Gözleme all the way

Have you tried gözleme? If not you should absolutely put it on your ‘must try before I die’ list. Technically I do not have one of these lists (yet!), but it rolls off the tongue beautifully so I think it should be a thing 🙂

I have an amazing group of friends at my work. They are brilliant people and truly without them my day to day life would not be half as shiny. We often like to have lunch together and one of my friends had been eyeing off a gözleme place that has been under construction for some time now. Finally it opened, so obviously we had to go on the first day.

Potato, spinach & feta – SO GOOD!!!

Looks great on the plate and even better when you taste it. It is served on a wooden board with a wedge of lemon. We all loved it and have already visited again a couple of times. It is promoted as Turkish street food and is made fresh, you can literally watch them make it for you from rolling out your dough to placing the finished product on your board. It is completely tasty and the people that run it are (from what I can gather) 1-2 families who are all Turkish, spanning across 3 generations, which I think is really cool.

Last week we went there and were offered Turkish tea (or Rize tea), it was a promotion and you got a free cup with every gözleme. I was a little hesitant because I had been warned off Turkish coffee, but I promised to try new things this year so I did… and I LOVED it. It was super yum. It is served in this elegant tiny little glass with a teeny teaspoon and a sugar cube. My friend and I were only disappointed that there wasn’t more.

Turkish tea with spinach and feta gozleme

Such an interesting contrast to be eating street food with your hands and sipping on tea out of an elegant cup like a posh lady.

9/10 will eat and drink again – A LOT.
It is probably not good that this is such a short walk from my work, but honestly it is not that bad for you is it?

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Gettin’ Figgy with it – Try something new

Remember my New Year’s resolution to try new things? Well I did 🙂

Some of you might find this surprising, but I have never tried a fig in my life… ever. Some ladies I worked with went on and on about how amazing they are and how easy they are to grow. Since I am currently trying to plan my own garden for when the house is finished I have been looking at a lot of different fruit trees (I like fruit and plants that provide food as well as look good). So I decided to try one and see if it was worth considering planting a tree and waiting 3 years for the first harvest 🙂

The Sacrifice

So I acquired said fig. It was a little firm and my expert Googling has said they need to be kinda squishy to be fully ripe so I waited a couple of days.

So it came time to eat my fig. I then realised I had no idea what to do with a fig, did I eat it skin and all like an apple? Do I cut it open and just eat the innards like a passionfruit? Am I supposed to cook anything first? Back to ole reliable Google and I learnt some very interesting things about figs, turns out you can eat them whole, just the pulp and they can be cooked in things. I also kept coming across YouTube videos about people getting sore mouth and tongues from eating figs. Then I watched this guys video and it was very educational:

Fig in natural yoghurt

My Mum thought it was odd that I bought 1 fig and asked me what it was for. I explained that I had never tried one and it turns out she hadn’t either, so I roped her into the experiment 🙂

Two’s company after all

So guess what?…. Turns out I like figs. I am not in love with them the way I love chocolate or anything, but I like them well enough. We could totally be friends 🙂

Pretty figgin good

Healthy life… weird textures

I haven’t posted in awhile and I am very sorry, it has been a bad month with a lot going on. I have now been diagnosed with serious insulin resistance (AKA stop eating bad shit right now) and PCOS (AKA you wanna lose weight, good luck with that *maniacal Robin Williams laughter*).

So it is time for a change… a change is as good as a holiday after all… except for the lack of Tequila Sunrises and Daiquiris because we can’t have them anymore 😦

First things first – Diet. I didn’t think I ate enormous amounts of “crap” before, but it turns out when you decide you need to live a low GI lifestyle you discover how much apparent “crap” you actually did eat.

My friend is a nutritionist/naturopath and she knows her stuff, I told her of my plight and asked for some pointers. She has recommended some supplements like fish oil and Apple cider vinegar to help with the digestive bloating and killer heartburn I have been getting. She also told me about the magical properties of Chia seeds, so today I have an incredibly sore throat and decided to have a Chia Pudding rather than try to swallow anything else. Have you guys seen Chia puddings? Seriously they look like frog’s eggs:

The texture/consistency is pretty much what I would expect frog’s eggs to be too, there is also no taste which is about the best thing about it. You can make it taste like anything, today mine tasted like vanilla bean and cinnamon which is YUM in any language, but I couldn’t stand the consistency. My brain didn’t understand how this is a superfood. I have been told that the ancient Aztecs used to eat this superfood to help them with health, vitality, energy and wellness which all sounds awesome, I’m just wondering if they found that in a cave painting or perhaps the Codex Mendoza?

So I went and did some research between the last sentence and now and it turns out that the Codex apparently does mention that they cultivated Chia… who knew hahaha.

Please note that I am not at all saying that Chia seeds are not good for you, I am a Science and Health Librarian so believe me when I say I have done the research and the research says it is good for you 🙂 I am just having a whine about eating snotty frog’s eggs.

Just when I was getting to the point where I didn’t think I could swallow another mouthful I remembered the banana sitting at my desk. I chopped it up and tried it with the Chia.

And I have to say it was pretty good. The texture of the banana covered up the texture of the Chia pudding quite a bit and I was able to eat the majority of it without an issue… until I ran out of banana 🙂

Interestingly (and somewhat problematically as I am supposed to have 5-6 small meals a day) it is now hours later and I do not feel hungry at all [increased appetite is part and parcel of these conditions so I am often very hungry] and it is not like I ate much I mean the pudding is only 6oz

And I didn’t even finish it. I have got some bloating (but no heartburn thank god!) and am a bit uncomfortable so we will see how we go.

Surely eating something with the consistency of frog’s eggs counts under my “Try something new” New Year’s Resolution 🙂

Have you eaten something you found gross in the name of living a healthy life? What lengths have you gone to in order to be “healthy”?

Dessert Experiments

So I decided (much to my Mothers chagrin) to make my own birthday cake this year, because I wanted to experiment. I found out later that my Mum must not have had very much faith in my cooking ability because they had bought Vienettas as back ups in case my experiment failed. 

The inspiration from this cake came from seeing a picture of an insane multi-layered chocolate, ice-cream and Violet Crumble cake. I decided that it was crazy and just too much, also I bet I could make something like that. So I began planning. 

I wanted the top layer to be ice-cream, my fear of having a chocolate cake bottom layer was that the ice-cream would be too heavy for it… my solution… 

Triple choc fudge brownie base!!!

Omm nom NOM!!

So then I took 2 litres of Peters Vanilla Ice Cream (No I did not make my own – ain’t nobody got time for that!) and smashed Tim Tams and crunchies all through it. Crunchies I left in BIG chunks so that the honeycomb didn’t get too hard. 

I used the same tin as the brownies and put the ice-cream into the tin and into the freezer overnight to set. 

Then the ice-cream gets laid straight on top of the brownie, you can used whipped cream to “frost” and decorate the top as you like. 

Finished product

This cake was such a roaring success that I have already had a request to make one for someone else’s birthday next weekend! 

Side on glory! So many NOMS!!

Seriously you guys, this was my best. Experiment. Ever!