Plaice with guacamole

Plaice with guacamole:
served with boiled broccoli and sweet potato/carrot/turnip mash

• Plaice fillets
• spring onion
• dill

Spread some olive oil or butter into an oven dish
Place fillets onto the dish, sprinkle salt, black pepper, dill and sprinkle some olive oil. The add shopped spring onions on top of the fillets, 170C for 20mins.

Guacamole:

• 1 fresh chillies
•  2 limes (We used half lemon)
• 2-3 avocados (depends on size), ripe!
• Small bunch of fresh coriander 
• 1 clove of garlic
• 4 spring onions (we used half of regular onion) 
• Olive oil 
• Handful of cherry tomatoes (we used 3 small regular tomatoes)

• Chop onion and put into food processor with coriander, chili, peeled clove of garlic and the juice of some of the lemon or lime (don't put too much as you an easily over do, easier to add afterwards if needed)
• Add good drizzle of olive oil. 
• Mix up in the food processor and peeled and stoner avocados and quarter tomatoes
• Mix until chunky or as smooth as you want

Almond Milk Pulp Muffins - take two

Almond Milk Pulp Muffins


8dl almond pulp, leftover from almond milk
8 dates, chopped (should be chopped/blended till paste!) 1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted -- We did not have this, put a teaspoon olive oil instead
1 dl almond milk
1 & 1/2 of banana
1 teaspoon baking soda

Mix everything and place into muffin cups, bake in 170C 30-40mins



 Ready for the oven!

Ready! These are absolutely best when served still warm! Will keep well perhaps max 2 days; we recon better to eat during the next 24hrs :)

Easy breakfast Kale Frittata - Whole Life Challenge style

Kale Frittata:

• 4 eggs
• Kale leafs (approx 8)
• Olive oil
  

Chop the kale leafs and sautee for few minutes in olive oil

Break the eggs into a bowl and pour the kale into it

Pour the mix into a pan and fry on medium/low heat. As they cook, use spatula to lift up the edges and let the uncooked egg run underneath. Continue to do so around the pan.

When the egg is no longer runny, slide pan let it fry on low heat until ready to turn in, Or alternatively put into the oven and cook for 5-7 minutes until the egg is firm to touch. We fried it...

Yummy!
Served with one slice of bacon

 

Roasted rump steak

For a easy Sunday meal we bought 600grams of rump steak and roasted in the oven (roasted as it was, nothing added in!)
Here is is, out from oven and just cut into slices

Served with mashed sweet potato/carrot/parsnip mash

Whole Life Challenge pancakes - take one

The first try to make pancakes using almond butter and almond flour :)

Almond Flour Pancakes - WLC


To eat these just 'plain' felt a bit dry, but try with fried bacon, a true heaven!

• 1 dl  almond flour
• 1/4 dl almond butter
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• Add all ingredients into a bowl and stir until everything is completely mixed together(we divided this amount of batter into two but could have been thinner hence this amount could have given us three large pancakes)
• Pour batter onto frying pan and allow to cook until bottoms start to slightly brown
• Flip and continue to cook until other side slightly browns

We will try to do another set with different ingredients to see how to get the pancakes moister

Served with two slices of bacon and blackberry/strawberry smoothie

Almond Milk

Our second time to make almond milk, mainly for coffee :) but will use a little bit for baking too

Almond Milk

You need

• raw almonds (300-400g)
• water

Preparation:

• Soak the almonds in water overnight or for at least 6 hours - there is no specific amount of almonds required, 300-400g give you approx 7dl of milk

• Drain the water from the almonds and discard
• Blend almonds in a new fresh water using the food processor (So that in the blender the water raises 5-6cm above the almonds). Until well blended

• Strain the blended almond mixture using a cloth or strainer.

We used a strainer and just pressed the pulp through it (approx 3-4 times), so the milk separates from the pulp. The dough looking item on the picture is the pulp.

Homemade raw almond milk will keep well in the refrigerator for three or four days.




















