The Things I Love Love Love!!

Happy Monday friendly friends!!

We're getting closer and closer to Christmas and are probably well under way with many celebratory dinners/ lunches/ catchups/ parties and just having fun!

And yet it seems that almost  every website I love to follow and frequent often (healthy living/ food blogs/ fitness etc.) are all centralised around one main topic at this present time; How to keep healthy/ maintain weight/ reduce kilojoules in this holiday season.

(finally learnt how to screen shot on a desktop!)

Now I'm not going to go off on a long rant about how the festive holidays and all the delicious treats and changes to normal routine only comes around once a year and should therefore be savoured and enjoyed, not stressed over and planned around to ensure you don't gain a single gram of weight!

Nope, I'm not going to go into that because I believe you are all smart enough to know that already and are instead focusing on the things (people and/ or food ;) you love these holidays! And so I am going to do the same!! :)

First of all, I love food. Food is healing, replenishing, rejuvenating, energising, tasty and down right happiness inducing. So these holidays I'm going to enjoy my food!

I love thick, chocolate smoothies:

 That require a GREAT amount of slurping energy to drink and also a spoon if required:

 I love bread and 'cheese' that doesn't give me a stomach ache (thankyou hommus, nutritional yeast and water) and tomato and combining them to make an old childhood favourite:

 Grilled cheese and tomato :)

 The crusty bit of my home-made wholemeal spelt bread topped with some vegan cheese, tomato slices and more vegan cheese:

 Popped under the grill at 180 degrees for 5-10mins until golden brown :)

 I also love my minions plate..

 I love super huge sandwiches filled with a rainbow of veggies:

 Hommus, veggie patty, spinach, grated carrot and beetroot, tomato, capsicum and avocado:

 And no, that is not a cucumber in the background, that would be my foam roller :P I was tricked for a second there too!!

 I love chocolate... especially for breakfast:

 Steel cut choc protein oats

 And I especially love warm, gooey oats with nut butter swirled throughout:

 I love, love, love roasted white sweet potato:

 As well as a big plate of ALL the roasted veg:

 And nothing can beat a cool refreshing smoothie bowl, topped with slightly warm, crunchy granola:

 Recipe here.

 And that's just the food!!
I love my friends, family, being together, watching corny holiday movies, baking, playing games, laughing, talking, soaking up the sun (Aussie Summer), the beach:

 I also forget how lucky I am to have a gorgeous white sandy beach at my backyard..

 And it truly fills me with so much joy to simply walk along the sand and just be.

Wow, that got a little lengthier than intended!

Your turn:
What do you love most about the holidays?
Best thing you ate this week?

I hope you all have a lovely day, be with those you love and as always; eat something delicious!! Bye for now friends! :D

Coconut Friday

Hello there beautiful people!

I hope you are having a brilliant Friday, filled with brilliant Friday things and if you're still going to work/ at school somewhere/ not basking in the happiness of the freedom obtained from a Christmas holiday... then when you do finally get a break it will be so much sweeter anyway!!

Today, I'm back to that taboo topic of the time (alliteration.. I like it) otherwise known as coconut.

If you would like some more in depth posts on my thoughts and opinions surrounding all things coconut visit here, in a nutshell- I think everything in moderation :) Coconut oil/ butter etc.like nut butter or avocado is high in fat, but filled with so many other great properties that make me believe it's not the devil quite a number of people categorise it as.

Instead, I would like to shed light on a slight obsession/ overload/ happiness inducing use of coconut  I've unintentionally delved into over the past few days!

It all began with last night's dinner:

 Into a warm frypan went a heaped tablespoon of coconut oil, chopped eggplant, zucchini and butternut squash.
This was browned for around 5-10 mins until slightly golden and slightly tender.
Next went in some chopped mushrooms and frozen broad beans:

 After another few minutes I tossed in some frozen peas, corn, lentils and spinach, added a little more coconut oil and cooked over medium heat for another 5 mins until everything is nicely golden brown, fragrant and tender.

 And into a bowl ready to be devoured! (letting it cool for 20 mins because I'm a freak who likes cooled food :)

After last nights dinner, I woke up with the craving of some coconut butter in some form or other. Would it be truffles? Oats? Pancakes?
All I knew was that I had run out of my home-made coconut butter and needed to whip up some more, so when I was decided what to whip up, I whipped up a fresh batch of liquid gold white!

 It's so simple-pimple to whip up, you only need to half fill your food processor with desiccated coconut and then whaz for quite a while until liquid and smooth (I probably whazzed it all up for around 10-15mins)

 Then into a sterilised jar (ran out of jars, so used a mason jar mug instead :) lid on and hey presto! You can either keep it in the fridge or cupboard (I choose cupboard).

 And you can have fun tricking both yourself and others that it's a glass of milk! Slightly more fat than milk. Slightly ;)

 devoidness of coconut now corrected!

 Happy, happy days!

 Which brings us straight to this morning's breakfast:

 A super delicious bowl of raw coconut butter granola with s splash of almond butter:

 Simply some rolled oats, cinnamon and low-sugar cheerios with some freshly made, warm coconut butter rubbed in and then some almond milk poured in at the end:

 So tasty:

 Alongside that delicious bowl was a frozen orange creamsicle smoothie with a frozen banana, frozen orange, frozen zucchini, kale, spinach, greek yoghurt and water:

 Spoon shot

 Slightly better spoon shot:

 Happy Steph :)

So yes, these past few days have seen a reignited love affair between me and coconut and there have been no complaints from me!

What about you?
Are you a coconut fan?
Favourite way to use coconut oil?
Coconut butter- how much do you love it? (Yes, you can only love it! ;)

That's it from me today folks, have a fabulous day, do something you love and EAT SOMETHING DELICIOUS!! Bye for now friendly friends! :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