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Coconut Pudding

15 Saturday Mar 2014

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Mimi here. 

Something a little strange happened to me this winter. I started craving rice pudding. Not the kind drowning in cinnamon, but plain rice pudding. I’m not ordinarily a rice pudding sort of girl. But I couldn’t shake the craving. And, we don’t eat much dairy, or rice, or sugar – all the main ingredients of rice pudding. So we looked for a option to improvise. 

That’s when I found this version of Paleo Coconut Cream Pie. I adapted the Coconut Cream Layer from their pie to make my own version of pudding. And it turned out great!

Here are the ingredients:

  • 1 can full fat coconut milk (we use Thai Kitchen)
  • 1 egg
  • 3 tbsp arrowroot powder (you can substitute regular all-purpose flour here if that’s not an issue for you.)*
  • 3 tbs organic sugar, or honey, or maple syrup
  • 1 tsp vanilla  
  • ½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut
  • pinch of sea salt

You take your coconut milk, egg, arrowroot powder (or flour), sweetener of choice, salt, and put them in a pot. Bring the mixture to a boil over low heat. Make sure you stir constantly so it doesn’t burn to the bottom of the pan. You’ll notice it will start to thicken. 

Once your mixture has boiled and thickened, turn off the heat and add your vanilla and shredded coconut. 

And then enjoy! Tara likes hers with some almonds on top. I like mine warm off the stove. 

The pudding does stay great in the fridge for a few days. Where it’s coconut milk based it will be thicker cold from the fridge than it is warm from the stovetop. 

I got five servings (approx 1/2 cup each) from the recipe. 

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*You could also try coconut flour, but try it with just half the flour – only 1.5tbsp

Brussels Sprout Hash (it’s that easy!!!)

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Breakfast, recipes, Uncategorized, Vegetables

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It would be easier if there were 34 hours in a day.

Enough time to sleep.

To get shit done at work.

Take care of family.

Cook something delicious and, please for the love of all that is pure, somewhat healthy.

Relax.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. (we know we said sleep already but it’s not really happening too much over here so we’re emphasizing how much we wish we were sleeping better).

UNFORTUNATLEY…

The day still only has 24 hours in it and like everyone else we scramble to cram as much as possible into the twenty four sessions of sixty minute cycles.

Opening the fridge and knowing you HAVE literally pull a rabbit out of the old hat can make it hard to commit to eating the best you can. Listen, we get it. Picking up the phone or piling into the car and ordering your favorite pizza feels so much more easier than whipping up a meal to serve at the table.

But we all know that that kind of shenanigans over and over again not only FLATTENS our wallets, it FATTENS our bodies. NO NO NO Bueno!!!

Our schedules are all out of whack adjusting to the “we don’t give set schedules” at Costco. Mimi’s days off are the same (lucky her). Tara’s…well they change week to week. Meaning, some days off are spent in the kitchen making enough food to pack 10 lunches and some dinners for those “I just can’t cook” kind of days at work. Sleeping in on those glorious Saturdays are long gone and now filled with going to the farmer’s market and Costco for kitchen supplies before returning to Costco for long shifts during the holiday season…

The point?

Cook your face off when you can so you don’t have to worry when you eat your face off. (hmmmm, that didn’t come out quite like we intended)…

Let’s try that again.

The point?

Cook enough food when you have the time so you don’t have to worry what to eat when you don’t have the time.

Like the recipe below!

This Brussels Sprout hash is amazing! It’s even more amazing because it’s so freaking easy to make and if you use the amounts listed will make enough for a few breakfasts (or lunches or dinners). It’s one of our “go to” foods right now because its so easy to make and tastes phenomenal with it’s limited ingredients.

Food processor a must for this recipe (or the patience and time (LOL) to shred each little cute Brussels Sprout)

Enjoy!

Paleo Brussels Sprout Hash

Ingredients:

  • 2 Pounds Brussels Sprouts cleaned (Costco has 2 pound bag, cleaned and ready to go!)
  • 1/2 Pound Bacon
  • 1 Onion (chopped)
  • Garlic (we used 6 cloves minced)
  • 1 Cup Chicken/Veggie Broth

Note: This is gonna make A LOT of hash so either whip out a big saute pan/wok or adjust according to your needs.

Grab your trusty food processor and using your shred attachment, turn those little heads into hash!

In saute pan, cook bacon thoroughly then remove from heat and either a) discard bacon fat or b) save that delicious bacon fat for future FoC (fat of choice) needs. Set bacon aside (and we dare you not to eat a piece!)

Return saute pan/wok to stove top and on medium heat add a little FoC (see how you should keep your bacon fat around?), minced garlic and onion. Cook until onions become translucent. Add Brussels sprout hash and the broth. Continue to cook on medium heat for about 5-7 minutes.

While cooking hash, chop bacon and add to saute pan.

Now if you like your hash a little crispier, turn the stove top up a little and crisp the hash for another minute or so (making sure to stir so it doesn’t burn). Serve with eggs, or as a side dish or as a stand alone meal!

brussels sprout hash

Now that’s good eatin’ folks!

Some cool changes and Paleo Thai Curry Beef…

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Beef, Meat, Paleo Recipes, recipes, Uncategorized, Vegetables

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We took a big leap this week and bought our domain name. Funny because we had originally wanted the domain name www(dot)TheHDD(dot)com but when we began our research we found out that we would need to purchase the name from some other company…

For $3000!!!!

(seriously, that’s just ridiculous)

We’ve had this blog for just over a year (can you believe it) and figured it was time to take our commitment one step further and drop the “wordpress” in our dot com and lucky for us thehealthydynamicduo hadn’t been bought up by some strange virtual real estate monster…

Yay for us!

In other news, we found a really cool program for eco friendly printing options over at PrintFriendly. Now when you want to print out one of our recipes you can just hit the “Eco friendly print” button on the bottom and it will take you to another page where you have the option to print without pictures! You can also delete any text you deem unnecessary (we can get a bit wordy) and change the text size so its easier to read.

Yay for you!

You can test out Eco Friendly Print option with this recipe cause look at all the extra stuff you can delete just for the heck of it! Now let’s get on to the recipe portion of this blog post shall we?

We love Thai food.

Give us a plate of pad Thai and a large helping of panang curry and we feel like nothing can go wrong with the world. The heat of the spices warming out mouths while the noodle-y goodness fills our bellies.

As Paleo eaters we enjoy the occasional “splurge” on foods we love but we know all too often if we’re not careful one splurge turns into two, turns into “can you please shove this entire chocolate cake in my mouth”…It doesn’t happen to everyone but for us we know it can happen pretty easily.

To combat the urge to eat out in search of those splurge meals we try to recreate them at home. We know it may not be exactly what we get when we sit down at a restaurant but we also know our meal won’t come with processed foods, extra salt and ingredients we have a hard time pronouncing.

We found the original Thai Curry Beef recipe over at Paleo Parents and as usual changed a few ingredients according to our tastes (and what we had in the fridge).

Enjoy!

Paleo Thai Curry Beef

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs Beef (we used flank steak cut into thin strips)
  • 1 Onion (peeled and chopped)
  • Carrots (2 -3 large or small organic bunch from local farm – peeled and chopped)
  • 1 Leek (cleaned and chopped)
  • 1 Head of Chinese Cabbage (washed and chopped)
  • Garlic (we used 7 cloves)
  • 1/2 C Coconut Milk
  • 1 Tbsp Curry Paste (red or yellow)
  • 1 Tbsp wheat free soy sauce ( or coconut aminos)
  • 1 Tbsp Fish Sauce
  • 1 Tbsp FoC (Fat of Choice)

The Players

The Sauces

In wok or frying pan on med/high add FoC. Add beef and brown on all sides. Remove beef and set aside.

Beef

In same heated wok/frying pan add onions/carrots/leek and cook until tender.

Onion Carrots and Leek

Return beef to wok/frying pan. Add curry paste and stir to coat meat/vegetables. Add coconut milk and mix thoroughly. Add wheat free soy sauce (or coconut aminos) and fish sauce, stir and reduce heat to simmer.

beef and veggies

Simmer for about 20 minutes.

Serve on bed of Chinese Cabbage

Paleo Thai Curry Beef

~ Now that’s good eatin’ folks!

Do you know where your food comes from? (Paleo Beef and Sweet Potato Stew)

10 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by in Beef, Community Shared Agriculture, informing the community, Meat, Paleo Recipes, recipes, Slow Cooker, Stew, Sweet potatoes, Uncategorized

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To know us is to know we live in a neighborhood here in Halifax Nova Scotia known as The Hydrostone. A little bit of awesome is that in 2011 The Hydrostone was named the second greatest neighborhood in all of Canada by the Canadian Institute of Planners.

