Whole30 Day 3

So the plan was to take pictures of all the meals I eat during this whole30, but due to bad lightening and iphone pictures I gave up on that today. I still did fine though, just pretty much ate the same stuff as I did yesterday. Stir fry with 2 eggs, chicken and leftover roasted curried cauliflower for breakfast/lunch. A big bowl of chili for dinner and then I snacked (a bit too much) on almonds.

I had a great run this evening, thats the only great thing about Saint Louis getting colder. Ran 6.4 miles (10.5 km). This weekend I am going to visit my former host family in Pennsylvania so I will not be doing any picture taking of food this weekend. Will however still update on the food front. Then I am definitely finding a camera next week, something with a flash would definitely do wonders...

Whole30 Day 2

So today was definitely not a great day, felt somewhat sick all day, which was hopefully just lack of sleep. But I survived, and hopefully tomorrow will be better. Anyhow I am way to tired to do a longer post so here are the meals for the day:

Lunch was a stir fry of two eggs, leftover danish meatballs, and roasted curried cauliflower topped with sliced almonds. I apologize for the general lousiness of the pictures on the blog posts, I am working on finding a decent camera instead of using my iphone.

After I got home from work I had a home made larabar, which I unfortunately didn't get a picture of, but I will definitely be making that again since it is so easy and way cheaper than the original one. I was hoping that the sugar from this would make me feel better but unfortunately that never happened.

Dinner was a big bowl of "clean out the fridge" chili, which is basically just my regular recipe for chili, mixed with whatever greens I need to get rid of.

Not a very inspirational day, but hey sometimes you have to eat to live and not live to eat... Until tomorrow...

Chili

So I love recipes where you have your base, and then you just add whatever you have in the fridge at the moment. This recipe for chili is one of them. I got the base recipe from paleoplan, and then I just adjusted it to fit me. I am not good with the spice chili, so I only the spiciness from the salsa. If you have mexican blod in you veins, add some extra chili, either in powdered form or diced.

Chili

• 1 Tbs coconut oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 3 stalks celery, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 lb ground meat
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp thyme
• 1 (12 oz) jar salsa
• 1 (8 oz) can diced tomatoes
• Salt & Pebber

In a large pot, heat up the coconut oil and add the garlic, onions and celery, and sauté until the onions become glassy. Add the ground meat and spices and saute until the meat is no longer red. Add the salsa and tomatoes and let the whole thing simmer for 1 hour. In the version on the picture I have added some yellow peppers that needed to be eaten before getting all wrinkly.

Serve alone or on top of spaghetti squash, zucchini pasta, or cauliflower mash.

Whole30 Day 1

So this is day one of the whole 30 challenge. Yesterday I went grocery shopping, and got as many greens and meats as my very limited space in the fridge could hold. I gave my roommates the few things that I had that was not on the menu, which included the processed meat I have used as an easy snack, and the last few cans of diet coke (going to be tough to quit that one). My beloved protein powder is now hidden away on the top shelf, and if my roommates didn't consider me a crazy dane before they definitely do now.

My general belief with regards to meals, is that you should eat when you are hungry. Do I practice what I preach? I wish, but sometimes the snack attack feeling wins in the hunger games. Anyhow since going paleo/primal I have eased up on the 6 meals a day routine that I used to be a slave to. I used to be a firm believer in the "I will die of starvation before i get to work if I do not eat breakfast" mantra, but I have actually found out that on the days when I only work out once in the afternoon, I am really not that hungry in the morning. So now I get 15 minutes of sleep extra - win win.

So the first meal of the day was lunch. "Frikadeller" (danish meatballs) with pineapple salsa and roasted green beans, which was my leftovers from yesterday dinner. The pineapple salsa is just grilled pinaples mixed with red peppers and tomatoes, tossed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil...Yum.

The Danish meatballs are probably one of the most common dishes served in Denmark, and they taste just as great warms, as they do cold. This makes them a perfect alternative to the lunch meat I had to give away. Also ground pork is really cheap in the states which just makes it even better!

Frikadeller:

1 lb ground pork

1 medium onion, chopped.

1 egg

2 tbs almond flour

Salt and pepper

Mix all the ingredients together, season with salt and pepper. Use the spoon to make small meatballs, and fry them in coconut oil or ghee in a pan until they are cooked all the way through. The recipe can be varied by using different spices, adding parmesan or feta to the mix, or maybe some finely shredded carrots. Definitely very good. My afternoon snack was a small handfull of nuts, to complement my coffee.

After work I had a LaraBar and a two small meat balls, and then I went for a 7.5 mile run. The LaraBars are allowed since they are all natural, but they are pretty high in sugar from all the dried fruit, so I am limiting them to pre/post workout, and only one a day.

They work great as a pre workout snack on the days where I really haven't eaten since lunch since they give a quick burst of energy and take the edge of any hunger I might be feeling. I definitely have to try and make them myself.

After my run I ate a big sweet potato while I prepared my dinner. I made a big batch of burgers, fried up some squash, mushrooms and red peppers with thyme and oregano, and as a second side dish, I made a batch of NomNomPaleo's curried roasted cauliflower. I used to never like cauliflower that much, and now it is by far the vegetable I use the most.

Curried Roasted Cauliflower:

1 head of cauliflower

Olive oil

Curry

Salt & Pebber

Preheat the oven to 400F. Cut the cauliflower into small florets, toss them with a generous amount of olive oil and curry and spread them out onto a ovenproof dish. Cover the dish in aluminium wrap and bake them for 15 minutes, remove the wrap and bake them another 15-20 mintes until they start looking a little black around the corners.

Hmmm lets give it another go...

So I have been absent for more than 6 months, so this blog definitely needs a round of CPR...
Well I didn't fall of the face of the earth, just fell into sort of a funk from a writing perspective...

So in order to get back on track a small update is in order... I have been on and of Paleo lately due to a new living situation. Yes I am living in the land of plenty at the moment, and am having a bit of a difficult time trying to stay away from two delightful gentlemen - Ben & Jerry... But I really need to move past this bad boy face in my life, and on to the healthy Boys next door... So in order to do that I have decided to do a 30 day whole 30 challenge, which among other things will mean starting to take pictures of my meals again. These 30 days I will take pictures of all my meals no matter how boring they might be...
As far as the triathlon goes, I got injured - no surprise there - but after a month of somewhat rest, and pretty decent eating, I was down 10 pounds and back on track, so what better to do than to decide to compete in a triathlon (in a bit of a blurred state...plenty of cosmos were to blame). I could have gone with the short distance, but a few of my guy friends were doing that, so had to do better... Anyhow long story short, I ended up doing the half ironman, even though I had not done as much training, as my OCD would have liked me to do. It was FANTASTIC, and I was so psyched afterwards, so despite no alcohol or other good excuses I went and signed up for the full next year... So now I need to get real about that as well...

So this is the challenge, no biggie right???

Anyhow, I am happy to be back, and I will do great...So I'll be back tomorrow with a bunch of pictures and a status update!!! Oh and someone send me this cartoon, and it made me laugh so hard, so Im sharing it with the world...

Getting back on the blog track...

So it has been forever and a day since my last post since time has just been flying by. My new training regime is going really well except for just having had pneumonia and therefor done nothing but ie in my bed whining... I am such a guy when I'm sick, know for sure that I am as close to dying as ever, almost wrote down my will but felt two tired!!!
Anyway I am getting back to normal again, had a nice run this morning in sun and plus degrees so that definitely lifted the spirits op again.

On the paleo part of life I just bought the Paleo Cookbook and am looking very much foreward to trying out all the delicious recipes in it. I actually hate cookbooks where there is no pictures, but then I thought that was a great opportunity to make some pictures myself. One of the authors behind the book is Nell Stephenson who does paleo nutrition consulting for athletes. She has a great blog and it is definitely worth a read. I wish I had the money to hire her, but until I do I can make do with all her great recipes. For now I will just post the pictures since I'm not sure what the rules are regarding copying from published books. So after this mornings run I had Wild Salmon Delight for breakfast. Very tasty but a bit strange to be eating "dinner" at breakfast. The salmon gives you a bunch of omega 3's, more than twice the required amount of vitamin D and vitamin B12 - who can say no to that? At dinner I made Paleo Chicken in a Pot with arugula and avocado salad. The recipe originally called for rasberries but my local store had blueberries on sale so I just switched the two which was fantastic. They were so sweet and tasted fantastic together with the bitter arugula and the creamy avocado. The chicken turned out great as well, and since I made it from an entire chicken I will probably be eating the left overs for a while...

