Food websites I love

I love food. For me, cooking and baking are times to be productive and creative. I also love eating. It’s probably my favourite past-time 🙂 So here are the favourite sites I visit on a regular basis for recipes, inspiration and also for the pretty pictures…

1. First of all I have to give kudos to Taste.com.au, NewsLifeMedia’s most popular food website. I’ve been visiting Taste for years, and some of my favourite recipes are from there (banana bread, chicken soup, lasagne, meatball pasta bake to name but a few!). I love the rotating banner they have on the homepage, which will give you some quick dinner inspiration if you need it. All the recipes are rated by users, so if you pick a highly rated recipe I doubt you’ll do wrong. Bookmark it today.
2. Have you liked the Tasty page on Facebook yet? If not, where have you been?!? I picked up on it in my Facebook newsfeed, because all my friends were liking and sharing the videos. This is their Buzzfeed page. You can seriously while away hours of your life just on the Facebook page. You have been warned.
3. The Healthy Chef – A trained chef, nutritionist, author and accredited fitness trainer, Teresa is an amazing woman. Her recipes are delicious AND healthy, which actually isn’t that easy to do sometimes. I found one of my favourite cold-weather recipes, Spicy Red Tomato + Lentil Soup, on Teresa’s website several years ago, and it’s still a family staple (but we add bacon). She also has an online store and health and wellbeing advice. And no, I don’t work for her – I just think her site is awesome.
4. GoodFood is a bit more high-end – a bit fancier, if you will. I like their Top 10 lists (best desserts in Sydney, best pizzas in Brisbane, etc) although some of their recipes are more complicated so better for a weekend cooking session.
5. Not Quite Nigella – This is more a review site, lots of local Sydney eats as well as out-of-town tours. She also posts about local food tours – the best eats in different suburbs. The photos are amazing, worth bookmarking just for them!

What are your favourite food inspiration sites?

Stay Fit & Well,
Lisa x

Things I’m Loving – December 2015

Being December, first up it’s…

• Christmas! – Yes, I am one of THOSE people. The people that embrace Christmas like it’s the last time they’ll ever see Santa again. I love putting up the tree while listening to Christmas carols.
  I love wrapping presents and decorating the house. I love the chaos of Christmas lunch and I love Boxing Day where you lay around all day watching the cricket and eating leftovers. My wonderful husband is Jewish so this year we’ve embraced Chanukah with a Menorah as well as a Christmas tree. Our son loves it – he calls the Menorah ‘Nora’ :)
• Re-reading the Harry Potter series – Every year at the beginning of December I re-read the entire seven-book Harry Potter series. To me, Harry Potter = holiday reading.
  Before I had a child I would have them all read easily by Christmas Day. Now I am a parent, I estimate I will have them read by February LOL. They are truly magical tales, and I can’t wait to read them to my kids once they’re old enough. The ones are the editions I have – the best ones, in my opinion.
  
• Building my business – This month I am working my butt off, scheduling work for my clients so I can take a couple of days off over Christmas.I plan on using December and January to plan what I want my 2016 to look like, how many more clients I can take on once Harrison is in daycare, and how to manage the increased workload. Fun, challenging, stressful and exciting times! I am finding the life of an entrepreneur VERY similar to the life of a parent, I have to say.

  

• Pedicures – When I have the luxury of time, I love a massage, facial or pedicure.
  This month I indulged with a long session at my favourite beauty salon and got my toenails painted a lovely pale blue colour, similar to this… (caveat: these are not my toes). Everyone has their way of relaxing, and this is mine.

• Coffee! – I am really enjoying the Republica Organic brand of coffee right now, specifically the Paris blend. We were given a Nespresso coffee machine as a wedding present, and since having Harrison, I have been more and more into coffee (and the caffeine hit it give you!). After a while I decided to try the supermarket brands of coffee pods and some of them are outstanding. I love choosing what flavour and intensity I feel like that day, and making it myself to whatever strength I want.
  BUT, I’ll be away from the beloved Nespresso machine over Christmas so I’ve decided I’ll go on a coffee detox. Wish me luck!

That’s all from me this year. I’ll be back in a reduced capacity next year, dependent on how busy Lisa Seltzer Social Media Management gets – at the moment it’s looking like I may put the blog on ice until I have more time, but we will see.

Stay Fit & Well,
Lisa x

New recipes to try this season…

Let’s get this straight: Winter is my season. I love the cooler weather, and I love cooking slow cooked, slow roasted, hot meals. This therefore means that Summer is not my friend. BUT, this Summer I was determined to try out a few new recipes, or twists on old favourites, and incorporate them into my Summer menu.

First up was a Donna Hay caesar salad. Being a parent and just generally pushed for time, I took a few shortcuts. Number 1: I bought a roast chook from Red Rooster and added that for extra protein and oomph. Number 2: I also added Cardini’s Caesar Dressing. I challenge you to tell the difference between a freshly made caesar salad dressing and this store-bought dressing. It’s my go-to dressing now, and the bonus is it has less than 1 gram of carbohydrates per serve. Making a caesar salad dressing from scratch? Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Then the weather dipped and became slightly cooler at the beginning of December, and I thought I’d cook up a batch of my spaghetti bolognaise. I add all the vegies I can possibly chop up into teeny tiny bits (in this case: capsicum, carrot, celery and courgette…sorry, ‘zucchini’ for the non-Brits), store-bought pasta sauce, garlic, herbs, beef mince and beef stock and then I simmer it for an hour and a half. So yes, the weather does have to be cool, because it sure heats up the house! Cooking for a toddler means that you can’t add spice to anything. Or you can, but that guarantees that they won’t end up eating it. So instead, I added Cholula Hot Sauce to my own serving before I ate.

My husband will vouch for the fact that I’m a big fan of spicy food, as I keep trying to sneak chilli flakes into everything we eat (cereal excepted), and I am a new-found lover of Cholula. For those worried about the spice level, it’s hot, but the spice hit disappears very quickly, so you’re not left lunging for the nearest cold glass of milk or slice of cucumber. It has a sweetness to it that is really different to a traditional hot sauce.

It’s going to be hard, and I’m going to be out of my comfort zone cooking ‘hot weather food’ (we usually have BBQs at least half the week in Summer!) but I’m going to give it a red-hot go.

I’m planning on trying more salads than the few that are in my current repertoire, and also even attempting a Thai Beef Salad (this could go either way). It’s going to be a long, hot Summer, so stay tuned for more…

Stay Fit & Well,
Lisa x

Things I’m Loving – November 2015

This month has been HUGE for me. I’ve launched my new website – www.lisaseltzer.com – and put a lot of time and energy into planning how I’ll be working for the next few years. It’s energising, challenging, frustrating (particularly when it comes to technology fails!) but most of all exciting. For so many years I’ve worked for other people, often thinking “I could do this better than you” and now I AM. By the by, if you need any help with your social media, or just want to chat about what I think of your social media presence, feel free to get in touch – info@lisaseltzer.com

Now, onto other things in my life that I’m enjoying this month…

• Fresh flowers – I love flowers. Some may say my love borders on obsession (namely, my husband) but I think flowers add a great energy to a room and to a home. I’m particularly partial to pale pink roses at the moment.

• Homemade pizza – Our family LOVES pizza. And by far the healthiest and tastiest option we’ve found is to make our own. We use wholemeal lebanese bread and whatever toppings we each fancy, and it makes for awesome leftovers for lunch the next day. A super easy and pretty healthy dinner (depending on how much cheese you use!)

• Canva – I’m proficient in Photoshop and InDesign, but they’re expensive design programs to buy. A cheaper, quicker and easier online tool I’ve found is Canva. Canva is a website that allows you to design everything from Facebook cover images (already sized to the correct dimensions) to printed posters. I use it to create social media images for work and personal use, and it’s a fantastic tool. They even have a photo library that you can purchase images from for as little as $1. Too easy.

• The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant – I have very little time to read these days, and when I do I want an escapist pleasure read. Anything by Sarah Dunant fits that bill, and The Birth of Venus is the latest book to grab me. Historical fiction, with a huge amount of fact thrown in, it’s got me gripped late into the night when I should be using my precious time to sleep! That’s how you know you’ve found a good book.

• Tamburlaine organic wine – My husband and I recently had a long weekend away in the Hunter Valley, which is a fantastic wine region in NSW, Australia. We visited loads of wineries throughout the weekend, but went back to our all-time favourite, Tamburlaine. We love Tamburlaine so much that we even got married there last year! (and drank more wine than had been consumed by a wedding there EVER – great claim to fame!). This visit we discovered a beautiful Marsanne, another couple of bottles of the GSM (Grenache Shirz Merlot) we had at our wedding, and took home a case of the Semillon Sauvignon Blanc – it will be our go-to wine this summer.

 

Stay Fit & Well this month,
Lisa x

 

Lifestyle in focus at the Fitness and Health Expo Sydney

The 2015 Fitness & Health Expo was on at Olympic Park, Sydney a couple of weeks ago, and I made a day of it with a friend. We had a great time looking around the exhibition hall – stall holders covered a lot of bases, from organic ‘healthy’ chocolate companies, to body-building protein and supplement stalls.

But by far the highlights were discovering a ridiculously low calorie alternative to noodles or pasta, and watching Commando in action on the CrossFit stage.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of Commando doing his thing and working out on the main stage, but I do have this very grainy shot of Michelle Bridges. She answered lots of questions about everything from recovering from training injuries to the benefits of going vegetarian to lose weight (her advice – don’t do it just to lose weight!). Heavily pregnant, I was amazed she could stay standing up as long as she did, but that’s one of the benefits of being incredibly fit to begin with!

Commando also chatted on the Healthy Living Stage, and gave great advice about functional movement, and increasing your range of movement so you don’t get injured in the first place (think stretching, foam rolling and regular massage).

There were loads of product stalls, but the one that really stood out for me was the Slendier stall. Slendier make a range of pasta and noodle alternatives, made from the Chinese konjac vegetable, which are low in calories and high in fibre. We tried a sample of the spaghetti with sauce and it honestly didn’t taste much different to pasta, with only a softer or silkier texture. I was sold, and bought several packets. They’re also available in Coles and Woolworths.

 

We tried lots of energy juices, low-carb bread and protein bars, and it was really interesting seeing the range of products on show, and it was a healthy and fun day out. I’m already looking forward to next year’s show…

Stay Fit & Well,
Lisa x