Honey Love

I am a big, big lover of honey. I think I always have been. I can remember getting those little straws filled with honey when I was little, in fact when I see them I still can't resist getting a couple. I put honey in my tea, drizzle it on fruit and use it in cooking. I love it for all the benefits it offers, especially for the skin.

A little honey knowledge....you're welcome.

Honey Skin Care Benefit #1:
Nutrition Rich

Honey is rich in vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, which are wonderful beauty aids that nourish the skin.

Honey is high in vitamin C, a variety of B vitamins such as niacin, riboflavin, and pantothenic acid, as well as minerals such as potassium. It is rich in amino acids, the basic building blocks of life, essential to our very existence.

Honey Skin Care Benefit #2:
Antioxidant Rich

Honey contains powerful antioxidants which fight free radicals and reverse aging.

Free radicals are everywhere - in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and even the sunlight we love so much. Every moment, the body absorbs oxygen and turns it into energy in a process called oxidation. This process also releases free radicals.

Antioxidants slow down aging by neutralizing these free radicals. They perform healing at the deepest cellular level, allowing the benefits to manifest in a myriad of different ways.

Honey Skin Care Benefit #3:
Antibacterial, Antiviral, Antifungal

Honey is a well known antibacterial and antifungal agent. It helps disinfect and speed the healing process in wounds, scrapes and burns.

In addition to the enzymes found in honey, which may help the healing process, honey also contains antioxidants and flavonoids that may function as antibacterial agents.

Pinocembrin is the most abundant flavonoid in propolis, and has been proven to have antioxidant, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.


Honey Skin Care Benefit #4:
Effective Moisturizer

Honey is rich and thick, making it an effective moisturizer. Like other humectants, honey binds moisture to the skin and helps it stay hydrated.

So it not only smoothes dry, rough, wrinkled skin, but honey also makes skin supple and plumps up wrinkles. Honey is a valuable moisturizer for your face as well as your body.

One of my favorite ways to use it is as a mask. A honey mask is one of the most amazing things to me. I swear you can see the results as soon as you rinse it off, and its not the sticky mess you might assume and its cheap. Whenever my skin isn't looking so great, or I just am in the mood I will do a honey mask. Its the simplest thing in the world. I usually just use strait honey but you can add anything you want to customize it for your skin type, sometimes I will add a bit of lemon juice. But with a little research you can find hundreds of recipes and most the ingredients can be found right in your kitchen. So go, yep right now and give your skin a little amazingness. It will thank you, I promise.

Daily Nourishment- Two for One

Dinner post number one here we go! Tonight's dinner was Pulled Jackfruit Sandwiches.....wait.... what?? Yes, jackfruit. I the lover of all faux meats was even a little scared by this. The idea of using a fruit to replace meat in this case pork didn't seem like it was a good idea. But putting my trust in the vegan geniuses that make up the vegan community I ventured out to one of my favorite grocery stores Uwajimaya, an amazing Asian store not too far from my home in search of jackfruit. I have never tasted or even seen jackfruit in person, however they did use it in an episode of Chopped (a favorite show, which I always DVR). In the episode jackfruit did not fair well, and no one was pleased to work with it. In saying that none of the featured chefs were vegan, this just goes to show how inventive gurus in the vegan community are. Who would of ever thought to use the fruit in this way? I am always in awe of their ingenuity. I’ll be the first to tell you I can cook up some amazing vegan goodness, yet I do not have the skill of seeing an ingredient for more then it is.

For those not familiar with jackfruit you can find it in all Asian markets, for this purpose I needed young green jackfruit in brine. The young green fruit is firmer and has not developed all its sugars yet. It looks like this in the can;




This what you get out of the can. Yeah I know it doesn’t look too enticing.




But here shredded it looks pretty similar to pork or chicken. This is where I was feeling less regretful for not having something else planned for a back up dinner. This is also the point I was ready to taste it, which was very mild.




The meal was easy to throw together. I put the pulled jackfruit in a crock pot, put a onion and green pepper I sautéed on top of that and then covered it all in barbeque sauce and hot sauce and let in simmer for several hours. At that point it looked like this;




I put it together like a classic pulled pork sandwich. Toasted bun, I used a whole wheat one, dill pickle slices on the bottom, then pulled jackfruit and topped with homemade vegan coleslaw. It was delicious. The omnivore boyfriend even had a second one.






On a side note tonight I am feeling so appreciative to have a meat-loving boyfriend who loves my vegan cooking.


Half way done, thank you if you are still reading!


I actually forgot I was going to post this dinner. I just uploaded photos from my camera and came across them. This was a nice dinner that was easy to prepare and the quinoa salad was very light. It would be a good one to bring to a pot luck, its simple enough to go with a spread of things yet still has enough going on to make to delicious on its own. The recipe is from a blog I read called 101 Cookbooks, you can find the recipe here.

I was wanting something heavy and sort of indulgent feeling to go with it, cornbread was the answer. I added broccoli since I had some that needed to be put to use and also thought it would bump up the healthiness of the bread. I love me some cornbread, and I think I may love it even more with broccoli. The funny thing is going into it I wasn’t so sure the addition would be one I would welcome again. To not drag out this post any longer you can see the photos below.

New Wagon.

So I fell off the gym wagon. It’s bad; I can’t even remember the last time I went…. I think I may have gone once back in March. I hate the gym; most people will tell you once you start going you’ll love it. I am still waiting for the love. Of course I do feel better when I go and I am always proud of myself for that small accomplishment. If you go to the gym regularly I think you should be proud even if you didn’t push your hardest or ran as long as you could have. You went. You moved today. It’s a step in the right direction and I think we are all usually too hard on our self, thinking we didn’t do all we could. So as a side note to this post don’t forget about those small goals, it makes meeting the bigger ones a less bumpy road and hopefully you will enjoy the view along the way. Back to my point of this post, I decided not to get back on the gym wagon. I am instead getting on a whole new wagon so to speak. I want to like what ever it is I am doing to get to the body I hope to have someday. If everyday is a struggle and I hate every minute once I get there I won’t be able to maintain. I came to a rather stupid epiphany recently, stupid in how simple it is and that I should of realized this early. I am always so focused on my goal that I set very strict rules for myself that allow for little to no flexibility, so once I get remotely close to my goal I give my self a break, this “break” usually ends with finding myself back to where I started. Not only do I undo all that work for nothing I also am now either mad at myself or feel incredibly guilty. So this new wagon will hopefully be the ticket to my best self and a new lifestyle. Not a boot camp to drop 10 pounds in a week that leaves me binging on the weekend, and once again back up those 10 pounds.

The New Wagon Guidelines

Part One- Move

I think in order to achieve the body I want it will take a combination of diet and exercise, again this time without the gym. The gym clearly isn’t working for me. There have been months on end I go 5-6 times a week and I didn’t look too different from now. They say you need to mix it up, that your body gets use to the same routine and stops giving you results. That may have been the issue, but without someone telling me what to do I feel kind of lost. So everyday I would just hop on a cardio machine put my ipod on and check out mentally for the next 45-60 minutes, then I would float around picking random weight machines without a game plan, wasting time and energy and without getting results. None of that. Another pitfall of the gym are the members- the girl who clearly spent time getting ready for the gym, the guys there for that type of girl, the girl in amazing shape that makes me want to just throw in the towel and go home to eat a pint of ice cream and the guys in ripped t-shirts throwing weights around and yelling. All of these people I can do without. The game plan now in the beginning will be a lot of experimenting. My goal is to try new things and mix it up a lot. With the nicer weather starting and longer days it will be easy to mix indoor and outdoor routines. I read both Shape and Women’s Health magazine, which come with new workouts every month. I will be trying some of those out and I will get some posts up about them as well. I also plan and trying some DVDs for when I don’t have a lot of time or the weather doesn’t permit getting outside. I picked up one DVD today, they are harder to find then I thought. I really want to try The Tracy Anderson Method (she trains Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kelly Ripa, Jennifer Aniston, ect).

With her workouts you don’t need any special equipment, you just use your body weight and her method claims to give you long lean muscle- I like both these ideas, and many swear by her method. The downside is that there are a lot of mixed reviews. Many say the DVDs are VERY hard to follow and offer little instruction, with this type of program form seems to be very important and I could see why without clear instructions results would be slim. The regimen also requires doing both the cardio and toning DVD 5-6 times a week, that equals 2 hours a day. A lot of the reviewers couldn’t stick with that many hours. I don’t have a problem with getting in two hours a day, however I am afraid my tiny living room doesn’t offer enough space for the cardio dance routine. And lastly they are expensive, ranging from $30-$80 depending on what you purchase. If anyone has tried these let me know your experiences with them. I am putting purchasing them on hold for now. I will start with the one I picked up today.



