Vegan Meal Prep for a Week

Since it is currently the school holidays in Sydney, I have quite a bit of extra time on my hands so I thought I would plan out some meals that were fairly healthy and could be eaten quickly with little to no preparation.  For this week I made 10 full meals, side meals and snacks.

Coconut Quinoa

Vermicelli Noodle Salad

Ingredients - Vermicelli noodles cooked in veggie stock, spiralised cucumber, carrots, spring onions, mint, coriander, 'Thai flavoured' tofu, satay sauce and sesame seeds

Veggie Tofu 'Bolognese'

Ingredients - Sauce (Sautéed onion, garlic, portabello mushrooms, pumpkin, broccoli, 'Dolmio' extra veggies sauce, all blended together), Tofu 'mince' (crumbled firm tofu cooked in BBQ sauce, pepper, smoked paprika, nutritional yeast and dried oregano), spelt pasta

Blueberry Muffins

I used this recipe but instead of soy milk I substituted unsweetened almond milk and instead of normal sugar I used coconut sugar.

Pumpkin & Sweet Potato Soup

I used this recipe from Taste.com

Roasted Sweet Potato and Pumpkin and Rockmelon

Lastly for snacks or side dishes I roasted some sweet potato and pumpkin and also cut up some rockmelon that needed to be cut up

For my breakfasts I have a fruit smoothie with coconut water and apple juice which I also add chia seeds which are full of omega 3, antioxidants, fibre and protein, flaxseed which contains omega 3 and fibre and 'Vital Greens' powder which contains over 70 vitamins and nutrients which you can read about here. If I'm still hungry after the smoothie I will usually make toast with avocado and tomato or just plain vegemite toast.

This meal prep has helped me to ensure that I always have a filling, delicious and fairly healthy meal on hand which are chock full of veggies!

Love Morgan x

Healthy Cinnamon Cookie Recipe (GF & DF)

Hi :)

Sorry for not posting in a while, school been really busy recently!

Anyway I've been doing heaps of cooking recently and unfortunately not a lot of my recipes have worked out :(

THAT IS until a couple nights ago when I made some of the nicest cookies ever, you'd never even know they had no dairy, gluten or sugar!

P.S. I personally am intolerant to dairy and gluten so that's why this recipe has none of that :)

The Little Blog's Cinnamon Cookies -Makes Approx. 14 cookies

Ingredients:

- 1 and a 1/2 cup gluten free self-raising flour

- 1/2 cup plain gluten free flour

- 85g coconut oil

-85g dairy free margarine (I used Nutalex lite)

- 1 and 1/2 cup evaporated cane juice

- 2 tsp organic vanilla extract

- 1 medium egg

- 1 egg yolk

- 2 tbspn cinnamon

- 1 tsp nutmeg

- 1 tsp ground allspice

Materials:

- 1 large bowl

- 1 medium bowl

- 2 baking trays w/ baking paper

- electric mixer

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Line two baking trays with baking paper.

2. In a medium bowl sift self-raising flour, plain flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and ground allspice. (Mix together with a spoon/spatula).

3. In a large bowl using an electric mixer, cream together coconut oil and margarine. Then add in evaporated cane juice and blend into a smooth, creamy consistency.

4. Mix egg, egg yolk and vanilla extract into the wet mixture.

5. Mix dry ingredients into the wet mixture in parts.

6. Bake for 15 minutes.

7. Leave for at least 10 minutes without touching, to harden.

8. Lift off tray, eat, enjoy or store for later!

Hope you enjoy this yummy cookie recipe as much as I did! My family were snatching these off the tray as soon as they were ready and I brought them to school the next day for my friends.

Good luck and enjoy!

Xx

Easter 2014

Hi :)

And happy Easter!

Hope everyone has had a great day.

Normally I go to my grandparents or great aunts for Easter but this year, for the first time Easter was at our house. Here are some photos and ideas for Easter:

We (Mum, little brother and me) started on Friday by marbling some eggs, but it was last minute and all the stores were closed on Friday so we only had yellow and blue food colouring... Anyway this is the instructions we used http://www.marthastewart.com/921623/how-make-marbleized-easter-eggs 

This was such a fun activity to do, everyone enjoyed it and we spent the afternoon telling stories and laughing!

We then added some white cotton balls to white ramekins, in these we put our marbled eggs (with some ribbon wrapped around the middle) and a variety of different Easter eggs.

A picture of our delicious lunch, shout-out to mum for cooking our yummy lunch of lamb racks and roast veggies for 13 people!

On Saturday night mum and I spent the night baking these Easter bunny cupcakes for the kids at church (although they ended up looking a bit like mice...) We made plain vanilla cupcakes, iced them with lemon icing, put in a pink lolly for a nose and cut a marshmallow in half to make ears.

My favourite of all the things we did for the lunch was my little project. I found this old frame and painted it with paint leftover from painting my room. I stuck on a sign with blu-tac.

My cat Popoke 'helping' me during painting.

I then took photos of the guests at the lunch holding the sign and sent the photos out as a momento of the day.

Hope you enjoyed these photos and had a great day!

Happy Easter.

Xx

How to Eat Health-ier Living with Parents

Hi :)

Sorry for being a bit MIA lately, school has been crazy! (Pretty much 12 major assignments and 4 tests and 6-8 weeks for them all).

Today I thought I would write about eating healthier while living at home which is something I've found quite difficult as I normally I don't have control over what's for dinner.

 I just want to make a quick disclaimer saying I'm not a health professional in any way and also eating healthier does not mean losing weight it means living a healthy lifestyle and being the best you that you can be! (All photos by me)

TIPS

• Replace unhealthy energy and soft drinks with better options that still have flavour like herbal tea with honey, fruit smoothies, fresh fruit juices, coconut water etc.
• Replace white bread and rice with multigrain and brown options, quinoa for rice
• Instead of butter use margarines (we use dairy free Nutalex) or better avocado or hommus
• Ask your parents if maybe once a week or more you could cook dinner and choose a healthier option for the family
• Go to the supermarket with your parents so you can help choose healthier options
• Pack your own lunch instead of buying from the canteen, packing things like a premade salad, mixed nuts, hommus and celery or carrot sticks, fruit/vegetables
• When snacking instead of reaching for something full of sugar reach for something with protein instead, it will fill you up more and give you long lasting energy instead of quick fills that cause you to eat more
• Don't over or under eat, make sure you are eating the right amount for your weight, height and age
• Drink lots of water
• Try to eat as fresh as possible, make sure you know what's in the food you're eating, a lot of the foods you buy you can probably make at home so you will know exactly what is in it and you can change ingredients it make the recipe healthier
• Cook some vegetables or make a quick salad to go along with your dinner if your parents don't, this way you'll at least get some nutrition even from a quick, easy meal (you know the one- Friday night pizza... ;P)
• This may sound a bit stupid but follow accounts on Instagram with photos of healthy food, I find great inspiration and new foods/recipes to try on Instagram and a lot of these people also have blogs which have lots of great tips, recipes, inspiration and more. Also I'm a bit of a sticky beak and like seeing what people eat ;)
• Use lots of flavour to add taste instead of needing artificial flavours to get that taste

That's all I can think of at the moment! Hope you enjoyed this and it was helpful, again I'm not a health professional in any way so if you don't agree with anything I've said you don't have to do it :)

Xx