RECIPE TIME: Salad Dressing from the Gods

I used to hate salad. 

I thought it was boring. 

Little did I know... there are fun and exciting salads out there just waiting to be concocted!! 

I like salads because you can put things together that kind of don't belong together, but somehow taste good anyway. It's like- each bite is a surprise!!!

It's the little things I guess...haha.

Behold!  Maybe the healthiest thing I've ever eaten!

I figured it would be fun to add recipes to this blog! 

Btw- it's so weird to take pictures of your food. Like, I think about where I'm going to place it for an aesthetically pleasing photo. As you can see, my plate is artistically placed on my rug!

Wish I could say the dressing was my own little idea, but it was the lovely Angela Liddon's--

Here's the link!

But here's the recipe anyway, cuz who likes clicking links:

Vegan Green Goddess Dressing

Ingredients:

2 garlic cloves
1 cup packed avocado flesh (2 small)
9 tbsp water
3-5 tbsp apple cider vinegar
3-4 tbsp fresh lemon juice, to taste
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (or more)
1/2 cup packed fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup packed fresh parsley
1/2 cup packed green onion (dark green part only, not white)
1 tsp kosher salt, or to taste
Pinch of cayenne (optional)
Sweetener, to taste (I used 1 tsp of sugar)

Directions:

So basically you throw the garlic in the food processor (or blender in my case) and make sure it's all pulverized and then add everything except the lemon juice/vinegar. They make it very tangy, so you want to add those in bit by bit, to your liking. I also added salt last. 

My fork

I literally lick this dressing off of the plate when my salad is gone. I love avocado. I love garlic. I love lemon!! It's so so good!!

The rest of my salad (obviously you're on the edge of your seat to know) is as follows: half spinach/half iceberg lettuce, lightly browned red onion/mushrooms in garlic, sauteed chickpeas(<3!) in paprika, these cute little honey-sesame stick thingies(they look like worms in the first pic), and a dusting of paprika. 

Now you can emulate my kitchen prowess and make a salad like a BOSS. 

Also! Some more recent BBB successes:

1. Bench-pressed today. It was pathetic, but also felt awesome. 

2. I am sore from weights yesterday too! Win.

3. I even biked to my classes in the pouring rain.

4. Totally making all these awesome oatmeals for breakfast. 

5. Made cookies again and only had one! And I never do that! lol!

Well that's all for now. Thanks for humoring bits of my personal life. ;)

<3Katelyn

Bringing Everyone in on the Discussion

That last post was about the fine line between a healthy body image and an unhealthy one. I'd like to know what you guys think. When does self respect turn into pride, and when does recognizing a healthy need for change morph into self-deprecation? How can we escape the self-centeredness of it all? Feel free to post your reponses here or e-mail them to StephieStalvey@gmail.com

Love, Steph

Thoughts from Memphis

Hey guys, Stephanie here. First of all, I feel grateful to know that there are actually people reading and following this blog. I've been able to talk to some of you about it, and seriously, the encouragement means so much. Bbb leaves room for all of us.

Here's a thought I've been ruminating over lately. It's a good and holy thing to have a positive body image. To me, that means appreciating the way God made your body, rejoicing in its abilities and respecting it by taking care of it. It means not nitpicking and critizinging the qualities of our physical appearance that we cannot or do not need to change. See your body as a beautiful, worthy gift from God.

But the danger is so close behind. The minute we begin to attribute our worth as people to our physical bodies, we have missed the point of who we are, and begun to devalue our souls. This works in the positive and negative. If you attach your identity to how beautiful to appear on the outside, you're missing the opportunity to develop real beauty, which seeks out others in kindness, without being prideful and showy. If you are constantly down on how you look, complaining about this or that, and dissatisfied with your body, you too are guilty of placing your value on external appearance. We're all guilty of these attitudes one time or another. These attitudes are ugly.

I think this is especially hard as women. We live in a culture that tells us we are literally not worth listening to if we don't meet a standard of beauty. Less attractive women are less valued by society. It is so tragic but true. This is why we are all so terrified of growing old, and certainly feeds this paranoid, comparative obsession we have about our looks.

What can we do? Do we even have a chance of combating this madness? I think so. I think that we have the power to try and see people the way God sees them, and maybe even try to see ourselves the way God sees us. Can you imagine if we tried that? If we, like God himself, aimed to look not at the physical state, but at the heart? I think it would result in some truly beautiful things.

Going Strong

Hey friends! Time to update you on all my BBB adventures. I've actually been pretty proud of myself so far. I've been going to the gym pretty regularly. The first time, I worked on the elliptical for the ENTIRE duration of Britney's first cd, and met two body builders named Pablo and Ronnie, which totally made me feel like I was on Jersey Shore. The next day, I was lucky enough to run into Scott, an old high school friend. He showed me how to use a lot of the equipment (which is super cool because otherwise I would have been wandering around aimlessly tugging at stuff.) I was happy to have a workout buddy, and Scott showed me some good workouts I can do from home. One of the things I want to work out is my arms and chest, (and you know that place where your arm meets your torso?) because my arms will be on display at the wedding. So naturally I was up in that gym lifting weights till I physically couldn't anymore. (And before you start picturing me as Rocky or something, let me explain that these were 5 pound weights. And I was barely making it.)

I thought you guys would appreciate seeing my awesome, pink gym pass. So heres a bad phone picture I took of it.

and heres the fitness center itself

Tomorrow I head back to Memphis on a big ugly airplane. I won't have this gorgeous sunshiny gym anymore, but I will have the love of my life around, which is nice. (Jake, by the way, has been up to his own BBB action. He's been working out at the seminary gym, and eating healthy. He even switched to whole wheat spaghetti, which rules. I like to send him encouraging messages, like, "we're gonna be abulous on our honeymoon!" Its cool.) I'll have to keep my head in the game for real, so to inspire me, I got some Victoria's Secret yoga pants and a Women's Health magazine. Oh yeah, and hanging out with my ripped little bro.

And to keep things real, let me tell you what I love most about this thing that we're doing. I love that we're celebrating our bodies as they are. For me, this isn't about reaching a number on a scale. You can loose all the weight in the world, tone whatever you want, but if you have a warped or unfavorable view of yourself, nothings going to change. Your mind is the thing thats broken, and a physical change won't satisfy you. For me, this new era means welcoming the idea that I am beautiful as I am. It's about appreciating my body for all it can do. By being confident in my own image, I find that its easier to see the beauty in all the women around me. I am in favor of dispelling this idea that only one type of woman is beautiful. Thats simply not true... it doesn't have to be. Lets band together in this. God made us glorious. BBB.

Steph

RA Life... How do I be Healthy??

Hi! Katelyn here.

John, welcome to the BBB blog! :) I felt weird putting "Dad" in a blog post, but putting "John" is weirder so... oh well. But it's good to have you here!

Just came from Christmas break in Orlando back to good ol' Gainesville, FL. It's always weird to see how somewhere just two hours away is so different! I live in the burbs so it's all palm trees and ponds-with-fountains-in-them. Gainesville is kind of... the dividing line for where a little country-style gets mixed in. With an enormous university in it.  It's fun here!

This is what it's like here. 

I miss my family and my friends already! Missing Miss bride-to-be Stephie. :) She reminded me to keep posting so HERE I GO--


I go to UF (go gata!!) in case you wanna know, and  am a Resident Assistant here in the dorms on campus.





And that matters. Why? Ehh-- it isn't really included in my job description per se, but I believe it pretty much should be: baking for your residents. Or at least, I should because all my residents live right by the kitchen. And because they always remember!! It goes like this--

Random person: Hey, do you know  name of RA?

Past resident: OMG YES she was my RA and was the BEST because she made us cookies!!!

Random person: Yeah she is pretty darn cool.

Past resident: Yeah


This has legit happened to me.
Last year, I baked almost weekly for them. I am amazed at the mysterious powers of butter and sugar to win over peoples' affections.

NOT HEALTHY

So that right thar is what I baked today. I haven't gone to the grocery store so a box of brownie is what's up. I'm not perfect so everything can't always be homemade. Whatever.

But guess what!?
...
Brownies are not healthy!



In fact, they pretty much epitomize the picture of unhealthiness.

(Not to mention they are a personal weakness of mine. I've gotten better (I hope) but once I ate essentially the ENTIRE box.)


What's a girl to do?? I do not have an answer to this question. Is self-control just it? I was lucky enough to have it this time. This was my BBB victory of today! NOT ONLY did I not have a single brownie, but I didn't even lick the batter. True story.

But I'm kind of thinking that if I bake weekly, I'm not always going to be so strong!

ALSO I must say that RA life involves a good bit of catering, and healthy food is super-duper expensive when you have to feed a buttload of people. Or really, any more than like, two people. We already had Panda Express and tomorrow we get pizza.

...What to do....

I guess I could like, refuse to eat that smut and go order some organic salad somewhere. But chances are, I won't do that cuz I want to bond with everyone and not be a jerk. I'm thankful for the BBB community (lol) because it helps give me strength to treat my body with respect! But I know it's essentially impossible to put yourself around a bunch of delicious, ooey-gooey, sugary, ambrosia-like treats (hahaha.. because that's what my baking is! ;) ) 24/7 and not eat them. You are more likely to eat what you put yourself around. Simple truth.
So, this is my plight! I'm still kind of figuring out what to do. (If you have ideas, lemme know!) So, I'll probably post all my ideas or something later. Maybe also my 2012 goals or something.


Bye for tonight!

Bringing a Little Testosterone to the Party

All right, my beautiful Katelyn just got me connected, finally.  I apologize for my technical difficulties.  Of course, everyone knows I have a beautiful body, (I kinda get tired of my wife saying it over and over and over again...sheesh!) but nonetheless I have joined.

I believe I am the only male member, and therefore, request a T-shirt with a picture of you girls on the front, as well as our BBB logo. On the back, it can just say "Mr. T."

Got up at 5:30 to go work out this morning and....got a knee injection so perhaps I can start pushing my arthritic knee a little harder.

Glad to be on board with you women-type creatures.

Mr.  T

The Gang goes to the gym/ Steph gets vulnerable

Well, it’s day five of our fabulous initiative, and I’m sitting here with a cup of green tea realizing that everything has changed. With the holidays wrapping up, everyone is having to migrate back to their prospective school towns. Katelyn left for UF this morning, and it won’t be long until I’m back to dreary, de-motivating Memphis. Being long distance with your weight-loss-partners-in-crime blows.  Proximity totally helps stir you on towards actually working out and stuff. We’re gonna really have to make this blog awesome if we want our energy to have some staying power.

It’s for that reason (and because of Emily’s awesomely soul-baring, inspiring previous post) that I’ve decided to get vulnerable today. And, as you all know, “vulnerable” in a weight loss setting absolutely means posting a before picture, and my weight in pounds.

So here you go world. Check it out.

Here I am. 5’ 9”, 165 pounds.

Last night BBB joined forces for our first real work-out sesh at the Gym. John, Katleyn, Emily, Kimberly, and yours truly were all present.  It was great to have everybody there working towards a similar goal. Also it was fun to awkwardly be taking pictures the whole time. Whenever someone looked at us like, “what the heck,” we just said, “we’re bloggers.” So true.

So here ya go blogisphere, enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Go girls go!

Team Awkward indeed.

                                                     Gotta work them glamour muscles ;)

                                                                The gangs all here!!

Aren't we precious?

I thought it would be fun for us to all post our favorite workout music/playlists, too. I think we all have pretty different taste and that’s fun. Personally, I’m all about working out to some show tunes.  Lately it’s The Book of Mormon. You have to have a certain kind of humor that tolerates obscenity and offensiveness to appreciate the genius of Trey Parker’s work. I have such a sense of humor. So I like doing the elliptical whilst listening to cheery, dancing Mormons. The songs have pep and they make me chuckle.  It’s a winning situation.

After we got home all sweaty and encouraged, I called my Jake. He was super proud, and suggested we end the night with a nice scripture reading and prayer together. “You’ve taken care of your bodies, now you can take care of your spirit.” Do I even need to say how crazy cool this man is?

So we did. We read John 15 and remembered that abiding in the love of God brings joy to the heart of Jesus and to us, and helps us to produce good fruit in this world. It was really a good time.

And now I’m off to do it again. This time I’ll be alone, but I know my girls have got my back long distance. I’m proud of us! BBB!