Healthy Roasted Garlic Onion and Potato Soup

I don't know about you and where you live, but here in Canada, winter is in FULL force. Just last week we had over 20 cm of snow fall in one day, and the windchill has us in the -20 range almost every day. As a result, cold and flu season also happened to be out in full force too! It feels like everywhere you go people are coughing and sneezing in your general direction, from the coworker at work to the cashier at the grocery store, the unmistakable sniffle and cough are everywhere. 

I've been trying my best to steer clear of a cold because really, who has time for that? Aside from chugging Vitamin C like its nobody's business I have also been trying to incorporate healthier and more nourishing foods in my diet that tend to have great anti viral properties such as garlic and onion. 

Onions are really high in antioxidants and possess anti-inflammatory properties. Apparently onions are extremely high in the antioxidant 'quercetin'. Quercetin helps the body fight free-radicals, and boosts the immune response. A recent study from the British Journal of Nutrition showed that individuals who ate foods high in quercetin (onion soup was used in the study), had better immune responses and less likelihood for cardiovascular disease [2].

Garlic is also a powerful antioxidant, but it also possess antimicrobial, antiviral and antibiotic properties! Garlic contains Vitamin C and can apparently provide decongestant effects when you do get a cold. Garlic has been used for centuries as a powerful medicine and was believed to have sacred qualities. In fact, some say that it was so valuable to the Ancient Egyptians, that cloves were always placed in the tombs of Pharaohs! Hey, if its good enough for the Pharaohs then its good enough for me! :) 

So if you are looking to boost your immune system to avoid catching cold from icky sickly people, or if you unfortunately have come down with something and you are one of those sickly people, try this delicious soup to get you back to your normal self sooner! 

Roasted Garlic and Onion Potato Soup

(slightly adapted from here)

• 1 large head of garlic
• A few tablespoons of Olive Oil
• 1¾ pounds (about 3-4 medium potatoes)
• ¼ cup butter
• ¼ cup flour
• 3-4 large onions, chopped
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup milk
• ¼ cup heavy cream
• ¼ teaspoon thyme
• ½ cup grated cheese
• salt + pepper to taste
  

1. Begin by preheating your oven to 400F to roast your garlic. Cut off the top of a full head of garlic, making sure to go back and snip off the tops of the cloves you didn't catch (just a tiny snip to expose the garlic will do!). Place inside a square of aluminum foil and then pour some olive oil on top (it will get absorbed inside the cloves) and add salt and pepper to taste.Then wrap up the garlic and place in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the garlic is soft when you poke it with a knife. Then allow to cool completely before removing the garlic from the peel. While the garlic was baking I proceeded to the following steps.

2. Melt the butter in a large soup pan on medium high heat. Add the onions and cook until they are translucent. Add flour and cook for 1 minute (do not brown).

3. Add chicken broth, milk, cream, and thyme. Allow soup to come to boil then simmer for a few minutes, whisking until nicely blended. 

4. Add peeled and diced potatoes (make sure they have been chopped into small pieces so they cook faster!).

5. Once the potatoes have cooked (you can tell by poking them gently with a knife - if it goes in really easily it means its cooked),  add in all of your roasted garlic cloves and shredded cheese. Using an immersion blender, blend all the ingredients until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

Healthy Eating and a Quick & Easy Apple Feta Cheese Spinach Salad

Hello Lovelies!

Keeping up with my (and probably many other's) New Years Resolution to eat healthier, I thought I would kick of my recipes for 2016 (woah, its weird. Its 2016 now...no more 15!) with something healthy. And what's more healthy than salad? Its basically a bowl full of veggies. Well the only thing healthier would be if it had fruit right? WELL IT DOES! Whaaattt. That’s right, an apple a day will keep the doctor away, so this salad with veggies AND apple slices should more than do the trick!

Now for most people the concept of putting fruits in with their salads is not a foreign one. Lots of people add fruits like apples and strawberries and clementine to their salads. These are the people I usually silently judged – I mean it’s a SALAD. All veggies. No fruits. Why are you ruining it?

