Ansley’s 2022 Holiday Gift Guide
We are continuing our holiday gift guide series with this post! It is my favorite time of the year and I always seem to have items for my kitchen and for self-care on my Christmas list each year. I am excited to share with you some of my very favorite (and regularly used) essential items.
Day Seven: On the seventh Day of Christmas we are wishing for…
an Instant Pot Duo Crisp 11-in-1 Air Fryer and Electric Pressure Cooker Combo
This bad boy is a multitasker in the kitchen! It is a pressure cooker, an air fryer and a slow cooker all wrapped into one handy appliance. If you haven’t yet jumped on the Instant Pot bandwagon, what are you waiting for?! There are several other additional features that I don’t often use, but it can also be used to sauté, cook sous vide items and make yogurt (to name a few). I typically use my Instant Pot AT LEAST twice a week and I am so thankful for the ease it brings to my meal preparation (especially when we’re all going different directions in the evenings). My favorite (read: EASY) thing to make in my Instant Pot is shredded chicken. I like to batch cook this chicken and make sure to cook enough for two or three meals to feed my family in a week.
Ansley’s Too Easy Shredded Chicken
3-5 lbs of chicken (I use a combination of thighs and breasts)
1-2 cups of chicken bone broth
Decent amount of sea salt (maybe around two teaspoons? I just sprinkle some. I’m not scared to use a good amount of salt to season meat, but you know your body and if you require a low-sodium diet, please adjust your amount accordingly)
Drizzle of avocado oil
Cook chicken on the high pressure cooker feature for 12-15 minutes (if frozen or partially frozen let it cook for 15 minutes). Allow Instant Pot to depressurize naturally after cooking. Once the pressure has dropped, open pot and shred chicken. You can enjoy this chicken as is with any sides of your choosing. Sometimes our family adds a simple BBQ sauce. I also like to use this chicken to make chicken soup, shredded chicken tacos, and chicken salad. You can add it to salads or bowls. It’s versatile and really makes mealtimes easy!
Day Two: On the second day of Christmas, we are wishing for…
Beautycounter Dew Skin
Several years ago, I was introduced to Beautycounter skin products. Beautycounter is committed to clean beauty and skincare products. This matters because your skin is your largest organ. What you put on it is absorbed into the bloodstream. If you are use products with a lot of sketchy ingredients (and MOST beauty products have a lot of ingredients that you don’t want on your skin), then your overall toxic load for your body is higher. This means your liver has to detoxify these chemicals and it adds burden to the liver (which, by the way, the liver is an amazing organ! If you don’t know all that it does for you constantly, please take a minute to research more about it). Every little bit counts when it comes to cleaning up what we put IN and ON our bodies.
Dew Skin is my favorite Beautycounter product. I use it daily as a moisturizer, light coverage, and for sun protection. I don’t like the feel of a lot of makeup, so this product works perfectly. It is light, safe for my skin and gives me a little bit of tinted coverage for my face.
You can visit Beautycounter here to see all that this brand has to offer! I like to stock up when Beautycounter runs their sales throughout the year.
Day Three: On the third day of Christmas, we are wishing for…
Cassy Joy Garcia’s books, Cook Once Eat All Week and
Cook Once Dinner Fix
Batch cooking can make all of the difference in the world when it comes to feeding your family healthy meals on a consistent basis. Do I batch cook all of the time? No. Do I wish I did? Yes! I go through phases of being very organized with batch cooking and phases where I’m figuring out dinner at 5:30pm. Can anyone relate? (Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) I can say that when I batch prep regularly, the stress of hearing, “Mom, what’s for dinner?” is gone and my family eats better on a consistent basis.
Cassy Joy Garcia’s book, Cook Once Eat All Week, is a great resource when planning ahead and batch cooking. Cassy Joy includes healthy meal plans, shopping lists and recipes for each week based on a protein and a couple of sides. You batch prep on the weekend (or whatever day suits your schedule best) and then you have the ingredients ready to go for several meals throughout the week.
Cassy Joy also has another book, Cook Once Dinner Fix, that simplifies batch prepping even more. I highly recommend both books and her website Fed and Fit.
