Tag: Mindful Eating

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Courgette and Goat Butter Soup

After quitting veganism and enjoying the benefits of animal products for a couple of weeks, I decided to switch up my diet and experiment with a Keto-Carb Cycling one. The concept is very easy: I rotate my fat-carb ratio, alternating high-fat-low-carb and high-carb-low-fat days. From Saturday to Tuesday, I keep my fat intake very high (50-70%) and my carb intake very low (5-10%); my protein intake is pretty much consistent (25-40%). On Wednesday, I have a carb refeed, so my carb intake spikes up to 50%, while my fat intake goes down to 20%; Thursday and Friday are moderate-carb days, with Thursday being a little higher in carbs and Friday a little higher in fats. I like this way of eating, because it allows me to enjoy all of my favourite foods, without stressing myself out on macros too much.

This is a super easy recipe for my high-fat dinners, and is really enjoyable alongside some baked haddock or salmon.

Ingredients

350 g Courgettes (1 medium-large Courgette)

30 g Goat Butter

1 Stalk Spring Onion

1 piece Ginger Root

Himalayan Salt

Fresh Parsley to Garnish

350 ml Lukewarm Water

Cooking Method

Chop your courgette(s), spring onion and ginger.

Melt goat butter in a saucepan or skillet.

Add in the spring onion stalk, the piece of ginger, the chopped courgettes and some salt, cover and cook for 5-10 mins, stirring from time to time to make sure they cook evenly.

If you have a Vitamix, pour your water in and place the rest of the ingredients. Set it on “soup” programme, and allow it to blend your creamy soup for you. If you have an ordinary blender or food processor, just blend your ingredients in the traditional way — you might need hot water, rather than lukewarm, though.

Sprikle with fresh parsley before serving.

Enjoy!

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How To Consume a Whole Salmon (3Kg) Without Wasting Any of It

If you want to be as ethical as possible, not only do you want to buy local and sustainable, you also want to maximise your food while minimising your waste. An excellent way to do so is making broth out of your leftovers. Whilst chicken bone broth has become increasingly popular over the past few years, not many people know you can make a delicious — and very healthy — broth out of fatty fish too. All animal products are indeed high in collagen, which is the most abundant protein in our body, and the most important one, as it’s responsible for connecting our organ tissues (including tendons, ligaments and skin). Vegetable collagen is unfortunately very hard to be absorbed and used by our bodies, but animal collagen is easily absorbed. Collagen is also held responsible for healing our guts, hair and damaged skin (it can also help with stretch marks and cellulite). When cooking broth, collagen is released from the animal’s bones and flesh, and loosed into the water in the form of gelatine. This is what makes broth so precious for your health.

It was around Easter time, and we found an incredible offer at Asda’s: a whole salmon (3Kg) worth £30 was reduced and on sale for only £13.99. Yes, 3Kg is too much for too people alone, unless you want to freeze the salmon, but the offer was too appealing not to take advantage of it — mostly because those poor salmons would otherwise have been fished in vain. So we bought one, cut it in 3 pieces, stuffed it with fresh ginger, rosemary, bay leaves, thymes, fresh parsley, Himalayan salt and lemon wedges, and baked it at 180°C for 30 minutes.

Whole salmon stuffed with fresh ginger, rosemary, bay leaves, thymes, fresh parsley, Himalayan salt and lemon wedges, and baked at 180°C for 30 minutes.

We ate nothing but salmon for 3 days straight, keeping all fishbones, head, tail, uneaten skin and flesh aside. At the end of the 3rd day, we decided to make some broth out of such leftovers.

We placed head, tail, fishbones, skin and flesh in a saucepan with: water, 1 carrot, 1 piece of ginger, some spring onions and regular onions (they’ll change their composition while cooking, losing some of their FODMAP contents in the process). We added some salt and simmered for 3-4 hours.

The broth was unbelievably good and satiating. We had it plain, after our dinner, but it would have been just as delicious with some prawns or shrimps, courgettes and maybe rice noodles.

What’s more important for us, however, is that that poor salmon hasn’t died in vain: we benefitted from its death for 3 days, not harming any other animals meanwhile, and used it in all the possible ways. This is what mindful eating really means!

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Some Tips to Enjoy Liver

Why You Should Be Eating Liver

As I said in my post on why I’m no longer vegan , one of my favourite meals is organ meats for 2 reasons: they’re extremely cheap, as they’re not typically popular among average meat eaters; they’re incredibly packed with nutrients and extremely absorbable by our bodies, because they’re what we, as a species, have evolved on.

Livers (from cows, lambs, pigs, geese, chickens and fish) are incredibly rich in B12, B2 (Riboflavin), B9 (Folate), Vitamin A, Iron, Copper, Choline, according to healthline.com. This is due to the liver’s functions of: processing the digested food from the animal’s gut and absorbing nutrients from it, while filtering and clearing the blood from toxins. Livers are also light in calories and high in proteins, making them fit for most diets. This is why everyone should be consuming livers on a regular basis.

