Wow, it feels like summer today in colorful Colorado!  Tomorrow will be a different picture altogether, with rain and 50s.  So I hope to get outside late this evening and enjoy some of the warmth before the rain moves in.

It’s time for another recipes to inspire post!  I have been doing so much recipe testing of work-related dishes (i.e. freezable dinners) that I haven’t spent much time keeping an eye out for other stuff.  Today a recipe caught my eye and I instantly thought of Mothers’ Day.  Do any of you have fun plans for Mothers’ Day?  Something about it always makes me think of brunch.  Both my mom and my mother-in-law live over 1000 miles away, so I won’t get to see them in person on the actual day (but there are plans in the works for visits with each of them over the summer) so maybe I’ll have to tuck a few of these ideas away for then!

note: Click on the recipe names to visit the actual recipes.

Chocolate Crepes

I love crepes.  I’ll take them sweet or savory.  Our last two visits to Vegas we made sure to visit the Espressement Illy for dessert crepes.  But often you see plain crepes filled with the good stuff or drizzled with chocolate.  What I like about this idea is you are making the crepes themselves chocolate by adding cocoa powder.  The neat thing about using crepes if you make a mom’s day breakfast is that they can be made ahead of time and gently reheated. You could also do a ‘build your own crepe’ bar by having a variety of things to top it with.

Shari Tweaks:  This particular recipe looks like a fair amount of work by adding two sauces and a filling, so if I make these I’ll just go with the crepe portion of the recipe and do my own thing for the rest.  I think it would be fun to just fold them in half or quarters, top it with freshly sliced strawberries, maybe drizzle a bit of honey or maple syrup over the top and some chopped raw almonds or pistachios.  As far as ingredients that I’d substitute on this recipe (for the crepe part), I would use almond milk in lieu of regular milk and melted coconut oil in lieu of canola.  I might even consider using carob powder and coconut sugar as subs as well.  For some color on a mom’s special plate, I would garnish with a bright, edible flower.  If you have a Whole Foods Market nearby, they often have edible flowers in the ‘clamshell’ packaging right next to the herbs.

Dark Chocolate Banana Panini

Ohh-emm-gee.  This look amazing and SO EASY.  I must be craving chocolate today or something!  But what a fun and simple breakfast idea to make for a mom!  Or if you want to surprise your significant other with breakfast in bed!

Shari Tweaks:  I love that this recipe has only 4 simple ingredients and especially love that they are using sprouted grain bread.  I think I would choose the cinnamon raisin flavor of sprouted grain bread for added flavor – Food for Life makes one.  I do think the bread will need a little Earth Balance (or butter if you prefer) spread on the outside of the pieces of bread that will touch the panini press or pan in order to provide some crispness and caramelization.  I also think that I would add a small smear of raw almond butter on the insides to give the bananas something to grab on to.  And you can’t go wrong with a tiny pinch of sea salt!

OK, since I’ve been oogling the chocolate, let’s switch it up to something savory.

Little Lasagnas from the blog Proud Italian Cook (gorgeous photos – definitely take at peek at this blog!)

I pinned this to my personal Pinterest board a while back and have yet to make them, but I’m getting close!  I love the idea of this freeform style lasagna.  In the raw food segment of culinary school there was a ‘raw ravioli’ made with paper thin slices of turnips that reminds me of this as well.  You can go so many different directions with this as your inspiration.  If you are dairy-free you could make a cashew cheese to use in lieu of mozzarella or you could use tofu to make a dairy-free ricotta. If you are gluten-free you could use Tinkyada brown rice lasagne noodles.  If you are having a brunch or breakfast for mom’s day and want to include eggs, you could fill one of the layers with some scrambled eggs or maybe lay a beautifully poached egg on top.

Shari Tweaks:  I’ll likely use either the brown rice noodles or a whole wheat noodle (or maybe I’ll be wild and crazy and use strips of eggplant or zucchini instead!.  And I’ll have to sub in some soft herbed goat cheese in lieu of the mozzarella.  But I love the small roasted tomatoes on their vine and the fresh basil just as they are.  Looks absolutely delicious!

