrying it was just another unhealthy, weight fixated diet. But when we went to the grocery store to try it out, we both discovered that the ingredients were balanced, healthy, and yummy. When we started cooking with our food, it just got better. 

Back from Bali, now, we’re back on the plan, and I’m so excited about it that I want to share my experiences, from both the kitchen and the gym. For me, though, it’s all about the health; I want to be fit, have a nicely beating heart, eat good food that keeps me going, and feel good, both inside and out. 

This is week one. Hope you'll join me :)