Clean Eating | Indulgent, No-Bake Brownie Bites

I am a huge fan of making protein balls - they're quick, easy, indulgent and pack a huge nutrient punch. The recipe I'm about to share with you, is by far the most delicious I have ever created, I hope you love it too.

Calories Per Ball | 93

Ingredients

Protein Balls

110g Smooth Peanut Butter

25g Chia & Flax Seeds

23g Ground Almonds

15g Cacao Nibs

5g Purple Powder

5g Green Powder

5 Prunes

5g Coconut Blossom Nectar

Chocolate Coating

3 Squares 85% Dark Chocolate

10g Virgin Organic Raw Coconut Oil

Instructions

1. Mix all the Protein Ball Ingredients Together

Mix all the ingredients for the protein balls into a food processor, I personally use my favourite toy, the NutriBullet.

I love using supplement powders to optimise the nutritious impact of these protein balls. The two powders I utilise in this recipe are, Hion Purple Powder Slimberry Metablend and Hion Green Powder Ultimate Blend. 

Superfood Supplement Ingredients!

Purple Powder

Beetroot, Garcinia Cambogia, Bilberry, Flax Seed, Rosehip, Green Tea Extract, Apple Cider Vinegar Powder, Pomegranate, Cranberry Extract, Goji Berry, Green Coffee Bean Extract (50% CGA - *Chlorogenic acid), Acai Berry, Raspberry, Montmorency Cherry, Blueberry, Lingonberry Extract

Green Powder

Wheatgrass, Barley Grass, Maca Root, Flax Seed, Green Tea Extract, Lucuma, Spirulina, Chlorella, Baobab, Acai Berry, Raspberry Ketones

2. Shape the Mixture Into Balls

Time to get messy! The ingredients list I provided above makes roughly 15 servings, depending on size. I prefer mine bite-size, but there's no reason why you can't make yours bigger or smaller - but remember they're highly nutritious, but highly calorific!

3. Freeze

Time to pop your little creations into the freezer and get started on the chocolate coating

4. Melt Chocolate and Coconut oil

On a low heat, melt 85% dark chocolate and coconut oil until liquid and leave to cool

5. Time to dip!

Take your protein balls out of the freezer and start the process of coating them in your melted chocolate and place on grease-proof baking paper.

I normally use a fork to pick them up, or you can go for it and use your fingers to coat them

 6. EAT!
This is where I can't resist eating (at least) one right away, but if you have more patience than me, leave to cool and pop into a Tupperware dish for an indulgent, rich, nutritious, guilt free sweet-tooth satisfier!

I love this recipe because it's so simple, so fool-proof and so quick!

They remind me of Reece's Peanut Butter Cups (but, you know without the E322, Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate, Propyl Gallate, E330, Ascorbyl Palmitate...it also says they are *Produced from genetically modified Sugar Beets, Corn and/or Soy Beans). It's just another example of an easy, delicious recipe that allows you to enjoy and satisfy a sweet-tooth craving without bombarding your body with damaging chemicals and refined ingredients...Remember, there's always an alternative! 

I hope you enjoy this indulgent recipe, let me know if you tried it or if you have a go-to recipe that you love! 

Happy eating!

x

Gamification: Level 1 | Why We’re all Players

In an all-Wireless World are you #Winning?

When I think of the word, gamification, I imagine a retro-pixelated world of surrealism, or an ultra-futuristic landscape of lasers…but maybe that’s just me.

The sheer proliferation and pervasion of mobile devices and wearables is undeniable. In fact, it was recently reported by Gartner that 4.9 billion connected things are expected to saturate the market by the end of this year, with the number sky-rocketing to 25 billion by 2020. 

What Do Mobile Devices Have to Do with Gamification?

IEEE experts predict “gaming will be integrated into more than 85% of daily tasks by 2020” and that “our mobile devices will be the hub for all the ‘games’ we’ll be playing throughout a normal day by tracking the data we submit and using it to connect to everything”.

So What Exactly is Gamification?

Coined in 2002, it can be described as the craft of deriving all the fun and engaging elements found in games and applying them to real-world or productive activities.

The concept of gamification can take shape as a multitude of different elements, mechanics and ideas. Let’s first identify the main groupings.

7 Ways Gamification Keeps Users Engaged

1. Progress and Tracking

This grouping represents a very important concept that underpins the premise of gamification, whereby the process of tracking, interpreting and presenting big data allows users to track progress, receive feedback, follow a narrative/storyline and benchmark themselves.

2. Rewards

These can be random, pleasant surprises to keep engagement interesting and varietous, or more commonly presented to the user when they reach a milestone or achievement.

3. Socialisation

 Given the prolific rise in social networking adoption, the application of socialising is crucial to gamification and more easily implemented. Socialisation can include ways to share progress, connect to a community, or benchmark and compete with one another.

4. Surrealism and Escapism

What makes gaming so engaging is the ability to step out of reality, examples include: virtual worlds & communities; customisation & personalisation; and creativity tools.

5. Achievement

Humans are fueled by striving towards their next accomplishment and can be engaged via challenges, learning, certification & badges, levels, and quests

6. Contribution

Feeling we are serving a wider purpose is crucial to continued engagement; examples include gifting, sharing and helping.

7. Playing

Elements listed here are likely to be the features that first spring to mind when conceptualizing gamification; elements include: point-scoring, leaderboards, virtual economies, and random chances. 

5 Ways you may Already be Gaming in Your Everyday Life

To give some context to gamification elements, let’s take a look at some of the more well known examples of gamification that have crept into our everyday lives. 

1. FitBit

This application uses multiple elements of gamification to foster loyalty. Used to capture and interpret data that users are already generating during daily activities; such as heart rate, steps and sleep patterns. FitBit allows you to track your progress and also benchmark against others. This engages what has been coined, ‘co-opertition’ – users participating for a common purpose engaged by the motivation to compete against each other. 

2. Yelp

We live in a declarative age; the concept of ‘checking in’ across your networking channels is a well-known social norm. – Checking in via Facebook, does indeed engage socialisation elements, however this data is lost, untracked and forgotten as time continues, in other words there is no increased incentive for prolonged engagement. Apps such as Yelp and FourSquare however collect or track multiple check-ins as progress – allowing you to benchmark yourself against a like-minded community and to achieve badges and social status based on continued use of the application. Users are also encouraged to contribute to a community by giving tips and reviews.

3. Starbucks Rewards

What might just push you to choose Starbucks over another coffee shop across the road is the continued use of their rewards app. This app transforms the concept of payment by not only removing the normal sensation of parting with cash, but it also presents users with stars, which convert to real-life rewards and discounts, and allows the user to move up various membership levels.

4. Waze

This community-based sat-nav application makes use of escapism with the use of avatars, gaming levels, and seemingly random virtual rewards, or ‘goodies’ you essentially drive through and munch in a real-life ‘Pac man’ style experience. These goodies are actually strategically placed in areas where the app needs to correct map data.

The community elements allow users to work towards a common goal. Wazers can flag speed cameras, traffic, police-cars and hazards for a more informed journey.

We’re all Accidental Gamers

It seems we participate in elements of gamification every single day without even realising we’re being intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to engage – it’s what makes us human.

As enterprises worldwide introduce new and more immersive ways to drive continuous engagement with gamification elements, both on premises and out in public; a fast, reliable and safe Wi-Fi network infrastructure will prove essential to not only support increasing device densities, but to also allow a stable cellular offload solution.

Think about how elements of gamification are already integrated into your daily life. What’s keeping you engaged and motivated? If you’d like to explore these concepts further be sure to progress to Gamification: Level 2.

This blog originally appears here.

