I get questions all the time about what I eat and how I train (mostly from friends and the high schoolers we work with) which I’ve answered before on my blog posts. However, I don’t do it very often so I figured I’d make it more of a reoccurring thing so here are two recipes I’ve been hooked on lately. Recipes
My nutrition is something that I’m really on top of or something that falls to my last priority; I’m never in the middle. I get really busy during the week which is what I hear from the high schoolers as well. With that in mind I need to take time on Sunday to cook my food for the week. I am always looking for something new that is going to taste good, be healthy for me and will last all week. Just ask Stevo and Kelsey, anytime they cook something new or are on a new kick I usually jack their style and will bring it in the next day to work. Lately,they have been utilizing a slower cooker/crock pot to do a lot of their cooking (who am I kidding; KELSEY has been utilizing a crock pot lately for their cooking… just joking Stevo, but seriously…). So I jumped on the bandwagon and let me tell you, it’s awesome the stuff you can do with it. I’ve been experimenting with different recipes and here is my favorite one so far.
Spicy BBQ Chicken
- 3-4 pounds of boneless chicken breast into the slow cooker
- Mix up the following ingredients in a separate bowl
- 1 (12-14 ounce) bottle of spicy or regular BBQ sauce (try and find BBQ sauce with natural ingredients)
- ½ cup Italian salad dressing (again try to find one with natural ingredients, if you don’t pay attention you’re going to buy one with a lot of artificial sweeteners and flavors)
- ¼ cup of natural brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
- Once this is all mixed pour it over the chicken in the slow cooker
- Depending on how big the chicken breasts are you’re going to want to cook it for 6-8 hours on low
The great thing about this is that yeah it takes a long time but the prep takes about 10 min. Once you throw it in the slow cooker you don’t have to go back to it until it’s done. By the time it’s done the chicken should be really soft and look shredded like the picture below. I usually eat this with 4% milk fat cottage cheese and some stir fried vegetables.
Homemade Protein Bars
I have been struggling as of late to get in enough calories so I have been looking for ways to help remedy the situation. I used to eat store bought protein bars back in the day between meals. However, they are usually really processed and have a great deal of artificial ingredients. I decided to go find a recipe online that suited my goals. I found a great one and just made my own modifications to it. So here is the recipe for a better alternative to a store bought protein bar.
- Mix up the following ingredients in a bowl…
- 8 whole eggs
- 6 heaping scoops of whey protein (I used Optimum Nutrition’s Vanilla Ice Cream whey)
- 4 cups of oatmeal
- 300ml of almond milk
- 4 tbsp. of brown sugar
- 3 tbsp. of NATURAL peanut butter (if you look at the ingredients it should just say peanuts, that’s it)
- And my favorite part…. A LOT OF CHOCOLATE CHIPS!!!
Once you have everything mixed up then lightly grease a one inch deep cookie sheet with olive oil or coconut oil and pour on the mixture. The mixture should look pretty gooey like the picture below; it won’t look as dry as cookie dough does.
Cook in the oven at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. It might not look cooked because it does not brown like cookies do so just do the fork/toothpick trick to check if it’s done (picture also below).
In hindsight I should have made two batches because I have been devouring them this week. This is a great way to get in some extra nutrient dense calories that you can keep in the fridge all week. So for all the high school kids who tell me they don’t have time to eat, you have no excuse anymore.