Archives: March 2010

With Passover underway, I’ve gotten into serious cooking mode – well, I just get excited when cooking/baking for friends/family. Hint, hint…. Who wants to come over to my house for dinner?!

I made carrot “kugel” gluten free style – SO YUMMY

I found the recipe on Elana’s Pantry and adapted it to my liking – I figured this recipe would be delicious! So I got to cooking – it turned out wonderful. Unfortunately I didn’t make enough for everyone 🙁 but I knew that my grandmother was also making carrot kugel – although her version was filled with ingredients that I knew I wouldn’t be too fond of, so I brought my own!

It was a hit! – Thank you Elana!

We had 25 people at our seder and this went pretty fast – so just  be mindful of that when you decide how many carrots to use.

Here’s the recipe:

5-6 cups chopped carrots (approximately 2lbs)

¼ cup agave nectar

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon cinnamon

4 egg whites

¼ cup blanched almond flour

1. Cook carrots in a steamer until soft, about 20 minutes

2. Blend carrots, agave, cinnamon, eggs and almond flour until smooth

3. Place mixture in a greased 8″ square glass baking pan

4. Bake at 350° for 1 hour, until browned around the edges and done in the center

5. Serve warm out of the oven, or allow to cool, then refrigerate overnight and serve cold

Clearly it’s a smart idea to only focus on ONE business idea at a time… But what happens when the ideas keep flowing and I want to pursue all of them?! Clearly this is not going to happen because to make a successful business I know I need to focus on one thing at a time, but boo hoo… I wish I could combine all my ideas into one business plan and start a HUGE successful business.

Don’t we all want that? I know I’m not the only one with these hopes and dreams. Of course we never like to share them with each other in case someone decides to go off and steal our ideas – but hey, I need somewhere to chat about mine!

One business for me that you may actually begin to see spring up in the near future is the idea of a healthy bakeshop!! I know it doesn’t sound possible – but hey, anything’s possible right?! Keep your eye out for me – I’m on a roll here and want to spread it all around.

I know many of you have life goals just like me, but I say you should totally go for them. Don’t give me any excuses. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Live your life now!

Enjoy it and take in the sunshine while you can.

With spring in the air and everyone coming out of hibernation, our wedding is quickly approaching and so is my bridal shower! With that being said, we already got an amazing gift – a crock-pot! We received it yesterday from my friend Jaci and used it last night for dinner! Talk about being excited about a cooking tool!

Let me just say that it was super easy to make a really tasty and delicious dinner. We made chicken with carrots, dates and dried apritcots. YUM!

The dish was a tad on the sweet side but that wasn’t due to any added sugar – the dates and apricots were bursting with flavor! I highly recommend investing in one of these – you definitely won’t be disappointed. If you don’t like to cook and think that you have to spend hours in the kitchen for something to taste good, then this is the right tool for you!

All you have to do is throw everything in the pot and turn it on – you can leave it for hours! Whoever invented this is a serious genius!

I will post the recipe below – we paired this dish with quinoa and were pleasantly satisfied.

1 yellow onion, sliced

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

2 chicken breasts or thighs, your choice

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped

½ cup dried pitted dates, chopped

¾ cup veggie broth, low sodium

¼ cup water

¼ cup orange juice

Put the chicken at the bottom of the slow cooker and place all other ingredients on top. Cover and turn on low for 6 hours. For the last hour, turn on high so that the carrots cook all the way through. This will make a yummy broth to pour over your quinoa. Enjoy!

I want to express how grateful I am for my loving, supportive family. This weekend at my Integrative Nutrition course I encountered more people then I had liked who said that their families thought of them as the “odd one” or the “weird one” in the family. I kept thinking to myself how grateful I was that my family never made me feel that way.

See, at the Integrative Institute of Nutrition we are learning how to heal ourselves through food. To many people this seems like a strange concept, but to all of us students it seems just right. We’ve been living and learning from our food and how it affects our bodies, but now we are learning WHY it affects us the way that it does.

We are also learning how important it is to have our “primary foods” in order, not meaning the literal food that we eat, but the relationships that we digest on a daily basis.

Personally, I’ve had a pretty great support system, sure it took some explaining of what I was doing for them to fully understand me, but they’ve always been on my side.

Last night I was truly blown away – let me explain the events that unfolded:

We celebrated my grandfathers 93rd birthday – I know, he’s an amazing man! – In any case, last week my mother explained that we would be going to my grandparents house in Fort Lee, NJ on Sunday and that there really wouldn’t be anything healthy that I would be able to eat, let alone everyone else. We decided that we would order from our favorite restaurant in NYC and bring it over to their house. First off, she didn’t have to do this! She could have said: “it’s one night and you can deal with eating what everyone else eats” but she didn’t! She understands the importance of eating healthy food on a daily basis and to that I am grateful!

This wasn’t the only amazing event to unfold – yesterday when I spoke to my mother she explained that we were bringing Babycakes cupcakes from the gluten free shop on the lower east side. What an incredible woman she is – not only could she have gone to the local supermarket to pick up any cake or cupcake filled with gluten and sugar, she chose to stick with the health kick and go all the way with the most amazing cupcakes on the planet!

My point here is this: for those of you who don’t feel like your family is supportive of whatever it is that you’re doing – have you tried explaining it to them – and I mean sitting them down and having a nice long talk for a good hour or two? If not, you should probably get on that if you feel that you need the support.

If this just simply isn’t possible then use your friends as your support network. I believe your key to success is to have the backbone to carry you through. It’s too hard to do it alone – so please, don’t try.

The act of giving up certain foods is such a hard thing to do. I completely understand all those people out there who know they shouldn’t be eating something but they do it anyway because they think, eh what the hell… I’ll deal with the stomachache, or the bathroom situation later.

Well I’m here to say that it’s NOT a good idea to be doing that. If you don’t take care of your body NOW then later you may end up with a diseased body, which could have been completely avoided if you had just listened to your body and said no when you knew you should have.

I’m writing this because recently I have been noticing that when I eat foods with garlic my body bottles up so much gas that it doesn’t know what to do with it! I know… not something that you probably want to know about, but this is a serious problem. Do I really have to give up ANOTHER food item?! I already gave up gluten, dairy and refined sugar, am I really going to commit to not eating garlic too?

I haven’t fully decided this answer yet, but I’m going to try it out. That’s really all I can do at this point because I know that I need to take care of myself now and not later. Trying to eat garlic free along with all my other food choices will be quite challenging, but I’m willing to give it a shot.

If I know that I will feel better then that is what will keep me going. If you can relate to me then we should go through this together… we’re all in it together. Keep your health now and later on you will be so thankful that you did.

Wish me luck!

P.S. tonight we ate garlic free and so far so good!