Homemade Peanut Butter with Banana and Cinnamon

Oh I love pb!! But it's kind of expensive in France, about 3.50eur for a 360gr jar. I bought 1 kg of roasted shelled peanuts for (I think it was) 3.80eur, from which I gathered 650 grams of peanuts. After processing them I got aprox 1200 grams of peanut butter, which is 3 times more than the store-bought peanut butter for almost the same price. I did add bananas for the texture and flavor, but that was a personal choice, you can do it without.

What you'll need:

- about 650 grams of peeled peanuts

- 6 bananas

- cinnamon

- a food processor

What you have to do first is divide the peanuts and bananas because it will get too crowded in the food processor and it won't be able to mix everything well. Okay so next you have to put the peanuts, 3 bananas and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon in the food processor and mix everything. My food processor is not the greatest so after 10 minutes it began to get hot so I had to stop, leave it about 10 more minutes to cool down and begin again. I did this for about 2 hours I think, but it was worth it. The peanut butter is awesome, it has this smooth banana and cinnamon flavor! It's not as buttery as Nutella, but that, again, is a personal choice. We like it crunchier, not that smooth and easy to spread. If you want a smoother butter, just mix it more.

Repeat the same process with the other part of peanuts and bananas and then combine everything and put the butter in jars.

Final product

If you don't know what to do with peanut butter, here are some suggestions:

- peanut butter jelly sandwich

- peanut butter oatmeal for breakfast

- peanut butter protein bars

- peanut butter spread on apple slices

- peanut butter and banana smoothie

- freeze it in small bites and use it as a healthy snack!

And so on... There are lots of pb recipes out there and now that I made it myself I'm gonna try some of them.

Enjoy!

Tuna Day: Lemon Tuna Loaf and Tuna Capers Pasta

Well, not really, because World Tuna Day is celebrated on the 2nd of May. Tuna is a saltwater fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids and protein, usually found canned in oil, brine, water or other sauces. It can also be sold as steaks and grilled. Being such a dry fish, it has to be briefly cooked or left to simmer in a sauce. Which is what I did with the pasta.

Now, for a basic pasta sauce, you're going to need olive oil, onion, garlic, canned tomatoes and some stock or water and a dried cube. Flavor wise, I always use a pinch of paprika to which I could add some bay leaves, oregano, mushrooms or basil.

Moving on to this particular recipe, you're going to need (for 2 servings):
homemade pasta (2 eggs and 200 grams of flour, in the food processor, add some more flour if it's too wet, roll it out, cut it in strings, ready. full recipe here) or store bought pasta
quarter of an onion (or more if you want, some put a whole onion but for me it's too much)
2 cloves of garlic
500 ml canned tomatoes
1 teaspoon tomato paste or purée (fr. double concentré de tomate)
pinch of paprika
1 vegetable, chicken, beef whatever cube
1 can tuna
2 teaspoons capers

After you have your pasta ready, set it aside and begin making the sauce. Put a large skillet over medium-high heat and a large saucepan filled with water over high heat, for the pasta to boil in. Don't add the pasta yet.

Chop the onion and the garlic. Drizzle some olive oil into the skillet, leave it heat for a few seconds, then add your onions. Leave the onions to cook, until they become transparent, stirring from time to time, then add your garlic. The reason I do this is that the garlic cooks faster and so it tends to brown before the onions are ready and then it won't look and taste so good.

After these are done, about 2 minutes, add your canned tomatoes, tomato purée and pinch of paprika and stir them all together to form a sauce. Then, add the veggie/chicken/beef cube, whichever you prefer.

Before adding the pasta, take a ladle of the boiling water and add it to the sauce, stirring it until it's well mixed. Now you can add a good pinch of salt to the rest of the boiling water and put in the pasta.