But recently that all changed when I was forced to try a salad with apples at my work place's local bistro. I was running late on grabbing lunch, and at about 3 pm, you take whatever food they have left to sell to you. So I begrudgingly bought it, wrinkled my nose at it, and sat down to eat. And oh my god! I was very pleasantly surprised at how good it was! I was definitely not anticipating liking the sweetness of the apple in the salad (for me a salad is usually lemoney/garlicy/ savoury thing), but I really did! So much so I decided to come up with my own recipe. And so here it is: a healthy Apple Feta Cheese Spinach Salad!

Recipe Review: The best part about this salad is that it comes together real quick and easy and only needs a few ingredients. The rest of my family, like myself, were originally pretty skeptical of a fruity salad, but once they dug in they ate THE ENTIRE serving of it in one go! I would call that a success! The dressing is also really great as its not only really healthy, and fresh, and homemade, it's also pretty yummy. It’s got a nice balance of sourness and sweetness to counteract with the rest of the salad. We will definitely be making this a staple into our family's rotation.

 

Apple Feta Cheese Spinach Salad

Ingredients

10 oz bag of baby spinach (we used one of those fully big containers you get from Costco!)

2-3 apples, cored and thinly sliced (I used 1.5 as the family was still pretty skeptical ;) )

1 small red onion, sliced into thin strips

1/2 cup celery, thinly sliced

1/2 cup toasted walnuts, chopped up

5 oz feta cheese, chopped into tiny pieces

1/3 cup dried cranberries

Cider Honey Mustard Vinaigrette

1/3 cup olive oil

4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoons of mustard

2 tablespoons of honey

1-2 tablespoons of lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Toss together all of the salad ingredients. (yes it's that simple, it is just a salad after all! ;) ) **note: If you are using onions that happen to be very sharp (mine caused me to start crying a river with the first slice) you might want to run them under cold water for a few seconds to get rid of the bite. Usually I enjoy the bite of onion in my salad but since this one has fruit in it you might want to tone it down. Up to you though!
2. For the Dressing: Whisk all the ingredients up together in a bowl and pour over your salad. Serve immediately. (If you plan on having your salad later, do what I do and make the dressing separately in a Tupperware container that seals well. Once ready to serve, just shake the Tupperware around to mix and pour on your salad. It's what I do for when I pack salad for lunch the next day!)

And as part of my new year's resolution to learn more about what I'm eating, heres the nutrition info for this salad! If you make it into 6 servings (I calculated it as 6 big plates worth of salad), each serving only has roughly 300 calories, 20 grams of carbs, more than 4 grams of Fibre, and approximately 8 grams of protein! This makes it a healthy low carb / low GI (glycemic index) salad. The extra health benefits: 1 serving gives you whooping 42% of your daily Vitamin A intake, roughly 30% of your Vitamin C, 18% of your calcium, and 14% of your daily Iron intake. *Average approximation as the exact brands of ingredients you use could be different. This is based on a 2000 calories/day diet. 

Hope you guys found the nutrition info helpful! If so, let me know and I can continue to include them in my recipes :) 

How to make achievable New Year's Resolutions, and how to succeed at them!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Wishing every single one of you a new year filled with lots of love, happiness, good health, and success!! :) 

Have any of you made any New Years Resolutions this year? This year, for the first time in a long time, I did! The reason I avoided them before was mainly because I just didn’t really seem to 'believe' in them… why is it that at one point in the year you have to suddenly make goals for the rest of the year? Why cant you make new goals for self improvement all year round? I also didn't like to set them as it seemed you were almost setting yourself up for failure. I mean the stereotype at this point is that whichever resolutions you do end up making, you will probably break in a matter of days.  You're setting yourself up for failure!

But this year I realized something. Maybe setting a resolution at the New Year is a good thing. Sure, we can (and should) make plans to make positive changes in our lives throughout the year, but one benefit of marking your start date as 'the new year' is it gives you a measure to, well, 'measure' your progress! You can see how you are progressing throughout the year, and next year at this time you can pat yourself on the back for 12 months of hard work. I also started thinking that maybe the reason we often fail  at our resolutions (and often so quick!) is because we are setting ourselves up to fail!

