Happy Belated Birthday & the Best Thai Food EVER

{Way back when I myself was sixteen. Look at my little guy, wasn't he the cutest?!}

My baby brothers birthday was earlier this week. The little man turned sixteen! It's crazy to think he's gotten so big, especially when it feels like I was just sixteen myself! I know, I know, sixteen was YEARS ago for me but...well, no, it wasn't YEARS ago, it was five years to be exact. That's not THAT long ago is it? Is it? I'm so old. Ha, well, in retrospect I know 20 almost 21 isn't old at all but for the girl who would have been happy to stay five years old, in Winnie the Pooh shoes no less and singing about everything that happened to me, 21 might as well be 80. Anyway, back to my little brother. He is just the greatest kid around. He'll always take out my bathroom trash for me, no begging necessary might I add (and if you read this baby boy, my trash can is full, hint, hint), asks for random hugs every now and again, never fails to tell me if my hair looks good in the back, and always gets adorably annoyed when he notices strangers checking me out. We've always had a strong connection with each other since the day he came home from the hospital. I was always eager to take care of him when my mom was in the shower. I remember rubbing his tiny baby belly and singing songs to him till he fell asleep. When he was first learning to talk I was the only one who understood the gibberish he spoke. Even though he's now a grumpy and sometimes aloof teenager he's still the best baby brother a girl could ask for. And hey, I know I was no walk in the park as a teenager either.

Now onto the food part of this weeks Food & Fitness Fridays post! For the little guys birthday we went to a  Thai restaurant called Sawadee that my family has been RAVING about for the longest time. I had never been because I'm the pickiest person alive and thought there would be nothing at a Thai restaurant that would suit my tastes. I was SO wrong. I went, and I am now in love with that place. It's got the cutest decorations ever, and has just THE coolest vibes. Not to mention, the service is incredible! I had a tofu and vegetable dish. I know, I know, I'm always preaching about how awful tofu is for you because its chock full the poison we all call soy, but cookies aren't great for you either and we all have them now and again anyway right? So I caved and indulged in a little poison...and it was delicious...obviously. That which is no good for our systems is usually that which is delicious. Why must you be so cruel world? WHY, WHY? Anyway, whenever you're in downtown Salt Lake go check it out!! You get two dishes, a spring roll, and rice for $8.25! Jeez, you'd think I own the place the way I'm pushing you all to go there but seriously them Thai peeps were just so dang nice, you'd be a fool not to go! Here are some pics of all of our dishes! I'd tell you what they all are but I have no clue what my family ordered.  

This one is my lovely non-meat eater friendly dish!

Our waitress brought out these fried bananas and ice cream, on the house! So delicious!

P.S. Sorry the pictures are all crooked and such, don't really know what happened. Oh, well! 

Green Smoothie

Hello everyone! This week for Food & Fitness Fridays, I decided I wanted to talk about the green smoothie! Green smoothies are something that have been getting quite a bit of attention lately. Whether they've been mentioned in the news as the new hit way to loose weight fast, or the new trend among celebrities for cleansing. Either way, the green smoothie is something that I've been incorporating into my diet for about a year now. For me it all started as a way to get more protein and nutrients into my body when I decided to try veganism and it just sort of stuck ever since. Partly because they're just so friggin' delicious and  partly because they're so quick and easy to make. Now, don't confuse the green smoothie with juicing! Juicing is quite a different thing, and there's a bit of a controversy over which method is better: juicing or blending (green smoothies are blended). Neither one is technically better, they just serve different purposes. Juicing takes away certain elements of the fruits or veggies you're juicing while magnifying others and vice versa with blending. If you ask me, though, I like blending better. Sometimes I drink a green smoothie for breakfast and lunch, and other times I'll just drink one green smoothie for breakfast. How many you drink a day in place of meals is really just up to you and your tolerance for drinking meals rather than chewing them. The recipe I'm going to show you guys is one of my own invention that I put together after making green smoothies for so long, and it's a pretty good one for beginners. It has enough fruit in the mix to give it a fresh sweet taste. Some of the more nutritious and hardcore green smoothies have very little fruit and lots and lots of greens so the taste can be a bit overwhelming if you're not used to it. I personally think the greener the better...but I've had a year to get used to and fall in love with the taste of greens like spinach and kale! One important thing to mention before showing you guys this recipe is that if you intend to incorporate green smoothies into your diet a lot, the first and probably most important rule of thumb is to ROTATE your greens! Don't just always use spinach or kale, experiment with other greens! Leafy greens contain elements that if you ingest too much of by eating large quantities of the same green you could inadvertently end up poisoning yourself, so rotate, rotate, rotate! Experimenting with greens can be fun!

Spinach & Berry Medley
Makes 2 servings!

1/2 banana
2 cup spinach
1/2 cup fresh or frozen strawberries
1/4 cup raspberries
1 cup blueberries
1 cup water
1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice (or if you don't have time, you can use store bought orange juice!)

The end result: A nice, rich, red violet smoothie! The more greens you add the greener the smoothies will be!

