A Healthier Cookie

Tropical Traditions gave me a jar of Gold Label Extra Virgin Coconut Oil to try out.

I have to be honest at first I had never heard of Coconut Oil. I didn't know how to cook with it. I had to figure out if it was even healthy to use in the kitchen.

Luckily I have a sister that works in health and nutrition. She told me that it is healthy. I also read up on Coconut oil before it arrived to me. This is straight from Tropical Traditions website:

As a cooking oil, its chemical structure is kept in tact and therefore is resistant to mutations of fatty acid chains even when used in higher cooking temperatures, unlike most vegetable oils. Research shows that the medium chain fatty acids found in coconut oil boosts the body’s metabolism, raises body temperatures, and helps provide greater energy which can lead to weight loss. For hundreds of tasty recipes from people who use coconut oil, visit FreeCoconutRecipes.com.

I used it on the boy's skin after a bath. I love how it smells and melts into their skin! Isaak always tries to eat the lotion. This is perfect for him because he can eat it.

I plan on using it to make a stir fry. Tofu is one of my newer loves. I'll post the recipe when I make this!

We also made healthier cookies! I'm a baker. Even though I'm trying to loose weight I still love to bake around this time of year. I've been trying to bake using healthier things in the mix.

The Recipe I Use for Chocolate Chip, Cherry Chip Cookies 

I love that these cookies contain oatmeal! 
Coconut Oil can replace butter!

Start:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 Degrees.

Cream the following together:

1. 1 cup Coconut Oil
2. 1 cup white sugar
3. 1 cup brown sugar

Add:

1. 1 teaspoon vanilla
2. 1/2 teaspoon salt
3. 1 teaspoon baking soda
4. 1 teaspoon baking powder

Blend in:

1. 2 cups flour
2. 2 1/2 cups oatmeal
3. 6 ounces chocolate chips, 6 ounces cherry chips.
4. 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Finish:

1. Spray a pan well. 
2. I used a medium Pampered Chef Scoop. 
3. Bake until light brown.
4. Place on a cooling rack when they've hardened up a little.
5. They taste good warm (straight out of the oven), room temperature and cold (we sometimes freeze them).
6. This made 55 cookies. We had a few and the rest went in the freezer for Christmas time. They tasted better then with using butter!

Disclaimer:
The opinions on this post are my personal take on the products. This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me.
I am not compensated to provide my opinion except for receiving the products themselves to test out.
If you have questions about this post please contact me at: alissa4illustration@hotmail.com

Food Should Taste Good!

Colies Kitchen is giving away a great snack for someone that is trying to loose weight!
I'm allowed one snack a day. This would be a great one!

A case of the winners flavor selection of Food Should Taste Good chips! All their flavors look good, but I think I'd choose multigrain, what about you?

Cash and Fruit For Classrooms

Songberries is hosting a great giveaway. Del Monte is giving one of their readers a $25 gift certificate!

Del Monte is having a contest online in support of teachers. The fruit is for classroom snack and to encourage educational activities about fruit and healthy eating choices. You can read more about the contest here.

Yesturday I Walked and Walked

I've been keeping up on the walking. It's a daily habit now. Yesterday I walked the most that I ever have. 7 laps.

That's over 2 miles, with 5 pounds strapped to my ankles and 6 pounds in my hands. I'm walking way faster then before.

I'm still watching what I eat. I do wish that my family liked Tofu as much as me. It's just yummy in stir fries. I think! They follow most everything else that I eat.

I ordered a new scale through CSN|Stores to review. That should be coming soon to our house. They ship about as fast as I walk. Our scale wasn't keeping it's batteries.

Last Day to Enter a Few Low Entry Giveaway's

• I have 2 CSN | Stores giveaways that end tonight at 10 pm. They are both for a $35 gift card. You can find them here and here.
• I have a Snugfits giveaway that also ends tonight at 10 pm. This is to win 2 baby or toddler's tee's. Their choices are awesome! Please enter this giveaway here.
• This giveaway ends on November 6. It's to win an Energizer smoke alarm and batteries. Right before day light savings hits! You can enter this giveaway here.

An Exercise You Can Do With the Kid's

Dining Room Table

I wish I had room for a huge dining room table in my house. We only have a space off to the side of our kitchen for a medium sized table.

I'd like one that looks like this:

One important thing to me is eating at home with my family. I love gatherings around a table!

Enter My Giveaways!

I have two CSN|Stores giveaways. Both are for $35. They can be found here and here.
There is a Snugfits giveaway to win 2 baby to toddler tees here.
Then there is a Energizer giveaway to win a smoke alarm and batteries here.

