Quinoa Tabbouleh

Summer is here in Phoenix, regardless of whether or not the solstice has actually passed. Sunlight stretches itself out across longer days. The noisy kids that used to throw rocks at each other (and our windows) in the grass behind our apartment have moved on to throwing each other into the pool. And, oh yeah, it’s hot. The perk of weather being warmer, however, is that produce like fruits and tomatoes are in season and there are lots to go around. Cheap fruits = happy Emily.

Since it’s so hot (and, honestly, I’m a little lazy when it comes to cooking sometimes), I’ve been eating way more fruits and vegetables than before, and almost no meat. It’s part of a phenomenon that happens to me every summer season, in which I have almost no desire to eat anything except for fruit and smoothies. And while some people - like Jonas (pronounced Yoh-nuss, by the way), the man I bought dates from at the farmers market - may be able to live exclusively on fruit for years, I actually cannot. Not even for a day. What I can do, however, is make food that will sound appealing when I get home from making people large hot black Americanos even when it’s 110 degrees out. One such food is tabbouleh.

Traditionally, tabbouleh is made with bulgur wheat. However, I had no bulgur (it’s not exotic – just whole wheat kernels ground into different sizes), but had lots of quinoa, so that's what I used. It has a similar texture, tastes great, and is also gluten free!

Quinoa Tabbouleh

½ cup dry quinoa, rinsed

¼ cup olive oil

Juice from one lemon

½ a cucumber, peeled and chopped

½ cup of cherry tomatoes, quartered

2 tbsp fresh mint, minced

1 cup fresh parsley, chopped

Black pepper and dried oregano to taste

Add quinoa to a saucepan with 1 ½ cups of water. Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to low until the quinoa has absorbed all of the liquid, about 15-20 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and allow to cool to at least room temperature. While the quinoa is cooling off, juice your lemon and chop the herbs and vegetables. When the quinoa is ready, add the lemon juice, oil, and herbs directly into the bowl and mix so that everything is evenly coated.

You can enjoy this recipe as a salad alongside a protein, or on its own with pita, vegetables, and hummus. Either way, it’s so refreshing, and lasted me a week.

Triple-Grain Chicken Chili

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a little more than obsessed with fiber. It’s my favorite part of carbohydrates – which happen to be my favorite nutrient, by the way. There’s so much fiber does for us in so many ways, it’s really, truly incredible, so I’m always looking for more ways to include it in my daily diet (more on those incredible fiber-powers in a future post). With Winter fully upon us, I’ve been using my crockpot a lot to make soup, stews, and chili because it’s super easy and convenient for cooking in bulk. Chili, for me, is especially awesome because it’s so versatile. Eat it on its’ own, on a baked potato, with eggs, tortillas, as a dip, with steamed greens – the list goes on. It’s sad that it gets a bad rap so often for being a not-so-healthy food, considering it’s typically made with lots of fatty beef, cheese, and salt. Not to say any of those things are necessarily bad, but if you’re on a budget and eat the same thing every day, it can get pretty rough.

I’ve designed this chili to be everything chili is supposed to be – hearty, hot, and satisfying – without all of the grease. It’s also easy to make it vegetarian by leaving out the chicken and using vegetable stock in place of water. The grains give it the same texture that would come from ground beef without the environmental impact and high fat content. This recipe makes about 4 cups of chili, which freezes well for storage. If you have Celiac or gluten allergies, simply leave out the barley and replace it with another grain or more beans!

¼ cup rinsed Quinoa

¼ cup Barley

¼ cup Wild rice

½ cup dry Black beans

2 Bone-in chicken thighs

2 tsp Chili powder

½ tsp Salt

1 tsp Cumin

½ tsp Allspice

½ tsp Cinnamon

1 cup no-salt added crushed tomatoes

½ Onion, diced

1 bell pepper, diced

2 cloves garlic

Water

Add all ingredients to a crockpot set on high. Cover with water and set to high for 3 hours, then set to low until beans are tender and chicken is cooked through. Be sure to check your water level. If the grains soak in too much water, it will burn the chili and make the entire thing taste bad. Add about ½ cup water if things are looking dry, and adjust as you need to. In the end, you want it to have the thick texture that chili typically has, so don’t worry if things are a little goopy looking!

Here in Phoenix, our weather is looking more like springtime than January, but for those of you on the east coast covered in feet of snow, this is the perfect recipe for being holed up inside over the weekend!

Really Real

So here we are again. Another year past, and another apology post from me for being the worst at updating my blog in the history of blogs. In all truth, the excuses of the past are no more – I don’t have the excuse of busy classes or a too-busy work schedule, though I have managed to stay “busy”, just not with things that are necessarily productive. I’ve never been one to worry much about New Year resolutions. My philosophy on the matter is that every day is the beginning of a new year, so why wait until the calendar resets to decide to make a change? Typically, the types of changes people plan to make for resolutions are fairly important things – change my health, change my finances, fix my relationship – these things are so important to fix ASAP, yet we wait and make excuses, and when we finally do decide to change at the new year, we’re usually not very successful after the high of the holidays has worn off. So, I won’t tell you that I’ve made a resolution to update the blog more often – that’s something that I should take more responsibility with, especially if I really want to be serious about it. But I will tell you why I’ve slacked so much with it, and what I’m going to do to change that.

The theme of this blog is Keeping it Real. My goal is and has always been to inspire others to lead healthier, better lives through diet and exercise the way I have, but in a way that doesn’t become discouraging if you don’t look and act just like me (something I’ve noticed can be difficult in the world of social media). So I’m going to be real here. I’ve never struggled with sustaining my health habits in the past – I’ve always worked out, I’ve always eaten healthy and cooked at home more than I eat out. That is, until the past several months. It’s funny how different people react to different environments. For me, during stressful periods of time, for example, during school, it’s easy for me to make healthy decisions and keep healthy habits. There’s something about life being out of control and non-stop that makes it easier for me to be able to slow down and take control for an hour of my day.

Since graduating, I’ve had a lot more time on my hands, and rather than filling that time with the good habits that I’ve developed for so many years, or taking advantage of the time to start building on my career, I started forming new, not-so-great habits that have distracted me and ultimately brought me to a point where I’ve had little motivation to do anything. I wouldn’t say that I have or ever did hit a “rock bottom”, but I didn’t like where I was going and decided it needed to stop. I had invested too much of myself into other people, and stopped taking care of myself. I fell into depression for several months, and this lead to a number of bad habits to form – staying out later, eating junk food, exercising less, and neglecting my spiritual life. At work, there’s a saying that goes “you need to fill your own cup if you plan to pour into others”. I was failing to fill my own cup, and it was getting dry.

During the past month, I’ve started running again. Running was never an activity I really enjoyed, but there aren’t many pools open in December, so I said to myself, “deal with it”. This week, during my run, I felt good. Great, actually. I felt strong, I felt powerful; I felt like I could run forever. And I realized that it had been far too long since I had felt that way. It had been far too long since I had really felt my heart burn for anything that I used to love, and it felt good to feel that fire again. Before, I had felt that I couldn’t be motivational or inspirational because I wasn’t feeling inspired. And that is why I’ve been so inconsistent with my updates.

So I can’t make any promises whether or not I’ll update daily, weekly, or even monthly. But I will try. Life is unexpected. Sometimes anxiety and depression sets in. Sometimes I let it get the best of me, other times I charge through it. Thankfully, I’m blessed with friends and family who are supportive and keep me inspired. Hopefully, in turn, I can be a source of inspiration once again, and more frequently in this format!

Happy New Year!

Matcha Mango Super Smoothie

If there really is such a thing as purchasing too much fruit, my roommate and I have accomplished it. Our freezer is filled with plastic bags containing the remains of pint-sized cartons of blueberries, strawberries, and entire pineapples. And then there are the bananas. We buy bananas with good intentions: they’re quick - an easy snack for those 5-in-the-morning shifts. That is, if we actually decide to eat one. Instead, they linger in the fruit bowl, over-ripening tomatoes and getting all speckled and mushy. We don’t like to waste food, so what do we do? Into the freezer they go. We will never not have bananas in our freezer. It has become a way of life for us.

The surplus of fruit in our freezer has only become problematic because soon we won’t be able to fit anything else in it. Ok, I’m exaggerating a little bit here, but the it is a very real possibility, especially because we keep buying fruit. One can only enjoy strawberry banana smoothies for so long, so I’ve been getting creative with my fruity, blended creations. Take for instance, today’s offering on the blog: my matcha mango super smoothie. This smoothie is full of trendy, healthy buzzwords in its name, and it is also full of trendy, healthy food items like matcha, chia seeds, and spinach – another staple goes-bad-way-too-quickly food of Struggletown. This is a green smoothie unlike any other you have had. It’s delicately sweetened, packed full of antioxidants, and is actually filling. I like to balance the fruits and vegetables I put in my smoothies so I’m not drinking a sugar bomb, and I like to think that this is the first smoothie that I’ve actually made to fit this balance successfully.

