If I find a healthy recipe that tastes great and requires almost NO effort, you better believe I'm gonna share it with you! I'm all about NOT making things from scratch if I can find a healthy ready-made option. This store-bought sauce is sooo good.

I even served it to my kids as salad dressing this week and they loved it. I'm sure I'll find lots more great uses for it. I'd like to try using it to stir-fry some veggies. For now, here's one recipe that turned out well:

Easy Buffalo Chicken:

Place a package of boneless chicken breasts or thighs in the slow cooker, cover with buffalo sauce (I used 1/4 to 1/3 of the bottle), set on low for 4-8 hours, depending on your slow cooker. (Chicken breasts tend to come out a bit drier in the slow cooker than chicken thighs)
When done, the chicken should shred easily with two forks
Serve over reheated frozen rice or quinoa, along with
Reheated frozen broccoli or other vegetables of your choice
Boom. Done.

I like this frozen brown rice from Trader Joe's, but I also sometimes use the frozen quinoa from whole foods. You can just remove from the plastic, put in a bowl, and microwave to reheat.

Voilà! Hope you enjoy!

May 31, 2015

Andrea Isabelle Lucas

Food, Body Love

Ridiculously Easy Thai Chicken Salad

May 31, 2015

Andrea Isabelle Lucas

Food, Body Love

This meal is not perfect. For example, I could have made the dressing from scratch, omitting all sugar. I could have used organic chicken, pre-cooked during some meal-prepping extravaganza earlier in the week. I could have used vegetables grown lovingly by me and my children in our very own permaculture garden. You get the idea.

It's not perfect. It is, however, ridiculously easy, and in my opinion, healthy.

Right now, for me, great or even good work just fine. Perfect isn't necessary. Here's a well-written blog post about that.

I've found, as a busy mom and business owner, my good intentions in the kitchen don't always pan out, and I've tossed one too many ingredients in the trash that I thought I'd get around to cooking, and never did.

Give me simplicity!

I want a nice, easy, healthy meal, and I know that if I don't shop for and keep easy-to-use ingredients on hand, I will cave and end up ordering take-out, or eating something not so good for me.

The only work involved here is washing and cutting up a cucumber. That's it. All of the other ingredients are pre-washed, pre-cooked or pre-packaged in some way.

Ridiculously Easy Thai Chicken Salad

Salad greens (I like to use organic spring mix)
Shredded cabbage (just buy the bagged stuff, organic if possible)
Cucumber (washing and chopping this is the only work involved in this recipe)
Trader Joe's grilled chicken strips (they're not organic, but they're a quick, easy source of lean protein and they taste pretty good.)
Pre-cooked quinoa (I just bought a bag from the frozen section at Whole Foods and left in the fridge to thaw.)
Trader Joe's Spicy Peanut Vinaigrette. OMG, THIS STUFF IS AMAZING!! THAT'S RIGHT, I'M SHOUTING ABOUT IT!!
I added a few cashews, but this may be overkill since there's already peanut dressing.

That's it!

Seriously, YOU NEED THIS DRESSING:

That's all folks. If you give it a try, or if you come up with any interesting variations, leave a comment and let me know!

November 8, 2014

Andrea Isabelle Lucas

Food, Body Love

Operation: Beach Bootcamp

November 8, 2014

Andrea Isabelle Lucas

Food, Body Love

Note: The strategies I used during this little "bootcamp" do not accurately reflect my current habits. I'm learning all the time. I recommended reading more recent posts from the Body Love category to stay up to date!

The first goal I've decided to tackle this year, for health AND for fun, is getting into my personal best physical shape for an upcoming Nicaraguan surf retreat on February 15th. This bikini is standing by!

My plan

Exercise:

I'm really happy with my strength overall. The emphasis for now is on losing extra holiday pounds. I also want to pay a little extra attention to upper body strength to help with paddling during my surf trip, and help me progress with my aerial skills. I'll be doing:

Cardio 5 x week - Interval training or other cardio classes that will burn claories, strengthen and get it all done in an hour - If I'm working out on my own, I'll run for about 30 minutes
Mind Body Class 2 x week - yoga, barre, or home practice
Pull-up training - I should have enough time to run through The 21-Day Pullup Challenge twice!
Aerials once a week. If I want to see progress on the silks, I've got to practice, practice, practice.

Nutrition:

Shout out to my nutritionist, Julie! Lots of these are habits I normally practice anyway, but I'll be cutting back on extras and focusing on making the basics really count.

Commit to eating 3 meals a day plus a couple snacks (no skipping meals, no getting carried away with snacking, and no substituting snack foods for meals. That means no Pinkberry yogurt for lunch... for now!)
Drink lots of water
Commit to having salad and dark green veggies every day
Limit grains to 1-2 servings per day
Eat lean protein every day
Eat so many vegetables I can hardly stand it

I got started on this plan on January 2nd, and I already feel really good. My mood has lifted and my energy is better.

Do you currently have weight loss goals you'd like to achieve? Other health or strength goals? I'd love to hear about them, or have you join me in this winter beach bootcamp!