Boomi Bars and Prana Bars

I finally got back in the pool today for a real workout!  It had been like a week and a half since I had swam…it sucks because my when I was working in my company’s other office I was closer to the pool.  I got a cool 3,000 meters in and followed it with a 25 minute run and 10 minutes on the stairmaster.

I hope all of you have gotten to take a look at my Sponsor’s page.  First off, these are all really great products that I was gone about contacting, they didn’t just give me products to promote.  They are all healthy and natural and are the kinds of foods we should include in our diets.

SuperCharger, Pranabar, BoomiBar

Divine Foods make a great set of bars called Boomi Bars and Prana Bars. They make two lines of all-natural energy bars that have a really good taste and texture and contain no artificial additives, preservatives or sweeteners. The Boomi Bars are 100% all-natural, gluten-free and contain no GMO, sulphured fruits or hydrogenated oils.  The Boomi Bars come in 13 different types and vary between more of a natural food bar to healthy protein-style bars.  Here are all the varieties:

• Almond Protein Plus
• Apricot Cashew
• Cashew Almond
• Cashew Protein Plus
• Cranberry Apple
• Fruit and Nut
• Healthy Hazel
• Macadamia Paradise
• Maple Pecan
• Perfect Pumpkin
• Pineapple Ginger
• Pistachio Pineapple
•  Walnut Date

Here are the ingredients on a Fruit & Nut flavor bar: honey, dates, cashews, raisins, hazelnuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, apricots, amaranth, sweetened cranberries, pistachios, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, crisped rice, and salt.    Wait a second… I actually know what all of those are! haha

Apple Pie Pranabar

Divine Foods’ PranaBars are certified organic, raw, gluten-free and made with agave nectar.  The Pranabars are also Packed with fruits, healthy nuts, protein and fiber and really are both tasty and healthy. They make a handy meal replacer (ha, or snack…) and energy booster.  They come in 6 varieties:

•  Apple Pie
•  Apricot Goji
• Cashew Almond
• Apricot Pumpkin
• Pear Ginseng
•  Coconut Acai

SuperCharger bars come in 4 varieties: Blueberry Coconut, Goldenberry Goji, Mango Maca, Raspberry Pomegranate.  These are like the Pranabars but have extra antioxidants added. The other athletes I have given them to really liked them. The texture is cool because it’s not like anything you’ve really had before….its crunchy from the nuts, but the honey and Date base makes it’s chewy…keeps ya guessing!

Melissa described it as “a grown-up fruit roll up, plus crunch.”    My response was, “there’s no such thing as a grown up fruit roll up…they are timeless and should be eaten at any age.”

Try some of these Divine Foods Bars!  http://www.pranabarstore.com/

Pumpkin Spaghetti

Here’s an intro picture for fun:  

Portobello cap pizzas

Portabello pizzas: topped with okra, chicken, crushed tomatoes, and some black beans.  Brought that mix together in a skillet and then poured onto the mushroom caps I baked quickly in the oven, then baked the entire thing for 10 minutes. Delicious.  

Here’s a new recipe I made up though.  I had seen a lot of recipes like mine, but since I can never follow recipes I just made my own.  Pumpkin pasta sauce!Here are the ingredients:

Ingredients

•  Chopped onions
• 1 cup evaporated skim milk
• >1 cup pumpkin
• 1/4 cup flour
• Chopped garlic
• Any spices you want to add (I added a little bit of pumpkin pie spice)

Start by sauteing the onions and garlic.  Once cooked, add the evaporated milk and the pumpkin.  Next add the flour (more or less to reach the consistency you want.)  Then taste and evaluate, add spice and liquid as needed for flavor and thickness.   

Ladle over cooked whole pasta and chicken.  Not bad!  Mine either needed to more savory or more sweet.  I can adjust this by adding more spices or cinnamon when it comes time to eat.  It creates a really nice balance on the spaghetti and chicken of sweet and savory! 

Onions, evaporated milk, garlic

  

Pumpkin added

  

Hot smooth sauce

  

Ta-da! Bye haters

 

To everyone that sounded gross or that I couldn’t do it!    

