All Natural Macaroons
G’s All Natural Macaroons When in doubt…bake goodies I’m a treat addict. Like most of you, one treat often turns into a waterfall of sugar intake. After much soul searching, I figured that I should just make treats that have a little health wedged into them. This way life’s balance is returned. This week I made homemade macaroons – the healthy kind. This recipe is particularly amazing because I have fresh and locally grown coconuts to work with. You’ve probably noticed that I often use coconut in my recipes like: my paleo almond coconut pie and my stovetop pumpkin pie. I like using coconut for a number of reasons. The flour is a great substitute for those who are gluten intolerant. It’s rich in protein, fibre, and good fats. It’s an excellent source of lauric acid which supports the immune system and promotes good skin health. Here are some other fast facts: This fruit is healthy for you because it contains lots of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and essential fatty acids. It is a great source of essential fatty acids because it contains all of the omega fats – 3, 6, 7 and 9. Inside a coconut is a cavity filled with coconut water, which is sterile until opened. It mixes easily with blood, and was used during World War II in emergency transfusions Coconut milk has a fat content of 17% and can be used for baking and cooking. One cup of raw coconut contains 282.9 calories – Fat accounts for 224 of these calories, while carbohydrates account for 49.7 and protein for the remaining 9.2 of the calories. It also contains less sugar than meat from other fruits like oranges or apples. For this recipe, I bought a couple mature coconuts to shred for my macaroons, but I could have just bought dehydrated, shredded coconut from the grocery store. This recipe makes about 25 macaroons the size of golf balls. Ingredients: 4 cups of shredded coconut 7 egg whites 1 ½ Tablespoon of orange zest 1 tsp of salt 1/3 cup of honey ½ coconut flour Preheat oven at 325° C In a large bowl, whip egg whites until frothy. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Drop big spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Make sure that balls are tight. Bake until golden – around 17 minutes. When done – eat and share.
Surfing With The Sun
I don’t often get to see the sunrise, but when I do I get a chill running down my spine. It’s a special feeling that I liken to taking off in an airplane, or the first day of a new job. Like you are living and breathing ‘beginning’. So the idea of getting to see a sunrise is pretty cool, but actually getting out there and doing it is another. For starters if you want to see the beginning rays of the day, then you have to get out of your cozy bed before that day has even begun. While your laying there in a half wake state there are tones of reasons to NOT get up. Living here at extreme for six months I’ve managed to find a few more reasons to get up with a pop. For one, our slogan is live by the sun. So once I see those rays coming through my curtains, I know its time to go…. And when the sun starts to set at night I begin concocting my plans for a wholesome dinner shared with friends and an early tuck in time. This past November I went surfing more times than I did in all of 2011. Or for that matter the entire rest of my life. Surfing is a pretty cool sport. We all know that. But the reason that its cool to me is that there are so many elements that line up to that perfect wave. And getting up early is one of them. I stood at the shores edge at 6:45 this morning staring at the massive rippling grey soup of swell wondering why there were no other surfers in the water. All the other surfers had a similar stance to me – standing, watching, calculating….. except I didn’t know why I was doing it. So I said to hell with that and went and got my board ready. By the time I got in the water I was about the fourth person out there. 30 minutes later once I’d battled past the break (I’m totally still an amateur) there was probably 20 people waiting for their perfect wave. Beating the crowds. Now that’s a reason to crawl out of your covers before the sun. When we say live with the sun, maybe we actually mean live ahead of the sun. Maybe set an alarm, or mark on your calendar – “today is the day you tell the sun what to do”. When you have a fierce desire and attachment to a sport/ hobby/ game – whatever it is that drives you – it doesn’t really matter where the sun is, or the wind or the powder… you have to put yourself there and be ready for whatever mother nature will give you. Big, small, gnarly, suave … its all a part of the challenge and the reason to get out and play.
