Don’t you forget about me?

Firstly apologises for the absence. Life kind of got away from me for a bit there. Who needs small talk though, let’s get straight back to it. I finally made my way to the much talked about 'Breakfast club' a few weeks back and I have to say it did not disappoint.

Note - be prepared to wait! Since opening its first location in Soho in 2005 Breakfast club has been fiercely popular with longs queues nearly all of the time. You'll be lucky if your wait is only thirty minutes but it’s more likely to be an hour to an hour and half.

We decided to chance it and go for a Sunday brunch (probably there busiest time) and as expected we waited roughly an hour before we were seated. You can't book which is kind of annoying but becoming the norm in London these days (frustration). I will say however the staff were good with the queuing patrons, giving out small cups of free hot chocolate (very tasty) and giving realistic time frames etc. Luckily I was with a friend who I hadn't seen in a while so happily chatted away while we waited in queue.

The breakfast club as the namesake suggests is an all-day diner that is dedicated to the most important meal of the day...Breakfast. It also does its best to give of the vibe of the 1985 film of the same name. With six locations across London, the original cafe lies on D'Arblay Street in Soho...you can't miss it with its brightly painted, sunflower yellow shop front. We however decided to hit the London Bridge location.

The Breakfast Club
11 Southwark Street,
London Bridge
SE1 1RQ

Despite the name they do also open for lunch and dinner where they do burgers, tacos, salads etc. typical diner food and off course have their late breakfast menu but I thought considering the name, we would go at breakfast...well more of a brunch (1130am), it was Sunday after all.

The breakfast menu is stacked with options for every type of taste bud. From club classics, to pancakes both savoury and sweet, to eggs any which way and of course porridge, fruit and granola.

We started off rather boring with a cup of tea, an Ever-so English breakfast tea from the Joe's tea range. It was really nice and I heard a lot of people talking about how good the coffee was (I myself, not a coffee drinker)

 

After looking at the menu for far too long, practically wanting everything we both settled on Chorizo hash browns, a Breakfast Club original which is chorizo, mushrooms, home-style fried potatoes and fried eggs.

It was ridiculously big and super tasty and very reasonably priced. Well worth the hour wait in the cold. The staff also made it worth the wait, polite with genuine smiles and conversation. We didn't feel at all rushed, which can happen with places with large queues. The staff seemed capable and unfazed by the popularity which was a nice change.

I have to go back and try the pancakes one day with my friend Paula and I will let you all know how that goes, you know how much I love my pancakes.

This is definitely one to put on your restaurant bucket list, just make sure you bring something or someone to keep you occupied in the queue *smiles*

Enjoy!

 

Starting it off right

I am sure you have all heard the saying:

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day

You’re probably all sick of hearing it to but it is right folks.

Despite its importance it is the most regularly skipped meal of the day. To me this is just bonkers people because it has to be one of the easiest meals to prepare for!

I will admit there was a time when I would skip it or in fact eat some pretty shocking things for breakfast like cookies or cake or pastries…pastries once in a while isn’t bad…but every day like I was doing, is not a good thing.

Due to health issues back in 2010 I had to learn the importance of a healthy breakfast. Emphasis on the healthy part!

If you really think about it, it make sense that breakfast is so important because you have basically been fasting overnight. Say you finished dinner at 2100 and then head to bed roughly 2230. You get up 0700 and don’t end up eating your breakfast till 0800. That means you have not eaten for 11 hours. Would you ever go 11 hours without food during the day…I doubt it! Say you skip breakfast and don’t have lunch till 1300, we are now talking 16 hours people! That’s just crazy talk!

Breakfast not only breaks the fast you’ve been having overnight (hence the name break-fast) but also gives you the boost to start your day right. A healthy breakfast provides essential nutrition, better cognitive function and even helps with weight control.

So now we all know the importance of breakfast let’s talk about how simple it can be.

First note – STAY AWAY FROM THE BREAKFAST BISCUIT
The humble breakfast biscuits is advertised as sustained energy but folks in this context sustained energy just means SUGAR. 
If you eat one pack which is four biscuits you are consuming roughly 3 teaspoons of sugar with a little bit of fibre and protein to round it out. This is actually the same amount of sugar as eating 4 Oreos!
Therefore the so called convenient, healthy, nutritious breakfast biscuit is not the key to your healthy breakfast.

Now to some good, easy, healthier options that I have all the time. Remembering I am lazy, these have to be easy enough for you *smiles*

I am pretty time poor in the morning during the week, so most of these can be prepared in less than 5 mins (or the night before) and eaten at your desk.

Natural Greek yogurt with honey and strawberries

Natural Greek Yogurt topped with Granola and peach

Granola with banana and almond milk

Granola with banana, strawberries and almond milk

Porridge with banana and strawberries

Porridge with honey and a Petits yogurt with a nectarine

Peanut butter on Warburton’s brown sandwich thins (basically a thinner version of bread) with banana and apple

Of course there is always room for a treat breakfast as long as it’s not all the time. Say,
Nutella on Warburton’s brown sandwich thins with nectarine

There’s even room for the odd breakfast take away. Can’t go passed an egg, sausage, hash brown and tomato sauce Bap. Sometimes it just has to be done.

