Tzatzkiki

This recipe is one of my absolute favourites! Its wonderful as a dip, as salad dressing, as a spread, on sandwiches as a substitute for mayo, and all around delicious! Its fat free, full of cucumber, and has tons of garlic, which aside from being delicious is great at helping to stave off colds and naturally boost your immune system!

We love to combine this with balsamic grilled vegetables, a meat (such as my turkey-pork sausage, although we omit the nutmeg for this dish) and wilted spinach on a pita or a bed of quinoa for a Mediterranean meal!

Here is my famous tzatziki recipe for one of my fellow (and lovely!!) brides Ms Lavender. I've been promising this recipe to her for so long, and continually forget to post it! Enjoy!

Tzatziki: 
1 c fat free plain yogourt
1 cup shredded cucumber (drained)*
1 - 2 tsp dill weed
3 (or more) cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp lemon juice
pepper to taste

1) Grate the cucumber and let it sit suspended (above a sink or bowl) in a cheese cloth for 15 mins. This allows some of the water from the cucumber to drain out. (save the water to add to a smoothie later!) Wring the cucumber out in the cheese cloth after it has sit.
2) Mix the lemon juice into the yogourt while you let the cucumber sit.
3) Add the dill, garlic (the more the merrier in my mind!) & pepper to the yogourt, and mix in the drained cucumbers.
4) Optional: blend the whole thing with an immersion blender. (Personally I am partial to the chunks of cucumber, but some people prefer a smooth texture, so feel free to blend away!)

It should keep in the fridge for a week or so, but ours rarely stays that long since we eat it yo so quickly!

*You definitely don't have to drain the cucumber if you are in a pinch for time, you'll just end up with a more liquidy tzatziki, which is great for salads. As a spread it works best if you get a lot of the water out, otherwise you end up with soggy bread. You can always drain some of the liquid later, as it tends to separate from the yogourt while its being refrigerated. I always find that this dip tastes better after a day or two when the flavours have had a chance to fully blend together.

My Typical Day

A few people have been asking what a "typical" day looks like for me, so I've decided to come up with an average day. What I eat, what I do for exercise and some of the boring mundane things in between! I also have to admit that I'm a grazer (which I honestly think is healthier than eating three giant meals!!). One essential that I keep with my constantly is my water bottle. I basically drink only water throughout the day, with the exception of sometimes a decaf coffee (with a touch of milk) or herbal tea (plain) for breakfast. Water is super super important for your body! I usually have 3 or more litres a day!


Breakfast: Although I know its the most important meal of the day, I've really never been much of a breakfast person. I feel nauseous if I put anything other than water into me until I've been awake for a few hours.
Anyways this is what I often eat for breakfast

• A smoothie (check out my post on smoothies here) 
• Yogourt with granola 
• 1 fat free or law fat yogourt cup with a large handful of sugar-free granola or oats
• Banana with peanut butter
• Oatmeal with berries and honey
• Cereal with skim milk (I really like Cheerios, Mueslix, Special K, Oat Squares...)
• Water

Lunch: Lunch usually happens at school for me, and since I am horrible at either getting up early enough to pack my lunch, or being efficient enough to pack my lunch the night before, its often a bit random. What we do though is ensure that we have lots of healthy foods and snacks at home so I'm not tempted to grab a bag of chips or something equally unhealthy. Overall we try to keep our house free of "unhealthy" foods, so there really are only good options!

• A sandwich of some sort, usually on pita 
• meat, lettuce, veggies, mustard & sometimes cheese
• egg or tuna salad made with mustard or vinegarette dressing instead of mayo
• all natural PB with homemade jam or local honey
• A piece of fruit
• apples, bananas, berries, peaches, nectarines, bananas...
• Carrot or celery sticks
• A "treat" like healthy homemade muffins, homemade granola, 100% fruit bars, 100% fruit snacks 
• Water

Supper: Supper is one of my favourite meals of the day. My husband and I love cooking together, so we often get creative and experiment with food ideas! The best part is trying to come up with healthy and nutritious meals together!

For supper we try to keep at least half of our plates as veggies. To clarify this, we count potato and corn as starches, so they don't count. A typical plate is 1/2 veggies, 1/4 - 1/3 protein and the rest a starch. 