Stovetop Thanksgiving
How to cook a thanksgiving dinner on the stovetop. This year I celebrated the American thanksgiving with the Extreme family. Maya, our architect and Zach, our trainer are both from the states. Since Monica and I didn’t get around to baking a feast of our own this October, we decided it was only appropriate to bake a feast for all of us. For a number of reasons, this Thanksgiving feast was going to be a unique challenge. Other than the fact that our ingredients were going to be slightly different due to the fact that we’re in the Dominican, Monica is doing the Wild Rose cleanse which prohibited her from eating certain foods and I am going through my own allergy discoveries that has forced me to cut out some basic food groups. So between the two of us, we had to cut out: Vinegar Gluten Added sugar Lactose Fermented products As you can imagine, this makes cooking a thanksgiving meal slightly more difficult. Oh, and did I mention that our oven didn’t work so that we had to make everything on the stovetop? Yah, that’s right. But in true Amazon fashion (Monica and I are known as Amazons) we saw these restrictions purely as fun challenges. Maya on the other hand, could eat anything and was surely not letting our food limitations stop her from having the true American Thanksgiving she’s grown to love and cherish. She still made a point to buy stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy. Because the oven didn’t work, I made a roast chicken and veggies in a soup pot, and pumpkin pie in a pan. I have to admit that I was little worried about how everything was going to turn out. Cooking a pumpkin pie without sugar, eggs or an oven sounded like a waste of ingredients. It was going to taste like poop. But I figured if Martha Stewart can make apple crumple in microwave while locked up in the slammer, I can make this pie turn out half decent. I started by searing the chicken before filling the pot with big chunks of veggies and chicken broth. I let it sit on the stove at a low temperature for at least two and half hours. When it was almost don’t, I started on the pie. The first step for the pie was pressing and cooking the pie crust mixture in a pan on the stove. Then I added the pumpkin pie mixture, put a pot lid on it and let it warm up for as long as I could without burning the bottom. When the chicken was finally ready, it was fall-off-the-bone-perfect! Because it was cooked in a broth, it was incredibly succulent and delicious. The vegetables were soft and flavourful, and after we finished eating the food on our plates, we all started eating out of the pot like a group of domesticated (starved) cats. When it came to dessert I cheated a little. I knew for fact that this pie was going to taste like a science experiment gone wrong, so I decided to flambé some apples in some Brugal rum to throw on top. I was amazed to see that the crust was crispy! The pumpkin part wasn’t quite as solid as if it had been whisked with eggs and baked… but it was warm. Success? I was quite surprised when it didn’t taste like pumpkin ass, but simply a diabetic version of pumpkin puree with a nice toasty crust. Since only Monica wasn’t allowed to have any added sugar, we all added some maple syrup to our pie… or liquid gold as I like to call it. All in all, I think it was a total success. So much so that I’ve made three more chicken this way since Thanksgiving! Here are my recipes, enjoy: Stovetop Chicken: 2pd whole chicken with skin Carrots Onions Handful or garlic Potatoes Peppers 500ml to a liter of chicken stock 3 Tblp of coconut or olive oil to sear chicken Roughly cut up all veggies. Turn on stove to medium-high. In a large soup pot, put in oil and half the onions and garlic. Put in chicken and sear on all side: this means allow the chicken to get crispy on all sides. Add veggies and broth. Put a lid on top, turn to low and let sit for at least 2 hours. Periodically base the chicken with the broth. When chicken is nearly done, take off the lid and let the broth evaporate a little. Test chicken by seeing if the drumstick bone pulls off the chicken easily. Pumpkin Pie Crust 1 ½ cup of coconut flour 1 ½ cup of sunflower flour 1 Tblsp of vanilla ½ tsp salt 1 tsp cinnamon 2 Tblsp coconut oil ¼ cup of warm water Mix all ingredients together and firmly push into pan. On low-medium heat cook pie crust. Move pan around to make sure all sides are evenly cooked. Pumpkin Filling One large can of sugar-less pumpkin puree 1 ½ tsp of cinnamon 1-2 tsp vanilla ¼ tsp salt 1. Whisk all ingredients together and place in pie. Smooth out top and sprinkle raisins or nuts if you’d like. 2. Turn to low, place lid on top and leave until pumpkin filling is hot..warm..decent. Drunken Apples 1-2 apples 1/3 cup of rum Place apples with a bit of water in small pot on the stove and turn to medium. Let them boil a little bit. Add rum, then slightly tilt pot to the side and light with a lighter. Be careful not to put too much rum and burn your eyebrows. Serve pie while hot and add drunken apples on top, add maple syrup of honey as you wish. Bon appetite! A reminder: Cooking is very different than baking. Baking involves chemistry, while I follow my taste buds when I’m cooking. The measurements I use are estimates. Taste as you go along, and
