New Year, New Resolutions + A Power Breakfast

I’m not one of those mother’s who stands at their son’s bris, just 8 days after giving birth, looking like they’ve just run a marathon (I mean that in the skinny sense, not in the just-been-through-labor sense). I squeezed myself into control top pantyhose, and my feet were so swollen, I could not fit them into a single pair of shoes. I still remember sending my brother to Macy’s the night before the bris to get me a pair in the next size. Alas, they did not fit on my feet either, and there I stood, dressed in my finest, with Crocs on my feet. Thankfully, I decided to make a last ditch effort and try on a pair of short boots that I had, and with a little nudging, they made it.

My son is now nearly 2 years old, and the swelling has by far subsided. But I put on a lot of weight. Unfortunately, I belong to that small percentage of women who actually gain weight while nursing, and gain weight, I did. It also didn’t help that I started my blog sometime around then, so the pounds just piled on. Yet here I am, coming on my 2 year blogoversary, and I’m proud to say that I’ve lost it – 35 lbs. and counting! I am half of the dress size I once was, and I’ve never felt better!

It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. I’ve done this a few times before. In fact, I’ve done it after every baby. But as I get older, it gets harder, and the pounds become more and more stubborn. I may not be as thin as I was before I had my kids, but I’m more fit than ever, thanks to a strict exercise regimen. When I started out my weight loss journey (if you follow my blog, you may recall this post) I was so out of shape that I started physical therapy for the pain in my knees and ankles. I tried to start walking but I could barely get through one block before my knees buckled. All that extra weight on my petite frame was just too much for my body to take. I started off going to a personal trainer, who began our sessions with low impact exercise to minimize the strain on my knees and ankles. As time went on, she upped the ante, pushing me to my limit, and not allowing me to give up when the going got tough. I hated going to those sessions, I really did. I dreaded them like a high schooler dreads a math test, but I persevered and boy am I thankful to Esther (my trainer) for pushing me.

After a few months of personal training and dieting, I wanted to change up my routine so I began taking Pilates. The Pilates instructer actually taught me french for 3 years in high school. I had met her a few months before, but she could not seem to place me. I reminded her my maiden name, and some of the classmates I was with, but she just did not remember me. When I stepped into her Pilates class, quite a number of pounds less, she immediately realized who I was. I could not believe that I had gained so much weight that it rendered me unrecognizable. Of course it became our little joke, as she teased me for being the one to kickstart my weight loss.

Pilates was, and is, a lifeline for me. It’s low impact, so I can do it even after a long day, yet it’s rewards are so much greater than the effort it requires. Pilates has helped me strengthen my core, improve my posture, and gives me a sense of overall confidence. But being a low impact exercise, it wasn’t enough to keep up with my weight loss, so I joined a running group. My running instructor, Shaina Sara, uses the pose running method, which is extremely difficult at first. That first month of running was practically torture for me and I wanted nothing more than to back out of the group. But I’m no quitter, so I pushed myself and kept going at it. I’m still a work in progress, but I have come to enjoy every run, even while it taxes my body. Running makes me feel powerful and strong, and the endorphins it releases put me in the best mood.

Following my weight loss journey, my husband finally decided to join the diet bandwagon with his facebook “run for likes” campaign. The same husband who could not wake up for anything short of a fire, is now jumping out of bed at 6 AM to pound the pavement. His determination has inspired me to keep going, even as I get tired and lazy to go for my runs.

I am sharing my journey with you because I want all of you to know that it’s never too late to get healthy and fit. I’m a food blogger, no-one loves good food more than me. If I did it, you can to! Exercising has breathed new life into me. I used to feel tired and lethargic, unable to keep up with my kids. But now I’m full of energy and I feel so strong. It doesn’t matter how much you weigh, or what size you are, you can always bump up your fitness routine and get on track to a healthier you. With the New Year upon us, I’m renewing my commitment to stay healthy and not fall back into my old ways. It’s so easy to revert back to our bad habits, but I’m going to push myself to continue to stay healthy and strong, and I hope you will too!

