Chia fruit pudding

Chia fruit pudding

Does this look like alien food? Yes pretty much. Just google for chia pudding and I’m sure you can find much nicer pictures than the one I’ve just posted here. My apologies… but oh well.. ‘keeping it real’ isn’t my slogan for nothing 😉

I’ve made this pudding before with particularly ripe (but not gone-off or brown) fruit which seems to work quite well for an extra intense and fruity flavour. 

Ingredients (serves 1)

• 1-2 tablespoons of chia seeds
• 3-ish strawberries
• Bits of mango
• Splash of almond milk
• Splash of vanilla extract

How to cook 

1. Cut up your fruit in small pieces and put it into a little pot/bowl.
2. Add in a tablespoon or two of chia seeds.
3. Add in the almond milk (about 3/4ths of however much you’ve filled it up with fruit) and vanilla extract.
4. Try and stir it as well as possible to spread out the chia seeds and mix them in with the milk and vanilla.
5. Let it sit for a couple of hours until the chia seeds have gone all jelly-ish.
6. Enjoy!

Additional notes

• Adding in bits of fresh mint might be nice.
• Of course this can be done with all kinds of fruit!
• Almond milk could potentially be replaced with water. I haven’t tried it yet.

Summery quinoa fruit salad

Summery quinoa fruit salad

Have made this super summery quinoa fruit salad twice now and it really is very versatile when it comes to the fruit you can use. Hence two different pictures and loads of optional fruits you can use!
I came across this recipe on a number of blogs and as soon as I manage to find the one I got most of the recipe from I will post a link on here.

Ingredients (serves 1)

Note: Use however much fruit you want and think is one portion. It really all depends on the combination of fruit you use how much to use etc so I’m giving the responsibility to you to do what works best for you. I’m sure you can do it! 😉

• 20-ish grams of Quinoa. Regular (left) or red quinoa (right) OR a combination of the two of course!
• Blueberries
• Strawberries
• Mango (left)
• Pineapple (right)
• Kiwi (right)
• Small handfull of roughly chopped almonds
• 1/2 tablespoon of desiccated coconut to sprinkle on top (optional)

Dressing:

• Juice of 1/2 lime
• 1/2 – 1 tablespoon of honey
• Mint (for dressing and garnish)
• Sprinkle of salt (optional – did not try this myself)

How to prepare

1. Cook the quinoa in advance or cook it while chopping up your fruit and rinse it thoroughly with cold water. Drain as well as you can.
2. Chop up your fruit and mix it together in a bowl with your cold and well drained quinoa.
3. Mix all ingredients for the dressing together and mix it into the bowl of fruit.
4. Put the bowl of fruit with the dressing in the fridge for about an hour to ‘marinate’ 😉 This step is optional btw!.
5. Chop up the almonds and sprinkle over your fruit bowl.
6. Add the desiccated coconut (if you want to) and add extra (chopped up) leaves of mint to taste.
7. Find yourself some sunshine and enjoy!

Additional notes

• As I said: a billion fruit combinations could be made!
• Also pretty damn tasty without the dressing.

Banana & strawberry smoothie

Banana and strawberry smoothie

Ingredients (serves 1)

• 1 banana
• strawberries (however many you need to get the balance with the banana right. Start with at least 6 medium ones)
• 100-ish ml almond milk (or whichever one you like)
• 1 teaspoon of chia seeds (optional)

How to cook 

1. Cut the banana up in smaller pieces.
2. Take the green stuff off your strawberries 😉
3. Add all ingredients into a mixer and MIX MIX MIX.
4. Add in extra strawberries if needed.
5. DONE!

Additional notes

• Strawberries can of course be replaced with other types of berries.
• I might actually prefer using fresh orange juice instead of milk but… I didn’t have any + it is A LOT of effort to actually make your own (and honestly, I would pick milk over yucky shelf-life orange juice any day).

Breakfast: fruit salad

Fruit salad

A super yummie fruity and fresh breakfast, snack or lunch. When I was living in Breda as a student I would get up a little bit early every day just so I could have this. As I now have an obsession for my banana pancake breakfast and the kiwi’s over here are often very disappointing I tend to only have this on a nice weekend morning.

Ingredients (serves 1)

• 1 Apple
• 1 Banana
• 1 Kiwi
• 4-ish tablespoons of muesli. In this case prefer the muesli to have lots of nuts and the least amount of dried fruit as possible.
• 1/2 tablespoon of chia seeds (optional)

Additional notes

• Adding strawberries is deeeelicous – really, my favourite! Blueberries aren’t too bad either.