Green smoothies - give it a go!

'Go for a green smoothie in the morning' my nutritionist said. It was the third time in a year I heard or read this advice.

I'm very lazy in the morning and I was definitely not looking for a time-consuming breakfast every morning but after hearing people be so enthusiastic about it I decided to give it a go. So two weeks a go I started the morning with a green smoothie. Using organic spinach, cellery and a banana I made my first green smoothie breakfast.

On my first smoothie morning I was a bit grumpy because it took a little longer than my usual breakfast ritual and I was almost late for work BUT I really really liked it. The taste was good and my hunger was instantly satisfied.

 So I decided I had to try out some more green smoothies and kept on going for days. And today I came to the conclusion that I have a new breakfast ritual. And this ritual has a lot of pro's: a high vitamin and fibre intake, no grains, no sugar, filling breakfast, not hungry for the next few hours and ofcourse a delicious taste of choice!

To help you get started on this great breakfast/lunch/afternoon snack, my favourite smoothie:
5 leaves of organic spinach
2 stalks of cellery
1 pear
a few mint leaves
Blend all together with some water and ENJOY :)
I hope you'll like it!

Zoodles - a great pasta recplacer

I'm busy adjusting my diet restriction to my daily life and the hardest thing to replace for me is pasta. I'm a big pasta-fan and I liked to eat pasta 2-3 times a week. I know pasta can make you fat so I already learned to eat more (healthy!) sauce than pasta, never ate the white/wheat type and mostly ate spelt pasta. But now my doctor told me I should completely skip grains from my diet. This means: no pasta! So I went on a search for a grainfree pasta replacer.

I wanted the replacer to be made of vegetables because increasing the amount of vegetables you're eating is never a bad adjustment. The extra fibres and vitamins are very welcome!
The first thing I tried was pasta sauce on cauliflower. It tasted well but that was mostly due to the delicious fish sauce I served it with. What I missed was the structure of spaghetti or tagliatelle. So the search went on!

The next thing I found out was love at first time. On the internet I came by a recipe called zoodles, a word combined of zucchini and noodles. It looked fabulous and I'm a big fan of zucchini so I decided to try this out.

A lot of people use a special spiralizer to make beautiful evenly sliced spaghetti-like zoodles. But I handcrafted my way true this recipe.

Frist I produced long vertical slices of zucchini using a cheese slicer. Than I used a knife to slice into thin tagliatelles. It took me ages to get this done so I would highly recommend to buy a vegetable slicer or spiralizer if your planning to make this more often. I definitely will!

After I was done with all the slices I put the zucchini in a large wok and stir-fried the zucchini for a couple of minutes. Et voila: your pasta replacer is ready.

I made a spinach and tomato sauce with garlic prawns to go with it but it will taste good with any sauce (as long as you like zucchini).
I found out a lot of people use veggies as a pasta replacer so I will be trying out different recipes with different types of vegetables in the nearby future. But first I need a spiralizer! ENJOY :)

Pumpkinsoup: always a good idea

I can never get enough of pumpkin soup.I know how to make a very delicious and quick pumpkin soup and I have made it every week since pumpkins are in season and still can't get enough of it.

The easy thing with soup recipes is that I don't have to replace a lot of ingredients. Soup is almost everytime grain- and sugarfree. So, no adjustments are needed. Soup: always a good idea!

The ingredients for this delicious pumpkin soup:
- 500-700 grams of pumpkin, seeds removed
- 1 cube of vegetable stock
- 500 ml of water
- Tablespoon of fresh dill
- Chilipepper, chopped into really small pieces

Chop the pumpkin into pieces and leave the skin on. Put them in a soup pan with 500 ml of water and bring to boiling point. Let it boil slowly for a while. If the water and pumpkin pieces are boiling for 10 minutes, put in the stock cube and chili. After a few minutes the pumpkin pieces will be cooked (prick with a fork to check if the pumpkin is soft).

Let the soup cool down and put it in a blender. Blend till completely smooth and add the dill. Then to heat you can put it back in your soup pan, but I like my soup a bit cooled down.

You can also use an immersion blender. If you do so, there's no need to let it cool down and you can add the dill after the soup is blended.

ENJOY :)

Parsnip chips - crispy veggies

Parsnip is a root vegetable that looks and tastes like carrots and perfect to make vegetable chips. The sweet and salt work very good together. Making veggie chips has always been on my to do list but I never managed to make decent veggie chips. Most of the times the veggie swere too wet or I didn't set my oven the right way. But with parsnip chips it never fails!

