It's not a diet, its a lifestyle
One of my favourite breakfast items has to be chia pudding, its incredible easy to make and keeps me full during the morning, I love it! Another reason that makes chia pudding so amazing is that there are so many variations on making these, you can totally customise them to your own taste. This time I felt like having some cacao and mango with my chia pudding, if you want to try a pumpkin spiced chia pudding click here.
Theres not much to say about this recipe, its extremely…
One of my favourite recipes so far has to be my rainbow sushi recipe, which you’ll find over here, be sure to check it out to see how I made the rainbow rice. Now there are many other uses of rainbow rice and this time I’ll share one thats fun, versatile and very delicious, rainbow onigiri!
Onigiri are japanese rice balls often filled with umeboshi (pickled ume) which is a kind of plum, kombu and many other fillings, but for these ball where gonna use a pea filling. They are great as a snack and in japan there are whole stores dedicated to these rice balls, selling many variations. You can eat them as is but often they are wrapped in seaweed. You can cover them with furikake (japanese seasoning) or wasabi powder if you’re feeling brave.
To make the rainbow rice you I cooked white sushi rice and added the colours afterwards apart from the purple, to make the purple I cooked the about 1/2 cup of rice with water I cooked purple cabbage in.
To make all the other colours I separated the rice in 5 and diluted the colouring with a little bit of water except from the blue because that one is already liquid.
I didn’t want to use any artificial food colouring, but chose to go for all natural food colourings, such as:
Now of course you don’t need to make these rainbow coloured to make this recipe, it’s all about the filling here, but don’t get me wrong, rainbow coloured anything is a feast for the eyes (and chakra’s)
These are perfect as a snack to take to work, school or on a picnic, scratch that, just take them wherever, whenever because there is always a reason to have some onigiri!
Don’t forget to tag me in your recreations or leave a comment below.
One Love.
A.J.
Whenever I’m watching a movie or series I like to have a snack on the side, and that’s not always a bad thing because there are snacks out there that are not bad for you, maybe even healthy!? Now of course I like to indulge myself with some junky snacks every now and then, but whenever possible I do try to keep it healthy and clean. Nothing beats snacking without the guilt, right!? Now all we need are some healthy snacks, the first one I’d like to share with you are these roasted chickpeas.
Roasted chickpeas are very versatile, and I’m sure I’ll be sharing more varieties in the future, but for now this one is just perfect, all you need are some spices, chickpeas and a bit of oil. I used ras el hanout as the main spice, because a spice blend called “head of the shop” in arabic, meaning the best spices of the store must be good! I also added some dried basil and gochugaru (dried korean red pepper flakes) for a little bit of heat.
You can experiment with different spices and herbs, use your wildest imagination to create something that will make your taste buds explode! Maybe use a little lime juice or add some curry powder, its your snack so you get to decided how you’ll make it!
Now its time to turn on a good (docu)movie or series and get our snack game on!
One Love.
One this I love about bananas is that even when they are overripe they will never be wasted, I often even wait for them to overripe so I can make delicious baked goods with them. One thing I love to make from over ripe (aka perfectly ripe) bananas is banana bread, I already posted a recipe for a raspberry/spirulina banana bread which you can find here.
This banana bread will be a little different from the other one, its a cacao and chai spiced bread with a peanut butter swirl on top and for good measure I threw some…
This is a question I get asked frequently, well why not, I commonly answer? There are so many reasons to go vegan and everyone has their own, I’m not gonna share statistics or facts, no, today I want to share my personal reason of going vegan. I’m sure I’ll make more posts about the benefits of veganism for the planet, animals and our bodies, but today I’ll try to speak from my heart, this is going to be personal.
A little back story.
About two years ago I reached a point in my life where I definitely hit rock bottom, just getting through the days was a struggle by itself. I’ll not go into detail too much, but it must have been the conclusion of some of the darkest years I’d ever experienced, I felt lonely, confused and desperate for a way out. One night when things got out of hand I felt like I had an epiphany, something clicked and from that moment on I knew what to do, I had to make some changes.
That is when I decided to really commit to changing my lifestyle, I was busy exploring spirituality, meditation and yoga. The reason I decided to dive myself into the realm of spirituality is because I was looking for answers, answers about myself, life and all of the between. During this period of my life meditating was a life changing experience, for once I felt like everything was fine and experienced a sense of calm and tranquility, together with yoga, and therapy (which is a whole different post by itself, which I’m not ready to share), I started to build a stable foundation for myself.
How I found veganism.
One thing I stumbled upon when I started to research a little about chakras, was something called a chakra diet. This diet heavily promoted plant-based foods, so of course, open-minded as I was, decided to do some more research about this lifestyle, which led me to some youtubers talking about veganism. It all started with Teal Swan and infinite waters, because at this point my main focus was still spirituality and cleansing my body of any “bad” energies. This quickly led me to YouTube channels like freelee and Kristina who shared more about the vegan lifestyle. All of this made me very curious so one day I decided to go vegetarian for a while, well this didn’t last long, only five days later I decided to go all the way and try this vegan “diet”.
The first few weeks were challenging to say the least, I no longer ate with my family and had to make my own meals, which were often a hot mess! I’m not even joking, I even tried eating raw eggplant, yup, my knowledge of vegan cooking was small, oh so small. Besides that I started shoving veganism down my families throats, which would definitely help them change to this lifestyle as well, right!? Wrong, this absolutely backfired and caused lots of fights, so I decided to be the change I’d like to see in the world. I quit smoking, took control of my alcohol problems, stopped using medications and started a new chapter in my journey.
Why I stayed vegan.
“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” -Pythagoras
At this point I watched some documentaries like forks over knifes and some YouTube videos like 101 reasons to go vegan. This quote by Pythagoras also changes a lot for me, for some reason it spoke to me on a whole new level! I no longer did it for my physical and mental health, but it totally took on a more environmental and cruelty free approach, while still trying to be healthy of course.
Not only did I become more conscious of what I put into my body, this vegan and yogi lifestyle thought me to truly kind to myself and others, make real inner and outer connections and it helped me find a sense of purpose. I love connecting with you beautiful people through this website and my Instagram account.
It’s quite hard for me to be so open and personal, but I feel a need to share them with you. We can all learn from each other, more importantly from out pasts and current mistakes, struggles and tragedies. Lets grow together and create a loving and bright community.
In the short two years of me being vegan so much has already changed, people are actually becoming more conscious about what they’re doing with their bodies, the environment and the animals. Studies have come out supporting this lifestyle and stores are starting to sell more and more plant-based products.
So why did I go vegan? I believe in a clean planet where we can all life peacefully. Feel free to let me know how you felt about this post and if you would like to see more (personal) lifestyle posts.
One Love,
A.J.
As a semi tropical boy I’ve always had a love for spicy food and with spicy I mean HOT foods, very, very hot foods. Not everyone likes spicy food like me, so whenever I’m cooking for someone other then myself I tend to use little to no peppers at all, but rather have a hot sauce on the side.
As much as I like sriracha, gochujang and all the other hot sauces, there is one that will always have a special place in my heart, the surinamese sambals I used to eat growing up. There are many different ways of making sambal, and this is one of my favourites, and super spicy of course. My favourite pepper is the adjuma pepper, I loved this pepper so much that as a kid I’d even put it on my sandwiches, my stomach must be lined with iron because these peppers are no joke, they are feisty!
Now this will not be a traditional surinamese or asian recipe, but definitely inspired by both those cultures. In traditional asian sambal recipes they often use red chilli peppers and in surinamese sambals they use adjuma or Madame Jeanette peppers. Sambal is also often made using shrimp paste or fish sauce (depending on the type of sambal you’re making), but of course we don’t use that over here! You can also find lots of spices or in some types of sambals, but I chose to make it very easy and simple to make using ingredients i’m sure everybody can find.
You might not be able to find adjuma or Madame Jeanette peppers, which wont be a problem, you can also use habanero or other hot peppers. you can also add other ingredients to customize your hot sauce to your own liking like ginger, tamarind paste, lime juice or scallions to name a few options.
I love to eat this hot sauce with things like rice, roti, noodles, bread, actually anything savoury to be honest.
If you like you food hot and spicy you should definitely give this hot sauce a try. If you try this recipe let me know how it turned out and if you used any other peppers or ingredients.
One Love.
As someone who loves to use gluten free flours, gram (aka chickpea flour) has to be one of my favourites! It simply keeps finding its way into my dishes like my noodle wheel recipe and many more to come. Chickpea flour is very versatile you can use it in savoury and sweet dishes, it’s high in protein and you can even use it to make face masks, yup face masks. Do keep in mind that raw and undercooked chickpea flour tastes like the stuff nightmares are made of, absolutely horrifying. …
For a while now I’ve been trying to eat more “clean”, while not being to strict on myself. One thing I’ve noticed is that when there are clean and healthy snacks lying around the house, it’s easier to ignore those junky foods that keep eyeballing me, and it’s not like I can completely get rid of them because most of them aren’t even mine. So you can expect a lot of clean, healthy and yummy recipes (although most of my recipes aren’t junky at all).
I wanted to get my oatmeal in the form of a bar and that’s how these bars were born. Now that the weather is getting warmer so big bowls of warm oats aren’t as appealing to me as they are during the colder periods, but I still want the benefits of eating a good bowl of oats.
These are just a few reasons why I enjoy my oats, now I want all of that stuffed into a bar! Now I do not recommend eating just one of these bars for breakfast, eat some fruits with to make it a meal.
These bars do not include any syrups, the only sweetener I used was bananas, if you want more sweetness you can add raisins or more goji berries. This makes it a perfect treat for when you are trying to avoid overt sugars and oils.
The base to this recipe are the bananas, flax seeds and oats, all the remaining ingredients are just because I like them or for nutritional value. This means that you can customise these bars to your own liking, just like a big bowl of oats.
I used turmeric to make them nice and golden and because I love its beneficial properties, you can’t even taste the turmeric. You can absolutely use other spices like cardamom, anise, clover and all spice to name a few. Instead of using walnuts you can use nuts like cashews, pecans and brasil nuts, and if you have a nut allergy just skip those and add coconut. Another ingredient you can swap are the goji berries, if you don’t have them just use raisins instead, or even mulberries. These are your bars, you get to decide what goes inside them.
If you like soft (but firm) and chewy bars you should really give these a try, they were a winner in my household. Give them a try and let me know how they turned out. If you tweak the recipe post a picture on Instagram and tag me, I’m curious to see your creations!
Bless,
AJ
Every once in a while me and some of my vegan friends come together for dinner, we all bring a dish and have an awesome evening filled with food babies, laughter and the occasional spontaneous yoga moves. This time I decided to make some dumplings, because everybody loves dumplings, right?!
Dumplings are …
One of the things I try to avoid at all cost is spoiling food, so dishes that use leftovers and kitchen scraps are high on my list of favorites. Vegetable fried rice is one of those dishes that allows you to use your imagination when it comes to vegetables and spices, you can really use whatever vegetable scraps you’ve got stashed in your fridge. Besides using scraps you can also use your leftover rice to make this dish. Often I catch people throwing away their leftover rice, which makes me gasp, because its perfect for making fried rice, and a ton of other dishes.
Growing up fried rice used to be one of my favorite meals, I loved the spices and didn’t mind eating all the vegetables, ofter I didn’t even notice them, this was awesome because I was kind of a picky eater. Luckily I grew to absolutely love vegetables and dishes like this always surprise me because of the amount of vegetables you can stuff in them.
These are the vegetables I used, but feel free to try different kinds of vegetables. I often throw some corn, celery leaves and mung bean sprouts through the mix or even some chopped purple cabbage, you can really use your imagination. Some other options are broccoli, mushrooms, cauliflower, bamboo, jackfruit, and whatever else floats your boat!
I made my own spice blend, you can make the one I used or make your own. Everyone loves different things so if you want it to be less spicy, make it less spicy. You can use store bought spice blends or just keep it plain and simple, again this is your dish, so customise it to your own liking. To make things even more easier you can cheat and use store bought satay sauce, just make sure it’s vegan.
I’ll work on more dishes and ideas for saving your kitchen scraps and leftovers, because I like to keep the spoiling of food to a bare minimum. Now you know what to do with your leftover rice, if you’ll try this recipe let me know how it turned out by leaving a comment below or tagging me on Instagram. Have an awesome day and bon appetite!
Bless,
A.J.
