A taste of the world cup!

Although the football didn’t come home, that doesn’t mean we can’t bring some flavours of the world cup home. Today I wanted to share with you a Brazilian recipe I made. I love trying out new things and mixing different food flavours and what a better time than the world cup.

This video is in collaboration with Co Op and you can watch the video and head to the supermarket with me, get your ingredients and cook a long with me. I hope you enjoy it and share it with your friends.

Link to recipe: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/1045/brazilian-black-bean-stew.aspx

Have a good week!

Amira

There couldn't be a better time to celebrate

Fast forward 3 years and I have finished university. Doesn’t 3 years sound like a hell of a long time? Well I tell you what, it really just flew by. I moved out with all of the first years and thought wow, you really have a whole adventure right in front of you to look forward to and now I’m moving on to different things.

Now that I have finished, it has been a really great time to reflect on everything that I have done, achieved, accomplished, the friends I have made, the things I have done but also to celebrate.

This month with Co-op, I a going to share with you how I celebrated with their various party food and snack options. I got together with a few of my friends, and my cat as you will see, and we just had a chilled day in the garden with lots of different foods to pick at and just great chats.

Always remember that the hard work you do is never for nothing and it will pay off. Some things in life aren’t instant but it will pay off.

Please watch the video below to see the spread that I created and my top picks for a chill out day with the friends. And also, go have some fun. You earned that break after all the hard work.

Eat wise, Revise | Rice and lentil bowl

Hey guys, welcome back to the blog. Today I am bringing another recipe post and video in collaboration with Co-op. this month’s theme was ‘eat wise, revise’ and I had the perfect recipe in mind to share with you guys. One that I make all the time when I know I have lots of work going on and I just won’t have the time to think about lots of different meals to make. This is my rice and lentil bowl recipe

For this you will need:

Rice of your choice (I eat the uncle bens wholegrain and quinoa rice)

Lentils

Tin of chopped tomatoes

Sweet potato mash

Onions

1 or 2 eggs

To season:

Balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, salt, pepper, garlic salt, garlic granules, canola oil

You wanna start by heating your chopped tomatoes in a pot with a little bit of olive oil. To it, add some balsamic vinegar (1tbsp), brown sugar (2tsps), salt and pepper and that should take about 5 to 7mins to heat through. once done, add to a bowl that you can place in the fridge to go back to.

Then you can start on the onions. Heat those in a pan and add 2tsps of brown sugar at a time (4 in total) and caramelise the onions. Once that is done, you can add some in a bowl to eat now and some into tupperware for later

Then heat some of your sweet potato mash in the microwave and your rice and lentils whilst you prepare everything else

Now we can add our rice and lentils to that same pot and heat that through and season with canola oil, salt, pepper and paprika and make sure that is all mixed through. That should take about 5 to 7 mins.

Then add all the ingredients we have made so far into a plate and that creates the base of the bowl. 

For some added protein, I’m going to cook to egg whites in a pan, season with pepper and garlic salt and add over the top.

And that’s it, seems like a lot of steps at first but it all lasts about 3 to 4 meals and is super easy to just heat up and make and egg to go on the top. I am super swamped with uni work atm so these ingredients are already on my list to get again next week.

Let me know some of your favourite foods to get you through those busy weeks below 😊

As always, there is a video to accompany this so if you want to make it along with me, check it out below!

Chicken or Choc | Lime & Honey chicken stir fry recipe

As I have more and more deadlines creeping up on me and working on uni and personal projects, I really just don’t have the time for fussy, lengthy cooking recipes but I love trying out new things. So here is a recipe to keeping it simple but having great tasty food.

Today I am going to be sharing with you my lime and honey chicken stir fry recipe. I love this recipe because of the combination of something so sweet and something so tangy as well as all of the ingredients being on the cheaper end and highly accessible.

You will need:

1 breast of chicken

2 limes

Honey

Sharwood noodles

1 bell pepper

1 carrot

For the marinade

Salt

Pepper

Sesame seeds

Olive oil

You can start by boiling the water to prep for you noodles to go in. whilst that is boiling, we can prep for the other ingredients.

Start by cutting your chicken into cubes and placing it in a bowl with some olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika. Then, place it in the fridge to set.

For the marinade, juice your two limes into a bowl. Then add some olive oil, salt, pepper, 1 tablespoon and a half of honey and some sesame seeds. These are optional. Then whisk those all together and put that in the fridge to set.

You can also cut up your pepper and shred your carrot at this point.

Add your noodles to the boiling water then strain and leave to one side.

Back in the same pot, add a bit of oil with some onions and garlic. Once all of that has softened, add your chicken and cook and until 95% done.

You can then add your noodles back in with the pepper and carrots and mix until everything is evenly spread around.

Then add the marinade half at time and again, make sure to mix that all in thoroughly. Once you have heated that through you can serve and enjoy!

I made this for a lunch with my favourite girls and I get a thumbs up approval from all of them. What’s great about this recipe is again it is really customisable, and I also made a vegan version too.

As always, if you want to follow along in video format, check out the video below so you can watch me make it too.

I hope you guys enjoy this and have a great weekend!

*this post and video was created in collaboration with coop. i am currently a brand ambassador for them. for more details, check my pr/disclaimer page.

Friday Favourites #2

Hello and welcome back to another Friday’s favourites post. I really enjoyed creating the last one and I think it makes me really aware (every so often) of the things that I just keep going back to or have added to making my life that little bit easier.

Favourite items

Firstly, is my iPad. This might seem like an unusual item to put on such a pedestal but as being more of a Samsung person over an apple one, the ipad is the most recent addition to my gadgets collection and not only did it save me when I had no internet in china (that was a real rough patch with 90% of things being blocked) it’s great for watching videos in the morning, getting work done on train journeys and even for the occasional lectures. Never thought I needed something like this in my life untill now but it has proved to be a great asset.

