Daniel Fast Recipes - Annabel Bateman | What Annabel Cooks (2024)

Welcome Hope Centre to What Annabel Cooks.

I have set up this page especially to give us all some ideas for recipes, meals and snacks for our 21 day fast. I’ve found personally when I do either a fast or a health detox of any kind it forces me to be far more creative than I normally am in the kitchen. Whilst the purpose of a fast is to draw closer to God and realign our priorities, I don’t think the food is meant to be terrible. Eating ‘real food’ is fantastic and will make us feel physically clean although expect to get withdrawal symptoms for the first few days to a week (think headaches, feeling grumpy & tired). So let’s press into God, eat well and drink LOTS of water.

For those not totally fasting from social media, I will add recipes and ideas throughout the fast – posting some of what I eat. I will also post on my Facebook page and Instagram feed photos of my food too (although I can’t promise the social media feed will be 100% Daniel Fast as it is appealing to a public audience). My website in general is full of gluten, grain & often dairy & sugar free recipes. If you go to the recipes page on this website – many of the recipes will be fast -friendly or easily adaptable.

The recipes I will link to here may contain: vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, oils (coconut, macadamia, olive are the ones I cook with) & herbs. They will not include gluten, grains (as I don’t eat anyway), dairy, meat/animal protein, legumes (as I don’t eat), sugar (apart from fruit). Other Daniel Fast websites I’ve found include wholegrains, legumes & pulses but as I don’t eat them anyway, my recipes won’t include them.

Here are my tips and a few recipes and ideas to help us all along!

Be prepared – in the week to few days before you start

• clean out your fridge – eat up what you need/want to, throw out the bits that you don’t or will go off. Use up the meat that is in your freezer.
• don’t buy excess meat/grains/treats
• clean out your pantry – pack away in boxes or on higher shelves the foods you won’t be eating – you don’t want temptation staring you in the face every time you open the pantry/fridge. Out of sight out of mind.
• buy up lots of fresh fruit & vegetables and store them in he middle of your fridge so that’s what you see when you open it.
• prepare your vegetables so that they are easier to use – peel, cut, de-stem, bag them up. The more preparation you put in, the easier it will be to eat & prepare them.
• cook up a soup or 2 and portion it out & freeze. That way you will at least have something you can pull out and eat quickly.
• Use the fast as an opportunity to try a new vegetable. Is there something that you’ve seen in the supermarket but not sure what to do with it? Buy it and google how to use it, then the trick is to use it THAT NIGHT or else it is more likely to stay in the bottom drawer till it goes mouldy.
• think about the kinds of meals you are going to prepare and write some shopping lists

BREAKFASTS

Juices – keep it simple. Celery juice is very cleansing as is cucumber juice. Add in 1 apple if you need it for the taste, but give celery juice a try first without the apple as it really does taste fresh and clean.

Smoothies – a great quick breakfast or snack. Here is a basic green

smoothie recipe that you can change depending on what’s in the fridge or freezer. You will need a high speed blender, nutra bullet or Thermomix to make a good smoothie.

• 1 cup fruit – I usually use banana (pre sliced and frozen. Freezing the banana will give a thicker, colder smoothie.
• 1-2 large handfuls of leafy greens eg spinach, kale (stem removed), silverbeet, rainbow chard.
• 1/2 – 1 cup liquid – water, coconut water, coconut milk or other nut milk (note most pre-packaged ones have added sugar).
• Here is a link for how to make your own coconut milk.
• Optional extras: handful of nuts or seeds, buckwheat (not a grain)
  Place all ingredients in your blender and blend until smooth.

Bircher style muesli recipe

This is a great quick easy ‘muesli’ if you are a cereal breakfast eater only far better for you – you might never go back to your cardboard boxes…. Click here for the recipe (just omit the yoghurt, unless you’re having coconut yoghurt).

Vegetable ‘hash’ – fry up some julienned vegetables eg zucchini, sweet potato with some onion and garlic.

Left over dinner – if you’ve got a salad or veggies left over from dinner, why not have them for breakfast?

LUNCHES – you can easily have these for dinner too, or the dinner’s for lunch, whatever works best for your life style.

Here are a few salad ideas – I usually just make up something based on what I have either left over from dinner, or what’s in the fridge. I have some great little vegetable peelers that make making a salad really quick. Don’t be afraid to add a little fruit to your salads.

