Fun Food Facts Friday

Hi guys. It's Friday- a day considered lucky in some countries, unlucky in others, associated with the colour blue in Thailand, or in some cultures, a day where it is considered customary to wear cowboy attire as casual attire.

Ok you probably guessed it from that intro (and also from the title..) it's fun facts Friday- the Foodie version! Wanna hear some cool facts about food?

1.  India is the world's largest producer of bananas, producing nearly 22 million tonnes in 2007

I use this picture in so many of my posts!

This one was interesting- when I think of India I don't jump straight to bananas, I mean I know how many bananas my family alone goes through in one week! I guess they export them around the world... but still!

2. So India might produce the most bananas, but China is the largest producer of garlic accounting for nearly 75% of the world's output

Wow, just wow.

3. Carbohydrates are chemical compounds that are made up of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon

 This one just interested me as I didn't know what a carbohydrate was. And now I do. Seriously though- it's kind of cool! (Can you tell I've just done chemistry in science?)

4. The water melon can be classified as both a fruit and vegetable

 Wait, what? I have to Google this one...
Well apparently it's a fregetable.
It's planted and harvested like vegetables and grown using vegetable production systems and also apparently the rules for what is and isn't a vegetable isn't set in stone- like pumpkin and cucumber.

The message to take away from this one is... watermelon is delicious. So eat it. Like this:

5. There are over 30 species of mushroom that glow in the dark

So, wait. I'm confused... why are we freaking out about electricity running out?

6. The top of the pineapple, after cleaning and drying, can be planted in soil and a new plant will grow.

 Ok. I'm off to go eat some pineapple. Then do this.


So I hope I enlightened you with some strange food facts and  always remember to not only eat your food, but question it! (Yeh, that sounded so much better in my head) as a bonus, cool facts make for great conversation starters :)

I hope everyone has a fabulous Friday and weekend!
See you later! :D

Thinking Out Loud- My life from the week

I thought for this Thinking Out Loud, I'd talk about my life's musings from the past week. Be warned it could get hectic, random or even utterly confusing- but thanks to Spoons, this kind of thinking is totally allowed! Let's get started shall we?

1. Allergies seemed to be the theme of the week for some reason. A few of my friends have allergies and coincidentally were having some tests done at the same time, so that's what I was hearing about for the week.

I don't even want to think about being allergic to nuts, instead I will be extremely grateful that I am not.
I do however think I am allergic to dates. I've never actually had one on their own, but I've had things with them in it and have felt quite nauseous afterwards. Remind me to try them alone one day- because they look pretty tasty.

2. After all that talk about dates, I got to thinking- 'What fruit are dates?' You know how sultanas are dried grapes and prunes are dried plums. Turns out dates are actually dried dates. So that doesn't help me in determining whether or not I'm allergic to them.

3.Speaking of things that bring me sadness...

Any one tried a foam roller? I'm sure there's lots of you. If you haven't, bless your beautifully loose muscles that you don't need it! Man does it kill! As part of my recovery from whatever it is preventing me from running (still) is rolling out my ITB's, quads and hamstrings. In my room, door closed, no one can hear my cries!

4. Something that would help me out here would be standing desks at school. I have extremely restless legs and the constant sitting that is school is torture slightly uncomfortable. How cool would it be though? I'm sure the majority of my peers would disagree, but maybe they could make it optional? :)

See, look how happy this lady is!

5. After googling standing desks, I got interested in what others things I could do standing. Obviously sleeping is a 'lying down for long periods of time' sort of thing... so...

Perfect.

6. You know how sometimes you just start thinking about things and go- who was the first person who would have thought to do that. Well, my guess is most of the amazing things we have today were mistakes. Like pan cakes and over night oats. The pan cakes didn't rise and instead became a delicious flat something or other and I reckon someone made a bowl of muesli, forgot about it and remembered in the morning, only to eat it and be pleasantly surprised!

7. So then I thought about some other things that someone must have been the first person to try....

Then I thought of oysters.
I mean who would crack open a shell only to find a slimy blob of glue and go, 'Mmmm, that looks yummy.'
Consequently I stopped thinking about these things.

(This space was left for a picture of an oyster- but they're just so gross to look at I couldn't do it)

Well, That's the contents of my brain dumped into a post for you!

What have you been thinking about?

Do you like oysters?

Standing or sitting?

Catch ya later! :D

WIAW #23

Happy Wednesday, or happy Mittwoch- which is the German name for Wednesday, literally meaning mid-week :)
No, no this WIAW doesn't have a German theme to it (I wouldn't even know what a German theme would be?) I just thought it was interesting! Let's hop to it shall we! Thanks as always to Peas and Crayons for hosting this link-up.

