Category Archives: grain free

Taking a tumble

The last non-bagel Bagel Wednesday. Hooray! It was really a nice morning out. Cool enough that we needed jackets and longer pants for a ride!

Early on in the ride, I took a tumble. We approached an intersection with no light or stop sign and I noticed a truck on my left that I thought was turning right. I turned to make eye contact with the driver to make sure that they saw me. When I looked ahead again, John had stopped short because of pedestrians crossing. As I tried not to run into John, I ended up falling over. The problem with falling over on a bike is that you can’t grab anything to break the fall, so I fell on top of my bike. I ended up with the end of the handle bar jamming right into my upper chest where there is no padding. Owie. I also scraped up my knees and ankles. I swore enough to give a sailor a run for the money because it hurt so bad, but I was also embarrassed. We got back on after a few minutes and continued while I tried to work out the hurt as we pedaled.

After about 6 miles, we stopped at the cafe to eat. We ate outside. I brought my ricotta puffs and strawberries and bought a cup of coffee.

Not good ambiance outside, but it was wonderfully cool to sit out there.

I viewed my right leg, which was still stinging quite a bit.

I think I am also going to end up with a big bruise on my chest. I am lucky the handlebar didn’t hit up a few more inches or it would have hit my collarbone.

We did another loop and ended up with 11.5 miles this morning. Other than the fall, it was quite a nice ride

The rest of the morning went by pretty quickly. I broke for lunch wanting an omelet.

This had cheddar cheese on it with some steamed broccoli inside. Yum!

I had a couple questions about weight lifting as I haven’t posted a workout in a while. This is my new taskmaster.

Or really the old taskmaster. Our bowflex. (And I type blowflex every time. Every time!).

My gym membership expired this month and I decided to work out at home for a while. I am debating on joining a different gym. It’s the gym my mother goes to. It is farther from home and biking there would be a little time consuming, but the membership is $99 a year versus my old gym at $275 per year. Kind of a no-brainer, right? I will wait a bit, though, until it gets cooler or I miss the barbell too much.

Time for the snack!

I love my afternoon snack. Don’t you? I did go get another pineapple slice, too.

I got a craving for a potato for dinner. This was topped with chicken, laughing cow, and hot sauce.

Yukon gold. That is my favorite kind of potato. They have the perfect texture for me.

A quiet evening at home with a couple macaroons. I need to stop watching the Weather Channel because I am going to obsess about this hurricane.

Question: What is your favorite kind of potato?

Riding and family fun!

Another gorgeous Saturday in the Adirondacks! After such a bad winter and crappy spring, this summer had more than made up for that with some wonderful weekend weather. John and I decided to head to the lake today. We had ice cream on our minds as it was going to be in the mid 80s, so we packed lunches and headed out.

It’s still so green along the path:

This picture is just to the left from this shot, which is 10 miles into the ride:

We arrived at mile 15 to our destination. Lake George was bumping on Saturday. There was some sort of craft show going on.

We browsed around a little bit and then sat down for lunch.

I packed up some pineapple, a coconut biscuit, and some peanut butter. I ended up not eating the cheese.

My lunch buddy:

We walked around in the bright sunshine.

Parasails were out today.

This would be a little scary for me. You are tethered to a boat, but still scary. We were going to have ice cream in Lake George, but we weren’t quite ready yet, so we decided to go ahead and ride back and stop at Cooper’s Cave at mile 25.

I was going to get ice cream, but then I decided I wanted toppings instead and got a mexican sundae, which is peanut butter sauce and chocolate fudge – a fabulous sweet/salty combo:

I had that over top of chocolate frozen yogurt. I was so hot and sweaty. I told John that the yogurt or ice cream just tastes so much better when we are active before getting it. I think because my body is ready for the carb hit, plus how cool it feels going down. I was loving this sundae!

I was so sweaty. I always have a hat in my bike bag because it is scary when I take my helmet off. Even my forearms get a sheen of sweat on them. Ewwww. I had to put sunscreen on 3 times in 3 hours.

While at ice cream, I texted my sister and decided to invade our parents’ house for dinner. Don’t you love how we invite ourselves over? With the offer of bringing takeout. Once that was settled, John and I continued our ride. We just decided to knock out another 13 miles and call it a day.

Ride stats:

Total miles: 38.5

Ride time: 2 hours 52 minutes

Average speed: 13.3 mph

Top speed: 29.1

Calories burned: 1251

A nice ride. It was so hot, though, and humid.