Book links: Cook Once Eat All Week and Cook Once Dinner Fix
Day Four: On the fourth day of Christmas, we are wishing for…
An Oura Ring
Some people like to know ALL. OF. THE. THINGS. about how their bodies work. I am one of those people. Tell me more and let me see how I can improve or bio hack a little bit more to improve my health. The more you know, right? If you aren’t one of these people, feel free to skip this suggestion!
I recently received an Oura Ring from my husband and children for my birthday. Christina recommended this to me and after seeing the Oura Ring app, I was sold!
The Oura Ring is worn at all times (except when charging which only needs to be done every five to seven days) and I feel the most valuable information I gain from it is from the overnight times. It tracks my sleep and lets me know how much sleep I got in a night. It also tells me how much type of each sleep I got (light sleep, REM sleep and deep sleep). This information is fascinating for me to see and so informative. I receive a “readiness score” for each day based on my sleep and level of body restoration I received from my sleep. I know whether I can tailor my workouts to be lighter or more intense based on this readiness score. I have learned in the past year that working out more often, harder, and longer is NOT always the answer. Sometimes my body requires me to treat it a little more gently. Watching my readiness score on my Oura Ring combined with how I feel really guides my activity and movement for the day. Some days my body can do a HIIT workout or a heavier strength training workout. Some days my body needs a walk. Some days require complete rest from workouts. I love having the information from my Oura Ring to help guide me with what my individual body needs from me that day.
Visit Oura Ring to learn more and if you’re a body information junkie like me, you may want to add this to your Christmas list this year!
Day Five: On the fifth day of Christmas, we are wishing for…
The Always Pan from Our Place
The Always Pan by Our Place is a kitchen staple in our house. I use it every day, sometimes multiple times in a day. With the Always Pan you can braise, sear, steam, strain, sauté, fry, boil, serve, and store foods.
I love this pan because it is non-toxic and that is very important to me as I feed my family (PSA: if you’re cooking with Teflon, throw your cookware away and add this pan to your Christmas list, stat! Just spend a little bit of time researching consequences of cooking with Teflon so you are well-informed about the risks associated with this type of cookware).
The Always Pan is made with a nonstick ceramic coating without potentially toxic materials like PFOAs, PTFEs, other PFAs, lead, cadmium and toxic metals. It comes with a steamer basket, locking lid, and a wood spatula with a built-in spoon rest. Bonus: you get to pick what color matches your personal style and kitchen the best. Can you guess what color Christina and I both have? (yes, we had a conversation about this recently and discovered we both have this exact pan in the same color, ha!). What’s not to love?
Visit The Always Pan by Our Place to learn more!
Day Six: On the sixth day of Christmas, we are wishing for…
A ButcherBox Membership
It is important to me to feed my family with high-quality pastured, wild-caught, 100% grass-fed meats. I source these meats from a couple of places. One these places is through my box subscription to ButcherBox.
ButcherBox only works “with companies and farmers that are dedicated to doing the right thing—never cutting corners, and always looking for ways to improve” (from the ButcherBox website). This means the meat you receive from ButcherBox comes from farms where the animals are treated humanely and live unstressed, happy little animal lives as they are supposed to live (not in crowded, unsanitary, stressful factory farms). This commitment to natural environments for the animals translates into healthier meat for you and your family when it makes it to your table.
You can choose what size box you want to receive, the cuts of meat you want in your box, and how often you want to receive your box. You can change what you receive in each box from order to order. ButcherBox lets you know when your box is about to bill and once it does bill, it is generally delivered in one to two days. The meat arrives frozen and packed in dry ice. I love stocking up on meat in the freezer; this is one way to ensure that I am always prepared with something to feed my family. Some of our favorites include: wild caught salmon, 100% grass-fed burgers, pastured chicken (thighs, wings, and breasts) and uncured bacon. I like to add a pastured turkey and uncured ham to my box around the holidays.
Check out ButcherBox here to receive $30 off of a box. Bonus: ButcherBox often runs “for life” specials upon signing up. My family received chicken wings for life when we signed up a few years ago. We get three pounds of chicken wings in each box at no extra cost!