Smoothie!

It's what's for breakfast.

I find smoothie recipes to be a bit redundant, I mean, don't you just chuck in whatever you've got in the fruit bowl and hope for the best? This is essentially me doing just that but the result was so pleasent I wanted to share.

This is a good way to get some healthy avocado into your crazy avocado hating friends and family!

Ingredients (makes about 2 cups worth):

1 tiny banana (for real - mine was probably barely 100g, I buy teeny ones at the farmer's market for $8kg)

1/2 a ripe avocado (if you can't afford bananas yet, use the whole avocado)

1 cup frozen raspberries (or other frozen fruit)

1 tbsp chia seeds

1/2 tbsp pea protein isolate powder

1 cup non dairy milk (I used soy)

Put all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend. (See? Redundant.)

The result is a smooth creamy smoothie that I very much enjoyed for my breakfast and am going to have again tomorrow it was so nice. If it's not sweet enough for you, add a tbsp or so of maple syrup, agave, or molasses or whatever liquid sweetener you like. I love the tartness of raspberries so for me it was perfect.

The chia seeds are crunchy in it - if you don't like that then I reccomend making a chia gel/pudding type thing before adding them into your smoothie. Apparently this goo lasts in the fridge for ages. I couldn't be arsed.

Also, to give it more staying power, I'd add some raw oats or wheat germ or something in it, otherwise it's really just a drink!

I've always been curious about trying a protein powder. Not for any particular reason - I doubt I actually NEED any more protein, but it's always fun to try new things. Whey protein is obviously out, soy protein (which you can get at Mrs Flannery's in bulk) sounds revolting and I really don't need any more soy in my life, the other main option seems to be this pea protein, which I've only seen in huge big buckets, but while at Mrs Flannery's the other week I saw it in little packets! Hooray!

It basically smells like guinea pig food, but once you get over that it's fine. I've been mixing it into my overnight oats that I have for breakfast before work. It has no noticeable taste (though I put lots of things into my oats so that could be covering it) but I've only been using quite a scant amount because as you can see, there is no serving size on the bag I got! And I don't really want/need that much. So a half tbsp is usually what I use.

Happy Sunday

Today has been one of those days where you sit on the couch thinking about all the things you should be doing rather than browsing through millions of food blogs and drinking cups of tea. I think it's because we bought a brand new doona yesterday. Yes I am blaming my blankets now. It's so soft and cushy and (not wool, feather or down!) warm and comfortable I decided to not get out of bed for ages, which of course set me up for the rest of the day.

Though I did manage to attempt to do some sort of yoga before breakfast (which was porridge with banana and peanut butter), but only did about 3 different poses (including a few sun salutes) because I am getting increasingly annoyed with my lack of ability to touch my toes. Motivation for yoga has been hard to come by since I crashed my bike (funnily enough, so has cycling) even though my wrist is FINE and getting stronger everyday with all the heavy lifting we seem to be doing at work lately. I know I know, I just have to get off my ass and just do it. I know I'll like it! I bought a new yoga DVD yesterday in the hopes that it would motivate me but within the first 5 minutes it rubbed me up the wrong way so bad I turned it off and had a sook. Ah, hormones!

I made this delicious guacamole to have for a mid morning snack (instead of running! this would have been pefect for after a nice sweaty run). Mash 1 small avocado, stir in 5 chopped cherry tomatoes, a couple of tbsp of sour cream (I used the cashew sour cream from Addicted to Veggies - so good!), a dash of onion powder and black pepper. Stir and enjoy with corn chips or crudites or with a spoon.

I also managed to wash my car, which I've been meaning to do for a couple of weeks. I ended up getting a new  (used) car by the way hooray! And it got so filthy from all the dust while parking at work (so dry). So I vaccumed out all the potting mix and put in some floor mats to protect the carpet from my scummy work boots. While I was cleaning the back seats out I discovered they could sort of fold out (i'm not sure of the purpose of this) and underneath was a lovely history of the previous owners (or their children). They went to the beach a lot, ate lots of chips and drank cans of something. Mmmm. I washed the outside using only four buckets of water, and of course a huge storm has now rolled in and the rain clouds looks dark and ominous. Oh well, I enjoyed looking at it's shiny-ness when I walked down the stairs before!

For lunch I had this amazing bowl of soba noodles. I made a similar sauce with sunflower butter and soy sauce, only I added in some chilli flakes. The veges are a grated carrot, 2 grated radishes and all the greens from one bunch of radishes. I also put a handful of rye berry sprouts on top. Yum.

I bought a lifetimes supply of various noodles while in the Valley yesterday. (I also had vegan 'fish' at a little vegan/vegetarian asian restaurant but I didn't take my camera :( It tasted disturbingly like real fish, though I could tell it wasn't because it had the chewy texture of gluten).

Yesterday for an afternoon snack I made up some of this cream from Addicted to Veggies (I may be a little obsessed!) It would be amazing on peaches like in the original recipe but unfortunately they are not in season in Australia at the moment. Strawberries are, however, and we dipped them in the cream and thought about how amazing it would be as a frozen dessert...

