Happy New Year!!

Desejo a todos os meus leitores, um grande ano de 2014, cheio de muita saúde, amor e felicidade! O mais importante que temos nesta vida. Divirtam-se muito e grandes entradas!!! :-)

Love,

Catarina XOXO

30 Min, Done!

Have no time for cooking lunch? Here is a quick and delicious recipe you can make in about 30 minutes.

1 Pastry (mine was a rectangle, bought on the supermarket)

1 Tomato

Mushrooms

Onion

Powdered garlic

Mozzarella cheese

Olive oil

Olives

Wash the vegetables, and peel the mushrooms. Join everything inside a bowl (if you prefer you can blend the tomato to create a pulp). Place it inside and in the middle of the pastry. Make a roll around it, add some olive oil on top and place the olives. Put it in the oven for about 20 minutes. It's done!

Não têm tempo para cozinhar o almoço? Aqui está uma ideia rápida e deliciosa que podem fazer em cerca de 30 minutos.

1 Folha de Massa folhada (usei uma rectangular comprada no supermercado)

1 Tomate

Cogumelos frescos

Cebola

Alho em pó

Queijo Mozarella

Azeite

Azeitonas

Lavem os vegetais e descasquem os cogumelos. Misturem tudo dentro de uma tigela (se preferirem triturem o tomate para fazer polpa). Coloquem dentro e no centro da massa. Façam uma espécie de rolo fechado e coloquem um fio de azeite em cima, mais as azeitonas. Depois, forno, cerca de 20 minutos. Está feito!!

See you next time! Até à próxima! :)

Catarina, XO XO

Do you now what I got for Christmas? Fat, I got Fat!

During and after the holidays is very complicated to keep up with the good habits. Sweets, salty food, left-overs, and all the treats around you seem to make it impossible, and then there's the new year's eve a few days after, oh, what a shame! It's still not an excuse to eat junk all the time, try to have some meal that does you good. Eating a healthy breakfast (as I've talked about a few days ago), is a great way to do it. Fill your body with vitamins and water to cleanse. Eat light meals but rich in vegetables and fruit that will help you gain your weight back! I can't say I did it these last days, but I sure ate less at dinner and forced myself to eat a lot of fruit. 

Check out my morning treat and what I had for lunch! Always add a soup if you don't want to eat greens, or they don't fit in the recipe. I had spinach cream before the Tofu and Pickles.

Morning Breakfast

Soy yogurt (strawberry)

Vegan chocolate cake

1 Apple

Black Tea

Tofu&Pickels

This is based on a Portuguese recipe called "Carne de Porco à Alentejana", which is basically pork meat with ground pepper and pickles or clams, it's very tasty, salty, and delicious. I had this idea to try it with seitan or tofu, this time I had tofu, so here it is:

Tofu

Pickles

Garlic

Onions

White Wine

Ground Pepper

Salt

Olive Oil

I seasoned the tofu with garlic and the ground pepper for a little bit to enhance the flavor. Heated the olive oil, added the onions and everything else. Add the wine in the end. Serve with white rice and pour the sauce on top of it.

Merry Christmas, Baby

Merry Christmas everyone! I wish you all the best in the world; a life filled with health and happiness.
It has been a working holiday, so yesterday I had no time to post my Christmas treats, and share them with you. Today, hopefully I'll have the time to do it. My dinner last night involved codfish that was delicious (made by my mom) and also vegetarian food (made by my aunt). Everything was delicious! This morning was also very good, although windy and rainy, starting with a delicious chocolate cake, orange juice and breakfast tea to wake up. The lunch will still take some time to be served, so here's a sneak peak of how the holidays have been so far!

Feliz Natal a todos! Desejo-vos o melhor no mundo; uma vida cheia de saúde e felicidade.
Foram dias de festa a trabalhar, por isso ontem não tive tempo para partilhar com vocês as guloseimas de Natal! Hoje, espero eu, acho que vou ter tempo pada o fazer. Aqui o jantar de ontem envolveu bacalhau que estava delicioso (feito pela Mãe) e também comida vegetariana (feita pela Tia). Estava tudo tããõo bom! 
Esta manhã também foi muito boa, embora ventosa e chuvosa, começou com um bolo de chocolate irresistível, sumo de laranja e chá preto para acordar. O almoço ainda vai demorar algum tempo a ser servido, portanto aqui está um pequeno preview do que tem sido o meu Natal! 



Catarina, XO XO 

Warning: Breakfast Time

Warning: Breakfast Time!


Hi! I started to think, that since my mother language is Portuguese, why not make my posts in both languages? So, I’ll start with it today!

The importance of breakfast is commonly invisible to the eyes and mind of most people.

Ignoring the fact that our “machine” woke up and needs “fuel” to carry on the day, it’s bad and unhealthy.

The ideal is to wake up earlier 10 to 15 minutes and make it calmly and with consciousness.
Because, if you don’t do it – eat your breakfast – your body will start to look for the energy stored in your muscles, so you can do whatever you’re doing (no, you won’t burn fat, but muscle!).

Avoid staying more than an hour without eating. There are no excuses that you can come up with, for not eating your breakfast in the morning, and no “diet” is a fan of that happening; so, always have stored in your kitchen yogurts, cereals, fruit, toast, whole grain bread, tea, and other healthy and tasty options to start your day!

If you’re not used to it, it’s still not an apology, it’s more than proven that after 3 weeks of maintaining the morning-breakfast-routine, your body will get in the routine and ask for food every morning.

If you’re not used to eating a lot in the beginning, don’t worry, work through it and just add some ingredients from time to time to make a completely healthy breakfast.

What do you need to eat?
Whole grain. Protein. Fibers. Calcium. Vitamins.

Whole Grain
Your best choice for carbs in the morning, it’s filled with minerals, fibers and vitamins. They are very rich in vitamin B such as thiamine, riboflavin and niacin which provide us a lot of energy. Where can you find it? Oat meal, granola, whole grain bread, etc…

Protein
Proteins are going to give you the momentary satiety and also keep you full for the next few hours. Soy/almond/oat milk, vegetarian yogurts, cheese, eggs, are great options to consume protein.

Fiber
Paramount for digestion, women should ingest 25g a day and men 38g, including the soluble and insoluble fibers. These can be found in fruit, oats, and vegetables. Make a clever option with this one, you have a wide variety in the market!

Calcium
More than known our need of calcium for the bones, it can be found in a lot of vegetables and fruits, unfortunately we haven’t been used to eat veggies in the morning, so I advise you to go and get it from cheese of milk (soy milks are enriched with calcium most of the times). Of course if you like it, go ahead and start you morning with a green leafy shake!!

Vitamins
They are a lot, so we must pay attention to what we eat. Eat season fruit which is usually tastier and cheaper!


I hope that soon I can make a post about all the nutrients our body needs, including the quantities needed daily and where we can find them!

Give your best to your breakfest, please. And share it!

See you next time,

Catarina xoxo

Squid your way out!

Complicated situations sometimes ask for gentle and unnoticable escapes, so why not "squid" your way out of it? :)

Today I woke up inspired to cook: great!

For breakfast, and to wake up the neighboors, I made a fresh fruit juice including 2 clementines (without the peel), half a lemon (with the peel), 1 persimmon and a little bit of ginger. Added some water and blended it all together.  It was delicious and you could feel the lemon taste with a slight hint of the ginger, just enough and nice to me. I ate a soy yogurt from the brand Soygurt (which I buy at the local supermarket: LIDL) with muesli, linseed and a few cereals that taste like honey (Golden Grahams). I was all very good, and of course the best way to wake up, is to get the best fuel to start the day, so never forget your breakfast: the MOST importante meal of the day!

