I am addicted to Kale Crisps

I'm always on the lookout for tasty but healthy recipes, I feel so much joy when I'm eating something yummy but knowing it's actually doing me some good too! Obviously sometimes you just have that decadent scrumptious chocolate cake but most of the time I try to be good.

One of the things I found out about recently was Kale crisps (or chips, on the other side of the pond). I am one of those people that actually likes veggies (after all I am a vegetarian, so it would be tricky if I didn't) so this for me isn't one of those "I hated this vegetable before but like this I can actually eat it" situations.

But this my friends, is out of this world. When I read the several "recipes" - you can hardly call it a recipe it's that easy - on the net for kale crisps I couldn't believe it when people were saying that it really tasted like crips. Maybe even better.

I decided to try nonetheless, so I bought a bag of ready chopped up and washed kale leaves (it really is best if you can get hold of an actual bunch insted of the small leaves, but I couldn't find any other variety). 

Apparently the kale can't be wet or damp so make sure they're dry before you pop them in the oven. I just blotted them with a piece of kitchen paper.

Now these crisps can be done however you like them, the simplest being just done with olive oil and salt, but you can do other variations like sesame seed, salt and vinegar, paprika, maple sirup (?). My favourite crips in the whole wide world are salt and vinegar, so that's what I tried to achieve.

I put about half of the packet of kale in a large bowl with 1-2 tbspoons of virgin olive oil and 2 tbspoons of malt vinegar. Don't be afraid to really dig in and massage the leaves, the misture has to be well distributed throughout the leaves so give them some love!

Then I distributed them as well as possible on an oven tray, over a baking sheet and put them in the pre-heated oven at 150ºC for about 15 minutes.

I was going to leave them longer, but since the leaves were cut quite small I took them out earlier. You really just have to keep checking and take them out when they're nice and crisp.

Sprinkle salt and enjoy your fat free, almost zero calorie tasty crisps!

I tried making another batch yesterday and decided to be adventurous. Put paprika AND cayenne pepper. I like spicy, but boy they were hot! I drank about a litre of water after that, pheww. They were still nice though!

Speaking of healthy food, I have just joined Graze, a delivery service where they select the healthy foods that actually taste good and handpick your very own snack box. 

 

I joined because I saw somewhere an offer where I could get the first box for free, so I thought why not. 

You get a box delivered to your door, on the day you chose for a more convenient weekly delivery and they handpick 4 diferent little boxes of snacks that match your preferences. You can choose whichever system you prefer: 1 box a week, 2 times a week, heck you could have a box everyday except for sunday! 

You also choose if you want a healthy box, a diet box, a normal box... I chose the eat-well box - healthy but  still get the occasional treat.

They delivered to any UK address for just £3.79 and to be honest if I went out to buy a snack - especially healthy stuff - I'm sure I'd spend more than that anyway. 

I like the idea of having exciting new things to try, a healthy snack to "graze" on and the element of surprise when you find a little package in the mailbox!

If anyone's interested in joining I have here a code for a free box: D1GZ8N6

Cherry Scones!

After a good workout this morning what did I decide to do? I decided to actually make scones instead of buying them from the shop, since I love them so much.

Since I'm a beginner in the baking department, I searched for an easy recipe and found an australian website (link here) with a video turorial and everything, that took my fancy. There is just something about the aussies' accent - I simply love it! The recipe is for basic scones but I wanted to make cherry ones so I just added that bit on myself.

I was thinking of making a step by step tutorial with pictures but :

a) Camera battery running low,

b) Recipe is so bloody easy anyway, you really don't need it!

All you need to do is pre-heat oven to 200º C, lightly dust a oven tray with flour, throw 3 cups of self-raising flour in a large bowl and chop up 80g of cold butter into cubes.

Then, using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Make a well in the centre, add 1 cup of milk(I used skimmed, but whatever you have is fine), and at this point I added my glacé cherry halves. 

Mix with a flat bladed knife in a criss-cross action until the mixtures forms a soft dough. You'll probably have to add a bit more milk in the process, you want a sticky but quite firm dough so don't overdo it.

Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead lightly, aka hardly at all! We really just want to gently knead the dough until it's smooth, otherwise the scones will turn out tough.

Pat dough into a 2cm-thick round shape. Using a 5cm (diameter) round cutter, or in my case, un upside down glass, cut out as many round shapes you can out of the dough, it should give you about 12 to 16 scones. 

Place scones onto prepared baking tray, 1cm apart. Sprinkle tops with a little plain flour and lightly brush on some milk on the tops. Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden and well risen. 

I wrapped them in a clean tea towel to keep them warm and served them almost straight away.

I did manage to take a couple of pics of the final results - cue drumrolls...

They were a success!

I swear I did not put any illicit secret ingredients in them, but somehow everyone was acting a tad over excited while eating these scones!

My gorgeous mother, by the way!

Who knew scones were such fun?! 

Saturday's Breakfast

Saturday morning requires a special breakfast, am I right?

I decided to spice things up and stray away from the usual Marmite toast or Cherios, and since I had some lovely berries in the fridge I thought I'd better use them. Fruit in the morning, can it get any better?

I usually make my own pancakes as they're pretty easy to do, but I had some store bought ones I thought I'd better use up, so all I did was heat them up, pop some golden sirup on those babies and throw some scrumptious berries on top.

We weren't quite content yet so I used up the rest of the berries with some natural yogurt and a dash of muesli.

Bliss!

A little slice of Christmas spirit

Hello there lovelies,

This weekend I decided to make "Fatias Douradas", that  translated from portuguese to english literally means "Golden Slices".  They are what I suppose you call French Toast, it's a portuguese custom to eat these delicious slices of sweet toasted bread at Christmas, so I decided to give it a go!

All you have to do is slice any bread in thick-ish slices, it is preferable if you use older, harder bread, but I only had a loaf of soft bread and couldn't bother to wait a few more days till it got harder :p

Then you heat up some milk, don't bring it to the boil though because then it will be too hot for you to dip the slices of bread in. Add a cinnamon stick and zest of lemon to the milk. When you take the milk off the heat, add a bit of sugar too. 

Then you dip the slices of bread in the milk (make sure they don't get too soggy, my bread was already very soft so I made sure I dipped them very swiftly!). 

Prepare a few bowls - one with about 5 whisked eggs and one with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon.

Heat a pan up with olive oil or oil, whichever you prefer. I used olive oil as it's healthier. 

Dip a few slices in the eggs and quickly put them in the pan to fry, until they are golden (don't forget to fry each side!). You can then pop the finished slices on kitchen paper, to absorb the oil, and then dip the slices in the sugar mixture. Keep doing this to all the slices.

And voilá! You can eat them straight away, but they actually taste better a few hours later or even the next day! (Obviously I didn't wait. I'm impatient like that.) :)