30-in-30 Day 3!

So some great news, last I checked we were up to 18 people who've joined this challenge and are enjoying green smoothies each day for breakfast (or morning or afternoon tea!)! A few of you have shared your smoothies with me and they sound really delicious - sometimes I think my imagination is a bit limited, so I love to hear what other people are throwing together in THEIR blenders!

Tomorrow morning I'm going to start my day with a different combo: Butter Lettuce (couldn't get baby spinach at my local shop today, EEK!), frozen raspberries and watermelon to start the day! Will let you know how it goes! (And try to get a good pic)

For morning tea I'm going to soak some almonds overnight and have banana, mango and almonds for something different, I think i'll put plenty of ice and make this one more like an ice-cream/thickshake. Pics to follow tomorrow too!

What are you blending up???!!!!

In further Chookie's Cookin' news, we're having a Thermomix cooking class at Millaa Millaa tomorrow night and we're showing some ideas for lunch boxes, so I just whipped up these mini-quiche to take along as a quick, easy and reasonably healthy lunch-box item. Originally Vicki Brown (my best friend) showed me how to make these mini-quiche using rolled out white bread slices as the cases, I've tweaked the recipe a bit and made it TMX ready as well as using TMX pizza base as the crust instead of bread (less preservatives and additives that way). Here they are:

Mini Quiche:
Ingredients:
BASES:
1 batch of TMX Pizza Dough
FILLING:
1 clove garlic
1 sml or half lge onion
2 rashers bacon, rind removed
20g olive oil
2 tomatoes, quartered
1 pk (250g) cream cheese
4 eggs
200g milk
Salt and Pepper to taste

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C, grease a 12-hole muffin tray. Roll out individual balls of pizza dough into circles approx 1/2 to 1cm thick and line muffin holes with dough.
Mince garlic, onion and bacon in TMX on speed 7 for 3 seconds. Add oil and saute for 3 mins on speed 2. Add all the other ingredients, and blend on speed 6 for 30 seconds. Pour egg mixture from TMX bowl directly into the muffin-holes lined with pizza dough.
Bake for 15-20 mins or until light golden brown on top.

*Once cooked you can freeze these and just grab out one at a time (or how ever many you need for kids lunch boxes).
*Modify by changing out the tomato and bacon for mushrooms and spinach, fresh herbs, or other fillings to your taste.
*I did it this way because there are no chunks of food in the quiche this way - I have a fussy little girl who sometimes won't eat it if there are little pieces of onion, tomato or mushroom etc.

Have a lovely evening and I hope your day tomorrow is awesome (its sure to be a great START, with a green smoothie! ;)). Love and Health! B xxx

30-in-30 Day 2!

Hey there everyone! How did you all find your first day (or not for some of you who were already doing this) of having a green smoothie for breakfast??? Did you enjoy having it? Did it give you energy? Were you hungry soon after or did it last you a while? I want to hear your first impressions!

I have to try to be quite quick tonight (eek!) as despite all the great fresh food I've been having I AM feeling a little run down, and I think that's because I've been staying up a little too late at night, and then getting up at 4 or 5am with the baby!

So tomorrow morning I'm going to have this Green Monster Smoothie:

It's just baby spinach, green apple and green grapes, with ice and a little water, its so sweet yet tangy and refreshing, delicious!!!

For morning tea I'll have my usual banana/berry/nut combo, for that recipe just have a look at yesterday's post. Tomorrow for me it will be banana, raspberries, cashews, one pitted date and a little cacao (about 1 tsp).

In further news, can you tell from this picture what I got in the mail today???!!!!