  
Vegan & Gluten-Free Muffin Recipe
I wanted to try something out of the almond milk pulp and made extra small amount of  trial'muffins'
, those actually turned out quite nicely, although not much to eat (as the dough was so small) and the muffins look a bit funny in half empty muffin cups, but works for any sweet cravings! I stored the rest of the pulp and will have another try tomorrow

 If you try this recipe, increase at least 3-5 times bigger so you can fill the muffin cups fully! SEE THIS LINK!!

 this is how the pulp looks

2dl almond pulp, leftover from almond milk
2 dates, chopped (should be chopped/blended till paste!) 1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted -- We did not have this, put half a teaspoon olive oil instead
1/4 dl almond milk
 1/2 of banana
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

I pressed few holes (as a decor) using work just before placing into the oven, bake in 170C 30-40mins
 
My first biscuits made out of the pulp, actually more like muffins! tiny but yummy! The colour comes from the dates

Week day easy dinner- Whole Life Challenge

Dinner; Oven Roasted Chicken Drumsticks with fresh tomato slices (sprinkled with chia seeds) and boiled broccoli/cabbage (once the broccoli is almost boiled add just few cabbage leafs as those just need few minutes to boil)-
This is dead easy dinner!

• Season the chicken with hot paprika powder, salt, black pepper
• Smear some olive oil to the chicken
• Bake, uncovered, until done, about 50 minutes.

Breakfast

• pear/orange puree
• roasted pork (prepared earlier this week), see blog from 18/09
• kale fritatta (free sample pack from Evolve), Will try to make this myself! (bought some kale already)
• http://www.evolveprimal.com/kale-and-red-onion-fritatta/

Whole Life Challenge Cooking

Wanted to try something 'every day'-food but with a twist. Decided to go for beetroot meatballs and these turned out very nicely!

Beetroot meatballs - oven baked
- Served with mashed cauliflower/Yam Mash
- Boil 3 small beetroots (peeled), and be careful as they are pretty messy and you don't want the colour to stick everywhere! Stay in one place while peeling! :)
- Chop 1 onion and 3-4 garlic cloves straight into a food processor
- Add approx 300-400grams of raw minced meat
- Add 3 eggs
- Cut the boiled beetroots into three/four pieces and add in.
- Season with salt, black and white pepper and if you have fresh parsley add it in too
- Mix everything with the food processor. The mixture should not be too mushy so keep an eye on the food processor, it mixes it really fast!

- With washed hands take a small portion and shape into a small ball and place it onto a try covered with Non-Stick Baking Paper.
- Bake at 375 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes

For the Cauliflower and Yam mash (my first time to cook yam)
- Boil separately as yam will take much longer to boil
- Ensure you are not boiling yam in too big pieces as it will take longer
- Once Yam is boiled too, mix together and mash

This was a new taste for us, my hubby liked it. I recon it was better on the next day (luckily cooked enough tonight to have leftovers for next days lunch)

Important! As breadcrumbs cannot be used, ensure you don't pack the tray too full as the meatballs might let a bit of liquid out while in the oven (as the beetroot is bit watery). But don't panic if that happens, at least for me it happened but the liquid stayed around the meatball and dried out there, hence easy to move after the meatballs are ready :)
I place another tray underneath the tray just in case though to catch any  (all stayed on top luckily as dried fast)
Not sure how these would have turned out if fried?! I felt lazy after work so oven was the easy option :)

Ready to go to the oven!

Struggling during the day - Whole Life Challenge

The last two days have been quite hard during the day, it seems we are not eating enough during lunch and we have decided really to start cooking larger amounts so we can take lunch from the leftovers.
Also general tiredness/weakness has been around and by reading from other Whole Life Challenge participants more or less everyone are feeling the same, but its should get better hopefully. We have slept very well, me even too well, it has been really hard to get up during the last three days.

