Fish n Chips

Since eating Paleo foods, there isn't anything that I have really craved, apart from fish and chips. The village that I live in has quite possibly the best fish and chips around and Friday nights after training I can smell the smell that I love so much. I know that if I ate the stodgy potatoes and fried fish I would probably be disappointed with the feeling of bloated-ness that I would get from it, plus I have a competition in Portugal to stay healthy for!

I bought Rainbow Trout from Sainsbury's for about £2.40 from the fresh fish counter. Already this is half of what the chip shop would have charged me. I swapped the potatoes for sweet potatoes, both root vegetables, but sweet potatoes come from the Solanceae Family who's other members include tomatoes, eggplant and peppers.

Ingredients:

Rainbow Trout

Sweet Potato

Mange Tout

Lemon

Coriander

Black Pepper

Method:

Cut the sweet potatoes in to wedges and season with pepper and place on a baking tray and cook for 30 minutes.

The Rainbow trout like mine, may already be gutted, so just wash the fish and place on tin foil, more than enough to cover it. Slice the lemon and place inside the slit of the fish and add coriander and pepper to season. I had a lemon, but lime would be really nice instead.

Place in the oven and cook for about 17 minutes with the sweet potato.

Serve up the fish and potato wedges and put the mange tout in a pan with balsamic vinegar. Cook until ready.

Enjoy!

Jolie x

Stir fry in Balsamic Vinegar with Coriander Cauliflower 'Rice'

Saturday evening I was in a rush. I came home from the gym and needed to get fed, showered and out to my friends birthday party ASAP. 

This is the thing with stir fry, it's so quick and easy to do when you're in a hurry. I made my stir fry with Quorn Pieces, but you can add any protein you want with it.

Ingredients:

Sugar snap

Courgette

Green Pepper

Yellow Pepper

Asparagus

Cauliflower - 1 Cauli gives you 2 portions

Mushrooms

Quorn Pieces

Paprika

Coriander

Coconut oil

Method:

Prepare the veggies. I like to cut my courgette and peppers length ways and I snap the Asparagus so they are all roughly the same length. 

Blend the Cauliflower until it is in fine pieces and heat a non stick pan and add coconut oil. 

Place the Quorn in a non stick wok or frying pan and cover all the pieces with Paprika. 

Add all the veggies to the pan. Add a little water and cover the pan to steam for a while, then add the balsamic vinegar. 

Add Coriander to the cauliflower and serve on a plate immediately and add the stir fry.

Voila!

Enjoy!

Thanks to my friend Kerry Masarati who gave me the idea of adding paprika and balsamic vinegar to the veggies and also to Chris Cruze who told me about adding coriander to Cauliflower 'Rice'.

Tuna & Veggie stuffed pepper

I love stuffed peppers, mainly because there are endless ingredients you can stuff them with and they are so good for you. Red bell peppers have more vitamin C in them than a large orange, and they are gorgeous when roasted.

Although I call myself a veggie, I do eat fish, so I guess I'm a fish-a-tarian or Pescaterian as the better word for it is. I love fish, but it wasn't always the way. I learned to love it as I grew older and realised that there was more to it than fish fingers. Working in a posh fish restaurant in my late teens definitely help as I got to taste a lot that was on the menu.
There are days when I don't have time to get to the shops and get fresh fish, so a good ole can of Tuna comes in handy for a great source of protein.
Tuna can be quite bland, so in my opinion it needs a lot of seasoning, so I tend to use black pepper and chilli to liven it up a bit.

Ingredients:
Large bell pepper or 2 small ones
Can of Tuna in spring water
Grated cheese
Onion
Courgette
Fine Beans
Chilli flakes
Black pepper

Method:
Pre heat the oven to around 200f
Chop the top off the pepper to make a lid and de-seed. Cut any seeds or stem away from the lid.
Chop the veggie in to pieces including the onion. Place in a bowl and add the Tuna. Season to your taste and add the cheese. Mix together really well and stuff the pepper(s).
Place in an oven proof dish and cook for around 35-40 minutes.

Enjoy!
Jolie x

Thai Green Veggie Curry with Cauliflower 'Rice'

Thailand is one of my favourite places in the world to visit, so the food and the place go hand in hand.
Curry can be pretty fattening due to the cream that goes in to making it, but I have been using creamed coconut melted down with boiling water which still gives that gorgeous flavour and doesn't taste like you're sipping flavoured water.

