These honey roasted turmeric pepitas are the perfect combination of sweet and spicy and are loaded with the essential nutrients every endurance athlete needs but never gets enough of. Enjoy them on top of salads, soups, or by the handful when you’re on the go!

Nuts and seeds are an excellent snack to nosh on thanks to their high contents of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins. Omega-3 is an “essential” fatty acid, meaning your body requires it for good health but isn’t capable of producing it on its own. Our only choice is to ingest it- by consuming lots of foods with Omega 3’s like these honey roasted turmeric pepitas!

In addition to being “essential” for your health, consuming plenty of omega 3 (also known as polyunsaturated fatty acid) is essential to the performance of endurance athletes. Here’s why:

For starters, the body has a limited ability to store carbs. The average person can deplete their body’s carb reserves within two hours of moderate exercise. If you’re training for an Ironman, two hours is nothing! Luckily, your body has a much greater capacity to store fats. These fat stores, which are often stored in your muscles and liver, can contain over 50 times more energy compared carbohydrates.

Fat tends to be the predominant choice of fuel during lower intensity workouts. When you ramp up the intensity, carbohydrates become, and remain, you body’s main fuel source until you finish your workout. Of course, the level of intensity and heart rate in which this switch happens is different for everyone. The best way to determine this is to complete a lactate threshold or VO2 max test. If you’re wondering why your coach spends SO much time telling you to stick to your nutrition plan and keep your heart rate low the first half of your race, this is precisely why.

The moral of the story, make sure you’re eating healthy fats to fuel your 3 hour long bike ride this weekend and make this recipe!

The main ingredient in this snack mix, pepitas (AKA pumpkin seeds), are guaranteed to pull you out of any nut-rut you may find yourself stuck in.

Before you get to cooking, there are two things you need to know:

1. You need more pepitas in your life.

Pepitas are the richest natural source of magnesium. Why does this matter? Well, magnesium is a critical but often overlooked electrolyte. If your calves never fail cramp a few miles in or the bottom of your foot ALWAYS cramps while swimming, despite the gallons of electrolytes you’re consuming, chances are you’re not getting enough magnesium.

Magnesium imbalances are caused by drinking too much caffeine, alcohol, and surprisingly enough, too much water. That’s right- it is possible to drink so much water (especially the day before a big race) that you flush out all of your electrolytes! (This is why you should always alternate between H2O and an electrolyte drink.) Because sweat loss, as well as high intensity and endurance exercises also deplete magnesium levels, its important to incorporate magnesium into your everyday diet. What better way to start than with these honey roasted turmeric pepitas!

2. You can never have too much turmeric.

Well, I’m sure its possible to consume too much turmeric (disclosure: I’m not a doctor) but as far as I’m concerned you can never cook with too much turmeric! I love adding this inflammation fighting powerhouse to just about everything I cook. Its benefits include helping the body to fight inflammation and acting as an antioxidant. As an endurance athlete I’ll take all of the help fighting fatigue and sickness I can get!

I know you’re dying to make these, so I’ll keep the remaining commentary brief.

Please note that the recipe calls for a “heaping teaspoon” of both turmeric and curry powder. If you’re not sure what a “heaping teaspoon” is, look at the picture above. This is my way of saying a rounded teaspoon with lots of spices- don’t measure exactly. Add a little extra. I believe this is a trait I inherited from my Granny!

I personally love making a big batch of these on Sunday night to enjoy throughout the week… assuming they last that long! I’m a Trader Joe’s die hard and have found that one bag of their raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds will get me through about two batches of these bad boys. If you haven’t checked out Trader Joe’s bulk nut aisle, stop what you’re doing and do it now! You’ll never buy bulk nuts and sees anywhere else ever again.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do! Comment below and let me know!

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Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite super foods to cook. If you don’t believe me, ask my husband. In our 2+ years of marriage, there have only been a handful of times when sweet potatoes have not been included on our Sunday grocery list. Greg and I both love Pad Thai but don’t love the high levels of sodium and unhealthy ingredients used at restaurants. To make sure we could still get our Pad Thai fix, I concocted Sweet Potato Pad Thai; a healthier version of Pad Thai made with sweet potato noodles, colorful veggies doused in a creamy peanut sauce, topped with chicken for Greg and Tofu for me.

Sweet potatoes are one of my go-to’s because they provide a healthy dose of complex carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates take longer to digest, allowing them to supply the body with energy over a longer period of time. This slow process breaks complex carbs into glycogen and stored in your body’s liver and muscles to be used as fuel for exercise, which is key to fuel an endurance athlete’s body during long workouts or on race day. Sweet potatoes are also high in Vitamin A, which plays a vital role in bone growth, immune system health, and helps the skin and mucus membranes repel bacteria and viruses. If you remember one thing from this post, make sure to load up on sweet potatoes during flu season!

Other performance enhancing benefits of sweet potatoes are their anti-inflammatory and blood sugar regulating properties. Stress, too much exercise, injury, and poor food choices create inflammation within the body, which will wreck havoc on your heath and performance if not addressed properly. The best way to control inflammation is by keeping your blood sugar levels low and stable. To do this, aim to eat a full serving of sweet potatoes post work out when your glycogen levels are low.

Make a plate of Sweet Potato Pad Thai to restore depleted glycogen levels and help refuel your recovery needs so that your body is prepared to train hard for your next workout. By opting for foods like sweet potatoes instead of processed foods, white breads and avoiding anything with high fructose corn syrup, not only will you feel better, you’ll likely perform better too.

Now that you know why you need to eat more sweet potatoes, lets talk about how to transform them into Pad Thai. If you don’t have a spiralizer, I highly recommend you invest $30 and buy one. There are so many things you can make with a spiralizer, the options are endless… but I’ll save that for another post. If you don’t have a spiralizer you can buy pre-spiralized sweet potatoes at Central Market, Target, and Tom Thumb to name a few.

Before spiralizing your sweet potato, peel it and cut the ends off. If you’re working with a giant sweet potato, I suggest cutting it in half. You’ll need a nice flat surface so the sweet potato can stick (and remain stuck to) the teeth of the spiralizer on both ends (see picture above). Otherwise you’re likely to experience a situation where your sweet potato falls off the spiralizer forcing you to chase the rolling vegetable around the counter top. If you can catch it before it rolls off and onto the floor its your lucky day! Otherwise, you may need to make an emergency grocery trip… trust me, I know from experience. That said, you won’t need to worry about this as long as you cut your sweet potato so that it has nice, flat ends and make sure it is tightly attached to your spiralizer.

As mentioned above, you have the option to make this dish with chicken or tofu. Before you begin spiralizing, chopping, or preparing the peanut sauce, I recommend cutting your chicken breast and/or tofu and letting it soak in the marinade. If you’re making a chicken version AND a tofu version make sure you cut and marinade each option separately to avoid cross-contamination from the raw chicken. I recommend cooking these in separate pans, but if you insist on using only one to limit the number of dishes to clean (we often do this in my household) make sure you cook the tofu first!

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What’s your favorite way to cook sweet potatoes? Comment below- I’d love to hear from you!

Month: February 2018

Honey Roasted Turmeric Pepitas

1. You need more pepitas in your life.

2. You can never have too much turmeric.

Sweet Potato Pad Thai