We bought a pork joint to have something different for breakfast to go with the smoothie, this time pear/banana, tasted really nice. The pork joint is so easy, you just need to roast it (don't add salt). It will be enough for few days, and it is best (in our opinion) when enjoyed cold with a little salt sprinkled over.
Tried Orange puree too (remember you cannot drink orange juice, cannot squeeze the juice out from the pulp! BUT you can put the peeled orange into a blender and have the puree. Tried mango/blueberry smoothie too and it was really yummy and something different.
Ran out of almond milk :( so need to do more during the weekend, will take pictures this time!

For dinner we had the leftovers from the yesterday's chicken and made some Hummus.
We were lucky to find some natural Tahini (sesame-seed paste) from Waitrose, made it much quicker:

We made our hummus from dried chickpeas (not sure if canned are allowed?)
Roasted Chicken, TomatoSalad with Hummus

Hummus;

• 1 cups dried chickpeas (the smallest you can find)
• 1/2 cup tahini
• juice from 1 squeezed lemons
• 1-2 garlic cloves
• salt
• olive oil
• parsley (not mandatory)
• paprika powder (not mandatory)

1. Wash the chickpeas until the water is transparent
2. Soak them in clean water over night 
3. Rinse the peas
4. Put the chickpeas into a food processor and grind well. Leave it to chill a little while
5. Add the tahini and the rest of the ingredients and go on with the food processor until you get the desired texture. 
6. If the Humus is too thick, add some of the cooking water. It should be thinner than the actual desired texture.
7. Sprinkle Parsley/Paprika Powder over the hummus
8. Serve with Olive Oil (With spoon press a whole to the hummus and pour in a bit of olive oil)

We froze the leftover hummur in freezer bags, easy and quick!

Roasted Chicken

Roasted Chicken
We got the chicken from Tesco and it was already washed and trussed, making things faster.
We tucked in 5-6 garlic cloves, 1xfresh chili and third of a lemon.
Sprinkled with salt and pepper, then smeared some olive oil over the skin of the chicken, sprinkled again salt and pepper and that's it. Just matter of waiting to roast in oven.
We like shredding the chicked once roasted instead of keeping it in pieces (just odd habit, lol)
The chicken was served with sauteed spinach and sun dried tomatoes (to ensure it is allowed in whole life challenge, we bought sun dried tomatoes, that had to be soaked approx for 20mins
http://www.waitrose.com/shop/ProductView-10317-10001-10762-Waitrose+Cooks%27+ingredients+sundried+tomatoes

Sauteed spinach

• 4 chopped garlic cloves saute until softened
• Add in spinach leafs until wilted
• Season with salt and pepper to taste
• We added a bit of almond milk and let it lightly boil 

What do we have for lunch?
We had beef stew leftover on one day but on other two we had to go for Pret for so called sandwhich without bread  (http://www.pret.com/our_food/)
'No Bread Crayfish & Avocado' is a favourite. Also some fruits during the day
Need to start cooking bigger amounts to ensure we have some leftovers to take for lunch

Work week begings with new challenge on board

So far we have adjusted to the new rhythm quite well, it is all down to planning and shopping the right ingredients and have them available in your fridge.
Breakfast was a boiled egg, slice of bacon and a smoothie. Will try to limit bacon and eggs for 3-4 for times a week (a lot of articles and research available on if eggs are healthy, bad for you or what..) as it has the risk of raising cholesterol..and bacon for obvious reasons of course. When following Whole Life Challenge diet it is important that the bacon is sugar free (as funny as it sounds), many of the bacons have added sugars.

For dinner we made a stew from beef.
Beef stew:

• Sightly fry the beef cubes (approx 600grams) to get some color (not to cook)
• Place to a stew pot
• Add in 4-5 cloves of garlic (peeled), 1 fresh chili, 1-2 onions, few button mushrooms, carrots, parsnips (or whatever veggies you have).

