Platters!

I've been having some fun creating platters. Now that we can gather up to 10 people, we have had a few people come over for a visit. We kept it small, 2 people at a time, and it was nice to see family/friends. Here are my creations

Some similarities but I made sure to make each one a little different. They turned out delicious! We still have some left over so I created a bento box lunch today. I didn't think to take a picture but we had a little bit of macaroni salad that I made, 1 slice of ham each, 1 slice of kabasa each, 3 crackers with cheese (boursin and goat cheese) and I also included some kimchi. It was delicious!

Been watching a few videos on FMTV, now known as Gaia, and it's been all about salads, and she made a Buddha salad which one restaurant makes a really good one, and I haven't gone there in a long time, so I'm thinking next grocery trip I'll be buying ingredients to create different Buddha bowls. For those that don't know what that is, it's a salad, but you get to mix and match whatever you want. The one I have at the restaurant tends to be quinoa, mix of greens, strawberries, apple, goat cheese, chicken but I tend to ask for shrimp instead of chicken, spiced pecans, onions, and peppers. I think that's it. It's a delicious combination with a vinaigrette, so I'm thinking I need to create my own. The video I saw, she added herbs, and kimchi, and she did a rice and can't remember what else but it's all about mixing things up with veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, grains, cheese, and protein. You don't have to include it all but you can, and even legumes would be good to add as well. It's a chance to just have fun in combining whatever you want. I love the idea of adding fresh herbs and fermented foods. The herbs would add a lot of fresh wonderful flavor, and to add fermented food, is really healthy for us. You can add in kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh, or miso. With creating each one differently, it will be something new and delicious to put together and eat. You can also have fun with different dressings as well.

Supper tonight is left over fajitas! Mine is shrimp and he has chicken. It's going to be just as delicious!

Breakfast!

I love breakfast! With working from home, it's giving me the opportunity to vary my breakfast more. Normally when I go in to work, I keep it quick and simple with a smoothie. I do still make some smoothies, cause they are delicious but I'm having fun putting together a few other things to enjoy for breakfast

I had some delicious fresh strawberries on hand and decided instead of jam, why not fresh strawberries! I toasted my fermented grain bread from Silver Hills, and then added some almond butter, but I'm sure natural peanut butter would be just as good. I sprinkled on some chia seeds for extra nutrition, and then put sliced strawberries on top. It was so good!

I also decided one morning on another smoothie bowl

I put in some frozen bananas, some fermented vegan protein powder, frozen cherries and some almond milk to get everything to blend up in my Vitamix. The granola I made on the weekend, I used gluten free oats, 1 cup, with 1/2 cup of quinoa, 2 tbps of ground flax seeds, and some almonds and walnuts chopped up. In a pan I melted 2 tbps each of coconut oil, natural peanut butter, chocolate chips and maple syrup. I then I toasted the dry in a pan until lightly golden, then mixed in the wet ingredients to combine until everything was well toasted.

Another delicious breakfast is pancakes!

I like to make this version of pancake once in a while. All it is, is 1 banana with 2 eggs. You mash up the banana first, and then add in the eggs and whisk them up and then cook in a pan like you would pancakes. This makes more of a crepe, but it's still so delicious! I added chia seeds, they are just hiding under the pancake, and topped it with fresh berries and of course real maple syrup. Yum! The Eeyore mug you also see in the picture is a chai tea latte, my fav!

It's been a good week of breakfasts! This morning I had some cereal with brown rice puff, sliced almonds, remaining of the blueberries, and some chia seeds with almond milk and some maple syrup to sweeten it up a bit.

Another thing we tried this week is to make our own homemade shawarmas. A while back we had a pot luck at work and one of the girls I work with made these small shawarma bites and I asked her about it cause it was so good! She ended up giving me her recipe for the garlic sauce. Very easy to make, just takes a while to peel up the garlic cloves. It's 2 whole heads of garlic put into a food processor with a touch of lemon juice, touch of salt, and one small baked potato (for starch and to help cook up the garlic a little to tone it down). Turn on the food processor and slowly stream in some vegetable oil, although I used grapeseed oil instead, which is still mild like vegetable oil.

It turned out great. This picture I didn't add enough oil, so I put it in a bowl and whisked in more cause the garlic was way to powerful, like clear your sinus and feel it going down powerful! Once I added more oil, it was perfect! I got some whole wheat pitas, opened them up, added in some shredded lettuce, sliced tomato and onion, and some pickled turnips. The chicken we marinated with a lot of spices, and cooked it up on the BBQ. Hubby found a recipe online for a chicken shawarma marinate and it was a good one, very delicious!

Yesterday we had burger's, mine was a meat free burger, and I was still a bit hungry so decided to have some dessert

This is an "ice cream" type of dessert. It's all done in a food processor. I added 2 frozen bananas, with 2 heaping tsp of natural peanut butter, and about 2 tsp of dark chocolate chips and blend it up until smooth. You have to stop to scrap the sides here and there, but it's worth the effort, it's so good!

I didn't workout out yet today so time for me to go do that. Supper tonight is salmon with some salad!