Not only is this gluten, grain and dairy free, it is also vegan (but delicious) and ticks all the boxes of the Round Meal that we have been discussing at length recently.
So in the interests of those who are playing along on the Instagram and also my test guinea pigs who are doing Cookiehouse Reprogram with me, I have put it through a nutritional data base so we can discuss at the end of the recipe its nutritional profile.
OO! Doesn't that look delicious! For those of you who are wrinkling their nose up, I am going to make some overnight oat jars for Mr T and we will have a look at those too.
Ingredients - serves one
40g raw buckwheat
10g linseed
1 apple (I used a pink lady)
4 prunes, cut into thirds
1 teaspoon of honey (from honorary CH tadpole Sammi's Dad's hives)
A scattering of macadamia nuts (raw)
almond milk
grind of fresh nutmeg
Place the buckwheat into a small pot and add about 3/4 cup of water, bring to the boil, turn down, simmer very gently for about ten minutes, add the linseed, continue to simmer until the buckwheat is tender, you may need to add more water, I find buckwheat quite variable in its absorbancy, spoon into a bowl.
Core and cut your apple into thinish slivers, arrange over the buckwheat, drizzle on the honey, scatter on the prunes and macadamias, splash of almond milk, grind of nutmeg. Done.
I ate this with a small banana and peanut butter and almond milk smoothie and one mandarin to up my nutritional profile and also to keep myself full enough to carry through to lunch without snacking - a cornerstone of Cookiehouse Reprogram.
Right, let's have a look and see what is actually in it.
So our total energy (kilojoules) represented in this bowl is 2140kJ, so that is a little under the requirements of a woman of my age, height and physical activity level, hence the smoothie and mandarin.
We have 10.23grams of protein, so that is nicely tracking for one meal for me, gives me some room for more protein later today.
Let's look at our fat and carbohydrate levels, remembering that it is the ratios we are interested in here, not the amounts. Remember? We are looking at 45-65% carbs in our daily kJ intake and 20-35% fat with no more than 10% saturated + trans fat in our daily intake.
So for this plate of porridge I have -
47.5% carbohydrate
35% fat (4.3% saturated + trans fat)
Okay, so that is looking okay, 65% of this fat is monounsaturated, 22% is polyunsaturated, so we are looking at good fats, but still, this is right on the verge of toppling over the Australian Government's RDI for fat intake.
Let's have a look at our fibre.
13.4g fibre. Yup, very happy with that, as one meal of three, this has already provided over half the RDI of fibre for me.
For interest's sake, let's have a little tinker with this round meal. Firstly we will take out the source of most of our fat, the macadamia nuts.
Wow! Okay, well that has changed our numbers a lot!
Protein - 8.6g
Fat - 17% (1.7% saturated + trans fat)
Carbohydrate - 62%
Fibre 12.3g
So already this is looking like a very different meal, with just this one change. Let's look at the kilojoules, 1616kJs. Yes, that is not enough to keep me going until lunch, people think that kilojoules or calories are a dirty word, but they aren't, they are simply a unit of measurement, it is what makes up that measurement that is important, balance and mindfulness is the key.
Let's put the nuts back in and add the mandarin and banana smoothie, see what my breakfast as a whole looked like.
Okay, very interesting.
So my kJs came to 2918.
Protein - 14.2g
Fat - 36.5% (saturated + trans 4.4%)
Carbohydrate - 47%
Fibre - 16.6g
So, my fat is now above where I want it to be, yes, good fats, still, above where I need it. Kilojoules good for one meal of three for a woman of my size, carbohydrate still within our parametres but only because it is standing on its tip toes. Fibre, excellent, we love fibre.
One last wriggle, let's take out the nuts again.
Right, that drops us to 2400kJs (we are counting the smoothie and the mandarin here).
Protein - 12.5g
Fat - 24.5% (saturated + trans fat - 2.7%)
Carbohydrate - 56.6%
Fibre - 15.5g
Well. So look at that. Of the four variations, this one is the best for balance. We are falling nicely within our percentages for fat and carb, we have kilojoules enough to keep me running until lunch, our fibre is at 62% RDI already and I have consumed 27% of my daily protein needs, leaving me plenty of room for the lamb steak I have in the fridge.
Okay, so what do we take from this? Small changes can make a big difference. For me, I am not worried that in my original meal I was nudging the edges of too much fat, I will just be mindful of that in my next meal for the day and try to steer it more into the carbohydrate (unrefined) pathway. Remember, balance is key, we are looking at these round meals individually, but if we are eating three of them a day, that gives us some nice wriggle room to play with our percentages. But... I think for tomorrow I will drop the macadamias and maybe add an extra 10g of buckwheat to the pot.
Thank you for playing along, have a great day, and don't forget, eat the rainbow!