Monthly Archives: May 2018

May312018

Moy River Bed & Breakfast

We recently went on a grand adventure to and through Ireland. We went all about the country and stayed at all different kind of places: hotel chains, B&Bs, fancy hotels, and hostels. We got a great taste of it all, but one place that we stayed at stood out above and beyond: Moy River Bed & Breakfast. It’s in County Sligo, nestled up against the Ox Mountains and Moy River. We would recommend this Bed & Breakfast to any person traveling Ireland (except perhaps a big family with lots of little ones). It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

It’s charming, beautiful, and very Irish, but most importantly, it has the best hosts. Pat McCarrick and Rita Normanly own this lovely bed & breakfast and I say it’s lovely because they are lovely. We arrived quite late to the B&B due to some car issues, but both of them were awake to greet us and show us our room. More than that, they insisted on giving us tea and some treats after a long drive despite how late it was. We sat around their fireplace and got to know each other. We learned more about Ireland, about the local area, and about them. It was such a nice time and it still stands out in my mind.

May302018

Lunch Break Meditation

Hooray! It’s lunch time! Or even if it’s not, hopefully you have some break throughout your day for a bite to eat and a breather. You might have five minutes, thirty minutes, or an hour. Use some of that time to nourish your body with filling, healthy food. On top of that, I’m challenging you to also nourish your soul with a lunch break meditation. The day’s event can sweep you up into a tide of stress and imbalance. Maybe you haven’t really taken a second to step back and catch your breath or allow your shoulders to lower from your ear lobes.

Whatever your day is–work or not–it’s important to take a break. And one of the most productive breaks you can take is a meditation break. It will refresh mind and body. You don’t need to sit in the middle of your office floor, legs crossed, shoes off, and be humming an ‘om.’ You just need a quiet place where you won’t be bothered for a few minutes. Maybe that’s your desk, a conference room, a table outside, even the bathroom. Find a spot. You don’t even have to be seated. If it’s loud around you and you can’t escape the sound, listen to some calming music. I have a “yoga” Spotify playlist that has some wonderfully soothing tracks (such as Home Again by Drala). Try to block out the outside noise, but don’t stress if you can’t. This will only take a few minutes, but try to give it your full attention.

Nature is always a great place to find some peace

May292018

Easy Chickpea Curry

Watch out, another “Indian” recipe! This time from Martha Stewart (ha!). Though nobody would venture to say Martha Stewart is Indian, I also think nobody would say she’s a poor cook. She’s legendary. I’ve wanted to involve more chickpeas in my diet for a while, but laziness prevented me from actually looking up recipes and finding ways to use them. Sure, I could use them in salads, but what about cooked recipes? I did a quick search and came up with Martha Stewart’s EASY chickpea curry. Like really easy. Like just throw spices and cook chickpeas together easy.

I altered Martha’s recipe into my own easy chickpea curry that would fit my needs and–more importantly–my ingredients. This recipe is a great whip-up-at-home-quickly-after-work dish when you don’t have a lot of time but would like to have something tasty and nutritious. I felt great about eating it! And curry is a heavy word for this dish, it’s really just stewing chickpeas in spices and liquid. Let’s get cooking.

May272018

Easy Mushroom Coconut Curry

Yeah, I’ve been on an Indian food kick lately. I mean, I’m always on one as a consumer, but in the past week, I made three different Indian dishes. Hopefully, you already saw the delightfully easy and delicious naan recipe I put out. And today…I bring you a delicious mushroom coconut curry! I really really enjoyed it. We received Vegetarian India (a cookbook) by Madhur Jaffrey, a well-known Indian chef and cookbook author, as a wedding present. I’m really loving this cookbook and can’t wait to try more from it.

This recipe is based off of her recipe called “Kodava Mushroom Curry with Coconut,” though I deviated quite a bit. Get her cookbook if you want the exact recipe–she’s a genius! Apparently, this dish comes from a more meat-eating region in India and thus she was fascinated by their vegetarian dishes. It’s rich, scrumptious, and filling. She suggests to have it with rice, but we had it with quinoa. I think it would go well with anything–rice, quinoa, naan, paratha, you name it!

May262018

How to Make Naan to Be Proud of

Here at Hungry & Fit, we are BIG Indian food fans. It competes with pizza for our most-delivered food. We love the flavors, the complexity, and the comfort it brings. I’ve always wanted to cook more Indian food since we love it so much, but I was intimidated by the many ingredients you usually need. Naan, however, seemed to have less ingredients and it is probably my favorite “bread” product on the planet. So one day, I find this wonderfully simple naan recipe from Jo Cooks and I committed myself to trying it. I tweaked the recipe slightly because I’m usually too lazy to get the exact ingredients that the original recipe uses. I can proudly say I now know how to make naan!

I was nervous to try it. I’m bad with tedious things and sometimes recipes that call for rolling and cutting dough are just that. I don’t even have a rolling pin! Naan is one of my favorite things to eat and I wanted to do it right. Feeling creative and ambitious one night, I set out to make my very first naan. And guess what, it turned out great if I do say so myself! And don’t be nervous, it’s honestly incredibly simple.

