All posts by R.C. Liley

I'm an ex-mutual fund accountant who left the cubicle world to be a stay-at-home dad to my beautiful little girl, Avery, who entered our life on 11/15/13. Also happily married to my wife, Kelley, for 7 years as of 8/17/14. Sorry ladies... :) Fitness and nutrition is of the upmost importance in our family and we strive to reflect this in our daily life. I always prepare our meals at home and only go out if it's a special occasion, and even then I tend to not get much. Food should be fun and a joy to eat, not something quickly consumed from a fast food chain or scarf down before the next meeting. I have come from strictly logging high miles to train for the next marathon to keeping exercise varied and focusing more on strength. I still enjoy going for a run when I can, but nothing crazy, and I prefer hill sprints while pushing my daughter, Avery in the stroller. She loves it and I get a great workout! I want to show the world how to appreciate their body and feed it real, wholesome food while moving more throughout the day. In doing so, everyone would be healthier, happier, and we'd all live in a better place as a result. I blog mainly about my life as a stay-at-home dad and frequently include reviews, participate in campaigns, and share my thoughts on fitness and nutrition. If you ever have any questions or thoughts to share, please reach out as I'm always open to listening or helping others however possible. That is, when I have free time since Avery is and my wife are the number one priorities!

Going Healthy

Going Healthy: Homemade Egg “McGriddle” Sandwich

07/06/2014 R.C. Liley 4 Comments

Have you ever had a McGriddle breakfast sandwich from McDonald’s? The soft maple-flavored pancake “buns” sandwiching crispy bacon or sausage, egg and cheese creates a sweet and savory fast food breakfast.

Mmm, I really enjoyed these sandwiches back in my “ignorant to how food is made” days. Now…not so much.

Glad I’m free from food ignorance now, and can see right through the “M” branded griddle cakes stuffed with fluffy egg and crispy bacon. I only see low-quality, non-nutritional ingredients like enriched flour, chemicals created in a lab to obtain that certain “flavors”, and cheese that is anything but.

Starting from the top, lets break down the ingredients in one of these sandwiches from McD’s. This info comes right from their site here.

Who brands their buns anyway?

One Bacon, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle (source) packs a whopping 420 calorie handheld heart attack served neatly in colored paper wrap. You get a substantial (not in a good way) 18g of fat, 240mg of cholesterol, 1110mg of sodium, 2g fiber, and 15g of sugar.

Still sound good? Lets keep going….

The top-level ingredients for a Bacon, Egg & Cheese McGriddles® are:

Griddle Cakes, Folded Egg, Pasteurized Process American Cheese, Bacon, Liquid Margarine
Seems somewhat safe, but dig deeper and we find the Griddle Cakes have a little more than you or I would use to make pancakes:

Water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), sugar, dextrose, palm oil, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, monocalcium phosphate), brown sugar, salt, soybean oil, rice flour, whey powder, modified tapioca starch, buttermilk powder, caramel color, natural (dairy and botanical source) and artificial flavors, soy lecithin, corn oil (processing aid).
Surely there’s nothing in the Folded Egg besides “egg”….right?….wrong:

Pasteurized whole eggs, food starch-modified, soybean oil, natural flavors (botanical source), sodium acid pyrophosphate, carrageenan, flavor enhancer [salt, maltodextrin, natural flavor (plant source), spices, herb, turmeric (color)], monosodium phosphate, citric acid, soy lecithin (release agent).

And the topping on (and in) the “cake” is Liquid Margarine:

Liquid soybean oil and hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils, water, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, soy lecithin, mono-and diglycerides, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservatives), artificial flavor, citric acid, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene (color).

This, among numerous other reasons, is why I happily prepare my own food at home!

My version is actually what you would expect an egg sandwich with pancake buns to be; two pancakes with a cooked egg in the middle. Wow, shocker!! I made a batch of coconut flour protein pancakes from ProteinPOW.com for the “buns”, but you can use your favorite pancake recipe if you choose.

The fluffy white one was obviously my egg-cellent first choice.

For the egg, I had this bright idea to microwave it in a small, circular glass dish to make the perfect round egg patty.

As you can see, I did this 4 times, and the egg just expanded and wrinkled into a brain-like resemblance. #FoodieFail.

I made do with the best rounded one of the bunch and just saved the other eggs to put on salad. Since my pancakes were too big, I trimmed around them a little; not necessary, but I wanted to make it look good!

Topped with a drizzle of raw, local honey, sprinkle of cayenne, and dash of pepper, this was a delectably sweet and spicy sandwich I devoured immediately after the last picture; pancake trimmings included.

I was pumped when the idea to make this sandwich came to mind, and I’m glad I did. These non-McGriddles are a delightful (and healthy) way to start or end the day. Not to mention they can be fun to make with kids!

I think it’s smiling at me…

My favorite breakfast on the weekends would be a scrambled egg sandwich with ketchup that my mom would make, and I could eat several! Did I mention I was a heavy boy? I don’t have ketchup anymore, but salsa suits me just fine and I don’t feel like I’ve given up anything!

Have you ever made your own fast food version into something healthier?

Do you like egg sandwiches with ketchup?

Read more: http://www.dadcreek.com/news/who-needs-a-gym-fitfamilyfriday/

Avery Talk

Our Baby Gives a Tour of the Kitchen

07/05/2014 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

Hey there! How’s it going? Hope your weekend is off to a great start!

