My goal with this blog is to have you join me as I learn how to live a balanced life, especially when it comes to eating habits. I don't think you should be one extreme or another when it comes to eating (unless you have to be) nor do I want to be one extreme or another. Who can relate to that?! I don't want to give you the impression that I eat perfect all the time. While I do eat well most of the time, I still splurge, and I think we should all do that once in awhile. But we live in a world that is severely out of balance when it comes to taking care of ourselves. I've learned a lot in my journey to good health about myself, about eating healthy and about my faith for sure. I've also learned to really like new things and my palate has tremendously expanded.
Being in balance doesn't mean what you think. It's not 50/50. You don't eat crappy 50 percent of the time and healthy 50 percent of the time. In my opinion (which is imperfect, but refined), proper balance in eating is 80/20. Our flesh or "humanness" wants the 80 percent to be the splurge and the 20 percent to be healthy, but if you want to maintain a good weight and a healthy body, you need to eat healthy 80 percent of the time and 20 percent leaves room for the treats. What that means is different for everyone, but I suspect most of you are smarter than you think, and you can figure it out for yourselves :) The only thing in life that I think you should be one extreme or the other is in your relationship with Jesus. Either you're all in with God or you're not. You can't be "balanced" or in the middle with that doing 50/50 or 80/20; you have to be 100 percent with Him.
I know I'm a stay at home mom and my time at home leaves a little more flexibility for me in the kitchen, but the recipes I share with you aren't complicated and if you have the ingredients on hand, won't take a long time either. Because if it did take a long time and was super complicated, I WOULDN'T DO IT! Yikes! Who has time for that anyway?
In between doing mommy things such as the recent cleaning of poop off the walls (courtesy of my 2 year old), giving my children once a week baths (because I forget how long it's been since the last one), folding clothes, maintaining a budget, keeping a house functionally clean, making sure groceries are purchased, dating my husband and much more, I don't have time to hand-make everything all the time, but I do try to use real food in a lot of my cooking. Also, much of the cooking I do at home is gluten, dairy and refined sugar-free.
I am by no means an expert on nutrition, but I have some tidbits of wisdom and some yummy recipes that I can share with you.
God bless!
Love, Kristin
Today's recipe is my NEW FAVE salad dressing. I'm so glad I found it! Not only is it super easy and nutritious, but it's super yummy too. You know it's good when your toddler licks the spoon. And even though it's free of dairy, it's just as creamy as a dairy based salad dressing. It also gives you a delicious, necessary and healthy dose of good fats. You will NOT be disappointed AND with the ingredients on hand, it only takes minutes to make. No excuses! ;)
Creamy Avocado Salad Dressing
from Redbook Magazine
1 Large ripe avocado
2 green onions (white and light green parts only)
1 large garlic clove
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Juice from 1/2 lemon (or 1/3 cup lemon juice
Salt to taste
Pinch of Cayenne pepper
Place all ingredients in a high speed blender and process until smooth.
The consistency of this dressing is so smooth and creamy that not only is it good for salad, but I reckon you could also spread it on a sandwich like mayonnaise. In fact you could use this dressing in place of mayo in most recipes that would call for that. I eat a lot of eggs, but this would be a great egg-free alternative to mayo for those of you that don't.
And now, what you've all been waiting for...the pictures:
