{Recipe} Homemade Almond Paste

Hiya almond lovers and everyone else!
My dad made some almond paste yesterday. We bought a new blender so he decided to test it out. We Chinese love our paste; black sesame paste, almond paste and other nuts paste lol. Ladies and gentlemen, almond is really good for the skin!

I didn't take any photos of the process because I didn't know he was going to make almond paste. Anyways its quite straight forward. I asked my dad for the instructions, I hope he hasn't missed anything.

Creamy Almond Paste

You will need:

- 1 bag of almond

- cold water

- hot water

- sugar or sweetener to taste (my dad used cane rock sugar)

Intructions:
1. Place the almonds into a big bowl and pour the hot water in. Let the almond soak for a while, until the skin are peeling off. When they are coming off, peel the skin off. And drain

2. Toast the almond in a pan or wok to get the flavour and aroma out. Let's say about 5 -8 minutes.

3. Pour all the toasted almond into the blender and add cold water. The water should be just covering the nuts. I guess the more water you add the less thick the paste would be. Blend until smooth.

4. Pour the paste into a saucepan and heat over medium - low heat. Stirring continuously! It will burn other wise.

5. Add sugar, honey, or any kind of sweetener that you prefer. Keep stirring. We used some Chinese cane rock sugar.

Click on image to view the original 

6. Once the sweeteners have melted and the paste is starting to bubble. It is done.

Suggestion:
After you've blended it, filter out the pulp with a milk cloth or old pair of if you want to make it less thick. My dad didn't filter it out and it turned out really creamy and filling!


Hope you like this recipe, if you do please share :)
Have a go and let me know the results and any adjustment you made, if any. =) Thanks for reading.

Bootcamp week

Hiya! This week was a "semi" bootcamp. I say semi because although I worked out real hard, 4 times this week, I pigged out a few times lol. I worked HARD this week and my muscles are still hurting. I realised that whenever I take a break from working out (I haven't worked out almost 3 weeks due to exams) I tend to feel unfit and less energetic.

On Monday, I went spinning and guess what? I have improved a lot. I am able to keep up with everyone else for almost 30 minutes, I think this was my 6th lesson. In the first 4 lessons, I could only keep up for about 10 minutes- btw I don't mean I stopped after 10 minutes, I just slowed down.  We have to do a lot of standing and increase the resistance gradually.. The instructor makes us stand for about 20 minutes, no lie!So that was 45 minutes of intense cardio.

On Tuesday, I went back to Tone Zone class despite the incident happened last week. This week we had a different instructor and he made it easier. Actually not easy but bearable. We started off with a warm up for about 5 minutes with no weight and had regular 30 seconds breaks to take a sip of water. Whereas the previous instructor jumped straight into working with weights and didn't give us any break, it was 45 minutes straight working from head to toe and core. Anyways, this week the routine was different (that's why I like it when we sometimes have different instructors, makes it more interesting) and as well as working with dumbbells, we also worked out with a bar for our upper body and lower body. We did a lot of jumping too. I actually enjoyed working out with the bar.

On Wednesday, I went to the gym with my boyfriend at 8am. That is early for me! He worked me hard and the gym is a body building one so the machines are a lot harder than the ones in fitness center. We did 2 sets of 20 for each exercise. Here was the routine:

Hip abductor
First we started with the hip abductor ( inner and outer thighs). I am able to lift 45 kg on the hip abductor at my gym but at this gym I was just about to do 25kg.

Abs
We did crunches on the crunch machine (I think that's what it is called). It was hard. You put your legs through these bars, your hands holding on to the bars above the head. Then you pull the bar to raise your upper body and pulling your legs simultaneously so your knees meet your elbows. I didn't add any extra weights as I already struggled with the weight of the machine itself. But my boyfriend added 20kg! Damn!

Leg press

45 Degree Leg Press

To work out our legs we used a 45 degree leg press machine (I think that's what it's called Lol. See the picture on the right). You rest your shoulders and back on the  cushion at the bottom, and your feet placed on the panel at the top. You can then add weights to increase resistance. I added 10kg and I started getting tired after 7 reps.

Bench press
I only do this when I'm working out with my boyfriend. Because he makes me do it lol. This works your chest and arms.

Other Arm workout
First we did some punching movements with dumbbells in hand.I held 2.5kg in each hand. Then we did curls and shoulder press together.

Obliques
I had 7kg dumbbell in one hand and leaned side ways. Then changed to the other side.

Curls
I sat at this machine where you rest your arms and elbows on this cushion in front of you. Then lift the bar keeping your elbows on the cushion. This really worked both my bicep and tricep. I lifted 12kg.

Captain Chair

Back workout
We used this machine that works your back muscles and triceps. I'm not sure what it's called and I can't find a picture of it on the internet to show you. You sit down and rest your chest against the cushion then you pull back those handles as far as you can go. So your elbows go past your chest.

Abs Again
To finish off we did some ab workout again on the captain chair. Lifting legs to chest level and sides ways. I started off lifting my legs straight out but I got tired so just lifted my knees like the picture on the left.







On Saturday I went for a morning jog in the park with my boyfriend. The park near my boyfriend's has the Adizone gym; exercise weight machines sponsored by Adidas (See below). We ran two laps with power walking, medium pace jogging and sprinting. Then we used some of the Adizone equipment. You see that pink machine in the picture, that works your arms. You push those bars forward, you're actually lifting your own weight. So its not easy if you have weak arms. After a year of training, I am STILL not able to do pull ups but I was able to push my weight on this thing. YAY! I'm getting there....slowly. I also did some walking lunges, haven't done those in a while and boy they do work your thighs!

Adizone Gym

Now on to my pig out days. On Wednesday, I had lunch with some class mates. We went for Vietnamese food in Soho, Cay Tré. It was pretty good. We had classic pho and chicken leg pho- the chicken was the best-, grilled aubergine with some shredded pork in spring onion oil, mince pork wrapped with crispy leave, pork rice pancake. The chicken pho isn't in the photo because we ordered it after we finished everything else as we were still hungry. Or maybe it was me who was still hungry lol. I still had dessert, but we shared one between the 4 of us. Banana fritter with coconut ice cream.

Vietnamese Food @ Cay Tre

On Thursday night, I went to Big Easy, an American restaurant, with my friend Rushka. We went there for the seafood, we both had lobster and shared a basked of fried jumbo prawns. Big Easy does daily deals on lobsters; £14.95 for 1.25lb lobster, £19.95 for 2lb. Both served with salad and chips and a choice of either margarita or beer for drinks.

Big Easy

We both chose 1.25lb lobster with margarita. I was a bit disappointed with the lobster, there were hardly any meat (are you thinking 'you did choose 1.25lb' but Rushka has been there before and that time she ordered 1,25lb and had a lot more meat. I guess either we were unlucky or she was lucky to get a big 1,25lb lobster). It wasn't fresh either. Usually if its fresh the meat would come off the shell easily but it was sticking to the shell and the texture was very soft and sandy. But the prawns were amazing! They had that crispy texture, and they were huge!

On top of the lobsters we also ordered macaroni cheese, onion rings and extra drinks; she had fizzy lemonade and I had strawberry shake. The waiter seem to be reluctant to take our order when we said we wanted to order extra drinks and side dishes. He probably was thinking 'you girls are not going to be able to finish all that, the table isn't big enough either.' In the end the two side dishes DIDN'T come, I think it was deliberate. Because they were not listed on the bill, I mean what a coincident that ONLY the sides didn't come, right? We didn't ask about it because we thought it might be too much anyway lol. The strawberry shake was so gooooodd!

On Saturday after the workout in the park, my boyfriend and I went out for lunch at an American Diner. I had a double beef burger with chips and strawberry shake again.

As for other days, they were a lot healthier.

Top Left: Quinoa salad with tofu, halloumi cheese, cherry tomatoes, 1/2 green pepper and lettuce.

Top Right: Hemp protein shake made with banana and soy milk. Papaya with organic Greek yoghurt and manuka honey.
Middle Left: Carribean Flavour- Coconut rice with beef and sweet potato stew and fried plantain- I made all that for me and my boyfriend.
Middle Right: Blueberries, nectarines, rolled oat, plain Greek yoghurt and manuka honey. This was just a snack.
Bottom Left: Chinese flavour- Steamed tofu topped with prawns. I love this dish.
Bottom Right: Cream cheese and smoked salmon sandwich.

My mum bought a massive papaya and a box of mangoes. So I've been making papaya milk shake, I used; 1/4 papaya, greek yoghurt, 1 cup of almond milk and a tablespoon of oat. You can add honey for a sweeter taste.

Papaya Milkshake


This morning (Sunday), I made some mango and apple smoothies. Chick pea fluffy pancakes. The pancakes were a bit different this time.

- 3 egg whites

- 2/3 cup of soy milk

-1 cup of chickpea flour

- 1 tablespoon of baking powder

- 1/2 teaspoon of ginger 

- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder.

I also added some of the juice from the mango into the batter, but I didn't put enough. Adding egg white actually made the texture more fluffy.

Sorry for the long post. ^.^ Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.

Back to keeping fit!

Hello readers, bloggers, friends, and everyone else!

Due to exams, I haven't done the weekly blogging on my food and workout for about 3 weeks. I am so glad it is over and now its just dissertation which is due end of August. The exams weren't too bad; some went extremely well but one was very very very disappointing. =( oh wells gotta move on.

I didn't workout much during the exam period as I felt I needed every minute for revision. But I made time on the last of week of exams, I went spinning and strength training once, had to release the stress. Didn't even put the time into cooking. I had pizza a couple of times and made some express dinner.

Wild/red rice with minced beef and tomato stew.

Pizza and dough balls from Domino's. The pizza was overcooked, couldn't even taste the cheese. But the dough balls were so good!

I know a lot of people snack while revising but I don't really do that because I find it distracting. Having saying that I did snack during my breaks. Been having halloumi cheese quite a lot.

Last week, I only worked out twice. On Tuesday, I went Tone Zone class (a toning aerobic class) and something embarrassing happened. I almost fainted during the class. Lol. I stopped to get a sip of water and as I was about to get back, I started feeling dizzy. My vision went fuzzy and dark, the sounds were muffled, my chest was hurting a bit and felt nausea. I just stood there trying to recover ASAP (silly me, still wanted to carry on). But the instructor came over to me and got some First Aid trained staff to see me. The lady just sat me down and told me to drink my water and take deep breathes. It took about 5 minutes for my vision to fully recover. I rested for about 20 minutes and went home. After that I felt so tired the whole day. It was the first time this happened, must have been the 2 weeks break and head rush...I think.

On Saturday morning, I was tired and reluctant to go gym but I forced myself. I did a short strength training session, 30 minutes workout.

2 Sets of 20 Reps of each:

- Hip abductor, inner and outer thighs

- Leg extensions

- Squats (I did 2 sets of 50 reps)

- Lunges

- One legged bridge (I think that's what you call it. It's a killer though)

- Russian Twist with a 4 kg medicine ball (Love love love)

- Triceps; not sure what this is called but I pulled the handle bar down. Pulled 6 kg of weights. 

- Shoulder press (holding 3 kg dumbbells in each hand)

This week has been a green week. I've been making green smoothies almost every single morning.

Green smoothies

I've heard a lot about the benefits of green smoothies, like how it cleanses your system and gives you clearer skin. Well, I really have noticed result when going to the Ladies. Lol. Sorry about that. Lol. Rushka if you're reading this, you're not surprised with what I just said, right? HAHA! 

One of my yummy Green Smoothie recipes:

1 banana

A handful of spinach

1/4 of cucumber

1/2 cup of water

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been having pancakes every morning this week. This is because I was experimenting with chick pea flour. I'm trying to come up with some yummy protein pancake recipes- gluten free too. (Click here to read it)

Since I almost passed out at Tone Zone class, I thought maybe my iron level is low. So I had steak twice this week; rib-eye and sirloin steak. I also had some turkey during the week; stir fried turkey breast with courgettes. And the dish below that is steam tofu topped with some dried seafood (dried mussels and mini scallops) and some "gravy" my dad made. Protein, protein, fiber fiber. Lol.

Steamed tofu with dried seafood and "gravy"

That's it for now, a short blog this time. Thanks for reading.

Have you ever passed out while working out? Do you like green smoothies? What are your recipes?

I love pancakes because they are so healthy!

Source from outandaboutinthecity.com

Hiya! Are you a pancake lover? (Mmmm...look at those pancakes *drooling*) Do feel guilty after eating those pancakes? Yes and yes for me. I have been experimenting with pancake recipes, making them healthy and beneficial for your body.

I remember I was in a meeting and during the meeting I felt like having pancakes (LOL, yes I always think and talk about food). I said to my class mates, 'I feel like having pancakes with berries and creams.' And one of the guys in my group was like, 'but that's full of carbs.' And I was like 'So? It's not like I have it every day, it's ok to have it once in a while. Everyone has carbs, rice and pasta are carbs.' And guess what he said? 'But do you exercise?' ...is he trying to call me fat?! Anyways that's no the point, the point is the carbs part. It got me thinking how to make healthier pancakes.

