Eating Food - Drinking Food

We have been juicing and doing smoothies for a while so we decided to have food last night and tonight. We love the juicing and smoothies but sometimes you just want to eat and chew. There is a difference between eating food and drinking food.

We have been using the peaches and plums that we picked last year summer and we had made ice cream with it so it has been so useful clearing out the freezer to make room for this coming year. Well, all of that ice cream making with our Omega has paid off. Our chocolate smoothie was made with peaches, plums, unsweetened chocolate almond milk and 4 squirts of Davinci sugar free German Chocolate Cake syrup. Oh My this was so freakin good.
Then we made peach, plum and strawberry with sugar free vanilla almond milk and this smoothie was great. It looks like this really satisfies my ice cream need.

Last night we had real food so my wife made baked boneless skinless chicken breast topped with walden farms bbq sauce and sambal chili. The side dish was crab/aspargus salad. It has cherry tomato, peppers and I topped it with a little heat. This was so amazing that the left over was used for breakfast this morning in my omelet.

Tonight we are having a big steak with stuffed mushrooms. We are also making a sugar free healthy crockpot cheesecake as we are trying this unplublished recipe for a cookbook our friend will be doing. This is going to be another one of my favorites. I told my wife that after I licked the spoon, I was already in love with the flavors.

Anyways, I have been busy so I have not had the opportunity to blog as much as I would like. I really want to blog about how we have been and continue to be lied to about food so much that it is now normal to accept these lies as the new truth. So until then…healthy eating everyone!

Zucchini Pasta

So last night my wife and I were in the mood for pasta. As a former pasta FREAK…I thought that this was one of the foods I would never get use to giving up. After a while and looking at my daughters secret stash of vblogs that she use to have on You Tube but eventually took off when everyone started taking her videos…she had one recipe for zucchini noodle pasta. I love zucchini and I love pasta so what a good pairing to make a meal that I love. So when I made it I also made a video of me making it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28y_PmRSSdE

If you are an athlete and you are in training for competition…eat that pasta you need. If you are an office worker or someone that is not training for the olympics, you may want to look for an alternative to get away from all of the carbs than turn into instant sugar in the blood stream and is one of the big factors to obesity and diabeties. Have a zucchini noodle pasta. My video above may help you with that.

Zucchini
Mushrooms
garlic roasted tomato
boneless/skinless chicken breast
avocado

To Health

Peach, plum, raspberry, strawberry smoothie
This weekend is a good weekend. This new year is just starting and I am thankful for it. We continue to eat healthy with plenty of protein, vegetables and fruit. In addition we continue to juice and make smoothies in conjunction to our healthy meals. I am amazed to continue to see that my calories of food intake is half of normal…about 800 per day and my juice calories is about the same…800 calories a day.

During the lunch hour when I am home on weekends, we juice instead of eat. We have a morning green drink (wheatgrass/spirulina) and thant carries us to Dinner when we have a good meal with either chicken, steak, pork or fish with more veggies. I have equally noticed that I have begun to establish a craving for beans. Not pizza, not burgers, not chocolate…BEANS!

We had a morning juice of canteloupe, apples and ginger on Friday morning. Friday for lunch we had another juice…apples, carrots, kale, celery, cilantro, ginger, beet. Saturday at noon we had another juice…pears, carrots, celery, beet, celery, ginger, cilantro and kale.

It is my hope that we continue to do what we can to make this a Flourless, no process food, no potato, no pasta or rice, no sugar year. It is my hope to continue to eat healthy, raw, juice, vegetarian, and alternative food items for healthy eats.

This is my friends Maria Emmerich recipe I used this weekend to make a Red Velvet Cake.  You can find her blog at  http://mariahealth.blogspot.com/2012/08/berry-red-velvet-cake-and-food-dye.html 
"HEALTHIFIED" RED VELVET CAKE:1/2 cup coconut oil or butter, softened
9 eggs
1 cup Swerve (or erythritol)
1 tsp stevia glycerite (omit if using Swerve)
1/2 tsp strawberry extract (or other)
1/2 cup unsweetened almond or coconut milk
1 TBS natural red food coloring
2 1/2 TBS unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp Celtic sea salt
3/4 cup coconut flour
3/4 tsp aluminum-free baking powder

Cream Cheese Frosting
2 (8 oz) packages cream cheese or 16 oz coconut cream
1/2 cup confectioner's Swerve (or erythritol, powdered)
1/2 tsp stevia glycerite (omit if using Swerve)
1/4 cup butter or coconut oil

Frosting: Make sure your cream cheese or coconut cream is at room temperature. In a medium sized bowl, mix until smooth then add in sweetener. Beat in butter or coconut oil until smooth. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 inch cake pan (or three 6 inch pans if you want three layers like I did in the photo) with coconut oil spray and dust with a thin layer of cocoa powder. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sweeteners together until fluffy. Add in the the eggs, almond milk, food coloring and vanilla. In another bowl, combine the coconut flour, cocoa powder baking powder and salt. Then mix the dry and wet ingredients alternately until everything is a smooth batter. Place the batter into prepared pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until batter is set.

