Girl Scout Cookie Inspired Protein Shake

I wrote this post a long time ago during girl scout cookie time, and I don’t know what happened but I never posted it!

I don’t know about you, but those little girl scout cookies get me every time.  The one good thing about living in Brooklyn and not having friends with kids is that I don’t really have access to them.  When I lived in NJ you could always find a troop of girl scouts sitting out side of a drug store, or a Walmart, or Target.  This year someone at Jake’s work was selling them so he got me my favorites, Thin Mints and Samoas.  The thing is they are full of crap ingredients.  Why have the girl scouts not caught on!  They are full of Hydrogenated oils, preservatives, trans fats, artificial flavors.  Just a ton of not good for you things, I really wish they would clean up their act.

Since they are only around for a short time, I figured I would make a shake inspired by my favorites, the Samoa.  The Samoa cookie is like a coconut macaroon, with chocolate on the bottom drizzled in caramel.  For my shake, I didn’t have caramel so I went with maple agave to get that sweet almost burnt sugar taste, it worked out pretty well.

For this shake you need:

• 1 scoop of Vega chocolate protein powder, or your favorite
• 1 cup of nut milk of your choice
• 1-2 tbsp raw cacao powder
• 1 tbsp Maple Agave nectar
• 2 tbsp shredded coconut
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2-3 ice cubes

For my shake I used my home made cashew milk that is unflavored as well as unsweetened.  I really like cashew milk for these types of shakes because cashew milk has a really nice richness that makes your healthy shake feel a bit more decadent.  Coconut milk would work great as well, but I never have any when I want it.  I used sweetened coconut shreds in my recipe, mostly because it was what I had opened at the time, and since my nut milk is not sweetened and I used raw cacao I figured the little bit of added sugar wouldn’t make much of a difference.  Plus we are trying to make it taste like a cookie!

Just throw all these ingredients in a blender, and blend till it is smooth, add some extra coconut on the top to make it fancy and you are set, drink away!

Sure it might not be a total replacement for the cookie but its still pretty good and calorie wise probably not that far off from a few cookies and you get so much more!  Give it a shot and see what you think.  Plus since girl scout season seems to be over, I am sure you are out of them anyway!

 

 

Maple Walnut Shake

In my quest to make different flavored protein shakes I stumbled upon maple flavored agave and figured I would try it out.  I had also been experimenting since my Soak Your Nuts post on how I can dehydrate my nuts and things without a dehydrator.  I was correct about my oven it roasted the almonds I put in there even on the warm setting.  But then it came to me.  I have a gas stove and the oven is always a little warm because the pilot light is always on.  So I soaked some raw walnuts laid them out on a baking sheet and went to work, when I came home they were almost dry and a few more hours later they were perfect!

So now I had a bunch of walnuts to use, so I decided to make a maple walnut shake which turned out really good.  I suppose you could use regular maple syrup if you wish but I never really have any on hand and I like using agave syrup anyway.  So here is what you need

• 1 cup almond milk (or any milk you like)
• 1 scoop Vega One Nutritional Shake
• 1/2 tsp Sunfood Vanilla Powder
• 1 tbsp Maple Agave Nectar
• about 10 raw walnuts (or to taste)
• 3-4 ice cubes

I of course made this in my single serve cup with my Ninja Pulse Blender.I have found when using this blender I usually start with half the liquid then put the powder and all the other ingredients in, then top it off with the other half of the liquid works best.  When I would just start with the protein powder a bunch of it would get stuck to the top and then I would be left with little lumps.  You can of course adjust these amounts of these ingredients to your taste or to what you have in your house but this is just how I liked it.

So let me know what you think of this one!  And don’t forget to soak the walnuts if you are using them raw!

ps, I had a hard time getting these photos right as you can tell, so many bland colors lol, but it gets the point across so forgive me, there is a definite learning curve going from being a film photographer to a hairstylist and then switching to a fancy digital slr lol.

 

Healthy Vegan Shamrock Shake

Well its shamrock shake time at McDonalds.  I never eat at McDonalds, but I can’t help but to love the shamrock shake.  I usually get one a year just to get a taste of it but this year I decided to try to make my own.

