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