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The choice is yours here but I made mine the night before to have for lunch cold in work as I thought it made a nice change to a hot noodle soup that I always pebble dash my white shirt with. You could have this warm too if you prefer.

Noodles

  • 1 round of Udon noodles
  • 2 leaves of savoy cabbage
  • 1 handfull of kale or 3 leaves of cavello nero
  • 1/3 red onion or one shallot
  • 3 slices of roast beef torn or chopped into chunks

Spicy Soy Dressing

  • ½ a large or 1 garlic clove grated with a fine grater
  • ½ a centimetre chunk of fresh ginger grated with a fine grater
  • 5 teaspoons of light soy sauce
  • 2 teaspoons of toasted sesame oil
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil dessert spoon
  • ½ teaspoon of LGM or Lao Gan Ma chicken flavour chilli oil with tofu sauce (Or 1 teaspoon of standard chilli sauce)
  • ½ teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
  • Two pinches of brown sugar

Instructions

  1. Place the cabbage leaves in one layer of a bamboo steamer and the kale in the other layer.
  2. Depending if you want to stop the raw onion overpowering the dish you can add the onions to the steamer for a few minutes too.
  3. Place the udon noodles in salted water and cook to packet instructions. Mine took 7 minutes on boil.
  4. Place the bamboo steamer on top of the sauce pan of noodles to steam in the same water as the noodles to save time and washing up.
  5. Add all of the ingredients of the soy dressing into a small jar and stir to combine or a small sealable container to take with you if eating cold on the go.
  6. Once the noodles are cooked, remove the bamboo steamer and take each layer of to stop the veg cooking and to leave them cool.
  7. Rinse the noodles in cold water to stop them overcooking and sticking to each other.
    Slice the steamed cabbage and kale if not already done so.
  8. Place the cold noodles in a tupperware box, top with the cooked and shredded veg and beef.
  9. Place in the fridge until you want to eat. When you’re feeling peckish you might want to use a bigger bowl and place the contents of the noodle box into the bowl, drizzle over the dressing and use chopsticks or two forks to toss and combine the dressing into the noodle contents.
  10. Sprinkle with a few more sesame seeds if desired.

Thai Turkey and Bacon Meatball Recipe

  • 100g thai bacon chopped into small chunks (or standard bacon if you don’t *sign up to Cure and Simple, which you should by the way)
  • 500g minced turkey
  • 4 spring onions chopped finely
  • 2 cloves of garlic grated
  • 1″ squared chunk of ginger grated
  • 3 teaspoons fish sauce
  • 1 teaspoon palm sugar
  • zest and juice of 1 lime
  • teaspoon korean red pepper flakes (or dried chilli flakes if you don’t have any)
  • small bunch corriander chopped finely
  • 1/2 teaspoon lemongrass powder or 1 finely chopped fresh stalk

Optional

My turkey mince was quite wet to start with because I had frozen it and defrosted it and added with the wet ingredients meant it had a little bit too much moisture. To help bind the mixture and give a bit of texture I added a couple of spoonfulls of panko breadcrumbs at a time until it made the mixture less wet to work with.

thai turkey meatball ingredients

Instructions

  1. Fry the bacon to for a few minutes to cook slightly and for the fat to render out. Remove from the pan and set aside.
  2. Fry the garlic, ginger and spring onion for a minute or two in the bacon fat then remove from the pan.
  3. Add the bacon, onion, garlic and spring onion mixture to a large bowl with the minced turkey.
  4. Add the fish sauce, palm sugar, zest and juice of lime, red pepper flakes, corriander and lemongrass to the bowl. Mix the ingredients into the turkey mince for a few minutes with your hands to fully combine.
  5. Take small mounds of the minced mixture and shape into little balls and place on a plate or baking tray until you’ve used up all the mixture.
  6. Heat a little coconut oil or olive oil into a wok then add all the meatballs. Cook until slightly browned on all sides then add to the oven on 200C for 10 minutes or until cooked through.

thai turkey meatballs

Peanut Butter Sriracha Chilli Noodle Recipe

  • 200g dried udon noodles
  • 3 teaspoons peanut butter
  • 2 teaspoons fish sauce
  • 4 teaspoons light soy sauce
  • 4 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
  • 4 teaspoons sriracha chilli sauce
  • juice of half a lime
  • sesame seeds to decorate

Instructions

  1. Place the noodles in salted water and cook to the packets instructions. Take a cup of the cooking liquid before draining the noodles and set aside.
  2. Add the fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil and sriracha to a small bowl and stir to mix. Add to a warm pan and cook for 30-60 seconds or until it starts to bubble slightly. Add the peanut butter and lime juice to the pan and stir until the peanut butter is smooth.
  3. Drop the cooked noodles into the pan and toss with a pair of tongs to coat the noodles in the sauce. Add a bit of the reserved noodle cooking water a bit at a time to loosen the noodles and make the sauce a bit lighter as the peanut butter can be quite thick.
  4. Once evenly coated, remove the noodles and divide between two bowls. Add a little more sesame oil if you like and a scattering of sesame seeds.
  5. Top with the cooked meatballs and devour at your leisure.

I was a late starter on peanut butter as it wasn’t as popular in the UK as it is in the US and it has had more of a serge in the UK over the past couple of years due to Reeses peanut butter chocolates being more widely available and due to the increased knowledge of nutritional benefits and protein content for gym goers.

I didn’t really fancy it at first but tried my first experience of peanut butter with Reeses chocolate on a trip to Cancun and been a lover since. I’ve started to take a bit more interest in my fitness over the past two years since being introduced to Crossfit and always looking for alternative protein sources. I’m not the biggest fan of protein shakes as I always forget to take them plus i like to mix up my sources of food all the time as i do tend to get bored very easily eating and drinking the same thing all the time.

I’d tried the standard peanut butter from Tesco’s on oat cakes, rice cakes and topped on slices of apple and although ok I did get bored and never seem to finish a whole jar. I then came across almond butter on GO Nutrition and bought a bucket even though the smallest size they did was 1kg. I’ve used the almond butter like i had with the peanut butter but also tried it with a recent recipe i found for kale crisps and then as a seasoning on vegetable stir fry to give ti a satay like flavour instead of using unhealthy sauces that i haven’t a clue whats in them. It’s taken me quite some time to finish my bucket of almond butter so i sought out to find some new alternatives.

I was ordering some Strength Wraps for Crossfit from Cardiff Sports Nutrition and came across the Nuts n More range of nut butter and was quite intrigued by the varieties on offer that i’d not seen anywhere else especially having chocolate in a lot of them, which might tempt me from raiding the chocolate cupboard we have in work in the afternoon when i’m needing a pick me up.

On a quick browse online Cardiff Sports Nutrition seemed to do some of the cheapest prices for the Nuts n More nut butters too so I decided to get one of each of the peanut butter and almond butter and opted to cover both my bases when it came to sweet treats, which is chocolate and caramel/toffee. I went for the Nuts n More Peanut Toffee Crunch along with the Nuts n More Almond Chocolate butter out of the ones available on the Cardiff Sports Nutrition Website.

I thought i was going to like the Chocolate Almond flavour Nuts n More the best but it wasn’t as tasty as the Peanut butter toffee crunch one i bought as it’s a lot sweeter i think. I’ve tried it with the previous options such as oat cakes, apple, rice cakes but i’ve used it on my Oatabix in the morning for breakfast too and had a dollop of each along with a little bit of honey just to sweeten up the chocolate too. It’s given me another option for consumption and good source of protein for breakfast as opposed to me having 2-3 boiled or fried eggs every morning,w which gets a bit repetitive.

Chocolate-Coconut-Almond-450x355-420x370

I’ve nearly finished my two tubs now which come in 454g portions with 14g protein per serving of two tablespoons so i’m just deciding on what other flavour to get but leaning towards the Nuts n More Almond Chocolate Coconut butter as i do really like coconut i just hope it’s a bit sweater than the standard chocolate almond butter.

To get the cheapest Nuts n More nut butters online and to see the whole range then take a look on Cardiff Sports Nutrition website.