Natural muesli

As promised - here is my version of natural muesli (it's super simple, but incredibly tasty, especially served with mixed berries). 

Natural muesli - 10 serves 
Ingredients:
50g organic dried apple
45g organic dried blueberries
45g organic dried cranberries
50g organic sultanas
360g (4 cups) whole rolled oats

Method:
Add apple and blueberries to the thermomix - pulse on turbo 3-5 times. (Or, if not using a TM, chop to desired size.)
Add remaining ingredients and mix (reverse, sp 5, 5 seconds).

Serving size is approximately 50g. Store remaining muesli in an airtight container.

Thawing moments - a refined sugar free alternative to melting moments

Ingredients
Biscuit
60g rapadura 
60g cornflour
225g spelt flour
250g butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

Icing
120g rapadura
100g unsalted butter
juice of a lemon

Or, for a caramely alternative, drop the rapadura to 70g, omit the lemon and add a tablespoon of maple syrup.

Method
Preheat oven to 180'C
Add rapadura to Thermomix/food processor and mill for 15 second on speed 9
Add other ingredients and mix for 10 seconds on speed 5
Knead on dough setting for 20 seconds 
Roll out into balls on a baking tray and press down with a fork dipped in spelt flour.
Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown - they will still be very soft to touch at this point but will harden as they cool
Allow to cool on tray for 5 minutes, then transfer onto a wire rack


Once completely cool, spread a spoonful of the icing onto the base of a biscuit and then place another biscuit on top.

Icing 
Place rapadura into a dry Thermomix jug/food processor bowl and mill for 30 seconds, speed 9. Add butter and cream on 10 seconds on speed 7, scrape down jug and repeat. Add lemon juice (or maple syrup) and mix 10 seconds on speed 4. 

Dinner meal plan - August - weeks 1 and 2

Fried rice from leftovers 
Preservative free sausages with sweet potato fries and veges
Mum's rissoles with cauli mash and greens
Quirky Jo's stroganoff with cabbage noodles
Skinnymixers all in one chicken dinner
Pizza
Pulled beef burgers 
Tacos
Lasagne and salad
Beef kebabs with wholemeal cous cous salad
Beef and broccoli stir fry

Real Food, Real Life

I've been thinking a lot lately about my real food philosophy and incorporating it into my everyday life. While JERF in June was a great way to kick start optimising our family's approach to eating more real food, I'm not kidding myself that processed and packaged food won't creep back into the mix.

I am far from perfect, and motivation and organisation waxes and wanes. But remembering to eat more real food and appreciate my body instead of trashing it with too many numbers and fake foods should be part of everyday life. I'm not going to say I'll never eat processed food because, for me, that's not sustainable. I'm not, however, going to let processed food creep in to the extent it was before.

It's all about Real Food in Real Life and that's why I'll be renaming my blog. Life can't be one big challenge, but it can be a series of everyday steps to increase real food and decrease processed food in our lives. 

I hope you'll keep following Real Food, Real Life and the journey we're on to improve our lifestyle. 

Meal plans #2 and #3 from JERF in June

In wrapping up JERF in June, I realised I'd been a bit remiss in not sharing the second and third fortnight meal plans with you all, so here are my main meals below for more meal inspiration. 

Dinner:

• pumpkin soup with spelt challah
• popcorn chicken, sweet potato chips and salad
• ricotta gnocchi (I replaced bakers flour with wholemeal) with bacon tomato sauce (a recipe I made up to use up our haul of cherry tomatoes, but essentially I fried up some diced bacon and garlic, added a heap of cherry tomatoes to roast and the a squeeze of half and lemon and a handful of torn basil leaves)
• burgers on lettuce buns (spelt challah buns for the kids) with homemade chips 
• slow cooker beef korma with steamed greens
• chicken kiev with salad
• pizza and salad
• grainfree lasagne (from Quirky Cooking Cookbook)
• beef and onion pie and salad (Save with Jamie)
• sausage casserole and greens
• roast chicken and veges with homemade gravy
• leftover chicken with nyonya sauce, brown rice and steamed greens
• stroganoff with cabbage noodles (Quirky Cooking Cookbook)
• silverside with mashed potatoes and vegetables
• nachos (from mountain bread) with mexican mince, homemade salsa and guacamole 
• goulash
• butter chicken

The end of June, the start of something new

Well, that's it. June is done. We've JERFed throughout June and we've made it to this point. I'm so proud of the efforts of everyone who has participated in JERF in June. Whether it's been sticking to a completely real food diet or just introducing more real foods into their family's meals. Well done everyone and thanks for joining in the ride. 

For me personally, JERF in June has been a challenge in more ways than one. First was making it through the cravings and sugar withdrawals in the first week, second was the sudden upswing in work that saw me working 10+ hour days, then the added interstate travel and finally the challenge of managing not only sticking to real food, but also blogging about it.

But, I made it through. And I'm happy to say that our family are much better for it. A and I are both, without a doubt feeling the positive effects of sticking to real food. 

We've both seen improvements in our digestive systems, my skin has cleared up and I've lost 2.5kgs, and we both have more energy day to day. The added bonus is that we've easily saved over $100 by taking our own snacks places, eating homemade and avoiding takeaway.

One of the things I noticed post week one was that my physical cravings for chocolate and junk had gone, but my mental cravings were still there. I am an emotional eater. Name an emotion and I'll eat for it. It has been a constant fight with myself this month to not eat my feelings. I think it will be a struggle that lasts a lot longer than this challenge. But by challenging myself I've been able to resist the urge to gorge myself on chocolate or placate myself with greasy food. This is a definite win for me.

So, June is over. What happens now? For us the JERF challenge continues and my family and I will continue to JERF in July. I'll also try to keep blogging (hopefully more voraciously now that the work crisis has been sorted) and sharing tips, ideas and recipes with you. 

What does post June look like for you in terms of JERF? I'd love it if some of my readers wanted to share your experiences with JERF in June and what happens now for you.

Thanks everyone. I look forward to continuing to JERF in July with you all. x

JERF peppermint chocolate

So, I may or may not been writing this post with my mouth stuffed full of the delicious peppermint chocolate I made today. Seriously, it is so tasty. So here's the recipe to try for yourself.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup almonds
6 tbs coconut oil
4 tbs raw cacao
4 tbs almond butter*
1-2 tbs honey or maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp peppermint oil or essence
Pinch of Himalayan salt
Shredded coconut

*I made my own almond butter by whizzing up 225g of raw almonds with 1 tsp rapadura and a pinch of salt (Thermomix sp  9 for 5 minutes, stopping every 30 secs-1 minute to scrape down the sides), then adding macadamia oil (on sp 5) until it's the right consistency.

Method (thermie):
Chop almonds in the thermie  until you reach desired consistency (finely chopped, but not made into almond meal...), then empty into a dry bowl. Wipe out the jug with paper towel.

Heat up the coconut oil, cacao, almond butter, honey, vanilla, peppermint and salt - 50 degrees, 3 minutes, sp 3.

Add chopped almonds and shredded coconut and mix on reverse, sp 2 for 5-10 seconds.

Pour into a (baking paper) lined tray and pop into the freezer until set. Cut into desired size. Store in the fridge or freezer.


Method (non thermie):
Chop almonds in the food processor until you reach desired consistency (finely chopped, but not made into almond meal...).

Heat up the coconut oil, cacao, almond butter, honey, vanilla, peppermint and salt on low heat, stirring continuously until combined.
.

Add chopped almonds and shredded coconut and mix until combined.

Pour into a (baking paper) lined tray and pop into the freezer until set. Cut into desired size. Store in the fridge or freezer.

Experimenting with chicken kiev

As promised - this week I added healthy chicken kiev to my meal plan and did some experimenting to figure out a delicious JERF recipe to share with you all. So, here it is...

