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Recipe: Asparagus and feta frittata
This asparagus and feta frittata is a quick breakfast you can make on the weekend and refrigerate to eat during the week. It’s a great way of consuming quality protein, calcium and vegetables in the morning. Of course, you can also pair it with a salad to have it for lunch or dinner. You can use this same basic recipe as a template and substitute your favourite vegetable and cheese. Feel free to add your favourite herbs and spices, too.
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Recipe: Banana pancakes
Banana pancakes are the perhaps the easiest pancakes you’ll ever make. This recipe is vegetarian, gluten-free and dairy-free. The basic recipe has only 2 ingredients: banana and eggs. That’s 1 serve of fruit and 1 serve of protein foods ticked off for the day. I add cinnamon because I love its taste and it helps control blood sugar. Ripe bananas work best for this recipe, as they are easier to mash. Smaller pancakes are easier to flip. If you are like me and the sweetness of the banana is enough, you can use unsweetened yoghurt (e.g. YoPro or Rokeby Farms) or peanut butter (e.g. Mayver’s) as toppings. These will also…
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Portable breakfast ideas
I was recently motivated to come up with some portable breakfast ideas. Based on recommendations by Dr Valter Longo and others, I’ve been aiming to keep my food intake within a 12 hour window every day. The main reason I’ve struggled to comply with this rule is that sometimes I get home pretty late (8pm or later) after working out. The solution To solve this, I’ve adjusted my breakfast time to ~8am, which means I now eat breakfast at work. This means my breakfast has to be: a) portable and b) not too weird (okay, maybe just a little). The breakfast ideas Below is the nutritional breakdown of several combos…
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What are açaí bowls and are they worth the $?
Açaí bowls have gained popularity in the past 18 months or so due to the reported health benefits of açaí (and, in my opinion, the rise of healthy eating and veganism). What are açaí bowls “Açaí na tigela (“açaí in the bowl”) is a “typical Brazilian dish made of frozen and mashed açaí palm fruit. It is served as a smoothie in a bowl or glass, and is commonly topped with granola and banana, and then mixed with other fruits and guaraná syrup.” Wikipedia. But before we get any further, please listen to the correct pronunciation of açaí in this Youtube video. Health benefits of açaí The polyphenols in açaí…
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Recipe: Chorizo frittata
This is an easy, tasty recipe that makes good use of leftover frozen vegetables. You can have it for breakfast or serve it with a big salad for lunch or dinner. Enjoy! I used Mexican-style (uncooked) chorizo. You can use Spanish-style (dried) chorizo, which is already cooked, in which case you can place it straight in the roasting dish without cooking it. This recipe is gluten-free and low-carb.
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Recipe: Jugo surtido ("assorted" juice)
The funny thing about this juice is that the name tells you nothing, however everyone in Lima (possibly in Perú) knows exactly what to expect. The taste of a classic jugo surtido is, I’m sure, ingrained in the memories of millions of limeños who have ever set foot in a juguería (juice bars). When I was growing up, the best juguerías could be found in mercados (markets). Popular flavours were papaya, lúcuma con leche (lúcuma and milk), fresa con leche (strawberries and milk), plátano con leche (banana and milk), surtido and especial (surtido plus algarrobina and egg). I hated lúcuma until my mid-20s, the other single-fruit ones were common at…
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Product review: Chrissy’s Cuts sausages (plus recipe inside)
Chrissy’s Cuts sausages are made with quality cuts of meat that come from ethically farmed free-range and grass-fed animals. In addition, they do not contain any fillers, flours, nitrates or additives. I love her tagline “because meat shouldn’t be a mystery”. The current varieties on offer are beef brisket with smuggled greens and pork shoulder with bacon and maple syrup (killer combo!). I got a pack of the latter to sample. As you can see from the photo below, the ingredients list is super clean. Instead of just cooking the sausages and throwing them on a pile of coleslaw (my default modus operandi), I decided to use them to make…
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Recipe: Egg & olive salad
More egg salad madness! This variation includes olive oil mayonnaise and olives, a combo that is very familiar for Peruvians. If this variation doesn’t appeal to you, try the egg & cucumber or egg pesto recipes.
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Recipe: Egg pesto salad
Another egg salad recipe. I told you there were more variations coming! (see the egg & cucumber variation here). This version includes two of my favourite sauces (pesto and mayo), which for some reason I never thought about mixing together.
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Recipe: Egg & cucumber salad
We’re not big on egg salads in Perú. Yes, we have “huevos a la Rusa” (Russian-style eggs, a spin of the classic Olivier salad) but not the typical chopped egg salad as it’s known in the anglo world. Now that I’m doing the AltShift experiment, egg salad has entered my breakfast menu. I made the mayonnaise with organic avocado oil, which gave it a very cool green colour as you can see in the photo below. This is a basic recipe with cucumber. There are infinite variations to this recipe; I’ll be posting more in the future.