Tomorrow I shall jump back on my exercise wagon, stop sooking about my lack of flexibility, and see if I can still run 3.5km (or 26 minutes) without stopping like I did last week! That was pretty exciting. It gave me confidence knowing I can probably run this 5k in less than 45 minutes or whatever it said I had to. Ha.

Fruit of the Month - Avocado!

Just in time for the end of March (already? dude) - the humble avocado!

I love love love avocado. Unfortunately they are generally expensive, but ocassionally you get quite good specials. These were $1.99 at my local fruit shop, but I've been buying them lately for up to $3.

Avocadoes are soft, creamy and very tasty. (To me. My dad reckons they taste of soap.) You can eat them as is, spread on toast, as guacamole, on pizza, on top of tacos, anything!

I've been trying to eat more fats like avocado to try and help the skin on my hands get better (may be too much info, but I have contact dermatitis all over my hands that will not go away. I've tried almost everything, except food, funnily enough!) This link has some nutritional info. Of course it is an official avocado website so it may be biased on the avocado's wonderfulness but I pretty much agree.

Some cherry tomatoes to add some colour would be awesome.

Tonight we made this 15 minute Creamy Avocado Pasta from Oh She Glows. It's literally just avocado, lemon juice, pepper and garlic. Yum. And it was so good. A very easy way to incorporate more avocado into my diet. I hope it makes a difference, alongside everything else I'm doing.

(The pasta dish cost 80c per serve for me to make, by the way).

Guacamole!

Yes it does look like a big bowl o' vomit, but I just wanted to post that the trick with using some frozen peas and white beans in place of an avocado in guacmole was a success :) Idea from Robin Robertson's Vegan on the Cheap -

Guacamole

Makes a big soup bowl full

Ingredients

1 large avocado (I used a shepard avo)

1 cup frozen peas, defrosted

1 cup white beans

2 roma tomatoes, diced

1 garlic clove, grated/crushed

a generous amount of sweet chilli sauce

black pepper

juice of half a lemon

Roughly mash the avocado in a bowl

In a food processor, blend the beans, peas and garlic clove until very smooth.

Mix it all in a bowl with the other ingredients and eat!

We blobbed ours on top of vegan nachos, that I made up from 1 cans worth of kidney beans and 1 can's worth of white beans, mashed up, 1 onion, garlic, 1 cup of 'chicken' stock and a taco seasoning packet. I figured out that the secret ingredient to the deliciousness of taco seasoning is cumin. I bought the home brand version of it (instead of old el paso, for example) because it was less than half the price and the only difference in ingredients was the lack of cumin. So I juct chucked in some cumin with the packet :) Who doesn't have cumin in their spice rack? I put it on top of corn chips, covered the lot with vegan cheese (that we had left over from pizza night) and baked it in the oven until the cheese melted. The sour cream from the same book was also a success, though not quite as good as tofutti. But probably a lot better for us!

We also drank a carton of beer and watched bad movies til 3am, most of which were quite good. Except one. 'Bitch Slap'. It was so bad. Worst movie I've ever seen. I dare you.

Pizza night

We decided yesterday that it was about time for another pizza night.

This time the toppngs were: avocado, corn kernels, kidney beans, capers, kalamata olives, jarred jalapeno chillis, and the base sauce was made from cooked cherry tomatoes, onion, garlic and red wine. Mm it was very good haha. The bread was a little doughy because we got impatient while it was cooking, but it wasn't THAT doughy (like the first time I ever made pizza, in grade 8 in Home Ec class. MMMM raw flour.)

We also decided to splurge and put some vegan mozzarella on top. I had to buy Cheezly brand this time as my favourite little vegan store didn't have any teese mozzarella in :( we hadn't had the Cheezly mozz before (I think) and it was pretty much as nasty as we thought. It's ok cooked, but we could just eat the teese stuff! Oh well. It's also supposed to be 'super melting' but the pizza says otherwise. However, I had a toasted sandwich with copious amounts of Cheezly and some hash browns today and it melted all over the place. Maybe the pizza will need to be stuck under the grill for a little bit next time?

And holy crap it's so unbearably hot. Well obviously I'm bearing it because I'm still in the country and alive. But this morning I thought it a good idea to fix up my garden and plant more stuff, and it was a great idea until sweat starting pouring down my legs and into my eyes. I got most of what I wanted done, except sowing my mint seeds, but I can do that this afternoon when the sun goes away.

I bought two 40L bags of organic garden soil at Bunnings for $8.50 each because my soil is crap and so far I've dug one bag in. So as of this moment in my garden I have:

Herbs - basil, rosemary, thyme, parsley, lemongrass, garlic chives and regular chives, mint

Vegetables: hot chilli, sweet chilli, eggplant, tomatoes, purple carrots, purple climbing beans, butter beans, radishes, ginger.

I've put chicken wire over my beans to hopefully deter my cats from digging around in the nice new dirt they love. I am reaaallly looking forward to my carrots! I have put them in a nice deep window-box like planter box thing with potting mix with no lumps so in theory they should grow. Unless the cat digs it all up. Maybe I should chicken wire that too.

I'll take some pictures when it all starts sprouting. At the moment it's just a big black expanse of dirt with some wire and some stakes. :)