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Crystal's Food Blog


Hello! I'm Crystal and I love making and eating food. My yellow friend Chocobo is my Sous-Chef and food taster; he is also currently sitting on a dumbbell, thus making it harder to lift.

I live in Tampa, FL and have a B.S. in Chemistry, 3/4 of an M.D., personal training cert, and currently am working happily as a software engineer! I chose to put up this blog because I would love to share some recipes for motivation to others' to cook and enjoy their food more. I do a lot of design and Photoshop also as a hobby (shhhh.. camera phone + Photoshop <= SLR? Maybe?).

Also I am very interested in nutrition and fitness and want to share some of the knowledge I've acquired about it over time so maybe it'll help someone out! I love to cook because there is a lot of creativity and fun to be had in organizing the food and what order you can do the cooking tasks to get everything all done without (much?) burnt food. I try and make things that are relatively healthy and quick but some of the dishes are very fun and more difficult ethnic ones. The great thing about cooking is that you always learn something new and you can constantly improve your skills. It's a great way to bring people together and to have a little fun at random intervals of the day.

I put some emphasis on different diet styles such as GF and FODMAP. And many of the dishes are also carb-free or can be adjusted to be carb free. It just gives everyone some options! We all have different lifestyles and choices in diet for what would make us feel our best. I make sure to cite my research articles as I do come from a heavy science background and I would like very much to only put supported evidence based articles. Please let me know if you find a new article that counteracts ones I may have here. I have organized the pages by tags where you can choose to only see recipes that are of a certain diet/dish type/meal type/speed to cook/etc.

My fitness activities/festivities have included HS varsity swim and dive team, college cross country, Disney 26.2 mile marathon (NEVER again), weight lifting (every single week!), surfing (I take a big board of wood and get tossed around), boxing (training, no sparring. I don't want to get hit in the face), tennis (GET THE YELLOW BALL), a NPC competition, and getting a personal training certification. I do believe that diet is about 80% of maintaining a certain weight but of course exercise will help overall fitness and is tons of fun to do. A lot of diet is appetite control, reducing stress, and getting a good nights' rest. I have noticed from constantly browsing bodybuilding.com many people who all have the same diets and same foods they eat, and I think everyone thinks you have to eat those foods only because those are the 'good ones.' The problem is.. if you hate those foods its easy to cheat on a diet and then it negates even trying to eat better. It is important to find foods that YOU enjoy and can stick to in order to change your lifestyle habits. Nothing.. ever, ever, ever will convince me that I will eat chicken breast and canned tuna on a salad to stay in shape. However, I sure do like frozen peas (A LOT!). And no I haven't seen anyone else eat those, but I know they have a lot of fiber and protein, and very little salt. So make sure you craft yourself eating habits you know you can keep up long term over the years and decades and avoid fad diets/foods you don't enjoy. There are plenty of healthy options out there. If you compare chicken breast to chicken thigh (4 oz. each boneless and skinless) you'll notice that its about 10-15 calories difference. Well shoot, I hate chicken breast but I sure do like chicken thigh. I think I'll go with the chicken thigh and take the stairs or move my computer mouse a little more.. its a negligible difference but makes me happier.

What do I eat day to day?
Honestly I am very simple and will cook myself some ground turkey, throw in frozen peas, and some sort of sauce like teriyaki and roll it up into a high fiber/protein tortilla and eat that for breakfast/dinner then go out to coworkers for lunch and find a nice meaty salad. Or I will mix some protein (I enjoy Phase 8 chocolate) into some microwave oatmeal. When I have the time I really enjoy making special dishes but often its hard to do with work. That is why there is a lot of variety in the dishes from fancy to something clever you can cook in a toaster oven at work ;).

Thank you for checking out my food blog. If you are interested in software programming (C#, Java, SQL, etc) / currently work in software you would likely enjoy my home page link below. Cooking is one of my loves as a hobby but software is where I spend most of my time and I love what I do as a career.


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