Snack-tastic Sweet Chili Tofu Squares

I used to hate tofu.  Then I learned that tofu is awesome because it is like a vessel for awesome things, like sweet chili sauce.  A vessel with 10 grams of protein per 1/2 cup.

One of my favourite tofu snacks is baked tofu.  It's so easy!  The hardest part is buying tofu, I get mine at the asian grocery.  be sure to get the firm/extra-firm type:

Chop the tofu into roughly equal squares and put them on a baking tray covered with baking paper (for ease of cleaning tray!)

Pour lots of sweet chili sauce all over the tofu, then rub sweet chili sauce all over the tofu, until they are completely sweet chili'd out

Put the tofu in the oven at around 350f/ gas mark 5 / 200c for about 25 minutes, then flip when the edges start to crisp.

Or forget they're in the oven and leave them there for 45 minutes and you end up with this tasty mess

The baking paper means that you don't spend 12 hours cleaning the tray!

These are awesome as a snack by themselves, or you can chuck them into a salad for extra protein and flavor  It's better if you let the sauce soak for a while, but if you're forgetful like me you can chuck the sauce on and put it all in the oven quickly.  Then you can snack away!

Delicious Low Fat High Fibre Banana Muffins!

I love baking - and one of my favorite treats to bake is Banana Bread!  I learned recently that I could freeze overripe bananas to use for cooking later - now my freezer is half full of discount overripe banana.  Yum!  I peel them first and measure them out to 1 cup portions for easy baking.

Oh yes, I'm American so I bake with cups - for all my UK followers, a cup is about the size of a man-fist.  To be honest banana bread is very forgiving so I estimate ingredients anyways.

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

3/4 cup oats

1 tsb baking powder

1 tsb baking soda

1 tsb cinnamon

3/4 cup fibre one

3/4 cup milk

2 eggs

1 cup mashed overripe banana

1/2 cup brown sugar (optional)

1/2 cup almonds or nuts (optional)

Here's how it goes!

1) Combine fiber one and milk.  It seems weird, just do it.  Then put aside.

2) in a seperate bowl, combine all the dry ingrediants, except sugar, which for some reason goes in the wet ingrediants, even though it's arguably dry.

3) In a third bowl, combine egg with defrosted mashed overripe banana and sugar (sugar is optional, I have a sweet tooth but I've made it without sugar before).

4) Add chopped nuts if you want to the dry ingredients (I used almonds).

5) Add the soaked fibre one and milk to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly   The fiber one should almost disintegrate into the mix.

6) Mix the wet and dry ingredients together, but forget to add the cinnamon and chuck it on after but right before you take a photo.  Don't overmix but be sure there's no dry ingredients left, mixture may be a bit runny but that makes for fluffier banana bread.  Thicker mix means chewier bread. All bread is delicious.

 7) Fill muffins 3/4 full with batter.  Bake at gas mark 4/ 350f / 180c for 22-25 minutes.

8) Remove from oven when the edges are a bit brown.

9)  once out of oven leave them in the pan for another 5 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.  Or a plate.  Or your mouth.

My Favourite healthy quick meal

I love stir frys!  They are so quick and healthy!  Yum!

Here is how I make mine: 

Step 1: Heat some oil in a pan.  I use sunflower oil as a model and food blogger once told me this is better, and I do everything models tell me to.

Step 2: Chop up a load of veggies.  Onions, peppers, cabbage, mushrooms, sugar peas, mini corn, water chestnuts (if you have them)... Or just buy a bag of pre-chopped veg.  It's up to you!  

Step 3: Cook the veg in a pan.  Throw in a lot of sweet and sour sauce.  It's full of sugar and bad for you.  Do it anyways.

Step 4: Defrost a load of frozen shrimp.  Or eat fresh shrimp, if you're fancy like that.  Or eat discounted fresh shrimp that's going off today, if you're like me.  Again, your stir-fry, your rules!  Chuck all the shrimp in with the vegetables.

Step 5: Put in a lot of bean sprouts.  YUM!

Step 6: Stir for 2 minutes and then put everything in a massive plate/bowl.  Chop up some avocado and chuck it all over the top.

