Guest Post: Learning to love Turkish food

Hi guys! Today's guest post comes from my little sister Kerry. Kerry is the second child out of five (I'm the oldest) and she offered to guest post for me. Isn't that sweet?

Hello Two Boos readers! I’m Amanda’s younger sister, Kerry. And just like her, I am a fan of food. But up until the last couple of years, you wouldn’t have known it. I was extremely picky and extremely bored with food. Then I met my boyfriend, Burc and everything changed.
Burc is from Turkey and I was privileged enough to go with him to his home town of Istanbul in September of 2008.



Here I am with a little pizza from the bakery down the street from Burc’s parents apartment. Amazing!
I fell in love with Turkish food. And after getting back home, I knew I had to learn to make it! So I’ve decided to share with you my first attempts at various dishes.



This is Sarma. It’s a seasoned ground beef mixture wrapped in grape leaves. Serve it with garlic yogurt and you have perfection! This dish is VERY time consuming to make and challenging…but I did amazingly well for my first try.



Here is my attempt at baked borek, a delicious pastry. Burc’s anne (mother) sent me a recipe that calls for a ground beef mixture. Let me tell you working with fillo dough is the toughest part. I also really needed a proper baking dish…not a cookie sheet. Borek can also be filled with many other ingredients. I love with stuffed with feta cheese and then fried! They call that version sigar borek because of the way the fillo is shaped.



The other night I made kofte, a sort of meat ball. (Wow, I didn’t realize all of these included meat!) I used corn starch instead of flour which actually worked great.



After combining all the ingredients, I shaped the meat into little baby patties.



Fried with a bit of oil



And viola!



Jasmine rice goes great with kofte.



And Yogurt! You wouldn’t believe how many Turkish dishes involve yogurt. Everything from kebabs to a ravoli called manti.



View from The House Café in Ortakoy, Istanbul Turkey.
Well guys that’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks Kerry! Hopefully, I can get my littlest sister Emily to guest post too. I'd ask my 8 year old brother but he'd probably write about corn dogs.

Check out previous guest posts:

Post from my sister Sarah

Post from One Healthy Apple

If you ever want to guest post, let me know!

Guest post: One Healthy Apple!

Hi Everyone! Andy and I will be leaving for Kauai tomorrow afternoon so I have a few guest posts lined up. Today's comes from Yelena at One Healthy Apple! Enjoy and check out her blog if you haven't already. She is super cute and lives in one of my favorite cities. We briefly met at the Foodbuzz Festival and I'm hoping to actually hang out next time!



Hi All! I’m Yelena from One Healthy Apple and I’m honored to be guest posting at Amanda’s blog while she is off in Kauai celebrating her wedding anniversary. We once shared an elevator ride at the Foodbuzz Food Festival in San Francisco, but of course I was too busy being awkward to have a conversation - but that’s another story for another post.

When Amanda put up a message requesting guest posts, I raised my kid like the annoying kid who sits in front of the class but had no idea what to write about. After a prompt suggesting I write about my summer vacation, I was more than happy to talk about myself!

Although I am not going on vacation until December, I have decided to spend the month of July taking yoga classes as my primary form of exercise, so this is somewhat of a vacation for my body. For a little background, I am not a yoga person. I don’t know what a yoga person is, but it’s not me. Ever since I got my first gym membership at the age of 12, my primary purpose was to burn as many calories as possible and to finally lose the weight I carried as an overweight kid. Fourteen years later, I admittedly found myself in the same cycle of working out hard, eating a little more, and doing it again the next day to keep up. My body was getting tired of all the cardio, and while I was lifting as well, my primary focus has always been high intensity, high impact activity. When I had to have emergency surgery on my toe leaving me unable to place any weight on my foot, it forced me to completely stop and evaluate things, whether I wanted to or not. I felt like a fraud in the healthy blog community since I wasn’t working out at all with the exception of a pilates DVD a couple of times a week while everyone else was running what seemed like marathons.

I decided to take matters into my own hands and sign up for a yoga studio membership for the month of July. I figure while I still can’t wear shoes, I can do yoga. I know yoga has tons of benefits and I am determined to find them. Although it has only been two days into my challenge, I am already enjoying it and loving the classes. I am also learning new dimensions in what health and fitness means while recovering from an injury and I would love to share them with you.

**Of course I have to leave the disclaimer that I am not an exercise or nutrition professional, nor am I a doctor. Please see a professional for your own health concerns.**

Here is what worked for me:

Working out hard makes us hungry. I don’t know about you, but a run used to make me raid the fridge. I’m not saying to stop working out, but I know many of us, including myself, fall into the workout hard, eat hard mentality. I promise that if you have to ease up on your workouts, you won’t gain all your weight back. You might even become more conscious of what goes in your mouth. Don’t be too hard on yourself and listen to the body- it’s pretty smart!

