Homemade potato chips

I'm a sucker for potato chips. When it comes to junk food, potato chips are my vice. However, as you know, chips can be very high in calories and saturated fat. Here is a recipe for homemade potato chips that cuts down on the things that are bad for you but satisfies that craving.

Ingredients
4 Yukon gold or russet potatoes
Olive oil
Seasoning of your choice, fresh herbs, or just salt and pepper

Slice the potatoes lengthwise very thin, about the thickness of two quarters stacked on one another. In a bowl, combine olive oil (and herbs if you are using them). Dump the potato slices into the bowl and toss to coat completely with olive oil. Lay out flat on a baking sheet covered in foil. Coat the top side with seasoning and salt and pepper and cook in oven at 375 for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and flip each slice over.sprinkle more seasoning and return to oven for another 10 minutes, or until the chips start to brown. Remove from oven and serve!

Some ideas for seasoning: Cajun spice mix, Rosemary and garlic, seasoning salt and pepper, chili powder cayenne pepper and brown sugar (spicy sweet), or just plain salt and pepper.

Please enjoy!

Salmon Bruscetta

When I wrote my blog entry earlier this week, I got to thinking about how, when I started MyFitnessPal, I actually had trouble eating enough calories to keep up with my workout routine. That's because when it comes to most of my meals, I eat unprocessed food. With the exception of peanut butter, bread, and a few other miscellaneous items, if it comes in a cardboard box or a plastic bag, I generally don't eat it. (Not gonna lie, I ate a box of Girl Scout cookies to myself) So when it comes to the big meals, I eat very low-calorie food.

Now, I don't expect everyone to do this. However, my point is that if you are looking to lose weight or eat a little healthier, cutting down on your processed foods is probably a good idea. Most of my recipes on here are, of course, very low on processed food. Here's another recipe to add to your low-calorie, high flavor arsenal. It's a little more useful over the summer, when the tomatoes are in season, but we are still getting semi-decent tomatoes down here in SoCal. So I thought I would share one of my favorite quick and easy recipes, Salmon Bruscetta.

Ingredients (for 2 people)

1/2-3/4 lb salmon

3 tomatoes, diced

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 onion, diced

1 handful basil, roughly chopped

Extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 (or grill, your choice).

In a small mixing bowl, toss together the tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper until thoroughly mixed. Be sure to add enough olive oil to coat the ingredients, but not so much that it's soupy or drenched.

On a baking sheet, lay out enough foil to surround the salmon. Place the salmon on the foil, and then add the bruscetta mixture. Wrap the foil around the salmon and bruscetta. Place in oven and cook for 20-25 minutes.

Note: This recipe tastes best when fresh tomatoes and salmon are used. If you can't get your salmon from a fresh fish market, get it from the fresh fish section of the grocery store, NOT the frozen ones on the shelves. Take it from my experience, it doesn't taste good!!

Please enjoy!

I'm back and I have news - Carbs are your friend!

I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth, I swear. I've been drowning in the depths of personal training certification exams, job searching, and now getting my body used to waking up at 4:30 AM to train earlybird clients. It's been about 3 weeks (and a thousand cups of coffee) since I started my new job and I'm finally getting used to the busy life again. Life is good.

I return to my blog with renewed goals - blog-related, professional, and educational. I'm excited to announce that I'm starting on my path to earn my master's degree in Exercise Physiology and Nutritional Sciences. This means that over the next 1.5 years, I get to take all those "fun" classes in college I managed to avoid, like various Chemistry classes, as well as microbiology and physiology. Yay. Sarcasm aside, I'm really excited to begin this journey; I believe it will better equip me with the knowledge to inform other people how to better their health and fitness, especially you, my readers! I'm also accessing resources to help give my clients a better workout, and I try to find fun and new exercises every week to keep changing things up. Finally, my goal is to start updating this thing at least biweekly, always adding to my arsenal of healthy, tasty recipes and safe health and fitness tips.

Which brings me to the point of this post. When I ask my clients what they are doing for their diet, the word "carbs" is almost always used, and not in a positive way. Here's the thing. Carbohydrates are your primary source of energy, and should be the main part of your diet, whether you are trying to lose weight or not. The basis of the low-carb fad that has swept the nation is that people eat too many carbs and should cut back. This may be the case for some people, but in my opinion (which is backed up by numerous sources), the issue is not carb intake on its own, but overall calorie intake as a whole.

American College of Sports Medicine and the USDA recommend that 65% of your daily calories should come from carbohydrates. 25% should come from fat, and the remaining 10-15% should come from protein. As a whole, to maintain a healthy body weight and provide ample energy stores for your body, you should not consume more than the recommended calorie intake for your age, height, weight, and activity level. If you are trying to lose weight, you should really be no more than at a 500-calorie deficit per day, which will allow you to safely lose 1 pound per week.

I know. Too many numbers. Here's my suggestion. Check out MyFitnessPal, an online calorie counter. You can even download it as an app for iPhone. It completely breaks down exactly how many grams of each nutrient you should be eating every day, from carbohydrates and fat to sodium, cholesterol, and vitamin C. It's 100% tailored for you, because you enter in your age, weight, height, activity level, and how much weight you are looking to lose. It comes up with a daily calorie count based on this information, and it's the same number that I would come up with from using the ACSM-approved equation.

Here's the cool part. You eat a bowl of Kellogg's Corn Flakes with 1% milk for breakfast and wash it down with a glass of Tropicana orange juice. You type in "Kellogg's Corn Flakes" and up pops the calorie count (with a breakdown of the nutrients) of one serving. You add it to your diary and it deducts the calories from the amount that you need for the rest of the day. If it doesn't have the nutrition information available, you can add it in yourself. You can also add in workouts that you have done for the day, which will add to the calories you need to consume for the day. It's a safe and effective way to lose or maintain your weight, and make sure that you are getting all the nutrients you need.

It can get laborious to enter in everything you eat, day after day. Some people aren't into calorie counting; it feels like someone nagging at you all day about what you are eating. Here's my challenge: Do it for 3 days. On the first day, eat everything that you normally eat and record it. You'll find yourself thinking of your portion sizes, which, in my opinion, is the largest cause of weight gain. You need to know exactly how much you ate to get the accurate calorie count, so you'll find yourself thinking "how many cups of cereal did I have?" and "how many handfuls of chips did I go for?" Be as honest and as accurate as you can. No one else is going to see your calorie count, and it's only going to help you. At the end of the day, see where you are in relation to where you should be.

Day 2: If your calorie count is over where it should be, think of how you can reduce it. Smaller portion sizes, substitute processed foods with raw foods (which by nature generally have less calories), cut out soda (liquid calories add up very quickly), whatever it takes. Be as accurate as possible with your portion sizes. See where you are at the end of the day.

Day 3: Try to replicate your diet from the previous day, but without recording what you eat. Try to eyeball the portion sizes, and remember that carbs are your friend. It will help get your food intake under control without being a slave to your calorie counter.

Try to eat the same portions of foods every day. Then you don't have to count it, but you know that you are around your target calorie intake for the day. Moderation is key. Losing weight does not have to mean (and shouldn't mean) starving yourself, or depriving yourself of things that you want. It means taking it in moderation, and making sure you are getting the nutrients you need to sustain energy. A balanced diet is the easiest and safest way to lose weight, and to keep it off. A balanced diet, once you've figured out how to achieve it, is a lifestyle change that you can adopt even when you're done losing weight, because it doesn't require you do to silly things like turning your burger buns into lettuce. All it asks for is to give your body what it needs. And what your body needs is

CARBS!

Homemade tomato sauce

For the past few weeks, I have been experimenting with homemade tomato sauce. I'm talking about the tomato sauce in a can from, say, Hunt's or X Grocery Store brand. I've been trying to buy as little as possible from the grocery store since we have such an abundance of food at the farmers markets here, and it's still tomato season out in California! So far I've made 3 dinners with tomato sauce as the base: my own spaghetti sauce recipe (which I'll share sometime in the future!), stuffed zucchini, and last night I made homemade chili. They have all come out amazing! Using the fresh tomatoes as opposed to the canned tomato sauce really adds that extra flavor. Here's the method I've found that best makes a substitute for canned tomato sauce.

Peeling and De-Seeding the Tomatoes

For every 15 oz can of tomato sauce + 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes, use 6 large fresh tomatoes. Boil a large pot of water and have a bowl of ice water standing by. Once the water is boiling, place the tomatoes in for a minute or two until you see the skin starting to peel off. Using a slotted spoon, remove the tomatoes and dump them in the ice water. Let them cool for about a minute, then peel the skins off with your fingers. Cut off the tops of the tomatoes so you can see the seed chambers inside. Over a garbage can, squeeze the tomato so the seeds drip out. You can also use your fingers to scoop out the seeds as best you can.

Crushing and flavoring the tomatoes

Cut each tomato in half and place in a large bowl. Using a potato masher, crush the tomatoes. I also use my fingers (they are all covered in tomato goop at this point anyway) to crush them and then go to the masher. Mash until you have a good ratio of sauce to tomato chunks. Add salt, I'd say about two tsp.

Side note: One really cool thing about homemade tomato sauce is that you get to control the salt content. It will still taste great no matter how much salt you put in!

Keep mashing the tomatoes so that the salt dissolves and the consistency is thick but not too chunky. And there you go! Homemade tomato sauce.

It is a little labor intensive. Set aside about 20 minutes to make the sauce. Or, you can make a whole bunch at once and can it or freeze it. I'm going to experiment with canning soon, so I can make sure to have plenty of sauce to last us through the winter!

Forgive me, Mother Earth, for I have sinned...

...it has been almost 2 months since my last entry.

BUT I'M BACK! Most (if not all) of you who read this are my Fb friends, so you know that I've been busy moving to Oceanside, touring Italy, visiting family, and settling into our new home! It has been a crazy two months and I'm so happy to finally be living in one spot for a long time.

So, where to start? Ah, yes.

Italy was AMAZING! I'll spare you the play-by-play and talk about the most important (and relevant) details - the FOOD. The food was to die for. Unlike in the US, all of the reputable restaurants use local and seasonal ingredients (very often from their own garden), making the simplest things taste so fresh. One night, in Rome, I ordered a pasta with sauce that was literally just crushed stewed tomatoes with a little salt and pepper. INCREDIBLE. We also visited Cinque Terre (pronounced chinkway terray, meaning five lands), which are five little beach towns painted on the side of a cliff, connected by hiking trails. This place has the best seafood I have ever had in my life. Think, resort town with the touch of grandma's cooking. So much care goes into every dish; fishing boats are going in and out of the harbor all day, and hiking around the towns you can see gardens growing fresh tomatoes, basil, squash, grapes, and many more. In fact, Cinque Terre is where pesto was invented, so of course I ordered pesto over homemade gnocchi, and I almost died it was so good. It made me wonder why people even bother with the crap that they serve in restaurants here.

Another cool, steffstainble thing about Italy was their toilets. Ok seriously, hear me out. On many of the toilets there are two flush buttons; one releases a small amount of water and the other releases more (comparable to a normal toilet in America). So, um, if you need a smaller flush, you push the little button. And, let's say, it might take a bigger flush, you push the big button. How cool is that?

Anyway, Italy was incredible, but I'm so happy to be back in America, which truly is the greatest country on earth. We are loving the San Diego area. In fact, there is a farmers market somewhere in the county EVERY DAY here! I'm loving it! We've been able to buy grass-fed beef from a local farm, locally-made snacks, and even homemade vegan cheesecake on top of the normal fruits and veggies you normally find at a farmers market. It's been amazing.

I have lots of new recipes to share with you, along with many other thoughts about sustainability and fitness. Welcome back to Steffstainability!

Drugs are Bad, Mmmkay?

Today my little brother turned 21 years old.

For over six months now, I've played today over and over in my mind. Around midnight, I give him a call and of course he is already drunk. I wish him a happy birthday but I know I'll have to call him in the morning/afternoon because he won't remember. My parents might drive out to visit him and take him to a nice dinner and buy him his first legal drink. He and his beautiful girlfriend, and all of his friends, share a great day together, probably ending in something so typically him, like watching the sun set over the beach or staring at the stars twinkling in the night sky. But we will never know.

My little brother passed away on January 28, 2010 from a heroin overdose.

This is not supposed to be my personal blog. This blog is supposed to be about sustainability, about keeping healthy. But this lifestyle is so intertwined with my life nowadays it is impossible to separate this blog from my life. So, as my life goes, so does my blog.

Illegal drugs are not sustainable. Most of our illegal drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, meth, and heroin come from Mexico. This means quite a few things. First, like many of our "fresh" produce, these drugs have traveled thousands of miles, placing carbon footprints in the air, just so people can "escape" for a while. But more devastatingly (depending on who you ask), these drugs fund the drug war going on in Mexico. The money that you pay for your illegal drugs indirectly goes into the hands of the drug gangs fighting against each other in Mexico, killing innocent (and sometimes not-so-innocent, but no more deserving) people. Buying illegal drugs is environmentally and socially bad.

