Robyn Spurr

Personal Health and Weight Loss Coaching For Women

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Cooking Made Fun, Chickadee Style

I’m not going to give you a long spiel about the reasons you should cook at home. Let’s just cut to the chase. Who knows what the heck is going down in that restaurant kitchen!

Restaurants buy food in bulk, which typically means poor quality. When you cook your own meals, you know exactly what you’re eating.

But, I don’t have time Robyn! Oh, if I had a dollar…

Cooking at home is actually faster than dining out. Add up the time you spend driving to a restaurant, waiting for a table, deciding what you want, waiting to order, waiting for your food, waiting for the bill, and then driving home. In that amount of time you could have prepared a healthy and delicious dinner at home and avoided all that waiting!

Here’s the deal-io Chickadees, cooking doesn’t have to be drudgery. Are you crazy? Yeah, maybe a little, but if you follow my Cooking With JOY tips, you too can hop on board the crazy train and learn to LOVE cooking.

1. First stop, Pinterest! Have you heard of it? If not, you’ve got to check it out. I save all of my favorite recipes there. Instead of sorting through cookbooks and random print outs, everything is located in one convenient location online.

Pin what? No worries, check out my recipes here.

You’ll need an invite to join the site. Want one? Just shoot me an email via my contact form on this site and I’ll send you one. Easy peasy!

2. All you need to do is find at least ten recipes that you like. That’s it, just ten. You may not believe it, but that’s all most families use.

3. Designate a specific day and time for your cooking fun. Choose a time when you can block off at least 2 hours and won’t be rushed or disrupted. I can usually whip up three big dishes during this time and that’s all I need to get me and the hubby through the week. Can you say delicious leftovers?

4. Sprinkle on some FUN! This may be the most important step. I tend to do my cooking on Sunday afternoons and I usually plan my recipes that morning and head out to store for any last minute ingredients.

Once I’m ready to rock and roll, I’ll open up a nice bottle of red wine and pour myself a glass. Next on the agenda, great tunes! Play music that inspires you. For me, it’s crooners like Frank, Dean, Etta, Rosemary or Louis.

That’s it, four simple steps. And once you’re in the zone, cooking can be quite meditative. All it takes is a simple mind shift. So replace those negative thoughts about cooking with a shiny new one like…

I am nourishing myself and my family with healthy and delicious food, all while having FUN.

And don’t forget to sharpen those knives. Hmm, might make for a good video post down the road. Stay tuned and buon appetito!

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Lightened Up Sunday Sauce (aka Italian Tomato Gravy)

sunday sauce

While my family isn’t Italian, I grew up in a predominantly Italian neighborhood in Northern New Jersey. I know what authentic Italian food made with love tastes like – and I won’t settle for less.

Most Sunday sauces use ground pork and beef and a heck of a lot more oil than this one. But you won’t miss the fat, because this sauce is GOOD and good for you. Just the way I like it.

Ingredients:

  • 2 (28 oz) cans diced tomatoes
  • 1 medium onion, minced
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • 6 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1 pound 93% lean ground turkey
  • 1 cup chicken broth
  • 2 bay leaves
  • ½ cup minced fresh basil leaves
  • salt
  • ground black pepper
  • LOVE (the magic ingredient)

Directions:

  1. Process 1 can of tomatoes with their juices in a food processor until almost smooth, about 5 seconds
  2. Combine the onion, oil and ½ teaspoon salt in a large pot, cover and cook over medium-low heat until softened, 8-10 minutes
  3. Stir in the garlic, tomato paste and pepper flakes and cook until garlic is fragrant, about 30 seconds
  4. Stir in half of the ground turkey and cook breaking the meat into small pieces until the meat loses its raw color but has not browned, about 4 minutes.
  5. Add the pureed tomatoes, remaining can of diced tomatoes with their juices, broth and bay leaves.
  6. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the flavors are blended and the sauce is thickened, about 45 minutes.
  7. Stir the remaining turkey into the sauce and continue to simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  8. Remove the bay leaves and stir in the basil.
  9. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

*Inspired by America’s Test Kitchen Best Light Recipes, Meat and Cheese Lasagne

Robyn Spurr is a Certified Health Coach, Weight Loss Coach, Personal Trainer and founder of Chickadee Weight Loss. She helps women reach their healthy, natural weight and stay there without all the diet craziness.

For more information on Weight Loss Coaching, click here.

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Top 10 Reasons to Hire a Weight Loss Coach

The final requirement necessary, before becoming a Brooke Castillo Certified Weight Loss Coach, involves making a short video about yourself and what you do. I had such a blast creating and filming my video. This chick is all about fun, right-brain projects.

The more technical parts and pieces, like downloading, converting, editing, exporting…OY VEY! My poor little left-brain was about ready to go on strike.

Point is, I powered through it and got it done. If you focus on your goal and approach it with the right attitude, anything is possible. Even if you’re technically challenged and like to figure things out without clicking on the help tab.

So here it, the Top 10 Reasons to Hire THIS Weight Loss Coach.

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A Kitchen Must Have

My hubby and I aren’t the type to go overboard with gift giving during the holidays. We have LOVE, and that’s the best gift of all. Yep, I’m a big old sap.

However, a few years ago Brett bought me the BEST Christmas gift ever. He handed it to me along with a disclaimer. Something like, “I know most women don’t like getting domestic gifts, but I thought you might like this.”

Say what? Like it, I LOVE it! By the way Brett, you can buy this chick stuff for the kitchen all day long.

Want to know what it was? A Thermapen. And I have no idea how I survived all those years in the kitchen without it.

What’s a Thermapen? It’s a super rad cooking thermometer. Here’s a description from the website:

The Super-Fast Thermapen™ is a professional tool (originally designed for commercial kitchens, labs and manufacturing plants) that has become the top consumer cooking thermometer for home use. It’s popularity among celebrity chefs, cooking magazines, top foodies, bloggers and competition BBQ teams have made the Thermapen™ into an essential tool in the best-equipped home kitchens and backyard BBQ rigs.

They cost about $89 and you can purchase one from my favorite store, Amazon.com. Now go and get one Chickadee. It’s absolutely worth the price and you’ll never, ever overcook a steak again. And that steak better be grass fed.