Ingredients:

Onion
Mange Tout
Sugar snap
Aubergine
Courgette
Cauliflower
Mae Ploy Green curry paste
Quorn pieces
Blue Dragon Creamed Coconut (size of 2 lego bricks)


Method:

Heat a non stick wok style pan or frying pan and fry the onion, add the curry paste and a little water to stop the paste and onion burning.
Add the veggies and the Quorn pieces.
Cover the veggies with a Pint of water and the creamed coconut. Reduce the heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes.
Put the Cauliflower in to a blender and wizz up until it is in little pieces. Boil in water until cooked, drain and serve with the curry.

The great thing about this curry is that you don't feel bloated once you have eaten it. The carbs from regular Thai Jasmine rice would normally make you feel bloated, but cauliflower doesn't.

Enjoy!

Jolie x

Aubergine layer veggie lasagne

After an afternoon of training with Kerry last week, we were chatting about food and I mentioned I had an aubergine in the fridge and wasn't sure what to do with it. She suggested that I make a lasagne with it, slicing it length ways and replacing it where we would normally put pasta sheets. I had seen on another blog by Debbie Manlove (my crossfit coach's sister) where she had used a courgette and it looked delicious.
Click on the link below to find out how I made it:
http://www.kineticmartialarts.co.uk/#!aubergine-lasagne/cvpf

Enjoy!

Thanks to Kerry Masarati for the idea x

Breakfast - Aussie Omelette

Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. It fuels you ready for the day ahead and keeps your metabolism running as it should. I personally can't start the day without it and is my favourite meal of the day, so I make sure I make it the best I can.

I'm not the best cook in the world and my omelette's were pretty rubbish until my boyfriend Jason showed me how to make a sturdy omelette, that doesn't look like fried scrambled egg.

Click here for the recipe
http://www.kineticmartialarts.co.uk/#!aussie-omelette/c1w0m

Tip: I'm a real big fan of seasoning and if you like chilli, it goes well in the omelette or just keep to some fresh herbs like Basil for extra flavour.

Thanks to Jason Norris for the idea x

Way to go Paleo

Just recently I have been posting some dishes that I have been making on to my facebook page. I've had a lot of interest and comments about the recipes as I have kept the food as carb free as I possibly can.

I train and fight in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the weight bracket 58.6 - 64kg (Light). I spent the whole of 2012 in this bracket and I know that it didn't really suit my build so I wanted to go down to fight in the under 58.5kg weight bracket (Feather).
Throughout my whole 20's I was around 55kg. It suited me fine, but I wasn't in to the sports that I am into today, so I was a little worried that the muscle that I carry around now wouldn't allow me to get there again. I'm not really sure how I got up to the 60 mark, maybe when I started baking really nice cakes and generally just being happy with the way I looked. I wasn't over weight and never had a problem with how I looked. I had learned to love and accept my body, especially as I was keeping it fit and healthy from all the exercise I was doing.

I started my clean healthy diet at the beginning of December 2012 at 61kg. I was eating 3 meals a day and starting off with Porridge and eating little carbs for lunch and dinner. My healthy weakness is Nairns Oat Biscuits with peanut butter on top, and basically peanut butter full stop. I can quite easily get through a jar per week no problem as I make Peanut butter balls made with oats, honey and protein powder.
Over Christmas I ate as little carbs as possible and my weight fluctuated between 59 - 58kg. I was ill around this time too with the Noro Virus, so I was feeling pretty weak and skinny. I still had a few cheat days and allowed myself some chocolate, biscuits and my mums home made Christmas pudding.

Once January 2nd came, I knew that I had to get really serious about my weight as I had 3 weeks until the European championships in Portugal. So I started the day with an omelette. 3 eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and spinach. It felt really odd eating something other than porridge for breakfast.
My friend and training partner Kerry told me that she makes her omelettes with 2 eggs and 2 egg whites. Its less fat and you still get a good amount of protein in your diet. So from then on, thats how I made them.

With a Paleo diet, people describe it as a Caveman style diet and sticking to meat and veg. This is a little difficult when you don't eat meat. I love Fish and often cook with Quorn, so sticking to those, I wanted to prove that it wasn't going to be a difficult thing to do.
From 2nd January until now, I made my feather weight division weight and weigh 55.6kg. Dropping around 2.5kg in 12 days and feeling really good about it too. Now its about maintaining the weight with over a week to go until the championships.

In this blog I will add recipes that are really simple to make.... I'm no top chef and I like to keep things as simple and as tasty as possible. I have a lot of friends who follow this diet too for well being and also to keep their weight down for Jiu Jitsu competitions and MMA fights, and they have given me a lot of ideas and inspired these dishes too.

Enjoy!