It's been a looooong, long, long tiiiime!

Hello everyone!

I can't believe almost a whole year has passed since I lasted posted here. It has certainly been a whirl wind of a year.

My family welcomed a new healthy baby boy, born 13/10/2014 and thankfully he's been pretty good so far! I also had my in laws stay with me from Jordan for a few months, I can't thank them enough for all the help they gave me.

Seeing as I have a newborn and have chosen to breastfeed I found it vital that I try anything to keep my milk supply as high possible. So far I have tried eating and drinking fenugreek. Although it's great since it's all natural, on consumption you may find that your skin will start to smell like this seed. I didn't feel as though it has done a great deal to increase my milk supply so I ditched that and when onto lactation cookies!

I have searched for some recipes and have found that the main ingredients to make the cookies "work" are brewer's yeast, oats and flaxseed meal (linseed).

So far so good! I have noticed a slight increase in my milk and I get fuller faster and never really feel 'empty'.

You will find that the brewer's yeast will give it a bitter taste, which is what you want, as it is the component that has the most health benefits.

Ingredients

1/2 Cup butter ( low fat is best)
3/4 Brown sugar
1 egg
1 Tsp Vanilla
2-3 Tbsp Linseed meal
2-3 Tbsp water (depending on how moist you want it)
1 Cup wholemeal self-raising flour
1 1/2 Cups oats
 Your own additional ingredients e.g. choc chips, coconut, nuts etc

Method

Pre- heat oven to 180 gas or 160 electric. Line biscuit try with baking paper.

1.Using a hand mixer or table top mixer cream butter and sugar then add the egg and vanilla. Mix well.
2. Place Linseed meal and water into a cup and allow to sit for a few minutes.
3. Place dry ingredients into the butter and sugar mixture along with water and linseed. Combine well.
4. Mix in oats and added extras to taste.
5. Using a teaspoon, scoop out mixture and place onto prepared baking tray. Wet the back of the spoon to slightly press down on the dough.
6. Allow to bake for 10 min.
Cool on baking rack.

In addition you could use a linseed (flaxseed) mixture which includes carob and berries.

Note: Using whole seeds is better than using crushed. The nutrients slightly deplete in the cooking process.

I hope you enjoyed my come back post! I hope this will help any mummas out there who deed a boob boost!

Herbs Crusted Fish

Hi all!

For quite sometime now I've come to realise I cannot cook seafood. SHOCK, HORROR, GASP!

With this terrible realization I had to find a way to nail cooking seafood. For those who know know me well, they'll know I could do without chicken or meat, give me prawns (shrimp), octopus, calamari, fish, muscles and all the other glorious things you find under the sea!

For starters I thought I'd experiment with some frozen fish that I get from my local Aldi store. This way if things don't turn out well, at least I didn't pay too much for ruined fish.

Here is one of my best tries at fish. It is a herb crusted fish and it tasted AMAZBALLS!
And the best part it was so simple, its ridiculous.

Ingredients:

Basa fillet skinned and boned
1-2 cup of flour (I used wholmeal)
2-4 tablespoons of mixed herbs
Salt
Pepper
Oil

Firstly defrost the amount of fish you want to cook (skip this step if using freshly bought fish). Using a paper towel dry the fish so the flour doesn't go pasty.
On a large flat plate mix the flour, herbs, salt and pepper together onto the plate. Place each fish onto this flour mixture coat the fish generously.
Heat up a large fry pan with some oil (as much as you like ;-p) and gently place each fish into the oil. Cook on both sides for 5 mins.
Serve with salad or rice.

Happy eating!

I'm back!...with a recipe!

Hello! Hello!

Although it has been quite sometime since I last posted some pictures of eating habits, I have now finally finished (I hope) with studying and can focus mostly on baking and my blog.

Since last time I had posted, I managed to bake a sticky date pudding with a lush butterscotch sauce and a whopper of a chocolate fudge cake. That's it. Sad, I know.

The whole family has also been doing quite a bit of "clean eating" for over 6 months now. My interpretation of clean eating generally consists of eating wholemeal, protein of any sort and veg. The family including my little munchkin have treats on occasion, which explains my cake baking shortage.

A few weeks ago I had made two wholemeal pizzas with bbq chicken on one and steak on the other.

For my dough I used the same recipe as the Zaatar Pizza and instead of using plain white flour I substituted it for wholemeal flour.

BBQ Chicken Topping:

- Barbecued chicken, roast or fried chicken breast
-Thinly slices Spanish (red) onion
- Sliced Capsicum
-Sauteed mushrooms

Once the dough is rolled out to your preferred thickness I smothered the base with bbq sauce I then add cooked barbecued or roast chicken (fried up chicken breast is just as good).
Add the onions capsicum and mushrooms, then mozzarella cheese.

