‘Lunch Bites’ – Bite-sized inspiration on your lunch break…

Which of us doesn’t get the ‘munchies’ during our work day? It’s all too easy to grab an unhealthy snack because it’s the easiest thing to find, and I know that I certainly have done this while at work. However, today’s inspiration for your lunch break is to spend a little bit of time the night before prepping some healthy snacks to keep you going throughout the day, and also to prep some healthy lunches. You’ll be amazed at how a few simple ingredients can go a long way, save money, and be better for your wellbeing, not to mention your waistline too! You can bring things into work and make up a lunchtime snack while you are there, and store your ingredients in the fridge – or you can do a little bit of cooking or putting things together at home and bring your lunch in. That way you know exactly what you’re getting, you’re not left with the only option of a calorific unhealthy meal, and you have a bit more change in your pockets.

For quick and easy vegan and vegetarian meal prep ideas, see my main page and click on the relevant ‘tab’ on the menu. Also, keep an eye out for some new recipe and snack ideas coming soon. Today I am enjoying a home made healthy pasta lunch, and for snacks I have been happily munching on cucumber sticks and vegan mayo which are surprisingly filling and much better than grabbing a chocolate bar from the vending machine or filling up on biscuits. Happy munching – if you have meal prep ideas, be sure to share them with us 🙂 x

Photo by Nathan Cowley on Pexels.com

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 7

This is another very easy and quick meal – perfect for dinner after a long day at work, and so delicious!

Very simply, just boil some pasta, and if you like add a little salt to the water. I added spinach and cherry tomatoes into the pan once the pasta was almost ready. Next, I simply drained the water, stirred through some green pesto, added pepper, and topped it off with a little bit of sliced red onion. This was great with pesto, however you can add any sauce you prefer, sprinkle on some pine nuts or chia seeds or other nuts or seeds of your choice, and add any other seasoning or vegetables to your own taste.

Super simple, and yet both healthy and delicious, and ready in less than 15 minutes! 🙂

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 5

Nothing quite beats a good ole’ baked potato for some healthy comforting food. I work a full time job, and by the time I got home this particular evening, having juggled my various ‘to dos’, I was hungry and at a bit of a loss for what to eat, and I really did just want something quick, easy and healthy.

And so this humble spud saved the day.

You know how it works: slice the potato, I put mine in the microwave for around 7 to 8 minutes, however you can vary the times according to your make and model, or bake it in the oven, or wrap it in tin foil and bake it over an open fire! 🙂 Afterwards, I popped it under the grill to crisp it up a bit, and then ate it with some salad with dressing, red pepper humous and guacamole. I would recommend having something additional such as pinto / kidney / baked beans, etc for protein, but I was far too hungry and tired that particular day, yet this quick and easy meal did just the trick!

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 4

For anyone joining this series, I am an amateur home cook, and for most of my life I have been vegetarian, however, more lately, I have been moving towards more of a vegan / plant-based diet. Therefore, this has taken me on a journey of experimentation, to create my own quick, easy, healthy vegan recipes from the healthy ingredients I have been incorporating into my lifestyle. Of course, I’m sure many others who know more about cooking can do it better, however, I hope that some of you find these ideas helpful, healthy, creative and nutritious ~ all that to say, if I can do it, I’m sure you can too! 🙂 Happy cooking! xx

For this dish, I boiled white rice with green beans and added in some spinach leaves that I needed to use up. I think the process took around 15 to 20 minutes.

I oven roasted frozen sweet potato cubes for around 20 minutes with some seasoning.

You can add your preferred seasoning to taste, however, at various points in the cooking process, I used salt, pepper, lemon juice, mixed herbs, a sprinkle of red chilli flakes and some sunflower oil spray when oven cooking the sweet potatoes, but you can be as inventive as you like according to your own taste buds and for whoever you are cooking for.

The sauce is from a ‘free from’ range of supermarket sauces, and is vegan. It is a ‘korma’ sauce that I mixed in towards the end.

Freshened up with a side of cucumber sticks and red pepper humous, this made a tasty yet simple meal, with both fresh and slightly spicy flavours, balanced by the lemon juice and light seasoning.

I am very new to seasoning, as you may be able to tell, and I tend to just experiment with what I have, however, any advice from more ‘seasoned’ cooks 😉 will be heartily welcomed!