After cleanup, John and I picked up Chinese for dinner. I was worried being grain free about what I could eat, but found an awesome dish. I got steamed shrimp with broccoli and carrots. They make this without any sauce, so I didn’t have to worry about cornstarch or anything. Or the sodium, although after this ride it wouldn’t really have hurt me to eat it.

I think they must have seasoned the water or something because these were not bland at all! I would get this again and again. I had another plate just like the one above. I started to put a little brown sauce on there, but then left it off. I wasn’t sure what was in it.

After dinner my dad got the fire going:

Time for roasting.

This is such a nice back yard, isn’t it?

Who has the bigger mouth?

I think I win by a long shot. After I ate 3 marshmallows, I realized they were probably made with corn syrup, so I had a small slip up with no grains there. No biggie – it wasn’t intentional.

What a wonderful day. Good ride, good food and family!

Nonbagel day and riding the wave!

Since I can’t call it Bagel Day, I guess it is Biking Day! It was cool and foggy this morning, like living in the Pacific NW. I grabbed a quick protein hit and we biked for breakfast. By the time we got to town, the sun was out and burned off the fog.

I had brought along a 1 minute muffin with some cream cheese and jam. Added a cup of French Roast.

It was a nice breakfast chatting about where we are going to ride this weekend. I also enjoyed this lovely flower at the table.

I’ve never had a lot of luck growing hydrangeas. Not sure why.

After a nice ride home, I settled in to work until lunch time. I wanted peanut butter, but couldn’t think of what to have, then I decided on peanut flour made into a dip for my pear. The peanut flour has 15 grams of protein in it, which is awesome! I mixed it with a little honey, some cinnamon and a tiny pinch of salt.

It took a while to eat this lunch because it was in so many pieces 😀

This guy was eating lunch while I was.

A little white sulfur butterfly. There are tons of them around here. Sometimes you see yellow ones, but the whites are very common.

Are you tired of dried pineapple yet? Apparently I am not:

I try to limit myself to 1 piece as it is 70 calories for 1 and pretty sweet. This seems to be enough to satisfy my needs for sweet right now.

I found myself wanting to nibble this afternoon and I had a few pistachios, but then I just had a couple mints to stop that. I was getting mildly hungry, but not over the edge hungry and figured I could wait another hour for dinner. Sometimes I have to really remind myself that it is okay to be a little hungry before dinner 😳

Speaking of dinner, I got in some superfoods. Roasted sweet potato slices and my broccoli!

I don’t know if pork is a superfood, but it was tasty. I just ate it crumbled up instead of a burger because it would cook faster (well, I was hungry).

I am doing quite well on my challenge to date and halfway through! I really feel like I am in a zone and getting through the weekend being on point really helped out with that. This challenge is doing exactly what I had hoped for my attitude. I’ll ride the wave as long as I can!

Riding the wave:

(I figured I needed more pictures of me not sweating or wearing a bike helmet on here LOL)

Running week 3

Drizzly morning again today, so I put off my planned C25K for a little while and made up breakfast instead.

Coconut flour waffles. Note, this is just my regular protein waffles with coconut flour subbing for oats.

I wish they weren’t so fragile. They are hard to get out of the waffle iron, which is why they are folded up. Tasty, though!

After the rained cleared out, I took a break from work, grabbed a protein drink and headed out to the track for C25K. I thought it would be a swamp, but it wasn’t that wet.

Yay!

Week 3 consists of the warm up, then 90 second jog/90 second walk, then 3 minute jog/3 minute walk. Then repeat. This seemed much shorter, even though the total minutes of running was the same as last week. Go figure.

Came back for some lunch. Egg salad! It was a little weird to eat egg salad without any bread or crackers.

Jody asked if I was feeling any different after a week of no grains. I can answer a definite yes right now. It hasn’t been too terribly difficult either, which I thought it might be. No cravings for anything sweet or other bread stuff.

At all.

Zero.

And there is chocolate in the house. It’s so weird. I do crave nuts, though, and have to be careful not to crack out on them. I will also nibble on potato chips if they are in the house (which they are now).

I do still have some sweet things, one being the dried pineapple, which I had today.

I love the dried pineapple. It tastes good and has such a nice texture to it. It goes surprisingly well with a latte (which is unsweetened).

Yesterday was sweet quinoa for breakfast. Today I used up the rest of the cooked quinoa for a savory dinner. I sauteed some broccoli, then threw in the quinoa with some feta cheese and a few splashes of soy sauce.

Not bad for a throw together meal and surprisingly filling. A little high on sodium, though. More than I usually have.

After finishing up work, John and I pedaled up the street for a little coffee!

