breakfast – ShakeUpFit

August 12, 2016 — No Comments

Carb free breakfast bowls – #FeedMeFridays

This is a little trick I learnt from some of the city based food locations. To keep carb free they were simply making all your favourite breakfast bits and putting them in a bowl together, so easy and so scrummy. Here are just some of my favourites!!

Baked beans, two poached eggs and half an avocado. It’s so easy to make poached eggs in the microwave! A touch of oil in some tea cups, crack an egg in and only a couple of minutes of cooking, done in short 30 second blocks so it doesn’t get overcooked.

How about poached eggs, poached eggs, roasted cherry tomatoes and melted cheese?

The list goes on, put some good things back into your diet, take out the carbs and put them in a bowl for a little bit of mixing it up

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in #FeedMeFridays, Food Tips, General

Tags: avocado, baked beans, beans, bowl, breakfast, carbohydrates, cheese, cooked, egg, eggs, mashed, melt, melted, poached, sauce, tomatoes, yum

January 22, 2016 — No Comments

Day 22 – Eggy soldiers!

Frying Pan Soldiers on a plate

So to start with, let me make this very clear, this is NOT the most beautiful of dishes. To be fair, not many of my dishes are very pretty but they are good for you and they are delicious....I'm afraid I'm just not an artist with my food! Sorry!

This one is another alternative in the mornings. I love bread and I love eggs so eggy soldiers are my favourite thing ever. This is a slight variation on my usual as I had the most delicious home baked sour dough bread with seaweed in it made and sourced via one of the girls in my yoga class (her stuff can be found here http://www.arlenedunkley-wood.co.uk/)

Obviously the ingredients and recipe for this dish are minimal and simplistic, that's why you can be luxurious in your bread choice and go crazy with a delicious bread choice. If you can get hold of some of Arlene's please do as you won't regret it:

Ingredients
2 large organic eggs
Splash of coconut milk
2 slices of good thick slices of bread (though any will do)

Put about a quarter of a teaspoon of coconut milk in a pan to start warming up. Slice the bread into soldiers, about 2cm thick.

Beat the two eggs and the coconut milk together in a bowl and season with some salt and pepper.

Dip the slices of bread into the egg mixture and fry in the frying pan. Fry on each side until nicely browned.

Put on a plate with some cracked black pepper on top and enjoy!

It's that simple!!!

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in Food Tips, Recipe

Tags: bread, breakfast, carbs, eggy, home made, protein, soldiers, sourdough, yum

January 19, 2016 — No Comments

Day 19 – Breakfast….why?

Sometimes it drives me crazy when people talk to me and ask about losing weight and my first question is always, 'what do you eat for breakfast?' and of course there is simply an awkward silence while they look at me with guilt.

Breakfast is so important it's the first step in any advice or discussions I have with people about their diet.

Let's switch it another way. Would you go 10 hours during the day without eating anything? Probably not. Then would you leave it about 14 hours between your meals? No, you wouldn't. So why would you do it overnight?

No matter how long you sleep for, calculate how long your body has gone without anything going inside. All night it has used what it had to repair, heal and restore your body as much as it can and THEN you make it carry on it's day only using what you had put in it yesterday.

So, it has been scientifically proven that those that skip breakfast are more inclined to be overweight. Why? Lots of reasons, but if you think that overnight your body essentially goes into a form of hibernation. It has to slow everything right down so that it can sleep and heal and restore. So it makes sense that it is still doing that until you wake it back up by eating.

The recommendation is that you should eat 2 hours from the point of waking up. It will wake your body up and kick start that metabolism into what I like to call 'day' mode. Not only that but your breakfast should contain approximately 20-35% of your daily calorie needs (we calculated that in one of the previous posts!).

What should I eat for breakfast?
This can depend a lot on what your day consists of but as a general recommendation, oats and natural cereals are great. By cereals I don't mean those things you find in boxes covered in sugar or honey or chocolate. I mean seeds and oats and mixed nuts, seeds and anything else we might call a grain or cereal.

If I exercise first thing, as I like to swim early, I will have a quick snack before I leave (usually my energy balls that I explained in a previous post) and then after I swim I will try and get some eggs, avocados, tomatoes in me, usually with a bagel or on gluten free toast. If I don't exercise first thing I often eat a homemade oats mix which I will post in a future blog post which will keep me full of energy for most of the morning!

I think for those who don't eat breakfast the key is to start getting some breakfast. I have a few recipe suggestions already with my baked eggs in avocados, smoothie and I'll post some more.

Remember, eat first thing!

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in Food Tips, General

Tags: breakfast, eat, eggs, hibernate, important, key, oats, wake up, weight loss

January 12, 2016 — No Comments

Day 12 – Breakfast Muffins

Muffins Sweet Potato

Apologies for the delay but it's been a bit of a hectic one today.

Anyway, building up to the important article about breakfast and how much you really don't want to be skipping it I thought I'd include another breakfast recipe. This is one of my favourites and such an easy one to make. These muffins are delicious and I usually make them up on a Sunday and they will last all week for when I want a quick snack or if I just don't have the time to make a proper breakfast. They are also fantastic for after a workout as you get a big hit of protein, carbohydrates and vitamins and minerals that your body will be craving

Ingredients (makes 12 muffins):
24 rashers of Turkey Bacon - In most supermarkets now, just look at the bottom of the normal bacon aisle. 24 rashers is usually about 3 packets. Turkey is packed with protein and so yummy!

10 eggs - Great protein hit

1 Sweet Potato - the good type of carbohydrate to help your body regain some fuel used during exercise or to get the energy you'll need through the rest of the day

Varied vegetables - this is where you can be a bit creative. The only rule is that you need about the same amount of vegetables to the same amount of eggs. For this batch I used a handful of broccoli, handful of peas and about a quarter of a white onion finely diced. You can use absolutely anything you have to hand however, experiment with the flavours and enjoy it!

Two handfuls of grated cheese - ideally mozzarella or feta but I used cheddar in mine. Some fats to help your body start it's day!

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius.

Peel and dice your sweet potatoes. Remember to cut the pieces nice and small as you want small delicious pieces, not chunks half the size of the muffins. Roast them until they are nice and soft, usually takes about 30-45 minutes.

In a bowl, crack and whisk your eggs together. Then add the vegetables that you have chosen. Mine were all uncooked and all taken from the freezer and thrown in with 1 handful of the cheese and the roasted sweet potato pieces. Mix, mix and mix it all up again!!

Brush two cupcake holder trays with coconut oil and lay the 2 turkey bacon slices in each so that they slightly overlap in the middle (make sure the mix doesn't fall out the bottom). They end up looking almost like the petals of a flower.

Spoon the egg and vegetable mixture into each cupcake holder space, adding another little sprinkling of cheese on top.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. You want to take them out when they are nice and golden brown on top.

Let them settle and cool for a little bit or if you just can't wait attack them while they're warm! They are delicious and another excuse for you to NOT skip breakfast.

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in Recipe

Tags: bacon, breakfast, broccoli, carbohydrates, cheese, eat me, egg, melted, onion, peas, protein, turkey, vegetables, warm, yum

January 9, 2016 — No Comments

Day 9 – Breakfast baked eggs with avocado and tomatoes

Baked eggs and avocado Whenever people talk to me about wanting to lose weight, or they are having issues losing weight or they want to be healthier, the first question I always ask is do you have breakfast?

Now, before reading on, do you have breakfast? It still amazes me how many people skip breakfast despite it being so important to your body. Yes if you skip it, it can cause you to put on weight in some situations but breakfast and the importance of it is for another post (even a smoothie shouldn't take too long to sort out).

Now one of my favourite breakfasts is mixing eggs, avocado and tomatoes in fantastic new ways and this recipe is just one of the ones I thought I would share. Obviously I served it with gluten free toast and lashings of butter but it was proper butter, not spread so that's better for you! Give this a go and try your own mixes too, next time I make it I want to add some chilli!

Ingredients
1 Avocado (I used one and a half because I had a spare half in the fridge that needed using)
5/6 cherry tomatoes, finely diced
2 eggs

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsuis and let's get started.

This is a very very simple recipe. Firstly, make sure the avocado is ripe, as if it isn't it will be really hard to mash and can sometimes be quite stringy. A good tip here is if you take the 'stalk' bit off the end of the avocado it can tell you the ripeness. If it's yellow, it's underripe, if it's brown it's overripe and if it's green it's just perfect!

Scoop out the contents of the avocado into a bowl, but keep the skins, making sure you remove the stone from the middle. Mash the avocado and the diced cherry tomatoes and add some salt and pepper to season. This is where I will add chilli in next time, cut very finely!!

Scoop the mix back into the avocado skins and make a small well in the centre. Where you made the well in the middle of both halves, crack your eggs. Now be warned, sometimes if you have small avocado and big eggs this can be a bit messy so I'd suggest putting the avocado skins on the baking tray at this stage so you don't have to move them later and spill the egg.

Put them in the oven to bake and now this timing depends on how you like your eggs. Runny eggs can take 12-15 minutes maybe, I like mine with none of the 'snotty' bits but not too runny a yolk (as I lose it as soon as I start eating it!) so I generally leave mine in for 15-18 minutes. 20 minutes or above will be a hard cooked yolk.

Then simply take out, add another splash of pepper, some buttered toast and devour. The creaminess of the avocado works so well with the sweet and tangy tomatoes and the runny hot yolks it's just delicious!

No more excuses for not eating breakfast!

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in Recipe

Tags: avocado, baked, breakfast, butter, chilli, eat, eggs, feed me, no excuse, toast, tomatoes, yum

January 4, 2016 — No Comments

Day 4 – Choco spread

FullSizeRender

Today's post is another recipe. It's day 4 into the New Year and you're probably struggling now with your sweet tooth reminding you that you haven't had anything 'naughty' for a whole week already!!

So a nice easy recipe for you today is my choco spread. Now strangely, I don't like chocolate of any kind but I do make a killer chocolate flavoured recipe that seems to go down a treat.

This recipe is nut based so the feedback I've had is that it tastes like the inside of a Ferrero Rocher so give it a try!! The spread can be had on pancakes, crackers or used in recipes for cookies to make them chocolatey too.

Ingredients
270g Hazelnuts
170ml Maple Syrup
110ml Water
3 heaped tablespoons of Cacao Powder
2 tablespoons of Coconut Milk

Lay the hazelnuts out on a baking tray and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for about 10 minutes, then take them out and let them cool.

Once they've cooled, throw the hazelnuts and cacao powder in a blender and whizz up until it's as fine as you can get it. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend again until nice and smooth.

From this point it's down to personal preference. If you want it sweeter, add small amounts of maple syrup in, if you want it more chocolatey, add a bit more cacao, if you want it more runny then add a bit more coconut milk. Just remember to add small amounts, blend and taste as you can't take it out once it's in the mix!!

Enjoy and let me know what you have it with!

Ciao for now x

Published by mbennardo in Food Tips, Recipe

Tags: breakfast, cacao, chocolate, hazelnuts, nuts, spread, sweet