Refreshing Zoodles

  Nobody was cooking lunch so I made Zoodles for myself.

I first stumbled upon zucchini noodles, or zoodles quite a long time ago, after seeing it being featured on many health and fitspo accounts. To my surprise, zucchini is widely used to make bread loaves, muffins, cupcakes, oats, noodles. When added to baked goods it helps add lots of volume while lowering the amount of carbs, which is why so many health foodies/paleo people love this plant.

The Zucchini/Courgette Plant is widely recognized as it has many health benefits. Many praise it as a low-carb substitute to carbs, (like in this case, a substitute for noodles). 

To create zoodles, use a julienne peeler and julienne the zucchini length-wise.
Or you could use a Spiralizer if you have one.
Check out this how-to post by Oh She Glows!

   

What I used:

(Noodles)
1 large zucchini
(Topping)
1/4 cup pomegranate arils
1 small ripe avocado
1/2 can tuna
2 tbs lemon juice
2 tbs greek yoghurt/cottage cheese
pepper, dill, oregano

Vary the ingredients according to how hungry you are.

1. Julienne the zucchini lengthwise with a peeler

2. Mash the avocado, mix it with the tuna, lemon juice, greek yoghurt/cottage cheese and herbs

3. Sprinkle with pomegranate arils. 

(This is best served cold from the fridge)

    

Zoodles are great! They're so crunchy, light and refreshing. But they don't even come close to noodles or pasta.
They work best when you need a light meal but don't expect it to be the answer to "carb-less" spaghetti.

Personally I don't see any point in substituting (unrefined) carbs,
because they are so good and the human body relies on them. 

   

Even though I am a supporter of carbs I'm definitely making this again, it's so simple, light and fresh!
(FYI: I had sweet potatoes after this. Sweet Potatoes are pure amazingness)

Treasure finding

While clearing up my stuff, I happened to stumble upon my old chinese calligraphy exercise book from 2005.

Amazing attention span, what great intellectual capacity

nailed it (only once).

Then I found other pretty Interesting things from even further back (2004).

I had a great chidhood

Life after Loaf

Remember the healthy spelt loaf? It was almost completely gone within a few hours! 

Fate of the Spelt Loaf:

My parents and sister ate it with butter.

yucky photo but oh well

May it's spirit live on in my stomach.

100% Wholegrain Spelt Loaf

I'm sooo glad to be able to say that I know how it feels like to be surrounded by the nutty fragrant smell of bread, which fills up the whole kitchen and brightens up the whole house.

Yes that's right, today was a great day. 

   

Never underestimate the toaster oven

   

Small but mighty! Spelt is an ancient grain that is highly nutritious and has countless of health benefits ! It has this really unique, subtle  nutty fragrance as well, which for really delicious baked goods and other products.

Here's a very brief informative read-up about baking with spelt

    

To make this small loaf,  I used the recipe which can be found here.
I added 1 tbsp of honey* (highly recommended!) and used half of the
required ingredients, and only baked the bread
for 30mins before flipping it over and baking it again for 5mins.


Tips and tricks for baking quick breads is really short and helpful, please read it!

*Any honey/sugar/sweetener should work. I used organic raw honey.

   

My whole family was so surprised that I was able to bake this! They loved the bread so much. Since it was made purely from nutritious all-natural ingredients, they decided it was safe to give some to the dog and the hamsters.

According to my Dad and Sister, the dog and hamsters were begging for more!
That made me so happy! You never know if you'll succeed until you try. I'm so glad I managed to push away my fears of failing and get on with baking this bread. So please, even if you've had worse/really bad past baking experiences like me, don't hesitate to try this! It's the simplest and best recipe for beginners!

   

my loaf looks like it has a cute little butt 

My Baking Breakthrough!

FIRST OFF, TODAY WAS THE FIRST TIME I'VE EVER BAKED ANYTHING SUCCESSFULLY IN MY ENTIRE LIFE! THIS IS WHY EVERYTHING IS IN CAPS, I'M JUST TOO HAPPY I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!

A few days ago I came across a recipe for a Spelt Pumpkin Loaf and was itching to get my hands on some spelt flour. Despite feeling so pumped to try baking bread (because baking bread is so cool and bread is just simply amazing), I was feeling very hesitant and afraid. Spelt flour doesn't come cheap here in Singapore. But after consulting my very encouraging friend, fellow health foodie and baking queen, Jill and reading up tons of articles, tips and recipes about baking spelt products, I decided to #YOLO!! and bought a huge 5 oz bag of Bob's red mill Wholegrain Spelt Flour. It cost me $10.70! I was investing money into something that I wasn't sure would work out, with the risk of wasting away a big bag of high quality flour.

For someone like me who has had absolutely no prior training/experience in baking at all, I am very relieved, happy and pleased with the outcome. You have no idea how terrible my past attempts at baking were..

(Brief Flashback of my Sad baking past)

Okay so I used white flour/oat flour, and followed non-conventional "healthified" recipes for cookies and banana bread. The cookies were supposed to come out "crunchy and crumbly", the banana bread was supposed to be fragrant, fluffy and thick.

And then clumsy me took on the recipe, and produced ugly moist and limp monsters that could pass off as a failed flat-cake. As for the banana bread.. Well.. it looked like a hideous uneven mountain range, a drunk lost brown blob that stumbled out of my toaster oven. The insides weren't even cooked. Miserable failed attempts at creating healthy and sugarfree treats that everyone could have enjoyed.

Oh and pancakes? Yeah, failed my first attempt too. The batter lumped up on the pan and refused to budge, resulting in a strange clump of pale uncooked goop.

Thank the Lord (literally) for Spelt Flour! It's so healthy, nutritious and delicious, yet so versatile! With Spelt Flour I was able to make my Clean Spelt Pancakes and a super satisfying 100% Wholegrain Spelt Loaf !

Something meaningful to end off this post

Sundays

How my Sunday usually looks like    

   

Breakfast

   

Ballet

Fortnightly Supermarket Spending
Absolutely LOVE Supermarket Shopping.

Simple, Nourishing, Yummy. Grandma usually cooks red rice porridge

 

"There's still leftovers from last night.."

"Why your fridge so small"

Sweet Potato Sundays.
Sweet Potatoes are one of the things I live for, Vietnamese Japanese Sweet Potatoes to be exact.

   

Snacking on a lot of fruits.
(This is only approximately 1/6th of the amount of fruit I usually eat in a day... oops)

Weekly visit to the Tiong Bahru Fruit Wholesale Market
(Of course, there are much more unpictured fruits)

Walking 

   

Church

Sometimes Dad cooks an amazing dinner.

Sundays that come and go. 

There are only 8 Sundays left.

Oatmeal Overview

Baked Grape and PB, topped with more PB

Recipe from one of my favourite blogs: The Oatmeal Artist

Banana, topped with frozen blueberries (so huge and cute!) and a PB snackimal

   

Strawberry overnight oats *in my cherry republic jar*, the PB snackimals appear once again
OIP memories *cries* sigh best memory of my student life right there

     

Pumpkin, topped with PB and pomegranate arils. Was hesitant about trying pumpkin oatmeal since I've never had pumpkin in sweet things.. No regrets making this! 

   

A whole ecosystem in my tummy! They appreciate the privilege of residing in my stomach.
Poached Cinnamon Pear with a medjoul date, topped with melted PB and wolf (goji) berries.  

What Val will do

Basically this will be a visual diary of what I'm up to while going on what seems to be one of the most important adventures in my life. I'll try to update regularly ☺

(For those who are wondering about the previous blog, I scrapped and abandoned it , so this is the one I'm going to stick to!)