Sure there are a million recipes online and I suppose I could have just followed one of those, but a lot of them had ingredients that I just wasn’t into.  I don’t want to drink an avocado, and I cannot stand bananas, and pistachio pudding? was in one of them.  Maybe there is pistachio in the original but all I taste is a sweet mint, so I went with that.

I drink a Vega One shake for breakfast every morning and usually I just mix peanut butter with it, but after about a year it can get a little boring so now I am trying to switch it up.

All you need for my version of the shamrock shake is:

• 1 cup of your preferred milk (I liked cashew milk the best)
• 1 scoop Vega One French Vanilla Nutritional Shake (or your favorite protein powder)
• 1/4-1/2 tsp Mint extract
• 1/2 tsp Sunfood Vanilla Powder(or vanilla extract)
• 1 tbsp Agave Nectar
• small handful of spinach
• 3 or 4 ice cubes

I used my Ninja Pulse Blender for this and it made it perfect.  You can of course adjust these measurements to taste this was just how I liked it.  The Vega One and spinach will turn your shake green by itself, not neon green like at McDonalds, but do we really need that? No way

fresh mint garnish look limp? use spinach instead!

His Plate / Her Plate #1

I am sure we have all figured out by now that I am a vegetarian.  I eat dairy, but I avoid eggs and I really only eat cheese and frozen yogurt.  I typically use almond milk or cashew milk for anything that I need milk for, like my Vega One shakes.  Jake on the other hand eats meat… a lot of meat.

Lately I have been feeling a little lost of what to make for us.  I like to make meals that are the same that satisfy both of us so it at least feel like we are eating a meal together.  I don’t mind making two separate proteins as long as they kind of work together.  Tacos are easy I just make him ground turkey and I use black beans for me and they have been our go to meal but I have been wanting to branch out.  So I turned to the internet figuring I would find a few blogs about a vegetarian/omni couple and what they ate.  Surprisingly only a few showed up and they all seemed to be abandoned or just listed the obvious, pizza – pasta- and chili… duh those are easy.

I posted on Facebook asking for suggestions and people had a lot of good ideas but a lot of it wasn’t very healthy so I started brainstorming myself.  Also a lot of the suggestions were for one meal that was meatless which won’t really work, while Jake is open-minded to my food a lot of it doesn’t interest him taste wise, and it doesn’t have the amount of protein that he needs.  I make Jake chicken a lot, or actually a lot of times he actually cooks it so I don’t ruin it, but chicken is always the go to protein so last night I figured I would surprise him and make him steak.

So you are probably wondering what I made….

Kebobs grilled on my George Forman grill!

My Plate : Vegan Field Roast sausage in smoked apple sage.  I love these things because they are soy free!

His Plate : Marinated Sirloin cubes.

Both Plates: Bell Peppers, cherry tomatoes, red onion, and zucchini in the kebabs, with quinoa, and roasted sweet potatoes that i seasoned with garlic, adobo, and cayenne pepper on the side.

I’m not going to break down the entire calorie count for mine but the sausage is 240 calories, and I had a half cup of of quinoa which is 111 calories.  I didn’t season or put oil on the kebabs and the sweet potatoes only have a few tablespoons of olive oil on the entire batch that I made (which was more than is shown).  I’d say the sweet potatoes were probably around 150 calories max, so my dinner was about 500 calories which isn’t too bad.

It was a pretty good meal, and it was nice to have something a little different than what we usually have.

So now this is a new challenge to myself, figuring out new healthy meals that we can eat together, now to start planning the next meal!

Apple Cider Everything, Pumpkin Picking, and the gym of course.

This week I was craving “suburb things”  at least fall suburb stuff.  Sure New York is awesome, and we can pretty much do anything and everything here with only a few exceptions.  I would say that 90% of me is a city girl but that remaining 10% does miss living in the suburbs.  My family lives in NJ and even though it is so close I have been a bad daughter and have not been home since February.  I have been busy and tired, and well lets face it, its pretty easy to get people to come to me hehe.  So since I was feeling a little homesick and Jake had off from work for Columbus Day I convinced him to go down and visit my family with me.

