Zucchini Linguine and other noodle substitutes

So, Christmas happened, and I fell off the paleo wagon in a big way. To be fair to myself, that was my intention. After completing a 10 week paleo challenge on December 23rd, during which I had only a handful of (mostly non-glutenous) cheats, I went home to mom's in London and I ate. A lot. Indiscriminately. I'll excuse myself for the gluten and sugar-filled Christmas dinner under my self-composed Plan to Cheat clause. For the rest of the holiday, I have no defense, except perhaps that gluten from mom's house doesn't count?

Climbing back aboard the paleo wagon is going to be made somewhat more difficult by the fact that I did not experience any immediate negative feedback from stuffing my face with...well stuffing. I did, however, experience several delayed consequences. The first was what I can only assume to be one mad sugar hangover (imagine feeling like you've been drinking all night, without the pleasure of a single glass of wine). In addition, my performance upon returning to the gym has been rather sub-par (I haven't been winded after a 500m warmup row in some time...)

I had planned to share the recipes from our pre-Christmas paleo cookie exchange, but in light of my recent vegetable cravings, I've decided my body has the right idea; the cookies can wait for another day. Instead, I'm sharing my favourite pasta substitutes. Pasta, as I see it, is really just a vessel for the sauce (with the possible exception of fresh, made from scratch noodles with nothing but parmesan, butter, and salt/pepper, but I digress). If you've been missing spaghetti, these substitutes are very tasty and often satisfy my noodle-type cravings.

Paleo Pasta
My favourite paleo "noodle" is spaghetti squash (pictured to the left). Cleave the squash lengthwise in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake face down for about 30 min or until a fork pierces the skin. Scrape out the innards with a fork and you've got spaghetti! Bonus: toss the cleaned seeds in olive oil and seasalt and toast in the oven for a tasty snack.

Zuccini is the next best noodle (on the right, with a tomato and cream cheese rose sauce and crumbled sausage). You can slice it with a mandoline for more spaghetti type noodles, or use a vegetable peeler lengthwise to make lingine. I've seen directions that suggest you saute or boil the noodes, but I find that if the sauce is hot enough you can just pour it on the raw noodles and they heat up sufficiently.

The last subsitute I've tried is chopped cabbage. It was hardly pasta-like in texture, but served as a handy vessel for my meatsauce one evening when I was feeling lazy.

Go nuts with your favourite sauce. I've put a couple suggestions below.

My version of a Meat Sauce

1. Brown ground beef or sausage in a large pan.
2. Add things that need sauteing like mushrooms, onions, peppers, carrots, and/or garlic
3. Add a diced tomato or 2 or three. Probaby you'd add tomato paste here, if you had that sort of thing, which I usually don't.
4. Season: I use lots of paprika and chili powder, salt and pepper, oregano and any other herb I feel like that day.
5. Simmer. Sometimes I add a bit of water. I usually leave the lid on for a bit to let the flavours distribute, and then leave the lid off to reduce moisture.
6. Sometimes I put a bit of red wine.

Usually by the time my squash is done baking, or I've finished making zucchini noodles, the sauce is ready to serve!

Creamy Mushroom Sauce

I haven't tried this exact recipe, but I made a similar tasty sauce for some porkchops and this one looks tastier (from Family Living Simple).

Ingredients
2 Tablespoons of Ghee or coconut oil
3 Cloves of Garlic
1 Cup of Mushrooms sliced
1/2 Onion chopped
1 Cup Coconut Milk (Full Fat)
1/4 Cup White wine
Pepper
Parsley

Heat the butter in a pan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until transluscent. Add the chopped Garlic and cook a few more minutes. Add the mushrooms. Mix everything up really well to make sure to coat all the mushrooms. Continue to cook for 3-5 more minutes. Add the wine and make sure it boils to cook off the alcohol. Turn the heat down to Medium low and add in the coconut milk. Add spices and let the sauce thicken a little bit and then remove from heat.

They served their sauce on steak but it looked like an excellent pasta sauce to me! Let me know if you try it.

New Year's Life Resolution: Change your relationship with food

This is something that I've been working on since I started crossfit, and I think that it is perhaps one of the most important keys to successfully changing your lifestyle long term.

