2 Spinach Recipes to Boost Your Morning Energies

Especially in the last days, due to some overload of work, baby screams and other life assignments I cannot delegate to anyone, I felt like all my energies are just out in the wild, leaving me completely alone to deal with the everyday life nasty challenges. But despite all odds, I keep being optimistic by nature, trying to find the best ways to challenge the lemons life throws on me once in a while.

As usually, being creative and offering myself something good - and a bit sweet too - is my answer to all those problems. Although I do have my second thoughts about spinach, I've tried to do my best to include it at on our menu at least once the month, with an easy recipe that the baby loves too. This time, I was looking for an overload of energy and iron, which the spinach contains in big chunks, can balance my deep fatigue. In combination with other healthy fruits, I created fast two good recipes to boost your mornings with lots of good and healthy energy.

Surprisingly for me, the spinach is blending perfectly, the metallic taste being taken over by the combination with the other ingredients. Instead, it offers a good colourful healthy basis for the smoothie. 

Spinach, banana and pomegranate milk smoothie

Ingredients

2 medium size bananas, cut into chunks

1 cup spinach, clean

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds

1 cup milk - the same amount of water can be also used

1 full tablespoon of brown sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions

Add all the ingredients to the blender. Mix them at medium speed for 2 minutes. Let it rest for a minute. Because the pomegranate do have some small seeds which might be annoying, you may consider using a strain to clear them out. Serve it cold or at the room temperature.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Serves: 4 full glasses of smoothie

Spinach, raspberry and banana smoothie

Ingredients
2 medium size banana, in chunks
1 full cup of fresh spinach leaves, cleaned
1 cup raspberry, cleaned
2 tablespoon brown sugar
2 cups water

Directions
Add all the ingredients in the blender and mix them at medium speed for around 2 minutes. Serve it fresh, or leave it for a couple of minutes in the freezer. It is a light, delicious and very fresh smoothie. Baby fully approves it too!

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Serves: 4 big full glasses of smoothie

Morning Healthy Treats: Pomegranate Juice with Honey

I love healthy mornings, and drinking something fresh is part of my daily ritual. Either tea or some smoothie is definitely worth to wake up 10 minutes early to have enough time to prepare and clean the utensils.

As the Jewish New Year traditionally involves using a lot of pomegranates - and honey too - after everything is over, there are a couple of bowls full of seeds left over that I don't have the heart to throw to the trash. The easiest way to use them, besides adding them to some salads or maybe to a batch of cake is by making a juice out of them. As simple as that!

For one glass of juice, I used the seeds from one medium-sized pomegranate, plus one tablespoon of honey and one glass of cold water. Added all those ingredients in the smoothie maker and blended at moderate speed for 2 minutes.

The most complicated - but not impossible - part is to come: the pomegranate do have strong seeds that during the blending process are took out, but should be filtered through a strainer. It takes another minute to do so and after that your juice is ready. 

As I had the curiosity to taste various ready-made pomegranate juices, I enjoyed mine much better, as it has the right sweet balance and the original taste, which I do not fancy, is diluted. Therefore, at least for the winter, I might consider including pomegranate part of my regular diet, given also its natural qualities, which go beyond the skin-care protection generously offered. For instance, pomegranate seeds contain antioxidants which fight cholesterol, increase oxygen levels to the heart, fight cell damage and can also balance your weight. Compared to other fruits, the pomegranate juice has the same healthy concentration as the fruits and the seeds. 

Chickpeas and blue cheese salad. And many veggies

There may be many reasons why people do not want to eat healthy, and besides money, the time spent on preparing yourself the dishes can be a consideration equally important. When you are in a hurry, early in the morning, cooking or starting to chop vegetables is not the happiest scenario, isn't it?

Once in a while, I am doing my best to be a good healthy woman, and do my work properly. 

True is that very often I spend more time preparing than eating, but I do it with a clean conscience so it is not that bad after all. 

Very often my recipes are not very planned, as I am tempted to use one main ingredient and build the rest of the recipe based on this. A couple of days ago, I discovered that I did not experiment with chickpeas for a while, so I got ready for something completely new. Before, I had to soak the chickpeas for more than 10 years in salty water: 100 bio chickpeas, in more than double their quantity of water. In the morning, I boiled them for around 20 minutes at 250C.

The other ingredients are:

100 gr. white champignons, finelly chopped

half of cucumber, finelly chopped

150 gr. cherry tomatoes, finelly chopped

couple of parsley leaves

100 gr. blue cheese

2 teaspoons ginger-pear balsamico - this is really gourmet and I am looking forward to do more experiments with it. 

Healthy, ready go!

Here we are! It is so good and with so many ingredients that I did not eat anything else the whole day. Not even pasta. A big bowl for a hungry, busy day! 

Energy morning treats by Ovomaltine

I am not a big fan of chocolate spreads and I still remember my shock when my first breakfast in Switzerland I was invited to put some Nutella chocolate on my bread. Sounded so barbarian for me that I needed years till I finally accepted to try. When I spread the crunchy Ovomaltine spread on my black bread, and started to taste it, my bad impressions were history but the results were more than surprising. It does taste as chocolate, but has some special strong taste that can be enough for the rest of the day. And, in fact, it was as I was full enough to do not dream about anything else. 

As I am a coffee fanatic, replacing the coffee with any other substitutes, makes me feel like a traitor. For my culinary explorations, I try once in a while some cocoa, but no way to make a long term commitment of replacing it for good. Especially not in the morning. Thus, I prepared my Ovomaltine treat in between two afternoon coffees. I used 180 cold milk for 18 g. Ovomaltine. I did not add sugar, but mixed extra as it takes longer to dissolve. 

It contains a healthy mixture of malz and cocoa, with many vitamins added such as Calcium, Magnesium and B12. So good and self sufficient that at least for one hour I forgot that I only need coffee. Drinking it in the morning made it for a full meal, with that energy dosis that everyone needs to go through the daily challenges.