Crockpot Vegetable Beef Soup

September 5, 2017September 4, 2017Leave a comment

The key to being successful with Whole30 is to prepare. If you don’t prepare, you will have a terrible experience. Don’t get me wrong, you can still do it and be successful, but you will stress about preparing food on the fly. Trust me. I’ve been there.

Part of my meal prep and planning success happens because I always try to make enough dinner for lunch the next day. After my first Whole30, I realized I need to double my dinner so we could eat it for lunch.

Whole30 lunches are the toughest thing to prepare. We live off sandwiches or wraps for lunch, but I know bread isn’t the best for my tummy so I try to limit it as much as possible.

This round of Whole30 I am trying to simplify even more. That’s where my trusty Crockpot comes into play. I love the convenience of the Crockpot, but I usually forget I have one.

But I woke up Sunday morning feeling extremely terrible. Had a bout with my reactive hypoglycemia, and worked through my low blood sugar issues with a fresh peach and a little bit of scrambled eggs. Cooking was the last thing I wanted to do. So I ventured into the depths of my cabinet for the Crockpot. I knew I had the makings for a delicious Vegetable Beef Soup, and the goal was to throw everything into the Crockpot so we could eat a nice, hot dinner. (And I was off the hook for standing over a hot stove/thinking up what to make).

What you need:

Crockpot
One bag of frozen root vegetables (mine had sweet potato, red onion, parsnip and turnips in it)
1/2 onion, roughly chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, roughly chopped
2 zucchini squash, sliced into half-moons
5-6 baby red potatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 bag frozen okra
1 box of beef bone broth (I used Thrive Market brand)
1 can fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1 lb. grass fed ground beef (I get mine from the Farm at Barefoot Bend)
Salt and pepper, to taste
Italian seasoning, to taste

Directions:

Brown the hamburger meat in a skillet. Season with salt, pepper and Italian Seasoning. Once the hamburger meat is brown, throw all ingredients into the Crockpot. Turn it on high and cook for six hours. Check the seasonings, and add more salt, pepper and Italian seasoning, if needed.

We both really enjoyed this hearty soup. It’s full of simple ingredients, but it doesn’t lack in flavor. You can add whatever veggies you have on hand, and I bet it will be just as delicious.

Roasting Veggies

September 2, 2017August 30, 2017Leave a comment

My favorite way to cook after a long day at work is with the handy-dandy oven.

I love roasting veggies in the oven.

Magic temperature of 400 degrees, give it 12-30 minutes (depending on what you are roasting) and boom, it’s all done.

I’ve even gone as far as briefly pan-searing meat in a oven-safe skillet and throwing it in the oven with the veggies. It’s life-changing.

Case-in-point: These roasted chops with okra, Japanese eggplant and baby tomatoes.

This whole meal was sourced from Me and McGee Market, my favorite farmers market in North Little Rock. The grow the okra, tomatoes and eggplant in their backyard garden, and they get their meat from The Farm at Barefoot Bend in Crowe, Arkansas (right outside Hot Springs Village).

But the true beauty of this meal, outside of I know exactly where it came from and who grew it, is the fact that I made it all in the oven.

As much as I love cooking an elaborate meal, I love convenience and speed of cooking just as much. Roasting veggies in the oven gives a deep flavor and a crispy texture, and I can’t get enough of it. As I said earlier, I’ve started pan-searing my meat with a little avocado oil for a couple minutes on both sides, and then I throw it in a 400 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes, depending on the size, until it has a nice golden crust on the outside.

I love how oven roasting meat and veggies doesn’t get my stove all messy. I love that I don’t have to stand watching over the stove. The oven just takes a lot of undue stress off of cooking dinner. Plus, if you are a good with meal prep, you can have all of your veggies for the week prepped and ready to go in the oven so making dinner is super easy.

What are your favorite veggies to roast in the oven?

Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

September 1, 2017August 30, 20171 Comment

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

Via

My most favorite kid Asher Ray has been fighting Ewing’s Sarcoma since she was three years old. She will turn nine in October. Ewing’s is a rare type of bone cancer. She has fought the most beautiful fight with the most grace and patience I’ve ever seen from anyone. She is the strongest person I know. (Her parents are close seconds.)

Every September we advocate for Childhood Cancer Awareness. We need a cure. This child deserves a cure. All the children deserve a cure. And we will fight to get one.

This month I will donating all of the income from my Beautycounter business to the American Childhood Cancer Organization of Arkansas in honor of Bit’s fight. Beautycounter and fighting childhood cancer go hand-in-hand. The mission of Beautycounter is to get safer skin care and beauty products into the hands of everyone.

Some of the things found in our personal care products are known carcinogens, meaning they are known to cause cancer. With skin being the largest organ of our bodies, it seems like a no-brainer to want to take care of it. But here’s the thing…there is little to no regulation on what companies can put or not put into your personal care and beauty products. Words like “fragrance” are used to hide whatever carcinogens, hormone disruptors or irritants companies need to hide.

We deserve better than that as consumers.

Finding Beautycounter was a total turning point for me. Learning I could make better choices about what I put on my face and body makes me happy, and the products are high performing and high quality.

My goal for September is to get safer products for you so I can donate my commissions to an organization that is near and dear to my heart.

To get yourself some Beautycounter products, check out my Website. I will be giving away some really awesome stuff throughout the month. So be sure to watch for it on my Facebook page.

Adventures to Wellness is Coming

August 27, 2017August 27, 2017Leave a comment

Things are changing around here. And I’m super excited. The most excited I’ve been in a long time about a personal project.

If you’ve followed me for awhile, you know I’ve had a designated blog space since 2009. It started on Blogger as It’s Always Something… and then evolved into Barefoot ‘N Running, the space I wrote the longest.

But when I quit running regularly, I quit writing there. When I finished grad school and started working full-time, I quit writing for a little while.

Then about two years ago, I create When I Grow Up I Want to be a Chef. I always thought I wanted to be a food blogger. To create recipes and share them. To take food photography. But I felt pigeon-holed and lacked creativity to share recipes. And to be honest, I’m terrible a writing recipes because I don’t measure anything. My cooking style is intuitive. It’s how it looks and smells and tastes more than it is measurements for people to recreate.

And to be honest, I felt like I failed at When I Grow Up I Want to be a Chef. Because it wasn’t like everyone else.

But in reality it wasn’t me at all.

So here we are. Eight years into having a personal writing space on the web, and I have it no more figured out than when I was 22.

Truth bomb: I’m not ever going to have it figured out.

But what I do know is I need a space to write and share and build community. And if the spaces I developed in the past are no longer serving me, I need to evolve.

So here we are.

Adventures to Wellness is a space to help me find balance. Or share how I’m constantly finding balance in the everyday. It’s about being able to adapt. And finding gratitude. And loving the beautiful, messy life I’ve been given.

It’s an adventure to living my healthiest life.

It’s about sharing food in a way that I want to share food with photos, links to recipes, sharing bloggers I love, recipes, food prep, farmers market shopping, buying local.

It’s about sharing exercise practices, exercise failures, lack of motivation, finding motivation, taking care of myself.

It’s about sharing life with music, movies, love, best practices, worst practices, failures, storytelling and just being a real person that you can relate to.

It’s about figuring it out on the fly. Being open and honest.

Finding balance is an ever-changing, ongoing adventure. Finding my own version of wellness is an ever-changing, ongoing and, ultimately, life-changing adventure that I can’t wait to share with you.

Welcome to my new space.

With love,
Ashten

P.S. Official site launch and new content begins September 1, 2017. I have lots of ideas and things to share with you. Get. Excited.

Skin Care with Integrity

August 27, 2017Leave a comment

I’ve always been one of those people that want more out of stuff.

A good skin care regime has eluded me for years. During my teens and early twenties, I fought acne. Nothing seemed to work for me. I took every medicine known to fight it, and I tried every cream to find clear skin.

When I heard about Beautycounter, I felt like it was different. Not only was it a beauty and skin care company, it was a mission based company working towards getting safer products into the hands of everyone.

With little regulation in our personal care products, major companies are allowed to put nearly anything in our makeup and skin care products. Fragrance being the ultimate “hiding place” for known carcinogens and toxic chemicals. But because it is listed on the ingredient label as fragrance and the lack of regulation, those toxic things do not have to be defined at all. Scary, huh?

Beautycounter changed everything for me. I found safer products that worked at a high standard. I love that the company worked to create safer products that didn’t feel granola.

This stuff works. I have loved every product I’ve tried. So much so that I became a consultant.

If I found products that work for me, that I love, that are within my budget, why not take the leap of faith to work toward getting more people safer products. My family and friends safer products. As much as it is about me and my love of Beautycounter, it’s also about me sharing it with other people. Educating people about the subpar beauty industry we currently participate in. Sharing safer, high performing products with people I know and love.

It’s so much bigger than me. So much bigger than a tube of mascara. It’s about demanding better. Demanding more as a consumer. Learning the why behind it.

Ask me why I chose Beautycounter over everything else. Ask me why it’s different. Ask me why it works for me.