And We're Back...

Good morning! I'm finally back after a two week break away! I'm also back to my regularly scheduled healthy lifestyle :-) 

This mornings breakfast was bright and early at 6am. I'm still jet lagged but I'm hoping to continue to wake up a bit early so I can ease into my morning. It's nice...waking up, having a cup if coffee and my breakfast while listening to the news in the background. 

The weather is finally getting warmer. It's so nice to be able to sleep with the windows open. Another plus...this weekend is Memorial Day weekend which means a three day weekend :-) you guys got any plans? I plan on starting my patio garden. I think this year I will plant spinach, basil, cilantro, mint, tomatoes and maybe string beans... Lets see. 

So, my breakfast this morning was very simple. I had a cup of black coffee with a dippy egg, slice of ezekiel toast and banana. Delicious and filling!

How have you guys been?

Recipe Alert: Raw Coconut Chocolate Cookies

Lately, I’ve been experimenting a lot with raw snacks. Especially since I love my Larabars so much, I thought it would probably be much cheaper to start making my own. I’m very close to perfecting a couple of the snack bars, but during this time I also came up with a few of my own concoctions. My recipe below is my raw version of chocolate cookies. Notice there is no added sugar in this recipe. The cookies are sweetened with the banana and dates. Enjoy my recipe below for Chocolate Cookies. These are pretty healthy and make for a great snack!

Ingredients:

1 1/2c of unsweetened, shredded coconut
1 banana cut in half
1/4c of cocoa powder or raw carob powder
Teaspoon of vanilla extract
4 dates, sliced
Preparation:

Place all ingredients in a food processor and process for a minute. Once combined, take ‘dough’ and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Take the chilled dough and with two tablespoons worth form into a ball and then lightly pat to shape a round cookie. Place on a plate and repeat with the remainder of the dough.

Tip: make a batch of these cookies and freeze them up for a quick treat anytime!

Recipe Alert: Coconut Apple Cake

Hey hey Peeps!

The other day I wanted to have cake for breakfast. Of course if I'm going to have cake for breakfast, a few conditions have to be met. For example: high fiber, low glycemic, nutritious and low sugar. You may ask...." But Kanwal.. How are you going to find a cake like this"? Well, first of all, I may not be able to find this cake BUT I will be able to make this cake and it will be quick!

This is exactly what I did. I made a healthy, nutritious, low glycemic/sugar apple coconut cake and it was extremely easy. So easy, that I feel bad taking credit for it :-p

I had this whole cake for breakfast and it was delicious. It was also so easy to make. I think next time I'm just going to make a big batch of this and make muffins out of them. I seriously suggest you try this recipe out. There is no added sugar and it has 10 grams of fiber!

Here are the deets:

Coconut Apple Cake
Ingredients:
1/2c unsweetened vanilla almond milk
2 egg whites
1tsp vanilla extract
1/4c coconut flour (I used Bob's Red Mill)
1tsp baking powder
1tsp cinnamon
1 small apple, diced

Preparation
Combine all ingredients except for apple. Lightly grease a small round baking pan (I used my Pyrex dish). Pour batter into dish, add apples on top. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Serving: 1

Jersey City Restaurant Review: Rajbhog Sweets

The other night we decided to go out for Indian food. It had been a while and we were both craving it. If you're in Jersey City, the place to go for Indian food is Newark Avenue, near the Journal Square Path Station. On Newark Avenue you will find all things Indian. Indian grocery stores and Indian restaurants. I've been going to Newark Avenue for the past 10 years. There are about 15 restaurants on Newark Avenue. Out of the 15 probably 5 have remained the same. I feel like every year a new restaurant opens but then closes with in a year.

One of these restaurants is called Rajbhog Sweets. Their sweets are AMAZING. I have never gotten a sweet I didn't like from here. Rajbhog Sweets also serves savory food plates. For $8 you get a huge thali(selection of indian food on a plate) of Indian food. This includes an appetizer AND DESSERT. The thali also comes with two rotis, two vegetarian dishes, rice and dhal. When you have this with the apps and dessert, it's a pretty big meal!

