Spicy Chicken & Peppers with Avocado Butter and Pineapple Greek Yogurt

For the last week I've been craving Mexican food. Although you can get Mexican food for pennies, I'd rather not calorie waste on the greasy restaurant stuff. My friend Nick sent me a recipe for what his family calls "Avocado Butter."

The Avocado Butter essentials are among the world's healthiest foods:

• Avocado - good for cholesterol, good source of potassium which helps regulate blood pressure, good source of folate which is important for heart health.
• Garlic - an excellent source of manganese, a very good source of vitamin B6 and vitamin C and a good source of selenium. Good for blood pressure, platelet aggregation, and cholesterol levels.
• Honey - a natural sweetener, anti-bacterial, cough suppressant, helpful for cholesterol levels.
• Olive Oil - helpful for cholesterol levels, an anti-inflammatory, prevents bone loss.

Talk about making your heart happy!

 

Nick's Recipe:

• 1 large avocado
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp honey
• 2 olive oil
• s&p to taste

Remove the avocado from its peel and pit. Mash with the back of a large fork. Add garlic, honey, and olive oil and stir until smooth. Add salt & pepper to your liking. Nick recommended using a blender but the fork worked just fine because my avocado had fully ripened.  The first time I made this I used all the ingredients, but this time I omitted the olive oil for a chunkier effect. Omitting the olive oil made it a much sweeter dip as the honey stood out more.

This took about 5 minutes from start to finish. I popped it in the refrigerator to let the flavors set in and headed to the gym. Once there, I did a 10 minute walking warm-up, 35-minute run, and spent about 15 minutes on abs. It's really hard to do more than that when you have Avocado Butter waiting for you!

For dinner, I cut up 8 oz chicken tenderloins, 1/2 red pepper, 1/2 yellow pepper, 2 gloves of garlic, and sauteed them with cumin, cayenne pepper, and balsamic vinegar. (Makes two servings.)

 

I decided to turn this into a wrap (fajitas?) and added the avocado butter and this key ingredient as a sour cream replacement:

Mmm! The pineapple flavor really cooled down the spiciness of the chicken. All the flavors combined so well that cheese wasn't necessary! I nibbled on some carrots as my side:

It tasted really good as a wrap and was quick to make!

I'm currently snacking on a Luna Bar: Peanut Butter Cookie. 

 

This bar definitely tastes like your typical peanut butter bar. It was a tasty treat with a perfect amount of crunch from the organic peanuts and sea salt.

The bottom layer adds delicious creaminess:

Question 1: 
Do you guys ever wake up starving? Lately, I have been waking up and running to the fridge. I'm trying to figure out if I'm not eating the night before or if it's because I'm going to the gym at night and my body requires more fuel. This doesn't happen on Mondays though - I guess I do a good job pigging out all weekend. 

Question 2:
It seems like the days I go to the gym looking extra-rough, hair a mess, wrinkled shirt, sweating 5 minutes in, are the days w/ tons of hotties and/or people I know. Not fair! It's only happened a couple times but stilllllll whyyyyyy? In the middle of abs I got some weird knot in my stomach and while I was laying on the floor pouring sweat, my friend suddenly stands over me saying "HI!!" Not even kidding, my response was "HI! I'm disgusting right now." Ohhhhh the gym look is HOT.