My panda headband is another recent edition from my trip to china but after years of getting face cream in my hair and getting kinks in it with hairbands, I resorted to a somewhat cute headband to get me going with my daily routine. Not the cutest panda faces I have ever seen but if it does the job, it’s a keeper.

What I’m watching

Netflix is pretty much my regular tv app of choice and I have been really getting into a few of the new releases. The first is The Good Place with Ted Danson and Kristin Bell, dispelling the perceived ideas about heaven and hell and putting those already dead through the works. Only one season and a bit in, I am excited to see where the episodes go and what twists happen next.

Having taken a break from American horror story with hotel being the least of my favourite ones, Roanoak is what I had secretly been holding out for. The style it is filmed in is definitely unconventional but from a critic’s point of view, a style with potential and gives the series a new lease of life. Some of your old favourites are back with a few new faces thrown in there and it deffo one I think you should give a go…even if AHS isn’t your favourite thing.

How could I forget the confession tapes? If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know I love murder mystery programmes and cases so as soon as this came through, I clicked on it straight away. It went into a little more depth about some of the cases I already had prior knowledge and even if it’s not your genre, it’s really interesting just to see how these are used or thrown out within the justice system.

Let’s eat

Bringing in a little home cooking this week as I am trying to keep my weekly expenses to a minimum, this is one of my many bulk dishes that I make and it’s a lentil and sweet potato curry. I use a recipe from online which I will link here but it’s always good to add your own little touch to it

I like to add some spinach to the mix as well as serving it with some wholegrain rice with quinoa. I uses ones out of the packet as I am not that great of a cook but in general, I have just loved taking recipes and adding my own little spin to it. This dish also works great if you have a busy week and need a few quick easy meals for even on the go.

Fashion favourites

I am loving Primark’s clothing range at the moment and I am going to do a new in haul very soon so you will see it all there but Primark’s Instagram page is just giving me all of the feels right now. Just look and tell me you don’t want it all.

Something to think about

“what you are feeling matters”

Every emotion and feeling that you have is valid. And you should allow yourself to feel it. Feel like crying for an hour? Go and go it, let it out of your body and if necessary, let those around you see it. Only once you let go can you give yourself the strength to keep going.

I hope you all have a great weekend and I’ll see you very soon with a new post 

When in China | Part 2

Now as you guys know, I am back from my time in china which saddens me greatly. It was such an eye opening experience and filled me with such energy, change of heart and change of understanding. Something quite indescribable unless you do it for yourself. After spending week’s pre departure being hesitant about my decision, I’m so glad I didn’t go back on it.

Although I have a few more posts with china related pics coming up, I want to share the last leg of photos to sum up my last 6weeks out there immersed in an internship, meeting new people and finding new things.

This place that was the first of many long haul trips and this place is one of the most unreal places I have ever been too called Jiuzhaigou (without the tones roughly pronounced joe-jie-go). It looked like an oil painting and every image taken made it so much more worthy of embarking on a 7 hour walk to the main tourist centre within the park. This route was free from the crowds of tourists we encountered at the entrance and a chance to breathe some fresh air, and have long chats with friends made. This place will always hold a special place in my heart especially as we were still there coming towards the end of the trip, this place was hit my an earthquake and luckily there were very few causalities but it’s a shame how such a nature driven place could have been partly destroyed just like that. Well I guess the pictures will just have to speak for itself.

The second of the lengthy journeys we made out of china was to Kanding, the Tibetan area of china. Another one of those indescribable experiences.

I have thought long and hard about going into depth about what it’s like to go to china and be there who isn’t strictly from china because, especially for me, it was tough to feel like you kind of belong somewhere where they continue to see you as outsiders or other. But if you want me to talk about it more let me know.

Kanding is another place that holds a special place in my heart because they are treated like outsiders in their own country, but they are some of the nicest people I had ever encountered throughout my time in china. Beautiful fashion, history and place to visit. We went horse-riding, joined in this daily town dance that they have and embraced a new culture. Plus this was also the first time I had had a yak burger and I have to say not too bad. It kind of tasted like a beef burger but yak…this will only make sense till you have had one.

I touched on the food a little bit in my first post but I have to say thinking about it again, there is a shit tonne of food to choose from. Some looked questionable but others were really enjoyable. Always bear in mind that if you find a non-Chinese cuisine, it’s a Chinese version of that cuisine haha! But at times, I do find myself craving it especially those little white buns. That with like a mince meat mixture was soooo good. And potato noodles (kind of like gnocchi but Chinese) were sooo good. I think I need to stop talking about it because it’s making me really hungry.

All I can say is that china I will be coming back for you. You have given me such an unforgettable experience that I would do over and over again in a heartbeat. But here are the final thoughts; the good the bad and the ugly

The good: gaining knowledge about somewhere on the complete opposite side of the world to you as well as being able to gain working skills to take back for future jobs. Aside from that it’s a rapidly developing country with soo many things that I wish the UK had, like their bike system

The bad: the air pollution. I can’t tell you how much I missed breathing in fresh air whilst I was there and how opening a window is something you just shouldn’t do there. AC is the way forward.

The ugly: how backwards and uneducated they seem to be about race and diversity. I feel so lucky to live (most of the time) and have grown up in London where being black wasn’t such a bigger deal and being a bigger size wasn’t such a big deal. Now, London is in no way perfect but it’s a giant leap from china. I feel blessed that I have a diverse group of friends and we have different interests and styles. As they are slowly being exposed to more western media and ideals, you can see with some of the people that you encounter it doesn’t bother them but they have a long way to go.

I hope you enjoyed the post. You can check out part one here and let me know some of your favourite destinations you have been too below.

Much love