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Skipping the grocery store and whippin’ up meals with Blue Apron

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OMG. YAS.

Feed me all the delicious food. Or, hand over the ingredients with easy-to-follow recipes and you have yourself a gourmet meal, made by me… all thanks to Blue Apron!

This is so fantastic. The reason I enjoy these services so much is mainly for the fact it gives me ideas on how to spice things up in the kitchen, literally. I’m in no way like my Mom who can whip up a delicious meal, enough to feed an army, and has the the most delicious flavouring in everything she makes. My meals? They’re bland! I have no imagination when it comes to mixing all sorts of random ingredients together for fear of it coming out gross and…then I’d have to eat it. So I stick to what I know best.

Blue Apron and I teamed up and I’m showin’ you the 3 meals I created with it. Fret not, if you’re not the most adventurous eater (like myself), you can select from a range of meals before your delivery box comes to your door step. I ended up choosing these delicious sounding ones:

[1] Seared Salmon & Lemon Labneh with Freekeh, Kale & Dates
[2] Fontina-Stuffed Pork Chops with Potatoes & pizzaiola sauce
[3] Chicken Under a “Brick” with roasted vegetables & italian dressing

Since I just got the box Saturday, I am still cooking the meals daily because they’ll do me right up until supper-time tonight. Plus my husband wasn’t home so I got to save the second meal for lunch as the ingredients provided, makes two adult-sized meals! Yas! Win win.

Select your ‘taste profile‘ and tag whether or not you’re a vegetarian, prefer the following meats: beef, poultry, fish, pork, lamb, shellfish (I de-selected the latter two since I didn’t want it in our boxes). The first meal I made was on Saturday night, and it was the Seared Salmon & Lemon Labneh with Freekeh, Kale & Dates. If I’m being honest with you, the labneh cheese was definitely not my favourite and I wish I had tasted it before topping it off on the salmon. It definitely made for a pretty dish and presentation though, don’t you think? :)

What do you think of these subscription boxes for food prep services? I love trying them out, personally… since we rarely go out to eat at restaurants, I prefer cooking at home so we can take control of the sodium and fat in each meal.

Get $30 off your Blue Apron box!

 

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CrossFit, FitFluential, Health, In the Kitchen, paleo, Photos

Paleo day 1 – here we go!

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I went shopping at the local fresh market yesterday morning with my friend Stephanie so I could start of the first day of Paleo on the right foot. I’ll be blogging Saturday mornings about my re-cap I think. Because I don’t want to become a food blogger. I can’t keep up with it every day, posting what I eat. So I’ll do it weekly.
What I bought at the market. Thass a lot of produce. I was completely overwhelmed when I put it on the stove top to take a picture. Where in the hey do I start? I texted my friend and she simply said, wash and chop. So I did, then it took me hours to write up a meal plan, cook and so-on, to prep myself for the upcoming week.
fresh food
I ended up washing, chopping and prepping my meals for a few hours yesterday. I was on my feet in the kitchen for what seemed like forever. But I ended up making some meals ahead of time so in the morning I can pop these egg omelet things in the microwave so I have no excuse to skip breakfast.
egg omelets
All of the goods.
 

Gotta be honest. I’m not all gung-ho about paleo because it IS restricting whether or not you like it. We’re living in 2013 here people, and of course food is going to be drastically different than the caveman days. The caveman also had different dental structure and ate friggen’ raw meat and organs. I ain’t about to be doing that shiznit. I get grossed out when cooked chicken has fat on the edges. It gets cut-off by my friendly fork ‘n knife, thankyouverymuch.

Paleo is such a touchy subject that I am almost hesitant on blogging about my experience. So many people can be so pushy and sensitive about it all. Me? Before I even started this process, I  don’t think this is a way for ME to live all the time. I love milk and I don’t even eat that much bread but when I have it, it’s soo delicious. Ace bakery anyone? I also have some medical issues (“dangerously” low iron, annoying eczema, and a bit of asthma which requires an inhaler when I exercise) but who knows maybe paleo is a miracle and will clear all my ailments and I’ll want to stay on it forever. Regardless of it all, I’m going to do it and you can skip over the blog if you don’t want to read about it.

I’ve been getting myself ready for the last two weeks. Googling paleo recipes, bookmarking and writing down my favorites and hopefully re-creating them within the 30 days. I’ve also came up with a  meal plan. To keep me on track I’ve created a routine for myself. Every monday I’ll be eating the same thing. Every Tuesday I’ll be eating the same meals, and so on. So week 1-4 is going to look identical.

