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! 

Good Morning

Good Morning (In New Zealand) 

Morning everyone, here in New Zealand it is 10:43a.m. at the moment :) 

I hope you are all having or have had a wonderful day! Today I started my day off with a big ol' glass of vitamin water! I find that it really helps to have at least 1L of water before your first meal, to help your digestion and just get you started on the right hydration foot in the morning! 

I would like to talk a little today about the issue of scientific back up for the 80:10:10 lifestyle, and how some people may think there isn't much of it floating around, it is true that a lot of people that have come to this lifestyle and advocate it openly do not have the common qualifications that are found when giving dietary advice. 

However, I am of the growing belief that science is limited. What I mean by this is that at one point it was believed that a way to cure a headache was to either smack the 'victim' on the head, or release some of their blood in an attempt to let the bad demons escape. Looking back on this ideology we can surely laugh a little about it now (and feel sorry for all the victims of the medicine in those days), however no one thought twice about it back then. 

I like to think that in another 100 or so years, humans may be laughing at all of our mistakes, which we so firmly believe in at this point in time. So in a way, even though in today's world there is not a lot of research or evidence behind 80:10:10 or veganism vs omnivorism in general, doesn't exclude the possibility that one day there might be a scientific reason behind the success of this diet.

This way of thinking has helped me to have faith in something which may not make sense to modern day science, but that so many people have been able to experience a number of health benefits from. 

This is how I view health, as much as it is a scientific subject, it is also a spiritual journey, which each individual needs to explore for themselves, to find what they best thrive on.