Food

Nov122016

Cheat Meal Recipe: Loaded Baked Potato

Hey team Hungry & Fit, are you hungry? This is actually what we put together for last year’s Super Bowl, if my memory serves me right, and we’re just now releasing it because well… it just feels like the right time. We’ve moved into winter and everyone’s a little more relaxed with their diets as they don’t have to worry about their beach body right now. While this doesn’t necessarily need to be an “unhealthy” or “cheat” meal, you’re more than welcome to have some fun with it and look at it as a “treat meal” instead.

Nov102016

Pizza Press Restaurant Review

Another contender enters the ring, but this isn’t Super Smash Bros although you might think a Mario and Luigi have something to do with this. Good one, right? Looking back through the blog, we’ve talked about pizza… a lot. Can you blame us? We’ve highlighted our favorite pizza ever, our favorite pizza in LA, simple homemade pizza, a healthy homemade recipe, and much more. We even wrote a blog post about pizza on our other blog. More recently, we realized that there’s a growing market here in LA that is heavily influenced by the success of Subway, Chipotle, and other “build your own” food stops. At the time, we tried Pieology and Pizza Rev, and we wrote about our comparative review HERE.

Nov082016

No-Bake Pumpkin Protein Balls

We haven’t made recipes in way too long here at Hungry & Fit. We pledge to post more recipes and more fitness advice! Getting back to our roots. Lately, we’ve committed ourselves to stick to a budget. We used to spend WAY too much money on food (think above $500 each) per month so we made a goal of eating in most of the time. We’ve made true of that commitment so far, eating in for almost every meal! We’ve gotten to cook more and fatten up our wallets. We also feel better since we know what we’re putting down our throats. Yay for budgets and eating well!

I’ve been wanting to get back into the kitchen for a while. I saw Carrots ‘n’ Cake’s recipe and decided to do my own spin on it. It’s no-bake pumpkin protein balls–an incredibly simple recipe with very few ingredients. This recipe also has that canvas for being creative. Try putting different wet and dry ingredients in! I went with pumpkin since…’tis the season after all!

Oct202016

Optimum Nutrition Opti-Bar Review

When you do it, do it right. I think that’s the first and last… and only impression that Optimum Nutrition (who I’ll refer to as ON for the rest of the article) wants to make. Even though they only have a few products with the name “Gold Standard,” it’s obvious that they want their name associated with being the best. For the past few years, you might have found your cabinet filled with their Whey Protein, Multi-Vitamin, and Creatine. More recently you might have added their BCAAs, AMINO Energy, Preworkout, Protein Water, and newer flavors of whey to your collection. Now, you can really take ON with you anywhere you go; meet the OPTI-BAR.

A protein bar is a protein bar, right? To a certain degree. While we shouldn’t need to explain to you that a protein bar is a few bites of nutrient-rich food that generally has a single texture, we do want to highlight some of the things that make the Opti-Bar stand out, or at least make you feel more comfortable consuming it. The reality is that when you go to a convenience store like 7-11, you don’t want to be inconvenienced trying to figure out which option to choose. You consider a few things so let’s address those directly.

Oct192016

New PowerBar Protein Bar

Who hasn’t heard of PowerBar before? Decades ago, when you were a young athlete or a parent raising a child who played soccer every Saturday morning, when you went into 7-11 last minute to get them something with nutritional value there were two things you could rely on… Gatorade and PowerBar. PowerBar (who we’ll refer to as PB moving forward) was one of the first companies, along with Tiger’s Milk to create a candy-bar sized and shape product that had some nutritional value to it. Which leads us to the next question, who hasn’t had a PB before?

Aug172016

Muscle Egg: Pure Protein

I have to start by apologizing to both all of you and Muscle Egg for taking so long to get this out to you. This company has beyond top-tier customer service. When I reached out to them, they were timely and professional. When I continued to reach out to them, they were quick to respond and efficient. You can’t ask for more and you can tell from the picture below that they value getting their high-quality to their customers. I could count on one hand how many times I’ve received a product packaged as thoughtfully as Muscle Egg. It was like opening a Christmas or birthday present, in the best way possible.

