Another nutrition tip
Lately, you may have noticed, I have been all about trying to help people sort good food from bad. Of course, there is no hard-and-fast rule that applies all the time, to every situation. Like working out, the key to eating right is to pick and choose which rules work best for you: which ones you understand, and which ones fit your lifestyle and personality. Those are the ones that you’re most likely to follow without feeling like you’re being constrained.
So here’s another tip for looking at food. This one is a two-parter. The first question helps determine whether or not a packaged food is real food; the second question can help determine portion control.
When you’re in the grocery store, ask yourself, “Do I know how it’s made?” Or better, “Could I make this myself, in my kitchen, if I had to?” If the answer is yes, it’s probably a whole food. And you should feel pretty good about purchasing it. If not, think twice about buying it. Do you know how to make Doritos? What about Honey-Nut Cheerios? Or Cheez-Whiz? The thing is, real food does not contain proprietary information. Real food doesn’t have any secrets, and you should be able to recreate it yourself, or at least conceptualize how to do so.
Second question: “How often would I actually take the time to make this myself?” I love convenience as much as the next person, and I understand the need for it in today’s society. However, the more time-intensive a food is–even a whole food–the less you probably need of it. Take bread, for example. I know I use this a lot, but it’s such a good one. Making bread at home, from scratch, takes a lot of time. Even with a bread machine. If you spend that much time making a loaf of bread, you probably want it to last more than a day or two, so you don’t have to make it again so soon. So you eat less of it, trying to make it last.
French fries are another great example. We all know how they’re made: slice up a potato, fry it, and add salt. Super simple, but time consuming. Would you eat them even once a week if you had to go to that kind of trouble? Or how about one of my favorite overindulgences: cheese! I do technically know how to make cheese in my own kitchen, but I also know that if I had to make it myself, and wait a couple of months for it to ripen (in the case of hard cheeses), I’d certainly be eating a hell of a lot less cheddar. Would you drink apple juice if you had to press the apples? Or would you save yourself some time and effort and just eat the apple or drink a glass of water? So if you find yourself thinking, “Yes, I know how to make it, but I wouldn’t do it often,” go ahead and buy it…but only as often as you think you’d make it from scratch. It’s long term portion control.
So if you read my last post about the Fooducate app, but you don’t have a smart phone, remember these two questions instead. They pretty much guarantee that the food you buy will have a short list of ingredients, that you’ll understand everything in that list, and that the product will be minimally processed. In other words: real, honest food.
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Fooducate yourself!
If you all read my last post about my somewhat haphazard plan for eating better this year, you may have found yourself thinking, “Well, that’s nice, but let’s say I want to try it? How do I actually know what to eat?”
Good question! And thanks to my friend Nick (thanks Nick!!) I now have a simple solution for you: the Fooducate app for smart phones. Nick introduced me to Fooducate last Thursday, and I’ve been having fun with it ever since.
Most of you are pretty familiar with my crusade against fake “healthy” foods. How are we supposed to sort out the truth when most of the 40,000 products in the grocery store come with big labels touting their health benefits? “The American Heart Association currently bestows (for a fee) its heart-healthy seal of approval on Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, and Trix cereals, Yoo-hoo lite chocolate drink, and Healthy Choice’s Premium Caramel Swirl Ice Cream Sandwich.” (Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food.
The Fooducate app is a quick (and kind of fun) way to help you figure out where the booby traps are in the grocery store. It turns your phone into a scanner; simply aim it at the bar code of the product you’re thinking of buying, and it comes up with a grade (A-F) for that product, as well as several options if you’re looking for something better. It also gives you a ton of information about why that product deserves the grade they gave it.
I LOVE this app! And I don’t think I’ve ever uttered that phrase in my life. For the most part, I’m averse to technology; in fact, Fooducate is only the second app I’ve ever downloaded since getting my smart phone almost a year ago (Angry Birds was the first).
As an example of what to expect: When Nick was describing this app to me, I asked if he’d tried scanning a loaf of bread. Bread is always one of my favorite examples of how food in the grocery store is not always real food. Nick told me he scanned a package of Health Nut Bread (I’m not sure which brand; I know Brownberry and Arnold both make bread with this name, and I’m sure there are others). Anyway, sounds healthy, right? Lots of whole grains, maybe some actual nuts (which are good for you, right??)… Fooducate gave this bread a grade of “C.” And–this is what won me over and made me download the app right there–it actually asked, “When was the last time you made something with over 35 ingredients?” Woo Hoo!! An app after my own heart!!
I spent the weekend scanning all kind of random stuff in my kitchen, including the things I eat almost every day. Now, Fooducate is not infallible; and you may value different things in your food (for instance, as far as I can tell, being organic doesn’t necessarily earn extra points). But for the most part, it sends a few simple messages: 1) The less processed something is, the better. In fact, I scanned the refried beans that I prefer to eat almost every morning and they got a “B-”. The best alternative a was package of dried black beans…which obviously would require me to soak, cook, and refry them myself. 2) The fewer ingredients something has, the better. Bread, by the way, only requires 4 or 5 ingredients. 3) If it comes in a package with a bar code in the first place, it’s probably not going to rate higher than a “B.”
You can probably see why I think Fooducate is so great. But it gets even better: if you scan something that isn’t in their database, it gives you the option to add it simply by emailing them 3 pictures (of the package, the nutrition label, and the ingredients) and they’ll add it. It’s all automatic; you don’t have to switch apps to your camera and your email…the app has it all. It’s really easy. You also have the option of “liking” whichever products you think are particularly good; and if you want to comment on a product or the grade they give it, that’s really easy too. For instance, I buy Mrs. Renfro’s Green Jalapeno Salsa because I understand everything on its ingredient list and it doesn’t have tomatoes (I’m not a fan of jarred tomato salsa). Fooducate gives this product a “C” because it doesn’t have any Vitamin C; it’s making an assumption that salsa has tomatoes, which are rich in vitamin C, and since Mrs. Renfro’s doesn’t have Vitamin C, it must use really poor quality tomatoes. So I commented on it, and if you go to the store and scan a jar, you’ll see my comment there. It’s kind of a Wikipedia for healthy eating.
Long story short, if you want to know “what to eat” and all the rules I’ve spouted before seem too complicated, get the Fooducate app. This app, along with a basic understanding of portion control, could be the tool you’ve been looking for in your endeavors to eat real food.
New Year, new goals!
Happy New Year, fitness fans! 2012 is here, and with it comes (drumroll please)…RESOLUTIONS! With no further ado, here’s mine:
Many of you have followed me through various “tests” of diets that hopefully demonstrate the healthy possibilities that are available. No single diet is perfect for everyone, so I’d like people to try to recognize the examples that will work for them. In 2010, I did the 30-day “No Convenience-Food Challenge.” 2011 brought on the Slow-Carb experiment. And through it all, I’ve been leaning towards the local and/or organic side of things.
This year I resolve to combine them all, without strictly following any of them. That sounds pretty loose, doesn’t it? But there are things I like about each of these options, and I like the freedom to pick and choose. I also like to keep the restrictions to a minimum, so that other people still want to eat with me.
I tell my clients all the time that being healthy means making the right choice 80-90% of the time. So my goal is to make sure that 90% of the food I eat is either local, organic, home-made (non-convenience), or slow-carb. The 10% that doesn’t fit into that category is left open in case someone else is cooking, or if I want to go out to a restaurant.
I already follow these rules pretty closely, but my weakness has always been cereal, and baked goods. I definitely consider cereal a convenience food, and along with baked goods (cookies, muffins, sweet breads) it is my main source of excess sugar. I figure that if I’m required to make all of these things myself, I’ll probably eat less of them. And I don’t want to give cereal a bad name; if you’re a normal human being and you eat raisin bran for breakfast, that’s fine. Personally, if left to my own devices, I would eat half a box of Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch for dinner every night. So clearly I have cereal issues that don’t apply to most people.
I have another, bigger reason for this cuisine-altering resolution. I’m doing it for you, my readers and my clients, to try to change the American food culture that is so difficult to navigate. I’ve said multiple times that our food system is booby-trapped. Our grocery stores are stocked with more unhealthy food than healthy, convenience and speed is the ultimate measure of “good” food, you can’t walk a block down any street without coming across fast food, and our groceries are labeled with misleading tags about what’s healthy and what’s not (from the Cap’t Crunch website: Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch is “fortified with seven essential vitamins and minerals and has zero grams of trans fat.” No offense to the Cap’n, but that’s bullshit. The ingredients list hydrogenated oil, which means it contains trans fat–it’s just less than one gram per serving, so they can claim zero).
How does my plan make a difference to you? Because of the amazing, wonderful law of supply and demand. If we demand local, organic food, and convenient products that are made naturally with ingredients that we recognize as food, then suppliers will provide those things. It’ll take some time, but it can happen. And eventually, the prices of that good food will go down. Every dollar spent on real, good food is a dollar that combats the industrial food system and its lobbyists. You can write your congressperson if you want, but this year I’m putting my money where my mouth is (an occasionally where my blog is). Every time you spend money on real food, you’re letting your voice be heard far louder than if you were to just send money to whatever lawmaker supports your cause. You have a direct vote every time you sit down at the dinner table, every time you pass by a fast-food place without entering, every time you choose the organic broccoli over the non-organic.
So that’s what I’m doing. I’m spending food money (money I would have spent on food anyway) in a way that will help remove the booby-traps from the system, so that someday you won’t have to rely on willpower alone to eat healthy. I want the “bad” choices to be more rare, and more expensive.
If you want to join me, I’d love some company. And I don’t care if you join me 100% or 5%; remember, even I am only in it for 90% of the time. So try it out for one meal per week. Or one meal per day. Or whatever is easiest for you. But remember, your food money speaks no matter where you spend it; so ask yourself, what do you want it to say for you?
To run, or not to run…
Let me start out today by saying Thank You!! to everyone who commented on last week’s blog, or wrote me an email in response to it. I got so many emails that I haven’t had time to answer them all personally, and I apologize. But I really appreciate everyone’s support; it’s nice to be missed. And my favorite thing in the world is to hear from clients I haven’t seen for a while, with updates saying they’re doing well and keeping up with the program. Congratulations to you all! I’m so proud of you!!
And now I get to give you all an update of my own. I have not been keeping up with the program I set for myself several months ago. You may all remember my hare-brained idea to run a marathon, while only running once a week and doing all my other training with kettlebells. I signed up for the Seattle Marathon, on November 27th, and started swinging those kettlebells.
Well, it didn’t take long for my hands to get ripped up by the kettlebells, so I couldn’t train with them more than once a week. And it took even less time for me to realize that I only like running when I don’t feel like I have to do it. I did a couple of long runs, getting up to 11 or 12 miles, back in September before I admitted to myself that I didn’t want to spend more than 30 minutes running at a time. It was a surprisingly good training plan, and the kettlebells gave me huge gains in both my endurance and my speed over long distances. But I was doing it for all the wrong reasons.
I ended up ditching the training plan and going back to various workouts that I enjoy; swimming, running short distances, weight training, and some kettlebells. I thought I’d just drop out of the marathon all together. But I ended up switching to the half-marathon at the last minute, and made a happy discovery: for the first time in my life, I’m at a place where I can essentially hop off my couch and run 13.1 miles, without specifically training for it. It wasn’t the fastest run I’ve ever done (I finished in 2 hours and 4 minutes) but considering that I wasn’t prepared–especially for the hills–I’m pretty happy with that.
The moral of the story is this: whatever you decide to do for a workout, make sure it’s something you enjoy. And do it for the right reasons. We all have that little rebellious voice in our head that says “I don’t wanna” every time we make a plan to challenge ourselves. You’re more likely to skip a workout if it feels like a chore. I mean, I love running, I love kettlebells, and I have plenty of marathon experience. So it seems like this would have been a great idea. But I’ve never been particularly competitive, so signing up for this marathon put a deadline over my head that triggered my inner rebel voice. What was I trying to prove? And to whom?
I ran the half marathon because I wanted to go to Seattle either way, to visit my friends who were running it as well. But I spent the entire summer not enjoying my workouts, until I decided that I wasn’t going to run it. Then, all of a sudden, running became fun again, because I could do short, fast workouts if I wanted to. Kettlebells became fun again because I wasn’t limited to hundreds of snatches. And a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders.
So if you’ve been feeling a little weighed down lately, or your workouts have become a chore, take a step back and ask yourself why. Just because you used to enjoy something doesn’t mean you still enjoy it, even if you do it out of habit. Don’t be afraid to try something new. It’s getting close to that time of year, anyway. Close your eyes and ask yourself: If I could do anything in the world, without physical limitations or the expectations defined by what you’ve done in the past, what would it be?
Maybe it’s time to step out of the box, and let go of who you thought you were. We all get stuck in a rut sometimes, and it can be hard to see it from the inside. So take a few moments, before the new year, and consider the idea of taking a new direction with your fitness. It can be pretty exciting to breathe new life into your old routine.
4 months later…Welcome to December!
Ok, so, some of you may have noticed that there hasn’t been a new blog post since the end of July…4 months ago. It started off as a summer break, and then turned into some sort of sabbatical. Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and there was snow on the ground; it makes it a little hard to call it a summer vacation. So let’s just say that I took the time to figure some stuff out, and in the coming weeks I’ll let you in on some things I’ve learned.
But first things first. I have a challenge for you.
It’s December, the time of the year when we give ourselves over to eating and family. It’s kind of nice to spend more of our time and money on everybody else, and have the opportunity to eat cookies all month without the usual guilt (because they’re Christmas cookies, right?). But come January, we’ll feel the repercussions. It’s the same every year: binge for a month in December, and pay the price in January, February, and maybe even March. Why do we do this?
So let’s not do it this year. Have the cookies if you want. Skip a couple of those long gym workouts to spend time with family and friends. But don’t wait until January to try something new.
This is the challenge: 10 minutes of working out per day, 6 days a week, for the month of December. You can add it to your usual routine, or scrap your routine and try this instead. And you don’t have to limit it to 10 minutes, either. You could do 30 minutes. Or you could do 3 10-minute sessions in a day.
The only requirement is that the 10 minutes has to be intense. I’m not talking about a 10-minute stint on the elliptical. I’m talking 10 minutes of burpees. Or mountain climbers. Or jump rope. Or hill sprints, or push ups, pull ups, jump squats, kettlebells swings, snatches, or clean-and-presses. Pick something that requires minimal space and equipment, and preferably something that you can do at home. It should be a movement so intense that you can’t do it for 10 minutes without a couple of breaks. The good news is, the breaks count towards your 10 minutes…so you may actually only do about 5 minutes worth of work during your 10-minute workout.
Studies have shown that short bursts of high-intensity effort can have just as much or better effect than long, slow workouts. So why waste your time? December is a time-crunched month anyway. So take 10 minutes a day, 6 days a week, and start to make it a routine before January gets here. You might find that in one month, you’ll like the new pattern so much that you won’t need a New Year’s Resolution.
Here are some 10-minute workout suggestions:
1. Jump rope until you can’t anymore. Rest until you can jump again. Repeat until you hit 10 minutes (rest included).
2. 3 pullups/ 8 pushups/ 10 squats. Take one minute to do the entire set; anything left over within that minute is rest (example: if it takes 48 seconds to do all 3 exercises, you get 12 seconds of rest). Repeat 10 times.
3. Pick a heavy kettlebell and do some swings. Take 2 seconds of rest for each swing that you do (example: 10 swings/ 20 seconds of rest). I like to do 50 swings/ 1 min 40 sec rest; 40 swings/ 1 min 20 sec rest; 30 swings/ 1 min rest; 20 swings/ 40 sec rest; 10 swings/ done. That’s 150 swings in about 10 minutes.
4. Single-arm clean and presses. Start on one arm and switch to the other when the first side gets tired. Go back and forth for 10 minutes. Just try to make sure that you do the same number on each side.
5. 20 situps/10 pushups. 18 situps/9 pushups. 16 situps/8 pushups….all the way down to 2 situps/1 pushup. Don’t take breaks; just try to get it done in 10 minutes or less.
6. 20 squats/10 stiff-legged deadlifts. 18 squats/9 stiff-legged deadlifts. 16 squats/8 sldl…all the way down to 2 squats/1 sldl. Don’t take breaks; just try to get it done in 10 minutes or less. Alternate this workout with #5 for a total body rotation.
Hopefully you get the idea. Feel free to submit your own quickie workouts at the bottom of this post. Don’t wait until January to get started on your New Year’s Resolutions. Make December your best month of the year! Good luck!!
We are not alone!
When you’re trying to change your eating habits, it’s common to feel like you’re doing it all by yourself. Eating a meal is something that most people do at least 3 times a day. And hopefully you’re spending at least a few minutes preparing that meal as well. That’s quite a bit of time out of every day that’s devoted to food. So do yourself a favor: make sure you have a partner in crime.
One of the biggest mistakes that I see my clients make is trying to eat differently than their family. While the spouse and/or kids are eating one thing, the client is making and eating something entirely different: the healthy food.
DON’T DO THIS. It sets you up as an outsider; it creates extra work; it allows the food that you don’t want to eat to still be in the house; it forces you to test your willpower over and over and over, setting you up for failure; it attaches a stigma to the food that you’re eating and makes good, healthy food look and feel like some sort of punishment (“I have to eat this while they get to eat that”).
You are not alone. And there’s no reason that your family and friends can’t eat healthy food too. In fact, if you really care about these people in your life, you want them to eat the food that will help them live longer and enjoy life more. Every time I hear about a client keeping Cheetos or Oreos in the house “for the kids” I want to slap them. Nobody wins in that situation.
So take control of the grocery shopping and the recipe planning. If your spouse doesn’t like the meals you prepare, tell them to fend for themselves. If your kids don’t like the food, too bad; they’re not paying the bills or cooking the meals. When they get hungry enough, they’ll try your delicious healthy cooking. And as far as guests, go, you wouldn’t expect a vegetarian to cook a chicken for you if you go to their house; so you shouldn’t be expected to cook food you wouldn’t normally eat. If your family cares about you, they will eventually learn how to support you.
Don’t be a martyr. You don’t have to separate yourself from the people in your life in order to eat healthy. In fact, you have a wonderful opportunity to create your own little healthy community, which will in turn support other healthy decisions you make.
So remember: what’s good for you is good for everyone else in your life. Rather than feeling like an outsider, think of yourself as an insider—and the more people you can bring in with you, the better off everyone will be.
Plan ahead to save the day
Yesterday I found myself in this situation: dinner time, with plenty of slow-carb approved food in the house, but nothing that could be prepared in the time available. I had 30 minutes to prepare and eat my dinner before leaving for work, and the meat and veggies that I could have eaten were in the freezer. Not enough time to thaw, cook, and eat before work.
I ate a grilled cheese sandwich.
Well, there’s a better solution than going for the quick and easy, carby dinner. And as usual, it involved planning ahead…but I’m not talking about simply remembering to take the meat out of the freezer earlier. I mean making sure that you have slow-carb meals prepared well in advance, and preferably frozen in individual portions. Like a Lean Cuisine that you cooked yourself.
I’ve always been an advocate of preparing meals in big batches and freezing them individually, so that you never find yourself in a tight spot like I did yesterday. Sure, it’s nice to have plenty of ingredients in the freezer, but if you don’t have time to prepare them, what good is it? Last summer, when I did my “No Convenience-Food Challenge,” the only reason it was possible was because every once in a while, I’d spend a little more time than usual cooking, and then I’d freeze the whole thing in individual-sized portions. Preparing meals this way means that when it’s time to eat, you can have a hot meal on your plate in less than 5 minutes. Faster than a grilled cheese sandwich.
And, lucky for us Slow-Carbers, it just so happens that a lot of easy-to-cook slow-carb meals are also easy to double (or triple, or quadruple), and they freeze really well. I’m thinking stir-fries, Indian cuisine, and Mexican cuisine.
So, next time you’re craving a tasty Asian stir-fry, substitute chickpeas for the more traditional rice, and double the recipe. The only other thing you’ll need is a large number of single-serving storage containers.
I’ll see you all at the Tupperware party. 
Are you gonna eat that?
It’s been a little while since I’ve gotten on my high horse about avoiding convenience foods, pre-packaged foods, and processed foods. In fact, the “No Convenience Food Challenge” was over a year ago now. But the other day I found yet another good reason to read ingredient lists and avoid anything that doesn’t sound like real food.
Do you know what L-cystine is?
To be brief, it’s an amino acid that, in the world of processed food, is sometimes used as a leavening agent. You can find a short and relatively bland definition of L-cystine here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-cystine.
What Wikipedia doesn’t mention outright (although there’s a little hint there) is that in the food industry, most L-cystine is derived from human hair.
So go ahead and take a look at the ingredients on the next loaf of bread you buy, or that pack of hamburger buns, or anything else you’ve got lying around that required a leavening agent to create (that is, the dough had to foam or rise). If you were eating a slice of bread, or a pancake made from a boxed mix and found an actual hair in it, would it gross you out a little? Why shouldn’t L-cystine do the same?
Personally, I prefer doughs and batters leavened with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), baking powder (baking soda mixed with an acid), or yeast.
When you give up responsibility for the preparation of your food, you also give up control over what goes into that food. I’m not suggesting you bake your own bread; simply that you take the time to read ingredient labels and make a conscious choice to only eat ingredients that you recognize as food.
Unless you think hair tastes good.
