Make your protein shakes more tasty

Here are a few tips I’ve picked up or made up to make protein shakes and smoothies taste a little better. I tend to buy bulk plain Vanilla whey protein powder. I also use bulk Creatine powder, Carnitine powder and BCAA from www.bulknutrition.com. It’s so much cheaper that way, but man it tastes nasty!

A blender, probably obvious but I have both a large one and the small single serving kind. Also the whisk ball shaker is a favorite of mine.

Frozen banana slices, slice up some bananas and keep then in a baggie in the freezer. Toss a few in the blender with the whey and some milk. Much better than ice in my opinion. Thickens and adds good flavor.

Apple Pie spice, this one is a great quick and cheap flavoring to add to vanilla whey, either blended or just in the shaker. Really takes away the bitterness of the Creatine, Carnitine, and BCAA.

Splenda and cinnamon, another good mix of to have on hand. Mix some of each in a small spice shaker for a quick dash of flavor.

Frozen berries, these are great to add when you are mixing up a breakfast smoothie. Depending on the berry mix it can get seedy though.

I’m sure I have some other protein smoothie ides on this blog somewhere too. Feel free to add any more ideas or recipes. I’m always looking for more.

Meatloaf recipe

Several people have asked me about my meatloaf recipe. Over the past months I’ve tried several “muscle building” and low fat/carb/sugar meat loaf recipes. I have always loved meatloaf and since I am now single again I wanted to start cooking in bulk for several meals for the week. After several trial and error attempts this is the one I have been making regularly, I can cook it on Sunday and have about 5-6 meals for the next week or so.

Muscle Meatloaf

2 lbs ground meat (either turkey or quality beef, I prefer 93/7 beef)
4 whole eggs (I don’t separate whites, but you can do 2/2 if you want)
2 cups old fashioned oat meal
2 Tbsp BBQ sauce (I use Famous Daves Rich and Sassy)

Throw in various spices to taste. I don’t measure these so feel free to adjust or replace and mix and match as you want. These are some common ones in order from most to least that I use:
Cookies Seasoning or Old Bay Seasoning
Chili powder
Mrs Dash
Oregeno
Black Pepper

I don’t use ketchup because it’s so high in sugar and carbs, plus the little bit of BBQ sauce and spices add enough flavor. Sometimes I will put some hot sauce on the top before cooking.

Mix it all together and put in olive oiled meat loaf or other such baking pan. Cook at 350 degrees for 90 minutes. Remove from oven let cool and cut into servings and put in storage containers. I can usually get 5-6 meals if I cut it right.

Honestly I don’t know the detailed nutritional info on this, I have just tried to keep the protein high, fat and carbs reasonable, and sugar low.

New design and updated Wordpress

I have finally got around to upgrading the Wordpress on this here site/blog thingy. I am hoping to kick start myself to get back into blogging again. For awhile I just thought “who cares to read about my crap”, but I dunno, I guess some people do. Or at least some people seem to find this site and read a post or two. Years ago it seemed to get lots of random traffic and was high on search results for various things, brown spider, Debian neck tattoo, etc.

More than likely I will focus on my workouts, fitness, MMA, food, and things like that. Oh and I’m sure I’ll also ramble on about relationships and Web stuff too. I’ll make my self post about my workout later tonight. Now I have to or I’ll look like more of a jerk than I already am. Ha.

Breakfast

Here’s is one of my favorite breakfast smoothies.

Morning smoothie:
1 cup goat milk
1 banana
Some ice
2 spoonfuls flax seed
2 spoonufls peanut butter

Mix in blender.

I don’t use goat milk straight from the can, I mix it in a pitcher 1 can goat milk and 4 cans water. I’ll sometimes add protein powder. But I have been getting enough protein from my regular meals lately.

Gluten Free, Yeast Free Pizza

Here is a recipe for Yeastless, gluten free pizza crust. The original recipe is really a Yeastless Focaccia bread that I modified slightly to use as a gluten free, yeast free pizza crust. All I did was substitute some gluten free all purpose flour with Xanthum gum in place of the 2 cups of regular flour. I think next time I will use baking soda instead for the baking powder, as I prefer a more thin and crispy crust.

For the toppings I used some organic pizza sauce (sometimes I will just run a couple of tomatoes over a cheese grater), turkey pepperoni, chopped artichoke hearts, chopped olives, chopped red peppers, chopped zucchini, mushrooms, and mozzarella cheese. That’s about it, a pretty simple pizza.

Glutten Free Peanut Butter cookies

I made some really good gluten free peanut butter cookies on Saturday. Here is the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

* 2 cups peanut butter
* 1 cup white sugar
* 1 cup brown sugar
* 4 eggs, beaten
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 tsp vanilla
* 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)
* 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheet.
2. Combine peanut butter, eggs, sugar, baking soda, and vanilla then mix until smooth. Mix in chocolate chips and nuts, if desired. Spoon dough by tablespoons onto a cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheets for 5 to 10 minutes before removing.

Energy Cookies

I forgot to post about the cookies I made the other day. Well, they were edible… my dumb ass forgot to add in the whole wheat flour. But they weren’t as bad as the first ones I tried to make. I’m going to get some more ingredients and try again.

I also want to mention that I am back to a regular workout schedule and am going to be tracking my workouts and keeping a daily food log. In the mornings I have been doing 15 min on the elliptical, 50 push-ups and 100 rotating bicycles. In the evenings I have been mixing in some heavy bag work with some strength training. Either Randy Couture’s barbell circuit or several variations of dumbbell snatches, cleans or presses.

Energy / Protein bars II

Ok, so those other ones were pretty gross. I thought it was something I did wrong but my wife thinks there was something wrong with the recipe. She says there was no “thickening” ingredient. But I do have a couple more I am going to try. I’ve tried the Peanut Butter balls before and they were pretty easy and tasty. (giggity)

Protein Peanut Butter Balls:

• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 scoop chocolate or vanilla protein powder
• 1/2 cup raw oats

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and form into small 1″ balls. Place in the fridge for a few hours and then enjoy.

These ones look really good.

Energy Bar Cookies

• 3/4 cup natural peanut butter
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups fruit and grain museli
• 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
• 1/2 cup chopped dried prunes
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp ginger

Mix wet ingredients together. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Drop by the spoonful or shape into patties on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Homemade energy / protein bars

I really like Clif Bars and Odwalla Bars. But I don’t really like spending $1.50 – 2.00 per bar.

Found this recipe online:

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showpost.php?p=4036793&postcount=2

INGREDIENTS

10 tbsp. natural peanut butter
5 egg whites
5 scoops whey protein (I find that chocolate mint tastes the best in this recipe, however chocolate tastes good as well)
2 cups oats (OPTIONAL: For flavor, I dry cook these on a frying pan until they are toasted)
1/2 cup soy milk

DIRECTIONS

Mix the peanut butter and egg whites in a bowl. Microwave on high for 30 seconds, and mix well (so that the mixture appears smooth). Repeat 4-5 times until all traces of egg whites have dissolved into the peanut butter, and your mixture is a smooth consistent one.

Gradually add the protein (one scoop at a time) and stir into the mixture. Next, add the soy milk and follow with the oats. Continue mixing until a thick ’sticky’ mixture is present.

Smooth the thick mixture into a 13×9 tray and leave for 20-30 minutes. Cut into 10 equal size bars. Individually wrap each bar (I use aluminum foil) and store in the fridge.

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size: 1 Bar

Calories: 220
Protein: 20.1g
Fat: 10.1g
Carbohydrates: 15.1g

I found several others but I’m going to try this first. I’ll add some more and also post how these turn out. I’ve also tried the ones that Alton Brown made on one of the episodes of Good Eats. They were ok, but were too sticky for me.