 My meal plan isn’t interesting yet. I’m going to go through the first week and see how I like it. It’s hard coming up with snack ideas besides TUNA. Jeeze. Gimmie some of those chocolate covered almonds!

I think it’s going to be quite interesting for me, as it’ll force me to cook up bigger batches of meals and have food readily accessible to me when I feel like snacking. I also read that cravings last just ten minutes. I hope those ten minutes don’t feel like an eternity. My plan is to drink a big ol’ glass of water dreaming of a McDonalds milk shake while drinking it. I’m also planning to add cucumber pieces or lime wedges to my water, to add some flavor.

I’ve told every one that I’m doing this 30 day challenge. Even my co-workers are ready for me. In fact, their exact words were: If Nancy has a stick up her ass next week, we’ll know why. Another co-worker said after that comment:  Maybe we should send an e-mail out to everyone telling them that Nancy is going off the sugar!!! I kid you not. Oh lunch time humor. It is true though. I hope I don’t “detox” too hard and become a stick in the mud, or my ass….

Follow me along, won’t you? :)

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Daily, FitFluential, Health, Photos

Healthy adventures

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My buddy Stephanie and I decided to get together last Saturday morning and spend a little quality time together!!

We met down at the local market and bought some yummy fresh produce. I made Stephanie take photos with my camera this day, because I felt awkward doing it. Look at all those fun colors. I want to dive right in, full body and eat all those colorful foods.

I LOVE asparagus. The thinner stalks taste way better than the thicker ones. Stephanie says I have a keen eye for asparagus ;)

Pretty colorful flowers!

Stephanie bought some for me herself.

Oh get this!! We ran into a guy who was selling tomatoes and asked us to try the last slice. For some reason, I stopped and made a “eughhh” type of face. I’m telling you guys this because it makes for a good blog post story. Trust me. He thought I didn’t like tomatoes. I just don’t like them on their own. It’s not like I’m going to chomp into it like an apple. I told the vendor “Well. If you make me a sandwich, I’ll eat it!” He was honest to my lord, getting his bread and meat out, ready to make me a sandwich so I could try out the tomato. I should’ve taken photos of it all but I really didn’t need tomatoes this week, so I had to apologize, and walk away. Haha!

We spent about an hour at the market and I stocked up on some goodies for the week (shown above) and then went to Thrive Juice Bar for lunch!

I’ve been dying to try out this spot.

I absolutely fell in love with the place. I love how everything is so clean and classic looking, but so futuristic at the same time.

I ended up getting the chocolate avocado ganache smoothie, with the big green sandwich.

We had some time to kill waiting for our sandwiches to be made, so Stephanie decided to get her daily green intake and eat some bamboo leaves while waiting.

See? Happy belly = Happy people!

The smoothie was out of this world. It had little chocolate bits in my drink, and was a nice rich drink. The sandwich was just as amazing as I thought it was going to be. The onyl reason I chose the big green sandwich is because Stephanie brought it to chaw on, when we met up once before and it looked tremendous. 

Doesn’t it look great? 

I forget what Stephanie ordered for her smoothie, but she also ordered the big green sandwich on gluten free bread. 

Chocolate smoothies make me very happy.

So do pretty bathrooms.Hey, I can’t help it. It even had peacock feathers! How could I not take photos. If you’re wondering why I’m using my grey Zara purse instead of my new love (this Fossil purse) it’s because it was raining that day and I didn’t want my pink leather purse to get weird and wet.

We left with our bellies full, and not bloated. It was a pleasant meal, but it did cost a hefty penny. My meal came to about $16~

I will definitely be back though. The people working there were so friendly and helpful. I kind of want to make a monthly visit to Thrive. How about it Stephanie? :)

I didn’t want to end the day there just yet. Stephanie is super fun to hang out with and always has me laughing, so we drove to a health food store (and of course, took more photos outside!)

Stephanie got some brown rice and showed me exactly how to pour the rice into this plastic bag. Look at the size of these buckets! They were filled with something different.

I decided to chomp down on this chocolate bar while waiting. But found out after all it was a shampoo bottle. It definitely looked like chocolate, let me tell you.

I picked up some treats for myself while at the store. The savi seed covered in chocolate kind of resembles peanuts. But different. Crunchier, not as flavorful but still a good indulgence.

That my friends, concludes the fun adventure day I had with Stephanie!

Hope you have a good weekend — what are all your plans?

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