I Went Down a Pant Size!

All the hard work of walking very fast with weights and watching what I eat is starting to pay off!

I went down a pant size! I've lost a lot, but it's all over. It's not for every brand of pants, but I went shopping and got a size smaller then before.

Chicken Bitki

1. I use a mini food chopper for all the chopping, mincing. You can use a knife. It just takes longer.
2. Make bread crumbs first. I found that two slices of bread makes a cup. Dump the crumbs in a medium mixing bowl. 
3. Wash 1/2 a package of mushrooms. Chop them up next. Add to the mixing bowl.
4. Chop the chicken up last. Add to the mixing bowl.
5. Beat your eggs in a small bowl. Add nutmeg, salt and pepper. Beat more. Pour into mixing bowl. Mix everything together with clean hands.
6. I use a Medium Pampered Chef scoop to make 1/2 circles on a plate.
7. Heat oil in a pan.
8. Roll the scoops of chicken mix in flour and drop into the pan. Flatten with a spatula. Cook both sides.

They taste good plain, with ketchup or barbecue sauce.
The kids love this! It's a much healthier option to fast food chicken nuggets!

Kid's Need to Stay Fit

I have two boy's ages 2 and 5. It's important that they stay fit. Mica my 5 year old has a program with one of his preschool's (he goes to 2) that is called Stretch and Grow. They teach Mica exercises as well as good nutritional facts.
A Giveaway Addicted Mommy is giving away an 18" hop ball from Aqua Leisure/First Fitness.

This is some information from Aqua Leisure/First Fitness website:

Getting kids up and active is the main goal... and FirstFitness offers a wide variety of products tailored to do just that. Each fitness item target benefits in one or more of these six key areas:

• Cardio: Increase heart and respiratory health and stamina.
• Strength: Helps stimulate healthy muscle growth.
• Agility: Teaches body awareness and balance.
• Performance: Aids and enhances child's exercise performance.
• Flexibility: Keeps muscles and joints functional and safe from injury.
• Skills: Develops the basics needed to do well in sports. 

They Fit!

A few things have changed in the last few weeks. I have shirts that were too tight in the arms that are now fitting. Before I was too embarrassed to wear these shirts before. Not anymore!

I use my 3 pound weights at my desk to do arm exercises. That must be helping!

I have underwear that would not fit before, now fit too.

I walk and walk at lunch with my 3 pound weights, totaling 6 pounds and my 2.5 pound weights strapped to my ankles, totaling 5 pounds. That too must be helping!

Inspiration

I'm an art teacher. my students sometimes comment when I walk around the school, Golds Gym and a few other businesses during lunch time.

Last week was midterms. I began walking around, and there were a bunch of my students out back. They were drawing with sidewalk chalk. I thought, "Oh a few images to look at." Nope, they had written messages to me. How thoughtful! ;)

When I walked around today; I ran in to get my camera after walking 6 laps. Three extra laps from when I started at the tail end of the summer!

The Worst Halloween Treats

There's a really great article here about what not to eat for Halloween. Maybe I shall state the better choice to eat for Halloween.

Worst "Fun Size" Candy Bar (my favorite, no more) 
Butterfinger Bar (fun size bar)
100 calories
4 g fat (2 g saturated)
10 g sugars

Eat This, Instead!
3 Musketeers (fun size bar)
63 calories
2 g fat (1.5 g saturated)
10 g sugars

Worst Fruity Candy
Brach’s Airheads (3 pieces)
140 calories
1.5 g fat (1 g saturated)
19 g sugars

Here’s the basic formula for an Airhead: Sugar and filler carbohydrates, artificial colors and flavors, and partially hydrogenated oils—a source of trans fat. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like our Eat This Instead, Dum Dums, are nutritional paragons, but they do have two noteworthy advantages over Airheads: They have no heart-wrecking oils, and they're hard candy. That means they dissolve slowly on your tongue, letting you enjoy the sweetness over time.

Eat This, Instead!
Spangler Dum Dum Pops (3 pops)
77 calories
0 g fat
105 g sugars

Worst Novelty Candy (another past favorite of mine)
Reese’s Pumpkin
170 calories
10 g fat (3 g saturated)
16 g sugars

This one should send your gimmick radar into the red zone. It’s simply an oversized peanut butter cup shaped like a pumpkin. What price novelty? Nearly two-thirds more calories than a regular Reese’s peanut butter cup! Grab two bite-size Reese's instead—you'll save more than half the calories, fat, and sugar. 

