Choc Protein Granola Bowl!!

Hi there friendly friends! Are you happy today? Are you feeling super pumped and excited and ready to tackle whatever the day throws at you??

Yes? Brilliant!

And if you answered no, worry not! For I have the solution to put you in the best possible mood to tackle your day and feel strong, powerful and extremely happy throughout the entire day! And yes, of course it involves food!

So this brekky idea came to me as per usual; whilst I was just drifting off to sleep and my mind was thinking about all the randomness of the world and then BOOM. This amazing breakfast idea. Looks at time... great, only like 10 hours until I get to create and then EAT this amazing breakfast! (anyone else have these feels when they're really excited about breakfast but it's all the way on the other side of sleep!?!) I quickly willed myself to drift off so the time machine to breakfast could do it's thang and do its thang it did!

This particular day was a full rest day after a completely exhausting, (both mentally and physically) week of 5 exams a row, with a workout on every single one of those days and just no time to breathe. So to say I was in the happiest of states when I woke up this Monday morning (no exam!!), simply sauntered down to the kitchen, got me a glass of water, grabbed my iPad, plodded back up the stairs to my cosy bed, read some blog posts whilst sipping water and waking up for the day and then fully awake; jumping down the stairs to make my dreamed-up creation!!

And create I did!
That my friends is a ginormous high protein bowl of greek yoghurt, home-made, warm choc granola made with natural muesli, nut butter and protein powder, cooked in the oven until crisp on the outside and golden, with sliced banana scattered throughout for creamy, sweetness to break up the rich flavours of the granola and the tart-ness of the greek yoghurt... it really was the perfect mix of flavours and textures and kept me full FOR HOURRRRSS! So if you're one to struggle with mid-morning snacking because you are utterly ravenous- this is your answer; I wasn't even all that hungry for lunch 5 hours later!!

Ok, enough chit chat- onto the recipe!!

Choc Protein Granola Bowl:

Ingredients:
Granola:
2 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter (or any nut butter you desire!)
1/2 cup natural, untoasted muesli
1/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 scoop choc protein powder (I use the Sunwarrior brand- which is vegan)
1 handful wholegrain sugar-free cheerios (so obsessed with cheerios!!)
3/4 cup almond milk
Other ingredients:
1/2-3/4 cup greek yoghurt (as much as you want with your granola)
1 banana, sliced
1/4 cup extra ice cold almond milk- drizzle over at end :)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius, line a baking tray with baking paper
2. Place oats, muesli, cheerios, protein powder and cinnamon in a bowl and stir to combine
3. Place nut butter and almond milk in a small bowl and heat in the microwave until warmed through (alternatively heat on stove in small saucepan- no need to stir; just heat through)
4. Add to dry mix and stir until combined (add water if too dry/ crumbly)
5. Scatter over baking tray, pop in oven and bake for 15-20 mins until crisp on outside, smelling amazing and lightly golden, leave to cool out of tray
6. Place greek yoghurt in a bowl, top with some banana slices, add a sprinkling of granola, more banana slices, granola, banana, granola, etc. until all used up!
7. Pour over some extra almond milk and then dig in!!

I just love the richness of the chocolate granola and paired with the creaminess of the greek yoghurt and sweetness of banana; gah- I want this NOW!!

I also love how the dried fruit in the muesli becomes slightly caramelised and gets this incredible flavour and extra chewiness- just adding to the perfection:

And honestly, it may not look like much; granola and yoghurt with some fruit, but this high protein, filled with good-fats, screaming deliciousness bowl literally kept me full for so long- and that's saying something for me; I'm a pretty ravenous creature majority of the time. Come lunch time I was like; 'Well, I could eat but I'd be perfectly fine not to..'

My stomach was probably too busy happily daydreaming about the breakfast to be thinking about next meal :P

So, yes, make this, eat this, savour this and I promise your body will thank you for it!

I see this in my future. Many, many times.

Stir around a little to coat some of that crunchy granola, mix up those flavours and you get a very tasty granola yoghurt bowl. Why would you ever go out and buy one of these again when you can make one this good at home with simple ingredients??

OK, I need to stop looking at all these pictures of this breakfast; getting hungry and longing for this bowl. Must stop. Don't want to. Need help :P

Ha ha, just kidding. But seriously. This breakfast is addicting!

Your turn:
What has been the best breakfast you've eaten of recent?
Favourite granola bowl flavours?
Breakfast you could eat everyday and never get sick of? That one's a hard one for me because I go through phases; you know, oatmeal, granola, toast etc. Right now I'm on an epic smoothie ride!!

Alrighty that's it from me today folks; I hope you have a fabulous day, do one thing you absolutely love, give someone you love a hug and as always; EAT SOMETHING DELICIOUS!! Bye for now friends! :D

:)

IT'S TIME!

So I've had this blog for a while now (read, 3 and a half years!!) and throughout the entirety of this blog I have umm-ed and ahhh-ed over whether or not to become vegan, frequently posting vegan recipes and meal ideas and admiring all those vegans out there with their huge plates of plant-based goodness...

And so it might seem shocking as to why I didn't go vegan a long, long time ago. But I think there was this tiny part of my brain that doubted whether or not i could/ should give up all animal products entirely.

But the other thing was, I was basically vegan anyway (especially throughout this year as I finished up with school and had more time to think about who I wanted to be as an adult in this world. I was really only eating greek yoghurt as my everyday animal product and eggs maybe twice a week max! So really, the transition wouldn't be so hard at all...

Which is why... come Sunday morning I whipped up a bowl of berry oats and just... poured over some extra almond milk instead of the greek yoghurt scoop and haven't looked back!

Yep, ya girl is vegan now and let me tell you, even in the last few days I've already noticed my digestion is heaps better, my hunger levels are back, my appetite is roaring, I'm energetic and I'm just happy.

You know the post about how easy it is to fall down the rabbit hole of restriction?? Well now that I've told my brain I'm vegan it's sort of like broken down that food restriction barrier and I'm eating in abundance and ALL the good stuff too! Soooo many veggies and my creativity for cooking has returned!

Thus, the real reason for this post:

Put down whatever it is you are doing right now and go and make this bowl of vegan AWESOMENESS!! So awesome (and healthy) I even made it for lunch! Plus a sneaky secret ingredient to keep you full and firing for hours!!!

Rich choc protein granola with coconut yoghurt, frozen mango and fresh dates:

a splash of cold almond milk over the top:

Such a simple and out-of-this-world delicious meal to make and yep, I have the recipe right here for all of you to enjoy (and seriously- MAKE THIS NOW!)

Vegan Choc Granola Yoghurt Bowl:

Ingredients:
1 cup red kidney beans (told ya there was a sneaky secret ingredient)
3/4 heaped cup rolled oats
1 scoop Sunwarrior vegan choc protein powder
1 teaspoon maca powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
splash almond milk

Few scoops coconut/ soy yoghurt

four fresh dates (fell free to use dried dates I just happened to have the fresh ones from the grocery store the other day)

few handfuls frozen mango

Extra almond milk to splash over

Method:
1. Drain and rinse red kidney beans and microwave for 30 seconds
2. Add beans, protein powder, maca powder, cinnamon and almond milk to blender/ food processor and process until smooth and creamy.

3. Massage into oats and then spread onto tray lined with baking paper

4. Place in the oven at 180 degrees celsius for around 30 mins or until the granola starts to get a little crunchy on the outside and smells incredible!!

Little dark and crispy on the outside- just the way I like it!! :D :D

5. Leave to cool slightly and then layer up your bowl! First some granola, then some dates, yoghurt, frozen mango, more granola, dates, frozen mango, granola and almond milk- hey presto! It's the best-o!!!

Enjoy for breakfast, lunch or dinner and thank me after your done devouring this bowl of goodness.

Absolutely needed after today's leg day- the hanger was real!!

Now, as for the red kidney beans added to the granola? No my friends- you cannot taste them at all! In fact they even add another dimension of fudginess I often find lacking in typical crunchy/ dry commercial granola and that browns-like texture is just incredible! Trust me my friends- this addition is legit!

I can't wait to discover what other mad creations I am yet to come up with and am so excited to be excited about food once again (and EATING!!) so here's to the next amazing chapter in my life (I'm cheers-ing with this bowl of chocolate goodness by the way :P :D)

No questions today, just a fun happy post filled with goodness and foooooooodd!!

Have a wonderful day my friends (and eat something delicious!! :P :D :D)

Life Recently...!

Hello there beautiful food-lovin' people!!

I hope you're all having a fabulous day, doing something you love (even if it's just five minutes with yourself and a cookie... do it!) and making time to smiiillleee.

I realised that we haven't had a good ol' sit down and chat for a while and you're probably very un-up-to-date on my life! GASP!! So I decided to fill you in on Life Currently: Steph-style!

Life wouldn't be life for me without a current food obsession whereby every second day or so I eat said obsession. In the past we have had white sweet potato (that one never truly goes away, I just stop buying white sweet potato), which moved onto smoothie bowls, swinging into a cookie obsession (healthy, muesli, brekky cookies!) and now? Now we've moved onto creamy green substances with fudge-y, nutty, warm granola straight out of the oven:

It's become quite the obsession recently whereby every other day will be something else I haven't made in a while (pancakes, toasties, oatmeal) and falling back to green smoothie/ fro-yo/ 'ice cream' with granola.

This particular breakfast was a creamy mango smoothie with mixed nut butter granola and peanut butter granola:

 Obviously I hated it:

And then I changed things up!!!

Look at that! That's not a smoothie- that's creamy green 'nice-cream'! Frozen banana + frozen zuchini + spinach, all whazzed up together in the Vitamix until smooth :)

 The granola was simply peanut butter granola. But how can I say simply? This warm, fudge-y peanut butter granola is out of this world delicious and deserves so much more love and recognition!

