Dessert Amaretti Peaches

Hey everybody,

So I had this major sweet tooth yesterday and wanted to try to make a different dessert. I came across this recipe for Amaretti Peaches and decided to try it because it was pretty low calorie for a dessert. Let me tell you, it tasted so good! Let me share this recipe with you. It is pretty simple and only takes 20 minutes to throw together.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup crushed amaretti cookies (about 4 cookies)

1 T brown sugar

2 large ripe peaches, halved and pitted

cooking spray

4 t butter

1 ounce bitter sweet chocolate, shaved

Directions:

1. Preheat broiler

2. combine cookie crumbs and sugar in a small bowl

3. Hollow the center of peach halves. Arrange peaches, cut sides up, in an 8-inch square metal baking pan coated with cooking spray.

4. broil for 2 minutes. Remove pan from oven.

5. Carefully fill each peach half with one rounded tablespoon cookie crumb mixture.

6. Place 1 t butter on top of each filled half.

7. Broil another 2 minutes until butter melts. Sprinkle evenly with chocolate and let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Nutrition:

Calories= 130, Fat = 7.4g, Protein= 1.6g, Carb= 19g

Thanksgiving stuffing

Hey guys,

Being that it is Thanksgiving this thursday, today I am going to give yall a whole grain stuffing with sausage recipe that you can think about making for thanksgiving dinner. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 tsp canola oil

1 lg onion, chopped

1/2 tsp salt

3 lg ribs celery, chopped (about 2 c)

3 Tbsp thinly sliced fresh sage leaves or 1 Tbsp dried

2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed

1 1/2 tsp whole fennel seeds (optional)

1 1/2 c fat-free milk "plus" (we used Over the Moon)

1/2 c reduced-sodium chicken broth

1 sliced bakery loaf 100% whole wheat bread (about 1 lb), cut into bite-size cubes (about 10 c)

8 oz fully cooked smoked turkey or chicken sausage, chopped

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly coat 11" x 7" baking dish with oil or cooking spray.

2. Put oil in Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion and salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until onion turns golden, about 25 minutes.

3. Add celery, sage, garlic, and fennel seeds, if using, and cook 5 minutes.

4. Remove from heat and add milk, broth, bread, and sausage. Stir well, season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and put in prepared baking dish.

5. Coat top of stuffing lightly with more oil or cooking spray, cover dish with foil, and bake 30 minutes. Remove foil and continue to bake until top is brown and crisp, about 40 minutes.

This recipe serves 8 people. There is 243 cal per serving, 11 g protein per serving, 35 g carbohydrate per serving, 4 g fiber per serving, 7 g fat per serving, 1.5 g sat fat per serving, 619 mg sodium per serving.

I hope ya'll have a great Thanksgiving Holiday. Enjoy your families.

Until next time,

Jennifer Klinkert

Roasted Pepper and Grilled Chicken Sandwich

The Sandwich is probably the easiest thing anyone can make, especially for those culinary-impaired athletes. There are so many different combinations you can come up with! This is another food-obsession I have: coming up with a different sandwich other than the plain jane ham and turkey 'wich everytime I make.  Who doesn't love a little food challenge, right? Its easy to make ahead, portable, cheap, and will satisfy my hunger any time of day whether its breakfast, lunch or dinner.

So today, as I stated above, I made a great roasted pepper and grilled chicken sandwich.

Ingredients:
2 slices of whole grain bread
1/2 cup of sliced peppers--I use frozen peppers just cause they are cheaper than fresh,come in a mix of red and green, and won't go bad on me.
3 oz chicken breast--pre cooked is always good too
1 slice of low fat cheese

Instructions:
1.Spray a non stick pan and  cook chicken breast, until slight browned on top on medium heat. If you slightly cut the breast in the  middle, you can see if its slightly pink or not to make sure it is cooked through.

2. In another pan, cook the sliced peppers, until cooked.

3. Toast bread in toaster.

4. Assemble sandwich with the cooked chicken and peppers. Top with cheese and enjoy! yay!

Have a delicious weekend everyone! Go Coogs!
--Starla Garcia

pico de gallo chicken

Hey everybody!

Hope everybody has been doing well lately. Only a week until we are off for Thanksgiving and home with our families! So excited for that. I am sure everyone is in need of a little break from workouts, practice and especially school work right? And for those who are getting ready to kick off their season I am sure ya'll are excited for that and ready to get to work. Anyway, today I am going to tell ya'll about this super simple, quick, and tasty pico de gallo chicken. The only preparation required is chopping up the tomatoes, onions and jalapeno to make the pico de gallo, the rest is a cake walk. I find that this recipe is one that I turn to often when I know I want to cook at home but feel like I don't want to have this huge mess of a kitchen and get stuck preparing and cooking all night. Here are the ingredients and directions.

Ingredients

1 cup chopped tomato

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 jalapeno pepper

2 1/2 T canola oil, divided

1/2 t salt

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1/4 t black pepper

*Note that this recipe makes 4 servings, 1 chicken breast and 1/3 cup pico de gallo per serving.

Directions

combine the chopped onion, chopped tomato, and diced jalapeno pepper. Add 2 T canola oil and 1/4 t salt.

Use the remaining 1/4 t salt and 1/4 t pepper to sprinkle both sides of the chicken breast.

Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium high heat with remaining 1 1/2 t oil. Sautee chicken 6 minutes on each side or until done. Serve the chicken with pico de gallo over it.

Tips and Nutrtion

Some tips to help make this dish even easier to make is to buy pre-chopped tomato and onion and buy the canned diced jalapeno peppers.

This pico de gallo chicken provides 275 calories, 12.8 g fat, 35 g protien, 4 g carbohydrate.

Female athlete triad

As of late, I have been thinking extensively about what else I could contribute to this blog other than provide recipes and ideas to fuel or re-nourish our bodies. So other than talk about certain food, I want to address something that can can happen to women if there are imbalances in our lifestyle.

I would have to admit that being a female is psychologically exhausting with the need to always to be perfect and just plainly better than our best girlfriend. Now bring in athletics and school, and our world becomes even more intense.  Sometimes this need to be perfect in all aspects in our lives can lead to us neglecting our bodies with the right psychological and physical nourishment.

The female athlete triad, is a risk that more girls are falling within. It is a combination of 3 conditions: disordered eating, amenorrhea, and osteoporosis.  Some can have all 3, or just one or two, but the consequences of the either one can impair a person's quality of life.

1. disordered eating:
Just as any girl can critcize their "looks," a girl that has the female athlete triad will use athletic performance as a way to justify sudden weight loss. Disordered eating goes hand-in-hand with avoiding foods that they think are "bad" like high-fat foods, cutting carbs, or sugar more than a normal person would, or only eating at certain times of day, measuring all foods obsessively, etc. Sometimes this disordered eating can lead to an even more destructive eating disorder like anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa.

2. Amonorrhea:
 When not enough calories are being eaten and exercise is intense for athletes, a decrease in estrogen causes a girl's menses to become irregular or stop. At times this normal,  so if this happens it does not mean that you have amenorrhea, but if it happens for 3 months or more, talk to your doctor. There may be a possibility of pregnancy . The decrease in estrogen happens because of low body fat and body weight. To check if you are at a healthy body weight for your height you can calculate your body mass index. There is a link to calculate at the bottom of the page

3. Osteoporosis:
Since estrogen levels are low and there is poor nutrition involved, low calcium intake is probably happening as well. Low calcium can cause osteoporosis, which is the weakening of bones in loss of bone density and bone formation. Basically your bones become porous like a sponge, and increase your chances of stress fractures, which can stall or ruin your athletic career. 

This information on the female athlete triad is not meant to scare you, but to INFORM you about what can happen if proper nutrition is not thought about logically in attempts to lose weight or increase athleticism.  Please find healthier ways to achieve your goals and talk to a registered dietian, coach, or counselor if you you feel something is wrong.

Until next time,
Starla Garcia
for more info:go here
for BMI calculator  click here

quick and easy pasta recipe

Hey ya'll,
So I have this pasta with basil tomato sauce recipe. Pasta meals are a great way to re-load on Carbs after a tough workout, which is highly important to all of us athletes. This particular recipe is very tasty and actually not too heavy of a meal either. For 1 1/2 cups of pasta it is about 350 calories. The only downfall to this recipe is that it has very little protein. As athletes it is important to get some protien with our meals, so to make it a little better and geared more toward an athlete's diet you could add some grilled chicken to this recipe and it would complete your meal. Adding the grilled chicken would bump the calories up to between 500 and 600 calories which is a perfectly healthy meal. Here is the recipe:

1 package fresh fettuccine
2 T olive oil
3 t minced garlic
4 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 t salt
1 cup fresh torn basil leaves
1/4 t freshly ground black pepper
2 ounces parmigiano-reggiano cheese, about half a cup

Directions:
1. Cook the pasta according to package directions
2. heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic to pan and cook 1 minute. Add tomatoes and salt, cover and cook 4 minutes.
3. remove from heat and stir in basil and pepper.
4. Add the tomato mixture and the pasta together, tossing well to combine. Then just top with some cheese.
5. Add grilled chicken to the recipe to get some more protein

This recipe only takes 15-20 minutes to make so it should be fairly quick and simple for a dinner after practice or class. If you need something that is easy to fit into your busy schedule you should definitly try this recipe out. It is always a good idea to over produce your recipes and save the extras to put in tupperware and have for lunch during the week or on nights that you get home too late to be able to cook. Hope ya'll have a great rest of the week.

Jenn

The Importance of Sleep

Written by Katie Kissane, U of H Dietetic Intern.

Getting enough sleep can be hard to do for most college athletes who have to balance school, practice, and social lives. Sleep deprivation can have a negative impact on cognitive function, mood, and reaction time. As an athlete, sleep deprivation can also have an impact on performance. Serotonin and growth hormone are released into the body while you sleep, both enhance mood and facilitate tissue repair. We all know that sleep is important, but sometimes it is hard to get the 7-9 hours a night recommended for most athletes. In addition, there is recent evidence that suggests getting extra sleep over an extended period of time improves athletic performance, mood, and alertness. Aside from prioritizing sleep and taking steps to ensure you get a restful sleep there are some things to consider changing in your diet to help with sleep as well.

What does food have to do with sleep?

Have you ever noticed feeling lethargic and tired after eating a large meal like thanksgiving dinner? There are several reasons for this including the action of the amino acid tryptophan. Foods that contain tryptophan cause sleepiness. Or maybe you have noticed after eating a food or beverage high in carbohydrate that you get a feeling of energy followed by a crash. High carbohydrate containing foods are rapidly digested and send a rush of sugar into the blood stream which the body responds to by increasing the release of insulin and subsequently causing the cells of the body to respond by pulling the sugar from the blood. This causes a crash in blood sugar and subsequent feeling of lethargy and sleepiness.

• ·         Tryptophan is an amino acids that is converted to melatonin. Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that regulates sleepiness. Tryptophan is found in foods like turkey, honey, milk, nuts, and eggs.

• ·         A large meal at lunch can cause a post-lunch dip

• ·         Caffeine is a stimulant that works by blocking the action of hormones in the brain that makes us feel sleepy. A strong dose of caffeine can stimulate the mind for a short time, and then cause a crash in alertness as the effect wears off. Be careful to consume caffeine too close to bedtime as its effect may persist for several hours. Cut out all caffeine from the diet about 4-6 hours before bedtime.

• ·         Energy drinks contain caffeine, some amino acids, and a ton of sugar. These ingredients will give you an initial short-lived feeling of alertness followed by a crash.

• ·         Alcohol can cause drowsiness and help you relax in the short term, but can disrupt sleep later in the night. It also keeps you from entering the deeper stages of sleep, which may cause you to wake up still feeling tired even with the 7-9 hours of recommended sleep. 

What to eat before bed to help you snooze?

A little food in your stomach might help you sleep. Try a bowl of cereal and milk, yogurt and granola, peanut butter and a banana or cheese and crackers. Remember to keep the snack small. Stay away from high-fat foods, research shows that people who often eat high-fat food before bedtime experience a disruption in sleep cycles. A heavy meal also activated digestion causing nighttime trips to the bathroom. Spicy foods may lead to heartburn. Avoid the less obvious sources of caffeine before bed such as chocolate, tea, and cola.

Warm milk with cinnamon and nutmeg

8fl oz 1 cup of whole or semi-skim (low fat) milk
10ml / 2 teaspoons clear Honey
pinch or ¼ tsp grated nutmeg

½ teaspoon of cinnamon

Heat milk gently in a sauce pan, to just below the boiling point.  Do not boil or scald the milk.
Remove from the heat and whisk (beat) until frothy.
Stir in the Honey
Pour milk into a large mug and grate a light dusting of cinnamon and nutmeg over the milk.

Pair this with a piece of toast or some whole grain crackers and you have a soothing bedtime snack full of sleep enhancing ingredients.

Before and After Races

This past Monday, was CUSA Cross Country Championships, aka my last conference race. Having already been racing for what feels like half of my life, I have gotten a grasp of what works for my body before and after races. For some runners, however, knowing what their body needs pre and post race is still a little foreign to them.
I know some runners, that are too nervous pre-race to eat end up bonking during the race due to lack of energy. Others, eat too much or not the right thing before, and end up too full or having some GI issues (aka bladder problems) once the gun goes off. I have been a victim to each of these, but throughout the years I have experimented with different types of foods and textures that work well for me. Practice is not just for running workouts, use it as a time to also try out what works  so that you can perform well on race-day.

First off, it is important to at least try to eat before hard workouts or races, because if you reflect about when you last ate, it was probably dinner. So, in reality your body was in a fasting state. Eating a snack before or a small breakfast can wake up your metabolism and provide energy before your run.Another thing to consider is what time your race is at. If its early you could probably get away with a small snack, but for late morning, I would recommend eating a moderate sized breakfast. Make sure to eat at least 2 hours before your race, or you may end up still feeling full and hear some "sloshing" in  your stomach. Foods that are high carb keep you energized and low fiber to not upset your stomach are best. Also keeping a minimal amount of fat/protein, because too much can have the same effects as fiber on your stomach.

here are some ideas: a piece of fruit, a powerbar or granola bar, 1/2 bagel with peanut butter, gatorade or orange juice

 Another big thing is recovery. Refueling within 30-60 minutes after a hard workout or race will affect how you do the next time you have to push your body, or even how you feel throughout the next couple hours. Within in the hour after, your body is like a sponge, and will utilize what you give it the best.
When your body has already used up the carbohydrates you ate before, it will start to eat away at glycogen stored in your muscles. This leads to muscle breakdown=poor recovery. To make sure that this does NOT happen make sure to eat simple and easily digestive carbohydrates or liquids, to replace your glycogen. Protein is also a major component to recovery and helps repair tissue breakdown or damage.

some more ideas: 1 cup of chocolate milk, sports drink, recovery bar, low fat yogurt or ice cream. oatmeal with almonds, handful of  trail mix, fruit, 


After knowing all of this, here is what I did on Monday:

pre race breakfast:2 whole grain waffles with peanut butter, 1 banana, 1/2 a Luna bar

post race: 3/4 bottle of sports drink and water (eating right after makes me queasy)
post race lunch: turkey sandwich, apple, chocolate coconut water (yum!)

Happy Thursday everyone,
Starla Garcia

Tasti d lite - A healthier dessert option

Hey guys,

So I have always been a sucker for any type of ice cream or frozen yogurt. It is definitely my weakness when it comes to nutrition. A friend of mine a while back introduced me to a frozen dessert place called tasti d lite. When I went there I saw that this place was all about nutritional content and making a frozen treat that was not so bad for you. That place has now become one of my favorite places to go. Tasti d lite is not ice cream, and it is not frozen yogurt. Instead tasti d lite is a frozen treat made without the butter fat that is used to make ice cream and it has half the carbs and sugar compared to ice creams and frozen yogurts. There are over 100 different flavors at this place and they all range from 70-100 calories for an 8 oz serving, not too bad for a dessert right? My teammates that are reading this are probably cracking up right now because I am that places biggest fan, I talk about it all the time. If anyone wants to try it out sometime it is located off of 610 and westheimer in the same parking lot as RA sushi. Hope ya'll can try it and that ya'll like it!

-Jenn