YES! My Spirooli finally arrived, now I can turn veggies into these gorgeous noodles for raw pasta's galore! For tonight's dinner I had these raw carrot and beetroot noodles covered in a raw pizza/pasta sauce that I made for last nights dinner (pizza's of course, regular style for hubby and child, and a more salad style one for me). Here's the sauce:

The light is not great as it was getting dark, its actually a pale orangey colour. Anyway here's the recipe:

Creamy Raw Tomato Pizza/Pasta Sauce:
Ingredients:
1/16 purple/salad onion
1/2 to 1 clove garlic
2 large fresh tomatoes, quartered
80g sunflower seeds
30g red capsicum
Handful fresh parsley
1 TBSP fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dried)
2 TBSP fresh oregano (or 1 TBSP dried)
2 Dates, pitted
1 tsp salt
Juice of half a lemon
30g olive oil

Method:
First place onion and garlic in the TMX bowl and mince for 3 seconds on speed 7. Add the rest of the ingredients and combine for 30 seconds on speed 7. If necessary, scrape down sides of bowl and continue processing on Speed 7 until its as smooth as you like. Spread on cooked pizzas bases, then top with your favourite toppings. Or spoon onto some veggie noodles and enjoy a lovely raw pasta dish! Last night I had half of my pizza with this raw pizza sauce, rocket, proscuitto and parmesan, and the other half with raw vegan pesto, rocket, olives and sun dried tomatoes:

I had the one with proscuitto because I felt like I wanted that gourmet proscuitto type pizza, but in the end funnily enough, the one I found the richest in flavour and the most satisfying, was the vegan one! LOL!!

I hope you had a truly fabulous first day of green smoothies and are looking forward to more yummy goodness in the days to come! Love and Health to you all! B xxx

And We're Off and Running!

WOW!! 30-in-30 is off to a flying start! Already so many people have agreed to try having Green Smoothies for breakfast for a month, we are already up to around 10 people and I only started this at lunch-time today! So awesome!

So a few people have asked for ingredient lists etc. First here's a basic shopping list to get a few most-used items:
*A large quantity of Baby Spinach (to give you an idea of the quantity, I'm the only one in my family who has the green smoothies, I have two a day - breakfast and morning tea, and I go through the regular sized bag of baby spinach from woolies or coles in about 3 days)
*Large bunch or two of Bananas (if they ripen too quickly, you can freeze them and use them in the smoothies frozen, this adds a creamier texture anyway!)
*Frozen Mixed Berries (of your choice of course)
*Oranges
*Apples
*Pineapple
Optional Extras:
*Fresh Dates (to add some extra sweetness if you're feeling the need)
*Raw Cacao powder (this is just Cocoa in its raw form, much richer, waaay better for you and just.....moorish, you can get it from the health-food store and while its a little more expensive, you will probably only use a teaspoon or so every other day so it lasts a while)
*Raw Almonds or Cashews or both (not 100% neccessary, but I highly recommend stocking some nuts as they add some oomph to the smoothie, so particularly good for those who find just fruit and greens to be not filling enough, they also produce more of a "milky" taste and texture so makes it more like a milkshake or thickshake)
*Fresh Mint (optional, but really adds a refreshing zing to some of the combos I make)
That will get us through the first few days, and I do tend to wing it, according to what I find at the shop that looks good to me that day, some others that I use frequently are:
*Mangoes
*Fresh Berries in season
*Green Grapes
*Whatever takes my fancy at the grocers! ;)

I do like what a few of you have been saying in regards to digestion and giving your body a bit of a chance in the morning to wake up and get going. That's the reason I always start my day with a lighter, juicier smoothie using the more watery fruits such as oranges, pineapple, grapes, berries, watermelon etc. I always wait until mid morning (around 9:30 or 10am) to have the more substantial and filling smoothie using bananas and nuts.

As a note, all my quantities are just to serve ONE person, so if you're making it for more, obviously double or triple the quantities. :)

So tomorrow morning I'm going to start my day with this one:

This smoothie is simple: A large handful of baby spinach or greens of your choice, two oranges skinned and quartered, a round of pineapple skinned and cut into chunks, and 6 large or 8 small pieces of ice. Combine ingredients in the TMX or blender on Speed 6 for 10 seconds, scrape down the sides of the bowl and lid and then blend on Speed 9 for 30 seconds. No need to add water to this one as the orange and the pineapple make it really juicy anyway!

Then I'm going to plan ahead and soak a handful of Almonds overnight for my morning tea smoothie:

For this one: A large handful of baby spinach, one banana, a handful of almonds (if you've soaked them that's great as they'll be sweeter once you drain the soak water off, if not its fine but you may need to add one pitted date for sweetness if your banana isn't super ripe. If you don't have nuts at all just leave them out but you may want to add an extra banana to make it more filling), a handful of frozen mixed berries, 4-6  ice-cubes and a little water (1/4 cup up to about 3/4 cup depending on what consistency you prefer, I don't add much water as I like this one to be a meal in a glass and I like it nice and thick). Once again, use Speed 6 to combine ingredients for about 10 seconds, then scrape down the bowl and blend on Speed 9 for 30- 60 seconds to achieve your desired consistency.

As a heads up, the day after tomorrow I'll be using some green grapes and apples, in case you want to grab some! :D

Thanks for joining me on this fantastic project! Good luck to all and please let me know here or via Facebook if you have any questions or comments or there's something I've overlooked (I hope not though!!!). Love and Health! xxx

30-in-30!!!

Hi Everyone!

So I have just had this cool idea whilst driving home from dropping Saana off to school, and its all thanks to Kate Walker!! ;)

Kate recently contacted me on Facebook asking about how I make my green smoothies (without exotic ingredients, LOL!) and she and her husband are going to start having green smoothies for breakfast too! I thought it was so cool that by me talking about this, it has inspired someone else to give it a go - perhaps they had already heard of green smoothies etc and now after reading how great i'm finding them, it was just that extra little "push" they needed? Who knows! But regardless I think its just awesome!

So here is my little brainwave: how about we try to SPREAD that love? I'm going to start small and ask that 30 of you, my friends, family and followers, make the choice to join me in having a Green Smoothie for breakfast each day, by the end of 30 days, so 30-in-30! All you need is a blender, some leafy greens, some beautiful fresh fruits (and nuts too if you like) and a positive attitude! To join me in this, leave a comment on my blog, or on my wall on Facebook, or email me and let me know you're joining in, and lets see if we can have 30 of us by the 6th of March!

All you need to do: 1) Start whizzing up and enjoying your own Green Smoothies for breakfast each day. 2) Start feeling totally awesome in the morning and always being "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed"!!!

3) Contact me by commenting on the blog, or via Facebook or email, to let me know you've joined the 30-in-30 project!

What I will do: 1) Continue posting daily or at a minimum every 2nd or 3rd day on this blog, and in particular; 2) Post information about Green Smoothies, why drink them, benefits, how to, etc 3) Provide ideas/recipes for different flavour combinations for your green smoothies! 4) Keep track of the number of people joining and be your "Green Smoothie Cheerleader"! LOL :D

Love and Health! xxxx

*Yawn* It was a long weekend!

The last couple of days I've been really quite slack in general, as well as with the blog, so for any of you who may have been waiting on a post, apologies! Over the weekend I have just felt so ordinary! I don't know what started it, but Friday I just had no energy or motivation to do anything. Then I think it became a bit of a vicious cycle..... I felt a bit bad, so I ate comfort/naughty food, then I felt worse, and so on!

So that's the bad news. The good news is that my idea of comfort/naughty food has changed SOOOOO radically, that when I looked back over my weekend I discovered that it really wasn't THAT bad after all. For a few examples: Friday afternoon I felt like an indulgent savoury snack, so I whipped up some fresh homemade Macadamia Pesto in my TMX and also a batch of pizza dough and had warm pizza spread with pesto as my comfort food.

Pesto Ingredients:

100g Parmesan or Pecorino Cheese

60g Fresh Basil

1 Clove Garlic

Handful Fresh Parsley

100g Raw Macadamia's

40g Raw Cashews

60g Olive Oil (more or less to your desired consistency)

1/2-1tsp Sea Salt

*Woops I forgot to put the acid here: Juice of 1 lemon or a tbsp or two of apple cider vinegar!

(To make this raw/vegan, just leave out the parmesan/pecorino and add more nuts, or use savoury yeast flakes if you have them)

Method:

First grate parmesan in TMX for 10 Seconds on Speed 8, then add in all other ingredients and pulse 4-6 times or until it reaches your desired consistency. Don't over process, its nice if there are little chunks of nuts in there! 

Then at the drive-in Friday night with Saana I had quite a few of these Bliss Balls from my earlier post. Again, an indulgence for me NOW, but compared to a pack of M&M's or something, really not that bad!

Saturday I started my day with one of my usual refreshing smoothies, this time it was Baby Spinach, Orange and Pineapple...YUM!!

I also had my mid-morning power smoothie of bananas, berries, dates, spinach, cacao and maca. Then for lunch I had some leftover Raw Walnut and Mushroom Pate and some Dairy-Free Sour Cream which I poured over some zucchini ribbons (I just used a regular old veggie peeler to turn the zucc into pasta-like ribbons). Then dinner was some Beetroot Salad, and Coleslaw from Everyday Cooking for Every Family, followed by a small serve of Pasta E Fagioli from the same cookbook. Then the indulgence was at the movies I had some popcorn AND a frozen coke! That WAS pretty naughty, but I console myself with the fact that a frozen coke and shop-bought popcorn now happen RARELY, as opposed to at least a couple of times a week!

This morning I didn't have all my smoothie ingredients on hand so I had a couple of large slices of fresh pineapple, followed by two slices of home-made spelt bread with peanut butter on them (again, this is naughty for me now, but probably would have been a "healthy" breakfast to me not so long ago!). Then we went to the movies again (I took Saana to see The Muppets and it was GREAT btw!) and I had MORE popcorn and was really naughty and had a few of Saana's M&M's this time! Then for lunch we had Sushi Train - really not all that bad in the big scheme of things, but for where I am right now this was a HUGE blowout weekend! 

So tonight I'm feeling decidedly lacklustre! So for dinner I had a bit of Beetroot Salad, and a slice of homemade five seed bread with my own peanut butter on it also. Off to bed nice and early now so I can get a good nights sleep and start tomorrow off RIGHT - with a delicious fresh GREEN SMOOTHIE of course!!!!

P.S. This is a picture Saana drew of me: "That's you cooking Mummy!" she explained to me that the pink items on the far left of the bench are apples, and a carrot, and on the right is me putting a carrot into my "cooking machine" LOL! Funnily enough the Beetroot Salad has carrots and apple in it - amazing how much they pick up on without even being told! Love and Health to all! Night! xxx

I'm so Proud of ME!

I just quickly wanted to share with you all a picture that I just found of myself from two years ago (January 21st, 2010 to be exact), and one of me taken by my daughter today........

 

WOW! Just WOW! Go me! I'm so proud of myself!!! I've lost 36kgs (that's about 80lbs for those of you in the UK and the States) over the past two years through small sensible changes over a long period of time - the biggest ones being simply eating more fresh fruit and fresh raw vegetables and doing some light exercise! There's no going back from here, I'm just going to continue getting healthier and slimmer until I reach my ideal weight (I'll know it when I get there!)!!

So apart from that little shout-out to myself (LOL), I just wanted to share with you a few things about my day: Firstly today was my first 100% raw day ever! It feels really good!

Secondly I managed to do my walk this morning so another pat on the back to me for acheiving that small goal. :D

Thirdly I have a quick recipe to share and a pic of my daughter enjoying our Cashew Milk "Warm" Chocolate!

So here are some Raw Vegan Choc Malt Bliss Balls that I made today:

Ingredients:

350g Raw Walnuts

300g Fresh Dates - Pitted

80g Raw Cacao Powder

40-60g Rapadura 

1 and 1/2 tsp fine sea salt

1 and 1/2 Tbsp Vanilla Extract

2 tsp Maca

(Rapadura is to taste - I know this is not raw but I don't have Agave syrup or other truly raw sweetener yet and Rapadura is minimally processed so I figure its not so bad!)

*If using Agave Syrup or other liquid sweetener, reduce Dates by 50-80g or this will be too moist.

* If you don't have Maca you can just leave it out and they'll be plain choc instead of choc-malt flavour.

Method:

1. Put Walnuts, Cacao and Rapadura into your TMX bowl and combine on Speed 6 for approximately 1 minute or until really fine.

2. Add remaining ingredients and process on Speed 6 for about 30 seconds, then increase to Speed 7-8 for a further Minute or so - until it all sticks together into a kind of smooth but stiff paste - it will be quite oily, don't worry that's just the oil from the nuts and the cacao.

3. Pinch small amounts (about the size of a large grape) and roll them into balls, store in the fridge for a few days or in the freezer for up to about a month.

*This recipe makes a huge batch so feel free to halve the ingredients and reduce the processing time by about 20% if you don't want that many!

*Originally these were from Quirky Cooking's recipe found here.

Saana and I also enjoyed a late afternoon Cashew Milk "Warm" Chocolate (I only heated it to 37 C so it was still raw) made with Cashews, Rapadura and Raw Cacao powder:

I have to get to bed now as I have another big day planned tomorrow! Happiness and Health to you all, til next time! XXX

Just a Quick One

Just quickly popping on to post some pictures of my beloved Thermomix as per Eva's request (founder of Uncooking 101 and the Uncooking School). Poor deprived Americans don't HAVE Thermomix over there!!!

So here's the picture of my one sitting on my newly tidy kitchen counter (no more microwave, HA!), on the right you can see the recipe book that comes with it.

For those of you who may be wondering as Eva is, exactly WHAT a Thermomix is, have a look at the website: www.thermomix.com.au which has just been updated actually. In my own words and opinion: its almost the only kitchen appliance you'll ever need again, for example where you might use a powerful blender, a food processor and a coffee grinder, I just use the Thermomix for ALL of those functions! PLUS it also cooks, steams, grinds grains, mixes, whips, chops, kneads etc etc etc. It's really amazing. It makes life so easy for me in the kitchen, especially now that I'm cooking meals for my family and then making separate raw dishes for myself, it just saves me sooooo much time. The best thing about it though is that I now make pretty much EVERYTHING from scratch using whole fresh ingredients, so no more additives for me or the family! We recently had Saana's 6th birthday party and not a single thing on the table came out of a packet! I made chocolate scrolls (with homemade hazelnut spread in them), mini pizzas, mini sausage rolls, chocolate fairy bread, plus dips for the adults. Everyone loved the food, and even the children enjoyed their raw healthy Bliss Balls that I put in the goodie bags instead of lollies!

This next picture is with the Varoma (two level steaming tray) that also comes with it:

The Varoma has a large steaming tray on the bottom (put fish, chicken, meat, meatloaf etc in here) and another tray that fits in the top for softer veggies, steamed puddings, eggs, omelets, etc. So you can have say a sauce cooking in the bottom of the bowl, with rice, potatoes or pasta in the basket, then in the Varoma on top you could have meat or chicken and vegetables, with an omelet cooking in the very top, and you have homemade preservative- and MSG-free fried rice, enough to feed at LEAST 6 people!

A close up of all the buttons/functions - temperature settings (set at a certain temp and it maintains that temp once reached) including a setting of 37 C which is perfect for raw but warm soups and warm drinks. Speed dial on the right which is continuously adjustable from 100 up to 10,200 rpm. There's also a Turbo button for pulsing and an interval button for kneading doughs, as well as the timer (it won't cook without the time set so you CAN"T burn stuff, I LOVE that its idiot-proof LOL!) Oh and of course the inbuilt scales, just press the button, add another ingredient, press button again, weigh in the next one!

Last but certainly not least, a quick pic of my Lunch of Luscious Leftovers! Teehee! A gorgeous fresh beetroot salad from my TMX cookbook, with mushroom and walnut pate, and Eva's Sunny Carrot Pate.... It was scrumptious and again, I'm SO FULL!

Oh and just by the way people, I DID get up this morning and went for a 30 minute power walk before everyone else got up, I felt so proud of myself - not to mention much more energetic! 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