• Meats: we like to keep this varied, but we never fry things in oil, we usually bake or broil or "fry" in chicken or vegetable stock. We make the majority of our sauces from scratch, and try to use store bought and pre-made seasonings as little as possible. 
• Chicken breast
• Pork loin
• Steak
• BBQ Ribs 
• Roast
  
• Vegetables: we like to vary this, otherwise it gets boring, and there are so many to choose from! We do use a lot of frozen vegetables in the winter especially (as we can't exactly harvest our own under 3 feet of snow!)
• Peas
• Green beans
• Spinach
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Carrots
• Asparagus
• Zucchini
• Squash
• Yams
  
• Starch: We like to vary this as well, and try to keep our starches healthy by limiting the oil & butter that we put into them! I usually limit how much starch I put on my plate, and never let it go over 1/2 cup (with the exception of when we cook pasta, I usually have about 1c cooked)  I almost never eat potato since I'm not a huge fan, and prefer to put more complex starches like Quinoa or brown rice on my place. 
• Corn
• Baked or mashed potato
• Brown or wild rice
• Quinoa
• Couscous
• Lentils
• Beans (like chickpeas, red beans, kidney beans etc)
• Whole wheat pasta

Snacks: I love to snack. I usually start eating lunch as soon as I have eaten my drawn out breakfast, and make that continue until I start cooking supper. This doesn't mean that I eat 17 bowls of cereal for breakfast or 9 sandwiches for lunch, it just means that I eat a small bit at a time. So my snacks often consist of my lunch, and I really try to keep things healthy! I like things that I can just snack on the best, and actually hate sitting down for lunch or breakfast throughout the day.

• yogourt
• pita or melba toast with peanut butter 
• celery/carrot sticks
• cheese &  meat with melba toast
• leftovers from last night's delicious supper

Sweets: I have a huge sweet tooth, and cannot resist dessert. My solution is to have a lot of healthier options for dessert at home. I usually have fat-free frozen yogourt in the freezer, that way if I want a sweet dessert, I can reach for that rather than fill a bowl with ice cream. I also keep a lot of home baked healthy treats around (I often make larger batches and freeze them). That way I can feed the sweet craving, but still keep my health in check! That being said, I do indulge in some dark chocolate and wine every now and then. I still enjoy some bad things every now and then! 

More recipes to come!!


-J 

Happy 1st Birthday to a Healthy Lifestyle!!

Well its pretty hard for me to believe, but it was one year ago this week that I decided to get up off my butt and get back on the fitness train! It seems like just yesterday that I woke up and decided that I was unhappy buying bigger jeans rather than making the old ones fit, and that there was actually something that I could do about it.

The biggest thing that I have learned is that you are as strong as you want to be. I've read a lot of health and fitness blogs over the past year, and I see a lot of people trying fad diets, wanting to shed pounds fast, and thinking only about the scale, and not about health. One of my best friends is a size 0, 5'5' and is the healthiest person I know. And yet she weighs 140lbs (looking at her you'd think she was barely 110lbs). She runs marathons, is strong, muscular and healthy. Don't base everything on the scale, but rather on your ability to be fit. That is not to say that numbers don't matter, but there are a battery of different scales to look at. For the average person your BMI is far more important than your weight (although this scale doesn't work well for the extremely athletic or muscular). Don't weight yourself every day, especially if you're trying to lose weight. Weigh yourself at most once a week (did you know the average adult human body can fluctuate about 2-3 lbs in a given day!!) in order to see actual change. Its also important to weight yourself at the same time every day, after the same activities (such as when you first wake up, or when you get home at the end of the day) so you have the same amount of food or water in your system.

I've also learned a lot about eating the right way too. How you feel is all about what you put in. We buy premium fuel for our nice cars, choosing that over plain old "regular" gas, and yet don't bat an eye when we shove fried food down our throats. How on earth can our bodies work at maximum efficiency and be pristine if we put nothing but garbage into them?

Lastly, learn to embrace yourself, be proud of what you have accomplished and stay motivated. Its all worth it in the end.

