Give Me Bananas

Yeah I ain’t kiddin. –>Do you believe my fake southern accent? I’m obsessed with saying "shiiiiaaat" the True Blood way right now.

But seriously now: I am not kidding!

What I hate most about jams are the ingredients. Sure, there’s a huge amount of fruit in there which is, however, closely followed by tons of sugar and sometimes some other weird little ingredients.

But then again I didn’t find any semi-healthy recipes! (I’m still no fan of cooking with tons of sugar) Long story short: I simply made my own jam.

Give Me Bananas Apricot Jam!

Ingredients (for 2 medium-sized jars):
- (approximately) 600g of fresh apricots
- 150g agave

Directions:
Remove the pits and chop up the apricots.

Combine them with the agave in a medium pot.

Let the mixture cook on a low heat (just hot enough so it bubbles a bit) for 30-60 minutes, depending on how “chunky” you want the jam to be.

That’s all! You can go and dance a bit in between. Or maybe do some studying, if you must.

I still have a shitboatload of apricots left so I will definitely make a second batch before I’ll leave.

Go and make this jam RIGHT NOW! You won’t regret it, I promise.

It also freezes well in case you won’t be able to gobble up that much jam by yourself.

Happy cooking!

For some weird reason I still remember the first time I made quinoa. I saw a recipe that sounded amazing and had my parents and sis over for dinner so I whipped up a quinoa salad (with spinach, mozzarella and pine nuts). Thinking about it makes me drool. I have make that dish again soon.

Ever since I’ve been in love with keen-wah.

My boyfriend is not a huge fan because he kind of overdosed on it when he was a kid (healthy mum! me likes!) but I wasn’t really familiar with it so I started to cook it extremely often. I don’t seem to get sick of it!

Yesterday night I prepared some quinoa for today’s and tomorrow’s breakfasts. I cooked some (pre-cooked) black quinoa with rice milk, dates, banana slices, almond slivers and a bit of cinnamon and got this really nice porridge.

It might look a bit ugly but it sure as hell is a keeper.

Other great quinoa eats:

• Quinoa pasta
• Quinoa salad
• Quinoa with basil and pine nuts
• Quinoa porridge (That post is actually titled with “I Love Quinoa (And My Sister Too)” – guess I really like quinoa, hehe)
• Leftover quinoa in a wrap
• Quinoa pesto mix (oh my what an old post!)

There are lots of other quinoa ideas but I could go on and on forever and you’d still be reading the next week .

Q: What’s your favourite quinoa-based meal? I can’t decide. I really love the sweet porridge version but I also love it in salads, etc.. It’s so versatile!

All day long I’ve been lying around, watching Season 7 of “24”, downloading podcasts, reading running magazines and listening to the Eclipse soundtrack (check out “Ours” by The Bravery! That song is kind of silly but so danceable and fun!).

Being ill has its good sides.

What sucks though is that I’m not even 100% ill! Just incredibly blah-ish but luckily not like I’m going to die. You know what I mean? It’s ok if you don’t

Moving on…

Thanks for the votes! It seems like we have a winner!
Here are the results:

Alplermagronen = 3 votes

Nusstorte = 4 votes

Graubünden Barley Soup = 2 votes

The nut cake it is then!

However, I will make the other two dishes in the following weeks as well. I really want to try making them.

Speaking of trying something new…

I needed a stabilizing and good lunch today and only had three things on my mind:
Red lentils
Brown rice
White coconut milk

I know that it looks awful but I took approximately 10389498 pictures and none of them turned out well. Too bad because this meal was truly amazing.

Coco Nutty Lentil Rice!

Serves one hungry trooper

Ingredients:

• 1/4 c red lentils
• 1/4 c brown rice
• 1/4 c coconut milk
• 1 c water
• 1 chopped tomato
• 1 tiny zucchini, sliced
• 1 small chopped carrot
• salt and pepper
• coconut oil

Directions:

Cook the lentils and rice with water for 20 minutes. Add salt and pepper, tomato and carrot and continue cooking for 10 minutes.
Add the coconut milk to the party and let it simmer until it’s not soup-like anymore and the rice is done.

While it’s cooking, sauté the zucchini with a little bit of coconut oil until it gets soft and a bit brown.