The main thing I wanted to do was go down to Johnson’s farm and go pumpkin picking with my nieces and get all the apple cider things that they make.  I didn’t get a pumpkin since I was going to have to drag it back to the city, but I did get some pumpkin butter and a huge caramel apple that I still haven’t eaten hehe.

my nieces Casey and Morgan

Morgan

Apple Cider Slushie!!

Apple Cider Donut!

I only had one donut, it was as amazing as I remember, they are so popular that the farm is consistently making them and as fast as they put them on the rack to sell they are gone, so they are always still hot.  so good, seriously.

Last week I went to the gym all 7 days.  Sunday is normally my day off from the gym but since Jake was at my house Sunday and he had to go, I went with him. Whenever I work out with him since he does all strength training my fat burning percentage is always super high, but I think 49% is my record for sure!  I also did some incline sprints while I was waiting for Jake to tan hehe.

Monday of last week I forgot to turn off my heart rate monitor so it logged me as working out for 57 hours lol, woops.  the calorie count is still correct though because it wasn’t reading the actual sensor since it wasn’t on me for that whole time.  I burnt almost 3,700 calories!!!  Technically that is a little over a pound, but I didn’t lose anything! rawr… shouldn’t have had that donut… who am I kidding, of course I should have!  But its not helping me get to my three pound goal for the month. woops.

 

I know this guy mostly talks about body building but I really like a lot of his philosophies, he is also talking about burning fat in this video without losing muscle.  This goes along with what my heart rate monitor wants me to do, so I am giving it a shot, less high intensity stuff like running, and way more low intensity stuff and we will see what happens.

Guess what I am doing!

 

I am going SKY DIVING!!  This Sunday!! I always wanted to do it since I was a kid and my dad always told me to join the marines so I could, well I didn’t so I still haven’t done it lol.  Of course I am going to have photos, and a dvd so I will obviously post them! This Sunday is also the Halloween NY Zombie Crawl, so in order for us to be able to go we are doing the skydiving super early in the morning then running home and putting on our zombie faces! So excited!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a Longggggggg week

amazing color and style i did at my salon

This week has been super eventful and packed so I haven’t been able to update my blog, but have kept up with my workouts and stuff, in fact worked harder.  I was decently busy at work and also hired a trainer that I worked out with twice last week.

My trainer, Alex started with me on Tuesday morning.  He did more cross training stuff with me, but did a pretty good job showing me some new moves to help get me out of my slump.  I woke up the next day with super sore legs, so sore that I walked noticibley funny, and i made it worse by wearing platform flip flops so i just walked awkward all day.  I worked out by myself Wednesday then Thursday I was back with Alex again at my meathead gym which was fun.  Friday and Saturday I went to Planet Fitness by myself and did intervals on the arc trainer and abs.  Sunday is usually my day off from the gym because I usually stay at Jake’s house for the weekend and his gym won’t allow guests (lame!)  but this weekend Jake stayed over beacause one of my best friends, Tina was in town so we all went to the gym together Sunday and Monday.  Sunday I did an arm day with Jake which was really fun, we usually don’t work out together because a lot of the stuff he does I can’t do, but I definetly want to try to do that more with him.

my stats for the week thanks to my Polat FT60

I really worked out 8 sessions but on the first day with Alex I didn’t wear my heart rate monitor, and on Sunday when I was doing a bicep curl the monitor unsnapped and fell off and didn’t count it!  I’m super excited because I ordered the S1 Foot Pod to track my running, so I can’t wait to see next week what it says!

Tina came up to not only hang out, but also to see Jake wrestle, he had a match Saturday night which turned out to be really fun.

Jake is front and center ❤

For the main event every minute a new guy entered the ring, and the only way to be disqualified was to fall out (or be thrown out) of the ring.  It got pretty crazy, but it was really exciting, I was glad I got to go to this one.

If you live in the New York area, and you like wrestling, you should totally like the Warriors of Wrestling’s facebook page and go to a match!!

We also got to see the new Batman movie, shopped in Time Square, and ate at one of my favorite restaurants (and the place Jake and I went on our first date) Wild Ginger.  yum!

