Finally, I has bananas :D

It is hard to keep bananas in this house, they are gone before you blink!! I managed to sneak some into my baking cupboard, which is where I store all my good snacks and no one ever looks ha ha ha ha So today I finally was able to make the http://www.deliciouslyella.com Banana Pancakes.

 

As a baking type of person, if you tell me that a pancake recipe has no eggs, milk, flour, sugar, any of the stuff we would normally associate with pancakes I would probably laugh in our face. But these WORK.

Basically, you make a ‘flour’ out of almonds and oats in the food processor, mix in water, bananas, blueberries and a couple of other things, and cook them just like you would with pancakes. The recipe says it makes 4 large pancakes, mine made 5. It doesn’t have how many servings these pancakes feed, but I’m going to go on how I felt after one of them: about 4 people could eat these. I was SO FULL, so so very full after just one.

This is what they looked like:

And they were REALLY REALLY good. Much like everything else I have made from her blog. Not surprised…. 😀

At the moment I’m following a bit of a food plan, so I wont be making any more of the breakfasts just for now, so I’ll be moving on to the juices and smoothies from the app next 🙂

xx

 

Blueberry and Banana Muffins

You might have noticed I’ve been loving all of the recipes so far. They are so GOOD!!!!! This time I made the Blueberry, Banana and Raisin Muffins. You might also notice that I leave raisins out of everything that says it has raisins it it. While they do have a place in fruit toast or Christmas cake, they just don’t work for me with berries, they kind of take away from them IMO so yeah….

So this is what I made:

find the recipe at http://www.deliciouslyella.com

Now mine didn’t look particularly beautiful, and a couple even got burnt. I think that the two cups of blueberries made my mixture too moist and they refused to cook, they took like an hour and a half, so I think in future Ill make smaller ones so that they cook faster. I would maybe suggest to try less blueberries, but I love blueberries so I wont be doing that 😀 I’d prefer a bit crunch on the outside with the stacks of blueberry flavour these had over less berries any day!!

The ‘flour’ that you make from oats and almonds is really good, it said to add ground flax but I couldn’t get any when I wanted to make them, so I used more oats and almonds to make up the quantity. I will definitely use this flour again for muffins, once they were cooked it definitely formed a muffin consistency and the flavour was so good!!!

I keep going to make the banana pancakes that are next on my ‘to make’ list, but someone keeps stealing my ripe ones and eating them before I get the chance!! Hopefully I can get some and hide them, I want my pancakes!!!!!

xx

 

Third recipe, sooo good :)

Sorry guys, I did actually make this recipe last Friday, which was right on time for my blog, but I got a bit sick (totally unrelated I promise!!) So here it it. The smell of this had me waiting next to the oven taking in big, deep breaths, although I really didn’t need to, you could smell it throughout my whole house. Even my husband came home and said “Oooh yum are you making a banana cake?” Which unfortunately for him, and his tummy, the answer was no 🙂

I made the Banana and Almond Granola Clusters, was so simple to make, took hardly any time, and gave me a huge container of granola which is super yum!!! The recipe is here, or on her app: http://www.deliciouslyella.com

I had mine for breakfast with a small amount of soy milk, some strawberries and a decent spoonful of coconut yoghurt. Wow, that was good. You so don’t need much of this to feel full either, there are so many awesome things in it, nuts, seeds, oats, bananas, honey, you cant go wrong!!

Check it out, so beautiful looking!!!! And tasting 😀

Another one I highly recommend!!!!! 😀

One thing though, I remember reading that you need to crush open the flaxseed (linseed) or you don’t get the omega properties, they pass straight through your system. So I tried smashing them up in the mortar and pestle, but they are slippery little guys and didn’t want to know about it. So for next time I would probably buy the ground ones instead of the whole.

The next recipe I will try on Thurday this week will be the Banana Pancakes, oooh yum, am looking forward to that one 🙂

xx

Second recipe, this was an interesting one…. :)

You know how  I have discussed food textures before, and I can’t eat foods that are slime? You know, things like bananas*, zucchini, eggplant, chokos, well they are all the slime foods. Well check this out:

Deliciously Ella Chia Seed Pudding – http://deliciouslyella.com/

Have you ever had chia seeds in anything? I have them in my bright purple berry smoothies all the time, they remind me of the seeds you would have in say, raspberry jam, but in a little pocket of goo. As we all know, lots of people are hurrah-ing over their goodness, their omegas, and their ability to reduce inflammation by sweeping through the system with their slime, which is activated once they hit liquid. And oh wow, their slime was abundant in this breakfast!!! This was almond milk, a bunch of chia seeds, cinnamon and honey, left overnight in my fridge to absorb all of the super yum deliciousness that is cinnamon, almond and honey, then topped with berries when I woke up.

Now the flavour this pudding had was AWESOME. It was exactly the right balance of all of the flavours. The berries could have done with more thawing, but I was marvin and I wanted to eat it before I ran off to teach Pilates. Also, I think mine hadn’t set as well as it could, I probably could have drunk it like a thick shake, I did leave some of it in the jar and just checked it before sitting down to write this, it has gotten firmer, so maybe make a couple of jars two days out and you would be set for breakfasts for a few days. Now back to the texture….. It was slime with little seeds in it. Great tasting, but since I’m such a textural eater it might have been a bit too much goo on one big hit. It needed some crunch. So I think next time I have it, I will pair half of it with her Banana and Almond Granola Clusters (doesn’t that just sound so so yum!!!) which I will be making on Friday 🙂

So there you have it 😀 I ate chia seed pudding ha ha ha ha ha

xx

*disclaimer – yes I do sometimes eat banana, but it needs to be very thin slivers of only just ripe bananas, no slime 😀

P.S., Notice how many times I use the word slime. I am not messing around 😀

First recipe, yum :D

So I started my ‘Deliciously Ella’ challenge I set for myself, and I was very happy with the first recipe 😀

I’m not a big breakfast person, for the longest time I was stuck in my ‘having a highly processed chemical based diet shake mixed with water and ice for breakfast’ rut, and while it did help me lose weight, it didn’t make me feel very good. Or full. Or happy. And my skin was gross. And some of my hair feel out and my iron levels went through the roof from all of the fortified iron I was having. So while I got smaller, I also got super unhealthy, which was obviously not the point!!!

So in challenging myself to try new foods, yesterday I decided to start trying all of the recipes on the Deliciously Ella site. I would look at all of those beautiful foods and would find myself wishing I could eat like that. Not because I couldn’t cook, I’ll toot my own horn here and say I’m pretty darn good most of the time, but because I had a mental block and honestly was too scared to eat like that. I can’t even describe why, just something in me was telling me that it was too unlike my normal food, it certainly looked very pretty and full of vitamins and nutrients and all of the stuff my body was needing, but it scared me.

I jumped in the deep end this morning. Now, a bowl of oats and fruit might not seem like much of a deep end, but I haven’t eaten the good version of that stuff  before. I’ve had instant porridge, in sachets, and flavoured with who knows what, then stuck some diet yoghurt on top, and I used to choke down that junk every morning because Weight Watchers told me that it was a good breakfast. Ugh, but I hated it. I think I’ve really come to the conclusion that you really don’t have to do things you don’t want to do, and eat rubbish food you hate if you don’t want to. It’s taken me a good 16 years to let myself believe that. It’s definitely a hard thing from having ‘anything diet and low calorie and low sugar and low fat and basically zero taste is good for you and you will lose weight’ pumped into me for so long, to transition to ‘eat whatever you want to eat, but make sure its nutrient dense, as close to nature as possible, and you can eat fat and natural sugars’, its definitely a HUGE difference in how I look at food now….

