Winter soups

The leaves are golden, it’s dark at 4.30pm and salads aren’t really hitting the spot anymore.  I’ve been eating gallons of soup over the last couple of weeks and decided to experiment with making roasted tomato soup in my soup maker. This type of soup is usually a big pain in the ass to make as you have to roast your tomatoes first and then remove the skins. I have been roasting the tomatoes to make them taste even sweeter, but have then bunged them straight into the soupmaker instead of faffing around removing the skins (which are the tastiest bit!)

This recipe makes about 6 servings and can be easily adapted to make roasted tomato and pepper soup.

Ingredients:

12 ripe tomatoes, halved. The riper the better, buy them early in the week to make the soup at the weekend. Vine tomatoes are amazing too!

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

400g tin of cooked lentils in water, drained

2 vegetable stock cubes prepeared to give you 1 and a ½ pints of stock

Salt, pepper and olive oil

A teaspoon of chilli powder (or more if you want your soup to have an extra kick)

Method:

1.        Preheat the oven to about 180°C. Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the top where the vine would

have been. Place them onto a baking tray, skin side up. Drizzle with olive oil and season with sea salt and black pepper.  Place in the over to roast for about 30 minutes, until they are softened. Don’t worry of the skins bur a little, the tomatoes will be extra tasty!

2.       When the tomatoes are done, pour the tray (and all of the juices from the tomatoes and olive oil) into your soupmaker. Chuck in the tin of tomatoes, chilli, lentils and stock. Select the smooth setting. If using a pan, I’d simmer all the ingredients together for half an hour and then blend.

3.       Serve immediately or freeze for lunches in the week.

For tomato and roasted pepper soup:

Same ingredients pretty much, but ditch the lentils and tinned tomatoes for 5 large peppers instead. Deseed and chop them, then place in the oven to roast in the same way as the tomatoes. Once done, place all of the ingredients into your soupmaker or pan and cook the soup as above.

The finished product- bring on winter!

It’s been half term this week!  Which means that as well as wedding planning, I’ve done plenty of cooking that I’ll tell you about next week.  I tried a new quinoa recipe but the absolute winner was definitely the chicken and peanut butter curry.  See you next week!

Where have I been?

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on my blog, and for a very lovely and wonderful reason. I got engaged!  I’m now a bride-to-be, wife-to-be, Bridezilla, etc! Since my last blog post, my boyfriend popped the question; I wrote a guest list; found a venue; found a wedding dress and booked my hen party!  So it’s no wonder really that I haven’t had much time for writing a food blog.

Mrs Clarke-to-be, slugging champagne because that's really healthy...

Work has taken over a little bit too, meaning that my running and gym visits have been sporadic and it’s been a while since I’ve done a huge cook-off or tried a new recipe.  Definitely though, clean and healthy eating will continue to be on the cards since a certain white dress I bought a few weeks ago is pretty much a perfect fit. Plus, I can’t bear the thought of piling on weight before my wedding and not being able to shift it. The best bet is to stick with my routine and eating habits so that I can maintain this weight rather than gain any or, for that matter, lose any either!

My lactose intolerance also got a bit of control a few weeks ago. I felt ill, bloated, wheezy, had indigestion and what I thought were palpitations. I realised that far from being lactose free, I had had quite a lot of late and immediately cut it out completely.  I gave up my daily Greek yoghurt, replaced butter/ margarine with free-from sunflower spread and made sure I had a supply of lactose free mini milk cartons (these ones) in my handbag.  Within three days of being lactose free, I was cured which was a huge relief!  I’m now making sure I absolutely steer clear of the stuff and that if I say have a pizza, that I remain lactose tee-total for the rest of the week!

Anyway, today was the first day in a while that I had time to cook something and then blog about it.  I made two batches of winter veg soup this morning using the random selection of veg my dad had brought me from his allotment.

Turnip and leek soup or turnip, leek and pea:

This was completely invented from scratch this morning. Whenever my dad brings me a load of random veg from the allotment, I make soup with it. In today’s delivery was a couple of turnips, leeks, an onion and carrots.  I threw the peas into the second batch just because I needed a bit more veg when my supplies were running low!

Ingredients

 Half an onion, diced.

3 leeks

1 turnip, finely sliced

2 carrots

1 and ½ pints of chicken or vegetable stock

Lactose free milk (or extra stock) if needed

Sea salt and black pepper

Method:

1.        Prepare your  veg, pop it into the soup maker with the stock and select the ‘smooth’ setting.  When it’s finished cooking, add sea salt/ pepper to taste. If it’s a little too thick for your liking, add a further splash of milk or extra stock and blend again. Serve or whack in the freezer for this week’s lunches! Alternatively, you can fry your veg in a large pan first, add your stock and simmer until the veg has softened, then blend.

2.       If you want to turn this recipe into a turnip, pea and leek soup, use the ingredients as above but also throw in about 200g of frozen peas.

With those grey skies, golden trees, chilly mornings and bloody Christmas stuff in every shop, it’s definitely soup weather.  I think my next post will be dedicated to another soup recipe and since the only veg I have left now is tomatoes and peppers, it’s time to make up a roasted tomato and pepper soup recipe I think!

See you next week!

Apologies for the lack of recipes- I can show you a picture of my engagement ring instead though!!

It’s Autumn (kind of)

I love September!  Going back to work makes September almost feel like a new year. It’s time to start afresh and head back to my usual working hours after rejuvenating myself over the summer holidays.  As much as I love the time off, I also like being back into the routine of work and my days having some sort of structure too.  Back to school for me also signals the start of autumn- my favourite season of the year.  It’s already much darker in the mornings when I get up (because I can’t do my make-up at the window in daylight anymore...such girl problems) and I think it feels like there is a definite nip in the air too.  I just love it and can’t wait for the autumn skies, golden leaves and ‘I can wear my new coat’ weather to properly kick in. My dad’s allotment season is coming to an end too, meaning that there’s always a pile of veg for me on my doorstep to cook up or freeze for later use.

Some pretty impressive home-grown parsnips!

Autumn brings with it a change in our taste buds.  Salads don’t hit the spot this time of year and I crave warm food.  It’s also the time of year where it’s easy for me to pile on weight, so I make sure that I stick to healthy, clean eating but opt instead for soups and casseroles.  The freezer is piled to the brim with Hemsley & Hemsley soups and I’ve already made my first casserole of the season:

Black Bean and Parsnip Casserole (serves 4, approx 393 calories per serving)

I came across this recipe years ago in the Sainsbury’s magazine.  I have adapted it slightly and use healthier sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes.

Ingredients:

A splash of olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

4 carrots, sliced

500g sweet potatoes

500g parsnips

2 tablespoons of mild curry powder

1 litre of vegetable stock (about 2 stock cubes made according to instructions)

2x390g cartons of Sainsbury’s So Organic black beans (can’t find them anywhere else)

250g baby plum tomatoes

Method:

1.       Heat the oil in a large pan and gently fry the onions and garlic for 10 minutes.

2.      Add the carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes and fry until the vegetables are golden.

3.      Add the curry powder and stock to the pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 20 minutes until the veg has softened.

4.      Throw in your black beans and plum tomatoes and simmer for a further 5 minutes.

5.      Serve with either a side of extra vegetables or some crusty, wholemeal baguette.  Leftovers can be frozen and this dish can be made in advance- I cooked it yesterday so it’s ready for dinner on Monday night!

Blueberry and Chia Jam

My dad delivered me a pile of blueberries a few weeks ago- a good half kilo of the things!  I love blueberries and they are considered a super-food packed full of vitamin C and antioxidants, so I happily snack on them as they are or add them to porridge.  They can be frozen too and I now have a good supply of them in the freezer.  The trick with freezing is to lay all the blueberries out on a baking tray, freeze them, then once they are frozen, they can be transferred into freezer bags. This stops the fruit from clumping together.  It’s easier as well to just grab a handful of them out of the freezer to add to porridge (they will defrost as soon as you throw them in) or to snack on- chewing on frozen blueberries is becoming a new habit and is way healthier than a Magnum!

I also used some of the blueberries to make the Hemsley & Hemsley Blueberry and Chia Jam.  This takes minutes to make and is a tasty, sugar-free treat for your toast in the morning.

Ingredients:

180g blueberries (defrosted if they have been frozen)

2 ½ tbsp of chia seeds (I use these ones from Holland and Barratt, they were included in the penny sale!)

1 tbsp of honey (adjust according to taste)

½ teaspoon of vanilla extract

A squeeze of lemon juice

1 tbsp of warm water.

Method:

1.       Mash your blueberries in a bowl using a potato masher/ a fork.  You want them to be quite pulpy but it’s nice to have a few chunks of fruit leftover too, as you would find in regular jam.

2.      Mix in your chia seeds, the water, vanilla extract and lemon juice.  Throw in the honey at this point too but add this gradually and keep checking how sweet the mix is after each addition.  Obviously, you may need less honey if the blueberries are already quite sweet. I’ve never had to use more than a tablespoon and find that this amount sweetens the jam enough, but also leaves it a little tart too so that you can taste the fruit.

 3.  Put into a jar a dish with a lid and allow it a couple of hours in the fridge to set.

4.      Spread it on a whacking piece of toasted, wholemeal bloomer and enjoy. Peanut butter to go with it is optional, but I’m a total sucker for peanut butter and jam!

In other news this week, being back to school means that I am more efficient at making the most of my time over the weekend.  I’ve started back at yoga over the summer and have been booking myself in for the 10am class on a Saturday morning.  I’m an early riser on a Saturday too since Ste is up for work, I tend to be up with him at 8am.  I have a couple of hours to do my paperwork, clean or lounge around with a book (just finished the second Hunger Games book...amazing!) before heading off to yoga.  Then I have the afternoon to do whatever- though this Saturday afternoon was spent browsing for ingredients. Every Saturday, I try to cook a new recipe which I haven’t made before and after my new Gizzi Erskine book arrived,  I’ve been dying to try a few things from it.  

I was raving about my new book on Instagram the other week!

I love all of Gizzi’s books. Her recipes never fail, are pretty easy and also delicious.  She too believes in the ethos of keeping our appetites well fed, but with the best food to nourish your body and keep you looking and feeling fabulous.

We all know how in love I am with Thailand and Asian cooking (post here), so I knew that Gizzi’s recipe for pad Thai would have to be the first one to try. I learned how to cook this at a cooking school in Bangkok, but never really tried it at home.  

The end result was delicious and took me right back to munching street food on Khao San Road. I’m definitely going to dig out my old recipes from Thailand and have another go with them, as well as cooking plenty more from my new Gizzi book.

My first attempt at Pad Thai #nailedit

Happy eating!

Faux carbs Part 2: Courgetti

I am a little bit obsessed with courgetti and whilst I’ve been on holiday, I’ve often found myself eating it for lunch and for dinner. Probably the main reason why I’ve been eating so much of the stuff lately too is down to my new kitchen  gadget, the Hemsley & Hemsley Spiralizer that puts my old one to shame.  I’ve been really impressed with this and have had loads of use out of it already.  A definite must if you’re a coeliac, trying to cut down on carbs or trying to get more veggies in your diet.  I bought mine from Selfridges for £29.95; Amazon also stock them too (link here).  

There’s loads of things you can do with them and the range of vegetables which you can spiralize is far greater than just me and my courgettes, so I do need to do a few more experiments with my bad boy spiralizer.

