Spicy Citrus Coconut Chicken

I started out thinking I would make a creamy mushroom sauce for my chicken. But then I remembered I had some clementines threatening to shrivel, and no body wants to waste a good clementine (don't you hate when you pick one up that looks great on one side, just to find that it's covered in blue mold on the underside and threatening to contaminate the rest of the basket with its grossness?). So, I ditched the mushrooms, kept the creamy sauce part, and came up with this delightful concoction, if I do say so myself. It looks a little bland in colour because by the time I remembered about the red peppers I had planned to add, everything else was all ready. Also, I forgot the ginger, and felt the whole thing was slightly lacking, but I added it to my leftovers, and happily my lunch the next day was more complete. Ginger is always a good idea. Like bacon. Except bacon jelly beans, seriously, don't do it.

Spicy Citrus Coconut Chicken (with Cauliflower Rice)
This made 3 meals for me

Ingredients
1 can coconut milk
2 large chicken breasts
~ 3 tablespoons lime juice
~ 6 clementines (4 juiced, 2 for garnish)
~ 2 teaspoons chili flakes (more or less depending on your level of spiciness)
fresh ginger
a pinch of cumin (if you like that sort of thing)
1/2 head of cauliflower
leaks or onion
other veggies? (red bell peppers or snap peas, mayhaps?)

1. Sear the chicken breasts on both sides in olive/coconut oil for a couple of minutes and set aside.
2. Chop and saute the onion or leaks briefly. Also saute sliced peppers here, like I forgot to do.
3. Add coconut milk, ginger, lime juice, clementine juice, cumin (optional), salt to taste, and chili flakes. I recommend adding a small amount of the chili flakes at a time and taste testing, because the hotness seems to intensify as you go along. I put a bit too much for my liking.
4. Put the lid on and let simmer while you "rice the cauliflower" in your handy dandy hand crank food processor, or your electric one if you're one of those fancy folk.
5. I added my cauliflower to the sauce at this point to let it cook. Ashley tried this recipe after smelling my leftovers, and cooked hers a bit separately first with some chicken broth, then added it to the sauce at the end. Either way, the point is to get your cauliflower cooked somehow, so long as it ends up in the sauce at the end, because I've decided it's better that way.
6. Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces and add back into the sauce to finish cooking.
7. Add some clementine wedges, if you please, and serve! Ashley also added orange juice to her sauce concoction, by the way, and something else but I don't remember what....hm....oh well!

New Year's Life Resolution: Sign up for the CrossFit Games Open

Or, more generally, come up with something that you think is probably too hard for you. Then try to do it anyway.

The first round of the Games will start in a month. Five weeks, five workouts, ANYONE can do it, and I am devoting this entire post to convincing you to sign up and compete. There are three main categories of responses to that statement.

1. I have no idea what you're talking about.
2. Duh, obviously, I'm already registered.
3. Don't be ridiculous Jen, I'm nowhere near that level yet.

If you're number 1, probably we haven't spoken lately, or you got here through google. Well, keep googling, the internet will tell you all about it! Then come back.
If you're number 2, you don't need convincing, so.....I guess that's all the advice I have for today :D

If you're number 3, and if you're like I was one year ago when coach Jen told me I should sign up to compete in the CrossFit Games Open, you're thinking there's no way. You're not fit enough, you rarely if ever do the workout prescribed, you never come close to the folks on the leaderboard, and when you begin the day's workout you expect to take at least 5 minutes longer than the slowest person on the board so far (I was consistently slowest for probably a year, don't fret, as long as you're working hard you're making progress, even if it doesn't seem like it. You'll notice all of a sudden one day).

But Jen didn't seem concerned about any of these things and so, somehow, she convinced me (something about contributing to the team score, although I wasn't totally convinced my score was worth contributing!). So, with no idea whether or not I'd be able to complete any or all of the workouts, I signed up, and set the lofty goal of getting to the end without being disqualified (i.e., get at least 1 rep in each workout). At the risk of spoiling the story, I will tell you that I did manage this goal, and ended up achieving far more than I ever would have without the motivation of competition. And, unexpectedly, it was actually fun! Convinced yet? No? Perhaps some details will help.

WOD 1: 10 min AMRAP of 30 DU, 15 power snatch (75/55)
I could just barely do both of these things, so that was fine, but this workout was challenging in a different way for me because I was out of town the whole week. Not one to give up my $10 registration fee so easily, I found a gym near where I was (CrossFit AI in Calgary), asked if I could come on by, and showed up terrified that they would expect some sort of hotshot out of town competitor and be sorely disappointed. On the contrary, everyone there was very welcoming, and they shouted encouragement, as I sputtered and wheezed, just as they did for their own members. I even had a complete stranger sharing with me his story as a newbie to crossfit, and how he was looking forward to graduating from lady pushups to real pushups! It was great to see that wherever you go there will be a great community of crossfitters.

WOD 2: 15 min AMRAP of 9 deadlifts (155/100), 12 pushups, and 15 boxjumps
I hate boxjumps. So much. And at this point I was still doing lady pushups, so it must have been painful for my judge to watch me have to rest in between every try at a real pushup. But, again, I could do all of these things, and something about the knowledge of having to write my score on the internet for all to see made me push myself harder than I ever have. That was the closest I've come to puking since the great "Barbara"-wod-too-close-to-green-beans-snack incident. Word to the wise: get up early to eat your breakfast, and ensure digestion before you begin. There's nothing worse than having to slow down for fear of hurling.

WOD 3: 5 minute AMRAP of squatclean and jerks (155/110)
Uh Oh. This was the first real hurdle to my goal of not being disqualified. I'd been at an 85 lb wall on cleans for months. So, I had a week to get to 110. Nobigdeal. By some miracle, and with the help of some excellent coaching from coach Jen (push off through your heels!), and some advice from Brit ("Srsly Jen, just walk up to the bar and pick it up", which is surprisingly good advice as it turns out), I actually managed to pick up the thing! Getting it over my head was another miserable matter that didn't happen for several more months, but fortunately the clean part was worth 1 point so (phewf!) I was still in the game.

WOD 4: 10 minute AMRAP of 60 bar facing burpees (and hops), 30 overhead squats (120/90), 10 muscle ups
So, obviously I couldn't do a muscle up (still can't, all in good time). I therefore did 60 leisurely burpees before attempting the squats, which were probably 20 lbs over my previous max. I managed to do a few squats at that weight in practice, but after the burpees I was too tired and kept toppling over. So my score was not stellar, but PR's during practice still count, so add one more to the list of PR's!

WOD 5: 20 minute AMRAP of 5 power cleans (145/100), 10 toes to bar, 15 wallballs.
Ok, so I'd figured out the clean part (see wod 3), but I hadn't managed a toes to bar. Come wod time, I took probably 3 minutes to get 5 successful cleans. Then, I spent 17 minutes practicing toes to bar, and in that time, I got two. Plus about 100 failed attempts. But darn it, I'd actually done one! By the end of those 17 minutes, a little cheering squad had formed. They groaned with disappointment every time I missed, and when I finally got one we were so excited you would have thought I'd just won the whole competition. This is what I love most about CrossFit, everyone helps you celebrate your achievements no matter how small.

WOD 6: 7 minute AMRAP of thrusters (100/65) and chest to bar pullups
Chest to bar. Really? Sigh. While the thursters were no problem (well, they were still pretty tough, but doable), I hadn't ever done a chest to bar. Once again, I spent the rest of my 7 minutes trying, and I even got a couple with a strange hybrid kipping pullup and donkey kick thing.

End result: NOT DISQUALIFIED, and I even didn't finish last! (I was 4th last in the Canada East, but that's not counting all of the people who dropped out :P)

Anywho, so there's my recap. That was really long. If you're still reading, my appologies, IOU some minutes. But hopefully anyone who is feeling shy about signing up will see that there's nothing to lose and a crud ton to gain. If I'd continued with my attitude of "I won't do well, therefore I shant bother", I would have missed out on FOUR PR's, not to mention the incredible experience of competition in a friendly, encouraging atmosphere. Everyone was pushing me to try harder, but I never once felt like would be disappointing anyone if I didn't manage to complete a move.

So if you sign up, I personally promise to start a cheering squad for whatever move you find toughest. And even if something comes up that you've never done, and you work towards it for the week and still don't get it, big whoop. You'll certainly be futher ahead than you were before you tried.

I saw an appropriate mantra on Modern Paleo Warfare: "No matter how slow you're going, you're still lapping everyone on the couch."

Toasty Paleo beverages for some not so toasty weather

So winter happened this week! I LOVE SNOW!!! Except on my car, I don't like it there. Or in my parking space, which is on the street, because if I go to the trouble of shoveling it out, someone else will certainly steal it before I get home >:| But I do love snow, especially for skiing or snowman building. Did anyone else ever make forts using bricks made of the ice layer that formed on top of fluffy snow? You know, the kind where it's a foot of fluff underneath but super cruncy on top, so when you walk you make giant crators of broken ice, and your foot sinks all the way down so you have to lift your feet super high and it takes forever to get to school? No? Well then. At any rate, I've been waiting for some cold weather to try out some toasty hot paleo beverages.

Paleo hot chocolate is super easy and super scrumptious! In the picture is a carton of coconut milk beverage, but I much preferred it with almond milk (unsweetened). Paired with a bowl of fresh raspberries it was a perfect dessert. I also just recently (as in, this minute) discovered chai tea latte with almond milk. I have a chai spice mix, but the internet is abound with recipes to make your own, or I suspect you could just plop a chai tea bag or two in your heated milk.

Paleo Hot Cocoa

1. Heat almond milk in a saucepan on the stove. I'm not sure if it will boil over all of a sudden like cow milk does, but as I'm not willing to find out, I stirred regularly. The internet says you can heat it in the microwave on low in 30 second intervals, stirring in between. I haven't got a microwave so you'll have to take the internet's word for it.
2a. Whisk in some cocoa until chocolatey enough, and stir in a spoonful of honey until it's de-bittered enough. I got my honey (raw unpasturized) from the Hamilton Market.
OR
2b. Stir in a square or two of dark chocolate until melted.
OR
2c. Try a chai latte recipe or any other hot beverage and tell me how it goes :) I just had a thought: toasted coconut in a teaball to add the flavour to the hot cocoa without making it lumpy. Must try.

3. Here's a recipe for coconut milk whipped cream to put on top. There's also a recipe for homemade paleo marshmallows from the Urban Poser but I haven't mustered up the ambition to try either yet. Let me know how it goes if you do!


PS to anyone from my elementary school, remember when we used to be allowed to slip and slide on the icerink that always formed in the drain ditch, before old-grouchy-man-whose-name-I-don't-remember came along and threw salt on it? What a party pooper.

Banana Curry Chicken on Cauliflower Rice

You know what's awesome? Cauliflower rice. You know what else is awesome? Kitchen gadgets that can chop the cauliflower without it flying all over the kitchen. The first time I made the stuff I tried just chopping it, with the result that I had to actually sweep the floor afterward. I also tried grating on the mandoline, but cauliflower is too structurally unsound and, again, ended up all over the kitchen.

BUT THEN for Christmas mum got me a hand crank food processor thinger, in which the cauliflower was contained while I mulched it into rice format. AMAZING! Also, much cheaper than the fancy electric food processors.

Cauliflower rice is a really excellent substitute vessel for your meats and sauces. The texture is similar to rice, and it soaks up sauce flavours nicely so that the cauliflower taste is not overpowering (which is good, because I happen to think cauliflower is gross). It's also easy to make, albeit quite messy without the proper tools (thanks mom!!). I've tried it with a few different curries. I hadn't ever made curry in my previous life so I'm still trying to find a recipe that tastes as good as my favourite Indian restaurant (next time, I'm trying something with pineapple!). This recipe is the best one I've found so far, and was pretty darn tasty. Original recipe here.

Banana Curry Chicken

Ingredients
Sliced veggies (bell pepper, carrots, zuccini, etc)
Chicken breasts
Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste
1 large banana, peeled
1/2 cup light coconut milk
2 large scallions, sliced
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
Fresh chopped cilantro, for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF. Place sliced vegetables and a chicken breast on a piece of foil. Season chicken with salt and black pepper.
2. In a blender (or with a fork), add banana, coconut milk, scallions, curry powder, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne pepper and ginger and process (smoosh) until smooth. Pour banana-coconut milk mixture over each chicken breast, dividing evenly. Seal foil packets, place on a rimmed baking sheet and cook in oven for 22 to 25 minutes. Set aside to cool for a few minutes before opening. (NOTE: I had to cook mine much longer, perhaps they were thicker).

Cauliflower Rice

Mulch up some cauliflower until it's the size of rice grains. As per the discussion above, I recommend some sort of food processor. I haven't tried the blender but it might do. Heat a generous amount of coconut oil in a pan. Stir in the cauliflower to cover with oil. Cook with a lid on medium-low, stiring occasionally, until the cauliflower is the desired squishiness. I do mine for 15 minutes or so.

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!