Blasts of Light

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My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is really all the gratitude that goes around. Nothing is better than getting texts from your friends about how grateful they are to have you in their life. But why should we wait for just one day a year to share all we’re grateful for?! I say write a list of your top 10 things your grateful for and read it over every morning. Can you think of a more wonderful way to start off your day? Give it a whirl, here’s my list!

1. YOU! Where would I be with out my lovely Go Sweet and Skinny readers?! Many of you have been with me for years watching the growth and evolution of the site (and me!) and for that I’m eternally grateful. It’s so inspiring to see how many people read the blog and to hear from you guys trying out all my recipes! It makes my heart smile everyday just thinking about you!

2. My family! I am so blessed to have a wonderful, caring and supportive family. They always have my back and I couldn’t ask for a better bunch of people to be related to. Their loving guidance is never more than a phone call away and their doors are always open.

3. My friends! I have always been so lucky when it comes to surrounding myself with wonderful, supportive and loving people. My old friends have been with me through thick and thin, I’m so grateful for their continuous love and support regardless of how crazy out lives have been! This year I’ve had the pleasure of making a TON of new friends through business endeavors and experiences and it has been nothing short of spectacular having these peeps in my life. You guys all know who you are and I love you all oodles!

4. My boyfriend! I’ve only known my boyfriend a few months but I’m incredibly grateful to have him in my life. He is such a loving, caring and supportive presence and it’s priceless having a partner who makes you smile day in and day out. Our stress free loving relationship is the best gift a girl could ask for.

5. Charlie! This little guy ( my westie puppy) lives with my parents and I can not wait to receive all his licks and cuddles when I’m home for the holidays!

6. My health coaching clients! I have the best clients in the world. They inspire me everyday with their hard work and determination to take care of themselves and their bodies. I truly feel most alive when I’m working with you guys! You make my heart smile!

7. My gurus! Gabby Bernstein, Kris Carr, Marie Forleo, Lynan Saperstein, Danielle LaPorte, Marianne Williamson and beyond. These kick ass, trailblazing women blow my mind day after day and inspire me to follow my heart and live my dreams. I have an amazing life doing what I love and I truly have these amazing role models to thank for keeping me on track and inspired day after day!

8. My healthy body! Virgil had it right when he said,” the greatest wealth is health”. I’m very grateful for my healthy body and strong immune system. It’s something we all to often take for granted till it leaves us.

9. Meditation and yoga!
I’ve always had a love affair with yoga but I truly got married to meditation this year and it has completely changed my life. Meditation has given me relief and piece of mind that I never thought possible. It truly empowers me to live my best life and I’m grateful the universe brought it into my life this year.

10. ABC! This year I was blessed with the tremendous opportunity of appearing on abc’s The Taste. In my audition, not only did I get to make my famous vegan cupcakes on network TV but I had the honor of watching such famous foodies like Anthony Bourdain, Nigella Lawson, Marcus Samuelson and Ludo Lefebvre eat them! Words can’t express my gratitude or the love I have for all of the amazing people I met while out in LA. They will truly be in my life forever – love you guys!!

I don’t know about you but I’m glowing just thinking about all these wonderful blessings I have in my life! Do yourself a favor and take a moment to do this yourself. It’s a lovely way to start each day and a great tool for turning a frown upside down.

In honor of GoSweetandSkinny.com’s Fall of Fitness, I’ve called in women’s weight lifting guru and certified personal trainer (and one of my lovely girlfriends!), Kaitlin Holiday to answer a few questions about working out for us less than savvy gym goers! Stay tuned for the whole series, this particular video is about HOW TO NOT BE INTIMIDATED BY THE WEIGHT ROOM 🙂

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I don’t know about you but as soon as the NYC winter starts coming, so do my intense cravings for hot cocoa! Ever since I was a kid I’ve absolutely LOVED hot chocolate! Never was a big fan of chocolate milk or sugary beverages but once the temperature got low, I craved that sweet, body warming goodness all too frequently!

Of course, I needed to come up with a healthier alternative and a dairy free one to boot! So once the NYC winter temps started rearing their ugly heads earlier this week, I got to experimenting! Oh, such hard work I had to do, drinking all that dairy free hot cocoa! Here’s my favorite concoction – the picture does not do it justice! Sadly my whipped coconut cream and sprinkles of vegan, gluten free chocolate chips melted and sunk to the bottom before I could grab the camera. However, I’m sure you’ll be seeing a lot more of these beauties on Instagram this winter!

Dairy Free Hot Cocoa
ingredients per single serving
1 cup of almond milk
3 tbsps of unsweetened cocoa powder (my favorite is Valrhona Cacao powder!)
1 can of coconut milk
Handful of mini chocolate chips

Easy as pie to make! First, pour your can of coconut milk into your mixer, place a towel over the head and keep it whipping at medium speed. This will whip your coconut milk while you heat your hot chocolate. If your coconut isn’t getting thick you can add a tsp of xantham gum to help it along. Next, heat your almond milk on the stove in a small saucepan and stir in your cocoa till it’s your favorite temp and chocolatey-ness. When your hot cocoa is done, place it in a mug, dollop some of your whipped coconut milk and sprinkle some mini vegan chocolate chips! Perfect! You have a delicious, sweet winter treat with out all the bad stuff, so you can enjoy it all season long guilt free!

In honor of GoSweetandSkinny.com’s Fall of Fitness, I’ve called in women’s weight lifting guru and certified personal trainer (and one of my lovely girlfriends!), Kaitlin Holiday to answer a few questions about working out for us less than savvy gym goers! Stay tuned for the whole series, this particular video is about WHY WOMEN SHOULD WEIGHT LIFT 🙂

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              I’m spontaneously inspired to write a blog post about my lovely afternoon with Tara from Skinnybytara.com and Jordan from TheBlondVegan.com. These two lovely ladies joined me in Central Park to talk about our healthy, happy lives and businesses, oh and I also interviewed them both for GoSweetandSkinnyTV!(So you can totally look forward to that soon!) It really hit me how wonderful it is to surround yourself with POSITIVE, HEALTHY, EMPOWERING people.
hjkhkjkThere is a famous quote that goes something like,You become most like the five people you spend the most time with, choose them wisely.” While, I’m not positive it’s limited to just five, I think it’s really important to surround yourself with an awesome group of people who support your values. When you are starting along your wellness journey it is even MORE important to find some happy, healthy comrades to keep you company along the way. Having a great support group can be the difference between having fun while you get healthy (the girls and I already discussed smoothie parties, yoga dates and full on kitchen playtime!) and feeling alone and frustrated while trying to make healthier choices. I know it may seem scary at first but reach out! Make friends in yoga class, follow healthy gurus like myself, @skinnybytara and @theblondevegan on instagram or facebook and create a community for yourself. There are so many wonderful opportunities to connect with other wonderful, happy, healthy ladies and I promise to start being more proactive in helping spread the word about events for us to connect. For now, start the conversation on my facebook page or tweet at us (@gosweetnskinny,@theblondevegan,@skinnybytara) let us be YOUR sweet + skinny sisters!

Peace, Love and Cupcakes,

Cassandra

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“Everything we do is infused with the energy we do it with” – wise words from one of my spiritual gurus, Miss Marianne Williamson! Hit all too close to home this morning when I overslept my alarm and woke up when I was supposed to be on my way to set for the day. Absolutely worst way to wake up, right?! Despite having set at least five alarms, my body obviously didn’t feel like cooperating this AM. Naturally, I’m frantic, trying to remedy the situation and completely beating myself up but as soon as I caught my breath and was on my way I had to have a mini intervention. First, I serendipitously saw this quote and secondly, I knew that there was nothing my self-loathing was helping at the moment. So I put my big girl panties on, took a few deep breathes and allowed myself to be human. In that minute I made the choice to continue the rest of my day in peace instead of letting that frantic energy resonate with everything I did for the rest of the day. I hope this can inspire and move you to face your Mondays (and any other days) with love and peace. Maybe you can do one better than me and make that choice for peace before you get too far into that negative spiral! Our days will go as positively as our mindset allows, so let’s all have Marvelous Monday!

Peace, Love and Cupcakes,

Cassandra

Watch me make this EASY, healthy and VEGAN Halloween treat! Your friends, your kids, everyone at your Halloween is going to fall in love with this adorable, good for you treat!

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Laugh away baby. It’s a thousand percent true! You know that person in your life that always seems to get a ton of things accomplished in the same twenty-four hours you might as well of sleepwalked through? They don’t have some secret pass to stop time just to get more done and make people like you feel inadequate! They just manage their time wisely.
And guess what?!
So can you!! How? Well it’s the same way you manage anything! Want to see why you’re not losing weight? Write down what your eating so you can see all those extra calories you’re not considering. Want to know why your bank account is embarrassingly small? Well you would write your income and expenses down, right? So why not write down HOW YOU SPEND YOUR TIME?!

Try it! For one week, bare with me and log how you spend every hour of the day and then at the end of the week go back and look for “wasted” time. Anything you think could be a better use of your time and circle it. Now Write down all those things you’d LOVE to get done and start inserting them into those circles spots! Give it a shot. It can totally change the way you use your time. 😉

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I was reading yoga journal on the subway this morning and this quote really stuck out for me and I knew I needed to share it! A really amazing and eye opening exercise to try today is sitting down and jotting a list of “who you are”. Who do you say you are? What are your best qualities and what are your worst? Completely unfiltered and real, how do you define yourself? Go ahead, try it! No, really, stop reading this and grab a piece of paper or start writing in the notes app on your phone. Okay, once you’ve got the list, go through and circle or star any of the things that are not serving you. What on that list is getting in the way of the person you want to be?!

Guess what?

Those things you circled, THEY ARE NOT YOU. They are things you have decided about yourself! And the beauty of that is, now it’s time to go back and decide differently. So now return to that list and replace all those qualities that aren’t working for your life with ones that will. It’s that simple. All you have to do is change your mind and COMMIT to that. It’s a great practice to read these new qualities once a day or at times where you are struggling to stay connected with them so that slowly and surely they will be melded into who you have chosen to be.

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Kicking off our #quoteoftheday! Are you peaceful? Life can be chaotic and we can’t always control what’s going on out there in the world BUT we can control how it effects our internal environment. I challenge you to take a minute today and choose to remain peaceful on the inside. Take notice of when things in your life stir you up and how it feels when you make the conscious choice for PEACE! 🙂

 

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It happens to the best of us, we’re chugging along so well with our healthy habits, meditating, drinking our green juice , exercising regularly and then it happens, something crashes into our life like a ton of bricks and we are instantly off track! It could be for a bad reason like a break up, ill family member or just maybe a funk at work OR sometimes it’s even for a good reason, like you fell in love, are on vacation or have been going out with friends a lot but either way your wonderful HAPPY, HEALTHY routine is disturbed and you fall off course. Now, the first step to getting back on track is simple, realize you’ve fallen off track. Nope, this isn’t an AA meeting but it’s still the first step to solving any problem in your life, haha. So now that you’ve admitted that you’ve fallen off track, you’ve made the conscious decision to get back on track, let me take you through my personal steps to realigning your life!

1. FORGIVE YOURSELF. Get over it! It happened, maybe you gained 10lbs, maybe you lost your zen, whatever it is it is and you beating yourself up about it is helping NO ONE. So give it up! Whether you want to sit in a self-forgiveness meditation, envision yourself as a carefree child and heal yourself that way or you simply want to take a moment to yourself and tell that little voice in your head to shut the f**ck up – is totally up to you. Just accept that you are human, it’s not the end of the world and Cassandra is here to help.