Invert pan and let cake cool completely. Slice cake into two layers (unless using three 6 inch pans, then just cut tops off to make them square and stack). Transfer bottom cake layer to a serving dish. Frost the bottom layer of the cake (do this again with second layer for 6 inch pans). Add the top layer to cake and cover with frosting. Makes 12 servings.

The Food Network: Not About Food

This morning I have established a pattern. I woke up, put the coffee pot on, drank a quart of Wheatgrass/Spirulina, grabbed a cup of coffee for my wife and I and just enjoyed the early morning after a great nights sleep. I got up to make breakfast 45 minutes later and I made me 2 fried eggs in coconut oil and 300 grams venison. Then I juiced:
10 carrots
2 apples
1 cup of raspberries
2 cups strawberries

All I have to say is AAAAAAAwwweeeSome! Tonight is sandwich night. We were going to have some veggie soup but we are having ground venison burgers on Ezekiel. We will also use provolone cheese, sliced tomato and fried egg. I had two sandwich’s including a turkey sandwich. Depends on how hungry I am…I guess the picture I took for dinner will tell the story. I had some left over Ratatouilli and refried beans too!

So my wife and I are having a lazy day at home. I decided to watch “Waiting for Superman” on Netflix. I had never seen the film before but had heard about it on the news. I can only pray that my grandchildren have a better circumstance than the school system provides. My children and their spouses may be home schooling our grandchildren until they can put them in a Catholic or Private School.

After the movie it was lunch time and another Juice:
10 carrots
1 apple
4 handfuls of kale
1 bunch of parsley
1 cucumber
½ lemon
2 roma tomato
How many verbs can you use to express you delight. Hmmmm

After having my juice I told my wife the first thing after the juice is I think I will make something to eat for lunch with this juice. I drank it and as I puttered around the kitchen but before I took anything out, I began to feel the fullness. Yep, it took a couple of minutes but you know what? I was full. So I grabbed a cup of coffee and went back to watch the “Food Network.” How about that…my wife joined me and I was kind of disappointed with this one time favorite channel. I remember when they had chefs like “The Hot Tamales” or “Emeril” or “Ming”…I mean real Chef’s that showed you how to cook amazing meals. Now it’s a competition game show. So I changed the channel. I do not want to watch people cook things that I will not make or have no educational value other than WIN. If I want to see trash like that I guess I could watch Big Brother if that is still on the air.

Maybe the “Food Channel” should have a show like talking about the ingredients that the companies put in food like the 40 different names of MSG which has no nutritional value and is only used to make mice obese with it’s addictive values. Or maybe they should talk about every kind of Sugar and it’s thousands of different names. Or TBHQ and how this item keep package products from going rancid so that markets can sell you old stuff. Maybe all of the petroleum’s and insecticides that are put in our foods. No, why not have a channel dedicated to Food become a game show channel instead of telling America what we have done to create Diabetes, Obesity, Cancer…why not say we are a country with so much products that we have chemically altered, genetically altered, poisoned and placed so much unnatural Garbage in what was once natural. Sugar is in what seems everything now. Diabetes??? Pasta turns to sugar as soon as it is in your blood stream. Potato turns to sugar as soon as it enters the blood system and so does anything made with flour including bread.

We are a nation that was once rich in quality to become a country that is now Starving with our less Nutritious Value with our bounty of quantity. We gas our veggies, we wax it, we take away the taste to make things so bland. We are a nation who no longer cooks because of the idea of fast food. We are a nation of All You Can Eat Buffet and we wonder why we are one of the unhealthiest nations in the world. I no longer drink cows milk from the store because the government has now approved some idiots that want to get kids in elementary schools to enjoy drinking milk twice a day by putting more sugar in milk. Oh Great…that’s what we need…more sugar. So now what do we do…we blame “Fat” as Public Enemy #1. Alright…now what do we do to fix that, well…how about we make all foods with “Fat’s” and make them Zero % Fat. 95% Fat Free. How about that…Yes, the American public is to dumb to realize that eliminating the Fat from items means adding What? You guessed it, sugar. We took out the fat and replaced it with more carbohydrates. How wonderful…we add more sugar into the American diet and we disguise it by changing the names so that people are to dumb to realize what we did. That’s it, America will see the package and it says FAT FREE so they will believe that.

So it’s winter here. The bad thing about living in a big winter state like this is not having fruit and vegetables that I can buy from the farmers market or flee markets. I have to go to a grocer. Yes, they have organic fruit and veggies and I do pay more for them. It is what I am left with. Now I go to the grocer and I know exactly what I need. I never go through the aisles…all I do is get my veggies, meat, dairy real butter. I get it and I get out. I have no other use for these grocers that make me sick with all of the processed package & food items. If I don’t know what the ingredients are or can’t pronounce it…I do not get it. Enough of my Rant!

I wish they would build a Whole Foods Grocer here. The closest one of us is in Pittsburgh. I can’t wait for Spring, Summer & Fall to go out there. Until then, I will continue to eat and look for ways to eat better and alternative ways to make what I enjoy

Food, Jucing, Smoothie

This has been some kind of week. I believe that I have noticed a big change in what I have been doing due to our adding juice to my normal eating habits. Now normally I have about 1200-1800 calories a day but recently we have added fresh veggies & fruit juicing so now I noticed we have been average eating about 800 calories of food and about 600 calories in juice. Maybe if I work on that, I can do a little better...who knows.  During the week I found myself to have more than the regular energy that I expected to have. I found myself staying busy and time flew by during the work week. I accomplished so much and lost track of time because I moved from one task to another so fast without thinking about it.

By Wednesday morning, I was so motivated. I had to drive for a couple of hours to teach Officers. So I left home at 3:30am, got to work at 4:30am and I was on the road to my next appointment. I got there at 5:45, stopped and got some coffee and by 6:15 I was setting up to teach in a gymnasium. There were 24 officers and 7 administrators. My class was scheduled for 8 hours.

By the end of my class my voice was almost gone. The gym had huge fans and I had to be loud enough to be heard over them. I felt like I was yelling all day.

When I got home I realized I just completed a 14 hour day…I was completely spent. So my wife made me a late dinner of pork chops, tomato slices, avocado and zucchini. I love meals like this. Yes, I know pork chops is not the best or healthiest thing in the world but I really enjoy having a port steak or pork chop when I want it. If this is the unhealthiest I eat, I think I am doing okay. The pork chop was cooked in coconut oil as was the zucchini. Everything else was raw.

So this morning I woke up and my wife said, let’s have a juice with breakfast. So I took out my last beet, 3 hand full’s of kale, a hand full of spinach, 10 carrots, 2 apples and ginger. We also had out typical breakfast of 2 eggs on Ezekiel toast.

Then lunch was a carrot/apple juice with a cheese omelet and beans and then we skipped a food dinner. Both of us were still stuffed from our juicing and lunch meal so for dinner we decided to have a juice again. More kale, carrots, cucumbers, apples, ginger and carrots. My wife decided to put a teaspoon of Sambal chili in the juice…Wow, the taste is amazing.

That night we had a ¼ cup of pecans and peanuts that had no salt and air roasted. My wife said, “Hey you want a smoothie.” So we take out the blend tech and we take out some of our frozen fruit that we made during the summer for ice cream. Peaches, plums, banana and 2 cups of coconut milk. Oh My…after having this and going through 2 brain freezes and my chest feeling like it was frozen I felt so awesome. I also felt like I over ate today. Then I looked out all of our meals and calorie count…Food = 780 calories. Juice – 1207 calories. Total calories = 1987. I feel amazing. I thank God for showing me the path…

My Power Raw Soup

For Lunch today I made a Raw Power Soup

Raw Power Soup

Juice from 10 carrots and 1 green apple

1 avocado

2 roma tomato

2 small zucchini1

mini bell pepper (roasted on Stove)

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

1/2 tsp. sea salt

1/2 tsp. chopped ginger

1/4 tsp. allspice

4 sprigs cilantro
1 handful spinach

Put everything in a high speed blender and blend till thick and smooth.

Today I made my first raw soup. I am not a Raw Foodie, I am not a Vegan or Vegetarian but I thought I would give this a try since we have been Juicing with our meals and doing as many things as we can to eat healthy. I decided to take a normal juicing base of carrots & apples and use that as my soup base. This is what I did…

First, I took 10 carrots and 1 green apple and I juiced them as the soup base. Then I took one Avocado, 2 small Roma tomato, one mini Bell Pepper (I roasted mine on the stove for flavoring), 2 small Zucchini’s ½ tsp of chopped Ginger & ¼ tsp of all spice, 4 sprigs of cilantro and a handful of spinach and then I put it in the Ninja Blender. I also added a ½ lemon and sea salt and pepper to taste.