Food, to me, used to be the enemy. Every calorie consumed was something else to feel guilty about, and anything with fat (read: anything tasty) not only made me feel like I'd commited some sort of crime, but I also felt angry at myself for not resisting it.

Success requires not only a change in what you eat, but also a change in how you think about eating. Food is not the enemy, and neither is fat (stay tuned for a more thorough review of fatty foods, there are lots of good resources out there). The mantra that I employed to rewire my brain is as follows:

1. Food is fuel
2. Pick good fuel

It seems obvious, but I think in the midst of obsessing over food and dieting, we often forget that the whole point of eating is to fuel your body (and your brain!) so it can do stuff. Furthermore it does stuff better with good fuel (that Ferrari needs high test!). I found that thinking about food in this way every time I eat not only helps me to make better choices daily, but also relieves that guilty feeling that used to come with eating.

We could quibble forever about the details of what exactly constitutes "good fuel"; research is constantly evolving what we believe to be true about how our bodies use food as fuel. The best we can do is to arm ourselves with knowledge (if you're curious, look it up, and read at least one article arguing each side), and pay attention to our bodies. If it makes you feel better, gives you more energy, or improves your life in any way, it's probably good fuel.

The last piece of my mantra contributes more to mental well-being than to physical health, but is also a key to my success:

3. Enjoy your fuel.

It's really important to me that my fuel be tasty. If it's not, then how can I expect any changes to be sustainable? There's no point in depriving yourself to look better if it just makes you miserable. Increasing my happiness is just as important to me as improving my fitness. And frankly, sometimes this means eating a piece of chocolate. Sometimes, the cocoa makes me happier than resisting it, and if I know I've made good choices the rest of the week, I'm not about to punish myself for it. Besides, what are we doing all this working out for if we don't get to enjoy life a little! :)

What the heck do you eat for breakfast?

Breakfast was the hardest meal for me when I started eating Paleo. As I mentioned in my very first post, I've had a bagel with peanut butter (or sometimes cream cheese) every morning of my entire life. Occasionally I'd branch out and have toast.

My new workday routine breakfast consists of 2 eggs (fried or scrambled in coconut oil), and a bowl of "cereal" (I think I got the idea from coach Jen). And some fish oil. If you need more vegetables in your life (who doesn't?), I've also started having a handful of spinach which I saute for a minute after the eggs are done. Sometimes I have salsa with scrambled eggs, and sometimes I add paprika or ground pepper. This whole routine takes no longer to prepare than my old breakfast, and I pack my lunch while my eggs are frying.

Pardon the cat.

On the weekend, I often make paleo pancakes or waffles. Both of these (receipes posted below) are big hits with non-paleo folk as well. I think the pancakes are better than the "regular kind" because I don't feel like I have to douse them in butter and syrup to enjoy them. The waffles are surprisingly spongey and every bit as delicious as the non-paleo kind. Bonus: they've got protein powder and 3 eggs apiece so they have 5 blocks of potein and will actually keep you full until lunch!

Paleo Protein Waffles

From "Giving Up Grains". This makes 2 waffles. I made the whole batch, ate 3/4 of one waffle, and heated up the rest in the toaster oven to supplement my breakfast for the rest of the week!

Ingredients
1/4 cup coconut flour
2 scoops of vanilla protein powder
6 eggs
2 tbs honey
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs natural organic apple sauce (do not leave this out or they will be very dry!)
4 tbs ghee, melted (I use coconut oil)

Heat up your waffle iron. If you don't have one, it's totally worth buying! Whisk everything together. I melted the coconut oil first, but make sure you wait for it to cool because the first time I did not and it started to cook my eggs when I poured it in! The batter is a bit lumpy and strange in consistency, but I promise this does not affect deliciousness. My iron has an automatic shut off when it's done, but it's about 5 minutes. As topping I heat up some frozen berries in a saucepan with a bit of honey.


Paleo "Cereal"

You can put all sorts of things in this but here's a list of what I often add.

A spoonfull of berries, frozen (and then thawed) in the winter, fresh in the summer
Sliced banana
1/2 scoop of protein powder
A handful of coconut (toasted in the toaster oven!)
Walnuts (also toasted)
chia seeds
flax seeds

Then I mix the whole thing up with either almond milk (unsweetened!) or coconut milk beverage. Both are much cheaper at costco than at any grocery store I've seen.


