Hello, fellow sports enthusiasts! Masha here for another episode of Masha’s Jars Nutrition Week: what to eat when working out and why? Feel free to check out my food blog to see who I am and what I do! But in the meantime, I’ll provide you with 2 recipes for a healthy day.

Breakfast: savoury jar

Some time ago, I tried out the ketogenic diet, which excludes most carbohydrates in order to make your body run on fat. It works pretty well and fast, and even some sportsmen have found their ideal lifestyle going keto. As a substitute for my granola-yoghurt-fruit jars, about which you can read in my first blogpost, I used cottage cheese, scrambled eggs and nuts. A savoury breakfast high in protein and low in sugar! But adding some carbs to it is easy: simply cut a good piece of brown bread to eat with the jar.

Savoury Jar
Savoury Jar

INGREDIENTS – 1 portion

  • cottage cheese: 100g to 200g, depending on how hungry you are
  • 2 eggs
  • some olive oil
  • pepper, salt, oregano/thyme/rosemary optional
  • salted pistachios
  • slice of brown bread for carbs

 

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat up some olive oil in a flat frying pan and break the eggs into it. Add freshly ground pepper and a pinch of salt and stir while they’re frying. Add other spices to taste.

Remove the pan from the heat after 2 minutes. The scrambled eggs must still be a bit fluffy and moist. Eggs are a great protein base to start the day with muscle-building nutrients!

Scoop your cottage cheese into a jar and top with the scrambled eggs. Cottage cheese is also full of protein, has some fat and is low in carbs. It’s also very yummy.

Add some 10 to 20 pistachios to the jar. I like them roasted and salted, which may not be the healthiest variety, but it’s so good! Pistachios again will add protein, but also healthy fats that slow down your carb absorption.

Serve with brown or whole-grain bread for carbs! You can use them 1h before a workout to have sufficiently high glycogen levels that give you energy. Fill up your glycogen to 2h after working out with some pasta, rice, legumes, or more bread.

 

Don’t be shy and pimp this savoury jar with some seeds, other nuts, or cut up vegetables!

Lunch: Asian style pasta

Do you ever get these Asian food cravings? Like you don’t want Italian or Middle-Eastern or South-American, but you really want some soy sauce and crispy vegetables and some spiciness. I have those cravings every now and then, so I started to experiment with some of my own creations with very simple ingredients. I recently discovered this amazing soy sauce pasta and I will surely make it again!

Asian Pasta
Asian Pasta

INGREDIENTS – 2 portions

  • Pasta to choice – I like this with farfalle, little bowties
  • Good quality soy sauce
  • Olive oil
  • 1 red bell pepper
  • ½ broccoli
  • 1 big carrot
  • 1 spring onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • ½ teaspoon of sambal
  • ½ can of lentils
  • A handful of plain peanuts

INSTRUCTIONS

Get a pot with water ready to boil the pasta. Throw the pasta in and check the box how long it needs.

Meanwhile, cut the bell pepper into thin strips, cut the carrot julienne (size of a match), the broccoli into small bite-sized pieces, and the spring onion into round slices. Finely chop the garlic clove.

Heat up some olive oil in a saucepan and add the garlic. Stir and fry till it’s brown. Then add the bell pepper pieces, carrot, and broccoli. Fry for some 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Don’t forget to get your pasta out of the water and drain it.

Take a dry pan and roast the peanuts in it for 10 minutes, while wiggling the pan every now and then.

Meanwhile, add 100ml of soy sauce, sambal and the lentils to the saucepan. Stir well. Here, you could even add ½ teaspoon of sugar, just to balance the flavours. Turn off the heat, but let it sit for 5 more minutes.

 

Now everything should be done: pasta, nuts, and vegetables. Serve the pasta with sauce over it, then add some of the freshly cut spring onion and the roasted peanuts on top. Here’s a very easy meal with lots of carbs for energy and all the vitamins your body needs coming from the vegetables. The peanuts bring great flavour to the dish, but also add good fats. Lentils are your meat surrogate here: they give you your needed protein, but so does broccoli!