This mornings breakfast looked like this:

This is the recipe “Baked Banana, Blueberry and Raisin Oatmeal”. I opted to leave the raisins out, sultanas ans stuff are not my thing. I also left out the suggested sweeteners and opted for a spoonful of coconut yoghurt on top. And it was SUPER YUM 😀 Will definitely make this again!!! The link again to her fantastic page is:

http://deliciouslyella.com/

The next one I’m going to try is a Chia Seed Pudding 😀 Wish me luck with that one ha ha ha ha

xx

A new challenge :)

So, it’s been a long time between posts, while I studied (and passed woo-hoo!!) my exams, and started my own Pilates business (:) so excite!!) blogging has sort of fell away from my mind, but like all the other times, I’m back 😀 And I had a new thought: I’m wanting to try a lot of new recipes, when it comes to food I tend to cook the same things over and over until we are all sick of it, then make something else, and keep going in that way. It gets pretty boring. I think we have had pumpkin risotto arancini with tomato and garlic pasta sauce maybe 8 times in the past 2 weeks. Yeah, when we like something we stick with it for a while.

So I was looking a the beautiful app on my phone from Deliciously Ella. Everything looks amazing, and honestly, scary. It’s food I would not normally choose, cause wow, its just looks so healthy, and basically there is just no cheese ha ha ha ha ha SO I thought, you know what, how about I jump in the deep end, make one of her recipes every couple of days, and write about them and how yum they are. Have you seen the movie Julie and Julia? I loved that movie 😀 I also just plain love Meryl Streep, and I’d love to give this a go. Would have loved to do that with my Zumbo cookbook, but who has the time, patience, skill and money to do that??

So starting tomorrow, ingredients-in-the-cupboard willing, I’m going to start with the breakfasts and work my way towards the  cakes and desserts. I’ll have to alter some, just because of where I live some things just aren’t available, but I should go ok I think 😀

If you would like a look at her page, its awesomely amazing with beautiful photos of all of her recipes, its just plain fantastic:

http://deliciouslyella.com

And her app, which was worth every single cent, is here:

http://deliciouslyella.com/app/

You might remember I made one of her recipes last year, the raw blueberry cheesecake, which was AWESOME 😀 It looked like this:

And it wasn’t scary at all ha ha ha ha ha

So yeah, going to go for it, I’m stuck in a giant food rut, reckon this will get me out of it 😀

Stay tuned for tomorrows breakfast post!!!

xx

The time has come… :)

In two sleeps I will teach my first proper Pilates class. I have taught small groups and one on one, but they were with people I know, this is a whole different thing now. I’m so nervous!!!! I’m hoping it will be like when I used to sing in high school: Scared to death in a small group, but in front of a whole hall full of people I didn’t really know it turned out ok and got a bit easier. So I’m super excited, because I’ve wanted it for so long, but also super jittery ha ha ha ha ha Wish me luck!!!!!

So birthday week is well and truly over 😀 Back to the juice tomorrow, with my veggie foods thrown in. With exams coming up there is no way I can just do juice right now, my brain needs all the help it can get. So my little boys birthday was fantastic, I couldn’t have been happier, when he came up to me to tell me what a great time he was having, that is the best part 🙂 I’m still smiling remembering that 😀

This is my little guy with his cake that I made, he is a huge Angry Birds fan 😀

We had an awesome time, was so nice to have a happy break from everything Ive been doing lately 😀

 

Cant believe he used to be a little bubba, he still sleeps like that too!! Bet he does when hes 15 too ha ha ha ha ha

So now, its all systems go for studying, boooooo. I have two exams and one assignment due all in the next two weeks, its been a super hard session, and I’ll be happy to be at the end of this one. I’ll be halfway through, only two and half more years to go, woo-hoo!!!!!! Meow has been helping me 😀

I’ll let her do the exam, she probably reads more than I do anyway 🙂

While my sister was here she threw together a super yum dinner (bit of a quick change of subject!!!) and told me the ingredients, gave it a go tonight with a couple of small changes, and its super yum, here is the recipe:

1 carrot, grated

1 red capsicum, finely chopped

1 red onion

8 button mushrooms

1 tin tomatoes

1 tin red kidney beans

1 tin low fat refried beans

1 tin corn kernals

2 red chillies (I have jar of organic red chillies that I dehydrated myself and are super strong, seeds still in, gives it a really good kick, you might want to adjust the quantity according to the chillies you use)

1-2 tablespoons ground cumin seeds

2 tsp smoked paprika

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 sachet taco seasoning (you can make your own, theres heaps on Google, but I used the shop bought one for this)

So pretty much you cook up the onion and mushrooms, add the carrots and capsicum when the onion is soft, add spices, then all of the canned stuff and give it a good stir. Season if you want, and simmer until it looks like this:

It’s so so easy, and super yum!!! Makes a GINORMOUS pot of it too, dinner for ages and good to freeze. This is how I have it:

On a tortilla with lettuce, baby spinach, tomato, soy mayo, avocado and brown rice and quinoa, and a teensy spoonful of cottage cheese, I so love cheese with my meals, am cutting it right out, slowly, but I’m getting there. So without all of my extras, the Mexican stuff is 100% vegan, how I have it is vegetarian, cause of the cheese obviously. I swear I will make my own cashew cheese one day, I will 😀

And there you have it 😀

Oh, and one more thing: I finally got my drink bottle. Might not be a huge announcement, but I was pretty excited 😀 You all know how I love my lemon water, but it does get to be a pain in the bottom sometimes when I’m out, you cant just squeeze a lemon into random water bottles, so this is what my new drink bottle does, winning!! It’s called a Citrus Zinger, and I seriously waited 4 weeks for it to come from overseas, but its so cool and totally worth it 😀 It has a citrus juicer in the bottom, so you just flip it over, squeeze your lemon, then flip it back and fill it up. Genius. You can store a lemon for a second refill too, also genius!!!

Lovely 😀 I so love my gadgets 😀

Anyhow, it is back to the study for me, thanks for reading as always!!!

xx

Birthday week has begun…

No, not my birthday week, my little boys 🙂 He will be four soon and this week my whole family will arrive to have his party on the weekend. When people are here food gets tricky for me, I see it as a big part of the celebration, as one of the most important elements. When people are visiting I like to eat whatever I want and not feel bad about it. So, birthday week has begun. Today I ate chocolate cake…….

My juicing in the past week has gone ok, a couple of little slip ups, but nothing huge and crazy. I’ve still had juice each day, and managed to lose 3 kilos, go me!! So the plan is, have little bits of celebrating, make some big pots of vegetable soup, and have snacks ready to go that are veggies or fruits. And that is my plan.

I’ve also been going through one of my favourite cookbooks in the past couple of days. It’s this:

I never know what to eat when I get to winter, so I pretty much make the same three things, all winter. Thats probably not so great!! I’m thinking after juicing (cause this wont last forever) of really embracing my outlook of ‘as close to nature as possible’. I don’t always do this, I fall into bad habits of buying processed, silly foods when really it’s so simple to get the most nutrients out of whole, local and seasonal foods. So I am about to teach myself a whole new way of cooking that I haven’t really gone into before: using whats available and in season. I love when I juice fast, things that I wouldn’t normally want to eat become so attractive looking and my taste buds yell out for them, like the big plate of garlic mushrooms I saw the other day. Oh, I wanted them so much!!!

So when people look at me like I have two heads when I say I’m on a juice fast, there are more benefits for me than just weight loss or being special and annoying ha ha ha ha. It really does hit a ‘reset’ button, and clears my mind to take on a whole new way of thinking.

Also, I don’t know you you guys are fans of Jess Ainscough (you have seen me post about her and her book before, I really like her) but she has posted in her blog lately about Jon Gabriel and the Gabriel Code. I got this program a little while back when I was finding it hard to control my stress and anxiety, especially when I was eating badly to find energy while studying, and it wasn’t doing me any good at all. Jon Gabriels’ program introduced me to a different level of calm that I hadn’t really gotten before, I find it funny that when I see his interviews on Food Matters or blogs I instantly relax, it’s so weird, his voice just has this hypnotising thing going on 😀 But yeah, I recommend having a look into what he does. I’m really not sure if the program ‘melts away the kilos’ or not but wow, on the visualisation and meditating side of things, it definitely does help.

http://www.thegabrielmethod.com/

On that note, I have a big day of party prep, cooking and uni lectures ahead of me tomorrow, I’m off to have a listen of my night time visualisation, and have a great sleep 🙂

xx

Day eight reboot / Day 3 juicing: Still going strong

Well yay its working 😀 The results were almost immediate. And that is such a good thing!! I’m such an instant gratification person, and work better when I get immediate results 😀 Its day 8, and I’m on the third day of juicing only. I feel awesome, not a bit tired, not a bit hungry, and I’ve managed to lose 1.4 kilos (3.1 pounds). So that is entirely cool 🙂

The first time I did a juice fast I felt revolting for a good week, I also didn’t gradually build up (down?) to just juicing either, I went cold turkey from lots of junk straight into the juice. But this time I feel great already, so either it’s because I was clearing out junk I’d accumulated over a LOOOOONG time and this time it’s only been a little while, or the stepping into it slowly has been the difference. Either way, yay!!!

The only negative I can feel (and it may or may not actually be related) is that my skin has gotten a bit dry. But that could also be because of the drop in temperature and me having hotter showers, so I decided to add a small handful of nuts, and also some chia seeds into my plan just to keep the omegas and good oils in the system. Can’t hurt 🙂 Also satisfies the need to chew something (‘chewing’ liquid makes me feel a bit stupid* ;)).

So yay for the juice fasting, not sure how long I will go on for, if i can keep going like this, a while is my guess 😀

See ya xx

*chewing helps to release digestive enzymes, so because I am not actually chewing what I’m ‘eating’, I ‘chew’ the juice to help these get going…..

Day six reboot/day one juice only = success :D

Yup you read it right, success 😀 Yay I didn’t even cave in to garlic bread ha ha ha ha ha

Pretty happy with todays outcome really, I’ve had 4 out of 5 juices so far, with one saved for when I start studying in a minute, had my coconut water, my peppermint tea, although I disguised that as coffee, it didn’t work…..

And thats it 🙂 Had a yum juice this afternoon, pineapple, lime, lemon, ginger and celery, that was good 🙂 Had one carrot, ginger and apple juice and two of the green lemonade juices that I tried the other day, so far so good!

What I found really interesting was that I am not ‘hungry’. Not food hungry anyway. It’s a totally different feeling…

I watched a documentary the other night called Superjuice Me. Its like Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead in that it promotes juice as a way to get loads of nutrients into the body, but a bit different in that it takes 8 individuals with LOADS of diseases between them, and sees what difference a 28 day juice cleanse makes to their lives. And its AMAZING. I totally recommend giving it a watch, the link is here:

http://www.superjuiceme.com/28-day-juice-plan/

What really made sense from the documentary was this: Remember every time you have ever gone for like, Chinese food or something, and you stuff yourself stupid, then you get home and you are all kinds of hungry and could eat that whole entire thing over? Well if you think of your body as a whole bunch of cells needing nutrients to keep everything going and running properly, and then when they have enough power from food to run smoothly they switch off your hungry signals, well, your Chinese dinner doesnt do this. Instead, you eat all the food, you don’t take in any nutrients, and your cells say “well that was all very well and nice, but I’m still hungry for nutrients so give me more food!! I will make you eat until I have my nutrients!!!!” And so you are hungry again, despite your digestive system trying to work its way through the four plates from the buffet you just scarfed down.

So today I have had four juices. And I’m not hungry AT ALL. I have an ’empty’ feeling, but its not a real hunger that I would normally get, telling me to eat crackers and coffees and bread and salty food, its just not there today. I made dinner for my little boy, which looked and smelt really good, but I didn’t have the urge to eat anything myself, I just didn’t get the ‘it’s dinner time’ signals I usually get. I think my cells have said “good work, we are full now, you did good” 😀

And that is a happy thing 🙂 Yay for day one juicing working out 🙂

xx