This cafe closes at 8 pm, so it’s always an early night there.

What’s blooming today!

I played hooky last night. John and I spent the evening last night at one of these:

For his birthday, I had bought John tickets to the Philadelphia Orchestra, which spends a few weeks in residence up here at SPAC.

It was an all Russian program. Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #2 (one of my favorites) and Prokofiev Symphony #5 (one of John’s favorites). Very, very good! Then we went out for coffee afterwards. An official date night 😉

After a wonderfully cool night of sleep (we dipped into the 50s), I was up for brekkie. This is the first time all week I missed grains because I wanted pumpkin oats today since it was so cool. Oh well, soon enough. Instead, I did a 1-minute muffle with blueberry sauce and coconut butter.

Such a nice day out today. We do have really wonderful days here in the later summer. I am sorry for all of you feeling the heat and drought 🙁

It did call for a porch lunch today.

I mixed up tuna (yes, 1 can made a reappearance) with mayo and lemon pepper. Plus a whole cucumber, which was a bit on the bitter side. Boooo.

Here is some of this week’s garden:

Black-eyed Susans:

Unwelcome ‘friends’:

Aphids! Ewwwww!!!! I got some organic insecticide to put on these tonight.

Browalia:

Galliarda

The marigolds – I know everyone loves these poms.

Four o’clocks. I grew these from seed. They are really fragrant. The blooms open up early in the morning and close during the day. Then they open again in the evening.

Allysum:

Another butterfly:

Such a gorgeous day today! John made me up a latte while I was working.

My new headphones for work. I love them! They are USB and the sound is much better.

It was such a nice night we wanted to bike for dinner. This usually means pizza, but I am no grains. We went to East End Eatery because they do have other things on the menu:

Grilled chicken! I did bend my local meat rule here, but having too many rules is not always a good thing. Note John’s pizza in the background. Surprisingly, I was not craving pizza – even seeing it. It looked good, but I was fine with my meal. The fries were excellent, too!

We had a nice 10 mile round trip for dinner. Tomorrow should be a nice long ride day. No cupcakes, but there will be some yogurt or ice cream in the mix. Yum.

I am so glad it is the weekend! Now if you will all excuse me, I have a couple plums to eat

Non bagel Wednesday and why no grains again?

Well, the first real challenge day arrived. No grains means no bagel! I woke up and waited for John to wake up to ride to breakfast. Normally he doesn’t sleep too late, but he did today and I was getting cranky and antsy. I should have just eaten breakfast. You know how that goes. I did have a protein drink and a date before he got up, but I was bonking by the time we got to the cafe. Ugh.

I had packed some strawberries with a couple of the ricotta puffs (which weren’t so puffy 2 days later…). Note John’s grain-filled goodness 😀

I also had a big Ethiopian Harrar coffee.

It was a nice ride home, although I felt a little fatigued. No flat tires, though, and that is always a good thing. 12 miles for breakfast today.

I think I have to clarify the no-grain challenge a bit as the comments from the other day brought up some questions. Funny how everything is clear as a bell in my mind, but I apparently didn’t explain well. That happens with John and I a lot. I will be talking and kind of skip ahead because I am assuming his thought processes are going in step with mine (thank goodness they don’t). Then I look up and see his face and can tell he is totally scrambling in his brain trying to figure out what I am talking about.

The biggest reason for doing this is to give myself a shot in the arm. I am pretty good at maintaining. A few higher days, a few lower days. But to get rid of the little extra something, I need to have more lower days in a row. For some reason, this has been really hard for me to do more than a couple days in a row. So, I wanted something that would really focus my mind on eating choices. It isn’t really about the weight loss because let’s face it – I am and always have been a turtle in that department. I just want something that will give me that little spark, and I think this challenge will do that. I am hoping to turtle on, though, with this challenge.

I am not worried about giving up grains and what it will do to my body per se. You don’t need grains to function. I get plenty of fiber. Yesterday I got 35 grams of fiber in without a single bit of grain. My carbs are about 40% of my calories, which actually is much better for *my* body (hate to admit it, but it’s true) especially now that I am not doing the huge rides. When I bring grains back in, I don’t think much will happen except my cravings for sweets will increase.

Regarding ‘substitutes’ like socca bread or the coconut biscuits. I just like those things. They aren’t necessarily a substitute for bread because I would eat them anyway, but I do like the texture of a baked good and these suffice as their own entities rather than a substitute. There is no substitute cupcake or bagel out there – and no, Arnold Bagel thins are *not* even close to a bagel. They are just sandwich thins with a hole. 🙄 I’ll just have to wait to have them.

So, hope that clears up why I chose this challenge – and on to lunch!

Quick one – just some pork with broccoli and a plum. Plums were on sale this week – yay!

I also had some pistachios after lunch.

Afternoon snack was a big bowl of blueberries and an almond milk iced coffee.

Don’t you want some? Cooler weather is coming in, and it is because I got my hair cut. Guaranteed to bring cold weather.

I was trying to cram work in with the late start and all. I dislike days like that. At least leftovers make a good quick dinner!

Palak chole on some socco bread (lots o’ chickpeas in this dinner).

I hurried with work because Wednesday is mom time! I met her out at the cafe. Don’t you love a latte?

I know I do. Yes, it is decaf, but 2% milk, cause a girl loves her fats 😀

Recipe: Ricotta Puffs

So I jumped into my grain-free challenge with an interesting recipe for breakfast. I got it from the The Perfect 10 book and adapted it for me.

Super easy and no fancy ingredients (aka no coconut flour – surprise!).

Ingredients:

2 eggs
1 cup of part skim ricotta cheese
2 teaspoons of honey (or other sweetener)
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
1 ounce of pecans, toasted and chopped

Preheat oven to 350 F. Or you could use the toaster oven, which I did so I wouldn’t heat up the kitchen.

Take the pecans and put them in the microwave for about a minute. This will toast them without the fuss and muss. Set aside to cool while you assemble the other ingrediets.

In a medium bowl, mix the eggs and the ricotta:

Chop the nuts. Then add those to the ricotta mixture along with the honey and the vanilla.

Mix well and divide evenly among a 6 muffin cup tin. See how quick and easy this is?? I recommend getting a 6 cup tin to use in a toaster oven. It’s so convenient! I put about 1/4 cup of batter in each compartment.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes until puffed and set.

Note – they will fall once they come out of the oven, so don’t worry.

They are sort of a cross between a souffle and a cheesecake. Not very sweet, just delicate. They went perfectly with blueberry sauce:

The original recipe called for agave and also for 1/2 an ounce of parmesan cheese, but I didn’t think the sweet/savory of that would be so good – so I left it out. I think you could leave out the sweetener and make these savory as well.

Nutritional Stats:

Per puff: 133 calories, fat 9.5 g, carbs 6.5 g, fiber 0.5 g, protein 7 g.

I think these might be quite portable. I have the others stored in the fridge and will see how they are 2nd day.

Grain-free for 21 days starts today

It’s Monday. So today begins my 21 day grain-free challenge. Not just gluten free, but grain free.

This means no:

Wheat*Rye*Barley*Bran*Bulgur*Couscous*Farina*Kamut*Orzo*Semolina*Spelt*Corn*Cornmeal*Rice *Oats*Millet* and a few other grains that I just don’t eat (and have never heard of). It also means some of the derivatives, like no cornstarch and no beer! Not that I drink much beer, but I have to remember.

I did some reading, and it appears that quinoa is not a grain, although often categorized as one. It is actually a seed, so I can have that. That sort of seems like cheating? But then, flax meal isn’t a grain either.

I tried a new recipe for breakfast which I will post the recipe for on Tuesday. These are something I am calling ricotta puffs. I got the recipe from the Perfect 10 book, but I changed them up a bit.

With blueberry sauce (which I had to thicken with arrowroot and not cornstarch). 5 ingredients in these little puffs and easy to make. Check back tomorrow for that post.

These were quite good. I made 6, so you will see more this week 😀

Work was quick during the morning, even though the cable guy came in and had to work on our cable modem and the line to the house because something has been weird with it lately. No internet means no work. So I ate lunch while he was here.

Salad topped with some cooked pork, feta cheese, and honey mustard dressing (that I made). I can’t have my BBQ sauce because it has food starch in it. Need to shop for a different brand. Grain free is actually a little harder than gluten free, it turns out.

Afternoon snackage!

Pixie is so annoyed here. I was trying to put these in place while she was sleeping, but the banana touched her and woke her up. Ooops.

Dinner was a cheese omelet with Cabot cheese in my Xbox.

I had some omelet run off, though. Don’t put 2 eggs and cheese in only one of the wells. Lesson duly noted.

Tonight’s snack?

Grain free day done. I have done them before, so no problem today.

I think I will have trouble in a couple of days when I miss my bagel.

I already have grain-free meals in my repertoire, so it won’t be so bad at first. These grain-free recipes are going to be in the mix these next 3 weeks:

Coconut flour biscuits

Banana Breakfast bread pudding

Now for some relaxing tonight with this while eating above peanuts: