Giants!

Sunday funday in San Fran.. =) We got to go and see a baseball game - it was my very first, and it will not be the last one because we had allot of fun. I love my husband!

We had seats with a beautiful view over the bay area. Sad day as the Giants did not win. But hey, it was opening weekend and they have like 150 more games to play before this season is over.

Anyway, today I am running from one thing to the next - training, classes and paperwork. I made a delightful lunch that has been on our weekly rotation list now for a long time. It`s a simple dish with a few ingredients. Again, I am using heirloom tomatoes and basil as a part of my dish, but it is just that good! Here is the recipe for my basil avocado salad:

• Brown rice, cooked
• Heirloom tomatoes
• Avocado (ripe)
• Basil (fresh)
• (Optionals: nuts, cheese, olive oil...) 
• Cook up brown rice, cut up the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Serve it mixed with the rice or separate.

Try this recipe, it`s incredibly good. 

-Kathrine

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Mango.

I just really like that word. Mango. A few years ago I traveled in Vanuatu for six weeks and one of the places we stayed at had a huge mango tree in the front yard. It was incredible to go and find a ripe fruit at any time of the day, pull out the knife and eat it. Ah - simplicity. We ate an enormous amount of amazing fruits during those weeks - coconut, papaya, mangoes, bananas, pine apple... good times.

This Saturday morning is gonna be good. I am getting ready to go to the gym - gonna get my work out on! Then off to the newly-opened-for-the-season farmers market before I head back to the gym for my spinning class.

Juicing fresh vegetables sure makes vegetables go allot faster then if I was to eat them all. This morning all I could find was carrots, a pear and a mango. So I juiced the carrots and the pear. Then I blended it in my high speed vitamix with the mango. A little bit of fiber, a lot of sugar (! pre work out meal) and at-least it was all natural foods.
Changing up my diet (when I say diet this does not mean micro dieting. It just means that I am referring to what I am eating) this week has been incredible. 4 cups of fresh vegetable juice until mid-afternoon. Then a normal lunch, and a lighter dinner later on. I am full of energy =)
 

Have a beautiful Saturday Loves

- Kathrine -

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Lunch-time

My green cocktail for lunch was incredible. I can feel my body "waking" up, as I am cleansing my body. I want to drink green juice everyday for a while now. Just to give it a little detox and get all "wintery" stuff out of my system..

As you can see, I added fruits to my juice and that is mostly because it covers up the edgy vegetable taste. Some of you are able to do straight up vegetable juice, and that`s awesome.

 

Looks like the sun is shining... I want to go for an outdoor run. First one since fall!

-Kathrine-

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Fresh fruit and vegetable juicing

On this half sunny, half cloudy morning I took our new moped out for a little drive. 7AM is still very peaceful as far as traffic goes, with my newly learned skills in driving the moped that is perfect for me. 

Lately I have not been wanting to eat vegetables. It comes in waves, sometimes all I want to eat is a different kind of salad for all my meals. Then there are times when all the greens I get is in stir fried foods. Waking up in the morning tired, is a sign to me that I need to pat attention more to what I eat and make sure I get allot of high quality whole foods rich in nutrients.
As I was cruising around the neighborhood this morning, I wondered if I could do the far drive to the one grocery store in town that makes fresh green juice. I considered the roads, the busyness and my skill level and quickly decided that it was not a good idea.

It dawned on me that I have a juicer in my garage, it was given to me a year ago by some sweet friends of ours and I have not even used it. You see, the last juicer I had was a crazy little machine I got at a thrift store for $6. It juiced my vegetables well, but it was super loud and it took at least 20 minutes to clean up! Joy filled my heart when I discovered that it was broken and I could throw it away =)

Anyway, I got home, parked the moped and found my "new" juicer. I used all kinds of vegetables - carrots, apples, lemons, golden beets, spinach and cucumbers and got 2 cups of really refreshing and tasty juice.

"The juice of fresh fruits and vegetables is the richest available food source of vitamins, minerals and enzymes." -From the book Juicing for life.

I am excited for my next cup of juice!

-Kathrine-

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My work outs and Carbs

Me saying that I am enjoying this day is a huge understatement. I love days when I can drink tea with my love, research the web for recipes, bake and cook delicious food and in the end of the day have our best friends (I so love you guys!!) over for an evening of laughter, conversations and a good meal.

This week I have put in many hours working out and instructing classes. My body screams for relaxation and recovery, I am mostly sore in my upper back but my arms are a little jello-like too. I am also tweaking my diet to fit my activity-level. Loading up on carbohydrates and nutrient rich food.

My work outs week 12:
Monday: EFX circut training 50 min. 
Tuesday: Stairmaster 45 min.
                Bodysculpt 50 min.
Wednesday - Stairmaster 30 min.
                      EFX circut training 50 min.
Thursday - Bodysculpt 1 hour
                  Spinning 45 min.
Friday - OFF
Saturday - Spinning race-day 2 hours

 Carbs, carbs, carbs:
A few years ago, during my transitioning time of becoming gluten free, I ate 95% raw and vegan. It was rewarding to focus on what I could eat, rather then what I could not eat. The backside of it was a constant feeling of being hungry. I snacked on carrots and nuts all day long in order to keep that hunger in check. But even with eating vegetables all day long - in the end of the day, a raw and vegan lifestyle did not support my activity level. Working out was hard and gathering motivation for it likewise.
As I started introducing more and more carbohydrates, protein and dairy products into my diet I found that I had more energy. My body felt more at ease because I was not constantly hungry and now I had a ton of energy for daily chores and working out. Over the years I have come to find what foods work for me and the amount that supports my activity level.

Food is obviously essential. The type of food we eat has powerful effects on energy levels, moods, appearance, longevity and how we age. There are foods that are good for us, then there are foods that are good in smaller portions, and there is foods we should stay away from (like overly processed food).
Dietary carbohydrates play a vital role in human nutrition because they provide the primary source of the energy we need to fuel bodily function.

Some carbs are good and some are bad depending on what it does to our blood sugar levels. We can use the glycemic index (GI) to find out just how much our blood sugar increases in the hours after ingesting. The food with the highest glycemic index aka the nastiest food you can eat in terms of turning to sugar the minute you eat it is... drum-roll, white bread! The GI of white bread is set to 100 and all foods are compared to it (GI charts either use white bread as reference point or pure glucose which has a GI of 140.

What we call simple carbs = empty carbs = high GI foods, have been refined and stripped of their supportive nutrients. So white sugar, white bread, pastries and even cereal has no nutritional value. It goes like this: you eat it, your blood sugar spikes, the pancreas works really hard to pump out insulin to get the blood sugar level down, and it works... fast, now you crash, feel fatigue and soon enough hungry again.
Anyway, since our bodies needs energy and fuel, we need carbs, good carbs! Ones that digest slowly and allows us to stay full for a long time, it also supplies us with balanced energy levels throughout our day. On a gluten free diet we often turn to replacement foods (gf bread, pizza, pasta, cookies etc), and the typical main ingredient is corn, white rice and potatoes which unfortunately is not much else but starch and lacking in nutritional value.
Choosing foods wisely is essential to our health in the long run, gluten free or not. Complex carbohydrates from grains are the body’s best source of energy because they are burned in a constant, time-released manner. Some of the carbs that I choose, that leaves me feeling full for a long while and also supplies me with high nutritional value include but are not limited too:

• Quinoa, millet, sorghum, oats, teff, amaranth and buckwheat
• Apples, kiwi, avocados, tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, spinach and brussel sprouts
• Berries, nuts and seeds.

 So that was a little bit of allot of things =) I need to get to my cooking and baking now. I wish you all a peaceful day!
 

 -Kathrine-

Resources: The encyclopedia of healing foods, Gluten free for dummies

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Baked beet and Quinoa Salad

 

 -Kathrine-

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Super-food Week

Happy Monday everyone =)

It`s always nice to start a new week, especially if last week was challenging.
My focus this week is on eating plenty of incredibly nutritious foods that will strengthen my immune system and boost my overall health. I will be posting my meal plans for some of the days and add the recipes along with it.

Super food are foods high in nutritional value and low in calories. They are superior sources of anti-oxidants and essential nutrients that our bodies cannot produce on it`s own. It`s food with allot of color, it usually tastes awesome in it`s natural state and can be found in nature.
These foods have high concentration of easy digestible nutrients, vitamins and compounds to burn fat, protect and heal our bodies. The green leafy vegetables are especially rich in chlorophyll, which our cells thrives on.
This can be foods like, but not limited too: goji and acai berries, cacao, vegetables, fruits, seeds (chia, flax, hemp etc) and nuts.


Here is my super food meal plan for today:

Breakfast - Papaya Salad (ripe papaya, blueberries and blackberries)

Lunch - Baked beets and Quinoa salad (gold beets, cooked quinoa and minced baby broccoli)

Snack - Coconut water, bee pollen and homemade chocolate fudge,

Dinner - Belgian Endive salad (endive, arugula, avocado) with apricot garlic crumbs (dried apricots, almonds and 1-2 cloves of garlic in a food processor)

Vitamins - pro-biotic, multi vitamin (B12, B6, C, folat etc) and flax oil.

I will post pictures after every meal. I really love capturing amazing foods on photos ;)
Have a wonderful day -Kathrine-

Resources: Eating for Beauty

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GF Crispbread

Here is a gluten free healthy recipe for crunchy crispbread that are rich in whole grains and packed with nutrition. I got inspired by Manuela and her knekkebrød, so I decided to make a gluten free version.
To shed light on one of the many healthy ingredients: teff - has twice as much iron as both wheat and barley (easy absorbed iron) and is also higher in protein than wheat.
Crispbread can be eaten plain, with peanut butter and jelly, with a slice of cheese and fresh produce...

 

Or next to soup and salad - spread some garlic butter on, I promise it tastes amazing.

Ingredients:

1,5 Cup GF Oats

1.5 Cup GF Flours ( I used a mix of teff, amaranth, millet and hemp)

1/2 Cup Flax seeds

1/2 Cup Hulled Sesame seeds

1 Cup Sunflower seeds

1/2 Tsp Salt

2 Cups water

2 Tbs brown sugar (or honey)

Add dry ingredients, mix in wet ingredients, spread it all out on baking sheets about 1 centimeter thick. Use a pizza slicer and make squares in the dough. Bake in oven at 300F, for 40-50 minutes.

I eat these and stay full for a long time. Crispbreads are high in complex carbs (the GOOD kind) which provides calories for energy needs. This would be a perfect meal 2 hours before a work out. Oh! One more thing, put the crispbread in a mixer and mix for a few moments - now you have your very own cereal.

-Kathrine-

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The superfood: Quinoa

It`s a superfood that I love to use as an alternative to rice, flours and pasta. It`s pronounced keen-wha, and it`s one of those foods that you might have to go out of your way to find, but the health benefits are outstanding and makes it worth the while.

For instance, it is a "complete" protein because of the rich content of all 9 amino acids which is required by the body as the building blocks of our muscles. Another great thing is the high content of fiber and vital nutrients such as magnesium and copper.

If there is a meal I have to make on a weekly basis - it`s this quinoa dish. The healthy version of mac n`cheese, kinda, sorta. I mix in cheese for J`s dish - and leave it out for mine =)

The steps to making this dish is:

• Cook quinoa for 15 minutes on medium to medium high heat with a dash of salt. 
• Cut up the tomatoes, avocado and press the garlic and mix together in a bowl. 
• When the quinoa is ready add in cheese - if desired
• Mix with the fresh vegetables and enjoy! 

The garlic gives the meal a great flavor, the avocado makes the texture smooth and the fresh tomatoes brings a sweetness to it all. This dish works perfect alone - as a salad, it`s also tasty next to lemon baked chicken (gave that to Jeffrey), fish and other grilled foods.

Back in the days I used to eat all raw and vegan foods only. Cooked quinoa was one of those foods that I knew my body needed for the nutrition, so I never gave it up =) Have you ever tried to be on a raw diet? It`s a great transitional diet and a great way for people to learn how to eat natural food.

This is a meal that can work for most everyone - it`s allergen friendly, diet friendly and it`s easy-to-make.

Have a good evening

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