A salad you won't get bored with!

When clients ask my advice about what they should eat, I always promote this quick, easy and extremely healthy salad.

Now,  I'm not talking about a limp piece of iceberg lettuce and some droopy cucumber and a bit of tomato that often accompanies a meal which us Brits class as a 'salad'!!  I am talking about making it interesting and tasty so you don't get bored!  And start reaching for the convenient sandwich that really doesn't fill you up and can often make you bloated and tired.  This is the No 1 complaint of many of us that eat too much bread and pasta.

I suggest you prepare a humungous bowl of this salad at the beginning of the week and then when you get home from work, tired and ravenous, instead of reaching for the biscuit tin and the fizz, you can sit down to a scrumptious salad!

Just try this salad and you will be hooked, I promise you!! It's quick and easy to make and is jam packed full of nutrition.

These are some suggestions for ingredients:-

sugar snap peas
cucumber
courgette
radishes
olives
seed mix
nuts
avocado
red onion
carrots
feta cheese
spinach
alfafa sprouts
lentil pea and bean shoots (sainsburys)
corn cobs
chilli if you like it spicy
grated beetroot
grated carrot
grated ginger
coriander
parsley
sun dried tomatoes
vine tomatoes
spring onions
raw mushrooms
gherkins
peppers
salmon flakes (you can buy ready made in the fish section of most supermarkets)

the list goes on, just throw in anything you like!!

Add quinoa and bulgar wheat which you can buy from sainsburys or waitrose.  Quinoa is a complete source of protein and bulgar wheat isn't actually wheat so neither of these two ingredients contain gluten which is often a culprit that causes bloatedness.  It bulks the salad up and makes it more filling.

I then liberally pour linseed oil over the salad.  It's delicious and has numerous health benefits.  You can use it in smoothies and pour over jacket potatoes instead of butter!  You can buy the linseed oil from Flax Farm in Southwater  Speak to Clare, she is a mind of information about linseeds and will tell you all about the enormous benefits linseeds or flaxseeds have when it comes to digestion.

Squeeze loads of lemon over the salad to give it some zest!

I hope you enjoy this.

Don't diet, just change your way of eating and the key ingredient is PREPARATION PREPARATION!!

Poor preparation means grabbing for sandwiches, chocolate bars, crisps and fizz which all make us feel rubbish!!

Delicious Smoothie!

I'm often asked by clients, "what to eat in the morning if I can't have toast".  This is a delicious option which will really fill you up until lunchtime.  If you're not a breakfast person, then put it in a flask and have whenever you feel like during the morning.  Great for that train or car journey instead of a coffee and pastry!!

See the ingredients below, Linseed Oil, Hemp Powder, Linseed Meal, frozen banana, (I freeze my bananas (don't forget to peel first!), big chunk of ginger (great anti-inflammatory, anti-histamine for those hay fever sufferers) and an apple for sweetness, pears are great too and useful for constipation! Also dates or figs are nice and a tangerine and grapes! You can also add any frozen fruit which is also really convenient making the smoothie nice and chilled! Finish off with any nut milk, just buy the long life from the supermarket, oat milk, hemp, almond or soya. Use as much or as little as you want depending on how thick/thin you want it!

Just chuck in the blender, you must have a decent blender that is capable of crushing ice etc, a really good one is the Magimix and the top of the range is the Vitamix but I am sure there are some reasonably priced ones, just have a look!  This Kenwood Blender has some good reviews but personally if you can, I'd go for at least the Magimix.  It really is worth investing in a good bit of kit though, if you are serious about getting healthy! Just forfeit a meal out, a new dress, starbucks, bottle of wine etc and you'll soon have a new blender that you will use everyday for the rest of your life!!

2 minutes later and it is ready to eat/drink, just put some hot water and a dash of washing up liquid in your blender and then whizz it up and your blender is clean!  Come on!! There really aren't any "I haven't got time in the morning excuses" for this delicious jam packed nutritious smoothie!  Enjoy!