Maybe the problem isn't us, but the unrealistic and horribly planned out resolutions we make! So this year, I decided to outline how to make the very best New Years Resolutions for the new year, and more importantly, how to set yourself up for success and not failure! :)

How to Make Achievable (and set yourself up for success!) New Year's Resolutions

 

1. Be Realistic

Make sure your NYR are realistic. Don’t say you are going to read 10 books a month, ever month, for the next 12 months, when the last book you read was 2 years ago. Don’t say you are going to go to the gym for 2 hours a day, every day, for the next 365 days when you have never stood foot inside a gym. One reason many people end up failing at their NYRs is that they make far too unrealistic ones. Sure, we would all love to be fitness freaks who are well read, but if this is your first step towards such greatness, don’t expect expert levels of skill and commitment! Small attainable goals are much more realistic. For example, if you have never stepped inside a gym, maybe one goal would be to get an actual gym membership, another may be to go a minimum of once a week, for the first 6 months, and then twice a week for the rest of the year. Instead of aiming to read 10 books a month, why not aim to read 1 in January, 2 in February, 3 in March, and so on. It will be much less daunting, much more realistic, and will give you a chance to get in the groove of things.

2. Be Mentally Ready

Make sure you are in the mindset of what you are setting out to do. For example, you may look in the mirror and see a nice little muffin top, and think, hey….I should probably hit the gym to get rid of this. But that’s not enough. You need to mentally prepare yourself. You need to come to terms with 'going to the gym is going to really suck at first', and see if you are willing to commit to the suckage. Most people tend to make NYRs about things they don’t like about themselves, but they aren’t actually willing to put in the effort to change. If you are not ready to do it, then don’t pledge that you will! You are simply setting yourself up for failure.

3. Prepare

Leading from being mentally ready, its not enough to simply be 'ready' to take on a new challenge, you need to actually plan for it in order to succeed. For example, if you want to try to eat healthier this year then you are going to need to plan. You need to come up with meal plans, grocery lists, and ideas for lunches to pack to work. If you are now making the more realistic resolution of reading 10 books in the new year, maybe you should help narrow down which books they would be. You can pick out which 10 exactly, and put them on your bedside table. Or at the least you can make a book list of potential reads to help you pick as you go. Preparation is key!

4. Challenge yourself, but don’t be too hard on yourself

Its important that you are realistic about your goals, and not too hard on yourself, but also make it a challenge! Reading 120 books in one year is way too much of a challenge, but reading just 1 book is not much of a challenge at all. Push yourself to improve in whichever area you want to improve yourself in, but DON’T over challenge yourself. It's all about moderation!

5. Create general categories of improvement

If there are several areas of your life you want to improve upon, I feel the best way to help you be successful in your NYRs is to make overarching general areas for improvement rather than very overly specific goals. For example, if your NYR this year is to do yoga every single day on your lunch break at a specific yoga studio across the street, then that may be setting yourself up for failure. What about the days work projects run late and bleed in to your lunch hour, what about days you're sick with the flu, what about days you just darn don’t feel like it? (Remember - don’t be too tough on yourself!) A better goal would be to have the general category of "I'm going to do more yoga this year". Then within that category you can make the following goals: "I will attend at least one yoga session a week at the location near my work, during my lunch break. I will join an outdoor yoga group in the summer. I will make a space in my home to practice yoga once a week." This way if you are having a tough week and can only attend one yoga lesson during your lunch, you wont be discouraged and feel bad. But if you have time and go three times in a week you will be super encouraged by breaking your own goals for yourself! YAY! GO YOU! :)

So What are MY New Year's Resolutions?

I've decided to focus on two general areas of my life:

1. My overall health
2. Blogging!

 

Health

I'm going to do my best to generally make healthier lifestyle choices from what I eat to the activities I do.

I'm going to do my best to try to incorporate more and more veggies into every meal

I'm going to try my best to pack a healthy lunch at least twice a week (and work my way up from there!)

I'm going to try to continue educating myself on healthy choices and foods

I'm going to move more! Confession: I am about the laziest person you will ever meet when it comes to exercise. I HATE it. Despise it. But this year I'm going to try to hate it just a little less. Being realistic I'm setting a goal of working out in some way at least ONCE a week. Since I have no plausible excuse why not to, I think I'm going to have to stick to it! :) Hopefully from there I will be able to gradually increase it to several times a week

Learn yoga. A girls gotta start somewhere….ill start with actually figuring out the basics!