I tried out a recipe for a protein peanut butter cup that my roommate Lydia found on a YouTube channel called Lean Body Lifestyle

I followed his recipe however I used my vegan protein powder by Vega.  The vega protein needed a lot more water than if I used a whey protein, so mine came out a little thicker, but its still pretty good, I can’t eat a whole one, it filled up a whole cupcake wrapper!  but i will definetly make them more once i finally finish the two that i made haha.

My New Obsession with my Blender

Since I started this whole weight loss thing my breakfast everyday has been a packet of oatmeal before I head to the gym.  Then summer happened and oatmeal just does not sound as good as it did in February.  It is just way too hot for oatmeal, its really way too hot for almost anything.  [ I HATE summer!!]

Recently I got a new blender, I had posted on facebook asking for recommendations and it was pretty much split between the Vitamix (which yeah I know its amazing, but expensive) and the Ninja.  Being that there is almost a $300 difference in price between the two and I really didn’t think that i was going to use it that often I went with the Ninja Pulse.

Ninja Pulse

It works pretty similar to the Magic Bullet you press it down to make it work, but this one has so many more attachments and even has a big pitcher so it has way more options.  It is listed on the Ninja Pulse website that it retails for $169 but I bought mine on Amazon for only $99 (it was even prime! so I got it with free two day shipping!).  I would link the deal but it seems to be gone.  My package also came with 4 of the single serve cups and lids instead of 2 like the photo, a lid with holes in it I guess for grated parmesean and stuff, and a really nicely put together recipe book.

Now that I have this, every morning I make a smoothie with a Vega One nutritional shake powder.  I have all three flavors, chocolate, vanilla chai, and berry but I haven’t tried the berry yet, berry flavored stuff kinda scares me a little.

yum!

If you haven’t read earlier entries in my blog Vega is a cool company.  All their products are vegan, gluten free, dairy free, and soy free.  Which is good for me, my body could never handle whey protein it always made me sick, and most soy protein powders were chalky and tasted horrible, plus I am trying to avoid soy anyway.

The Vega One is not a straight protein shake that you would drink after the gym, they make a version called Vega Sport Protein that has more protein for that.  But the Vega One is packed with vitamins and minerals to give you energy, help your metabolism, supports your immune system, and even has probiotics in it to help your intestinal flora.  It has 15 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, 1.5 grams of Omega-3, has as many antioxidants as 2.7 cups of blueberries, and contains enough greens to be equivilent to 3 servings of vegetables, so all in all its a pretty good thing.  It is also lightly sweetened with stevia instead of sugar, so it is lower in calories and has a low glycemic index.

For me it is a little too lightly sweetened, I have a bit of a sweet tooth so if I am just mixing it by itself I add unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze and just a teeny bit of agave nectar.  If I make it in my blender I go all out and add fresh ground peanut butter, or frozen fruit depending on the flavor.

Chocolate Vega One with frozen cherries, unsweeted Almond Breeze and some ice

Vanilla Chai Vega One with frozen blueberries and peaches

I actually think in general I like having the shake for breakfast better than oatmeal, it keeps me fuller longer, and having the probiotics in it are good for me since I can’t even get down a spoonful of yogurt without gagging lol.  So this might even stay my breakfast of choice even in the winter hehe.

Finally hit the 20 Pound mark

Yay!  So yesterday I finally made it to 20 pounds.  Kinda crazy.  I am not going to lie, I wasn’t really expecting it because I had gotten a little lazy going to the gym.  I have just been kind of bored there so I have been looking for some new stuff to do.  A lot of people had been recommending that I pick up some of the Jillian Michaels DVDs so I ordered 3 from Amazon.   These are what I got

• Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism
• 6 Week, Six Pack
• 30 Day Shred

Nope, I haven’t tried them yet but we will see how it goes.  Honestly those claims on the DVD lose up to 20 pounds in 30 days, lose up to 5 pounds a week.. Thats a little extreme and I don’t really believe it, and I’m not looking for fast fixes like that… but I have heard that the routines are really difficult.