1 mango, peeled and diced

1 banana, frozen

1 cup fresh spinach leaves

1 cup ice

½ cup almond milk

1 ½ tsp matcha powder

1 tsp honey

½ tsp chia seeds

Splash lime or lemon juice

Add all of the ingredients except for the chia seeds to a blender. Blend on high until smooth. There shouldn’t really be any chunks or flecks of spinach. Add the chia seeds and pulse 2-3 times to incorporate them, but not pulverize them. If you don’t like the texture of chia seeds, by all means leave them out, or add them to the blender with the other ingredients so they’re ground up with the rest of the smoothie.

“You Eat _____, Right?”

Vegan, gluten-free, Paleo. You could insert any one of those and more into the title and it would form a question I’m asked all too often: how do you eat, Emily?

And the answer to that would be… however I want to eat.

Since my blog is growing, I felt it was important to address this. People like to know what the person who’s giving them advice or sharing ideas with them believes and practices, and including it in my blog adds to the reality I strive for with Keeping it Real.

I don’t play hard and fast with rules when it comes to the way I eat. I allow myself to go out to restaurants to eat, and I don’t restrict any food groups in particular. If I absolutely had to define the way I eat at home, it would be a plant-based, high-fiber diet. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, let me tell you:

1. I love fruits and vegetables.

I believe that loving what you eat is one of the most important aspects of eating at all. Fortunately, I actually do enjoy eating kale in all of its forms, along with most every other vegetable. Plant foods are also convenient. I can take a banana or apple in my bag without worrying that it’ll be a breeding ground like meat would be. Granted, I do eat meat, but fruits and vegetables are my priority. My goal when I’m eating is first, to get all of the essential nutrients I need from my food, and second, to enjoy it.

2. It’s sustainable.

The process of growing plants is far more efficient than raising animals. Plants produce gases that are good for the environment, leave behind less waste, and if crops are rotated correctly, can replenish the soil they are grown in. While I know that me eating more plants doesn’t have a huge impact on the global aspect of sustainability, it certainly does for my personal financial aspect. While I do enjoy meat, it’s not the cheapest to buy. I do eat meat, but it’s far cheaper to make some beans and high protein (and fiber!) grains.

I can also practice sustainability at home by having my own garden. Space in an apartment complex is limited, but there are plenty of resources for container gardening, which is how I’m growing my chard plants.

3. The science.

Plant-based diets are naturally high in fiber. The potential health benefits of fiber are huge, and a lot of them are still unknown. To keep things simple, some of the less mainstream benefits include: an improved immune system (fiber feeds the healthy bacteria in your intestines and may also interact with immune cells), increased fat oxidation (using fat for energy. It does this by increasing the expression of genes that code for certain fat metabolizing enzymes), and it slows the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream, helping to prevent high blood sugar and insulin resistance.

I could go on about the benefits and wonderfulness of fiber, but the rest of the plant needs some recognition, as well!

As we all know, plant foods contain, in differing amounts, all of the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that we currently know the body needs. I subscribe to a “whole foods” system in this area, and believe that the best way to get all of the nutrients your body needs is from the diet first. If you absolutely can’t get enough of something, then take a vitamin supplement. Phytochemicals are also present in plant foods, and while their purpose and function are still mostly unclear, they have been observed to have great health benefits.

Now for the part where I present my opinion:

Though research tends to focus on single nutrients and their impact on a specific disease state, enzyme, or function, I do believe that eating a varied, plant-based diet provides benefits beyond those of supplements. For example, carrots don’t only have vitamin A; they also contain vitamin C, K, and a number of other nutrients, some of which may still be unknown.

4. It works for me.

I found a way of eating that promotes health that I enjoy. It provides me with the essential nutrients I need, it maintains my current weight, and I leave myself room to enjoy foods that aren’t strictly “whole” or “plant-based”.  I do not consider it a “diet”, in the modern use of the word; it is a lifestyle, and a lifestyle approach to eating and exercising is what I encourage. I’m not strictly vegetarian, vegan, or even organic. I purchase what I can afford, and I make it work. I eat eggs (yes, yolk included), fish, meat, and even ice cream and desserts, but I also enjoy tofu, almond milk, and sweet potato burgers.

Just remember, health is not and should not be a fad. I recommend talking to a registered dietitian before changing your diet, and research in-depth and independently of what blogs (mine included) tell you. No two people are the same, and no single way of eating is ideal for everyone. Eating and activity should be purposeful, enjoyable, and personal.

Sources:

Benefits of Fiber

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3926973/?tool=pmcentrez

Sustainability of Plant-Based Diets

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/100/Supplement_1/476S.abstract