Pour the “stew” into a bowl and top it with the zucchini. Add preferred toppings (I added hummus and shelled hemp seeds).

Enjoy!

I’ll continue watching 24 now. Go Jack, go!

Have a good Wednesday!
Switzerland won the match against Spain and there’s a crazy noise outside! I get that people are happy (and let’s be honest here – no one thought that they would win) but damn it.. after a few hours it gets annoying! Am I becoming a grandma? Could be possible.

Q: Do you watch the World Cup?

I couldn’t publish this post yesterday for some reason… Let’s hope it works now.

There are few grains that I’ve ever cooked with. One of them is MILLET! I’ve had that lone package of millet for ages and finally gave it a try yesterday.

I had millet before but I’ve never cooked it myself which is also the reason why it took me 298583 years (and a few months) to try it.

I present you the Not So Average Millet and Chickpeas Dish!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 cup dry millet
• 4 cups water
• salt
• approximately 2 cups cooked chickpeas
• 1 onion (halved and sliced)
• 2 carrots (sliced)
• olive oil
• ground cumin
• 1/4 c raisins

Directions:

Cook millet according to the package (mine said to cook it with water and a pinch of salt for 13-15 minutes). In the mean time sauté the onion slices in a bit of olive oil. Halfway through cooking the millet, add the carrots and cumin. Once the millet is done add the chickpeas, onion slices and raisins.

It couldn’t be more simple!

Sorry, this pic is pretty ugly but I was HANGRY and needed my food fast! I’m sure you guys understand . On the side I also had a tofu kebab which went well with the millet dish.

Mmm I LOVED it! I had leftovers for lunch today and my co-worker said that it smelled so good. Mmm yes it was. Thankyouverymuch.

My day was pretty non-eventful. I was busy at work since we have a big event tomorrow night (which I am not looking forward to. I like my job but working til 9pm is not my idea of a “fun night out”).

Tonight’s pilates class was ok. We have a fairly new trainer and she keeps things very basic so it’s been boring me a lot. Actually.. Few people know that I once started to train to become a pilates teacher! I gave up after the second course because I’ve been too busy and couldn’t deal with everything at the same time.

Ha. That was some sort of random fact about myself.

Tell me one random fact about you!

I LOVE finding out random facts about other people . In fact (no pun intended) I always remember the weirdest facts about people – mainly celebrities. Yes, that’s what you need to know in life.

Darn. Is it 10:32pm already? I actually wanted to go to bed early so I could leave for the gym am 5:30am (crazy? Yes indeed, I don’t deny it). We’ll see how that goes.

I don’t know when I’ll be able to blog again because of tomorrow’s big event (and me getting home really late) and my trip to LONDON this weekend! I worked my butt off in March and can use my overtime for a few more days off so we’ll fly to London on Thursday night. I CAN’T WAIT! I will blog over there though (as often as possible) because the boyfriend is taking his laptop with him. Hooray!

But for now.. GOODNITE!

ps: the legs workout that I mentioned in my last post is a killer and I did it again today. My butt is in pain!! (Ok, I’m pretty sure you all wanted to know that.. –>insert heavy sarcasm)

ok I’ll go now.

See ya.

Sweet dreams.

Hasta luego.

Oh KARIN! Shut up already will ya???

..ok…

There are 3 main ingredients that you need for a good and simple veggie lasagne:

1. Tons and tons of veggies (duh)
2. Béchamel sauce
3. pasta

First you cook a huge load of mixed veggies (I used 1 yellow & 1 red bell pepper, 3 carrots, a few leaves of savoy cabbage, 1 zucchini and 1 aubergine) with one can of crushed tomatoes. Let it simmer for a few minutes and turn down the heat.

Next up is the béchamel sauce. To make that sauce you need 3 ingredients:

1. Butter
2. Flour
3. Milk

First melt 30g of butter on low heat then mix in 2 tbsp of flour. Let it brown a bit but watch it carefully! Afterwards stir in 4dl of milk and continue stirring (very important!) for about ten minutes. Season with salt and nutmeg and you’ve got your perfect béchamel sauce.

Now comes the fun part. LAYERING!

Béchamel sauce, pasta (uncooked!), veggies, béchamel sauce, pasta, veggies… until nothing’s left.