Eat This, Instead!
Reese's Bite Size Peanut Butter Cups (2 pieces)
72 calories
4 g fat (3 g saturated)
6 g sugars

• Three miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups—the kind you find in office candy bowls and trick-or-treat-bags—fill your belly with more sugar than a glazed doughnut.
• Half a pack of Skittles has more sugar than a scoop of Haagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream Ice Cream. 
• Nine Twizzlers carry as many calories as a Wendy’s Double Stack Burger.

These are some spooky treats. And Halloween is only the beginning of the eating season: Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner.

Survival Tip 1: Toss the candy bowl
Alabama researchers found that people who have snacks within reach when they're watching TV consume more calories per day overall. But instead of simply relocating the bowl to another table, limit the potential for mindless munching by keeping the candy bagged and in the cupboard.

Survival Tip 2: Consume drinks before treats
Drinking 16 ounces of water before a meal fills the stomach, quells hunger, and helps you lose weight, according to a study presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Use this strategy to help tamp your candy cravings. Just don't substitute a sugary beverage for the water or this strategy will backfire: A can of soda has more sugar than two Hershey’s Take 5 bars.

Survival Tip 3: Work out on Halloween morning
Lifting weights reduces levels of blood sugar by 15 percent for more than 12 hours after you’ve left the gym, according to research from Syracuse University. Why does that matter? Some of the sugar you consume will stay in your blood stream, providing energy to your cells, instead of pitching a tent in your belly.

Survival Tip 4: Switch to dark chocolate
It won’t necessarily save you calories, but dark chocolate boasts a bevy of health benefits that milk chocolate can’t claim.

Survival Tip 5: Chew gum
Sort through any trick-or-treat bag and you’ll undoubtedly discover a handful of Super or Dubble Bubble—those small pink cubes wrapped in old-fashioned, end-twisted candy papers. Instead of plowing through the chocolates and taffies, throw a big gob of the gum in your mouth. The chewing suppresses cravings, and each piece has only about 15 calories.

Survival Tip 6: Don't hand out your favorite candy (I'll remember this for next year)
If your favorite candy is Milk Duds, and you’re handing out Milk Duds all night, doesn’t it seem likely that you’re going to wind up with a pound of chocolate and caramel in your stomach by night’s end? Of course! And that’s not even factoring in how many Duds you’ll plow through as they sit on the counter in the days leading up to Halloween. Choose something less tempting. 

Survival Tip 7: Keep your candy calorie load to 400
The fewer calories you take in during candy season, the better off you’ll be heading into turkey season. So if you worry that you risk overindulgence, set a caloric limit and hold yourself to it. Four hundred is a good number—indulgent yet not overly destructive. That means you could eat every “Eat This Instead” on our list, and have 65 calories left for one of your personal favorites.  

Survival Tip 8: Don't skip dinner
A healthy dinner will take the edge off your candy craving, not to mention temper the blood-sugar rush that converts your body into a flab factory and puts you at risk for diabetes.

Survival Tip 9: Take it outside
The worst thing you can do on Halloween night, after most of the trick-or-treaters have cleared off the street, is set your candy bowl by the door where you can grab a handful every day on your way out. Noshing 300 extra candy calories a day will add a pound of flab to your frame in less than two weeks. Instead, set the bowl on the porch before you go to bed. The leftover candy will be gone by morning, guaranteed.  

Survival Tip 10: Remember Halloween is a one time event
A study in the journal of Nature Neuroscience found that eating junk food doesn’t just satisfy cravings—it creates them. That’s right; junk food is addictive. Limit your sugar splurging to October 31. If you start a week early, you’re going to have a serious candy habit to break after Halloween. You might find it to be frightfully difficult.  

Southwestern Burger

I made a great burger this last weekend!

In a mixing bowl dump in one pound of ground beef or ground turkey.

I used my mini food chopper to finely chop 1/2 cup oat meal. Dump it into the mixing bowl. Open a can of black beans, rinse them, and add 1/2 the beans to the mini food chopper. Chop them up roughly. Add the beans to the mixing bowl.

Cut up 1/4 cup cilantro. I got a batch of cilantro from the store, and just cut up 1/2 of it (that was 1/4 cup). Dice 1/2 a Roma tomato, 1/3 cup white onion, 1/3 cup bell pepper (any color). Add them all to the mixing bowl.


Sprinkle feta cheese in the mixing bowl. I start to mix everything at this point. I add enough feta until I can see it in the mix.


Add in an egg. This will help hold your burger together.

Start forming them in patties. Broil or cook on the grill.


Optional, slice avocado to put on your burger. It has so much flavor that no additional sauces or cheese is necessary. I used wheat buns.


I used the remainder black beans on a salad for the next day.