health

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Are you in? I get back from Napa and Sonoma later this week, and once I am recovered from my redeye flight (They KILL me!), I am ready to be healthy again. Winter and illness and spending LOTS of time at home snacking and just kind of letting it all go health-wise has gotten me feeling really sort of icky.

I need to make some small changes to restore the balance in my life and more than that, to have energy and to be able to sleep normally. Will you join me on my quest for better health?

To sweeten the deal, I am taking advantage of a gift code giveaway from CSN Stores. So as we prepare to spend more time outside, you can check out outdoorsy things like wood swing sets or fitness gear like yoga mats, weights, and just about anything else you can think of. They have just about everything! I am giving away a $30 gift code, and all you need to do to enter is to leave a comment telling me the small (or big) change you are making toward better health this spring.

Since I’ve been talking about renewal, I have really gotten myself to start thinking about it as well. And when I get back I need to hold myself accountable to the following things:

1) Getting to bed earlier. Every morning, when I wake up exhausted I promise I will unplug at 9:00 in order to ease myself to bed earlier. And at 11 PM I am still usually reading emails/blogs/job hunting etc. and my mind is whirring well past midnight. Must stop.

2) Smoothies. I need to drink spinach smoothies five days a week. They are easy and delicious, and when I consistently drank them I had so much more energy. I’d like to juice more as well, but my juicer is so messy! I’ll try for twice a week. Beet, carrot, and ginger juice happens to be my favorite, FYI.

3) Three quality workouts a week, preferably two at the gym that I am donating money to each month. My workout trifecta would be 30 minutes of all out cardio and two strength workouts each week.

4) More movement in general. I need to organize my time so that I am working enough but not from 7 am until midnight each day. I need to leave my house more. Of course, the weather needs to be a little warmer. But you get the drift. I have spent enough comfy months in my house, and getting outside and just walking is something I need to do.

I hope you don’t mind if I check in weekly via a blog post. And I hope my goals don’t stress anyone out; they are truly to feel more energetic and to support my readers’ healthy goals as well. I would love it if you would check in with ME too!

So, let’s get started. Do you have any small changes you are going to make toward better health this spring?

Tags: challenge, eating, exercise, fitness, giveaway, health, workouts

Happy Sunday! I am quickly learning there are no weekends or vacation days when you work for yourself. Which isn’t really that different than working in the corporate world, you just get to do it on your own schedule and in your pajamas.

The theme for this week is simple, healthy foods. Friday night we did a massive grocery haul at Market Basket. It was awesome to have that big task checked off before the weekend even began.

I have had a craving for homemade pizza for awhile but have had no desire to mess with dough. I just don’t have it in me to have another pizza disaster.

So I went the very easy route, Boboli whole wheat pizza crust for our lunch pizza yesterday.

Boboli pizza crust

You know what? I really liked it. Like I said, I am just in the mood for simple food these days. I don’t care that it wasn’t a hand-tossed dough or made in a pizza oven or on a special stone.

Instead of a red sauce, I decided to use my winter pesto, also known as “poor girl pesto” as the base. Winter pesto because it utilizes spinach instead of basil, and “poor girl pesto” because it uses walnuts, which are cheaper than pine nuts, and there is no parmesan cheese. To tell the truth, I love it just as much as traditional pesto.

Start by adding a bunch of baby spinach leaves to the processer.

baby spinach

Top with a handful of walnuts, 4-6 cloves of garlic, a grind of sea salt, and enough oil to cover the top. Because my pizza was cheese-less, I added a little extra oil to my pesto to make sure it was not a dry sauce.

walnuts

Voila! I always make enough pesto so that I can eat a spoonful or two right out of the bowl. It’s garlicky goodness never fails.

spinach pesto

Next up, I chopped a head of broccoli into florets. We certainly got our greens in at lunch!

broccoli florets

I didn’t get a photo of the process, but I smothered the Boboli pizza crust in pesto and a little basil oil, topped it with broccoli, and popped it into the oven at 420 degrees for about 10 minutes.

While the pizza was baking, I quickly stir fried bits of chicken breast with some olive oil and garlic.

chicken and garlic

When the pizza came out of the oven, the chicken was perfectly cooked and ready to join the rest of the ingredients.

pesto broccoli chicken pizza

Yum!

pesto broccoli chicken pizza

This was an awesome lunch that didn’t take more than 20 minutes to make. In the middle of a busy weekend, it was nice to stop for a healthy meal with all sorts of flavors.

pesto broccoli chicken pizza

This would definitely be something you could easily wrap up in foil and bring into the office for a lunch you would look forward to.

I am going to dinner at Beacon Hill Bistro tonight for a friend’s birthday. Do you have any fun Sunday plans? Do you have tomorrow off?

Tags: Boboli pizza crust, chicken, cooking, cooking at home, dinner, easy pizza, garlic, greens, health, healthy recipe, healthy recipes, Lunch, pesto, pizza, spinach, spinach pesto

Green Meatloaf

Happy Valentine’s Day! Do you have any fun plans for the day/evening? Due to my being away and my husband’s gazillion hours of work this weekend, our plans are still up in the air, but I am sure we will think of something!

Last night’s dinner, inspired by recent recipes on Alicia’s and Emily’s websites, looked a little more like something you would serve on St. Patrick’s Day, and with Valentine’s Day on its way out, green is where it is at.

I usually make meatloaf several times over the course of the winter; during the last Presidential primaries, meatloaf became a good luck charm when we ate it on the evening our candidate won several states. Following that, I made meatloaf on the evening of all big primaries.

I returned from visiting my family in NJ craving some comfort food as I was missing them and had a harrowing drive back that included a warning from a state trooper. I was also intensely craving greens, and thus green meatloaf was born.

spinach meatloaf ingredients

The ingredients were few: 1/4 onion, chopped, three cups of spinach chopped, a container of ground turkey, one egg, a drop of ketchup, some ground pepper, and salt.

I started with my favorite kitchen tool, these salad shears from the Foodbuzz Festival swag bag. With these my spinach was chopped into tiny pieces in no time, ready to be quickly sautéed with the onion in a bit of oil.

salad shears

chopped spinach

I cooked the spinach down just a bit, then cooled it while I mixed the ground turkey with the egg, pepper, and salt. I then folded in the spinach.

spinach meatloaf

When everything was well blended, I placed it in a loaf pan to cook at 375 until the meat was cooked through. I pondered using a muffin tin to make mini meatloafs, but I envisioned meatloaf sandwiches and went with the loaf pan instead.

spinach meatloaf

About 20 minutes in to cooking, I drained off some liquid from the meatloaf to make sure it cooked up nice and brown. Then I started on the sauce.

Muir Glen was so incredibly generous last month, and I am still reaping the rewards of attending their dinner at Garden at the Cellar.

image

I added a can of the Muir Glen organic tomato sauce to the pan that the spinach was cooked in, then added a pinch of red pepper flakes and some garlic powder.

Muir Glen tomato sauce

When the meatloaf was done, I cut it into slices, topped with tomato sauce, and served with my incredibly easy and delicious mashed potatoes.

spinach meatloaf

Just a bunch of potatoes, boiled until soft, drained and mixed with Kerrygold and skim milk, mashed until creamy.

mashed potatoes

Does it get any more comforting than meatloaf and mashed potatoes?

meatloaf and mashed potatoes

I’ll be tucking this recipe away and making it again in the very near future, maybe as part of our St. Patrick’s Day feast. Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day, my birthday falls on the same day as the Boston parade this year, what should I do?!

Tags: comfort food, dinner, Food, health, healthy healthy recipes, mashed potatoes, meatloaf, Muir Glen, recipe, recipes, spinach, tomato sauce, turkey

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