Aubergine Tower!

Tags

Aubergine, aubergine tower, baking, food, healthy, healthy eating, Pesto, recipe, tomatoe

Hello everyone again! I am so excited today because I have bought a new cook book! We have been watching The Great British bake off programme lately and we are trying to get ourselves into baking. I always wanted a baking book with the step by step pictures (of course) and with recipes that go from the most simple and classic to the more complicated and innovative creations. So I found this book called Step-by-step baking (check it on Amazon clicking here) so soon we are going to be baking and updating the baking section of our blog!

Today’s recipe is another one for our brand new category on the menu ‘healthy eating‘. You all know how much I like aubergine, well this time I made this easy aubergine tower, with tomato, pesto and cheese…. yummy!

Ingredients

• 1 large aubergine
• tomato
• pesto (check recipe here)
• goats cheese, or any cheese that melts.
• salt
• olive oil

Cod with pesto in papillote

Tags

cod, fashion, foil, food, healthy, holidays, oven, papillote, Pesto, recipe, weight loss

Some fishy tales from Freesia now… A lovely cod dish packed to the gills with so much goodness it’s off the scales! Enjoy!

Tim

Summer is still with us in London 🙂 Having lived in very hot countries with days of 40ºC  during which you cannot do anything but stay indoors until 7pm with air-conditioning on full power or all the fans blowing in your direction… I appreciate the sunny and slightly warm days in London, although 27ºC-29ºC wouldn’t hurt me at all… we cant have it all, can we? 

Lately besides eating healthy, swimming and running at Crystal Palace Park (see picture with the dinosaurs at CP park), I have been training with my friends from BodyRock.

In this website Lisa and her friends post loads of 12 minutes works-out which I find very useful as you can do them at home, yes! in your living room. The first time -and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th 😉 were so difficult for me as its been a good year without training and your body feels it. Now I am getting better and still I have a long way ahead of me to get myself as fit as them but its worth trying, and you feel so good after each work-out! (yesterday Freesia moaned so much about her aching limbs… Tim)

So to go along with your training or to help you with the weight loss and healthy eating. Here another papillote recipe, this time with Cod (you can also see the Salmon in papillote recipe clicking here). I used a bit of pesto I had stored in the fridge and only 1 teaspoon of olive oil so all the vegetable are cooked in their own juices… Enjoy it!!!

Indredients for two people

• 1 cod fillet
• 1 large onion
• 1 red pepper
• 1 potato
• 1 carrot
• 1 tbs of pesto (check the recipe clicking here)
• salt, pepper
• 1 tsp of olive oil
• broccolli

Avocado and jamon serrano skewer.

Tags

avocado, cheese, cherry tomato, food, healthy, jamon serrano, mustard, queso tierno, weight loss

Summer is finally in London… and its time to eat light and easy dishes that do not required much work on the hob in the kitchen.

As you may know now I really like avocado, here some of the reasons (Wikipedia helped me with this because I had forgotten the figures):

• About 75% of an avocado’s calories come from fat, most of which is monounsaturated fat.
• On a 100 g basis, avocados have 35% more potassium (485 mg) than bananas (358 mg). They are rich in B vitamins, as well as vitamin E and vitamin K.
  
• Avocados have a high fibre content of 75% insoluble and 25% soluble fibre.

Last week I bought a whole bowl for a pound in one of the little shops near home and I was thinking to try something different from the well-known Guacamole we made some time ago.

In my recent trip to Spain I bought some Queso tierno and Jamon serrano (and some other good stuff: recipes to follow) so I decided to give it a go and combine those flavours in this easy skewer.

I miss these items so much so I always try to stock up on them when I head to Spain. Tim usually does the same when he heads back to Wales as well (although he tends to just bring beer back!)

Salmon in Papillote.

Tags

books, fashion, foil, food, healthy, mandolin, papillote, Salmon, vegetables

So what is papillote? It is a method of cooking in which the food is put into a folded pouch or parcel (aluminium foil this time) and then baked.

It is a very healthy way to cook as you only use a tiny bit of oil so it doesn’t get stuck to the foil.

The rest of the ingredients will cook in their own juices and will absorbe all the flavours as they’ll cook with the steam of being in the foil bag 🙂 Delicious and low calory!

Ingredients

• Salmon fillete
• onions
• carrots
• lemon
• red pepper
• green pepper
• garlic
• chives
• salt
• pepper
• olive oil

Risotto in 7 easy steps!

Tags

carnaroli, carrots, creamy, Diet, healthy, Italian, Italy, onion, pepper, risotto

Risotto is one of the Italian classics I really enjoy cooking. I use Carnaroli rise which plump grains create a creamy and velvety risotto. It is meant be creamy but don’t panic! For those on a diet or on a healthy-eating program, here is my way to make it – no cream at all, just olive oil and low fat cheese. Hope you enjoy it!

Ingredients for 2 people

• 200-250g Carnaroli rice
• 1 carrot
• 1/2 of a red pepper
• 1 onion
• 100-200g fine beans
• 6-8 mushrooms
• 1 clove of garlic
• olive oil
• 1 vegetable stock
• salt, pepper, bay leaves

Preparation

1. Chop the veggies (and mushrooms)

2. In a saucepan with 4-5 tbsp of olive oil put the onion and garlic to fry lightly (or sauté) until transparent.

Welcome Everyone!!

Tags

Cholesterol, Diet, dietitian, exercise, flour, freesia, healthy, Life style, Light, Recipes, Smoking

In spite of all the things I’ve had remove from my life over the past few months four-letter-words are as prominent as ever…

Giving up smoking has been pretty stressful, yes. It has certainly given rise to a few F-words and some other utterances so disgusting flowers in full bloom dropped their petals and closed like fly-traps to protect what beauty had not been tarnished by the foul-sounding air heading their way…

This isn’t a blog about smoking. But smoking is certainly part of the ‘life change’ that I am putting myself through to make myself a little healthier.

I suppose this is a blog about trying to live a healthy life to reduce my cholesterol. Having just received the test results from my doctor it emerges that I have the cholesterol level that would be aspirational to a walrus heading into the sort of winter displayed in the Day After Tomorrow.

And it’s about trying to create a daily menu that I can enjoy – in essence one that alleviates the need to scream four letter words… Especially that dirty one that sends shivers down the spine of many a rugged man… the DIET.

So, here I start…  There will be recipes of dishes I’ve created with my girlfriend; ‘Freesia’. Freesia is an out-of-work dietitian who will also attempt to add some science-meat to the literary-bones of this flour-y blog so it may be of use to someone! I will also post pictures of days out, exercise routines and various activities I am now doing to be more healthy. I will also update with how much weight I am losing (or not) and the rising and falling of waist measurements as we head towards Christmas and the New Year!