Bisogno Pasta: Gluten-Free & Vegan

May 21, 2014

Bisogno Pasta: Gluten-Free & Vegan

What a treat I have in store for all of my readers who suffer a gluten intolerance or happen to be following a vegan diet 🙂 Today I want to introduce you to Bisogno Pasta! They are a California based brand and currently sell their products in Southern California. Luckily for all us Northern Californians, Bisogno Pasta are currently expanding to the Bay Area, woo hoo!

I came across Bisogno Pasta and was instantly intrigued by them. Why? Because they are the only fresh gluten free and vegan pasta currently on the market. Their nutritional values were super impressive, boasting 20g of protein (as much as 4 ounces of chicken) and 23g of fiber (basically fulfilling how much fiber you need in a day). Their pasta is made from lentil flour and water and so absolutely no gluten, wheat, corn, rice, soy, dairy OR eggs were used at all!

I really wanted to try Bisogno Pasta because I have tried a few gluten-free pastas for fun but honestly, they were all kind of … lacking. Bisogno Pasta kindly sent me samples of their three flavors of pasta: beet, lemon parsley, and spinach. My boyfriend and I had a lot of fun thinking up some recipe’s to try out the pasta and were seriously so impressed. The texture and taste were both fantastic, and I would never had known that it was missing wheat and eggs if I had not known beforehand. I think my favorite was the spinach pasta (who doesn’t want a way to incorporate more veggies into their diet?) but my boyfriend preferred the lemon parsley. All flavors were fantastic though, and I encourage you to try them!

Here are some photos of what we made followed by the recipes 🙂

Spinach and lemon parsley pasta with cashew pesto and smoked salmon

Ingredients

1 serving of spinach bisogno pasta
1 serving of lemon parsley bisogno pasta
4-8 ounces of smoked salmon (I used honey smoked salmon)
Cashew pesto – I used walnuts instead of cashews in mine however because I had run out of cashews!
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese to garnish
A few basil leaves to garnish

Serves 2 people

1. Prepare the cashew pesto first and then set aside for now.
2. Prepare the bisogno pasta according to instructions – boil in hot water for 4 minutes.
3. Serve pasta and top with a generous serving of cashew pesto, smoked salmon and parmesan cheese. Enjoy!

Beet pasta with Thai style chicken

Ingredients

1 serving of beet bisogno pasta
16 ounces of chicken
1 can of coconut milk
1 cup chicken stock
1 sliced carrot
2 cups of cauliflower
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp salt
1 tsp fish sauce
1tsp red chilli flakes (feel free to add more if you like spice!)
OPTIONAL – 1 cup enoki mushrooms

Thai style chicken will serve 4. Make 4 servings of bisogno pasta to use all of it or store the rest away as leftovers.

1. Prepare the thai style chicken 1 day in advance. Using a slow cooker/crockpot, put all of the ingredients (minus the bisogno pasta) into your slow cooker and set on ‘LOW’ for 7-8 hours. Keep in slow cooker on ‘WARM’ setting until you make your pasta.
2. Make bisogno pasta according to directions – boil for 4 minutes.
3. Serve pasta with 1/4 of the chicken that you made. The chicken will serve 4 people and is a great leftover meal!

I cannot waaaait until Bisogno Pasta expands to the Bay Area. When it does it is going to be a constant in my kitchen! Can’t wait to make people think they are eating normal pasta and then tell them the nutritional profile hehe.

I am curious, how many of you are actually gluten-free and vegan?

Honestly yours,
Alice

DISCALIMER: I was not paid to write about bisogno pasta. I only ever write about brands which I believe in and have high quality and healthy products.

Fitness, Sunday Summary

Sunday Summary: Kayla Itsines Week 12

May 18, 2014

kayla itsines week 12

Wow. I cannot believe I have finished Kayla Itsines 12 week bikini body guide! Feels surreal that it has already passed so quickly … 12 weeks is a really interesting amount of time. In the grand scheme of things it really is not that long, but at the same time, so much can happen in 12 weeks. In the course of these past 12 weeks, I have:

finished Kayla Itsines bikini body guide (try it here for free for a week!)
finished my first year of graduate school (don’t know how that happened lol)
watched my blog grow, receiving over 1,400 visitors at its peak
became an I’m Fit Possible ambassador
joined the POPSUGAR select fitness program
continued my yoga practice and am much more flexible
can do over 180 push ups in a 30 minute workout session
can now do 70 pound lat pulls

Okay, I will stop there haha! Those are the accomplishments I am most proud of 🙂 And of course I am extreemely proud of my boyfriend for getting into the PhD program at the University of Utah, but I can’t really count this as my own personal accomplishment now can I? 😉

I am so grateful to everything that has occurred in the last few weeks, and I cannot wait to see what the future has in store. Your reality is what you make of it, so make sure you are doing what makes YOU happy. Do not focus on what others will think of you or what they will say. Although for the most part people are supportive of what I do, I still get some passive judgement about the choices I make. But I don’t really care and if I have to continue to state why I am doing what I am doing, then I will continue doing so.

You are probably all wondering whether or not I will be posting progress photo’s, huh? 🙂 I do want too, although I am not sure when (check on my instagram because if I do post them, I will post them there). Don’t get me wrong, I am EXTREMELY proud of my progress, although I do worry about the negativity I may receive: “There’s no change.” “She look’s worse” etc etc. It isn’t like I have developed a six pack or a thigh gap lol, but I have tightened up a lot and am much stronger although I do not really think the photo’s can accurately convey this. I am definitely going to continue with the bikini body guide and will probably just repeat it until Kayla’s new book comes out. Maybe that time round the abs will be showing 😉

Also I just wanted to share this graphic with you that my friend sent me. I think it is fantastic and fits in well with my philosophy that diets are unnecessary!!

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness

Kayla Itsines Interview

May 17, 2014

Kayla Itsines Interview [Exclusive]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!! I am so so so excited to share with you all an interview with my ultimate fitness idol, Kayla Itsines!!

Omg, I am fan girl-ing way too hard right now. Keep cool, Alice.

Ahem, so you may or may not know, Kayla Itsines is a personal trainer who became an Instagram sensation due in part to her incredibly toned physique and because of her client transformations. All of her clients lost fat and started to take on the same look as Kayla, which she describes as a bikini body. You can see a snippet of her client transformations on her website and on her Instagram account. I have been doing Kayla’s bikini body guide and have loved the experience so much. I am in my final week and couldn’t be happier with my progress in terms of how my body looks, how much stronger I am, and how good I feel. My progress may not be as dramatic as some other girls, but I am so proud of how far I have come and will definitely continue to incorporate the workouts into my workout routine. Kayla was also my original inspiration to work towards doing unassisted pull ups and chin ups. Still far from my goal of doing 10 in a row, but I can do 3 now!

I am so excited to introduce you to her!

Hi there Kayla! Tell us a little bit about yourself and your fitness philosophy

Hi, my name is Kayla and I am a twenty-three year old personal trainer from Australia. I specialize in training women and helping them achieve their goals whether they are appearance, health or confidence based. I love summer, the beach and travelling with my partner, Tobi, and hope to continue to grow as a person and be able to bring more information to women around the world.

My fitness site can be found here.

A typical day in the life of Kayla Itsines looks like this …

I’m not hugely different from the normal person I guess. I wake up at 6AM and go for a walk. I come home shower and have breakfast. I drive to work with my baby husky, Ace in the back. Open up my studio and train my clients from 8-11AM. I have a break for a few hours where I either workout or prepare content for all my followers and then head back to work. I finish with my evening clients 4PM-7:30PM and that’s it. I come home, have dinner with my boyfriend and relax. Oh and I have over 700,000 amazing followers online who I get to chat to every day 😛

Tell us a little about your boyfriend, Tobi. How did you both meet?

I’m sure this is a huge surprise, but we met in the gym. We didn’t talk or anything really, but I apparently came up in the “people he may know” section on Facebook and he added me a day later. A week went by and we were at coffee and a month after that we were at dinner. Two years later we are in our own house with a beautiful puppy and we couldn’t be happier.

Where did your passion for fitness come from?

I have always been healthy and fit. Whether it was basketball, other sport of just working out I am far too impatient to not do something with my time. Now my mission is what inspires me. I have a dream to end confusion within the health and fitness industry. Fads and scams in this industry have created so much distrust and insecurity around weight-loss programs.

I want all people to understand their body, have a place to learn about health and fitness and in turn feel confident & happy.

Did you always have such an amazing body?

NO! Not at all. I was always a little “too skinny” during my childhood and often got bullied for it. I put in years of training and research to try to get my body to where it is today. Now I am in a position where I can educate girls to gain OR lose weight to get their dream body. Everyone’s goal appearance is different, but the goal is still really confidence. This is what I bring to girls all over the world.

Okay, so although your body is out of this world, even fitness idols have their own fitness idols right? Who would you say yours is?

This is so true, I idolise Iza Goulart like there is no tomorrow. I also love Candice Swanepoel AND she followed me on Instagram a while back. Possibly one of the best days of my life!

I get a lot of questions from girls asking me about your Bikini Body Guide. What is so special about it?

I guess the biggest different is the goal. Rather than being a weight-loss of a muscle gaining program it is simply a plan to get you a particular look. It will help work both ways, to gain strength and to lose fat. The workouts aren’t easy but this is compensated by some amazing flexibility in my meal plan (and recipe books coming very soon). If you want to have a look at the results just visit my reviews or transformations page.

Cardio or strength training? Which do you think is more important?

Both. One training protocol will never supersede another purely because they all provide different benefits. I think the most important thing is to have balance between the two as well as recovery.

When girls workout, should they do heavy weights and low reps, or low weights and high reps?

Like I said above, I believe in a variety of rep ranges, weights and exercises. Try the free downloads on my website to get a guide of how I train.

What are your views on green juices and smoothies? Passing fad or here to stay?

I personally love a green smoothie/juice. I think they will be around to stay for a little while purely because they pack so many nutrients. But, like anything they are not a sole source of nutrition and sometimes girls only have smoothies for a whole day. This is not the right way to go about things.

Any advice for girls who can’t live without a certain ‘bad’ food?

Have it! The choice is always yours. If you can accommodate this into your meal plan with a cheat or flexi meal then do so. But the point still stands, if you “can’t live without it” every day of the week then don’t expect to live with your dream body.

Biggest pet peeve?

People who workout once and complain they don’t have an amazing body. It’s as simple as that.

Any tips for all the ladies out there looking to get bikini body ready?

Find a simple play and stick to it. Consistency is the biggest piece of advice that can ever be given to anyone. If you train 110% and eat 110% perfectly 10% of the time you’ll still only get 10% results. I would rather eat and train well always and get 100% results.

What can we expect from you in the future?

Without giving away too much there will be recipe books and a Bikini Body Training Guide 2.0. Along with this there may be the opportunity for girls all over the world to never have to leave their home to train. Interactive programs and fitness equipment may be a thought here 🙂