Clean Eating Cobb Salad

I had never eaten a cobb salad until recently. To be honest I had never really eaten a salad until recently. You see I am the pickiest eater on the planet. I don't like lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, peppers....pretty much every thing that goes on a salad! I slowly started to eat baby spinach with strawberries, sweet and salty pecans, salmon, and blue cheese. Then I started expanding. When I say expanding I mean, eating field green salads and choosing a salad with pears and gorgonzola!! So expanding is probably not the correct word!!

Since my husband loves cobb salads I decided to make one. I mean I like cheese, eggs, turkey, bacon...sounds pretty darn good to me. (I left the tomatoes off mine) I liked this salad so much I could eat it everyday!!!

I am not going to give measurements on what I used because it's kind of up to you. It all depends on how many you are making and what you want.

This is what I used.......

Clean Eating Cobb Salad
Baby Spinach
Grape Tomatoes
Avocados
Reduced Fat Blue Cheese
Hard Boiled Eggs
Clean Turkey Bacon crumbled
Clean Turkey Deli Meat
Clean Parmesan Croutons
Clean Chipotle-Avocado Vinaigrette 

Clean Chipotle-Avocado Vinaigrette

I had a salad recently at a restaurant called Grace 1720. It was a seafood cobb salad and it was one of the best salads I have ever had. The dressing it came with was an ancho-chili vinaigrette. It was the perfect blend of sweet and spicy.

This evening I decided to make a cobb salad. My husband grew up on them. He said it's one of the main memories he has of his grandmother, Viola. She used Ott's dressing on hers. I searched high and low for the ingredients list of Ott's Red Dressing and couldn't find it anywhere. I know it's similar to French dressing, but I wanted to try to recreate the real thing. Since I don't like French dressing (or Ott's for that matter) I decided to try to recreate the ancho-chili vinaigrette I had at Grace 1720 so we could both eat it.



This is what I came up with from ingredients I could find in my fridge and pantry.....

Clean Chipotle-Avocado Vinaigrette
1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar
2 tbls of raw honey
1/4 tsp of garlic salt
1 tsp of chipotle powder (this makes it a little on the spicy side. Reduce to 1/2 tsp if you don't like spicy, but I liked the spice with the salad. I couldn't have taken it on it's own though...I am a baby!)
1 package of 100 calorie packs of Wholly Guacamole

Add all ingredients to a blender and blend until thoroughly mixed.

Clean Eating Parmesan Croutons

If you are coming here to find out how to accidentally make clean croutons, you have come to the right place!!

Last week I made these croutons by accident. I was making my husband and I some clean garlic bread to go with our meal. Well I turned off the oven and then never took the bread out. The next day I went to put something in the oven and there was our garlic bread.....hard! I almost threw it away and then thought wait, I can use this as croutons. I cut it up in crouton size pieces and tried one....and the clean eating crouton was born!!!

Remember these have to be made the night before. (You could probably cook them on a lower temp for a longer amount of time and make them the same day. I have not tested this though)

Clean Eating Parmesan Crouton
1 piece of clean bread (I got mine from the farmers market. It was a whole wheat sourdough so it was a larger piece of bread. Use 2 pieces if yours is a small piece)
1.5 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp of oregano
1/8 tsp of garlic salt
1 tbls of shredded parmesan cheese

Heat oven to 350.
Using a pastry brush, brush olive oil on bread. Even sprinkle oregano, garlic salt, and parmesan.
Lay bread right on the grate in the oven and back for 20 minutes. Then turn oven off and take the bread out the next day. I suggest putting a note on the oven.

Mine have been in plastic container for 4 days and they are still hard. I used them on the clean cobb salad with clean chipotle-avocado vinaigrette I made last night and they were very good. Gave it a nice crunch.

Clean Chicken Burrito Bowl

This is the easiest, quickest, yummiest recipe! I love something that you can throw together quick, that is healthy and still tastes good! You can pretty much add whatever you want to this. FF Greek yogurt, tomatoes, onions, peppers, olives...whatever you want. Below is what I had on hand!

Clean Chicken Burrito Bowl

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts boiled and shredded

1 can of black beans

1.5 cups of clean cilantro lime rice 

1 large corn on the cob

1 avocado

4 tbls of fat free feta

1 tbls of chili powder 

2 tbls cumin

1/2 tsp garlic salt

1 tbls of water

Heat oven on 350 and cook corn with the husks still on for 30 minutes. (while the corn is cooking, go ahead and boil your chicken.) 

Once the corn is done, in a med bowl, add the cooked and shredded chicken, cumin, chili powder, garlic salt and water. Stir until all the chicken is covered in the seasoning. 

Warm the can of beans....either in the microwave or in a saucepan. 

Cut corn off the cob. 

Chop avocado in small pieces.

In 4 small bowls divide all ingredients evenly and layer.....rice, corn, beans, chicken, avocado, and FF feta. Add anything else you can think of! 

Since there are only 2 of us, we had it the next day as leftovers...still yummy!

Clean Cilantro Lime Rice

One of my all time favorite foods is the Cilantro Lime Rice from Chipotle. I was so happy to find out that they now serve this wonderful side in brown rice. Chipotle is one of those restaurants that you can actually get a fairly clean meal at. 

I am trying to really limit how much we go out to eat this month since I have started my little challenge. I was really in the mood for Chipotle though so I decided to make it myself!!

Clean Cilantro Lime Rice

About 1.5 cups of cooked brown rice

2 tsp of lime juice

3 tbls of finely chopped cilantro (to get a fine chop, this is my favorite kitchen tool)

1 tsp of extra virgin organic coconut oil

salt to taste

Fold all of the ingredients above together and you're done! ENJOY!!

1 Month Challenge

Over the next month I am going to give myself a little challenge. It has become apparent that I get motivation and push myself when it comes to pictures. Pictures of myself and pictures of others. I also push myself when I have a goal in mind.

So, for the next month I am going to push myself SUPER hard. I have taken a before picture of my front, back, and side and will post those along with after photos on my blog on September 24th.

My goal is to get 5 days of cardio and 5 days of some sort of weight training in (probably my Jillian video) I will not be working out at the gym or on any fancy equipment. This just proves that this can be done at home and you don't need to pay a high gym membership fee in order to get fit.

As far as my diet goes, I am going to try my hardest to stick to 95% clean eating in this next month.

If anyone wants to do it with me, have at it!! I have 2 people who have joined in already!! :)

Mickey Mouse Party

One of my best friends little boy turned 2 over the weekend. They live in Arkansas and I was not going to be able to go and that always makes Lala VERY sad! I helped her with the writing for the invitations and some little print outs as well as some thank you tags. We ended up going to Arkansas for an unexpected death in my husband's family so I was able to stop by the party.  Here are a few pictures I got (not many)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROMAN!!! LALA LOVES YOU!

The cute front door sign she made!

The favors....filled with all kinds of mickey mouse goodies. (bubbles, fruit snacks, pez dispensers, stickers, and more)

 Top of his cake

 She got his cake at Wal-Mart...they did a great job and it wasn't expensive. 

 The cute banner she made.

One of the signs I made.

Another sign I made. 

Above the food table.

 The banner, balloons, and sign when you walked in. 

Each side of the invitation.

 Some of the food.

Food!

More food!

The Birthday Boy and his parents. I didn't get a pic of him in his ADORABLE birthday outfit because he is 2!! At least I got one in his birthday suit! 

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses...

I have been FULL of them lately! I have gotten so off track from my training for my 5k in October it's not even funny! We went on vacation and that threw me off. Then I got started back up after 2 whole weeks. Then we went back to Arkansas for an unexpected death in my husbands family and that threw me off. But when it comes down to it, these are just excuses. I could have gotten up extra early and gotten it done, but I made the choice not to. So, starting today I am back at it! Also, my sister in law started a new Facebook page called DaniGetUrGunz. It will follow her through prepping for a competition, getting her training license, and giving clean eating food tips! Check it out and go like it!

This is how I felt after vacation!!!! 

Front Door Frame

It was time for me to change up my front door wreath. I normally have a really big grapevine wreath that I change up for every season. This time I wanted to do something different. 

I had a dark brown frame that I really liked. I didn't want it to be brown since my front door is the same color. I had some extra spray paint in the garage in cream so I decided to go with that. I spray painted it and after it dried I took some steel wool to it and made it look antique.

Next, I wrapped the back of the frame in some material. 

After that I glued a gold, antiqued T too it. The T was originally $9.99 at Hobby Lobby, but I had a 40% off coupon so I used that. 

I also glued an embellishment flower that I found in the clearance section at Hobby Lobby to the lower right corner to add a little summer to it! 

Since the frame was old, and the spray paint was already in the garage, I spent a total of $10 on this. I love making stuff cheap!

