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

Getting back on the wagon......

Helloooooo lovely people!

So it seems like its been FOREVER since I did a blog post! But I'm determined to get back into the swing of things now - not just with the blog, but with my raw food journey, weight loss, Thermomix, parenting, just everything, lol. I went on holiday for two weeks and then needed the next two weeks to recover from my holiday, so all sorts of things have been left to slide, but no more!

So the past few days I've been working on getting back into mostly raw food, as while on holidays I splurged and ate/drank all kinds of things that I know are not so great for me - don't we all do that? One green smoothie I did make while I was away I will share with you because it was sooooo sensational I can't wait to get my hands on some more kale and some pomegranate to make it again! Seriously it was THE best one I have ever made, bar none! :D

Recipe: Sweet and Tangy Green Smoothie
Ingredients:
2 cups kale
200-300g watermelon
100-200g pineapple
seeds and flesh from 1 pomegranate
large handful ice

Method:
Place all ingredients in Thermomix or blender and blend on speed 9 for 1-2 minutes or until nice and smooth and juicy! Enjoy the sweet and tangy deliciousness. Sorry I don't have a picture for you, I drank it all before I thought of taking a pic!

Another quick recipe I'd like to share with you (and one I DID snap a picture of) was this fabulous salad I made the other day:

Recipe: Monster Salad with Minted Lime Dressing
Salad:
Ingredients:
6-8 large leaves of iceberg lettuce
1 large tomato
1/2 medium cucumber
1/2 large red capsicum
1/4 red onion
1 medium avocado

1 Serve of your favourite veggie pate (I used Uncooking101's Sunny Carrot Pate)

Method:
Chop lettuce and veggies and arrange prettily, making a fan of the avocado slices and sprinkling the red onion on top (I layered lettuce, then tomato, then cuc, then capsicum, then avo, then onion). Place a nice ice-cream scoop of pate on the top and drizzle with Dressing.

Minted Lime Dressing:
Ingredients:
70g fresh lime flesh (approx 3 limes or kaffir limes, peeled and deseeded)
sml handful fresh parsley
sml handful fresh mint
60g Apple Cider Vinegar
60-80g Grapeseed Oil

Method:
Place all ingredients in Thermomix or blender and blend on speed 9 for one minute. Drizzle over your monster salad and pate and enjoy! This dressing is VERY tangy, so if you don't like that zesty lime flavour reduce lime flesh to 40g or just use the juice from the limes instead of the whole thing.

That's about it for NOW! But there will definately be more to come in the following days and weeks, and I will be working on that Great Green Smoothies ebook to have available for you as soon as I can!

Please have a look on my facebook page I have an exercise in self-love going on there at the moment which I hope will be really special!

Love and Health, B xxx

The Crazy Thing Is...........

Lately (over the past week or two) what I've been noticing as I've mentioned before, is that the more raw food and green smoothies I eat, the more raw foods my body craves and the more sensitive I seem to be to cooked foods - in particular dairy and starchy carbs.

For about a week now I've been noticing that about an hour after dinner I'm completely shattered. Of course part of this can be put down to the fact that I'm running around with a school-age child plus a baby all day every day, but that's not ALL of it. The last couple of nights I've just felt so bloated and heavy and then so tired I'm ready to pass out about an hour after having a big cooked dinner with the family.

So................
Tonight I finally had a raw dinner! Woohoo! It's the first time I've managed to find the energy to cook something for the family and THEN prepare a seperate, raw meal for myself! And it's all thanks to Eva at Uncooking 101 (well it's also thanks to my body demanding more of what it seems to THRIVE on!!). Just two days ago I received my Home Study Course from Uncooking 101, called "An Introduction To Raw Food Made Easy" and its sooooo brilliant! (No this is not a paid advertisement LOL) Eva just has this calm, uncomplicated yet passionate way of teaching about raw foods and showing such EASY recipes! I was inspired and thought "It IS easy enough for me to do this!" So tonight I took a little extra time after cooking dinner for hubby and daughter to make myself this delicious Summer Salad with Eva's Vinigarette and Sunny Carrot Pate. The salad is really simple, just some baby spinach, a tomato, some red capsicum (or red pepper for those of you in North America), some shallot/spring onion, and a little celery with leaves all chopped and thrown together. The Vinigareete and the Pate unfortunately I can't share with you as they're not my recipes, but I highly recommend you visit Uncooking 101's site as she does have TONNES of great free recipes as well!

This was totally delicious, filling and completely satisfying and now (about an hour later) I AM feeling the tiredness that comes from a long day, but NOT that exhaustion and heaviness and feeling like I can't keep my eyes open that I've had the past few nights. To sum it up I feel quite awake and aware, just a little tired from being on the go since early this morning.

The other thing that I've been struggling with is getting up in the mornings. AFTER I've had my morning smoothie I'm full of energy, but prior to that, getting out of bed in the morning and finding the energy to go for a walk has been impossible, so lets see how I feel in the morning after having a raw dinner, instead of a heavy cooked dinner. I'm hoping it will be the difference I need to get up just that LITTLE bit earlier and go for a brisk walk! To be continued............ xxx