More posts coming soon–I have a lot to catch up on…like my first sushi experience!

Body Pump and Oatmeal Protein Cakes

For the first time tonight I tried a Body Pump class at Gold’s Gym.  My parents have gone to the class for years…actually, when I was little and before the class became so popular, we had like bootleg video tapes of the class that my dad would use in the basement.  It’s a class based on lighter weights with higher reps and combos.  For example, we did constant squat varieties for an entire song, then moved on to bench press the same way, and so on for each body part.  I did my running etc before the class which didn’t make the squats much fun, ha!

Speaking of running, my workouts have been so random lately.  They are either great or they suck.  I think the problem is going too hard one day to make up for a bad workout the day before and then getting into a cycle of that.  I think it may also be from not eating enough and recovering correctly–what do you guys think?  And I know the 4 hours of sleep I got each night this week are killing me. ..

Remember, its what you do outside the gym for recovery that makes you a better and more succeful athlete.  I overheard something actually smart at the gym today… I mean usually you just hear people clueless about nutrition giving each other advice: “Drink your protein immediately after your workout.  Carbs are bad.  Fat will kill you!”  Haha, sure, NOT!  (I’ve been wearing my “My Personal Trainer Told Me to Eat More Fat” shirt from Ben Greenfield Fitness more lately at the gym to try and dispell myths.)  I will go into another post about healthy macronutrient balances in a future post.  Although, I can’t lie- I’m still very afraid of fat.

Anways, the smart thing I heard!  A guy was telling his girlfriend the importance of eating before working out.  Basically, I just overheard him saying that by restricting before working out, you have less energy to workout with and so you workout less hard and burn less calories.  Just a thought.

My friend Melissa wanted me to try the Pumpkin Pancake Recipe created by April at Food’s of April.  Well this was my plan…till I realized I was mising most of the ingredients.  So I invented my own.

Honestly, I don’t remember the exact recipe, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was:

• 2/3 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/3 of a leftover baked sweet potato
• 1/2 cup 1% cottage cheese
• 1 scoop vanilla protein powder
• Cinnamon and Pumkin pie spice
• Little bit of water

Mix these all up in a bowl and put into a hot pan.  I know, this sounds like something you would just microwave right–like any other super oatmeal.  But, even though it tasted great just straight uncooked (had to lick the spoon), it actually came out really good being cooked like a pancake!  Just don’t over do it!

Oatmeal, sweet potatoes, cottage cheese

Un-cooked...but realy good!

In the skillet

Into the pan

 They tasted great!  Like gooey pancakes, but they were warm and eatable with a fork.  Plus satisfying and incredibly healthy.  4 Super Foods plus cinnamon!

Here’s a bonus picture I made: Bananas in eggs?  You know it.  Awesome sweet savory combo!

Bananas in eggs? Wwwhhhaaattttt

Awesome cream cheese pecan sweet potato and BBQ Chicken

I was in the mood for bbq chicken.  Simple ingredients, simple cooking method, so hard to mess up and sooo good!  The deliciousness was augmented by bottle #2 of BBQ sauce for January, Big Papa’s:   

January #2

Much thicker and richer than the previous bottle this month. A richer molasses based sauce with more flavor and smoked taste.  I just topped the chicken with garlic and onion powder, poured the BBQ sauce on top and baked for 20-25 minutes in the oven.  This way, the sauce couldn’t go anywhere and baked all onto the chicken.  Oh man!  I just realized I should have my injector and injected some into the chicken!    

Anyways, there was more amazingness to this meal, the sweet potato topped with cream cheese and Chopped pecans.  The Cream cheese mix of low fat honey walnut and light Pumpkin from Einstein’s Bagels (I actually bought it when I was in Chicago since they don’t have Einstein’s in Virginia Beach haha.)  When the two flavors got half finished I just mixed the two.   

The Pecans were Emerald’s Nuts brand “Pecan Pie” flavor–basically just really really good candied pecans, so delicious and, with exception of the added sugars…really healthy.  Pecans are a great source of Omega-3 fatty acids which has all kinds of benefits. 

