Post-holiday smoothie

Our almost-two-full-weeks at the beach came to a sad end yesterday. We had perfect autumn Queensland weather with warm, sunny days. We spent our days by the beach, building sandcastles and splashing in the warm ocean. 

The downside to being on holidays was food related. For the first time in three months I strayed away from a pure plant-based diet by eating cheese and chocolate. I'm not going to beat myself up over this. So today I'm back to whole-plant based eating. 

And is there any better way to start then with a delicious smoothie? I'm desperate for some greens and usually I would as kale or baby spinach to my breakfast smoothie. But since we haven't done a grocery shop yet, I'm left with whatever is still viable after sitting in the fridge for 10 days. And that, my friends, was cos (romaine) lettuce. I pulled away the outer leaves which weren't looking too good and underneath there were crunchy lettuce leaves - perfect for a smoothie I get that this may seem a little strange to some of you (kinda like how lettuce soup seems a little weird) but rest assured, you don't even know that it is in there. 

I always try to have frozen bananas on hand, as well as bags of frozen fruit. I had medjool dates that I brought home with me from our holiday. So I blended frozen banana, frozen blueberries, two pitted medjool dates, a teaspoon of cacao, cos lettuce and 500ml (2 cups) of ice water. 

What a perfect start to a Sunday morning.  

INGREDIENTS:

• frozen bananas
• frozen or fresh blueberries
• 1 tbs of cacao
• handful of greens (baby spinach, kale, cos lettuce etc)
• 2 cups of water (add more or less depending on how thick you like it)

METHOD:

Place all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. 

Recipe: Cinnamon sugar popovers

This recipe is from David Lebovitz. 

Makes 6 regular popovers and 9 muffin tin popovers.

for the popovers:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 large eggs, at room temperature (I used jumbo eggs)
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon salt (I used Maldon)
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup flour

for the sugar coating: 
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 210 degrees C and liberally butter a popover pan. If you don’t have a popover pan justnuse a standard muffin tin. Note: You will want to heavily butter your pan, even if it’s a non-stick popover pan, otherwise the popovers will stick and be hard to get out.

In the blender, add 2 tablespoons melted butter, 3 eggs, 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar and blend for a few seconds.  Don't add the flour yet!

Add the 1 cup flour and blend for about 10 seconds, just until smooth.

Pour the batter into the popover cups filling them 1/2 to 2/3rds full. If you’re using a muffin tin then divide the batter among the 9 greased molds, filling each to 2/3rds full.

Put the popovers into the oven and bake for 35 minutes, or until the popovers are deep brown. Do not open the oven door during baking, as this will cause the popovers to deflate.

While the popovers are baking, prepare your sugar and cinnamon mixture by combining 2/3 cup of sugar with the 1 teaspoon of cinnamon in a large shallow bowl and mix the two together (I used a fork).   Cut the butter into small pieces, so it melts faster, and set it in a ramekin or small bowl. Set these both aside until the popovers come out of the oven.

Remove the popovers from the oven, wait a few minutes until they are cool enough to handle, then remove them from the pans and set them on a cooling rack.

Melt the butter in the microwave and brush a popover with the butter.   Then roll the popover in the cinnamon sugar mixture and place on a wire rack to cool. 

We ate them straight away and they were more than delicious!

Date, oatmeal and walnut balls

Lately I have been only eating three meals a day - and it is really hard some days, especially when I have gone for a run in the morning.  Plus I need something for my daughter to snack on in between her dance classes on a Saturday morning.  We had a meltdown last week when the hunger monster overtook all sense and reason (and that was just me!). 

So I decided to jump on the ol' bandwagon and make some raw balls.  I know that most people, who converted to this way of living waaaaay before me, use fancier ingredients like medjool dates and organic produce. 

I have made these using the garden variety, available at the supermarket ingredients.  It's more economical - which is really important for us because kids can be expensive! 

So, these are around 80 calories per ball.  The exact calories will differ each time because you may need to add more dates (for example) to get the mixture more 'wet' so that the balls combine well and don't fall apart. 

So I put around 24 dates (just the normal kind), 1/3 cup of walnuts and 1/3 cup of quick oats (oats that have been ground up a little so that they cook a little faster) in the blender and blended until the mixture came together. 

Then I the mixture into little balls (this time I made 15, normally I would make 12) and put them in the fridge to set hard.

You could vary the ingredients - try almonds instead of walnuts or try adding some coconut. 

Enjoy!

Recipe: Slow cooker beef and vegetables - 493 calories (a lot of meat)

 

So before I get into how I made this deliciousness of dinner, I have no idea how much beef I actually ate.  I recorded it as five large slices (50g each; 250g in total) but I don't think that it weighed quite that much.  And, for the record, the photograph above is not all of the meat that I ate.  I went back twice.  

Making a beef roast in the slow cooker is so simple and it is destined to become one of my favourite quick and easy winter meals (although winter seems so far away after such a hot and humid night).  

I didn't take any photographs while I was making this, sorry.  

First I took a few potatoes and, leaving the skin on, I sliced them length wise - about1/2 a centimetre wide.  Then I laid these on the bottom of the slow cooker.  They are supposed to soak up the oils and juices that come out of the beef when it is cooking and stops the beef from sitting in a layer of liquid which would make it all mushy I guess.  

I placed the beef on top of the potatoes and then threw in, for flavour, chopped carrots and celery.  I then added 1/4 of a cup of beef stock.  

Then the lid went on and I cooked it on automatic for around 8 hours.  

When I got home from work, my husband and the kids had eaten some of the beef.  So I steamed some frozen vegetables and made some gravy (using a powdered gravy mix).  

The beef was so tender and just broke apart when it came time to serve it.  We didn't have any leftovers, but it would have been delicious pulled apart and added to a sandwich for lunch the next day.  

Recipe - Egg and Vegetable Omelet - 556 calories

The above monstrosity was an attempt to make a 'packed to the brim with vegetables' omelet.  It looks pretty unappealing in this picture and I will admit that it was not the tasty delicious meal that I was looking forward to.  And it had a lot of calories - 556 to be exact. 

So why did I cook this?  For starters I was unorganised.  They day before I had defrosted a split chicken to be cooked in the slow cooker all day so that I would be able to walk straight in the door after work and have a delicious and healthy dinner on the table in less than 30 minutes.  So didn't happen.

Instead, I came home - starving - and there was nothing for me to cook.  This is usually when disaster strikes.  I'm starving, tired and the kids are banging on that they are hungry.  My usual go-to meal is pretty lame - pasta with a jar of pasta sauce.  So I made my husband (the poor thing) and the kids pasta while I dry fried (without oil or water) broccoli, capsicum and onion.  Then I fork-whisked two jumbo eggs together and added them to a small frypan with a 1/2 tablespoon of oil.  The oil is what really pushed up the calorie count, adding an extra 73 calories.  Perhaps I should have used a spray of oil or cooked the eggs on a very low heat to stop them from sticking and burning?  Anyway, lesson learned!

Once the eggs had started to set a little, I added the cooked vegetables plus a chopped tomato (fresh from our garden) and stirred together.  At the same time, I toasted two slices of grainy bread.

To, hahaha, serve, I just heaped (obviously) the cooked egg mixture over the toast and added some hot tomato sauce over the top.

It wasn't really tasty at all.  My husband was complaining that he had to eat pasta and he would have preferred my egg mixture thingy.  Once I started eating though, I assured him that he was definitely NOT missing out.

So I will just put this one down to experience and perhaps try to find a recipe next time? 

Friday 14 February 2014 - 862 calories

Friday, Valentine's Day, was a very low calorie day - with a total of only 862 for the day - completely unintentional.  I have every Friday off and have been using the time to sort out the mess that is our house and to get working on the garden (we live on 5 acres).  Friday's job was to get into our bedroom (almost literally!) and to clear our the walk-in cupboard and finally unpack the boxes that have been sitting in there since we moved in almost six months ago.