After work, walked the dog, and didn't feel like doing much for lunch, so I boiled some cheese tortellini, spinach, and joined it with 1 can of tuna fish, grated mozzarella cheese, oregano6black pepper and some ketchup. It was actually very good, if you don't like cooked spinach, try brocolli, it's also very good. It placed ketchup instead of real tomato sauce, because I didn't have much time to cook, of course if you have the time, fry some onions and garlic with tomato sauce, join the tuna and the rest of it, and it will be even more delicious! 

Work ended, and I felt like doing something I had in mind since the Christmas spirit hit me, do some decorations with a few nature gifts my dad gave me. Here's how it turned out: (I'm actually very glad how it turned out, and I love it!)

I'm decorating my rented house for Christmas the very first time, I never had the opportunity because I always spent the holidays in my parents house, but now with work occupying all of my time, I really needed to come home and have this lovely decorations all around me.

And then, came dinner... I had an idea for a while, that involved stuffed squids, so here are my spicy stuffed squids:

Spicy Stuffed Squids avec Broccoli & Carrots

4 Squids

A little bit of soy chourizo

5 Garlic cloves

Half an onion

Olive oil

1 Tomato

Coriander

White Wine

Toothpicks (to close the content)

4 Broccoli heads

1 Carrot

Vinegar

Salt

Black pepper

Dad's spicy sauce

First I blended the filling: tomato, garlics, salt and chourizo all together with a little bit of olive oil. Cleaned the squids really well, specially their insides, removing all the guts and bones (they have a really thin bone). Stuffed the squids with the filling, closed them. Boiled some water and added the brocolli and the carrot.

Heated in a big pan, olive oil & a vegetable oil (called Vaqueiro Líquida), added the onions, coriander (dried), white wine, black pepper, and the spicy sauce, wait until it cooks a little bit, add some water and the squids. Turn them over 3 times, and wait till it's done.

Season the broccoli and carrots with olive oil and vinegar, cut half a bread and place the squids & sauce over it. 

Wait till your mouth starts salivating, and eat. It is very good!

I had a lot of fun doing this, and of course, my dog was very bored by all the time I spent cooking, so now I'll just go and give her some snuggles before we go to bed. 

Good night everyone.

Love,

Catarina

The Mushroom Impression

I'm sorry about the time I haven't spent around here. So, since I'm crazy about mushrooms, here are some recipes I did with this big and little fellows.

Here is a little treat I made myself with the left-overs of the shrimp:

Shrimp

Small mushrooms

Black Pepper

Garlic

Onions

Rice 

White Wine

Olive Oil

Coriander

Heat the olive oil along with the garlic and onions. Add the mushrooms and black pepper,also the coriander. Let it cook a little bit. Join the shrimps, and the rice, blend it all together and add the wine. Pour water to cook the rice and let it boil to cook the rice. Wait until it's done and voilá!

On Monday I went shopping and I found some lovely Portobello Mushrooms. I used two of them for my lunch on Tuesday, and here's what I got:

Onions

Red Bell Pepper

Cheese (your favourite)

Oregano

Olive Oil

Salt

Clean and peel the mushrooms, add some olive oil on top (this case, bottom's up), add the onions, black pepper, chopped peppers, and the cheese. You can place the oregano now or later if you prefer.

Bring the them to the oven and here's the tasty result:

They were delicious!

Still two more to go, and so tonight's dinner involved the two other.

This time was different, I stuffed them with egg and placed them on top of a half cut bread.

Olives

1 Egg

Onions

Black Pepper

Salt

1 Small White Bread

2 Portobello Mushrooms

Green Beans

Carrots

I mixed the egg with the onions and olives, added salt and pepper. Placed the mushrooms on top of the bread halfs and poured the egg mix on top.

Boiled the beans & carrots for about 5 minutes and then heated them with olive oil, garlic and white wine.

I have to say, the last meal was my favorite. 

I love to cook food with a lot of garlic, pepper and wine. They do enhance flavors. I promise I'll do something different next time!

Hope you liked it :) and, try!!

