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!

Pie!

I decided to go through my Chocolate Covered Katie cookbook for some desert ideas and decided to try one of her pies, it's all raw

It turned out really good! I made the chocolate crust with lots of almonds and a bit of walnuts, using cacao powder for the chocolate and for sweetness some dates. Then on another page I saw this raspberry filling but since I didn't have any I chose to go with blueberries since I had a lot. This to had some cacao powder for more chocolatey goodness. This pie is delicious!! I do recommend her cookbook, it has a lot of great healthy deserts. She does have more recipes online as well, but she doesn't have the recipe for either of these online.

We also did some BBQ'ing and cooked up some shrimp and salmon skewers, along with some potatoes and asparagus

It was so good! For the shrimp I made the Epicure garlic aioli dip. Yum!!

I have also been on a little Soul Surfer kick lately. I have seen the movie many times, it's so inspiring! I finally got the book and I started to read it Thursday and finished it up last night (Friday). It's not like the movie, but a very good read! I actually got curious to see what she's up to now so I did a search online and found out that she has another movie she came out with called Bethany Hamilton Unstoppable and saw it was available on Netflix so that's what I did today, and it was really good. It's her actual story from when she was a kid to fairly recent (4 years ago) of her life. This one is also very inspiring! When I need some motivation, I'm sure I'll watch one of them for some inspiration.

Today I did some speed walking for 5 km, and yesterday I did another 5 km but a mix of running and speed walking with different inclines.

Supper tonight I'll be trying out this chicken recipe with a basil sauce that I found on Facebook. My herb garden is really growing and we do have a lot of basil so I'm looking forward to trying it out

Fresh Herbs!

It's finally that time of year! I have my herb garden all set up!

So this year's herbs are parsley, curly and leafy, some rosemary, thyme, basil, dill, chives, and cilantro. I also decided to get some Kale. I already dove into the dill yesterday, I put some in our salad. I will wait till my Kale gets bigger before I start grabbing some of it.

About a week ago, I decided to make some bruchetta and put it on some Naan bread

It was so good!! I toasted up my whole wheat Naan bread in the oven to get it crispy, and sliced it up and then topped it with the bruchetta I made. It's so simple to make! I used 2 Roma tomatoes, chopped it up, added about 1/4 cup of fresh basil (chopped), 1 clove of garlic (minced), with 2 tbsp of olive oil, but I think 1 tbsp would be enough, and then 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar,with a touch of salt and some pepper. I let it sit for at least an hour and then I added some feta cheese. This photo is missing the balsamic glaze that I drizzled on top.

We have been keeping busy as well, we did some yard work, and vacuumed up the car, and I also went for a nice run, 6 km

Weather here has been so beautiful! Today's workout I did some fast walking on my treadmill with different inclines, and also did some upper body weights. Tomorrow is suppose to be another nice day so I'm thinking another run outside.

Smoothie bowl

I have been seeing a lot of posts of the kitchen twins on Facebook and they have been making quite a few smoothie bowls and it got me hungry for one yesterday so I created my own

I had some extra coconut milk in the fridge from making almond flour chocolate chip cookies so I used 3 tbsp of that, some flax seeds, 1 frozen banana, 2 handful of frozen kale, some fermented protein powder and some maca. I had to add more liquid so I added a good splash of kombucha. I then topped it with fresh blueberries and sliced almonds. It turned out really good.

I have also been craving an egg salad sandwich so I made that for our lunch today and it was delicious! I boiled my eggs, added in a touch of salt, and lots of pepper, some paprika, a bit of Dijon mustard and some mayo. I also chopped up some fresh chives and added it in. Simple yet so delicious!

I'm thinking I should make a new batch of granola so I can make more smoothie bowls. I'll see when I get the chance to make some.

Today's workout was weights, and I want to walk shortly to get more steps in. I didn't work out yesterday but I was gone for a while doing groceries so quite a bit of walking there.

Hope everyone had a great weekend, and have a wonderful week. I'm looking forward to this long weekend, a friend reminded me that we have Monday off! Yay!!

Chocolate Chip cookies!!

Before I did groceries last week I needed some ideas on what I can make, and decided to take out a cookbook that I haven't looked at in a while

I was able to find 3 recipes I wanted to try out. The first that we had was the salmon cakes

I used fresh salmon, I baked it in the oven for about 20 minutes and let it cool a bit and then flaked it all in a bowl and added the rest of the ingredients. These turned out really good! I made some aioli using the spice from Epicure. Her recipe did include aioli but I decided to use Epicure since we both really love it. We had this with a salad.

Second recipe I made was these Best ever chocolate chip cookies that you can find on her website that I have linked.

These turned out really good! We both love them. This is what's remaining from the few we have already eaten, which this made 18 cookies. I'm thinking I'll be making more soon. They are healthy and a great treat.

The third recipe I haven't made yet. I want to try the scallops with this orange glaze to it. The picture she shows in her book looks delicious and again healthy ingredients which I love.