Circus Retreat Performance at Extreme Hotel
So how do I put this… last night was amazing. Thanks for the show…? You girls were great. Can I put the tip in your bra…? Where did you learn those mean skills?… nope, that all sounds oddly sexual. But then again so are aerial arts and circus performances in general. But if you ask this team of highly skilled, highly talented, and highly ripped acrobats, they’d tell you that it’s an expression, and that creating each act is an extremely artistic endeavor. Circus girls I had the pleasure (ahem – again with the sexy words) of catching Kerri’s brand new show last night. Since the Sweet Retreats†k Team has only been at Extreme for ten days, their routine was still in the works and is still a little wet behind the ears. Of course this actually worked to their advantage. The girls bantered with the audience between sets, asking what everyone thought, and did back flips, walkovers, and handsprings while fluttering around like little birds. It was so natural it seemed like it was how they always interact with people. And when the beautifully elegant knife-dancing-Olga dropped her knife, we were all able to drop our jaws a little farther when she was able to recover with the same grace. circus crew at extreme Their one hour show kicked off with one of Kaiceitos‘ very own doing a graceful strength routine on the hanging bar, then an areal arts routine by Chloe and Kerri, followed by the circus boys on the beach throwing poi, which are basically burning balls of fire on sticks (ahem). This is actually a pretty big thing internationally, and we welcome poi dancers to our beach side paradise every year. The whole show was done to booming pop-hip-hop-technoey beats. The crowd went wild for the group, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that left vowing to myself that tomorrow I would pick up where I left off with my hand stands and by next week I’d be skipping town in search of some long lost circus dream. The best part about the whole thing is that I totally could have done that. Or so I felt. The sense of place that you get at Extreme is that anything is possible. Wake up one morning and you’re a circus freak – I mean circus pro, and the next day you could be on your way to being one of the first Olympian kite boarders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. My point is, this type of stuff just crops up all the time here. For all of you who surely share the same dream, Kerri is also kind enough to provide classes to the public for those who would like to learn the aerial arts, tumbling, handstands, trapeze and much more. Although this amazing group will be leaving us shortly, they do retreats twice a year at Extreme! Be sure to check our Facebook page and website for updates on Kerri’s Sweet Retreats at Extreme Hotel. circus crew By: Monica Rush
Organic Dominican Chocolate Bars and Almond Butter
The best organic chocolate and almond butter can offer a healthy snack at any time: It happened again. I woke up in a sweat and I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I tossed and turned, but nothing seemed to help. I started counting sheep… pointless. I started telling my body to relax and fall asleep…feet, ankles, calves…I got to my stomach and gave up. When I finally caved, I slid out of bed and made my way to my desk. It was still dark, but I knew exactly where it was. As if I had night vision, I reached into my desk and grabbed it. I unfolded the tinfoil wrapping, broke off a piece, and sat down for what would be a midnight foodgasm. The homemade 80% organic chocolate instantly started melting on my tongue and brought me into another world. I will admit now that I’m not proud of my addiction. Most of my pockets are littered with small pieces of tinfoil. I’ve even lying to my friends and family, “It’s just water weight!” but my defensive tone totally blows my cover. Zach taught me that “sharing is caring” but c’mon, this shit is primo gold! The best way for me to avoid this addiction is to only buy one bar and eat it as fast as I can. I haven’t always been like this, but since our good friend Maria started making organic chocolate at Taino Farm to sell, I’ve been hooked. In my defense, its better then eating a box of chocolate cookies or ice cream from Bon. Most health articles will say that dark chocolate is good for you… so that’s my justification. My favourite dessert is when Maria arrives with a fresh batch of organic almond butter AND dark chocolate…can someone say chocolate almond butter sandwich?? YES PLEASE! Both products are made with love and care. It’s not an easy process to accumulate all the ingredients, roast them to perfection, produce and package. We’ve trained up the farmers to help with the process, but Maria still does most of the work herself, including perfecting a chocolate recipe that even Willi Wonka would admire. As soon as she’s got a batch ready she brings it down to Extreme to sell. Maria has almond butter and chocolate ready for purchase most of the time, and the Extreme team staff is sure to let hotel guests and Cabarete locals know when it’s around. You can always make a custom order by emailing Genevieve@ecabarete.com. Prices 250RD – 80% organic chocolate bar 500RD – jar of organic almond butter Because we’re adamant at reducing and reusing, the prices might vary depending on what jars Maria is able to find and use for the nut butter. Prices might also change slightly for the chocolate if she decides to add nuts or fruit to the chocolate. So unleash your inner fat kid and give in to some healthy-guilty-pleasures. Because you only live once and there’s no better way to be decadent than doing so in a eco-friendly-locally-produced-oh-so-awesome kinda way. By Genevieve
