Posts tagged spring/summer
Rice Paper Rolls with Peanut Sauce

Looking for a super healthy summer appetizer or light dinner? Look no further than rice paper rolls! They're colorful, tasty and a cinch to make as long as you don't mind chopping veggies into thin strips...To make things quicker/easier you could buy pre-chopped veggies such as julienned carrots, strips of bell pepper, etc. Feel free to get creative with what you put in your rolls! Rice paper rolls can be the perfect 'kitchen sink' meal, i.e. a way to use up all the veggies leftover in the fridge at the end of the week! 

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10-Minute Healthy Weekday Lunch

I bring my lunch to work every day. It's healthier and definitely saves money. My favorite kind of weekday work lunch is a hodge podge of leftovers from the night before. Meal prep and planning is essential for success and I follow the principle of 'cook once, eat at least twice.' This means if I am cooking chicken breasts + veggies for dinner (for two people), I will cook 4 chicken breasts and 4 servings of veggies so lunch is sorted for us the next day.  If, for some reason, this leftovers plan doesn't pan out, or we went out for dinner, then I have to have something up my sleeve that is simple, delicious and can be prepared quickly the night before or in the morning before heading to work. This salmon and collard green burrito is my go-to! All it entails in terms of prep is a quick steam of the collard greens so they're soft enough to roll like a tortilla and a messy stir of the salmon salad ingredients in a bowl. Throw the burritos into a glass tupperware container and you're off to the office...in ten minutes (including clean up)! 

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Steak Salad with Ginger-Wasabi Dressing

One of the first principles I teach my clients is to make lunch the biggest, most nutrient dense meal of the day as the digestive system works most efficiently between 10am - 2pm. With lunch being the main meal, that means dinner should be small and light because your digestion is weaker in the evening. You could do a soup or stew in the autumn and winter and a salad in the spring and summer. This nutrient-dense steak salad is a great option for a light weeknight dinner. You'll feel full from the protein, healthy fat and fiber while keeping the calories pretty low at around 400. Plus it's totally delicious and satisfying!  

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Energy- and Metabolism-Boosting Smoothie

Now that it's Spring, I'm back on the smoothie train. Smoothies can be a great choice for adding to your breakfast meal rotation, or you can make them smaller to have as a snack. I've been enjoying this delicious blueberry coconut concoction pre- or post-workout. It's well balanced with healthy fat, protein and carbs plus it's simple and easy to make! 

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Spring Chicken Tacos

Spring is here! So it's time to start transitioning away from the heavier comfort foods of winter and into light, cleansing spring fare! This doesn't mean you have to eat salads three meals a day. Instead, focus on flavored steamed veggies, brothy soups, sprouts and lighter proteins like beans/legumes, lean meat and fish. These tacos are a wonderful option for a weeknight dinner. Maybe you can even eat them outside on the porch like we did last night! 

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Spring Clean Watercress and Asparagus Soup

Spring is the time of year when our bodies naturally want to "spring clean" or detox after the heaviness of winter. If you tune in, you may notice that your appetite naturally begins to wane during the months of spring. Spring boosts natural fat metabolism which, in turn, decreases cravings, hunger and appetite in order to reset fat burning, start detox and loose any extra weight carried over from winter. 

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Asian Fusion Chicken and Raw Veggie Noodle Salad

I absolutely adore clean, fresh and vibrant Asian flavors.  My first exposure to, and subsequent adoration of, Asian cuisine was during my first visit to Asia four years ago with two of my best mates, Anna and Alexandra.  "The Asian Crew," to which we are often referred (which is funny, but more strange, considering we went to high school and college together too - not just Asia - ha), backpacked around the southeastern countries of Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Singapore) for two months after graduating from UVa.  In addition to visiting temples, getting scuba-certified, hiking through jungles, rafting down rivers in inner-tubes, and drinking vodka from buckets (as you do when you're 22), we embraced each country's slightly different cuisine and were even 'cultured' enough to take a cooking class in Cambodia! While none of us had much of a cooking background, we had such exciting experience learning about and experimenting with all the Asian ingredients which were so foreign to us at the time.  I remember being so inspired to get home and cook up for our parents all the recipes we learned during our class.  Unfortunately that plan never eventuated (maybe because we couldn't find banana leaves in Richmond?), but hopefully the recipe notes are still somewhere at home that I can dig up now that my Asian food passion has made a resurgence. 

When I say I love Asian food, what I mean is that I enjoy certain flavors and styles of cooking, rather than any particular country's cuisine.  If I had to choose, though, I would say I favor Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese the most, over Chinese, Malaysian or Indonesian. When you consider that many of these Asian countries share borders, and inevitably, common ingredients, it's no wonder Asian Fusion cuisine, which is just combining flavors from different countries, has become so popular. 

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Work Lunch + Quinoa and Chicken San Choi Bow Recipe

Wanna know the secret to cutting the office afternoon snack attack?

Eat an amazing lunch!

So simple, but so crucial.  

When we eat the same ol' unsatisfying meal day after day, or simply don't eat enough, for lunch, it's no wonder we find ourselves raiding the kitchen in the break room or, worse, the vending machine come 3 o'clock. Instead, if you make your mid-day meal delicious and satiating by including some good fats and protein, those heavy eyelids and uncontrollable sugar cravings will become distant memories. 

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Maui-inspired Acai Bowl

I recently returned from one of the best weeks ever in Maui.  The second-largest of the Hawaiian islands, Maui is also known as the 'Magic Isle' for its rolling hills, misty mountains, and best-in-the-world beaches.  While the topography of the island is incredibly stunning and there are endless adventures to be had, the company was certainly the highlight of my vacation.  

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Gung-ho Green Smoothie

As implied by the title, this smoothie is not for the faint of heart.  If you're just getting into making smoothies, experimenting with superfoods, and toying with the idea of adding vegetables to your breakfast, then perhaps you should hold off on giving this one a go, just for now.  Better to ease your way in...and I don't want to be the one responsible for scaring you away. For those of you seasoned smoothie-makers, this green smoothie is particularly awesome because it's fruit-free (meaning, minimal fructose) but still tastes great.

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Creamy Avocado and Cacao Smoothie

This is a smoothie I made on the weekend and put up for all my (50! Getting there...slowly but surely!) 'gram followers.  I love experimenting with smoothie ingredients, and Saturday and Sunday mornings are really my only time as it can take a couple of blends to get the right combo.  My kitchen cupboard is seriously overflowing with superfoods - every time I read about a  new one I have to buy it - so it's just a matter of pairing the right ones together so that the end result doesn't turn into some revolting shade of green-y brown.  This one is a winner.

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