Wednesday 16 July 2014

2 Smoothies! :)

The other day my girlfriend bought a smoothie recipe book called Smoothies och Juicer (Smoothies and Juice) from the Swedish store Lagerhaus and we've already tried out two of the recipes from it. Both of them turned out really well, considering I've never made smoothies before, so I thought I would share the recipes with you. We modified them slightly to suit our preferences.

Kiwi and Lime Smoothie

First we went for a kiwi and lime smoothie recipe, partly because it sounded tasty, and partly because we had quite a few kiwis to eat :). It turned out very rich and smooth, probably because of the ice cream in it, but also very refreshing and fruity.

Ingredients:
2 kiwis
Half a lime
150 ml of milk
400 g of vanilla ice cream

Pour the milk into the blender and squeeze in the juice from the lime. Then scoop out the kiwis and add them. Finally add the ice cream and blend it all together :) It should make 2-3 servings. For a healthier alternative, use vanilla yoghurt instead of ice cream.


You can also check out this recipe on my girlfriend's blog here

Strawberry Cooler Recipe

The second recipe we went for was called Apple Cooler, but there were more strawberries in it than apples, so I'm gonna call it Strawberry Cooler :) This one was lighter and fruitier, so it's good if you're on a diet.

Ingredients:
1 apple
1 peach
4 oranges
A number of strawberries (See the picture below to see how many we used)



First peel and core the apple, chop it and add it to the blender. Core and chop the peach and add it. Chop the strawberries and add them. Finally squeeze the oranges into the mixture and blend well. Serve with ice and enjoy this delicious and wholesome, summer smoothie. It's great if you love bits!


I hope this recipes gave you some inspiration! Comment if you know any other nice smoothie recipes you want to share. Thank you for reading :)

Sunday 13 July 2014

Chanterelle Mushrooms on Toast

I had never heard of or tried Chanterelle mushrooms until I came to Sweden, where they are a bit of a delicacy. I've never seen them in the supermarket in the UK, which is a shame because they're really tasty and I much prefer them over regular mushrooms. Luckily, they're really easy to get a hold of in Sweden. The other day I cooked some up with special homemade Swedish style Chanterelle sauce (which is ridiculously simple to make) and had it on toast for dinner, with salad on the side (I'd had a big lunch so I wanted something light). This recipe makes enough mushrooms for 8 pieces of toast.


Ingredients:
200 g Chanterelle mushrooms
125 ml cream
A large knob of butter
8 slices of white bread

1. Fry the mushrooms in the butter for several minutes until they start to go soft. Then add the cream. Add enough to fill up the pan, as some will boil away. 
2. Stir for a couple more minutes until the sauce is fully warm.
3. Toast and butter the bread and then add the mushrooms with the sauce to each slice.

This recipe is so simple I almost feel stupid writing it up but the mushrooms are really tasty and they go really well with the sauce. This recipe is perfect for a light lunch or snack, but you can also add the mushrooms and sauce to pretty much anything, it goes really well with rice and probably with pasta as well. To be honest I could probably eat it with anything. I don't know how hard it is to get a hold of chanterelle mushrooms in countries other than Sweden. I'll have a look next time I'm in the UK to see if I can find any. But if you do have chance to find some, then I'd definitely recommend buying them! 

Friday 11 July 2014

Fitness Guru One Meal Powder

Fitness Guru One Meal Powder

My girlfriend and I recently bought a powder from Fitness Guru. Its called One Meal and can be used either as a meal replacement or as a supplement. My girlfriend bought it to have instead of breakfast when she's in a rush, but I've ended up using most of it, and she's only had it once so far. I've been using it for snacks in between meals and also mixing it with my oatmeal for breakfast sometimes. My god does it taste good! The flavour is Madagascar Vanilla and its really sweet and tasty. Some might find it a bit sickly but I have a sweet tooth so I loved it :). In addition it was extremely filling and kept me full for a long time, so I think it'll definitely work as a meal substitute for those who don't have time to cook or who are trying to diet. I'm not trying to lose weight so I'm just using it in order to make sure I'm getting enough protein into my diet, and also because it tastes so damn good. Ok, mainly because it tastes so damn good.


I don't have much experience with this kind of thing, so I can't really compare to similar products, but the price was reasonable (25 pounds for 1.38 kg). There's quite a lot of carbs in it (43 g per 100g) so I'd avoid if you're on a low carb diet. There is nevertheless very little sugar so I'm not too worried and its aspartame free which is another plus. Its also high in protein (38 g per 100 g) so its good if you need more protein in your diet. They recommend 2 and a half scoops per serving, but personally I think this is way too much and rarely use more than 1 scoop.

Since the taste is so amazing, I'm going to use it in baking and smoothies recipes which I'll post up at some point once I get around to trying them out :). So stay tuned.

Here is the link to Fitness Guru if you're interested: http://www.fitnessguru.com/en.