Guest Post: Raw Corn and Tomato Salad with Parsley Pesto

Hello! This is Lynn and Christy from The Actors Diet (www.theactorsdiet.com).  We are two Hollywood actresses (one of us is also a Nutritional Health Counselor) aiming for health and positive body image in what can be a very superficial business.  Thank you to Sam for featuring us on her wonderful site!

Here is a recipe that is fast and vegan, with a lot of health benefits.  The chickpeas are a wonderful source of complex carbohydrate and protein.  Plum tomatoes have cancer fighting agents and parsley helps to detox the liver and satisfy the taste buds.  And the fresh corn is a sweet vegetable that will help curb sugar cravings later in the day. Add to that the antioxidents, the good quality fats of the olive oil and pecans, and you have a plateful of nutrition.

 
Raw Corn and Tomato Salad with Parsley Pesto:

Ingredients:
2 Cobs of Fresh Corn
2 Plum Tomatoes
1 cup Chick Peas
2 Handfuls Flat-Leaf Italian Parsley
2 TB Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 TB Raw Pecans
1 TB Red Wine Vinegar
Salt and Pepper

Cut the corn kernels off the cob.  Add diced tomatoes and chick peas (we used dried that we cooked in kombu to make it easier to digest but you can use canned too).  Season with salt and pepper.

In a food processor, combine parsley, pecans, and vinegar with a generous pinch of salt and some pepper.  Pulse, and stream in olive oil. 

Combine all the ingredients, and enjoy alone, or on top of some mixed greens!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful sister, Joanna, who turns 20 today.

A girl who enjoys good food…

…and good drink…

…as much as I do!

Love you Josie!

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Hopefully by the time you all read this, I’ll be halfway across the world enjoying these…

And these…

But since today’s a special day, I wanted to touch base with you all. One year ago exactly, on July 14th 2008, I graduated from Cardiff University, after spending the three best years of my life at the place. I absolutely loved graduation – walking across that stage was one of the proudest moments of my life. My parents had to pretty much force me to return that gown at the end of the day, because I wanted to keep in on forever!

Here are a few snaps of the day (back when I had some hair!)

If you’ve had one, did you enjoy your graduation day? What was your favourite part?

Bon Voyage!

OMG I’m going to Thailand!! I’m leaving for the airport in a couple of hours, so need to make this speedy. Work today has been absolutely manic, but I managed to finish pretty much everything  I needed to. And now I have two lovely weeks out of the office.

I can’t wait to fill you all in on my adventures when I get back. In terms of food and drink, I completely intend to indulge on this vacation, without going completely mad. I want to try all the Thai curries and noodles, but at the same time I don’t want to come home four stone heavier. It’s all about balance I think. I don’t need to eat twice as much as I do at home, and I don’t need to have dessert after every single meal.

It’s been so long since I’ve been on a two-week holiday that I’m not sure how well the healthy eating is going to go. So it’ll be interesting for me, and hopefully interesting for you guys when I get back and recap. I’ve made sure to pack my running shoes. There’s probably about a 90% chance I won’t use them (there’s no gym where we’re staying and it’s going to be so hot), but they’re there just in case.

Besides, if I don’t take them I won’t be able to do this:

Hehe, I love this picture! Hopefully there’ll be lots of walking and swimming on this holiday, which should help keep me in shape. It’s going to have to – I have a 5k race two days after I get back!

In other news…I realise my blog posts haven’t been brilliant lately, and I haven’t had as much time to devote to the site as I would have liked. But I’ve been thinking of ways to improve it, and can’t wait to get started once I get back. Here are a few of the things you can expect (besides a vacation-recap of course!):

• Regular posting at regular times
• More in the way of product reviews
• Guest posts from some of your favourite bloggers
• More delicious recipes
• A post on my 5K, which takes place on the 26th of July
• A more thorough snapshot of what I eat every day (I realise I’ve been really bad at this lately)
• More exciting breakfasts and lunches – this one is a promise!
• More ‘topic’ posts on issues relating to food, dieting, exercise and body confidence
• My very first giveaway, which will hopefully feature some Thai goodies!

I’m really excited about all the ideas I have for the blog, and I really think I can make it more interesting, more detailed and more fun for you guys to all read. So please bear with me while I’m away – I value and appreciate each and every reader so so much, and I don’t want to lose you all!

I’ll be back on the 24th of July, but keep checking in while I’m away because there are a few posts scheduled to pop up here and there.

What would you like to see more of on this blog? What improvements do you think I need to make?

See you all in two weeks!!!

A Pasta Phase

Thanks for all the lovely comments about the new hair, they all mean so much to me! I’m still getting used to it, but it’s slowly growing on me (no pun intended!)…I think. I just had a shower and it felt so weird having about half the amount of hair to wash as usual. Still, at least it’ll save me a bit of money on shampoo and conditioner!

Today has been a bit manic…I’ve been so busy at work trying to sort things out before I jet off. And then this evening I (finally) started the huge task of attempting to pack. I must be the world’s worst packer – I just put it off until the very last minute.

My room currently looks like a bomb’s hit it, but at least my suitcase is slowly getting full. Tell me girls, is six bikinis too many for a two-week holiday?!

Trust me, they’re hidden in there somewhere! Talking of bikinis, has everyone read Meghann’s awesome post on Bikini Confidence? I’m the first to admit that the thought of donning a bikini doesn’t fill me with joy, but I’m determined not to constantly worry about how I look this vacation. I want to have fun and be confident on the beach, not stressing about how big my ass looks. Who’s with me?!

And while I’m doing shout-outs, I want to say a huge thanks to Holly for all her great tips and recommendations for Thailand. I’m so excited now!

Tomorrow I’m in the office all day, and then I’m leaving for Heathrow Airport about 7pm. My flight’s at 10 and takes about 14 hours – I hope there’s some good movies on!

Before I go and do some more packing, I want to tell you all about the fab dinner I had tonight. It featured a medley of crayfish, prawns and mussels:

First I fried a bit of garlic and onion in some olive oil, before adding white wine, chilli paste and tomato puree to form a light sauce.

While that was simmering, I cooked up some wholewheat pasta. When the pasta was done, I added it to the sauce, and chucked in the seafood and some spinach.  I mixed the whole thing together until everything was covered in a delicious tomato-chilli sauce.

It looks like there’s loads here, but it was for my mum, dad and sister too.

 My portion, with some steamed broccoli on top:

This is seriously the best meal I’ve had in so long! The sauce was amazing, and the seafood really made the dish special as we hardly ever buy it. I’m usually not a massive pasta fan, but I’m really going through a big phase of it as the moment. I’m getting hungry again just writing this up!

Are you a big pasta eater? What’s your favourite pasta dish? I love lasagne and ravioli.

New hair and a tortilla pizza

Well I still haven’t started packing or booked anywhere to stay, but I did manage to tick one thing off my holiday to-do list this evening – getting my hair done.

I went from this…

To this…

It’s so short! To be honest, I’m not sure if I like it. I asked for quite a bit off, but I didn’t think she’d snip quite so much! What do you all think? It’s definitely going to take some getting used to! I do prefer my hair short in the summer though, especially on vacation.

Because of the hair dressing appointment, I needed something quick for dinner, so I decided on a tried-and-tested favourite – tortilla pizza. I spread some tomato puree over a wholewheat tortilla, and topped it with asparagus, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, carrot and low-fat mozzarella. Then I put the whole thing in the oven for about ten minutes:

 

I put some peach salsa on top before I ate it. The sweet and savory combination was great!

 

All in all a quick and tasty dinner. I’ll definitely put more cheese on next time though, it seemed to shrink in the oven!

Breakfast today was another muesli creation, which featured some of the raspberries I picked up at the weekend. Lunch consisted of farm shop items too – lovely wholemeal bread with lime and corriander hummus, spinach and tomatos.

I haven’t put tomatoes in a sandwich for a while, and I have no idea why – they went perfectly with the spinach and the hummus.

What’s your favourite quick dinner? Do you tend to spend much time in the kitchen or do you prefer speedy meals?

I want to move to Devon and become a full-time berry-picker

Sorry I was missing yesterday – it was such a hectic day at work, and I’m so busy trying to sort everything out for my vacation. I can’t believe I’m jetting off to Bangkok in two days time!! But more about that later. In the meantime, I know what you’ve all been waiting for me to talk about – potato digging!

My aunt and cousin live in an amazing old farmhouse by the beach. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and the kind of place I’d love to live in (when I’m a bit richer!):

They’ve got a massive garden, complete with a greenhouse, berry bushes and potato patches. It’s weird, my aunt assures me they’ve been growing their own vegetables for years, but I’ve never realised. Or maybe I was just never interested before? This time, when she told me about all the home-grown produce (some of which we’d be having for dinner) I was ridiculously, giddily excited and insisted I be part of the process!

Enter potato digging:

This was a good workout, let me tell you! The potatoes are quite far under the soil, so I had to dig around for a while to find them.

Once we had enough potatoes, I passed them onto my aunt for cooking and made me way to their berry bushes. Now you may have noticed I’m slightly obsessed with berries, so I was in complete heaven. They had blackberries and tayberries (which apparently is a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry). I had great fun picking as many ripe ones as I could find…and sampling them as I went!

I had A LOT of these over the course of the weekend – they were great with my cereal on Sunday morning. And I made sure I picked some more just before we left to go home, so I have some sitting in my fridge at the moment. Any bets as to how long they’ll last?!

When my aunt saw how excited I was about all the fruit and veg, she suggested to go to a local ‘pick your own’ farm on Sunday morning. Guess what my reaction was?!

My sister, my cousin and I had great fun picking everything on offer.

There were broad beans…

 Rhubarb…

 And raspberries.

 All together…

We took all this home with us. With both me and my sister at home at the moment, the raspberry stash has become severly depleted in just a day! We’ve still got all the rhubard and broad beans though, any ideas as to what to do with either?

I can’t believe I’ve missed out on all this for so many years. Over the weekend, we also sampled home-grown cucumber, tomatoes and lettuce from my aunt’s garden. I don’t know if it’s just because I knew it was out of their garden, but all the food tasted so much better than shop-bought stuff. As soon as I have my own garden I’m starting a vegetable patch! (Is it slightly sad that I’m 22 years old and I’m this obsessed with fruit and vegetables? Still, I know you guys will understand!)

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In other news…Like I said, I’m off to Thailand in a couple of days, and I still have a million and one things to do. Including having my hair done, shopping, packing, getting money and finding somewhere to stay – quite an important thing don’t you think?! I also want to spend some time with my sister, because she’s off to Africa the day I get back to Thailand. She’s there for 10 weeks, so I basically won’t see her all summer.

I’ll still be blogging  over the next few days though, so don’t go anywhere!

Have you ever picked your own fruit or veg? If you have a garden, do you grow any of your own produce? Or do you just go to Farmers’ Markets a lot?

This Weekend In Pictures

Hi guys!

Did you miss me?! I just got back from Devon, where I had such a lovely weekend. I hope you all had a fantastic few days too, especially everyone who celebrated July 4th.

I’m absolutely shattered, so I’m heading to bed in a few minutes. But here’s a sneak peek at what I got up to while I was away.

There was a beach…

A lot of relaxing…

Family…

A picnic…

A barbecue…

Vegetarian options…

Lots of fresh produce…

A delicious and healthy dinner…

Lots of berries…

And even a farm shop…

Good food, good company and good weather – what more could I have asked for? I even got the chance to go berry picking and potato digging! I’ll go into that in more detail tomorrow because I think it deserves a post of its own (I’ve got some great pictures!)  I was in complete heaven all weekend with all the fresh and delicious food left, right and centre. But now I need my sleep, so I’ll ‘see’ you all in the morning. Night night!

What did you all get up to this weekend? How did you celebrate July 4th?

Rocky Road Gorgeousness

Disclaimer: absolutely NOTHING about the below is healthy in any way, shape or form. Boy does it taste good though!

Disclaimer #2: if you’re some sort of baking conasuir, it’s probably going to seem really lame and unimpressive!

We’re having a charity bake sale at work today, so last night I took over the kitchen and got baking! Well, I say baking…does Rocky Road count as baking? Probably not. But I wanted something that would be difficult to mess up!

I followed this recipe, but I used rich tea biscuits instead of crushed peanuts. And most of the chocolate I used was the fruit and nut variety instead of plain…I thought it would jazz the recipe up a bit.

