What is your go-to fruit and vegetable shop? Galway has a few, and once you find the one you like, cooking will get so much easier. Seasonable cooking especially, and in winter more than ever, we all need nutritious and healthy breakfasts we enjoy to start (yet) another gloomy day. A lot of my favourite recipes for a quick and healthy breakfast in winter include apples, which you will find plenty in any given shop. Because I usually buy my fruits at the market, I often buy just a bit too much and end up having to make a lot of smoothies. This is not a terrible thing, in my opinion, as long as you have a blender: I have been using my one for a few years now and it has not let me down yet. At the end of this article, I have included two easy to do smoothies’ recipes. Here are some yummy recipes that you might be able to implement into your daily morning routine.
Breakfast Apple Crumble
For this recipe you will need three apples (diced), ½ tablespoon of lemon juice, two tablespoon of maple syrup, one tablespoon of cinnamon and one tablespoon of water, as well as oats (as much or as little as you want), honey, and a splash of water.
- Chop the apples, add a pinch of cinnamon, a pinch of salt and a splash of water.
- In a pan, sauté everything on medium heat. At the same time, pre-heat your oven.
- While the apples are cooking and the oven is heating, place all the other ingredients in a blender and blend for half a minute to make the crumble.
- On a tray, put the warm apple dices at the bottom and the crumble on top, and bake for 15-20 minutes at 180C, or until the crumble is golden brown.
Sunday Pancakes
This recipe is for eight mini-pancakes and was kindly taught to me by one of my flatmates, who used to make pancakes for the whole flat almost every Sunday.
- Mix 100g of flour with two eggs and add 300 ml of milk.
- Keep mixing until the consistency starts to be runny, then add a small amount of sparkling water.
- Put some oil and butter in a pan and pour the batter.
- Turn the heat on moderate and wait until the mixture is golden brown (you will notice little bubbles on top just before it is.)
- Flip the pancakes over and repeat.
- Add the fruits you want on top of the warm mini-pancake and pour yourself a glass of orange juice, with a coffee!
And because you cannot feed only on apple-based recipes, here are a few of my favourite smoothies’ recipes. As these recipes are unfortunately a little less in season, a trip to your nearest Tesco store might be needed.
Berry smoothie
- Blend milk (almond milk tastes nice for this recipe) that you will pour around three quarters of the way from the top of your blender, add half a handful of hemp seed, a handful of spinach leaves and some frozen berries (fill the blender with them),
- Blend, drink, enjoy!
Banana smoothie
- Pour milk (about three quarters of the way up, again), add half a banana, a handful of spinach leaves, a tablespoon of peanut butter and flaxseed.
- Blend, drink, enjoy!
