Dessert: Light on Calories and Budget

I love dessert.  Chap would rather have another serving of whatever dinner was, but the Monkey definitely takes after me and appreciates sweet things.  We are well aware of what sweet things can do to the waistline and our bodies overall, so dessert has to be made over in our house!  I will note that we aren't afraid of full fat foods in our house - we just watch what we eat overall to make sure fats are balanced with our protein and carbs.  Hence the butter in this recipe!  Fat is not the enemy.

Since we had lots of apples in the crisper, I decided to make a fake apple pie.  Here's what I did!

Fake Apple Pie
Serves 3
Ingredients:
*3 apples
*1/2 tbsp butter
*Cinnamon
*Nutmeg
*Honey or other natural sweetener

Step by Step:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and melt butter in bottom of baking dish.

Core and slice apples.  I love my apple corer/slicer!!

Remove melted butter and stir apples in the baking dish.  Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg on top.

Drizzle a very small amount of honey onto the apples and stir once more.

Bake in the oven about 15-20 minutes or until apples are tender.  Enjoy!

I would love to try other spices in this recipe, and maybe I will come up with a healthy oatmeal topping!  I hope you love your budget and calorie friendly dessert!

Budget Protein + Surprise Salad Ingredient

I did a Jillian Michaels DVD on Amazon Prime this morning. Since it was my second time doing it, I was definitely more prepared to follow along and (mostly) keep up! My breakfast afterward of oatmeal and trail mix was good, but by lunchtime today I needed some greens and protein! I should probably mention that I'm also a little tired of meat...

I must say, even at $2.99 a dozen (the most we would pay), EGGS are a really affordable source of protein! Each egg contains about 6 grams of protein. I hard boiled 4 eggs for the Monkey and myself to share. That's only $2 for plenty of protein to top a salad!  The Monkey was so excited to eat the "oak" or yolk, in two year old speak! 

As for my surprise salad ingredient, I cut up a GRAPEFRUIT and added it to my salad today! I didn't need any other dressing other than a tiny drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and the grapefruit was a nice change from lemon!  I know it's not original to add fruit to salad, but adding the grapefruit was certainly different for me!

I'm still following the Tone It Up workout plan and enjoyed fueling my body for it today! 

My Lunch Salad

A Two Year Old Approved Lunch Plate

(Yes, that is pepper on his eggs. He loves pepper on pretty much everything!)

Best Burger Side

We had burgers for dinner tonight because my grandparents sent us an Omaha Steak package for Christmas. We are set on meat for awhile, which REALLY saves on our weekly food budget. While we don't eat it every night, meat can be a healthy addition to your weekly menu. We stick to 3-4 oz portions (1-2 for the Monkey), and pair with lots of interesting sides and additions. 

Tonight, because I've been wanting take-out style burgers and fries, I bought three different potatoes at the Fresh Market to make oven fries. I purchased a russet, orange sweet, and PURPLE sweet potato! I peeled and sliced the potatoes, mixed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and popped them in a 375* oven for 20ish minutes. They were delicious and definitely a lot healthier than restaurant fries!

Chap was super healthy and added a salad to his meal. I'm set to eat green vegetables tomorrow! I'm not counting the five pieces of baby lettuce on my burger...

I do love a good burger and fries!

Affordable Workout Equipment

I researched the price of dumbbells on Amazon because many of the Tone It Up workouts use them. I have kettlebells and resistance bands already, so I could have taken the time to modify the workouts to make them work.  Have you ever tried to take time to modify a workout with a 2 year old running around? It feels next to impossible...

...but I found that January is a great time to shop for weights at stores like Target! Using the Target Cartwheel app and the sale price, I was able to buy two 6-pound weights for $12 total! I'm excited to have such an affordable way to keep up with my *free* TIU workouts!

Great Budget Link!

Having trouble lowering your grocery bill? Greatist put together this awesome list of 44 foods under $1 per serving. Most of them are WAY under a dollar and are perfect bases for healthy meals!

Check it out!

http://greatist.com/health/44-healthy-foods-under-1 

Fueling with Breakfast

Do you have a go-to breakfast?  We certainly do in this house.  All three of us need something warm, filling, and affordable to start our day.

Usually my breakfast consists of oatmeal and some sort of topping.  Oatmeal is super affordable at any store.  Even at Whole Foods - $1.50 per pound in the bulk bin.  If I shop at the Dekalb Farmer's Market, I can get rolled oats for $1.49 per pound and steel cut for $1.19 per pound!  Lately I've also purchased Whole Foods' campus trail mix ($6.99 per pound) from their bulk bin to top my oatmeal.  All it takes is a handful, and I get a great mix of nuts and raisins to flavor my breakfast.

I also really love a tiny drizzle of honey and flax seed meal mixed into my oatmeal!  It tastes a little nuttier and only needs a tiny bit of sweet to make it delicious.  We buy whole flax seed and grind it in our coffee grinder.  It's on my list of "things I want but don't have to have" to get another grinder dedicated to flax and spices, but it hasn't happened yet!

I've also discovered, thanks to Chap, that oatmeal does not have to be sweet.  Do you ever have a morning where something sweet sounds awful?  Every so often that's the case for me.  He is great about cooking an egg and kale and topping the oatmeal with it.  I've also learned I like a little dash of soy sauce with this meal.  It sounds crazy, and for the longest time I resisted trying it, but the savory oatmeal can actually be a great change of pace.

Sometimes we keep boiled eggs in the fridge - I love a bowl of oatmeal with trail mix served with a boiled egg on the side!  The Monkey (being the two year old he is) always wants to "try Mommy's egg" even though he already knows he loves them!  I end up eating 1 egg plus a bite, and the Monkey takes the rest!  Talk about an easy breakfast!

New habit to help my muscles - DRINKING MORE WATER!  I have a glass while the oatmeal is cooking and won't let myself start coffee until I've had my water.  Our condo is really dry, so I'm glad my husband pointed out that I wasn't getting enough water throughout the day.  Being mindful of it helps so much!

I'm thinking about dinners for this week, so watch for a post about this week's budget meals!

Hello, 2014!

I can't even imagine how many blogs were created on January 1st.  I'm almost embarrassed that this is one of them!  I wanted a place to document my healthy eating and fitness goals and steps to meet them!  I have been working on these goals for awhile now - they aren't New Year's resolutions.  The new year just coincided with my decision to blog about my life!

A bit about me - I'm a wife to a consulting arborist, stay at home mom to a two year old (best known as the Monkey), and a former teacher.  My husband (Chap, as I call him) owns his own business, so his schedule is super busy but also can be flexible.  We recently moved to a condo in Midtown Atlanta and FINALLY sold a home in Athens.  The months of overlap between buying and selling were tight, but we did it!  Our weekly food budget dropped to $100 a week for our family of three.  It sounds bad, but we manage to eat well - it's become my secret mission to prove that you can eat healthy on a small food budget.  Perhaps my blog can make it not-so-secret.

Fitness-wise, I will admit I'm starting with a decent base of fitness.  I run regularly and was training for a 10K...until I learned it was full by the time I tried to register.  Whoops.  So I can run a decent amount with no race to document it!  I use the Ease into 10K app regularly and even go back to earlier weeks to increase my speed and do shorter running intervals.

Recently (maybe November-ish?) I signed up to receive the Tone It Up girls' email.  I'd tried a couple of the workouts on my own and liked them.  In fact, I did the Saved By the Bell kettlebell workout for a few weeks with awesome results.  I shed a few extra pounds that I didn't necessarily need to, but my muscles really started to develop!

When I saw the Tone It Up Love Your Body series, I was a little curious about it.  I've committed myself to doing the challenge.  You can do ANYTHING for six weeks!  Well, most anything workout related.

So that's me.  I'm working daily on loving my body, loving my family, and just all around loving life!  I hope to share meal planning ideas, recipes, and workout ideas for those with limited time and energy!  Having taught for 8 years, I know what that's like!

Here's to 2014 being awesome!