Fiesta Lettuce Wraps

Yesterday for lunch I felt like experimenting. I was in the mood for something on the spicier side, so I threw some ingredients together with some taco seasoning and put it in some lettuce. Simple enough! It turned out pretty good, so I thought I'd share my recipe!

I'm not such a pro at the lettuce wrapping part, but I promise it still tastes good! 

Ingredients

1/2 C chickpeas

3/4 C black beans

1/4 C frozen corn, thawed

1 roma tomato

2 T chopped cilantro

1/4 C chopped onion

1 1/3 T taco seasoning

Romaine lettuce leaves

Combine all ingredients except lettuce. Spoon into lettuce and wrap up! Makes enough for about 6 or so wraps.

Motivation Monday: Getting Away from the Physical

Good morning! Happy Monday!

Today's motivation stems from exasperation at the whole weight loss industry. Hopefully this doesn't come off sounding like a rant or anything!

So many health-related goals that people have deal with physical qualities: Fitting into a smaller size of jeans, having toned arms, weighing a certain amount, etc. If this is the ultimate goal you have in your head right now, drop it! Focus, instead, on living a healthy lifestyle. The other benefits will follow of their own accord. Tell yourself right now that you love yourself enough to improve your whole lifestyle. 

Focusing on the physical will stress you out! I promise! Focus your goals on the big picture: You want to be healthier and feel better in all aspects of your life. If you treat yourself great, you will feel great. Exercise, eat real food, sleep, laugh, smile...

What really matters is YOU. When you treat yourself right, you will radiate confidence and be beautiful no matter what dress size you are, or no matter what that number on the scale says. Starting today, train yourself to ignore the numbers and the physical qualities you see around you. Go back to basics and focus on simply treating yourself right. If you do, the particulars you find so essential will come on their own.

Love yourself today! Don't define yourself by the physical!

Have a fabulous week!

Eating Healthy on a Budget: 9 Tips

Sometimes one of the hardest things about eating healthy is the grocery store. A complaint that many people have (including me), is that healthy food is too expensive. Without going into a long speech, the key is that if you really want to make your health a priority, you have to sacrifice. Yes, healthy food is expensive, but buying it is a sacrifice worth making. Aside from that, there are some tricks I've learned about eating healthy on a budget.

1. Plan out meals before going to the grocery store. This is huge! Fresh produce goes bad, so you need to know exactly what you're going to eat so you don't buy too much.

2. Pick only one new food to try per grocery store visit. This may not be relevant to some people, but I'm the kind of person who loves trying out new healthy foods. If I set a limit for myself of only one just-for-fun food, I don't go overboard with the new granola bars, crackers, and fruit chips that catch my eye.

3. Bring a limited amount of money with you. If you only want to spend $20 on groceries, only bring $20 with you. You'll be sure to buy only what you need since your money is limited.

4. Keep an eye on the fresh produce you've bought so you eat it before it's overripe. I'm the worst person for buying a bunch of tomatoes, and only using one before they all go bad. I just forget what I have! Meal planning will help a lot with this, because you won't be as inclined to accidentally neglect your fresh food.

5. Buy produce in varying stages of freshness. This tip has helped me a lot. If you buy multiple avocados or bananas, for example, you don't want them to all get ripe at the same time, forcing you to eat copious amounts of that particular food in a short period of time before it goes bad.

6. Watch for sales on more expensive produce items. Where I live, fruits like blueberries or cherries tend to be a little more expensive. If I don't need them for a specific recipe, I hold off on buying them until they go in sale, making sure to keep up-to-date with the sales by checking in the advertisements that come with the newspaper.

7. Freeze your own fruit for smoothies. Frozen fruit gets expensive, so when fresh fruit is on sale, buy it in larger quantities. Chop up what you can't eat before it's too ripe, stick it in a zip-lock baggie, and toss it in the freezer.

8. Grow it yourself. While not everyone has this option, this will definitely save you a lot of money. At the very least, you can buy potted herbs you can put in your kitchen. Potted vegetable plants are also easy to put on your patio.

9. You don't need to shop at Whole Foods. The last thing I want is for people to think that you need to shop at fancy healthy stores to eat right. Yes, Whole Foods is a good store. Personally, I love wandering around in there. However! It is expensive and you can still buy good produce and other healthy food at your normal grocery store.

Those are the top nine recommendations I have for eating healthy with a limited amount of money. A healthy lifestyle is completely feasible for almost anyone, as long as you have your priorities set right.

What would you add to this list? What do you do to stay healthy on a budget?

What Happens When You Get Your Wisdom Teeth Pulled

So, this morning I got my four lovely wisdom teeth kindly pulled out of my mouth. Thank goodness for anesthetic!

Getting your wisdom teeth out happens about once in a lifetime, so I am YOLO-ing it up. My diet today consisted of mashed potatoes, tomato bacon soup, chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, butterscotch pudding, blueberry frozen Greek yogurt, and maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal. What up.

Life happens, embrace the lapses into unhealthiness (as long as they don't occur too often), and don't freak out!

I'll be back with a normal, healthy post tomorrow!