 

Blogging

I really want to commit some serious time to this whole blogging thing :)

SO I am committing myself to learning and growing my blogging in 2016. I am hoping on posting at least 4 times a month (roughly once a week) and maybe grow from there. (If you have the same resolution and want to check out my Pinterest board with all the cool articles I've been collecting on 'how to blog', check it out HERE!)

I'm also hoping to expand my social media presence (though I'll have to do some learnin' on how to make that happen first! Anyone have any tips for me? (Check out my Pinterest Board HERE on Social Media tips and tricks – see? Planning is key ;) )

I'm also hoping on improving my food photography skills. I have come a long way form my early days but still have a lot to learn! I would like to learn more about the food 'styling' side of food photography and more about lighting details. If you are looking to improve your food photography too, check out this Food Photography Pinterest board I have going on!

SO those are my New Year's Resolutions! What are yours? How do you plan to tackle them? Let me know in the comments :)

 

Lets make 2016 our year! :)

My journey towards healthy eating and a Quick and Easy High Protein Low Carb Sauteed Mushrooms and Feta Spinach Recipe

So I have finally done it you guys.

I've taken the jump into the world of healthy eating, and healthy living. I'm officially a healthy eater!

Kinda.

Sorta.

Maybe....

Perhaps a more accurate description would be I have made the jump into the "I'm-actively-trying-to-make-healthier-food-choices-and-not-slowly-but-surely-killing-myself-with-the-immense-amounts-of-junk-food-and-calorie-laden-carbs-and-sugar-loaded-cakes-that-I-consumed-on-a-daily-basis-though-I-still-sometimes-cheat-and-stuff-my-fat-face-with-delicious-junk-food" bandwagon. But you see, to say I have become a "healthy eater" is just so much easier.

Perhaps an explanation is in order? You see I've never had the 'worst' diet in the world, due basically to the fact that I have a mother who has always emphasized using 'healthy' and 'whole' ingredients, and banned all forms of fast food and junk food in the house since I was a kid. She was able to successfully condition us as children to avoid junk food to the point where we would not even ask for it as we knew the answer was no. If 10 year old Zahra were to pick up a box of Dunk-a-roos in the grocery store, with the hopes of whining pleading my case enough for them (but MA! EVERYONE IS EATING THEM), I would then put it right back down without trying to argue because I knew the answer was not only "NO", but would also be followed up with a speech about how I would get cancer from eating these delicious cookies + dip combo. Chips? Nope. Coke? Don't even think about it. Fruit Roll ups? HAHAHA you mean chemically infused rubber that will give you cancer AND LITERALLY KILL YOU?

You get the idea.

It came to the point where the idea of "OMG LETS HAVE A YUMMY TREAT" was having an organic yogurt fruit cup.

So then fast forward to a few years ago when I finally became independent and in charge of what I ate in my university years. Having the cash and the opportunity, I started to eat whateverrrrr I wanted. And man. Did I make up for lost time. Pizza? Double cheese please! And a side of greasy fries please. And a Coke. XL. McDonald's? Superzie Me? SUPERSIZE YES!

And as a result....the weight started piling on.....Freshman 15? More like Freshman 20.

And things only got worse when I left school and joined the workforce. At least in school I had to *walk* to class. Not here friends, not here. My commute consisted of walking 10 meteres to the bus stop in the morning, sitting on the bus, getting off and walking 10 meteres to my building, sitting for 8 hours, and busing back home. Meanwhile my snack drawer at work (yes I had a snack drawer) consisted of a selection of cookies, brownies, poptarts, DUNKAROOS (FOR YOU 10 YEAR OLD ZAHRA! FOR YOOOOUUU!), chips, chocolate stuffed croissants (thanks Costco), and oatmeal. Cause, you know, oatmeal is healthy right?

As my weight crept up, and my energy levels fell, I was in denial. See the thing was, I was blessed with this wondrous rare gift that can be bestowed on any woman - a super high metabolism and good genetics. When I started University I weighed 100 pounds. 100 pounds! And at roughly 5'5' that put me at BELOW the average BMI! It was all thanks to great genetics - my sister was tiny, and even my mom had been teeny tiny when she was younger! It was the GREEN light I needed to stuff my face. And stuff my face I did friend. Stuff my face I did.

As the weight started to pile on I ignored it. Honestly I never even weighed myself. I noticed my clothes getting a tad tighter....but I figured I outgrew my high school clothes and that this was a chance to buy a new Uni wardrobe! wee! then I realized one day I was 115 pounds, and I wasn't even remotely worried. I was all "PSSH!! This is a GOOD thing. I need some extra meat on my bones. In fact...I need even MORE meat on my bones!" Before I knew it I went from a size XS to a M. "Pshh. Thats fine...."I would say, rather defensively. "I, uh, as a Medium, I am NORMAL, sized individual. I'm still a HEALTHY size!"  :D Then....it just kept coming....in the first year out of school I gained another 15 pounds. FIFTEEN POUNDS. In less than 8 months. Thats when it slowly started to hit me that eating junk every day may not be so 'ok' as I had previously convinced myself. Maybe my beloved mother was on to something when she said NO to the sugar packed junk foods I so deeply desired? I evaluated my diet and realized I was making some pretty poor choices. So I figured, huh.....maybe I should cut out having a coke every day with my meals? Maybe that will stop me from gaining all these pounds. Maybe I should make some healthier choices, like instead of heading to McDonalds for lunch, I will make a Subway Trip. Instead of having a chocolate chip muffin (or two) for breakfast I'll have a FRUIT muffin. Then I will go right back to the weight I was. Yeah. That will do it!

It didn't do it.

It kept coming on. Now those of you who are healthy eaters may be rolling your eyes at me like "NO? Really? You thought stopping having a coke a day and opting for a processed fruit muffins over chocolate flavoured ones would make you skinnier? Oh no. I wonder why it didn't work??" *eye roll* Well heed your sarcasm - I know NOW how wrong I was! But alas I had to wait until that winter to hit rock bottom before slapping myself awake into reality.

Oh God. So sometime this past January I had pulled out some winter clothes I had in storage. I had bought them BRAND NEW the previous year after some major sales in the early spring. Since it was the end of winter at that point I had packed them up, tags still attached, and put them in storage.  Keep in mind that when I had purchased them the previous year they were a tad large (that's the way I like my clothes - I prefer baggy rather than skin tight). So I take them out of storage, and put on these brand new clothes, with their tags still attached, and it.....wouldn't fit. IT JUST WOULDN'T FIT ME. Like sure, I could squeeze into them but it was really tight and uncomfortable and looked like I was wearing the completely wrong size of clothing . That was my slap-in-the-face-wake-up- call. In less than a year I had ballooned in size, and clothing that was very comfortable one year, simply  WOULDN'T FIT less than a year later.

That's when I decided I needed a change. I started googling. Started learning. Started understanding WHAT I was putting into my body and what it was doing. Turns out half the 'healthy choices' I thought I was making? WERE HORRIBLE for me! It soon became apparent why I was gaining so much weight in such a short duration of time.

So I decided, that starting January 2015, I would start *trying* to eat a healthier diet. I educated myself on what sorts of foods were good choices, and what were bad. And trust me, me and my sweet tooth cheated plenty. But despite this, I still managed to stop gaining weight, and even lose some of it too!

My experience these past 10 months has shown me that the biggest obstacle to healthy eating is the availability of it. If you come home for dinner and you're starving, chances are you will reach for unhealthy snacks to fill you up, rather than wait 2 hours to make a healthy meal. Since then I have come up with several different recipes that are fairly quick and easy to make (without complex ingredients) but are high in protein and fibre (the good stuff) and low in carbs (the bad stuff). I hope to be sharing more of them with you on the blog soon! :)

Now on to this recipe. I have found that the best type of diet to adapt is one that is high in protein and fibre and low in carbs. The reason for this is that protein and fibre tends to keep you full and satisfied much longer than carbs, and in turn leads to less feelings of wanting to stuff your face. :) Carbs, though good in moderation, can lead to problems in the long term including weight gain.

This is a really quick and easy recipe that comes together within minutes. Its a great side to a main meal or can even be the main attraction as a light lunch or dinner.