It’s an amazing place to live.

Not hardly a stone’s throw away from our front door is a recent addition to the neighborhood; Highland Drive Butchery owned and operated by Jessi Gillis.

As soon as we saw the “coming soon” sign go up in her windows we just about freaked out. One of the most important aspects of us eating a Paleo foundation is wanting to find our food as close to home as possible. Having only one income at the moment (fingers crossed for that to change sooner than later) makes it a little difficult to do this 100% of the time but this year we participated in our first CSA (Community Shared Agriculture) and you will often find us down at the Seaport Market stocking up on in-season goodness.

The other day we had a hankering for slow cooker beef stew and this is where our lovely friend and meat connoisseur, Jessi comes into play. Word on the street is her stewing meat is the best in town and if you catch her on the right day there is some delicious beef stock to be snatched up.

We won’t lie to you. We’re not in a place financially to always use Highland Drive for our butcher needs but when we do it’s almost magical.

 

 

 

 

1 1/2 pounds of stewing meat, 2 cups of just made beef stock and some fresh veggies were in our hot little hands we found the original recipe over at FitViews (p.s. Kerri is awesome) and as usual, we changed a few things according to our tastes (and what we had in the fridge).

Enjoy!

Paleo Slow Cooker Beef and Sweet Potato Stew

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 – 2 lbs Stewing Beef
  • 2 C Beef Stock
  • 1 Tbsp FoC (Fat of Choice)
  • 1 Large Onion (chopped)
  • 2 Carrots (peeled and chunked)
  • 2 Parsnips (cleaned and chunked)
  • 3 Large Sweet Potatoes (cleaned and chunked)
  • 2 – 3 Cloves Garlic (minced)
  • Salt / Pepper to taste

The original recipe said to just throw everything together in the slow cooker for a few hours, but one thing we found to bring out some truly fantastic flavors of our meats is to sear it first…

Heat FoC on high either in frying pan or wok. When nice and hot sear the meat for about 2 – 3 minutes trying to brown all sides. When done toss in slow cooker and prepare the rest of the veggies.

Chop the onion, carrot, parsnip, sweet potato (skins on or off is personal preference), mince the garlic and toss into slow cooker.

 

Pour in beef stock, cover and cook on low for 4-6 hours (time will vary according to your slow cooker)…

Thanks Jessi for some of the best stewing meat we’ve ever had!

~ Now that’s good eatin’ folks!

Paleo Slow Cooker Chili…

03 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by in Beef, Meat, Paleo Recipes, recipes, Slow Cooker, Uncategorized, Vegetables

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There is something to be said about hearing the winds howl outside and hunkering down with a nice big bowl of chili. Pull out your slow cooker in the morning, cut up a few vegetables, toss in some ground beef and spices and when you’re home and ready to warm up your outside with comfy jammies and wool socks it’s time to warm up your insides with this delicious meal.

While preparing chili can happen most anytime we like to make big batches of it during the weekend so that it can be used for lunches later in the week. Tara will also tell you that you can literally throw an egg on top of anything and make it into a breakfast (true story as she does it all the time with left overs). Leftovers can also be used to as a topping to one of our all time favorite paleo eats: Sweet Potato Pizza.

The thing about chili is there is so much “wiggle” room. The base is the same (a little meat, a little veggie, a little spice) but the combination is totally up to you. We’ve got a few chili recipes that will eventually make it’s way to TheHDD blog but for now this one is the most basic.

Enjoy!

Slow Cooker Paleo Chili

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs Ground Beef
  • 1 28oz Can of Diced Tomatoes (we used one with extra garlic)
  • 1 Onion (peeled and chopped)
  • Peppers (large = 3 or 4 sweet peppers = 8 – 10)
  • Garlic (we used 6 large cloves)
  • 2 – 3 Tbsps of chili powder (depending on your tastes)

Seriously this is gonna be easy folks.

In a large skillet on medium heat, brown the meat until cooked thoroughly. Drain and set aside (keeping some fat in skillet for garlic and onions). Mince garlic, chop onions and put in skillet on low/medium heat. Allow onions to cook for about 5 minutes, add chili powder and mix well. Continue to cook onions for another 5 minutes or so…

You can add the beef back into the skillet or you can just throw everything into the slow cooker at this point…

Clean and chop your sweet peppers and add to slow cooker.

Add diced tomatoes (we chose not to drain first), mix together well, cover and cook on low heat for about 4-5 hours.

Now it may seem that there’s not much “kick” or spice to this chili and you would be right. However the garlic and chili powder were just the right combination to bring heat to the dish. Remember to adjust accordingly to your own tastes…

Depending on your definition of Paleo, you can serve this will quinoa on the bottom or if you’re not following a paleo foundation, pasta would be right tasty as well.

~ Now that’s good eatin’ folks!

Let’s make some soup (Roasted Sweet Potato and Fennel)

11 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in Paleo Recipes, recipes, Soups, Sweet potatoes, Uncategorized, Vegetables, Vegetarian

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Dear Fall,

Oh how we love thee. With your brightly changing colors and your cooler nights. The oversized sweaters / hoodies and comfy socks. The hunkering down under a quilt with a good movie or that book you’ve been wanting to read. The howling of the wind on the outside as your warm and cozy on the inside. Oh and let’s not forget the delicious (delicious!) soups you inspire us to make.

Here are two things you need to know about us:

  1. Fall is our absolute favorite season (Spring is a close second)
  2. We love making soups.

We’ve been stocking our freezers with homemade soups in preparation of the upcoming winter and with it being prime squash season we’ve been taking full advantage of all the varieties we can get our hands on.

The original recipe can be found over at Robin-Ellis.net and as always we made a few changes according to our personal tastes. Make a double batch and freeze some for those nights when soup is the only thing that will take the chill of your bones!

Enjoy!

Roasted Sweet Potato and Fennel Soup

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs Sweet Potato (peeled and chopped)
  • 1 Large Fennel Bulb (cleaned and chopped)
  • 2 Medium Onions (chopped)
  • 4 – 8 Cloves of Garlic (remember we love our garlic)
  • Ginger (thumb size – peeled and finely chopped)
  • 3 Cups Chicken Stock (Vegetable stock will work too)
  • 2 Cups Almond Milk (Water will work too)
  • Salt and Pepper to taste
  • Greek Yogurt for topping (optional)

Preheat oven to 400F.

It’s best if you roast the sweet potatoes separately from the onion, fennel and garlic. The sweet potatoes take a little longer so it will be of good use of your time to start them then get to work on the other vegetables.

When peeling the sweet potatoes you may want to leave the skin on at least one to give it a more deeper “earthy” flavor. It’s really a personal taste and for us we left the skin on a few.

Drizzle with a small amount of olive oil (we used a mushroom sage oil), toss then spread on foil lined cookie sheet. This is a good time to add a little black pepper if you want or you can wait until everything is ready to go into the food processor / blender.

Roast potatoes for about about 10 minutes. In the mean time grab a second foil lined cookie sheet and prepare Onion, Fennel and Garlic (chop and lightly toss in oil like the sweet potatoes). If you don’t know how to prepare fennel, here’s a really nice “How To” to follow.

Side Note: Don’t be so quick to throw the top of your fennel away. If you are making smoothies in the morning as a quick breakfast think about adding the stalk of the fennel as one of your ingredients. Try a pineapple / fennel smoothie it’s divine.

When the 10 minutes is up on the sweet potatoes give them a good stir and return to oven. Add the fennel, onion and garlic to oven and continue to roast for an additional 10-15 minutes or until sweet potatoes are soft all the way through.

While everything is roasting in the oven, peel and finely chop your ginger. In medium sauce pan add chicken stock and when warm add ginger.

Once the roasting is complete pull out your handy food processor / blender / hand held submersion blender. In our household we have the handy dandy food processor. Just throw everything in there and slowly add the ginger chicken stock (a cup at a time should do the trick).

Blend until you reach the consistency that you desire. For us the three cups of chicken stock wasn’t enough so we continued to blend with almond milk for a more creamier texture. Water will also do the trick. How much you use will be up to your discrepancy.

The really nice thing about this soup is that while the sweet potatoes, fennel, onion and garlic blend smoothly together the ginger will remain finely chopped giving the soup a complex texture.

For an added extra bonus of tasty deliciousness, when ready to serve garnish a dollop of greek yogurt and course ground pepper. If you want this to remain fully Paleo use chilled coconut milk (i.e. Thai Kitchen brand) instead of greek yogurt.