Focus on what you CAN do physically, not on what you can’t. Um…I can’t do much, but I can work on my core and flexibility while my body recovers. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t lift 15 pounds, lift 10. I promise you will get there as long as your listen to your body.
Control what you can. Make a commitment to yourself to get enough sleep, eat fresh produce, take your vitamins, and try to reduce stress in other ways. For me, that included calming my mind with yoga or reading a book. Other times, it’s waking up on time and making sure I get a good, satisfying breakfast. Little things count.

Channel your energy into other things. I have spent a lot of time otherwise spent at the gym working on my grad school homework, spending time with my family, and distracting myself. I know we love to blog and share workout ideas, but sometimes it’s good to get our minds to focus on other things. There is a giant, fabulous world outside of health blogs! Enjoy!

Take time to rest. Losing sleep messes with our hunger hormones. Depriving one’s body of the rest it needs to recover from an injury can harm you in the long-run. Listen to your body and give it a rest. I know guilt can get in the way, but remember a little rest now is a lifetime of fabulous exercise later.

I hope these points help you on your journey, whether you are working your way through an injury, or trying to refocus your current exercise program. I’m really looking forward to getting my zen on and learning even more! Thanks again to Amanda for letting me post!

Questions for you: What do you do to relieve stress? Are you a yoga person?

The Nuval Scoring System: How does your breakfast score?

Hi guys!

Recently one of my favorite bloggers started working for a company that really interested me. I’m sure most of you are familiar with her blog, Carrots N Cake . Tina works for a pretty cool company called Nuval.


What is Nuval exactly?

From the Nuval Website:
“Fact panels, package labels, nutrition reports. There has to be a better way to make decisions about the foods you eat. Now there is: the NuVal™ Nutritional Scoring System.

The NuVal System does the nutritional heavy lifting so you don’t have to. The System helps you see – at a glance – the nutritional value of the food you buy.

How? The NuVal System scores food on a scale of 1-100. The higher the NuVal Score, the better the nutrition. It’s that simple. And it’s coming to every aisle of your favorite grocery stores – right there on the shelf tag. Now you can compare overall nutrition the same way you compare price. You can even compare apples and oranges.

How the Scoring Works

NuVal Scores summarize comprehensive nutritional information in one simple number between 1 and 100. Each NuVal Score takes into account more than just the nutrition fact panel. It considers 30-plus nutrients and nutrition factors – the good (protein, calcium, and vitamins) and the not-so-good (sugar, sodium, cholesterol). And then it boils it down into a simple, easy-to-use number; a number you can trust to make better decisions about nutrition in just a few seconds.”

Obviously, the NuVal Scores are designed to help the everyday consumer make healthier choices while out grocery shopping.

As an example, I’ll compare two different breakfasts using NuVal scores to show you how I made a better breakfast choice. First up, the easiest go-to breakfast in the world; cereal. I love making myself a bowl of dry cereal with a piece of fruit and some yogurt.

Cereal of choice?
General Mills Whole Grain Cheerios Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal.



Seems harmless enough right? But unfortunately my beloved Cheerios only score a 34 with the NuVal Scoring System.

A good alternative?

Post Healthy Classics Shredded Wheat 'N Bran Regular which scores a 91 with the NuVal Scoring System. And here’s a link to Post’s website It makes perfect sense why the shredded wheat and bran scores higher than a bowl of cheerios. The Post cereal has a whopping 57 grams of whole wheat per serving while Cheerios packs in “at least 16 grams per serving.”
Plus the shredded wheat N bran has 8 grams of fiber compared to Cheerios’ 2.5 grams per serving.
(Even more surprising to me was how low the NuVal score on Kashi Strawberry Fields cereal. I would have thought at least 50 but guess what? It clocks in at 11!)

For fruits, I usually choose bananas which score high at 91 but blueberries score even higher at 100!!





I always knew blueberries were a superfruit!

As far as yogurts go, a plain non-fat Chobani greek yogurt scores a 91 while a yoplait non-fat strawberry yogurt scores at 60!

Unfortunately for me, NuVal scores aren’t found in my grocery stores yet. But they are expanding and I can’t wait to see them in stores. Until then, I will check out the NuVal site and Tina’s new blog, Trading up Downtown

Check out the Nuval site. You will definitely be surprised with the scores!

Guest Post @ Carrots N Cake!

I did a guest post for Tina @ Carrots N Cake. Check it out!

Guest Post for CNC!

I love guest posting for other bloggers! I posted a typical day for me when I'm trying to lose some weight. (Which is always people! ha!)