Back in Melbourne, Hot Weather and Bacon Burgers

December 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

On Friday we made it back to Melbourne safely after our amazing holiday in the US and we were welcomed with some seriously hot weather! After experiencing an American Football game in -4 C weather Melbourne is feeling rather warm. Warm weather means BBQ’s for us so that’s exactly what we have been doing since we got home. BBQ’s are great for making simple and healthy meals, and also great for making really unhealthy meals if you feel so inclined. Beef burgers with balsamic bacon and red onion jam was our BBQ meal of choice yesterday.

This recipe is adapted from Ourlifeinfood.com

Ingredients

Jam

  • 4 rashers bacon, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
  • 2 red onions, thinly sliced
  • 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1/3 cup water
  • Salt and pepper

Burgers

(the original recipe had 2 rashers of bacon mixed into the burgers but we skipped this bit)

  • 500g Lean beef mince (preferably grass fed)
  • 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 tbs tomato paste
  • 2 tps Dijon mustard
  • Plenty of pepper and salt

Directions

  1. Mix the mince with the remaining ingredients and mash it all together with your hands. Form the burger mix into desired number of patties and set aside. If you’re using a BBQ get it started so its hot when your want to start cooking
  2. Heat a large fry pan and add the chopped bacon. Cook until browned and crispy. Set aside bacon but keep the bacon fat in the fry pan
  3. Add the sliced onion to pan with the bacon fat, and continue to stir the onion so it doesn’t burn. Once the onion has softened place a lid on the fry pan and leave the onion for approx 10 mins to get really soft
  4. At this point you can start cooking your burgers on the BBQ. Place the burger patties on the hot plate and flatten with a spatula. Cook on each side for approx 5 mins or until browned half  way through
  5. Add the balsamic vinegar, mustard, water and salt and pepper in with the onions. Give it a good stir and then add the cooked bacon. Place the cover on the pan again and let it simmer until it thickens
  6. Just before serving remove the cover from the frying pan and let the jam simmer down a little
  7. Serve the burgers with a big salad or in a bun if you prefer it that way. Top the burgers with your cheese of choice and then add the bacon jam on top

Get the BBQ nice and hot and make sure you have some healthy oil to cook them with

Cook that bacon!

Remove the bacon and cook the onion

Place the patties on the hot plate and flatten them out

Be sure to get your cat to help out in the kitchen..

Add the remaining ingredients and bacon to the onion jam

Remove the cooked burgers from the hot plate

Serve and enjoy!

 

Got any questions about these delicious burgers? Ask me in the comments below.

Kyle and I have a huge line up for you this summer, including tips on how to keep fit and healthy over the holidays so make sure you sign up to our email updates so you don’t miss out!

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Bacon Sweet Potato (cakes) with Rocket

September 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This recipe was meant to make sweet potato cakes, but we ended up using a little too much sweet potato so it turned into a kind of sweet potato/bacon/onion fried mash. All the same, it tasted very yummy. If you want to make sweet potato cakes just add an extra egg, or try first grating the sweet potato very finely. It would probably be easiest if you have a food processor grater for the sweet potato, but our mandolin grater worked fine. We served this delectable dish on a bed of rocket and little diced natural Nimbin cheese.

This recipe is adapted from this site.

Ingredients

  • 2 sweet potatoes, grated
  • 4 bacon rashers, cooked and crumbled
  • 1 onion, diced (or 4 shallots sliced)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 handful fresh parsley, chopped
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1/4 cup coconut flour
  • 1 tbs Cajun spice
  • Coconut oil, for frying
  • Salt and pepper

Directions

  • In a hot pan fry the bacon until crispy, then chop it up and set aside
  • Peel and grate the sweet potato and place in a large bowl
  • Add the bacon, onion, garlic, parsley and Cajun spice
  • Lightly beat the eggs and add them to the mix with the 1/4 cup coconut flour
  • Add some salt and lots of pepper and then stir it all together with your hands or a spoon
  • Heat the coconut oil in a pan, and once hot add the cakes to the pan
  • Cook for 5 minutes each side, or until golden brown
  • If it ends up like ours did you can just turn the mix every few minutes until its cooked through
  • Enjoy!

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The Easiest Recipe Ever – Grilled Vegetable Omelette

August 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s been a while since my last recipe post! I’ve been a bit of a slacker here on the blog since we moved house, but I’m well and truly settled in now so I have no excuse not to have new recipes for you to try. Moving house was way more epic than I thought it’d be, being the first time I have actually had to move an entire house (not just my bedroom) and I totally understand now why people say it’s so stressful.

Moving house is definitely one of those times when eating mostly unhealthy take-away food seems like the easiest thing to do, but you can still make healthy easy meals in minimal time and with very few ingredients. We ate a LOT of bacon and eggs when we first moved in, firstly because we weren’t very good at grocery shopping after moving (the local supermarket isn’t awesome), and secondly because bacon and eggs are delicious!

This recipe is great for those crazy times like when your moving house and need to get rid of all the stuff in your fridge, or just busy days when it’s difficult to take the time to cook anything too complicated, or just ’cause its yummy and super healthy.

It takes all of about of about 10 minutes to make, and you can add any vegetables or extra ingredients you like.

Ingredients

  • 4 eggs (add or take away eggs depending on how many people)
  • 1/4 cup sour cream
  • 1/2 cup tasty cheese or cheese of choice (plus some extra for top)
  • 3-4 slices of bacon, cooked and roughly chopped
  • 1 head of broccoli, chopped into bite sized pieces
  • 1/2 a red capsicum, sliced
  • 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 1 small zucchini, diced
  • Salt and pepper

You can add pretty much any ingredients you like to an omelette – use your imagination. Or keep it simple and just have a bacon and cheese omelette. Yummm…

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Best Ever Roast Vegetables with Haloumi

June 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Friends of our’s put us onto this recipe, which originally comes from Nigella Lawson’s cookbook Nigella Bites. I added cauliflower at Kyle’s request. You can have this as a side dish with a roast, put it on a salad like we did, or just eat a big bowl on it’s own. Any way you have it, its awesome! Just be careful though, ’cause it’s hard to stop!

Ingredients

  • 2-3 potatoes diced into bite sized chunks
  • 1 large sweet potato, diced into large chunks (you want chop it big so it doesn’t cook too quickly)
  • 1 red capsicum, roughly chopped
  • 1 yellow capsicum, roughly chopped
  • 1 red onion, halved and then chopped into about 8 chunks
  • 4-5 pieces of garlic, separated with skin on
  • 1/2 head cauliflower roughly chopped
  • 200g haloumi, very thinly sliced
  • 2 tbs olive oil
  • Pepper

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Chicken and Ricotta Balls

May 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

When you scroll down and look at all the ingredients and instructions you might think “this looks too hard”, but believe me,  this was a very easy meal. No matter how busy you are, or how much work you have to do, there is always time to eat real, nutritious and delicious food.

All up I spent less the 45 mins preparing and cooking this dinner, and I was working slowly because I enjoy it. I really like putting my time and effort into a good meal, and even if I’m short on time I will still try to make something decent and healthy to fill me up, even if that is just a vegetable omelette (very easy to do in about 10 mins).

Monday is grocery shopping day for us, and that means planning out our meals for the week. This not only saves a lot of money by helping to avoid last minute shopping trips and take-away, but also means that even if we’re going to be really busy we can have meals prepared in advance. Try making meals on the weekend and freezing them, or just make way too much extra like we do and eat it for lunch/dinner on another day during the week.

Anyway, give this recipe a go and see how you like it. Meatballs are a perfect meal to store in the freezer as you can quickly and easily heat them up.

Makes approx 30 meatballs and serves 5-6. Simply add more zucchini for extra hungry hippos.

Ingredients

Chicken balls

  • Approx 500g minced chicken, or you can mince 3 chicken breast fillets (I got the butcher to mince it fresh)
  • 1 cup ricotta
  • 1/4 cup almond meal
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1/4 cup fresh basil, minced
  • Salt and pepper

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Beef Goulash

May 16, 2012 by 1 Comment

I don’t love the cold months of winter, but I do love the tummy warming yummy hot food I can eat without feeling like I’m suffering from heat stroke. Before this attempt, I had never even tried beef goulash. I didn’t think it was going to be that amazing because I accidentally burnt the paprika when I was cooking it, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that I LOVE this stew! Tuesday’s are my lazy days so I had time to let it simmer for a good 3 hours. As you can probably imagine, the beef was melty and amazing!

Thanks to Mark Sisson for the basis of this recipe.

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Breakfast Cake with Stewed Apple and Rhubarb

May 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

First of all, yes we do eat cake for breakfast. Secondly, it’s getting really cold and really hard to drag myself out of bed at 5AM so I need something delicious to look forward to. This recipe is extra awesome because I have always loved stewed fruit, especially rhubarb. My dad used to make it from the home-grown rhubarb from our garden.

This recipe is very simple and you can change the fruits to whatever you prefer. Aside from the fact that this stewed apple and rhubarb is delicious its also a great option for people who usually struggle to eat fruit, especially people with digestive issues.

The coffee cake comes from Elana Amsterdam’s The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. As usual we have altered the recipe a little to remove some of the sugar and add some nuts, diced apricot and currants. We have also left out the topping for this cake and simply sprinkled some coconut sugar on top instead. We always make the mix up the night before or at least 7-8 hours before baking to let the nuts soak.

Cake

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
  • 1/2 cup pecans, chopped
  • 1/4 cup almonds, chopped
  • 1 cup dried currants
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 2 tbs Maple syrup
  • 2 large eggs

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Beef Meatballs with Primal Zucchini Spaghetti

March 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Usually we don’t get to have dinner at dinner-time because of the way we work, but we certainly don’t use that as an excuse not to cook a proper meal. On most days we have dinner for lunch, or an early light lunch and a late afternoon dinner. I personally prefer it this way ’cause it means I get to go to bed super early!

This delectable looking dish is an example of one of our afternoon dinners. This meal was a joint effort, myself being in charge of the amazing looking zucchini spaghetti and Kyle being in charge of the meatballs.

