Saturday, April 25, 2015

Perfect Post Workout Meal+Progress Report

For this week's recipe, Adam and I decided to make another healthy dish that is tasty, nutritional, filling, and easy to make. This recipe include chicken, brown rice, egg whites, broccoli, carrots, and sugar snap peas. The chicken is first baked and cut up then stir fried with the rest of the ingredients and topped off with sesame chicken sauce. This dish contains many nutritional values as chicken is filled with protein. Brown rice is filled with complex carbs as well as some fiber and protein. The egg whites are straight protein and vegetables are filled with micro nutrients and fiber. Broccoli is also rich in vitamin C and A. Carrots improve vision and prevent heart disease and the peas are loaded with vitamins and essential minerals. We also sautéed the vegetables in a bit of olive oil which contains lots of monounsaturated fatty acids which is beneficial for heart health.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup uncooked brown rice
5 cups vegetable mix (broccoli, carrots, sugar snap peas)
2 chicken breasts
3 egg whites
Stir fry sauce (to taste)
3 cloves of garlic

Directions:
1) Bake chicken in oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes (20 min each side) or until inside is no longer pink and juices run clear.
2) Put 1 cup of uncooked brown rice and 2 cups of water in rice cooker.
3) Put olive oil in pan over medium-high heat.
4) Once hot, throw garlic/vegetables in the pan and reduce heat and simmer until al dente.
5) Once the chicken is done cut it up into bite size pieces and put with the vegetables and as soon as the rice is done throw it together with the rest of ingredients.
6) Put in desired amount of stir-fry sauce and mix together over low heat.





















Progress Report:
1. In the last two weeks, we have learned about more recipes that are both delicious and healthy. However some of these meals were not easy to make and consumed too many times. We tried to pick out the easier recipes since most athletes are not experienced with cooking and may not have the time.
2. We learned that the meals we are making for our blogs we can make for everyday purposes. These meals are easy to make and healthy as well so as athletes ourselves, we can make these meals for our own benefits. We are also becoming more experienced with cooking as we are starting to make more meals.
3. We do not currently have any setbacks. It was difficult to find the exact nutritional benefits of the meals but we solved that problem by researching the benefits of each ingredient in each meal to find the overall health benefits
4. Now we just need to continue expanding our cook book by adding more recipes into it until we have a full cook book for athletes to create healthy meal plans with
5. The nutritional values we learned together can be applied to the things we eat everyday. We are now more conscious about the nutritional benefits of different things and can begin to choose healthier food to eat.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Cooking: The Beginning of a Great Spring

Two weeks later we have finally moved from logistics into the kitchen and we have learned that cooking is a process of trial and error; many times it takes some adjusting to make the "perfect dish." For this reason, creating a dish that is simple, delicious, and nutritious is very time consuming. Nevertheless, having a go to recipe that will always hit the spot and is nutritious is a key component to being able to reach your goals of athletic success, losing weight, or even daily functionality. Personally, I enjoy building things, creating works of art. For this reason, I use food as another medium, a building block to create a dish, a meal, nutrition to succeed in other endeavors of my life like athletics. Over the past weekend,Vincent and I got together and worked to perfect a dish with one of the most common staples in our diets, chicken. Below we will take your through the steps and continue to add recipes in the weeks to come.


Baked Honey Mustard Chicken 


                Ingredients:                  

 6 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts
1/3 cup of Yellow Mustard
1/3 cup of Dijon Mustard
1/4 cup of Honey
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

                                           1) Throw all the ingredients together and marinate overnight.
   2) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
                                                     3) Bake each side of the chicken 20 minutes or until no longer pink.
         4) Let it cool 10 minutes before serving.