Impossibly Healthy Mashed Potatoes

Healthy Mashed Potatoes...say what??? impossible.

That is probably one of the top 5 food oxymorons that exist.

But I'm not kidding. It's a real thing. I made it for dinner the other night and it was not only healthy, but it was also delicious (even according the the manfriend who is an awesome cook).

Here's how you do it for 2 people (of course use your brains and do math if you are making it for more people):

3 potatoes--we did have a ton of leftovers though so it should probably be 1 potato per person instead
1 tablespoon of some form of healthy butter--margarine, butter made with olive oil, low cholesterol butter, etc. There are a ton of healthy-ish butters in the cold food section.
1/2 cup of unsweetened original almond milk
pepper and a tiny bit of salt

1. Peel and cut those potatoes and boil them until you can poke a fork into one easily.
2. Drain the water, add the healthy butter, almond milk, saltpep (that's my new shorthand for salt and pepper...deal with it).
3. Mash mash mash mash mash (hey! you get an arm workout by making this too!)
4. Add more almond milk to match your desired level of creaminess.

**SIDE NOTE: I'm pretty sure the almond milk is the key that makes these delicious. BUT! Make sure you get UNSWEETENED AND ORIGINAL. If you use a sweetened version or the vanilla version, your potatoes will have this strange sweet taste that mashed potatoes shouldn't have. It's just weird. Don't do it. If you trust me on anything...trust me on this.

Here's the lowdown on the nutrition per person (remember the amounts listed above yielded quite a bit of leftovers, so the actual caloric intake is less than this).

A medium potato has about 160 calories.
Half of a tablespoon of margarine has about 45 calories.
A fourth of a cup of unsweetened almond milk has only about 20 calories.

So that adds up to 225 calories for mashed potatoes if you eat WAYYYYYYYY too much (and I've got some Irish blood in me so I can put away mashed taters.) Normal mashed potatoes are a lot more because of the regular butter and regular milk.

Couple this recipe with a lean piece of chicken and some baked or grilled veggies, and you are in for one healthy and delicious meal.

Go enjoy those mashed taters!!

National Chocolate Day

Okay so maybe Valentine's Day isn't actually National Chocolate Day but it might as well be. I admit it: I'm a chocolate lover. But I'm also female, so it basically comes with the whole estrogen territory. As everyone who was ever born knows, today is Valentine's Day (or Singles Awareness Day)...one in the same. Regardless, everyone should eat chocolate. It doesn't count on holidays, right? Well, maybe not in our heads, but our bodies certainly count it. 

Here are a few tips for chocolate consumption on V-day:

1. Take the Dark Chocolate option. Dark choc is loaded with antioxidants that are beneficial for your cardiovascular system. Granted a lot of foods have antioxidants, but if you must eat chocolate, the darker the better. The dark stuff also has lower amounts of sugar than other chocolates. Definitely a positive.

2. Make yourself drink 5 gulps of water after every piece of chocolate. I promise you won't be able to eat as much...or it will take you a lot longer to eat it.

3. Put the box of chocolates in a different room than where you are for the majority of the time. It will force you to walk to go get a piece, which burns a few tiny calories and also prevents you from eating it if you are lazy enough.

4. Have your better half feed it to you. That will force you to take smaller bites or at least eat it slower. Not to mention it's super sexy (or completely ridiculous if I'm involved.)

5. Dip fruit into your chocolate. If you get your chocolate fix that way, at least you are eating fruit at the same time. Yummmmm.

Now go enjoy that deliciousness. Yes puhhhhlease!

Winter Blues

Being cold sucks. 

I. 
hate. 
it. 

I especially hate when my hands are cold...and my feet...and my face...and my ears. Ughhh. What REEEEALLY sucks is when those body parts are so cold that they hurt. It's the worst! I would much rather be sweating profusely than be so cold that it hurts. 

I think part of that has to do with the fact that I grew up in a pretty mild climate down in Northeast Tennessee (please read that in a Southern accent and if you can't do one, I'll demo in person). I always tell my misinformed Yankee friends and family who think that the entirety of Tennessee is a scene from The Hills Have Eyes or that you will hear a creepy banjo playing if you go to a certain place, that TN aint all that bad. Sure our education system sucks (but so does the rest of America's if you compare it to Europe), sure it is in the heart of the Bible Belt which makes for some extremely judgmental and closed-minded people (although there are normal people too!), and sure my town is known primarily for a ginormous Nascar track (yes...the city is compensating for something...), but daaaaaaaaaamn we have good weather. We have normal, bearable seasons. It gets nice and hot in the summers, comfortable in the springs and falls, and cold enough in the winters. Of course we get things like snow, rain, thunderstorms, flooding, and tornadoes; but NONE of those weather events trend on the extreme side. The majority of the time, everything is manageable and not catastrophic. The weather rocks.

The only thing I hate more in Boston than Boston drivers (because you all suck...I love you...but you can't drive), is Boston winters. So last winter wasn't bad at all compared to the one before. (The one before was the one that welcomed me when I first moved up here and that resulted in a black eye...Snow Shovel: 1; Me: 0.) 

But beyond the snow, IT'S COLD!!!!! I consider anything less than 45 degrees as cold...and you crazies up here are like, "ohhhh it's not negative 37 degrees so it's not cold at all, just put on a light jacket." 

Shut up. I'm cold. and I don't like it. Thank goodness my boyfriend has the metabolism of a baby spider monkey and produces heat like a werewolf because basically, he has become my personal space heater. (I was looking for an animal to pick here and I picked spider monkey because he has crazy long arms like a monkey and he's hairy, and it reminds me of Talladega Nights which brings us back to Nascar. bam! full circle).

So now that I spent half the blog prepping the whole point of this blog, I guess I'll finally get to the point:

I get sad in the winter--I gots da Winter Blues. I like to be outside, but I can't go outside in the winter because my body hates the cold. My Winter Blues aren't severe, but there is a more severe version of what I feel. It's a real thing called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD (is it bad that I find it amusing that the acronym is sad?) 

According to WebMD, SAD is basically depression during the winter that is thought to be linked to your body's clock being "out of synch" and lack of enough direct sunlight.

Symptoms include: extreme fatigue, too much sleep, concentration problems, and weight gain.

Here are some ways to fix it without talking to your doc:

• Light therapy--Find a way to get direct light. "Dawn stimulation" is a pretty interesting technique.
• Don't watch depressing things...like the news
• Stay active and force yourself to keep moving
• Don't give in to the cravings for sweets and carbs.
• Confide in someone!

If none of these things work, consider consulting a doctor. There might be actual imbalances in your body that a doc can fix (i.e. melatonin deficiency or seratonin deficiency).

Here's to learning to find joy in the winter! We can do it!