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Share with us what you’d love to include on your own brunch table!

– Shari B. =)

Previous Recipes to Inspire Posts:

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

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I am crawling out from under the paint mess to say hello!  Back in March, I posted that we were starting a new home improvement project on our stairs.  At this point it has kind of taken over all of our free time!  Each of the last 6 weekends has included work on this project, plus free weekday evenings when time allows.

We’re slowly getting there.  Here’s a photo journey so far:

We have a split staircase – you can go upstairs from the front of the house or from the kitchen area on the back of the house.   The stairway is something that we really loved about this house when we bought it.  But over the years as we’ve remodeled most of the rooms, changed cabinetry to dark wood and refinished the floors to natural, the honey oak finish on the stairs began to look out of place.  We really wanted to have the railings and spindles replaced with new stained wood, wrought iron and treadcaps.  But the cost was absolutely insane.  So this is our budget-friendly Plan B.  Of course once we got into it, we found the condition of the stairs to be pretty bad once the carpet was removed, so it’s turned out to be a lot more prep work than we planned on.

Today I’m starting on the treads.  The vertical facings are finally done (painted white) but now the horizontal pieces will all be painted the espresso color.  This part will be slow-go.  Lots of taping off and tedious detail work.

To tie it in to the theme of FitFeat, I’m getting a LOT of extra BW squats, step-ups and shoulder raises in, that’s for sure! 

Sunday I needed to get away from paint fumes for a bit and it was such a beautiful day, so Cory and I went for a little trail run.  It was the first outdoor run I think I’ve had so far in 2012.  Running just has NOT appealed to me lately, but I have to admit that I did enjoy the trail run – I really enjoy the hills and scenery as opposed to just a usual run on a flat jogging path.  So maybe I’ll pick up more runs here and there along some of the backcountry trails.

Here’s a little guy that crossed the trail in front of us so we had to stop and snap a pic – he’s well camouflaged so you have to look for him!

Thanks a ton for putting up with my sporadic posting schedule right now while this home project takes up all of my spare time.  Starting next month we have a small string of special houseguests coming for visits, so we have to keep at it to get it done and give the paint on the treads the 4 weeks to cure that it requires.

I know a few of my friends/family that read FitFeat are DIY’ers.  Any projects you’ve undertaken that turned out to be a lot more work/time than anticipated?

– Shari B. =)

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Now granted, I didn’t eat too terribly in Vegas.  In fact, check out this beautiful salad I had on Thursday evening:

It makes me want to get out my spiralizer, which has been sadly neglected as of late.

I had seaweed salad and a side of seared tuna at a really fun sushi restaurant we found:

And I even ate at the Canyon Ranch Grill for lunch – unfortunately no pics of this one but I had a small serving of quinoa salad with butternut squash cubes and a cup of delicious roasted vegetable soup.  And a REAL ginger ale, made with fresh ginger juice!  (SO GOOD!)

But here and there I had to sneak in some fun stuff too, like these fabulous chocolate crepes at Espressement Illy:

So I always get home from any kind of travel and just really look forward to some simple plant-based meals I toss together myself, like a salad of baby bok choy greens, cucumber, grape tomatoes and homemade vegan ranch dressing:

Or some fajita-spiced peppers and onions with tomatoes, nutritional yeast and cilantro hominy:

And of course a super-sized green smoothie!

I had a fabulous little visit but it sure tastes good to be home! 

What do you miss when you travel?

– Shari B. =)

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How is your week going?  I hope it’s off to a great start!

I mentioned a while back that we were embarking on another home remodel project, ripping all the carpet off of our stairs in order to make them painted and pretty.  Well, until the carpet was off we really didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into.  (That’s the fun of home renovations though right?)   The treads were in worse condition than we had anticipated, so we’ve certainly had our hands full.  Cory and I have combined over 50 hours logged on it since we started, and we are only done with the sanding and the priming.  Next, we tape off all 101 spindles, the treads/risers and the newel posts/railing in order to get the paint started.  It’ll be so beautiful when it’s done, but it’s definitely a lot of hours to get to the end result, outside of our regular work.  My ‘free time’ outside of personal cheffing and personal training has gone toward this home project – hence the quiet days on the FitFeat online presence of blog, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

But we had to put the project on hold for a previously scheduled interruption.

