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Grilling Vegetables

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grilling vegetabes on george foremanI’ve been avoiding eating potatoes when cooking at home for the last while. So instead of doing potatoes of some kind with a steak I’ve either prepared some kind of salad or been grilling vegetables.

Grilling vegetables is pretty simple.

You just slice up the vegetables and put them straight onto the grill – in my case a George Foreman – and let them cook for a few minutes.

The vegetables you can use? Pretty much anything that will grill .. so I usually end up using onion, mushrooms, peppers and anything else that looks like it’ll survive the grill.

This evening, for example, I grilled a few vegetables, microwaved some French beans and ate them with a steak. The end result was incredibly tasty and didn’t use any oil or other extras 🙂 (Well apart from a bit of olive oil I used in the marinade for the steak)

Back on Juice ..

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chopped fruit and vegetablesFor the last week or so I’ve been travelling.. In terms of eating etc., it hasn’t been too healthy so I am avoiding the weighing scales… though I know I won’t be able to avoid them for much longer ..

Yesterday evening I collected a box of fruit and vegetables from my local shop and this morning’s breakfast was 100% juice (apple, carrot, orange, celery, lime and ginger)

Christmas, of course, is not the best time of the year to worry about a diet.. or to even try and stay on one..

Some Juices Simply Do Not Work

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Harvesting beetroot by amortize on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/99317668@N00/2647422770)

Getting the combination of fruits and vegetables in juices right might not be “rocket science”, but it’s still important.

Some combinations result in amazing juices that are a wonderful explosion of taste on your palate.

Other combinations, however, just don’t work as well, if at all.

This morning I tried a combination of beetroot and orange, with a bit of ginger root.

While the result was drinkable, it wasn’t anywhere near as nice as other combinations. Beetroot with carrots works out a lot better.

Lesson learnt 🙂

Banana and Berry Smoothie

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Fruit and other ingredients in the blender to prepare a smoothieSince I bought the blender a couple of weeks ago I’ve been dying to try it out. This evening I decided that a post dinner “treat” was in order so I made a healthy smoothie 🙂

As I’m going to be away for a few days I’ve been trying to make sure that I’ve used up as much fruit and vegetables as possible as I’d hate them to go to waste – plus they’re really tasty.

Since I’d never made a smoothie before and I wanted to use up ingredients that I had to hand this is what I ended up with

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Banana and Berry Smoothie

A very refreshing and delicious fruit smoothie
Course Drinks
Keyword smoothie
Prep Time 5 minutes
Total Time 5 minutes
Servings 1

Ingredients

  • 2 bananas peeled and chopped
  • Couple of handfuls of frozen mixed berries
  • 1 plain yoghurt
  • 2 spoons of honey
  • handful of ice cubes

Instructions

  1. Put all the ingredients in the blender bowl
  2. Blend until smooth
  3. Drink!

And here’s the finished product:

Berry and banana smoothie ready to drink

The end result was fantastic, though incredibly cold (doh!). Leaving it to warm up slightly ie. giving it 5 minutes before you drink it probably isn’t a bad idea, as straight from the blender it was headache inducing cold!

I didn’t calculate the calories in this, but I suspect it’s a couple of hundred, as there are two full bananas and a yoghurt in there. I’m not too sure about the frozen berries, but I’m glad I picked up a few packs when I was in SuperQuinn earlier during the week, as I wouldn’t have been able to make this otherwise 🙂

Cooking Experiments With Kale

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washed kaleJames cooked a very tasty variation on this recipe the other evening. (He added some boiled sausage .. )

So I ended up with quite a bit of kale..

Kale is incredibly healthy and packed full of nutrients. Some people call it a “super food”, but it wasn’t something that I was that familiar with until recently. (Spot a trend? Yes – I’m learning about food!)

Last night I wanted to cook something using kale and as many vegetables as possible. I ended up doing a bit of an experiment with what I had in the kitchen:

  • shallots
  • garlic (not crushed – whole)
  • kale – plenty of it
  • mushrooms
  • red pepper
  • courgette
  • carrot
  • chicken breast (I had some in the freezer)
  • a couple of slivers of ginger
  • dash of wine
  • vegetable stock made from a stock cube and hot water ie. not homemade because I don’t know how!
  • herbs – both fresh from my mini-garden and dried

Kale dinner cooking

Once the stock was added I just let it cook away for about another 20 to 30 minutes until the kale reduced down which led to this:

Kale with vegetables and chicken

I’ve no idea what you’d call this, but it was very tasty 🙂

I’ve also got no idea about the calories etc., but it’s basically loads of vegetables with chicken breast, so it’s probably quite healthy..

Beetroot, Carrot, Apple and Ginger Juice

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Harvesting beetroot by amortize on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/99317668@N00/2647422770)

Beetroot is a fantastic vegetable, though you usually find it already cooked or pickled. Making juice from beetroot was a whole new adventure in juice for me, so finding the right combination of juices was key.

I ended up adapting this recipe to suit me ie. smaller quantity and different proportions.

Print

Beetroot, Carrot, Apple and Ginger Juice

A strong and tasty juice that will give you a nice kick to start the day
Course Juice
Prep Time 5 minutes
Total Time 5 minutes
Servings 1
Calories 280 kcal

Ingredients

  • 1 beetroot raw / uncooked
  • 2 - 3 apples medium to big
  • 2 medium carrots
  • 1/2 lemon
  • 2 slices of raw ginger root

Instructions

  1. Top and tail the carrot and beetroot
  2. Slice up all the fruit and vegetables so that they'll fit through your juicer
  3. Fill the juicer with the fruit and vegetables alternating them so that they are mixed
  4. Juice
  5. Drink and enjoy!

 

The end result is quite tasty, though it retains the deep dark red colour from the beetroot.

 

Related articles

The Humble Avocado

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Fruit & vegetables for juicing

Fruit & vegetables for juicing (Photo credit: blacknight)

Avocado is one of those fruits that I’ve never really known what to do with.

I’ve eaten it over the years in many forms, but I’d never actually prepared anything using it.

Since trying to “crank it up” a bit with the juices etc., I went off and bought a load of fruit and vegetables to try out a few different juice and smoothie combinations

One of the “new” additions for me was avocado.

This evening I used some in a salad and it was truly delicious.

So what’s so good about avocado?

Have a look at the nutrients in an avocado – it’s truly impressive: