An ongoing love affaire with all things fashionable, tasty and fun

Posts tagged “TwinCakes

Links You’ll Love

Health & Fitness:

Sweet potatoes are a great addition to any healthy diet so you should definitely try out some of these nutritious recipes from Shape Magazine – 10 Healthy Sweet Potato Recipes.

fall detox salad 7422 thumb   Fall Detox Salad + Hurricane Sandy Fundraiser Update

OhSheGlow’s Fall Detox Salad is a must try – Filled with Brussels Sprouts, carrots, apple, celery, sunflower seeds, and raisins, it’s as nutritious as it is delicious {also check out this salad as part of the Thanksgiving Recipe Round-Up}.

Eating well and living a healthy life doesn’t have to mean giving up all sweets and desserts, you just need to make healthier, smarter choices when you want to indulge – Try FitFluential’s Five Healthier Desserts which include amazing choices like Raspberry Chocolate Chips, Dark Chocolate Nut Butter Pretzels, Fruit & Yogurt Parfaits, Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes/Muffins, and Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries.

Do you want model-worthy skin? Refinery 29 has the goods – The Surprising Secret To Model-Worthy Skin.

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Finding a great, healthy snack that you love and that’s easy to make is wonderful – One of my favorites recently is Choosing Raw’s Cinnamon Caramelized Cauliflower.

Fashion:

Interested in spicing up your daily makeup routine? It’s always fun to see what other beauty products are out there and the sort of routines that women go through on a daily basis, so let’s check out how blogger Trop Rouge has set up her makeup routine – Makeup Monday.

Top 9 at 9: A Model’s Must Haves with Lonneke Engel gives you all of model Lonneke Engel’s Fall 2012 picks – From workout gear to sweaters to what her favorite shoes are for Fall.

Ulyana Sergeenko’s dramatic, eye-catching clothes are the perfect pieces for this dreamy Moscow-based photo shoot in the most recent Carine Roitfeld Fashion Book issue – Moscow Walk.

Oxblood is everywhere for Fall 2012 and if you’re not sure whether it’s the trend for you, trying beauty products and nail polish are great choices – 3 Chic Ways To Do Burgundy Beauty.

The Fall 2012 Collection for J.Crew is pretty phenomenal – It’s filled with great outerwear, fun, printed pants, and killer accessories. And none of those accessories are better than the Lulu Frost’s Capsule Collection – Shop It Now: Lulu Frost For J.Crew Holiday.


Weekend Grocery Shopping

When you work long hours and try to simultaneously maintain a consistent workout regime, eat healthy and get enough sleep, doing your grocery shopping on weekends can be a serious life saver. Many people plan their meals for the week and write their grocery lists accordingly, which is an especially great strategy if you’re cooking for a family, interested in making sure no food goes to waste and/or sticking to a budget.

I tend to be a bit more lackadaisical when it comes to grocery shopping for a couple of reasons: (1) I’m only cooking for myself so I have more flexibility with my meals, which means that if I want to eat nothing but sugar snap peas and jalapeno hummus for “dinner” no one can say anything! 🙂 (2) I try to eat seasonally as much as I can so I like to see what’s available in stores/at the Farmer’s Market before deciding what to eat. (3) I get a CSA basket every other week so I have to factor in its arrival when I consider what I’ll need for a given week. (4) Finally, I only spend every other weekend in San Francisco since I spend the other half in Sacramento with my boyfriend, and obviously if I’m coming back on the train at 7pm on a Sunday there’s no hope of grocery shopping.

In all of the situations above its great to have some basic staples and emergency items in your pantry. Just in case.

I like dipping.

A lot.

Hummus is a non-negotiable staple in my life and I usually have a couple store-bought varieties on hand at any given time. I also like to get sprouted garbanzo beans at the Farmer’s Market to make my own hummus, though I that I must warn you, sprouted hummus has a very distinct flavor. I’ll also dip virtually anything (including a spoon and/or my finger) into nut butter, so I usually keep a jar or two of sunflower seed butter in my pantry (and under my desk) as well as cashew butter.

