The best healthy Sweet & Sour sauce

This recipe was a pure accident, I had some kale and home-grown silver-beet (woohoo!) and I was looking for a way to make them tasty...(yes, kale and silver-beet don't taste good normally!) and I thought about an Asian style stir-fry, but I knew that those usually contain lots of soy sauce and other salty ingredients, so I thought, maybe I'll go for a sweet option, and the best sweet and sour sauce was born! and it's 80:10:10, NO salt or oil! I can't believe it either..


 I had already put rice on when I came up with this recipe, but I'm definitely going to try this with some noodles as well!

The best healthy Sweet & Sour sauce

Ingredients;

- 1 onion, diced
- 2 stems of red kale, chopped (optional)
- 1 leaf of silver-beet, chopped (optional)
- 1 fresh red chilli, finely sliced
- 1 tomato, roughly chopped
- 1 can of no salt canned tomatoes
- 1 tub of no added salt tomato paste
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground chilli
- Sprinkle of black pepper to taste
- Around 2-4 heaped tablespoons of coconut sugar, to taste!
- 1/4 of a cup of water

Method;

1. Heat up a large pan on high heat, add onions and stir continuously until slightly brown and translucent
2. Add the kale and silver-beet, or any other vegetables that you choose and sauté until wilted
3. Add the water and cover to allow to steam for about 2 minutes
4. Remove lid and add the chilli, and the fresh tomato, continue to sauté for a further 2 minutes
5. Add the canned tomato and tomato paste and stir through, reduce the heat to a simmer, add the ground chilli, pepper and coconut sugar and stir.
6. Simmer for another 2 minutes and your ready to go!

Enjoy!

P.s I could not taste the silver-beet or the kale whatsoever, success!

A little story about Hypoglycaemia, plus my 30 day challenge that I want you to join!

So, as the title suggests, recently on my rawtill4 journey I have come across a couple of other symptoms that are very interesting to me.

Before I continue with this I may have to make another confession, I had been slacking off a bit, and what I mean by this is that I wasn't eating enough.

During the day I was sipping on a couple of 400-500cal banana smoothies and then having a 1000cal dinner, not quite the recommended 2500cal minimum. This mentality was brought on by my old anxieties around eating and wanting to see results faster then my body was dishing them out. Old habits die hard it seems.

Anyway, what I found from doing this is that after I went to bed at night I would wake up for my routine nightly pee, except that I would be in a sweat, this sweat could range from a slight dampness to full blown ‘I've-just-been-for-a-run-sweat.’ Gross!

Now I had done some research into why I was sweating so much by this point and all resources pointed to hypoglycaemia;

'But how could this be??' I thought, 'I'm eating a high carbohydrate diet!'

I was feeling rather confused and slightly sceptical, until this one particular afternoon when I was just about to tuck into a big bowl of pasta, I was just waiting for it to cool down when I started to feel hot and sweaty, and to be quite honest it was putting me off my food, I thought to myself;

‘If I'm all hot and sweaty now, how much sweatier and hotter will I feel after a 1700cal bowl of hot pasta!’ 

Nevertheless, my love of pasta took over and I began to eat…and to my surprise the sweating stopped! I actually got colder after my meal, very interesting indeed...

I was then convinced me that what I was experiencing was hypoglycaemia due to being undercarbed! How crazy is that! 

Now I have to tell another story, the story of ordering 168 bananas from the supermarket!

Basically after scolding myself for not being motivated enough to nourish myself properly I found out that freshchoice was advertising bananas for $1.69NZD per kilo! (a.k.a VERY cheap!)

My eyes lit up immediately and when I arrived at the supermarket, I rather nervously went up to the checkout;

“Hi, can I please have 168 bananas?” hahah I don’t think I will ever feel normal at the supermarket again. 

Anyway the point is that for the next 30 days I am challenging myself to consume 20 bananas a day as well as a cooked dinner, and I challenge you to do the same!

I am already at Day 2 and I actually feel amazing, more amazing then I expected to feel!

What I want to try and get across to you guys is to please please PLEASE make sure you all eat enough on this diet! I believe it is paramount to your success!

There is definitely a reason why the recommendation is at least 2500 calories a day of low fat high carb vegan food, it really is what you need! I am definitely going to monitor how I feel over the next 30days, but so far so good!

I hope you all join me for this amazing experience and let me know how you all go and remember...

SMASH IT IN! 

Is 80:10:10 right for you?

Should everyone in the world eat 80:10:10?

This is a controversial subject for most people.

Being a high carb, low fat vegan makes sense to so many people in so many ways, both in terms of how they feel and the fact that this diet refuses to pay into the market of caged and abused animals. I love and respect these reasons (they are my own too!). 

However, I also understand that this diet may not be for everyone. Some people struggle to gain weight as it is, and being on this diet would see them vanish before our very eyes! Some people find the most pleasure in life from eating meat. My partner is one of these people. Now whilst I don't necessarily enjoy the smell of egg or meat or milk on his breath (no kisses please!) I'm not about to force my way of eating on him.

It wouldn't be fair on me to expect this of him, and even though, in an ideal world he would be vegan with me, I am still respectful of his choices to eat meat. I feel that, as a student studying nutrition, a one size fits all diet is quite unrealistic. 

Not to mention, people experience such a variety of symptoms coming to this diet, which just further speaks out about how much every-ones bodies are different from one another. I have extreme envy for people who are able to start eating this way and drop 40lbs just like that! I know that when I first started eating this way, it was just not the case for me. 

I remember experiencing some not so friendly symptoms as my body transitioned into my new way of eating, some of these included; 

- Night Sweats 

- Sore throats in the morning 

- Headaches 

- Bloating 

Just to name a few.. luckily, most of these have cleared up now (although it is still a work in progress) but my goodness I can imagine other people throwing in the towel after a few days of these symptoms! and who would blame them! They are a pain in the butt! For me, the only reason I pushed through was because I was determined not to go back to starving myself to be skinny, I wanted to be like freelee and durian rider, living the life of abundance! 

But I can also understand that some people might not want this, some people might look at the amount of food I eat and be repulsed! The take home message here is that everyone is different, and we all need to work on finding our own personal 'sweet spot' in which our bodies function at their optimal level and we feel absolutely fantastic! I just want to say good luck on your own personal journey's towards the best health you have ever had!