So I did  my research. I first tried adding protein powder (Good Hemp protein- they are natural hemp) to the pancakes. So they were pancakes with plenty of protein. But I felt that wasn't enough. So I carried on researching. Eventually, I came across this fitness blog (which has become one of my favourite fitness blogs), www.celeryandcupcakes.com. Jemma, the blogger of Celery and Cupcakes, mentioned about socca pancakes, a healthy French street food in Nice. They are savoury pancakes made with gram flour (made from Chickpeas), which is a source of protein. But Jemma made some sweet ones which looks really yummy. I followed her recipe (click here for her recipe) and serving suggestions, see below:

Served with apple, cinnamon and honey

How was it? It was O.K. but the chick pea flour has a strong nutty flavour and I'm not quite used to it. So I had to keep adding lots of honey to cover the taste. I think she suggested maple syrup but I don't have any so used honey instead, I know it's not the same.

Second attempt, I adjusted the recipe by adding hemp protein powder (its green so made the pancake green), almond powder and almond milk. Tasted a lot better. I served it with blueberries, banana, honey and milled seeds.

The 3rd attempt I decided to make the traditional socca pancakes. I found the recipe from a blog but I don't remember which one, I forgot to save it. Sorry. But the main ingredients was chickpea flour, water, rosemary, olive oil and salt. It wasn't bad at all, smelt quite good of rosemary. I had it with some cheese and ham and it was so good!

Home made Socca pancakes

Recently, (I carried on with my research on pancakes) I found another fitness/health blog, www.fitforthesoul.com, written by Ellie. I think she is also pancake lover because she has quite a lot of super healthy and unique pancake recipes. And I love them!

I first tried her Spiced Socca Pancakes (Click here for her recipe). She's added chia seeds, vanilla stevia and vanilla but I don't have any of those. The ginger and cinnamon powder really helped covering the nutty flavour. This pancake was yummy. I served it with banana, manuka honey and almond butter (I absolutely love almond butter)

I also tried adding blueberries to the batter (This is also an inspiration from Ellie). While the pancakes are cooking, the juice in the blueberries will burst out into the pancake. Yum yum! I tried serving it with cranberry jam, the Swedish way, and it was good.

I basically been having pancakes every morning. I am not sick of it...yet...hope  I won't be lol. But it is so filling, it literally lasted me the whole morning. I had them around 8:30am and didn't feel hungry until 2pm, usually if I have porridge I will get hungry around 11am.

Do you like or/and make unique pancakes? Or do you prefer the regular pancakes? What do you serve them with? 

I heart Holland & Barrett Penny Sale

Hello Lovelies!
I haven't blogged for 2 weeks as I have been busy with revisions, I got one more to go tomorrow. I'm on a 30 minute break now so decided to update the blog about my shopping at Holland & Barrett.

Yes, Holland & Barrett is doing the penny sale again- I've been waiting for it! The penny sale was only available on certain products and good thing it included Manuka Honey. I've recently established a love for Manuka Honey because of the benefits it has for the skin and body. I've been adding it into my smoothies, porridge, pancakes and other food.

I bought these two for £26.50, that's; £26.49 for one and 1p for the second. If you've never heard of Manuka Honey, you must be wondering 'why the hell does it cost so much?'. I don't really know why, but apparently it is known as 'healing' honey, it contains antibacterial qualities and has an anti-inflammatory action. Manuka Honey has some active agent in it and unlike normal honey it won't be destroyed when exposed to heat. The figure 24+ is the UMF, the higher the better. Anything below 10 is no good.

This jar of honey contains 100% Manuka Honey which is what I like to see. Nice and pure and no other artificial ingredients. Oh also, you can also you use it as a face mask. It's anti-aging.

I also bought Aloe Vera to use on skin, bought them for £6.99; £6.98 for one and 1p for the second. I like to use aloe vera gel to soothe the skin after waxing and threading and also if I accidentally burnt or cut myself. Aloe vera is another natural healing agent and very good for your skin too. This tube contains 99.9% natural aloe vera gel. 

I bought almond nut butter, this wasn't part of the penny sale. I've read about almond butter in a couple of my favourite fitness blogs (www.celeryandcupcakes.com, fitforthesoul.com) so I wanted to give it a try. It taste a bit like peanut butter and I like it. 

Look at the ingredients. Its very natural, 99.5% of almond. No added palm oil and sugar. Great stuff! I bought this for £2.79.

Ok, that's it guys. I got to get back to revision. =) Thanks for reading!