Category Archives: Food

WIAW #1 – Do All Parents Eat Food Off the Floor?

Before “Going Dad”, I had a healthy food blog called Just Add Cayenne. You can find a link to it at the top with it’s own tab. One of my favorite things to do on the blog was to participate in What I Ate Wednesday (WIAW); a link-up party hosted by Jenn from the blog Peas and Crayons. Note: There is no link party this week, but it will continue next week. Check out Jenn’s post explaining why here.

It’s been a couple years since I joined in, but I’ve missed it and figured I’d try to start back up again. I love food, healthy food, and I enjoy sharing and talking about it with others who have an appreciation for it too. So thank you, Jenn, for still going strong on these link ups, glad to see you’ve kept these going!

The theme for my first WIAW post on Going Dad is something I’ve found myself doing a lot of lately, eating food off the floor. And not just food I dropped, but food my daughter, Avery, drops. Sometimes from her mouth, sometimes just her hands, but I can’t stand to see it go to waste. Hey, if it’s healthy and something you took the time to cook, it’s hard! I know there are other parents out there like this….right?

This is partly my fault for trying to feed her while she’s roaming around my feet in the kitchen (yes, like a cat) and not putting her in the high chair. So I break pieces of my homemade bread like Coconut Carrot Bread and feed it to her. Again, yes, just like a kitty, which I pretend she is as a way to get her to eat.

But sometimes kitties drop their food, and me not wanting to toss it in the trash, I quickly eat it myself before taking time to have a second thought. I have my limits, like if it’s practically fully chewed and regurgitated, but otherwise, I’m a victim of second-hand snacking from my baby.

Now, let’s move on to my eats for the week.

what I ate wednesday, WIAW

A little pre-workout snack of homemade pumpkin bread with a nice layer of NuttZo in the middle.

I downed a green protein smoothie after the workout and played with Avery while cooking lunch. I made a big bowl of edamame spaghetti with my homemade fermented beets and wild salmon. Avery ate from what I had, and I made sure she was in the high chair for this one!

Not long after, it was naptime, so I brought Avery to her room to sleep. Like usual, she fought it, but finally gave in after kicking the crap out of crib. Crazy kid!! Then I snacked on some chocolate chia oatmeal NuttZo balls while checking e-mail.

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As expected, naptime was short, and Avery was up and ready to wreak havoc play all over the house. When my wife, Going Mom, came home from work, more playing ensued and I prepared dinner. Chicken and black bean stew turned out better than I expected, and Avery and Kelley both enjoyed.

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The mushrooms were all for me, Kelley’s not a fan and had tortilla strips instead. Fine with me, I’m not one to share my mushrooms!

After dinner, we went through Avery’s bedtime routine and put her down for the night. For my nightly snack, I enjoyed a steamed kobocha squash with lots of plain Greek yogurt and, you guessed it, a couple spoonfuls of NuttZo.

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I may or may not have gone back for seconds. Okay, thirds.

Brilliant blog posts on HonestMum.com

Sugar Free Green Coconut Carrot Bread Recipe

The other day I posted a picture of my Sugar Free Green Coconut Carrot Bread on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and promised a recipe was coming soon.

Since I like to deliver on my promises, I’m sharing it with you today. Consider yourself lucky, or maybe it should be forewarned…..hmmmm. Here’s the thing…..

I do about 90% of my cooking via the microwave. My main cooking method is steaming, mostly veggies, and microwave steaming is quick, efficient, and retains the most nutrients compared to roasting, sauteing, boiling, etc. I still cook with these other methods, just not often.

Now, many people avoid microwaves at all costs for fear that they’ll turn radioactive or some other harm will be done. This was a concern for me at one time, so I looked into it and was convinced it was a safe, if not safer cooking method. Think about the carcinogens resulting from grilling, roasting, or toasting, that’s not safe either.

Anyway, I wrote a post on my old healthy food blog, Just Add Cayenne, titled Is Microwave Cooking Safe that you can check out for my reasoning if you’d like. But that’s my preferred method, and that’s how I make most of my breads.

I’ll let you in on my little microwave bread cooking tool that I absolutely love; it’s a microwave omelet cooker! Yep, it’s the Nordic Ware Microwave Omelet Pan and you can get it off of Amazon for less than $7. The link is my affiliate link and I’d be ever so happy if you went through it to make your purchase. Check out my other favorites on the Amazon sidebar to the right.

I’ll save my microwave cooking details for a later post, but for now, how about that bread recipe? I adapted it to be cooked in the oven, so you’ll have to wait for my microwave version. It’s a lot faster, using less ingredients, and still delicious and healthy!

healthy, bread, cooking, recipe

Sugar-Free Green Coconut Carrot Bread Sweetened with PyureSweet Stevia

Get These Ingredients….

  • 1 egg + 4 egg whites
  • 1 cup steamed carrots
  • 1/2 cup steamed spinach, only drain a little of the excess water and leave the rest*
  • 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 1 ½ cups oat flour; could probably use whole wheat, spelt, kamut, or high quality protein powder too
  • 1/2 cup coconut flour
  • 1/4 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut; I used the kind from Let’s Do Organic
  • 1/2 cup PyureSweet Stevia; if using pure or liquid stevia extract, use the equivalent of 1 cup of sugar which can be between 1 to 2 tsp depending on brand.
  • 1 Tbs Cinnamon; you can use less, but I’m obsessed
  • 1 ½ tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • Pinch of sea salt

Now Do This….

  1. Add wet (first 4) ingredients to the bowl of a food processor and puree until mostly smooth.
  2. Whisk all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. 
  3. Add your puree to the dry ingredients and mix with a large spoon or spatula making sure everything is incorporated.
  4. Pour into a loaf pan and bake 50 – 60 minutes in a preheated oven at 350 degrees. 
  5. The bread is ready when a fork or knife comes out clean when inserted in the center.  Cover the top with foil for the last 20 minutes to avoid burning.

*The water from the spinach helps retain volume and moisture since baking with stevia requires less bulk than if using sugar, honey, maple syrup, etc.

Give this to your kids and call it “Green Monster Bread” or something fun like that and feel good knowing they’re getting healthy food for their constantly growing body. Avery knows what’s up….

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And of course, this bread’s deliciousness is only compounded when you put a think layer of NuttZo on top. Remember, save yourself 15% on the best organic nut & seed butter in existence and used code liley15 when purchasing from their product page. It’s good for you, good for me, and everyone loves it! Winning all around! If only I can get Avery to give me back the jar…

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What are your thoughts on microwave cooking?

Have you made bread in the microwave before?

Since we never go out to eat and I take on cooking mostly all meals in our house, it’s a must and I swear by the microwave. Never mind that odd glowing I get around 3am……

Going Dad’s Sunday Food Log

Do you keep a daily food log? I used to a few years ago, but it’s not easy to track food when you actually prepare your own meals. Kind of sad how so many online food logs are geared more towards those fast food and other quick service restaurants or packaged food.

You can create your own custom food items all you want, but that takes a lot of time that most of us don’t have. Plus, chances are, if you’re making all of your own meals from fresh, whole foods, you probably don’t need to keep a strict food log as you’re obviously conscious what and how much you’re putting in your body.

It took me a while to stop tracking, but found that once I finally came to this realization, I had gained 30 to 45 extra minutes back to my days! More time to eat and NOT track, yay!!!

Going Mom, my amazing wife, gave me several hours of freedom on Sunday as she stayed home with Avery. I had done the same for her the day before, Saturday, and as it’s something we both could use every now and then.

Of course, we both just used the time to get a few things done around town. I had a leak in my tire that I brought to Costco to have repaired for free (ahhh, member perks), and used the waiting time by working on the computer at a nearby Starbucks. Like any normal at-home parent would do during their free time, I had to Tweet to the world….

By “work”, I mean messing around with the blog settings and getting distracted as the Dallas Cowboys went from winning to losing the game against the Green Bay Packers. I’m not a huge fan of watching other guys play sports when I’d rather be active myself, but I still root for the home team, and it was a disappointment to see us lose.

I got over it fast, though, and continued on my black coffee binge at Starbucks. You get free refills with their gold card, which I have, and made sure to take advantage of. I brought two of my own bottles that I filled up, had 5 grande refills while there, and brought another full grande back home.

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Coffee, FTW!!!!

One purchased Americano with nothing added, 8 free grande refills, and 50 trips to the bathroom in only a matter of 2.5 hours had me shaking like a Polaroid picture! Thank you, Andre 3000, for the great analogy. #winning

I’m used to consuming a massive amount of caffeine via coffee and green tea, but even this was a lot for me in a day! Since I refuse to eat the store bought offerings at most places and forgot to bring my own food, I basically fasted most of the day.

Will I do it again? Most likely. What can I say, I love coffee! Plus, although I am done with food logging, I figured I might as well log Sunday’s “food” intake because that’s easy…

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Yep, that coffee buzz lasted most of the day and had me crashing pretty hard late into the night. Hopefully Monday is off to a good start, because I don’t exactly feel like coffee at this point. Tuesday will be a different story.

Do you overdo it on coffee sometimes? All the time?

How do you like your (if you have it) coffee?

Do you prefer another form of caffeine or abstain from it all together?