Peanut butter warmed up with almond milk, stirred into around 3/4 cup natural muesli with ground cinnamon- into the oven at 180 degrees celsius for 15-20 mins until golden and fragrant- eat pretty soon afterwards for optimal enjoyment!!

 Pop a few on top of the ice cream and you have one delicious breakfast!

 My theory for my food obsessions is why I force myself to eat something else when I will absolutely love to eat the same thing and will enjoy eating the same thing more?

 It's all about one's happiness people :D

 Ok, so that's the food side- onto fitness!

You may remember my most recent posts about fitness are actually quite a few months old and discuss my decrease in mileage and increase in strength training/ Blogilates videos (HIIT type stuff, or if you're a Blogilates girl, PITT)

Well, it's been quite similar, however I have upped the mileage/ training- a lot more hill sprints and simple sprints around the park, mixed with 1 or 2 long runs in the week and some ab/ leg/ arm workouts (mainly Blogilates) on the off-days. There's also rest-days thrown in where I might just do an easy stretching/ workout video.

This passed Saturday I did one of my longest runs in a while- and I felt good. It just shows the ups and downs and changes of seasons in one's life and I sort of new the day would come where my body would once again love a nice, easy, slow run.

 An hour long run whereby an interesting, funny podcast got me through!

I've found that this combo of cross-training with strength workouts, HIIT and sprint workouts mixed with long runs has toned my body and left me feeling strong and healthy and ready to tackle the world! Or something along those lines!

Something un-health related? My hair's gronw pretty long over the past few moths and I'm kind of excited to have my long thick hair for the up-coming Winter- bring it on cold weather!

In all honesty, this is also a post whereby I try to make the blog a tad more personal with some pics of me- which I sort of cringe at sharing but know that I want you guys to know me better! So.. yep!

Your turn:
What's your current food/ breakfast obsession? How long has it been going for?
Green smoothie fan?
Current fitness favs?

That's it from me today folks (got a bit lengthier than anticipated!) I hope you all have a fabulous day, again- do something you love, and a s always; EAT SOMETHING DELICIOUS!! Bye for now friends! :D

A breakfast Papaya!

Happy Monday friendly friends!!

You know, I can't think of anything better than starting off my week with a nice, easy run in the cool Sunny, Summers morning, followed by the prospect of not having to go to school and papayas.

Papayas?

Yes, papayas :)

When I was out grocery shopping on Saturday, I was perusing around all the glorious fruits coming onto the fresh sections shelves and couldn't help myself when I saw the large number of beautiful whole papayas at quite the low price!

So ofcourse I jumped on that, took my precious little fruit baby home and come this morning...

Enjoyed a glorious breakfast treat!

After slicing my papaya in half I filled it with banana cheesecaek ice cream and topped it all off with peanut butter granola.

And for your enjoyment too, here is the recipe!!

Ingredients:
Banana cheesecake ice cream: This one is completely up to you, I stuck pretty plain with simply banana and yoghurt, but feel free to add in some berries, cacao powder, protein powder or any other flavouring/ add-ins you would like!

1 large chopped, frozen banana
2 heaped tablespoons greek yoghurt (optional- adds cheesecake flavour)

Peanut butter granola:
3/4 cup rolled oats (I used rolled oats and a rolled barley and oat mix)
1 teaspoon chia seeds
optional- pinch cinnamon- to taste
1 heaped tablespoon peanut butter
1/3 cup almond milk (or any other milk)

Other ingredients:
1/2 papaya

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line a tray with baking paper
2.Make the banana ice cream by throwing ingredients in a food processor/ blender and blending until smooth (may need to scrape down sides). Spoon into papaya and place in freezer to harden up slightly until required.

3. Place the oats, chia seeds and cinnamon in a bowl and stir to combine. Place the peanut butter and almond milk in a small bowl and microwave for 30 seconds.
4. Rub warm peanut butter mixture into oats
5. Place raw granola onto tray and bake in oven for 15-20 mins until golden brown (and smelling amazing!!)
6. Remove granola from oven and leave to cool for 10 mins or so

 7. Once granola is cooled place on top of banana ice cream and ENJOY!

Leftover granola never goes to waste- eaten out of the almost empty greek yoghurt container! :P

This was such a lovely refreshing breakfast filled with all the beautiful flavours of fruit and Summer and peanut butter granola!!!

 Which is why it was eaten with a yellow spoon :)

It's funny how people either love or hate papaya... I get that it has a kind of funky taste, but I just love the sweet and almost creamy texture- I'm a fan papaya- good job nature!

 It didn't last too long...

Your turn:
What would be included in the best morning for you?
Do you ever stuff your breakfast into another fruit/ veg?
Papaya- yay/nay?

Well, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed eating it (which would be quite impressive!!) and I hope you have a wonderful day! Eat something delicious!! Bye!!! :D