A Day On My Plate & My Kitchen Cupboard Essentials

‘What I Eat in a Day’ videos are pretty much my favourite type of video to film. I mean, I get to make a load of food, film it all and then consume the end result. What’s there not to love about that? It’s actually been a while since my last one, so I thought it was about time I checked in again and showed you what my current weekday menu looks like. Now this was a little different as I filmed it in the festive break, so there’s a bit of Christmas flavour in there – a Miniature Hero there, a peppermint cream there – but it’s pretty much what I like to eat Monday to Friday.

To go with today’s video I thought I’d open up my kitchen cupboards and show you some of the contents. You know those things that you always have stock-pile, that have the ability to beef up a meal or be the base to cook up something entirely when all you have in the fridge is one lonely egg? Yeah those bits. Say hello to my healthy kitchen essentials…

I’m a sweet-toothed gal, so let’s get the boring savoury stuff out of the way first. I’m just like my Mum and always have about 20 tins of chopped tomatoes in the cupboard. Not only are they a great base for stews and soups, you can also mix them into a Shakshuka or whip ’em into a quick pasta sauce – bit of basil, bit of garlic, done. I also buy about 10 packs of cooked rice when it’s on offer. The Tilda Brown Steamed Basmati Rice & Quinoa is my favourite and helps to beef out lunches and dinners. Sometimes I add it to greens, sweetcorn and tuna for a quick salad or stuff some into fajita with all the trimmings for dinner. Speaking of tuna – I always make sure I have tins stocked up. Oh, if I had a penny for every time I’ve had some tuna, rice and random leftovers from the fridge for lunch…

Right – onto the good stuff. I feel like a big snooze mentioning the Tiana Coconut Oil again, but this stuff really is incredible and I use it all the time in cooking and baking (side note: this has no coconut scent!). It’s also great in energy ball recipes, which is why I always keep a good amount of nuts and seeds in my cupboards too. I’m rather fond of pistachios and pumpkin seeds and tend to add these to whatever granola I’m using or just sprinkle them on top of yogurt for a snack. Speaking of granola, I like to have some on hand to dip into whenever I fancy something sweet. The Lizi’s ones are great – pecan and treacle? HELLO.

I like to have some kind of protein powder to add to smoothies or just mix into pancake batters for breakfast or energy balls for an extra protein hit. I’m currently using up this WelleCo The Super Elixir Nourishing Protein, but Neat Nutrition and MyProtein do great options too. Then finally my kitchen cupboards wouldn’t be complete without a jar of chocolate chips (I use these ones from Amazon). I’m a cookie making machine so I always have some on hand to mix into my dough or just throw in my mouth. Seriously – why does chocolate taste better in chip-form? 

Photos by Lauren Shipley

SHOP MY KITCHEN UTENSILS