Ideas for healthy smothies

Since we came to NZ I tried to make as much as possible fresh home made food and that includes smoothies and juices that are extremely nutritious and excellent energy boosters. You don’t need that many ingredients for a smoothie – banana is a basic fruit to make a ‘base’ for a smoothie and you can just add on – apple, dried fruits,cinnamon, ginger, nuts, avocado or rice/almond milk or any powdered greens – barley, wheat grass, spirulina etc. – your imagination is the limit. If you never made a smoothie before I will suggest a simple ingredients: banana, avocado, kiwi and apple or orange- just blend all ingredients  and add water if you find it too thick. For chocolate lovers I also recommend to add  a spoon of cocao powder. If you want to be more experimental try to add some vegetables like spinach, kale, parsley.

Recently to provide more iron in my diet I’ve started using organic beetroot as a great source for boosting stamina which also contains potassium, magnesium and iron as well as vitamins A, B6 and C, and folic acid.

This one was made of two beetroots, two apples and a peach – but you can add beetroot to any juice/smoothie to enrich its nutritional value.

New year resolutions, goals and purpose – how to find them?

I was sent this ‘coaching wisdom’ some time ago but it’s still very relevant when I think about my goals for this year and in general purpose in life. Sometimes we feel that what we do doesn’t have sense or doesn’t make us happy. Here are few questions to help you to change it and  find your real purpose:

Do you love what you do?  Are you doing what you love?
Or are you coasting on what’s easy and familiar?

To do what you love, reconnect to your purpose.  Purpose is invariably connected to giving.  Take time to think about: what is it that you uniquely bring to share with everyone?

Reconnecting with your purpose is the easy part.
The challenge is to remember your life purpose on a daily basis and then step out of what’s familiar.  When you align your actions with your purpose, you’ll love what you do.

Easy gluten and dairy free pancakes

It must have been some kind of hidden cookery intuition that today  I made pancakes without even knowing it’s a famous in my culture ‘tlusty czwartek’. In Polish tradition it’s a day when we eat and share ‘fattening sweets’, food such as donuts, pancakes (more outside Poland) and ‘fawork’i, which my grandmother was a real master of. The ‘tlusty czwartek is a traditional feast marking of the last Thursday before Lent and is associated with the celebration of carnival.

‘Faworki’ are far too complicated for me and my skills of making food from flour aren’t great, especially that for about 2 years I try to avoid wheat in any form. So today I found a delicious recipe which is wheat and diary free, based on nutritious buckwheat flour and very easy to make.

1-1/2 cups buckwheat flour

1/2  teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon garam masala spice

1 teaspoon sugar

2 cups water

Juice of one lemon

2 tablespoon oil

Mix all ingredients leave for 30 minutes and fry as normal pancakes. Serve with fruits or savory topping – tomato, olives, tofu/cheese, fried onion and mushroom.

Happy, healthy ‘tlusty czwartek’!