Mama's Haven

Latest Posts

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 18 – Car crash and pizza

Published by Oana

This was an eventful day I am glad to see the back of.

After work I drove into an industrial estate in Belfast to pick a DHL package (with more healthy goodies!!) but on the way out got crashed into. I had Emma in the car on the side that was hit but thankfully she was sleeping and never became aware of it even. It was a minor crash and no-one was injured but my passenger door is jammed now and opens with a painful crack and my bumper is askew. Bummer!

So no healthy dinners tonight, hubby took us out for pizza at Pizza Express. I had their light version, Legerra with Pollo because it had only 500 calories but found it heavy after almost 3 weeks of eating only healthy food.

This is day 18, there are 22 days left of this healthy living challenge and I hope tomorrow everybody who drives by will stick to their side of the road 🙂

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 17 – Easy Dinners. Again

Published by Oana

I was going to call this post Damned 69 ( a figure I associate with a lot of psychological distress) because my weight went up by 300 grams to 69 kilos this week and I was really pissed off this morning. But I suppose this things are normal when you try to lose weight and as long as I eat the right things a change IS BOUND to happen sooner or later.

Anyway, these days I have been quite busy trying to run the house and various errands, see the G.P. over my strange back pain and keeping everyone happy. In consequence I had to come up with quick, satisfying but healthy dinners.

I know you know I am Romanian. As a Romanian I was raised with dishes and ingredients that people here turn their nose to. Take chicken livers, for example. I love chicken livers, pork tongue, bovine brain…okay, I know I grossed you out, sorry. Yesterday I felt like having chicken livers. I had some free-range ones in the freezer from my butcher. I fried them in the pan with coconut oil once defrosted. This is the first time I do it with coconut oil and was pleasantly surprised by the delicate taste it infused into the livers. Livers are a versatile but very simple dish and all you need for seasoning is salt, a bit of pepper and some rosemary. I make them into a meal by adding boiled potatoes into the pan once the livers are cooked. Voilà!! A dish in half an hour. Oh, if you thing you need some convincing to eat liver, check out what the Butter Believer thinks about it.

Today was another busy day so I opted for chicken breasts marinated in Nando’s sauce that I cooked in the oven for a change and lentils. I used this recipe for inspiration because it was the easiest I could find online but I added some flavour into it by cutting an onion and stewing it in coconut oil, water and Indian spices. I usually use half a tablespoon of each spice: turmeric, coriander powder, cumin powder and cumin seeds along with a cube of garlic and one of chilli(Tesco’s frozen brand), a couple of cardamom pods and a bay leaf. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, it’s simply throwing everything together in a pot, letting the spices infuse the onion for 5 minutes and then adding a cup and a half of green lentils with enough boiled water to cover them. Lentils are thirsty pulses so keep an eye on them and add water until they start going soft and don’t forget to season them with salt(or a stock cube). Another half an hour meal ready!

This is day 17 of my healthy living challenge, there are 23 days left and I hope I have inspired you to live a bit better! Keep up the good work!

Spicy chicken, Indian lentils and Romanian cabbage salad 😉

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 16 – Plan your week ahead

Published by Oana

Remember I was telling you about my positive grocery shopping experience the previous week in Holywood?

Well, we did it again last Friday and for me it was an opportunity to plan my meals for this week. No, I am not one of those women who does fish on Monday, chicken on Tuesday and Thursday and roast on Sunday with religiosity. For me it’s more a matter of having enough in the freezer and the cupboard to put together healthy but simple meals for the following seven days.

We are also slowly transitioning towards an all-organic menu, at least when it comes to our fruit, veggies and eggs. I decided to set up a weekly order with the organic farm in Helen’s Bay and look forward to using my creativity and putting to good use our seasonal produce.

You don’t need to spend crazy money to eat healthily. I am still experimenting on how to do it optimally on a decent budget but I would say ordering your fruit and veg from a farm and buying your meat from the local butcher would be the first step. Buying your “side order fillers” from the health store shouldn’t be too costly either as you only need a couple of bags of healthy pasta or alternative grains a week.