Step 7: Finally, cover the whole thing with lots and lots of Sriracha!  OMG I LOVE SRIRACHA.

Step 8: Eat!  You have made an amazing stir fry and now you will eat the amazing stir fry and you will be so happy!

The whole thing takes about 10 minutes from thought to eating, especially if you use pre-chopped veg.  There are some optional extra steps you can include for extra protein - I like to throw in some cashews and also to fry an egg into it right before I add the shrimp.  In fact, there is my timing:

-10 minutes: heat oil in pain

-8 minutes: add veg and mix

-5 minutes: add sweet chili sauce

-4 minutes: add cashews 

-3 minutes: add egg

-2 minutes: add shrimp

-1 minute: chop avocado

EATING TIME! MIX IT TOGETHER AND EAT!

Easy Slowcooker Chicken - How to Cook Delicious Healthy Whole Chicken in the Crockpot with Almost No Effort!

A recipe!

This is one of my most favourite ways to cook chicken.  I like to buy a whole chicken at Lidl or Aldi and it's cheaper than buying chicken breasts alone... then I cook the chicken and bring it to work and eat it for lunch for a week.  Because I love chicken!

STEP 1: Buy a chicken

STEP 2: wash the chicken (I may have stolen this picture from the internet)

STEP 3: Put the chicken in the slow cooker

STEP 4: pour a bunch of spices on the chicken (allspice is good - or italian seasoning)

STEP 5: Turn the slow cooker on low for 7 hours

STEP 6: take the chicken out and nom on it until you ate it all.

STEP 7: buy another chicken and do it again because OMFG that chicken was the tastiest chicken you ever ate and everyone thinks you are an amazing cook now and really you did almost nothing, you're like Martha Stewart but without the jail time or Delia Smith but not a psycho.

OM NOM CHICKEN.

THE END.

If you have any questions about this recipe then you didn't read it carefully enough.  If your question is: should I add water?" then the answer is NO!  If your question is: can I cook it on high? Then the answer is NO because if you cook it on high then you probably need to change the time and this is MY RECIPE.  If you're wondering if you can stick something in the chicken butt, like an apple or an onion or a clove of garlic, then the answer is YES but still that's not part of this recipe.  That's part of the ADVANCED EASY SLOWCOOKER CHICKEN RECIPE.

(non)Paleo Pancakes and a Lazy Saturday

One of the great things about being away with work was/is that I work with a group of health conscious people and there are loads of healthy eating options available   I decided to do a test and see if I could eat no cheese and no white bread/grain for the 3 days I was away - I did and I felt good for it!  So I've tried to keep it up since coming home - sort of a cross between Paleo and the old Weightwatchers Core programme.  Also lots of Aero Hot Chocolate because it is DELICIOUS!

I eat a lot of eggs and omelets but this morning I wanted something a bit different.  I wanted PANCAKES!  but I didn't want flour.  So I looked up some recipes for Paleo pancakes and found one that looked interesting, so I chucked the following in a bowl and blended it:

3 bananas
3 eggs
1/3 cup peanut butter (because almond butter is too expensive)
1 tsp baking soda

That's pretty much a paleo pancake, but it just made me think of peanut butter and banana omelet  which sounds gross.  So I added a packet of flaxseed that I got as some free handout

and about 1/4 cup of oatmeal (which is not Paleo at all, but I'm not being Paleo, so I don't care)

And then I chucked it in a frying pan with tasty tasty butter:

And it came out like this:

Blurry!

No, actually delicious.  Not exactly like a pancake, but not far off.  I quite liked the thick texture, and I put a bit of Agave Nectar on it (because apparently I'm just being annoying now) and it was tasty tasty!  My brewer half probably would have preferred normal pancakes, but for a mostly made up attempt at avoiding white flour and overly processed foods I thought it was quite good!

The recipe made 6 pancakes, I had 3 for breakfast and then I had one for lunch - cold with a bit of almond butter.  YUM!

Tomorrow I'm off mountain biking - normally my snacks are french bread with cheese but I'm going to try chicken skewers and falafel bites instead.  But I'm probably going out to dinner after, because sometimes a girl needs treats!