Sautéed Mushroom and Feta Spinach Side

(note that this recipe is more of a general guideline - that means the measurements for the ingridents REALLY doesn't matter! :) you can adjust based on the amount you have on hand or how much you want to make, or simply what you prefer to have more/less of. If you want more spinach, add more. If you don't like mushrooms, add less. Its very flexible :) )

* 1 pound of spinach
* 2 cup of chopped mushrooms
* 2-3 tablespoons of chopped feta cheese
* 1-2 cloves of garlic, finely diced
* 1 medium onion + oil to fry with
* Garlic powder to taste
 

1. Slice your garlic cloves and onion up, and sauté it over medium heat with whichever oil you want to use (I prefer coconut) until the onions are slightly brown.

2. Add your chopped mushrooms and cook until slightly brown. When they are about 1-2 minutes to being cooked, throw in your spinach. It may seem like 'too much' spinach as you're throwing it in and it may seem to be overflowing but its OK! When spinach cooks it looses a LOT of volume!

3. Continue to fry until the mushrooms are cooked an the spinach has turned a dark green. Add some Garlic to taste. I like it garlicy so I tend to add a lot! (and add  salt and pepper if you wish).

4. Remove from heat and empty contents of pan into a bowl. Throw in your chopped feta cheese and combine.

5. That's it! You've made a really quick and easy (and HEALTHY) side (or meal) in minutes! Yay You :)

And heres a video I made of the quick process :)

Quick and Easy Homemade Guacamole Recipe

Well then….its been a while hasn’t it? ;)

Seasons have changed, and have so many other things in my life, ranging from my ever changing career to crazy family life, to finally changing my diet and lifestyle to a much more healthy one (yeah I still can't believe it either!). And though the experiences of the past few months have been really great life experiences, it has caused me to have to put this little wee blog on the backburner. But never fear I am back, and with this newly found concept called ' a little free time' and a whole lotta passion and ideas to get back to making some lovely things!

So without further ado, lets dive right into some good stuff. And believe you me….this is some good stuff! Riding along on the tails of the whole 'I'm going to eat healthy' thing, here's a super yummy, super healthy, and most importantly, super easy guacamole recipe to get us going. Before recently I had never had any 'fresh' or homemade guacamole. I lived a meaningless life filled with store brand, sat-in-a-grocery-store-refrigerator-for-weeks-before-I-bought-it, and preservative packed guacamole. However once you have some homemade guac there is really no going back. The best part about homemade guacamole is that you can control all the different flavours. Want more of a sour taste? Squeeze a bit more lime. Want more chunk in your guac? Add more tomatoes! More heat? Up your garlic and onion. It's all up to you baby. You're in control here.

But what's the best part about homemade guacamole? It's just how EASY it is. I never use a 'recipe' and usually just eyeball it – you can't really get it wrong. But just for you very special people, I have devised a set proportion of ingredients to help you get going – but by all means feel free to add or subtract to taste.

Easy Homemade Guacamole

(this recipe makes a small bowl portion (approx.. 2 cups) as I usually make it with, say, 2 avocados, but you can make more or less depending on how many avocados you have on hand)

* 2 avocados

* 1 lime

* 1 tomato (if you want it to be less chunky then probably ½ tomato)

* 2 tablespoons chopped onion

* 2 garlic cloves

* 1.5 tablespoons of cilantro

* Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Begin by pitting your avocados and scooping out all of the flesh. Place in a bowl and start mashing with the back of a fork. (Or do what I did and enlist your younger brother to mash the avocados for you :) )

2. Finely chop your garlic, onion, and cilantro. Chop up your tomatoes to desired consistency – I like my guacamole to be nice and chunky so I tend to cut tomatoes into slightly larger chunks.

3. Then throw everything in together and mix! Add in your lime juice, starting with half a lime first, and adding more as needed. I find that sometimes, some limes have a lot more kick, and other times they are a bit more watered down. This time I used only half. Add salt and pepper to taste.

* One thing to keep note of is that once you scoop out avocados they turn brown pretty quickly. Despite the added lime juice (which usually preserves cut fruits and veggies longer), the avocado part of the guacamole can go brown pretty fast so be sure to consume it within 24 hrs. And this fun fact is another reason why I will never buy store bought guacamole again. WHAT HAVE THEY ADDED TO IT THAT IT STAYS GREEN FOR WEEKS?!?!

And that’s it! You have some delicious and nutritious guacamole!