More Smoothies

I love smoothies! Even before I was preggo smoothies were a quick and easy way to get a good punch of nutrition quickly and easily. The only change I have made is the removal of caffeine, either espresso or macha, but all the other ingredients have remained the same. So, here are two that I have made up in the past two days. As you will see they are very basic but quite yummy.

Chocolate Banana


1 or 2 frozen bananas
Small handful of oatmeal
1 scoop chocolate protein powder
1 tablespoon almond butter
Top up with almond milk

Blend away.

Cantaloupe  Smoothie

Half a frozen banana

Half to three quarters of chopped cantaloupe

Small handful of oatmeal

1 scoop vanilla protein powder

1 tablespoon chia seeds

Top up with almond milk

Blend and enjoy.

What Was I Thinking

Here's me thinking that one day of sleep and I'll be over this cold/flu, HA! Fat chance of that. It has been almost a week of sleeping and nothing else and I finally feel a little bit like myself this morning, still not 100%. I took some Tylenol to help with the body aches and keep the fever down and drank copious amounts of ginger, lemon and honey that I kept boiling on the stove.

Somehow, and I don't really remember doing it, I managed to cook us up some feel better food this week so I thought I'd share as they turned out pretty good. We were pretty sick so I could be wrong!

HOT & SOUR CHICKEN SOUP

1 chicken breast
1 litre chicken stock or water
2 tsp hot chilli paste
3 or 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 or 2 stalks celery, chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup brown rice (approx)
2 to 4 Tbs tamarind paste
lime juice
brown sugar (optional)

Fry up garlic, onion and celery in pot until browned, add stock, chilli paste and chicken breast, cover for 20 - 30 min until poached. Remove chicken and shred with two forks. Add back into pot along with rice and tamarind, start with 2 Tbs and you can add more later. Cover and cook for another 30 min. until rice is nearly done.
At this point taste the soup and adjust seasoning. I had added way too much chilli paste so levelled it out with more tamarind, a good splash of lime juice and surprisingly a Tbs of brown sugar.
This was a toss what ever you can in a pot kind of soup that turned out pretty good, we both crave a hot and sour soup when sick and it did the trick.

With what I think are my abs now pushed up on top of my ribs thanks to the ever expanding bump it makes it quite awkward to cough. Combine that with a throat that feels like it on fire and all I wanted was some ice cream to sooth it. Problem was I didn't want any dairy to add to all my phlem so I gave this banana ice cream a try.

Toss one frozen banana in a food processor or mini chopper with a small splash of vanilla and blend until creamy. That's it!

It really helped with the soar throat, I put it in a little glass jar and got two servings out of it and no guilt of eating ice cream. I think I'll be making this a lot.

Lastly I managed to make up a batch of my fave yam and bean burritos, I did cheat a bit a use pre made beans and shredded cheese (both of which were pretty good) but I think that was the only way I was able to make them up. If you want the recipe just ask and I will gladly pass it along, we have been making these for ever and freezing them for a quick dinner during the week.















I guess that's next on my list, figuring out meals to make and freeze for when Pip arrives so we can continue to eat well and I wont loose my mind with guilt over not cooking.

Where's Winter?

Don't know where you are right now but Toronto is basking is some serious spring weather. Yesterday was stunning reaching a balmy 10 degrees so I went for a one hour walk wishing it could have been a run! That's ok, soon enough. Today again is has been hovering around 7 or 8 and quite sunny with some very black sky to the north, east and west of us so I don't think this is going to last too long.

I came across a crazy looking smoothie so had to try it out. We both love going to the market at getting a fresh beet juice with ginger, our place is too small for a juicer so it's a once and a while treat. Well, this smoothie may fix that.

Beet Smoothie - adapted from Smith Bites

1 - 2 roasted beets
1 med to large orange
big chunk of fresh ginger peeled
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
approx. 1/2 cup of any kind of milk

Blend all together. I'm not a fan of really sweet drinks so omitted any sweeteners, the protein powder adds some sweetness along with the roasted beets. I like it spicy so added almost an inch of ginger.
Be prepared, it tastes way different than it looks, especially if you don't know what's in it!

Finally a pizza update. The dough that I had mad up last week (or was it longer than that? ) was used up on Sunday night for pizzas and was probably even better than before. I think the week of developing in the fridge was what did the trick. This week I made up a white pizza as my Mom and I were trading recipes and she had sent along one that looked good. Of course I changed it up but it was a great inspiration. You can check out their adventures of making pizza in the desert here. You will need to scroll down a bit.