We added some tomato/basil liquid but you can do it with ordinary hot water/stock mix But it will not be near as nice!
We boiled approx 10 tomatoes (just few seconds in boiling water) so you can easily peel off the skin . Place all to the food processor with fresh basil's leafs(dry is ok too) and oregano and 1 fresh chili.
We like hot food so reduce the amount of chili if you're not into spicy food!
We had the stew in the oven almost 3 hours on low heat(with lid on), you can have it ready sooner (approx 1hr per 1kg of meat) but if you are not in a hurry let it sit on medium then on low heat and it will really bring difference to the taste.

The stew was served with beans and mashed sweet potato/carrot/Chia seed mix -- I think its start to swap carrots to something else, getting not just bored but the amount of beta carote might increase as sweet potato has very high beta carote.

STAPLE:	Maize / Corn	Rice	Wheat	Potato	Cassava	Soybean	Sweet potato	Sorghum	Yam	Plantain]
Component (per 100g portion)	Amount	Amount	Amount	Amount	Amount	Amount	Amount	Amount	Amount	Amount
Water (g)	76	12	11	79	60	68	77	9	70	65
Energy (kJ)	360	1528	1419	322	670	615	360	1419	494	511
Protein (g)	3.2	7.1	13.7	2.0	1.4	13.0	1.6	11.3	1.5	1.3
Fat (g)	1.18	0.66	2.47	0.09	0.28	6.8	0.05	3.3	0.17	0.37
Carbohydrates (g)	19	80	71	17	38	11	20	75	28	32
Fiber (g)	2.7	1.3	10.7	2.2	1.8	4.2	3	6.3	4.1	2.3
Sugar (g)	3.22	0.12	0	0.78	1.7	0	4.18	0	0.5	15
Calcium (mg)	2	28	34	12	16	197	30	28	17	3
Iron (mg)	0.52	4.31	3.52	0.78	0.27	3.55	0.61	4.4	0.54	0.6
Magnesium (mg)	37	25	144	23	21	65	25	0	21	37
Phosphorus (mg)	89	115	508	57	27	194	47	287	55	34
Potassium (mg)	270	115	431	421	271	620	337	350	816	499
Sodium (mg)	15	5	2	6	14	15	55	6	9	4
Zinc (mg)	0.45	1.09	4.16	0.29	0.34	0.99	0.3	0	0.24	0.14
Copper (mg)	0.05	0.22	0.55	0.11	0.10	0.13	0.15	-	0.18	0.08
Manganese (mg)	0.16	1.09	3.01	0.15	0.38	0.55	0.26	-	0.40	-
Selenium (mcg)	0.6	15.1	89.4	0.3	0.7	1.5	0.6	0	0.7	1.5
Vitamin C (mg)	6.8	0	0	19.7	20.6	29	2.4	0	17.1	18.4
Thiamin (mg)	0.20	0.58	0.42	0.08	0.09	0.44	0.08	0.24	0.11	0.05
Riboflavin (mg)	0.06	0.05	0.12	0.03	0.05	0.18	0.06	0.14	0.03	0.05
Niacin (mg)	1.70	4.19	6.74	1.05	0.85	1.65	0.56	2.93	0.55	0.69
Pantothenic acid (mg)	0.76	1.01	0.94	0.30	0.11	0.15	0.80	-	0.31	0.26
Vitamin B6 (mg)	0.06	0.16	0.42	0.30	0.09	0.07	0.21	-	0.29	0.30
Folate Total (mcg)	46	231	43	16	27	165	11	0	23	22
Vitamin A (IU)	208	0	0	2	13	180	14187	0	138	1127
Vitamin E, alpha-tocopherol (mg)	0.07	0.11	0	0.01	0.19	0	0.26	0	0.39	0.14
Vitamin K (mcg)	0.3	0.1	0	1.9	1.9	0	1.8	0	2.6	0.7
Beta-carotene (mcg)	52	0	0	1	8	0	8509	0	83	457
Lutein+zeazanthin (mcg)	764	0	0	8	0	0	0	0	0	30
Saturated fatty acids (g)	0.18	0.18	0.45	0.03	0.07	0.79	0.02	0.46	0.04	0.14
Monounsaturated fatty acids (g)	0.35	0.21	0.34	0.00	0.08	1.28	0.00	0.99	0.01	0.03
Polyunsaturated fatty acids (g)	0.56	0.18	0.98	0.04	0.05	3.20	0.01	1.37	0.08	0.07

