Home cooking

One of my aims this year was to eat better, healthier food and fall back in love with cooking. It's so hard to be creative in the kitchen when you're hardly at home, have a tiny kitchen, or live on a constant party island (more on that later!). Spending some time at home recently I've been having a lot more fun in the kitchen, getting into the habit for my own lovely kitchen in a couple of weeks time.

Whist it would be nice to loose a few pounds and be a little more excited about the way I look, it's mostly about the way I feel, and the benefits that good food brings you. I am sometimes careful about what I eat, but probably not in the right way. I enjoy understanding the theory behind food and what feeds your body properly. To be honest, if you follow that, you can't really go wrong on the calorie front either.

This year I've said previously, I want to try some different diets as well - right now I'm staying away from dairy and, as much as possible, meat. It's only been a week or so but I think I feel better for it, especially the meat. I've never been a huge fan anyway.

It's been perfect to be at home for a while trying out some dishes and back in front of my lovely cookbooks. Here's what I've been creating over the last few days...

I'd seen variations of this mushroom & chickpea stew in a few places, but I adapted it around what I like, adding spinach, garlic, turmeric & cumin, and serving with quinoa. I ate a lot of this, but that's the beauty of veggies - portion control isn't that important since they are already fairly low in calories and packed full of goodness! 

I'm not sure where she got it from, but my mum shared with me this warming lentil soup. So simple, and so filling - it's simply tomatoes, vegetable stock, onions, chillies and lentils. I tried it with this spelt & sunflower bread - I try my best to avoid bread, but it sounded like a nice change, and it was yummy. I then read this article about spelt, and discovered that it has a low gluten content and is known as being easy to digest, which is very obvious. Definitely my new go to bread when I need it.

Omelette is such a nice and easy meal, packed with goodness if you put the right ingredients in it. This one was full of onions and peas - so many in fact that I didn't think my two eggs would cover it! I did also add a little cheese, and a few small pieces of my new favourite bread!