On a weekend I also like to get a bit more creative

Scrambled eggs with tomato, spinach and cheese with Warburton’s brown sandwich thins with a little bit of butter

The other weekend my amazing cousin Kirsty also made me an English muffin with cheese bacon and a poached egg and it was amazing.

I haven’t tried it myself before as the thought of cooking a poached eggs scares me off but it was soooo good I might have to overcome that fear and give it a try.

So there is a whole bunch of options ranging from easy to a little more tricky. You now have no reason to skip breakfast people!

photo taken from https://nourishinstyle.wordpress.com/tag/recipe/

So start eating breakfast from tomorrow, if you don’t already folks. From personal experience having a healthy breakfast will set up your metabolism and you are more likely to make healthy choices throughout the whole day!
  

 

Food prep Sunday

I am not paleo or celiac or gluten intolerant or any of that stuff but one thing I am is…LAZY.

My diet in the past hasn’t been great which ends up making me feel rubbish and the main reasons for that is because I am time poor and quite frankly lazy.
 
I do actually enjoy cooking but if I’ve got home from work between 2000 – 2100 the last thing I want to do is start cooking...which also means cleaning. I end up getting a healthier take away option (meaning expensive) on the way home, eating instant noodles, toast or a quick pasta dish or if I am really bad...just skip dinner altogether. I did for a while even get addicted to the M&S and Sainsbury ready meals.

In Australia we had the frozen meals but it was pretty widely know these weren’t good for you and that they should NOT be a regular occurrence but when I moved to the UK and there was this new 'fresh' ready meal, I got hooked. They looked and seemed pretty healthy, they were tasty and it was so easy. A few minutes in the microwave and the food was ready and eaten in less than half an hour with no clean up! What could be better?

Then I started to realise, when something is too good to be true it probably is. I started doing the research.
Saturated fats, additives, sugars, crazy amounts of salt, lack of natural vitamins and minerals.
From this you can gather that I straight away stopped and a ready meal is as rare for me nower days as getting a fast food take away.

However giving up the ready meal brought back that age old issue of being time poor during the week and then eating badly, expensively or not at all. Skipping meals became far too often which in the end just made me run down, tired and pretty irritable all the time.

I mentioned before about paleo, celiac, gluten intolerance etc. because people with these types of diets/concerns are often really good with what they eat and making sure they do the right things. One of the ways they do this is a Sunday food prep session. My thinking…why not give it a go and see if it’s going to help me keep myself from binging on junk and skipping meals and of course being a foodie, still keep me satisfied taste wise.

I started yesterday with my first Sunday prep session.

I decided to make a big batch of garlic prawn wild rice with carrot and spinach for dinners, mini cheese, tomato, spinach, carrot and bacon quiches (12) for lunches and then Caribbean spiced chicken for either lunches or dinners, with spinach salads or green beans.
Breakfast would be cereal or porridge and some fruit.
Snacks would be grapes, carrot sticks, homemade guacamole, popcorn, baby bell cheese and fruit again.

Grocery shopping:
Chicken
Prawns
Bacon
Wild rice
Garlic
Onion
Eggs
Mature cheddar cheese
Baby bell individual cheeses
Butter
Coconut oil
Spinach
Green beans
Tomatoes
Carrots
Avocado
Grapes
Nectarines
Apples
Lime
Pre-packaged popcorn
Porridge packs
Fruit n Fibre cereal

The guacamole recipe is in my blog post Getting back to good

The garlic prawn wild rice with carrot and spinach is pretty easy.

• Prepare and cook the garlic prawns.
• Finely grate two carrots and chop up two cups of steamed spinach.
• Prepare the wild rice (brown rice if you prefer)
• Then basically mix it all together.

Not very hard at all but it’s pretty tasty and I find it filling.

The chicken is just fillets of chicken, cut in to steak sizes and spiced and fried. Again really easy but tasty. I fry in coconut oil because I prefer the taste and have been told its healthier for you.

The mini quiches need a bit more prep. You can customize yours by adding which ever ingredients you want. I chose cheese, tomatoes, spinach, carrot and bacon.

You need a muffin pan and 6 free range medium eggs beaten and seasoned with a pinch of salt and pepper and then your mix ins.

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and generously grease the bottoms and sides of your muffin pan with butter to ensure a stick-free removal once the quiches are done baking.
2. Make sure your eggs are beaten and you’ve added the salt and pepper.
3. Chop up or grate all your fillings.
4. Add you fillings to the egg mix.
5. Fill the tins with the mix. The quiches will puff up when you bake them, so make sure to leave just a tiny bit of space at the top of each.
6. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until you can poke the centers with a knife and it comes out clean.

 

 

Super easy and super tasty both cold and hot. I have just had them for lunch with a few of the other bits and it was tasty and filling. 

Hopefully the rest of the week is as good of a success as today has been so far.

If I can keep this up surely getting back to fit and healthy is going to easy right? *smiles*