There you’ve got your perfect lasagne!

Now just top it with a bit of cheese (opt.) and you’re good to go (well after baking it for 30 minutes of course. You wouldn’t want to eat “crispy” pasta, would you?)

Ok, Italians would probably shoot me for butchering up that lasagne but it’s still an unbeatable recipe if you want a quick and good treat.

My boyfriend and I actually cooked veggie lasagne on our first date and it’ll always be dear to me.

Random meal of the day:

That, my friends, are defrosted zucchini patties from 9829847 years ago, topped with rice mung beans and savoy cabbage.

Oh and there was an egg or two too..

Ok, I’ll have to go and continue praying. My leg has been hurting like hell for the past few days which is making me slightly nervous since the race is in.. oh.. 2 days. Huh.
Or in other words: I’M FREAKING OUT!!

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

It’ll be fine. And if not..
well we still have two days.

Q: Have you ever had an injury? I haven’t! 23 years without one broken bone or any other kind of injury. I just hope that this trend continues *knock on wood*.

Oh Saturday, how I love theee!

Jane Austen has me again. I was doing some “research” on iTunes last night and accidentally stumbled upon the Pride & Prejudice soundtrack. I instantly knew that I had to go and watch the film. At 11:30pm. Oh the joy! I’ve never watched the BBC version but I love the one with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. The scene in the rain is my favourite. Sigh…

Anyway, no more cheesy talk.. (God, I’m such a girl sometimes! ) Let’s get to business.

This morning I met up with my parents at a huge sportswear store. They wanted to buy me a race outfit as a birthday present. Dad also wanted to get some Nike Free shoes (in case you didn’t know: he’s also a passionate runner). He went to a seminar where they talked about that shoe and he was intrigued. And so was I .

I also tried one pair on and It fit like a glove. We were meant to be together. It was definitely like love at first sight. So my beloved parents got me a pair too (though I protested and wanted to pay it myself – I don’t like getting things from my parents…). Oh well.. thanks anyway

Nike Free is pretty special and trains the foot and the legs and it definitely isn’t your average running shoe but they’re fantastic. I tried them afterwards at the gym.

My gym is actually next to the store (how convenient!) and I got a good workout in:

• 2 miles run in 18 minutes or so (I’m not 100% sure because I accidentally hit the Stop button 4 (!!) times..)
• Upper body strength training / 30 minutes. (Shoulders, arms, back, abs)
• Stretching

I was starving when I got home and whipped up lunch in 10 minutes flat. Who said that fast food can’t be healthy??

Salad with ice berg lettuce, carrots, radish, chickpeas and walnut oil + white balsamic vinegar.

WW wrap with 1/2 mashed avocado and sesame seed + almond tofu

So simple and delicious!!

This afternoon I made a banana carrot bread. I’ve been wanting to combine banana & carrot forever and couldn’t wait to get into some baking action today.

Carrot Banana Bread

Adapted from allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil (I used safflower oil)
• 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup maple syrup + 1/4 cup rice syrup
• 2 eggs egg replacer (I bought a mix ages ago.. I believe it’s similar to Ener-G)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
• 1 cup grated carrots
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans completely forgot to add them

Directions

In a mixing bowl, combine oil and sugar. Add eggs (or replacement); mix well. Combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon; gradually add to the creamed mixture alternately with bananas. Stir in carrots (and pecans). Transfer to a greased 9-in. x 5-in. x 3-in. loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 55-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean (I covered the bread after 30 minutes of baking to prevent burning). Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

I really like this bread because it’s so moist. Definitely a keeper

Dinner was pretty good with one exception. I made Tempeh (for the first time at home– I had it at a restaurant before) and wasn’t impressed. I didn’t not like it but it was only ok..

I also had some brown rice mochi and zucchini on the side (which were both great)

(Btw: my camera seems to take such blurry pictures sometimes even though the lightning’s fine. Sorry for that)

I added some shoyu and curry to the tempeh which helped a bit. Does anyone have a great trick for a good tempeh dish??

Okay, I’ve got to go now… Hope you’re having a wonderful weekend!