Dipping time! Lydia's kale chips & juice pulp crackers/flatbread from TwinCakes

I like crudities and/or apples for dipping in hummus and nut butters, as well as kale chips (Lydia’s Organics can be hard to find but all of her products are worth the effort) and juice pulp crackers. I mentioned TwinCakes in this post, they are a vegan/gluten-free/mostly raw East Coast bakery that you can order from online. I adore their crackers, flatbread and snack bites, all of which are parfait pour dipping!
 
Another staple that I keep in the pantry are various gluten-free goodies, pastas & grains for quick meals, breakfasts and snacks.
 

Gluten-free goodness: Brown rice pasta from TJs, Quinoa pasta from Real Foods, Mary's Gone Crackers chia seed Sticks & Twigs and Glutenfreeda Oatmeal

The gluten-free snacks that I keep around vary depending on what I find in stores and what I’m in the mood for. My last trip to the Farmer’s Market yielded a ton of new products so I had to move my stash to the freezer for safe keeping, so in addition to the above I have sprouted garden burgers, chickpea flour naan, spicy Moong Dal and GF falafel in the freezer.
 
Yum.
 

Healthy raw or dried snacks and canned goods that can easily be added to/used as the base of a meal are also good to keep around. 

 
I always have tons of nuts, chia seeds, dried fruit, lentils, beans, seeds, quinoa, couscous and canned beans & tomatoes on hand. These might not seem like much but adding kidney beans to a salad can be the perfect topping, dried pineapple rings (no additives) the most amazing dessert when sprinkled with cinnamon or quinoa the ideal base to your grilled vegetable dish.
 

Two other quick meal basics that are absolutely necessary in my kitchen are nooch and Braggs, which can both be used for a variety of dishes.

 

I couldn't live without Bragg's Liquid Amino Acids (less sodium than soy sauce & ideal for a quick stir fry) and nutritional yeast from the bins at Real Foods

Nutritional Yeast (aka Nooch) is deactivated yeast, available as a powder or in flakes, either pre-packaged (looks like parmesan cheese cans) or in the bulk bins at a health food store. Nooch contains protein & vitamins and is a complete protein, in addition to being free of sugar and allergens like dairy and gluten. Vegans, vegetarians and raw food enthusiasts often use nooch in place of processed cheese substitutes like soy cheese and Daiya to achieve “cheesiness” in their recipes. If you checked out the Oh She Glows Mac n’ Cheese recipe that I talked about here, you’ll see that nooch is a major ingredient.
 
Bar love. 🙂 While I’m not a ‘replace my meals with bars’ kinda girl, I do always keep bars of some sort in my purse, desk and pantry.
 

I go through phases with my bars, and while I will always LOVE Larabars, I'm deep in Raw Revolution devotion right now

I’ve also made two batches of these super easy raw cacao snack bars from Choosing Raw in the past few weeks. You can easily add/subtract flavors based on what you have on hand (cacao & coconut turned out SUBLIME) and these are delish after being frozen.
 
In addition to the dry (i.e. pantry) items that I like to keep on hand, there are also a few perishable staples that I consistently keep at home. Hummus (as lovingly mentioned above), spinach, firm pressed tofu, onions, ginger, garlic, large dates (always key for raw dessert recipes), sprouted garbanzo beans, sweet potatoes, dipping veggies like celery, carrots, cucumber, cabbage & peppers, Daiya (Pepperjack is AMAZING) and berries to throw in the freezer for smoothies.
 
After the weekend shopping I cut up my fresh veggies and store in two ziplock bags, one to take to work (with a tub of hummus)  and one to keep at home for snacking. I also cube 1/2 my sweet potatoes and any squash I may have picked up, to make them easier to prepare mid-week (I love baked sweet potatoes as a side so usually keep one or two whole). I also make big batches of black beans (try this recipe for Cuban black beans) and lentils to be added to wraps, stir-fries, salads and eaten as sides during the week (small containers of each go to the office with me as well).
 
Other than this minimal prep I tend to just eat what sounds good on any given night, since I have all the necessary ingredients on hand!
 
I hope that you’ve enjoyed this peek into my cupboards and I’ll be back at a later time with a look at the goodies I keep stored my office for mid-day snacking.
 

Motivation

 

Personally I find an external motivator to be great incentive to keep up with an exercise regime. I wish I could say that I have all the internal motivation that I need in order to meet all of my goals, but unfortunately I don’t. Sometimes on days when I’m tempted to skip my planned workout, knowing that I’ll have to admit my failure aloud to someone else is usually enough incentive to push through.

Usually. 🙂

I’m registered to run the San Francisco Half Marathon on July 31st and haven’t run consistently for months, so I need to begin training, um… Now! It just so happens that one of my best friends is training for the Death Ride (which I lovingly call The Ride of Death) a 129 mile bike race with 15,000 miles of climbing through the Sierra Nevada’s near Tahoe. Her race is July 9 and although we’re training for different types of races in different cities (she’s in Sacramento), she has been acting as an unofficial sponsor and motivator for my last-ditch training efforts.

Monday mornings I email her my proposed workouts for the week (subject to scheduling changes) and each morning I send her a confirmation of what I accomplished the previous day. I’m going to include various types of exercise in my training program in addition to running, specifically circuit training and Pilates.

Below is a draft of a proposed schedule for one of the weeks of training:

Monday:

  • Run to work (1.3 miles)
  • Mini cardio session (2 miles stationary bike & 1 mile elliptical trainer)
  • Pilates Mat class (5pm – 6pm)

Tuesday:

  • Jog to work
  • 15 minute circuit training workout
  • Run (pm)

Wednesday:

  • Walk to work
  • High intensity interval training on the elliptical
  • Pilates Mat class (5pm – 6pm)
  • Yoga Flow (6pm – 7:15pm)
  • Walk home

Thursday:

  • Walk to work
  • 25 minute circuit training workout
  • Run (pm)

Friday:

  • Jog to work
  • 15 minute circuit training workout

Saturday & Sunday – Rest & stretching (maybe a massage if I can be convincing enough) and long walks or a hike

Hooking up with a workout buddy who you can share your plans with or a like-minded friend who you may not workout with but who has similar goals, can be a great motivator.

If the idea of sharing your workout goals/plans with someone else isn’t appealing, or if you’re just getting started and want to hold off until you feel like you’ve made some progress, there are other external motivators that may help you when the odd lazy day rears its ugly head.

(1) A kick-ass play list can do wonders. Put a super charged playlist on your MP3 player or blare it over your computer/sound system. Everyone has their own style and different beats that get them pumped up, and I personally refresh my Nano weekly, but here are some artists/bands that never fail to get my heart rate going, regardless of my mood: Panic! at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Chemical Romance, Finger Eleven, Breaking Benjamin, My Darkest Days, Jason Derulo, Lady Gaga, Bon Jovi, K$sha, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Sean Kingston.

(2) Sign yourself up for a class on a day when you don’t think that you can make yourself do a work out. You’ll feel guilty not showing up after having reserved a spot in the class and even guiltier when you see the charge on your credit card! The two days of the week that are the hardest for me to get off my booty are always Monday and Wednesday, so I’m getting into the habit of doing at least a Pilates class at Glow Yoga  each of those days. And now that I’m getting to know the other students and the instructor, there’s even more motivation not to play hooky!

(3) If you have a movie or a book that you find extremely motivational, that can be a great way to get yourself going. If hearing Jillian’s commanding voice shoots you out of your seat, start your workouts with some Shred, even if you don’t plan to do the video it can give you the push you need. Personally I’ve found that popping in a dance DVD before my 5:30pm after-work runs or reading a few pages of Born To Run are a sure-fire way to get myself going.

(4) Finally, one of my favorite pieces to read when I need to stoke my motivational fires is The Better Man, about the (then) 75 year-old fitness guru & health nut Don Wildman (my friend Jim sent me this YEARS ago and I saved a PDF in case of emergencies). This always gives me the kick in the pants that I need to get off of the couch.

Good luck getting yourself onto the trail, treadmill or into the gym. Make me proud!