I was craving these so bad last week.  I combined a few recipes to make this one.

Ingredients:

• 12 jumbo pasta shells
• 10 ounces of fresh or frozen spinach
• 1 cup of ricotta cheese (I prob used a little more)
• 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese (grated)
• 1/2 cup of mozzarella (shredded)
• salt and pepper (enough to taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon of oregano
• 1 jar of marinara sauce

Cook the shells as you would any pasta, but make sure you don’t cook them all the way.  You want them dente (so you can work with them).

Mix the ricotta, parmesan and mozzarella in a bowl.  Throw in your spices. Chop the spinach, add to the bowl and stir.

Stuff the shells with your cheese mixture.  Coat the bottom of the pan with a marinara sauce and then place the shells inside.  Once all the shells are in, cover with another level of marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese.  Bake for 20 minutes.

It’ll come out look like this.  And it will be amazing.

Serve and eat.  (Although prob eat two or three, this meal below was entirely too much food. For realz).

Enjoy!

e.

Man oh man, when I came across these two recipes, I was really skeptical.  I found them on Skinny Taste (which is a really awesome site) and what’s more is that they’re low fat.  She includes weight watcher counts for all her meals, I have no idea what the numbers but I’m sure they might helpful to some of you.  I’ve made these before and they taste amazing, I tend to couple the rice and beans with grilled chicken and home made salsa.  I could live off of this stuff and it’s super filling.  You can throw all this stuff in a tortilla and make a burrito.  Yum!

The Rice: Chipotle’s Cilantro Lime Rice

Ingredients:

• 1 cup extra long grain rice
• 2 cups water
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 tsp vegetable oil
• 3 tbsp chopped cilantro
• 1/2 of lime’s juice (I used the whole thing)

The recipe is super easy.  Make the rice you usually would – boil the cups of water, add the rice, salt and 1 tsp of oil.

Once your rice is done, put it in bowl, add the remaining oil, cilantro and lime juice.  Stir and serve.

The Beans: Cuban Black Beans

Ingredients:

• 1 can black beans
• 1/2 small or medium onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• pepper (recipe calls for 2 tbsp but I def used about a quarter of a pepper)
• 3 tbsp of cilantro
• 15 ounce can of black beans
• 1/2 cup of water
• pinch of salt
• pinch pepper
• pinch of cumin
• pinch of oregano
• 1 bay leaf

Chop the onions, garlic, peppers and cilantro (I didn’t have scallions, but you know, chop those too). Saute those veggies in a pot until they are soft. Add the beans (with the juice from the can), the water, cumin, oregano, salt, pepper  and bay leaf. Stir and let simmer. Serve with the rice.

I’ve made these before and they taste amazing! I tend to couple the rice and beans with grilled chicken and home made salsa.  I could live off of this stuff and it’s super filling.  You can throw all this stuff in a tortilla and make a burrito.  Yum!  Here’s my lunch for the day #holla.

Enjoy!

e.

Ok we’re back!  These are my latest obsessions: baked tortilla chips and salsa and guacamole.  Yeah I go all out.

Ingredients

4 (soft) corn tortillas (cut into quarters)
2 tomatoes (roughly chopped)
1 avocado
1 medium onion (chopped)
2 cloves (or 1 large clove) (chopped)
1/2 cup of cilantro (chopped)
sea salt to taste
1 lime

First the chips:

Preheat your oven to 350.

Cut the tortillas into quarters and brush each side with vegatable oil.  Space them out on a baking sheet.

Bake for about 15 minutes until your chips look like this:

While the chips are still warm, sprinkle with sea salt to taste and voila.

And the  guacamole:

Pit the avocado and roughly chop it in a bowl.  Squeeze the juice of half a lime on it.

Now mix in half of the onion, half of the garlic, 1/4 cup of cilantro and a quarter of the tomato.

Now the salsa:

There are many ways to make salsa, I like it chunky.  So I chopped up 2 tomatoes, a quarter of an onion, a handful of cilantro and squeezed a lime and voila!

Yum.  Enjoy!

peace,
e.

The first time I tried to loose weight, I asked my cousin how to start.  She said, “Eat half of what you eat now.”  Simple advice, that actually made a huge difference.  Now I am more nuanced (and educated) about how much I should be eating, but something I noticed in my package food was that there was normally more than one serving size included – particularly in my bottle sodas (which I desperately need to give up *sigh*) and bags of chips (can anyone say kyprtonite?).   Women’s Health has a slideshow to illustrate “the truth about serving sizes.”

I’m trying to find a graphic that shows how small serving sizes are – particularly of mean (the size of my fist? weak).

peace,

e.

So yesterday I was hanging with my bestie and she was telling me about some contraption she wanted to buy to tone her abs.  I gave her the side eye and said “Well, you already have that big exercise ball, what do you need that for?”  So then we started talking about how she could use stuff that she already had around her apt to make at home gym.  I also started thinking about the from the comments on my posts Being for real about our weight, parts 1 and 2 – if women really don’t want men to see them without makeup/sweaty/frizzy hair, etc, this is the perfect way to get in shape and save face.