So this is how last night went:

11 PM
K: Damn you brain. Stop working! I want to sleep!
11:15 PM
K: One sheep, Two sheep…
♫ Boom Boom Pow ♫
K: What the…????
♫ some weird German hip hop ♫♫♫♫♫
K: Alright. That sounds like Sel is listening to music // *goes outside* // ??? No it isn’t…
♫ Again an other song ♫♫
K: Wait that comes from the neighbour next doors?!?
♫♫
K: Oh wait.. Today’s 1 February.. Did someone new move in?
♫♫
♫♫♫
♫♫♫♫
K: GRRRRR! Ok, I’ll just try to sleep.
♫♫♫
00:20 AM
K: Ok, a pillow over my ears.. that might work…
K: No it doesn’t.
♫♫ I am a mother f*cking PIMP ♫♫
K: OK I WON’T LISTEN TO THAT CRAP ANYMORE!! I WANT TO SLEEP!!!!
So K stomped outside.
K: Hell, it’s freezing!
Thank god for these intercom things.
Dude: Yeah?
K: Hey. Are you that guy who listens to that music?
Dude: Oh is it too loud?
K: Yeah well, I live next doors and can hear everything so please could you turn the volume down? I really want to sleep.
Dude: Ok. Sorry!
K: No worries. Thanks.

Maybe I acted like a grandma but you can ask your neighbour to turn the volume down at 00:30 AM, right? Seriously, it sounded like someone inside our apartment was listening to music.. not someone who lives in a different house! (Though both houses are right next to each other and sort of connected.. I assumed that the wall wasn’t that thick [but it was – I banged against it with a book and thought it might work. Well it didn’t.])
He probably hates me now and thinks that I’m super lame.

So… fast forward: This morning I got a newsletter by Jivamukti Yoga London which started like this:

Divine Karin…

…LOVE thy neighbour…

I’m not kidding. Those yogis know everything.

I awoke bright and early but lacked sleep. A fantastic bowl of whole wheat cereals, crunchy quinoa and hemp-nola with soy milk, banana and almond butter made me dance with joy though.

I felt like going to gym after work (and before pilates) so I packed my stuff and realized at work that I forgot my chip. Sigh. So I went back home on lunchtime and decided to make a protein smoothie for post-gym/pre-pilates.

In the mix went:

• 1 banana
• 1 scoop chocolate protein powder
• lots of frozen raspberries
• 1 cup almond milk
• ice

This was probably one of the best protein smoothies I’ve ever made! So creamy and raspberry-ish!

Alright.. got to hit publish now.. AGAIN. Sorry if you saw this post incomplete – I accidentally hit publish while writing this post.

I’m glad to hear that you all liked the brownies recipe ! It’s actually quite common to use black beans in Japanese desserts but I wasn’t really familiar with chickpeas.. But today I saw some chickpea blondies on an other blog! Woooo.. Those chicks are everywhere!!!

Q: What’s your favourite smoothie mix? See above.

HAPPY MONDAY!!! I decided to try feeling positive about the “worst day” of the week because

1. What’s the big difference between a Monday and, say, a Wednesday? Basically it’s the same (at least for me). You go to work and come back home. Period.
2. Hating Mondays is a waste of time.

Well I’m not really sure if I’m going to be successful with my plan but it’s better than not trying, right?

Yesterday was super busy (hence my absence). I did the laundry, paid bills, went to my parent’s place and ran 5 km with my dad (I was ankle-deep in snow!), went so see my godmother’s play, played pool, had dinner at my parent’s place and went back home to Bern. Whew.

I came up with an amazing brownies recipe on Saturday (I was in a huge baking mood). Nicole wrote about chickpea cookies the other day which inspired me to…

Chickpea Brownies

Makes one 8 inch (about 20 cm) pan

Ingredients:

• 1 can chickpeas (drained and rinsed)
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup agave
• 225 grams (8 ounces) dark chocolate
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup almond slivers
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• pinch salt
• 1/4 cup apple sauce (or more – depends on how moist you like your brownies )

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C. Whisk chickpeas in food processor. Mix them with the flour in a big bowl. Add baking powder and salt. In the mean time melt the chocolate in a small bowl over hot water or in the microwave. Stir in all the wet ingredients (maple, agave, canola oil). Mix with dry ingredients and stir in the almond slivers. Pour the mixture into a brownies pan that’s either sprayed with non-stick spray or buttered.
Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Feel free to add more apple sauce if you want it more moist.

