Meat Free Mondays: Polenta and Vegetable Ragout

This polenta recipe is the perfect way to welcome in spring! The recipe is light and refreshing, and has no animal by products. I love the tarragon and lemon zest, such a perfect meal for a Sunday brunch or Meat Free Monday! The colors also make this meal as nice to look at as it is to eat. The best part? Prep is simple and clean up is a breeze!

Servings: 4    Prep Time: 15 minutes    Cook Time: 40 minutes

Recipe via thekitchn.com​

Ingredients

​Polenta:

• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup polenta
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil
  

​Ragout:

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or grapeseed oil
  
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 bunch green onions cut into 2 in diagonal pieces
  
• 8 baby carrots with trimmed ends and cut in half, lengthwise
  
• 6 radishes trimmed and quartered
  
• 1/2 cup light vegetable broth
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 ounces asparagus, trimmed and cut on the diagonal into 2- to 3-inch pieces
• 8 ounces shelled peas (fresh or frozen)
• 1 tablespoon each coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley, chives, and tarragon
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Additional olive oil and herbs for garnish (optional)
  

Recipe

Polenta:​

Bring vegetable broth to a boil in medium pot. Once boiling, reduce heat and slowly whisk in polenta and salt. Once polenta thickens, cover and continue cooking, making sure to stir every ten minutes. Let cook for 40 minutes, then add olive oil and serve. Eat within 15 minutes

Ragout:​

While polenta is cooking, heat olive oil and minced garlic in skillet for one minute, or until it becomes fragrant. Add in the vegetable broth, radishes, carrots, green onions, and salt. Cover the pan and cook for five minutes over medium heat. Then, add in the asparagus and peas. Cover and cook for another five minutes on medium heat. Remove from heat and stir in lemon zest and herbs. The taragon and lemon zest add a refreshing taste! Spoon 1/4 over polenta and serve.

Great Health and Fitness Tools

Everyone needs a resource or two when it comes to health and fitness. Whether it is an app, a great book, or some super cute running shoes; tools are important for the health and fitness trade. Here are a few great ways to learn about how to stay fit through books, the internet, or YouTube. ​

​Blogilates

I must admit, for a while I was not doing Pilates at all, but, Cassey Ho over at Blogilates has changed that. Her workouts are incredible and she is super sweet to boot! These workouts are usually 15 to 20 minutes, but focus on certain body areas and become very effective. The best part is how quick that time flies. Cassey is great at keeping your mind off what your are doing. She always has popular songs playing in the background and manages to keep everything light... Even when the workout, really, is not.

I would totally recommend her Victoria's Secret Series for some great workouts for arms, the bum, tummy, and legs. The arm workout is intense!

Foodist by Darya Pino

I loove Darya Pino's website, summertomato.com. ​It is filled with some great food knowledge from a PhD who enjoys eating healthy, well rounded meals. Darya and I both believe that healthy should taste great. Darya is able to use her neuroscience background to give some interesting and amazingly informative takes on food. 

I am soo excited for her first book to be released May 7th. ​Foodist: Loosing Real Food and Real Science to Loose Weight Without Dieting has been years in the making and looks to be just as good as her site!

Yoga Journal

Yoga Journal is ​a great webs resource for all things yoga. One of my favorite parts of this site is in the Poses section. Yoga Journal has every yoga pose cataloged for quick pose instruction, health info, benefits, and similar poses. This is fantastic if you are wanting to build a sequence relating to a certain body part, or need a bit more information on how something is done.  One of my favorite uses for this is building sequences. Every pose has a list of other poses that should come before or after, making sequence building super easy and the yoga flow super efficient. ​

If you are not so into building your own sequences, do not fret. Yoga Journal has incredible instructors and yoga videos. My favorite YJ flow has always been the Twist and Detox, but this one is pretty high up there as well. Check out the Video section of their site for video sequences that are separated depending on experience level. ​

Cardio by YouTube

I love my cardio workouts... Especially when they can be done on a treadmill or in the comfort of my own cozy home. ​There are some great cardio workout videos out there that are 45+ minutes. As much as I love them, it can be difficult for me to get 45 minutes of cardio, plus shower, plus hair and make-up into a day. For those busy-bee days, I look to the amazing Amanda Russell and some other fantastic, quick cardio workouts.

