Cinnamon Caramel Bake

Ok yum, this was really good.  This weekend Alex and I were dedicated to relaxing around the house.  We went for our first run of the year together, and to celebrate I baked this.  I messed up the recipe and used 2 whole sticks of butter (I compensated for this by adding more of everything), but it is worth the guilt.  Especially since it uses almond flour instead of grain.  I made almond flour for the first time since Trader Joe's was out of their almond meal.  It was fun to decimate the blanched and sliced almonds that I bought, and the texture was better since there weren't flakes of almond skin everywhere that you would find in almond meal.

Recipe is here

Working on my Fitness

Over the past couple of weeks my interest in fitness has picked up again.  I had been doing yoga, which even though I will continue to use it as a tool to relax, it just doesn't kick my ass enough.  Instead I've decided to revisit pilates, which is what I used to do in college and I had good results with it.  The only reason that I stopped is because Netflix stopped streaming my favorite pilates workouts.  Instead I've been utilizing YouTube for channels such as Blogilates.

Anyway, Alex and I have been having good results with our modified diet.  We still have cheat days where we are too lazy to make dinner so we buy a frozen pizza.  I'm going to try to cut down on these for myself personally and make easy salads instead since it's just food and I shouldn't be a slave to unhealthy food when I have so many tasty alternatives.

One of co-workers at the hospital came up to me earlier this week and told me how great I look.  He is really into diet and fitness, and he guessed that I had lost ~20 pounds.  I refuse to buy a scale for this house and I honestly don't know how much weight that I've lost, but I promise that I did not drop that much.  What I do know is that my face is more sucked in, I had to buy new pants a size smaller, that my arms and stomach have less pooch to grab onto, and that my boobs have shrunk.  I don't think all of that happened just from two weeks of pilates, so I attribute it to having an extremely low grain and sugar diet.

Instead of weight, I'm going to start measuring my achievements through measurements so here we go!

As of 2/20

Bicep 10.5"
Waist 27"
Abs 31"
Hips 38.5"
Thigh 22"

Banana Bread with Almond Flour

I have had a banana browning on my counter for over a week now, for some reason it never occurred to me to throw it in the compost bin.  Thank god I didn't because I was able to make a half batch of banana bread muffins with it for breakfast this morning.  The recipe is from Paleo Comfort Foods, and based on this one recipe alone (and gawking at the other recipes) it is an awesome book (with great photography to boot).  There is no added sugar in the recipe, so I drizzle my muffins with raw honey.  Yum yum yum.

Recipe

• 3 cups almond flour or almond meal
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/4 cup coconut oil- melted
• 4 large eggs
• 2 very ripe bananas- mashed
• 3 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 3 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup walnuts- chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix together the almond flour, baking soda, and sea salt

Mix the eggs and coconut oil together in a separate bowl and then stir into the flour

Add in the bananas, vanilla, cinnamon, and walnuts

Pour batter into a greased muffin tin or loaf pan.  Bake for 25-30 minutes or until an inserted tooth pick comes out clean.

Roasted Balsamic Strawberries

Alex called me from the grocery store this weekend because he was picking up his football game junk food, and being a smart husband realized that I would probably like a snack too.  I opted for strawberries since I'm not giving myself any excuses to include grains in my snacks (just the occasional pizza...).  Anyway, the strawberries weren't ripe so I roasted them to deepen their flavor, and I had just seen a recipe for balsamic roasted strawberries so that is what I did, but I made it SCD friendly by using honey instead of sugar.

I think that the key is to use a high-quality balsamic vinegar that you want to drink instead of drizzle on a sandwich.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (or skip this step and just eat the balsamic strawberries raw, that was tasty too)
Chop 1 lb of strawberries into 1 cm slices
Mix together 1 tbsp honey with 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar and combine with the strawberries.
Spread the strawberry slices out on a tin foil lined pan and bake for 15-20 minutes.
Refrigerate and serve as a dessert topping.  I served mine on top of my homemade SCD yogurt, and it was delicious.  I am thankful that Al thinks that he doesn't like balsamic vinegar so he left it alone.