Holy Effing Heckballs do I love to cook?!?

And eat – especially the eating part.

That said, I like to whip things up in a jiffy, especially if I get home-mid-arvo and haven’t eaten lunch, or get home from work after 8 and want dinner pronto.

Last year I was doing 18 hours of placement a week in a nutrition clinic, teaching yoges 7 days a week – sometimes multiple classes daily – and editing my book ready for publishing.

If I desired regular fuel, I needed to embrace super-human organisation. Not once did I succumb to takeaway – I must be the only spud muffin on the planet who is yet to use Uber Eats. Nor purchase pre-prepared meals from the supermarket – too much plastic packaging and usually cooked in canola oil. How could I even entertain skipping a meal – did I mention how much I like eating?

I may have eaten homemade cupcakes, self-saucing chocolate pudding and chocolate-chip cookie dough for dinner a few times, but that was for ‘work’. I was recipe testing.

These days I work from home or at least close to home and have more leeway when it comes to foodie organisation. That said, I still love meal prepping on Weekends so that I have easy options at the ready for the first half of the week.

Below are some of my fridge and pantry staples and how I use them.

Happy Pantry Perving – may you find inspiration amongst my cluttered shelves and random culinary pairings.

My Pantry

Smoothie Staples

I love to have a range of powders and spices on hand for my smoothies. Think cinnamon, vanilla bean, raw cacao (raw chocolate powder is stupendously high in magnesium – very important for a yoga teacher), matcha (green tea) powder, green stevia (a sugar-free, ridiculously sweet-tasting herb), cardamom pods, Spirulina (pictured below) and novel items here and there to change things up. At the moment I’m loving red velvet latte powder (beetroot-based), maca powder, carob and blue Butterly pea powder. Then all I have to do is add filtered water ice cubes, coconut water, frozen organic spinach, fresh zucchini and sliced ginger and whizz – smoothie magic a-go-go.

Oats and Banana Flour

Man I love working with organic oats and green banana flour. I use them to make these bread roll muffins, and pretty much all other baked goods, including the chocolate cupcakes and self-saucing pudding in my upcoming book baby ‘Periods, Poo & A Glorious You’.

I also use oats to make savoury risottos, chickpea-based cookie dough (also in my book baby) and stirred through coconut yoghurt that had been blended with banana and vanilla and layered with crunchy ground flax seed. Yummers. Me gut says Hells to the Yeah!

Aussie Olive and Organic Coconut Oil

My fam and I can’t do without these two beauties. I love olive oil for dressing veggies and risottos and coconut oil in my nut butters. I also love the flavour of coconut oil with roasted veggies.

Homemade Nut and Seed Butters

Nut and seed butters changed my life. I’m not being dramatic spud muffins. I mean it. You can add them to just about everything and they’ll provide protein (see-ya animal flesh), creaminess (so-long moo-juice), vitamins and minerals (move over chicken embryos) and fibre (your welcome bowels). Here’s how I nut (and seed) butter;

• Inca inchi seed butter mixed with turmeric, pepper and salt for a creamy dressing for steamed greens
• Macadamia Hemp Butter with these muffins
• Peanut butter with organic sprouted gluten free bread (or organic sourdough oat bread – wheat free)
• Pecan Cashew butter with baked sweet spuds (all three colours; red (white flesh), orange (amber flesh) and white (purple flesh)
• Hazelnut butter with roasted pumpkin
• Tahini – black tahini is my fave – in this recipe. I buy this one from The Source Bulk Foods (not sponsored).

My Fridge

Fresh Fruits, Veggies and Ginger

With help from your pals nut (or seed) butter, seasonings, olive oil, ferments (see below) and either a muffin (see below) or serve of resistant starch rice (cooked and cooled rice – for a specific recipe check out the Poop-promoting Resistant Starch Rice in my upcoming book baby) you can easily make a meal of veggies.

On nights that I teach a yoga class from 7-8pm, I like to enjoy a muffin (below) with 3-4 Brazil nuts plus a generous tablespoon (HEAPED) of nut or seed butter with a simple serving or fresh fruit such as an apple or berries. This makes a light yet satisfying dinner if you eat later than usual – like I do several evenings a week.

Fresh ginger, zucchini and spinach are a dream base for an easy smoothie. Just add ice cubes, coconut water and all of your favourite shelf-stable powers i.e. raw cacao, carob, Spirulina, cinnamon etc. and you have yourself a meal. This works well as a standalone brekkie or as a ‘starter’ before a ‘second course’ of apple or banana with homemade nut or seed butter. I’ve been know to have a snacky smoothie dinner like this when I arrive home late feeling thirsty, hungry and in need of both hydration and easily-digestible energy.

Ferments

These take any savoury meal to the next level and deliver digestive-aiding enzymes to boot. They also offer a whopper dose of friendly probiotics to supplement the ‘forest in our gut’. A little goes a long way. I stir a dollop though veggie and salad creations or eat with ripe avocado and turmeric resistant starch rice for a colourful meal.

Roasted Veggies

Another bomb diggity bomb bomb. Add roast veggies – think pumpkin or sweet spud, regular spud, capsicum, red onion, eggplant, zucchini, beets … WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR GROOVY BOAT – to salads or steamed veggies with freshly cooked chickpeas (see below). It’s also no secret that I love pumpkin and sweet spud with nut/seed butters. You can even snack on roasted veggies. Add homemade guacamole and ferments to make a light meal. Drooling!

Slow Cooker Chickpeas

I buy chickpeas dirt cheap at the local bulk store and soak them overnight in salted water. Then I drain, rinse and pop in the slow cooker covered with more water. They cook on high for 4 hours. Then I drain and rinse again. Once cooled, they keep for 5 days in the fridge in an airtight container. I use them in salads, veggie creations, this bowl and Orgasmic Cookie Dough (recipe in my book baby).

Profound Plantain Muffins

Forget the infamous Fat Bomb Muffins of best-selling cookbooks gone by, these muffins are their plant-based, fibre-bomb cousins. They add satisfaction and loads of gut-soothing fibre (nothing harsh about these intestinal brooms) to any meal and because they are the best-ever vehicle for homemade nut butter, they make upping proteins and fats in the diet a cinch. In my nut butter-obsessed opinion it would be a crime to eat these babies without nut or seed butter. Or at the very least creamy coconut butter if nuts and seeds send your immune system haywire. To be truthful, I often make these delights with green bananas, as I don’t always get to the markets to snag a bunch of plantains. They still work out swell.

There you have it kiddlets. This is why I’m such a happy banana. Look at all the delicious and soooooo freakin easy peasy lemon squeezy foods I get to enjoy. I hope you’ve found inspiration in all, some or a humble few of my everyday suggestions.

If you’re wanting even more foodie inspiration, kitchen clarity or nutritional coaching, check out my list of services to see if working together sounds like something that would make you happier than a bright little Vegemite. I am a qualified nutritionist who acts more like a foodie fairy godmother than a white coat health professional.