SOCIAL MEDIA

A Quick & Simple Healthy Choice Meal

Mar 28, 2016


Thank you Healthy Choice for sponsoring this post. Visit your local retailer to pick up your own Healthy Choice Simply Cafe Steamer or Original Cafe Steamer meal today!



I love food. Love love love! So it's no surprise that I write about it a lot in this blog. Sadly though I'm also super busy sometimes which means that I have no time to cook. With Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers I'm always guaranteed to have a rich, flavorful meal that's never dried out. My absolute favorite one of their dishes is there Chicken Margherita with Balsamic because it has two of my favorite ingredients: pasta and chicken. 

     


When I get home from work on a busy day I pop one of these in the microwave, make my sides if I want to eat a bit more or change into my house clothes and within 5 minutes my food is ready to go. I usually buy a few of these, especially when I know I'm going to have a busy week, because it let's me stick to healthy meals and prevents me from ordering pizza or tacos while I'm heading home from work.




Tonight I paired my meal with a spinach, tomato and parmesan cheese salad that I tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I'm such a spinach and tomato addict so I take any chance to eat those two. Sometimes I mix these in with the Healthy Choice steamer but I opted to have it as a side tonight.


What I like about Health Choice Steamers is that their meals are made with real ingredients and no preservatives so they're always fresh and tasty! The ingredients aren't frozen in the sauce so they have a fresh and more vibrant taste. It's really noticeable after you mix the pasta/chicken with the sauce and I never need to add salt or pepper for flavor. 

The best thing about the cafe steamers is that the sauce cooks separate from the food using the tray-in-tray system which is what prevents the food from tasting soft and overdone. Plus, I like putting the food into the sauce afterwards. It makes me feel like I actually cooked!



I've got to say that a year ago I would never buy a frozen meal because the few times that I tried them the meat and veggies would be dried out and they would lack flavor. Healthy Choice is the only major frozen food brand that has meals that can call all of their products 'healthy' as approved by the FDA so it makes me feel good eating it. The cost isn't bad either since it averages at $3.29. If you're a fan of quick and delicious meals and want to stay on a health kick you should totally check out their Facebook page to learn more about them and see what other flavors they have.
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

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Being Green is Another Way to Achieve Happiness

Mar 22, 2016
Thank you Tetra Pak for sponsoring this post. Join Tetra Pak and learn how you can live a more renewable life!


A few months after moving to Los Angeles I started to develop healthier habits. I drank less, ate better and became less wasteful. I also started to be more conscious of how wasteful I was doing things like constantly buying small bottles of water, not reusing plastic bags (when the supermarkets still had those) and taking longs showers while jamming to music.

This is why I was excited to take some challenges in order to help me continue to live a more conscious and renewable lifestyle. The challenges that I did were related to my shopping, shower, commuting and my coffee addiction!




I'll start with walking. I don't drive. I refuse to drive. The New Yorker in my prefers walking, mass transit or cabbing it whenever I'm heading somewhere so the walking challenge didn't really apply to me. I live in a great area with everything that I need within walking distance and heading to the supermarket--the farthest place I walk--only takes 10 minutes each way. That's cake. I know tons of people that can benefit from walking a little instead of wasting gas just to hit the drive through. I think it'll benefit people that are stressed out in a good way because when you're walking, even if you're listening to music, you have a chance to focus on your thoughts.

When it comes to grocery shopping I generally buy fresh or frozen veggies because I'm not a fan of packaged foods anymore. This usually means that I'm creating less waste because I mostly end up with the little plastic veggie bags that I always find ways to reuse. Sometimes I do get lazy though and want to get something I can cook fast like soup. I like that my favorite tomato soups come in renewable cartons because it means I can take what I want at the time and put the rest away for later. If I were to use canned soup I wouldn't want to leave it half opened in the fridge or be forced to put it in a tupperware container. I like these cartons because they're space savers and the packaging is renewable. Turns out that before I even heard of Tetra Pak I was already purchasing soup by Pacific that came in their packaging. Their packages help protect our planet's limited supply of natural resources because they're mainly made from paper which as you should all know by now, is a renewable resource that can be naturally replenished.

I'm a music fanatic and I can't really do anything without it. Cooking, cleaning, and showering always require music. I even have a special play list called Shower Time that lets me jam out to tunes while I'm showering and/or washing my hair. This of course means that my showers are a lot longer than they need to be. I decided to take my iHome out of my bathroom and force myself to take shorter showers. Because I live in SoCal I have to be mindful of the water that I waste and putting my iHome away for that reason helped me cut my shower time in half. I totally recommend this challenge to people because hey, who wants to look like a prune after getting all nice and clean?




Lastly, I changed the way I drank my coffee everyday. Or rather, I changed the vessel in which I drank it from! At work we have these tiny styrofoam coffee cups that don't carry more than 8 oz so imagine how many times a caffeine addict like me gets up to refill her cup--or to get a new one. I probably wasted about 7 cups a day, 5 times a week, so the challenge to bring my own mug to work is something I should have done on my own years ago. Not only did bringing my own mug to work let me have more coffee, but it reduced the amount of waste I was creating. In addition to that, my coworkers started doing the same thing after a few days.

I love to shop, eat tasty food, travel and drink good champagne but I also hate being wasteful. It totally makes me feel like a hippie saying this but I get a kick out of being 'green'. It's really amazing how changing even one thing every day, like taking shorter showers, can have a huge impact on things down the line that we can't even see. I also took Tetra Pak's Happiness Quiz and it gave me some insight how how the things I like to do positively affect me. You can take the quiz and see how your habits positively affect you as well.

Now that I did these challenges I'm hoping to keep them up as well as encourage people around me to do the same. I've spent so much time being wasteful with my time, energy and so many other things that surround me that I'm finally at a place where I want it to stop. And you should totally join me!




I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
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Get Back Into Your Clothes With SculpSure

Thank you SculpSure for sponsoring this post. Visit SculpSure.com to learn more about their body contouring treatment!



Oh college. It was a super fun time. I learned a lot, made long lasting friends and discovered my love of that yeasty goodness that is called beer. I was in great shape through hour high school because I was in the soccer team which had us on the field at least 5 days a week in season. We also practiced with the boys team in order to stay in shape and keep up with my moves. So yes, I was FIT!

Fast forward to today and while I do you have a really great place for a hot body I just have some areas of fat that will never go away no matter how much I work out. And that area is of course my stomach and my outer thighs. I've worked off hard-core on and off for the past four years and even at my thinnest I have always felt very self-conscious about my midsection because it's the one place that just never wanted to bulge. I have an extremely tiny waist but it goes unnoticed due to my spare tire that is made for a monster truck

During my days in NYC when I was a socialite I had a different outfit for every day of the year. I would buy the cutest clothes and rock the hell out of them. But now I seem to have a closet full of clothes that just don't fit. I either can’t get passed my stomach or up my thighs. And let's not talk about pants! I haven’t worn a pair in over 6 years. It's not that I don't like them--I have about 20 pairs of pants and jeans--I just can't fit into them!
 If my clothes could speak they would ask where I am and why I'm neglecting them! I refuse to spend money on an entirely new wardrobe. I'm very confident and the extra weight isn't driving me to madness but I would like to get some help working on that area and that’s why I was happy to hear about SculpSure.

not bad after just 2 treatments

SculpSure is a non-invasive body contouring treatment for the reduction of stubborn fat in areas that I need the most help in, my stomach and love handles. It’s a 25 minute procedure that destroys up to 24% of treated fall cells without needing surgery. This is great for someone like me who has no issue losing weight once I get into a diet or workout regiment but still have stubborn areas of fat that won’t go away.

This is where all the magic comes from!

The fact that this in non-invasive is a winner in my book because I’m not the type to want to go under the knife for a cosmetics procedure at this point in my life and while the results aren’t seen immediately, knowing that I can start seeing them as early as 6 weeks following treatment is great.

If this is something you’re interested in trying you can go on their site to find a doctor near you and get a free consult: http://sculpsure.com/find-a-doctor


So ask yourself, if your clothes could talk, what would they say and how would you benefit from it? See how Sculpsure can help you answer that question by following them on Twitter , Instagram, YouTube, and  Facebook






I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
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Decorating With Lights in a Non Dorm Room Way

Mar 21, 2016
When I was in college I, like every other girl that I knew, had icicle lights hanging on the ceiling 24/7. It looked super cute, was a great alternative to the harsh lighting and it helped set the mood for doing everything but studying.

These days I still really like the idea of these types of lights around my place but I'm steering clear of making my bedroom look like it's in a dorm. I've been obsessively pinning ideas that I think would look really great in my new bedroom since it's cozier (yes smaller) than my current one and it already feels more like home to me...even though I haven't even moved in yet.

Here are some cute ideas that I've been looking at and plan to use my Micro 30 LED Lights from Oak Leaf. 








What's cool about the lights is that they're battery operated so I don't have to worry about wires hanging out or using up an outlet that would normally be used for my laptop or phone.

Also, Oak Leaf is letting run a giveaway where one lucky person will get a set of their purple lights to use however they want. It's like Christmas never ends, right?
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Seared Tuna With Avocado Cauliflower Mash

Mar 2, 2016



Another day, another great carbless meal for my Phase 1 of the South Beach Diet. This time ahi tuna is the shining star. I obviously love fish and ahi tuna is one of my favorites but this is my first time making it. I've also never cooked with ginger before because I just became a fan of it about a year ago thanks to juicing.

As soon as I got home from work I went straight to the kitchen to get dinner/lunch for tomorrow started. My mahi-mahi salad was probably the best lunch I've had in a long time so I was hoping that my first time cooking tuna would give the same result. And did it? Of course it did. I can't cook steak to save my life but chicken and fish come easy. I didn't want to make a salad because I don't want to get sick of it so instead I got creative with cauliflower, an avocado and cheese. 

Check this out!

Ingredients
Ahi Tuna
Cauliflower
Avocado
Parmesan Cheese
Ginger
Lime Juice
Soy Sauce
Salt
Pepper
EVOO





Defrosting the tuna was set to take about 10 minutes so I used that time to get the mash ready. I steamed cauliflower and then threw it in the magic bullet. I haven't used this in ages and forgot that it's not a food processor so I had to add some water in order for it to break everything down.



Once I took it out it was a bit watery, because cauliflower has tons of water already so adding to it makes it worse. I usually use Psyllium Husk to take the moisture out but I ran out and totally spaced on getting more so what I did was just let the cauliflower sit on a plate to let the water kind of separate. 




In the meantime I mixed ginger, garlic, soy sauce, lime juice and EVOO in a bowl for the tuna. This smelled amazing. I think I'm going to do my best to cook fish with ginger as much as possible.





After about five minutes I was able to get the water off the plate without dropping any cauliflower in the sink. I added the avocado, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper and put it back in the bullet to mix up a bit. Enough to mix it all together while still leaving a few avocado chunks.





With that done it was time for the tuna. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and then threw it in a pan with sizzling olive oil. I seared it (so fancy!) for one minute and then carefully flipped it over. 



As soon as I did this I poured the ginger sauce on top and around it just enough to let some seep into the bottom of the tuna while still leaving it pink in the middle which was about two minutes.




Then that was it. I put the beautiful heart shaped tuna on top of my cauliflower avocado mash and I have to say it was absolutely amazing and because it doesn't smell fishy I won't feel weird microwaving it tomorrow for lunch.




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