Food planning

Second day and it is clear that all food needs more planning than usual, not meaning it is more complex to prepare but to ensure fridge is fitted with food for each meal. We are actually getting excited about this and already researching recipes and what food ingredients are on the 'Allowed' list that we have never in our life tried before (like Chia seeds)
The food processor is really needed, and as part of breakfast ever breakfast from now on will include one small glass of some sort of smoothie.
So far we have tested the basic flavours Strawberry and Banana and also Strawberry/Banana with fresh coconut!
My hubby spend quite some time opening it, we still have 2 to open, lol!

But it is definitely worth it, and you will not use the whole coconut in one go, we packed it to the fridge and will add few bits to smoothies over the next two/three days. It brings a nice flavor and little crunch to it.

The salmon we had in the fridge (as we only used other half yesterday), was fried on a pan and served with roasted veggies (courgette, onion sprinkle with some mixed dry herb- place on a tray, sprinkle with oil and to the oven it goes, easy and yummy)

For breakfast we fried one piece of bacon, a glass of smoothie and a new invention - Re-using the leftovers from Sweet potato/Carrot/Parsnip Mash!

Veggie Mash Breakfast 'Pancakes'

• Add two eggs to the remaining mash (more eggs if you larger amount of leftover mash)
• Mix it and shape into a burger shape and fry

This is really tasty! Looks bit like a pancake :)

We even made Almond Milk (to replace coffee milk), but unfortunately I forgot to take the pictures.
But is it really easy to make

Almond Milk

•     1 cup raw almonds - soak overnight or for at least 6 hours, ensure you have enough water in, so   that the water is 5cm more than the almonds
•     Rinse under water and discard the water where almonds were soaked
•     Mix the almonds in food processor/mixer till you have solid 'paste' sort of mixture
•     Strain the blended almond mixture using a strainer, we did that approx 4 times

Will keep well in the refrigerator for up to four days

  

Whole Life Challenge is here

The first day of the Whole Life Challenge and it is indeed a challenge; To change not just our diets but the whole way of living. We are true food lovers and love good cheese and wine so I'm pretty sure cravings will come. I hope during this time we will adapt to some of the new ways of cooking and living.
Through this blog I'm hoping to share some recipes with other participants of the Whole Life Challenge or people who follow Paleo Diet.
There are strict dietary rules on Whole Life Challenge, what is allowed to eat.
https://www.wholelifechallenge.com/challenge_rules

The difference to a Paleo diet is that on Whole Life Challenge legumes are allowed but Honey as is in Paleo.

First real challenge is to find alternatives for what to have for breakfast, I'm missing bread and cheese already! Saturday did not start too well as our fridge was very empty and only had 'non-allowed' items in it.
We also purchased a food processor (been planning to buy it for ages!)

Breakfast:
Banana

Snack
Smoothie

Lunch
Tuna (keep an eye on the product description!) with leek and tomatoes

Dinner
Sweet Potato/Carrot/Parsnip Mash with ChiliGinger Salmon
Fruits

ChiliGinger Salmon Recipe;
Half of whole salmon fillet (we bought 1kg salmon fillet and used half on this dish and half on another dish)
-'ChiliGinger'Paste:
Approx 2cm of fresh Ginger (peeled and chopped to few pieces)
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1x Fresh Whole Chili
Squeeze in half of lemon's juice
1 small Onion (preferably red but I used regular)
I added coriander too which coloured the paste ;)
This recipe should have some soysouce added BUT its not allowed, hence I added a bit of olive oil
Mix all in liquidiser/blender

Place the salmon on oven tray and do few slices to it and place the paste over it (don't over do it)