Healthy & Tasty Potato Salad

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 500 grams of potatoes
• 1 small to medium onion, chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, very finely crushed or grated
• 1 red fresh chilli, finely chopped (you could use half a chilli or less or more as you wish)
• A bunch of fresh chives, chopped
• 1 tablespoon of cider or apple vinegar
• 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• Salt to taste

Method

Wash, peel and cook the potatoes until cooked. In the mean time, prepare the salad dressing by mixing the vinegar, oil, crushed garlic, chopped chilli and salt. Once potatoes are cooked, chop them roughly or cut them into cubes, mix with the chopped onions, add the dressing and add the chopped chives. This salad can be served warm or cold, I prefer it cold personally. Enjoy!

Penne Al'arrabiata for Babies

My 8 month old daughter simply loves this!

Ingredients

• 1 small handful of penne
• 1 medium ripe fresh tomato, peeled and chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon of tomato paste
• Water to cook

Method

Simply put all the ingredients in a pot and cook for 15 to 20 minutes and mix. Make sure there is enough water left in the pot.

Quick Iced Coffee

Here is my version, quick and tasty!

Ingredients

• 200 ml whole milk
• 2 teaspoon of instant coffee ( I use Nescafe Gold)
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• Hot boiling water

Method

Put 2 teaspoons of instant coffee in a measuring bowl, add very small amount of hot boiling water to dissolve the coffee, add sugar and stir to dissolve, add the cold whole milk and ready!

This is equivalent to a double latte!

Spaghetti with Minced Chicken Mini-Burgers and Fresh Tomato Sauce

This one turned out really tasty! Here is how it goes.

Ingredients for two people

For the meat

• 400 grams of minced chicken (you could use minced turkey if you don't have minced chicken)
• 1 medium to large onion
• 1 fresh large red chilli
• 1 handful of fresh oregano, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin
• Salt
• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

For the tomato sauce

• 750 grams of fresh ripe tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed or grated
• 1 table spoon of apple or cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 1 fresh medium red chilli, finely sliced
• 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil

You will also need 200 grams of spaghetti and a bunch of fresh chives to garnish.

Method

For the chicken mini burgers, chop the onion and chilli very finely, you can use an electric food processor or mixer for a couple of seconds on low to medium setting. Put the mixture in a bowl, add the ground cumin, chopped fresh oregano and salt. Add the minced chicken or turkey and mix everything very well. Make the mini burgers (about 1 inch long and 1/2 inch thick). Heat the oil in a pan and fry the mini burgers and put them aside.

For the sauce, peel the fresh tomatoes (you can leave them in hot boiling water for a about a minute and they will peel very fast and easy), put them in a food processor or mixer and mix them on high setting until fully pureed.

Heat the oil in a pan, fry the crushed or grated garlic for about a minute (do not fry them on high heat), add the pureed tomatoes, apple or cider vinegar, sugar and sliced chilli and cook the sauce for about 20 minutes on medium high heat and stirring every once in a while until the sauce is reduced and thickened, add the mini burgers and cook for another 5 minutes to heat them up.

Cook the spaghetti according to the instructions, drain and mix with the sauce and garnish with fresh chopped chives.

Enjoy!

Fast Food Calories and Calorie Burning Facts

I really like McDonald's Big Mac menu, I have it as often as once or twice a month and the day I have it, I hardly eat any thing else apart form fresh fruits and water. I was just curious to find out how many calories are actually in this menu and how much exercise you should really do to burn it and avoid body fat.

Here is the result:

The Big Mac by itself contains 490 calories which might not seem a problem, especially that it contains 24 grams of fat in total, which you might think is ok for one main meal, but it gets a little tricky when you find out that actually 10 grams of this fat is pure SATURATED, which is 50% percent of your total GDA (guideline daily amounts) as a woman!

A medium sized French fries or chips contains 330 calories with 16 grams of fat ofwhich 2 grams is saturated.

A medium Coca Cola counts 170 calories with 42 grams of sugar, which is almost 50% of your GDA! (in average, adults need about 90 grams of sugar every day)

So this menu in total holds 990 calories which is about 50% of your GDA!! And you only had one meal and there are still two more to go for the rest of the day!!

You might think if you go for a walk, you will burn a lot of calories, well let me tell you that if you walked for an hour, you would burn less than 200 calories!! Shocked? If you jog, you will burn about 10.5 calories a minute instead, so a Big Mac menu will keep you jogging for around 1 1/2 hours!

Of course if you are an active person and do regular proper exercise, you have nothing to worry!

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Baby Pasta with Tomato, Peas & Carrot

I made this today and my daughter simply loved it, eagerly awaiting every mouthful!

Ingredients

• 1 handful of your choice of pasta
• 1 fresh ripe medium tomato (I used Italian tomato for its taste, but if you don't have one just use any and add tiny bit of tomato paste for the flavor)
• 1 handful of green peas (fresh or frozen)
• 1 medium carrot
• 1 garlic clove
• Half a teaspoon of ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of grated mild low salt cheese (e.g. edam, emental, gauda, cheddar)
• 1 small glass of water

Method

Peel and chop the tomato, carrot and garlic, put them in a pot. Add the green peas, pasta, ground cumin, extra virgin olive oil , grated cheese and water. Cook for about half an hour or until every thing is well cooked and there is still some water left in the pot. Pour the cooked food into a mixer or mash it finely.

Homemade Vegetable Baby Food

My baby is around 8 months and today I made this for her and she loved it, so I thought I will share it here for those of you with babies.

Ingredients (enough for two main meals)

• 1 medium potato
• 1 medium carrot
• 3 small cauliflower florets
• 1 handful of green peas (frozen or fresh)
• 1 garlic clove
• Half a teaspoon of turmeric
• Half a teaspoon of ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon of grated mild cheese (low salt cheddar, edam, emmental or gouda)
• 3 tablespoons of whole milk
• 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 small glass of water

Method

Wash all the vegetables and chop (except for green peas). Put them in a pot, add the rest of the ingredients (turmeric, ground cumin, cheese, whole milk, extra virgin olive oil and water) and cook for about 25 to 30 minutes. There should be still some water left in the pot.

Pour the cooked vegetables in a mixer and mix it. Ready to go!

Fusilli with Tuna and Garden Herbs

It is one of those very hot summer days and I thought you may not feel like warm food! I came up with this salad for our lunch and we loved it. I decided to share it with you.

I will give you the amounts per person. You will need.

• 100 grams of fusilli
• a handful of tinned sweet corn
• a tablespoon of chopped onions
• a handful of chopped fresh garden herbs and lettuce
• fresh dill and coriander
• spring onion chives and cress
• baby leaves of red and green lettuce
• half a tin of tuna in brine
• salt and pepper to season
• freshly squeezed lime juice
• extra virgin olive oil to dress

Cook fusilli as per instructions on package, drain, rinse with cold water and set aside. Put chopped onions and sweet corn in a bowl, drain tuna and add it to the bowl, add fusilli, season with salt and pepper and dress with lime juice and extra virgin olive oil, add chopped herbs and lettuce right at the end and serve.

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Courgette Stir Fry

This one is very fast, easy and delicious whether as a healthy lunch, side dish or even a starter. Give it a go, you won't regret it!

Take two courgettes, cut lengthwise and slice them. Roughly chop an onion (same size as your courgette slices).

Heat a frying pan, keep the temperature high , add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, let the oil get very hot first then add onions and stir fry for two minutes.

Now add the courgettes and stir fry for two minutes, finally season with soy sauce and serve immediately!

Quick summer salad to go with all!

Simply chop the following into medium sized cubes: a cucumber, 4 tomatoes and a medium onion. Chop a bunch of fresh garden mint, mix all, season with sea salt and black pepper and dress it with 1 table spoon of freshly squeezed lime and extra virgin olive oil. Enjoy!

Quick clever tip: To make chopped/sliced onions more crunchy and juicy, leave them in cold water for 5 minutes!

Weight Loss and Starvation

Hello!

Did you know that if you starve yourself, it is actually harder to lose weight? It might sound unreal, but it's true. As soon as you start to get hungry and starve, your body starts to store fat for the famine it thinks your body is facing.

The best way is to prevent yourself from getting hungry by eating healthy snacks and fruits often during the day.

Try raw carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, cauliflower and vegetables of this sort as they contain very low fat and low carbohydrates so they are extremely healthy and they will send useful signals to your brain that you are not hungry and your body will carry on its normal metabolism and burn your unwanted body fat.

Don't forget fresh fruits and to top it fully, a bit of exercise will make your weight loss come along beautifully!