My muscles felt pretty tight this week even though I stretch like crazy so I actually did yoga (on DVD).  When I worked at Whole Foods Market (like 5 years ago) I had picked up a couple of DVD’s and actually never took them out of the plastic, so I figured now would be a good time.  I ended up doing  Gaiam Power Yoga :Total Body

The poses were good for what was bothering me, but it was a little repeditive.  I do like power yoga better than regular yoga, regular yoga is too slow for me and i get bored.  Plus I appologize in advance to anyone I might offend but some yoga people just drive me crazy for how intense they are about it and how snobby they are that they do it.  Which is why I will be strictly DVD only lol.

I have still been keeping up with drinking the Vega Pre-workout energizer, and the Recovery Accelorator, but have been naughty and haven’t drank the Protein powder.  My blender has been broken for a while and even though I ordered a replacement piece I can’t get the damn broken piece off and I just don’t like the taste of a plain protein shake… yuckk!  I don’t know how Jake drinks those things all the time.

So I guess here is to the next 20!

It Begins…

I have decided that now that I am coming up on my 15 pound loss I would start doing everything I can to help my reach my goals.  You might ask why I didn’t do this from the beginning….

One answer, I’m a quiter

I know this about me. If I don’t love it, I won’t do it, so why would I spend a ton of money on something I might quit.  I did it with my clarinet, field hockey, skateboarding, college and probably a lot of other things that my parents would love to remind me of.   So I gave myself a mini-goal.  Get through the first 15 pounds, see if I stick with it then start with all the supplements and and making actual goals.

So here I am, 14 pounds lighter as of March 3rd, and with a kitchen full of different black jugs of Vega products for every time of the day and every part of my workout.

There are certain things I just can’t eat.  Like you will never see me down a protein shake of just water (or almond milk) and protein powder.  I never was a fan of milk ever, even as a kid I convinced my school to give me apple juice instead of the mandatory little carton of milk.  If yogurt tasted like pudding I would love it, but instead it tastes like tangy (but not good tangy) spoiled I don’t even know what.  You will also never catch me eating meat.  And this is where I struggle.  Every day the app I use on my iphone called MyFitnessPal adds more and more protein to my daily needs, and I am having a harder and harder time trying to get anywhere near my goals.  So I have set out to fix that.

I have to hand it to my roommate Lydia, she has made me some pretty good protein smoothies that I have enjoyed.  The problem is, Lydia’s only job isn’t to make me smoothies when I need them so I need to learn to make them too hehe.

Yesterday was my first day trying out my Vega supply.   So I started by mixing up a glass of the Pre-Workout Energizer.  I have to admit, at first glance I didn’t know how I was going to muster up the strength to even drink it, the color was this ugly yellow-green and it looked grainy.  It definetly didn’t look as refreshing as the lemon-lime flavoring would suggest.  Finally I was able to kick it back and I realized it honestly wasn’t bad at all, in fact it was kinda good.  But I think there is a reason I was given a blue Vega Shaker cup, I would have never noticed the color if I had used it.

yum?

After I downed the drink my boyfriend (Jake) and I walked to the gym and I started my workout.   First thing I noticed was that I felt like I was on a crazy sugar high, or like I drank a giant energy drink, maybe 2.  Which I have to be honest, I didn’t really like and it made me a little nervous.  I guess I should have thought about the fact that I have pretty much zero caffeine in my diet, so I should have started with a half a dose and worked my way up.  Now I know.

I did run faster than I have run since I started working out, and yes I did feel the increased energy and endurance, but it was a little too much for me too soon.  I did a solid 45 minutes on the elliptical starting at a level 8 and working my way to level 14 staying between 6.5mph and going past 8mph the entire time.  Then I did 20 minutes on the treadmill at maximum elevation going 3.5mph and I could have kept going.  In fact I did, I talked at a mile a minute and couldn’t calm down for a long time after that.  Jake told me not to take the Recovery Accelerator since I was still bouncing off the walls and by this time it was past 8pm.  I guess I will leave that for another day.

I think that how I felt was a combination of not being used to supplements like this and the fact that we started our workout later than usual.  Even though this product doesn’t contain added caffeine if has yerba mate, kombucha, green tea, and ginseng so it definetly packs a punch especially for me.   I liked that it made me work out harder than usual, but it was a little too much for the first time.  I am going to stick to a half dose of each until I feel like I am not noticing the effects and then move up to a full dose.  We will see what happens the next few days I guess.