Papaya, apple and passion with chia - this is a winner!!

Breakfast

If you read my earlier challenge with chia, you'd understand that after coming up with chia strawberry almond porridge , I was pleased. Why fix it if it ain't broke? Then suddenly for the last few weeks the cheaper strawberries have disappeared from supermarket shelves and I don't have time to go hunting for the guys who occasionally roam around sell strawberries around Hurlingham or Peponi Road. But chia must be consumed .... Back to the drawing board .... Again keeping in mind that for breakfast chia needs to be accompanied by fruit that contains a lot of liquid and a lot of flavour as chia needs to soak up liquid and the tasteless mass that it is, it needs help in flavour department. 

Juice 1 apple (mine was a 100 gram apple)

Juice 5 passion fruits (resulted in 75 grams of juice)

Add this to 57 grams milled chia (use a hand held blended to avoid chia clumps)

Add 51 grams of papaya and the roughage that remained in the juicer from apple, blend.

Serve on a plate. Decorating with passion optional as it actually tastes better as is, but it is more photogenic with the passion on it.

The combination of the taste-packing fruits is awesome. I do recommend large cups of green tea to follow the porridge - as you can see it is solid and stands up, which means that chia is far from its saturation point and will keep looking for liquid in you stomach. 

You will enjoy this, may be even too much!

Grilled Salad with Tuna

Lunch

Grilled sliced zucchini, tomato wedges, fennel, red paprika, and onions 

--  226 grams  --

Tuna

--  114 grams  --

Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dried herbs 

Fennel mint green smoothie

Morning greens

Fennel, strawberries, mint, lettuce, lemon juice

Guacamole Dip With A Twist

Dinner

1/2 avocado

114 grams of canned sardines

1 glove of garlic

some grilled  tomato and red bell pepper

juice of 1 lemon

Blend

Weigh, knowing that 114 grams is protein and the rest are vegetables. 

Add enough fresh carrot and cucumber to get to full 284 grams of vegetables.

Chia Almond Strawberry Porridge

Breakfast

For some time now, as I am reading about all the good things to eat, chia keeps popping up. However when looking for recipes, mostly it is a little extra ingredient, just like an after thought. Somehow there are not many recipes that have chia as the main player, or if they do, the thing looks just slimy and unpleasant. Slimy is just not the thing for me. 

During my next stock up trip to health food store I look for chia. I was surprised to find it right there on the shelf. I picked it up and as I was standing there, looking at the label, the price, trying to decide, a man, of Somali origin, came along with a shop assistant. He too was looking for chia! How now?!? We got talking. His doctor had suggested he should start eating healthier, to avoid memory loss, to reduce weight and to sleep better. And chia was on his list .... Surely, somebody comes all the way from Eastleight, from Little Mogadishu to buy chia .... in my part of Nairobi .... Hmmm ... I bought chia. 

I looked through websites. Pondered over next step. Soak in water it says ... Add milk and yogurt (and I don't eat those things!!) it says .... Add almond milk it says ... Based on my calculations, if I have almond milk I can not have an other nut or seed .... I did soak in water. It was grayish. Tasted. It tasted tasteless, flat completely. Not something to look forward to to start the day! I left the taste, the feeling, the texture sort of hanging about in my mind. How to make it palatable? How to make a lovely breakfast?

 226 grams strawberry blended

30 grams of chia milled

Mix. Leave to soak.

After 15 minutes add 27 grams of milled almond 

Mix and enjoy. 

It gives the stomach a gentle caress.

Kale and eggs

Lunch

Chopped onion, chopped tomato sautéed in olive oli with shredded kale over small fire.

--  227 grams  --

Served with 2 boiled eggs

--  114 grams  --

I LOVE facts and figures

Yesterday morning's suddenly full stomach left me puzzled. How? Why? I had never imagined that such innocent ingredients - flax seed, water and apple - can have this kind of effect. I should mention that the very full stomach somehow called for large 4 cups of green tea (400 ml each). So far, just the prescribed quantities had been enough for me to keep going on the planned path, but now I needed to know more. I went to look for facts and figures about what I actually eat.

I took only my usual proteins. More so, because I suspected that my 'unusual' protein, flax seed, had been the culprit in me not finishing my breakfast.

Isn't it nice to look at all facts side by side :)

My breakfast proteins (note that these are all 57 grams):

My lunch and dinner proteins (note that these are all 114 grams):

While there are many components to nutrition and I am in no way minimising their importance, I looked at the following categories: protein, fiber, fat, sugar and total calories.

Protein:
Walnut - 8.6 g (hmmm ... I always thought it was higher than almond)
Flax seed - 10.3 g
Almond - 12 g
Egg - 14.8 g
Pumpkin seeds - 17.1 g
Tilapia - 29.6 g
Chicken - 30.8 g
Tuna - 34.2 g

Dietary fiber:
Tilapia - 0 g (As expected)
Chicken - 0 g (As expected)
Tuna - 0 g (As expected)
Egg - 0 g (As expected)
Pumpkin seeds - 3.4 g
Walnut - 4 g (hmmm ... I always thought it was higher than almond)
Almond - 6.8 g
Flax seed - 15.4 g (what?? can that be true??)

Fat (of course all of it is healthy saturated fat):
Tilapia - 3 g
Tuna - 6.8 g
Chicken - 8 g
Egg - 12.5 g
Flax seed - 23.9 g (don't they make flax seed oil? where is that oil content??)
Almond - 27.9 g
Pumpkin seeds 27.9 g
Walnut - 37 g (it does taste oily ... I guess ...)

Sugar:
Tuna - 0 g
Tilapia - 0 g
Chicken - 0 g
Egg - 1.3g (egg has sugar??)
Pumpkin seeds - 0.8 g
Flax seed - 0.9 g
Walnut - 1.5 g
Almond - 2.2 g (at least this one I was correct in my thinking)

Calories: 
Tilapia - 147 (what is tilapia doing at this end???)
Egg - 177
Chicken - 210
Tuna - 210
Flax seed - 304
Pumpkin seeds - 319
Almond - 328
Walnut - 373

Interesting line up ....

Did you see 141% cholesterol behind eggs. If you, like me, at first thought that it can not be possible, then just the tiny * next to Daily Value explains how it the percentage can exceed 100.

AND, I have found the answer to my yesterday's puzzle - 15.6 grams fiber in flax seed compared to my usual 3.4 grams (pumpkin seed) ... 4 grams (walnut) had this unbelievable impact.