In the meantime though, let’s start with courgetti.  You will need:

3 courgettes (or just 2 larger ones)

Your spiralizer

Some oil to fry your courgettes in (I use this coconut oil)  

1.        Spiralize your courgettes.

2.       Heat the coconut oil in a pan.  Fry your courgettes on a high heat for just a couple of minutes.  Like with the cauliflower rice, you want to heat them through rather than make them go soft and mushy.

3.       Serve with a sauce of your choice! The heat from the sauce will also cook your courgette further too.

Some serving suggestions:

·         Stir through some home-made bolognaise sauce.

·         Serve with a basic tomato sauce recipe and perhaps some meatballs.

·         Mix  the courgetti with some pesto/ chopped tomatoes/ tomato puree, basil, cherry tomatoes that you can fry in the coconut oil before you throw your courgetti in. In fact, use any leftover vegetables you have!

Grab any leftovers from the fridge and your courgettes...

The end results...

Courgetti with mushrooms and cherry tomatoes

Courgetti with tomato puree, olives and basil

A huge lunch but it's only approximately 380 calories and will fill you for hours!

Faux carbs, part 1: Cauliflower Rice

I love carbs and don’t believe that a sensible, balanced diet would cut them out.  I certainly watch the amount of carbs that I eat (usually I have them for breakfast only, and only eat carbs for two out of my three meals a day) and have cut down massively on the amount I used to eat back when I was a stone heavier.  I’ve replaced carbs with protein and have also jumped on the bandwagon with ‘faux carbs’, as in, carb-like foods made with vegetables instead.  I’ve been tucking into courgetti and have recently fallen in love with cauliflower rice.  This dish is a little dry on its own as a side, but goes together really well with anything sauce based.  I’ve served it with Vietnamese curry (recipe here) and chilli.  Not only did it taste great, but it is also filling and a sneaky way to up your vegetable intake for the day.

To make enough rice to serve 2 people:

1 cauliflower (medium/ large sized...whatever you can find really.  I don’t know much about cauliflower sizes!!)

Sea salt

Ground turmeric (miracle spice apparently, is so good for you and I just use this Asda one if I can’t find any in Aldi)

Cumin seeds (these ones from Asda)

You’ll also need a  grater and a really good-quality, non-stick wok.

Method:

1.        Using the coarse side of your grater (to get chunkier pieces rather than finely grated), grate the cauliflower into a bowl.

2.       Season with the sea salt and then give it a generous sprinkling of turmeric and cumin seeds.  Stir it all together so that you are left with some pretty yellow-ish cauliflower!

3.       Heat the wok up to full heat. DO NOT ADD OIL.  Once the wok is hot, throw in your cauliflower and let it fry for a couple of minutes, turning it occasionally with a fish slice.  You only want to heat the cauliflower through rather than cooking it and making it go soft and watery.  Two minutes on this high heat will probably do the job perfectly.

4.       Serve with a curry of your choice and enjoy your faux-carbs!

Cauliflower rice looks so pretty on Instagram.  I'm @thegirlwiththelilytattoo if you'd like to follow!

Broccoli, pea and basil soup

I put this recipe on my huge list of things to cook!  It’s from the Hemsley & Hemsley book, The Art of Eating Well and I adapted the measurements for it to be made in my soup-maker. 

Ingredients:

1 onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 sticks of celery, chopped

A pinch of dried oregano

80g fresh basil, roughly chopped

250g frozen peas

Broccoli- as much as is needed to make the above ingredients up to 1kg in weight

1 and ½ pints of vegetable stock

Sea salt and black pepper to season, if needed

Method:

1.        Prepare your onion, garlic, celery, oregano, basil and frozen peas. Weigh all of these ingredients together and then add as much broccoli is needed to make the weight up to 1kg.

2.       Put in the soup-maker with your stock and select the ‘smooth’ setting.

3.       Season (if needed) and serve or you could divide between containers so that the soup can be frozen and eaten at a later date!