Breakfast:
I knew breakfast was going to be super awesome when I put everything in my pot and immediately it went this colour:

 Yay blueberries!
In my blueberry vanilla protein oats today were some rolled oats (I don't pay attention to serving sizes for oats- they're ridiculously small) chia seeds, a scoop of vegan vanilla protein powder, a teeny chopped banana, some rice milk and a BIG handful of blueberries, heated until thick:

 And... smothered in almond butter (yes I used this trick on my bowl as well)

 Check out the purple-ness!

 Would you believe me if I told you it tasted better than it looks?

 'Coz it did:

 Lunch:
Lunch today was a typical school kids lunch. A sandwich! I guess there's a few things typical school kids don't put on their sammy's that I do however :) Starting with how much I put on :)

 Inside was mashed lentils with salsa, sliced avocado, spinach, sliced capsicum, sliced tomato, grated carrot and alfalfa, topped with more lentil mash and the other half of the wholemeal spelt and rye bread. So yum!

 Snack:
After a long day at work school I needed a snack!
Enter sliced green apple and glass of soy milk:

 This always picks me up with the natural sugar rush from the crisp sweet apple and the added protein and calcium from the soy milk.

 Dinner:
I have a thing about serving meals in bowls. I think it makes food taste better. It also creates one big meal, rather than a side of carbs, a side of protein, a side of veggies... it's all together in one bite :)

 This dinner was a bed of spinach topped with roasted veggies (pumpkin, sweet potato, potato, parsnip, swede and that's it) steamed peas and corn and a torn up vegan sausage

 Twas quite good! I'm sure some of you are wondering if I have dessert or not after dinner because there never seems to be any pics of it in my WIAW. Well the short answer is no. The longer answer is; my dinner's are always so big that I'm sometimes not even hungry when I wake up! Don't worry though, as soon as I'm out of bed the hunger strikes!

What did you eat this fine Wednesday?
Do you speak German?
Blueberries- love/hate/don't mind?

Wanna see more eats? Head on over to Peas and Crayons to see what everyone else is nom-ing!

Vegan & protein

Vegan and protein.
Two words that are almost always found in the same sentence.. usually in this sort of way:
'If you are vegan you might find it difficult to get enough protein.' or
'Vegans are often lacking in essential protein.'
You could pretty much sum it up like this:

 Now, I'm not vegan, but I have been previously (I think that's a cue for another post in the future) and it's the exact same thing for vegetarians too. Why is it that people believe meat is the only source of protein?
I get why people eat meat. It's already got all nine essential amino acids that the body cannot create. It's a high source of protein. It tastes good. (Yes, I'm not going to lie- I did enjoy the taste of meat- and yes, again this is a topic for another day) I don't have a problem with meat eaters.

So why, if I don't have a problem with them choosing to eat meat, do they have a problem with me choosing not to eat meat? I don't have enough fingers or toes to count the number of people who have asked me about my protein and iron sources etc. and yet I can count the number of times I've asked people how they get their five servings of veggies a day, because it's zero. It's not really my business.

So I'm not here to preach veganism/ vegetarianism, or hate on all the meat eaters in the world (that'd be a lot of hating!) I'm just here to educate others, so that when they go to ask that very same question; 'Where do you get your protein.' they can stop themselves and remember this post.

So I'm not just gonna voice my opinion about the matter, because come on, who really cares what a 15-year-old Aussie student thinks (apart from me) no I thought I might instead make my point with cold hard facts :)

 How cool is that? It's also pretty funny. Broccoli is now my new favourite vegetable! (Ok just kidding- I love you sweet potato :)

 A little bit of research here and there presented me with meal plans and tables and protein sources readily available, tasty and easy to include in our diets.. that contain 0 traces of animal.

This website was particularly helpful in straightening out a few questions.
You see the average adult male requires about 63g of protein per day and the average adult female- 52g. Of course those numbers change and shift and jump around considering everyone's demographics but if we just use this as a rough guideline, a typical day of food could look like this:

(this is just the protein sources- it does not include all the extra veggies and fruit etc.)
Breakfast:
1 cup oatmeal (6 grams)
1 cup soy milk (7 grams)
2 tablespoons peanut butter (8 grams)

Lunch:
2 slices of whole wheat bread (7 grams)
1 cup baked beans (12 grams)

Snack:
100g trail mix (13 grams)

Dinner:
1 cup cooked lentils (18 grams)
1 cup cooked bulgur ( 6 grams)

Total: 7 grams of protein

That's right- that's over the amount listed above- without the inclusion of protein pill/ powders.

I strongly recommend clicking on the above link as there are multiple tables with amounts of protein in different foods and other statistics.
For example:
1 cup of tempeh- 31 grams of protein
1 cup of black beans- 15 grams of protein
1 cup of peas- 8 grams f protein

So the take-away message?
Next time someone asks you how you get enough protein simply:

Ok maybe not. Though you can calmly and intelligently inform them of all the foods that give you your bulking muscles!

Until next time- eat your spinach to be as strong as popeye!

Bye for now! :D

4 books

Hello,  hello!I'm back with another n10-day-you challenge and today we are up to.....
4 books!

 Before we get started though, I have to show you guys this ridiculous cake I made on the weekend! Now it's not vegan/ gluten free/ healthy in any means.. but it sure was fun to make :)

 From Taste.com.au magazine  it's called the oreo choc chunk cheesecake. On the top is a meringue that I got to caramelize with a cooks blow torch- it was awesome!

 I think it went choc biscuit base, Oreo cheesecake with chunks of oreo inside, a chocolate ganache over on top, which was then topped with the meringue, then melted chocolate drizzle and more mini choc Oreos.

Yeh. No words.
My family still can't understand how I can go through making something like this and then not eating it. I seriously find that making it is the best part. Is there anyone out there who agrees? Anyone?

Now back onto books. Hmm, maybe we should have started with the books- the cake was just too exciting! Ahh well :)

Coming in at number 4 on my top 4 books ever...

The Fallen Series by Lauren Kate

I loved these books and finished the entire series in about a week- they're big books too! My favourite genres are probably fantasy and dystopian so I guess that's another reason why I enjoyed it so much!

Number 3:

 I think this may have been the book that actually got me into reading. I read it when I was about 9 and it was just amazing. The imagination of this author excited me and influenced my own writing (boy, did I do well in creative writing throughout primary school!) I loved it so much that I had to own it and it had to be a hardcover- so I got a really old, hardcover version off ebay.I think it used to belong to a library in England.

Ok guys. It's my top two!
Runner up:

Disruption by Jessica Shirvington

I only read this one this year (I think it was only published this year) and it blew my mind! Love, love, love it! I love the main character- she's just so flipping awesome and I love the whole idea of the novel. What I don't love? I have to wait for book number 2 to come out later in the year!

I don't want to seem so mainstream or anything but my number one favourite book/ series is:

The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

Again, I read the entire series in about a week and had such an emotional reaction to each and every book, they became my favourite books ever, as nothing else I have read has given me that kind of response! Now I could go on and on about what I love about these books, but you might just want to read them yourself to see why I like them so much :)

What's your top 4 fav books?

Cook for fun, or cook to devour?

See ya later guys! :D

It's the weekend!

Hi Friends! It's the weekend and I'm smiling. Just a quick post today- a post to share my joy... yes it is a post about breakfast- although it is a recipe (super-duper easy and super-duper yummy!) so yeah.

You know it's gonna taste good when the base ingredient is:

 Here's what you do: (in pictures because it's too easy for a proper recipe;)
1. Place around 1 1/2-2 tablespoons of coconut butter, 1/2 cup of milk (I used oat milk) and 1 1/2 teaspoons of raw cacao in a small bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. (watch it in case it boils over) Give it a stir and microwave again if coconut butter hasn't fully melted:

 2. Place about 3/4 cup muesli (any kind you like- I would recommenced a raw muesli with dried fruit) into a bowl and stir in the melted chocolate/coconut mixture:

 3. Form into balls and place on a plate lined wit baking paper to go into the freezer:

 4. Freeze for out 15 mins (or as long as you like- when ready to eat just leave out for 10 mins)
5. Meanwhile why not make a grape smoothie?
Frozen grapes:

 Frozen grapes + 1 frozen banana + a big handful of spinach and some kale+ 2 big spoonfuls of greek yoghurt+ 1/2 cup oat milk:

 = the perfect amount of smoothie for my cup:

6. Remove balls from freezer and voila!

They reminded me of those rum ball things (although I only ever tried the rumless ones) but they were just as rich and decadent! They were really fudgey too!

The smoothie was extremely delicious too- it just couldn't compete with the stars of the show!

 While I was outside in the perfect sunlight eating my breakfast I panicked because I didn't have my camera with me to take some glorious shots of these little balls of amazingness- then I relaxed because I knew I would be making these again. Very soon.

 So if you want to start your weekend off with a little bit of yumminess- make. these. now!

Bye for now friends! :D