I really loved those brownies and they’re just as good as any other (unhealthy) ones. You can’t taste the chickpeas but they add some nice fiber.

Don’t you all agree with me that hunger/appetite is sometimes pretty strange? Today I had two pieces of toast with almond butter and banana for breakfast which kept me full for hours. I wasn’t even super hungry when it was time for lunch. (Who am I???) Usually I’m starving by 10 AM, even after having porridge for breakfast. Weird. Does that happen to you sometimes as well? I decided to have a little something anyway and drank some blood orange, honey and ginger juice.

And for lunch I had some ugly wakame salad! My mum found it at the local supermarket and bought me a package (she knows me so well ). It doesn’t look pretty but it was great. Seaweeds are good for you!

Also had a “normal” salad and a banana muffin. Good stuff!

HAVE A GREAT MONDAY EVERYONE! I’ll meet my friend Simone for dinner and then we’ll go and see “Bright Star”. Can’t wait! 

Missed week 1 or week 3?

Well obviously week 3 part 2 never happened and I also said that I’d post the recipe of week 4 “tomorrow” but never did and I’m really sorry about that. However, I thought that it would be great to post the recipe during my absence even though it isn’t December anymore. A great soup can be eaten any time though, right?

So here’s what you need:

Ingredients:

• 3 potatoes
• 1 beet
• 3 carrots
• 1 inch ginger
• 1 root celery
• 1/4 savoy
• 4 cups of water
• 4 cups of stock (I used 2 litres of water with bouillon instead)
• salt & pepper to taste

That makes a LOT of soup.

Heat the water & stock. Peel and cut the veggies.

(purple carrots!!!!!)

Add the veggies to the water/stock mix and bring it to boil. Afterwards reduce heat and let it simmer for about 40 minutes. (Seriously, it’s up to you. Just check when the veggies are soft – I went running while it simmered (Silvio was in the house, no worries) and let it cook for about an hour).

Looks a bit like blood doesn’t it? Ok I don’t want to ruin your appetite now..

… It turned into this after a while.

Purée the soup with a hand held blender or pour everything into a “normal” blender and blend your little heart out. Season with S&P

Enjoy!

(It’s a fact that it killed all the germs when Silvio was ill. True thing.)

Bonsoir mes amis.

Sorry for my absence but life kind of got in the way. I just got back from seeing Avatar (in 3D). Wow. Such an amazing film! But anyway, it’s 11:45pm now and I just wanted to stop by and say hi.

“"Hi!”

Ok. Now we got that done .

The weekend was truly lovely and I was completely restless yesterday. I went out on Saturday night but only drank water and tea (it looked very cool – drinking tea in that club. Kind of badass. ). I got up without problems (aka no hangover) and headed for the gym where I did 30 min on the elliptical and 30 min on the bike with some ab work in between. Afterwards I went to my parent’s place as I had plans to go running with my sister and dad. I was tired but felt great during the run. However, it was really cold and started snowing. It was my first real run with my sister and I’m so proud of her! She has a great endurance even though she “only” does pilates.

Work has been kind of like a madhouse today, I guess people want to get everything done before Christmas break. Time flew by and when I got home Selina was already cooking dinner. Hooray! She made a pasta dish with veggies and cream. Not going to complain, it was great

The film started at 8 pm and we still had some time so I wanted to make some chocolate covered dried apricots! We have them every year during Christmas season and I honestly don’t know why we make them more often. They’re so easy to make and so so good!

We just used dark chocolate and dried apricots and got started.

I never melt chocolate in the microwave or in a pan but only in a bowl over a pan (with boiling water in it). This is a great way to prevent burnt chocolate.

Just check out these gorgeous chocolate covered apricots! They’re such an amazing treat and don’t take that much time to make at all.

I made them with Silvio which was rather stupid. I swear, he ate half of the batch he made.

Ok I’ve got to go to bed now. I just wanted to leave you with these gorgeous babies We’re going to make cookies on Wednesday. Yay!

Question: I’m still looking for great cookie (or any other sweet treats) recipes. What are your favourites??
Come on, I need ideas!