Paleo Pancakes

I'm not sure where I found this recipe originally, perhaps Mark's Daily Apple blog.

Ingredients (per person)
1 ripe (or frozen) banana
BIG scoop of almond butter
1 egg
Cinnamon to taste
(you can add almond flour to thicken the batter, and I've also added a bit of protein powder).

Thaw the banana, if it's frozen, and smash it up. Whisk everything together. Fry in ghee or coconut oil. I find they take much longer than ordinary pancakes, so don't put them on too high or the outside will burn before the inside is cooked enough. Serve with berries (or syrup, if you like that sort of thing), and some blueberry breakfast sausage (way better than they sound) from Beach Road Meats on Locke St.


Egg Muffins

If you need something quick for hurried mornings, I sometimes make up some egg muffins ahead of time on the weekend. There are a million versions on the interweb (like here), but in short, you wisk up your eggs, add whatever you want in terms of finely chopped veggies (peppers, onions, spinach, etc) and meat (precooked: ham, sausage, etc), and bake in muffin tins on about 350 for 20-30 minutes. They tend to deflate a little like a souffle, but they're tasty (think mini quiche!) and can be kept in the freezer, then heated up in the toaster oven or microwave once you get to work!

New Year's Life Resolution: Practice stuff you suck at

New Year's resolutions.

I hate them. You're all gung ho about whatever it is you intend to do better this time around. You set ridiculous lofty goals and have such high expectations of yourself that the February Fail is inevitable and all you've managed is to feel crappy about yourself.

Which brings me to one of my favourite things about CrossFit. I don't need a resolution to motivate me to go! From the awesome people I get to hang out with, to the hit of seratonin after a killer WOD, to the real, tangible results, I'm addicted; CrossFit has fascilitated a complete life overhaul for me. But, there's always room for improvement. So this year, instead of New Year's resolutions, I'm starting a list of Life Resolutions: small, achievable but significant and lasting changes that I think I can make every day.

NEW LIFE RESOLUTION #1: Practice Stuff You Suck At

This one has obvious implications in the gym, but can be applied to any aspect of your life.

Practice stuff you suck at....
...in the gym
Coach Jen tells us this all the time, but it's advice I want to try to follow more often. The first step, I noticed, is to recognize that when I say I hate something (*cough* Burpees), I probably really mean that I'm just not very good at it, and therefore do not enjoy doing it. So, I resolve to do more of those things I hate, until I do not hate them any longer. For instance, by attempting strict pullups every time I found myself standing around (in between each heavy lifting set), I was able to finally get my frist strict pullup after a month or so. Sometimes a more concentrated effort is required, like a full 17 minutes of attempting toes to bar at a certain Crossfit Games Open last year (I only got 2 reps in that time, but the next time I tried I got 5!)

Practice stuff you suck at...
...in the kitchen
All those people you know who are great cooks had to start somewhere! The more recipes you try, the longer the list of meals in your repertoire. And while you're accumulating meal options, you're also learning what flavours work together, discovering new ingredients, and becoming more efficient at the whole process. A few tweaks and suddently you've invented your very own recipe!

Practice stuff you suck at...
...in your mouth?
Er...that is, practice eating more healthfully...

Changing how you eat is very much a mental challenge. You're constantly fighting cravings, habbits, and often laziness (cooking is sometimes difficult when you barely have time in the day to chew your food, let alone make it!). The good news is that the brain is plastic, and it can actually be trained to want healthier foods!

I discovered the truth of this as I progressed through the 10 week challenge. I found that the more greens I ate (collard, kale, and the dreaded broccoli), the less horrible they seemed. Partly because I learned how to cook them without turning them into a squishy mess, but also because my palette has changed completely so that I'm enjoying things I used to hate. I've also noticed that I'm more aware of the flavours in food. Since I eat so much less sugar, for example, fruit tastes sweeter and is more satisfying as a dessert, and I only need a small dab of honey with my hot cocoa (and milk chocolate tastes way too sweet).