Ingredients

2-4 chicken breasts

Coconut oil to fry

Herb butter

100g butter

Handful of fresh parsley leaves (finely chopped)

2 cloves of garlic (crushed)

Salt 

Pepper

"Crumb"

2 eggs (beaten)

3 tbs coconut milk

75g coconut flour/arrowroot flour/cornflour

1/2 tsp garlic powder

**1 cup almond meal (optional)

Mix the butter, herbs, salt and pepper until well combined and then wrap into a log with baking paper/cling wrap and pop into the freezer to harden.

 

Pound the chicken breasts between two pieces of baking paper with a rolling pin until 1/2cm thick. (I also cut the breasts into smaller sizes to make bite sized kievs for the kids.)

Slice the butter into enough equal parts to fill your kievs and pop into the middle of the flattened breast pieces. Fold the shorter ends of the chicken in and then roll the chicken around the butter.

 

Once you've rolled your kiev, cover it in plastic wrap to help hold its shape and pop into the fridge for 1-2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees. Pull the chicken out of the fridge, unwrap and dip into the egg/coconut milk mixture, then into the flour combined with the garlic powder. Make sure it has a good coating to really get the "crumb" texture. 

**(I made mine nut free so the leftovers were daycare friendly, but if you don't need to do that, almond meal makes a really good crumb in place of the flour.)

Shallow fry the kievs in coconut oil in a frypan to brown them and then pop into the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes to cook.

Lauren's nutty toasted muesli

120g walnuts

100g macadamias

100g hazelnuts

150g almonds

250g oats

60g pepitas

70g sunflower seeds

20g linseed

20g sesame seeds

50g shredded coconut

50g sultanas

50g dried cranberries 

50g maple syrup

50g coconut oil

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cover oven trays with baking paper. 

Place nuts in Thermomix bowl and turbo x3 (or until you reach your preferred consistency). 

Add everything else except the syrup and oil and mix for 15 seconds, reverse, speed 2. 

Add syrup and oil and mix at 37 degrees, reverse, sp 2 for 45 seconds. (If it's winter and your coconut oil is really solid, you may need to mix for longer.)

10 minutes in 180 degree oven until golden. 

You can make this in a food processor by melting the oil in the microwave first and mixing it through.

This works well with any combination of nuts, I've just highlighted our favourite combination above.

Friday fake-aways

After  a long week, the last thing I feel like doing is cooking another meal. And it seems so easy to just grab some take away to celebrate the end of the week. But when you start to look at what is in this food, you start to realise the cost isn't just to your hip pocket, but also to your health. 

Friday fake away started in our house as a way of saving money (because, let's be honest my Scottish genes are strong) but now has continued as a way of saving time and eating better, while still "indulging" on a Friday night.

Depending on your preferred take away choice, there are lots of options you can make ahead of time and freeze to make your Friday nights stress free and tasty.

If Indian is your thing, I really can't recommend highly enough A Little Taste of India by Nikalene Riddle. Her recipes are amazing, full of flavour and incredibly good for you. Her butter chicken recipe (available on her blog Skinnymixers) is the stuff of legends. The recipes are perfect for freezing with rice (either brown or cauli) in individual serves to heat and eat on a Friday night.

If you're more into pizza, try making a couple of spelt pizza bases ahead of time, cover with a light spread of tomato paste and freeze them. Then, all you need to do is add your toppings of choice and pop them into the oven. 

If burgers and chips are your thing, try making patties ahead of time (mine are a simple combination of 600g premium mince, 2 cloves of garlic crushed, 1 egg, 1 tbs Dijon or wholegrain mustard and some dried oregano) and freezing them. Then on Friday night, they're simple to cook up and serve with sweet potato fries on a lettuce bun or roasted field mushroom with homemade aioli or this dairy free egg free version.

Homemade chicken nuggets are also super handy to keep in the freezer for the kids, as well as Mexican mince (perfect for nachos, using mountain bread as the chips, or on baked potatoes) and sausage rolls. 

By just having a range of these options in your freezer, it's much easier to make better choices when you're tired, stressed, or simply CBF. 

JERF meal plan - the first fortnight

Our meal plan for the first fortnight in June is a fairly simple one - but I think simplicity is best when it comes to making over our eating habits. I've listed the breakfasts, dinners and snacks below - with links to recipes where possible. As I mentioned in my previous post - we tend to eat leftovers for lunch, so I won't list the lunches separately.

Breakfasts:

Homemade muesli with coconut yoghurt*

Egg and bacon cups** (Sophie Guidolin My Kids Eat)

Baked beans** with avo and feta

Peanut butter chocolate oats (Sophie Guidolin My Kids Eat)

Healthy banana bread*

Porridge

Spelt pancakes

Big breakfast (bacon, eggs, homemade hash browns, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes)

Granola bars* (Sophie Guidolin My Kids Eat)

Dinners:

Hungarian goulash* with broth steamed greens

Chicken stew (Jamie Oliver Save With Jamie) with spelt challah

Preservative free sausages with mash and greens

Poached eggs in broth with greens

Lettuce burgers* (Pete Evans Family Food - Joy burgers patty recipe) with sweet potato chips 

Butter chicken* with cauli rice and veges

Spelt pizza* with salad

Silverside with mash and veges

Spicy BBQ chicken

Meatballs* with zoodles

Pumpkin soup*

Popcorn chicken (Sophie Guidolin My Kids Eat)

Grainfree lasagne (Quirky Cooking Cookbook)

Snacks:

Spelt banana muffins*

Corn fritters*

Choc zucchini muffins* (for this recipe, I switch out the flour for wholemeal and the sugar for rapadura and drop the quantity to 100-150g)

Vegetable chips

Pizza scrolls* 

Peppermint slice

Vege sticks with tzatziki/hommus

Carrot cake* (Sophie Guidolin My Kids Eat)

Chickpea brownies* (Sophie Guidolin My Kids Eat)

Arrowroot biscuits (I swap out the sugar for rapadura and use spelt or wholemeal flour in place of plain)

Crackers

*All these recipes can be made ahead and frozen. This definitely helps when packing lunchboxes or on busy weeknights.

**These recipes can be made 2-3 days ahead and kept in the fridge. 

Hopefully there are some ideas here to help fill out your meal plan.

Getting prepped - countdown to Monday

Ok. Monday is D day (or is it J day?). You've got this weekend to get prepped to give yourself the best chance possible in succeeding at #JERFinJune. Here's a quick checklist to help you prepare.

Have you:

• planned your meals for the next week (or fortnight or month)
• shopped for delicious, fresh, real ingredients
• cleared out your fridge and pantry of all not so real food 
• thought about condiments and spreads (will you not eat them, buy alternatives or make your own)
• prepared and frozen a couple of enticing meals for those nights when things go awry and you CBF (tip: make sure these meals are something you really enjoy so you aren't still tempted by takeaway)
• prepared some yummy wholefood snacks for the week ahead
• precut your veges (and any fruit that needs it - I'm looking at you pineapple!) to make them an easier to grab option 
• stocked your freezer with frozen fruit for juice and smoothies
• got yourself into the mindset of nourishing your body?

Honestly, depending on your diet until now, the first week in June is going to suck. I suspect I'll be enduring some killer sugar withdrawal headaches and some mad chocolate cravings. There are three things that will get me through - delicious snack alternatives that will take the edge off, bucket loads of lemon water to flush toxins and the knowledge that I'm making better food choices for my body and my family. Stick with it, with me and the community of JERFers we have on Facebook, and we'll all feel better for it.

Feel free to post questions or let us know how your JERF journey is going throughout the month on our FB page and we'll do our best to support you through it.

Good luck my fellow JERFers. Let's #JERFinJune :) 

Getting prepped - cleaning out the pantry

They say at the start of any change in habit or challenge it's important to take away the temptation to maximise your chances of success. For JERF in June that includes clearing out the pantry of any sneaky processed foods that have crept in.

Now, I thought we were a family that ate relatively well and limited our processed foods, but...this is the before shot.


After spending a good hour or so clearing out items that didn't fit with my real food mantra, this is what I have left.

Bit of a difference! (Plus, wow, how easy is it to find everything now!!)

I really dislike waste, so I haven't thrown out the food that we won't be eating in June, I've stored it in a plastic tub so I can see how we feel at the end of the 30 days. Some foods may be reintroduced as a once a month/fortnight type splurge for the kids - things like the Weetbix and rice crackers. This is how full the tub is...

All this left me thinking about pantry staples for wholefood eating. 

In my pantry I have the following left:

- tinned tomatoes

- various tinned beans (mixed, cannellini, kidney, butter beans and chickpeas)

- coconut cream and coconut milk 

- tahini

- tinned corn (I've left this at the pleas of my son - but once it's gone, I won't be restocking)

- tomato paste (homemade and 100% tomato store bought)

- various homemade jams and marmalades (made with rapadura sugar)

- spelt flour

- wholemeal flour (to be used very rarely)

- brown rice flour

- bicarb soda

- baking powder

- rapadura

- maple syrup

- honey

- lots and lots and lots of herbs and spices 

- rock salt

- organic brown rice

- popcorn kernels

- homemade vanilla extract

- sunflower seeds

- pepitas

- flaxseeds

- sesame seeds

- cacao butter

- various dried fruits (organic where possible) 

- buckwheat

- oats

- lots and lots of shredded/desiccated coconut

- coconut oil

- olive oil

- macadamia oil

- a whole variety of nuts (walnuts, almonds and cashews are my basics, but I love to have macadamias and hazelnuts on hand too)

- quinoa

- chia seeds.

What I noticed I was missing from my pantry with the clean out were some of my homemade condiments - peanut butter, tomato sauce and bbq sauce. They've slowly been replaced with the store bought "easier" options. I'll need to get started on those this week so we've got some on hand once the June starts. More about those later this week though.

Tomorrow's job is to clean out the fridge.  

What are your pantry staples? 

Getting prepped - my favourite recipe inspirations

While one part of the key to successfully making real food choices is preparation, I often think the other part is in making real food more appealing. For me, part of that is about shifting my mindset. Years of making poor food choices have left me with a ridiculous sweet tooth and senses that need the flavour to be bursting off the plate to entice me away from processed options. 

With access to the Internet there are thousands of real food meal ideas out there to inspire you to make some interesting meals, but sometimes it's really a case of trial and error to see what will make the kids flip and what will be a flop. 

I don't know about everyone else, but the last thing I want to deal with is a flop on a busy work night where the kids refuse to eat dinner. I refuse to force my kids to eat food they genuinely don't like (I'm fussier than both of them so I don't think it's fair to enforce a take it or leave it approach) so meals that are sure fire winners are a necessity.

I get my inspiration from both hard cover cookbooks (who doesn't love flipping through the glossy photos) and online. Some of my favourite cookbooks and websites are:

• Quirky Cooking (both the blog and the cookbook)
• Pete Evans' Family Food
• Skinnymixers 
• Nourish by Lorna Jane Clarkson
• Well Nourished 
• 100 days of real food
• Wholefood Simply 

These books and sites are full of tried and tested recipes that produce delicious meals and snacks that my family adore. 

My lovely friend Lena has also recently pointed me to My Kids Eat by Sophie Guidolin so expect to see me trying some of her recipes over the coming month. :) 

What are your favourite recipe inspirations? 

Getting prepped for JERF in June - meal planning

As a busy working mum, meal planning is critical in our household. It saves the afternoon dilemma of "what's for dinner", the mid meal preparation freak-out of a missing ingredient and the realisation that your dinner is going to be on the table well after the kids' bedtimes.

When we first set up as a family, our pays were done fortnightly, so we meal planned (and shopped) fortnightly. Though many things have changed since my husband and I moved in together, this pattern has remained consistent. 

So, every second Thursday night, in preparation for a Friday shop, we sit down with our recipe books and our meal planning template and fill out any upcoming activities for the fortnight, expected late nights and days when we know we'll be too exhausted to cook.

Then we look at our freezer for any pre-prepared meals, leftover meats from the last fortnight and any other bits and bobs that could be used to make a meal. Then we plan...

As a family, we tend to only eat chicken, beef and vegetarian dishes (with the occasional fish based meal for my husband and the kids), and Sundays are a good night for a roast or silverside. 

I work from home Tuesdays and Wednesdays so I tend to choose Thermomix meals that I can make during my "lunch break" at home. Mondays and Thursdays are meals that are either from the slow cooker (in winter), from the freezer, prepped the day before, or breakfast for dinner. Friday nights we do "fake away" - homemade takeaway options - sometimes Indian, Chinese, burgers with sweet potato chips, etc. 

Knowing that pattern we plan our dinners. 90 per cent of our lunches are leftovers from dinner the night before, so that just leaves breakfasts and snacks. My lovely children tend to prefer a cooked breakfast so most of the time they'll have an omelette, scrambled eggs, or dippy eggs with soldiers. They're also fond of my healthy spelt banana bread or breakfast muffins for variety. A and I tend to stick with my homemade muesli (recipe to come) or Quirky Jo's buckwheat cereal.

Snacks are usually fruit and vegetable based, with all muffins and other carby snacks still including at least 1-2 serves of fruit or veges. The kids get 2 pieces of fruit, 1 sweet snack and 1 savoury snack in their lunch box, as well as yoghurt and their lunch. 

I'll share the family's meal plan for next fortnight (starting next weeked) over the coming week. 

What is JERF?

JERF is about Just Eating Real Food. 

In today’s society it is all too easy, too convenient and too cheap to choose things that we think are “healthy options”. After all they’re low calorie/low fat/paleo/whatever the latest food trend is. And it’s all too confusing to find what is really a healthy option. But by choosing to just eat real food – to JERF – you are choosing food that hasn’t been highly processed, that doesn’t come with a set of numbers in the ingredient list, that doesn’t have the potential myriad of effects on your body. You are choosing to fuel your body straight from the source. 

There are some competing ideas about what constitutes “real food”, but to my mind, real food is:

• fruit and vegetables
• meat, chicken and fish – preferably grass fed and finished for the beef, hormone and antibiotic free for the chicken and wild caught for the fish
• nuts and seeds
• whole grains – quinoa, whole grain rice, barley, oats, buckwheat, etc
• legumes – beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc
• dairy (in limited quantities) – yoghurt, cheese, milk
• eggs
• natural sugars (in very limited quantities) – coconut sugar, honey, maple syrup
• water, juices (natural and not reconstituted), smoothies, teas, etc.

It is food that is an ingredient, not a food made of ingredients. It is food that will fuel your body, regulate your mood and improve your brain function. 

So, I’m in to JERF in June. 

I want to track my moods, how I feel, and my energy levels and share them with you. I want to share my hints and tips for staying organised and keeping on track to JERF in June (and beyond). 

I will share how I keep real food on the table for my family, around all the obstacles of working full-time and keeping my house on track. I’ll share links to delicious recipes and meal planning ideas. 

I’d love for people to join in the challenge and find some inspiration to ditch some of the overly processed “food” we eat and choose more natural options. 

I’m no saint, and certainly no stranger to eating less than stellar food choices (McDonalds, M&Ms, Dairy Milk, anyone?) but I’m committing to make real choices for June, to see and highlight the benefits and to try to make some new, better habits.

So, will you join me and JERF in June?