If organs are cheap and highly nutritious, unfortunately, they’re not necessarily as tasty, especially when not cooked properly, or when overcooked. With a few adjustments, however, organs can become part of a very enjoyable meal. In this specific post, I’ll focus on livers exclusively. Just stay tuned for further posts on hearts and kidneys. 😉

My Tips to Enjoy Liver

  1. Don’t overcook it. Liver is soft, tender and creamy, but tends to get a bit stiff when overcooked. The best thing you can do is chop or mince liver prior to cooking it, and not cook it for more than 1 minute on each side.
  2. Use plenty of herbs (such as rosemary, thyme, chives and bay leaves), onions or spring onions, salt and pepper to stir fry your liver. These will enhance the liver’s flavour, while hiding its animal-like taste, which not everybody enjoys.
  3. Squeeze some fresh lemon or lime juice on your liver, to enhance its flavour even more.
  4. Don’t quit liver just because you didn’t like it the first time. Keep trying out different recipes until you find a way to enjoy it: you’ll sure get used to its taste and texture.

If you have any tips that would like to share with me, feel free to comment down below. 😉

Thanks for following me along my journey!

Lamb liver stir fry with: red pepper, mushrooms, ginger, spring onion and fresh parsley.
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My Mindful, Ethical, Easter

Thousands of lambs are slaughtered every year around Easter time, just because it’s a tradition to consume lamb on Easter Day. I’m not gonna lie, lamb is my favourite meat, taste-wise. However, I’ve always opposed this silly tradition, as this unfair massacre is just senseless. After all, I can still enjoy lamb any other day.

On the other hand, however, I’m well aware of the fact that nobody will stop slaughtering lambs for Easter just because I refuse to buy them, and the unsold meat (mostly organs) will be wasted, without reducing the numbers of lambs to be slaughtered the next year. How can this dilemma be solved in the most ethical way?

Our Ethical Choice

We decided not to order any meat from our local farmers market this Easter, but to go and see what was available, namely, to buy what no one else wanted to buy and would most likely end up in the trash. Most meat was obviously lamb, and that’s what we also bought. However, rather than buying legs, shoulders, chops or popular cuts in general, we went for hearts and necks, which are: cheap, delicious, nutritious and less popular (therefore more likely to be wasted).

Our Easter Table

As you might or might not know, I have Argentinian roots on my maternal side, and for my family, Easter is a serious tradition. In particular, something that can never miss from our Easter table are empanadas. Since I quit gluten, however, I also stopped making empanadas for many years. But this year I wanted to try something new, and decided to make tuna empanadas again, using only buckwheat, goat butter, salt, water and 1 duck egg for my dough. Although the overall consistency came out quite different from the empanadas my grandma used to make when I was a kid, the taste was awesome and both me and my husband really enjoyed them.

Alongside empanadas, we had a huge salad, halloumi, cheddar, mushrooms, lamb necks and hearts, all cooked on a raclette grill. It took me less than 5 minutes to prepare everything, and it turned out to be one of the tastiest and most enjoyable Easter lunches ever.

Lamb hearts, halloumi and mushrooms cooked on stone on top of our raclette grill (underneath, some cheddar is being melted meanwhile)

As a dessert, I just combined some eggs with raw cacao powder, protein powder, liquid stevia, bicarbonate of soda, Himalayan salt and vanilla extract, and made some muffins out of it. It could never be Easter without some chocolatey dessert. 😉

My gluten free, sugar free, high protein chocolate muffins. A perfect finisher for a mindful Easter lunch. 🙂


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Spinach and Potato Soup

What do I miss more from my old, unaware, high FODMAP lifestyle than my weekly leek and potato soup? Maybe only my daily avocado… sad story! 🙁

I am a real soup person, as you might already know. Soups are great because: 1) they combine carbs and veggies, so I can get both from just one dish (in theory, you can even throw in your protein as well, but I usually prefer having my protein as a separate dish); 2) they’re typically low in calories, so they fill me up without making me feel guilty; 3) they’re warm and easy to digest; 4) they’re so fun to make!

As Autumn is approaching, I decided to challenge myself by creating one soup a day for the first week of October. On Monday, I made my signature “Mung Beans and Kale” soup (which you can find in my FREE ebook, see the link below). On Tuesday, I came up with my Thai Sweet Potato and Courgette Soup. Yesterday (Tuesday), I felt inspired to try out something new, something that could finally replace my beloved-but-forbidden Leek and Potato soup.

Here’s the recipe (serves 3-4):

  • 3 medium-small Potatoes
  • 1 small Sweet Potato
  • 2-3 cups Fresh or Frozen Spinach (I used frozen)
  • 1 Carrot
  • 1 Spring Onion (the green part only)
  • 3 cups Fresh, Filtered Water
  • Himalayan Salt,
  • Nutmeg
  • Parmesan Cheese (or Nutritional Yeast, for a vegan alternative)

Chop carrot and spring onion.

Place them into a pot, add water and salt and cover with a lid.

Bring to a boil.

In the meantime, chop potatoes and your sweet potato and add to the boiling pot. Add in your frozen spinach,* cover and reduce heat to low.

Simmer for 15-20 minutes. Blend to reach your desired consistency (I left some potato chunks and spinach bits, as I prefer it this way, but you can make it creamier, if you like).

*If you’re using fresh spinach, you want to add it towards the end of your cooking process, or it’ll overcook.

Adjust salt and nutmeg, and garnish with nutritional yeast. Enjoy! 🙂

I had it with my BBQ Marinated Tofu and I loved it! 😉