21 Day Fix Approved Quinoa "Fried Rice" Recipe

Love Fried Rice but don't like the carbs or high glycemic index
of white rice? Try this healthier alternative!

Ingredients:

2 T Olive Oil, Divided

2 Lg. Eggs, beaten

2 Cloves Garlic, Minced

1 Small onion, diced

8 oz mushrooms, sliced (I used baby bellas)

1 head broccoli, cut into florets (or if you can find it, I used a bag of frozen organic)
1 zucchini, chopped

1/2C frozen corn

1/2 C frozen peas

2 carrots, peeled and grated

3C cooked quinoa

1T fresh grated ginger

3 T low sodium soy sauce or coconut aminos

2 green onions, sliced

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, grilled and cubed

hot sauce to taste

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium skillet over low heat. Scramble eggs and let cool.

Heat remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet or wok over medium high heat. Add garlic and onion, and cook, stirring often, until onions have become translucent, about 4-5 minutes.
Add mushrooms, broccoli and zucchini. Cook, stirring constantly, until vegetables are tender, about 3-4 minutes.

Add corn, peas, carrots, chicken and quinoa. Cook, stirring constantly, until heated through, about 1-2 minutes.

Add ginger and soy sauce, and gently toss to combine. Cook, stirring constantly, until heated through, about 2 minutes.

Stir in green onions and eggs.

Serve drizzled with hot sauce, if desired.

Following the 21 Day Fix? One yellow, one green, 1/2 red. 

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Greek Yogurt Buffalo Chicken Wraps - A Gluten Free, Clean Eating Crock Pot Recipe

One of my standard Sunday afternoon activities, is prepping my meals for the week ahead. I plan out all my snacks, pre-assemble my salads, wash my fruits, hard boil my eggs (free range organic, of course - and if you don't know why that matters, follow my blog - I'll get into it in a future post, for sure) and make a big pot or pan (or in this case, crock pot) of something I can portion out for my dinners for the week. 

Having healthy options at the ready, makes it a lot easier to stay on track, than it is to cheat, and sets me up mentally for the week as well, with some basic organization, so I don't have to think about what's for lunch (or breakfast, or snack, or dinner) once Monday hits and life gets CRAZY.

So this week, I tried a new recipe - Greek Yogurt Buffalo Chicken Wraps. Not only was it super easy; it was also flippin' yummy!

Greek Yogurt Buffalo Chicken

Ingredients:

• 4 chickens breasts
  
• 1 1/2 cups of plain Greek yogurt (I used fat free)
  
• 2 cups hot sauce, divided (no need to get fancy; I used the store brand)
  
• Blue cheese crumbles (optional - and I used reduced fat)
  
• Sriracha Sauce
  
• Fresh Romaine Lettuce
  

Put the chicken breasts in crockpot with 1 cup of hot sauce. Cook on low for 8 hours or on high for 4 hours. Once chicken is cooked, drain the juice from the pot. Once juice is drained add the second cup of hot sauce to the pot. Then use your fork to shred the chicken, adding in the Greek yogurt. The chicken will shred easily. 

While it doesn't look like much more than a creamy mess, in the crock pot, it does get pretty when you plate it. Select large Romaine leaves, and place about 1/2 cup of chicken mixture inside. Sprinkle with blue cheese crumbles, and drizzle with Sriracha. Fold up the bottom of the lettuce leaf, and fold over the left and right sides, pinning in place with a toothpick. Enjoy!

If you want more clean, healthy recipes like this one, check out my website: BuildingYourBetterBody.com, or my Facebook Page (be sure to like it while you're there) http://www.facebook.com/BuildingYourBetterBody - I'm always posting healthy tips, recipe ideas and hacks, and other fitness and nutrition type advice.

Meal Prep - Saving myself from eating badly

Sunday Meal Prep

Taking a few hours on Sunday afternoons, to do my meal planning and prep for the week ahead, is really critical in staying on track with eating healthy and clean. Without it, who knows what I'd reach for! (probably something chocolaty or salty or both - and my taste buds would love me for about a minute, but my butt, thighs, and hands - yup, hands - because I always feel the sodium overload in my bloated fingers first - would hate me for days to come).

So it starts of something like this: Thursday or Friday, I start thinking about what I want to make for the week. I cook one "hot meal" - in quantity - so I can portion it out in serving size containers and not have to worry about cooking much, throughout the rest of the week. Look, I'm a busy girl - Full time day job, part time nights and weekends teaching horseback riding lessons and helping out with barn chores, and a fitness and nutrition coach - and once in a while I even try to have a social life, so at the end of a full day - who has time to cook at night? I sure don't.

I pick out a "clean" recipe - from one of my cookbooks, or pinterest, or sometimes I just visit my own website, find a favorite, and either make it exactly the same way or tweak it a little for some variety. This week's recipe was Spaghetti Squash Skillet. It was fantastic, and I promise I'll share the ingredients below. 

Most weeks, everything else is pretty standard - egg white and veggie frittata with some berries on the side, for breakfast; hard boiled egg and a handful of almonds for a snack; spinach or kale salad topped with sunburst tomatoes, cukes, avocado, tuna and clean dressing for lunch; baby carrots or zucchini spears and hummus for an afternoon snack; and on my way to my night job, my favorite meal of the day - vanilla Shakeology blended with unsweetened cashew milk, crushed ice, and ground flax meal. What's Shakeology, you ask? Only the healthiest and most delicious meal of the day. And then at night when I get home, I'll have my hot meal.

So once I have my recipe picked out, I make a shopping list, doing a quick (usually mental) inventory - and I always shop on Friday nights. I don't want to fight the weekend warriors at the grocery store, and I also don't want to use my precious weekend time, fighting those crowds and waiting in those lines.

Then on Sunday afternoon, when I get home from shoveling horse sh!t, teaching lessons, and playing with our awesome German Shepard, J-Dawg, I can come home, put on some music, or a personal development podcast, and start prepping. I love doing it that way, especially in the winter, because I'm usually chilled to the bone from the farm, and nothing heats up my condo like having the burners on the stove, and the oven, cranking.

Everything gets sliced, diced, measured, packaged in containers or zip lock baggies, and perfectly portioned out in my fridge so I can *almost* guarantee myself a successful week without much risk if cheating.

Oh, and I did promise a recipe for the Spaghetti Squash Skillet, didn't I?

Cut one medium spaghetti squash in half, remove "guts", and place face down/skin up on a cookie sheet - bake approx 40 mins at 350. I do this part in advance so it can cool a bit before I have to touch it.

Brown 16-20 oz lean ground turkey (I use 93/7). Add a large can of organic diced tomatoes, a bag of frozen spinach, sliced baby portobella mushrooms, about a cup of low sodium chicken broth, Italian seasoning to taste, and scrape out the insides of the spaghetti squash and add that too. Mix it all up, and allow it to simmer for about 15-20 mins to blend all flavors.

I also added some dehydrated onion flakes and garlic powder - I was being lazy but if you want you can mince some fresh garlic, and dice an onion, and saute those first and add them in too.

Either way, really good and really easy and it made like 7-8 servings.

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