Recipe of the Week: Black Bean Quesadillas

From Eat­ing Well

In a hurry? These sat­is­fy­ing que­sadil­las take just 15 min­utes to make. We like them with black beans, but pinto beans work well too. If you like a lit­tle heat, be sure to use pep­per Jack cheese in the filling.

Serve with: A lit­tle sour cream and a mixed green salad.

Ingre­di­ents

• 1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed
• 1/2 cup shred­ded Mon­terey Jack cheese, prefer­ably pep­per Jack
• 1/2 cup pre­pared fresh salsa (see Tip), divided
• 4 8-inch whole-wheat tortillas
• 2 tea­spoons canola oil, divided
• 1 ripe avo­cado, diced

Prepa­ra­tion

1. Com­bine beans, cheese and 1/4 cup salsa in a medium bowl. Place tor­tillas on a work sur­face. Spread 1/2 cup fill­ing on half of each tor­tilla. Fold tor­tillas in half, press­ing gen­tly to flatten.
2. Heat 1 tea­spoon oil in a large non­stick skil­let over medium heat. Add 2 que­sadil­las and cook, turn­ing once, until golden on both sides, 2 to 4 min­utes total. Trans­fer to a cut­ting board and tent with foil to keep warm. Repeat with the remain­ing 1 tea­spoon oil and que­sadil­las. Serve the que­sadil­las with avo­cado and the remain­ing salsa.

Nutri­tion
Per serv­ing: 377 Calo­ries; 16 g Fat; 5 g Sat; 8 g Mono; 13 mg Cho­les­terol; 46 g Car­bo­hy­drates; 13 g Pro­tein; 10 g Fiber; 679 mg Sodium; 581 mg Potassium

Metabolic Rate 101

This is a re-post from March 2010.

POSTED BY DANIEL

Do you wish for those days when you were a kid and could eat what­ever you wanted with out any repercussions?

We often for­get that while we were being those kids and eat­ing what­ever we wanted, we were run­ning loose through the neigh­bor­hood — never to sit still. As we age, our eat­ing habits and activ­ity habits change, and there­fore so do our waistlines.

We can also thank our par­ents for the genet­ics that gov­ern our meta­bolic rate, but with the right under­stand­ing we can com­bat or enhance their genetic gift. The rate at which your body burns energy is made up of three unique parts:

1. Basal Meta­bolic Rate: Basal Meta­bolic Rate is the energy your body burns by sim­ply just being. Your body burns 60 to 70 per­cent of the calo­ries you ingest each day to breath, move blood, grow hair, repair dam­aged cells, etc.
2. Ther­mic Effect of Food: The Ther­mic Effect of Food is the actual caloric cost of digest­ing food and pro­cess­ing it to energy; mean­ing, your body burns about 10 per­cent of the calo­ries you con­sume each day to digest, store, and use food.
3. Activ­ity: When you move, you burn calo­ries! When com­bin­ing your daily rou­tines with a proper exer­cise pro­gram, you can assure that your metab­o­lism will burn about 30 per­cent of your daily calories.

So how do we improve our aging metab­o­lism? Editor-in-Chief David Zinczenko of Men’s Health suggests:

• Increase our mus­cle mass: Par­tic­i­pat­ing in a fit­ness pro­gram where we increase our mus­cle mass pro­vides more cel­lu­lar tis­sue for our bod­ies to main­tain, there­fore increas­ing our Basal Meta­bolic Rate.
• Eat through­out the day: Eat­ing more than three meals a day will force our bod­ies to uti­lize the Ther­mic Effect — burn­ing more calo­ries through­out the day and often times caus­ing us to eat less.
• Eat pro­tein with every meal: Eat­ing pro­tein with every meal is impor­tant. Not only is it the fun­da­men­tal build­ing block for cre­at­ing mus­cle tis­sue, it takes more energy for your body to break-down and store pro­tein, there­fore increas­ing the Ther­mic Effect of each meal.
• Keep mov­ing: Increas­ing our activ­ity lev­els by incor­po­rat­ing intense car­dio­vas­cu­lar work­outs three to four times a week will, over time, increase the rate our metab­o­lisms burn calories.

Got any tips for increas­ing your metab­o­lism? Share your thoughts by click­ing the “Com­ments” link above this post.

Recipe of the Week: Tropical Cucumber Salad

Vari­ety is the spice of life. So every Fri­day — or almost every Fri­day — we share a healthy recipe to help keep your menu excit­ing and nutri­tious. If you have a healthy recipe that you’d like to share with the group, we’d LOVE to fea­ture it on the blog, and give you credit! Email your healthy recipes to: lauren@​bc4​c.​com.

Today’s recipe is brought to you by Eat­ing Well and com­bines cucum­ber, avo­cado and mango with a salty-sweet dress­ing for a taste of the trop­ics — per­fect for a warm sum­mer evening!

INGREDIENTS

• 3–5 tea­spoons fish sauce, (see Shop­ping Tip below)
• 1 tea­spoon freshly grated lime zest, plus more for garnish
• 2 table­spoons lime juice
• 1 table­spoon canola oil
• 2 tea­spoons light brown sugar
• 1 tea­spoon rice vinegar
• 1/4 tea­spoon crushed red pepper
• 1 medium Eng­lish cucum­ber, cut into 3/4-inch dice
• 1 avo­cado, cut into 3/4-inch dice
• 1 mango, cut into 3/4-inch dice (see Kitchen Tip below)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

PREPARATION
Whisk fish sauce to taste, lime zest, lime juice, oil, brown sugar, vine­gar and crushed red pep­per in a large bowl until com­bined. Add cucum­ber, avo­cado, mango and cilantro; gen­tly toss to coat. Serve gar­nished with lime zest, if desired.

