mascarpone tomato soup

Honestly I love cooking but cleaning and chopping vegetables isn't one of my favorite activities. That's the exact reason why this is my favorite soup recipe... well, that and the fact that this soup is just delicious.


What you need:
•2 Onion, chopped
•1 garlic clove
•2 spoons of olive oil
•2 large cans of peeled tomatoes
• 1 stock cube
•Salt and pepper
•300g Mascarpone (or more if you're greedy like me)
•Fresh basil

What you do
1. chop the onions and the garlic
2. fry the garlic and onion in olive oil until soft.
3. Add the whole tomatoes from the can, with the juice.
4. add the stock cube
5. Cook on low heat for 20 minutes, covered.
6. Run the mixture through a strainer
7. Return the mixture to the pan, add salt, pepper, fresh basil and mascarpone reheat gently and serve.

What you get +/- 250kcal/serving

Moelleux au Chocolat

What you need

•100g of dark chocolate (over 70%)
•100g of butter
•100g of caster sugar
•50g of flour •3 eggs of 60 g each
•An untreated orange

What you do

1)Preheat the oven to 200°C.

2)Cut the butter and chocolate into small pieces, melt au bain-marie.

3)Remove from heat, add sugar and stir with a wooden spoon or with a normal one, but not with a whisk, you do not want to incorporate air.

4)Add flour, stir and add the eggs one by one.

5) Grate an orange (untreated and washed) into the chocolate mixture.

6) Place in moulds.

Bake in the oven 5 to 7 minutes.

What you get:
lots of calories... but hey.. it's sunday!

Let's slip out of the meat mode

♫ ♪ The Smiths - Meat is Murder

Let's face it, going veggie isn't all that easy... a lot of those vegetarian meat imitations are really unfulfilling for people who love their tender juicy steaks. But since I care about the environment I've made it my duty to try every meat imitation out there and separate the good from the bad.

Here a little selection of my favorite meat alternatives ( not all of them are meat 'imitations')

1) The one thing you'll always find in my shopping cart is Quorn's Florentine: a wonderful sandwich filling with italian herbs

2) Quorn Lasagne:

two options:

- Buy it ready-made:

- make it yourself with

( in my opinion this last one only tastes good combined with a rich sauce)

3) One thing I really love is Hummus, not only because it's a good substitute for meat but also because of it's creamy-ish texture, which always makes me feel as if I'm eating something greasy with lots of mayonaise.... so it's great if you're in the mood for fatty food and your diet doesn't really allow you to have a greasy burger with french fries and lots of mayonaise.

you can find a great hummus recipe in one of our earlier posts

4) let's not forget about an old time classic: split pea soup with rye bread

5) Garden Gourmet's Toscane Burgers: these are filled with mozzarella, basil and sundried tomatoes

We ♥ Nigella

Everybody who loves food most definitely adores Nigella, a commentator from The New York Times once said, "Lawson's sexy roundness mixed with her speed-demon technique makes cooking dinner with Nigella look like a prelude to an orgy"
The way curvaceous Nigella describes the ingredients, techniques and results does make you mouth water... every single item she uses is delicious, luscious & fabulous. The woman can make a simple omelette sound like the most heavenly thing you've ever tasted.

here some of here recipes:

Sunday treats

'cause sunday is supposed to be a fun-day... let's just forget about the calories for once and treat ourselves to some home-baked goodness!

White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

What you need:
110 g chocolate cookie crumbs
40 g white sugar
55 g butter, melted
250 g frozen raspberries
25 g white sugar
5 g cornstarch
120 ml water
350 g white chocolate chips
120 ml half-and-half cream
650 g cream cheese, softened
100 g white sugar
3 eggs
5 ml vanilla extract

What you do:
1.In a medium bowl, mix together cookie crumbs, 3 tablespoons sugar, and melted butter. Press mixture into the bottom of a 23cm springform pan.
2.In a saucepan, combine raspberries, 2 tablespoons sugar, cornstarch, and water. Bring to boil, and continue boiling 5 minutes, or until sauce is thick. Strain sauce through a mesh strainer to remove seeds.
3.Preheat oven to 165 degrees C. In a metal bowl over a pan of simmering water, melt white chocolate chips with half-and-half, stirring occasionally until smooth.
4.In a large bowl, mix together cream cheese and 1/2 cup sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time. Blend in vanilla and melted white chocolate. Pour half of batter over crust. Spoon 3 tablespoons raspberry sauce over batter. Pour remaining cheesecake batter into pan, and again spoon 3 tablespoons raspberry sauce over the top. Swirl batter with the tip of a knife to create a marbled effect.
5.Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until filling is set. Cool, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 8 hours before removing from pan. Serve with remaining raspberry sauce.

What you get:

412kcal/serving

Brownies

What you need:

185g unsalted butter
185g best dark chocolate
85g plain flour
40g cocoa powder
50g white chocolate
50g milk chocolate
3 large eggs
275g golden caster sugar

What you do:
1.melt the dark chocolate and butter au bain marie: Cut the butter into smal cubes and tip into a medium bowl. Break the dark chocolate into small pieces and drop into the bowl. Fill a small saucepan about a quarter full with hot water, then sit the bowl on top so it rests on the rim of the pan, not touching the water. Put over a low heat until the butter and chocolate have melted, stirring occasionally to mix them. Now remove the bowl from the pan.
Leave the melted mixture to cool to room temperature.
2.While you wait for the chocolate to cool, position a shelf in the middle of your oven and turn the oven on to 180C. Using a shallow 20cm square tin, cut out a square of non-stick baking parchment to line the base. Now tip the flour and cocoa powder into a sieve held over a medium bowl, and tap and shake the sieve so they run through together and you get rid of any lumps.
3.With a large sharp knife, chop the white and milk chocolate into chunks on a board.
4.Break the eggs into a large bowl and tip in the sugar. With an electric mixer on maximum speed, whisk the eggs and sugar until they look thick and creamy. This can take 3-8 minutes, depending on how powerful your mixer is, so don't lose heart. You'll know it's ready when the mixture becomes really pale and about double its original volume.
5.Pour the cooled chocolate mixture over the eggy mousse, then gently fold together with a rubber spatula until the two mixtures are one and the colour is a mottled dark brown. The idea is to marry them without knocking out the air, so be as gentle and slow as you like - you don't want to undo all the work you did in step 4.
6.Hold the sieve over the bowl of eggy chocolate mixture and resift the cocoa and flour mixture, shaking the sieve from side to side, to cover the top evenly. Gently fold in this powder. The mixture will look dry and dusty at first, and a bit unpromising, but if you keep going very gently and patiently, it will end up looking fudgy. Stop just before you feel you should, as you don't want to overdo this mixing. Finally, stir in the white and milk chocolate chunks.
7.Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. Put in the oven and set your timer for 25 minutes. Take out of the oven.
8.Leave the whole thing in the tin until completely cold. Cut into quarters, then cut each quarter into four squares.

they'll keep in an airtight container for a good two weeks and in the freezer for up to a month.

what you get:

288 kcal/serving

A little history of absurd diets

1. Consume Nothing But Booze
One day William the Conqueror (1028-1087 decided he needed to go on a diet. His solution? Get wasted and don’t leave bed for days. The pounds shed away, and William soon found he could ride his horse again, which he soon drunkenly fell off of and died.

2. The Diet Of Olympic Champions
In ancient Greece, the breakfast of champions wasn’t Frosties, but rather lots and lots of smoked pork. To get the ripped muscular bodies depicted in Greek tapestries and bathhouses, Olympic athletes were put on a strict meat-only diet.

3. Rub the Fat Away
Zander rooms were popular two centuries ago. In them, overweight people would sit in a large contraption. This device would oscillate back and forth. The principle behind this was that a vigorous rubbing would make fat disappear.

4. the Liquefied Diet
About one hundred years ago, Horace Fletcher stumbled upon a stupid idea and sold it to millions. That idea was chewing your food until it liquefied before swallowing.

5. The vinegar detox program
The originators of the detox diet were most likely Egyptians. They would brew a foul primitive vinegar concoction and use it to cleanse their bodies of toxins. Side effects of this include vomiting and diarrhea, which means ... more weight loss!

6. Tapeworm diet
Tapeworms are parasites that live in a human’s stomach, eating all their food.This means you can eat all you want without actually eating it!

7. Eat Like A Caveman
The Paleolithic diet, created in the 1970s by Walter Voegtlin, restricts the dieter to eat only foods that were available in the Paleolithic era, which ended 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture.

6. Eat Nothing But Air
The Breatharian diet consists of air. No water, no food, just crisp, calorie-free air. Inedia is the term used to describe the ability to subsists entirely on air, since no human has ever shown this ability the diet makes absolutly no sense whatsoever.