2. ASSESS THE SITUATION. What happened? Why did you fall off track? Is it still going on or are you back to your regularly scheduled programming? If it’s over and done with, wooo hoo! I’m glad you had your fun and are ready to get back to the norm. If it’s still going on, you’re on a month long vaca, still in a new relationship or still dealing with grief, then you need to accept that this might be the normal for now and it’s time to get back to feeling good! Having a “splurge day” here and there is wonderful but when they start piling up one after another you will start feeling it’s effects on your system. No one wants to be sluggish, moody and heavier regardless of the situation. Getting back on track with your healthy habits will make you feel so much better!

3. GET MOVING. It’s not always easy to jump back into your old gym routine when you’ve been binging on junk food for days but even a long walk in the park will put you in a better place. Start off by doing your favorite version of working out. Mine is usually going to yoga class or just doing some yoga moves on my own and getting out in nature and doing some sort of cardio but you can do whatever appeals to you. As long as you start making an effort to get your body moving, give yourself a week or so to ween back into your usual exercise routine.

4. GO GREEN. Chances are your body is desperately missing some greens! We forget all about them when we fall off track and stop eating fresh foods from the earth and our body can’t help but feel the negative effects. Best thing you can do? Grab some green juice ASAP! If that’s too crazy for you, of course you can just start incorporating more green in to your plate but a nice juice is great because it gives you an insta-greenboost! Pledge to eat at least three green veggies a day and stick to it!!

5. COMMIT TO A ROUTINE. Now your moving, feeling better and getting some green in to you so take the final step and make a commitment to yourself to keep it up! It can be as small as promising to be active 30 minutes a day or a pledge to go to spinning class every morning and not eat processed foods. Listen to your body and decide what’s right for you. Big or small, making a promise to yourself will keep you on track and remind you to stay on track!

I certainly fell a bit off course while I was in LA. It was SO easy with most of my meals coming from whatever I could grab after filming and then wanting to indulge in “fat days” with the boys on the weekend but whenever I took a breather, got myself to the gym or found some green juice, I was instantly reminded of why I love my ‘normal routine’. I feel better, I’m happier and healthier when I’m putting good plant based foods in my body and meditating and exercising daily! I’m back on track and couldn’t be happier. I hope these steps help you, please feel free to comment below, I’d love to hear about your journey and what your biggest struggles for getting back in to your healthy habits have been!

This Dijon-Balsamic Salmon with Orange-Lentil Salad is actually relatively simple and a great light, healthy dinner! Plus, if you’re cooking for one or just have leftovers of the lentil salad, you can eat it the next day for lunch or poach some eggs on top of it for a delicious breakfast. Delicious and multi-purpose, oh my!

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Dijon-Balsamic Salmon with Orange-Lentil Salad

2 medium sized oranges

5 tsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar

a pinch or two of sea salt

dijon mustard (1/2 tsp for salad – about 2 per piece of salmon)

a pinch or two of freshly grounded black pepper

1 can of lentils or 16oz

2 sprigs of finely chopped mint

1/2 of a medium sized red onion, chopped

Salmon – as many pieces as you need, skin removed

To start off, preheat your oven to 400 degrees for the salmon. In a bowl, squeeze the juice out of your two oranges. Grate a bit of the skin and let the tiny pieces of zest fall into your orange juice. Add your oil, vinegar, salt, 1/2 tsp of mustard and pepper and gently stir in your lentils, chopped mint and onion. Add more seasoning to your taste.

Put your salmon fillets in a foil lined baking pan. Lightly sprinkling salt and pepper on each side. In a separate bowl add equal parts dijon mustard and balsamic vinegar to taste and depending on how many salmon fillets your making. Brush the balsamic mustard on your fish liberally and stick them in the oven! They should be just about cooked through around 8-10 minutes. Serve on top of lentils and optionally garnish with some mint sprigs and an orange slice, you know, if you want to be all fancy. 😉