We are hanging at G-Ma’s house for a second night, and enjoying each other’s company as Avery keeps everyone entertained. Now that she’s crawling, things are definitely more interesting, and it’s hard to keep up with this girl! What happens when they start walking?

Maybe we should look into those leash and harness contraptions….

The other day, while I was in my home inside our home, the kitchen, Avery wanted to give a pictorial tour of our kitchen and dining area. I told her no at first, but then she turned on her super cuteness and I caved…

But don't you love me, Daddy? — But don’t you love me, Daddy?

And so the tour ensued. Enjoy!

Oh, hi there, welcome to our kitchen! As you can see, behind me is the fridge and freezer. It’s nice and silvery; perfect to see my fingerprints on!

And right here is the oven, where Daddy does his baking and roasts a lot of vegetables.

It’s also silv…..oh hey, look, I can see myself!

Pretty cool, I can see other things too. So shiny….

Huh? Oh yeah, the tour. Sorry, I love seeing myself.

And this right here, is one of our two bar stools for the island. Mommy sometimes holds me as she tries to eat, but I play a game called “grab everything and shake it while making your body go straight”. So far, I’m winning.

I also like to practice pulling myself up on it like this…

But I’ll save that for later, let’s move on to the dining room.

Here is our dining room. This is where we sit down to eat at night and I…..oh, it’s Lou, our fat cat.

Let me just go try and grab some of his hair out really fast.

Nope, wait, stay right there, Lou.

There you go, hold that tail still and I’ll be right there.

Well crap, he didn’t listen.

If I can just make it over this electric cord to Lou…

Oh, and here we are back at the start. I guess Daddy didn’t want me giving any more of the tour.

Thanks for visiting, that makes me happy. Until next time, hope you have a great weekend!

Life, Parenting

4 Things Babies and Firecrackers Have in Common

07/04/2014 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans, and Happy Friday to all others! Both great things, and both reasons to celebrate!

We’re heading down to G-Ma’s to celebrate the 4^th of July weekend with Uncle Preston (if he’s around) and G-Ma’s boyfriend, Paul. This will be the first time Avery gets to watch fireworks, and we’re not too sure how she’ll act. Any tips?

Growing up, I remember getting tremendously excited around New Year’s and the 4^th of July because that meant fireworks!! When I was old enough, I would have my own yard sale trying to sell anything from some of my old books to jewelry I thought my mom would never miss.

For some reason, some boy sitting in the front yard with a few things laying on a blanket never got me very far. I earned some money, though, but mainly out of pity from the neighbors. I even tried my shot at a Kool-Aid stand which earned a bit too. Same reason…..pity.

With my earnings, I’d ride my bright neon Huffy bike to the firework stand nearby and spend it all on whatever I could afford. The stand owners were parents to one of my friends, so they’d always toss in a few extras.

I couldn’t afford the big fireworks, my sympathetic mom helped there, so I mainly came back with a lot of Black Cat firecrackers. Probably for the best since trying to ride bike while carrying several artillery shell fireworks would be ill-advised.

Not 30 minutes after arriving back home and I’d be out of my hard earned fire ant disrupters. Man, for such a small thing, those firecrackers are pretty potent!

One day, while Avery was screaming because I set her down for a second, I reflected upon my past obsession with firecrackers and came up with 4 things they have in common with babies. I figured 4 is a good number for the 4^th; see how intuitive I am?

1. Both are small but loud. When compared to an adult, babies are small, cute and (usually) cuddly, right? Likewise, a firecracker pales in comparison to the enormous fireworks you’d see at a major firework display. Despite their small packaging, babies and firecrackers can and do create quite a racket.

The firecrackers are self-explanatory; you light them and they go “boom!” Babies do a great job at creating loud noise with just their vocals, or by grabbing anything nearby and banging it on anything else nearby.

Although, unless you have one of those strands of 50,000 firecrackers set to explode one after the other in sequence, babies tend to make noise for longer periods. And, unfortunately, it’s not on cue by lighting a fuse, it’s all on their terms!

2. Both are good at exploding. While firecrackers themselves explode, babies tend to create explosions by other means. But, after either one “explodes” you have a mess to clean up.

The paper wrapping and any remnants from an unfortunate toy might be scattered across the ground, while babies leave their aftermath inside a diaper, on the floor, up their back, in the tub, in the car, in the…well, you get the idea.

3. Both have a short fuse. You ever try to light a single firecracker? Those things explode before you can turn the other way after lighting, and a lot of people, me included, just light and throw them quickly as they explode before touching the ground. Not safe or smart since you eventually have one go off in your hand which feels far from good.

Babies, on the other hand, can be as happy as a clam at high tide for one moment, but if you so much as take your attention off of them to scratch your head, they can go irate! This happens to Going Mom and me frequently; we’ll have Avery laughing as we coo at her and make funny faces, but we stop to talk to each other and WHAM! she’s crying.

4. Both need to be tightly swaddled/wrapped. We haven’t swaddled Avery in months, but when we did, it had to be a tight wrap. If it wasn’t tight enough, she’d get her arms free and thrash around like a short circuited robot. For a firecracker to work as intended, it needs to be very tightly wrapped around the powder inside.