May252018

A Non-Spoiler Review of Solo: A Star Wars Story

As per usual, we saw the newest Star Wars movie on opening night. Solo: A Star Wars Story is one of the “off-shoot” movies (like Rogue One), as in it’s not part of the episodic saga like The Force Awakens or The Last Jedi. I felt a great deal of conflict about this movie. Han Solo is my favorite Star Wars character and only one actor can play him, the beloved Harrison Ford. Was this movie going to be good? Did it have a chance of me liking it? These were the thoughts leading up to the movie. Hungry and I have the joy of living walking distance to Disney’s El Capitan theater and we try to see new Disney movies there (and that does include Star Wars movies now) because they usually have cool shows or behind-the-scenes stuff. And we did so last night, walking our way over to the theater. It wasn’t as huge and high-energy as the Last Jedi release, but still plenty of Star Wars fans buzzing. There was a fun photo op with Chewbacca and some Stormtroopers and they had props from the movie downstairs. But you’re not here to hear this, you want to hear what I thought of the movie!

May242018

We Flew WOW Air and Here’s What Happened

If you’ve been keeping up with our social media and the blog, you’ll know that we just returned from our honeymoon in Ireland. We’re not rich and we needed to save some money on the trip. I had set a watch for cheap flights on the app called Hopper and lo and behold, cheap flights appeared. The only thing was…it was WOW Air. We had heard horror stories about WOW Air so we were a little apprehensive, but the price was too good to beat. After scouring over a million different reviews of the budget airline, I made a decision and bought the tickets.

I was able to put it out of my mind for a little, but as the trip neared closer and closer, my worry grew again. Would we be cramped up like cattle, starving and parched? Would it be the worst flight of our lives? Would it ruin our trip? All of these things passed through my mind, but I kept remembering how much money we had saved by going with them. I also asked around with my friends and got mixed reviews. Basically, the advice was to manage your expectations. So we did. We went into the flight expecting it to be the worst in our lives. We flew four flights with them: two at 9 hours and two at 2.5 hours. Let’s break it down.

May232018

Our Honeymoon in Ireland

You may have noticed that we have been absent for a good bit here on the blog. However, if you follow any of our social media accounts, you would know it was because we were honeymooning in Ireland! Yes, we got married two years ago, but a late honeymoon is better than a non-existent one, wouldn’t you say? We had a 16-hour layover in Iceland since we flew WOW Air (more to come on that airline later), so we got to explore Keflavik very briefly. Then we were back on the plane, sleep-deprived and body-confused, and arrived in Dublin in the morning. Look at our map below to see our exact route–starting in Dublin and going north then counter-clockwise the WHOLE island. We’ll share with you pictures for now based on each location (of course we can’t show every little place, we did lots of driving and saw lots of things!), we hope you enjoy!

Iceland

May192018

4 Helpful Tools That You Can Find Online

The online space has grown rapidly over the years and has now become the hub of all kinds of information, products, and services that you could ever need on planet earth. Numerous businesses have established an online presence displaying their amazing inventions and product offers which you can benefit from with the click of a button.

But with all this amazing stuff available on the internet, it can be quite overwhelming for you to effectively consume it. This is where online tools come in handy. Tools are software programs designed to serve a specific function and to help you accomplish a specific task. Here are 4 tools you can find online that will be super helpful to you:

Fitness Tools

Fitness is a primary priority for everyone including you. Your health matters a lot and the healthier you are, the more productive you can be. It takes a lot of discipline to eat healthily and work out and this discipline is lacking in most people.

Luckily though, there are numerous online fitness tools that can really help you stay on track for personal fitness. These tools are programmed to help you organize your workout schedules, prepare a meal plan, track your weight, and so much more. They keep you focused on staying fit. Find a fitness tool online and start using it today.

Financial Planning Tools

Money answers all things and you practically can’t do without it. It’s easy to misuse the money you’ve so much worked hard to earn and end up broke and depressed and that’s a place you don’t want to find yourself.

But the good news is that there are financial planning tools available online that you can use to effectively plan and manage your money. You can create budgets, track your spending habits, plan for short and long-term projects, save for the future, and manage your debt payments using these online financial planning tools.

Why handle your money aimlessly when you can make use of a financial planning tool? Get one online and start using it today.

Personal Planning Tools

Time is an equal but limited resource available to every human being but how you spend it determines the outcome of your life. It is almost impossible to recover wasted or lost time.

There are online personal planning tools that can help you plan your time, define goals, set priorities for them, and ensure that every second of your time is well spent in a productive way. Don’t just slide through the day. Use a personal planning tool to properly organize your time and daily activities.

Online Shopping Tools

There are millions of products and services on offer online that are waiting for you to purchase and use. But it can be overwhelming determining which deals are genuine, which online retailer to buy from, which promotions to go for, and which prices are correct. It would take you forever to go through every product on offer.

Thankfully, there are online shopping tools that track products from different niches and bring them all in one place where you can be able to view and make informed purchase decisions. birthorderplus.com is an online shopping tool that brings the best and latest health, beauty, and weight loss products all in one place for you to view and purchase. Try it out today.

May082018

Avengers: Infinity War Review

Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.

A lot of speculation manifested before the Avengers: Infinity War was released based on discussions and rumors about the contracts of some of the biggest stars in the MCU. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has dished out nearly 20 movies over the past decade or so and it is hard to see anyone other than Chris Evans as Captain America or Chris Hemsworth as Thor. For us, that remains extremely true for every character and recasting would greatly tarnish the legacy of the entire MCU.

Based on these rumors, I thought they were going to kill Captain America, especially since he survived Civil War, which he does not in the comics. Even though there are multiple timelines and realities in the comics, that one is key and I was shocked when he didn’t die in Civil War. Add the rumors of Evans’ desire to end his role as Captain, and I thought that he definitely wouldn’t make it through Infinity War.