Courgetti comfort: veg-packed and awesome!

Back in the day, before I realised that you could actually eat real food to be healthy (and didn’t have to limit yourself to rabbit food), my go-to comfort food to warm me up was a big bowl of greasy pasta. I’d eat it when I was feeling miserable, despite the fact that pasta is one of my IBS triggers and would leave me in an even more miserable state! Go figure, right?! ‘Ah shame Bella, I know you’re feeling a bit under the weather right now, here’s something to make you feel even more like crap!’ …. Not so clever. But how often do we do that?

So now, my comfort food is something that’s actually going to comfort! It’ll nourish and love and give me an inner cuddle, instead of a sharp kick to the intestines. Huzzah! This little beauty was invented initially because it was pissing down with horrific rain and I just wanted something to warm me up – and I had a shed load of green veg in the fridge that needed using up! And thanks to my trusty spiralizer (it was top of my Christmas wishlist!), this is super quick n’ easy – although you can absolutely make this by peeling the courgettes too!

I’ve also just recently discovered Umami Pepper… oh my! I freaking LOVE this stuff!! Umami is the ‘fifth taste’ – the other 4 are sweet, sour, salt and bitter – and it gives such a great flavour to dishes. I got mine from Tescos – I’m not sure where else it’s being stocked. It’s an awesome way to add a bit of ‘je ne sais quoi’ to your dishes! If you don’t have it, this recipe will work fine with normal black pepper instead.

Ingredients

Courgetti, chicken and greens… Rammed with veg and yumminess

• 1 tsp coconut oil
• 1 chicken breast, cubed
• 1 slice lean back bacon
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• lots of umami pepper
• chilli flakes to taste
• dried basil
• 1/2 green bell pepper, diced
• large handful green beans, sliced
• large handful asparagus spears, cut into rounds except for the spear heads
• 2 large handfuls sugar snap peas, sliced
• 2 tbsp mozzarella, cubed
• 1/2 large courgette, made into noodles

Nice and simple – melt the coconut oil in a pan and add the chicken and then the bacon and cook gently until the chicken is white all over. Season well with the umami pepper, chilli and dried basil. Add the garlic and stir to coat and soften slightly. Then chuck in all of the veg except for the courgetti and stir fry for a few minutes until the veg has softened and is cooked. Add in the mozzarella and the courgetti and literally just stir through to coat in the seasoning before serving.

So tasty, so quick, and perfect for an inner cuddle. 🙂

This is the penultimate 5 a day recipe in the #May5aday series! What do you want to see for the final recipe?? Something sweet? Something savoury? I hope you’ve been consciously trying to up the amount of fruit and veg that you’re eating!

Don’t forget, you can sign up to my newsletter to receive a monthly update of news, recipes and tasty little tidbits!

Sweet Moroccan Stew – love n’ beans for your 5 a day fix

So did anyone try the Glorious Green Smoothie? Are you doing more to make up your 5 a day? This week, I’m sharing an old favourite of mine. It’s something I came up with for dinner with the girls – I’d given up my job in London, had very little spare cash, but still wanted to see my friends and be able to do something nice for them. This dinner was perfect – it’s so simple, cheap to create and doesn’t mean that you’re slaving over a hot stove – plus it’s filling and GOOD FOR YOU! Not quite the 5 a day corker that the smoothie was, but it whacks in a whopping 3 ½ – 4 portions, including a portion of beans, which are packed full of fibre! I also served it as the wholesome and nutritional sustenance for our gorgeous bunch of yogi’s that joined me and Ellie from YogaByEllie at our yoga retreat in April. It certainly got the thumbs up from them! And the Spring Cleaners have loved it too – and so, I thought I’d let you all join in the love-fest for this bean-filled beauty!

Cookin’ up a mountain of Moroccan stew love for the yoga retreat!

Here’s what you’re getting from this oozing pot of love:

Red onion & garlic: both of these are part of the allium family, which are rich in sulphur-containing compounds (yep, that’s the gorgeous smell!) and are packed full of antioxidants, polyphenols and flavonoids that help protect us against a huge range of illnesses and disease. They’re also awesome for boosting our cardiovascular health and bone strength and are packed full of anti-inflammatory qualities.

Turmeric: another anti-inflammatory superhero… it’s been used in Chinese and Indian medicine for centuries to treat a wide variety of conditions.

Red peppers: have over 300% of your daily requirement of Vitamin C which keeps your immune system healthy. They’re also a good source of beta-carotene which the body converts into Vitamin A to keep eyes and skin super healthy.

Courgettes: They’re rich in magnesium and potassium, which help normalise blood pressure and can help prevent the build-up of bad cholesterol in the blood.

Chickpeas & butter beans: Not only do they count towards your 5 a day with just 2-3 tbsps, but they’re also packed full of fibre and so great for your intestinal health.

AND, just to top it all off – this little beaut is an awesome freezer meal. Cook once, eat 4 times! Dinner ready in 5 mins flat! Amazebeans. Do you really need any more persuading to get your ass in the kitchen to make this? It’s a perfect #MeatFreeMonday meal. Get stuck in!