Bed Time Yoga Postures
Yoga postures you can do while in bed? Absolutely. The other night, I found myself twisting and turning in bed all night trying to go to sleep. No exercise that day had me holding onto some pent up energy and had my mind was buzzing. Why not relax the muscles tension and calm my mind with a simple in bed yoga series. Here are some good twists and turns for bedtime relaxation. Reclining Bound Angle Pose with pillow or blanket Your deepest breath starts now. Reaching the top of my head away from my shoulders, and breathing deep through my nose, I felt an almost instant release of stress. I initially tried it without the pillow but I knew something was missing so I grabbed my pillow, put it between my shoulder blades to elevate my head for comfort and opened my shoulders and chest. -Pillow is optional but a great tool to open the shoulders. Make sure it is lengthwise down your spine with the top below your head allowing your head to drop back. -Don’t look for a stretch here. Squeeze your but and pull your knees apart once settled but then release the tension and breathe. Let gravity do the rest. -Hands palms up by your sides -Count your breaths in and out starting with 1 on your first inhale and 2 on an exhale. Go to 10 and start over at 1. Do this 2 times. 20 total. -Remember this is for you. If you want your hands folded across your chest. Do it. Want an extra pillow under your head. Grab one. Sometimes I prefer to splay my knees and do a forward bend over my feet (butterfly pose) before I lay back. Make this little bedtime practice your own. Spinal Twist I LOVE twists… I figure if I do them before bed then maybe I won’t wake up in a tornado mess in the middle of the night. If done right this should have your eyes rolling to the back of your head with this sublime back release. Bed set up is important so you don’t twist off your bed. If you twist right, start on the left side of the bed, and vice versa. -Like all postures, make sure you reach tall through the body to lengthen the spine. -Before you twist, take a HUGE inhale through the nose and hold as you send your leg across the body and release your breath fully when your knee touches the bed on the other side or when you have reached your full twist. -You might add a bend to your bottom leg as you come across with the top leg. This is fine but straighten it out as you continue into your breath focus. 5 huge inhales on each side. -Feel free to close your eyes but make sure you keep your gaze at your opposite arm across the bed away from your twisting leg. Half pigeon pose This posture is my personal favorite and a constant request in all of my classes. One of the most powerful hip openers you can find. Good for all but great for those that find themselves seated for extended periods of time. -From your hands and knees lift your right knee and send it to your right wrist while twisting your foot towards your left wrist. The closer you have your foot to the opposite wrist, the more intensity of your stretch. I suggest starting light and making an adjustment after a few series of breath. -With your leg under your chest. Slowly extend the opposite leg that is supporting your hips, behind and straight. You can roll to the forward leg’s side for more comfort but from there you focus on pressing both hips to the floor or mattress. -Once your hips are square and down. Slowly bend forward bringing your chest over your forward leg supporting with your hands. If mobility allows, you can bring your elbows and/or head down above the forward knee/shin. -Stay here for 10 exhales for each leg. -When switching or coming out, make sure you use your hands to gently push yourself up and roll to the side of the forward leg. Always be conscious of the forward knee. Upside down cobra Last but not least. A nice little inversion to really relax and clear your mind. A great stretch for the neck and abs. -Finding the right spacing here can be tricky but allow your head to fall back and hang uninterrupted. -Slide your shoulders off the bed to open the chest a little more and increase your inversion effect. -The final touch is inhaling your arms slowly above your hanging head and close your eyes. -Count your breaths in and out starting with 1 on your first inhale and 2 on an exhale. Go to 10 and start over at 1. Do this 2 times. 20 total. Sweet dreams and Namaste.