Healthy Snack Time

Hungry when you’re finished at the gym and fed up with extortionate price of a smoothie or sandwich at the gym.

 Or just need a healthy snack during the morning.

Make your own smoothie, they ‘re really easy if we’re not too lazy to make them. It takes longer to clean the processor/blender than it does to make them.

What you’ll need;

A food processor or blender, a good blender is not that expensive and doesn’t take up too much room.

What to use:

Low fat plain yoghurt. You could get flavoured but plain is better.

Low fat milk.

Wheat germ (a healthy option);

Honey, optional.

Bananas

Frozen berries such as strawberries, blue berries or any that take your fancy.

Optional, a melon, not water melon. Believe it not watermelon is packed with sugar according to the Low GI brigade.

Method;

Put the yoghurt and a banana in the blender with the frozen berries you choose just strawberries or a cocktail. Experiment. The honey if you use.

Blend all this together, add some milk if you think it’s too thick.

Add a dessertspoon of wheat germ and blend till mixed in. Wheat germ is full of all sorts of good stuff, vitamin E and folic acid. No sodium or cholesterol.

Add more if you don’t mind the taste, it’s supposed to give you more vitality. Energy.

You can add it to just about anything you eat or cook.

One thing to remember, it’s still alive if you can imagine a plant still alive. Once you’ve opened it you have to keep it the fridge. You’d be surprised what will start crawling around in it. Nothing harmful.

I didn’t know this when I first bought it. I was living in the Middle East then. To my horror I found all these crawly things in my food cupboard. My cupboards needed a clean out anyway.

I still eat it though and full of vitality.

A healthy sandwich;

Banana and peanut butter on whole meal or multi grain bread. Bananas are at there best when you start to get brown speckles on the skin, they go over quite quickly after this, but still okay for your smoothie.

Just spread over the sliced banana and peanut butter, have it topless or with a top on.

This is great toasted as well for the afternoon or mid-morning snack.

You could sprinkle over a teaspoon of wheat germ for good measure.

Another sandwich;

You’ll need a pitta bread per person.

Fresh lemon juice, olive oil.

White cabbage, parsley,  celery, tomato.

A healthy meat choice to your liking, turkey breast maybe.

Salad cream or mayonnaise, salad cream is a British thing. We do have Hellimans mayonnaise in the UK but I prefer salad cream.

In Las Vegas the best place to buy it is the ‘Fresh & Easy store. They stock a good supply of British stuff at a reasonable price.

Http://www.freshandeasy.com

Make a Cypriot style salad of chopped cabbage, stick or two of celery and chopped parsley. Mix together with the lemon juice, go easy on the lemon juice and olive oil.

Warm the pitta bread either in the microwave or under the grill (broiler). Not too much, you need to keep the bread soft. Just enough so you can split the bread and spread on the salad cream or mayonnaise and fill with the salad, tomato and meat.

If the warmed bread stayed soft enough you should be able to fold or roll.