If you want more recipes and information on green smoothies I definitely recommend reading this book, Green Smoothie Revolution by Victoria Boutenko! It's the book that helped get me started and helped me get to a point where I know what fruits and veggies go well together and I'm comfortable concocting my own recipes for green smoothies! It gives you great recipes for smoothies that help with a variety of different things like detoxing, stress relief, weight loss, and much much more!

Food & Fitness Fridays

*I meant to post this on Friday, but I didn't get around to it till tonight, sorry!

Hello Friends! I've been thinking a lot lately that I wanted to incorporate food and fitness into my blog since it's such a huge part of my life. I thought the best way to do it would be by making a Food & Fitness series for Fridays! So, every Friday I plan on posting some fun workouts/fitness tips, a fun healthy recipe (it'll probably be a dessert recipe since I'm addicted to dessert), or a post on one of the cool hole in the wall restaurants that I've come across on my hunt for restaurants that are both more on the healthful side and that fit my special dietary specifications. Special dietary specifications you ask? Well, its a bit of a long story, but I'll do my best to condense it. At the beginning of last year I watched Forks over Knives and it completely changed my outlook on food. I have always striven to eat healthfully but this movie just totally made me reevaluate my definition of "healthful". After watching the movie, I tried veganism for a few months. My goal, though, was to still eat grass fed, free range meat once a month so I would still be keeping the word of wisdom. Anyway, after trying it out for the better part of a year I realized that to avoid eating animal products I was filling my body with other extremely processed replacers and soy (which is REALLY bad for you, but that's a different story) which was kind of defeating the purpose of being kinder to my body. Also, it was just REALLY hard to give up eggs. So after that, I decided to just be vegetarian. Except, I would be really careful about the animal products I consumed. I feel like the large demand of animal products now a days is one of the biggest culprits for the treatment and poor quality of life that is afflicting the animals we eat. I didn't want to have any part of the way these animals were being treated. When I eat eggs they're cage free eggs, the meat I eat once a month is grass fed, free range. They can cost a pretty penny but I'm lucky that I have amazing parents that buy the groceries. I'm also blessed with an amazing mother that knows of all the best farmers markets to go to, and local small farms to get the best quality meat from animals that weren't filled up with all kinds of crazy chemicals and were actually allowed to roam around instead of living in a tiny enclosed space. I try to adhere to a largely plant based diet to be kinder and more respectful to my body and other living creatures. Now that my shpiel is done, here is my first Food & Fitness  Friday post! Tonight I had a girls movie night over at my place. Featuring: John Tucker Must Die, Baby Mamma, and The Proposal. My DVD player was malfunctioning so we ended up watching Pitch Perfect on the PS3, and episodes of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix. I decided to go with two treats, a creamsicle smoothie and chocolate vegan cupcakes (I know I'm not technically vegan anymore but it's a good recipe). I can't remember exactly which health food magazine I got the recipes from anymore, but I think it was "Clean Eating Magazine". Now, without ado here are my slightly revised versions of the recipes.

Creamsicle Smoothie

1 cup cold coconut water, no sugar added (the best place to go for this is Sprouts)
1/3 cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt (I used a brand called Chobani that I bought at Winco)
3 tbs Simply Orange orange juice
1 cup frozen mangoes
1 cup ice

Blend coconut water, yogurt, mango, orange juice, and ice in blender until smooth. Makes 2 servings!
Per Serving: 103 calories; 1 g fat; 0 mg cholesterol; 10.5 g carb; 9.5 g sugar; 4 g protein; 3 g fiber
Nutritional Bonus: Calcium, Vitamin C, Potassium & Vitamin A

Glazed Chocolate Avocado Cupcakes
Makes 12
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa  powder
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 avocado, pitted and peeled
1 cup of pure maple syrup (I got mine at Sprouts, but they sell it anywhere. Also, beware, It's close to $10 for about 12 ounces so you will use most of it all at once.)
3/4 cup of soy milk (I used unsweetened almond milk since I'm completely against soy.)
1/3 cup of canola oil. (I didn't have canola oil on hand so I just used Mazola corn oil)
2 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze
(Ok the version from the magazine called for tofu, which is made from yucky soy, so I actually ended up doing it differently. Here is my version)
2 tbs heavy whipping cream
1/3 stick of softened butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
3 tbs pure maple syrup
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

To make cupcakes: preheat oven to 350F. Line 12 cup muffin pan with paper liners. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in bowl. Puree avocado in food processor until smooth. Add maple syrup, almond milk, and blend until creamy. It should resemble baby poop at this point, sorry for the comparison but its true. Whisk into flour mixture. Spoon batter into cupcake cups. Bake 25 minutes. Cool.
To make glaze: whisk together heavy whipping cream, softened butter, vanilla, and syrup. Add in salt and cocoa powder, and mix until even and smooth. Gently spread onto cooled cupcakes.
*I don't have the nutrition information for this one quite yet since my glaze is made differently and has fewer calories. Once I know for sure I will let you all know! My ballpark guess would be somewhere around 200-250 calories per cupcake?

This is what the batter should look like once all the ingredients have been mixed!

After Baking!

After Glaze! You can't even tell eggs are missing from the recipe! The cupcakes are MEGA soft and moist

Yummy sweet treats for a girls movie night without breaking the calorie budget, plus tons of nutrients to boot!