Tomato-Baked Eggs

Here’s a great, simple idea for a healthy breakfast or light lunch – Tomato-Baked Eggs.

1. Get a large tomato (beef tomatoes are ideal)
   2. Slice off the top and scoop out the seeds (and any liquidy flesh)
   3. Place on a baking tray
   4. Carefully crack an egg into the hollowed out tomato
   5. Season with a little salt & black pepper
   6. Bake in a medium oven (about 180c) for 15-20mins – until the white has just set
   7. Serve on a bed of spinach. Add a slice of wholemeal or rye toast if you’re extra hungry!

HEALTHY SNACK IDEA – Roasted Salted Nuts

One of my most favourite snacks in the world is nuts – cashews, peanuts, pistachios, almonds, macadamia, hazelnuts…. I could go on. I love them on their own, raw, roasted, in savoury meals, in cakes, in biscuits – they are just so versatile, you really can use them all the time. My personal favourite is the dry roasted variety, those ones that you get in pubs, that are (reasonably) cheap in the supermarket and that leave you saying ‘one handful was not enough’….

But these cheap, shop-bought ones aren’t just nuts – they’re full of cheap oils, additives and other things that are just not necessary to ingest, and that don’t do your body any good.

Nuts are (usually) seriously good for you, are full of protein and healthy fats (HUGELY important for our diets), and contain a host of vitamins and minerals necessary to help keep your body in a healthy condition. I won’t go into a huge amount of detail on this (yet…), but for example, almonds are rich in calcium (great for vegans or those with lactose intolerance to get some essential calcium), cashews are full of magnesium (good for restful sleep & thought to help with age-related memory loss) and pistachios are super rich in vitamin B6 (essential for allowing the body to store and use both protein and carbohydrates)

So here’s a little recipe for you – my first blog post – to enjoy! Aaaannd the best thing about these? They’re (obviously) homemade so they’ve no chemicals or any other nasties!

1. Choose a selection of nuts (my favourite combination is cashews & almonds)
2. Coat in melted coconut oil & toss in some pink Himalayan salt*
   
3. Roast in the oven on a low-medium heat (I use about 160-180c) for about 10-15 minutes, checking and stirring regularly
4. Store in an airtight container

* This is just a suggestion for the simplest take on this recipe, roasted salted nuts. There are TONS of other combinations of flavours you could try:

– Salt & Black Pepper

– Garlic

– Paprika & Cumin

– Salt, Fresh Rosemary & Garlic

These are a great little snack to grab if you’re busy or on the go; just remember that although these are very healthy and so SO good for you, nuts are rather high in fat – so try not to eat the whole batch in one go 😉 (Not that I would judge you…I’ve done this on more than one occasion…)

**More info coming soon on the benefits of coconut oil & Himalayan salt**

You need to work HARD…

This isn’t easy. Getting up at 5:30am, slogging away at the gym after a long day at work, trying so hard to resist that piece of cake… To see results, we need to work – and work hard. You need to challenge yourself if you want to see progress, and at times we all get that lack of motivation.

This is a favourite quote of mine – “if it doesn’t CHALLENGE you, it doesn’t CHANGE you”! Use this as inspiration to get up, go to the gym, and kick ass on your next workout!

More coming up in future posts on dedication, motivation and much, much more!