TIPS & NOTES
Make Ahead Tip: Cover and refrig­er­ate for up to 1 hour.

Shop­ping Tip: Fish sauce is a pun­gent South­east Asian condi­ment; find it in large super­mar­kets and Asian markets.

Kitchen Tip: To peel and cut a mango:

1. Slice both ends off the mango, reveal­ing the long, slen­der seed inside. Set the fruit upright on a work sur­face and remove the skin with a sharp knife.
2. With the seed per­pen­dic­u­lar to you, slice the fruit from both sides of the seed, yield­ing two large pieces.
3. Turn the seed par­al­lel to you and slice the two smaller pieces of fruit from each side.
4. Cut the fruit into the desired shape.

NUTRITION
Per serv­ing: 169 calo­ries; 11 g fat ( 1 g sat , 7 g mono ); 0 mg cho­les­terol; 18 g car­bo­hy­drates; 2 g added sug­ars; 3 g pro­tein; 5 g fiber; 178 mg sodium; 342 mg potassium.

Nutri­tion Bonus: Vit­a­min C (45% daily value), Vit­a­min A (15% dv).

Car­bo­hy­drate Serv­ings: 1

Exchanges: 1 veg­etable, 1/2 fruit, 2 fat

Recipe credit: Eat­ing Well

Good for What Ails Ya

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a re-post from last year. There­fore, some of the com­ments are also from last year and may or may not be rel­e­vant to today’s workout.

BY LEIGH

After a cou­ple days at camp you may be expe­ri­enc­ing some sore­ness. While that is to be expected, espe­cially if you are new to a fit­ness regime, there are some things to con­sider to help you through it.

• Stretch: Stretch­ing through out the day helps to keep you loose and lim­ber, as well as increas­ing blood cir­cu­la­tion to the mus­cles. Increase blood flow will accel­er­ate heal­ing and over­time will increase energy lev­els due to the increased accel­er­a­tion. How­ever, If you are afraid you have pulled a mus­cle or have a mus­cle tear, do not stretch that mus­cle it will only get worse.
• Drink: Water that is. Most causes of sore­ness include a build up of lac­tic acid in the mus­cles. Drink­ing water is a good way to flush out that build up.
• Go for a soak: It might sound a lit­tle hokey and/or grandma-ish, but tak­ing an epsom salt bath can do won­ders for your sore mus­cles. You can pick up a box at any drug store.
• The cold treat­ment: Cold show­ers or ice baths get the blood flow­ing through the mus­cles to the sur­face. As men­tioned before the increased blood cir­cu­la­tion helps accel­er­ate healing.
• Don’t stop: Sore­ness should be expected after most if not all of our work­outs. It is one of many sig­nals from your body that you are push­ing your­self and get­ting stronger. By con­tin­u­ing your exer­cise reg­i­men you are rais­ing your bod­ies lim­its and over time less likely to expe­ri­ence sore­ness for the same level of exer­tion. Feel­ing a lit­tle sore should be one of your goals for every workout.

If you are expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing that feels more than just sore­ness or you have incurred an actual injury, try RICE. Though not of the brown, white, or fried variety.

• R: Rest. Take a day or two off to give your­self a break. Try to limit any activ­ity that results in pain.
• I: Ice. Apply ice to the affected area. See icing guide­lines here.
• C: Com­pres­sion. Get an ACE ban­dage and wrap the injured area. Be care­ful not to wrap it too tightly though, you want to make sure the blood is circulating.
• E: Ele­va­tion. Prop that twisted ankle up on some pil­lows. Wher­ever the injured area is, try to get it ele­vated higher than your heart.

Let us know if you have occurred an injury or if some­thing feels awk­ward. There is a good chance that one of the train­ers or even a vet­eran camper may have expe­ri­enced some­thing sim­i­lar. How­ever, none of us are doc­tors or nurses, so if you think it is some­thing seri­ous do not hes­i­tate to get a pro­fes­sional med­ical opinion.

Let us know how you’re feel­ing after Day 2. Post a com­ment by click­ing the “Com­ments’ link above this post!

Recipe of the Week: Artichoke Dip

Today’s recipe comes from Canyon Ranch and is per­fect for this time of year when friends and fam­ily are gath­er­ing to watch foot­ball games or cel­e­brate holidays.

To help man­age the portions/calories, try spread­ing the unbaked dip on baguette slices (you can also use bagel crisps or whole-wheat pita chips) and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 12–15 min­utes. This prepa­ra­tion makes serv­ing easy and you’ll know exactly how much dip is going on each slice.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup low-fat cream cheese
• 1/2 cup non­fat sour cream
• 1/4 cup grated Parme­san cheese
• 1/2 cup grated moz­zarella cheese
• 2 table­spoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tea­spoons salt
• 1 1/2 tea­spoons black pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped green chili
• 2 cups canned arti­choke hearts, drained and rinsed

DIRECTIONS

1. Pre­heat oven to 400°.
2. Process until smooth and creamy. Add arti­chokes and pulse until arti­chokes are chunky.
3. Place dip in an 8-inch bak­ing pan and bake for 10 to 15 min­utes or until bubbly.

NUTRITION INFORMATION
Makes 16 (1/4-cup) serv­ings, each con­tain­ing approx­i­mately:
55 calo­ries
5 gm. car­bo­hy­drate
2 gm. fat
8 mg. cho­les­terol
4 gm. pro­tein
282 mg. sodium
1 gm. fiber

IMAGE CREDIT: MyRecipes​.com