Just to demonstrate what I am preaching here, this week we will be having mainly chicken (free range, bought from the butcher) as a main; our veggies should be here by mid-week and should provide me with enough salad for my mid-morning snack and enough variety as accompaniment to our evening meals. I have bought amaranth from the health food store last Friday and that will make a great mid-week salad/side and will be our new grain to test this week, after quinoa and millet! Oh, I almost forgot treats there! I was asked yesterday how I keep my sweet cravings at bay. Well, I normally don’t have an issue with sweets anyway(I have a rather savoury tooth myself) but for the times I need an energy boost I have bought this “healthy” granola mix with no sugar added of which I take about 30 grams with coconut milk. Perfect fix for around 150 calories!!

Well, my friends, this is day 16 of my healthy living challenge, there are 23 days left and I feel well prepared to face another week! What about you?

Some of the ingredients I will be “working with” this week.

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 15 – Listen to your body

Published by Oana

No, my friends, I am not going all weird on you here, I am just saying many times our bodies will tell us what they need in the form of cravings.

Ahem, nice try, justifying to yourself that muffin or chocolate bar tonight but no, I am not talking about cravings for sweets and wheat.

I actually believe people like William MD Davis, the author of The Wheat Belly who proved scientifically and through thorough research that wheat is addictive. I believe that once you come off wheat completely for a good two weeks, as I have done, your body starts “speaking” to you again, communicating its real needs.

This week I felt run down due to lady pains and discomforts(oh, yeah, I really did it, I’ve talked about two of the most embarrassing and personal things a human being can talk about in two subsequent posts!!) By Wednesday my body was quite depleted of energy and I was…full of cravings. I actually made some of my Facebook friends suspicious when I announced I had given in to my body requests to have anchovies, rye bread and barley coffee as my mid-morning snack.

I did a bit of research the same morning and found out that, according to Livestrong.com, anchovies “contain among the highest concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids of any food. Omega-3 fatty acids may reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer, lower your blood pressure and cholesterol and lessen menstrual pain.” Aha!!

Encouraged by my findings, I went on and checked the barley coffee and its benefits and found out that “nutrient-rich barley supplies our body with vitamins, minerals, chlorophyll and amino acids for general good health and well-being.”

My body knew exactly what it needed in order to reduce the pain and get a healthy boost!! Amazing, isn’t it? I can assure you I wouldn’t have resorted to these remedies had I been eating the way I used to eat a few weeks ago. It would have probably been coffee and pancakes, the worst sort of things to put in your body when it is trying to restore itself.

Well, this is day 15 of my healthy living challenge, there are only 25 days left and I am excited about this journey and the things I have learned so far!

My anchovy and rocket salad

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 14 – Alternative Eating

Published by Oana

I call it alternative because once you decide to eat healthily, you have to find replacements to the things you used to comfort eat. Like, did you use to fill up on bread and keep yourself awake with coffee, like me? Then you have to find things that keep you full and awake but don’t necessarily tip the scales the wrong way…

To give you the motivation to change some of your habits, please take a moment and have a look at this chart I came across last week, while browsing Stumbleupon.

Have you done it? What shocked you the most? For me, it was the fact that when hungry, most people would go for a 400-calorie burger while they could have 3 KILOS of celery for the same amount of calories. Okay, who could eat 3 kilos of celery, anyway but you get my point…you need to find alternatives to your go-to-snacks or meals if you want to lose the weight.

So today I replaced what used to be my Saturday fry with a healthier alternative. I used two butcher-bought rushers, cleaned them completely of fat, sautéed them in their own juice for 3 minutes then sparingly used my 1-calorie-a-spray Fry Light Extra Virgin Olive Oil and cooked my organic egg alongside. I ate my now healthy Saturday fry with half a slice of rye bread. Delicious and as hubby says, guilt-free!!

As a Romanian, I was raised to believe pork meat needs to be in almost every dish and the pork fat was actually tasty(yuck, I know…). Anyway, one of the staple dishes in Romania is stuffed peppers or stuffed vine leaves. I love them and I love my mum’s recipe but one pepper stuffed with minced pork and beef plus rice and extra oil would easily scor in around 400 calories. So I make my own version now, with lean turkey breast meat, half a cup of rice, leek, parsley, carrot and an organic egg. Verdict? Yummy and low caloric, with less than 200 calories per stuffed pepper, always a winner!!

I could go on and on but I will stop here and give you a chance to reflect on the little changes you could make to help your eat a bit healthier :-). Please do share your ideas with me, I would love to hear from you!!

This is day 14, there are only 26 days left of this healthy living challenge.