Summer Pomegranate and Pea Quinoa Salad with Marinated Lamb

 

This recipe has been adapted from Meghan Telpner's Qristmas Quinoa recipe.

Ingredients  

Serves 2 people 

Lamb & Marinade - Made by my fiance

400g of lamb fillet (200g per person)

Handful of Parsley and Mint.

Couple of sprigs of Rosemary

2 Garlic Cloves

2-3tbsp of Olive Oil

1 tsp of Chilli Flakes

Salt 

Quinoa Salad

1 cup Quinoa (soaked for 15mins and rinsed)

1 Pomegranate

1 cup of fresh or frozen Peas

Salt to taste 

Tomato & Cumber Salad

1 Tomato & 1 Cucumber diced 

Dressing
Another handful of Parsley and Mint
1 Garlic Clove
2 tbsp Olive Oil
Half a lemon juiced
1 tsp Pomegranate Molasses

Method
About 1-2 hours before you prepare the salad place all the herbs, garlic, olive oil, salt and chilli into a blender and combine well to make the marinade. Place the meat in a zip-lock plastic bag or container and add the marinade and massage into the meat. Put this in the fridge until about 20 mins prior to cooking so that the meat can be closer to room temperature before cooking.

For the Quinoa salad, cook the grains by covering with 2 cups of water and bring to the boil then reduce down to a medium heat and cook for 20-30mins until the grains are soft and the water is absorbed. Leave this to cool before adding pomegranate seeds and lightly cooked peas.

While cooking the quinoa you can cook the lamb. Heat up a fry pan or skillet and place the meat in the pan (it should have a good sizzle when you do this otherwise its probably not hot enough), leave for about 4-5mins before turning over and giving it a further 4-5mins. The lamb should be nice a springy to the touch when you remove from the pan. Leave to rest for about 5 mins and then finely slice.

For the Dressing place everything in a blender or hand mixer and combine well. Use 1/3 of this to dress the Quinoa Salad and another 1/3 to dress the tomato and cucumbers in a separate bowl.

I served it up by placing a nice sparkly pile of Quinoa Salad on the bottom followed by slices of lamb and sprinkled the tomato and cumber over the top. You can used the last of the dressing to drizzle over the top if you wish. Deeeeeelicious!

Easy Peasy Thai Summer Salad

Wow, I can't believe it has been a whole month since my last post... this last part of the year has flown by so quickly. I sort of fell off the wagon a little bit in the last month. Giving way to the Christmas parties and all the booze and food that follows.

I've started to see a new Naturopath and I'm slowly getting back on track with my healthy eating and living goals. I will go into more detail with this in a post tomorrow. But for today I just wanted to share a delicious new recipe that I hope will help me get back on the healthy train!

For Christmas my fiance, Simon, bought me a beautiful book, Stephane Reynaud's "365 Good Reasons to Sit Down to Eat." And this recipe has been taken from this book with a couple of twists of my own.

Easy Thai Salad

Ingredients
200g Breast fillet (I bought some pre-marinated Thai Chicken from Harris Farm)
2 Carrots
2 Scallions
1/2 Bunch of Coriander
100g Shelled Cooked Prawns
1/2 Packet of Rice Vermicelli Noodles
1/3 Cup Activate Nuts in Tamari and Chili (I will post a recipe for this soon).


Dressing:
2 Garlic cloves
1 Red Chili
1 tbsp Agave Nectar
2 tbsp Fish Sauce
3 tbsp Olive or Grapeseed Oil
1 tbsp Lemon Juice

Method
Heat up a non-stick frypan and sear the chicken, then wrap in foil and put in the oven (pre-heated to 180℃). Remove from the oven in about 20 minutes and chop up into pieces to serve.

Using a vegetable peeler, peel the carrot into ribbons and place these in a bowl. Finely chop the scallions and coriander (you could also add cucumber, celery, etc to bulk up the veggie content here), place these into the bowl with the carrots.

Cook the Vermicelli according to the packet. Usually you just need to place the noodles into some cold or warm water for 2-4 minutes.

Put the agave, fish sauce, oil, lemon juice, garlic and chili in a bottle or container and give it a good shake to combine.

Serve up all together. Chop up the nuts and sprinkle over the top for some extra crunch! I had a couple of cherry tomatoes just picked from our plant in the backyard, so I added them in as well.

Its so beautiful, fresh and flavourful! A great Summer dish.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Salmon, Pea Puree and Brocolli with Arame Salad

Thought I'd just share this delicious meal recipe with you. Had made up a rather large batch of pea puree during Meghan's Low Glycemic Challenge week (I feel like I mention her in every blog I do, but she's really a huge source of inspiration at the moment), which I had frozen.

And I also just bought 'Ripe from Around Here' by Jae Steele which had tonnes of fantastic vegan recipes, not that I am vegan, but I find it is a fantastic way to bump up my consumption of veggies.

So this recipe is a bit of a concoction of a few things but it was so damn tasty! (If I do say so myself!)

Sesame, Broccoli and Arame Salad
Ingredients
1 head of Broccoli
1/4 cup of Arame (a seaweed and rich source of iron, calcium, zinc and iodine)
2 tbsp of Tamari
2 tbsp of Sesame Oil (this might be a little rich - I think I might drop it back to 1 tbsp next time)
1/4 tsp of Dulse Flakes
1 clove of Garlic
Pepper

Method:

• Put the arame in a bowl and cover with room temperature water until the seaweed is rehydrated.
• Steam the broccoli for 2-4minutes in a steamer.
• Strain the arame - save the water and either use it for stock or put it in the garden!
• Mix together the tamari, sesame oil, dulse flakes and garlic.
• I made this a cold salad but you could just as well have it hot - simply toss the broccoli and arame in the dressing and sprinkle sesame seeds to serve.
• NB. This recipe makes enough for four people - I had the left overs today for lunch with some brown rice.

Salmon and Pea Puree: 
Ingredients
2 x 200g salmon fillets
1 x Leek
2 tbsp Olive Oil
1 Bag of Frozen Peas
1 bunch of fresh mint
Salt and Pepper to taste 

Method

• Sautee the leek in the olive oil in a pan until they soften
• Add the bag of frozen peas and cover with boiling water
• Let this simmer away until the peas are nice and easily mushed
• Depending on your blender you might need to let this cool
• Put the peas, leeks and mint into a blender and whir away until silky smooth
• Add Salt and Pepper to taste
• With the Salmon I drizzle some olive oil on the skin and rub this in, then sprinkle with a little salt and pepper
• Get a fry pan nice and hot (no need to add any more oil)
• Place the salmon skin side down and let it sizzle away for a good 3-5 minutes (depending on the thickness of your salmon.
• Here you can either turn the heat down and turn the salmon over until it cooks most of the way through, or transfer it to a low oven to cook gently - I find using the oven insures a more even heat and helps avoid a really raw middle.

Put everything on a plate and enjoy!!

Making Time for What is Important

Image courtesy of Blissful Image

Okay! Let's go through the list I set for myself and see how well I've gone on Day 01:

• Get up 5.30am prepare a nutritious breakfast and go to the gym for pilates or yoga.

Check! I made my fiance and me a banana, cinnamon and almond smoothie and finished off some beautiful gluten-free sun-dried tomato and baby spinach tarts (thanks to the Almond Flour Cookbook by Elana Amsterdam). Didn't go to the gym - I figured getting a good breakfast and lunches ready for the week was more important!

• Get out of the office at lunch time for a 10 minute walk.

Check! The other designers and I wandered down around Millers Point to and back before having lunch.

• Spend at least half an hour a day reading.

Check! I read on the bus.

• Catch the bus half way home and walk the rest of the way (try 'walking meditation')

Check! I walked home from Glebe to Stanmore (for the record, that's about 3kms and I did it in 25 mins) and even ran a few blocks! Hooray!

• 2-3 hours study Tuesday and Thursday nights.

Oops! Make that Monday and Wednesday nights - and after I jump in the shower I will be getting stuck into some study!

• To prepare delicious, nutritious meals each day.

Check! My lunch was the envy of all at work today - gluten free tart, some rocket, cherry tomatoes, a little organic sheeps milk fetta and a drizzle of flaxseed and umeboshi vinegar!

• To blog and journal my experiences at least every second day.

Check! 

• Spend some time each day to focus, visualise and feel myself achieving my goals and dreams - probably whilst walking.

Check! 

• To pamper myself with a bath, foot treatment before bed, home facial as often as possible!

I'm just about to hop in the shower.

• Get to bed early.

Will do! I'm pooped! But in a good way.

Feeling good - happy that I've made the time today to get everything done that I wanted to and I've just prove to myself that it is possible to everything I want to do (and that I can motivate myself to do it). I did think that I was going to miss walking home because I was at work until 6.15 or so, but I was still home by 7.30!

I'm hoping that in a couple of weeks I'll be able to walk or jog the whole way! That's 7kms.

They say the second day is always the hardest. But I think I'm ready!

xK 

Spooky Turn of Events

Photography by Gabriela Camerotti

Wow! Sunday again, the weeks are flying by and soon it will be Christmas! I can't believe it.

Had kind of an up and down day today. Was woken at 4am by our blender starting up on its own!! Freaky! I thought the fridge or something in the kitchen was about to explode!!

So I slept pretty badly after that and quite weirdly, the shock of the noise conjured up all these strange anxieties, like I need to earn more money - how are we going to save for this wedding? I'm not loosing weight fast enough. I didn't go to the gym once this week - I am a total failure. Was the new hand blender I bought that day missing a part? How was I going to deal with them to get the part! Oh! the stress! I think my heart was racing for about 4 hours.

Really need to work on finding the lighter side of life, learn how to calm myself and take control of my anxieties. Tough gig. So thank you, Blender, for frightening me so. It has helped me create this week's new challenge.

Taking control of things and doing it with a smile.

This goes hand in hand with the book I'm reading at the moment, "Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting" by Lynn Grabhorn. It sounds like your typical, awful self-help book (and it kind of is a self-help book...) but its so light hearted and warm, even my deeply cynical side is loving it to bits. And even if I can implement just one or two things from this book I'll be a much happier person for it.

One thing I always find myself doing is holding on to the past (and not positive happy things) but all the things I didn't do. And these anxieties constantly spring out of thin air, brought on by some catalyst (like the Possessed Blender Demon) and it ruins me for hours, sometimes days.

This week I want to focus on taking responsibility for the little things I can do each day that will help alleviate the 'regrets of the future', the factors that I do have control over, right now, and letting go of those I don't or that live in the past. I love this quote from the book:

The real reality is we have come here to thrive, and prosper, and live this grand human experience in lighthearted joy, not struggle and pain. We have come here to have fun while we learn, to grow without suffering, and to harvest our desires in the absolute knowledge that we can have it all once we learn how to handle our energies... meaning... our emotions.

This idea ties back in with something I read on Wellness Warrior a little while ago about integrating daily habits that make you feel good so here goes my list of daily habits and promises to myself that I want to tick off each and every day this week:

• Weekdays - get up 5.30am prepare a nutritious breakfast and go to the gym for pilates or yoga.
• Get out of the office at lunch time for a 10 minute walk - get some vitamin D and to remind myself that there is a world outside and that I am a part of it!
• Spend at least half an hour a day reading (aside from my study) to broaden my general knowledge.
• Catch the bus half way home and walk the rest of the way (try 'walking meditation')
• 2-3 hours study Tuesday and Thursday nights
• To prepare delicious, nutritious meals each day and to make up a healthy dessert as a treat at least twice a week.
• To blog and journal my experiences at least every second day.
• Spend some time each day to focus, visualise and feel myself achieving my goals and dreams - probably whilst walking.
• To pamper myself with a bath, foot treatment before bed, home facial as often as possible! Maybe even try to do one little indulgence everyday? 
• Get to bed early.

