Juice Day 3 & 4

My recap for the past two days is essentially the same as days 1 and 2. Juice, bootcamp, veggie dinner.

Day 3: Juice 1

2 granny smith apples, 4 carrots, 1 cucumber, 2 handfuls spinach, 3 leaves rainbow chard, 1 inch ginger

 Day 2: Juice 2

2 cups blackberries, 6 strawberries, 1 cucumber
one of my favorite juices
tastes like springtime in your mouth 

Day 4: Juice 1

5 carrots, inch of ginger, 4 leaves purple cabbage, 3 leaves rainbow chard, 1 cucumber
I ran out of apples... so extra carrots for sweetness. 

From the top, this juice looks groovy...

...from the side, not so much.

 Day 4: Juice 2

1 navel orange, 2 tangelos, 2 mangos, 1 cup coconut water (not pictured)
this was amazing as well!! sooooo yummy!!

I highly recommend a juice reboot or even just adding juice and/or smoothies to your daily routine... so much vitamins packed into that little glass! And by golly are they delicious.

Tomorrow I have the day off (um, woohoo!!!) ... and I will be taking myself out for a day on the town. Shopping, eating and the meeting up with a few girl friends for the grand opening of El Santo Cantina (if anyone else in the area wants to go, let me know! I'd love to meet some local blogger and, of course, the more the merrier!). My Saturday and Sunday have not been set in stone yet, but I know there will be lots of fun, food and fiesta-ing. I feel like its Christmas... but maybe its just Cinco de Mayo. And maybe I'm just having an awesome week.

Hope you are all having an awesome week as well!!  

Juice Day #2

Day two of "jucing". I'm not even sure I can call it that, because I'm not drinking only juice during these five days. But its still some sort of reboot, and I'm loving the results.

{Juice 1}

purple cabage, cameo apples, lemon, rainbow chard and carrots

After I juiced those, I realized it did not make enough juice... 

Only half full! But it IS colorful

So I added another batch of goodies to the same cup:

spinach, more rainbow chard, another cameo apple, the other half of the lemon

{Juice 2} 

3 navel oranges, handful of strawberries

best juice I've made so far

Lucky for me, there were no speed bumps today. Everything went as planned. I was not hungry and had no headaches all day :) 

Today was an off day from bootcamp so I headed over to the gym to do just a little but of running. The gym was so crowded today! I wonder if everyone else in Arizona is participating in Healthy May as well? Haha.

{Dinner}

After the gym I headed home and made my dinner - sauteed spinach with garlic on raw zucchini noodles. 

I'm currently obsessed with zucchini noodles. They are delicious and healthy! 

Until tomorrow - have a great (healthy) day!! 

Juice Day #1

May day! May day! May is finally here :)

[source]

It's now one month closer to my birthday, one month closer to the wedding, one month closer to being healthier. I already had personal goals set for myself, but now I am excited to be linking up with Here Comes the Sun for Healthy May (you can see the rules/guidelines/suggestions for Health May here). This is just one more way to keep me accountable and excited about my continuing journey towards health.

I will be tracking my food and exercise on SparkPeople (we could be Sparkfriends if you also use it), tweeting about progress (Twitter: @lebonk) about progress and taking pics of stuff along the way (Instagram: @lebonk).

Anyways - on to Healthy May and recapping my first day of "juicing"... Yesterday morning I woke up bright and early to get my juice on. I made two juices, one for breakfast and one for lunch. I was ready to hit the ground running! 

{Juice 1}

4 celery stalks, 4 carrots, 2 cameo apples, 2 kale leaves, large handful of spinach

Green!

Now I'm not claiming to be any kind of juice recipe expert... so if you copy these recipes and you hate them, don't blame me. I'm just sharing what I did.

sidebar: I gave samples of this juice to my boyfriend and his roommate... boyfriend always loves my green juice, roommate politely tried a sip and then, when I wasn't looking, let boyfriend finish the rest. Moral of the story: not everyone likes to drink a garden.

{Juice 2}

1 cucumber, handful of strawberries, handful of blackberries, handful of spinach, 1 granny smith apple, 1 cameo apple

Now this is where I hit my first speed bump. I had an off-site client meeting at 9:30am, and was supposed
to be back to the office around 11:30am, so I did not bring any juice with me. The meeting ran long... and I kept looking at the clock, hoping that we could wrap it up soon... but I didn't get back to the office until almost 3pm. I was STARVING and had a massive headache!

I chugged a boatload of water and downed my second juice but it wasn't helping. I had some cucumber slices and carrot sticks in the fridge from last week so I went ahead and ate those. The headache eventually subsided and I was ready to roll.

Then I went to bootcamp... start of week two - woohoo! 
Bootcamp was great, but when I got home I needed more than just juice to munch on. I knew this was going to be a possibility, so I went to my backup plan: I will be juicing during the day and then eating some healthy plant-based dinner after my workouts.

Monday's dinner ended up being kale chips (recipe to be posted at some future date) and some delicious coconut water. Coconut water is delicious and GREAT for after a workout. 

Do you guys have any health/diet/exercise plans for May? 

Anyone else interested in joining in Healthy May? 

Anyone have a good juice recipe for me to try this week?

Banana Ice Cream

Ok... so it's not really banana ice cream.
My sister calls it banana nice cream.
I call it fanana fice fream.
You see, I have a habit of putting an 'f' in front of a word if its fake/faux...  
I've been known to eat fushi, wear fackets and play fribbage

Anywho, regardless of what you call it. 

This faux fanana fice fream is felicious! 

BANANA NICE  CREAM

Ingredients:

• Frozen bananas 
• A splash of almond milk (or liquid of your choosing, I use unsweetened original flavor almond milk)
• Vanilla extract (optional)
• Toppings (optional)
• Thats it! Simple, eh?

This dish does take a little bit of forethought... mainly you have to freeze the bananas ahead of time. I find this not to be a problem as I always have bananas on my counter, insisting on turning brown. When the bananas start to go to the "dark side", cut them up into slices, throw them into a ziploc bag and throw that bag into the freezer. 

Disclaimer: Since this "recipe" is super simple, I will elaborate un poco for your reading entertainment. 

Step 1: Gather ingredients: Open your freezer, grab and remove banana bag. Open your fridge, grab and remove liquid. Open your pantry/cupboard, grab and remove vanilla extract and/or toppings. Place on counter. 

Look, ma! I did it!

Step 2: Place ingredients in blender or food processor (all except the toppings, of course). The almond milk (or other liquid) is just to help in the blending process. I usually add a splash (descriptive, right?) and then after blending some have to add a splash more. Start off with a few tbsp and then add more if needed. 

I forgot to take a pic at this stage. Essentially, it would look like this. 

Please use your imagination to transport this blender into my kitchen. 

Then make the blender red. 

K, thanks!

Step 3:  Press the button that makes it work. Since I don't know what device you are using, I can't give you exact directions here. I personally use the "crush ice" button a few times, then maybe a little time on "blend", maybe some time on "puree" ... basically, do work on that banana until it resembles soft serve ice cream.

Step 4: Spoon fanana fice fream into a bowl. Top with toppings if desired (please note: it tastes wonderful with out toppings, we just decided we wanted to be fatties and splurge this time around). Add spoon.

The final product

His: a spoon full of brown sugar

Hers: Sixlets and gummy bears 

I love how gummy bears get hard in ice cream... yuummmmm

Step 5: Enjoy!

My Box of Magic

Every other Friday I get a box of delicious magic delivered to my doorstep.... I wake up on those Fridays like a little kid on Christmas... I rush to the front porch to see what sort of goodies arrived during the night.

The magical goodies in the box are an random assorment of organic, locally grown, fruits and veggies.

I LOVE to be in the kitchen, Googling various recipes and concoctions to try. It's fun to be surprised with random produce that I've never cooked with before. And this produce is DELICIOUS.
A million times better than the grocery stores (even when you buy organic at the grocery store) AND it just shows up at my doorstep... how cool is that?!

This week's assortment:

Please ignore my reflection in the mirror... I promise 

I don't have a Santa belly... its just the shirt and the angle :) 

Veggies:

• 1 bunch of spinach
• 2 bunches of carrots
• 2 bunches of kale (with red stems? interesting....)
• 1 bunch of chard (rainbow? not sure... stems are lellow)
• 2 broccoli crowns
• 1 cucumber

Fruit:

• 5 bananas
• 3 fiji apples
• 3 braeburn apples
• 3 tangelos
• 5 kiwis
• 2 pears
• 1 avocado

I see lots of yummy juice, smoothies and salads in my future!!

LeBonk!
"Did you mean: 'clam bellies'?"