Sweet Moroccan Stew

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 2 tsp coconut oil
  

  Spring Clean Sweet Moroccan Stew with Greek yoghurt & avo!

• 1 red onion, diced
• 3-4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp paprika
• 2 large courgettes, diced
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 tin chickpeas, drained
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 veggie stock pot/cube + 500 ml water (more may be needed)
• ½ cup red lentils
• 2-3 tbsp raisins
• 2-3 tbsps chopped dates (or add more raisins)
• 1 tin butter beans
• 1 tbsp honey (optional)

Melt the oil in a pan and slowly cook the red onion and garlic in a pinch of salt

Once soft, add the turmeric and paprika and cook to release the fragrance and flavour of the spices.

Add the diced courgette, pepper and chick peas and mix well to coat in the spices.

Add the tin of tomatoes, puree and veggie stock, then stir in the lentils, raisins and dates. Leave to simmer for 20 mins, stirring occasionally.

Check that the lentils are cooked,  give them a little longer if needed and add more water if it’s looking parched, then add in the butter beans.

Stir through and add the honey if needed, then leave for a final 5 mins or so to thicken up (if your mix is very runny, then turn up the heat, or alternatively, add another handful of lentils which will soak up the juices as they cook and expand.

This works perfectly served on it’s own, with or without a dollop of Greek yoghurt and some creamy avo slices, but you could also serve it up with brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat or couscous if you’d like. Have an extra portion of green veg or salad on the side to really earn your 5 a day halo!

Delish! Let me know if you try it!

Glorious green smoothie bowl – your 5 a day in one

So, as promised, here is the first Monday in May recipe to help you get your 5 a day. And this one is a corker. It’s creamy, it’s tasty and so freaking good for you it deserves a halo.

I love smoothies – whether they’re in a glass if they’re liquid enough to drink, or in a bowl or jar to eat with a spoon. They’re super easy to make, and unlike juicing, you do get the whole goodness of the fruit/veg because you’re not discarding the goodness containing pulp. But it’s also very easy to turn smoothies into sugar bombs that will blow your healthy eating out of the water and bring on cravings and love handles. So how do you avoid that?

Well, first off, don’t too many sugar-laden fruits – we’re hearing a lot of scaremongering about fruits being full of sugar and how we need to avoid them. I am NOT going to start off down the ‘don’t eat fruit’ trail, because I think it’s a load of tosh. Tosh, I tell ya! I think it’s FAR better to eat an apple or banana than a Mars Bar. So if you’re craving something something sweet, fruit is definitely going to be a waaaaaaay better option than chocolate that will stick to your innards and fatten you up. But I will give a little warning that with smoothies, something different happens – firstly, you’re squishing the fruit up, so you tend to eat more of it than you necessarily would if you were picking it out the fruit bowl. And secondly, the process of squishing changes the sugar structure of the fruit, so it’s not held intrinsically in the cells but becomes an extrinsic sugar… which basically means that it acts more like refined sugar that you’d find in the sugar bowl. So when you’re blitzing up fruit, you want to make sure that you’re choosing the slightly lower sugar fruits like berries and be careful that you don’t overload.

The other thing that you should do with smoothies, especially if you’re using slightly higher sugar fruits, is to combine them with some form of protein. Protein helps to slow down the digestion of the sugars which, as well as keeping you fuller for longer, will also keep the blood sugar spike under control. I use protein in all manner of forms – whey protein powder, Greek yoghurt, nut butter, chia seeds… they will all help slow down digestion, but also taste awesome too! Cinnamon is also good at controlling blood sugar spikes, so is another good addition to your blender.

Glorious green smoothie bowl

So let’s look at what goes into my glorious green smoothie – and how to get your 5 a day in one hit…

Ingredients: 

Ingredients for the 5 a day smoothie bowl

• 1 cereal bowl of kale leaves, chopped, thick veins removed (use spinach if kale is too scary for you)
• 5cm chunk of cucumber (you will hardly taste this)
• 1/2 avocado
• 1 small banana
• 80g (about half a cup) of frozen mixed berries
• 1 scoop vanilla why protein powder
• 1 tbsp milled flaxseed (for added protein and fibre)
• 1/2 tsp spirulina (for added vitamins, minerals and protein) – optional
• 1 cup almond milk (or whatever milk you’d prefer)

Simply chuck all the ingredients into the blender and blitz for a minute or so until it’s properly smooth and silky. The avocado and banana will make this super creamy, while the berries and protein powder add a sweetness to make it taste gorgeous. Add more milk or water to yours if you’d prefer to drink it, but I ate this one out of a bowl, topped with fresh strawbs and pumpkin seeds. YUM. And a great way to kick off the day with a bowlful of goodness! Halo is firmly intact. 🙂

Bowlful of goodness

Let me know if you try this! What other breakfasts do you have that pave your way for a good 5 a day?