Let’s talk breakfast...

How often do you take the time to have some breakfast in the morning? Do you wake up a little bit earlier to have a bowl of cereal or you sleep until the last minute and then rush to work? I guess most people choose to sleep... and especially on cold and dark winter mornings.

I am an early bird and luckily for me I am always in a good mood! I don’t like rushing in the morning and love watching news or just listening to music while having my coffee!

Usually I have a bowl of muesli in the morning but I have been craving pouched eggs since Monday, so I have invited my friend over to have a lovely Halloween breakfast with me. I’ve made an English breakfast a few times before but I find it a bit too heavy and that’s why I decided to cook a healthy version and it was just perfect...

My healthier version of an English breakfast

I have poached eggs, not fried... instead of ordinary toast I had fresh and soft Halloween themed bread made with carrots, pumpkin and sunflower seeds which I have drizzled with a little bit of olive oil and grilled in the oven together with tomatoes and mushrooms... Grilling veggies makes all the difference, they are not as greasy and olive oil gives that little extra silky taste. I then filled my plates with lovely baked beans, poured some orange mango and passion fruit juice... parboiled vanilla flavour coffee and the breakfast is ready! Yummy!

The facts

Eggs

It’s recommended to eat eggs if you want to lose a few pounds and they make you feel fuller for longer. Statistically people eating eggs in the morning are losing weight easier and quicker than those who don’t.

Despite the popular belief research shows that people who regularly eat eggs do not suffer from an increase in cholesterol levels in their blood.  

One egg has only 70 calories, loads of useful vitamins, high quality proteins and antioxidants and it tastes so good whether it’s boiled, poached or scrambled! I wouldn’t recommend fried eggs though...

Beans

I’ve been a fan of beans since I was a child! I love them boiled, baked, hot, cold and mixed with food or on their own, butter beans, red kidney beans, the list is very long! This is an amazing source of protein. They have significant amounts of fibre and soluble fibre which can help lower blood cholesterol and beans are also high in complex carbohydrates, folate, and iron which is great for our health!

Mushrooms

Love love love mushrooms! They are a good source of selenium. With significant amount of selenium in every serving mushrooms could turn out to be an important ingredient in a cancer fighting diet, especially in lowering prostate cancer. Mushrooms are also a good source of vitamin B and they are unrecognised source of potassium, which helps to regulate blood pressure.

Mushrooms are great ingredients for your weight loss diet as well, 5 mushrooms contain only 20 calories and they are fat free!! How great is that!

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are great ingredients because they are fresh, juicy, colourful and tasty! They are an excellent source of vitamin C and A. One tomato has 22 calories and only 0.25g fat! They are well known for their richness of lycopene, a chemical that makes tomatoes red! The more tomatoes we eat the lower risk of cancer we have!

Don’t skip it!

It’s amazing how breakfast can make your morning more enjoyable! Just a simple fruit plate with yoghurt will provide you with energy and all the nutrients you need for a perfect start to the day and it only takes a few moments! Just take a few grapes, half an apple, half orange, kiwi mix it all with natural or your favourite flavour yoghurt and sprinkle handful of granola on the top! Its colourful, fun, tasty, refreshing!

Your stomach is not growling anymore, you are ready to start a new day and all that thanks to just a little breakfast!

Little Filter Coffee Secret

Coffee is a very fascinating product to me! I love the smell, I love the look and I love the taste…  But how (un) healthy is this drink? In my opinion the worst thing that happens to coffee drinkers is that they become addicted!

I drink coffee just because I like it, but to be honest it doesn’t affect me as much. If I want to sleep even a hundred cups of coffee will not help to keep me awake! But I like the process of making coffee…My childhood memories recall coffee shops, making coffee on the sand and my mum says it tastes great. I have never tasted something like that though… I was too young and I haven’t seen anything similar recently… also I remember my mum’s sister using little wooden coffee grinder… and I still remember that magical smell… and not being allowed to taste it… I had a high blood pressure and therefore this drink was forbidden to me until I moved to Italy for 3 months where I discovered the best coffee ever!

What not to do:

Being a coffee lover I am not in a position to criticize, but I would recommend avoiding drinking coffee on an empty stomach. This is my bad habit and I am trying to quit doing that.

The Choice…

There are so many articles discussing the impact of coffee on our health… and I think it is just endless debating… there is no straight answer yes or no just like loads of other issues on this planet. I use to drink much more coffee, but now I just have one nice cup of coffee in the morning and am trying to drink more teas, especially green tea throughout the day and I feel so much better for it. It is proven that green tea gives you more energy than coffee and I do believe it is true!

 

Little Filter Coffee Secret

Did you know that filter coffee grounds may be used to soften your skin? It works as well as body scrub!

When I was younger I use to work in a coffee shop during my summer holidays and once I had a bad experience with washing up liquid. My hands were terribly dry and my skin was rough and irritated. I used creams, but it didn’t help. But my mum (of course) had a solution! After drinking her coffee she didn’t throw the coffee grounds away but used them to rub into my hands! And you know what, it feels really great while little bits of soaked coffee grounds massaging and softening your skin…

 

If you don’t drink filter coffee, ask your friend or a member of family to keep the coffee grounds (just make sure they are fresh) and use them when your skin feels dry and rough. It really works! Especially in winter when we become a little bit more fragile…

Just 2 table spoons off coffee grounds are enough to make your hands smoother, then just rinse with warm water and apply some cream, feel the difference and enjoy the feeling! You can also try applying it on the whole body, skin loves it!

I did it this morning and I simply love it!

The Power of Nature

I believe in healthy lifestyle and I truly believe in Nature. My biggest inspiration has always been my mum. Since my childhood she tried to keep me and my brother away from antibiotics, she always was and still is seeking for the natural ways of healing the body. Even now she is sharing her knowledge with me and I love our ‘Skype’ conversations about vitamins, new home made beauty products, new recipes, shiny hair, healthy skin, our favourite health magazines and lots of other interesting stuff. 

When I go home I know she will have loads of exciting and natural beauty treats in her little cupboard and I know that after my visit in Lithuania, most of them will end up in my little cupboard in London.

We have an incredibly vast choice of beauty products these days, with the variety of brands and range of prices we forget about the simplest ways of staying beautiful. Most home made beauty treats do not take long to make, they smell amazingly good and fresh plus your pocket does not cry!

I am very excited to convert my kitchen into a little beauty lab and experiment with our daily essentials like salt, oils, sugar, honey, lemon, coffee… just name it! It takes only a few minutes to make a body scrub to make you glow, face mask to refresh your skin or a hair treatment to make it shine and the results I get are amazing! Your body will be really thankful for looking after it!

Celebrity tip

I once read that Jennifer Aniston is using a salt scrub to keep her body skin healthy, and radiant. Salt scrub exfoliates and stimulates the skin giving it the glow, healthy feel and appearance. The only negative I found using salt scrub is that it can be unpleasant if you have irritated skin or if you have injuries which haven’t healed yet as it will ‘chew’ your skin. But go for it if you are sure you do not have harmed skin, because the benefits from the salt scrub are terrific!

Little tips from my home beauty lab:

Sugar & honey scrub

My home made sugar&honey scrub

Body scrub is a perfect tool to refresh your body and it will give you a SPA experience in your own home! Its not only a pleasant smell, it removes dead, rough skin and stimulates the skin to feel softer and appear more refined. Sugar is a natural exfoliant and your skin feels much smoother after using a sugar scrub. These scrubs feel luxurious and are believed to be mildly aromatherapeutic in addition to being great for your skin.

The Romans had the right idea when it came to sugar. They used honey to sweeten foods and used sugar for medicinal purposes. It was also a cosmetic treatment used to draw moisture to lips and other areas of the body

I love using my own made sugar scrub! Its so easy to make it, just mix:

1/5 cup of brown sugar

1/4 cup of honey

3-4 tea spoons of your favorite oil

Rub it into wet skin and pay more attention to problematic body parts such as elbows, knees, heels. Rinse it well with warm and then cool water. Enjoy!

Food Intolerance

I love food, love cooking, love eating and trying new cuisines.  

I have always been very conscious about my health, my weight and my day to day diet. Sometime I find myself feeling heavy and full after a small meal portion or only from a bowl of soup and sometimes I can’t have enough. I do not think it’s something I should be extremely worried about as it’s winter time and people tend to eat a little bit more just to keep themselves warm, but food intolerance might be one of the reasons why my stomach feels dodgy from time to time.

A BBC Health article says that food intolerance is an adverse reaction to some sort of food or ingredient that occurs every time the food is eaten, but particularly if larger quantities are consumed. This isn't the same as a food allergy, because the immune system isn't activated. Neither is it the same as food poisoning, which is caused by toxic substances that would cause symptoms in anyone who ate the food. Food intolerance doesn't include psychological reactions to food either.

I am curios to find out if I am intolerant to any kind of food. I do not have many actual food intolerance symptoms and I am more worried about what’s causing it. I never thought I was a very sensitive person, but I remember having stomach aches since I was little because I think that my digestion is the slowest in the world! Apparently food intolerance occurs in people with more sensitive digestive system and unfortunately I am one of them. Food intolerance occurs when the body is unable to deal with a certain type of food. This is usually because the body doesn't produce enough of the particular chemical or enzyme that's needed for digestion of that food. For example, one of the most common types is intolerance of cow's milk, which contains a type of sugar called lactose. Many people have a shortage of the enzyme lactase. Without this enzyme they can't break down milk sugar into simpler forms that can be absorbed into the bloodstream. But I have never had any problems with consuming milk, maybe I am intolerant to some diary products and I need to find out what are they!

I found out that eating one day old food makes my stomach act funny. So I always try to make fresh food for my lunch and avoid ready made meals unless it’s a salad. I also think that sitting all day in the office doesn’t help me to digest either. I love Covent Garden soups as they are a real treat to me when it’s rainy and cold, but always have irritable bowel straight after eating it and sadly I have to cut it out of my daily diet and maybe this is because it’s a ready meal… It’s a hard work to give up food you love, but if it leads to a happier me, I just have to do it!

Cure to keep your stomach happy:

Peppermint tea is a saviour! I recommend to everyone who has a slow digestion! Just one cup of this tea makes you feel better and it’s very tasty and refreshing!

Water Water Water! Please try to drink at least 5-8 glasses of water every day! It will benefit you in all the ways possible!

Going to the gym helps me a big time! Recently I stopped exercising for about a month as I was really busy and this made a big impact on my digestion system and the way I feel! I felt sluggish and moody, but I started going to the gym again and I am back on track!