The ingredients:

Step One: break up the chocolate and heat it over a saucepan of boiling water…

…until it looks like this:

Step two: pour half of the melted chocolate into a baking tin and scatter cherries, marshmellows and biscuits on top:

Step three: pour the rest of the chocolate on top, and stick the whole thing in the fridge for a few hours:

Step four: cut into pieces, stand back and admire!

 

 

I may or may not have eaten two of these myself (in my defence, one was broken so I couldn’t sell it anyway!) They’re so good. Rocky Road isn’t as popular over here as it is in the US, so this is only about the third time I’ve ever tried it. I’ll definitely be making it again – this is the level of baking I can cope with! I also might have snacked on some marshmellows and biscuits while the chocolate was melting…oops.

The bake sale is at 10am today…I hope these get snapped up! There are going to be dozens of different cakes on sale so I’ll have to choose my favourites carefully rather than having one of everything. Rumour has it there’s going to be a cappuchino cake – if that’s the case, the others don’t really stand a chance!

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend and that all the Americans out there have a fantastic July 4th. I’ve got a full day of work ahead of me, but then I’m off to Devon for a couple of days by the beach. ‘See’ you all on Monday!

What’s your favourite cake? What do you tend to make for bake sales?

Spaghetti & non-meat balls, and a blogging hiatus

Three simple steps to Green Monster perfection:

1. Put a banana, mango, spinach, natural yoghurt and milk into a blender.

 

2. Blitz.

3. Transfer into cup of your choice, and enjoy.

Breakfast perfection!

I seriously can’t get enough of Green Monsters in this weather. I’m thinking of buying some kale next time I’m in the store and trying that instead of spinach. I’d love to see my parents’ reaction to that – they find spinach smoothies disgusting enough!

Mid-morning snacks included an apple and a handful of nuts and dried fruit. Lunch was another hummus and salad wrap, and mid-afternoon snack was a couple of apricots. I was wondering earlier, would you guys rather see pictures of all my meals, or just the interesting ones? If I post a picture of a sandwich or a wrap every day I have a feeling you’re going to get very bored! But here’s today’s (pre-wrapping) anyway…

Dinner was interesting enough to warrent some pictures! Since it’s the end of the week, it was the case of scrounging around the fridge to see what needed using up. I had pepper, onion, broccoli and falafel, so I decided to mix it the pasta to make spaghetti and meat falafel balls.

I stir-fried the onion, pepper and broccoli in some olive oil. While that was browning, I cooked up some pasta (I didn’t have much left, so I resorted to breaking up some spinach lasagna sheets to bulk it up a bit!) and the falafel.

Once the pasta was done, I added it to the veg and poured in a carton of chopped tomatoes:

Then I topped with the falafel balls and some cottage cheese:

I was pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself. This is the most creative meal I’ve made for ages. The falafels obviously didn’t taste much like meatballs, but they look the part!

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In other news… I’m afraid I’m going to be taking a bit of a hiatus in the next few weeks. Don’t worry, I’m not bored of blogging already! I’ve just got a few vacations coming up. Tomorrow evening I’m heading down to Devon with my parents and sister to stay with my aunt and cousin for the weekend. They live in a small beachside village, which is one of my favourite places in the whole wide world.

I’m not taking my laptop, so won’t be posting on Saturday or Sunday. But…I’ve got a great baking post planned for tomorrow before I leave (any rocky road fans out there?) And I’ll be back on Monday to fill you in on the weekend’s fun, games and food. I have a feeling there’ll be lots of treats consumed!

Next Thursday I’m off to Thailand for two weeks to visit one of my best friends from college. She’s travelling round the world, and I haven’t seen her for months. I miss her! We’re going to be island-hopping and staying in hostels, so taking the laptop isn’t really practical. I’m hoping to get some guest posts lined up though, and will be doing a fantastic giveaway when I get back. So please don’t desert me while I’m away!

Do you guys all blog on vacation? Or do you prefer to have a complete break and time away from the computer?

PS – thank you for all the lovely and supportive messages on my post this morning. The blogging community is so fantastic, I’m so proud to be a part of it. Positive thinking isn’t always easy (trust me, I know) but it makes such a difference.