Continue with the sauce, putting in the canned tuna and the capers, and try to mince the tuna into the sauce so that you don't end up with big chunks of tuna everywhere and that it's all evenly distributed. The sauce and the pasta are now done. Given the fact that you've made homemade pasta, they're done in 45 seconds-1 minute. If you've used store bought pasta, cook them as instructed on the package.

Now add your pasta directly in the skillet, stirring it until its evenly covered in sauce. Serve it while hot.


Lemon Tuna Loaf

A few weeks ago, we invited a friend over for lunch. She brought this amazing tuna loaf and I had to make it! I forgot to ask her for the recipe so I had to improvise. I found another loaf recipe and adapted it to this one. Here's what you'll need and how to make it:

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 cup Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons lemon juice (one lemon)
zest from one lemon
1 can of tuna

Preheat oven at 180 C, 350 F or 6 gas. Prepare a loaf pan by greasing it with butter.
In a big bowl, mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, beat the eggs. Add the oil and mix all well. Add the yogurt, lemon juice and zest and fold everything together.
Add the tuna and, again, like for the pasta, try to crumble the tuna so that you have it evenly distributed in the loaf and not have big chunks of fish inside. Add this mix to the dry mix.
Pour into pan and bake for about 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Leave it to rest for 10-15 minutes and serve warm.

There you go, two great tuna recipes. Enjoy!

Snacking on: Grapefruit sprinkled with Wheat Germ

What to do with overripe bananas: Banana Oatmeal Cookies and Quick Strawberry Banana Ice Cream

I always buy bananas cause they're such a great fruit! You can eat them for breakfast with your cereal, as a pre workout snack because they give you lots of energy and protect your muscles, or as a dessert. As I said before, we always have them in the house but thing with bananas is that they get ripe really fast. Yesterday I found myself having lots of overripe bananas and nothing to do soooo I made these two beautiful, healthy desserts. These are incredibly easy and fast. I also used some strawberries cause they were sad all by themselves in the fridge, but you don't have to. Just use what you have in your pantry or fridge: peanut butter, chocolate chips, mango, strawberries, rum, caramel, (go) nuts!

For the awesome cookies, you only need 2 ingredients: bananas (doh) and oatmeal. I used 6 ripe bananas and 3 cups of oatmeal. Put it all in your food processor, even a hand mixer will work given the ripeness of the fruit, and mix it until well combined. Then, using a teaspoon, make small shapes on a pre-greased baking sheet and take it to the oven for about 15 minutes over 200 C, 400 F. BUT! They're not going to be crunchy, they're soft and silky and lovely. Serve them warm! They're so cute and healthy, only bananas and oatmeal!

Moving on to the lovely ice cream, you'll need about 450-500 gr of frozen fruit, I used 3 bananas (250 gr) and 200 gr strawberries. Leave the fruit in separate bags in the freezer overnight! I once tried this recipe with fresh fruit and then refrigerated it and it was disgusting... Right, so fruit, frozen overnight, about 500 grams of yogurt and some honey if you want (1-2 tablespoons should be enough). Mix it all well in your food processor. I actually didn't mix it THAT well and left some chunks of frozen fruit in it cause that's the way I like it, but you can do it anyway you want to. You can serve it right then and there, with some biscuits like I did, or you can put in a container, in the freezer for as long as you want to. But get it out like half an hour before you serve it so that it's creamy not frozen! It tastes amazing and it's super healthy! 

Enjoooooooy!

Peach Tart and Fresh Pasta with Tomato, Garlic and Chili Sauce

I've always wanted to make this kind of tart, but in my mind it seemed so difficult. Maybe because it looks to goooooood. But I've never been more wrong! It's so easy to make and oh! so delicious... You will need

1 store-bought crust (pâte feuilletée), just to make it easier and cheaper than making it yourself

4-6 peaches and/or apricots (I used both)

1/2 cup sugar

pinch of salt

First, cover a pan with some baking sheet and set it aside. Then roll the crust a little bit, just to stretch it. Put the crust in the prepared pan and into the fridge until you make the filling.

For the filling, cut the peaches into randomly shaped chunks, but all of approximately the same size, and put them in bowl. Add a pinch of salt, sprinkle the sugar over them and toss them around with your hands so that they're well coated in sugar. Afterwards, take the crust out of the fridge, put the fruit in the middle and close the edges on the fruit. You can sprinkle the remaining sugar over the fruit and then put the tart into the oven for about 40 minutes at 200 C, 405 F or until it's golden-brown. Mine had a powerful personality around the edges, but I like it when this happens, it makes it look real. Enjoy it while it's warm!

--

Moving on to the pasta, this is a very simple technique of making fresh pasta on the spot. The recipe is very easy to follow and remember. So, you will need 1 egg and 100 gr of flower for each person. So for two, I used 2 eggs and 200 gr of flour. As you can see, we didn't have a pasta machine, so we had to use a roller pin. But if you have a pasta machine, do use it! It's a lot easier!!

So in your food processor, add the eggs and the flour and mix them a bit, until it's all together, that takes a few seconds. You might need to add some more flour, depending on how the dough feels like when you touch it. If it's too wet and sticky, add some more flour, a teaspoon. Then mix it again in the food processor and check too see if it's still too sticky. If so, add another teaspoon of flour. Two teaspoons were enough for me but if you feel like it needs more, add some more. After this, you're ready to roll your pasta dough! It should be crumbly.

Transfer the dough onto your worktop and start kneading it a bit, until all the crumbles form a ball. Now if you have a pasta machine, put the dough inside it and roll it multiple times until it's really really thin. If you're using a rolling pin, roll it until it's, like I said, very thin. When you feel it's thin enough, flour it a bit, fold it in half, flour it again, roll it in half until you're left with a "log" of dough. Then, you can start cutting it as above.

Aaand it's done.

Being fresh, this pasta will cook in about 45 seconds to 1 minute, which is awesome! I made my favorite sauce for it, using some tomatoes, chili, 2 cloves of garlic and some fresh basil from the garden. Turn the heat on and leave the pan to heat up and the water for the pasta to boil. In the meantime, cut the tomatoes into halves and then halves again, or just do it randomly, whatever you feel like. Slice the garlic and the chili and remove the seeds if you don't want the dish to be extremely spicy. 

Put some olive oil in the pan and add the garlic and the chili. When it starts browning, add the tomatoes and the basil. Leave them to cook for about 5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Then, add a ladle full of boiling water and leave it again to cook. Now we can cook the pasta. Sprinkle some salt in the water and leave them for 2-3 minutes to cook, just to be sure. Then add the freshly cooked pasta into the pan with the sauce and mix it a bit to get all the flavors. Serve it while hot.

Enjooooooy!

Jamie's (almost) 30 Minute Meals: Fish, sweet potato mash, Asian greens, sparkling lemon-ginger drink

Right so it's been a while since I've been willing to try Jamie's 30 Minute Meals and today I got my chance. We bought some fish and didn't know what to do with it so I looked some recipes up and found this one. You can watch the video here and give it a try. I'll post the recipe though cause it's easier to follow. It actually took us 45 minutes but that's probably our fault cause we were two in a small kitchen, trying to do stuff really fast... and it actually slowed us down.

He actually made some ice cream too but ours is not ready yet cause the fruit wasn't really frozen. I actually replaced the berries he used for the ice cream with apricots, nectarines and peaches, which was what I already had in the fridge. I'll post some pictures of that later on.

And of course it was all delicious!

EQUIPMENT
microwave friendly bag (Ikea)
a lot of olive oil
large frying pan for the fish
large saucepan for the veggies
food processor

First of all prepare your equipment. Put the frying pan on the cooker and really leave it to heat for about 20 minutes, over medium-high heat, without any olive oil. Also, prepare the water for the veggies and if you don't have a kettle just heat the water in the pan, add some ground salt and leave it over medium-high heat.

Gather all the ingredients you need, just put them close by, if you really want to have all those things ready in 30 minutes or so. And most importantly, have fun!

FISH
4 slices bacon, pancetta (we used prosciutto)
2 fillets Pollock fish
1 tsp crushed fennel (even better in my opinion, i don't have seeds)
1 lemon

First heat your frying pan really well, like he does. Then just put the slices of bacon or whatever you wish in the pan, drizzle with some olive oil and let it cook. Let it shrink a bit. Meanwhile, drizzle the fish with some olive oil and season with lots of ground salt and pepper. When the bacon's shrunk, add the fish in the pan and the crushed fennel (or seeds, however you want it), on the fish. Then some orange zest and leave it to cook over medium-low heat. Moving on to the greens.

MASH
2 sweet potatoes
1 chili
fresh lovage (didn't have any coriander)
soy sauce
2 lemons
(didn't have any mango chutney either)

Moving on to the mash sweet potatoes. This was mind blowing! So what he does is, he takes the potatoes, washes them, cuts them in halves and puts them in a microwave friendly plastic bag. Then he adds some lemon and olive oil and puts the bag in the microwave for 14-16 minutes. Now, he forgets to say that he actually made some small holes into the bag so it can all breathe. Fortunately, I saw it and did the same. And if you can adjust the power of your microwave, put it to the highest, for the same amount of time.

After the time has passed, remove the potatoes from the bag (be careful it's super hot!), squeeze the lemon over them and put them aside. Chop another chili and remove the seeds, chop some coriander if you have some (I didn't so I used fresh lovage from my apartment garden) and place these on a wooden cutting board. Then add the potatoes and start mashing them like does, adding the lemon and soy sauce.

In the end, take the fish from the pan, place it on the bed of sweet potato mash, put the bacon on top and drizzle with some olive oil and coriander (more lovage for me!). You're done!

GREENS
1 red chili
1 clove garlic
soy sauce
1 lemon
250 gr white asparagus
green beans
(no sesame oil)

First off, drizzle your large bowl or plate with some olive oil. Chop the chili, remove the seeds if you want, and put it in the bowl. Then crush the garlic, add the soy sauce and your lemon juice and mix it all well. Taste it and see if it fits your taste, we actually added more lemon cause it was too salty and heavy. Put the bowl aside. Having the water hot and almost boiling, add the veggies in the pan, bring the heat up and cover the pan. After they're done, add them to the bowl of Asian sauce and mix them all well. They're ready to be served.

LEMON-GINGER DRINK
store-bought sparkling lemonade
ice
mint
fresh ginger

You need lots of ice. So put your ice into a decanter or whatever you choose to serve this lovely beverage in, add the sparkling lemonade (if you choose to buy it), mint and freshly grind ginger and mix it all up.

ICE CREAM
500 gr peaches, apricots and nectarine, cubes
500 gr yogurt
mint
3-4 tablespoons of honey

Mix all the ingredients in your food processor and take it to the freezer. I don't actually know how it is but it looks lovely...


So there you have it... Jamie's awesome 30 Minute Meal. Enjoy!

Again, whole video is here.

Air Popped Popcorn

It's healthy and a lot cheaper than store bought popping corn. You don't need to use any oil, not even olive oil. Oil tends to cut off corn's antioxidants, essential in preventing stress and heart disease. Enough with the science!

To make this, you'll only need a bag of kernels, which you can get from a supermarket, and a plastic lidded bowl. Put 1/2 cup of the kernels in the bowl, put the lid on it, but not air-tight, just enough so that the popcorn won't burst all over the place. Microwave it for 5-6 minutes until it's ready, you will hear it pop after about 2 minutes. Repeat until all the kernels are popped. Add some salt and enjoy a healthy snack!

Now, in case you don't like plain popcorn, here are some delicious stuff you can add:
Soy sauce
Chili powder
Powdered dark chocolate
Cinnamon
Oregano
Basil
Rosemary
Thyme
Garlic powder

There you have it, enjoy!