We decided to try Rajbhog and get the thali. My thali came with a samosa appetizer and a fried eggplant pattie. I also got a paneer(cheese) dish and channa(chickpeas) masala as my vegetarian dish. There was rice, dhal(lentils) and yogurt as well. Also, lets not forget... dessert was a gulab jammun (fried dough soaked in a sugar syrup). So, how was it? I loved the samosa, roti, channa and gulab jammun. I felt the panned was over cooked and was just to oily. The dhal...I've never had dhal that looked milky and tasted slightly sweet. I'm more used to Punjabi dhal which is a bit salty and has spice. Like I said the channa was delicious. The chickpeas were cooked perfectly and had a bit of spice to them. There are options to get smaller thali's and if I do eat here again I would get the thali with one vegetarian option.

The dessert was phenomenal! I love gulab jammun and these guys did a great job with that. I've gotten a few of their sweets in the past and have never been disappointed.

The verdict: Stick to Rajbhog Sweets for their sweets. The savory food can be hit or miss.

Rajbhog Sweets:
812 Newark Avenue
Jersey City, NJ

Workouts, Parisian Night and Then Some....

Good Morning!

I hope you guys had a great Monday. I had a great weekend filled with at least one workout, a fun filled Parisian night and Indian food!

I knew Saturday night there would be a lot of food and I wanted to try a little bit of everything, soooo I went to the gym Saturday morning and worked out extra hard. Oh yes, I spent 45 minutes on the stair master working to burn at least 500 calories. So worth it and I felt so good! I immediately came out and devoured a stack of healthy coconut flour pancakes :-)

So, Saturday night I threw a little Parisian party. Our friends from CT were in town and we made plans to meet up. I started the night off with a simple cheese platter. I had Brie, goat and port cheese along with some grapes and rosemary Melba toast. This kept people noshing until the main course was ready to be brought out.

The main course was roasted rosemary chicken and lentils in a balsamic Dijon sauce. To be quite honest, I thought the lentils were so much more flavorful and delicious. The lentils were an Ina recipe. Of course they would be good :-) On the side, I had French bread, white asparagus, roasted potatoes and sautéed green beans. I have to say... everything turned out pretty good.

Dessert was none the less... CREPES!! Seriously, how could you not have crepes on a Parisian night!!! Sadly, I did not get a picture of the crepes. I made the crepes from scratch and had fun fillings such as Nutella, bananas, strawberries, pudding and whip cream. Crepes = Success.

So that was our very fun Parisian night in a nutshell. Sunday we decided to take it easy. We had a lovely breakfast with my sister, brother in law and the little one. What did we have.. Crepes of course :-p
The rest of Sunday was spent shopping and roller skating, and dinner at an Indian restaurant. Review coming up.

How was your weekend?

Finally Friday...

Good Morning & Happy Friday!!!

Ah, yes we've waited all week for this day! I've had a pretty good week with healthy eats and working out. I'm still pushing myself to complete a 5K on the elliptical in under 30 minutes. The closest I've come to is 2.87!! So close, yet so far! I've been working at it on a 10/10 level. Slowly but surely I will get there!

I've also been working extra hard to make sure I'm eating healthy. This means getting my prep work done for meals and snacks is essential. Hard boiled eggs hell ward off hunger before the gym and are still light enough for me to push myself during my workout. Carrot and celery sticks are a great way to satisfy crunch and some mixed nuts hold me over till dinner.

I have to say... Trader Joes has really been helping me out with quick and easy dinners. I will do a separate post on this, but their pre-seasoned meats are great. Lately, I've been getting the chicken, fish and sometimes lamb already pre-seasoned. I just come home and cook it up! This plus a side of veggies is awesome. Of course, left overs from the night is lunch the next day :-)

I hope you guys have a great weekend! Be sure to follow me on twitter to get my #onetweetrecipes. I now leave you with some food and exercise high lights from the week.

Recipe Alert: Quick Mocha Almond Iced Coffee

Every Saturday I try to wake up as early as I can and haul my butt over to the gym. I feel it's just better and easier to get my workout out of the way as early as possible. Not to mention, there's a grocery store right next to the gym and it always helps getting my grocery shopping out of the way when there are no lines or crowds.
Anywho, since I don't have time to wait for a pot of coffee to brew up, and heaven forbid I start my day without coffee, I make a super quick iced mocha almond coffee and take it to go with me. This is so delicious and gives me a good pick me up for my workout! I literally make this in less than a minute.

Here are the deets:

Ingredients:
1c unsweetened almond milk
1.5TB instant coffee
1TB coco powder
Optional: splash of almond extract

Preparation:
Throw all ingredients in a magic bullet or blended and whiz away. Pour over ice and enjoy!

I suggest you try this out ASAP!