No Bake Chocolate Balls

Memorial Day Weekend is over! (unfortunately)

How did we all do? I personally ate an Italian Sausage at my mom’s BBQ and it was delicious…..and I had some angel food cake…..so that was my meat & sweets limit for a while!! I hit the gym twice and spent some leisure time at the pool. Today I am back on track. I made my no bake chocolate balls yesterday so in case I get a sweet tooth I am set. They contain the following:

1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup macadamia nuts
1 cup almonds
1/2 cup walnuts
aprox 15 pitted dates
3 T ground flaxseed
1 tsp vanilla
3-4 T unsweetened cocoa

Mix in a food processor and then form into balls by hand and store in the freezer.

I found the recipe on a website called http://www.wholefoodmommies.com if you are interested in whole raw food and seeing the original recipe!

What’s Cookin’?

When my boyfriend and I can’t make up our minds on what to make for dinner, we always resort back to one delicious, and vegan, dish (or a variation of it) !

This recipe is so delicious and easy to make, it needs to be spread throughout the blogosphere.

This recipe is courtesy of bbcgoodfood.com, which is a great resource for finding quality vegetarian and vegan recipes. I’ve switched up the recipe a bit from the website; we never follow recipes exactly as they are anyway. Feel free to add your own spin on this too!

First things first: Make your own homemade paste.

1 jalapeno pepper

3 shallots, chopped

1/2 red pepper

zest 1 lime

2 garlic cloves

ground pepper

a bit of olive oil

Add ingredients into a food processor until smooth. In the meantime, marinate the tofu in 4-5 tbsp  soy sauce.

Ingredients:

Firm tofu, cubed (use as much or as little as you’d like)

1 can light coconut milk

1 eggplant, chopped

1/2 red pepper, chopped and deseeded

1/2 green pepper, chopped and deseeded

mushrooms, halved

sugar snap peas

Grab a large skillet and heat with a bit of olive oil. Add the veggies and the tofu.

In a separate sauce pan, stir together the paste and the coconut milk. Season with bay leaf and desired spices if preferred.

Stir in sauce with veggies and tofu and let simmer.

Grab your rice ( or quinoa! ) and DIG IN!

Photo from BBC Good Food

Creating the WOW.

It’s quite obvious that being happy at work is essential to maintaining good overall health and happiness.

Most of us however, at some point in our careers, have experienced the feeling of being overworked, stressed, and frustrated in the office.  Often times this frustration at work can transfer to other elements of you life, leaving you feeling worn out and unhappy.

ResortCom has recently introduced a new initiative in our company culture, and is an idea that has been embraced by us here in the wellness committee. So much so in fact, that we had to share with the blogging world! This new initiative is simple: WOW.

The “WOW” initiative is an attitude that promotes growth , change, and an overall positive atmosphere in the office. Positive motivation comes from positive thinking, and positive thinking comes from a healthy mind.   This is the type of atmosphere we are trying to implement in the office here at ResortCom.

The initiative has been set in place to enhance all aspects of our work culture; from relationships, to atmosphere, customer service, and business strategies, the WOW initiative seeks to bring overall positive change and growth to our company and employees.

I thought I’d share with our readers an activity that we did here in our office to kick off this new initiative.

I present to you, “The WOW Board!”

 

This board was a great way to get everyone in the office to participate in sharing and brainstorming ideas about the WOW culture. We designed the poster in Illustrator and quickly and easily printed it off at a nearby Kinkos. We then hung it up in our employee lounge and provided post-its and markers that we placed nearby.

We asked everyone to think of one word or phrase that describes what a WOW atmosphere means to them. It was a great way to get everyone brainstorming and participating, and gave us some great ideas as we continue to implement this new initiative at ResortCom.

Sometimes all it takes is a little team spirit and new, creative ways of thinking to begin to make big changes – and healthy ones!

-The ResortCom Wellness Committee

You Are What You Eat?

Hello everyone and happy Tuesday!

To get this blog rolling, I wanted to share something that has been a long topic of discussion in the wellness committee and has strongly affected me.

Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion and debate regarding meat, particular red meat, and its roll as a contributor to cancer, heart disease, and other deadly diseases. (If this is the first you’ve heard of it, just Google it–plenty will come up).

Personally, it was a topic I’d heard about and had taken and interest in, but I’m naturally not much of a meat eater so I didn’t research into the topic much.

Well for all you meat eaters out there– think twice before ordering that burger on your lunch break.

We watched as a group the eye-opening documentary Forks over Knifes.

Forks over Knifes is largely based off the best-selling book, The China Study, which compilies the extensive findings of Dr. Colin Campbell.

Campbell’s argument, and the position that is taken in the documentary, argues that a whole food, plant based diet is the key not only to preventing several diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and type II diabetes, but switching to this diet can actually reverse your chances of suffering from these illnesses. Animal protein, on the other hand can onset these diseases. Essentially, the right nutrition is man’s greatest medicine.

The strictness of the diet is severe, but the documentary provides extensive evidence of various research and case studies where adopting this whole food, plant based lifestyle can have an outstanding impact on your health.

After watching the documentary and conducting my own research, I decided to become fully vegetarian and cut back on dairy as much as possible. You have to do what’s right for you– if you’re a big meat eater, don’t go in cold turkey, rather take small steps. Even implementing “Meatless Mondays” or being more conscious of what you eat can make huge differences in your health and well-being.

To get you started, I have a fantastic recipe I wanted to share! This is next on my list to make. 🙂 Veggie burgers are a great alternative if you’re looking for a heartier, filling meal. You won’t even miss the meat!

-Ali