~ Now that’s good eatin’ folks!

Pick your side…

20 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in recipes, salads, Uncategorized, Vegetarian

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It’s easy to throw together a full meal in a pot. Take a few ingredients, add some spices and throw it all on the stove and voila! Okay maybe it’s not that easy but we’ve been cooking up a lot of 1 pot (or pan) meals lately and today decided to post two sides that were popular in the HDD’s house (meaning: We ate it all). The first is a wintery coleslaw that we came across at this website, when looking for a recipe for the Spanish radish we picked up at the farmer’s market. Unfortunately when Tara went to use the radish she realized it had “matured” beyond its use. However with a few changes the coleslaw was delish! If you think coleslaws are only for the warm months, give this side a try and think again.

The second recipe is originally from the CheapHealthyGood blog. As the website shows this is a wild rice salad but the wild rice (with edamame) was so tasty alone we used it as a side multiple times in lunches.

 Hearty Winter Coleslaw

Ingredients (coleslaw)

  • 2 carrots
  • 1 turnip
  • 1 small celeriac (the root of the celery)
  • 1 head of white cabbage
  • 1 head of Chinese cabbage
  • 1 small head of radicchio cabbage

Not a whole lot of thought in this part. Here’s a good chance to practice your knife skills. Put the cabbage and veggies mix into a bowl and move onto the dressing.

  

Ingredients (dressing)

  • 1 lemon
  • 1 cup Greek yogurt
  • Fresh mint / dill / chives
  • 2 Tbsp mustard
  • Extra virgin olive oil (about 1 Tbsp).

In a medium-sized bowl add fresh juice from squeezed lemon (make sure to remove the seeds!), olive oil, yogurt, mustard and fresh herbs (another good opportunity to practice your knife skills). Mix well and adjust to taste.   If you’d like to add salt and pepper for taste this is a good time to do that but we found we didn’t need to add either.

  

Pour dressing over cabbage / vegetables and mix well.

That’s it!

– Side note: this coleslaw has a lot of opportunity for changes. Over the course of a few days we tried it with cranberries, flax seed and almonds. Something sweet works well with the tangy dressing. Use your imagination and let us know what you come up with!

Wild Rice Spinach Salad with Edamame

Ingredients (the salad):

  • 1 cup uncooked wild rice (this is yield about 2ish cups of cooked rice)
  • 1 – 2 carrots (the more the merrier)
  • 1 1/2 cups edamame (shelled) – thawed if frozen
  • Fresh spinach

Ingredients (the dressing):

  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1/4 lemon
  • 1 Tbsp fresh mint (finely chopped)
  • Salt & Pepper to taste (again we found we didn’t need it)

Easy peasy salad prep:

  1. Cook the rice and bring to room temperature.
  2. Practice your knife skills with carrots
  3. Double check your edamame is thawed
  4. Mix together

Easy peasy dressing prep:

  1. Grab a whisk
  2. Mix fresh squeezed lemon juice (remove any seeds), mint, olive oil.

Pour dressing over rice / edamame / carrot mix.

Serve on a bed of spinach or as a side (both hot and cold work well)

So there you have it. Try both and pick your side. No matter which one you choose there’s one thing for sure…

~ Now that’s good eatin folks!

Stuffed Pork Loin…

15 Tuesday Nov 2011

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We found this recipe at Everyday Paleo. We are not strict Paleo followers; more like 80/20 followers. We like to find recipes then change them up a bit for variety. Here’s our version of the Stuffed Pork Loin…

The Ingredients:

  • Pork Loin (large enough to butterfly)
  • 2 slices of uncooked bacon
  • Variety of sweet peppers (color is everything!)
  • 1 hot yellow pepper (if you like a little kick)
  • Handful of Mushrooms
  • Fresh Basil leaves
  • Garlic (the more the better in our opinion)
  • Butcher’s twine
  • Fresh vegetables for side dish (the more the better!)

This is a pork loin (DUH). We try to buy local raised meats and on this particular day we visited the Halifax Seaport Market. While there we picked up some bacon and freshly made bratwurst. This is fine eating my friends! We had originally picked up two pork loins thinking we would tie them together but once we got home we realized one was enough for the both of us…

The reason we choose bacon for this recipe is because the original one called for a jar of sun dried tomatoes and while they are delicious one of us can’t eat them (Tara). The tomatoes would have given the pork loin the necessary oil to keep from drying out so we chose bacon as the substitute and seriously you can’t go wrong with bacon…ever!

Basil!!! So fresh, so good and a nice opportunity to show off some knife skills if you have them and impress the ladies (or so that’s what Tara thinks when trying to impress Meegan). We used a handful of leaves to make sure the flavor would come through.

A few sweet peppers (yellow, orange and red), a little bit of hot yellow pepper and lots of garlic. Again, another prime opportunity to show off those knife skills!

Oh man this is coming together nicely! Whatever veggies don’t fit, save for a nice omelet in the morning or throw them in with whatever vegetables you decide to have with dinner.

How in the world are we going to close this baby up to pop it in the oven?

Good old butcher’s twine. Now if you have any trouble finding twine (as we did – meaning we walked around the store for 20 minutes before asking if they carried any, which they didn’t) head towards the meat department and ask the butcher! Ours was kind enough to give us enough to last a few months!

To make it look pretty on the outside, try searing it in a hot pan for about 2 minutes on each side (alternating sides every 30 seconds or so to prevent burning). For our oil, we chose a nice chili oil to give it some extra spicy flavor (we like things spicy!)…

use a little oil on the bottom of glass pan to prevent the pork loin from sticking. Preheat oven to 350 and when it’s ready pop this in for about 25 minutes (we don’t have a meat thermometer just yet so we erred on the side of caution and went for 30 minutes – the meat was as tender as can be!)

While we waited we cut up our vegetables and pan roasted them with the same chili oil we used to sear the pork. The more color on your plate, the more you will enjoy your food: FACT!

And voila! Not only was this delicious (and we mean seriously delicious) it was just enough for the two of us. No leftovers = no mindless snacking.

~Now that’s good eatin folks!

Sharing a passion for food…

15 Tuesday Nov 2011

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Tara: One of the things most important to both Meegan and myself is the food that we eat. Individually (meaning 4000 miles apart) we often shopped at local farmer’s markets buying food for the week. Focusing on local, organic products and veering away from processed foods. We would coordinate times together and make the same meals while sharing “face time” over Skype (which was a lifesaver the first six months of our relationship)…

Fast forward to today and we no longer need to share a meal over Skype. Today we share a kitchen and more importantly we share a passion for eating mindfully. Halifax is chock full of local vendors and on any given day one can find a farmer’s market bustling with your heart’s content of freshly picked vegetables, farm fresh fruit and locally raised meats.

One of the main focuses of this blog will be the meals we share together.

Meals that we hope you will share with those that you love…

Share your kitchen.

Share your love.

(Let’s eat)


 

 

In the beginning…

13 Sunday Nov 2011

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Tara: One of the things that has been most important to me on this journey of weight loss, this journey of life gained, this journey of taking back control and heading towards what I deserve is finding someone who would stand beside me. Someone that feels as strongly as I do not only about our individual health but about the health of others. Someone that understood my passion not only to move forward but to help others step up to the starting line of their own journeys.

I’ve found that in Meegan.

The story of us meeting (first by blog) then meeting again (in person), building a friendship and falling in love (so very quickly and literally without warning) is nothing short of a fairy tale.

The collaboration of TheHDD (The Healthy Dynamic Duo) is another chapter in our story. A commitment of sorts if you will. To ourselves, to each other, and more importantly to the people we hope to encourage to do what Meegan and I have done: Learned to live again…

Welcome to our blog.

Meegan: As usual I find myself wondering how I can put into words the feelings of my heart. Tara and I have uncovered blessings in life on our LCJs, and now after uncovering our own personal truths, get to uncover how good life can be in sharing our lives together. When I first read Tara’s blog I knew she had many gifts, as a wordsmith, as an inspiration, as a dedicate athlete, to name just a few. I remember reading many of her posts and thinking “we are thinking EXACTLY the same damn thing!” and wondering what we could do if we were working together. Now I have the incredible pleasure of seeing exactly what we will do working, living and loving together. (and it’s EXCITING people!)

This collaborative blog is what we hope will be a piece of our healthful lives together. The story of what our lives look like when we get share the day to day routine of living life on the other side of obesity. Of finding the joys in healthy active living and wanting to share that with the blog-o-sphere that brought us together.

Life now is what I always dreamed life would be. Whole, healthy, happy and shared with someone who understands and believes in the same passions in life. Its magical.

Welcome to our blog.