Here's my dog, Miley, craving for some food!!! :) 

Here's my dog, Miley, craving for some food!!! :) 

Love,

Catarina

Hi December.

This first weekend was complicated because I worked. I didn't have much time to come here and make posts. But I did make some tasty food over the past days. 

Here is a very good avocado recipe. It's very simple and I enjoy eating it with bread or toasts.

Avocado Salad

1 Avocado

Lemon Juice

Salt (very few)

Olive oil

Vinegar (if you like)

I spread it over bread like a sandwich and it's delicious!

Then I went for some veggie burgers.

This ones I made with:

Veggie Burgers w/ Beans & Quinoa

Red Beans (I used canned ones)

Avocado

Quinoa

Red Bell Pepper

2 Garlic Cloves

Whole Grain Bread

Onions

Salt

I smashed the beans, joined the garlic, added the onions, avocado and bread. Meanwhile, I cooked the quinoa, and let it cool down. I added a 2 tbs of water, and 1 tbls of olive oil. Added the salt. Joined the chopped pepper, and the quinoa. Joined it very well with the hands, and let it refine its flavor.

I cooked it an about 2 minutes each side.

Here's the mixture and the final product! I ate it with salad, and sweet potato.

After that, was the sweet afternoon to forget about the hard work and created a Cacao Cream, made with pure cacao, corn jelly and dates. I mixed them in the blender and got this very adorable and yummy blend: 

It's great to bread-spread!! You should try. Add some sugar if dates aren't enough.

Today for dinner, I used the avocado left overs, and joined some shrimps to the party!

Where I live, there are monthly markets prepared by some gypsy people, unfortunately, some of them left a beautiful female horse abandoned near the place I work. The animal had no food, just grass to eat. Here the police, are the only people who can actually take action since no one knows to whom it belongs to. I gave it some water and food so she won't starve. I hope tomorrow I can be more helpful with this! I couldn't take a picture because it was already too dark. :(

I hope your weekend wasn't working like mine. Monday and Tuesday are my days off, I'm sure I'll make some new recipes.

Have a great evening,

Good night,

Catarina - xoxo

Tasty Pastry

[Português & English] Vegetarian

Para o jantar de hoje decidi fazer algo fácil e saboroso! Quando olham para o que fiz parece uma pizza à primeira, mas é mais estaladiço. 
Aqui está a receita:

Massa folhada (comprada no supermercado)
2 Tomates
1/2 Cebola
8 Cogumelos
Algumas azeitonas
Orégãos
Queijo Mozarela

Coloquei a massa na prateleira do forno, e deixei o papel de culinária para evitar que a massa se colasse ao recipiente. 
Cortei os tomates bem cortadinhos para ficarem meio em puré, adicionei as cebolas e coloquei tudo dentro da massa. Juntei os restantes ingredientes, fechei a massa um pouco e polvilhei com queijo por cima. 20 a 30 minutos no forno e polvilhei orégãos por cima.

Esperam até arrefecer e saboreiem! Espero que gostem. É muito fácil de fazer e mesmo muito bom. Por vezes também acrescento sementes de papoila pois enaltecem um pouco o sabor.

Reason

[ Victus (latin) = food; living; manner of live; nourishment ]

Being human and facing life everyday in the world we live in, is hard. Complicated, elaborated, full of decisions we don't want to take, and filled with a heavy conscious most of the time.

All of a sudden I decided to change my life. I want to be healthier, feel better with myself and with my own world; and with everything that surrounds me. I'm taking a big step and changing my way of eating, trying to have a healthier lifestyle.

Here I am going to talk about my experience in changing my way of eating, thinking and acting. I have a goal to stop eating certain types of food. I have a huge respect for people who decided to become vegan, it's not easy to erase a lot of what you were used to, from your life. But I'm going to try, and do that. Do the complicated, and turn it into easy and loveable.

I hope you enjoy your stay here, and hopefully contribute to the improvement of this blog.



Have a nice time,

Catarina - xoxo