Tag: healthy

Cauliflower and Cream – Friday Fitness?

Today was intended for #FridayFitness but, instead, I thought it’s time to relax a bit and I’m posting a recipe which is anything but fitness-friendly, anything but healthy. I’ll share with you one of my most craved meals – Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cream and Processed Cheese. So, it’s a real calorie bomb! But, hey, friends – you can’t be health-obsessed all the time. It’s not natural, therefore it’s bad. Enough for the apology section. Let’s move on to the recipe itself.

You need:
– broccoli – 400 g
– cauliflower – 400 g
– sour cream – 200 g
– processed cheese – 100 g
– cheese (which we call “yellow cheese”) – 100 g, grated
– garlic – 1-2 cloves
– thyme – 1 pinch
– oregano – 1 pinch

How to Cook It:
Rinse the broccoli and cauliflower, cut into “rosebuds” and simmer for 5-7 min in hot water. Strain and place in a baking tray.

In a bowl, mix the processed cheese cut in cubes, the sour cream, cheese, mashed garlic cloves, thyme and oregano.
Put all in the baking tray and pour 1 teacup of the water in which the vegetables were boiled. Stir carefully.
Bake in a preheated oven, medium temperature, until ready. The ingredients yield 3 portions.

Enjoy!

Courgette with Buckwheat – My Latest Favourite Meal

Today is time for #FridayFitness and I decided to tell you about my latest favourite meal.
I’ve seen the buckwheat packs often enough and known it’s some sort of healthy thing, but I’d never tried to find a way to consume that. When I gave birth to my baby, my mother-in-law gave me a pack of buckwheat flour telling me it’s super healthy and what not. I don’t see that pack now, so I must have disposed of it.

Finally, I thought I’d buy a small pack and then start looking for recipes. I bought the seeds, and not flour as I decided that would give me more varied options for cooking. Once home, I discovered a lot of easy-to-make recipes and thought how stupidly stubborn I’d been never to try this before. After cooking my first buckwheat meal, I went so far as to consider a mono diet for 3 days in which I’d consume just that with a little diluted low-fat yoghurt.

Today, I present to you… Courgette with Buckwheat

What You Need:
courgette – 3-4 pcs
carrots – 2 pcs
bell pepper – 1 red one
onions – 1 bunch of green ones, but I used half an old one
garlic – 1-2 blades of green one, but I didn’t use any
buckwheat – 1 teacup
dill – as much as you feel right, I used a teaspoonful
oil – I used olive oil
You may add salt in case you need it, of course. I don’t.

How to Make It:
Rinse the courgettes and cut them in cubes. Heat up a little oil and add 1 teacup of water. Add the onions and garlic in small pieces and stew them until they are soft. Then add the courgette, carrots and bell pepper. Add the buckwheat, 1 teacup of water and boil until ready. That means about 15 minutes after the water boils up. It’s not a long wait, all in all.

If you wish, you may transfer the mixture in a baking plate and put it in the oven for some time. I didn’t. In cooking, I prefer simple. And I didn’t understand if you move the mixture before or after you cook it in the pot.

Serving suggestion: Sprinkle some dill over the dish.

Everyone in my family loved the meal, so I’m cooking it again tonight. Give it a try yourself and share your photos and opinions with me!

Friday Fitness – Healthy Egg Muffins

For today’s post in Friday Fitness, I stopped my choice on an Egg Muffin recipe I stumbled upon some time ago. The why? For starters, I love eggs, even though preferably when they are boiled. Then, this meal is very easy to make and takes little time and resources. And finally, I can safely say it’s healthy and filling. Recently, I came to realise that eggs are a rather good pick when we need something both nutritious and low-calorie.

What you need:

  • 6 eggs
  • 1/2 tsp salt (I don’t add salt, but honesty demands me to mention it here)
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • 3/4 cup chopped spinach (or similar leafy greens)
  • 1/2 cup diced bell peppers (you may use your imagination and your personal preferences here, but don’t use courgette or eggplant, because they ooze lots of water. You can add olives or gherkins, though.)
  • 8 cherry tomatoes in quarters (if you are using normal ones, 1 tomato is enough, but make sure you remove the watery seeds and use the pulp only)
  • around 70 g of white cheese in crumbles (the one you call Feta, and we here call just “white cheese” :-D)
  • oil to grease the muffin cups

How you make them:

  • Preheat the oven at 180 C.
  • Sprinkle with oil your usual muffin holes (6 of the 12-hole tray will be enough).
  • Whisk eggs, salt and peper. Add and stir the other ingredients.
  • Divide mixture evenly between the holes. If you need, use more.
  • Bake 20 min or until the top is light golden and the centre bounces back when pressed.

My thanks to Nagi, the author of this wonderful recipe, located here . I was looking for protein meals that are easy to make, and here it is.

How to serve:
First option is to eat immediately, while they are still hot. Two muffins should be enough for breakfast. You can also store them in the freezer, packed in a vacuum bag or box.

I hope you’ll enjoy this and please, share some pictures and opinions!

Elevator or Everest?

ELEVATOR OR EVEREST?

(The new program for making your employees healthy)

Get Your Employees Involved to Experience the Ultimate Challenge and Long-Term Benefits

Following the recent legislation moves, you are supposed to freshen up your office work by persuading your employees to move along more than they usually do.

Here is what we offer: get them to forget about the elevator and climb Mount Everest instead!

As a start, the challenge will equip your employees with pedometers to log the number of steps they make every day, thus taking part in a prize-offering internal competition. Participation in the step-logging initiative will be enough so that they may win a prize, not considering the actual numbers they achieve.

The real incentive, however, will be the virtual climb of Mount Everest. At each stage your employees reach, they will celebrate their conquest by sticking the flag, so to say, and covering a stage of the real Everest climb. The south passage route will be used in that virtual quest, showing photos of base camps, scenery, along with information about the environment and even “current” details, such as outside temperature, the weight of the equipment they are “wearing and carrying” at that particular moment of their climb, etc. Your employees will see a route map where their progress will be shown along the track to the top. And since the Everest climb is not a quest for loners, your division leaders will be able to form teams which will cooperate in the collective task, thus building stronger internal bonds and benefiting from the team spirit in their future work.

Teaming together employees whose actual working stations are located in separate office sections or on different floors, is a possible approach. Thus, Jimmy from “Sales” might ignore the phone when he needs to talk to Mary from “Customer Service” and take the actual steps towards her office. Or, perhaps pizza-loving Pete will decide in favour of Mount Everest and skip the elevator ride to his breath-taking fifth floor, knowing that his teammates depend on his steps in order to reach the top sooner that the other teams.

In addition to the mission accomplishment, your employees will enjoy better fitness, brighter mood and warmer working environment (especially as opposed to the temperature figures they will be “experiencing” on their virtual quest), which, in the not-so-long run, will benefit your company immeasurably.

© 2011 Mariya Koleva

(This is a sample article, and not a real advertisement. Please, do not send inquiries as to the specifics of the program! Thank you!)