The midday meal

Lunch.
A hard topic that one.
It's not breakfast and it's not dinner, so you can't have solely breakfast foods or dinner foods. It's kinda got to be a mix of the two.
For some people. If I want pancakes for lunch I'll have em'! This past week however I've had some pretty great containers of lunch! (Tupperware is a saviour when packing food for school!)

This yummy looking box was quinoa, raw veg (carrot, capsicum, red onion, corn and tomato), with a parsley and coriander pesto-y thing (few sprigs coriander, few sprigs flat leaf parsley, a small spoon of dijon mustard, pinch of cumin, lots of spinach, olive oil and some lemon juice- all whazzed up in a food processor)

I felt a bit more like the veg of the cooked variety after that and so made a roast veg salad thing with roast carrot, potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, beetroot, suede and parsnip mixed with lentils and chili tofu and spinach:

:)

Check out this bit of pumpkin...

Seriously- that is my idea of perfection! Love roast veggies. :)
Weekend lunches have to be my favourite though. More time to make something awesome:

 Grilled sandwich with hommus, mashed pumpkin, spinach, veggie patty, grilled capsicum, eggplant, zucchini and mushroom, with some sliced tomato- all grilled in a sandwich press :D

 Everything that didn't fit in the sandwich! (I was quite hungry)

Nom.
Sunday's lunch:

 A hum-un-go-saurus salad with... drum roll please...
Spinach, kale, parsley, red cabbage, carrot, cucumber, strawberries, peas, corn and 2 torn up veggie sausages.

 No, I didn't even consider if everything would work together. I knew it would ;)

Sometimes I just crave a big bowl of raw veggies!

What would a lunch special be without a big ol' Steph sized sandwich!

 That, my impressed friends, is two slices of home made spelt/rye bread spread with hommus, topped with mashed lentils, spinach, avocado, sliced tomato, purple cabbage, grated carrot, grated beetroot and some cucumber. :)

Give it a hat... and then admire the beautifulness that is this sandwich!

Good thing I was hungry that day.

Wait. I'm always hungry...

Details :)

What about you?
What's your favourite lunch?
To you like big ol' salads?
Do you like putting those big ol' salads between two slices of bread?

See ya later guys! :D

Sunday Morning Scones!

Happy Sunday everyone! I love Sundays- long, relaxing, rhymes with funday... yeah! So in my chipper mood this morning I'm going to spoil you all with the breakfast I spoiled myself with because sharing is caring :)

Scones seem to be a thing now in the blog-o-sphere and I'm all for being with the things, so I decided to create my own version- not the triangular ones I've seen so much of, but the typical round British ones. I added strawberries too. :D

These scones were pretty darn good if I do say so myself. They brought me back to a time when my mum and older sister would whip up a batch (the ingredients were a little different to the ones I used) with some whipped cream and strawberry jam and then we would place the warm scones in the middle of the table and dig in. I never really liked them too much (they weren't sweat- what was the point?) but I would always spread on some butter, wait for it to melt then top with a small scoop of strawberry jam and nibble away.

I guess- linking back to this post- my taste buds must have changed somewhere along the years and I seem to remember the taste of scones and really want them! As always, I listen to my body and go with it. I know, my life is tough.

Strawberry Breakfast Scones
Wheat free, dairy free, vegan, soy free, added sugar free, absolutely delicious
Ingredients:
35g wholemeal spelt flour
25g rolled oats
10g oat bran
1/3 cup milk (I used almond milk) with 1 tablespoon chia seeds mixed in along with 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 banana mashed with a fork
2 large strawberries (3 smaller ones)
Optional- 1 tablespoon added fiber mix (LSA etc.)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line a small baking tray with baking paper, dust with a small amount of flour
2. Mash banana, stir chia seeds into milk with baking powder:

 3. Place the flour, oats, oat bran and optional fibre mix into a bowl and stir to combine

 4. Cut strawberries into small chunks

 5. Add banana and chia mixture to dry mix and stir to combine, then use your hands to mix through strawberry chunks

 6. Roll into balls and flatten slightly

 7. Bake for 10-15 mins, until hard on top and golden

 8. Transfer to baking tray for a few mins

 9. Cut in half and spread with anything you like- I went for generous blobs of almond butter :)

10. EAT! While warm- they taste better :)

 I served mine alongside some banana yoghurt (the other half of the banana whazzed up with 3 big scoops of greek yoghurt)

 These were seriously good. Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside.

 They are more dense than regular scones, but that's just because of the different flours and quite frankly I prefer it!

 They sort of look like melting moments, so I guess you could call them melting moment strawberry scones!

 The real reason for the banana yoghurt? To act as the typical cream with scones

 Step 1.

 Step 2.

 Step 3.

 Step 4. NOM!

 T'was a good breakfast. T'was.

How about you?
Do you like scones?
Do you have a favourite type? I'm thinking of making pumpkin scones next
Do you like cream? Never have never will. Too many times has it tricked me into thinking it's ice cream and then left me disappointed!

Bye for now! Enjoy your Sunday! :D

Saturday happenings

Hi everyone!
Just dropping by quickly to recap the past few days and enjoy Saturday! (time to breathe and relax after the business of the week!)

This morning was a nice lazy morning because I could not move. Seriously. Ok- maybe I could move a little, but still. I blame yesterday, volleyball, net ball and hockey all in one day= Steph in a coma. :)

Usually on Saturdays I spend a lot more time in the kitchen at breakfast to make something extraordinary and delicious and a lot more time consuming than week day breakfasts. Today, however I couldn't get a post about oat bran and how adding lots of liquid gives you a big voluminous bowl out of my head and was really craving oat bran because of it!

I didn't realise you could add so much liquid to oat bran and it will still absorb it, resulting in a H.U.G.E bowl of filling oat bran! This bowl was 1/3 cup oat bran with a tablespoon of this fiber mix stuff, a tablespoon raw cacao, a big dash of cinnamon (probably 3-4 normal people dashes) and 1 chopped banana, heated on the stove with 1 cup almond milk and 1 cup water, whisking until thickened to liking.

And of course topped off with a big drizzle of mixed nut and chia butter :)
This was sooo good and sooo filling- all that extra liquid really does make a difference and I loved that I got to eat so much without cooking 1 cup of oat bran!

I ate my big bowl o' oats alongside some kiwi fruit yoghurt (2 kiwifruit, chopped and whazzed with 3 big scoops of greek yoghurt)

So that was good and comforting and made me smile, which was a handy thing... especially after waking up to find this on my leg:

Trust me the light does not do this giant of as bruise any justice. It's huge, it's egg shaped and it hurts! My guess is it happened during hockey last night... but you'd think I would have remembered something that caused a bruise that big!

Now I'm off to enjoy some ginger tea (I literally just put chopped up ginger in hot water), work on some blog posts, read some blog posts, get some study in for my physics, chemistry and English exams!

See you guys later! :D

The Changing of taste buds?

Hello friendly friends!
Today I want to talk about something that truly perplexes me. Something that makes my brain hurt and keeps me questioning. How can one day I wake up and hate avocado and the next day love it? The same goes for mushrooms, pasta bakes, zucchini and olives.

Please explain!

I blame these little guys:

No that's not a pic of something from a coral reef- that's your taste buds people! And boy are they confusing little things!

Apparently you not only grow out of hating on certain foods (seriously- I was crazy to dislike avocado) you can also retrain them!
So your taste buds have a life cycle where they start as basic cells, develop into taste cells and die- all in a matter of around 10 days- 2 weeks! Nuts! (Something else I wasn't always a fan of!)
Makes sense about the re-training part. It also answers a lot of questions that constantly get thrown my way:

'Don't you miss meat?'
'How can you not eat sugar?'
'You can't seriously like the taste of spinach?'

 Nope, I don't miss meat because I haven't had it in about 4 years... so my current taste buds have never come across it's taste before.

I don't eat/ crave sugar because I stopped eating it a while ago- it was hard at first but after about a month I forgot how much I loved it and now most sweet foods taste too sweet for me.

Yes, yes I do like the taste of spinach. Never did as a child, but after eating it almost daily for around 2 years straight, it's started to grow on me (metaphorically)

Maybe I can simplify my answers down a little though...

My taste buds have changed.

 My life as a person who eats food (I know- weird) started with a preference for raw fruit and veg for every snack and toasted sandwiches/ vegemite sandwiches for lunch and whatever meat and veg was on my plate for dinner.

They used to call me bugs bunny because I would just walk around the house chewing on a whole carrot.

In my pre-teen stage I got into the junk food a bit more. Juice/ ice tea over water, chips, chocolate, lollies, biscuits, sprinkle sandwiches (yes as I got older I had sprinkle sandwiches) muffins, cookies- the list goes on and on- because that's what all my friends were eating.

 Things took a turn upon entering 13-14 years of age and now I prefer whole foods, a large variety of them- lots of veggies (cooked/ uncooked) and some health-i-fied versions of my old favourites. (Nachos, pizza, burgers etc.)
 

Black bean veggie burger

That's where my taste buds be at now- I can't handle too much sweet/ salt because I just don't have it too often. Because I've re-trained my taste buds.

I think this is what stumps some people when trying to like a new food/ trying to cut back on one they like too much and may not be the best for them in terms of health.
Persistence is key and when you think about it, it really only takes a few weeks to change a preference.

If two weeks is still too long, apparently burning your tongue kills taste buds too. Hot coffee/ tea/ chocolate for everyone! (Ok, no, I'm not going to endorse that!)

Fun fact before I leave:
You can't actually see your taste buds- the lumpy things on your tongue are called fungiform papillae with six taste buds buried inside it's surface tissue. Yeah.

So this is me thinking out loud!  Head on over to Spoons (creator of this awesome link-up!) for more great thinking!

Bye friends! :D