I'll have to get groceries again later on this week, and I plan to check out what other new recipes I can try out. We had a lazy weekend, but we did take advantage of the beautiful weather and fired up our BBQ. We had burgers, mine being a veggie patty. I tried this new one with healthy ingredients and it was ok. Today I did hit my basement gym and did some running on the treadmill along with some walking on inclines as well.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Frozen treats

I have been looking mostly online lately for some ideas on meals and treats, and came upon these chocolate chip fudgesicles from Joyous Health

These turned out so good!! They were easy to make, and you can find the recipe here.

I still had a little left that didn't fit in my molds so I put it in a small mason jar to use for something else, and then came the idea to make Nice cream. I got a cookbook as a gift so I looked up how it's made and used one recipe but instead of the peanut butter I added the remaining fudgesicle mix I had in the fridge along with frozen banana. All I had to do was add it to a food processor and scrap the sides once in a while and it turned into this soft ice cream texture

It was delicious!! Pretty close to ice cream, but I think even better since it won't cause me tummy issues. I used the last of my frozen bananas but I have a few ready on my counter to take the peel off, and I cut them up into chunks and freeze them. I put them in separated so they don't stick together.

I do have an ice cream maker, and love using a can of coconut milk as the base for the ice cream. Coconut milk is the perfect creaminess to make really good ice cream without the dairy.

It was my birthday and I talked about what I was going to make, and here's the 2 portion lasagna and mug brownie I made

It was a delicious birthday supper! I had enough to make 2 of the lasagna, so the other is in my freezer to enjoy another time. I also have a mason jar of the remaining tomato sauce I made. I had the sauce cooking for a few hours, and it turned out really good. The brownie was so simple to make and it was delicious! I got the recipe from Chocolate covered Katie. I have one of her cookbooks and she really does make great food. You can find the recipe here.

For the cocoa powder, I used cacao, as it's healthier, and for the dutch cocoa I just added more dark chocolate chips. It was really good!! For sure a recipe I will keep on hand when I'm having a craving for a brownie.

I'm also still working out, and since the day after my birthday, I have been meat free, but I am eating seafood here and there. Today I plan to look up more recipes to see what else I should make for this coming week. Tonight's supper will be a fried rice, I will cook up some brown rice, and in a pan I will saute a bunch of veggies, I have peppers, onions, scallions, carrots and mushrooms that I think will go well, and I'll scramble in some eggs, and add in some shrimp. I'll use some tamari sauce as it's gluten free, some sesame oil, a little rice vinegar, and grated ginger. I want to add a bit of hot sauce as well to add a bit of kick.

I have also been catching up on some of my cooking shows to try to get ideas on what to make, which gave me the idea of the fried rice. The Pioneer Woman had a great episode with her daughters and nephew doing the video for her since we are in isolation. It was funny and really good, they did a great job. I am also still enjoying watching Rachael Ray at home as well.

Cookies and muffins

Since we are still in isolation, I thought what better time then to do my endometriosis diet to get back on track. I have been eating a bit to much meat and some cheese lately which has caused me some pain. I see a lot of posts online stating how many tend to eat more during this time but my eating hasn't really changed. I get up a bit later so I don't tend to need a snack in the morning, I have lunch, and I'm good till supper. I'm guilty of snacking at times at night but I'm working on trying not to.

In order to help get started on my endo diet, I of course did groceries to get what I needed, and got into the kitchen to make these

On the left it's coconut banana muffins. The ingredients are simple, The base is a mashed banana, some coconut flour, coconut oil, vanilla, maple syrup and a lot of eggs. The topping is a little coconut flour, some coconut oil, maple syrup, cinnamon and walnuts. On the right it's almond rice cookies. It's brown rice puff cereal (ingredient is only brown rice), with almond butter, honey (I once tried maple syrup and that didn't work, to liquid), some cinnamon and sliced almonds.

When I did my endo diet years ago, I never ate any coconut banana muffins but it's all ingredients I can have. I won't eat to many of them since hubby loves them a lot, so I'll enjoy more of the cookies, which I use to eat a lot during the diet. So what does the endo diet look like, it's sugar free  (except natural sugar like honey, maple syrup and fruit), gluten free, meat free except seafood, and diary free. I felt so great after about a week or so on the diet. Another bonus was that I lost some weight, 2 dress sizes which was nice. I could use some weight loss, but it's more about feeling and being healthy, including avoiding pain.

I am still working out, I ran 4 km on the treadmill yesterday, and did some lower body exercises. Today will be walking and upper body and core exercises.

My birthday is coming up this weekend, so it will be a treat day and I'll get back on track. Saturday for supper I'm thinking the sweet potato pad thai. Although it's vegetarian and healthy, it's absolutely delicious and feels like a treat. Sunday is my actual treat day, starting with sausage mcmuffins, and unsure about lunch yet, I may go healthy with a salad since supper will be my absolute favorite thing to have, lasagna. I'm making a 2 portion lasagna so there's no left overs. Dessert will be a single serving brownie, so I'll make 2 so we have one each and again no left over so I can get back on track on Monday. I will of course enjoy some wine as well on Sunday.

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy