Easy Shrimp Tacos

April 11, 2014

Easy Shrimp Tacos

This week’s Friday Fare is dedicated to my friend, Tenny, who requested an easy shrimp tacos recipe for the upcoming Cinco de Mayo!

I thought this was a great idea because a) I wanted to make taco’s anyway and b) Now you can all make these taco’s for your cinco de mayo parties, or to just eat and enjoy. This taco has my own Alice twist on it. Instead of cabbage, I have included spinach because then you don’t have to spend ages shredding cabbage. Plus, spinach is extremely healthy for you and very, very tasty. I decided to use guacamole to spread onto the taco (like butter on bread) AND also as a topping. The main ingredient in guacamole is avocado, which is a source of healthy fats and has quite a range of vitamins and minerals. Healthy fats are a necessity to aid your body’s absorption of vitamins and minerals too, by the way.

Your carbohydrate source comes from the corn tortilla’s, and your protein comes from the shrimp! I am a mega fan of shrimp (as those of you on Instagram know) because they are low in calories but quite dense in protein. For example, 4 ounces of shrimp is only 80 calories and has 18 grams of protein!

For all you students out there, I recommend buying frozen shrimp in bulk because it is much cheaper and it is really easy to thaw – you just put it in hot water for a few minutes and it is ready to cook.

Shrimp Tacos

Alice Williams

Celebrate Cinco de Mayo with these tasty and healthy shrimp tacos!

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Ingredients

For the taco's
2 corn tortilla's I used blue corn tortilla's from Mi Abuelita Bontia Naturals
1 cup fresh spinach
4 oz shrimp or 8 jumbo shrimp
Juice of half a lime
1-2 teaspoons cumin
1-2 teaspoons garlic salt or 1 clove of crushed garlic and 1-2 teaspoons of high quality salt
For the Guacamole
1 ripe avocado
2 crushed cloves of garlic
Juice of 1/2 a lime
3-4 cilantro leaves
Optional - 1/2 diced jalapeno

Instructions

1. Prep the guacamole first. Trust me, you will devour the taco's and forget all about the guacamole if you have not made it first! To do that, mash all of the ingredients listed above for the guacamole in a small bowl and set aside.
2. Now get a large frying pan and put over a high heat. Wait 30 seconds to 1 minute until the pan is quite hot and then put the taco on it. Cook each side of the taco for 30 seconds to 1 minute - until they are lightly browned.
3. Once both taco's are cooked, you can spread your guacamole onto them. I used about half of the guacamole I made to spread onto the taco's. Then add a layer of spinach onto your taco's, will require about 4 spinach leaves, depending on how big they are. Set aside for now,
4. Saute the shrimp in a frying pan, using either coconut oil or olive oil. I used a spray olive oil to minimize the calories and fat since I am getting a substantial amount of healthy fats from the avocado already. Sprinkle the cumin and garlic salt over the shrimp, and then drizzle the lime juice over the shrimp. Please adjust the amount you add to your taste.
5. Once the shrimp has cooked (does not take long, maybe 5-8 minutes?) place them evenly onto your taco's, and place another layer of spinach on top of them. Add some more guacamole if you want, and some salsa if you have made or have some as well.
6. Place a few cilantro leaves on the top of the taco's (if you want), drizzle some more lime juice on them and then fold, and enjoy!

I hope you have all enjoyed this week’s edition of Friday Fare! I love this recipe because it is quite a light dish, yet very satisfying, tasty and healthy all at the same time 🙂 I prefer to use corn tortilla’s because flour tortilla’s tend to have a lot more ingredients in them whereas corn tortilla’s are much simpler. Annoyingly though, flour tortilla’s do have more protein and fiber but corn tortilla’s have less calories. And for those who are intolerant to wheat and gluten, corn tortilla’s are the obvious winner here. I think corn tortilla’s are tastier too hehe, but that is just my personal opinion!

As always, if you recreate these, please please use the hashtag #fridayfare and tag me in your post so that I can see them! And if you like the posts, why not subscribe .. 🙂

Honestly yours,
Alice

Fitness, Health, Sunday Summary

Sunday Summary

February 16, 2014

Congratulations on another successful week everyone! I hope you have all been mindful of what you have been eating (Valentine’s Day is of course an exception!) and making sure you are staying active throughout the week.

What did you all do for Valentine’s Day? My Valentine of 5 years was sweet enough to come and see visit me (he lives about an hour and a half away) and we went out for Japanese food. I had a delicious and hearty soup of soba noodles (soba noodles are made out of buckwheat) and we shared some gyoza (how can you not?) and some grilled lamb chops.

We went to Sushi Zen; have any of you San Franciscans ever been there?

Apart from the extremely decadent banoffee pie (recipe here) I made as a Valentine’s Day gift, this weekend has been surprisingly healthy. I for one always give myself a little more wiggle room during the weekends because I like to meet up for meals with friends and I know that it is unrealistic to expect to eat healthily 100% of the time. My boyfriend and I went to a great restaurant for lunch yesterday in the Castro area of San Francisco called Chow. They had many healthy options, and a lot of their offerings were organic which is always nice to see. I got a Chai BaBa Chai to drink (delishhhh), Arancini as a shared appetizer and an amazing Beet salad with greens, fennel, endive, grapefruit, goat cheese and avocado.

