Almond Flour Banana Carrot Muffins - (Gluten and Sugar-Free)

This is the best set of muffins! Highly recommended!

Makes 6 large muffins

    3 dl of almond flour
    1/2 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
    Juice of 1/4 lemon
    4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
    3 teaspoon raisins
    2 teaspoon grated Cardamom (this is a must have ingredient!)
    2 eggs, beaten
    3 tablespoons olive oil
    8 tablespoons coconut milk
    2 dl grated carrot
    2 mashed bananas

• Preheat the oven to 170°C
• In a bowl place the almond flour, baking soda, raisins, cinnamon, cardamom and stir to combine
• In a separate bowl put the eggs, oil, lemon and coconut milk and whisk together. Add to the dry ingredients and fold through
• Squeeze the excess water out of the carrots (if watery, mine has never been), mix with 2 mashed bananas
• Add with the rest of the ingredients 
• Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin tin or cups and bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake springs back when pressed in the centre. 

Just before going to oven

Out from the oven :)

Breakfast Whole Life Challenge Style

Smoked Salmon-Avocado Rolls

Smoked salmon (Check no added sugar! Tesco Organic Smoked Salmon is a good choice)
Avocado
Fresh Dill

Slice the salmon (approx 2cm x 6cm) and avocado (as fine slices as possible) and chop some dill (Use the dill on the next day for a fish dish or freeze it chopped in a freezer bag)

Sprinkle some dill onto the salmon slices and roll avocado slices into the salmon rolls
Easy!
 

Breakkie smoothie with Raisins and Chia seeds
Pineapple
Pear
Banana

We could not survive without our food processor, we use it every single morning to prep a fresh fruit smoothie.
This time made a bigger portion as we had ran out of meat/eggs so served a larger portion of smoothie with the salmon slides.


Did you know chia seeds are super food?
'Chia absorbs up to 12 times its own weight and expands to curb your appetite, so adding just an ounce or so of chia seeds to your diet can reduce caloric intake and help lower the energy density (or calories) of foods, plus double the amount of fiber you receive.'

'Chia seeds have more omega-3 fatty acids than salmon! Chia is one of the most concentrated sources of omega-3 in any food. It also contains high amounts of omega-6. Everyone needs to consume high amounts of these essential fatty acids in their diet'

'Chia also contains calcium; in fact, it delivers 18% of your daily value per ounce, which is three times more than skim milk.'

Kale frittata -a good whole life challenge breakfast

Kale frittata, good alternative breakfast
Did again frittata from kale and eggs, no other seasoning that salt.
Recipe here: 
Kale is s a form of cabbage and its considered to be closer to wild cabbage than most domesticated forms.

Served with yummy, mango/strawberry/banana smoothie, other one topped with raisins/chia seeds and other with raisins/chia seeds/pumpkin seeds/almonds

Roasted pork joint lasts for several days when served as breakfast. As it is eaten in small quantities its so worth of investing on a good quality joint!

Breakfast Veggie Patties - Whole life challenge recipe

Great use for your left over veggie mash! Veggie mash recipe click here
Just add two eggs to the mash, mix well and fry either as a whole or in small patties.

Served with apple/plum smoothie (really good combination!) and roasted pork slices (Even a small roasted pork lasts for quite many days :)

Almond Flour Carrot Muffins - 'Take one' (Gluten and Sugar-Free)

Makes 4 large muffins
This was the 'take one' meaning first try hence did not do a bigger dough
These turned out really nice! I can recommend to all whole life challengers :)

• 1 1/2 dl of almond flour
• 1/2 dl chopped walnuts
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
• Juice of 1/4 lemon
• 3 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 2 teaspoon grated Cardamom
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 tablespoons coconut milk
• 1 1/2 dl (200 g) grated carrot 

just before going to oven

Out from the oven :)

Breakfast served; Muffin served with roasted pork

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C 
2. In a bowl place the almond flour, walnuts, baking soda, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg and stir to combine
3. In a separate bowl put the eggs, oil, lemon and coconut milk and whisk together. Add to the dry ingredients and fold through
4. Squeeze the excess water out of the carrots (if watery) then add them to the bowl. Fold in lightly. Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin tin or cups and bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake springs back when pressed in the centre. 

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

 

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

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/

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!

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