A few ways with cacao powder!

Who here likes chocolate? Everyone? Good.
Who here doesn't like the fact that eating too much (especially low cacoa content) chocolate will make us unhealthy? Most people- right? Me included! If chocolate didn't contain masses of sugar and other unhealthy (sometimes even unpronounceable) ingredients I'd be bucketing it down like I do spinach... and sweet potato.... and nut butter :)

My name's Stephanie and I'm a chocoholic! There it's out there! Judge me if you will!
Ok, drama-ing it down.

So what's a girl to do when she needs her choccy fix?

I mean I could go out and buy some sugar free, (tastes like cardboard) full-of-artificial-stuff chocolate bars. Or some 100% cacao choc (I never walk down the chocolate aisle so I'm not sure if my super market even sells it). Or I could buy raw cacao powder.

Now guys- raw cacao powder is where it's at. It's on point. It has swag and sass and a bunch of other recently popularized words I don't entirely know the meaning of. It's good stuff.

Don't believe me? JUST WATCH! (shout out to Bruno Mars, in case you missed that)

First of all when I saw raw cacao powder I don't mean cocoa powder.

There's a difference.
I mean the good, un-processed (and uttelry delicious!) kind.

It can be a little tricky to use though, as it is quite bitter on it's own, but I have a few recipes that might just help you out (and let you enjoy that chocolatey goodness!)

You've seen this guy before- he is an old-time blog favourite of mine and has been around since the beginning (last January). It's the super-thick, super-chocolatey green monster!!

Not the prettiest of colours, but one of =my all time favourite smoothies- taste, filling-ness and chocolate power.

Into your blender goes 1 chopped frozen banana+ 1/2 chopped frozen avocado+ 1 scoop chocolate protein powder (optional- make sure it contains raw cacao ;) + 1 heaped teaspoon raw cacao powder+ 1 huge handful of kale/ spinach+ sprinkle of chia seeds + sprinkle raw oats+ 1/2 cup almond milk+ tablespoon nut butter+ 3 scoops greek yoghurt (optional)- whazz it up!

Z-OMG so good!
Banana- for sweet-ness and ice cream qualities, avocado for creaminess and healthy fats, raw cacao for chocolate!

So that one kinda looks a bit too healthy though... don't you think? How about something that looks almost as decadent as it tastes? (I say almost because this bad boy tastes... bad! In an extremely rich, delicious and fudgy kind of way)

Chocolate coconut steel cut oats with a side of kiwi fro-yo

1/3 cup steel cut oats + 1 cup almond milk+ 1/2 sliced banana+ 1 scoop choc protein powder + 1 heaped teaspoon raw cacao powder + sprinkle of chia seeds+ big few shakes of cinnamon+ 1 teaspoon coconut butter (extra for serving) +extra water if necessary

To make- place everything in a pot, stir to combine, then bubble away on low-medium heat for 15-20 mins and then sit for another 10 mins. Pour into bowl (or cup;) and top with extra coconut butter.

Guys, this was so rich and chocolatey that I couldn't finish the last bite! Can you believe it? Your challenge is to be able to!

Finally ice cream. Chocolate ice cream.

 I always remember as a kid that when it came to choosing ice cream my flavours of choice would be crazy rainbow bubblegum flavour or banana or cookies and cream. Always. My brother on the other hand always chose the richest deepest chocolatiest chocolate flavour and I would never look at it with envy. Chocolate just wasn't that high on my list of food loves. I remember tasting his ice cream and not really liking/ disliking it either way.

 That flavour got locked in my brain though and a few years later, the cravings for chocolatey chocolate ice cream like the ones my bro used to get hit hard.

 So into my high speed, super strong, mini food processor went 1/2 frozen avocado, 1/2 banana (preferably frozen but I just used an un-frozen one), 1 big teaspoon raw cacao powder and two spoons of greek yoghurt, whazzed up to produce a beautifully smooth, creamy and chocolatey ice cream. Place in freezer for 30 mins to harden it up a bit (if preferred) or just eat it like soft serve! Ahhh, so good!

Those are just a small sample of my favourite ways to incorporate chocolate into my diet. I would say I consume chocolate in the form of my raw cacao concoctions about 3-4 times per week and it's only 3-4 times and not 7+ times because I want to make sure I don't get sick of it. I still want chocolate to seem like a treat! :)

Your turn:
How do you eat your chocolate? Regular choc bar/ raw cacao powder/ cocoa powder/ hot choc/ protein powder/ baked goods etc.
Do you think chocolate for breakfast should become a thing? I do.
Ever tried chocolate avocado ice cream? No? Go make it now.

That's it for today folks, I hope everyone has a good one! Eat some chocolate! Bye!! :D

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