Trying something new :)

Hi everyone! Happy, happy Sunday!

 So true right? ^^
 I feel like time  scampering away at break neck speed and I just can't seem to get everything I want to get done! I blame school. It takes up 7 hours of my day, Monday to Friday and that's not even including the morning- getting ready for school and the afternoon- doing homework for school... no wonder I have no time for life!

But that's just me complaining. If I truly think about it, I'm so grateful I have school and an opportunity for an education which will hopefully lead to a job in my future.

Wow, this was not the kind of post I had in mind! I think I may be going off topic. What was my first clue? The fact that I came onto this little blogging platform to talk to you about buckwheat. Yep.

When I first tried buckwheat... I was not a fan. I don't normally say I hate things, but I really very much disliked this grain. I had it quite plain in an eggy-bake thing-o. It was gross.

So, there has been a bag of buckwheat sitting in my pantry for a while now. I can never bring myself to throw it out because it seems like such a waste... which is sort of ironic because I never even think twice about using it- it's an immediate no.

Something magical was in the air this Sunday morning however, and when I reached into my pantry for my tin of steel cut oats my hand deviated from it's intended path and started patting around for that abandoned bag of buckwheat kernels.

Look at all those benefits! Good job buckwheat! Source

It was an adventurous and daring act on my behalf but I soldiered on pouring about 1/2 a cup into my oat-making saucepan, along with 1/2 banana, 1 scoop choc protein powder, 1 heaped teaspoon raw cacao powder, sprinkle of chia seeds, a few big dashes of cinnamon, 3/4 cup almond milk and 3/4 cup water and then simmered stirring occasionally for 15-20 mins until the liquid was absorbed:

It smelled amazing. Good first sign!

After letting it cool for 5-10 mins, I scooped it into an almost empty jar of my home-made coconut butter along with a cup of banana/ blueberry yoghurt (the other half of banana+ small handful of blueberries + 3 big scoops of greek yoghurt- whazzed up in a small food processor until smooth)

It smelled good, it looked good, I was preeetttyyy hungry- the spoon went into my mouth...

Oh. My. Grape jelly! (Grape jelly is a thing... I just looked it up!)
On first bite I may or may not have sighed in pleasure at the taste of my 'oats'. I did by the way. I sure did!

There's something about the texture of buckwheat that makes my normal chocolate steel cut oat recipe so much more.... fudgier? Decadent? Rich? I dunno, but it was gooood!

I'm not going to lie though, as with all rich things you can only take so much, so it was a bit of a struggle for me to finish that jar (yeh, I know- me!) still I managed to get through it (you can tell I suffer, right?) ;)

And I'm not going to lie about this either- I really, really enjoyed this buckwheat porridge! If you haven't tried buckwheat before I would recommend going the sweet/ breakfast-y/ porridge-y route first because I'm still not sure if I could tolerate this pseudo-cereal on its own (I'll happily stick with plain brown rice and pasta for that!)

I just wish I had tried this buckwheat experiment before my first- I've been missing out for so long! I guess I'll just have to make up for lost time- oh well! ;)

Your turn:
Have you ever tried something, hated it and then tried again in something different and liked it? (I'm so good at asking succinct questions, hey?)
Have you ever tried buckwheat?
Favourite way to eat buckwheat?

Remember to have a lovely Sunday, relish any spare time you have and just have an all-round great day! Bye for now! :D

Birthday celebrations!

Hello, hello everyone! How are we all today on this lovely Sunday?
Me? I'm already pooped- as is the usual case when I've run for 90 minutes and it isn't even 9:00am yet. But happy, healthy and feeling good none the less!

Especially after a filling and delicious breakfast to fuel up my body after said run:

My favourite bowl of steel cut oats with a big side of water!!

Some almond butter was spread around the bowl, then topped with the oats and dolloped with some peanut butter, because, you know, why not? ;)

Delicious!

So as you all have probably figured out by now, I have this thing for cooking. I sorta like it. A lot. I think the hint was in the title of this blog.

The thing that confuses people the most, however, is the fact that even though I'm a vegetarian who doesn't eat added sugar, tries to find alternatives to wheat and consumes zero cow's milk or cheese- I still love making foods with all these things in it. Yes that results in me not eating it- the part that horrifies people.

I cook/ bake/ create because I love to do that- cook/bake/create. Now, I love to eat too, just other things, that make my body feel good.

Therefore what's a girl who loves to bake and loves all things creative going to do when her birthday rolls round? (It's actually tomorrow, though school/ work sort of make it hard to celebrate)

She creates her own birthday cake of course!!

Presenting my 16th birthday cake:

The cake is alternating layers of white chocolate mud cake and dark chocolate mud cake with either a white chocolate ganache between the layers or a dark chocolate ganache.

Around the outside, there's white fondant, a bow made from pink ready-roll icing, smarties, and of course ice cream!

Well the ice cream may have been some more chocolate cake formed into a ball with a little extra melted butter and then covered in blue ready-roll icing, though it looks like ice cream all the same!

With a few sprinkles on top and of course a waffle cone!

Cake decorating is so much fun! (and pretty time consuming too:D)

So, no I did not eat my birthday cake, but I got to make it- which for me is just as good, if not better!

I did eat my celebratory birthday dinner though (which I cooked for myself as well- guys, seriously, I. LOVE. COOKING. This is like a present for me!)

A big plate of roasted veggies with some spinach and garlic tofu!

The veg was pumpkin, swede, beetroot, sweet potato, potato, eggplant, zucchini, red onion, mushrooms and asparagus all roasted in some olive oil with some fresh rosemary (at varying times) and then gobbled up!

A great *early* birthday with family, love and lots of good food!

What about you?
What is your favourite post workout food?
Do you like to cook on your birthday?
Best birthday cake you've ever had?

That's all for today, bye for now folks! Remember- everyday may not be good but there is something good in every day. :D

BACK AGAIN! :) :)

I'm Baaaaack!!
Did you miss me?
Well I missed you!!! When I returned from my week away from my usual world (6 hour drive down south to Albany) I checked everything. Boy was that over whelming! Emails, face book, messages, blog posts- I had missed so much, all in the space of one week! So I decided that last week just didn't happen to me in the technological side of things and that I'd just start a fresh this week. To keep last week as simply the week that was camp!

I. Loved. Camp!

Now I usually hate camps- the only ones I've been on being school ones, so when I was getting ready to go on this one I was sort of apprehensive. Along with only recently publishing my post about orthorexia and how being in control of my food and diet has affected me simply added to this worry.

But that's the thing- camp helped me so much with that!

I wasn't in control of any of my meals, I was thrown out of my comfort zone and I was left with a choice on how I wanted this week to pan out. And you know what- I did it. Not only that I enjoyed it. I met brilliant people, formed extremely tight bonds with some and had the time of my life everyday without the constant worry of what I had eaten or how much sitting I had done.

I ate a lot of tofu because that's what the camp chef decided was my only source of protein ;) I ate processed foods like veggie soy sausages and heavily marinated tofu. Lot's of my food was fried in oil and there was significantly less veggies on my plate than I'm used to. I didn't have a shred of spinach for 8 whole days and not only that- no pumpkin!

And can you believe it? I survived! Haha, very funny. In all seriousness though this camp truly opened my eyes to the important things in life. Relationships with other people, good times, just hanging out and of course seeing as it was a Christian/ bible camp learning and loving God. I could finally see that the world would not end if I had a squirt of tomato sauce from a bottle or some dip that wasn't dairy free. I ate what I was given and I enjoyed it. The end.

Now that's not to say I wasn't absolutely thrilled to come home and cook up a storm with a bucvket load of veggies- because that's exactly what I did!

 Roasted pumpkin, carrot, swede, parsnip, beetroot, potato, sweet potato and brussels sprouts with some wilted spinach and two poached eggs!

 I missed my veggies!

 I will admit that after 8 days of a different style of eating my body wasn't all that happy. I did get quite a bit bloated after the white rice and lack of veggies and some other stuff that we don't need to go into detail about, but nothing too serious.

 Because we were always so busy on camp I know I ate quite a bit less than usual but I didn't even realise it until we sat down in the dining hall for the next meal and I was famished!

Also, breakfast was at 9:00am every morning and I was up at 5:30 am... so I did have a snack of something I had brought along to hold me through until second breakfast (apple/ muesli etc.)

That's the other thing I was looking forward to- smoothies for brekky!

 Along with chocolate steel cut oats!

 Topped with some coconut butter= YUM!

 I didn't have any yoghurt in the fridge so this smoothie was 1 frozen banana + 1 small frozen mango + 3 chunks of frozen spinach (didn't have any fresh stuff- must go grocery shopping) some chia seeds, LSA mix and oat milk all whazzed up until smooth:

 And very green!

 This filled me up nicely after my hour long run (another thing I missed) and tasted sooo good!

You know what they say- absence makes the heart grow fonder! And I definitely greatly appreciate being at home and all the wonderful things I can eat and do etc. Although I would go back to camp any day any time!

To sum my week away up in one word- helpful. It helped me realise that I wouldn't die if I didn't have a green smoothie, that I didn't have to run every day that I could just be with others and enjoy life. For that I am truly thankful!

Onto you guys:
Did/ do you go on camps?
Do you sometimes like taking a break from your usual routine?
Do you enjoy returning and being in control of your food again?

I have a lot to do today (school's starting back in a week!) so I best be going! Talk to ya later! Bye! :D

WIAW #35

Hidy Ho friendly friends! (Wow. Just wow, Steph)
How are feeling today on this fine Wednesday? Happy? Jolly? Christmas-y? I know I am!

In the glorious mood I'm in- I think I should talk about a glorious topic- FOOD! In particular- the food I have been nom-ing on. WIAW (on Tuesday) style! Thanks Peas and Crayons for this awesome link-up every week, where I always seem to find a fabulous new blog that I never knew existed!

Now onto the eats!
Tuesday was a day when the stomach wanted food. And a lot of it too. Hey- I'm only here to please!
So, bright and easrly, I skipped into the kitchen and nom-ed on a delicious medjool date and dried fig before lacing up my running shoes and going for a lovely run! Upon return, breakfast was created and bubbling away and lunch was being prepared too. Boy life's busy!
Breakfast:
On the breakfast scene was a big bowl of chocolate steel cut oats topped with mixed nut butter:

There was probably 1/2 cup steel cut oats with a scoop of choc protein powder, 1 teaspoon raw cacao powder, a few big dashes of cinnamon, sprinkle of chia seeds and 1/2 a banana with 1 cup of almond milk and 1 cup of water stirred in and then bubbled away on low heat for about 20 mins (left to cool for another 10 mins)

But that's not all. These weren't just chocolate steel cut oats, these were chocolate cheesecake steel cut oats!

Once they were done cooking I stirred in 2 spoons of greek yoghurt and let that sit for a few mins= deliciousness! It also makes it a bit more filling too :)

Can you believe I was still a bit hungry after this? Well I was! So I had a handful of green grapes  as well :)

Snack:
For my snacky snack at school I had a small pot of frozen peas. Yum. :) :)

 Lunch:
I sure was hungry when lunch rolled round as Tuesday happened to be our year day and we went ice skating. So after already running and then ice skating on top of that- feeding was required!

 This is a recycled pic because I was sort of in a rush but it's basically the same thing. A huuuuuge veggie sandwich with home made spelt bread, hommus, spinach, a veggie patty, grated carrot and beetroot, sliced tomato, capsicum, more spinach and top of bread. Yep.

Snack:
After school my snack of choice was a small fuji apple with some apricot and a glass of soy milk:

This apple was sooo crisp, sweet and delicious and the apricot was pretty good too!

Soy milk always tastes the same. Very, very scrumptious!

Dinner:
Dinner was another huuuge plate of food, (told you I was hungry) mainly veggies:

On top of a bed of spinach there was 2 scrambled eggs with garlic, pepper and garlic tofu, beside that was some steamed veg (pumpkin, swede, potato, parnsip and sweet potato and next to that was some roasted brussels sprouts and brocoli- so good!

Even after this mammoth of a dinner I still had a small handful of nuts because I was still a teensy bit hungry... (can you believe it!?!) you know what they say- growing boy girl! I'm lying- I think I've finished growing. Unfortunately I think I will remain this short.

What did you eat Wednesday? (or Tuesday, if you're like me)
Do you sometimes eat a lot on days you run/ work out/ do a lot of activities?
Do you like frozen peas?

Like snooping out what others are eating? Head on over to Peas and Crayons for even more eats!

Bye for now folks! :D