The Very Healthy Fancy Poached Eggs

I tried this recipe for lunch yesterday. Immediately I reported to my sister that if she cooks it for someone he will marry her. That wouldn’t work with my husband, because he hates eggs, but in general it is worth a try. HA-HA!

I cooked poached eggs for the first time ever! Guess why? I saw them recently at the Imperial Café in the center of Prague, a very sophisticated restaurant indeed. I had a very boring fish there, when I saw a waiter with a plate of very interesting design with poached eggs, veggies and bread. I wanted that too, but they didn’t have a gluten free option.

Later on, I saw a picture on Pinterest and decided to try. I always want to eat good and healthy breakfasts with eggs, I swear, but in the morning I usually start to load up on different types of sugars: pancakes, peanut butter, waffles, fruit and so on. Then I find myself full of it with no place for a healthy egg.

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 Firstly, I prepared toasts. I used gluten free whole grain sandwich bread from Marks and Spencer.

Then I made an avocado-parmesan salad. Super easy, just cut an avocado, grated some Parmesan cheese and mixed them together.

The last step before cooking eggs was to put the salad on the toasts. So I was ready to poach…

 I read a few articles on how to poach an egg. It seemed difficult to me. Also it was messy. I heated a deep pan until the water was boiling, broke an egg into a bowl and then poured it from a bowl into boiling water. The white partially fell off, but the egg was still poached. Maybe not very fancy for the first time, but who cares.

 Since then I have been a big fan of poached eggs, but still find it quite difficult to cook them for breakfast, when kids are messing around. I’d better save them for lunch.

Ingredients:

  • 2 eggs
  • 2 pieces of gluten free sandwich bread
  • a half of an avocado
  • One tsp of grated Parmesan
  • Salt and pepper
  • Few cherry tomatoes or cut one big tomato

 

What to visit in Prague if you are fit enough: The South Tower of St. Vitus Cathedral.

We have visited the South Tower for the first time just a few weeks ago during The Prague Towers Game. I was sooo excited! I was just wondering why I had never visited it before?

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Yes, you have to climb 287 steeply steps (which is not a big deal for me or my friends), but the view is even more stunning than you can expect._DSC1318-29Mar2015

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Another Look at Russian Cuisine from an Insider. Can it be healthy for a sportsman?

 I am often asked if I cook Russian food at home. I must admit, no I don’t. Since my early childhood a lot of Russian dishes seemed disgusting to me, especially, all kinds of salads with mayonnaise. I used to ask my mom to leave me all the salad ingredients separately and ate them as is.

I have been living in Europe for nine years now and ever since I moved I almost stopped to cook Russian food at all. Maybe the climate is not appropriate for such greasy food; maybe I found more interesting combinations, which I had never encountered living in Russia.

My mom came to visit me for the first time and started to cook some forgotten dishes from my childhood. They look so weird, but some are delicious. I got a present from my sister, a cup with fairy-tale heroes from one crazy Russian cartoon “The Hedgehog in the Fog” and I was happy as a child to eat food I had last time eaten many years ago in the dishes with very forgotten fairy-tale. Exciting!

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As I am maintaining a healthy lifestyle and blah blah I want to share one recipe that is very high in proteins, easy and tasty. We ate it a lot with my siblings when we were children. It is called lazy vareniky, because you do not need to make dough or to roll curd cheese inside. It is all in one and it is very healthy.

For those, who are not familiar with curd cheese or tvorog (russian) or tvaroh (czech) or quark I explain.

Quark is a member of the acid-set cheese group. It is made by warming soured milk until the desired degree of coagulation (curdling) of milk proteins is met, and then strained. In Russian families, it is especially recommended for growing babies. It can be simply enjoyed with sour cream, or jam, sugar, sugar condensed milk, as a breakfast food. It is often used as a stuffing in blinchiki offered at many fast-food restaurants

Russian tvorog option is more hard than European. But in Czech Republic we can have almost the same. There are a lot of tvaroh to choose either hard or soft, because it is very common in Czech cuisine as well.

So I took 250g of hard tvaroh and 250 g of the soft one and mixed them together with one egg and a pinch of salt. Normally, we have to put sugar in it (about 2 table spoons), but remember, healthy food and do not put sugar. Then I take flour, in my case it is gluten free flour, and mix it in until it looks like soft dough (maybe about one cup or so). It must be really soft, almost the same as tvaroh or quark was before an egg was added. I feel like gluten free flour makes it much softer than normal one.

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Then I make small balls or, another option is to cut it, as I did on the picture, then boil it in boiling water until they float (few minutes). Put small piece of butter on the top and a bit of icing sugar, if you want.

Another good recipe is a kompot. It is a traditional Russian drink – a kind of fruit and berry punch, but cooked in boiling water. Sometimes I add sugar, but more often I do not. Apples or pears make it sweet enough. I cook from frozen berries in winter and it tastes great. Can be drank cold or hot.

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The Prague Half Marathon Is Here!

It has been three days since Prague Half Marathon. My emotions have settled down, my legs are not sore anymore and I am quite happy to share my experience with you.

I had prepared for the race a bit more this year. I wanted to beat my result and I wanted to see progress of my year around training process as well. First, I started a pre-race nutrition plan. I reduced, well, I almost excluded all sweets and unhealthy stuff. I was still gluten and meat free, which made my diet a bit tricky. The second day after I had started the meal plan I felt terrible. I had to miss several workouts, because I was weak and the baby was crying all night long. The start date was implacably approaching…

My husband took the baby the day before the race, so I had a chance to sleep all night. I even felt very strange as I had not slept uninterrupted for a long period. Notwithstanding I tried to have healthy breakfast the morning of the race: oatmeal. I could not eat that. I wanted peanut butter toast and I decided to follow my gut feeling. That was the right idea.

I met with my friends. We all were so cold. The weather was chilly and windy. I had my winter jacket on and I did not want to take it off for as long as I could.

I started in the middle of the coral E joining my friend. After the first 500 meters I felt my legs burning. I looked at my Garmin and saw that the pace was extremely fast for me (4:38min/k). I tried to slow down to 5:00/kilometer or even more. The first 5 kilometers I was battling with myself to slow down. But I did not want to listen to my mind. I was so excited, that I almost did a 5k PR, which is not a great idea when you run a half marathon.

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Finally, I was very happy and running easily, so I made my 10k personal record. That was inspiring, but not for a long time. Right after the 11th kilometer I felt weak. I ate a gel, drank some isotonic and was ready to continue, when I saw 1:50 pacemaker passed me by. I tried to follow him, but I felt tired. It seemed I had run too fast during the first half. As much as I tried to keep my pace above 5:30, I often saw 5:45 and tried even more with the same result.

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At the 18th kilometer I started to feel frustrated, but my husband came to pace me at the end. He was chatting a lot and that made me angry, because I could barely speak. He did many sprints to make photos and cheer me up. I think it helped and I sprinted the last hundred meters to the finish line.

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1 hour and 56 minutes this time. Maybe I would have been able to do better, if I did not run so fast in the beginning. Next time:)

Never the less, I am the 558th out of 2708 women and 289/1339 in my age group, which is at the top 25%. Continue reading