Back on track (mostly)
One month ago, I confessed that I hadn’t been doing much training for this marathon I signed up for. Turns out, that might have been just the motivation I needed to get started. I’ve actually been doing pretty well since then. For starters, I actually wrote a training plan.
So at least I have a plan now. I haven’t been following it exactly, but at least I’ve run a couple of times.
Here’s a quick list of the workouts I’ve done in the last 4 weeks. It’s not as impressive as I wanted it to be, but at least I feel like I’m making progress:
June 28: Swim. Not really part of the kettlebell/running plan, but still a good cardio workout.
June 29: Kettlebell snatches, 50 sets of 9. That’s 450 snatches in 25 minutes. Not bad.
June 30: Swim.
July 3: Run 6 miles, averaging 8:41 per mile. A little slow, but also the first time I’ve run over 4 miles in about 4 years. I’m happy; it was a good first week.
July 6: Kettlebell snatches, 30 sets of 9. I was going to go for all 80 sets, but my workout got interrupted partway through and I just didn’t get back to it.
July 8: Swim.
Not a good week; sandwiched between a holiday and a 3-day out-of-town trip, I only had 3 days to workout, while also cramming 5 days worth of clients into those same 3 days. Plus the 6-mile run left me sore for 4 days…not a good sign of things to come.
July 11: Kettlebell snatches, 60 set of 9, or 540 snatches in 30 minutes. Good stuff.
July 13: Run 7.21 miles, averaging 8:31 per mile. I’m really proud of this one, even though it should have been done the week before. That’s a fast pace for me, but it didn’t feel too hard.
July 16: Run 9.07 miles, averaging 8:46 per mile. Slow again, but I blame the heat (this was Saturday morning; it was already close to 85 degrees and too damn humid). But once again, I have to point out that this is the farthest I’ve run in 4 years. And I felt pretty good afterwards. I think the kettlebell routine is actually working. Never before in my life could I have just hopped off the couch and ran 9 miles.
This week:
July 18: Kettlebell snatches, 80 sets of 9. That’s 720 snatches in 40 minutes. I made it! This was my current kettlebell goal; I’ll probably try to hit it one more time, to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. But then it’s time to either pick up a heavier kettlebell and try it again, or change the routine from 15 seconds work/15 seconds rest, to 32 seconds work/32 seconds rest. I’ll probably go for the latter.
July 20: Kettlebell snatches, 20 sets of 9. Not enough rest after the last workout. My back and neck were bothering me, and I could feel a blister forming on one of my hands. Rather than try to push it, I set the kettlebell down. Better luck next time.
The plan is to go for another run on Saturday. Hopefully it won’t be too hot; the training plan calls for 11 miles. Sounds like a lot, but then, so did 9 miles.
New lunch recipe!
Ordinarily, I’d just throw together a salad for lunch and be done with it. But the other day, for no particular reason, I just did not want a salad. So I was at Lund’s, doing some regular grocery shopping, and I was hungry, and I knew I didn’t want that salad that was waiting for me at home.
So, inspired by an idea from one of my clients (thanks Jodi!), I decided to try a quickie asian-style recipe: Thai peanut stir-fry.
Super simple! I grabbed a package of chicken breast tenders (because it was lunch and I was feeling lazy; boneless skinless chicken breasts would work just as well if you don’t mind doing 30 more seconds of cutting), a package of frozen vegetables, and a bottle of Lunds & Byerlys-brand Thai Peanut Stir Fry Sauce. That’s it! I already had cans of chickpeas at home.
So I got home, heated up some oil in a pan while chopping the chicken tenders, then threw them into the pan and stir-fried them until they were almost cooked through. Then I threw a can of rinsed and drained chickpeas in, to toast up while the chicken finished cooking. Then I threw in the vegetables; they only take about 5 minutes. Once everything was warm I drizzled it with the sauce until I thought it looked saucy enough. And voila! It took not quite 10 minutes to make, and it makes tasty leftovers. Slow-carb-tastic.
Jodi’s original recipe called for a spice packet for kung-pao chicken instead of the sauce I used. The spice packets are cheaper and they last longer; the sauce has to be refrigerated once it’s opened so you’d have to make the same dish relatively soon. I just chose the sauce because it only had one ingredient that wasn’t actual food (xanthan gum) and I can be pretty picky about processed food. But if you’re looking for a quick, easy, cheap recipe, this one should be at the top of your list whether you use the packet or the bottle.