Spicy Kale Chips- Guest Post

Hi there NYC fit food & fashion readers!
I am Cait, I blog over at Piece Of Cait. Where I share bits & pieces of my life, which revolve around myself, my husband & CAT! , sweets, workouts & daily rambles/ inspo.

 I am so glad Joanne was looking for some guest posts while she is busy with the new babe! AH!!! <3Since I am nowhere near a fashion guru, I will spare you and share a healthified chip! KALE chips actually. If you haven’t heard, kale is pretty amazing. like, it is the holy grail of greens.

Some interesting facts:

• Per calorie, kale has more  iron than beef
• More calcium then milk
• 10%  more vitamin c then spinach
• High in protein
• Metabolism booster
• Immune boosting
• Detoxifying
  The list goes on! …Also, they make great snacks!

  { Spicy kale chips, or .. nacho style! 😉 }
  All of these ingredients remind me of Mexican, salty, savory & all around my fav!

  What you’ll need

• 1 bunch kale {stems removed}
• 2 tbsp olive oil { half for bowl, half for on the bottom}
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp cumin
• dash of paprika
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 300* F
• Wash & cut your kale into small pieces { “chip size”}
• Combine in a bowl: your olive oil, spices, + salt/ pepper.
•  Toss your kale in the mixture by rotating them into the mix.
• Place in oven rack <— cookie sheet with aluminum foil, bake until crispy.

No guilt here when snacking away on theses “chips” 🙂

Check out some more over on my blog, Piece Of Cait, see you there!<3
xo

Dinner Ideas from Pinterest

Hello Fellow Foodies! If you are like me you are always looking for dinner ideas. A great resource for finding recipes and ideas for dinner is Pinterest. When I am looking I try to think of that I want chicken, beef, pasta etc and then search for chicken recipes… I decided that today I would compile a list of some dinner ideas for you guys that I found while searching around on Pinterest. I am always searching for dinner ideas so I figured I would share some of the recipes I have found with you. Here is a look at some delicious dinner ideas:

Chicken Marsala

Easy Cheesy Breadsticks

Baked Potato Casserole

Crock Pot Beef and Broccoli

Black Pepper Shrimp Bake

Buffalo Chicken Pasta

7 Easy and Quick Dinner Ideas

20 Healthy Dinner Ideas

I hope some of these recipes will help be of help to you when you are in a jam trying to think of dinner ideas. I know that these are sure to be some of my favorite recipes for when I am hard pressed to come up with something quick. Once you have tried these ones head over to Pinterest and do some searches and you will be shocked by all the dinner ideas that you can find there! I have given you guys some options what are some of your favorite things to whip up for a quick dinner?

Shula’s Steakhouse NYC

NYC Restaurant Week has come and gone. We were able to get out for three date nights during Restaurant Week. The last restaurant that we visited was Shula’s Steakhouse. I was surprised to see that Shula’s was a hotel restaurant inside of the Westin Hotel NYC. There is no where better to be for steaks than in New York City. The restaurant week menu at Shula’s had steak, chicken and fish as options but we obviously went there for steak. The atmosphere was a lot nicer than your average hotel restaurant. It has an old school NYC Steakhouse feel to it and was dimly lit making it romantic. There were some football photographs around Shula’s, if you did not know Shula’s is a chain of steakhouses owned by Hall of Fame Football Coach Don Shula.

We were seated as soon as we had entered the restaurant and the hostess was friendly and welcoming. Our waiter was over in a few minutes and took our drink orders and brought us some warm bread with in a few minutes of us being there. I was a huge fan of their sour dough bread and who doesn’t love warm bread. We had two options for appetizers. I went with the Caesar Salad with sour dough croutons and Jon had the Sea Scallops with pineapple mango salsa. They were both really yummy. The portion on the scallops was small, Jon was served one scallop but it was delicious. My caesar salad was your standard caesar salad not the best I have had but I ate every bite, which means it could not be bad right?

As I had mentioned previously there was three options for entrees but I could never go to a steakhouse and not order steak especially in New York City. We both ordered the New York Strip, with beranaise sauce, potatoes au gratin and green beans. Jon upgraded his steak size to the 16 oz but I was quite happy with 8 ozs of steak! When the steak came to the table they asked us to cut it in the middle and make sure that it was cooked to our liking before the waiter left. We both ordered medium rare and the steaks were cooked perfectly. Jon is not a cheesey potato fan so he did not enjoy the potatoes au gratin but I loved them and the green beans were just plain green beans. Not to much I can say about the green beans. My steak though was amazingly seasoned and did not disappoint this meat lover.

Being restaurant week there was obviously dessert. I was stuffed and Jon having eaten all 16 oz of steak was beyond full but we ate dessert anyways! Jon ordered the cheesecake and I had the carrot cake. I had a bite of the cheesecake and was incredible but when is cheesecake bad? My carrot cake was sooooo good and it was in a rum sauce that was a sumptuous addition to the carrot cake. It had a melted vanilla ice cream kind of quality to it and I loved it!

This being one of our last date night’s before the baby come, I am happy that we spent it at Shula’s. Right now we have 2 weekends left till baby. That means I have 2 weekends to get out there and have some romantic adult time with my husband before we are prisoners in our NYC 1 bedroom apartment! If you are thinking about visiting Shula’s Steakhouse I would totally recommend it and would return. The service and the food were both top-notch in my books! Now where are we going to go this weekend??

Shula’s Steakhouse

270 W. 43rd St. New York, NY

Food Quote of the Week

Happy Sunday! Like we always do on Sundays me and Jon have been fairly lazy we usually go out for lunch and then laze around until it is time to cook Sunday Supper. I will admit during the weekend I indulge in what I consider to be forbidden foods more than I do during the week. During the week we eat health and cook healthy, for a couple in NYC that is an oddity. Most people here never ever use their kitchen but if you were to visit our kitchen you would see that it is well used and loved. I hope a lot of you are cooking today and cooking something delicious yet healthy. What will you be having for Sunday Supper?

March Madness

Hey guys! I had promised myself at New Year’s that I would start every month off with a note to you guys. Well when did March start? I feel like January was the slowest month I have ever experienced and February was over in the blink of an eye. Maybe it is because February is so short or that I am a few weeks away from the birth of my first little one. This is something I am extremely excited yet very nervous for! I think the best part will be finally finding out what we are having. Will this be a handsome little guy or a beautiful little gal? My odds are on a boy but as we all know intuition is not always correct!

If you have been following nycfitfoodfashion.com you may have noticed that I have been featuring a lot more guest features since New Years and this will continue. I think that it brings a little more to the page and not just one voice. I hope you agree! I will also be taking a break when the baby comes. Do not worry there will still be posts, I have a team of guest bloggers that will be posting work during the week of 2 that I will not be able to. I am hoping to have a great balance of fitness, food, recipes and fashion tips from some fantastic bloggers. I am still accepting submissions, if you are interested please send me an email at nycfitfoodfashion@gmail.com. I love to support other bloggers out there.

Lately I have been posting a lot of fashion posts. I go with what ever inspires me, right now that seems to be fashion. I will be working on getting back to a regular balance of all the things you love in fitness, food and fashion. There has been so many great things going on in fashion lately. How about those SJP Shoes?? I can not stop thinking about them!

As per usual I really love hearing from you guys and I am looking for feedback. What would you like to see from NYC Fit Food Fashion this month? Is there anything that pops out at you that you have been looking for us to cover? Please feel free to reach out and let’s talk!

As for what I do have planned for this month. Here are some topics:

• spring fashions
• perfect sandals
• should you detox?
• Clean Eating Recipes
• baby style
• and many many more!

This month is going to be a crazy one for me. With this being my first child I would love to here from any of you that have some advice. Especially for how things are going to go after we get home! I am really blessed that Jon will be home for the first month with me but other than that I am on my own here. Any tips would be greatly appreciated by this first time Mamma. I will be heading to the Dr today to see if the little one has decided to turn down. Have a great day everyone!

City Lobster NYC

It is still Restaurant Week in NYC. This past week we had gone to City Lobster for our date night. We have been to City Lobster before with a Groupon and enjoyed our selves. I checked out the menu for Restaurant Week online and it looked pretty good. I made a reservation for Friday night. Upon arriving the place was disorganized chaos. The hostesses did not seem to have things under control. Even though we had a reservation we were told it would be at least another 15-20 minutes. Not something a 9 month pregnant lady wants to hear when she is already starving. Once they finally called us Jon asked the hostess if it was normally this busy to which she responded “Ugh, it’s Restaurant Week” while rolling her eyes. A great way to make us feel welcome?

Once we were seated we looked over the menu and waited for our server. The tables were so crammed together it was like we were eating with the people next to us and let’s just say they did not seem like happy people. Not that much fun for date night. When our waiter arrived Jon asked him if they had any nice virgin cocktails from the bar for me to which he just responded no. He told me soda or iced tea. It would have been nice if he could have checked with the bar to see if they could whip me up something. At this point I knew that this may not have been the best choice for our date night but was determined to have fun anyways.  We ordered our appetizers. Jon decided on the Chincoteague Bay Oysters and Crabmeat Rockefeller and I ordered the Newport Lobster Clam and Corn Chowder.

Jon’s appetizer may not have looked very appetizing but it was pretty good. My chowder was ok, it did not seem like it was made fresh and was not seasoned very well. It required a lot of salt and crackers. I looked over at some of the other tables and their apps looked pretty good, maybe I just made the wrong choice.

We had been having a lot of trouble deciding on entrees. After asking the server about the baked lobster we both ordered it. The server had told us that it was stuffed with crab and a hollandaise sauce. Well once it arrived it had a spoon full of crab mixed with sauce just thrown on top on the shell. Was not worth the supplement price for ordering that item. The rest of the lobster was yummy but when is lobster not. We enjoyed wearing our bibs and had a good time cracking all those shells!

Once we finished our lobsters we were eager for dessert and to make our way home. I was pretty full but who can say no to Manhattan Creme Brulee Cheesecake. Jon chose the Baked New York State Apple Crumble. My cheesecake was probably the best part of my meal. Once again Jon had dessert envy, this has happened the last couple of times we have gone out. He liked his apple crumble but not as much as my delicious cheesecake. After finishing our dessert we headed out. I wish I could say we had an amazing date night but if I had to do it over again we would have went with another restaurant. There is just so many places in NYC that there is no need to go somewhere that does not really appreciate your patronage. There are tons of places to eat lobster in the City! This week we will be eating at Shula’s Steakhouse. Watch out for the post on our date night next week!

Aureole Bar Room NYC

NYC Restaurant week is here and it is going on till March 7th. Since it is Restaurant Week and I am due in a month we decided to take advantage and reserve a few date nights. Our first NYC Restaurant Week date night outing was to Aureole-Bar Room. We have visited Aureole in the past for Valentine’s Day so we already knew that the food there is amazing.

We arrived for our reservation and we were seated right away. The service was friendly and they were quick to bring us out waters. They did not have any virgin cocktails on the menu. Jon asked about it for me and the bartender whipped me up a little something. I still do not know what it was but it was delicious!

We were brought some really yummy bread. I know bread is bread but this stuff was good so it is worth mentioning. For restaurant week they have a prix fixe menu with a few choices for appetizer, entrees and a dessert all for $38.00 per person. I chose the Cavatelli Pasta Amatriciana, the pasta was delicious and cooked al dente just the way I like it. Jon had the Fluke Tartare and it was soooo yummy. I have to admit I did have a few bites of it!

WOW is what I have to say about the entrees. I had the Chatham Cod with orzo, broccoli rabe with a lemon beurre blanc. If I could eat this fish all of the time I would. The crispy skin on the cod was incredible. I wish I could have had 2 servings it was so amazing! Jon had the Grilled Veal Chop with gigante white beans, leeks, English mustard jus. The veal was good but if you do go during Restaurant Week I can not say enough that you must have the Chatham Cod. Honestly it was one of the best fish entrees that I have ever taken a bite of!

At this point I was already pretty full but we still had dessert to get through and I am glad I had it. For dessert I got the Dulcey Pannacotta and Jon ordered the Warm Chocolate Brownie. They were both so decadent and well worth the extra calories. You can not go wrong with either. It is really a question of how much of a chocolate fan are you. Jon is more of a chocolate person than I am so he was drawn to the brownie right away. I was happy with my choice the Pannacotta is out of this world yummy.

Once again Aureole out did themselves. The service was great except at the tail end when we had to wait awhile for dessert. Other than that it all came out really quick. If you are in NYC during Restaurant Week or anytime this is a restaurant that you can not miss. We will definitely return again especially for the Cod. I cannot stop thinking about it!

Aureole NYC

135 W. 42nd St, New York, NY

Clean Eating Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Hey guys! I hope you all are having a great day so far. With all of the snowy days we have had this winter, I have had a lot of time to experiment with baking. If you are looking for a way to pass the time during a snow day baking cookies is a great way to spend the afternoon. I had some peanut butter and oats sitting around so I figured why not make them into some yummy healthy cookies. This is a pretty simple cookie recipe I added dried cranberries but you could do chocolate chips or raisins if you would like. Give this cookie recipe a try. They are healthy but the real test was that Jon actually ate them and liked them!

Ingredients

• 1 cup of oats
• 1 cup turbinado raw sugar
• 1 cup smooth peanut butter
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries (optional)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Mix oats, sugar, cranberries together in a bowl.
3. Combine peanut butter, butter in a bowl and whisk until mixed. Add eggs, vanilla and beat until smooth.
4. Add the oat mixture to the wet mix and fold in with a rubber spatula. Slowly add in whole wheat flour until it is all combined.
5. Drop 3 inch size balls of the mixture on to an ungreased cookie sheet and flatten with a fork.
6. Bake the cookies for approx 14 minutes, until golden. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.
7. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Enjoy!

What is your favorite clean eating baking recipe?

Food Quote of the Week- Motivation Monday

Good Morning and Happy Monday everyone! This is a food quote but also falls into fitness as well. People often wonder why they work out but do not see the results that they want to see. Weight loss, muscle gain, and especially abs are not just something that happens in the gym. Diet is the most important element in achieving the fitness goals that you do have. The leanest and fittest I have ever been was because of how careful I was with what I was eating. I barely strayed from that food schedule and I saw results. My workout routine really did not change it was all about how I ate. It is great to have treats now and then but the more you have them the less you will see the results that you want. You just have to decide what it is that you want more, that cupcake or that body you have been working for. I admit the cupcake does win out on many occasions but that is ok too! Just a little something to think about today.

Food Pins of the Week- Pasta Edition

Good Friday Afternoon! I hope everyone is having a great day. It is time for me to share with you my favorite food pins of the week, this week I will be focusing on pasta. I am in my third trimester of pregnancy and I have been obsessed with pasta for most of my pregnancy. Before I became pregnant we never really made pasta very often. These days we have it a few times a week, I have been on the search for some new recipes to try out since I feel we have over done a few of our favorites. Here is a look at some of the really yummy looking pasta recipes that I have found on pinterest this week:

Baked Cheesy Chicken Pasta

Creamy Tomato Pasta

Lemon Shrimp Scampi Pasta

Jamie Oliver Farfelle with Carbonara and Spring Peas

Jerk Chicken Pasta

Penne Pasta with sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce

If you are not on pinterest you need to be on it! If you are then please click on this link and follow my boards! http://www.pinterest.com/nycfitfoodfash/boards/