Tag: vegetables

5 Steps to going vegetarian

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Hello and welcome back to my blog. I hope everyone is okay and being productive with their time.

I recently went vegetarian for the first time in my life for 30 days and it was…. different! It was something that I had wanted to do from a few years ago and I was occasionally eating vegetarian meals and reducing my meat consumption and I just decided to go for it. In this post I’ll share with you how I successfully ate vegetarian meals for 30 days.

Top 5 steps for going vegetarian or changing your diet:

1. Plan, plan, plan. By this I mean to plan everything you will need in order for it to be successful. I did my research and looked through magazine recipes, recipe books and online for inspiration. I also made a list of all of the vegetables that I liked eating so that I could create my own recipes.

2. Write recipes and weekly meals. Get a notebook and plan 30+ recipes including all the ingredients needed and a step by step method so you know what to do.

3. Shopping list. At the start of each week, plan which 7 meals you are going to eat and do a shop for those items.

4. Get others involved. I live at home with my family so I was able to get my sister involved in helping me make the meals and actually taste it too, which made the whole process more fun.

5. Enjoy it. This step is all about embracing the change and sticking to your goal. Although I didn’t enjoy every meal I didn’t give up because it was something that I set out to do and it was all a part of the experience.

I would like to say that I my background is based on food, I decided to take a more practical route once I left secondary school and I studied Professional Cookery because at that time my dream was to become a cook and at a younger age, have my own food show on TV. Some time after that I decided to study Nutrition and I got my degree not long ago, my current job is in a different field but my passion for food, nutrition and good health throughout the body still remains.

Please comment below your favourite vegetarian meal so that I can try them out or any tips you have for changing your diet.

Thank you for reading, see you in the next post xx

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A Little Bean Appreciation

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Sometimes you’ve just got to take the time to really appreciate the beauty in nature. These broad beans are pink and purple they almost look magical, the colours are so pigmented and really stand out. The broad beans look so pretty and are very nutritious. Life can get really busy at times so always make the effort to just sit and appreciate the wonders that surround you, be it a broad bean, other foods, furniture, technology or the trees outside 🙂 

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I’m not sure what dish these beans will be apart of, maybe a stew, soup or used in a salad!! They are locally grown too in an allotment which is always good…

One Pan Dish

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My amazing ‘Sweet Vegetable Cottage Pie’ this is a great vegetarian dish, really simple for anyone to cook for dinner.  I actually topped this off with some mashed sweet potatoes but didn’t take a final picture but here’s what it looked like in the pan.

​Ingredients
Olive oil
½ onion finely diced
2 handfuls of lentils
350ml vegetable stock
Canned tomatoes
150g pasta of your choice
½ broccoli cut into small trees
1 carrot grated

Method
1. Heat the oil in the pan and gently fry the onions until slightly soft.

2. Place the potatoes into water to boil for 7 minutes then mash.

3. Once the onions are cooked add the lentils and veg stock, simmer for 10 minutes. Next add the canned tomatoes, pasta and broccoli cooking for a further 5 minutes.

4. Now pour the mixture into an oven dish and sprinkle with the carrot the cover evenly with the mashed sweet potatoes. Bake in the oven for 30 mins!! Yum.

Top 8 Foods That Contain The Most Water

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Water is very beneficial to the body and some foods contain high water levels such as:

Iceberg lettuce

Courgettes

Orange

Potato

Pear

Tomato

Cucumber

Watermelon slice

If your not a major fan of water try adding some of these foods to your diet, I personally love drinking water especially when it’s cold because it’s just so refreshing. I read once that drinking cold water is good for burning calories because the body has to work extra hard to reduce the temperature, but then I also read that it’s best to drink water at room/body temperature between 23-37°c because the body doesn’t have to use excess energy to reduce the temperature instead of digesting it properly (I think).

To be honest I have no idea if one is better than the other :/ but it definitely is good to drink, especially when the weather is warm your body needs to be hydrated. I’m currently out in Spain and the weather is so warm nothing compared to back home in the UK!!!

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Broccoli Burgers

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I was so proud of creating this dish, firstly because it was vegetarian (with eggs included) it looked really colourful and actually tasted delicious. I’ve only recently started eating chickpeas but I’m slowly getting used to the taste and mixed with the broccoli YUM! I created this dish as part of my final culinary skills lesson for a specific persons needs.

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This was only the practice lesson so I’ll probably do another post with the small changes. This meal was created for someone with high blood pressure, so I decided to go for a vegetarian meal with minimal fat and salt.

*I will do another post with the final recipe 🙂