26 March 2014

Recipe: Green Smoothie

There's always a lot of talk about green juice and smoothies, green juices are just not for me but I found this smoothie recipe and it's had me hooked since December! 

What you need:
  • 1 cup of spinach
  • 1 cup of green grapes
  • 1/4 cup of coconut milk
  • 1 handful of ice cubes
All you need to do with these super healthy ingredients is whack them in a blender (my blender has now broken though and I'm distraught so if anyone has any recommendations for a new one, please let me know) and blitz until smooth.

Enjoy! Are any of you hooked on a green smoothie?

23 March 2014

Chinese Supermarket and recipe: prawn wraps

You all know that I love food, I love all food (apart from mushrooms) especially food from oriental countries. I love most things oriental, especially Chinese food, the colours and the flavours melt my brain with joy. So any excuse to go to my local Chinese supermarket and I'm there! The SeeWoo in Glasgow is a great excuse to stock up on incense like this:
Wheat free noodles:
Beautiful prawns: 
And most importantly these rice papers:
Now after reading this post from Claire - read her blog here, it's full of amazing vegan recipes, fashion and crafty projects - I was dying to try a something similar. This is where the prawns and papers come together to make my delicious wheat free, dairy free dinner that is super tasty.

You'll need:
  • two rice papers
  • a handful of prawns
  • two tablespoons of sweet chilli sauce
  • 1 small carrot
  • 1 spring onion
  • a chunk of cucumber - about 5cm
Just defrost your prawns overnight in the fridge, mine are in their shells but they are really easy to peal once defrosted. Rinse the prawns in some cold water and get them straight into a hot frying pan, here you just fry them with a little bit of spray oil, once the prawns are almost cooked add the sweet chilli sauce and leave to bubble away, making sure you coat all of the prawns in the sauce.

Shred the vegetables ready for the wraps. The rice papers are incredibly easy to use, simply soak them, one at a time, in warm water until they soften, it only takes 3-5 minutes. All you need to do now is split all of the ingredients equally between the two papers, wrap and enjoy!
I just need to learn to wrap mine more neatly!

9 March 2014

Pink Sunday - Recipe: Pink Smoothie

Happy Sunday everyone, Sunday is my favourite day of the week, I never feel guilty for doing nothing and anything I do end up doing seems like a bonus. Needless to say, today I did very little - mostly shopping for mama smeeeff's mother's day gift and papa smeeeff's birthday present. Why are dad's so hard to buy for? Long gone are the days of buying him DVD's that I actually wanted... damn.

Anyway, if you follow me on Instagram you might have seen that I started my day with eggs, gluten free toast and a smoothie - such a good start to a Sunday.
Of course the smoothie is home made and super tasty, you just need:
  • 1 cup of berries (I often use a frozen pack of summer fruits) 
  • 1 ripe banana
  • 1/2 cup of hazelnut milk
All you need to do is blend it until it's all smooth and creamy. I find that the frozen berries, as well as being a handy frozen staple, they also give the smoothie a really creamy texture that's a little bit like a sorbet. 

What's your favourite Sunday morning breakfast?

8 March 2014

Recipe: Raw Brownie

After being introduced to Deliciously Ella a few weeks ago I decided that I should start being strict again with my diet, I mean all the chocolate and cheese is so tasty but it's just not good for my skin or my insides. But as well as ditching the dairy I've decided to swap the sugar and generally anything with unpronounceable ingredients for fruit and vegetables. I'm writing this on day 6 and I feel so much better already. These raw brownies have kept me going, there is nothing bad in them but they taste like they are full of gooey, chocolately goodness that usually comes along with a ton of calories!

Here's what you need:
1 cup of walnuts
1 pinch of sea salt
10 dates
3 tablespoons of cacao nibs
2 tablespoons of coconut oil

I know that I say everything is easy, but this has got to be the easiest, you just need a blender and a baking sheet covered in baking paper. So, first, blitz the cup of walnuts until they are smallish chunks, add in the salt and cacao nibs (I'm sure you could just use a good quality dark chocolate here if you wanted but the cacao nibs really are great), blitz again.

Then add the dates and blitz. Are you seeing the theme here? Add and blitz, add and blitz. Now the coconut oil, I've found that this is better if you melt the oil first, you guessed it one more blitz. All you need to do now is whack it in a bowl and add a couple of tablespoons of cold water so you can press the mixture onto the baking sheet.

Leave it to set in the fridge, preferably 3 hours and cut into delicious pieces to enjoy! I like to eat mine with some fresh strawberries, cherries and sometimes a spoonful of soya yoghurt.

What's your favourite guilt free sweet treat?

2 March 2014

Food, a hat and jelly shoes

I'm back! With tasty food and new purchases - one of which I'm still not completely happy with but here goes:
Shoes: I finally (after a 20 year wait) got some jelly shoes, these beauts are from schuh, obviously and I love them. As soon as it stops raining I'll be purchasing the purple and probably the glitter too!
Dress: This is pretty old now, but a total favourite. It's a wrap around Dorothy Perkins dress which always makes me feel half way between a ballet teacher and a witch. They don't stock it any more but it's pretty much this.
Hat: Now this is the tricky one... I absolutely love hats but I'm just never quite brave enough to buy one until now! With some gentle (actually, it wasn't gentle at all) encouragement from Carol, the hat was bought and after staring at it for a full week I donned the hat for a jaunt to the cinema with my man friend.
But now I'm lusting over this H&M bag to go with this outfit too so that I look more witchy...
This weekend was also filled with really good food:
You can't beat poached eggs and bacon on a gluten free roll. I'm now off to see if my Deliciously Ella inspired brownies are set enough for some photographs and testing.

Ciao for now,
Smeeeff