Recipe | Simple Spicy Vegetables in Honey Soy

After a fairly crazy weekend of birthday and Australia Day celebrations I found my nutrition levels to be fairly lacking. During the week I like to chill out and restore my body to a more healthy state and in addition to my daily seed-based breakfasts and salads for lunch I try to avoid heavy carbohydrate-based meals in the evening. This is one of this weeks detox meals full of vitamins but also flavour and different textures. Feel free to change up the vegetables with your favourites. 

Ingredients

broccoli, separated from head

mushrooms, halved

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2tsp hot chilli paste

1/4 light soy sauce

1tbsp honey

Preheat oven to 180°. Prepare baking dish with baking paper.

In a medium mixing bowl mix garlic, chilli, soy sauce and honey together vigorously. Set aside. 

Bring a small to medium pot of water to the boil. Place broccoli and mushrooms in boiling water momentarily; until the green becomes much brighter. This process is called blanching and normally happens in under a minute. You wouldn't normally do this to mushrooms but I find it gently breaks through the skin which allows the marinade to soak through better.

Drain vegetables and add to marinade. Toss throughly and let sit for 5-10 minutes. Move vegetables from marinade into prepared baking dish and bake for 15-20 minutes. 

Serve and enjoy!

If you have any healthy fulfilling snacks, feel free to recommend them in the comments.

Erin xx

Sweet Potato, Prosciutto and Quinoa Salad

It's been a while since I brought you all a new recipe, and well this isn't new but it's my own variation on what is quickly becoming a very popular grain. Quinoa (pronounced anyway you feel like it) is one of my favourite things to eat. Never having been a big fan of couscous, simply because it's too easy to make a mess, quinoa has filled that gap in my life. It used to be quite expensive and only available at heath food stores but it has made quite a headway in the market in recent years. You caaaan find it in normal grocery stores now but it is more likely to be cheaper, and probably better, from a health food store. It really depends where you live as to what your supermarkets stock. 

Anyway, here is my most recent salad creation with the delicious quinoa. 

Serves 2-3 people for lunch

Ingredients

2/3cup quinoa

1 1/3 cup water

1 lebanese cucumber, finely diced

1 tomato, finely diced

1 red chilli (as hot or mild as you like), chopped roughly with out without seeds

3 shallots, finely chopped

1/2 sweet potato, chopped into bite size pieces and roasted (can be done anytime before)

250g prosciutto, chopped and briefly warmed in a frying pan

Dressing

1/4 cup tahini

juice of one lemon

salt and pepper

water to thin mixture