A while ago I was watching Biggest Loser on TV (Hi, my name is Jen, and I'm addicted to Biggest Loser) and they had a guest (Dr. David Linden, a neuroscientist and author of The Compass of Pleasure) who shared some really nifty research about brain plasticity and cravings. He explained that the pleasure center responds differently for different people. When an obese and a lean person smell a cheeseburger, the obese person will have a much larger pleasure response (chemically in the brain) than the lean person (thus, they want the cheeseburger more badly). BUT, give both people a cheeseburger to eat, and the lean person will have a much larger pleasure response than the obese person, who will have to eat far more just to feel as good. But it is possible, he said, to rewire our brains with healthful eating in a few weeks or a few months. He did warn though that it only takes a week or so of crappy eating to undo all the re-wiring, so maybe only cheat for part of your vacation, and not the whole time!!

Dr. Linden also shared the trick of eating mindfully (pay attention to what you're eating). If your pleasure center is distracted while you eat by something like a TV show, he says, you're likely to eat more in order to feel satisfied. Maybe that's why I always end up finishing the bag of popcorn at the movie theatre without noticing :S

For when there's nothing in your cupboard but a can of tuna...

That's what happened to me today. I got home from work to discover that I'd forgotten to take a meat out of the freezer, I had used up all of my eggs for breakfast, and I was feeling too impatient to wait for something to thaw. But there were two cans of tuna in my cupboard! Below is the dinner provided by the internet, along with a couple other google discoveries.

Zingy Tuna Salad

Recipe here from PALEOdISH. It was pretty darn tasty for lacking mayonaise! Someone in the comments suggests adding smooshed avocado for creamy texture, but mine wasn't ripe enough to try. I served it on a couple slices of toasted Paleo bread and it was almost like I was eating a tuna melt. I'm really not certain I can give up cheese for life....


Turnip Fritters

I found this recipe (from Paleo Foodie) when I decided it was time to use up the turnips sitting at the bottom of my veggie drawer, like they always do when I get them in my veggie box, because turnips are gross (acceptable ways to eat turnip include disguising them in a stew where they don't really taste like turnips. NON acceptable ways include mashing them up and putting them next to the bowl of mashed potatoes so that 12 year old Jen takes a heaping scoop of mashed turnip and is then forced to eat it so as not to be wasteful).

Aaaanyway, the ginger and raisins cover up the turnip grossness quite nicely. They have a hashbrown texture (but bonus: vegetable!), and I even heated some up in the toaster oven for breakfast the next day. If you're fancy, you can even grate your turnips with a mondolin, like I did, because my manfriend decided I was hopeless at choping things and bought me a mandolin. I'm not normally one for gatgets, but this one is pretty great.


Paleo Pecan Brittle

This last recipe I found when I had a craving for peanut brittle. It's not at all like peanut brittle, but satisfies the sugary roasted nut desires. They're super fast to make (plus half hour baking time), and I just made a batch to take to a family Christmas dinner this weekend. Bonus: my house now smells like cinnamon toast crunch.

I have also hired Ashley to make me her awesome paleo brownies so that I have a variety of desserts with which to avoid cheating. Speaking of not cheating, I realized last week that I can make stuffing with Elana's paleo bread!!! AMAZING! Well, I hope it will be. I'm going home Friday night so mom can show me how to make her worlds best stuffing. Stay tuned.


That awesome pumpkin spice bread that Jocelyn made for the Halloween potluck

It's awesome. 'Nuff said. I've linked the recipe from Primal Palate so as not to have to search in the CrossFit Altitude archives every time.


Protein balls etc

Speaking of Ashley, this is the original protein ball recipe (and posted below for convenience). The ones at the front of the gym are modified by paleo pastry chef extrodanaire (Ashley B) and, frankly, are much better than the ones I haphazardly mush together for myself. Mmmmm mocha tasty balls.

1/2 cup of nut butter (cashew, almond)
2 tablespoon of raw honey
2 tablespoon of cocoa nibs
2 tablespoon of shredded coconut
3/4 cup of protein powder ( natural, not sweetened)
1 teaspoon organic, alcohol free vanilla
2 tablespoon crushed nuts (raw almonds)

Mix nut butter, protein powder, honey and vanilla until smooth. Then add remainder of ingredients. Rill into 1 inch balls and place in an airtight container in the fridge for storage.

For when you get a little tired of that particular protein snack, which I did after my 5th batch, I tried these goji protein bars. They're quite tasty (less sweet, more nutty and seedy), but they're a bit crumbly. Perhaps an extra egg? I also soaked my goji berries in boiling water for a few minutes to soften them.