One of my favourite breakfasts is egg fried rice with vegetables.  I had a real fancy for it today and as I was working from home I was able to make it.  I am finding rice an excellent food to eat at the moment.  It feels comfortable in my stomach, it has relatively low calories compared to how , it is nutritious and it is very easy to cook.

If you click on this link, you can see why brown rice is so much more nutritious than white rice.  One reason why it is good to eat in the morning, is because it is an excellent source of manganese which helps with energy production.  It is also a critical component of an antioxidant enzyme which protects our cells from free radical damage.

If you don’t make rice because you think it is too difficult, let me show you how easy it is.

I use brown basmati rice but other brown rices are healthy too.  I find basmati easier to cook and prefer the taste to other types of rice.  I never eat white rice as it has so many nutrients stripped out during processing I don’t see the point of it.

I always rinse mine before cooking in a sieve. Having rinsed the rice well I put one cup in to a large saucepan with two cups of water and I bring it to a very lively boil.

Once it is boiling I put the lid on leaving a slight gap for steam to escape.  You don’t want too much steam to escape or it will dry out too much but if the lid is put on fully, the water boils over and the rice ends up dried out and burnt.

Boil vigorously for 10 minutes and then put the lid on the saucepan.  Do NOT lift the lid or look in the saucepan or all the steam escapes.  You want to keep as much steam in the pan as possible.

Forget about it now for half an hour and the steam completes the cooking.

After half an hour you end up with a pot of perfectly cooked brown basmati rice.

You can fry the rice in coconut oil before adding the water.  It adds a little flavour but it’s not necessary and I don’t to save some calories.  You can also add spices when you add the rice and water and they end up sitting on the top of the rice so they are easy to pick out.  But today I made plain basmati rice.

It is recommended that you do not make more rice than you need to eat at each meal as it can give you food poisoning.  This is a link to the NHS site which explains why.  However, I always make enough for 2 – 4 servings and have been fine.

So while my rice was steaming I decided what to have with it.  The trouble with organic food is that it goes off quickly!

I only bought these last week.  The mould was created because I leave tomatoes at room temperature but I made the mistake of leaving them in the plastic bag.  I did salvage 4 to use though. I picked some Swiss Chard from the garden. I fried a red onion with the chard stalks in coconut oil and then added the chard leaves and chopped cherry tomatoes. When the veggies are cooked, I added 80 g cooked rice.  When it was all cooked to my satisfaction, I pushed it to one side of a large frying pan and cooked the egg in the other half.  I added soy sauce to the egg.  When the egg was cooked, I mixed everything together. Breakfast perfection – egg fried eggs with Swiss chard and tomatoes.

453 calories. I was too busy with meetings and then collecting a poorly son from school to have lunch so I made a quick smoothie with coconut water, an orange, almond butter and protein powder.  It was runny and refreshing and kept me going until dinner.

292 calories. I meant to make a chilli con carne for dinner but I had neither chilli nor kidney beans so instead we had a slow cooked beef and onion dish which I ate with broccoli and carrots.

430 calories.

Adding in the extra calories I used by adding some soya milk to coffee, I consumed 1,208 calories today so nearly bang on target.  Unfortunately there was no time for any exercise which was a shame so that will be a priority tomorrow.

I had a very enjoyable evening in Benenden watching ‘Scrooge The Panto’ put on by the Benenden Players.  It was really good fun – a very good bit of Am’ Dram’.  It is on again over the weekend so go and see it.

Have a happy weekend 🙂