Not only that, most of the drugs I have listed literally alter your state of being. It actually changes the chemical balance in your body, so you are no longer who you once were. Trust me, I have seen it firsthand. Doing these drugs are bad for you body and your mind. For someone who cares so much about what I put into my body (and what others I care about put into theirs), I truly don't understand the reasoning behind consuming these products.

It's just not worth it. These illegal drugs can, more than likely, literally destroy who you are and take your family down with you. Your body is not what it was, your mind is not what it was, and the risk of putting your family through the pain can pull it apart. Even before my brother overdosed, my family had been through so much pain and strife trying to help him break away from this lifestyle. And we truly thought he had done it. Until one day, he left home just to buy some schoolbooks and he never came back.

Trying to make sense out of all of this, I've concluded that the only thing that can come of this is if it convinces other people to stay away from these horrid substances. My brother was a loving, caring person and I know that if he had realized the pain he was putting us all through, he would have never touched the stuff again. Please, learn from him. Don't wait until it's too late. Because he really died of an accident; it was just "one more time" of something he had done numerous times. But he either took too much, or got a bad batch, or some combination of the two, and because of this screw up, I'm sitting here with my family trying to push on, trying to fill this hole in our lives.

It's trivial and low-brow, but South Park really says it best when they say "Drugs are bad, mmkay?" There is literally nothing good that can come from it, whether environmentally, socially, or emotionally. It's just not worth it.

Rest in Peace, Mike, and happy birthday.

Sausageless Shrimp Gumbo

I love love LOVE Cajun food. The flavors are so rich and complex, but the dishes are generally very easy to make. One staple ingredient in many Cajun dishes is Andouille sausage, which can be very greasy, hard on the stomach, and not so great on the waistline. Which is why I love this next recipe. I got it from my dad, who absolutely loves to cook and from whom I probably got my dedication to cooking and flair for coming up with my own recipes. He loves spicy Cajun dishes, and he used to always make this one when I was growing up.

It's farmers market friendly and it's good for you, which makes a perfect recipe for Steffstainability! Enjoy!

Note: For more or less spiciness, play around with the amounts of red and white pepper. My dad had a half teaspoon of each in his recipes, but that's a little too spicy for me, so I decreased it to a quarter teaspoon.

Another note: This recipe requires a spice called "file", which is pronounced fee-lay (makes me think of my favorite TV show in my adolescent days, Boy Meets World... "Feenay! Fee-hee-hee-heenay!" Anyone??). It's sometimes hard to find, but it's almost absolutely necessary for gumbo. It compliments the taste of the seafood and acts as a thickener. If you can't find it, you can add okra to the gumbo instead; the juice from the okra will thicken the sauce. Hell, add okra anyway; it's not in this recipe but is often used in Cajun foods. It's super yummy and currently in season!

Ingredients:

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp white pepper

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried oregano

1 crumbled bay leaf

1 onion, diced

2 or 3 celery stalks, chopped

1 green bell pepper, diced

3 Tbl file

1 Tbl tabasco sauce

1 clove minced garlic

1 cup tomato sauce

5 cups vegetable stock

1/2 lb imitation crab

1 lb shrimp

1 cup rice

You can use any flavor stock/broth you want, really. I like the extra kick of flavor that beef stock adds to it; I've tried vegetable and chicken as well, and they all taste great.

You have a couple options with the shrimp. Get fresh if you can, but frozen raw peeled shrimp also works.

Instructions

1. Combine cayenne pepper, paprika, salt, white pepper, black pepper, thyme, oregano, and bay leaf in a small bowl or container.

2. If your shrimp has the shells on them, deshell them, but save the shells in a saucepan. Add the vegetable/chicken/beef stock to the shells and bring to a boil, and simmer for about 10 minutes. If your shrimp do not have shells, skip this step.

3. In a medium or large soup pot over med-high heat, heat some vegetable oil. Cook onions, celery, bell pepper, file (or okra), tabasco sauce, and minced garlic for 6-8 minutes, stirring constantly. If you did use the file, you will have to start scraping the mixture off the bottom of the pot, especially if your pot is not nonstick. Don't worry though, just keep scraping.

4. Reduce heat to med-low and add tomato sauce and spice mixture. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring every now and then.

5. Strain the broth and shells over the soup pot, adding the broth to your mixture. If you skipped step 2, just add the broth to the soup pot.

6. Bring the gumbo to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 45 minutes.

7. Prepare white rice as per the instructions on the package.

8. After the 45 minutes, add the crab and shrimp to the gumbo and cook for about 10 minutes.

Spoon rice into soup bowls and cover with gumbo. Enjoy!!