New recipe: Non-chicken and sweetcorn soup

I loved chicken and corn soup. It was my go-to meal with spring rolls to dunk whenever I used to have Chinese food. Its the best.  But not many places make just corn soup, without having a million other non-vegetarian things in it. So I looked up a few recipes, and found one that I could just leave the chicken out of, and guess what. Its perfect. I made a few tiny little changes, but for about half an hour today I was talking myself up to anyone that would listen about how good my soup was, just like at the shop, but vegetarian.

So to start with, I want to talk about the stock. How do you have chicken and corn soup that tastes like the real thing, but is vegetarian? Well, actually, if you omit the egg white, it would be vegan, how about that!! I use Massel stock, which is vegetable based, gluten free, lactose free and a whole bunch of other ‘frees’ so its the one I always use, and tastes super good 🙂 You can get salt reduced too, which I did. This is the link if you want more info on it: http://www.massel.com.au/products/liquid-stock/

So the recipe is this:

1 litre of Massel Chicken Stock

1 tablespoon of kecap manis or soy sauce

1 teaspoon finely chopped ginger

2 tablespoons cornflour

1/4 cup of water

1 can creamed corn

1 can corn kernels

1 egg white, lightly beaten (omit of vegan)

3 spring onions, finely chopped

Pour the stock into a large saucepan and heat on medium, do not boil. Add the kecap manis (or soy) and the ginger. Put one tablespoon of the cornflour and all of the water into a bowl and stir, then add to the stock. Turn the heat up and continue stirring until the soup thickens. If it doesnt, sprinkle the second tablespoon of cornflour over the top and mix in. Lower the heat back to medium.Add the creamed corn and corn kernels, stir, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Whisk the egg white, then slowly pour it into the soup in thin drizzles while stirring gently, this makes the ‘chickeny’ look to the soup. Continue to cook until the egg turns stringy and white. Add the spring onions and cook for another 2 minutes, then serve.

As with most of my cooking, this tastes even better once its sits for a while, to get that corn flavour going though it. Hope u like it!!!!! Running it through the calorie counter, if you divide this into 6 bowls it works out at 118 calories/495kJ a serve. Even if you divide it amongst 4 really big bowls you are still only getting 177 calories a bowl. Thats a bit awesome 😀 There is a bit of salt in this, so make sure you choose low sodium varieties of the soy, creamed corn and the stock.

So, I hope you like it!!!

As for the rest of my day, I spent it cooking vegetables, making raw cacao chocolate with raw peanuts, chia seeds and dried cranberries chopped up into it, watered my super cute little sprouts:

Totally loving growing them, I don’t have much patience so the fact these are about 5 days old and already good to go is a big plus in my book ha ha ha ha

Plus, Ive been playing with my new juicer. Yes, it arrived, so sparkly and new and awesome, best juicer ever!! Even though I had the model before it, this one kicks its butt, gets rid of foam, and makes the juice so smooth and yum, loving it HEAPS 😀

Am so very, very happy with this one 😀

Oh, and I also managed a 540 calorie workout on the cross trainer. Had a good day 😀

Hoping for another just like it tomorrow 🙂

xx

 

Life changing bread hey… I better try it :)

Ive read peoples posts on this ‘life changing bread’, so I thought I’d better have a look for myself. Once I saw it was from My New Roots I was all over it, that is one of my most favourite food blogs. I MUST MAKE THIS BREAD.

I would consider my old self to a be a breadaholic for sure. Nothing like that breadohol 😀 But seriously, if it was fresh and white and still warm from the bakery, it would be gone in a day, two at the absolute most. Breakfast lunch and dinner were centred around this beautiful fluffy white loaf of bread. Its the best.

But now my diet has changed, and my taste buds with it, my need for bread isn’t anything like it was before. If the supermarket here doesn’t have my tiny loaf of sunflower and chia seed gluten free bread this week, no big deal, Ill get it another week. A MASSIVE difference form the bread guzzling machine I once was. But now and then I still eat a sandwich or two made from wholemeal or grain or rye bread, my taste for white and fluffy things has gone.

So when I saw this, I thought it looked amazing. Look at all of those seeds, those nuts and all of the goodness packed into it!!! I must try this 😀

Here is the link, and while you are in there, have a snoop around at the other amazing recipes she has posted. Brilliant.

http://www.mynewroots.org/site/2013/02/the-life-changing-loaf-of-bread/

So while Ive been looking at photos of bread, this is what Ive been eating today. To get back into proper food, Ive decided to eat salads. No big deal? I don’t eat salads. They are boring. USUALLY. But THIS I could eat every day, I love it 😀

My usual berry smoothie, super yum 🙂

The bestest ever salad in the world, baked pumpkin and potato, mixed leaves, baby spinach, cucumber, avocado, sun dried tomatoes, alfalfa, red onion, danish feta and pesto, am having the exact same thing tomorrow, so good!!!

Another salad for dinner, almost the same but no cooked vegetables, I had carrot and celery instead, and no feta. Yum.

I also had an oat milk coffee, which instantly made me feel tired, booo. And will probably have a scoop of my grapefruit sorbet later on too. Was very happy with today, especially after I manged to do this while Eddie danced around to Play School:

I also had to let him have a turn on the cross trainer at my 20 minute breaks, that was his deal 😀

So a good day today, hoping for another good one tomorrow 😀

xx

Grapefruit sorbet, and other exciting things…

Well its my ‘holidays’, and by that I mean I have no uni work, but have a long list of other stuff I have been wanting to get done this past year that I haven’t yet been able to do. Its funny, but when you stop the go go go of everything and relax for a minute, you find out exactly how tired you are. But I must keep going…..

I have started up my exercising again, which is great 😀 I love my cross trainer, its right up there with dancing and Pilates as my favourite exercises ever. Its just a time to listen to music, and think, and relax. Yes, relax 🙂 So I am excited to be doing it again, and need to work out how to work it into every day when I get back to uni work, its going to be super important.

I have a huge goal right now, Pilates school is coming up in March of next year, so excited, but to feel completely confident I need to feel comfortable, and the size I am currently just will not work. I have a very busy summer ahead of me!!!! But I am happy that I can do it, I dont feel the pressure (yet) and just have to get right into it. Preparation is the main thing, meal planning and prep, planning exercise times, and not getting off track are really big key things for me. I am so likely to eat badly and not exercise if I feel rushed or haven’t planned what to eat previously, so will be doing that for the next couple of days.

But Ive been doing workouts already this week, as you can see 😀

This is pretty much what I do each time I exercise, its really awesome 🙂 Need to add in PIlates training now and some weights, have been a bit slack with both of those lately….

So, enough about that, who wants a recipe??? I’m going to start putting recipes on here, I get asked about things I make a fair bit, so here is my first one!!! My neighbour gave me a huge shopping bag of grapefruit from his tree, and not being a huge grapefruit  fan I usually throw half in a juice. But having no juicer at the moment (come on post man!!!) I had no idea what to do with them!! On a raw food page I’m on someone suggested sorbet, and ginger, so I made up my own recipe. And the result? Awesome, if I do say so myself 😀 Its sour, gingery, with a hint of lime and mint, so refreshing and yum.

Ingredients:

4 grapefruit

1 lime

3 Tbl maple syrup

1 ripe banana

6 leaves of mint (I used pineapple mint)

2cm piece of ginger

Peel 3 of the grapefruit the banana and put into a blender/food processor until pureed. Add the juice of the 4th grapefruit, most of the juice (saving about a tsp separately) of the lime, and maple syrup and give it another mix. Finely chop the mint, peel the ginger and roughly chop it, and put both of these into a mortar and pestle with the leftover bit of the lime juice, and smash it up until it becomes a paste. Add to the blender and mix all of this up.

If you have an ice cream maker (I do) you should set it up to the manufacturers instructions, and use it now. Put in freezer once its done to make it more firm.

If not, you can put all of the mixture into a bowl and put into the freezer until almost solid. Then break it up and put it into the food processor and mix until smooth, then place it back into the freezer.

And you are done! Super yum sorbet!!!!!!

You can do this with almost any fruit, and with summer almost here I cant wait to make so many more different flavours, will post them as I make them 😀

Another awesome thing that has happened is that one of my biggest inspirational people, Jess Ainscough, has released her book yay!!!!! I already have the e-book, and my paper copy (not the same as the e-book) is on its way woo hoo!!!

Do yourself a favour and buy this. The reason I like her so much is that while she has not done traditional uni and stuff like what I’m doing, she has studied the effects of food and healing in the body, and has used this to heal herself from disease. She promotes healthy living and wholefoods, and her blog is fantastic if you want to check out more: http://www.thewellnesswarrior.com.au/

So everyone, I hope you have enjoyed this post, cant wait to make more recipes, and hope you are all having a nice day 😀

My view from my coffee 😀 Dont forget to relax xx

Exams are over, its time to concentrate on me

So you may have noticed this is the first post which is not numbered. Its been a very long time between posts, and in a nutshell here is where I’m at:

I have completely stalled in my “raw foodie” goal. I have eaten chicken sausages. I have eaten junk food. I have eaten all the not great stuff I used to. I dont feel bad about it, just very tired and not very well. It happened and I’m totally fine with it, Im not mad at myself or anyhing silly like that, it’s how I dealt with the stress of exam time, this year, and exactly how I have every other end of session/exam time. Except this time I gained weight, got a virus, got really sick, and needed a Dr certificate to postpone one of my exams until February. It happened, its not great but hey, I made it through and there is nothing I can do about it now. I have done pretty much zero exercise, had little time to do anything that wasnt studying, and I definitely learnt that I wont be doing that next time. (On a side note, results have started coming back and I got a distinction for microbiology so far, which gave me a bit of a pleasant shock, thanks carbs :D)

My Pilates course is about 5 months away, so now is the time to focus.  Now that I have a little break, I have time to organise and plan, prepare good foods and really focus on myself, which is very much over-needed right now!! Sometimes, for your own sanity, you just have to say no and give yourself a bit of a time out. Cross trainer is now in the lounge room, ready to go, did a nice workout the other night, and am happy to get back into it. Mostly I’m excited to start my Pilates training, every day, I love it so much and am too too excited to get into it!!!!

So…. I have a ‘raw transition’ plan I’m going to give a really good go, and will let you all know how I’m going along the way. My poor overused juicer burnt its engine out a week ago (not the biggest surprise), so am waiting for a new one to be delivered (this week hopefully yay!!!) So right now, I have my check list of things I am going to do each day, for the next 21 days. Tomorrows is replace breakfast with a smoothie and all snacks with fruit. Easy. Already got the smoothie part down, I have that every morning already anyway 🙂 The snack part is new, am sitting here trying to think of what I have for snacks, I’m thinking most ‘snacks’ are when I’m having my oat milk decaf cappuccino, but will have either veggies or fruit, instead of just fruit, I’m not the biggest fan of sweet things….

Anyways, just a quick hello, and now that I have an actual chance to write again expect to see more of me 😀 I’m back 😀