BIB Power Breakfast

1 toasted Ezekiel English muffin
1/2 avocado, mashed
1 tsp lemon juice
pinch of salt
2 egg whites + 1 egg
salt and pepper, to taste
1 large spoonful cottage cheese

Method:

Mash avocado and season with salt and lemon. Whisk egg whites and egg and season with salt and pepper. Scramble over low heat to desired consistency. Spread avocado on both sides of the english muffin. Top with eggs. Finish with a spoonful of cottage cheese and some freshly ground pepper.

1 year ago: couscous with thyme & honey roasted carrots, parsnips and beets

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Cinnamon Infused Honey


Have you ever seen those honey straws that the stores start carrying around the holidays? I can’t get enough of the delicious honey flavors! Every year, I buy a large assortment and place them in a vase at the center of my table. I also like to add a honey straw to each person’s place setting. Usually, I tie a bow around some gold napkins with raffia and slip a straw inside.

Honey straws come in an array of flavors from caramel to chamomile. But you don’t have to buy them to enjoy the taste of flavored honeys. You can make your own flavored or infused honey at home by following a few simple steps (see method below).

I love the combination of cinnamon and honey, but feel free to make your flavor of choice. I like to drizzle thyme honey over figs and cheese or vanilla honey over poached pears. The possibilities are endless, here are just a few…

rosemary
thyme
lavender
cumin seeds
fennel seeds
cardamom seeds
chamomile blossoms
rose petals
mint
lemon
vanilla
chile

What’s your favorite honey flavor?

This post is part of the Kosher Recipe Linkup for the month of September, featuring HONEY recipes. Scroll down for more!

Cinnamon Infused Honey

1 cup good quality pure floral honey
5 sticks cinnamon

Method:

Add honey and cinnamon sticks to a pot (running some warm water over the honey jar will make it easier to pour) and warm over low heat. Make sure the honey does not come to a boil (you’ll lose some of it’s health benefits and it will also create a huge mess if it boils over!). Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove honey from heat and cool (but keep it warm enough that it’s still easy to pour). Pour the honey and a few of the cinnamon sticks into a glass jar and seal. The longer the honey sits, the more of a cinnamon flavor it will take on. You can taste it periodically and remove the cinnamon sticks once the honey has reached your desired taste.

VARIATION: For other honey flavors, use approximately ½ cup herbs (unless they are very pungent) to 1-2 cups honey. Strain the honey from the herbs or spices when you are done steeping.

1 year ago: rosh hashanah roast

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Apple & Honey Tart


You’ll never believe how easy this beautiful tart is to make. It only requires 4 ingredients, and the dough isn’t even homemade!  The secret to this scrumptious dessert is puff pastry. I’m a huge fan of puff pastry because as most of you already know, I don’t like to bake, and it comes already prepared in the freezer section of every supermarket. I’ve been known to sneak puff pastry into just about any recipe that calls for a dough, even rugelach and hamantaschen!


Truth be told, I can’t take all the credit for this simple, elegant and delicious dessert. Last year, my wonderful sister-in-laws decided to treat me out to a fun evening at the Kosher Culinary Institute for my birthday. It was a special “date night” class, so my husband joined me in preparing a gourmet meal together with a few other couples. We really enjoyed the evening and I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember exactly what was on the menu. What I do remember is making spaetzle from scratch, whipping up cherry clafoutis for dessert, and what was a mere afterthought of the chef – a version of this apple tart.

For other sweet puff pastry ideas, check out Dina’s apple turnovers or my sweet potato bourekas on kosherstreet.

 

Apple & Honey Tart

1-2 crispy sweet apples, cored and thinly sliced (unpeeled)
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
1/2 cup honey
1/2 lemon
powdered sugar, optional

Method:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Unfold puff pastry sheet and cut it in half down the center (don’t worry about the creases from the folding, they will disappear during baking). Place the halves on a greased cookie sheet.

Add honey to a microwave-proof bowl and heat in the microwave until warm, about 20 seconds. Brush the puff pastry with the warm honey. Mix the apple slices with lemon juice and place them along the length of the puff pastry, overlapping over each other. Brush the apples with additional honey (warm the honey again, if necessary). Bake for approximately 25 minutes, until pastry has puffed up and is golden brown around the edges.

