🐔Last minute friend/family feeding?!

🐔This is a v easy Moroccan style dinner/BBQ tray-bake, which tastes unbelievable! I use this marinade in canapés and buffet meals for my clients and it always goes down an absolute treat.

🐔I think mixed chicken thighs and drumsticks work well with this and add to the mess when eating, which I always think it quite nice--also easier on the pocket too.

🐔For the chicken and marinade I used:
- 500g chicken thighs and legs
 -1 decent tbsp Greek yogurt
- 1tbsp ras el hanout spice mix (can get from @sainsburys
@asda etc)
- 1/2 thumb grated ginger
- peeled rind on 1 lemon
- 1 pinch of salt
- 1 pinch of chilli flakes
- 1/2 bulb garlic, skin on, lightly cracked with the flat side of the knife

🐔Put into a large baking tray with chunky chopped veg (courgettes/red onion/peppers) and tuck dried apricots or figs underneath.

Cook for about 35mins at 200C until cooked through!

Save this for a Sunday...

“

I love bulk cooking to prepare myself for the week ahead.

I tend to roast lots of veg and cook some kind of ‘carb’; this week it was butternut squash, beetroot, cauliflower and a batch of quinoa.

 This week, it came to Wednesday and finishing late, I just didn’t want to think about dinner, or spend any time cooking. But look what happened… I had all the ingredients for this delicious, warming, satisfying and wholesome plate of food!

 Once prepped, the rest of the veg can be piled into lunch boxes, added to stock for a soup, added to a salad, turned into a frittata or muffins for breakfast.

**Shopping list: 2 Squash, 5 beetroot, 1 cauliflower, 1pk quinoa, 1 green pepper, 1 pk mint, 1pk feta

Note: I try and include a variety of colours in my roasting trays, as this gives me a greater variety of antioxidants to munch on.

Whatever your work schedule, eating healthily really is just about knowing what works for you. If you’d like advise on working this out, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

What’s your best way of staying food-prepared for the week ahead??

“

Pop it in your lunchbox

Working in the city? In an office? At your desk from 7am? No time for a lunch break? 

This is the reality for so many people now a days and it can mean meals become a chore.

Let’s be honest, finding ready-to-eat food out on the streets that ticks all the nutrition boxes is near impossible (if you have any recommendations, I’d LOVE to hear them!), whilst getting home in the evening to do a massive cook up for dinner AND the next day isn’t always the most appealing either. 

Here are a couple of tips:

1) Look to make your plate ½ different coloured vegetables, ¼ protein and the rest made up with grains and healthy fats (plants, nuts, seeds and fish are our best sources).

2) Tinned lentils, beans, chickpeas & fish can be great cupboard essentials as they vastly decrease preparation time. (Add in some fresh leaves/herbs, some veg from dinner, ¼ avocado, a squeeze of lemon and you’ll have a pretty wholesome gig to look forward to come lunchtime!)

The clean 15 and dirty dozen

Eating ‘clean’ if you’re not lucky enough to grow your own food, can be quite a minefield and it can be very disheartening when your hard-earned wages are being thrown back into the ether as you try your best to buy chemical free food supplies. 

I recommend this to a lot of my clients, as I think it gives a comprehensive approach to what “is” and “is not” necessary to buy organic. 

*image from:*

(https://www.algaecal.com/expert-insights/infographic-dirty-dozen-clean-fifteen/?inf_customer_id=1342763&utm_source=email-broadcast&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=Dirty-Dozen-April14&utm_term=lead-customer-list&inf_contact_key=9a9c76a18b9ac81d3b5bce99da040cc177370ee9e739be31b670154bb783036b)

Musings on the importance of personalised nutrition

I’m sure I’m not the only one, who’s spent hours self diagnosing symptoms online or has been caught up in the online fad-dieting ‘one size fits all’ approach?

The truth is, that this is totally non-sensical. We are all exposed throughout our unique life experiences, to a cocktail of contaminants, microbiome altering medications and stressful situations which have left our health in someway compromised. Often these situations are necessary and unavoidable, so please try and leave the self-criticism out!

The point is, is that optimal health comes weaving our way through this quilt of potential influences and repairing any damage that may have been made. 

This will vary hugely from person to person, thus throwing one diet at 6 billion people worldwide, in the hope that we will all live a little longer, just won’t work. 

We need to appreciate our individuality and what makes us unique and promote the importance of personalised nutrition.