During my research of the Tracy Anderson Method many reviewers mentioned these workout DVDs and I found several of them at target today, I just picked up one (which was only $7, score!) and plan on starting with it Sunday or Monday. I’ll keep you posted on how I like it.

Part Two- Healthier Habits

I will not be counting anything, weighing food, watching carbs. Nothing of the sort. I already eat pretty healthy when it comes to breakfast, lunch and dinner. My pitfalls are snacking and how much I eat. Yes sometime I eat just because I like to eat, its like a hobby. An very hard to break but so good until you see the bottom of the carton, pint, box or bowl hobby. I will simply try to make better choices, easier said then done I know. I will watch my potion sizes, choose whole foods for snacking and allow one indulgent thing a day. We all need to indulge. A few goals I am working towards will be;

Choosing fresh fruits and veggies for snacking
Limit my sugar intake
Quit diet soda
Choose fruit over juice and tea over coffee
Make sure my plate always has more veggies then carbs
And finally for now; when indulging- enjoy it with no guilt!

So as I take off on my new shiny wagon I will keep you posted. I am sure there will be lots to report! And if you read this whole post thanks for hanging in there, I know it was long and maybe boring.

La Roux....Clay Aiken??

I have been digging some La Roux lately. I didn't know much about the band and after watching a few interviews I really like the front girl Elly Jackson. However after watching a few videos I can't seem to see past her likeness to Clay Aiken. Is it just me?



Elly


Clay


Elly again...


Clay


Hmmmm?

Daily Nourishment- Clean out the Fridge Meals

So as I said I have been making a better effort to cook dinner every night. The last two meals of last week might be regulars and are great to use when you have a lot of random veggies left over. So, here we go.

The first "Clean out the Fridge Meal" was a mezza spread, which was a lot of fun to eat. It's the type of meal you can spread out on the coffee table and snack on while watching TV and hanging out. Which also means you can eat for hours, who doesn't like that? Here's what mine looked like.



This meal was very cost effective. I had most the veggies which were- cucumber, banana pepper, tomato, artichoke hearts, avocado and garlic stuffed olives. Then a picked up the hummus and falafel mix in the natural foods bulk section(bulk bins= very cheap!) of my local grocery store. I was a little scared what the quality would be but they were actually both really good. I did add a little fresh squeezed lemon juice to both which wasn't called for on the directions but I felt was needed. I also picked up some mini pitas which I just heated in the oven before serving.

The second "Clean out the Fridge Meal" was Sloppy Joe's....well vegan Sloppy Joe's, strange right? I actually saw a recipe for vegan Sloppy Joe's but they called them Snobby Joe's. Pretty cute, sorry mine don't have a cheeky name. These were actually my very first Sloppy Joe's ever. I don't remember ever having these as a child, or maybe I just blocked it out. So going into this I didn't really know what to add because I had no idea what the sauce was like. But I did have a tube of this that needed to be used up and a yellow onion.



So I picked up a can of Sloppy Joe sauce and some whole wheat hamburger buns and crossed my fingers. Then I thought if I was going to do the whole cheesy American junk food dinner I had to have.....yes, tater tots. I even made a vegan fry sauce or special sauce if you are a stepbrothers fan. Ta Da!



Anyways here is what it looked like before adding the all scary sauce from a can.



Upon opening the can I right away hated the smell....way sweeter then what I was expecting. My first thought was gross, my second thought was I should of gone with my gut about purchasing sauces that come from a can. Then I tasted it and it wasn't as bad as I was prepared for. I was expecting a Spaghetti O's type of sauce and it wasn't that bad. It was similar to the Spaghetti O's sauce as none of the flavors in the Sloppy Joe's sauce was anything I could put my finger on. Even with the ingredients stating the sauce had green pepper, tomato and onion in it I couldn't taste any of it. It was very much like how ketchup doesn't taste too much like a fresh tomato. But I went ahead and dumped it in. Here is the finished meal.



In the end the meal was good and I would/will make it again. The sauce is so heavy it would cover up almost any veggie. So next time my veggie bowl is full of lots of odds and ends Sloppy Joe's will be their fate. But next time I will make the sauce from scratch, maybe a more grown up version.