Here's my tips from the last year:

• Drink lots of water, and I mean lots of water. I usually drink between 3 and 5 litres a day. Yes this means I am constantly going to the bathroom, but we bathe the outsides of our bodies, so why not the insides of us too?
• Health isn't necessarily about pounds, and weight and pant size, but rather about being active, eating well and feeling healthy.
• You don't need a fancy cleanse, or diet to be healthy and shed a few pounds. I've come across everything from "The Cookie Diet" , to a guy drinking only beer and eating nothing, to a guy blogging about trying to only eat cereal for a year, to living only on lemonade mixed with cayenne pepper and maple syrup. While you might feel really awesome for about three days, our bodies need real food and real nutrients to be healthy, and no one can survive on these things forever! 
• Don't limit yourself too much, but don't let yourself cheat too often either. My trick was to eat real meals, and real food. The less packaging the better, if its fresh, and home prepared, its probably pretty healthy, even if its a hamburger! If you know what goes into your food, you can control it, portion it, and make sure its good for you!
• You have to earn it! Sure you can drop 10 pounds in 10 days by starving yourself, but is that really healthy? And really what you want? Fad diets and crazy weight loss plans are no way to stick to things and get healthy. 
• Try to cut out as much processing as possible. Limit pre-packaged & frozen meals (yes even those Lean Meals), as they are usually packed with salt, artificial flavours, colours and sugars. 

Start small. Just because you decide today that you want to be fit doesn't mean you will be able to run a marathon tomorrow. Start with running around the block once, and tomorrow try twice. Rome wasn't built in a day, so don't expect yourself to be. Set tangible goals and make sure you reach them!

P.S. One thing I wish I had done was take a proper "before" picture of myself. I never did because I didn't like how my body looked, but I sincerely wish I had something tangible to compare to now.

-J

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

I realize that it has been almost 2 months since my last post! Being busy sort of creeps up on you when you get back to school full time and work on the weekends. I can't believe that its almost Christmas holidays! I will try very hard to get a few more recipes up over the next couple of weeks (which will probably happen more and more as exams draw near, as one of my favourite study avoidance techniques is procrastibaking!).

For today I offer my healthy version of Chocolate zucchini muffins. I usually get one or two HUMONGOUS zucchinis from my mother-in-laws garden, that are perfect for baking with, but not so appetizing to eat. So this year I got my husband to grate the entire zucchini (we got about 6 or 7 cups worth of grated zucchini!) and I decided to make muffins, and I made TONS of them. We gave lots away, and I froze a bunch as well, which means that I have healthy & delicious treats to go whenever I want! Yum!


Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

1 c white flour
1 1/2 c multigrain or whole wheat flour
1/2 c dark cacao powder
 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/3 c brown sugar or honey (or stevia)
3 eggs (or you can use 5 egg whites)
1 c unsweetened apple sauce
1/2 c skim milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 c shredded zucchini
3/4 c chocolate chips - optional (I usually use dark mint chocolate chips in mine)



1) Preheat oven to 350F
2) Mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda & cinnamon together in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre.
3) Add sugar or honey, eggs, apple sauce, milk & vanilla into well. Mix well.
4) Using your hands, gently fold in the shredded zucchini and chocolate chips until well mixed. Don't overdo the mixing here, the idea isn't to pulverize the zucchini, just get it nice and mixed in. The batter should be fairly  wet, so if it is too dry add in a bit more apple sauce.
5) Scoop into muffin tins with liners (they stick horribly if you don't use liners, so plan on using a lot of grease and flouring the pan if you don't use liners) until the cups are 3/4 full.
6) Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the middle of a muffin.
7) You can also make this as a cake or a loaf, in which case, grease & flour the pan, and cook for 45-50 minutes.

This recipe should make about 24 cupcakes. You'll notice that there is absolutely no butter in this recipe, and a very minimal amount of any type of sugar. I sometimes make it without sugar altogether, but that is a much more bitter muffin. The apple sauce in the recipe substitutes itself very nicely as both a natural sweetener and moistener, meaning that it replaces both butter and sugar in the recipe! The apple sauce has a fairly mild flavour and hides very well in most recipes. You can substitute it basically at a 1:1 ratio for butter, although I usually add a bit more, just to help keep things moist.

Enjoy!