Healthy and Easy Breakfast Options

Breakfast recipes:

Pancakes & Bakes

I made Not Quite Nigella's Blueberry Chia Pancakes, recipe is from here. They are probably going to be my go to recipe from now. I always have problems with pancakes, probably because I mix the batter too much but even though I mixed the wet with the dry ingredients a lot, they still turned out great! Not chewy at all or too wet/dry and had a cake like texture.

I reduced the chia seeds to 1 tablespoon and used frozen blueberries. I think it's pretty important to use a good quality vanilla essence though because that's the predominant flavour, if you omit the syrup.

I had it with maple syrup and would normally spread some kind of nut butter but we ran out.

This pancake recipe is super easy, just mash a ripe banana (the riper the better) and mix with a beaten egg. This is your batter which makes around 6-8 small pancakes. You just need a non stick pan on a low heat and a lot of patience. 

It tastes like banana and has quite a wet texture. I'm quite amazed it worked though, I would make it again if I wanted a healthy alternative to pancakes.

My Favourite Breakfast Muffins are from here. I've made them twice already - easy, portable, healthy and delicious (especially when heated up for 30s in the microwave). 

Baked Oatmeal

Blueberry and Banana, slightly adapted from here

Just combined 1 cup of oats and top with boiling water until just covered. In another bowl, mix 1 cup of blueberries (I used frozen and it worked), 1 chopped banana (with a little reserved to decorate), handful of walnuts broken up into smaller pieces, half a cut up pitted dates (the woolworths brand one seems very similar to medjool dates, just slightly less sticky), 2 tablespoons of cinnamon.

Once oats are soft, add 1/4 cup almond and coconut milk (or any milk). Mix dry ingredients with wet ones. Pour into baking dish and top with left over sliced banana. Put oven on 190 degrees celcius for 20 minutes and you are done. 

Baked Carrot Cake Oatmeal from here
This looked great but it was a little disappointing, I preferred the deliciouslyella one. It was very wholesome and made a great breakfast but it wasn't sweet enough (something I rarely say). The only sweetness in the base came from the raisins and the maple syrup from the top was hardly noticeable. I also found the top to be too unnecessarily oily, next time I would reduce the oil.

& Other Oaty goodness

Overnight oats:
combine a cup of oats with 1.5 cups of almond milk, grate an apple, add a tablespoon of chia seeds, tea spoon of cinnamon, pinch of salt and a teaspoon vanilla extract. Then pop it in the fridge, excellent cold or warm. It reminds me of my go to porridge

My Go-To Granola

3 cups oats
1 cup almonds (or any nuts)
1 cup pumpkin seeds (or any seed)
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup dates and 1/2 cup cranberries (or any dried fruit)
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 1 tbsp virgin coconut oil
3 tbsp maple syrup and 1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
3/4 tsp salt

Put in oven on 180 degrees celcius and bake until oats/coconut are golden brown. Be careful as it burns quickly.

New Years Eve Party

For New Years eve I decided to throw a little get together with some of my closest friends.

I've never gone wrong with Not Quite Nigella's recipes, so most of these are from her wonderful site.

This dessert was a last minute decision, I had all the ingredients already and just needed coconut and it just looked so darn good. It was incredible. If it wasn't for the tedious nature of making coconut butter, I'd be making this all. the. time. I've actually made coconut butter before and it took even longer than this, mainly because 1) I was using shredded coconut and 2) I wasn't adding much water to help it along. The water really is so necessary.

I did the same thing as NQN except for a few modifications, click here for the recipe. I blended 2.5 cups of desiccated coconut as last time in making coconut butter I didn't think I used enough. It starts as a flour consistency, then it lumps together and finally forms a butter like texture. Hallelujah. It only takes forever though considering you need to scrape down the sides and stop the processor ever so often to prevent overheating. Mine actually overheated awhile ago and once it gets too hot it just stops on its own. It's one from target and cost $20, I love it.

Then I added about 4 tablespoons of water, used a ripe banana, 2 tablespoons of raw honey, 1 tsp of a good quality vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Then after that was done, I added in a cup of frozen blueberries (cut in half). I also then lined a takeaway container and put it in the freezer overnight.

It has a mild coconut flavour and slightly sweet with a bit of texture from the coconut

Another dessert I made was a mango and blueberry vegan cheesecake inspired by this that is a fair bit cheaper.

The last time I made a vegan cheesecake I used a cake tin that was 8 inches in diameter that was far too big, resulting in a very thin cake. This time, I made the base and saw that a 6 inch cake tin would be better, even though the original recipe uses an 8inch.

Fo the base: I just got a packet of raw mixed nuts and separated them
1 cup almonds
1/2 cup hazlenuts (not enough almonds in the original packet).
3 cups of cut up pitted dates (woolworths brand, only $2 and tastes like medjool dates but slightly less sticky and sweet). I poured hot water over them, removed the hard skin and cut them up.

For the middle:
I used 2 cups of soaked cashew nuts (soaked overnight).
2 frozen overripe bananas (sliced)
1/3 cup of maple syrup
1/3 cup lite coconut milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon

For the top:
1 cup frozen blueberries
1 cup mango
1 frozen sliced banana
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

To make:
1. Blend almonds and hazelnuts until chopped then add in chopped dates until sticky. Press into cake tin and put in freezer.
2. Blend all the ingredients in the middle layer until smooth. Pour 3/4 into cake tin (use 1/4 for top layer) Put back in freezer. One thing I did wrong was I put all my bananas in one bowl to freeze. Then put them all in the middle layer instead of reserving one for the top layer.
3. For the top layer, I blended the 1/4 left from the middle, mango, banana, blueberries and cinnamon. I left out the maple syrup and dates as it was already quite sweet from the mango. I put this back in the fridge and then blended it again. Poured it into the cake tin and I put it back in the freezer.

I think this would work if you switched up the fruits too, so maybe use a berry and another fruit that's in season. Pitted dates and frozen fruits do work though.

I found the base was way too sweet for me but I enjoyed the other layers, it has quite an overwhelming banana taste though. Next time I would reduce the number of dates in the base to 2 cups and also reduce the amount of maple syrup in the middle to 1/4 cup.

Some other desserts present included: coconut and pandan cake and rocky road. The coconut and pandan cake was extremely light and moist, not oily at all, not overly sweet and had a very mild coconut and pandan flavour. Similar texture to an airier sponge cake.

For snacks:
I also made 2 dips, both served with toasted lebanese bread.

One was NQN's tuna dip which I followed exactly. The flavours marry well together, it's perfectly balanced and reminds me of a pate (but with tuna). It has a vinegary taste which is offset by the creaminess from the residual oil (from the tuna) and the mayo. It was a huge hit

I also made this hummus recipe with some additions.

Basically blended a can of chickpeas (skin removed), save 1/4 liquid, a crushed clove of garlic and 2 tablespoons of hulled tahini. Then added 3/4 juice of a lemon, cumin, tiniest bit of chill powder, salt, 1/4 reserved liquid. I like that it doesn't have a ton of olive oil like a lot of other recipes and it's quick.

I removed the skin beforehand to make it creamier, crushed the garlic clove. My favourite hummus is still the Aldi one and an Obela brand pine nut one.

For main:

I made NQN's Singaporean noodles which was really good. I also added in quite a lot of water towards the end because I prefer wetter noodles and stirred it quite a bit to break up the noodles. I also reduced the curry powder to 3 tablespoons

I also made a watermelon, feta and mint salad. I used 1/4 of a watermelon, 50g of feta and a few torn up mint leaves. I didn't mind it but I wouldn't make it again, it was refreshing though.

Some other mains included potato puffs and these chicken bites (which had garlic butter inside)

I hope you all have a very happy new year!

Eats Of The Week #4

This week I had:

Banana oatmeal made with chopped banana. I also tried adding cocoa powder to it and it reminded me of brownie batter. I prefer making it with oats though as I found it was a little too thick for my liking

I also had the Carman's Honey Roasted Nut oatmeal with the Vitasoy High Calcium soy milk and it was delicious! I microwave it for 90 seconds, stirring at 45 seconds and then at the end of the 90 seconds. I then put it in for another 30 seconds and stir quite vigorously. The stirring is really important for it to get really creamy. Really nice, not too sweet and has decent pieces of nuts as well. I've also had the Fruit and Seed one and I think I like the fruit one a little more as there is a nice contrast between the fruit and seeds and you can always add chopped nuts in.

I was also pretty obsessed with making vegan desserts this week. I made Not Quite Nigella's bliss balls and they were revolutionary. They are quick, no bake, healthy and super easy and fun. The only change I made was I didn't add any extra honey/agave as I knew the dates and sultanas would be sweet enough for my palate. I would also try rolling them in almond meal as a reader suggested.

I also made some raw vegan chocolate brownies from here. They were so more-ish and addictive, everyone in the family loved them. The icing was incredibly rich and creamy using just avocado and the date & walnut combination was the perfect pairing. I used 2 tablespoons of honey but in the future I think I will use 1.5. 

I also tried making coconut butter by putting dessicated coconut into a food processor. I knew it would be hard but after 25 minutes of trying, the coconut still hadn't turned into a buttery texture and simply looked like flour. I tried to salvage it by adding 2 handfuls of walnuts to provide some oil to help it bind and it was essentially walnut butter with very fine coconut bits throughout. I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you had a high speed blender. 

I also made a chicken green curry this week. I heated a pan with a tablespoon of oil, added 2 tablespoons of Mae Ploy's green curry paste. Then added 2 cut up chicken breasts and about 2.5 cups of frozen vegetables, 1.5 cups of salt reduced chicken stock. Then brought it to a boil and after reduced the heat to low and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Towards the end I took out some of the liquid, added light coconut milk to combine the 2 and poured that into the bowl so the coconut milk wouldn't separate. Next time, I would add the vegetables in later as I found they softened too much. I would also use less stock (only 1 cup) as I had to add corn flour after to thicken it. 

Also went to Seoul Ria this week for a quick feed. Free Banchan! My favourite is the tofu skin but the raw onion was delicious. I didn't care much for Nokdumuk, Korean mung bean jelly. The 'Fruit Salad' was also surprising as it had a combination of fruits and vegetables in a sweet sauce.

I normally order the sundubu jjigae, a soup made with tofu, egg and seafood but decided to try the soybean paste stew with seafood and tofu. It was delicious but a little too salty. It tasted a little like miso soup. 

We also got the chicken bulgogi, which I preferred out of the two. The sauce was very flavoursome and coated the rice wonderfully, the chicken wasn't tough at all and the vegetables still had some crunch to them. Would recommend! 

Eats Of The Week #3

I should probably mention I have uploaded so many posts today because I am moving a lot of it over to this new blog and re-writing some of it. Luckily, I didn't have too many to do.

I had my wisdom teeth pulled out 2 weeks ago and I was eating a lot of scrambled eggs, lots of avocado with very soft veggies, mashed banana, oatmeal and soups that week. I've got 2 more teeth to go, the actual process didn't hurt but I would take painkillers before the anaesthetic wears off. Here's a look into some of the things I made.

I made this incredible soup. I roasted 1kg of normal tomatoes, 1 onion and 2 bulbs of garlic (had tomato and garlic left over). I then added this, 3 cups of Massel vegetable stock, 2tsp garam masala, 2tbsp tomato paste and then added light coconut milk at the end (TLC brand, which is quite good!). Then blended it

I didn't have tin toil for the roasted garlic so I put the bulbs in muffin tins and drizzled some oil on the top.

I was really inspired to make more vegan meals and desserts after visiting Sadhana Kitchen in Enmore a few weeks ago and being blown away by the raw, vegan lasagne and hazlenut cheezecake. Both tasted better than regular lasagne and cheesecake and I already have a list of similar places I want to try.

I made some zucchini pasta with a creamy avocado sauce which was essentially 1/2 a mashed avocado, lemon juice and S&P with a side of pumpkin fries. I used 2 small zucchini and a grater. This was surprisingly filling and satisfying. I do love me some avocado though, especially as a butter substitute.

I also made possibly my favourite soup, ever. It's a simple, no frills, hearty chicken & vegetable soup, which I adapted using this recipe. 

I heated 1 tablespoon of oil and added 1 sliced leek and 2 cloves of smashed garlic and stirred it for a few minutes. Then added  2 small zucchini, 1 carrot, 2 sticks of celery and let stirred it. 

Then I added 1 1/4 cups soup mix, 2 chopped chicken breasts (around 600g), 5 cups salt reduced chicken stock (woolworths select brand), 2 cups massel vegetable stock and 1 cup water. Turned the heat to high and let that boil. 

After, I reduced the heat to low and let it simmer uncovered for 1hr. At the end of that hour, I added in another cup of water as the stock had reduced a little. Seasoned with S&P.

The chicken was incredibly tender and all the flavours worked so well together. It was exactly what I needed when I was sick. It's incredibly healthy, filling, tasty, versatile and makes around 6 serves so it's quite cheap as well. I would highly recommend trying it. 

'Ellen Burger' by Fabio Viviani

I'm always fascinated by vegan food so I thought I'd try making some vegan patties. 

Chopped 10 mushrooms and 1/2 an onion (should be red though):

Add 1 tbsp of flour, 2tsp of cumin, corriander, 3 cloves of garlic

Put this mixture in along with a bunch of parsley and a can of chickpeas

Process till you can form a patty without it falling apart (quite a lot do it until chickpeas are pretty smooth)

 5I think Fabio grills it, I panfried them until browned on both sides. Would be ok on BBQ if your patty holds up too.

Store it for later, you can use these instructions

I liked that it's healthy, has less ingredients than other veggie burgers and it was fund to mould. However, I put too much parsley in and that's all I could taste. If I re-made it, I would add the parsley in as a went. The oh she glows one also looks incredible so I'll probably try that one first.