Zesty Avocado Salad

This summer I've had lots of salads for lunches. They're easy and filling and the possibilities are endless! Here's the salad that I've made the most this summer.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 C chopped romaine lettuce

1/2 avocado, cut into cubes

1 roma tomato, chopped

1/3 C frozen corn, thawed

1/2 T Parmesan cheese

1/4 tsp Good Seasons Italian Dressing Mix 

Combine all ingredients and enjoy!

*With the corn, you may want to chill it a little after it's thawed, just so your salad is a bit more crisp.

Motivation Monday: Mini-Goals (plus a challenge!)

Success. What do you define success as? Everyone wants to be successful, right?

The thing about success is that it doesn't happen overnight or on its own. It takes work. Talking about success comes back down to priorities. Are you making the area you want to be successful in a priority in your life?

Everyone says they want to "be healthy." That's their ultimate goal. If they accomplish that, then they will have "succeeded." Assuming that you, reading this right now, want to be healthy, set yourself up for success! The best way I know of to get big things done without giving up, or else just wandering in circles, is to set reasonable, attainable, mini-goals. Setting broad goals will just leave you exhausted and stressed. My challenge to you today is to set 1-2 mini-goals to accomplish this week. Here are some ideas:

-Eat 4 servings of vegetables every day.

-Drink at least 8 glasses of water every day.

-Get to bed at a decent hour at least 4 nights this week.

-Work out at least 3 days this week OR make it a priority to at least sweat every day.

-Eat when you're hungry, not just when you're bored.

-Go at least 3 days this week without eating any processed food.
-Try going at least 1 day eating fully-raw vegan.

You can pick a couple of my ideas, or you can make your own mini-goals. To make your own, think of a health- or fitness-related practice in you life that you know you can improve on (ex: not snacking, exercising more, drinking more water) and make a measurable goal out of it. "Exercise more" isn't enough. Try "exercise for 30 minutes, 3 days this week." Much better! 

Once you have your goals, write them down! Write them on a post-it note and stick it on your bathroom mirror or in your weekly planner. It doesn't really matter where, just put the post-it note somewhere you will see it.
Then, finally, follow through! Smash those goals! Let this week be a week of success for you!

Have a lovely day!

Curry and Sweet Potatoes

Yesterday, the weather here finally started to cool down a little. We had some rain, and then some large gusts of wind in the evening. I was hoping for a thunderstorm, but, alas, my wish wasn't granted. The different weather was a nice change at least from the continually hot temperatures we've had lately. As it neared dinnertime, I turned on Pandora and got started on making my kitchen smell delightful!

I'm a big fan of using curry to season recipes, so I thought I'd use it in my experimentation. This recipe was inspired in part by a curry recipe I've made in the past from a cookbook, but I pretty much did my own thing. 

Curry Chicken and Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

4 medium-sized sweet potatoes, peeled 

4 large carrots, peeled

4 roma tomatoes, roughly chopped

1 small onion

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

olive oil

curry powder

garlic powder

salt

garlic salt

*Again, when I make my own creations, I don't do a lot of measuring, so a lot of the ingredient amounts listed are approximations. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, though, because it encourages you to adapt it to your own tastes and take a more active role in your cooking. To those of you who are trying to cook more meals yourself, the more you cook and experiment in the kitchen, the more aware you become of your own seasoning and ingredient preferences. This will help you when you have fresh produce in your house and want to make something from off the top of your head.

Makes 6-8 servings

1. Cube sweet potatoes and carrots

2. Steam carrots. I put them on the stove on low so they would steam slowly as I cook the rest of the dish.

3. Slice chicken into 1" strips. Rub about 1 1/2 tsp. curry powder into chicken. Sprinkle about 1/2 tsp. or more garlic powder and rub it into the chicken. Cut up the chicken the rest of the way into 1" cubes. Put chicken into a pan with a little bit of olive oil and cook. When it's done, drain any excess liquid and set aside. Like the carrots, I also put the chicken on a lower heat setting so they'd slowly cook while I worked on the rest of the recipe (just so I wouldn't have to concentrate on it so much). 

4. Chop up onion and sauté with a little olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. After 3-4 minutes or so, add sweet potatoes. Cook for about 5 more minutes. 

5. Add tomatoes to the saucepan. Cover and let cook for about 10 minutes, or until sweet potatoes are getting soft. 

6. Add carrots, which should be about done by now. It's actually better for them to be a little less than fully done, since they'll be cooked a little more with the sweet potatoes and tomatoes. 

7. At this point, I added some salt (probably about 3/4 T), garlic salt (probably about 1/2 T), and curry powder (about 1-2 T). This is where the measuring was the most sketchy, since I was rushing a bit to finish and I didn't want to bother measuring. I just put the seasonings on, mixed it up, tasted a sweet potato chunk and added more if I felt like it needed more. Trust your own tastes here! Cook for another 3-5 minutes or so, or until sweet potatoes are all the way cooked. 

8. Add chicken, stir up, and serve! 

I ate this plain; however, it would also taste great served with some brown rice or quinoa. Bon appetit!