Drizzle with additional honey and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

This tart cannot be frozen (the apples will turn soggy) but it may be prepared in advance. Just warm it in the oven to crisp up the pastry before serving.

NOTE: Don’t worry if some of the honey syrup leaks off the puff pastry during baking. It will actually help caramelize the puff pastry around the edges. Just remove the puff pastry to a cooling rack as soon as you take it out of the oven.

TIP: Always make sure your puff pastry is cold otherwise it may become difficult to handle. If the dough becomes sticky, just return it to the fridge so that it can firm up again.

VARIATION: Try this tart with other fruits like sliced pears or peaches, or for a delicious dairy option, spread some goat cheese on the puff pastry, and top with figs and honey.

 

1 year ago: honey cake with caramelized apples

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Musical Beds

I noticed I’ve been neglecting the “coping” category for some time now. I guess that’s a good thing. It means I’m handling things. But not today. Today I need your help with a little something I like to call musical beds.

I’m sure you are all familiar with the game of musical chairs. Well in my case, the chairs are beds and the music is the sound of children’s cries in the middle of the night.

Let me explain.

After a long, hard day of taking care of house and home, tending to the needs of my kids, and maybe squeezing in some blogging time {if I’m lucky}, I want nothing more than to crawl into my comfy bed and get a good night’s sleep.

But as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, more often than not, things don’t go exactly as planned.

Take last night for instance. After completing our bedtime routine of bathing, storytime, and some soft music, I was hoping for a quiet night as my cold had gotten increasingly worse throughout the day. But my son would not have it. Try as I might to get him quiet, he just screamed and screamed. So I took him out of his crib and put him in my husband’s bed. I thought I had it all figured out. My husband would tip toe in late from his work meeting, and quietly transfer him to his crib.

Give or take an hour or two, my oldest daughter ran straight into my bed mumbling something about monsters and a bad dream. So I let her stay. Until she started poking and prodding me from all sides.

By this point, I suspected that my cold had turned into a full blown sinus infection and I needed some rest. So I did what any desperate mother would do. I went into her bed. After about 20 minutes of twisting and turning, my husband came home and tried to move my son over to his crib as gently as possible. But being the light sleeper that he is, he woke up and started bawling. You know that full on desperate cry that tugs at a mother’s hearstrings? (and wakes up the whole house, including the tenants?) It was that kind of cry. I couldn’t take him with me into my daughter’s bed because it’s too small for both of us, so I helped her sleepwalk back to her bed and went back into mine, taking my baby with me.

And then the middle one woke up. That’s right. I said the middle one. As my bed was occupied, and more importantly, since my husband could sleep through a four alarm fire, I sent her to his bed.

I don’t know what time it was by then, but I had gone through an entire box of tissues, and I was at my wit’s end. Not only was I terribly congested, I was achingly tired. I rolled myself up on the corner of my bed (so my little prince could have ample room to move around without kicking me), barely sleeping a few short hours.

When my husband left early for work, I climbed into his bed so that I could try and get a little more sleep until the kids woke up. It wasn’t long before they were crawling in next to me to tell me about their terrible night of nightmares and sleep walking!

In all seriousness, I appeal to all the young Mama’s out there. How do you keep your kids in their beds at night? I can’t really let my son (the major culprit in this game of musical beds) cry it out because I have tenants upstairs.

So I’m all ears. Please. Help. A. Tired. Mother. Get. Some. ZZZZZ’s.

And now for the coping part.

I may not have had sleep last night. And I may still be congested with an earache, throat-ache and headache. But I still had to take my oldest to school (her first day in 1st grade, talk about butterflies! [me, not her!]), drop my son off at playgroup (thank G-d for those few quiet hours), and start my round of pickups at 12, then 1 and then 2.

To get through the day, I sat down to a steaming hot cup of chamomile tea with honey and a splash of milk (no, I’m not English, but I like me some milk in my tea!) I throw in a little mandelbread for good measure, and I take a few minutes to breath in the peace and quiet.

It also helps to drink from adorable tea cups. I love this set from Ikea!

How do you like your tea?

