Forever changing dinners

Dinners frustrate me sometimes.

I feel like I've done a lot of eating during the day and oh, there it is again, a little whisper huge cry of hunger. I'm kind of like- come on body, I've been feeding you all day!

Then I remember I love cooking and food and eating in general and then I'm happy again. Welcome to my brain- at least you don't have to live with it! ;)

Now, there seems to be two types of dinners for me:
1. Dinners that take a long time to prepare and I can just zone out from the world and cook for an hour or two.
2. Dinners that involve quick cooking foods that can be made in a rush, yet still fill me up (generally involving veggies that can be eaten raw/ can be sauteed in a hot pan quickly.

I will admit that I'm not a big fan of the rushed/ having to be portable dinners as I believe dinner is a time that should be spent around a dinner table with family, eaten slowly and enjoyed. But then life happens and that just simply is not the case every night.

My go-to quick dinners include:

• Fried eggs, sauteed mushrooms/ capsicum/ eggplant/ zucchini, with toast that's usually topped with hommus/ avocado/ vegemite (and sometimes a combo of these)
• salads- spinach, tomato, carrot, capsicum, peas, beetroot, drained beans/ torn up veggie burger/ tofu
• Microwave rice cups with frozen peas, corn capsicum, beans, other veggies and salsa
• Omelettes
• toasted sandwiches (my favourite being a hommus, avocado and baked bean jaffle!)

My generally-take-longer-than-half an hour meals include:

• Anything with long, slow roasted veggies (Y.U.M)
• Barley salads (generally with roasted veggies)
• Baked sweet potatoes with a delicious topping of some kind
• Lasagne (wow, I haven't made lasagne in ages! I better remedy that!)
• PIZZA! (me loves pizza :D)

Friday night was one of those precious nights when I had no where to be. I had the whole weekend to do my homework and I had a few spare hours to create whatever I wanted for dinner. Some may see cooking dinner as a chore but it is definitely a treat for me (when it isn't rushed or hectic)

So I started off by making this:

Mmmm, love me some beetroot juice for dinner!
Ok, maybe not. Any who I steamed up 1/4 large beetroot for about 30 mins, whazzed it up in my mini food processor and then squeezed all the juice (and a bit of the actually beetroot) into a small bowl to make...

A pink beetroot pizza base!! Yay pizza!

To make follow the directions in the link above.
I topped my pizza off with some no-added-salt, 100% tomato paste, lots of vegan cheese, fresh basil leaves, sliced tomato and mushrooms, chopped capsicum and eggplant, sliced olives, sliced red onion and a little lot more vegan cheese (I was in a cheesy mood!)

Baked in the oven at 180 degrees celsius for around 25 mins (until base was hard and 'cheese' was golden)

Yum, yum. Although I couldn't enjoy it 100% as when I was rolling it out after resting for 45 mins my Dad goes 'So you made play dough for dinner?' Then I couldn't get the thought of eating play dough out of my head. Thanks Dad.

Who am I kidding, I probably enjoyed it more thinking it looked like play dough! ;)

I ate that baby at home, at a table, with plenty of time swirling around me, enjoying every second. Saturday night was a totally different experience, but that's a story for another day (ie. tomorrow or the next ;)

What about you?
Go-to quick-to-throw-together meal?
Favourite lengthy meal to create?
Favorutie pizza dough recipe? Mine will probably forever me my pumpkin base, although I love the play-doughy appearance of the beetroot base.

Bye for now folks! Remember to make today a fantastical day! :D

Trying something new :)

Hi everyone! Happy, happy Sunday!

 So true right? ^^
 I feel like time  scampering away at break neck speed and I just can't seem to get everything I want to get done! I blame school. It takes up 7 hours of my day, Monday to Friday and that's not even including the morning- getting ready for school and the afternoon- doing homework for school... no wonder I have no time for life!

But that's just me complaining. If I truly think about it, I'm so grateful I have school and an opportunity for an education which will hopefully lead to a job in my future.

Wow, this was not the kind of post I had in mind! I think I may be going off topic. What was my first clue? The fact that I came onto this little blogging platform to talk to you about buckwheat. Yep.

When I first tried buckwheat... I was not a fan. I don't normally say I hate things, but I really very much disliked this grain. I had it quite plain in an eggy-bake thing-o. It was gross.

So, there has been a bag of buckwheat sitting in my pantry for a while now. I can never bring myself to throw it out because it seems like such a waste... which is sort of ironic because I never even think twice about using it- it's an immediate no.

Something magical was in the air this Sunday morning however, and when I reached into my pantry for my tin of steel cut oats my hand deviated from it's intended path and started patting around for that abandoned bag of buckwheat kernels.

Look at all those benefits! Good job buckwheat! Source

It was an adventurous and daring act on my behalf but I soldiered on pouring about 1/2 a cup into my oat-making saucepan, along with 1/2 banana, 1 scoop choc protein powder, 1 heaped teaspoon raw cacao powder, sprinkle of chia seeds, a few big dashes of cinnamon, 3/4 cup almond milk and 3/4 cup water and then simmered stirring occasionally for 15-20 mins until the liquid was absorbed:

It smelled amazing. Good first sign!

After letting it cool for 5-10 mins, I scooped it into an almost empty jar of my home-made coconut butter along with a cup of banana/ blueberry yoghurt (the other half of banana+ small handful of blueberries + 3 big scoops of greek yoghurt- whazzed up in a small food processor until smooth)

It smelled good, it looked good, I was preeetttyyy hungry- the spoon went into my mouth...

Oh. My. Grape jelly! (Grape jelly is a thing... I just looked it up!)
On first bite I may or may not have sighed in pleasure at the taste of my 'oats'. I did by the way. I sure did!

There's something about the texture of buckwheat that makes my normal chocolate steel cut oat recipe so much more.... fudgier? Decadent? Rich? I dunno, but it was gooood!

I'm not going to lie though, as with all rich things you can only take so much, so it was a bit of a struggle for me to finish that jar (yeh, I know- me!) still I managed to get through it (you can tell I suffer, right?) ;)

And I'm not going to lie about this either- I really, really enjoyed this buckwheat porridge! If you haven't tried buckwheat before I would recommend going the sweet/ breakfast-y/ porridge-y route first because I'm still not sure if I could tolerate this pseudo-cereal on its own (I'll happily stick with plain brown rice and pasta for that!)

I just wish I had tried this buckwheat experiment before my first- I've been missing out for so long! I guess I'll just have to make up for lost time- oh well! ;)

Your turn:
Have you ever tried something, hated it and then tried again in something different and liked it? (I'm so good at asking succinct questions, hey?)
Have you ever tried buckwheat?
Favourite way to eat buckwheat?

Remember to have a lovely Sunday, relish any spare time you have and just have an all-round great day! Bye for now! :D

How to survive a busy day!

Hello, hello friendly friends! I hope everyone is having a good day today, or a favourable, spanking, prime, superb, rad or any other positive word my thesaurus threw at me. :)

Whether your day is good, favourable, spanking.... yeh you got it, is it also a busy day? If so then this is the post for you! (If not then you will probably have a busy day in your life so this is also the post for you!)

Wednesday night I was just standing around, twiddling my thumbs, thinking about anything and everything, when I realised that Thursday (the day after Wednesday ;) was going to be a busy one.

To begin with, I wanted to fit in a run... and didn't want a rerun (pun not intended) of a few days ago. That meant no time to make breakfast/ lunch for school. I also had my first acrobatics class that night and wasn't sure how much homework I would receive at school (that Wednesday was crazy- every subject needed attention for some reason!) so I also wanted to make dinner too.

Yep, that Wednesday night I prepped Thursday Breakfast, lunch, dinner along with Wednesday's dinner- coz, you know, I needed dinner that night too :).

This is what resulted:

Roasted veggies for lunch (potato, sweet potato and parsnip), 2 small quiches for dinner and a big bowl of overnight protein oats for breakfast:

I love, love, love cold roasted veg (especially potatoes) and take them to school way too often!

Also, these quiches were amazing!!

Eggs, quinoa, veggies, garlic, ginger, yum, yum, yum :)

Into a bowl went chopped capsicum, tomato, zucchini, eggplant, celery, red onion, mixed quinoa, garlic, ginger and nutritional yeast:

Then 2 whisked eggs stirred in and added to two greased ramekins:

Baked in the oven (180 degrees celsius) for 20-30 mins, until the egg is set. Turned out of the ramekin, left to cool and then placed in a container in the fridge.

Too easy!
This is what lunch turned out to be:

The prepped cold roasted veg with some kumara bean ball thingoes (frozen at the grocery store- good ingredient list!), kale and spinach... then I thought it needed some hommus to top it off:

This is what breakfast turned out to be:

The protein overnight oats- muesli, yoghurt, chia seeds, cinnamon, vanilla protein powder and almond milk- topped with a sliced banana and almond butter:

So good- perfect after a run!

Spoon shot:

And dinner was just so quick handy and easy!!

I always feel at ease when all my meals are sorted and I don't have to think... though I love cooking all of my meals. Therefore I love this solution for busy days!

What about you?
Do you prep meals at the beginning of the week/ day before a busy week?
What is your go to make-in-advance meals?
Favourite overnight oats recipe?

That's it for today folks! Hope you have a lovely weekend (I definitely need a rest from this busy week!) See ya later! :D

The real-life RD has a point

Hey there friendly friends! How's everyone going today?

I've had something that has been on my mind for a while now. When something's on my mind it stays there. So my solution is to learn more about that something, read more, investigate further, get my mind around it. And still it's stuck there on my brain... so my only option is to do a brain spew of everything I've been thinking on this topic.

What I'm talking about is a lesson I learned from The Real Life RD, a fantastic blog written thoughtfully by the amazing blogger Robyn. The lesson her entire blog teaches. The lesson of eating!

Yes, I was confused too, but as I continued reading through her many well-written posts on the topic of restoring a slow metabolism etc. I began to understand. It made sense.

If you've ever read a diet magazine or seen an advertisement for a dieting program/ eating plan or heard about a certain celebrities healthy way of eating... you know that there is a lot of info out there on what's considered healthy. This can mean one of two things.

1. There is so much information and complex things to learn in order to be healthy.
2. Or two, no one truly knows the perfect way to be healthy- no one has the true answer.

So, just like all those diet advertisements and newest research proclaiming some ancient unheard of fruit to be the healthiest food on the planet, my thoughts are just thoughts too- not the answer!

 The biggest thing I take away from Robyn's posts is her urgency at informing readers that eating a diet of 1200 calories (typical weight loss diet) is no where near enough to sustain a healthy life. It is ridiculously low in calories. It isn't healthy. 

She goes on to say that neither 1400, 1600, or even 1800 calories is enough to sustain oneself properly.

'The majority of women need 1,300 to 1,500 calories per day to just maintain LIFE.'

 That's not even taking into account any extra exercising, moving, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning etc. That's just breathing, making sure your heart is beating and your kidneys are working. Yet for some reason we need to eat 1200 calories a day to lose weight? I feel as though these numbers aren't adding up.

If things don't add up then problems start to occur. Your body isn't in taking enough and it comes as no surprise that what food is does get it stores. Metabolism is slowed. Burning energy doesn't happen as it should. Weight loss becomes very difficult. 

 You know that one girl at school who ate everything and everyone was so jealous because she was still thin? Her metabolism was normal. Everything she was eating her body was using as fuel, not freaking out and storing it as fat because it doesn't know when it will be fed again.

I guess, to all of my friends I am that girl. I come to school with huge lunches (albeit filled with lots of delicious veg, wholegrains, legumes and other good stuff) the one who always packs a snack wherever we go and never misses a meal. And yet the most common solution teenage girls (and I'm sure any other aged girls/ even guys) is not to mimic the behaviour they're seeing right in front of their eyes- oh no, that would be ludicrous! It's to cut down on their already deficient daily caloric intake. 

                                  Typical Steph sandwich- try getting your mouth around that!

 The worst part- they will see results and quickly too! The question is- are these the results they really want. By not feeding your body adequately it still feeds. It feeds on whatever is in your body. Food becomes unavailable? Your muscle because the next best option for your bodies protein needs. Losing wight in the form of muscle mass is not OK.

  After these quick results, your body jumps into action. It's such a smart machine and so to keep you and your vital internal organs surviving, it's got to slow down on the quick, healthy burning of energy. Any food that is consumed is safely stored away and then slowly broken down into energy to make sure it lasts, to make sure you last. 

Results start to slow, you're always tired, you don't have enough energy, your hair is brittle, you don't look healthy and you are lacking in many vital minerals and nutrients all in the name of being thin like that friend of yours who eats everything. It's almost comical that the solution to the problem at hand is to eat. Fuel your body with the nutrients it needs- and a lot of them too, because our bodies are energy burning machines! We're supposed to have healthy metabolisms that burn all the energy we give to our bodies. 

It's time we all developed a trusting relationship with our bodies. To trust that our hunger signals are justified and we should honour them. To trust that our body knows what it's doing and if it's sending you signals (tiredness, fatigue, hunger pangs) we should listen. To trust that our body needs fuel and a lot of it.

It's no coincidence that as the diet and media industry continues to grow and grow, so does the number of over weight people and other food-related diseases. It's time to get back to the time when food was just food, there was no target amount of calories you should/ shouldn't be eating, back to the time when we didn't over think our eating and in turn didn't create even more problems than we started with.

Wow, I've rambled on, haven't I? It just goes to show that this is a topic I am passionate about and if you want to learn more and hear all of this from someone who knows much more about it than me, please head over to The Real Life RD and read about what Robyn has to say because it makes sense. It's so much easier than we think.

This is me just Thinking Out Loud- if you want to see what everyone else is thinking about this week head on over To Running with Spoons for Amanda's awesome link-up!

Any thoughts are definitely encouraged!

Bye for now friendly friends! Have a great day! :D

WIAW # 42 First day back!

Hi everyone! Once again Happy Wednesday!! Geez these weeks fly by!
I'm back to school now so I thought for this WIAW I would share with you the entirety of my meals from Monday (The first day back at school and also my birthday ;)

Breakfast:
So I got up nice and early, did some nice Purely Twin's workouts, had a nice little breakfast creation in the kitchen and then realised I also had to make lunch- oops! So I started scrambling around like a headless chicken trying to throw something together that was quick and would fill me!

 After randomly chopping veggies and draining beans like a mad thing I got to enjoy my loveley (and extremely filling!!) breakfast.

 Raw cacao muesli balls with a creamy banana mango green smoothie :)

 This awesome jar I got for my birthday is pink, which is why the awesomely fluoro colour of my smoothie looks kinda strange... but it was good stuff! (I especially love how the jar has a handle!) Follow my creamy green smoothie if you want a cup/jar/bucket of this for brekky too!

 The choc muesli balls were similar to these except I used coconut butter in place of the almond butter.

 Oooh look, I did take a picture of the vibrant green-ness that was my smoothie!

 Seriously I was still full from this meal at around 4pm that day.

 Snack: Unpictured Peas!
My morning snack was a small pot of peas, I wasn't too hungry but I need to be able to concentrate through my classes- year 11 is getting tough guys! (Which reminds me- I have home work I should be doing!!)

Lunch:

My quick throw-together lunch was this salad thing that had chopped carrot, beetroot, cucumber, cannelini beans, spinach, capsicum, celery and sweet potato noodles (yep sweet potato noodles! Tasted almost exactly the same as rice noodles but hey, I like rice noodles!))

So I wasn't too hungry again, but I love veggies so much that I enjoyed every last bite :)

And I really just loved eating the sweet potato noodles ;)

Snack:
For a snack when I got home (and got stuck into more work) I had some watermelon, (so good!) a cut up apple and some soy milk:

Seriously watermelon, why do you taste so good?

Dinner: 
The hunger had returned slightly for dinner so I whipped up a delicious plate of veggies and carbs and... deliciousness!

A toasted wrap with a side of the leftover filling:

In the wrap was some oven roasted veg (tomato, eggplant, zucchini, asparagus, mushrooms- all sauteed in some olive oil and garlic, and some steamed pumpkin, fresh spinach, hommus and chili tofu- wrapped up in a wholemeal wrap and toasted in a sandwich press= yummy!

Finished off the day with a small handful of raw mixed nuts. Happy days.


Your turn:
What did/ do you pack for lunch when you were/ are at school? Primary school lunches for me were Vegemite sandwiches and a muffin/ cookie- times have changed!
Do you ever have really filling breakfasts? I kind of don't like not being hungry at meal times!
Ever tried sweet potato noodles? Or- favourite type of noodles?

Thanks to Peas and Crayons for this awesome link-up and definitely go over and check out what everyone else has been eating on this fine Wednesday!