What a way to start the day :)

I'm happy. Tummy's happy. Yep, you guessed it.. I've just eaten breakfast :)
It was a good breakfast:

On the left is a frozen pineapple and watermelon sorbet. It was good. The mug was better!

That was a crispy, cinnamon, pumpkin granola with a warm home made coconut milk drizzled over the top.
Why was the sorbet there? I'm not sure. I like sorbet- enough said :)
Ingredients:
Granola:
90g muesli (mine was fruity, seedy, nutty muesli with some wholegrain cheerios)
108g pumpkin puree (I steamed up a bunch of pumpkin and then mashed it and measured it at the end)
dash of cinnamon (1/2 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon nut butter
Coconut milk: (Super simple!)
1 tablespoon coconut butter
3/4 cup milk (I used oat milk)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line a small tray with baking paper
2.If you're using fresh pumpkin, chop and steam/boil until soft (20 mins) - then weigh
3. Place muesli in a bowl with cinnamon
4. Once pumpkin is done stir in nut butter until combined

5. Stir in to muesli

 6. Spread out onto baking tray

7. Bake for 15 mins

8. Place on paper towel

You could make your sorbet if you wanted now, (only if you want a brain freeze) you just put 109g frozen watermelon in a food processor with 86g frozen pineapple and whaz until smooth (scraping down sides occasionally)

9. Place coconut butter and milk in a small bowl and microwave for about 1 min, then stir to combine

10. Layer on half the granola into a bowl/ mug

 11. Add half of the milk

12. Place the remaining granola on top and the remaining milk

ENJOY!

Sooo good:

 It just warms your soul! :)
Have a fabulous Saturday!
:D

WIAW #82 Strange Cereal Habits

Hidy-ho friendly friends! Happy Wednesday to you all!!
I hope your week has been chugging along nicely and can you believe it's Wednesday already!

Anywho, Wednesdays are about sharing glorious full days of eats, drooling over other people's glorious full days of eats and linking up WIAW style! All thanks to the wonderful Peas and Crayons for creating this weekly link-up :)

Breakfast: 7:15am
Brekky this morning brought me back to my childhood...
When I was little I used to love Nutrigrain (Iron Man Cereal!!) However I did not like Nutrigrain when it got soggy- ie. placed in milk. So my oh-so-clever solution was to pour my bowl of Nutrigrain, pour a seperate glass of milk and enjoy the two separately... together?

I still got the taste of cereal and milk, however with the added benefit of an always dry, always crunchy piece of cereal!

So, how does this relate to this morning's brekky? Well I did it again! A little more Steph 2 Chef style though this time:

 A super thick and creamy green mango smoothie with a side of freshly baked, warm peanut butter granola, eaten separately because I wanted to enjoy the fudgey crunch of the granola and the challenging slurping through a straw of the super thick, creamy smoothie!

 You can find the recipe for the peanut butter granola here and the smoothie was a simple blend of frozen banana, frozen mango, kale, spinach, greek yoghurt and frozen zucchini with a touch of water to get it all moving.

 This breakfast did not dissapoint, however it's not to say I'm moving on from my beloved smoothie bowls :D

 Nope, just taking a break...

 And having a little too much fun with the thickness of my smoothie and it's resulting capabilities:

 :P
Lunch: 12:30pm
So recently the hangry monster has been visiting my belly, so lunches have been a little earlier and involving a few snacks while I create it (think nomin on a carrot whilst cooking up other veg).

 Today wano different. Come 12 o'clock and I was ready for food!
Enter high fiber spaghetti with grilled eggplant, capsicum, tomatoes, mushrooms and pumpkin with steamed spinach and garlic tofu:

 A few blobs of hommus were also stirred in afterwards fro good measure :)

 And for some reason I still wasn't entirely satisfied after that bowl of deliciousness so I had a small square of dark chocolate to round out lunch.

Snack: 4:00pm
At around 4 I noticed my stomach started to sing grumble again, so I chopped up some fruit!

 Hello perfectly ripe rockmelon and pink lady apple. Gte into my belly!

 Perfect pick-me-up to carry me through to dinner.

Dinner: 6:45pm
I was quite hungry again come dinner (seriously guys, I'm telling you! I'm gonna blame it on the increase in muscles I've started getting from my blogilates videos and fitness challenges :) so I roasted up some sweet potato, parsnip, beetroot, swede, baby carrots and brussels sprouts in coconut oil for 45 mins.

 To the roasted veg I added some broad beans, corn and mixed four beans:

 Quite tasty if I do say so myself!

 To round out the day and keep my stomach quiet throughout the night I had a cup of soy milk.

All in all a very tasty and nutritious day filled with a lot of good eats!!

Aaaaand that's what I ate!

Your turn:
What did you eat this fine Wednesday?
Are you a fan of soggy cereal? My brother is. He actually pours his milk into his cereal and then goes and takes a shower so it's a soggy cereal gloop. I can't even imagine eating it!
What do you nom on when you can't keep the hunger bug at bay? I kind of try and make myself snack on veg, but sometimes it's just not what the body wants. Soy milk, seems to be pretty good at quieting the monster though!

That's it from me today folks. I hope you have a loevely rest of your day and week. Do something you love doing that you haven't done in a while and tell someone you love them- everyone needs to hear that once in a while! Oh and... EAT SOMETHING DELICIOUS! Bye for now!! :D

Saturday- craving all the fat!

Hip, hip hooray for the weekend! So excited right now and I don't even know why! Maybe it's the fact that I can finally eat breakfast slightly later and therefore don't have to deal with the troublesome sun giving me a whole... teeny tiny square to photograph my breakfasts:

Tuesday last week:

I guess I shouldn't be complaining though because at least there is still sun out! Not looking forward to that aspect of winter!

But it is still Summer and no one can take that away from me!! (I am really not a winter person, hey?)
So weekends= awesome sunshine= happy Steph! (It's the little things in life people!)

Weekends also mean long and leisurely runs where I don't have the constant nightmare of being really late for school because I haven't kept track of the time whilst out running (which has happened every weekday before school so far). So long runs (approx 105 mins= approx 18km) lots of sunshine and good food... such as:

Choc protein creamy green ice cream and raw peanut butter granola

Usually when I return for a run (in desperate need of sustenance) I gravitate towards carbs. All the carbs. Oats, wholegrain crumpet, wholemeal spelt bread. Today something was different though. I thought of a big bowl of oats and didn't start drooling (very strange for me) instead I thought of avocados and nut butter and all things FAT! (The healthy kind of course ;)

So I whazzed up 1/2 a frozen, chopped avocado, 1 chopped, frozen banana and 1 scoop of chocolate protein powder until smooth and creamy dreamy!
Then I set about making my typical granola, took a bite and decided that I wouldn't bake it because it tasted so gosh darn good raw. I have these moments sometimes.

So I had all the fat and was super happy.

There's something about avocado that just makes everything so... creamy!

Ice cream paired with warm, gooey peanut-y granola= pure bliss. Especially after running a marathon for quite a while.

So craving the fat was a little strange (but listen to your body people- there must have been a reason! :) however as lunch time rolled around the usual carb-o-saurus in me came back with a vengeance:

 Big bowl of food!

 In this particular bowl was brown rice, garlic tofu, capsicum, tomatoes, spinach, snow pea sprouts, cucumber and roasted sweet potato (overdone and super srispy on the outside- just how I like it!)

To make such awesome sweet potatoes you just need to turn your oven up to hotter than usual (about 200 degrees celsius) and bake for 35 mins and the result is crispy outside, super soft inside and awesome flavour!

I think it's so awesome that (for me at least) my body pretty much tells me what I feel like- be it carb rich foods, full-of-fat goodness, or a decent serve of protein (hello eggs and beans and lentils and everything else on one plate!) and I think it's awesome how good I feel afterward by listening to my body. Top job, body!!

What about you?
What sorts of foods do you crave after a workout?
Favourite source of fat? I love, love, love nut butter, but avocados are definitely up there!)
Favourite method of cooking sweet potato?

That's it from me today folks! Back to my typical Saturday happenings (you know that really means home work!). Hopefully you have something fun/ relaxing/ happiness-inducing happening on your weekend and if not just take an hour or so to do something you truly love! With that- goodbye!
:D

Fun Food Facts Friday!

First of all, thanks for all the wonderful comments on this post- and to everyone who asked, yes I will come and cook for you all- more cooking for me :D
Anyway, since it's Friday I thought I might do a fun little post about amazingly awesome food facts I've come across.
But first- my breakfast. Why? Because it was flipping brilliant :)
Berry ice cream topped with peanut chocolate granola:

I made the ice cream with 1 chopped frozen banana, a handful of frozen berries and 2 big scoops of greek yoghurt (optional for vegans) and whazzed in a food processor until soft serve-y (had to scrape down the sides a few times)

The granola was just some muesli, cacao nibs, wholegrain cheerios, buckwheat flakes and chia seeds mixed in a bowl; 1/2 cup of milk+ 1 spoon of raw cacao heated in microwave and stirred until combined; then rubbed into muesli along with some peanut butter (around 1 tablespoon)
Then placed in oven, spread out on a tray lined with baking paper, at 180 degrees celsius for 15 mins:

 The granola was really bitter on its own and I was worried after tasting it, then I put it with the ice cream... let the pictures do the talking:

Yeh... it was pretty good :)

Now who wants to hear some fun facts about food!

Nutella alone uses 25% of the world's hazelnuts

Most popcorn comes in two different shapes when it's popped; snowflake and mushroom

The can opener wasn't invented until 48 years after the invention of the can

Honey is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins and minerals and water

Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave

 Does anyone else wanna try this?

The water of a coconut is identical to human blood plasma. Lives in 3rd world countries have been saved from it, fed through an IV

 And again:

So they were just some interesting facts I came across when bored (thumbs up for time well spent at school when finished everything!)

I hope everyone has a fab Friday.... I do love Fridays... and aslo a great weekend!
Eat some good food- you know I will be! :D