1 year ago: candy sushi

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Pomegranate Coleslaw


Welcome to the first ever Jewish Holiday Blog Party, hosted by Jessie of Taste and Miriam of Overtime Cook, and sponsored by Kitchen Aid! As you may know, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year is coming up, and Jewish bloggers from all over the world are celebrating with all kinds of twists on traditional Rosh Hashanah foods.

This is the first of hopefully many exciting Holiday Blog Parties, so if you would like to join in the fun, please email holidayblogparties@gmail.com.

For the blog party this year, I decided to make a nontraditional salad that incorporates a lot of the sweet Rosh Hashanah foods that are eaten on the holiday. With pomegranate seeds, apples and honey, this coleslaw makes the perfect quick, healthy and refreshing side dish for your holiday meal.

For more sweet and delicious holiday recipes including my famous honey cake with caramelized apples and my Rosh Hashanah roast,  make sure to check out my new Rosh Hashanah category.

And don’t forget to check out my step by step instructions for how to deseed a pomegranate!


Stop by and check out some of these amazing Rosh Hashanah themed recipes on the following blogs:

Challah and Bread:
Marlene of The Jewish Hostess made Apple Challah
Amanda of The Challah Blog made Pomegranate Challah
Shelly of The Kosher Home made Apple, Honey and Pomegranate Challah!

Sides, Salads and Starters: 

Sarah of Food, Words, Photos made Tzimmes (Rosh Hashanah Carrots)
Tali of More Quiche, Please made Roasted Beets and Butternut Squash
Roberta and Lois of Kosher Eye made Simanim Salad
Chanie of Busy In Brooklyn made Pomegranate Coleslaw
Rivki of Life in the Married Lane made Super Salad
Hannah of Cooking Manager made Beets Marinated with Ginger and Garlic
Sina of The Kosher Spoon made Pomegranate, Almond and Raisin Couscous
Shulie of Food Wanderings made Rosh Hashanah Salad
Hindy of Confident Cook-Hesitant Baker made Warm Roasted Beets with Farro
Sarah of Kosher Street made Sweet Potato Apple Tzimmes

Main Dishes:

Jessie of Taste made Smoked Salmon
Samantha of The Little Ferraro Kitchen made Chicken with Dates
Michele of Kosher Treif Cooking made Coconut Chicken w/ dipping sauces
Melinda of Kitchen Tested made Key Lime Glazed Duck
Stephanie & Jessica of The Kosher Foodies made Pom Braised Chicken
Liz of The Lemon Bowl made Beef Brisket
Estee of Anyone Interested? made Easy Breezy 5 Minute Brisket

Desserts and Drinks:

Miriam of Overtime Cook made Mini Apples and Honey Tarts
Laura of Pragmatic Attic made Fresh Ginger Honey Cake
Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen made Honey Caramel Apple Galette
Danielle of Hugs and Cookies xoxo made The World’s Best Rugelach
Amy of What Jew Wanna Eat made an Apple and Honey Cocktail
Nick of The Baking Process made Apple and Date Honey Squares
Lisa of The Monday Morning Cooking Club made Honey Cake 2 Ways
Leah of Cook Kosher made Pomegranate Ice Cream
Nossi of The Kosher Gastronome made Pareve Key Lime Caramel Cheesecake

Have you entered our giveaway for The Whole Foods Kosher Kitchen cookbook? To enter, click here!

For additional entries, you may click over to the other participating blogs in the Rosh Hashanah blog party as they are also giving away a copy.

Pomegranate Coleslaw

1 14oz. bag coleslaw
1 Granny Smith apple, julienned
2 scallions, sliced
1/3 cup pomegranate seeds (how to deseed a pomegranate)
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp whole grain mustard (with mustard seeds)
salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Method:

Combine coleslaw, apple matchsticks, pomegranate seeds and scallions. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar, honey and mustard. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix gently to combine. Season with salt and pepper.

NOTE: If you have a custom not to use vinegar on Rosh Hashanah, you may substitute with lemon juice.

VARIATION: For sweeter coleslaw, increase honey by 1-2 tbsp and add chopped pitted dates.

1 year ago: chicken pastrami roulade

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