Perfection

As mentioned in the previous post I have been experimenting with making pizza dough and I think that I may have found the perfect one. It was easy to work with, nice and thin, crispy where it needed to be and most important, good flavour. I was so excited with the results that I have wanted to make pizza every night, but have resisted.

I found this recipe through Punchfork, a fantastic recipe aggregator.

Pizza Dough
Original post: My Baking Addiction
Yeild: four 1lb loaves

2 3/4  cups warm water
1 1/2  tablespoons active dry yeast (2 pkgs)
1 1/2  tablespoons salt
1        tablespoon sugar
1/4     cup olive oil
6 1/2  cups all purpose flour


Directions
1. In a large bowl add all the ingredients but the flour and mix until combined

2. Add in the flour and mix until all combined and your dough has formed. No kneading required, I promise. If mixing by hand, which I did, you will want to finish incorporating the flour by hand as it gets a bit difficult. Once a smooth dough has formed you are finished.

3. Transfer dough to a large bowl and cover. I used a metal mixing bowl and saran wrap leaving some small gaps for air to transfer. Rest at room temperature for 2 hours or so, until it doubles in size and then flattens out or collapses. For me that was about 3 hours but I did kind of forget about it.

4. The dough can be used immediately but I suggest keeping it in the refrigerator for 24 hours. This allows for the flavour to continue to develop. When ready to use, take out what you need about 1 hour before baking and allow to warm up a bit. I did find that it was very easy to roll out while it was a touch cool.

5. Keep remaining dough in the refrigerator for up to 12 days in a container that is not completely air tight, again, I used a metal bowl and saran wrap.

I halved the above recipe with no problems at all. We cooked our pizzas on a pizza stone at 475 degrees for about 6 - 8 minutes, but not entirely sure as I usually cook by sight and smell, not by the clock! You can bake these up as you would normally do, nothing special.

Last note about the pizzas, we did a basic tomato sauce, mozzarella, carmelized onions, mushroom and orange pepper topping but going forward this is perfect for a white pizza or just some pesto and toppings as you can roll out this dough very thin.

Enjoy!

Green Eggs and Toast

Yes, there seems to be a theme going on here, spinach in everything. I find it a very easy vegetable to incorporate into almost anything, helping up my vegi intake. Today's lunch was hard boiled eggs mixed with some baby spinach, greek yoghurt, dijon mustard and some pepper. It's quick, simple and pretty tasty. I did add a bit more yoghurt than usual but I need to up my calcium intake even more as Pip's bones are starting another growth spurt now.

As for dinners I have been on a bit of a roll lately, just saying! This week consisted of a ostrich and quinoa chili that kept us well fed for a few meals. Ostrich is a very lean red meat, for a 6oz serving you get 190 calories and 38g of protein, and is really tasty. Second meal was a white bean and chicken stew with lemon, dill and topped with a mint pesto. You could say that this is more of a spring/summer dish but was a really nice change from the typical bean dishes I make. It was also very easy to pull together. Here is a link to the recipe, it's a keeper. Chicken and bean stew.

Yesterday I made up a batch of pizza dough and will be making up pizzas for dinner tonight. Hopefully I wont be a ziggy piggy like usual and will try to take a couple of pics. I am still trying out pizza dough recipes and hopefully have found one that gives us a great flavour as well as a sturdy thin crust.

Now if only we had a wood burning oven to bake them in.

Green Pumpkin Pie and a Bump Update

Slowly growing and very happy!

Just got back from our latest midwife appointment and everything is rolling along really well. Noting to report really, basically that in the next couple of weeks I should up my calcium intake to accommodate for Pips growing bones. Baby is big enough to be able to hear the heartbeat with a stethoscope now and I got to hear it. While lying down Pip gave us a show by giving several really big kicks, big enough that my belly moved so of course I couldn't help but laugh. It was great that Rob was there during to visit so he got to see everything, they were the biggest ones so far!

I was hungry by the time I got home and wanted something quick, a smoothie is my favourite option. This one is two big handfuls of spinach, about 1/3 cup of pumpkin puree, one frozen banana, vanilla protein powder, milk, almond meal and pumpkin spices. Nutritious and delicious! As you can see, I started drinking even before I could shoot it.