Every year, our experience at the Los Angeles Fit Expo (and IHRSA… and IDEA…) is different. It’s reflective of what is going on in the fitness industry. Some years, you’ll see more drastic changes in the landscape based on what’s popular with different health and wellness trends. There are also always dozens of booths that represent brand new companies. The world of fitness is so interesting because you generally have very passionate people who are involved for two reasons.
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.
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.
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.
There’s no food quite like Cucumber Sandwiches to make you feel like you’re having a proper tea time (except, perhaps, tea). They’re dainty, delicate, mild, but better yet, delicious. They want to make you drink tea, lift your pinkie, and wear a fancy hat. To go along with our Downton Abbey themed get-together where we also had raspberry meringue pie, a summer salad, and egg curry sandwiches, we of course had to feature cucumber sandwiches! I took this recipe right from the The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook: From Lady Mary’s Crab Canapes to Mrs. Patmore’s Christmas Pudding – More Than 150 Recipes from Upstairs and Downstairs (Unofficial Cookbook)
Started the weekend off with a Friday evening drink at Curtis Stone’s new restaurant
When a coworker asked me for my opinion of PB Crave, I responded with a fairly short… what? I hadn’t heard of it before, and naturally, I assumed it was one of those protein-packed peanut butters, or peanut butters without calories, or something along those lines. I couldn’t have been more wrong and I could not be happier about being wrong. We get so caught up in counting our calories and measuring our macronutrients that we often forget to stop enjoying life and being happy. PB Crave makes you happy. Why?
![PBCraveVariety[1]](http://hungryandfit.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/PBCraveVariety1.jpg)
With social media acting more as an IV for people across all generations in 2016 than actual medical care, there isn’t a single new item that isn’t known to the world within a scroll of the finger. (Your choice of finger would depend on whether your phone still fits in your pocket or is bigger than your laptop.) So with that in mind, it’s only a matter of time before someone like Jeanette Settembre writes an article for the New York Daily News about this find.
Asian dishes constantly find their way to the spotlight and since there are so many cultures and peoples in that area of the world, I can’t see an end to the discovery on this side of the ocean. Recently, bao have been gaining popularity and a spot in LA called Take a Bao (clever names, although they usually involve pho) has been delivering options from tofu to duck and bbq pork. You need to make sure that you don’t just look at their savory bao. Just like with a crepe, you can stick something sweet in that bun.
If the name, Kaeng Raeng, sounds familiar, it’s because we did an awesome cleanse with them (plus a giveaway) back in 2014. This was a hit with us and with you guys! We’re here to tell you about another great product coming from this great company. What I love the most about Kaeng Raeng is that they’re all about the natural. Natural ingredients, natural lifestyle, natural health. They don’t give you a magic pill to lose all your fat. These are healthy ingredients to spur a healthy lifestyle–it’s as simple as that. Now, let’s get to the new product–the Daily Green Energy.
With Spring here and it feeling like Summer in California, the desire for fresh food comes forth. Raw, fresh food but certainly not lacking flavor. So it was, a Saturday night, hanging with my brother and his girlfriend, Sophie. Sophie is an excellent cook and has a lot of experience doing so. She was going to make us tacos–perfectly cooked steak for everyone and wild-caught fish for me. I was all in. Growing up in California, tacos become your soul food. Along with tacos, come the necessity of the avocado in one’s life. Rich with delicious healthy fat and the creaminess to save any dish, I was ready to be her sous chef and make the side dish–fresh Avocado & Tomato salad.