Steak Topping:

-500g beef strips
-Carmalised onion
-Sauteed garlic
-handful of roasted pine nuts or almonds

Once again once the dough is rolled out, throw on a few tablespoons of tomato paste onto the base.
Generously lather on the onions and garlic (these can be cooked together).
Add the beef and nuts.
Finally add the mozzarella cheese.

Presto! Easy and healthy.

Happy eating!

Red hot steak

I sometimes feel as though a lot of the food that I put together isn't worth me uploading and are a bit embarrassingly simple. But if the title hasn't been taken yet, I'd like to dub myself the lazy home cook.

If there is an easy way out, I'm there, right at the front!

As most of you have realised I am still catering for the slow carb diet. But as I've mentioned before, a side of rice, pasta, or bread can be added to any of my dishes to cater to those lucky enough to be eating them :-D

Steak has been big in our diet since starting the slow carb regime. I don't think I've eaten this much steak in my life...not complaining, as there is so many things you can do with steak.

This recipe calls for 5 ingredients:

Steak (any cut and size)
2-4 tbs Tomato paste
A few dashes of Tabasco
2-3 tbsp Soy sauce
A good dash of garlic powder

Method:

1) Heat a big fry pan with oil, butter or ghee ( all are optional)
2) Rub each side of the steak with garlic powder and tomato paste
3) place into the fry pan and add soy sauce
4) Keep turning the steak until there is even caramelisation on either side of the steak.
5) Take off from the heat and allow to stand for 5-10 mins.

If you wanted to add the veggies just add them to the pan with all the steak juices and sauce add some Tabasco sauce and you've got yourself one hot steak with veg!

Crusted steak and veg

Heyho everyone,

Once again I have had no time to research what I wanted to cook this evening but managed to pull a few things together to make this O.M.G ultra healthy crusted steak with steamed veg.

There are many variations of a crusted lamb or steak but this here is great for people of a low carb diet.

Here is what you'll need

2 pieces 200g steak of your choosing
1 egg
1/2 cup almond meal
1tsp salt
1/2 tbs freshly ground pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1.5 tsp all purpose spice
Olive oil
Frozen veg (any type)
1 tbsp butter

1) place salt, pepper, almond meal, garlic powder and all purpose spice into a flat plate and mix until combined
2) crack egg and saturate each steak in the egg, taking care and allow excess egg to drip off.
3) coat all sides of steak with almond meal mixture.
4) add oil to a fry pan and fry on high on each side for 1-2 mins. (If you want it well done and cooked quickly reduce heat and cover for 5 mins).
5) remove from pan and allowed to rest for 10 mins.

Veggies

Bring a pot of water to the boil once veggies have gone bright in colour remove from water and rinse off in cold water. Add salt, pepper, more garlic powder to taste and butter.

Tah-dah! It's done. Quick simple and very healthy.

Spiced roast chicken

Hello all and welcome to my recipe-athon! I hope to overwhelm you all with tantalising creations from savoury to sweet!

Today's recipe is my own. I actually put it together on the spot as there was no time for me to sit and think and look for inspiration. So I quickly put a few things together with what I had in my pantry.

Let us begin!

Ingredients:

2kg chicken
3 bay leaves
6 bruised garlic cloves
6 sliced or roughly chopped garlic (extra)
1/3 cup sweet paprika
1/3 chicken spice (any kind)
2 heads broccoli
50 g melted butter
1 cup olive oil
1 cup balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

Method:

1) Pre heat oven to 190 C ((fan force) add 20 C if using gas oven)
2) Cut broccoli into to florets and place into baking pan
3) Wash and dry chicken. Cut off tail and any extra fat around the cavity.
4) Rub some salt into the cavity
5) Stuff the chicken with bay leaves and 6 bruised garlics
6) Rub salt and pepper onto both sides of chicken
7) Rub the sweet paprika onto both sides of the chicken, making sure to coat between the legs and wings
8) Rub chicken spice onto the chicken on top of the sweet paprika.
9) Place chicken on top of the broccoli and sprinkle sliced or chopped garlic on top of the chicken (breasts are always facing up)
10) Brush melted butter all over the chicken
11) Cook chicken on high for the first 30 mins then turn in down to about 150-140 for an hour after that.
12) throughout the roasting time when we see the chicken become dry baste the chicken with olive oil and balsamic vinegar mixture. It may seem like a lot, however you may find that you won't need it all.

In my rush and starvation I forgot to take a picture of the end product, but here is what it looked like before in went into the oven!

I hope you give it a go and please let me know how you went!