Cardio Kick

I found this cardio video while scanning youtube for some great workouts that take less than thirty minutes. This Cardio Kick workout came up and I became super excited. It is pretty rare that I think about a workout all day until I can do it, but for this one, I did. ​

Amanda Russell is fantastic. She can fit some great muscle toning, fat burning exercises into less time than it takes to do most anything. ​This workout is no exception. You will be sweating by the end and burn quite the high calorie count. The workout is a circuit that lasts about 20 minutes and is comprised of some jogging, jumps, floor activity, and kicking (of course).

I would totally recommend this if you get bored during long workouts or most circuit routines. The time between activities is quick and each exercise goes by quite fast. Loved it. ​

BeFit in 90 Cardio Workout

The BeFit in 90 workout system may have a post of it's own soon enough. BeFit is an incredible YouTube channel that has some massive fat burning, muscle building, workout videos. Most of there workouts are by a few different trainers and aggregates workout videos by trainers like Jillian Micheal's and Denise Austen. 

The BeFit in 90 is a workout system that lasts 90 days. This cardio workout video is one in the 90 day line-up, but is good on it's own too. The short circuits and high intensity will help burn fat while building muscle. Best of all, everything about this video is geared towards the busy person. ​The workout is intense, but it is over in less than ten minutes. This would be great to do on it's own when time is tight, or as a warm-up before yoga!

Birthday Update

Well, today I officially turned 26. I have been bouncing around some different thoughts on what to post today... Should it be like every-other day, or should it be birthday related. Birthday won. 

I talked a little bit about some of my birthday plans a few days ago, but wanted to give an update. So far, I have had some checks coming in from family and friends who wanted me to choose which of the three organizations to give to, and some incredible donations of wheelchairs. Right now, we are half way to our wheelchair goal. Four people around the world will have mobility soon because we helped!! ​

Charity: Water is, most likely, where are large portion of the money people have given me in private will be going. Since this is where my biggest goal amount is, I think that makes sense. So far we only have one contribution on Charity: Water, so we will definitely need more to get us to the goal of $500. This $500 will go towards building a $1000 well in an area of the world that does not have clean drinking. Clean water can change everything.

The final organization I chose has not been talked about much on the blog. It is an organization based in Ada, Michigan called Vicky's Pet Connection. Vicky is one of the sweetest, funniest people I have ever met. Talking to her about her mission to help dogs and cats was an inspiration to me last time we visited the rescue.

We know this rescue through family who live up in Michigan, and wanted to tour it over the summer because of some great ways they have incorporated rescuing and adopting animals into people's daily life. While we were there we got to talk with Vicky about why she started a pet rescue and some of her goals for it. We were also able to go to her home and see some of the kittens and special needs adults cats they take care of daily. Their dedication was inspiring and we ended up leaving with our little Chibi and Chuu in tow.

This rescue is an incredible labor of love. It is completely run by volunteers and ​private donors, but they have also teamed up with Bissell. If you are needing a new vacuum and shop at Bissell.com, put in the promo code ADOPT at the checkout and a portion of your purchase will go to Vicky's Pet Connection! Vicky, being the smart lady that she is, has also put together an Amazon wishlist filled with goodies needed to keep those furry buddies happy.

I would love to be able to raise at least $200 for Vicky's Pet Connection along with the $500 for Charity: Water and the $300 for Free Wheelchair Mission. This is quite a hefty goal, but it is possible and so worth it! ​So far, we have about 45% of the total goal accomplished! The donation time will be going until May, but if you are interested in giving, there is no reason to wait until then!

Thank you so much to anyone who has considered, or helped towards these Birthday goals. We are coming together to help others in need, I cannot think of a better way to spend a birthday! 

​Love, Jenni