My question of how

The question is, “How?”.

When you start taking turns in your time on this blue planet that you never imagined possible, when you are in situations that you promised yourself you would never be in with so much conviction. When your heart shatters many times a day. You ask yourself, how did it get to this point? You ask yourself how do I get out of it? You ask yourself how do you go back to a previous state, where there were only hows of potential – how can I grow, how can I make life more meaningful, how can I experience this blue planet more fully.

Everyone says hard times are how you grow. Hard times make you appreciate the good times. Hard times make you realise how much you had to be thankful for.

I am asking myself this question. How?

And sometimes why.

But these questions have unlimited answers. These questions point a finger. These questions do not solve anything.

I’m changing my question to what.

What can I do to change my questions into answers. What can I do to realise how much I still have to be thankful for. What can I do to restore those former glorious days that I took for granted.

What?

Smooth operator

Being healthy is tough. These days, I want everything to be easy and quick – this usually means finding something that needs little to no cooking. The Nutribullet changed my life when it comes to speed and still getting in all the healthy stuff. Not just the Nutribullet, but various other machines can do the same thing. My mom uses a food processor to make her smoothies.

I make my fiancé a smoothie for breakfast every morning and it fills him up until noon. I have my smoothie as a mid-morning snack for some extra energy and to tick me over until lunch time. The great thing about this is that you can make your smoothie the night before, keep it in the fridge overnight and it will still be perfect to use. You can also use lots of different fruits and veggies – if you don’t like veggies, this is the perfect way to get all their goodness as you hardly taste it!

Today I had a Strawberry and Apple smoothie, but with lots of other good things:

My ingredients:

• Strawberries
• An apple
• Ginger
• Mixed seeds (I use Nature’s Choice Miracles Plus as it has a large variety of seeds)
• Cucumber (good for water)
• A scoop of Oats (I made my oats finer with my Nutribullet and just keep a container in the fridge to use at any time)
• A scoop of whey protein (not necessary, but I exercise a lot so it is good for the extra energy)
• Water to fill it up

For my fiancé I use slightly more Oats and an egg as well.

Mix it all together in the Nutribullet and Voila!

Over my bread body

I will not and cannot stop eating bread. Toasted, fresh, in any form, be it a croissant (swoon) or ciabatta or just a bun. Alas, if only my body agreed. Luckily, one of my former colleagues rocked up at work one day with this SUPER healthy Rye bread. I tried it immediately and was hooked – even though I put too much bicarbonate of soda in the first time, lots of butter fixed it.

Now, cooking for my fiance and his daughter and making sure they also have a healthy sandwich option, that tastes great on top of that, is my priority. In comes my rye bread…

You will need:

350g Rye flour (I use Eureka Mills 100% Rye Flour)

125g Oats

1.5 Teaspoon Baking Powder

1.5 Teaspoon Salt

1 Teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda

1 Teaspoon Cream of Tartar

125ml Mixed Seeds

2 Teaspoons honey

250 ml Warm Water

250 ml Milk

1 Egg

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius

Grease your bread tin

Sift dry ingredients in a big bowl; add Oats and Seeds

In a separate bowl, melt the honey in the warm water; add milk and egg and mix well

Now add the liquid mix to the dry mix. Mix well – do not worry if the mixture feels quite runny.

Throw mixture into bread tin

Wet a butter knife with water and make a 1cm line in the middle of the bread from one end to the other. This ensures a good shape and crust.

Bake in the oven for 1 hour

Remove from oven and cool in bread tin for 10 minutes; remove and put on cooling tray.

Enjoy with butter.