Sunday Cooking Marathon

I hope everyone is having a great weekend.  The weather sure has changed in this neck of the woods.  Bye bye summer, hello Fall.  I do love the fall for it’s crisp morning air and all of the changing colors. I especially love the morning dog walks on days like these:

 It also means the start of pumpkin time and I love anything pumpkin, especially pumpkin pie. 

I made some pumpkin tarts with my class this year right before the Canadian Thanksgiving Holiday.  The kids were so stoked…they each got to take home 4 tarts…some didn’t quite make it home as they ate some before going home.  (And I didn’t take any pics…woops).

This week I also stepped up my fitness regime to another level.  I joined a local gym and signed up for 1 month of unlimited Crossfit.  For those who may not be familiar with Crossfit, the definition is as follows: 

Constantly varied, functional movements at high intensity. 

I did a bit of Crossfit over the summer while visiting family in Vancouver and was hooked from day 1, but this was the first week back at it since coming home.  Crossfit is relatively new in my city..and I am so happy that the gym is offering it.  My goal is to get in the best shape of my life, to tone down, get strong and leaner and I know that this is the way for me to get there.  I can’t wait to explore the next part of my fitness journey and see where it takes me. 

Now the title of this post is “Sunday Cooking Marathon”.  That’s right.  I spent about 3 hours today cooking meals for the week.  I am limited in time during the week and sometimes my nutrition lacks when I don’t have the time I’d like to cook the meals I’d like during the week.  So my trainer gave the a tip:  spend a few hours on Sunday cooking your meals for the week.  They are easy to freeze and heat up in the microwave or stovetop during the week.  How smart is she?  Thanks Kaiya!

After figuring out the final details to my meal plan for the upcoming week, I took off to the store to grab the necessities.  And I even found something for the dog today, which he loved instantly. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I sit here typing this, my house is beginning to smell of chocolate goodness from the yummy no-grain cocoa granola.  So what is on the menu this week?  Voila!  Take a look and let me know what you think   I think this week is going to rock.

  No-oat Cocoa Granola

Cauliflower Rice for Tuesday’s Salmon dinner (this is a previous pic)

Bacon Mushroom Mooseloaf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paleo friendly Pumpkin Pie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spicy Thai Beef and Noodle Soup

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Back soon with more goodies

Bea

Cocoa Roasted Butternut Squash Fries

Recently I’ve been reading a lot about roasting squash with cocoa… so I thought why not take the classic Butternut Squash and turn it into fries….much like Yam fries….. and cocoa is perfect for tomorrow’s Special day. 

Ingredients

• 3 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and sliced into fries
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 Tbsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp  cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp Sucanat sugar
• 1/4 cup oil.

Directions

Preheat your oven to 425F.  Mix all of the dry ingredients into a bowl.  In the meantime, prepare the squash. 

Drizzle the fries with olive oil and toss in the cocoa mixture.  Place on a cookie sheet and roast in oven for 20 minutes.  After 20 minutes, turn the fries and place in oven for another 20 minutes. 

You can also place the fries on the cookie sheet, drizzle with oil and then sprinkle the cocoa mixture over fries, but I prefer tossing them and them placing them on the sheet.  They will get quite brown…be forewarned…they are not burned. 

I served mine with Balsamic Onions and Bacon wrapped Fillet Mignon.