Changing up the eats!

You know when you get in those food funks?
Those funks where day-in day-out you have no inspiration as to what to create for whatever meal is supposed to be next.

I know, I know- biggest first world problem you've ever heard... but we've all been there.

Monday: 'Hmm, what should I make for dinner tonight? I guess I'll need some veg, some carbs, some protein.'
Dinner: Steamed rice. Boiled/roasted veg. Canned beans/ meat of choice

Tuesday: 'Dinner, right, what are we having? Carbs, veg, protein, fat.'
Dinner: Boiled pasta. Boiled veg. Tofu/ meat of choice

Wednesday: 'Right, dinner is a daily occurrence, ok. So are we thinking carbs, protein, fat and veg? Haven't had rice in... a day.'
Dinner: Steamed rice. boiled/roasted veg. Canned beans/ meat of choice.

Now, the above scenario isn't exactly me. I hate eating the same thing day after day. But I have noticed that I've created a sort of rotation that occurs weekly. Once a week I'll have pasta. Once a week I'll have a bowl of roasted veg. Another day of the week has to be a pizza night. There will usually be eggs on toast on a typical day of the week. Then all of a sudden all my days are filled with dinners that I have every single week and I never try new things!

Yeh, I think that's a little too much meal prep- and that's me talking!

So I've started a new mission to begin adding in wild and wacky dinners like I used to. Back in the day (around 8 months ago) when I would just cook up a storm in the kitchen and either create something amazing, or something amazingly terrible. I guess that was the difference though, I wasn't afraid of making something that tasted foul. :)

This just reminded me of a veggie bowl I made for dinner once with roasted veg, buckwheat cereal flakes and almond butter... told you I was creative!

It's not just dinner either. It's breakfast and lunch too (especially during school terms). I always fall back on the typical oats or the typical salad with a torn up veggie burger. Whatever happened to crazy breakfast pretzels or veggie pizza buns?

Yep, it's decided- gotta change up them eats! Discover new cuisines and try them out. I admit I am quite hesitant towards Asian dishes as the flavours are so subtle and quite foreign to me and as a result I stick to my tried and true Italian and Mexican dishes- but all that is going to change!

Like this brekky:

To the untrained eye this may appear as a simple bowl of oats topped with peanut butter (which is not an amazingly creative and different eat for me) but you have been deceived!

 I call this creation; nutty rhubarb cheesecake oats!

Ingredients:
1/3 cup steel cut oats (heaped)
2 tablespoons flax flakes (optional)
sprinkle of chia seeds
1/2 stick of rhubarb chopped
1 banana chopped
1 cup milk of choice (I used macadamia milk)
1 cup water
1/3 cup greek yoghurt
peanut butter/ other optional toppings

Method:
1. Place the oats, flax, chia seeds, rhubarb, banana, milk and water in a pot and stir over medium heat. Leave to start bubbling and then stir occasionally until thick and liquid is absorbed.
2.Leave to sit for a few minutes
3. Stir in the greek yoghurt, pour into bowl and top with topping of choice
4. Eat up!

I always seem to forget how good rhubarb is.. and then I'll remember and buy some and enjoy it in some oats/ a bake or something. Then I forget again. Gah.

As I said, dinner for me is probably the hardest to come up with brand new meals. I'm tired, I have probably spent the remainder of my afternoon doing homework, I probably don't have much time to make a decision on what to make so I generally slip into steaming veggies and adding a grain and protein source. My mind doesn't even think of other cuisines or types of combinations like spring rolls, curries, chili, soups, bakes etc.  My goal? At least once a week do something crazy.

 This plate wasn't too crazy- but I'm working on it! I thought I should feature it as it's something I've never done before.
Yes, those are steamed veg on the side (pumpkin, parsnip, beetroot) however on top of the two slices of 100% rye bread spread with hommus is the best veggie sausages ever topped with my take on a home-made relish!!

I caramelised around 1/4 of a brown onion with a bit of olive oil for 15 mins or so on low heat until golden and... caramel-y? Then shook in some cumin and paprika and sauteed for around 30 seconds before adding in a handful of chopped cherry tomatoes, a slice of eggplant chopped and a handful of chopped capsicum and sauteed for another 20-30mins until everything was nice and caramelised.

So that's my current challenge- wacky-fying up my eats, trying things I've never done before and most probably eating some food that tastes comparable to that of fried rubber... but you know- live and learn!

 Things just got deep

 Feel free to join me if you feel like you're stuck in your meal rotation and want to break out!

What about you?
Do you ever have periods of eating the same meals on rotate?
How do you combat meal un-inspiration?
Favourite way with rhubarb?

I hope everyone has a fabulous rest of the day and maybe even make something you've never tried before? Bye! :D
Now, what to make for dinner...

If breakfast was a person...

If breakfast was a person....
We would be best friends.
We're both morning people, we're both fans of breakfast foods (eggs, yoghurt, cereal, oats, smoothies etc.) and we're both unforgettable! (Haha, that last one was mainly for breakfast- you should never forget breakfast!!)
This passed week has dealt out some killer breakfast (killer in taste not effect) and I feel like sharing is caring (and I also feel like that is an over-used cliche... that I just used- no shame :)

OIAJ (oats in a jar) made a come back twice this week (that's what happens when you have two jars of opened nut butters in the fridge that you alternate between each day- they both run out at the same time) and both times have been gooood.

Pictured above was some choc protein steel cut oats (1/3- 1/2 cup steel cut oats + 1 scoop choc protein powder + 1 heaped teaspoon raw cacao powder+ a few big dashes of cinnamon + 1 cup almond milk + 1 cup water- bubbled on medium heat, stirring occasionally for 15-20 mins, left to cool for 10 mins) in an almost empty jar of almond, sesame seed and chia seed butter.

Love a good chocolate-filled breakfast!
Lettuce not forget the cool side-kick though!

This cup of beauty was a BIG handful of frozen blackberries whazzed up in a small food processor with 3 scoops of greek yoghurt. So good!

Also very essential as the refreshing-ness of the berries makes the richness of the chocolate more bearable= you can eat more! :) Logic.

SPOON SHOTS!

My favourite type of breakfasts usually feature a smoothie too, however simply sipping sculling down a smoothy will do nothing for the hunger that torments my inner being (yep, hunger is that deep people) so smoothies go with something else that actually requires the use of my teeth. I am not an old granny yet.

They go especially well with coconut butter truffles! 1/2 cup muesli+ 1 tablespoon coconut butter melted with 1/3 cup almond milk in the microwave- 30 seconds- rolled into balls and placed in the freezer for 30 mins until set.

This bad boy was 1 large chopped frozen banana+ 1 handful kale and spinach+ 3 big scoops greek yoghurt+ juice of 1/2 squeezed orange- whazzed until smooth.

Inside view:

Let's just take a moment to appreciate that fudgey-ness.
Good.

Very good.

And finally... I cannot believe in all of my fro-yo creations I have never created this one:

The oats in this pic are just a bowl of my favourite oats.

Topped with a good amount of peanut butter. :)
The fro-yo?
Now, I've made mango fro-yo, I've made peach fro-yo, kiwi fro-yo, banana fro-yo, blueberry fro-yo, blackberry fro-yo, grape fro-yo and probably some others that aren't coming to mind. For some reason I have never, ever made...

PLUM FRO-YO!
Boy have I been missing out!
On the weekend I bought some seriously ripe and juicy plums and knew I was going to freeze them for smoothies. Then my brain eventually remembered my beloved fro-yo obsession. Happy days.

Not only is the colour amazing, but the taste- oh my green peas! Sweet, plum-y... perfect.

See what I mean by a good week of breakfasts? Yep if breakfast was a person we would be BFF'S (best foodie friends :)

What about you?
Do you love breakfast?
Favourite breakfast. Ever?
Favourite way to eat oats? In a jar? In ball form? In a bowl with spoons and spoons of nut butter? ;)

Bye for now friendly friends- have a great day!! :D

Pancakes and Pasta Bake!!

Sunday, Sunday, how I crave thee!

I seriously feel as though the one day of the week where I get a super-super large amount of sleep would be Saturday night- Sunday morning. I generally get a good 8 hours sleep every other night, however as I've labelled myself the teenage baby (need lots of sleep, attention, love and... food!) Sundays offer me around 10+ hours of restful bliss!

I don't even sleep in too much (sleeping in has never, ever been something I could do, no matter how late I stayed up- I was up and moving at the crack of dawn) However my usual wake up time is around 5:00am... so sleeping in until 6:45am-7:00am, really is a sleep-in for me. And boy, do I feel good!

So in short (because that intro seemed to be ridiculously long!) I love Sundays.

In case you didn't know.

Now you do.

:)

Something else you might not have known- I used to hate... hate pasta bake. Both my parents and my sister seemed to think it was one of the best things ever, but my naive, young taste buds just couldn't fathom their appreciation of the cheesey, pasta-y blob of food. (Why do I not write meal descriptions?)

Like everything else I used to hate, now love (avocados, mushrooms etc.) Pasta bake has grown on me. This became evident to me last night when I simply craved it! Enter dinner:

Of course I wasn't really craving the overly cheese-y and sauce-y stuff of my past, I was craving those flavours at the same time not wanting my stomach to explode from the large amount of wheat/dairy/sugar in the original dish.

So how did I do it?
1. Cooked up some quinoa pasta
2. Steamed some pumpkin and broccoli until really soft
3. Stirred together the cooked pasta, steamed/ slightly mashed pumpkin and broccoli, 125g reduced salt baked beans, 2 tablespoons hommus, 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast and 1 tablespoon chopped brown onion
4. Poured into small baking dish and baked at 180 degrees celsius for 30 mins
5. Cooled for 15 mins
6. EATEN!!

Yep, I managed to pull of a vegan, wheat free, ultra cheese-y and flavoursome pasta-bake with hidden veggies and natural sweetness from the pumpkin. In short (again) it was awesome!

Serious comfort food that doesn't leave your tummy crying. Happiness on my fork :)

Served with two poached eggs over some sliced avocado because I am a hungry eating machine!

Other things Sunday offers me besides sleep? Long, luxurious time to make breakfast!
And what a breakfast!

For the pancakes (extremely necessary as it is pancake Sunday) I used this recipe, minus the banana and then stirred up a little chocolate concoction to drizzle on top while the pancakes were cooking:

1 teaspoon raw cacao+ 1 teaspoon choc protein powder+ 2 tablespoons milk( I used oat milk)- stirred until smooth.
So I poured the batter onto a pre-warmed fry pan with some olive oil and then after a minute drizzled on some of the choc sauce:

After another minute on medium heat, flip:

Cook for another minute or so, check other side to see if cooked:

(It's seriously like a brownie layer on top!)

Flip onto some paper towel and top with whatever you like! I chose to go the coconut butter route- because coconut butter is amazing!

I also made  ice cream. Because... why not!

1 chopped frozen banana + 1 chopped frozen plum and that's it!

Whazzed until smooth! (You may need to scrape down the sides of the food processor once or twice)

Pancakes:

Plum ice cream:

Happy days!

Sunday, I love you.

What about you?
Do you love Sundays?
Do you like pasta bake?
Favourite thing about the weekend? In all honesty my favoruite aspect of the weekend is having the time to catch up on everything I couldn't get done during the week. The more productive I am the happier I am!

I hope you all have a fabulous Sunday- make something delicious for whatever meal is coming up next! See ya later! :D

Why Hello There Saturday!

Do you ever have those days where you just feel accomplished?
Where it's not even 10:00am and you've already done so much?
Do you like those days?

Ok, ok I'll stop harassing you with questions.. for now :)
Any-who back to the point (if there ever really was one)!

Standing here, at the computer (have I mentioned how much I hate sitting? That's a topic for another day I think!)  I have already run 20km (I am so pumped about this- longest distance- and time- so far!!-) done my grocery shopping for the week (mum and I literally have different shopping carts when we grocery shop) packed all the groceries away, frozen a big bunch of bananas and written an entire paragraph for the blog (see paragraph above) and it's only 10:37am and 45 seconds.
BOOM!

Saturday- bring it on!

I thought today I might reveal what a typical Friday night/ Saturday morning looks like for me... coz you know, someone might be interested! ;)

So back to my run. I've been slowly increasing my distance from 30 minutes (around 3 months ago) to now- 2 hours! And I am so surprised at the capabilities of my body. If the past few months have shown me anything, it's how strong my body really is!

It has also shown me that running distances like these results in a hunger I have never before experienced. Not complaining though- just wolfing down food like there's no tomorrow!

Like my post-run brekky (pre-run usually features 2 pitted dates)

That, my friends is a big creamy green smoothie (kale and spinach!!) with some greek yoghurt added in and some oat bran in a jar. Heather would be proud!

Of course in my 'crazed, hungry, can't think I've just run the farthest distance I've ever run!' state I added waaaay too much oat milk and water to my oat bran, vanilla protein powder and half a banana (other half went in the smoothie) and so it was a bit on the liquidy side, but still super tasty!

In an almost-empty jar of smooth peanut butter... mmmmm.

And what is more refreshing than a huge green smoothie full of the two best fruits (apart from grapes and water melon)? Nothing.
1 small chopped frozen mango + 1/2 chopped banana + 1 big handful spinach + 1 big handful of kale + 3 big scoops greek yoghurt+ 1/4 cup water- whazzed!

The hunger was repressed once more and the normal(ish) Steph returned)
I also didn't mention that those long distance runs also result in my downing around about 1 liter of water (and coconut water) afterwards. Good times.

Ofcourse I always (read: sometimes) plan ahead the night before to make sure my dinners are filled with carb-y goodness so I'm fueled for the ridiculously long distances I make my legs gallop and last night I simply had no other choice than to make pizza.

Pumpkin base pizza! ;)
Topped with all the veggies:

Mushrooms, brown onion, semi-dried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, red and yellow capsicum, zucchini and eggplant.

Spread with 100% tomato paste, the veggies and some vegan cheese:

And some more vegan cheese...

Baked in the oven at 180 degrees celsius for 25 mins (until crust is hard and brown)

I simply cannot profess my love for veggie pizza enough. It is too good. Definitely something I love more than I should!

The pizza must have worked its magic because I managed the run without collapsing halfway through which only tells me that I need to eat pizza every night before a run. Yep, it only makes sense. Scientifically.

:)

And because I'm a hungry monster I also had a handful of raw nuts after this amazing pumpkin base veggie-filled pizza. :D

After dinner it's rest time, bit of tv watching, bit of day dreaming, bit of... nothing (definitely one of my favourite times of the day) and then an early night- around 8:15pm-8:30pm because I'm super sleepy anyway and come Saturday morning I was out pounding the pavement at 5:15am... so sleep is good!

And that's a little look into my Friday nights/ Saturday mornings- I'm quite the party-kid hey?

What about you?
Do you exercise on Saturday? I know some people refuse to. Weekends = rest for them. For me, weekends= extra time!!
Typical long run refuel?
Do you eat lots of carbs the night before a big workout?

That's it for today folks! I hope you have a restful/ super awesome weekend, accomplish everything you need to... and of course eat some good food while you're at it! Bye! :D