On Friday night, I was making dinner for my cousin and two of her friends… and apparently I thought that was a good time to experiment on almost everything I was making. I had made the macadamia chicken before, but everything else was kind of “weird” and I was winging it as far as any so-called “recipes.”

I’m only going to share the dessert with you today. It seriously deserves its own post–it’s probably the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten, and my guests said the same thing. The idea for it has been brewing in my head for a while. I often think of themes for a recipe, and then work out the specific details of how I’ll execute it. This one’s theme is My Favorite Things…

Chocolate. Cheese. Wine.

Enough said, right ladies?

Anyway, I came up with a layered dessert idea that begins with Chocolate Avocado Pudding on the bottom. Next, I added cheesecake mousse (cheesecake flavor, but lighter and fluffier texture). Last, I drizzled it with a Red Wine Syrup. For that, I just bought a sweet red wine, reduced it on the stove till it turned into a syrup, and added just a bit of maple syrup to sweeten it.

Here’s what it looked like:

I didn’t have great lighting for the pic, but hopefully it still looks as good as it tasted!

So, here’s how you do it:

Favorite Things Parfait

Make Avocado Pudding and refrigerate.

Make Cheesecake Mousse: 

1 8oz brick of cream cheese, room temp

1 batch of whipped cream (8oz carton of heavy cream, 1 Tbsp of grade B maple syrup, mix with hand mixer on high till it turns into whipped cream)

Mix (on low to medium if you use a hand mixer) the cream cheese and the whipped cream. Add a splash of vanilla extract and/or a splash of lemon juice. Taste it and add more sweetener if needed. When smooth, refrigerate.

Make Red Wine Syrup: 

pour 2 cups of sweet red wine into a saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil, and continue to boil until it has reduced to about 1/2 cup. Taste it—if it’s not sweet enough, add a sweetener (I used grade B maple syrup). Refrigerate.

To serve: 

I used a Pampered Chef Easy Accent Decorator, but if you don’t have anything like that, just put some of the pudding into a plastic baggie and cut off a corner. That way when you pipe it into a glass or dish, it will look smooth. Do the same thing with the mousse, and then drizzle the syrup on top. You will want to be stingy with the syrup–it’s very strong tasting!

Note: you can use any type of sweetener you want—stevia would make this very low carb!

My guests loved this so much they talked about it for the rest of the evening! They said the combination sounded a little strange at first, but it was amazing, especially when all three flavors were combined into one bite.

This is definitely going on my list of things to make again! I really would like to share it with everyone I know…

News/Notes: I did the SM Stairs today at high noon… what a mistake! Well, not really, but it was pretty treacherous at that time of day–busy and full of people with no common sense: one guy who brought a puppy and a couple who brought their two year-old and actually had him going down and then up the steps. I’m surprised no one got hurt—I’m the person who worries the whole time I see something like that. Last week, a lady had her baby in a carrier on her chest. I suppose that’s ok, but it makes me nervous with the possibility of tripping up the steps or falling down them.

Anyway, I wore my YMX workout shirt, and I loved it! I’m going to post the review tomorrow—YMX sent me two shirts for free to review. I’m so in love with these shirts… but I’ll show them to you tomorrow.

Oh… the reason I brought up the stairs… I did 6 trips without stopping, so I’m definitely making progress toward my goal of 15! I think I’ll probably reach it before the 8 weeks is up, so once I do, I’ll just start running up them and see how long I can do that for… maybe. I don’t know, that sounds kind of awful.

I have a really busy week ahead of me, and I need to turn up the focus a bit. My favorite yoga teacher is subbing tonight, so maybe I’ll do that first, and then start focusing after…

I’ve made this so many times now that I have the perfect recipe (if I do say so).

My client loved it too… and she had no idea it was full of cauliflower

Cauli-Coconut Flour Pizza Crust

½ cup cauli rice

2 T coconut flour

2 eggs

¾ cup sharp cheddar

1-2 tsp pizza seasoning

Rice your cauli and steam it (you can steam it before you rice it too). Don’t worry about pressing the liquid out of it–some recipes call for this (I’m way too lazy to do that!). Mix the cauli with coconut flour, eggs, cheese (any kind works—I like sharp cheddar or parm), and pizza seasoning. Grease a pan REALLY well, and make two pizza crusts (for two mini pizzas) or several smaller ones (easier to flip). Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes. Let the top get totally brown, and even hit it with the broiler for a few minutes. Flip the crusts, and broil for a few min. Take out of the oven… Add toppings. Return to broiler till toppings are heated and cheese is melted!

Or, stop after you’ve added the toppings, put foil over the pan, transport it to your client’s fridge, and stick a post-it note on it telling her to remove the foil and put under broiler till cheese melts.

She’ll call you later, telling you how amazing you are, and how this is the best money she’s ever spent.

I like to make these really small too (like cookie-size) and do mini pizzas (english muffin pizzas?). For this particular one, the sauce was Rao’s Basil Marinara (2 jars) plus 1lb ground beef and 1lb hot italian sausage. Of course, there’s a ton of sauce. I used it in lasagna and pizza soup too. I’ll share those later!

This is honestly the best cauli crust I’ve had—if you bake it long enough, you can totally cut it and eat it like regular pizza, and the coconut flour helps to add just a little fluffy-bready-ness to it.

News/Notes: Last night, I made dinner for my cousin and two of her friends. I experimented and it turned out amazingly well. I’ll share the pics and recipes over the next couple days, but I’ll give you a sneak peek of the dessert here:

Of course it was evening, and the lighting wasn’t great for pics… so I used the floor as a backdrop and just apologized to everyone for being obnoxious like that. They didn’t care—in fact, they all told me I should write a cookbook. Ha.

This dessert was a masterpiece I’ve been developing in my mind for a couple weeks—I really wanted to combine my three favorite things into one dish: chocolate, cheese, and wine!

So, I finally did. And it turned out even better than I anticipated! I’ll share the recipe tomorrow.

I’m loving my new kitchen life–and I’m thinking I may try and get another client in my neighborhood. My friends last night are big supporters of the idea, and even came up with a business name for me—my cousin has been affectionately calling my new endeavor “meals on wheels,” in response to which I politely asked her to name it something more glamourous… I’ll tell you what they came up with later after I make it happen!

I went on a (second) date today to the Griffith Observatory—the view was so amazing! If I wasn’t still trying to act somewhat normal in front of this guy, I would’ve taken pics and instagrammed it. Lol. Anyway, he’s nice, and we’ll probably end up being friends… especially if he google stalks me and reads this!

The Under Armour What’s Beautiful Challenge is going so well! I’m really excited, and if you want to follow along, you can see our team updates, videos, and pics here. You can join the team if you want to as well!

One last thing…

Yesterday, Pilar and I were shooting a yoga video in Palisades Park for our next online course (geared toward women 6-12 weeks postpartum). I was sitting off to the side under a tree holding baby Maya, and feeding her (lucky me!)… This (crazy?) lady walked up and tried to have a conversation with Pilar…through her legs!

I cut the clip out of the larger video so I could show you… Pilar handled it really well, but I think the funniest part was after the lady left, and we were both cracking up—Pilar never broke her stride though! I wanted to stop the lady, but I didn’t want to yell or get up while I was feeding Maya.

Ha.

Ok, one last thing (for real this time, I promise!). I got another pic back from the photo shoot I did in Rochester with Kurt Wannenwetsch and my friend Shirley (I think Shirley has a whole cd full of pics, but they’re too big to email so she just sent me her favorite). I’m a pretzel! Actually, it’s garudasana (eagle) pose. I think it looks pretty cool, and the organic spray tan doesn’t hurt

Koss sent me a couple pairs of headphones to review, so I’ve been wearing them around for the last week or so…

They sent me the headphones for free, but the opinions are all my own!

Don’t miss this!!! There is a $5 off code (that also gets free shipping) if you purchase at http://koss.com. The code is Fit4Life.

News/Notes:   Pilar and I are videotaping another post-partum yoga class today (meaning: I get to hold Maya while she works!). I’m also making dinner for friends, and trying to get all of my other work done. This will be a work weekend for me—I love working on the weekends (sometimes) because it feels like I’m just getting things done and catching up rather than trying not to get behind… My macbook is not functioning at the moment, so hopefully it’s just the battery or power cord, and I can spend my work weekend in coffee shops instead of on my imac at home. We’ll see!

I’m gonna share some of the recipes I’ve been making for my client this week (probably tomorrow). Things are going really well so far… and oh, about my date the other day. Meh. Enough said

I have so many updates… but nothing in-depth to share with you! So I thought I’d just do a quick video since it takes less time for me to create (and I’m super busy right now with my new “job”)… Note, as a result of tech issues with youtube, this is a day later than planned so the video is one day out-of-date!

Check it out:

News/Notes: Napa was super fun and expensive. We didn’t find a wedding venue, but it was helpful for my cousin to look nonetheless. Napa costs so much… but the wine is so good it deserves to be that expensive! We did one tasting at Opus One that cost $40 a glass. Now, I’m not cheap, but that was a little much for me!

I’m deep in the process of developing my plan to reach my What’s Beautiful Campaign goals. I posted my goal video on the Thrive Team page, and that’s where I’m going to post most of my updates too. You can check it out if you want to, and join the team if you like!

I’ll probably post more this week about my kitchen endeavors—so far, my client has texted me after every time she eats to tell me how amazing the food is and how happy she is. I’m thinking of advertising to my neighborhood (since I don’t have a car). It’d be fun to have a few clients—I could play in the kitchen all day!

By the way, the SoCal Avocados winner is Brittany from Go the Extra Mile. Congrats Brittany! She’ll receive a box of avocados delivered to her door

In this video, I’m just telling you about the plan for my What’s Beautiful Team — It’s going to be fun!

I emailed all the people who responded the first time around, and have started to get responses and confirmations about being on the team.

Of course, I was little overwhelmed with the over-50 emails I received about being on the team… so I had to change the rules a little (and decided I’ll just sleep in July!).

Anyway, here’s the deal:

Based on what usually happens with this type of program, I believe I’ll end up with about 1/4 of the people who showed initial interest… that means, I also don’t want to leave anyone out who didn’t see my post about it the other day. If you’re seeing this and you want to participate, email me at lisa@lisabeach.com!

I’m going to post my own goals tomorrow (here, in video format, probably…unless I change my mind again), and I’ll also post the UA WB site info, how to join my team on your own (cuz anyone can show up there and join in… it’s just the people who connect through me that get extra special targeted training!).

I’m hoping we have some chatty-pic-taking participants so we can keep it interesting and exciting through the 8 weeks (and also give me some content for the mini-documentary… oh missed that detail? Watch the vid!).

One of my favorite parts of this has to do with my own goals (which I’m 90% decided on)… I am going to have three (I think).

I’ll tell you one I know for sure…

My first goal is to do a press handstand in yoga… if you don’t know what it is, check this out!

That’s Pilar, by the way! She’s the awesome yoga instructor and expert for our Nutrition and Yoga for Pregnancy Course, and she’s going to train me for this goal. We’re going to do a whole tutorial on how to work up to doing this pose. For the WB campaign, I may have to settle for doing it straddle-legged…. but it’s a stepping stone for doing the pike-legged version eventually!

Don’t you love Pilar’s arms? She’s amazing… I saw her on Friday (5 weeks post-birth), and she’s doing great! Her baby, Maya, is also amazing (and super cute, with Pilar’s long legs!). Our next course together is targeting new Moms… and you’ll see that in July!

Anyway, back to the Under Armour What’s Beautiful Campaign….

I’m thrilled about my team, and about working with them on their goals… My fabulous intern, Heather, is going to be great in this too!

One more thing… several people from my home town area in NY are on the team… so when I’m home at the end of June, we can meet up in person!

I’m so happy to tell you about the first course Pilar and I developed and created together. It’s a comprehensive training class on the topic of Nutrition and Yoga for Pregnancy, and we’re thrilled to announce that it’s completed and launched!

Please watch this video to learn about what the course is all about, and to decide if you (or someone you know) might be interested!

Because we’re excited about the course, and we are eager for our first enrollees, we’d like to offer a deep discount ($100 off!) to the first 25 people who enroll!

You just have to go to:

www.udemy.com/nutrition-and-yoga-for-pregnancy/

and enter the coupon code: first25

Even if you’re not interested in this course, please check out our website and facebook page! We’ll be releasing courses as we complete them throughout the year—all about women’s health topics!

We put our hearts into this course, and I am so happy it’s ready to share with you. I have been studying nutrition and pregnancy for several years, and I’m so lucky that I can call this “work.” Each day, I wake up and can’t believe how fortunate I am that I can blend my pleasure and work together—I love food and nutrition, pregnancy, babies, and women’s health in general. I’m crazy about the idea of using food as medicine and to build our best selves. I just wish there were more hours in the day, so I could do more and share more! But… I’m working on my patience, so it’ll just all have to trickle out to you as I get things done.

If you were to ask my students, or read my course evaluations, you’d hear about how my passion for nutrition comes through in the way I teach and how I share information that is useful in real life. I love helping people gain real useful information… and then put it into action. It all goes back to how we craft our lives through our lifestyles.

I have several new things coming along soon, and I’m also determined to share more recipes—I have a huge list of ideas brewing!

If you missed yesterday’s post, check it out! I’m working for an Under Armour Campaign called What’s Beautiful… and I’m creating a team of people to work with me on the campaign (on their own fitness goals!). Note: Under Armour is contributing this effort through sending me a bunch of their products to wear, but I am donating the training to my team members.

News/Notes: I’m going to San Francisco and Napa this weekend with my cousin and aunt to check out wedding venues (for cousin, not me, obviously… I’m currently married to my Apple products and new Under Armour wardrobe!). I’m so excited—I’ve never been there! I’ll take pics

I’m going on day 20 of drinking green juice everyday… and although I took a hiatus from my beef liver adventure (I ran out), I was taking the dessicated liver pills at that time. I have a presentation half done about liver that I’ll share soon (I know you can’t wait).

The gelatin update… I have taken a day off from it here and there, but overall, I’m still on the wagon. It’s definitely making a difference in my hair growth and knee pain. I can’t tell a difference in my skin yet, but I’m keeping an eye on it!

Pilar and I are shooting new yoga videos, starting this Friday, for our next course… new mommies are gonna love this one! After we pick a name, I’ll share more info! It’ll come out in the beginning of July. I’m also working on a course about skincare using natural products and food that will be released in a few weeks.

I read my horoscope (susanmiller.com) for May, and things look darn good right now. I don’t know why I read that—it never comes true, but it’s still entertaining! She says I shouldn’t focus on being social this month, but rather, I should be mostly focusing on work. I’m going to take that advice starting now—my weekend was excessively social, and a lot of fun! I drank too much, danced a lot (seriously, I have bruises on my feet), and I even found time to meet up with friends to work out (so at least that was productive)!

Do you read your horoscope?

What new projects or things do you have going on?

What’s Beautiful Campaign

Watch this…

Please join me

I love helping people reach their goals with fitness and food, and the Under Armour What’s Beautiful Campaign is putting a fun spin on that!

Just so you know, the way I’m going to pick team members is that I’ll look for people who have similar goals (because I think the group effort will be most beneficial to you that way). If I don’t have five people email me about it, I’ll just call my friends and we’ll do it for fun… (and if my friends are reading this, you can email me about it too if you’re interested).

I do hope you won’t be shy—just email me at lisa@lisabeach.com and tell me the following:

1. Your goal (or the general idea of it–we can make it specific later)

2. What point you are starting from (how far away from your goal are you? There’s no right answer!)

3. How you know me!

Please remember that the only payment you need to make if you’re chosen, is that you need to be enthusiastic and participate on the UA website/profile page, documenting your journey toward your goal, etc. Also, you can’t quit

If you’ve been trying to get started or motivated to work toward something, this is a perfect opportunity for you! I will share my best information, motivation, and advice with you at no cost (and just so you know, it will add up to be worth over $1,000.00).

Please check out the UA What’s Beautiful website if you want to learn more about the campaign! Also, you can sign up individually, and I hope you do—but first, send me an email to be on my team! I am already thinking of ways in my head to add more than 5 people… Anyway, don’t be shy

Side Note:

I’m going to talk more about it tomorrow (plus announce the avocado giveaway winner), but I wanted to let you know that our Nutrition and Yoga for Pregnancy course is live… and we’re offering $100 off for the first 25 people who enroll. You just have to enter the coupon code: first25

Enroll Here!

A while ago, I talked to you about how I’ve been working out smarter, not harder, and then a couple weeks ago, I talked about the first step in how to make your abs in the kitchen. This is a fun series for me because I know it works—I’d show you my abs and my kitchen habits, but I’m going to have to put that off until I have a week that’s a little less busy (next week, maybe!).

Anyway, the next step is… The Elimination Diet!

And hey, I know you don’t want to do it… Don’t Skip It!

Here’s the basic list of foods you should eliminate when you do an elimination diet. Note: If you suspect any other food is not working well in your body, add it to your list!

dairy, gluten, eggs, soy, corn, beef, pork, chicken, nuts, beans, lentils, coffee, citrus, and nightshade veggies

Once you’ve come to terms with the fact that you’ll be going 3-4 weeks without these items (if you’re relatively healthy, go with 3 weeks… if you have a lot of health issues or annoyances, go with 4 weeks), then come up with a plan of what you’ll eat. I know, at first glance it looks like you’ll have nothing to eat! Possibly, you will also experience some detox symptoms on this diet. My recommendation is to eat plenty of cooked veggies, fats (coconut oil!), and fish. This isn’t a diet for calorie restriction, so have a plan–you don’t want to go hungry. It will make you feel any detox symptoms you have more severely, and that’s not what we’re trying to do here!

When you’ve completed the 3-4 weeks of elimination, add one food back in at a time for one day. Wait 2 days, document how you feel (mentally, physically, sleep, etc). If you feel good, repeat the process with another food. If you feel bad or have any symptoms, you can explore a little more. Try a different version of the food or a different source. Then move forward in the same way.

If something makes you feel bad or have symptoms, take it back out of your diet, wait 2 days and add something else. If you had no symptoms at all, you can leave that food in and try another one. So… each food test takes a minimum of 3 days to add back in (1 day of eating the food and 2 days waiting to see what happens).

Please check out this site for more info and a lot of great details about Elimination Diets. This is my favorite source for this topic!

In a week or so, I’ll post the third step in making your abs in the kitchen!

News/Notes: The Nutrition and Yoga for Pregnancy course is currently being uploaded. I didn’t realize how long it would take… but I had to convert video files and all sorts of fun things, so I decided not to stay up all night just to get it done yesterday. I suppose I should have known it would take this long—17 video lessons, 3 yoga practices, and several video check-ins… I didn’t count how many hours of content it is (yet), but it’s a lot! Pilar and I are meeting tomorrow to discuss our next project—she’s about to hit her 6-week mark after giving birth, so we’re going to develop our next course to match her journey with post-partum yoga and nutrition. I believe it will be 6 weeks long, with a new yoga practice each week and specific nutrition for recovering from pregnancy and breast feeding. I’ll keep you posted!

The weather is starting to be amazing in Santa Monica… not that it was bad all winter, but it wasn’t as warm as it is now. I’m looking forward to getting back to my hang-out-on-the-beach happy hours (with a book, not alcohol!), and living in flip flops!

I have some new recipes I’m going to try later this week and over the weekend… so I’ll share. And I’ll also share my gelatin update. Plus, I may or may not have a couple dates this week. I wish I had the guts to be totally unprofessional and tell you what a guy said to me last week—people can be unbelievable! Let’s just leave it that… Dating is not really fun most of the time…but it sure can be funny

One of my favorite foods is the avocado… and I have about 29 of them in my kitchen right now! Last weekend, while I was visiting my aunt and uncle, I went to the Fallbrook Avocado Festival (perfect timing for a visit!). My uncle and I walked downtown in the morning to check out the festival and to buy some avos.

I got 5 fuertes for $5 and 25 mini Hass for $5. The minis are a little bigger than a lemon, and the fuertes are huge! I don’t know about you, but I usually pay $5 for 2 avocados in the grocery store or at the farmer’s market!

I’m sure I’ll be sharing what I do with some of these avocados… the standards for me are guacamole (obviously), chocolate pudding, ice cream, smoothies, and even face masks (I’ll share the recipe for that soon!).

I’ve been wanting to host another avocado giveaway, and this was just the push I needed to do it. Of course, my favorite avocado ranch wasn’t at the festival—they’re quite a bit further north. I contacted Josh to see if we could do another giveaway, and he said yes… So here it is.

The winner will get a box of 8 California Avocados delivered to his/her door!

I love So Cal Avocados because they are a family owned avocado ranch, and now I live only a short drive from them! When I lived in New York, I belonged to the Avocado of the Month club, and I loved it! Until I found So Cal Avocados, I didn’t know how many different varieties of avos there are! Bacon and Fuerte are my favorite, but I love them all!

Since avocados are picked when they are still hard, they’re the perfect fruit (yes, they’re technically a fruit!) to send in the mail.

Even if you don’t win the giveaway… I recommend you check out the website for tips on how to store and ripen your avos, and also for some awesome recipes. My mom tried the avo stacker recipe and she said it was amazing!

Enter to win Avocados! (Leave a comment here for each thing you choose to do!)

Do any or all of the following: 

1. Sign up for my newsletter here (this earns you 5 entries!).

2. Tweet about the giveaway:

I entered to win FREE California Avocados, delivered to my door!  http://www.thrive-style.com/avocado @lisakbeach @socalavocados #avocados

3. Follow me on Pinterest and Pin this image (you may have to log in to pinterest before you do this):

Good luck! I hope you win!!! The winner will be chosen randomly on April 29, 2013.