Great week

So the first week of my new training is done and it has gone very well. I have to admit that I am actually pretty darn proud of myself, and I am really looking foreward to the next week. I have done 3 bike workouts, 4 runs and 2 swim workouts and all together is sums to:

- 2 hours of spin class
- 65 min on the hometrainer
- 40 km run
- 4700 meter swim

The weekend was pretty tough. I didn't go swimming on friday since the pool was closed because of a meet, so Saturday I had to do the home trainer workout and then go straight to the pool afterwards. This is where it was great to be accountable to someone other than myself, I was pretty stressed because I was having people over for dinner and needed to do all kinds of things before then, but since I had to log this workout I got up early and did the things I had to do. Had it been just me, myself and I the bed would probably have won that battle.

As for the eating part of things, that has not been so great. I have been able to stay on track most days but there has also been a few major cheat days. This week I have to be much better at planning my week so that I don't get home from training at 7 or 8 and then have to figure out what to eat - that should just be a done deal...

This week I will be doing 3 bike workouts, 4 runs and 3 swims, but that will hopefully go just as smoothly as this week did...

Cod with rucola tarpenade and celeriac fries

So I am so excited about the start up for the triathlon training even though it's not that different from my daily training so far. Yesterday I wen't for a body sds treatment which is a combination of deep tissue massage, zone therapy, acupressure, chiropractor and relaxation. It is oh so tough and rather painfull but it definitely works and afterwards you feel like you have just completed a half marathon. I had a spin class in the evening and the class itself might not have been that tough, but I was so tires that I could already feel my legs hurting during the warm up... That was a VERY long hour.

Today I wen't for an easy run with a friend of mine, and afterwards I pulled myself together and made a delicious meal even though I was much more inclined to go to the local salad pusher. Anyway todays dish was cad with rucola tarpenade, cellery fries and a tomato salad.

Recipe for 2 (sorry about the metric units):

2 cod fillets

lemon juice

1 head of celeriac

100g rucola (1 bag)

60g pitted olives

2 tbsp capers

1 garlic clove - minced

olive oil

salt and pepper

Cut the celeriac into fries, place them in an ovenproof dish, sprinkle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake the fries at 450 degrees for approximately 10 minutes. Place the fish in another dish and season them with salt and pepper and a splash of lemon juice.

Decrease the temperature to 400 and bake the fish together with the fries for 8-10 minutes.

Mix the rucola, olives, capers, and garlic in a foodprocessor and cut it into a tarpenade. Serve the tarpenade on top of the fish and add the fries and perhaps a small salad. Voila an easy fish dish with a "sauce/dip" that can be used for all kinds of things. I have started using a little cheese in my salads and other dishes, I know this is not really paleo but I use it moderately and it just makes some salads even better.

Trying again - but doing it right

So just like everyone else entering into the new year I have made som resolutions. I actually made way to many and most of them only lasted the first week, such as being better at keeping my place tidy, spending more time watching the news and less watching Greys anatomy, mad men, gossip girl etc, getting up early and going to bed at a normal hour - you know the usual getting your life in order resolutions. Well that didn't really work out, but at the same time I had the same resolution as I had last year - to finish the half ironman. And that one I attend to keep. So I have finally got my but out of the couch and started going to spin classes to get into bike shape, and it is actually going rather well. Compared to a trip on the road it is oh so boring, but at the moment it is not that bad getting through them since I know that they are a means to an end.

Other than that I have hired a personal coach to help me reach this goal, and I am starting the program that he is supervising next week. I am so excited about this, and I really hope that this will help me stay on track and help avoid the injuries. So I have posted my first week of workouts and I will let you know how it goes.

It has also been a while since I have posted a meal, and I actually made one a few days ago, just didn't have the time to write up a post. This recipe is just another clean out the fridge kinda thing, but it turned out great.

Creamy Tomato Chicken

3-4 persons

1 lb chicken cut into pieces

1 onion cut into pieces

2 cups of sliced mushrooms

4 cellery sticks

1 garlic clove minced

1 cup coconut milk

2 cans of tomatoes

2 cubes of chicken broth

Olive oil

1 head of cauliflower - riced

Heat up the olive oil in a large frying pan and fry the chicken, onion, mushrooms, cellery and garlic until the chicken is tender. Add the coconut milk, tomatoes and chicken broth and let it simmer for 15-20minutes. Serve the tomato sauce on top of the rice. Yum.

Toad in the Hole Almond Trout

So the recipe that I tried out a few days ago was called Toad in the Hole Almond Trout. Quite a name if you ask me, but that just makes it all the more interesting. So I went to the local fish market and bought two small trouts with the head and everything. I have never made an entire fish before, and half a year ago I definitely would not have just tried this out. This is such a great thing about getting the meal plan from paleoplan each week, I just try to make the new dishes that they send me no matter how strange it sounds, and so far I haven't tried anything that I didn't like.
I decided to bake the fish instead of frying it. Baking often makes the meat more juicy and that way the filling stayed inside the fish.

I just gave it 20-25 minutes at 400 degrees.

The end result was really great, very juicy meat that didn't have that fishy taste that trout often has. Definitely going to make that again next time they have trout at the market.

Brussel Sprouts with Almonds and Ginger/Soy dressing

So the earlier post was yesterdays dinner, and since it is the weekend my energy is slowly getting back on track, hence this second post...

Dinner today was just pasta with meat sauce which is just the chili recipe with whatever vegetables I needed to get rid off served on top of lightly boiled squash. Delicious. But that is not the reason for the post, behold the side dish.... Brussel Sprouts with almonds in Ginger/Soy dressing. I have never liked brussel sprouts, but to be honest I probably havn't tried them since I was 10, but this dish was fantastic.

Recipe for 4 persons:

1 lb brussel sprouts

1 handfull almonds

Dressing:

4 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp minced ginger

2 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp tamari soy sauce

Boil the brussel sprouts in water with 2 tsp salt for app 5 minutes or until they are tender. Chop the almonds into large chunks and dry roast them. Add the dressing to the brussel sprouts, stir it well and sprinkle with almonds. Easy dish that tastes great.

Fruited Chicken Thighs

So my whole statement of coming back from vacation with plenty of energy is really not working out as planned. I have been dead tired all week and on top of that I have gotten the worst cold ever. I hate having a cold, you are not really sick so you go to work looking and feeling like crap, and on top of the you don't even get the pity vote, because it is just a cold...

Anyhow as promised I would try to be better at posting in the new year, so last night I made Fruited Chicken Thighs with Roasted Asparagus and Cauliflower Rösti.

I had some leftover "rice" from last night and instead of thowing it away I just mixed it with a ½ cup of grated cheese and some ham, and then let it bake for 30 minutes or so - voila Cauliflower Rösti . The entire meal was really great, and a lot easier than I had expected (never was any good at the whole chicken stuffing thing).

This week has not been great on the eating front but my plan is to go almost full frontal next week. Almost being code for cocktails and cheese in moderation being alright - a girls gotta live a little.... So hopefully being a bit more strict will also turn my body around and give me more energy, and get rid of this stupid cold.

Happy New Year

So I'm not dead or anything, but December turned out to be rather stress full due to exams and work so didn't have the time to post. I spend my vacation in Cap Verde away from the snow in Denmark so I should be back with plenty of energy by now. Lets hope that is the case, and that I have not lost everyone due to my break.

Of course the resolution for the new year is to get back on track with the food, exercise, and the blog. So yesterday I went for a 15 km run and then finished the evening of by making coconut shrimp with honey dill carrots. I made the sauce for the shrimp on light coconut milk and then served it on top of "rice". This is definitely one of my new favourites and definitely one of the dishes I will be serving when I have friends over for dinner.

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years and that you are ready for 2011.