7. Byron diet
This diet, made popular by Lord Byron in 1820, encouraged its followers to fast and subsist solely on water and vinegar. It should be noted that Lord Byron suffered from anorexia, so only use this diet if you want to be an anorexic male poet.

8. The Grapefruit Diet
The 1920s and 1930s were a dangerous time for the waistlines of the public. The popularity of the Silver Screen led to an obsession with skinniness. Combine this with a general ignorance as to proper dietary health, and conditions were ripe for ridiculous diets to sweep the public. Enter the Grapefruit Diet. This diet makes the claim that unhealthy foods are fine to eat, as long as they are eaten with grapefruit. The theory is that grapefruit makes some sort of ysterious change in your stomach, becoming a magic fat-preventing super fruit.

9. Roman method
The Romans really liked to live large, enjoying extravagant meals. However, their enormous appetites didn’t match their stomachs, and they often found themselves full before they had experienced every course of the meal. So, they would throw up to enjoy eating even more food.

10. Prolinn Diet
One of the worst diets however is not from thousands of years before standardized medicine, but rather from a few decades ago. In 1970s, Dr. Roger Linn advocated eating nothing at all but his miracle liquid called Prolinn. Prolinn consisted of ground-up and crushed animal horns, hooves, hides, bones and other slaughterhouse byproducts that were treated with artificial flavors, colors, and enzymes to break them down.

Salmon, Fennel, Parsnip and Coconut Stew

Looking for some winter goodness with a touch of spring? This creamy hot soup gives you a cosy winter feeling yet the beautiful combination of soft colors makes you look forward to the springtime. A perfect dish for this month since winter doesn't really seem to be over, yet spring does already appear to be creeping in every now and then.

What you need:
(Makes enough for 2 people)

1 Tbs olive oil
1/2 leek, washed and sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 fennel bulb, diced
2 parsnips, scrubbed and diced
1 cup vegetable stock
1 cup coconut milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
250gr salmon, cut into chiunks
Microgreens as garnish (optional)

What you do:
In a medium pan, heat the olive oil and cook the leek, garlic and fennel for about 5 minutes until tender. Do not let it get brown. Add the diced parsnips, vegetable broth, coconut milk, salt and pepper.

Cover the pot and let it simmer for about 5-10 minutes until parsnips are tender. Add the salmon, cover and let it simmer for another 3 minutes or so, until it turns light pink. Adjust seasoning.

Serve with microgreens, if desired.

what you get:
+/- 450 kcal/serving

tip: look for a light cocosmilk and save some calories!

Craving some Ice Cream?

two options:

1) Moderation
magnum bonbons: 30 kcal/bonbon

2) substitution

sorbet or frozen yogurt: 110 kcal/100gram (icecream 190kcal/100gram)

RECIPE

Frozen Yogurt Pops

What you need:

2 cups lowfat strawberry yogurt
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 Tbsp light corn syrup
2 Tbsp sugar, or to taste
2 cups fresh or frozen unsweetened strawberries

What you do:
1. Have ready eight ice-pop molds and wooden ice-pop sticks. (+/-100ml)

2. Purée yogurt, lemon juice, corn syrup, sugar and 1 cup strawberries in a blender or food processor until smooth. Add remaining berries; pulse until mixture is puréed but still has tiny specks of strawberry.

3. Pour into molds, cover with tops and insert ice-pop sticks. Freeze 4 to 6 hours until hard.

4. To serve: Remove tops from molds. Dip molds briefly in warm, not hot, water. Gently pull pops out of mold.

96 kcal/serving

Breakfast Time: Home made granola

What you need:
4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups sweetened shredded coconut
2 cups sliced almonds
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup good honey
1 cup small diced dried figs
1 cup dried cherries
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup roasted, unsalted cashews
Directions
Preheat the oven to 180°C

What you do:
Toss the oats, coconut, and almonds together in a large bowl. Whisk together the oil and honey in a small bowl. Pour the liquids over the oat mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until all the oats and nuts are coated. Pour onto a sheet pan. Bake, stirring occasionally with a spatula, until the mixture turns a nice, even, golden brown, about 45 minutes.

Remove the granola from the oven and allow to cool, stirring occasionally. Add the figs, cherries, cranberries, and cashews. Store the cooled granola in an airtight container

Calories/100g: 370 (20% from fat)