Nutrition made simple

With one week to go till my first big challenge and fundraising event, it has been days with setbacks and a cutback in training.

This week I had planned mostly to talk about nutrition and specifically the energy bars I make and eat all the time, they are great tasting granola bars but jampacked with extra goodness.

What's best is they are homemade, quick n' easy, organic (where I can find it) and store in the fridge for a few days, except the family also eat them, my wife to sustain her through a 13.5 nurse shift, the kids to counter the chocolate rubbish they like so never last long.

So as I take you through the making process I will call out the nutritional benefits, not just for people doing exercise but anyone suffering pain in joints but mainly my Sarcoidosis family, who get awful pains absolutely anywhere in the body!

A great deal of the ingredients are anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant which you should look to incorporate anywhere in your cooking! This article at Healthline.com will give you a better explanation than I will attempt, I reference this website many times!

I am in no way linked to the website other than signposting, other resources are available, I am just being lazy and they talk good sense!

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/anti-inflammatory-herbs

Now the amounts of each ingredient can be up to you and I typically use what I have to hand but the core Ingredients, the links will take you to a specific article that gives you more detail.

A wide variety of ingredients

    

    

Granola (2 Cups) - Makes the base for the bars

Walnuts (Chopped and about 85g) - very good for you and anti-oxidant

Honey (3 tablespoons). - Adds sweetness and much better than refined sugar

Orange Zest and juice (orange) - The orange makes the bars yummy and Vitamin C loaded

Eggs (2 medium) - used to bind the ingredients

Rapeseed Oil  (splash) - helps keep the moisture and bake to perfection

The following I add, again with whats ever in the cupboard but will put my favourites to the top

Flaxseed - I add this at the end, the health benefits are superb, to say the least, also add to thicken the mixture so that's why I put in last.

Gogi Berries - an anti-oxidant, taste best to me when cooked!

Blueberries - Sweet delicious and super anti-oxidant 

Raisins - Sweeten the recipe and moist, also anti-oxidant 

Hemp Hearts - Incredibly nutritious 

Ginger - This has been used in medicine for thousands of years nuff said!

Turmeric - Your biggest friend in the anti-inflammatory space (I take two super loaded tablets a day)

Chia Seeds - Put these in porridge, sprinkle over cereal, invisible in the bars, great anti-oxidant

Cinnamon - anti-oxidant on another scale and adds a bit of flavour

Black Pepper/ Cayenne Pepper  - Now black pepper is proven to help you absorb the likes of turmeric in bucket loads, it's whether you like a kick to your bars... Now Cayenne is a favourite of mine I have Psoriasis and this is pepper is shown to reduce the inflammation 

Dark Chocolate/ Cacao Powder - If you like a chocolate taste, then either use chopped (up as high % dark chocolate you can find) or Cacao Powder, which can make the bars a bit bitter... though!

Now onto the method

1) Preheat the oven to 190°C  (375°F) 

2) Line an 8-inch square baking tin with greaseproof paper and lightly coat it with rapeseed oil.

3) Chop Walnuts into small pieces add to a plastic bag

Chop the walnuts as small as you can

2) Add granola to the plastic bag, Smash and roll the granola and nuts into smaller pieces, add the contents of the bag to the mixing bowl

Smash and roll the contents of the bag

Empty the content into the bowl

5) Chop Goji Berries and add to bowl

6) Chop Raisins and add to bowl

7) Add to bowl any ingredients you fancy from the list above

8) Mix two Eggs in a separate bowl, then add to the mixing bowl

9) Add zest and juice of an orange

Use a grater to get the zest and squeeze the juice

10) Add honey

11) add a splash of rapeseed oil

12 mix thoroughly with a fork

13) check consistency, if too sloppy add flaxseed as it quickly thickens and you can never have too much flaxseed

14) slop out onto a greaseproofed tray (lined with rapeseed oil) 

15) flatten and shape the mixture with a spatula

Prepped for the oven

16) pop into the pre-heated 190c oven for 12 minutes

17) allow the bars to cool for at least an hour before cutting into 10/12 bars

18) package in thin foil or airtight Tupperware and store in the fridge.

Wrapped in foil, two bars to a pack!

As for the training this week, 3 days in bed and not so good until Sunday when I did a 9-mile run which went well, nice to be out after an enforced break!

Hopefully, I can get some more running in this week Saturday will be an early start, as will have to set off at around 5am and though I haven't been able to cycle much my running should keep the fitness there!

If you can sponsor me at all, SarcoidosisUK needs all the support it can get, the link is:

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mark-kelly57

Keep running and keep safe!

Mark