Recipe: Garlic Roasted Eggplant Salad & Reboot Summary

Today was a really interesting day! And pretty great. My tummy is having some hassles adjusting it seems, so I ended up starting the day with a juice anyway (just didn't want anything else) and even though I had a fairly small amount to eat, really wasn't hungry for dinner either.

Day 8 Summary:
Food:
Breakfast: Juice of 2 x pink lady and 2 x granny smith apples
Lunch & Afternoon Tea: Garlic Roasted Eggplant Salad

This was super delicious, and the recipe is below. After two serves of this - yes I came back for seconds for afternoon tea  ;) - I was feeling really full! My tummy was pretty rumbly and a bit sore in the afternoon also, I think maybe just the adjustment to the little bit of garlic, oil and salt in this recipe might have been to blame.
Dinner: Green smoothie with 2 bunches english spinach, 2 large bananas, 1 tsp cacao and 1/2 tsp maca

Exercise: 
I did fit in a brisk 30 minute walk with the children this afternoon, it was really lovely to be out in the beautiful fresh air. Thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Gratitude: Some of you may have seen on facebook, my gratitude for today was for my "mistakes" for helping me learn and grow and become the person I am today :).

Recipe: Garlic Roasted Eggplant Salad (Vegan):
* Serves 1 person as a main meal.
* This recipe IS a little fiddly but its WELL worth the effort! :D
Ingredients:
2 M-L Shiitake Mushrooms, sliced
1 TBSP Chopped Parsley
1 TBSP Tamari/Noma Shoyu/GF Soy Sauce/Liquid Aminos

1/2 a large eggplant, sliced in 1/2 cm slices (8-10 slices)
2 cloves garlic
1 small pickling onion or 1/4 large brown onion
Sea Salt
Cracked Black Pepper
2 TBSP Olive Oil

1-2 tomatoes, sliced in 1/2 cm slices
8-10 leaves fresh basil

Method:
1. First preheat your oven to 160-180ºC. Then set the mushrooms to marinate: slice mushrooms and dice parsley, and place in a small bowl, pour Tamari over and set aside to marinate.

2. Prep the eggplant: Lay out the slices of eggplant on a cutting board or tray, and sprinkle each slice with a little salt, rub the salt into the slices. Leave to sit for approx 15 minutes, then flip over the slices and repeat on the other side. Leave to sit for a further 15 minutes. Then rinse the slices of eggplant and dry between sheets of paper towel. *This breaks down the eggplant a little so you don't get that rubbery texture, you should notice the slices are softer and floppier after doing this.

 3. In your TMX or food processor, finely mince the garlic and onion for 5 seconds on speed 7. Put this into a small bowl  or ramekin and add olive oil, mix.

4. Lay the slices of eggplant on baking paper on a cookie tray. Using a teaspoon, spoon a small amount of garlic, onion and oil mixture onto each slice of eggplant, spread evenly over each slice using the back of the spoon. Sprinkle with a little good quality salt and cracked black pepper.

5. Bake eggplant in oven at 160-180ºC for approximately 20-30 minutes or until you see the onion and garlic browning, and eggplant goes nice and soft.

6. Arrange slices of eggplant around a round plate, place a slice of tomato and a leaf of basil on top of each piece of eggplant, and place marinated mushrooms in the centre of the plate. Serve and enjoy! :D

I hope you all had a lovely day! Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Maybe pop by my FB page and let me know what YOU'RE grateful for?

Love and Health,
B xxx

28 Day Reboot - Week 1 Summary & Week 2 Plan

I DID IT!!! :D I have successfully completed week 1 of my 28 Day Reboot - the 7 day juice fast.

It was a challenging week without a doubt. For the first two days I felt weak, light-headed, a little woozy and by the afternoon of the second day I had a whopping great headache! However, after that it got easier and easier. It was like my body adjusted (pretty quickly all things considered) and the second half of the week was pretty easy to maintain. By day 5-7 there was a definite craving for solid foods, but it was more of an emotional or psychological craving than an actual physical craving, so wasn't too hard to resist.

What I learned: This is a FANTASTIC way to cleanse, give your digestive system a break, lose a fair chunk of weight healthily, and boost & nourish your body with a bunch of fabulous micro-nutrients. I also learned that I DO have willpower when I choose to exercise it! On the 6th day I went to Cairns and took my daughter to a movie and was easily able to resist the temptation to have popcorn or other snacks/junk food. That felt really good, really empowering! :D I also lost 3kgs by about the 4th day, I haven't weighed myself today to see the total for the week, I'll do that in the morning and get back to you!

Tonight I rewarded myself by breaking my fast with a delicious dinner out. I had baked barramundi with a fresh salad and lightly steamed vegetables. I tell you I was soooooooo full! I'm still feeling full almost 3 hours later! Just goes to show how quickly your stomach shrinks, and how unnecessary a lot of the "filler" foods we take for granted actually are - I'm specifically thinking about the starchy carbs most of us think are imperative to a main meal like rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, etc.

So my thinking for the 2nd week of this Reboot is that after doing that fabulous juice cleanse, I don't want to jump straight back in to eating just anything. I want to continue the cleansing benefits from the first week, and keep my diet really clean.

So for Week 2 - Days 8-14 - Food: I'm going to continue having ONLY fresh fruit and vegetables, with the difference being I'm going to EAT them! LOL This means I'll still be having a green smoothie or green juice for breakfast, and probably a juice for morning and afternoon tea as well. For lunch and dinner I'm going to have salads, lightly steamed vegetables, vegetable soups etc. I'm also going to allow myself small quantities of condiments such as Nama Shoyu (or gluten free soy sauce), apple cider vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper, herbs, perhaps some semi dried tomatoes and olives, the occasional avocado, and very small quantities of cold pressed olive oil (to make dressings and flavour soups etc). I'm hoping that this will ease my digestive system back into coping with solids again, but also continue the cleansing benefits of eating just fruits and vegetables.

Week 2 - Days 8-14 - Exercise: Last week I didn't manage to exercise at all, but I'm okay with that, considering the major changes my body was coping with, I decided to cut myself some slack and not expect too much! For this week I'm planning to do light exercise (such as a brisk walk) 5 out of 7 days.

Week 2 - Days 8-14 - Emotional Health: My friend Vicki brought this aspect to my attention last week when we were discussing this program. I do tend to get really fixated in the physical sometimes, and forget that my emotional state is every bit as crucial to nurture! For the first week I really felt like I just needed to focus all my energy on completing the juice cleanse and dealing with detoxing, but for the second week I do want to start focussing on the emotional side of things as well. So for this 2nd week, I plan to try to spend a few minutes each day on gratitude. Taking a leaf from Eva's book (from uncooking101.com, check it out, she's super awesome!) I am going to take just 5-10 minutes per day to quickly jot down a few things that I'm grateful for. I'll post my daily gratitude on my FB page, so if any of you are following this, and you DON'T see my daily gratitude, please nag me! ;)

If any of you are keen to try this plan, please let me know and feel free to ask any questions either here or on my FB page. I'd love it if some of you joined me! :D

See you in a day or two!
Love and Health,
B xxx

28 Day Reboot - Day 5 Summary

I'm pretty used to this now! I don't physically feel hungry or light-headed any longer. What I AM struggling with at the moment, is after 5 days of liquid meals, my mind and emotions want to CHEW stuff! So whilst I do feel physically sated most of the time (except if i go a little too long between juices), the emotional/psychological cravings for solid foods have started (and how!).

Day 5 Summary
Breakfast Juice: Pineapple, mint, english spinach
Morning Tea: Vegetable broth made with garlic, shallot, leeks, bok choy, shitake mushrooms, carrots, celery and a pinch of salt - this was cooked and then I strained off the liquid and just drank that. A nice change from cold juices!
Lunch: Watermelon, pineapple, english spinach
Afternoon Tea: Celery, lettuce, tomato, red capsicum, cucumber, lemon
Dinner: Vegetable broth made with garlic, red onion, red capsicum, tomato, celery, carrot, english spinach and 1/2 tsp vegetable stock concentrate.
After Dinner Juice: TBA - tonight I will probably have a "dessert" juice using pine and orange or something along those lines

Cheats: 10 cigarettes :( Still no exercise but thanks to some advice from Em, I'm not too worried about the exercise for this week anymore, as my body needs to rest and detox and heal during this phase.

Looking forward to catching up tomorrow.
Love and Health,
B xxx

28 Day Reboot - Day 3 and 4 Summary

I've actually had a pretty good couple of days. It seems my body has adjusted and is running quite well on juice.

Day 3:
On Waking: 1L Water
Breakfast Juice: Orange, pineapple, green powder, english spinach
Morning Tea Juice: Beetroot, carrot, apple, lemon, parsley
Lunch Juice: 1/2 large cucumber, 2 stalks celery, 2 tomatoes, lemon, red capsicum
Afternoon Tea Juice: Orange, pineapple, watermelon, english spinach
Dinner Juice: Orange, pineapple, english spinach

Cheats: Too many cigarettes (I actually lost count but I think it was about 12) :(

I was much more active in general, doing work around the house and spent most of the day either on my feet or driving, without feeling light-headed or having a headache.

Cleansing: Lets just say there's movement at the station! Its obvious that a lot of stuff that has been stuck in my digestive tract is being cleaned out. It all very easy and comfortable though! Just have to keep up the water.

Day 4:
Breakfast Juice: Watermelon, lime, raspberries
Morning Tea Juice: Beetroot, carrot, apple, lemon, parsley
Lunch Juice: Spinach, orange, passionfruit
Afternoon Tea Juice: Pine, Mint, Baby Spinach
Dinner Juice: TBA (or I might not have another one tonight, will see how I feel)

Cheats: 6 cigarettes

Once again I had a fairly active day spending most of the time on my feet. I'm feeling pretty good now except for the smoking. Really going to make the extra effort tomorrow to stop!

So far I've learned that I can't do too many juices that are just vegetables in a row - that's when I seem to get dizzy and low energy etc. I guess pure vegetable juice just doesn't have enough calories to keep you going for very long. I've been trying to alternate fruit and vegetable juices, or at least make sure the spinach in my juice makes up at least 1/3 of the juice. I also learned that despite the fact that I don't feel thirsty, as all I'm doing is drinking all day, I DO still need to drink a decent amount of water - 2L approximately. This helps with keeping me feeling full and I haven't had a headache or dizzy spell since I started concentrating on drinking more water.

If any of you are also trying this out, I'd love to hear how you're doing so far! :D

See you tomorrow,
Love and Health,
B xxx

28 Day Reboot - Day 2 Summary

Today was really tough! I had a massive headache all day and felt very low energy. I'm feeling a lot better tonight, so maybe the worst is over! I've discovered that I can't do JUST vegetable juice very easily - working on that!

On waking 1L water.
Breakfast Juice: Pink grapefruit, English spinach, 2 x pink lady apples
Morning Tea Juice: Orange, Watermelon, english spinach, 2 x passionfruit
Lunch Juice: 1/2 large cucumber, 1 stalk celery with leaves, 1 wedge lemon, large bunch parsely, 1 green apple.
Afternoon Tea & Dinner Juice (both were the same): orange and pineapple.

Cheats: 5 cigarettes :( (but better than yesterday, so we're making progress), 2 small pieces of bruschetta type bread with approx 2 tablespoons raw vegan pesto. (In the mid afternoon I was feeling so faint, and had such a massive headache, I felt like I was going to pass out)

Exercise: No walking but I did do all the washing, folding, ironing and cleaned the house so can I count that? Housework-workout? LOL

Wish me luck for day 3!

Love and Health,
B xxx

28 Day Reboot - Day 1 Summary

Here's a quick summary of the first day of my juice cleanse week:

Before Breakfast: 1L water with juice of 1/2 a lemon
Breakfast Juice: Bunch of Kale, 2 oranges, 1 passionfruit, 1 tsp green powder
Morning Tea Juice: Watermeon, 1 orange, raspberries
Lunch Juice: Celery, Baby Spinach, 1 small slice red onion, basil, parsley, 3 tomatoes, juice of 1 lemon
Afternoon Tea Juice: Celery, beetroot, carrot, ginger
Dinner Juice: Baby spinach, 2 stalks of celery, 1/2 a large cucumber, 2 apples.

Cheats: I broke down around lunch time and had a glass of coke that I had left in the fridge :(
I also had 7 cigarettes. I didn't have my first one until almost 2pm though, so that's a good start.

Today I didn't fit in any exercise.

I've felt pretty light-headed most of the day, with a very slight headache. And I was pretty low on energy. I'm pretty sure these are pretty standard detox symptoms, so I'm determined to persevere and reap the benefits of the cleanse!

Tomorrow my goals are to continue with the juices, and to fit in a 30 minute walk, and to have less cigarettes than today (preferably NONE!).

Have any of you started this? If so please let me know how your first day went!

Love and Health,
B xxx

28 Day Reboot - Day 1-7

Have any of you been slipping back into some bad habits lately? The reason I ask is because I had a conversation with my friend Vicki the other day, and we were talking about how we KNOW what's good for us, we KNOW we'll feel better if we do (insert whatever good habit here), and yet we let ourselves slip out of those good habits and back into bad ones! Does anyone know why we do this? Cause I sure don't!

Having said that, since I went away in April for my sisters wedding in Adelaide, I've been sliding further and further into really bad habits. It started innocently enough - because I was on holidays I ate a few things I know aren't great for me here and there, and drank some alcohol, even had some smokes! :( And before you know it, I was feeling low about having put on a bit of weight and developing some bad habits, so that made me eat MORE bad stuff and not want to exercise etc. So NOW I find myself in this place where I'm eating ALL the wrong things, even drinking soft drinks and smoking again! I have no energy and EVERYTHING is a big chore, I'm not enjoying my life at all! :( I've been wanting to do a cleanse/reboot for a while now, and after my chat with Vicki I was inspired by her idea of doing a 28 day program to get back into some good habits.

So I'm going to run a "28 Day Reboot" for myself, and if there are any of you who have maybe also slipped back into some habits you know aren't great for you, please join me for the ride! :D It's starting tomorrow - Monday the 25th of June! I will put up the outline plan for each week on the Sunday night (I'll run the weeks Monday to Sunday) so you can get prepared, and each day I'm going to log what I eat and do and put it up on the blog - to hold myself accountable. I'll also check in on Facebook each day with how my day went etc, and hopefully some of you will share your experiences with me there too!

For Week 1 - Day 1-7 - Food: I'm going to be doing a Juice Cleanse! That is ONLY fresh fruit and vegetable juices for the entire week (WOW, it's going to be a challenge!). I really think this is a great way to pack heaps of easily accessible nutrition into your body whilst cleansing out all the rubbish you don't need. So for this week all you need to have are a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables, and a juicer, or a powerful blender and something to strain the juice through like a sieve or nut-milk bag. I'm personally planning on having fruit-based juices for breakfast and morning tea, and mostly vegetable juices for the rest of the day. If you have a green powder or spirulina or wheatgrass or chlorella please DO add this into your juices as its AMAZING for detoxing!

For Week 1 - Day 1-7 - Exercise: I'm also going to ease back into some better exercise habits, so my goal for the week is to go for a 30 minute walk at least 4 times in the week. If you haven't been doing any exercise at all, go with this, if you have, perhaps jog or gym for you, but try to fit in at least 4 exercise sessions in the week.

So for right now I'm off to continue vegging out watching telly and generally being a slob! Tomorrow is GO TIME! (I'll also be stopping smoking AGAIN from tonight, so please pray for me and send me your good energy that I have the strength of will to do that!) So see you here or on FB tomorrow night. :D

Love and Health,
B xxxx

"Creamy" Herb and Garlic Dip, Pesto & More! ;)

I've been meaning to get a post up for days and days now, and I've just been busy with kids, study, Thermomix, and of course cooking (and uncooking too!)! So here's a few things I've been making and thinking about the past week or so!

Firstly I put up a picture of my dinner the other night - Quirky Jo's delicious gluten free foccacia style pizza base (recipe here) topped with Mushroom and Onion and with a little pesto, and of course the Pink Paradise Smuice I had with it! 

With the pizzas I made up the recipe from Quirky Cooking, and after rising I just sprinkled some finely sliced onion and mushroom on it, then baked it. I just had this broken up with a little of my homemade macadamia pesto and it was just divine! 

I also felt like something sweet and energising with dinner that night so I had this beautiful Pink Paradise Smuice (Smoothie-Juice ;))

Pink Paradise Smuice

150g frozen watermelon cut into chunks approx 2 inches in size

2 oranges skinned and halved

1 round of pineapple cut into large chunks

1/2 a tray of ice

Simply throw all ingredients in the TMX or blender then blend up for 1 minute on speed 9.

Sit back and relax and enjoy your delicious and pretty pink smuice! :D (Or you could throw some greens in it for some extra oomph and voila its a scrummy green smoothie!)

I also made up a few salads to have on hand in my fridge so that I wouldn't go looking for easy UNhealthy snacks. I find if I have a few really great crunchy healthy salads with a couple of different dressings in the fridge ready to go, I can eat those until I'm busting and know that I'm nourishing my body instead of hurting it with excess fat, sugar etc. So I made up the salads, and I made a lemon basil vinaigrette and then thought I'd see if I could make a Japanese recipe I have for Sesame Soy dressing. I didn't actually have all the necessary ingredients for the authentic recipe (such as rice wine vinegar and sesame oil to name a couple) but I thought I could get close to how it should taste, and it turned out way better than I expected! Just like the real thing!

Japanese Sesame Soy Dressing:

Ingredients:

1/2 med brown or white onion

60g sesame seeds

60g vinegar

60g grape seed oil (or other lightly flavoured oil)

20g soy sauce or tamari

20g sugar or other sweetener

Method:

Grind the sesame seeds in TMX for 1 minute on speed 10.

Add onion and mince for 10 seconds on speed 6.

Add all other ingredients and blend for 1 minute on speed 9.

Mix into your favourite salad and enjoy - this goes particularly well with a chinese style salad of wombok, finely sliced red capsicum, bean sprouts etc. Also with daikon but good luck finding quality ones here in the Far North! Those of you down south, if you can get hold of daikon you want to shred it either in your tmx on speed 5 for about 10 seconds or grate it and have just that with this dressing - sounds strange but its delicious, and that's the way they eat it in Japan!

Then today I went a bit crazy with dips - I made a trio of dips! One was to practise for my Varoma Demos with the TMX which is a red capsicum, sundried tomato and cashew dip. The other two were my own creations and both turned out so well I simply have to share them!

The first one I made was because at our demos we make the Creamy Herb and Garlic Dip from the Everyday Cookbook and its always a huge hit. So that got me thinking, I wish I could have that dip without suffering from hayfever for a couple of days afterwards (as the original recipe has cream cheese in it and dairy makes my hayfever go crazy)! I had heard of and seen and tasted creams made from cashews before so I thought if I just made a "cream cheese" from cashews, then added the rest of the ingredients, that should work, and it turned out pretty well!

Creamy Dairy Free Herb & Garlic Dip (foreground of above picture)
Ingredients:
200g Cashews
60g warm water
1tsp salt
1-2 cloves garlic with the centre removed (this takes the bitterness out of the raw garlic, but leaves all the great garlic flavour, you don't have to do this if you don't want to, it tastes fine with using whole garlic cloves!)
2 Shallots quartered
Handful fresh parsley

Method:
First make the cashew cream "cheese": First mill the cashews for 10 seconds on speed 9 to make a fairly fine powder.
Add water and salt and blend for 1-2 minutes on speed 8 or until a cream cheese type texture is reached.
Remove this cashew cream cheese and set aside.
In your clean bowl, mince garlic, parsley and shallots for 3 seconds on speed 7.
Add your cashew cream cheese mixture back into the bowl and blend for 5 seconds on speed 7.
Enjoy with some rice crackers or my fave - veggie sticks - especially zucchini and carrots! :)

The final item for tonight (and then I have to get to bed, urgh!) is my Raw Vegan Macadamia Pesto (pictured at the back of the above picture). I have been tweaking and tweaking and tweaking this for weeks now, so if you've seen the other incarnations on my blog sorry but this one really is the BEST! I'm finally happy with it, and we had 3 others taste test at our TMX meeting tonight and everyone really loved it (EVEN Jo! :P) so here it is:

Raw Vegan Macadamia Pesto:
Ingredients:
1-2 cloves garlic
Leaves from 2 x 50g packs of basil (approx 40-50g of basil leaves)
100g raw macadamia nuts
Handful of parsley
Handful of baby spinach
1 tsp salt
1 TBSP Apple Cider Vinegar
40g Cold Pressed Olive Oil

Method:
First mince garlic for 3 seconds on speed 7.
Add all remaining ingredients and pulse on Turbo for 3-5 pulses.
Scrape down sides of bowl and pulse a few more times until the desired texture is reached (some people like it chunkier, I like mine medium).

That's it from me tonight as its WAAAAYYY past my bedtime and I'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard!

Over the next couple of days I'm going to do a series of posts on my top "secrets" for weight loss and increased energy! I've also still been thinking of running another challenge, so stay tuned for details!

Love and Health, B xxx