"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

Hot Chocolate, Baby Food, 30-in30, and all that jazz! :)

Well I've been DYING to share some things with you for a few days now, and I just had to make some time to sit down and actually blog it!

First of all this morning I had a delicious green smoothie of green apple and a handful of grapes, I didn't have any baby spinach and didn't feel like silverbeet in it so no leafy greens, but it came out green nonetheless and was lovely and sweet and refreshing! Then for morning tea I was feeling like a little indulgence so I made some of this guilt free Hot Malted Chocolate! Thanks to Quirky Cooking who gave me the original recipe for Creamy Hot Chocolate (Dairy Free), which I have tweaked to my personal tastes (and to make it a Malted version).

Cashew Milk Hot Malted Chocolate
Ingredients: (Makes 1 Mug)
50g raw cashews
300g water
10-20g raw cacao powder, or cocoa or carob powder
1/2-1tsp Maca powder
Rapadura, Agave Nectar, Stevia, Sugar, Raw Honey, Pure Maple Syrup - or whatever sweetener you prefer - to taste (I used about 20g of raw sugar as I'm currently waiting for my order of Rapadura to arrive, WOE!)

Method:
Grind the cashews in the TMX for 10 seconds on speed 9.
Add 300g water and mix for 1 minute on speed 8.
Add your cacao, cocoa or carob, maca and sweetener of choice, then cook for 5 minutes at 70-80 degrees on speed 4.
When its finished whizz it up for 15-30 seconds on speed 8-9 to get it a little frothed up. Enjoy a lovely warming cup of super creamy and indulgent Hot Malted Choc - without the guilt! (or the hayfever in my case! LOL)
*If making for more than one person, just double or triple the recipe, and extend just the cooking time for about 2 minutes. :)

So next I wanted to tell you all about baby stuff in the Thermomix! As I go along I just keep realising there are more and more things that I can use it for! :D

So I started out by asking Jo from Quirky Cooking how she thought I would go about making my own rice cereal for bub (as Jo's my go-to healthy food guru!). I really wanted to have a better option than rice cereal out of a box for bub. She suggested I soak some brown rice and then grind that up. I experimented a couple of times and here's what I ended up with:

How to make Rice Flour for baby Rice Cereal:
Ingredients:
300g Brown Rice
Water
(Yes, that's IT!)

Method:
(this is a tiny bit fiddly, but I think its worth it to be giving bub whole foods free from additives and preservatives!)
Place brown rice in a container with water to soak for 12-24 hours (the longer the better I tend to think).
Strain water from rice, place rice into a baking dish and bake in oven at about 100 degrees C for a couple of hours until its dry. (You can't make flour with wet rice!)
Mill rice in TMX for 1 minute on speed 10.

To make this into rice cereal you can just mix it up with a little boiling water from the kettle, and some pureed fruit or veggies (see below). Or you can cook it in the TMX as per the Everday Cookbook on page 163. The reason I went to the trouble of soaking the rice then drying it out was so that its easier to digest and doesn't really NEED to be cooked. :)

Taste and texture wise this turned out pretty much exactly like supermarket bought rice-cereal, it just looks darker because well, I used brown rice! LOL (brown rice has far more nutrients than white rice, thus the reason for using brown rice). The ONLY drawback that I can see from doing it this way is that the supermarket brands are fortified with Iron which growing babies need (although i'm wondering how our grandparents and great grandparents managed to raise healthy children without fortified rice cereals? Interesting thought!). My solution to the Iron issue is simple: I never mix up plain rice cereal for my children ANYWAY (have you tasted it by itself? ewwwwww), I always add some pureed fruit or vegetables to it, so to make sure he's getting enough iron, I'm simply going to steam then puree some baby spinach and add that to some apples and the rice cereal, and voila! Iron-fortified NATURAL baby rice cereal! *Pats herself on the back* :) hehehehe

I also made some baby food in the TMX last week and have been meaning to post my method on here for anyone who's interested. I made pure sweet potato puree, and apple puree as its best to start kids on puree made from just one fruit or veggie at a time.

Fruit and Veg Baby Food in TMX:
Place water in the bowl of the TMX to just cover the blades.
Peel and thinly slice your hard veggies such as pumpkin or sweet potato and place them in the rice basket.
Peel and core your apples or pears and chop into large chunks and place in the Varoma (you can fit 2kgs of fruit in here EASILY).
Set time to 20-30 minutes (depending on how soft you want the food prior to pureeing it), temp on Varoma setting, and speed 1.
When its finished steaming, set aside the varoma, pull out the rice basket with the veg in using the spatula, and tip the water from the bottom into a jug - keep this water!
Tip the veggies from the rice basket into the TMX bowl and add a little water (about 30g to start with).
Puree for 30 seconds on speed 7-8. Check the consistency, then add more water and process longer if you want it smoother/thinner.
Do the same with the apples from the Varoma, although you might want to do them in two batches, and apples need far less water, even none at all sometimes!
Freeze in ice-trays or small containers and use as needed.

The Thermomix is ALSO a steam steriliser! Place all your bottles, dummies etc in the Varoma, put about 1L of water in the TMX bowl, and put on for 15 minutes on Varoma temperature on speed 1, sterilising DONE, AND you can use the water for formula bottles too! :D

Okay I'm going to have to pull up here as Jon has just woken and wants some time with Mummy! Coming next time I have recipes for some delicious raw vegan salad and dressings, a raw vegan pate, more smoothies, and who knows what else!

By the Way the 30-in-30 Green Smoothie Challenge is officially a success! We reached 30 people who've joined last night! :D Don't forget to comment on this post in order to be entered into the draw to win Harvvey Diamond's book Fit For Life, Not Fat For Life!

Love and Health! B xxx

Deep Breath, Push Reset!

I've been facing some challenges just on a personal level this week......

Firstly everyone in our family got sick, Jon, myself and my husband with a cold, then Saana (my 6 year old girl) had a bout of gastro so we were up all night Sunday night with her being sick, poor thing! I've had KILLER hayfever every day all day this week :(, and Jon had his immunisations this week which made him a little grouchy and have a slight fever also! Here's a pic of him looking not so impressed with the world LOL!

He's still super-cute though! (I suppose I could be a little biased, hehehe)

So, with all that, I felt tired and lousy most of the week, so I didn't get out walking, and I ate comfort food (bread and risotto and pasta etc), and then I didn't have any energy, so i didn't go out walking, and I ate comfort food.....etc etc etc - you get the picture!

Are there any of you (women in particular) out there who get into these sorts of cycles as well? Or is it just me who falls into these bad habits and finds it hard to kick back into gear again? If you DO get into these kinds of ruts, have you discovered any tricks or ways of motivating yourself that really WORK to get you back into the groove of eating right and exercising? Cause as I've said before I KNOW I'll feel so much better if I make that extra effort to go for a walk, and to resist those cravings, but knowing and doing are very different things!

Okay, now for the fun and positive stuff! :D

This week my TMX has been busy cooking up all sorts of delicious things as per usual! I've had some wonderful smoothies this week as always. I have a lot of apples so they've been featuring heavily in my smoothies, and I also had a few nectarines. One smoothie I made turned into a kind of sorbet as I put some banana, nectarine and a date in the freezer ready to take out with me, and then forgot them, so in the afternoon I blended those up with some baby spinach and it turned into this rather lush ice-cream treat:

There was heaps of this so I had one bowl then and there and froze the other, and I'm just having that with my breakfast smoothie now! :)

A few nights ago I experimented with the standard thermomix risotto and made up a Bacon, Chicken and Leek Risotto that turned out so delicious I just had to share this photo on FB, so as promised here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 medium leek roughly chopped
1-2 cloves garlic
1/2 onion (cut in half)
2 shallots with bases and tips trimmed, quartered
Handful Parsley
2 rashers of bacon with rind removed
200g chicken
40g Olive Oil
300g Arborio Rice
2 TBSP TMX Chicken Stock Concentrate
1100g Water
*Salt, Pepper and Parmesan to taste if desired

Method:
Place leek, garlic, onion, shallots, and parsley into the TM bowl and mince for 2-3 seconds on speed 7.
Add Bacon rashers and chicken and chop for 5 seconds on speed 4-5.
Add Olive Oil and saute for 3 minutes on reverse and speed 1 & 1/2.
Add remaining ingredients and season with salt and pepper, then cook for 17 minutes on reverse and speed 1 & 1/2.
Pour into Thermoserver or large bowl, mix through about 50g of grated parmesan cheese (grate your own in the TMX) and leave to sit for 5 minutes, then serve and enjoy! :)

Thursday afternoon Saana and I felt like whipping up a sweet treat so we made the Torte Caprese (flourless chocolate almond cake) from the TMX Everyday Cooking for Every Family Cookbook. This time I made it exactly as the book said and it turned out really nice, although a tiny bit dry, so next time I will cook it slightly less on a slightly higher temp. Also the topping in the book is delicious, but I found it a little too rich, so next time I will just whip about 100g of cream until its nice and thick, and grate some chocolate in the tmx, and just top it with the cream and sprinkle with the grated choc. Warning: this pic is soooo delicious you will probably want to make this cake right away! ;)

A note on 30-in-30 - we have just a few days left and we're still only at 22 people who've joined me, so if you've been doing it and you didn't tell me, or you can just get a friend or two to join in before the 6th of March, that would be great! I'd really like to reach the target of 30 people!

My smoothie this morning was Pink Perfection! 2 S-M Red Delicious apples, approx 100g of watermelon, ice and water:

Lastly I discovered some things about my TMX this week that I hadn't even THOUGHT of in regards to baby stuff! So next post will be all about baby food and bottles etc, you can't say you haven't been warned! ;)

Until next time, Love and Health! B xxx

30-in-30 Days 4 & 5 (Oops, Sorry!)!

Hello everyone!

I have to apologise right off the bat for not posting at all yesterday! I had my hands full with the baby and Saana and then in the evening we had a Thermomix Cooking Class at Millaa Millaa which was really great, but I got home quite late and the baby had trouble settling, so that's my excuse!

I was also really bad yesterday and I didn't have any green smoothies!!! I tell you what I FELT like I hadn't had my green smoothies too! I had WAY less energy than I usually have and I was yawning and ready for bed by about 6pm! So of course today I've jumped back in!

This morning for breakfast I had a smoothie of orange, mango, peach and baby spinach whizzed up with a bit of ice and water. The mango I find gives it a little thicker consistency so this tastes more like a smoothie than a juice. It was really yummy regardless!

Before!

After! (teehee!)

So that got me going and out the door, with WAY more energy than yesterday, I do have to say! Then after dropping Saana to school and Jon to family daycare, I whipped up a few raw treats to get me through the weekend (Raw Walnut and Mushroom Pate, Eva from Uncooking101's Sunny Carrot Pate, and some Raw Dairy Free Sour Cream) all of which took me about 10 minutes, HA! Then I threw together this little beauty for morning tea:

This one has approximately half a cup of raw almonds which i soaked overnight (so much sweeter and creamier that way), a banana, a peach, baby spinach and the teeniest dash of pure maple syrup (about 1/2 to 1 tsp). I blended this one a little longer than usual - about 1 minute on speed 9 in the TMX and it turned out soooo decadant and creamy it didn't feel like it was good for me at all! Hehehehe!

What are you all putting in your blenders? Please let me know, I love hearing what others are doing!

Some of you may have concerns about the cost of drinking alot of green smoothies, so I thought I'd quickly jot down a few things that help with that. It can get expensive, especially if you're using organic fruits and vegetables or you live somewhere that has a limited range! My tips for savings are pretty simple. You NEED to have a really powerful blender (a commercial style one) or a Thermomix, if you're going to continue doing this for any length of time. The reason for this is with a stronger blender or the TMX, all you need to do is peel SOME fruits - the ones without edible peel - and throw the WHOLE fruit into the blender, this way you only need to use one or two pieces of fruit instead of juicing where you throw away all the fibre and just extract the juice, then you'll need 4-5 pieces of fruit to get the same amount of liquid. Obviously this is an estimate and it varies from fruit to fruit! The other thing is just add a little more water and ice to your smoothies, this bulks up the quantity and its free, really nothing simpler! Joining a co-op can be a good idea to buy all your nuts and seeds etc in bulk, and some areas have veggie/fruit boxes that you can have delivered which are often cheaper, but they're a bit pot-luck with what you get in them, so you have to be extra creative! One other thing I do is I look to see whats on special and buy a large amount of it at that time and freeze it - most fruits freeze really well, and keeps it interesting as its a different texture when you add it to your smoothie.

I hope this helps! For money saving ideas I know Jo over at Quirky Cooking is always FULL of great ideas, particularly Menu Planning (which I think is brilliant but haven't gotten organised enough to do yet!).

Love and Health!!! B xxx

Sooooo Much to Say, So little TIME!!!

Well today I'm feeling like I don't know where to start!! We had a huge weekend with my Mum's surprise 60th Birthday party on Saturday night (I made those fabulous dips for it, and also made up a Beetroot Salad, some Coleslaw, and a lovely tart Broccoli salad which everyone loved). Mum was super surprised and had a really great time so it was all worth it!

Then I had to rush back from Cairns to Atherton Sunday for my very first Thermomix demonstration! It went really well despite my nerves and a few beginners jitters and hiccups and the hostess really loved it! So not bad for a complete newbie!

So onto the raw food "thing" that I keep going on about lately. I have to tell you it's EXTREMELY addictive, the more raw fruits, veggies, nuts etc that I eat, the more my body seems to be craving it. After splurging a bit at Mum's party on Saturday night (I had quite a lot of dips with cream cheese in them and a bunch of cooked canape's, plus a bit of steak and some mudcake!) and then having cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner Sunday (circumstances dictated, although I DID manage to sneak in some salad at lunch time and a fresh squeezed OJ at breakfast), I felt like rubbish yesterday and also this morning to a lesser extent! I woke up yesterday with red itchy eyes and a runny sneezy nose and it lasted until mid-morning. Today I was a little better, a little headache and a runny nose but it cleared up after only an hour this morning.

Yesterday morning I had a green juice of a huge bunch of baby spinach, 3 fresh oranges and some ice, it was so light and refreshing, just what I needed when I was feeling all sinus-y! Morning tea was my usual banana/nut/berry power smoothie followed by this totally delish Creamy Pesto Carrot Slaw for lunch:

Now this one was a little complicated, I have to fess up, but I was in the mood for something creamy and pesto-y and I just wouldn't be denied so I put the extra effort in.

So first I made up a dairy free sour cream based on a combination of Jo's from Quirky Cooking found here and Eva's from Uncooking101 here. Here is my Thermomixed take on it:

Ingredients:
50g raw cashews
50g sunflower seeds
100g pine nuts
(Soak these seeds and nuts overnight to make them softer, for an even creamier texture and to activate the enzymes in the nuts, I hadn't planned that far ahead so I put them in unsoaked)
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp onion powder
1 clove garlic
Juice of 2-3 lemons (to taste, I like mine really tart)
250 g water

Method:
I'm lazy so whilst some ppl might mince the garlic first I didn't!
Combine all ingredients in your Thermomix, food processor or blender. Blend on Speed 9 for 1 minute, scrape down the sides of the bowl and blend again on Speed 9 until a nice smooth creamy consistency is reached. This does keep in the fridge for a few days so I made up quite a large batch.

Next I threw in some leftover Pesto Dip from the Thermomix cookbook Everyday Cooking for Every Family, slightly modified (I prefer a stronger basil flavour, and a slightly wetter consistency, and I love the pine-nut flavour so I added some in, cause for me if there are no pine-nuts its not really pesto!):

Ingredients:
1 clove garlic
100g basil leaves
Handful of fresh parsley
100g Cashews
40g Pine Nuts
100g Olive Oil
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
2-4 TBSP of Parmesan if you eat dairy, or substitue 2-4 TBSP of Nutritional Yeast or Savoury Yeast for a dairy free alternative.

Method:
Combine ingredients in your Thermomix or blender and pulse on Turbo for 4-6 pulses depending on the consistency you like.

Next I threw together a Carrot and Zucchini "Slaw" which was just 1 carrot, 1 zucchini, 1/2 a stick of celery with leaves, 1/2 a shallot and 1/4 of a red capsicum all quartered and thrown in the Thermomix and chopped on speed 4 for about 10 seconds, then scraped down and chopped on speed 4 for another 5 seconds.

I then threw all three elements together in a nice big bowl, mixed it up and VOILA, a creamy pesto salad! It was totally delicious and by halfway through the bowl I was so full I had to leave the rest for dinner!

I have more pics and recipes to share (my daughter and I also made some of Choclate Covered Katies Raw Cookie Dough - for the sweetener I used 2/3 cup of Rapadura. And we made some peanut butter, plus there's my awesome juice from this morning, my power smoothie and today's gorgeous lunch!) but I don't want to overwhelm you all in one post so I'll save those for later tonight or tomorrow (depending on when I have time). As always please leave me comments and/or requests for recipes and I'll do my best! Stay happy and healthy! xx