Finally, I mixed the juice with the blended and stirred until thick. I topped it with crème mexicana and cilantro.

Note: I like things a little spicy so I always add Sambal Chili paste on most everything I eat. I love the flavor and pure heat…for those who do not like spicy or very hot chili…please omit.

My wife on the other hand took the same ingredients and she juiced it all.

Okay, I just want to add in my thoughts of Vegans and Vegetarians. If I had to choice between the two, I would chose to be a Vegetarian. Why? Well personally I think that what vegans and vegetarians eat for the most part is very good and healthy…more so vegetarians. I am no authority on Vegans or Vegetarians…
Vegetarians for the most part if I understand this correct do not eat meat, poultry or seafood. Vegans if I understand correctly like vegetarians do not eat meat, poultry or seafood and do not eat animal products. Some vegetarians eat eggs , cheese and milk but not all. Some vegetarians also eat some fish but no meat.

I personally think that if I was to choose a healthier way to live, it would be vegetarian over vegan. Please do not take this the wrong way, this is not intended to say anything bad about either way of living and choices they make.

I think vegans eat a lot of items that are unhealthy. Flours, process food items and carbohydrates that are not a healthy choice. I understand that vegans have a way of life that is more towards eliminating the use of animal products and foods from their lives and that is okay, it does not in my opinion mean they are eating healthy.

The difference between a vegan and a vegetarian is that a vegan eliminates all animal products from their diet, including dairy. Those following a vegan lifestyle do not wear leather and avoid products made from animals such as wool, silk and down. Vegans tremendous humanity for animals is an abiding, overriding conviction in their lives.
Vegetarians do not eat meat, fish or poultry, but might eat dairy products such as cheese, eggs, yogurt or milk. Vegetarians are not as predictable in their beliefs, as there are many reasons to become vegetarian that don’t necessarily include altruism as a primary motive. For example, many vegetarians have eliminated meat for the sake of their health. In fact, there are a great many people lumped into the category of vegetarian. Lacto-vegetarians will eat dairy, but not eggs. Ovo-vegetarians will eat eggs, but not dairy. Lacto-ovo vegetarians will eat eggs and dairy products. The reasons for these choices are varied and based on individual beliefs. In some cases they are based on moral choices, and in others on dietary needs or simple preference.

A vegan, on the other hand, is self-committed to upholding a personal standard of living where animals are concerned. Generally, the vegan point of view is that animals are not here to be exploited by man, and that commercialization of animals necessarily involves a fundamental, inhumane component and lack of respect for basic life. Unfortunately, cruel methods are often cheaper methods, and animals raised for meat or dairy products by commercial interests are commonly and routinely kept in abusive conditions and slaughtered inhumanely in the interest of a competitive marketplace.
I seen the movie “Vegecated” and when the Vegans took the young girl shopping, I did not think that the choices they were making with pasta and Ragu were good choices. It was obvious that they did not know about MSG and it’s 40 different names or TBHQ based on the items they said were healthy.

The problem I believe is that we get away from healthy eating for convince and expedience. We want it now and we do not want to work. Everything is fast food and processed. Take the “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” movie…that was extreme but much more healthy and helped those who had been on medications for the majority of their adult lives not to mention their obesity. This was an excellent example of a person or people who wanted to make a Live Changing benefit for the purely Health reasons. In this case, a person who was getting ready to die in his present lifestyle made a drastic change and allowed his body to heal but healthy intake of vegetables.

Finally, the film showed that people will chose to remain unhealthy even if they know the health benefits of good foods because in their minds they have said it is better to die “Happy” rather than live long by making a short term sacrifice. A few months of sacrifice over years of medications and pain….are you kidding me? What is so Happy about that.

Well, I continue to eat my protein, veggies and fruit. Now I have added juicing and raw to my life. I just want to make sure that if I put it in my body, I know what it is. If I read the ingredients on the side of the can or bottle and I do not know what the ingredient is…I don’t buy it!

Big Breakfast

This morning I had a quart of Wheatgrass/Spirulina before breakfast. For breakfast I had a 4 oz. steak & cheese omelet.

I also had a Juice:

2 apples

2 carrots

2 celery ribs

1 beet handful spinach

handful kale

handful cilantro

1/2 lemon

1/2 cucumber

1 tsp Acia Powder