Serious Play

My Breakfast

So, Anthropologie came to my fair city just before Christmas. Knowing that I had been waiting for it to open in order to buy some breakfast bowls, Ashley got there before I did and purchased me a set for Christmas! Now, I enjoy my healthy oatmeal every morning in a beautiful Anthropologie bowl. And to top it off, my mom purchased me the delicate tea cup for Christmas, also from Anthropologie. How happy am I?

Here is a look at my typical breakfast every morning...

I boil water for both my oats and tea at the same time.

I put a lid on my oats and let them 'cook', while I pull out all the fixings to go with it...bee pollen, flax, hemp, protein powder and sunflower seeds. Lately I have also been adding walnuts and pumpkin seeds.

Next, I add some Kefir and a few dashes of Apple Pie Spice (from the recipe book).

Finally, I add some fruit. Typically I have bananas. Sometimes it is cranberries, blueberries, unsweetened applesauce...whatever I have on hand.

Eating these oats every day (or some home-made granola) has given me a better start to my day.

Are you ready to try it? If it helps, find yourself a beautiful bowl like I now have!

Granola

So, I hope you are not getting tired of hearing about all of my previous intentions being met. Because here is another one. I have wanted to make home-made granola for almost a year now. Don't ask me why I hadn't...other things just seemed more worthy of my time, I guess.

Since learning about the Eat-Clean diet, the one thing that I have been able to incorporate and maintain successfully, is breakfast. In her books, Tosca Reno talks about the importance of a good breakfast. That is one practice that I used to skip regularly, using the excuses that I didn't have time in the morning and that I "couldn't eat that early". Once I read what Tosca had to say, I changed up my mind. I can honestly say that not only do I now eat breakfast every day, but I eat a healthy breakfast.

I learned from Tosca that eating breakfast:

• breaks the 'fast' from not eating all night and provides your brain with the nutrients it needs to start your day
• helps you both lose and maintain a healthy body weight
• prevents you from bingeing throughout the day since you started the day right
• should provide one quarter of your nutritional requirements for the day

She strongly suggests oatmeal for breakfast since it is loaded with soluble and insoluble plant fibers, which provide bulk and give you that 'full' feeling longer. Oats also moderate blood sugar levels, and avoiding highs and lows is one of the principles of the Eat-Clean diet. Oats, paired with lean protein, such as egg whites, gives you a well-rounded start to your day.

Now, my girls will not eat hot cooked oats for breakfast. So, I wanted a healthy alternative and turned to granola in order to still start their day with oats. All of the store-bought granolas that I looked at were typically high in sugar and had several additives. After finding a recipe in my Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook, I finally decided to give it a try. My girls loved it and ate the entire batch in a week!

...another OLW check mark for me!

Maui Black Bean Soup

Snowy patterns on my kitchen window on a blustery day

So, we had a terribly, blustery, wintery weekend. The kind where you stay indoors for a full 48 hours without even being tempted to crack a window just to breathe fresh air. I watched the snow blow and swirl all around my house from a wind so fierce it caused my Christmas wreath, which has overstayed it's welcome, to smack against the window on my front door.

This called for one of my favorite comfort foods...a thick hearty bowl of soup. 

I pulled out my Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook and decided to try the Maui Black Bean Soup. This soup is full of clean ingredients that leave me feeling satisfied and good about what I have put inside my body. There is a great mix of vegetables and the beans add protein. Floating on the top is a little pile (I was going to say dash, but let's face it, it's a pile) of freshly grated parmesan cheese.

I did cheat and have a piece of bread and cheese, but it tasted so good. The Eat-Clean diet frowns on bread that contains white flour and since this was store-bought ciabatta bread it is a no-no in terms of being clean. I have cut out all refined white foods (flour, rice, sugar) in the last year, but I must admit that every once in a while I do still have a piece of ciabatta or focaccia with soup. This happened to be my once in a while.

Why no white flour, you ask? Well, white flour is a simple carbohydrate, which essentially breaks down easily and causes blood-sugar levels to go out of control. The Eat-Clean Principles, as stated in Tosca Reno's book, seek to keep those blood-sugar levels balanced. As Tosca talks about in her books, simple carbohydrates do the following:

• remove B vitamins from the body, which increase metabolism and therefore burn your food without it turning to fat
• break down the skeleton by upsetting the delicate calcium-phosphorus balance in bones and teeth
• cause enormous spikes in blood sugar levels, that our insulin must then try to adjust to, and when it cannot, the result is fat, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer

When I read this, I decided it was not worth it to eat these simple carbs. I'm done. Sugar, white flour, white rice...gone from my home. Cooking the Eat-Clean way has allowed me to replace those options with more healthy ones and that makes me feel great!

...but I am human, and sometimes I have ciabatta bread. How do the Italians seem to still be so healthy?

David's Tea

So, I love tea. I don't remember when my love for tea started, but over the past few years my interest and taste for tea has grown exponentially. Last week I discovered a new store in the mall that sells nothing but tea. Rows and rows of tea, black teas, red teas, green teas, yerba mate teas, medicinal teas, fruity teas, chocolate teas (if you can believe it) and the list goes on. It was called simply David's Tea.

On this day, Sean and I tested many, many teas. Several of them wanted to come home with us, but we limited our selections to just three. Since we drink a lot of peppermint tea, we were pulled towards the spearmint tea, which is similar, but a bit sweeter. I also chose one called Lavender Zen, which is a green tea with lavender...great for winding down in the evening. Lastly, we bought Chocolate Mint, what more need I say about that one?

I think it was the tin that sealed the deal for me! I am such a sucker for practicality. If you bought 100g of tea, you qualified for a free tin. The bonus there is that I can take the tin back to the store to get my refills of whatever I feel like...no packaging waste at all! Brilliant!

And, who can argue with such a simple design? Even the store itself was designed in a Swedish minimalist fashion, which I love. So I am busy drinking up my teas so that I can go back to taste-test more teas!
 

Mexican Tostadas

So, tonight we made Mexican Tostadas from Tosca Reno's Eat Clean recipe book. Three of us were chopping and prepping and cooking...and it was so much fun! I do feel spoiled to have my new kitchen. It just works so well when we all want to cook together. No one is bumping into one another, or stepping on each others' toes!

We placed all of the prepared ingredients on the island for everyone to assemble themselves.

There is a cooked black bean layer, then shredded lettuce...

Pico de gallo goes on next, yogurt cheese, shredded Monterey Jack Jalapeno cheese and avocado on top.

This is what they ended up looking like...and I cannot even describe the taste! Fabulous! Not only do I have the memory of the new recipe we tried, but also the memory of us all pitching in and working together to prepare it!

Do you typically prepare the meals in your home, or do you have other family members pitch in? Even if you have younger children, they love to shred cheese, or wash tomatoes. I would love to hear about your meal prep traditions!