Part of the reason they are so mindful in their packaging is the nature of the product. The Muscle Egg containers (pictured below) is frozen when you receive it. You can choose to keep it frozen or throw it right in the fridge. If frozen, it stays for quite some time but once you refrigerate it and open it, its shelf life decreases significantly. Remember, it’s essentially egg whites so think about proper keeping of dairy products when you’re considering how you want to use it. We found our three go-to ways of using Muscle Egg.

Aug162016

Buff Bake: Nut Butter With a Purpose

Recently, we (might have) introduced you to a product called PB Crave that offered one of the best-tasting peanut butters we ever consumed. While the focus of the product seems to be tasting good, using natural ingredients, and something even greater, it isn’t a revolution in the field of healthy peanut butters (for the body). Buff Bake has created a line of products that is trying to accomplish that level of maintaining the joy of consuming peanut-butter-like substances while increasing the level of nutrition at the same time. The result? That’s up to your taste buds.

Buff Bake 3 Cookie Sample Pack (2.8 oz. each)

Aug102016

Curried Egg Salad Sandwiches

The final piece of our Downton Abbey party is here…the curried egg salad sandwiches! This one is the one I got most creative (aka deviated from the recipe found here: The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook, Revised Edition: From Lady Mary’s Crab Canapes to Daisy’s Mousse au Chocolat–More Than 150 Recipes from Upstairs and Downstairs (Unofficial Cookbook) ) with. These were also Hungry’s favorite! The eggs and the curry make a wonderful pair. The mayo gives it that creaminess that you just sink your teeth into. All together, it’s an unbeatable sandwich. This one, if not the others, will be a repeat I make very often. Let’s get to it.

Aug012016

Raspberry Meringue Pie

Recently, I had a Downton Abbey get-together with a few friends. I’ve been watching with one friend who has just started because I love the series so much, I don’t mind to watch it all again! And because I recently got the Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook, I wanted to turn a simple Downton Abbey viewing into a food-included party! There were a few things on the menu: cucumber sandwiches, egg salad tea sandwiches, a beautiful salad, tea (of course), and raspberry meringue pie. The others will be coming as a recipe to Hungry and Fit soon, but for now, let’s start with the Raspberry Meringue Pie.

This pie has a wonderful tartness that comes from pure beautiful raspberries co-mingled with the small meringue atop it. I’m really not a fan of super sweet pies, so the tart ones are my favorite (see: my mum’s rhubarb pie). I shouldn’t say exactly how much of this pie I ate, but it was more than one serving. This pie brings the dessert to you without all the sugar-y sweetness you’ll find in most pies. I had a lot of help from Jamie (our resident guest chef) on this one. Let’s dig in.

Jul262016

LA’s Best Breakfast Sandwich

Pizza, bagels, deli sandwiches, Italian food… it’s hard to find an adequate option outside of the Tri-State area around New York City. It’s something in the water, right? Or some old Italian-American secret? Either way, that’s not necessarily the case anymore as Fat Sal’s and other great pioneers have brought us more than satisfying options to hit the spot at the right time. Despite the leaps and bounds we’ve seen over the past few years alone, there seems to still be a serious lack of quality bagels out here, and more importantly, breakfast sandwiches.

Sam’s on Sunset and The Original Brooklyn Water Bagel in Beverly Hills have tried replicating the NYC bagel experience but have failed miserably. (That might be a BIT harsh.) When it comes down to it, you can’t find a bagel the right size, texture, and value out here. They’re either too small, too dense, or too expensive. That effect only multiples when you look at breakfast sandwiches. The best breakfast sandwich I’ve ever had is from Bagel Emporium.