Cleaner Life | Healthy and Sane

Celebrity sighting

June 29th, 2009

Thank you all for your sweet comments on my previous post. I am back on the CLC wagon and am looking forward to the rest of the ride. Somehow the day got away from me so I didn’t get a chance to work out yesterday, but I’ll make up for it today

What I did have a chance to do, though, is check out Boston’s Health and Fitness Expo yesterday. I’ve been reading about these types of events on blogs for what seems like ages now. I was imagining larabar and goo samples everywhere, polar and garmin coupons and I don’t know what else… maybe booths with fancy performance socks or something Unfortunately, this particular event was kind of lame (just lots of hospitals and a few ghetto products sprinkled in)… until Katy spotted the Biggest Loser guys. Where? Oh yeah… that’s Mike and Ron!!! I am a HUGE fan of the show, and seeing those guys (ok Mike) kind of brought the 16 year old in me. I really wanted to talk to him, but there was a huge line to do just that and I had to get to work. Boo to adult responsibilities I did get a chance to snap a few photos (from a weird angle)… here is the best one:

Mike + Ron from the Biggest Loser

They looked just like on the show! So so cool. Helen was there earlier, but I don’t really like her much so I’m not upset I missed her. Some lady told us that Mike’s brother lost 60 lbs already. That’s so great. Maybe they should bring him in for the next season. Ok ok, I’m done rambling. Maybe this is only exciting for me. I went back to work, and once in a while was thinking about this little celebrity sighting. I was thinking about what I’d say to them if I did stand in that line? I think I’d want to ask them if they were hungry standing there for hours? Are you a fan of the Biggest Loser? What would you say to Mike and Ron if you met them?

Yesterday’s eats included some vegan berry pie for breakfast, and then this…

Egg white omelet with mushroom, spinach, canadian bacon, light on the cheese, light on the oil + dry whole wheat toast at the Trident Cafe:

The Healthy Chocolate at the Expo (just acai berries – no sugar)… yeah, tasted like fake chocolate. No surprise there.

For dinner I made an amazing summer squash gratin from 101 cookbooks. This was pretty labor intensive (it took me probably close to an hour to slice and dice everything, make the breadcrumbs, make the sauce) but it was worth it in my opinion. I used fresh basil to make the sauce, halved the amount of oil (and added a little bit of water to the sauce instead) and only used 1.5 T of butter for the breadcrumbs instead of 4. So many complex flavors. I really loved it! Can’t wait to have it for lunch today again. Unfortunately Adam said there was too much squash there for his liking so I froze his leftovers for a dinner in the future. We’ll see how it keeps

I also ate my last chocolate macaroon

Perfect way to end the weekend (ha, that’s lobsters on the tv – we were watching food shows)!

Oh wait, last question… I went crazy buying everything in sight at the farmers market on Friday and now have a whole bunch of root vegetables (beets, turnips). I went through lots of old Cooking Light and Eating Well magazines for inspiration on how to use these up but the best I could come up with was just roasting these babies and adding them to sandwiches, salads or over some ww grains. Any ideas from you guys? Thanks!

CLC – falling off the wagon

June 28th, 2009

As the title implies, I broke my 12 day streak of complying with CLC (actually I also had some tofu and white chocolate chips in the blondies at the blogger potluck dinner party, but that was pre-planned and was one of my exception events). The challenge so far has been great. I’ve blogged about it a bit over the past few weeks, but basically it has really helped me refocus on eating cleaner and I haven’t felt this good in months!

Yesterday, however, I was invited to a Mary Kay party and wanted to bring some dessert. I search for recipes all morning, trying to find the perfect white sugar/white flour free recipe to bring, and finally decided on trying my hand at a chocolate/strawberry dessert number (using the same trick I used while making the amazing black bean brownies… i.e. starting with unsweetened chocolate and sweetening it with agave nectar). I didn’t have most of the ingredients on hand, so I walked to Whole Foods. This is where I kind of broke down, I think. The trip took a while, they didn’t have all the ingredients I needed (and I didn’t really have a plan B recipe) so I started going through their baked goods section and reading all the ingredients lists. It was hard – mostly everything had either sugar, white flour or soy. It took me FOREVER to finally find a vegan cherry blackberry pie that complied with all the challenge rules (it used whole wheat flour and was sweetened with evaporated cane sugar and fruit juice). I bought it for backup, but I still didn’t like the idea of not bringing a homemade dessert so I went to another grocery store in an attempt to find the rest of the ingredients for my project. Nope – no luck there either. And then, by the time I got home, I basically didn’t have much time to make anything anyway. I felt so defeated So when my friend, Katy, mentioned that she made a (CLC non-compliant) lime cake I just said screw it – I’m going to have some. For the first time, I was tired of the challenge. I wasted most of my Saturday thinking and trying to comply with it. I was done! What didn’t help is that another guest brought the most amazing chocolate cake from a local bakery, so yeah – I pretty much had to have some of that as well.

Here is how you break a 12-day streak:

dessert assortment

And then you go back for seconds after a few hours oops:

I woke up early this morning to workout, but I have a food hangover! I’m hungry, yet bloated. I’m jittery from all the sugar. I feel sick. Exercise is just truly not an option right now. I’m going to have to get my butt to the gym later in the day, but I also HAVE TO continue with the challenge. At the beginning of this post I mentioned that I haven’t felt this good in months, since starting the challenge. I’ve been feeling so much more in control, so much more at peace with my body and how I’m taking care of it. I want that feeling back! How do you handle the day after an excessive food splurge?

P.S. – the vegan berry pie from Whole Foods is awesome!

Eating chocolate during the CLC – amazing black bean brownies

June 25th, 2009

One of the things I was most nervous about after deciding to do my own version of Heather’s Cleaner Life Challenge, was going almost 30 days without chocolate and other sugary sweets. I am a self-proclaimed chocoholic and anyone who knows me (in both real and blog life) knows that even that is kind of an understatement. The challenge so far is going well. I’ve had some kind of chocolate tasting thing nearly every day, but that’s a huge improvement over what I was doing before. Better yet, these chocolate tasting treats were sugar free, and I’m not talking artificial sweeteners… I’m talking natural, unrefined sweeteners. Yeah, baby

So yeah, given my love for chocolate and an upcoming blogger potluck dinner, I went searching my favorite blogs and magazines for some inspiration. Most sugarless desserts sounded boring for this chocoholic… until I stumbled upon a recipe for amazing black bean brownies I’ve saved a long time ago. The recipe is originally from Baking with Agave Nectar by Ania Catalano, and after tasting these guys, I need to get my hands on this cookbook. Yes, need. The copy from my library mysteriously disappeared (I’m not even kidding, the records say “missing”) and honestly I can’t blame whomever took it. Actually I can blame them (sneaky thieves!) but you know what I mean…

Aside from being white sugar and white flour free (yay for staying on top of the CLC), these were fantastic! The brownies have some instant coffee in the batter, and the coffee really intensified the chocolate flavor. The texture was fudge-like, like a creamy flourless chocolate cake. My mouth is watering just thinking about these brownies (alas, they’re all gone). I halved the recipe, and the only substitution I made was using almond slivers instead of walnuts (one of my party attending friends, Katy, is allergic to walnuts). I think walnuts would have been excellent in these. Next time. Oh and no, you can’t taste the black beans

Progress pics galore…

All the ingredients:

Melt butter + unsweetened chocolate in the microwave

Do not taste this! Yup, I did… unsweetened choc + butter = gross

Pulse some almonds, black beans + a little bit of the choc mixture. If the batter is too dry, add a little more chocolate.

Combine choc mixture, remaining almonds (or walnuts) + ground coffee

Beat eggs

Add agave nectar

Combine the chocolate/coffee mixture with the black bean/almond mixture

Add eggs/agave mixture, saving a little (as per recipe), and mix well

Pour into the pan

Add some fluffy eggs on top (looks funny but it turned out great!)

Bake + cool (I refrigerated mine overnight)

Cut into squares or triangles. I cut mine into 12 triangles (that’s for the half recipe) but these are quite rich so I’d probably cut into smaller squares next time.