Ingredients

Meatballs

  • 500g lean mince meat
  • 4 rashers of bacon, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 sprig fresh rosemary, minced
  • 3 sprigs fresh thyme, minced
  • 1 long sprig fresh oregano, minced
  • 1/4 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
  • 1/2 a small onion
  • 1/2 cup almond meal
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1/4 cup cream (optional) – we forgot to add it
  • 1/2 cup shredded parmesan

 Zucchini Spaghetti and Sauce

  • 2 medium sized zucchini’s grated into long strips (we used one of these awesome graters), but if your feeling super patient you could probably slice it up too
  • 1 large clove garlic, crushed
  • 1 small onion, finely diced
  • 1/2 red capsicum finely diced (optional)
  • 800g tinned diced tomatoes (or fresh)
  • Large handful of fresh basil, chopped
  • 1 tsp coconut sugar or brown sugar
  • salt and pepper
  • Coconut oil or olive oil for cooking

Directions

Meatballs

  1. Finely dice the bacon, onion and herbs and mix into the remaining ingredients
  2. Use your hands to roll the mix into small balls
  3. Cook on the BBQ on high heat for approx 5-7 minutes each side (you can also use a fry pan for cooking)
  4. Check the meatballs are cooked through by cutting into the middle
  5. Once all the meatballs are cooked, leave in a warm oven until ready to serve

Sauce and Spaghetti

  1. Grate the zucchini into long strips and set aside
  2. Chop up the onion and crush the garlic
  3. Heat preferred oil in a large pan and cook the onion until soft
  4. When the onion is soft add the garlic and capsicum
  5. Add the tomatoes, sugar, salt and pepper and simmer for 2-3 mins
  6. Add the chopped fresh basil and leave to simmer for approx 15 minutes
  7. When you’re ready to serve, add all the zucchini into the sauce and cook for another 2-3 mins

Place a serving of Zucchini spaghetti onto a deep plate or bowl and top with meatballs and a sprig of fresh basil. Delicious!

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Nut & Fruit Muesli

February 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This nut and fruit muesli is awesome! Seriously. I wanna eat it all the time! It’s very easy to make, but if you want to go all out and make it even healthier for you, you can soak your nuts and then dehydrate them before roasting your muesli mix. The reason for soaking nuts is explained here.

I simply put all my nuts and seeds into a large bowl, add a big spoon of salt and let them sit overnight (at least 7 hours). The next day I rinse and drain the nuts and dry them out in my dehydrator.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup raw almonds
  • 1 cup pecans
  • 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
  • 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
  • 1/4 cup sesame seeds
  • 1 cup shredded coconut
  • 1/2 cup dried apricots, diced
  • 1/2 cup currants
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 1 Tbs maple syrup
  • 1 Tsp Vanilla essence

Directions

If you are going to soak your nuts you need to prepare this the night before. Place all the nuts and seeds into a large bowl, add a large spoon of sea salt and cover the nuts with filtered water. Cover the bowl and leave to sit (at room temp, don’t put it in the fridge) overnight. The following day, rinse the nuts, place in the food dehydrator and dry them out until almost completely dry. You will be able to tell this from biting into the almonds. You want them to be a tiny bit soft before roasting them.

  1. Preheat oven to 180C
  2. Place the nuts into a food processor and whiz them up into small chunks
  3. Placed the processed nuts into a large bowl and add the seeds and coconut.
  4. Melt the butter and mix it in with the vanilla essence and maple syrup
  5. Add the wet ingredients into the nuts and mix well
  6. Spread the mix evenly over two baking trays and bake for 10 mins. After 10 mins stir the mix up on the trays so it’s evenly cooked. Bake for another 5-10mins.
  7. Once baked to your liking, remove from the oven and immediately add the diced apricot and currants.
  8. Leave to sit for 1/2 an hour before serving.

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Savoury Egg Crepes

February 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Today I made Mexican Tortilla Pie but I didn’t want to use regular flour tortilla’s so I substituted them with these delicious egg crepes. This recipe is based on one of Mark Sisson’s recipes from his Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Recipes.

Ingredients

  • 2 tbs coconut flour
  • 1/4 cup double cream
  • 6 eggs
  • 2 tbs melted butter

Directions

  • Briskly whisk the whole eggs until slightly frothy and set aside
  • In a separate bowl mix the coconut flour, melted buttter and cream
  •  Pour the eggs into the coconut mixture and whisk well. Don’t worry if there are a few coconut flour lumps, they will disappear once cooked
  •  Heat a large frying pan and melt a tsp of butter
  • Carefully pour the mixture into the frying an and tilt the pan until the mixture is evenly spread
  • Cook one side for approx 30 secs or until golden brown on cooked side
  • Carefully remove the crepe from the pan and serve while hot or set aside to cool if you’re using them in a separate recipe
These crepes are really yummy and diverse. You can use them as a substitute for regular tortilla’s or you can enjoy them as a yummy treat like me. I had one crepe left over and felt like rewarding myself for all my hard work in the kitchen and ate it up with my sister’s home  made Boysenberry jam and double cream. Soo yummy!

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