Old Favourites/Chicken Burgers/ Q & A!

First things first, before I forget! I promised the chicken burger recipe, so here it is

For three big burgers, you will need:

• approx 400g of minced chicken
• 2 tsp pesto
• 4 garlic cloves
• 3 shallots
• 1 egg yolk

Method: Finely chop the garlic and onion, and add it to the pesto and egg yolk:

This be my mistake Numero Uno – I didn’t chop them finely, as I figured I was going to add it the blender…which was Mistake Duno! The recipe I based this on wanted minced chicken, which I didn’t have, so I just threw chunks of chicken breast into the blender – but my chicken didn’t get ‘minced’, it got well and truly blended!!:

Seriously, by the time I’d mixed in the garlic etc, it was like MOUSSE!! Ah welll….Anyway! Next step, shape into burgers and chill for a few hours (I sprinkled some wholemeal flour down cos the mix was very sticky):

Then, heat 1tbsp oil, and fry them for about 15mins, flipping occasionally til they’re cooked through:

Then serve!

SO SIMPLE!! SO GOOD! The blending-the-chiken-til-it’s-like-a-mousse thing actually made them WAY better – the texture was DIVINE! I’d recommend you do that

OK, now onto today

Woke up – a glass of mango smoothie and 2 squares of chocolate were my pre-2.4mile/20minute/fast run:

YUM. Then…

NINE DAYS.

Yes. It’s been nine days since my last bowl of oatmeal. I was seriously overdue a hit of my own personal crack (I’m a self confessed oatmeal addict ). But, I didn’t do just any old oatmeal, I did Chocolate Hazelnut Oatmeal!! Let me tell ya, it was GOOOOODD!!

• 1/2 cup oatmeal
• 1 cup milk
• 1 banana
• a big spoon of hazelnut butter (I just can’t get enough)
• a whisked-to-soft-peaks egg white
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder

Cook oats minus the egg white as usual:

When it was almost done, I added in the egg white (left over from the burgers yesterday), and served, topped with flaked almonds, blackberry jam and another blob of hazelnut butter:

OH MY DAYS. That was one of the BEST bowls of oatmeal ever!! Well worth the wait, and very chocolatey, with delicious hazelnut butter melted everywhere….so much better than Nutella

After that, I did some work, some riding, and some Jillian Oh, and 15mins of a dance DVD I re-discovered – so fun!!!

Lunch was simples:

I fried some aubergine, cherry tomatoes and spinach in a new pur-chase:

 

Avocado oil!! There were tons of oils I was looking at (like multi-seed oils etc) but most of them seemed to just be used for drizzling, as opposed to cooking – so avocado it was Alongside, I had the other half can of my faux baked beans, (aka chickpeas) and 2 pieces of toast:

Simple and quick, but filling and hit the spot For dessert, I had two lemon curd biscuits:

I love those so – they’re made totally from ‘real’ ingredients, nothing artificial or dodgeh PLus, they taste darn fine

During the afternoon, I had a coconut flavour hot chocolate (I needed the brain energy for my revision of neurons and neurotransmitters and GLUATMATE and GABA….ugh) and a little pear:

It looked sad and woeful, with the stalk bent over So I ate it

Theeen, I had another hot chocolate, and another one of my apple parsnip spice muffins (look them up in the recipe section – then bake them cos they’re AMAZING!), hot from the microwave and spread with PB and hazelnut butter:

Don’t even get me started on how good that tasted. Oh my.

For dinner, I had dreamt up an adventurous recipe last night, but then, something called my name….

STUFFED PASTA!!

When you hear that call, you DO NOT ignore it. Plus, I realised I hadn’t had my usual tradition of stuffed pasta on a Friday night…So, back to an old favourite it was!

I teamed it with agave/thyme/cinnamon/garlic salt roasted squash, parsnip and broccoli, and lots of balsamic vinegar:

I will never ever ever get bored of this scrumptious meal – it will stay with me throughout my life

After dinner entertainment consisted of revising movement control and emotion (I love emotion, and I love movement control, but DANG there are some cruel experiments out there!! Cutting open live dogs’ brains with no pain killers, and then prodding them about to see what muscle moves….the dogs showed ‘vivid pain’ apparently. Oh, the joys of psychology). Then I had my last pot of 2% whilst watching Come Dine With Me (along with a hot chocolate and 2 Booja truffles )

Now – a few brief questions! I will get to all the questions I’ve had so far, but as this is a mega long post, I’ll just do a few short ones

What is your favourite cereal?

Holy crumbs. HORRIBLE question!! If I had to pick just one…probably Soya and Linseed Bran – tastes fab, packed with protein and fibre But the Nature’s Path cinnamon/blueberry is a close second – helLO, it has cinnamon What’s your favourite cereal? Any brands you’d recommend?

When did you start riding?

Horses have been in my family since my gran was young, so we had them around all the time – but I was too scared to sit on a horse til I was 1.5yrs old If you’d like to hear more about my horsie history, leave us a comment and I’ll do a post with some more details

Does anyone else out there ride?

Have a good Sunday evening!

Don’t forget my ‘Ask Me Anything’ page!