But the childcare centre called at around 10am and said that she was running a temperature (around 38.5) and only had half of the panadol that they tried to give her (she hates the taste of the children's panadol, preferring the more bitter baby panadol).  So while my husband went to get her I pulled her mattress of her bed and laid it in the lounge room so that she could rest (in front of the tv, I know, bad parenting).  I had also wanted to get to the supermarket that day as well as we did not do a full shop the week before.  My mother-in-law came over and watched our daughter while we went and did the shopping.  How this all relates to what I ate, I will explain shortly!  By the time we returned home, it was around 2pm.  I took our daughter's temperature and it was 40 degrees.  She was sick.  By the time I gave her medicine and sat and comforted her, it was 2.30pm.  So I had a quick lunch of toast with cottage cheese and fresh tomato.

By the time dinner time came around, I wasn't starving (like I normally am) after such a late lunch.  So I didn't haven't any snacks or drinks that day which contributed to such a low calorie count.  But never mind, I made up for it on Saturday.

Here is Friday's dinner:

This is how I did it.  

I roasted an already prepared split chicken from Woolies (they are great!) in the oven for about an hour and a half.  While it was resting, I prepared a really basic salad of spinach and rocket leaves, grated carrot, fresh tomato (from our garden), raw broccoli and four olives.  I had to count the olives because they are high in calories and I love them so much that I would just eat an olive salad!  Then I pulled apart the chicken and added some of the breast meat to my salad.  I didn't weigh it so I just estimated it be 170g of chicken.  That's another note to go into my hints and tips - always weigh your food!

I don't have any salad dressing at home (I forgot to buy) and I don't want to add extra calories by making one with oil, mustard and vinegar, so I just added some hot tomato sauce.

And voila!  Dinner was served!

Thursday 13 February 2014 - 1076 calories

My week one progress post is here. 

Breakfast

Same as Tuesday's breakfast - cold cereal. 

Lunch

Same as Tuesday's lunch - tuna salad and a grainy breadroll.

Dinner

Rump steak with potato, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes (from our garden) and, gravy, of course! 

This meal is delicious!

We buy all of our steak from a butcher located in Coomera (between the Gold Coast and Brisbane) called Springbok Foods.  My husband is South African, so this little South African supermarket is a familiar, comforting taste of home for him.  The bonus is that they sell the most tender, delicious AGED rump steak for around $17-$19/kg.  It is also cheaper if you buy a whole side of rump.

For this dinner, my husband seasoned the meat with Spur Seasoning Salt (also from Springbok Foods) and then sealed it on both sides on the BBQ.  Then he bastes the steak while it is grilling with Spur Marinade Grill Basting sauce (which I've just realised that I forgot to add to my calorie count for the day).

While he was grilling the meat, I boiled potatoes (with the skin on - lose so many nutrients when you peel it off, plus it just takes longer to prepare) and steamed fresh broccoli and carrots.  I also chopped up some tomatoes from our vegetable garden.  Then I made the gravy (straight from a packet with boiling water, I'm not fancy).

Here are the delicious results....

Exercise

Hmm, I didn't exercise.  My excuse was that our (almost) four year old was awake for 1.5 hours in the middle of the night and I was too tired after putting them to bed to go downstairs and walk on the treadmill.

Wednesday, 12 February 2014 - 1173 calories

Breakfast

Same as Tuesday's breakfast - cold cereal. 

Lunch

Same as Tuesday's lunch - tuna salad and a grainy breadroll.

Dinner

Chicken with rice, vegetables and gravy.  We used our stainless steel AMC Classic frypan to 'fry' the chicken breasts - which allows us to cook our food without adding any water or oils/fats.  I also added some cooked brown rice and boiled peas.  Lastly, gravy, I added gravy.  Gravy would have to be my favourite sauce of all time - I don't care if it is chef made or made from powder in a box mixed with hot water.  I love all of it.

Exercise

Another 15 minutes on the treadmill - walking at an incline.