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General Weight Loss Tips

Token Fat Girl Cook Along: Gyros

Welcome to the second installment of the Token Fat Girl Cook Along! This week we made gyros. And the challenge was to make one ingredient from scratch. The typically gyro consists of meat, such as chicken, beef or lamb, tzatziki sauce (yogurt with cucumbers and dill), and pita. The rest is up to you.

I really cut it close this week with my gyro making them last night and finding myself at the grocery store around 8pm. The gyros were served around 10pm last night so my challenge was making gyros with meat and yogurt sauce from scratch in a limited amount of time.

I couldn’t find a lot of lamb and I am weird about buying ground meat from chain grocery stores so I decided to buy lamb chops and steaks instead. I knew that I would have to puree the meat anyway and figured I could skip having ground meat.

I used this recipe as a base. But skipped all of the refrigeration. I placed the meat (pulled from bone) into the food processor with four slices of thick-cut bacon, 1 medium yellow onlion, marjoram, oregano, salt and pepper. Processed until it became a puree. Which honestly, is kinda gross looking.

I spread the meat puree into a bread dish and baked at 350 degrees for about an hour. During that hour I would take the meat log out and drain the fat. I did that about three times.

Once the log is done, let it sit for about 10 minutes before cutting into thin slices. I then browned these slices on the skillet. I found the slicing part difficult as the meat was falling apart.

On to the tzatziki sauce. This was another area of short cuts for me. I could not find plan unflavored greek yogurt at my local grocery store. Nor could I find plan full fat yogurt. How annoying is that? My local Food Lion has about a million flavors of crap-tastic chemical yogurt, but not one container of full fat yogurt. I remembered that I had some plain full fat yogurt at home, at least a cup left and some cream-top sour cream and decided to make that work.

I didn’t have time to strain the yogurt, so I just left it as is. 1 C full fat yogurt, 3/4 C full fat sour cream, 1/2 t (plus more to taste) garlic powder, 1-2 T lemon juice, fresh dill, chopped english cucumbers and salt and pepper. This came out delicious. I’ve made tzatziki sauce many times before and found this just as refreshing.

Tzatziki sauce.

Store bought flat bread.

Finished gyro! The verdict? Delicious! Josh really liked it a lot too. I am not set on this being the best gyro meat recipe. It was great with everything, but not flavorful enough on it’s own. I liked it though. The process grossed me out a lot. I think I’d like to try this with a rotisserie oven next time.

I’m also pleased with how good it was on less time. I skipped a ton of steps and the results did not suffer. This could easily be made on a regular week night in about an hour.

Thank you so much to those who participated!

Caroline: My Fascinating Life

Rachael: Treadmill Truth

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February 4th Challenge!

Post Date: February 10th 2011

Details: We will have one week to complete the recipe and then post (with photos) our results on the same day.

To make the recipe a little more fun I will post a challenge for the recipe such as: you must use an artichoke in your recipe, or use one local ingredient, or it must be made bento-box style. I encourage us all to make the recipe your own and find ways to make it work individually. For example: making it vegan, gluten-free, made with whole wheat pasta, make it miniature, deconstructed, change the filling, make it low calorie etc.

All you have to do is leave a comment in this post letting me know you’re in and I will link to your blog on reveal day!

Our  assignment begins Thursday January 27th, making the following Thursday (the 3rd) is reveal day! You can make the recipe at any time during the week, just make sure you schedule your post for Thursday.

Here is this week’s recipe:

This recipe (and photo) comes from Best Recipes Evar.

Challenge: Make 1/2 or 1/4 of the recipe as is and use the rest of the dough in an inventive way. Make pizza crust, cinnamon rolls, calzones…you name it! Make it your own.

Time to fire up those ovens!

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General Weight Loss Tips

Power Oatmeal

I’ve been eating this oatmeal off and on for about three weeks now. I love oatmeal in the morning, because it’s so darn filling, but my previous recipe called for brown sugar. And because eating unsweetened oatmeal would leave me feeling like Oliver Twist, I decided to add a banana and some raisins.