Ambitious. Yes. But I think these are all good things - not chores - and therefore should be achievable and every day I achieve all those little things that are important to me the less I think I will have to regret or to brood about in the future. Its just about learning to take the time and care I guess?

Okay, I'm off to enjoy the last bit of sun for the day with my fiance and housemates!

Breakfast Recipes Catch-up: Nut & Seed Cereal and a Chocolatey Shake to kick off a Friday

Phew! Busy end to the week, here are the last two gluten-free breakfasts from Thursday and Friday!

Breakfast : Day 04
Almond, Hazelnut and Seeds Cereal
This is a recipe that I learned during Meghan Telpner's Low GI Challenge and it is fast becoming one of my favourites! It is fantastically filling and keeps my whole day rolling smoothly!

Ingredients (1 Serve)

2 tbsp raw almonds
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
1 tbsp hazlenuts (or other nuts if you prefer
1/2 cup chopped seasonal fruit
1/2 cup yoghurt or almond milk

Method
Soak the nuts and seeds over night.
Strain them in the morning, mix with yoghurt (or milk) and fruit.

I also sprinkle a tablespoon of flaxseed over the top (might be a bit excessive...)

Breakfast : Day 05
Bananaberry Smoothie with Maca and Cacao.
I have been intrigued by cacao for a little while now and I just ordered some from Power Super Foods and the also sent a bunch of samples which I am excited to play with! One of the samples was for a Maca Smoothie Blend which also has a little raw cacao powder mixed in - PERFECT for this week's breakfast challenge!

Maca is a root vegetable found in South America, it is rich in amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals and other trace elements. From the little bit of research I have done so far, it is great for improving energy and vitality but you only need small amounts and not too regularly as with any stimulant it can be detrimental.

Cacao is the raw sister of the more traditional cocoa. Here's what Power Super Foods has said about it:

Most cocoa powder is processed via the "Dutch method" meaning heat extracted (up to 150°C!), sometimes with solvents, thus destroying most of the nutrients and antioxidants and potentially contaminating the end product. Cacao Power products have an antioxidant (ORAC) score of 95,500. To put that into perspective, that's 14 times more antioxidant flavonoids than red wine, 21 times more than green tea, and 7 times more than even dark chocolate ! 

So cacao makes a wonderful alternative to chocolate, I am going to try out some recipes hopefully this week. Will talk more about the wonderful cacao then!

Anyway here is the recipe:

Ingredients (Serves 2):
1 Banana (I broke it up into little bits and put it in the freezer the night before. YUM!)
1/2-1 cup of mixed frozen berries
1 cup of milk (normal, almond, soy, etc)
1/4 cup of crushed walnuts
1 sachet of Maca Smoothie Blend

Method:Pop everything into the blender and buzzzzzzzz away!
You get this wonderful purple, chocolatey smoothie!

Enjoy!

Breakfast Cocktail!

 Sorry for the iStock images - the kitchen is a bit messy and I was also being lazy...

I've made our breakfast for tomorrow tonight so I can get to yoga in the morning. I did a gluten-free, fruit extravaganza tonight! Hope you enjoy!

Breakfast : Day 03
Summer Berries, Apple, Mango and Mint Smoothie
(Serves 2 people)

Ingredients
2 Green Apples (peeled and chopped)
1 Pink Lady Apple (peeled and chopped)
1 Mango
1 cup of Frozen Mixed Berries (or fresh)
1 handful of Mint
1/4 cup of Kefir or normal yoghurt
2 tbsp Ground Flaxseed

Method
Let the fruit, mint and yoghurt all tango together in the blender.
I'm going to stir through the flaxseed tomorrow, because otherwise it swells up and will be more like a jelly than a smoothie! I was toying with the idea of adding some of my liquid chlorophyll tomorrow too.. I'll let you know how that goes!!

Enjoy!