My favorite kitchen gadgets

I know that the majority of my posts in this blog are about my workout, but nutrition is very important as well. Sometimes it’s not always easy to keep my nutrition on track but I have a few kitchen gadgets that make it much easier! So this blog post is dedicated to my favorite kitchen gadgets! If I mention a brand name, I’m just mentioning it for the heck of it. I’m not getting paid, I’m just sharing my opinion! ^_^

My food scale is super helpful. I bought a digital food scale (I believe mine is Hamilton Beach) at Kitchen Collections at the Cincinnati Premium Outlet in Monroe, Ohio. It was a bit cheaper than any other digital food scale I had seen at Target, Walmart, Kroger and other places. I think I paid around $15 for it. Total steal! And it’s so helpful because it gives me the exact weight of whatever it is I’m weighing up to 11 pounds. I totally recommend having a scale, whether it’s digital or not. I had bought two non-digital scales previously and neither one lasted a very long time. The first one was because I dropped it and the second one, I think it got messed up from having things at on top of it. I’ve had the digital one for about a month and I love it!

Another kitchen gadget that I love isn’t really a gadget, it’s a kitchen necessity. Measuring cups. They’re great and yes, a total necessity in the kitchen. I measure out everything to make sure that I’m not getting too much or cheating myself. ;). When I eyeball, I tend to give myself way too much or way too less and measuring cups just make things easier.

I love using blender and a mini food chopper. My blender isn’t anything special, it’s just your average blender but I can make so much with it. Smoothies, milkshakes, protein drinks. The same with my mini-chopper. I didn’t spend an arm and a leg, it’s just your average little chopper but it works great. I love chopping up chicken to make chicken salad. I want to chop up some cauliflower and try to make the cauliflower pizza crust sometime but I might need a slightly bigger one (or will have to do it several times!). Both are really helpful.

Another favorite of mine is my pineapple slicer. I got a pineapple slicer earlier this summer and that this is great. I got a really simple and cheap one from Walmart that I was really nervous about breaking but it works great! I have cut up a pineapple without the slicer one time. I never forgot. It was HARD. I’lll be the first to admit that dicing and slicing are NOT my strong points; it takes me probably a full five minutes to dice up a tomato for a salad, so that might be part of my difficulties with slicing pineapple but the slicer still is AMAZING. Plus it’s really fun to take the skin part of the pine apple and drink out of it. ;)

And last night not least, my all time favorite kitchen gadget is my julienne slicer/peeler. I’ve mentioned this thing before when I posted about my zucchini noodles but mentioning it again because IT IS AMAZING. I can take a zucchini or a summer squash and make some yummy noodles out of the vegetables and it’s just great. I’m definitely a pasta girl, but the zucchini and squash noodles are amazing alternatives and most of the time once I get a little bit of cheese and some spaghetti sauce on it, I don’t even notice (that much) that I’m not eating real pasta. And you can used the julienne for so much more, too.

So there ya go. My favorite kitchen gadgets (or kitchen necessities in the case of measuring cups). I truly believe that these things have really helped make a major difference in my journey. Really simple things, like making sure I have the right measurements or weight, having a tool to have food alternatives, a pineapple slicer to make life easier (and more fun, I mean, come on, doesn’t drinking out of a pineapple sound fun).

Do you have a favorite kitchen gadget?

Jillian Michaels Yoga Meltdown - Level 1

The other day I decided to take a break from the treadmill and Shred It With Weights since my knee and quad have been a bit sore. I went back and forth on what workout to do and decided to give Yoga Meltdown another try. I don’t own the DVD (I do own Yoga Inferno) but Level 1 is on Youtube. 

I still feel like a total n00b when it comes to yoga. I’ve never taken a class and I’m still not 100% confident that I have the poses down correctly, but with that said, I was definitely more confident this time around than I was the last time I did it. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m more flexible than I was the last time or stronger or because I’ve done Yoga Inferno, which from what I understand is like yoga on uppers. :P

Like all Jillian DVD’s, this one has a girl doing advanced moves and another doing modified versions. It starts with a quick warm up that includes chair pose, stretches to warm up your hips, and chaturanga pushups. After the warmup is the first circuit, where you go in and out of poses (“rep it out” as Jillian calls it) and then you do a power pose where you hold the pose for 15 seconds. Circuit one has you popping in and out of crescent pose, doing knee thrusts/donkey kick in downward dog, and then chaturanga pushups. You repeat on the opposite side. After you repeat on the opposite side, she has you do two sun salutations and then you’re ready for circuit two.

Circuit two has you popping in and out of warrior 2, going in and out of camel, and then side planks, where you hold each pose at the end for 15 seconds. You repeat it again on the opposite side. Afterwards, two more sun salutations and then you move on to circuit three. 

In circuit three you’re popping in and out of warrior 3, and then you’re in an ab hold on your elbows doing dolphin (I still love to hate dolphin! Reminded me of Killer Body core workout), and then in and out of locust pose. Repeat on the opposite side, and end it with two sun salutations. And then you’re ready for a cooldown. 

I’ll be honest: Yoga Meltdown is not my favorite. As gross as it sounds, I love getting hot and sweaty after a workout, I love feeling like my heart is about to pop out of my chest. I don’t get that with Yoga Meltdown. It does feel a bit too easy for me. BUT I did feel very relaxed and stretched out! But I will say that the next day, I noticed that my body felt a bit sore. What?! I don’t get that very often anymore, so that opened my eyes that maybe I’m using muscles I haven’t used in a while. So while there was no part of the workout I felt like I was going to die, I wasn’t gargling my heart (a favorite Jillian quote of mine, hahah!), the next day, I still felt it some. I think I might actually do this one a little more often, maybe once every couple of weeks.