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Healthy magnums

There are times when I just want to be in the kitchen experimenting & last week was one of them. It felt like the cover of every food magazine was plastered with beautiful images of gelato & ice creams and all I wanted to do was try my hand at making my own.

I ordered various moulds online & as they arrived I got to work. These moulds were obviously designed for nothing less that home made magnums, in fact it would have been rude not to make homemade magnums in them.

Do you like magnums? They are certainly the husbands ice cream of choice but he eats them in the most specific/anti social way. He eats all the chocolate off the outside & then the ice cream centre. There is no way of sharing that…which is probably his intention!

Do you have certain ways of eating things? I prefer eating apples if they are sliced & also prefer peeling them & eating the “flesh” and peel separately. I don’t like cold milk in coffee, I drink tea black & really weak. My dad doesn’t eat sauces, not even ketchup or gravy and always says “good food doesn’t need sauce”. My mum only likes cold toast & never drinks the last dregs of her coffee but my favourite is that our neighbour carries a mini pepper grinder on his key ring to garnish anything he eats.

These magnums are light & creamy & delicious. They are rich & decadent but they are also refined sugar free, high in protein & packed with antioxidants. You can make these with greek yoghurt or coconut yoghurt as both work well. They are a treat as they taste great but they are also great for your body, surely what a treat should be. There are lots more ice creams coming your way so I hope you enjoy these & are ready for more! Happy summer!

Ingredients (makes 4)
1 tub Greek or coconut yoghurt (170g)
1 tbsp maple syrup
Seeds from 1 vanilla pod (optional)
100g raw or 80% chocolate

Method
Mix the yoghurt, vanilla & maple syrup together & spoon into your ice Molly molds
Allow to freeze (6 hours or overnight)
Melt the chocolate
Remove the ice lollies from the moulds & cover in chocolate using a spoon (hold the ice lolly over the pan of chocolate & spoon chocolate over it)
You can also sprinkle on nuts or toppings but you have to act really quickly as the chocolate freezes almost instantly
Place the lollies onto a piece of baking paper & place back into the freezer for 1 hour
Remove 5 mins before enjoying

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A juice buying guide

I love the fact that healthy options are becoming more widespread. It is so easy now to get a gluten free sandwich, a great salad or a vegan desert. Vegan pop ups are flourishing and more and more chains are making sure that they offer a wider variety of natural, wholefood based options. Alongside that it is now really easy to get smoothies and juices on every corner. The health benefits of juicing have become more and more apparent. A great way to deliver huge amounts of vitamins to your body in an easy to digest way. The problem is, not all juices are created equal and you need to be savvy to see which ones will boost your health and which ones will boost merely your blood sugar. So here is my guide to ‘Which juice should I buy?’

My juice buying tips:

Read the label – just because it is a great colour doesn’t mean that it contains great things

Look at the ingredients – what comes first? Ideally you want it to be vegetables

Check the quantities – out of 100% how much of the juice is made up of vegetables? If the juice is 90% apple, 10% kale.  You are drinking green flavoured apple juice not green juice.

Is it cold pressed? – Cold pressing is the most nutritious way to obtain juice..more on this later

HPP – this is the next best thing to cold pressing (and is often used in conjunction) and is high pressure processing. It retains freshness but increases shelf life. It is a much better alternative to pasturising.

Is it local? – the produce that goes into the juice matters and how many miles it has traveled matters too. The more local the produce, the higher the vitamin content

Is it seasonal? – this is similar to the local train of thought. If you are making a fresh juice or having one made for you, making sure that you pick seasonal produce will guarantee a better vitamin content. Kale is only in season during the frosty months…

I have taken a long time researching the market and trying to find great brands that i can support and love. My absolute favourite juice brand is B-Fresh. They are relative new comers on the market but they are amazing! They are doing it slightly differently to most others as they grow the produce and then juice it. They understand provenance. They understand seasonality. They understand the value of picking and bottling quickly. They are run by a passionate team, headed up by a third generation farmer. A man that understands how to grow high quality produce.
B-Fresh cold press their juice on site in a custom build juicery. They use HPP to ensure that it stays fresher for longer and also to keep it safe and bacteria free. You can order them online and they will be delivered in a chilled box ready for your fridge. Our favourites are #leanandgreen, #greenwarrior and #rockthebeets. Let me know if you try them and which one is your favourite…
Happy juicing x

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Getting started

This blog is not a place to preach. Its not a place to make you feel guilty or to put me on a superfood soapbox. This is my place to share my experience of learning to cook with natural foods. It is a place where I can share recipes that have helped me heal my body and where I can show how to make that leap to eating a clean diet.

There is a lot of room for improvement in most European diets. Whilst we imagine that obesity is an American phenomenan I was shocked this year to learn that there are now more people who are obese that there are people who are starving. People are eating food that bears no resemblance to its natural state. Foods that are full of highly refined sugars and oils. Foods that keep for years unaffected. Foods stuffed with grains stripped of their nutrition and animal products of dubious origins. Many of these foods contain high levels of hormones and antibiotics. They have been sprayed, shipped, processed and packaged. Vitamins and minerals removed, additives and flavour enhancers added. They are addictive, mood altering and dangerous. The good news is that switching to a clean natural diet is actually an easy and delicious process.

Food to me should nourish. It should provide us with the nutrients we need to function at our best. It should boost performance, energy and mood. It should leave us satiated and satisfied. It should make us feel calm and happy. It should be grown, sold and shared. It should be cooked and transformed in your kitchen rather than a processing plant. Olives become olive oil, oats are ground to oatmeal, chocolate is separated into cocoa and cocoa butter, legumes are dried and fruit is picked.

You dont need to become a crazy person. You dont need to rip that chocolate from your childs hand as you frantically run through the kitchen with a bin bag. Don’t start making rules. Im not obsessed. Im living and in life there are always moments for cake…and whiskey. It is however a  shift, and as you make the changes your tastebuds will change too. Your body will function better, your skin will glow and your will crave new things. Foods that before were off limits and exciting will give way to new tastes and flavours to be savoured.

The first step. My first step was throwing away the white food. Chuck out the white flour and white sugar, the white rice and white pasta. Replace them with ancient grains that can be cooked and eaten in much the same way but that are full of fiber and minerals. You could try wild rice, quinoa pizza bases and spelt pasta. In baking you could try out nut flours and new sweeteners like honey, maple syrup or coconut sugar. After you have made the initial switch you’ll see that this was a quick and easy way to make world of difference.

My starting steps to better health

1) Cook it yourself – making your own sauces, stocks and stews is a great place to start

2) Eat colour at every meal – the colours in fruit and vegetables are what gives us the most powerful antioxidants and vitamins. Use them.

3) Drink water – simple but the best

4) Shop at markets – at markets you can have a relationship with the stall holder. You can ask questions about the produce, its origins and how  its best cooked or eaten

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