For a little change of scenery, I got to do this last night:

So that today instead of cheffing, sanding or painting, I could do this:

Ahhh…. :D  

Last time I was on this trip in 2010 I blogged about it the entire time.  So I won’t bore you by doing it again.    Unless of course I get to do something super cool worth sharing! 

Have a wonderful week!

– Shari B. =)

Random Posts

• Accidental Dressing
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Making a change to this mindset is very much in line with how I’ve adjusted the content of my coaching program.  No matter WHERE you are starting in your weight management and fitness journey, if you are unhappy with something about yourself in some way at the beginning, there are strong chances you’ll still be unhappy after you reach your goal.  I’ve worked with enough clients over the past decade to know that when one reaches a goal, there is short-lived excitement and elation about the achievement of the goal, but the unhappy little gremlins can creep back up and the same issue(s) will start again.  This is the problem with the mindset of “when I lose that last 10 pounds, I’ll feel so much better / be so much happier, etc.”.   Trust me when I tell you that is rarely the case.

Change your mindset first and your chances of lasting success will be much stronger.  Train yourself to be content with where you are right now, not to mention WHO you are right now instead of constantly feeling like you are trying to chase something that you currently are not, and I bet you’ll find the journey to be much more enjoyable.  You’ll also appreciate the destination that much more.

– Shari B. =)

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Shari Becht is a Certified Natural Chef, ACE Certified Personal Trainer and healthy lifestyle coach.  She is extremely passionate about teaching people how they can take steps to fit healthy habits into their busy lives. 

If you or someone you know could use some help learning how to eat more healthfully, banish negative body image and incorporate more “FIT” into their lives, please feel free to email her at shari [at] fitfeat  [dot] com.  For more information, click here.

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She had curve to her hips!  She didn’t have pin-thin arms!  I loved seeing that!  I hope that a lot of young girls who see the movie will take notice and know that her healthy body type is much more realistic than plenty of the other overly ‘skinny’ celebrities in movies, on TV and in the magazines.

Credit: Collider/Lionsgate

Image source

I watched an interview at FitSugar with her conditioning coach and appreciated what he had to say about her nutrition:

“Some of her diet information was a little misinformed and she’d been on the high protein diets in the past and didn’t feel very well. So she had a little bit more reasonable program, a little bit more carbohydrate, and then portion control. It was evidence based sound nutrition.

Sound nutrition.  Not a crash diet to get her ultra-lean in just a few short weeks.

I hope that this healthier body image trend is one that continues!

– Shari B. =)

Random Posts

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It’s been a little quiet around the blog in the past week so I wanted to pop in and say hello!  What I’ve been up to:

I finally started that month of yoga from a Groupon that I’d previously purchased so I’ve been trying to get in some 90-minute yoga sessions, which I really love to do but am finding it to be tough on my schedule.  The class if offered usually late morning (9:30 to 11:00) so I’ll enjoy it while it lasts but I have a feeling when the month is over I’ll be back to my usual routine of working out in my home gym first thing in the morning so that I can have it behind me and move on with the rest of my day.  I don’t enjoy working beforehand then stopping and then trying to start up again – it messes with my momentum! Especially when I feel so relaxed and zen when class is over!  I have to admit though – I forgot how amazing yoga in an actual heated yoga studio is.  I sweat buckets in that 100 degree room and I feel very ‘cleansed’ of mind and body afterward.

I am revamping the coaching program that I’ve been offering through phone/online.  Whenever I’ve had time to be in front of my computer, that’s what I’ve been devoting my time to.  To do it all the way I’d prefer will take a lot of time and possibly mean that a big part of the FitFeat archives would come down off the web.  Can’t say for sure, but if there is anything that you really want to keep (articles or recipes) you might want to print it to have on hand just in case.

On the home front, we started our next big ‘home improvement’ project on our staircase, ripping up all of the carpet (which is old and gross).  Hopefully when it’s done we’ll have painted hard surface treads, plus painted spindles and handrails but there is a LOT of work that needs to be done to get them ready for paint.  The carpet was hiding a whole lot of ‘messy’ from when the house was built.  This could easily be a project that stretches into multiple months but we think it will be worth it when it’s done.  We’ve done two projects now that require ripping up carpet and it is shocking how much dirt is UNDERNEATH the padding.  Now I understand those home buyers I used to work with who said they wanted no carpet in their homes at all.  I am starting to be of that mind as well.  No wonder our house is a pain to keep dusted!

And we finally started a compost bin!  If you have any tips for me please share – we are complete newbies in this new adventure.

***

And of course, I’ve been personal cheffing, nutrition coaching, recipe testing and personal training.

How about you?  Anything fun and interesting on your agenda lately? 

– Shari B.

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I guess I really am a Nike girl!  They’ve branded me!

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Are you excited for the start of spring?  I SO AM!  We had a warm weekend last weekend and Cory did some work outside, adding compost to the area where we have our garden and planting our kale and basil seeds indoors so we can get some seedlings going before planting them outside in a few months.

The kale is already growing!  There is something about seeing little seeds grow into sprouts and then grow into plants.  It seems … hopeful.

Hopeful that our garden does better this year than last year!    This time around we’ll focus on less variety of vegetables (plenty of KALE this time) and a lot of herbs.  However, I’ll be sure to put my mint in a separate container this time.  People aren’t kidding when they say mint is invasive.  Cory pulled all the old roots out of our garden and you should have SEEN how long the mint one was.  I wish I’d gotten a pic of it.

I’m looking forward to plenty of kale bouquets and kale chips from the garden.

Are you planning a vegetable garden this year?  What are you looking forward to planting?

–Shari B. =)

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It’s amazing how good one can feel after a few consecutive nights of really great sleep!  Today’s workout was fabulous.

• Dynamic warmup for 5 minutes + some rotator cuff exercises
• Deep smith squats (I mean DEEP.  Hamstrings touching calves)
• Overhead shoulder presses
• DB rows with horizontal grip
• Curtsy lunges with weight vest
• Back extensions on the ball
• Ball crunches
• Biceps with the band
• Triceps with the band
• Angled pushups on smith machine with varying hand placements

And later today, when the weather is supposed to be mid-70s I get to do a little socialcizing at my favorite hilly loop with a good friend for some catch up time.  It’s going to be a great day!

After weights this morning, I made a super post-workout smoothie.

This thing was massive!  32 ounces.  It didn’t even fit into my large cup!  It was like the Big Gulp of smoothies!

So I wondered – if my smoothie is THIS big and this filling, what kind of calories are we talking here?  Just out of curiosity I decided to enter it into a calorie calculator to check.  In addition to 10 ounces of water and a couple of ice cubes, here are the ingredients and the calorie info (if it is hard to read, click on the image to see it full-size):

Only 216 calories and a very solid balance of protein and carbs.  I don’t mind that the fat is low, because I get plenty of healthy fats in my lunches and dinners by way of avocado, egg yolks, olive oil and more.

Look at all the goodies packed into this smoothie: Ginger is included for its anti-inflammatory properties, not mention helpful for digestion and it is a warming ingredient.  Lemon for a boost of alkalinity.  Mixed berries (black, blue and strawberries) rich in antioxidants.  Frozen organic spinach because no meal is complete without some leafy greens!  Cucumber (also anti-inflammatory and antioxidant-rich) for healthy connective tissue and cleansing water content.  Celery – hello fiber!

If you are looking for a calorie controlled breakfast option that you can eat on the run, this one’s for you!

Have a fabulous Friday friends!  And a safe and fun St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow!

– Shari B. =)

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