Jump rope is #bae

In fitness news, I have re-discovered my love for jump rope (a.k.a skipping for all my European readers)! I became inspired by seeing amazing jump rope videos by the likes of Michael Olajide, Jr. who trains various models including Adriana Lima, and bernapril20 from Instagram. Jump rope is also a great form of cardio and strength conditioning so I highly recommend you try it out. I recently reached out to Miss Galaxy Australia 2012, Danielle Johnson, and asked her what she did to keep her legs in amazing shape, and one of her pieces of advice was to jump rope! So just do it everyone, it’s cheap, can be done anywhere and portable.

Here is a little video I posted of me on Instagram doing criss-cross jumps. I was SO excited I could do these again … they are harder than they look everyone!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yxSXAEfTY&feature=youtu.be]

Hope everyone had a great weekend, and have a great fresh start to your week! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a message in the comment section below, email me or get in touch via my social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest).

Honestly yours,
Alice

Friday Fare, Health

Friday Fare a collection of healthy recipes

January 17, 2014

Hey everyone! Welcome to the first edition of Friday Fare a collection of healthy recipes.

Friday Fare is going to be a regular weekly post (may become bi-weekly during the uni semester though unfortunately) where I will be posting healthy and filling breakfast, lunch, or dinner recipes. Why did I choose ‘Friday Fare’ as opposed to ‘Monday Meals’ or ‘Tasty Tuesday’? Well a) I wanted to be original and b) ….

Which is exactly what I will be doing. Posting a range of foods, especially of a particular type – the healthy and nutritious type 🙂

The first edition of Friday Fare features one of my favorite simple meals that can be eaten for lunch or dinner. What I made for you all today is a simple stir-fry featuring a lean protein – shrimp, carbohydrate source – sweet potato, healthy fats – coconut oil, and plenty of fresh vegetables. It only took me about 30 – 40 minutes to make (chopping, cooking and everything) and is such a delicious and nutritious meal! The photo below shows you all the ingredients you need to make this delicious stir-fry.

As you can see, you really do not need many ingredients at all! They are all relatively cheap as well, although I know shrimp is not that cheap but if you buy it frozen you can get some great deals. As you can see, I did not put a measurement on how much salt or cumin to use. This is because I think you should spice and salt the stir-fry according to how you like it. As a rule of thumb though, you can start off with a teaspoon of salt and cumin, and then add more if you like the flavors.

The secret to making my vegetables quickly and in a healthy way is my beautiful steamer … Ta da! I do not know what I would do without this baby. I literally chop up my veggies and throw it in my steamer and then put the steamer in my microwave for a few minutes. I know some of my old housemates will recognize the steamer, they loved using it 😉

Alright, now that you know what ingredients to use, and how to make the veggies, I will now tell you how to make it and nutritional value of this dish.

Healthy and filling shrimp stir-fry with sweet potato and steamed veggies

1. Make sure you have done your prep work – this includes chopping, getting all your spices out, and etc.

2. Throw the chopped broccoli and sweet potato in your steamer and microwave for 5 minutes. If you do not have a steamer, you can mimic the steaming action by placing the vegetables in a frying pan and adding about 2-3 tablespoons of water and then placing a lid on top of the pan. Check it every few minutes to see how soft the veggies are.

3. Whilst the veggies are being steamed, get a frying pan and heat the coconut oil in the pan until the coconut oil has melted (coconut oil is usually found cold-pressed so is in a solid state).

4. Then put your diced garlic and shrimp in the pan and fry until the shrimp is pink on each side. Lightly season the shrimp with some salt and cumin, and add half of your half tablespoon of chicken broth. Once the shrimp is cooked, place the shrimp on a separate plate for now (we will come back to it shortly).

5. Put your spinach into the frying pan with a splash of water. And no, not a Niagara Falls splash, just a tablespoon or so of water. This will create a nice steaming effect for the spinach. I typically just steam my spinach in the pan because since the sweet potato and broccoli take longer to steam and soften, if I add the spinach in with them, it will come out a pile of mush!

6. Now your sweet potato and broccoli should be steamed. Take them out of the steamer and add them to the spinach in the frying pan. After a minute or two, add the shrimp back into the pan so all the flavors mesh together.

Voila, and there you have it! A really simple, healthy and quite filling meal. If you do feel as if you want more food, feel free to add some more sweet potato, shrimp or veggies as you wish. Keep in mind that this will change the nutritional values of what I posted below. Adjust it to your own unique daily caloric needs 🙂 If you are weird like me, you can chop an ounce of Parmesan and nibble on that whilst enjoying the stir-fry (Parmesan has a surprisingly high protein content).

Mmmmmmm. As you can see, I am a chili fiend so added some chili powder to it. I hope you all enjoy the meal! Let me know if you would like me to post meals with specific ingredients, anything you can think of!

Nutritional Info
Calories: 343
Protein: 30 grams
Carbohydrates: 54 grams (mostly all from the sweet potato which has 41 grams in one cup)
Fat: 6 grams
Fiber: 14 grams

Honestly yours,
Alice

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