I’m beginning to believe I was even a little too ambitious
saying that I would post twice a week, since you can see that obviously hasn’t
happened yet… In my defense though, it’s been a very long and very crazy week.
What have I been up to? Oh you know, cooking enough food to feed the masses.
200 people to be exact. I was hired to cater a wedding reception for a friend.
Crepes bar. Mmmmm! I used over 10 dozen eggs, 1.5 gallons of milk, and
approximately 8 pounds of sugar on these crepes alone. About 150 of each the
savory and the sweet kind. My spatula and my pan were my only tools. Each crepe
batch took an hour to whip up and to let rest, then another hour to crank out
the actual crepes. Though, I did learn quite useful tips: savory crepes cook
faster and look prettier than sweet crepes. My theory is that this is because
of the sugar content in the sweet crepes The sugar caramelizes and makes the
crepes have brown spots instead of a nice, even, beautiful shade of yellow like
I expect them to have.
Also, I know I promised we were going to start on the 28 day Engine 2
Challenge… but this has yet to be done… It’s so hard! Seriously! My cravings
for all things salt and crunchy are so incredibly strong… I need to find the
strength to tell them to hush up and let me do my thing!
My other problem is that I. Love. Food. So much. You know how people are all
like, “Eat to live! Don’t live to eat!” Well, I think those people have OBVIOUSLY never
had to struggle through prednisone. Those people have never graduated with a
degree in delicious food. I am not one of those people.
Enough of my griping. Like I said, I just need to find the
inner strength to tell prednisone to “Shut it,” and get on with it.
However, I am making baby steps in the right direction. I
LOVE to give my morning a swift kick in the pants to get it moving. I do this
by juicing. Now, I would love to tell you all of the benefits of juicing and
how you can detox, energize, or boost your little white blood cells to fight
off the evil germs of the day, but “Ain’t nobody gots time for that!!” Instead,
I’m going to recommend that you watch “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead”. It pretty
much converted me to the power of juicing. Here’s the website, summary, and
trailer. You can also watch the whole documentary on Netflix if you have that! And
let’s all be honest here… You are probably like me and don’t crave the healthy
things… I don’t like the way that a lot of vegetables taste. Especially beets.
Bleh. No thanks. But see, with juicing, you can pretty well mask the taste of
beets with oranges, pineapples, apples, and other strong and sweet tastes!
In fact, here is my first and favorite way to start off the day: We will call
it the Super Duper Immune Booster. (ummm, if anyone comes up with a better
name, let me know! Haha)
It’s so simple. I took two apples, about a cup of pineapple,
¼ of a beetroot, 2-3 carrots (except I didn’t put it in the juice in these
pictures because I was out… I need to do some grocery shopping! But it’s
usually in this juice…) one peeled orange. Also, I don’t usually put kiwi in
this recipe, but in this case I did. They were starting to look old and wrinkly
so I needed to use them up...
So, just chop up your fruits and veggies to be able to fit
into the chute, then start juicing away!
*sigh*...Just look at those beautiful colors...
I also very much love the taste of bananas. But as most of
you could guess, there are some things that just don’t juice! So here’s what I
do. I just juice everything else first, then pour the juice into my little
knock-off bullet blender and give it a whirl. Voila!
Once you have made your juice cocktail, you are more than
welcome to add some other things to it. Two of my favorites are raw chia seeds
or ground golden Flaxmeal. This way, you get those healthy omega 3’s into your
morning!
(side bar: the great thing about chia seeds is that when you soak them, they turn into this tapioca-like thing... It's such a healthy way to make "pudding"! But we will save that for another blog entry)
If you don’t have a juicer, I would definitely recommend
investing in one. I know they are expensive, but the health benefits are
awesome. You get to squeeeeeze all of those super nutrients out of your fruits
and veggies and “eat” a plateful of life sustaining nutrients in just a couple
gulps! Or, if you are like me and don’t like beets, this is your way of still
getting all of the wonderful things beets offer, but not have to suffer through
the taste! Also, I know another argument is that it’s wasteful. Here’s my
solution: Get a chicken! Or a garden! Start composting! The scraps and pulp
that come off you’re your juicer will give your garden some yummy nutrients. We
have a chicken, and she goes crazy when we feed her the scraps. She just loves
them! If you get a good enough juicer you will have very little, very dry
scraps. My brother bought his new one and it’s very much like that. It also
makes a pulpier product, which I love. I’m the kind of gal who buys OJ with
extra pulp. Also, his gets the maximum nutrients and juice out of the things
you put through it. It’s pretty awesome, I’m not going to lie. The juicer I
have my sights set on is only about a couple grand… Pocket change… So yeah,
unless I hit some sweepstakes, or the lottery, it’s probably never going to
happen! But that’s ok.
I just bought a juicing recipe book (and by bought I mean
downloaded for free off Amazon…) so I’ll probably be doing the recipes on there
for a while until my fridge clears out of all the things NOT allowed on this 28
day diet. Then we will re-group and get this started!! There are only like… 50…. recipes to
get through… no biggie…
