What I Eat #8

Again a sneak peek into what I have been eating the past 2 weeks or so. This is all vacation food. Since I had 5 weeks of doing nearly nothing, I entertained myself quite a bit by baking and cooking. I do have to say that I may have gone a bit overboard on the ‘nice but good’ things. But hey, it was vacation and don’t forget I have a major sweet tooth. And when all I do is lounge around on the couch doing absolutely nothing, it’s just the best thing to snack on. I got back to work again on Monday which means I’ll have more of a fixed schedule coming very very soon which will also make it easier for me to plan and watch what I eat. My goal for September: no added sugar of any kind. The only sweet things I’m allowed are things that are already sweet by nature. So no refined sugar, no agave nectar and no honey. But it’s not September yet…

Breakfast:

Yoghurt with fresh raspberries, pecan nuts, chocolate sprinkles and shredded coconut.

Banana/ egg pancakes smothered in agave syrup and a side of fresh blue berries.

Two breakfasts to satisfy my sweet tooth! Yet not as bad as they might seem at first tight: all ingredients are real foods, apart from the chocolate sprinkles. Other than that this pretty much is about as healthy as it gets. I’ve been reading some bad things about Agave Nectar, so I am going to cut that down. The pancakes were baked in coconut oil by the way.

Poached eggs x2: with sauteed spinach, tomatoes and flax seeds and sauteed mushrooms and bell pepper.

I’m still trying my hand at making the perfect poached egg. I have the egg white swirly thing down so the egg is covered in egg white. But I just can’t seem to get the middle runny! Any tips? Oh and the one of the left (minus the flax seed though) is my favorite combo if I’d added some sauteed mushrooms.

Lunch/ smoothies:

Pinapple/ peach/ mango & Sour cherry/ chocolate

I can’t remember what exactly I chucked into these, but what I can tell you is that I pretty much had a smoothie for lunch all throughout summer. Combine the accessibility to tons of different fruits and veggies with enough time on my hands to make them and make additional trips to the market for more ingredients and you’re set. I have been loving adding zucchini to my smoothies for an extra veggie twist.

Dinner:

Spicy meatballs in tomato sauce with zoodles

Lemon & lime grilled chicken with honey/ cinnamon roasted sweet potato and pecans

*** Bottom picture courtesy of Alison***

Gluten free pasta with cajun marinated white fish & cauliflower alfredo sauce

Zoodles with cauliflower alfredo sauce

Cauliflower pizza crust without topping

Cauliflower pizza crust with a topping of extra cheese, mushrooms, tomato and parsley

Not too many dinner pictures as I had so much lying in my freezer and because I spent quite some time eating out as I also had plenty of social gatherings during summer break. I made some of my old favorites and tried some new things. For one, I have started to substitute grain pasta by zucchini sliced with a julienne peeler. Looks like pasta, takes 2 minutes to microwave and adds some texture to a dish without adding the grains.

But my main discovery of the summer is the versatility of the cauliflower. Now I am a broccoli girl: straight up cooked or steamed broccoli, oven roasted broccoli, in pastas, curries, smoothies. I love me some broccoli. Cauliflower, however, I’ve never been a fan of. Until I found out that cauliflower is best used in other ways than a simple boiled version with some nutmeg. Because of it’s texture it can be turned into a creamy alfredo sauce or, wait for it: PIZZA CRUST! Both options have stolen my heart and I have the recipes for you so you can have yours stolen as well: alfredo sauce recipe/ pizza crust recipe.

Snacks:

On to the good part!!! I told you I experimented quite a bit and what I did mostly is try to find snacks that I can take with me to work. I bought a snazzy new lunch box to carry around snacks in the shape of cut fruit and veggies, in addition to my salad, but of course I have to find things that can go in there apart from some carrots and a tomato. That gets boring after a while. Recipes included whenever possible.

Raspberry lemonade popsicle

Melon & pomegranate fruit salad

‘Caramel’ freezer fudge

No recipes needed here. The popsicle was literally a matter of mixing some water with some raspberry flavored lemonade. I made these coconut milk/ blueberry ones later which were also great. The fruit salad was a matter of cutting up some fruit and the fudge is literally the easiest thing ever. To make the fudge what you need is an equal amount (1 or 2 cups) of dates and any nut of your choosing (macademias work best as they are quite greasy). Blend in a food processor till it has a pasty texture, spoon into a foil covered container and freeze over night. Looks horrible in the picture, but tastes great.

Banana/ oats cookies with cocoa powder

Apricot/ coconut bites

Ginger bread

Grain free scones

The cookies are the ones I have shown in the past, but this time I added cocoa powder which is why they’re so black. The apricot bites are made like the fudge only with dried apricots rather than dates and coconut rather than nuts. The gingerbread recipe can be found here (in Dutch) and is more of a traditional recipe where I only substituted the wheat flour for spelt flour. Scones recipe can be found here, mine could have been a bit smaller as they were still a bit gooey on the inside, but with scones I don’t really mind.

Cinnamon raisin cookies

Chocolate & raspberry bars

Cinnamon raisin almond bites

Chocolate coconut macaroons

On to the very very good stuff! Another thing I’m loving is cinnamon. I just can’t get enough of it and so I’ve been having it as much as I can. The cookies I made are adapted from this recipe. I substituted the sugar for honey which is why mine came out darker. These cookies were the most delicious things I made all summer!

In second place after the cookies are the chocolate raspberry bars. The recipe can be found here. On the picture the mixture still had to go into the freezer, but oh my goodness. These are so good. Too bad they cannot be taken anywhere, because it melts before you can even take a bite. The bananas give it a rich creamy texture. Whereas the cocoa in both layers make for a grand chocolate-y treat.

The cinnamon bites are a bit cookie dough like, which was exactly the purpose. This, together with the aforementioned cookies, will definitely go in the: to take to work pile. Recipe here. The chocolate macaroons are super easy to make at first, but the making the little balls using a tablespoon measurement is quite time consuming. They were delicious, nevertheless.

What have you been eating? And if you have any tips on cutting down on sugar, without the nasty side effects of kicking the sugar habit, then please feel free to let me know so I can start gearing up for my no added sugar, no junk project. I already have some ideas which I’ll share in a post soon, but any other help would be great!