Key West for 10 Years

Mike and I met 10 years ago on August 2nd. I can't believe it's been 10 years. We celebrated this special anniversary in Key West. Neither one of us had ever been there. We just went down for a long weekend and had a great time.

(I brought my big camera, but didn't get it out once. I really didn't want to be consumed with getting "the good shot" on this vacation. This was more about me and Mike and enjoying our time together.)

We flew into Ft. Lauderdale late on Thursday night. When we went to the car rental counter they told us they were out of the economy car we had reserved and they were going to have to upgrade us to a convertible..OKKKK!!! :)

We stayed the night in Miami and got up early to head down to Key West. On the way we stopped off in Key Largo for breakfast at the Conch House. I had crab cakes benedict and Mike had the cracked conch benedict. Oh my, it was so good!

When we got to Key West we drove around for a while and checked it out. Our room wasn't ready, but they let us use the pool so we took advantage of that. We stayed at the Doubletree Grand Key Resort. I liked this hotel a lot. They had a great pool and pool bar. Their conch fritters were amazing. There was a guy playing music with steel drums all day everyday. He was the worst singer and I can tell you Mike and I got A LOT of laughs out of that. We pretty much lived at the pool from morning until 4:00 everyday!

That evening we went out to Duvall St. The hotel had a free shuttle so that made things a lot easier. We decided to go to Sloppy Joe's since we had heard good things. We had fruity frozen drinks and shared the Sloppy Joe's nachos. Oh my gosh, these nachos were amazing!! There was a great band playing and we really enjoyed ourselves. After Sloppy Joe's we just walked around and checked things out. We had dessert at a little place that sold the chocolate covered key lime pie on a stick. Wow, those were good!

The next day we had a lot more pool time. I think we went down there at 9:00a. We took a little break for lunch and headed to BO's Fish Wagon for more conch fritters and a grouper sandwich. This was Mike's favorite dive of the trip!

Later that evening we had a special night planned. We had reservations at Latitudes on Sunset Key. This restaurant was recommended to us and after looking at the menu online I was sold. Since we had to take a ferry to get over there, we went downtown a little early to walk to sunset pier. We stopped off at El Meson de Pepe and had mojitos while listening Cuban music. Then we took the ferry over to Sunset Key. The sun was starting to go down as we pulled up to the dock. The table they seated us at was more than perfect. It seemed like it was all off on it's own and had the most incredible view. We ordered a bottle of wine and enjoyed the sunset and our time together. Mike ended up ordering the wagyu beef skirt steak and I got the crab stuff scallops. I am not kidding you, these were 2 of the best meals I have ever had. The flavors were incredible. Our waitress was awesome as well. This was probably all around the best restaurant I have ever been to. A great way to celebrate 10 years! After we left the restaurant we went by the Key Lime Pie Co. and shared a piece of pie!

The next day we got up for more pool time!! We had to check out at 12:00p so we decided to go out for one last lunch. We went to Southernmost Beach Cafe and had lunch over looking the beach. Then we headed back north on that 7 mile bridge to catch our flight. We took a detour and stopped by Miami Beach and drove down A1A!! Of course I had to stop and get a picture of DASH before heading out! 

Little Mermaid Theme Night

Theme nights are a Lala specialty! I LOVE to do them!! This one is from last spring but I figured I would go ahead and post it. Warning....these pictures are horrible.  Also, a lot of food coloring was used in this theme night. I know it's not good for kids, but once in a while during a theme night isn't going to kill them. Probably better for them than half the stuff on the shelves that is "healthy for kids"!

We had lots of Little Mermaid themed food, watched Little Mermaid about 15 times, and made a Little Mermaid out of nature.



Breakfast.....A Little Mermaid Pancake. I mixed three different bowls of pancake batter. One red, one green, and one normal. I added them to ziplock bags and cut off the corner to make it like a pastry bag. I had to work fast! Little Mermaid has blueberry boobies and is sitting on a blueberry boulder pile!!

Lunch.....Little Mermaid Sandwich. Tomato hair and boobies, monterey jack cheese body, and avocado tail!

Dinner....Little Mermaid Pasta. Mac and cheese with food coloring and spaghetti hair with food coloring.

Little Mermaid on the driveway. Rock body outline, purple boobies made of flowers, orange leaves for hair, green leaves for a tail, and pink rose petals for lips! She LOVED helping design this, find the stuff, and put it all together!