The finished product in 'Exorcist Green'

I served this with a warmed, wholemeal pitta and was really impressed with the bright colour of the soup, which I’ve called ‘Exorcist green’ (it did remind me a little of the scene in the film where excessive amounts of pea soup were used). 

The photos of the finished product even got the seal of approval from the Hemsley sisters themselves!

So, this will be my last post before I jet off for a week of all-inclusive indulgence and though I plan on enjoying the food on holiday, there is no way I’ll turn it into a sugar/ junk food binge either.  The holiday clothes are bought and packed, plus my clothes from last year still fit perfectly!

There's no better feeling than when your holiday clothes fit perfectly!

It's just more proof that putting good stuff into your body, exercising and avoiding fad diets allow you to be the best shape you have ever been.  Adios!

10 Reasons why you should give a personal trainer a whirl...

It’s the summer holidays!! Meaning that I have less than a week until my friend’s wedding (bridesmaid duties, yay!) and less than a fortnight until I’ll be sunning myself on the beach in Fuerteventura.  I love my running but also wanted to work a bit more on toning too so, on a whim, I booked an hour long session with a personal trainer at my local gym.  The hour cost me £30 and was well worth the money- I’ve got plenty of new exercises to play around with and don’t feel like I need another session for some time whilst I master and enjoy this new programme.  So, today’s post is 10 reasons why you should try a personal trainer yourself:

1.        If you’re making any of my recipes and eating better, the next logical step on top of this is exercise!  A personal trainer asks what you’d like to achieve and then puts together a range of exercises for you. Even if you’re a beginner, they can advise you how to get started whether it be very light exercise or building on a higher level of fitness.

2.       They are a friendly face (not a crazed army sergeant-like figure) who will push you.  I run 12 miles a week and am fit, but my session left me out of breath and totally knackered- I was pushed to my limits with loads of encouragement too.

3.       They know their stuff.  I tend to spend about half an hour running on the treadmill but my personal trainer (ooohhhhh, how posh) gave me a range of exercises that kill two birds with one stone, meaning that as well as toning your muscles, they form your cardio exercise as well. The exercises- such as squats with weights, planks and press ups- actually get you out of breath as you do them, meaning you’re still burning fat and getting fitter as you tone.

4.       They will surprise you.  Apparently, all the sit ups I was doing were a waste of time. I’ve now got two new exercises which tone and define my abs (and arms at the same time!) in much less time than I was spending on sit ups and crunches.  A lot of the exercises we think are effective are, in actual fact, not so. A personal trainer can clarify this for you, meaning you can ditch the useless exercises in favour of more efficient ones.

5.       You will learn a lot from them in just one session- take a notebook and pen or jot down the exercises as you go on your mobile phone.

6.       No access to gym equipment?  No problem!  My personal trainer gave me exercises where with the majority of them, I could do them at home without any equipment and just my body weight to act as resistance.  This is definitely a winner if you don’t want to sign up at a gym and have to pay the monthly membership fees.

7.       When it comes to gym equipment, a personal trainer can show you how to use it properly and crucially, how much weight you should be lifting.   They are very aware of our female phobia that if we so much as touch some weights, we will turn into Arnold Schwarzenegger.  That’s really not the case and lifting a decent amount of weight (that your trainer will advise you on) is crucial to help you tone up.

8.       Personal trainers will correct your technique.  Turns out I’d been struggling more with press ups than I actually needed to because my technique was wrong.  A personal trainer will fine tune your technique so that you are performing the exercise correctly and also safely so that you avoid injury.  My trainer pointed out that my lower back sagged a little when I was doing press ups and warned me about this so that I could avoid a back injury-I wouldn’t have known otherwise!

9.       They give you a whole new routine to try, meaning if you’re stuck in a gym rut...

10.   Going to the gym becomes fun again!  I’ve quit with the million sit ups in favour of my usual run followed by my new exercises. They are more varied, effective and quicker! I’m well and truly hooked and going to the gym doesn’t feel like such a drag anymore.

Happy exercising!