A lovely day at Bempton cliffs

 Before we lived by the sea we used to go for days out to the seaside all of the time and over the few years we lived in the South we explore most of the South coast at one point or another. Since moving to the seaside a couple of years ago we hardly tend to leave it any more as we enjoy spending time there so much. A month or so ago we decided we had to change that and start exploring a bit more,

It was with this in mind that we decided to venture out on a little day trip a few weeks ago to Bempton cliffs. A colleague had told me about how lovely it was there and the forecast was good so we went for it and braved the pretty long drive to the North East coast.

 

Low carb Margarita cocktail with a Himalayan salt rim

It's been a little while since I've posted (as usual) but thought I'd pop back with a quick recipe we have been making ALL THE TIME. These low carb, low calorie, in fact low everything (except alcohol percentage) are so super easy and taste amazing, I'd even go as far to say that I prefer my own ones to ones you buy in bars!

Better still they need next to no ingredients and can be whipped up in moments. We have them every Friday, and now even call it Margarita Friday, not even joking, that's now a thing in our house.
You can make them either frozen, by blending them with ice, or serve over ice, annoyingly, we both like them differently but even still they're still all finished in under ten minutes!

For two margaritas you will need:

• Two limes, cut in half
• 100ml (four shots) Tequila 
• 50ml (two shots) Cointreau- the cointreau has 7g carbs in it, if you're being really good you can sub in vodka instead to cut those carbs altogether, though you will also be subbing out some of the taste...
• salt

To make it:

• Take a lime wedge and smear it along the outside of each glass then save it
• Shake a generous amount of pink Himalayan salt onto a saucer 
• Dip your glasses into the saucer of salt a couple of times until the rims are nicely coated with salt
• Add two shots of Cointreau to your cocktail shaker 
• Then add four shots of tequila to it 
• Squeeze both lime halves into the shaker 
• Fill the shaker just over half way with ice 
• Pop the lid on and shake well for about 10 seconds 
• Pour the cocktail through the strainer, equally into the glasses
• Enjoy!

if you're making them frozen then just add all the ingredients to your blender, I always use my Blendetc which literally blitzes through it all in about a minute producing a slushy limey glass of perfection! 

Right time to go and make one, back very soon though! Hope you're all having lovely summers! 

Low carb affogato

I would love to say I discovered Affogato whilst in Italy, but I didn't, I'm not sure where I first saw it, but it was definitely in the UK. That aside, it has since become one of my favourite drinks, or desserts, and I find it hard to say no whenever I see it anywhere. It did occur to me the other week when I got really excited at seeing it on a menu that it would actually be really easy to make at home as it is essentially just espresso and ice cream.

Low carb chocolate avocado ice cream

Well summer is basically upon us here in the UK and that principally means two things:
1. I am trying to eat better as summer means baring more skin, and
2. I want to eat colder, more summery foods.

As a result of the above I set about thinking of a low carb, healthy ice cream recipe and after much playing about I came up with the following. 

A Sunday brunch and a low carb feta and mint dip

Sorry once again for the long radio silence, I have been continuing to have big blog problems, culminating in my server losing the whole back up of my site a couple of weeks ago... anyway I have managed to restore most of the content though there are still some gaps sadly.





















Moving on, one positive side to this is I have lots to share! We have had a few little brunches recently so I thought I'd kick off by showing you some pictures of one we had over this weekend and also a lovely dip I whipped up that went down particularly well!









We love having brunches, in fact they're pretty much one of our favourite ways to entertain, the prep seems so much easier than dong a full cooked meal, they're relaxed as everyone just helps themselves and you still have the evening left so it doesn't feel like the whole day/ evening has gone.

When we're doing a brunch we pretty much always stick to the same format, lots of fruit, some scrambled egg, smoked salmon for the fish eaters, crudites and a few dips, some bread- usually a low carb and a normal loaf, and a few drinks! I normally split the fruit up into a few different fruit plates rather than doing one big fruit salad, so it looks lie more, I garnish with herbs, usually mint so pretty it all up. I then just pop it all in the middle of the able, accessorise with lots of flowers and candles and let people get stuck in!



This dip is one of my favourites and has pretty much lots of my favourite things in it,best of all it's super simple and quick and keeps well in the fridge. there's approx 12g carbs in the whole dip, though if you find a low carb Greek yoghurt it can be much less.

You will need:

• 200g feta cheese 
• 1/2 a cucumber roughly chopped 
• 200g Greek yoghurt
• A handful of mint leaves
• A handful of dill
• Olive oil
• Some dried mint to garnish

To make:

• Drop the feta, cucumber, yoghurt and herbs into a food processor- I used my Blendtec- keep a few herbs to garnish at the end 
• Turn the processor on in short bursts several times until the ingredients are broken up completely but the dip is still quite chunky (of course you can keep going if you'd prefer it smooth)
• Garnish with the dried mint and the leaves you kept back
• Enjoy! It's lovely with toasted low carb bread, crudites or even spooned onto a salad 

The easiest way to eat kale

A quick little blog post as I've not done one in a while following catastrophic website difficulties! You might notice that my blog address has changed a bit, basically there was a problem on the server that my site is on which culminated in me losing lots of data... not good. Anyway, I'm back now, albeit with this slightly amended website address which will hopefully be back to normal soon!

In all the drama of this I haven't had time to channel much energy into writing blog posts, especially as I wasn't sure whether they'd even be read or not as all seemed to be lost for a little while, but wanted to pop back with a quick one as it's something I've been enjoying recently.

I have been making an effort to eat more kale and more goodness in general recently. This is one of my fave ways to eat kale as kale can be a little bit tough and sometimes a little bit bitter but this way you can just add it to almost everything without hardly knowing you've done it.

It's not really groundbreaking but I basically just add the kale to my Blendtec, and blitz it several times until it breaks down into tiny pieces (you might want to remove some of the tougher stems first as these really do take some breaking down). If you keep going it will almost break down into almost sawdust size pieces and won't go soggy at all. Once it's this size it's far less tough and you can easily add it to things and barely known it's there. For example you can sprinkle it on salads or soups or other hot meals and it seems to pretty much dissolve in.

I've tried to show here how small it goes but it's still quite hard to see!

I do still eat it in it's normal form and I do love it that way, especially in kale salads, but this just seems like a good way to bulk meals out and add goodness to them without it dominating the food. I'd love to know your thoughts, have you tried eating kale this way?

Frozen raspberry low carb cocktails

Hello, I hope you're all having a lovely January, it feels like a little while since I last wrote on here! We've had a couple of parties already this year so I wanted to pop back on and share another cocktail that went down a storm when I tested it on friends last weekend.

Let me introduce you to iced raspberry and lemon champagne cocktails. Very similar to the low carb lemon champagne cocktails I recently posted (which you guys all seemed to love btw), but this time I added in some raspberries and loved the results so thought I'd quickly share them with you.

Once again these are super super quick to make and don't taste low calorie/ carb at all, I may have even whipped some up for myself the other night as they're so refreshing. I've made mine in my Blendtec and it literally takes minutes. 

To make two you will need:

• Two big handfuls of ice
• Two lemons 
• 250 ml prosecco/ cava/ champagne- I would never use the really good stuff in cocktails though as they're other strong flavours that will overpower it
• 8 raspberries 

Then to make them:

• Pop the ice into a blender
• Add the flesh form the lemons (take care to remove the pips if you can as well!) 
• Blend until slushy
• At the end add 6 of the raspberries to the blender and blend for a few seconds until they've just started to break down
• Divide the mixture equally between the glasses 
• Top up with fizz
• Garnish with your remaining raspberries
• Enjoy! 

I'm going to try experimenting with other flavours, as these are so so easy and pretty virtuous as the ice makes them a but less alcoholic, if I try anything else and it works well, I'll be in touch!