Pecans and pumpkin/honey walnut cream cheese

  I started by baking the sweet potato–a new way I figured out!  So much better than in the microwave which comes out sort of rubbery!  Instead, I microwaved it for 4 minutes, then put it in the oven for 20 minutes at about 400-450 while the chicken cooked.  This made the skin a little crispier and the insides so much more “fluffy.”I chopped the nuts to make them into small pieces to place on the sweet potato.  While the sweet potato was hot I added the cream cheese and let it melt into the insides.  Then I added the chopped pecans on top.  It was incredible. The sweetness of the cream cheese and sweet potato mixed with nutty savory flavor of the nuts.  I highly recommend that everyone try this, not matter how weird it sounds! 

Topped sweet potato

 The bbq chicken is there in the picture as well.  The sauce took on a nice consistency as it heated up with the garlic and onions.  I recommend you check out the post where I created the BBQ pecan chicken breasts.  A similar sweet and savory mix.  I will make it again soon…becuase I just remember how good it is, and I’ll find a better way to make to show you!Coming soon– a couple vegetarian recipes, so stay tuned.  Not really on purpose, put I was given some recipes to try out.  Check back tomorrow.  

P.s. I registered for the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon tonight, got my flights and hotel, and set up the logistics for having my bike shipped.  It’s official, San Fran here I come.  I just hope I don’t freeze…

Rice cake Pizzas…Strike two!

Update 1:  I got into the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon today!  So I will be heading to San Francisco for the race on May 2nd.  Will be interesting because I have a half-Ironman 6 days after…  But how often do you an opportunity like this!  Just gotta figure out how to ship my bike… 

Update 2:  Before I enlighten you all on dinner tonight, I gotta give a shout out to my little brother, Stewart.  For Christmas he gave me a one year subscription to the Barbeque Sauce of the month Club.  How baller is that??  My first two bottles finally came a couple days ago and here’s what I received: 

 

First sample

 This bottle tasted, eh, ok.  I’ll go into more detail later–when I have tried the other bottle as well.  I’m also tracking them all in spreadsheet for analysis that I will post each month, haha. 

As for my latest attempt at rice cake pizzas, not a success, but certainly not a failure.  Not that any of my recipes are failures… But at least I think I have perfect the method so that it will work the third time I try it!  If you read the previous post where I tried to make these, you’ll see that I hated pretty hard on rice cakes.  I still stand by this, but it was because of the type of rice cake.  A Quaker Caramel Apple or Butter Toffee flavored rice cake is filled with a ton of of other sugars and additives along with the rice.  The kind I bought were Quaker No-Salt flavor.  One ingredient, Organic Brown Rice. I was still hesitant, so I asked Triathlon professional and nutrition expert Ben Greenfield over at his site, www.bengreenfieldfitness.com.  If you listen to Podcast #79 he answers the question I had about the rice cakes.  Basically, this type is ok.  It’s certainly not a first choice for a carbohydrate, but it is mostly natural and very low in calories. 

In my research, I also found out how they create such a crisp patty: They are cooked really hot and really fast in a pressurized disk.  Maybe that’s why my “cakes” didn’t work so well when I tried to make them myself.  

Here is what I learned while making these:  Put the toppings on first and then sauce on top so that the cakes dont get soggy in the middle.  I didn’t get back from the gym to start cooking till about 9, and since I was trying to be as  fast as possible, I just used some Laughing Cow cheese spread on the bottom instead of shredded cheese.  I couldn’t taste it at all making it basically a waste.  (I feel the same way about mozzarella..it doesn’t really have any flavor and if I’m using cheese, I want to taste it!)  I recommend using shredded cheddar.  So here’s what the ideal recipe would be:

• Plain rice cakes
• Tomato Sauce
• Grilled chicken
• Vegetables (such as onions, tomatoes, mushrooms,  and I love pineapple, although that’s not a vegetable)
• Shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• Plenty of garlic, crushed red peppers and other spices

Ingredients, plus chicken

Before the oven

Hot and fresh out the kitchen....

So let me know if you try and have more success than me! 

I was thinking, would anyone be interested in seeing what a day in the life of eating for me looks like:  all meals and snacks? 

And remember, leave me your fitness and nutrition questions and I will write posts on them!