So what do you need: worst case, if you are super broke, you can start off with nothing at all, and just use your body weight (with squats, lunges and push ups) and lift canned veggies or books to tone your arms.

If you do have a little money to spend, I would suggest getting:

yoga mat

exercise ball

weights (start with 5 lbs, then work up to 10lbs)

exercise bands

DVDs (if you feel like you need some encouragement or you just don’t know what exactly to do with all this stuff)

If you want to go hard core with your home gym, you could also get:

medicine balls

balance trainer

So what do you lovely ladies have in your home gyms?

peace,
e.

No I’m not gonna go Howard Stern on her, but I think she’s a perfect example of what I want to talk about.  First off, I love her confidence.  It’s not easy no matter the size, but for her to be that size in Hollywood and still have her self esteem (and sanity) in check is amazing.  But we must be for real, she is not healthy and we should not encourage her to stay this size.

The other day on twitter someone joked about how it’s the time for someone to talk to Gabby about her weight and not even 5 minutes later someone else tweeted “big girls rule, leave Gabby alone.”  Now I know this isn’t going to be popular, but we’ve got to stop.  If Gabby does not lose (a substantial amount of weight now), she might not make it to 50.  It’s just not healthy and we shouldn’t encourage this. I’m not saying turn on her, say bad things, think negative thoughts.  I’m not hating on Gabby.  I’m saying, we need to encourage her to do better.  We need to not make excuses for her not to lose weight.  At this point, she can afford better food, she can afford the gym, she can afford a trainer, she could even afford surgery if she wanted to go that route, so all these wack excuses you’re getting ready to throw at me are moot.

This post is not about bashing “big girls” or hurting their self esteem.  This post is a plea for us to stop encouraging each other  to stay large.  I get why we say “big girls rule” and other affirmations.  And I think it’s great that we encourage people to feel good about themselves no mater the size, but we have got to stop making excuses for our size.

Facts:

• African American women have higher rates of obesity than women of other races
• Black people were 50% less likely to engage in exercise than White people in 2007
• People that are overweight are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and other risk factors of heart disease (which is the #1 leading cause of death for African American women).

Collectively we need to lose weight.  I’m not saying try to become a size 2, I’m saying be healthy. If you’re already fit, great.  Now go out and help your mom, your sister or your best friend get in shape too.  Losing weight and eating healthy are not easy, but they are definitely feasible.  With some motivation, discipline and support, we can do it.

peace,
e.

sources: 1, 2

Last week I had the privilege to speak at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services forum “The Social Determinants of Health: A Discussion of the Relationship between Marriage and Health Outcomes in African American Communities.”  Throughout the day we had panels of researchers explaining marriage (and cohabitation’s) effect on health – there was one entire panel devoted to obesity.   Maybe two weeks ago, Belle touched on the topic of how our weight might be affecting our prospects at marriage.  My first reaction to the post was “well, duh” but the commentors weren’t having it… at all.  It got crazy.  Many self proclaimed larger women were going on and on about how they were landing men left and right.  But let’s get one thing clear: there is a big difference between some dude you just sleep with and a husband.  Many of these women had the former.  And if that’s all you want, then that’s cool.  But from what I’m hearing, most women want more.

Before I really get into what I want to say, let me lay out some facts for you guys

• Discussions of selection aside, people in better health are more likely to get married (there is a ton of research to back this up)
• Your weight is an indicator of your general health
• Black women are more likely to be considered overweight and obese (and yes, these are very different from thick)
• Black women are less likely to get married than women of other races (yes, yes I know, we’ve been beaten over the head with this all year)

So that said,  one researcher found that Black women are more likely to become obese after marriage than women of other races (granted, I think the assumption was that they were already overweight).  Well when it came to the Q&A people went in.  First it was the excuses that we as women are just too busy to find time to exercise.  Look, if Barack Obama can find time to exercise every day, you can find time too.  Then it was “but exercising isn’t fun.”  Are we being for real?  Brushing your teeth isn’t fun, but you do that every day.  Putting on makeup isn’t fun (at least not to me) but you’d better believe I take the time to look pretty in the am.  Going to work really isn’t fun, but we do that without fail.  That excuse is lame and I’m not going to justify that.  You’re an adult, grow up.  Then came the one I was waiting for  – “but my hair.”

Black women look at it like this: it’s your hair or your life. And I’m serious.  I can think of no worse reason to die young(er than everyone else) than the desire for your hair to look good.  We talked about how much our hair costs, how long it takes to do our hair, how we need to look good.  It all.  It was pathetic.  Surrounded by these amazing women doing amazing things and most of them were overweight and complaining about their hair.  Later while discussing this with another panelist, he bought up the fact that a lot of women he knows don’t like working out in the gym because they don’t want men to see them sweating.  Women, please stop the madness. A). I’m sure you’re still gorgeous under all your makeup and B). you’re supposed to look at little crazy at the gym, that’s how you know you’re doing it right (and trust, sometimes we are doing it all wrong at the gym, but that is another post).

Unsure if you are overweight or obese, check your  BMI (yes I know this isn’t the *best* method, but it’s start) or better yet, check your percentage body fat.  Most gyms should have a machine that will check it for you, or you can buy one yourself.  If you are overweight or obese, please take a good long look at yourself, think about how your body feels, think about how you feel about your body and then think about how you want to feel (and look) in the next 10 years and then reconsider not exercising.

So please, love yourself, take it to the gym, eat better and be happy.

peace,
e.

Ingredients:

• 1 can Italian tomatoes (28 ounces)
• 2 zucchini, grated)
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh mint leaves (in my recipe I substituted this with basil)
• 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano, plus more for sprinkling
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (I LOVE garlic, so I added maybe 6)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 4 cups chicken broth (substitute light, tastes the same to me)
• 1.5 cups orzo
• 6 sweet bell peppers (red or yellow)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.
2. Poor tomatos into a large bowl (I’d recommend not pouring in all the extra juice) and break apart using a pair of shears or your fingers.  Add the zuchini, mint (or basil), cheese, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.  Stir.
3. Bring chicken broth to a boil in a medium sauce pan over high heat.  Add orzo and cook for 4 minutes (you only want it partially cook, it’ll cook all the way through later).  Use  a sieve to transfer the orzo to the bowl with the veggies.  Stir the orzo into the mix.  Transfer the warm chicken broth to a 3-quart backing dish.
4. Slice the tops off of the peppers and remove all the rib and seeds.  Cut a thing slice from teh base to level the bottom of the tomato.
5. Place the peppers in the baking dish with the warm chicken broth.  Spoon the orzo mix into the peppers.  Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for 45 minutes (maybe it’s my oven, but I definitely didn’t need that much time).  Remove the foil , sprinkly the top of each pepper with cheese and continue baking until the cheese is golden.

I made this a while ago and loved it… the first week.  This recipes made about 10 (regular size) peppers, which was entirely too much for just me.  If you live alone, I’d suggest halving all the ingredients and you’re good to go.

Original recipe and video on how to make here.

peace,
e.

As you know, we here at SASSY have been working on our fitness.   Earlier this month a friend emailed and invited me to join in a running challenge.  It was online, over on the Nike Running site, so I signed up and expected to just type in how far I ran.  Nope, doesn’t work that way, you need Nike gear to impute your runs.  So in order for my runs to be recorded I had to buy the sportband or an ipod shuffle AND the Nike+ Sportkit (womp), so I dropped the $60 and got the sportband.  You also need Nike+ sneakers, but pretty much every running sneaker they’ve made in the past year or 2 in a Nike+ sneaker.

Now to be honest, I had looked online and did not find the most glowing reviews of the sportband – namely that it was difficult to calibrate.  But I wanted to do the challenge and I needed some motivation to run (and let’s face, I like getting new things), so I got it anyway.  So the first time out, I tried to calibrate it running.  It was off – way off – like 0.25 miles off.  But on the second try I got it to calibrate and it’s been smooth sailing since then.

As you can see, the face of the sportband is a USB.  You just plug that into your comp, plug in your weight and the sportband does the rest.  It tracks how far you’ve run, how long you’ve run and how many calories you’ve burned (I love to look at that part as I run).  And then you plug it into your comp and it transfers all that info to your profile online.

To be honest, I think I like the website more than the actual sportband – or rather, I like all the things I can do with the website.  So of course, there are the challenges (and you know no one’s cheating since the band is uploading all your info), but there are also coaches to help you (I’m training to run further) and you can also set goals.  After each run, I plug in my sportband and can instantly see how much closer I am to accomplishing all my goals.  It definitely motivates me to run more and for that I love my sportband.  (Also, it’s pink!)

You can buy the Nike Sportband online or at your local sporting good store.

peace,
e.

**NOTE: We are not paid by Nike to promote their good, we just really like it. **

Last Friday I went out with some friends to Beast in Brooklyn, and we had their amazing chopped salad.  I don’t normally like chickpeas, but I figured since I devoured my portion of the salad which was chocked full of chickpeas, this would be a dope addition to my Meatless Mondays.

The salad is pretty easy to make, just chop up your fav veggies, toss em in, add some feta and this vinaigrette.

Salad:

• 1 can chickpeas
• 1 large tomato
• 1 cucumber
• 1 bunch arugula
• feta (as much as you like)

Shallot Vinaigrette:

• 1 small shallot (if you don’t have one, use a red onion)
• red wine vinegar
• olive oil

To make the salad, rise off the chickpeas, and toss them and all your other veggies into a bowl. Toss in some feta and mix.

To make the vinaigrette, heat oil and challot (either in microwave  or low heat on the stove), let this cool.  Add red wine vinegar.

To be honest, when I made this last night I hadn’t found this vinaigrette recipe, I just made my regular vinaigrette of red wine vinegar, oil olive, dijon mustard, salt and pepper. Yum.

To make the vinaigrette

Enjoy!

e.