Clean Eating | Cauliflower Crust Pizza

Ever since discovering the numerous clean-eating substitute recipes made possible by using cauliflower, from 'rice' to 'mash potato' - it's pizza that I've been the most anxious to try for myself!

Calories | 555

INGREDIENTS

Base
1 Cauliflower

1 Egg
15g Cheese

Sauce
6 Plum Tomatoes
1/4 Red Onion

Toppings
1 Courgette
1/2 Avocado
20g Cheese

The World is Pizza Crazy!

A photo of the Earth may as well have pepperonis on it, because we are pizza mad! Did you know that pizza is considered the most popular meal in the world? Over 5 billion pizzas are sold worldwide each year - which is colossal, but also makes me realise just how much food there is available for everyone in the world :(


   The USA are pizza-eating machines, consuming 100 acres of pizza a day - that's 350 slices a second! 

Are we addicted? Science would say so. Apparently pizza is the most addictive food of all...yup, more so than chocolate. It seems highly processed foods, like pizza as most of us know it, share certain characteristics with addictive drugs! For example, both tend to be consumed in concentrated doses and both are absorbed quickly by the body.


Refined Flour is Dangerous for Your Health

Of course pizza healthiness varies, but for the most part we are consuming a factory product, high in carbohydrates and saturated fat. It contains refined flour and studies show that any excess of this contributes to obesity, increases cholesterol, and can raise sugar levels in the blood over time. Is it worth it?

A recent study I read looked at several pizza restaurants, pizza varieties and major pizza chains in order to analyse dietary information across the board. Unbelievably the study showed that for most vendors, a single pizza slice contained more fat than an average cheese burger!

So Why on Earth am I Making Pizza??

Clean eating is good for your body, and I find it much more fun trying to re-create our guilty pleasures, than eating leaves. I decided to make an unprocessed, flour-free pizza that doesn't pose a health risk. Win-win!

The Method

1. Turn up the Heat
Pre-heat your oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas Mark 6

2. Blitz Your Cauliflower
Get yourself a fresh cauliflower, chop it up and whizz it in a NutriBullet or other type of food processor.

     

You may find you have to keep stopping the NutriBullet to give the container a shake to move the pieces around, but keep going and you'll end up with a 'rice-like' consistency

3. Cook your cauliflower
I normally cook it over the hob with a little coconut oil until it's soft, but you can also microwave it


4. Drain Your Base!
This is important, you need to drain the blitzed cauliflower of water, or your pizza base will be super soggy. 

I recommend either squeezing the water out through a muslin cloth, or perhaps trying to use a sieve to push water through. You could also try to boil off some of the water too.

5. Grate it
Grate your cheese, be sure to separate some for base and topping!

6. Mix it
Mix an egg and the cheese into the cauliflower. Of course you can opt for a 'flax egg' to keep it vegan! I'm a big fan of this alternative and often use flax seeds to help with texture of the base anyway, ground almonds works a treat too!

I often use lactose-free cheese, but I think as this is the only naughty ingredient in the whole recipe, you can pick your favourite - of course to keep this vegan you can omit the cheese, you can find alternatives, such as 'cashew cheese' here.

7. Shape Your Base
Pat the base mix onto a tray covered in baking parchment and brush lightly with coconut oil. I usually make mine about 5mm thick

8.  Bake Your Crust

Pop it in the pre-heated oven for around 15 minutes, or until it's golden brown and starting to crisp at the edges 

9.  Prepare Your Sauce & Toppings!

Whilst your crust is baking, prepare your sauce and toppings! You can be as creative or plain as you like here. For this pizza I opted for tomato sauce, courgette, chives, cheese and avocado.

Tomato Sauce Base

You're welcome to use your favourite tomato base sauce here, however in the spirit of clean eating, it's always best to know what's going into your body! I simply blitz the plum tomatoes, red onion and seasoning to taste

         

The Courgette & Avocado

I fried aubergine in coconut oil and sprinkled them with some black pepper and chives. For the avocado, I just simply cube half.

10. Take out Your Base

Take your base out and leave it to cool for a few minutes

11. Turn up the Heat

Turn your oven up to 240C/220C Fan/Gas Mark 8

12. Assemble Your Pizza!

Onto your baked crust, add the tomato sauce, courgette and cheese. I leave the avocado until after!

13. Bake Your Pizza

Pop your pizza in the oven and bake for around 10-15 minutes

14. EAT

Take your pizza out the oven, leave to cool, add your cubed avocado and EAT!

I really hope you enjoy this clean-eating recipe, it may take a couple of attempts to perfect, but is so worth it. I'd love to see your delicious attempts - be sure to leave a comment or of course tweet me @laurajreeves! 

Bliss or Miss? | Shoryu Ramen

I recently visited a little gem I frequent on Regent Street, London named Shoryu Ramen. Since its opening in November 2012 they have been offering their Hakata Tonkotsu ramen, a recipe which was specially designed by executive chef, Kanji Furukawa. 

Shoryu translates to mean 'to bring good fortune'.

I find Shoryu to be an understated, modest establishment, however its popularity speaks for itself. You cannot reserve a table ahead of time and frequently I spot a line that reaches way outside into the busy streets of Soho. A ringing endorsement in itself and an indication of quality before you even enter the front door!

Their menu is refreshingly simple - as their name suggests, they mainly offer steaming bowls of ramen, amongst other small plates and of course, steamed buns!

I HAD to try their steamed buns as this delicious creation is one of my latest favourites. For those yet to discover these beauties, a steamed bun - as the name suggests, consists of a variety of fillings, encased in a pillowy, fluffy steamed-dough bun

I opted to try two different variations, the Char Sui barbecue pork belly (left) and the soy marinated chicken Karaage (right). Now I'm never short of an opinion, but I REFUSE to pick a favourite, they are both unbelievably spot-on. The pork belly was packed with flavour and smothered in charred-sweet sauce, which married well with the crunch of the salad and the softness of the bun, whilst the contrast of the crispiness of the chicken against the cloud-soft bun was to die for!

You just simply have to try these, plus they offer more variations on their menu, namely; their ginger salmon Tatsutage, their tiger prawn Tempura, and their vegetarian-friendly, grilled Halloumi & Shimeji mushrooms.

Quite honestly, after those two delicious helpings of steamed buns - I really couldn't imagine tackling their rich, generous serving of Ramen - I had to give myself a break! 

But I finally opted for their Kotteri Hakata Tonkotsu - their signature 12-hour ramen, but with a richer, meatier broth. 

I loved this dish, it has variety, balance and is the exact antidote to a hectic day, rushing around London. This steaming bowl of warmth allows you to take a much-needed pause.

Ok, I will admit that I had to take half of this serving home to enjoy, however I'd argue that after the flavours were able to muddle for even longer it made for an even more delicious serving. Don't be ashamed to take your ramen on the tube home!

Shoryu Ramen isn't the least expensive establishment you can visit, but its comforting simplicity, packed with flavour keeps me coming back. A would definitely recommend this to anyone who is an Asian-food lover. Or to anyone who has yet to try their first bowl of Ramen or steamed-bun - this is a great place to start!

...And a tip to any Ramen-lover on a budget - you can take a ramen, steamed-bun and a drink to go for just £12 with their go PACKAGE. 

I've only ever visited their Regent St. location, but why not visit their other restaurants located in Soho, Carnaby and Liverpool Street? Does anyone have a preference? Let me know!

Happy Slurping!

Tweets about @shoryuramen @laurajreeves

Clean Eating | Chocolate Banana Pudding

I'm a big fan of re-creating recipes - swapping out unhealthy, processed ingredients, for clean natural substitutes. 

We live in a world of temptation, wading through a barrage of bad food choices - which makes it all the more difficult to 'eat clean'. 

This very simple, sin-free recipe hopes to satisfy any sweet, dessert cravings for a substantially less guilty indulgence. It's dairy-free, coeliac friendly and delicious!



Calories | 381

INGREDIENTS

1 Avocado

1 Banana

4 Prunes

2 tbs Cocoa Powder

2 tbs Coconut water

INSTRUCTIONS

For this recipe, I utilise my new favorite toy, the NutriBullet, but you can use any type of blender to create this recipe.

The method is simple, just pop all the ingredients together and blend until smooth!

I originally made this recipe without the banana, but I found it quite bitter. Like so many, if you're not a banana fan I would substitute this for another fruit, just to counteract the bitterness of the cocoa. 

I'd be interested to see what fruits work well too - feel free to let me know! I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do!

Wearable Technology is Here. Is “Mind Control” the Next Technology Wave?

According to IDC analysts, worldwide wearable device shipments are set to grow a staggering 510.9% from 2014 to this year. As we sit in the wake of mass adoption of wearable technology, some are already looking ahead to the next evolution in personal technology usage.



In fact, in a recent survey conducted by the IEEE, it was reported that “mind control” is set to be the technology of choice in 10 years’ time. When respondents were asked which tasks they’d most like to accomplish with the power of the mind, answers included the ability to lock and unlock doors, control appliances, and turn lights on and off.

To most, this discovery may seem ludicrous, unrealistic, or just plain science fiction. But if we examine this from a socio-psychological perspective, these findings may demonstrate a natural progression in both technological capabilities and user expectations.

In 1890, William James noted in The Principles of Psychology that “man’s self is the sum total of all he can call his.” These notions of “self” and “ownership” remain powerful constructs in explaining our acceptance of technology today.

Technology is, in essence, a “tool,” and the usage of tools to achieve outcomes greater than human capacity is a vital component of our behavioral repertoire. In the Journal of Consumer Research, a scholarly publication, it is written that our resulting interaction with possessions to achieve outcomes augments our capabilities, and therefore symbolically “extends the self” through psychological ownership.

With the mass adoption of smart devices demonstrating a pervasive “self-extension” in everyday life, our psychological propensity to reach beyond our physical capacity, while also manipulating and interacting with our environment, looks set to spur the next wave of technology ownership. According to the IDC, this wave is primed to explode almost exclusively as a result of the introduction of smart wrist-wear.

Growing trust and dependence on personal technology is paving the way towards a refined convergence of smart technology and our own innate capabilities. With the advent of mind control on the horizon, will the line between ownership and “self” exist? Or is what was written back in 1890 becoming both symbolically and physically true? In other words, as technology’s physical presence shrinks, it seems our “extended self” is set to grow.

Our capability to control devices in a hands-free way using directives from our brainwaves marks integration with technology that transcends spatial boundaries and demonstrates true user mobility. But what does this ability mean for the infrastructure that must support it?

As the landscapes of corporate and consumer technology continue to converge, they are increasingly set to make major strides in the not-so-distant future. This posited leap in technological and personal ability demands a Wi-Fi infrastructure that is prepared to anticipate and satisfy the relentlessly increasing demand for capacity and performance.

Wi-Fi, of course, is an integral tool in achieving our everyday tasks, and therefore facilitating the extension of our physical periphery. As the line between possession and self is blurred even further, will Wi-Fi become a major construct in psychological ownership?

Is mind control a natural progression in our ever-increasing adoption of technology in the Internet of Things? Or is it still too mystifying to comprehend?

The acceptance of mind-controlled technology depends on an evolutionary shift in expectations. After all, not so long ago it was stated that “there is a world market for maybe five computers.” We have made colossal leaps in technology adoption since then, and this trend only looks to accelerate exponentially into the future. Therefore, it becomes ever more important to cease looking at the market for what it is, and start looking at the world for what it could become.

This blog post originally appears here.