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?

Farewell to steak… and bacon… and chicken…

The results of the poll are in! In an earlier post, I left the fate of my meat-eating habits in your hands – will I spend the month of April exploring what it’s like to be a pescatarian, vegetarian or a (*gasp!*) vegan….?

You’ve been kind – over 40% chose vegetarian. It’s farewell to fish and meat, but I can eat cheese and other dairy produce. I can’t complain about that! So despite one of my more sadistic friends voting for the vegan option so that I would be stretched to the furthest point from my comfort zone, the rest of you were a lot more considerate and are helping me makes changes in baby steps!

I’m really excited my meat-free month! I’ve not had an awful lot of time to work out some exciting recipes for this week, but I have pulled together a meal plan with a fair amount of beans and feta… I’ll need to sort that out soon else I’ll be a bored bottom-burper before long (and no one wants that!). In essence, I just need to eat a balanced diet, with lots of fruit, vegetables and wholegrains. Variety is key. But from speaking to my veggie friends and through my studies and reading, there’s also a risk of missing out on some essential nutrients. So, if I’m going to do this right, there’ll need to be a bit of planning to make sure I get the energy and vitamins that my body needs.

I’ll cover two of the nutritional pitfalls that I’ll need to be wary of in this post – these are the two more common complaints (certainly among my veggie friends!). But there will be others I’ll cover in more detail throughout the month.

Be strong like iron
Iron is essential for helping our bodies make haemoglobin – that’s the red sticky protein stuff that makes your blood red, but also, more importantly, creates red blood cells to help move oxygen around your body. Without it you risk being anaemic, breathless and severely lacking in energy. The non-meat sources of iron are slightly harder to absorb, so vegetarians in particular need to make sure that they’re getting enough. So where do you find it in a vegetarian diet? Actually there’s plenty of choice, you just need to make sure you’re getting them at regular intervals!

• Eggs
• Some fortified breakfast cereals
• Nuts and seeds
• Pulses and beans (particularly baked beans, lentils and chick peas – hello hummus!)
• Leafy green veg, kale, cress and broccoli
• Brown rice, wholemeal bread

Make sure that you’re getting enough Vit C in your diet too – it’s a handy little helper in the absorption process – but PUT THE CUPPA DOWN. Tea and iron are NOT friends.

Vitamin B12 yourself up!
Vitamin B12 is like the super DIY champ of the body. It makes sure that the general maintenance jobs around the body are done – growth, repair and general upkeep, bit of hedge trimming and mowing of the lawn (okay, maybe not the last two). But sadly for veggies, it’s only found in animal products in its natural form. So that means if you don’t eat eggs and dairy then, as a vegetarian, you’re left with the option of Marmite (and we all know that you either love it, or hate it… ) or the fortified breakfast cereals etc route.

So with those two starting points, I’m all set to start on my meat-free veggie learning extravaganza! If you have any favourite vegetarian recipes, hints, tips or ailments you’d like me to research and explore along the way, please do get in touch!

Meat-free for a month? Cast your vote!

I’ve been learning about all the good and bad things that proteins and fats can do for our bodies. This little fact slapped me round the chops a bit:

Most of the fat (31%) in the average UK person’s food comes from meat

Not from chip butties (a sandwich made from chunky potato fries and white bread, to those who aren’t familiar with the UK staple…). And not from the cakes and biscuits that go so well with the quintessentially British cuppa. Nope. It’s from meat. Scientific research on the sources of fat in the UK says so.

I grew up in a country where it wasn’t uncommon to have a steak for breakfast. Where we feed children dried meat (biltong and drywoers) as they go through the teething process. And I have to admit I did chuckle at the ‘Vegetarian is an old Indian word for bad hunter’ jokes. But I have several lovely and healthy friends who are vegetarians and vegans and I’d love to be able to advise them properly when they ask me for help. So, to help me understand what it’s like to have to source iron, protein and B12 from vegetarian produce, I think it’s important that I actually become vegetarian for a while, experiment with cooking new things and put myself in their shoes. And besides, if I do it right, I could lose a few pounds, which isn’t a bad thing!

But HOW vegetarian I go depends on you. Am I gonna be a fish eating veggie (saves me sourcing Omega 3 from something other than oily fish!)? Or do I go full hog and go the vegan route? You decide.