Chicken pepper and onion kebab recipe.

I saw someone’s blog post of a dish similar to this and I was so tempted to try it. A combonation of seeing that post and a friend telling me about an amazing Greek restaurant they had visited, had me craving humus and pitta bread! 

I decided that onion pepper and chicken kebabs were the perfect combo to go with this. I just had to come up with a marinade. I wanted something with lemon for zing and oregano one of my favourite herbs, so I made up this marinade:

50ml rapeseed oil

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

1 dessert spoon of lemon zest

1 garlic clove 

1 tablespoon oregano 

I mixed all the ingredients in a bowl and added chopped chicken breast and left for around an hour. I then fried this off. I’m quite skeptical about putting raw chicken straight in the oven in case it’s not cooked thoroughly. I then added the chopped onion and pepper so they could absorb some of the marinade. The pepper onion and chicken was assembled onto skewers and then placed under the grill for around 10 minutes. This was served with warm wholemeal pitta bread and humus. 

I couldn’t have been more pleased with the result. The flavour was so tasty. This also satisfied my craving of humus and pitta but made it healthy! 

Chocolate peanut banana porridge.

I decided to mix up my regular breakfast porridge and add banana to the main bulk of the porridge instead of as a topping. It tasted good but so sweet! I think I would have it again as a dessert but not for breakfast.

It’s funny I used to have a real sweet too and always lived by the notion that dessert was the best course of a meal. However over the past few years I’ve moved towards having more of a savoury tooth. I’d much rather go for a starter or cheese board than any rich dessert. I think it must be a sign of getting old-haha. But has anyone else gone through this faze too? 

I simply measured out 50g oats as normal then added chopped banana and mashing. I then added around 100ml milk as usual and microwaved for 1 minute. Once heated I added half a scoop of my favourite whey protein – My protein chocolate peanut butter and some chia seeds. 

Try this if you have a sweet tooth! 

Homemade fajita spice and guacamole.

For a while I’ve wanted to try and make my own fajita spice mix. I just feel the packets you can buy in supermarkets are unnecessarily high in salt. Anyway this was my experiment yesterday, to see if I could lower the salt without compromising on taste.

I can tell you my recipe needs amending slightly, perhaps a touch of salt was needed because the shop bought ones taste better. But if any of you can make recommendations to adjust this recipe to make it taste a bit better please let me know!

My spice mix included:

3 teaspoons mild chilli powder

2 teaspoons paprika 

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 clove crushed garlic 

I mixed the spices together and rubbed all over chopped chicken breast then fried in a small amount of sunflower oil. I then added the red onion and peppers, before serving into Mission deli Multigrain wraps with some salsa and guacamole. 

The guacamole however came out a treat, so tasty. I braved chopping up chillis too for the recipe. 
The ingredient for this was:

1 avocado 

The juice of 1 lime

1/2 a red onion

1/2 a red chilli

One clove of garlic 

Simply mash the avocado, squeeze the juice of one lime and mix in. Crush the garlic, chop and de-seed the chilli and chop the onion. Then mix all of this together.

You can alter this recipe by adding tomatoes and coriander for example.

Shakshuka recipe.

Okay so you’re all probably thinking “what on earth is shakshuka, and how do you even pronounce that?!”. I thought the same to begin with unti I found out what it actually is and I was won over just reading about it!

It’s basically a tomato based stew which is highly flavoured with yummy herbs and spices, with eggs cracked on top. It’s also so easy to make. You can choose how spicy you want it and if you like the flavour of some spices more than others then you can add more of those. It’s totally up to you. There are many recipe variations flying around the internet like adding chorizo or feta to the mix. My recipe is vegetarian (for those who do eat eggs). Personally I’m not a vegetarian but it’s sustainable and healthy to have some meat free days! I have to admit I rarely have meat free days, more meat free meals but hey ho I’m working on it. 

Ingredients (serves 2):

400g tinned tomatoes 

1 red pepper

1 green pepper

1 white onion

1 tspn tomato puree 

1 clove of garlic

4 eggs

1 tspn cumin

1 tspn paprika

1 tspn mild chilli powder

1/2 tspn cayenne pepper (this is spicy!)

1 tspn cooking oil of your choice 

Simply fry the chopped onion, peppers and garlic in the cooking oil. Add in the chopped tomatoes and tomato puree. Add all the spices. Simmer unti all veg is soft and a lot of the liquid has evaporated off. Make four wells in the mixture and crack the eggs into each well. Cover the pan until the eggs are cooked. It took about 10 minutes for the eggs to cook for me. 

I served this with some cous cous. Delicious! 

Almond oat energy balls.

That’s right another energy ball recipe! But I love making (and eating) these. They are so easy to make and a great healthy snack that taste more like a treat.

I totally winged this recipe and just combined ingredients that I thought would work well together.

This consisted of 6 tablespoons of oats, 2 tablespoons of honey, a teaspoon of cinnamon and 40g almond butter. Pretty much blend everything up together and then roll into balls, I made seven balls. If you find the texture quite dry then try adding a tablespoon of water. 

When I nutritionally analysed the recipe I discovered that a satisfying portion would probably be two of the balls. It might be worthwhile making bigger balls in a smaller quantity!

Macros per ball (makes 7):

87kcal

4g Fat 

10g CHO

3g Protein

Chocolate peanut energy balls.

Experimenting with ingredients to make energy balls is one of my favourite things to do. Chocolate and nut butter are two of my favourite foods, so I thought why not combine these flavours to make delicious balls of goodness? 

I’m living at home now after my uni placement for Christmas and put these in the fridge yesterday morning after making them. I went back to eat one this morning to find that 5 of the balls had been demolished by my family. It shows they must be tasty! 

To make these you’ll need:

50g oats

125g dates

20g cocoa powder 

20g smooth peanut butter 

2tbspns water 

I used my usual Breville VBL062 Blend-Active Blender and pretty much shoved all the ingredients in and blended them up. I started with the oats and dates to make sure they were in the finest small pieces then added the other ingredients. Once everything is blended put the mixture into a bowl and mix with your hands. I’ll warm you this does get quite messy! Then form 9 balls of equal size and enjoy! 

Average macros per ball:

86kcal

2.1g Fat (trace of saturated)

14.4g CHO

2.5g Protein