Showing posts with label How to Feed a Ninja. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How to Feed a Ninja. Show all posts

November comes before December


I need to remember this. I woke up this morning thinking about my christmas list. Not the one that says what I want, but the one for everyone else. I always enjoy making gifts for people. Not always sure they enjoy getting them, but hey, that's what family is for.

Anywho back to this month. TURKEY!! That's right Thanksgiving. My husbands favorite holiday (aside from his birthday, which to him is a holiday) This year since I look like I'm trying to smuggle a turkey to safety, I've very thankful for family and their offer to have us over. But once again thinking about food and what we put in our bodies has me asking, "What would be some good alternatives to the traditional Thanksgiving sides?"

So I've compiled a short list of some healthy twists on Thanksgiving stapels:

Mashed potatoes: 
Try Sweet Potatoes with cinnamon instead! I do this all the time. No need to add the butter.
They're called sweet for a reason ;)

Stuffing: it's a touchy subject for some people, but here's a recipe I found
Paleo Friendly Poultry Stuffing 
2 cups finely ground blanched almonds 
1 cup chopped onion (use chopped dried onion for a better flavour) 
1/2 cup chopped celery (optional) 
1 teaspoon ground sage 
1 teaspoon ground thyme chopped parsley 
1 tablespoon mild-flavoured oil (more if it seems too dry) pepper to taste 
Mix together all ingredients. Fill cavity of bird with the mixture, then roast. 

20 button mushrooms, stems and gills removed;
2 cups cooked crab meat, canned or fresh and finely chopped;
3 tbsp chives, minced;
3 cloves garlic, minced;
1/4 tsp dried oregano;
1/4 tsp dried thyme;
1/4 tsp homemade mayonnaise or the same amount of your favorite mustard;
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste;
Preheat your oven to 350 F.
Mix all the stuffing ingredients together in a bowl.
Scoop a generous portion of the stuffing into each mushroom cavity and bake in the preheated oven on a baking sheet for about 15 minutes.
Let cool a bit, but serve when still warm.

Well that's a nice start I think. I'll post more as I find them. Maybe I'll even make some and post my own reviews. Just remember it's not always necessary to add the sugar and butter to make food taste good.

Eggs and Bacon at 4am

Oh my! 2 posts in 2 days?!?! Whatever has come over me? ;) I wanted to post about this the other day, but felt that it would work best on it's own.

When your husband leaves for work before the sun is even thinking of starting it's day, it makes it hard to think about breakfast. A lot of early morning people I talk to often just grab a muffin or bagel and coffee and go forth to concur the day. The problem is that bagel or muffin gets turned into sugar (which makes you crash earlier) and fat to be used at a later date and stored in fun places like your gut (love handels anyone?) So I've always been of the mind set that if you can start your day with a protein high breakfast, you're off to a good start.

But how do you make eggs at 4:30 when the whole house is asleep and you need to leave at 5? Easy actually, you prep it head of time. Now I didn't come up with this idea, but I love it!! I found the idea on LifeHacker.com and they got it from here.

Things you'll need:
Eggs
Turkey Bacon (you can use real bacon if you want just cook it by itself first)
Cheese (optional)
Muffin tin
Oil (spray for tin)

It's super simple:
Turn the oven on the heat at 375
Oil the muffin tin
Place bacon in each hole
Crack an egg on top of the bacon
Add cheese if you want
Bake the whole sha-bang for 15 min (ish I had to do 20 in my oven)
Let cool and pop them out



I heard they freeze really well but I only made one tin on sunday so they are already almost gone. I take two of these and put them in my Ninjas lunch bag. Some times he has time to heat them up and eat them before he runs out the door, but most days he eats them on the go. Either way I know he's not going too hungry. ;)

How to Feed a Ninja...

I'm introducing a new segment today. I'm calling it "How to Feed a Ninja" I might actually just change the whole blog over to nutrition and health. But I'll deal with that later.

Some of you may know, I'm married to a Ninja. Not like from the movies, more like from the heart. My husband has been training at the Boston Martial Arts Center in Allston MA for about the past 10 years. He also is a CrossFitter. Soooooo he get's hungry, a lot...

When I use to pack him lunches I would honestly just grab any food in the fridge and fill his lunch bag. I never really thought about what I was putting in it till we got more involved in the CrossFit world and the Paleo diet. Now a days I'm much more Primal then Paleo. The difference being I don't mind having cheeses and dairy from time to time. Check out Whole9 for some great info about all that stuff.

Back to my Ninja, he needs to eat and to all you who might be wondering, he can make his own lunches and such, I just like doing it for him :). Since I have some time off I figured I would delve deeper into what I'm giving him vs. what he needs. My first challenge was to figure out how much he needs. I found a handy calorie calculator here. I'm sure there are more advanced ones out there, but I'm just starting out, so this one will do. Turns out hubby needs 3145 calories a day, not 2000.

But what does that mean? How much food is that? I decided to reverse engineer the amount of food he needs. Starting with what I gave him for lunch today. I got the numbers from CalorieKing.com:

Coffee 2
Two eggs 34 with turkey bacon 35
Salad 15 with Turkey 66 and Feta 45
Apple 53
Banana 105
2 Clementines 70
Almonds 164 with raisins 42
Celery 1 with Carrots 30

total calories = 662 (roughly)
Leaving a difference of 2483!! o_O
Thankfully tonights dinner will run about 1080 calories.

But unless I give the poor guy a can of crisco for a snack I might need to rethink the breakfast/lunch plan!! But how important are the calories? Enter science (or Wikipedia). Short answer very. They give us the energy to function. But what about other nutrition factors like protein and such. Well taking the same lunch we get the following for protein:

Coffee 0g
Two eggs 7.2g with turkey bacon 2g
Salad 1g with Turkey 18g and Feta 2.4g
Apple 0.5g
Banana 0.9g
2 Clementines 1.3g
Almonds 6g with raisins 0.4g
Celery 0g with Carrots 0.5g

total protein = 40.2g
He "needs" 78.3g/meal (based in 3 meals a day from the Calorie Calculator - Macro nutrients)

Bottom line he needs more food. So what do I give him? What do you feed a CrossFitting Ninja?
Over the next few weeks I'll be posting about my attempts to fulfill his nutritional requirement in the healthiest why I can. I'll be making regular post about nutritionally dense foods that aren't imposable to make. And even some short cuts when I come across them. 

I hope some of you found this helpful with your own nutrition questions and will check back to see how much I can fit in a lunch bag :)