More From the Cabbage Patch

Ever since I made that coleslaw last week, I've been craving cabbage. I've always liked cabbage...I think. I guess I only really ate it on top of salads and in coleslaw...Anyway. A while ago I read Melicious' recipe for Smokey Cabbage Saute and, after eating cabbage last week, I haven't been able to get it out of my head. So I made it.

I fried the bacons, and poured some of the grease into the saute pan along with a little bit of coconut oil.

Sauteing the onion (please excuse the Iphone pictures...)

Added the cabbage

After sauteing the cabbage a bit, I put the lid on and allowed the mixture to steam.

Then I added the bacon!

I also added a little bit of sea salt and garlic powder. I would have used fresh garlic, but I forgot to add it at the onion stage, which would have made sense.

Let me just say: I am loving the cabbage these days! We devoured almost the entire pan of this last night for dinner. I even added this to my scrambled eggs this morning...awesome!

A Letter to Kale

Dear Massaged Kale Salad,

Where have you been all my life? In all my years of eating leafy greens, why have I not bumped into you? I'm embarrassed that it's taken me so long to make your acquaintance. How could I not have known about your delicious nutritiousness? More importantly, how could I not know how easy you are (no offense)? I just drizzle some olive oil, sprinkle some sea salt and garlic power and massage your leaves until they are a brilliant green. It takes no more than two minutes, and it's delightful!

I've paired you with homemade bacon bits, and with avocado-- you taste great with everything! I will be eating much more of you in the future. Not only are you in season right now, but you are full of calcium, vitamins K, C and A and cancer preventing organosulfur phytonutrients.

I promise to keep trying all different kinds of you, Massaged Kale Salad, with the hopes that you fill me with nutrients and keep me smiling with your awesomeness.

Sincerely,

AllieNic

Sunday Breakfeast

Yesterday morning, M decided that he wanted to make me breakfast. Not just any breakfast...a breakfeast as he called it. Breakfast foods are most easily my favorite kinds of foods: I would eat eggs and bacon for every meal if it were possible slash not weird.

We made a special trip to Whole Foods where Chester and I stayed in the car and M went in a did the shopping. He came out 15 minutes later with a mystery bag full of groceries...and I had no idea what he bought! The entire breakfast was a surprise.

I sat in the living room, drooling over The Phantom Gourmet, while M slaved away in the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in front of my dream breakfast.


When we go out for breakfast, I have the hardest time choosing my breakfast meats...so M made both sausages and bacon! The sausages were Wellshire Farms original pork sausages. I think the bacon was from Wellshire Farms too.

I love putting avocado on my eggs. We've recently become avocado obsessed: they're a great source of healthy, monounsaturated fats.

The main dish: Cheesy Eggs. Fried and scrambled eggs are a breakfast staple at our house...the cheese was our weekend indulgence.

M bought a whole pineapple and cut it into chunks. We're big on fruit in the mornings, but we usually eat berries of some sort. The pineapple was a tropical treat.

Breakfast is the best. For reals. I love waking up hungry for delicious breakfast foods. They say that eating breakfast is important because it helps boost your metabolism and it keeps you from overeating throughout the day. I like breakfast because it helps me get some protein in the A.M. and because there are so many different breakfast foods that I enjoy eating. Eating a healthy breakfast definitely keeps me on the healthy eating track for the rest of the day.

An Extravagant Brunch

Last Saturday, I decided to make a delicious brunch. I was inspired by yet another gifty from IIN, gluten-free, wheat-free, sugar-free, dairy-free blueberry maple muffin mix from Purely Elizabeth.


All I needed to add was maple syrup (I used 1/2 of the recommended amount), olive oil, blueberries and vanilla. Easy-peasy. I stuck some blackberries in with the blueberries to make them a little more exotic and I thought about using coconut oil instead of olive oil, but I really wanted the brunch to be niiiiice, so I followed the recipe...

I popped the mini muffins into my ancient oven. (You can't really tell from this picture, but there are no numbers on the burner dials...they have two settings: inferno and gas leak).

The mini muffins came out perfectly!

Some glamour shots:

To round out our brunch, I made some scrambled eggs (two eggs, two whites each), and bacon, because, as we know, no brunch is complete without bacon! I also sliced up a peach I had lying around.

It was a protein packed, blueberry muffin-y brunch! The muffins were great: they had a very unique taste-- maybe it was the chia seeds and millet flour. I used to be some sort of muffin freak (I would eat a dunkin' donuts reduced fat blueberry muffin every morning before work in the olden days), and I really liked these! I'm not sure if I would buy the mix myself, but I definitely plan on using it as a model for my own healthy blueberry muffins.

Bacon Wrapped Sweet Potatoes Equal a Glorious Memorial Day

Last weeks module for my Integrative Nutrition course focused a lot on healthy cooking at home. Since starting the program, I've gotten much, much better at organizing my grocery store trips so that I have plenty of ingredients to cook dinners and pack lunches. I make sure to have lots of leafy greens for salads galore, a variety of fruits, and snacks for throughout the day. The beautiful summery weather has made us grill crazy, so we've also been making sure to stock up on turkey burgers, chicken sausages and chicken wings (M makes a mean grilled buffalo wing).

This being Memorial Day Weekend, we hosted the obligatory BBQ. The usual suspects showed up and we had a grand ole time playing games (beer pong and ladder ball), eating steak tips, burgers and some mouthwatering hors d'oeuvres.

My newly found love for cooking at home inspired me to make something different for this get together, so I experimented with two of my favorite things: sweet potatoes and bacon. This is what I came up with:

Bacon Wrapped Sweet Potatoes:

Ingredients:
Two sweet potatoes
One pound uncured, nitrate-free bacon (I used Nature's Promise from Stop and Shop)
Olive oil
Rosemary (I used dried, but fresh would work too)

I cut the sweet potatoes into "fries" (with the skin on), sprayed with olive oil and baked at 400 for 10 minutes on each side. After baking, I let the sweet potatoes cool to a temperature that I could comfortable handle them, and dipped them in a mixture of olive oil (1/4 cup ) and rosemary (1 Tbsp). Then, I cut the bacon strips in half and lightly fried them. I wrapped each fry in one "1/2 strip" and secured with a skewer. After laying each morsel on an aluminum foil lined baking pan, I baked them again at 400 degrees for 7-10 minutes on each side (until the bacon was crisp).

These were a hit! I will most definitely make them again...

Also among our mouthwatering hors d'oeuvres was this crazy-good (but probably not good for you) Buffalo Chicken Dip:

One of our friends makes this for basically every party we have...because it's addictive...like crack.

She won't divulge her secret recipe, but I'm pretty sure it's chicken, buffalo sauce, and many kinds of cheeses including blue cheese and cheddar.

The BBQ was a success! Everyone enjoyed themselves...including Chester and Meadow, who shared a rawhide bone.

They were in a rawhide induced coma for most of the evening...

The Great Breakfast Experiment of 2010

Last week, after my horrible whey protein breakfast experience, I decided to actively partake in a Breakfast Experiment. The Breakfast Experiment was first brought to my attention in the "warm-up" classes for my Institute of Integrative Nutrition program. We were all asked to record what we eat for breakfast each day of the week, and record how we feel two hours later, and then in the evening. We were also encouraged to experiment with different types of breakfast foods.

I'm kind of stubborn when it comes to breakfast: I love me my eggs. I usually eat one egg and two or three egg whites every morning with some fruit. When I first read about the experiment, I wasn't really in the mood to switch things up, because I know that this breakfast works for me. Last week I was hit by a sudden urge to try something different...and it went terribly wrong. As a result, I decided to experiment with types and amounts of breakfast food to see what really holds me over and gives me energy...

Wednesday, May 12th
Breakfast (8:00am): Optimum Nutrition Whey Protein, one scoop with one cup almond milk, almond butter, spinach and flax seeds. (A Green Monster gone bad)

10:00am: UGH...I hate whey protein...and I secretly knew this would happen: I felt sick to my stomach all morning.

5:00pm: Even after lunch and my delicious snack, I still felt hungry and a little sick. I ended up having a headache...and taking a nap on the commute home (don't worry...I wasn't driving).

Thursday, May 13th
8:00am: One egg and three egg whites & a large Dunkin' Donuts Coffee with cream and splenda (I usually have something in addition to the eggs...but we're due for a grocery store trip aka out of everything.)

10:00am: Hungry! Breakfast was not substantial enough to hold me over until Lunch.

5:00pm: Doin' good...probably the bowl o' Boloco I had for lunch...

Friday, May 14th
8:00am: One egg and two whites scrambled with 1 cup spinach, strawberries and coffee with milk and stevia

10:00am: I can't tell if I have my morning snack out of habit...or if I'm actually hungry. I think this time it was truly hunger...I had an apple and 1/2 of a Cinnamon Roll Larabar.

5:00pm: I'm starting to think that lunch is my most important meal of the day...I usually don't need an afternoon snack after a good lunch. Does this mean I'm eating too much for lunch? Or that because I need a morning snack, I'm still not eating enough for breakfast?

Saturday, May 15th
9:30am: Ditto yesterday, but this time...WITH BACON!

11:30am: Weekends are tough...I lose track of time...I was fairly satisfied all morning long. Was it the bacon? Or that my brain was occupied instead of sitting in front of a computer watching the clock?

5:00pm: Doing pretty well...forgot to eat lunch...which probably means my breakfast was AWESOME.

Sunday, May 16th
10:00am: Pink Lady Apple with 2 tbsp Almond butter, coffee (a couple of fork fulls of M's eggs and guacamole...YUM). I didn't feel like making a huge production with the breakfasts...so I went for something simple. I was going to be home all day anyway, so I didn't need to hold myself over for anything.

12:00pm: In the middle of an intense clean and jerk Crossfit workout-- I guess my apple helped me through.

5:00pm: Still going strong (with the help of a turkey burger lunch)

Monday, May 17th
8:00am: Two eggs and two whites scrambled, with a leftover steak tip from Doms!

10:00am: Feeling pretty good. The extra fat and protein from the steak tips helped tide me over until lunch.

5:00pm: I still gots to have my afternoon snacks! I needed a little kick to get me through the afternoon...maybe I need to do the "Great Lunch Experiment of 2010"

Tuesday, May 18th
8:00am: I gave the Green Monster another shot-- this time, without the whey protein. Spinach, flax seeds, 1 Tbsp almond butter, one cup almond milk and 1/2 a banana.

10:00am: Woot! I'm not hungry! Even better: I'm not sick to my stomach...'twas definitely the whey.

5:00pm: Hungry for dinner! I ate a little less protein than usual at lunch...so that's probably why.

Wednesday, May 19th
8:00am: Back to the usual-- one egg, two whites scrambled with spinach and a large coffee from Dunkin' Donuts.

10:00am: Still feeling pretty good...

Conclusions: After recording my breakfasts for the past week, and really paying attention to how my body felt after each meal, I've decided that the best breakfast for me is one high in whole food protein. I also feel most satisfied mentally when I have a "food" breakfast, like eggs, as opposed to a "drink" breakfast like the Green Monster.
My egg and spinach breakfast has about 17g of protein according to The Daily Burn, which, for me, is a great way to jump start my day.

Even though the Green Monster is nutritious, I found myself wanting to eat more (even though I wasn't so hungry) after having it for breakfast. I'm pretty sure it's a mental thing: I feel like I didn't eat anything...because I drank my breakfast. I do, however, really like experimenting with the spinach shakes and I plan to try more tasty recipes...I'll just need to remind myself that I am getting nutrients...and that using a straw for breakfast can be as satisfying as using a fork.

I've also discovered that (duh) lunches are pretty important for me. Breakfast might help me start my day, but a well rounded lunch can hold me out for much longer than my breakfast...maybe I need to eat more breakfast...I probably should have varied things a little more...oh well, I'm done with the official experiment for now, but I plan to keep trying new foods and different quantities of food.

Has anyone else ever done this kind of experiment before? What kind of breakfast works the best for you?

Flip Flip Flipadelphia

This past weekend I made a trip to Philadelphia with my sister, mother and aunt to visit my grandmother for Mother's Day. It was a whirlwind tour (flew in Saturday and out Sunday), but we managed to get in some good quality visiting time.

Upon our arrival, we went to the Ardmore Farmer's Market for lunch.

Great Harvest Bread Company!



Delicious sausage treats


Lots of fresh veggies


Mother's Day Treats



On Mother's Day, we had a wonderful brunch at my Grandparent's retirement community


mmMMMmmm....meats...

My sister's downfall...


Round One

Round Two. Yes, I did have seconds on the bacons. You can never have too much bacon...



It was a wonderful Mother's Day weekend! I am so thankful that I have such a wonderful mother...and family!