As a side note, I made quite a lot of rice, and therefore I only mixed in the sauce with the portion that I ate as shown in the picture. This means that I can use the rice for my next meal, or even eat it the next day, and change it up a bit, perhaps by adding some spring onions, or other sauces or flavouring to keep it interesting. With the sweet potatoes, as well as having them as a side, you can also add them into your dish if you prefer.

Hope you enjoy, & happy cooking. 🙂 xx

 

QUICK & EASY HEALTHY VEGAN RECIPE # 3

 

Potatoes – 4 ways.

This is also an experimental recipe that worked out quite well. 

Ingredients:

Baby potatoes.

Spinach leaves.

Cherry tomatoes.

Vegan BBQ Sauce.

Seasoning to taste (I used cracked black pepper, herb ‘salt’, sunflower spray, chilli flakes, lemon juice and reduced-fat red pepper humous).

Method:

This is very simple, and yet is also an elegant and tasty dish. I washed the baby potatoes and cut them, cooked them on full power in the microwave for around 8 minutes (settings will vary depending on the make and model of your m/w). After which I stir fried a portion of the potatoes with some spinach leaves using sunflower spray, lemon juice, black pepper, & herb ‘salt’, and added in cherry tomato halves towards the end.

I used another small portion of potatoes to make potato ‘stacks’, layered with the vegan Memphis BBQ sauce. I mashed the rest of the potatoes, and from the mash I made a potato round, which was seasoned through with pepper and a few chilli flakes. The last bit of potato I served as mash mixed with seasoning, and with a little of the BBQ sauce through it.

Garnished with the baby spinach leaves, and some sauce, with a side of humous. Not bad for an amateur cook, and very tasty – why don’t you try it, you might like it if you’re in the mood for potatoes 🙂 !

 

 

Quick & Easy Healthy Vegan Recipe # 1

Firstly, my apologies for not blogging for a while ~ I have been keeping very busy and productive with my ‘Big Spring Clean’, decluttering and house renovation (not to mention a full time job!) ~ I am pleased to say that I have accomplished a lot of my household goals for February and March, which was no easy feat, and I will shortly continue writing my series that I began at the start of this year on home & lifestyle and will update you all with some lovely before & after pictures!

However, now that the cosy season of hibernation has passed, and the task of preparing my home for the year ahead is about 80% accomplished, I suppose it is a natural progression to turn the focus towards maintaining a healthy lifestyle. 

So now that hopefully we are back in the swing of things, and keeping motivated to make the best of the year ahead, here is a simple, healthy, cost effective and very tasty vegan or plant-based recipe for you to enjoy! 🙂 x

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of Burgen soya & linseed seeded vegan bread (lightly toasted & cut into cute triangles 😉 ).
• Fresh cherry tomatoes.
• Sliced cucumber.
• Reduced fat red pepper humous.
• Mexican beans (canned) lightly cooked / stir fried in sunflower cooking spray, with lemon juice, cracked black pepper, herb ‘salt’, and red chilli flakes (add to taste depending on preferred hotness – after finishing making this dish I accidentally spilled *a lot* of flakes into my bowl – I don’t usually like very spicy food, but mixed this in, ate it all, enjoyed it, and actually felt good afterwards, despite a few more glasses of juice than intended 😉 . Remember to check out the health benefits of chilli and add a little to your diet every now and then).
• Topping of green pitted olives.
• Drizzled with vegan ‘sour cream’.
• Pressed apple juice (not from concentrate).

I made this as an experiment using a few of the ingredients I had at home. It was quick to make, very filling, tasty, and surprisingly I noticed that I felt very good afterwards – I’m not sure why, as I had been struggling with my mood that day – perhaps the addition of chilli flakes (even for someone who usually tends to avoid spicy food as I do) perked me up a little, who knows  – but one thing is sure, healthy can be comforting, tasty and a real boost to your sense of wellbeing. xx

 

 

Travel Snaps ~ Frankfurt ~ NH Hotel & New Friends…

Welcome!

If you would like to follow along with my travel series charting my adventures from last month’s journey across Europe, particularly Prague, Budapest & Vienna, then please click on the ‘Travel’ tab on my main menu, and you will find all of my travel related posts there! However, as these are ‘Travel Snaps’, you should be able to enjoy them as stand-alone entries too.

So to summarise, we were previously on the road by coach from Rotterdam to Frankfurt, with a brief stop at Moselle overlooking the Moselle River & Valley (en route to Prague), after which I stayed overnight on Tuesday 15th August 2017 at the NH Hotel in Frankfurt, Germany.

For anyone considering staying at this hotel, and  for anyone else who is simply interested, here are a few facts:

• There appears to be 5 NH Hotels in Frankfurt, including one located at Frankfurt Airport, however there may be more that I am not aware of. I am not entirely sure which branch of the hotel I stayed at, however I would imagine that they are all fairly similar in style.
• The Hotels rate themselves as between 4 and 4 and a half stars out of a 5 star ranking.
• They are modern, clean, neat, ‘unfussy’, and offer guests the use of free Wi-Fi, and have all of the usual facilities that you would expect from a modern chain-hotel.
• With regards to price, as my overnight at the NH Hotel was included in the price of a coach tour, I am not able to provide an exact amount, however, prices on the internet seem to range from between £53.00 to £100.00 (GBP) depending on location, with the average cost being around £68.00 (GBP).

My impressions of the hotel were that it was modern, neat, minimalist. I found the staff to be friendly and helpful, and at the evening meal had to request vegetarian food as the driver / tour guide for our coach hadn’t been notified by the travel company of my dietary requirements for some reason. However the staff obliged, and I had a nice healthy and tasty vegetarian option. I found the lobby to be a nice relaxing area, and there was a bar as well which was also quite modern and neat. The breakfast was buffet style with plenty of choice.  For one evening and morning in the hotel I didn’t have a lot of time to explore things that one might make use of during a longer stay such as the gym and other facilities, but for an overnight stop it was quite pleasant and very functional.

On a more personal note, at this stage of the coach tour with spending most of the time on the road with brief stops at service stations along the way, I still hadn’t had the opportunity to engage in more than just ‘small talk’ with the other people on the tour. I don’t mind this too much as I am just as happy to be in my own company most of the time as I am to be in good company with others.

So on arrival in the hotel, I unpacked the essentials, showered, got changed into some nice but not too formal evening clothes, and settled in during the hour or so before the evening meal. Being on my own, I was seated at one of the smaller tables for four guests, as opposed to the larger round tables that were there where most others in the group were directed to. I was met by a lovely couple who were semi-retired, but still quite young in their ways. They asked to sit with me, and I was quite happy to have their company. We talked and laughed about our many and varied travel adventures, shared stories about our families and our lives at home, and also chatted about our future travel goals, the films we liked (including a shared love of the Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson film, ‘The Bucket List’ that I watched on my Kindle Fire while on the bus) and other such things. We were joined by the bus driver shortly afterwards, who later turned out to be quite a character and a nice chap to have around, however my first impression of his company was not very pleasant due to the fact that he talked a lot about his friends’ experiences of getting the cane (being beaten) in school to the tune of a classical piece that he was playing to us on the bus. As some of you may know, I have Post Traumatic Stress from being bullied as a child, and the conversation got to the point where I had to mention it, however he continued, and with tears in my eyes I actually had to leave and take some time in the lobby. The couple I had been chatting to urged me to come back after I had a break, and I promised that I would.

I’m writing this, as well as anecdotally, to encourage anyone who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress, anxiety, panic attacks or other such conditions, who may fear traveling whether that be alone or with others. My advice is to just go ahead and do it. You will always find a way to manage, and sometimes you will be surprised at your own resilience and at the kindness of strangers who then become friends. Some of you may also know that I have a relationship with God, so while in the lobby drying my eyes and trying to calm my breathing and settle the ‘flashbacks’ (and at this point I noticed that the lobby was quite tastefully decorated in style with long couches and a black marble counter at reception, as an aside 😉 ) I prayed for God to comfort me, and a few seconds later a lady arrived and sat on the sofa opposite me with her tiny granddaughter, a beautiful baby who was at the stage where she was still too young to speak. Her grandmother spoke to her in German, but despite the language barrier, I was able to smile and wave to her and we made eye contact. It was a lovely moment, and a blessing. I did eventually rejoin the group, and as mentioned previously had a lovely vegetarian meal, with some kind of raspberry cream sorbet for desert.

I chatted with the couple I had met over a drink (a hot chocolate for me) after dinner at the bar, and the husband was inspired by some black and white prints of the Golden Gate Bridge on the walls to tell me about their road trips as a large family through the United States, including to San Fransisco. And so concluded my first night of the holiday on land (as opposed to the overnight on the ferry), and the beginning of some new friendships…

Here are a few pictures that I took of my hotel room while I was there: