It is finally starting to feel like fall and with it comes some of my favorite foods! This is the only time of the year when beautiful orange winter squashes and sweet potatoes are in abundance. We got our first round of sweet potatoes in our crop share basket this week so I wanted to try doing something different with them. I love how versatile sweet potatoes. Some of our favorite ways to eat them are mashed, as fries, cubed, hash browned, and baked. However, I wanted to try something that would be more filling as an entree instead of just a side dish. That's how these fiesta stuff sweet potatoes were born. Maybe you can tell from the Italian Stuffed Pepper recipe, but
a common meal at our house are stuffing whatever vegetable is in season with whatever meat you have and it is always surprisingly delicious. Besides sweet potatoes and peppers, zucchini, acorn squash, and butternut squash are some of our favorite things to eat this way.
On to the recipe. This is very easy to prep ahead and reheat and depending on the type of meat and spices you use can be adapted to your family's style.
Fiesta Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
Yield: 8 - 1/2 sweet potato portions
Serves: 4-8
Ingredients:
- 4 large sweet potatoes
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1 diced onion
- Spinach or other green
- Seasonings to taste (for a Mexican flair, I used chili powder, garlic, and little cumin)
- Salt and Pepper to taste
- Avocado and cilantro (as a topping)
What to do:
Bake sweet potatoes at 400 for 1 hr. While potatoes are cooking, brown ground beef and add onion once beef is almost cooked through. Add in desired spices and greens until the greens are cooked down and the taste is to your liking. Once the sweet potatoes are done, slice in half length wise and using a fork push the flesh of the sweet potato down as much as you can. Scoop a healthy amount of the beef mixture onto the sweet potato. Return to oven (or reheat later) at 350 for 10 minutes. Top with avocado and cilantro when serving.
RESTART® Your Health Nutrition Classes AND Nourish Your Family Freezer Cooking Parties!
RESTART® is Back!
Excess weight, tiredness and fatigue, headaches, gas and bloating, brain fog, poor sleep, unbalanced hormones, high blood pressure, heartburn, or lack of energy? Do you suffer from any of these things? Like many Americans, have you accepted them as “normal?”
I hate to break it to you but nothing on the above list is “normal” and none of these things should be experienced day to day.
Thankfully, YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF YOUR HEALTH AND YOU CAN TURN THESE THINGS AROUND! Living this way does not need to be normal!
That is what the RESTART® class is for! This 5 week class provides the education, support, and a 3 week REAL FOOD CHALLENGE where we’ll be focusing on using FOOD to HEAL the body, specifically by eliminating all processed food and sugars.
Want to begin living life without those everyday complaints? Go against the normal and sign up for the next RESTART® class that will be held on Monday nights from 7-8:30 beginning OCTOBER 26th!
You can learn more and Sign up for the class here.
Nourish Your Family Freezer Cooking Party
Want to put healthy meals on the table for your family but aren’t sure where to begin? Are you too busy to cook real food from scratch? Need some new fresh ideas for meal time?
If any of these are true of you, then you would LOVE our new Nourish Your Family Freezer Cooking Parties!
We will provide the menu, recipes, pastured meat and eggs from a local farm, and run the cooking party.
You will walk away with several servings of 4 different freshly prepared meals ready for your freezer to enjoy at anytime!
You will need to bring groceries from a very basic grocery list that will be provided and the cost of the party is $75 per person.
The next party will be on Friday, October 23rd from 6-9 pm in Warrenville. Spots are very limited so sign up today by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Can’t make it to this one? That’s OK – we can come to you! Gather 4-5 friends for your very own freezer cooking party. This will be no cost for party hosts.
All of our menus are gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free, and paleo with pastured meat and eggs that we will provide from a local farm.
Our Fall Menu:
-Pumpkin Chili
- Italian Stuffed Peppers
- Salmon Cakes
- Sweet Potato Casserole
- Veggie Egg Cups
It has been found that about 50-70% of women experience back pain at some point during their pregnancy. It is easy to see understand how this would happen since the average weight gain is 25-35 pounds. As the woman’s center of gravity moves forward, the curve in her low back increases. This, in addition to hormonal changes, can cause severe back pain.
Many women have no idea what to do in this situation because they don’t want to take medicine that can be harmful to the baby. Here are some basic exercises and strategies that are not only helpful for reducing pain, but are great for preparing the body for delivery.
Specific Exercises
Cat/Camel exercise
- Cat/Camel- Start on your hands and knees, and move back up to a flexed position, and then down to an extended position. Alternate between these positions (within a comfortable range) ten times. Do this several times throughout the day. Not only with this help with back mobility and core stability, but it helps the uterus to move up and off the pelvic floor slightly.This is especially beneficial before bed because it can remove some pressure off of your bladder, and allow you to not have to get up quite as frequently throughout the night to urinate. Not Pregnant? This is still a great exercise for anyone experiencing back pain!
- Squatting- Spending some time in a deep squat position daily is great to work hip mobility, and opening up the pelvis in preparation for delivery. Try to get your heels on the ground. Your spine should be in a neutral position and not flexed forward, so it should not bother your lower back in any way. Try to work your way up to at least 30 seconds to a minute of holding this position daily.
Dr. Thomure squatting at 39 weeks pregnant
- Sitting Cross Legged- This is a healthy and natural position for the lower back. It also allows the uterus to move forward increasing circulation and stretching the inner thighs.
What else can I do?
- Get regular low impact exercise such as walking or swimming at least 3 times a week. Try for at least 30 minutes.
- Avoid high heels, instead wear flat comfortable shoes with good arch support.
- Use a pregnancy or body pillow when sleeping, and try to sleep on left side.
- Wear a support belt under lower abdomen. This can help if pelvis is feeling unstable once ligaments are becoming more lax during later pregnancy.
Chiropractic Care
Chiropractors can offer all natural relief to back pain in this situation. According to the American Pregnancy Association, seeing a chiropractor during pregnancy can help with
- Maintaining a healthier pregnancy
- Controlling symptoms of nausea
- Reducing the time of labor and delivery
- Relieving back, neck or joint pain
- Prevent a potential cesarean delivery
How often should I see a chiropractor during pregnancy?
Obviously every patient is different, but Dr. Thomure typically recommends coming about as often as a woman sees her OB. This would mean approximately once a month during the first trimester, 1-2x/month during the second trimester, and 2-4x/month during the third trimester.
Article By Jamie Thomure DC
One of the most common questions that I get is, how is it possible to actually eat only real, unprocessed foods, in the midst of the busyness of life? My response is that it takes preparation! It is very possible to eat real food without it feeling like it is taking over your life but it does take some time to figure out a routine that will work for you and your family and it definitely takes planning ahead.
My typical week involves grocery shopping once per week and two days (usually Saturday or Sunday and Wednesday) spent preparing food to have meals ready for the next 3 or so days for two people. That way, besides those concentrated times where I am in the kitchen, I do not feel like a slave to the kitchen the rest of the week or dread it being the end of the day and not knowing what we will have for dinner.
Here is what went down in that two hour cooking session this past weekend.
What I made:
What will this give us?
The egg casserole yields 6 healthy servings so this is our breakfast for 3 days. We will have 2-3 meals out of the soup for dinners or easy lunches packed in thermoses. The extra veggies and sausages will make out the rest of our meals and can be heated up simply as is or used in stir fry’s or curries to provide some variation but still quick meals.
What I did:
I begin by preheating the oven and prepping my veggies for the egg casserole. I toss this together and throw it in to bake at 350 for 40 minutes. While the egg casserole is cooking I get the soup going. I already had shredded chicken and broth from dinner the night before (a great thing to make in the crock pot the night before food prep to have on hand!) Instead of roasting the veggies like she suggests in the recipe link, I simply throw them in the stock pot with the broth and let them cook in there.
Now we have the egg casserole in the oven with about 15 minutes left and soup simmering on the stove. Next I prep veggies that I want for the week. On one baking sheet I did cubed butternut squash, on another other I roasted a mixture of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and onions. The egg casserole timer dings and I take that out. Bump the temperature up to 425 to roast the vegetables and throw both pans of veggies in at 425 and set the timer for 30 minutes.
The egg casserole is done and cooling, the soup is simmering on the stove and the veggies are in the oven. All that’s left is the Italian sausages. I quickly mix the ingredients together for those and cook them on a cast iron pan. The sausages are finishing just as the veggies are beeping. The veggies aren’t quite done yet so I set the timer for five more minutes and take the sausages off of the pan. Next the veggies come out and begin cooling. This gives me a chance to get back to the simmering soup. Per the recipe, some of veggies in the soup are pureed while the others are left whole so I use a ladle to scoop a 4-5 ladles worth of soup into the blender and blend until pureed. I throw the puree back in with the rest of the soup and add the spinach until the spinach is wilted and everything is blended together.
OK! You did it! This is the final stage now that everything is cooked and just needs to be packaged up for easy meals. I slice the egg casserole into 6 pieces and place into separate containers for easy to heat up meals in the morning. I put the sausage in one container to simply grab and reheat as needed. I put the roasted veggies in a few containers depending on what I have on hand (sometimes individual containers are nice to be throw into quick lunches to go). The soup gets stored in a big glass bowl in the fridge for easy stove top reheating.
Whew! Did I mention that this was also a good workout? You are so close at this point, just the clean up remains. Maybe you can recruit a willing child or spouse to help you out with this part but in my experience, it’s best to just tackle it right away to get that full feeling of accomplishment, instead of letting it wait for later and get harder to clean.
Now you can relax in knowing that you have several nutritious meals packaged up and ready to go for the next few days! Now you can get a few extra minutes of precious sleep in the morning and you will certainly avoid the fast food line at dinner!
Article by: Joelle Kurczodyna, NTP
I can't tell you how excited I am about this!"