I call this Power Oatmeal because it makes me feel powerful and because it features Zenergy Powerballs. Powerballs people, powerballs!

Okay…here’s how I make my oatmeal:

1/2 C old fashioned oats and 1 C. unsweetened vanilla almond milk

Add to a saucepan. And hey, as I was snapping up photos this morning I realized that my breakfast features not one, but three christmas gifts! Here you will find a stainless steel, copper rimmed pot from my sister. Thanks sister!

Using this rad bird bowl from my mom!

Once the oatmeal starts boiling add one chopped up banana and 1/8 C raisins. Stir. Let cook for another two minutes. My trick to perfect oatmeal is to take it off the heat before you think it looks done. Oatmeal will continue to cook in your bowl, so if you take it off the heat when it’s still runny it will firm up to the perfect (not dry) consistency. I learned this the hard way. I always thought I couldn’t make oatmeal until I did this.

I put a powerball in the microwave for about 15 seconds to soften (this probably isn’t recommended, but I’m a rule breaker). I really like the almond and coconut flavors the best. They are filled with natural stuff like dates, almonds, and cacao nibs, which I enjoy a lot.

Here’s the powerball! These were sent to me by the owner of the company Peggy Sue Honeyman Scott (try saying that ten times fast). What I like about her is that she is hands-on with the promotion of her company. She contacted me personally back in November and even included a nice little note with her Zenergy Powerballs. I like that, I like personal. And I like these powerballs in my oatmeal.

Top with a little shredded, unsweetened coconut if that’s your thing.

And enjoy with a nice glass of grapefruit juice in your special Floyd stem wear. Another Christmas gift from my sister in law. Which is proof that if you give me a gift I will actually use it…a lot.

So because Peggy Sue is so awesome she agreed to send one of my readers a sampling of her Zenergy Powerballs, which honestly make a great breakfast by themselves or snack. I’ve been known to eat one while making dinner.

Just leave a comment and I’ll draw a name at random and have them send out to you!

What are you favorite oatmeal toppings?

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General Weight Loss Tips

Considering a Raw Vegan Diet?: Advice to Help Make the Transition Easily

Are you considering trying a a raw foods diet? Would you like to learn more about the many benefits of this type of diet? Or do you need assistance choosing the right raw food books or other information that can help you to make the changeover easily?

Raw food diets have become more popular in the last few years as many more people want to live their life as balanced as they possibly can while also dropping their weight and increasing their overall appearance.

Moving to a raw foods diet has some amazing health benefits that most people notice almost immediately. These include increasing your energy levels, developing clearer skin and shedding pounds. However, for many, making the switch to eating raw can be very challenging. For starts, transitioning to a raw foods diet calls for mastering a new way of preparing food that no longer relies on cooking it. However, it also means cultivating new tastes and trying out new foods that have dissimilar textures and flavors. There are, however, many tips to help make your transition to a raw foods diet much simpler:

1) Learn the right raw food diet recipes for you. There are a large number of raw foods recipes you can try, but for those making the initial switch, you may have the most success by creating raw recipes that are similar to the cooked foods you like the most. There are raw food recipes for even the most standard “comfort foods” like pizza, chips and burgers. The raw food copies will not be exactly like their cooked counterparts, but they will have enough of a similar flavor to make transitioning process better, and they will also be better for you as well.

2) Be Snack Prepared. For those moving to a raw vegan diet, one of the biggest detractors is often the failure to feel “full” and the desire to snack. This is in part a result of our tendency to overeat at meals (especially in the United States), but you can help remedy this by making sure you prepare plenty of raw vegan diet snacks each day and have them easily available for whenever the snack urge hits.

3) Make the transition slowly. Don’t try switching completely to a raw vegan diet on a single day. Instead gradually transition over a few weeks or even a month, to the diet. Start by exchanging one cooked meal a day with a raw version (plus plenty of raw snacks) and then eventually work up to having all your meals uncooked.

Hopefully these tips will help you be successful when transitioning to a raw vegan diet. For those just beginning on a raw foods diet, you may find the first few days to be the most challenging. Hopefully these tips will help you get past these early difficult days and allow you to move onto a more healthy and energetic life!

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