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Welcome back to a long overdue recipe. These are low cost, nutritious and tasty choices. Today’s recipe is a probably the best gluten and grain free bread option I’ve ever tried, so hope you enjoy!

The ingredient that may stick out in this little recipe is gram flour. Gram flour, or chickpea flour or besan, is a pulse flour made from a variety of ground chickpea known as Bengal gram. It is pale yellow and powdery and has an earthy flavour best suited to savoury dishes. Gram flour contains no gluten, a high proportion of carbohydrates, higher fiber relative to other flours, and a higher proportion of protein than other flours.

Right, so to crack on. This bread recipe is super quick and boasts a pretty good macro and micro nutrient ratio. You’ll find this recipe particularly sustaining due to its high protein content from the gram flour, eggs and even almond. The eggs, seeds and almonds also contain some healthy fats, vitamins and minerals.

Ingredients:

– 1 x sachet 7g yeast

– 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

– 250g gram flour

– 100g ground almonds

– 100g mixed seeds (chia/flax/sesame)

– 50g linseed

– 1.5 tsp of rosemary

– 4 large eggs

Method:

– Preheat oven to 190c

– Fill jug with 375ml of Luke warm water. Add extra virgin olive oil and the yeast. Mix with fork till dissolved and place to once side for 5 minutes.

– Mix gram flour, ground almonds, all the seeds, rosemary and yeast together. Crack in the eggs and start to beat together.

– Add the water and continue to beat, bringing in the mixture from the edges to ensure a smooth batter.

– Place the batter in a greased or parchment paper filled bread baking tin. Place in the preheated oven for 45 minutes.

– Remove bread from oven. Stick a bread knife through the middle and if it has sticky residue, left, put it back in for longer. If the knife is clean, allow bread to cool and serve with a nice grass fed butter.

Welcome back to the What Supp Blog, your one stop shop for optimising body and mind. Today’s post will look at what has become a bit of a hot topic over the last few years; gut health. In light of having a mere 2 minutes to share some info, I’m going to bypass the fairly obvious recommendations of fermented foods, fibre and probiotic supplements. Well, almost bypass.

Below are just a couple of tips I’ve picked up that have seemed a little off the beaten track. I’d advise anyone to read more on this fascinating subject, but here are a few nuggets to keep you going.

1. Got a sweet tooth? Well be warned, Sucralose (table sugar substitute also known under the E number E955.) kills off gut microbes. Need something to fill the void? Erythritol is a good alternative sweetener option that won’t do damage.

2. Got a gut feeling or butterflies in your stomach? The vagus nerve is a connecting line directly between our brain and gut. Much of the feel good chemical serotonin that we produce happens in the digestive tract. Therefore, to ensure more happiness, feed your microbiome with as much probiotic and prebiotic rich food as you can.

3. Do you bulletproof your coffee? For those who’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years, this is butter and MCT oil added to your coffee. Although some may warn you off, look for MCT oil that has not had the lauric acid removed, as it supports gut health and suppresses appetite.

4. Magnesium. This often overlooked mineral isn’t just an essential electrolyte that helps sleep, but it also increases mitochondria and gut microbes.

5. Beware acid blocking drugs such as those used to manage digestion. Dr David Permutter notes research (in his excellent book Brain Maker) that these drugs have been linked with onset of Alzheimer’s disease. He suggests this is potentially resulting from them upsetting the balance of the gut microbiome.

Alrighty, although this is no introduction to the deep topic of gut health, hopefully for those already familiar with the subject, this post may of given you some tips you didn’t already know about. For some more info on prebiotics and probiotics, check out this previous post http://whatsuppblogblog.com/2017/04/27/snack-hacks-5-prebiotics-vs-probiotics/

Till next time.

Welcome to a long overdue return to the Snack Hack series. These posts aim to bring simple and doable options that can be used to optimise your life.

Today’s little bite sized morsel is the post training recovery bowl. This is has got all you need to replenish following either a hard session in the weights room, on the road or on the mats.

Let’s see what we got on the recipe list and break down the what and why:

– Half a cup of berries blue/goji/raisins. Ok, so I’m not a huge huge fan of raisins due to the vegetable oils often used to process them. However, dried fruit can be a great to replenish your glycogen stores quickly if you’re, for example, working out again later that day. Berries in general though, and especially blue berries, are well vaunted for their high antioxidant count, helping to clear some of the free radical damage caused from exercise.

– 2 tbsp shredded coconut. Coconut is a source of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) . MCTs are a fat that the body digests quickly and sends to the liver to use as an energy source.

– A quarter cup of Macadamia nuts. The macadamia can be simply put as the king of nuts. They have the most favourable omega 3:6 ratio. Omega 3 is an essential for brain health and helping to reduce systemic inflammation.

– 2 tbsp chia seeds. Chia seeds are also a source of Omega 3 as well as gelatinous fibre. Gelatinous fibre helps process out toxins from the body through coating them and guiding them out the body. Gelatinous fibres are also reported to help normalise blood glucose and insulin levels.

– 3/4 cup kefir. Kefir is a fermented dairy product (read more here: http://whatsuppblogblog.com/2017/08/28/snack-hack-10-kefir/). Fermented foods are commonly known for their gut healing properties. They provide a source of probiotics, strains of ‘friendly’ bacteria to support everything from immune function to mental health. Kefir is also a protein source so will aid with muscle recovery.

– Dash of Ceylon cinnamon. So this is primarily added for taste so if you don’t have Ceylon then standard Cassia cinnamon is fine. However, Ceylon is a pretty powerful healer and definitely more than a worthy replacement for sweeteners. Read this previous post if you’d like to find out a little more and why your standard shop bought cinnamon may be a worrying alternative; http://whatsuppblogblog.com/2017/11/16/snack-hack-13-ceylon-cinnamon/

Alrighty, well there’s no great method here, just chuck it all in a bowel and give it a good stir. Hope you enjoyed the post, please give it a like, a comment and share! Till next time.

Right, so this is maybe a few days late but I wanted to present a format from which you can review the year. These questions are taken from the great Ryan Munsey’s book; F**k Your Feelings, which is an absolute game changer in my opinion.

Although new year is always a pretty fitting time to review and set goals, these questions can be used at anytime to make positive changes.

Take some time to thoroughly and meaningfully go through the below list. Reflect and try and be as honest as you can..

– what results are you happy with?

– what results are you not happy with?

– what results would you like to be getting?

– what changes can you make in your time to get more of the results you desire?

– how are you holding yourself back?

– what would you do if you new you could not fail?

– what is the fear?

– what ruts are you in because of preference for comfort?

– how is comfort crushing my drive / motivation?

– where can you seek discomfort?

Ok, hopefully this has helped and can be a point of reference for future planning. On closing I’ll just leave this pretty potent statement that Ryan refers back to in his book on a number of occasions:

“Your life is perfectly designed for the results you’re currently getting”

Till next time.