Sweet potatoes are delicious!

 
My lunch was absolutely delicious!  I had some leftover Le Mein and didn't want to just eat that.  I bought some sweet potatoes yesterday at Sprouts that have been begging me to eat them so I decided to add a little saute job to the stir fry.  I started with dicing up some onions and adding them to a large cast iron with a spoonful of refined coconut oil.  I let them warm for about 3 to 4 minutes and then added 1 sweet potato diced up.  I cut them into approximately 1/2 inch pieces (some bigger, some smaller).  They then cooked for about 15 minutes on warm.  While I was at that, I started sauteing some portobello mushrooms.  My momma raised me right and I pretty much eat sauteed mushrooms & onions on all of my meals.  So. Stinkin. Good!  As this was all going on over the cooktop, I prepared some 'guacamole' as a side.  I used 1 avocado, some seasoning and 1 Roma tomato diced.  This blending of flavor was actually quite nice along with the Lo Mein/Sweet Potato mixture. 

This is what it ended up looking like and it tasted so much better.  Now, on to watching some Harry Potter because it's just the right thing to do! 

What a lovely Saturday

This morning Brian and I slept in until 7 AM!  That was such a treat to not have to get up super early and get going.  While he was getting ready for work, I decided to go to the gym instead of doing P90X at home.  I did 40 minutes on the treadmill, crunches and then arms.  It felt nice to jog a bit.  I haven't done that for a while. 
When I got home, Brian was walking out the door so I decided to head to the back yard and pull weeds.  Our backyard looks currently like a jungle.  I filled up our only trash can so I have to wait until the trash guy comes on Wednesday and then fill it up again next weekend.  While working on the weeds Big Turtle came out so he got fed too.  Nom nom nom....

For breakfast, I decided to use my awesome Vitamix blender (thank you Come before Winter women) to make a breakfast smoothie.  This machine is absolutely amazing.  If you don't have one... GO BUY ONE NOW!

 





I started off with 1/4 cup of Welch's white grape juice as a base.  I ended up added another 1/4 cup of water once I started blending to make it more smoothie like and less ice cream like.  1/2 frozen banana.  1/4 cup pomegranate seeds.  1/2 c pineapple chunks.  1/4 apple (I ate the rest of the apple with my smoothie).  1 cup grapes.  2 cups spinach leaves.  I also added 1 scope of vanilla protein powder since, you know, I worked out and all.  :)  The great thing about this smoothie is everything about it is raw and fresh fruits or veggies.  (You can always use just water instead of the Welch's white grape juice.)

The recipe makes more than enough for one smoothie.  I tend to freeze the leftovers in my Popsicle maker thing or just put it in the fridge and drink throughout the day.  The smoothie isn't the most attractive thing in the world but man it tastes good. 

Enjoy your weekend!

My Paleo journey

So... a little over a month ago I was in Austin with some of my favorite people ever. A couple of my friends that I hadn't seen in a long while looked absolutely amazing. Because I can be tacky and speak my mind I had to have a thorough understanding of how they were making this happen successfully. I have struggled over the last 5(ish) years of weight yo-yo-ing. They both are living "Paleo" and were doing Crossfit. My interest was peaked after talking with them. I started doing some online research to learn more about it (the Paleo... not so much the Crossfit). One of my coworkers in Phoenix was also doing Paleo along with his family and had lost a good amount of weight and was talking about how good each of them feels!  He recommended that I check out Everyday Paleo and start from there.

I've lost 8 pounds within the first month. I think this is from cutting out the breads and cheese. I decided to restart the blog to try to hold myself more accountable to this (my old one still exists at here.  I also figured I could add the recipes that I try along the way since I have found some really yummy foods that I never thought I would like.  I must confess up front though... these recipes will most likely be created by me.  I love to cook and bake but I am not that gifted where I can create something all on my own.  I will do my absolute best to document where I got the recipes from! 

One of my bestest friends ever, Chez, introduced me to Pinterest while I was in Austin and I am a FAN! I have found a lot of great Paleo recipes on it and I am thankful to have a place to 'store' all of the online recipes I find. I found this recipe online and thought I would give them a try. The ones I made are not near this pretty but they taste deli!!

Morale of the story, I will do my best to update this blog more than every two years with recipes and what's going on with the Goode-Wicks of Tucson.