It's such a easy way to eat more veggies!

The recipe is very easy and doesn't deserve to be called a recipe.

Ingredients:
3 parsnips
Sea salt
Olive oil
Herbs (if you like)

Peel the parsnips. Slice the parsnip in really thin round parts. I used a cheese slicer to get them evenly sliced but it's also doable to use a knife. Spread the slices on a baking plate and rub them in with a fair amount of olive oil. Then cover them in salt (I used about three tablespoons of sea salt) and add herbs. I don't think the chips need herbs but you can vary and find out which way you like it.

Put it in the oven for about 20 minutes on 175 degrees celsius. I change to grill the last 5 minutes to make them crispy and crunchy. Put them on some kitchen towel to remove the oil and serve as a lunchsnack or for dinner with a burger. ENJOY :)

(Cheap) Almond flour - easy to make and great to use!

Almond flour is a very good option if you want to replace (grain containing) flour in a recipe. It gives a great, rich and little sweet taste to a recipe and is especially great as a replacer of flour in sweet bakery recipes. This comes in really handy as I'm on a grainfree diet. But being grainfree isn't the only pro! It has all the benefits of eating nuts, your adding essential minerals, healthy oils, proteins, vitamin E, fibers, etcetera... to your baked goods. I for example used it to replace normal flour in carrot cake, pumpkin pie and banana bread. All turned out great!

But there's one little problem: almond flour is really expensive!
That's why I decided to learn how to make it myself. After reading about it I have to say 'learning' to make almond flour is an overstatement. It's super easy: just blend the right amount of almonds in your food processor untill it has the consistency of flour. That's it!
But watch out, don't let it blend for too long because the oils in the nuts will be released and your almond flour will turn into almond butter. Not a very hard recipe either :P!

If one cup of allround flour is used in a recipe you can replace it with about 0.75 cup of almond flour.

And there are so much grainfree variations on almond flour, what about sunflowerseed flour, pecan nut flour, cashew flour, sesame seed flour. The possibilities are endless. Just look up how much you need of your specific flour to replace the flour in the recipe.

ENJOY :)

Two ingredients banana pancakes - grainfree!

If you need a delicious grainfree pancake recipe, try this out! The picture I made is terrible but your pancakes will look way more fabulous!

I only used two ingredients for 1 person:
- 1 banana
- 2 eggs

Squash the banana. Add the eggs and blend it together. Than put some oil in a pan and bake small pancakes. I used a spoon for soup to pour the mixture in the pan. The pancakes are super easy, cheap and delicious! There are so many variations possible if you change the toppings of spices. I topped the pancakes with frozen berries and chia and added a little cinnamon to the pancakemix. ENJOY :)

Raw bonbons - delicious chocolate treats

These raw bonbons are super delicious and easy. It would be a shame if your never tried out this recipe! It takes only three basic ingredients and you will be ready in less than half a hour. I had a lot of visitors at home this week so they had to try out these chocolate treats. Everybody liked it and one of my friends even made her own raw bonbons for her family after I explained how easy it was!

The three basic ingredients to create the bonbons:
- raw cacao powder
- coconut oil
- ahorn syrup

You just have to heat the coconutoil in a little pan, add cacao powder and some syrup. That's it. I didn't use any measurements just went with what looked and tasted good. But I would recommend 4 tablespoons of coconutoil and one tablespoon of cacao powder for about 15 small bonbons. If you want sweet bonbons you can add some syrup.

I added goji, coconut and almond to the chocolate mix. The goji tasted especially good in this recipe! But you can use any dried fruit or nuts you like. Next time I will be using pistache and dried raspberry. Be as creative as you can and let me know what you used :)

After I put all the ingredients together I used a spoon to pour the chocolate mix into really small alluminium cups I bought at Flying Tiger.

After you poured in all of the chocolate mix make sure you lick the spoon you used because you have to wait a few hours before the bonbons are set in the fridge. The waiting really takes long when you know how delicious it will be.

Because the bonbons are mostly made of coconut oil, they will melt really fast in your warm hands. So it's not a good idea to serve them directly next to coffee or tea and you should not leave them out of the fridge. But still, it's worth it! I treat myself with one bonbon everyday so I can enjoy this delicious recipe for a very long time. And of course make sure your friends and family taste this delicious chocolate treat. ENJOY :)