Week 1 recipes and workouts

Recipes

I feel like I was super sneaky this week with my food.  Believe it or not, no one complained about what I made. I keep thinking that I need to add a disclaimer here that these are not the cleanest meals that I ate all week, but the purpose of this is to clean up the recipes that my family loves.  For example, I have a recipe for Broccoli soup that my family loves.  I made it for a family dinner we had on New Year Day, but I cleaned it up a little bit.  The recipe calls for cream of broccoli soup, so I adapted a cream of mushroom soup from the Gracious Pantry website http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/clean-eating-cream-of-mushroom-soup/.  I  followed the recipe from step 4, then I chopped up frozen broccoli and added it to the chicken broth.  I blended it to the desired consistency before adding the rest of the ingredients.  I think that this recipe could be adapted to make all of the "cream" soups.  Thickener, like flour and corn starch, could be used if you wanted a thicker soup.  I just used less water in my soup recipe.  The Broccoli Soup recipe is a cleaned up recipe.  I don't eat very much dairy, but the cream cheese really adds a creaminess to this recipe.

Broccoli Soup
1/2 a batch of Cream of Broccoli soup recipe (I used 1 bag of cauliflower and 1 bag of broccoli)
1 medium carrot shredded
2 tsp dried minced onion
1 block cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat, I'm not sure if there is a clean subsitute)
Diced, cooked chicken
The recipe calls for 1 pkg. wild rice cooked.  You could substitute quinoa or brown rice too.  You would need to season to taste.
Mix everything, warm and enjoy

I also made taco soup this week using a recipe I found in Clean Eating Magazine.  Really the only idea I used was instead of using Campbell's Tomato Soup, I used 2 TBSP of tomato paste mixed with 1 cup of water.  I cooked ground turkey with onions and garlic and then I combined the tomato paste mixture, 2 cans low sodium diced tomatoes, and 1 can of black beans.  I used taco seasoning, even though it's not as clean as just adding spices, but I think that it makes the soup taste better.

I am really proud of this last recipe.  It needs some tweaking still because it had a little too much tang to it,  probably from the Greek yogurt.  I realized later that I probably could have used a banana instead of the yogurt.   I also want to try it with some protein powder next time.  After I baked the cookies and ate a few, my husband and I left the kids at home to run some errands.

This is what we came home to, obviously the cookies were a hit!

Outrageously Clean Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/4 cup Sucanat
6 packets Stevia
2 1/2 TBSP honey
1/2 cup Greek Yogurt
1/2 cup natural nut butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup flour- I used whole wheat pastry flour because I was too lazy to grind any almonds or oats, but I'm sure either would work great, too.
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup chocolate chips (raisins would probably be yummy as a substitute)
Before I cooked them, I smashed them down a little bit with a spatula because they stay in a tight ball when they cook.  Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

The regular recipe called for 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup of butter and all-purpose flour.  Omitting these cut about 40 calories per cookie.  Plus the benefit that the cookies are pretty darn clean.

I also found a new page on Facebook that I "like." http://www.facebook.com/CreatingAFamilyOfLettuceHeads?ref=stream
I found some great meal and workout ideas from her page.  She used some nitrate free ham on a salad, which I copied and loved it.  Sometimes I get tired of chicken and turkey breast, so I thought that was a great, quick substitute for a hectic day.

Workouts

On Monday I went to Gold's Gym to try out my friend, Monica's, tabata class.  They gave me the whole sales pitch and I ended up rejoining.  I got my butt kicked in Monica's class.  Afterward, I tried to run 3 miles, but by 1/2 mile into the run, my legs were like jello so I went home.  On Tuesday I did a dumbbell upper body routine and then headed to the gym for a short run on the treadmill.  Wednesday, I had time after work (while my daughter was at gymnastics) for an interval run, squats, lunges, abs, and the stair climber.  Thursday I ran "Heartbreak Hill" or the treadmill version of it and then headed home for more upper body.  Friday I did a circuit workout that my husband developed.  I didn't make it a cardio workout like he does,  instead I focused on legs-burpees, step-ups, lunges, and squats.  Saturday I had to be to work by 8, but the gym doesn't open until 6 on the weekend, so I did an extra upper body workout until 5:50 and then I went to the gym where I did 10 minutes on the row machine, 40 minutes of hill intervals, and then I tried out the assisted pull up bar for the first time.  The upper body workout that I did on Saturday was one that I found in the Oxygen Magazine.  The concept is to work a muscle group to fatigue.  For instance, I started with pushups- the first set was with my feet up on a bench until I couldn't do anymore, then I went to a normal pushup to fatigue, then to my knees and then finally with my hands on the bench.  Lateral shoulder raises-10 pounds to 8 pounds to 5 pounds. Back: Single arm rows- 30 #, 15#, 10#.  Triceps: dips, 10# kickbacks, 8# kickbacks.  Bicep curls- 15#, 10#, 8#.  I did about 15-20 reps for each one before going to a "easier" weight.  I'm also doing a Burpee Challenge that I found on the Creating a Family of Lettuce Heads Page

I'm probably nuts.  Today I did 30 burpees as part of my warm up since tomorrow is Sunday and I'm taking the day off from all things physical.

Overall, it was a good week.  The temperatures have been below zero every morning, which is crazy!  I ran through the winter last year and loved it.  This year, not so much.  I haven't ran outside for 2 weeks because of the cold. The last time I ran outside was when I was visiting my sister in Arizona.  I'm hoping that next week it will be at least 10 degrees in the morning so that I can get off the treadmill and onto the roads.  I loved the tabata class and I'm looking forward to getting in some spinning and kettlebell classes too.