Rainbow noodle salad click here for the recipe

Avocado grape salad recipe:

Cos lettuce
Rocket
1/2 ruby grapefruit
1 small avocado
Sunflower sprouts
Grapes
Drizzle of pumpkin seed oil @the_pumpkinhouse
Sprinkle of hemp seeds
Dollop of Kehoes Kitchen fermented cream ‘cheese’ (optional – it’s made from cashews and available from health food shops). It is fast compliant, tastes AMAZING and is good for your gut
Dollop of celery leaf pesto

Here are some other visual ideas of salads that you could make – you should be able to see the ingredients fairly easily. My common ingredients include – leafy greens, avocado, red cabbage, fruit, nuts, seeds, beans, snow peas, sprouts, sweet potato etc.

DRESSINGS

I don’t think I’m the best salad dressing maker, however if you have good quality ingredients, that helps a lot – a good olive or macadamia oil or pumpkin seed oil. So at worst you can just drizzle some olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice and season.

Another option is honey, mustard, garlic, lemon juice & olive or macadamia oil.

Pesto
Here is a great pesto recipe you can make – either from celery leaves or using any other dark leafy greens. I will often water down a tablespoon of pesto with a little bit of water, squeeze of lemon juice and salt & pepper.

Mixed herb dressing – see this recipe but obviously omit the chicken!!

Turmeric dressing – click here for the recipe:

Orange dressing – great salad recipe too: click here

Green goddess dressing – avocado blended with garlic, olive oil & lots of herbs is really good too. This is Pete Evan’s recipe:

Green Goddess Dressing

1/2 avocado

3 tablespoons coconut milk

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

2 anchovy fillets, finely chopped

1/2 cup roughly chopped flat leaf parsley leaves

3 tablespoons roughly chopped basil leaves

1 tablespoon roughly chopped tarragon leaves

1/4 tsp sea salt

125 ml extra virgin olive oil

Place all the ingredients except the olive oil in a food processor or blender and process until well combined.

With the motor running, slowly pour in the oil and process until the dressing thickens and the herbs are finely chopped. Sore refrigerated for up to 5 days.

DINNER

As I said above, lunch and dinner are somewhat interchangeable but here are some cooked recipes that would work well for dinner.

Roasted vegetables are an easy, substantial and tasty dinner – think pumpkin, sweet potato, cauliflower, broccoli (yes you can roast it but be careful it can burn), beetroot, tomatoes, onion, carrot, garlic etc. Toss in macadamia or coconut oil, sprinkle some rosemary & thyme, Salt & pepper – yum!

Roasted vegetable lasagna – slice a mix of vegetables eg eggplant, pumpkin, capsicum, others as above, char grill them then layer in a lasagna dish with tomato passata in between the layers then bake.

Roasted vegetable salad

Kale
Rainbow chard
Roasted cauliflower & beetroot (tossed in coc oil)
Steamed broccoli
Toasted slivered almonds.

Soup – soups are a great fasting option and easy to digest. Try playing around with texture to mix it up a bit eg chunky, blended, sprinkled with nuts & seeds etc.

SNACKS:Here are a few ideas…

• Kale chips
• Fruit! – just a piece of fruit is easy but you can make it prettier by cutting it up and serving it on a plate like the photo below of ruby grapefruit sprinkled with a few nuts & seeds
• Celery & nut butter
• Handful of nuts & seeds – you can activate to make them easier to digest. To activate nuts & understand why here is a little article I found – otherwise a google search will give you plenty of info.
• Avocado seasoned.
• Bliss balls – might be best left alone on a fast, together with the ‘treats’ but I’m putting them in as they are better choices than blowing it with ice cream or chocolate. Whether you choose to include them that’s between you and God! Here is the link to my basic bliss ball recipe – all ingredients are fruit, nuts & seeds just don’t add added protein powder unless a vegetarian one.

TREATS

As mentioned above whether including these treats are in the true spirit of a Daniel Fast is up to between you and God, but these are better options than blowing it.

• bliss balls – as above
• Medjool (fresh) dates – see this article I wrote about dates…
• ‘Nice Cream’ – basically just blended frozen fruit:
  • So simple 3 ingredients & 10 seconds to make. Could it be any easier.Put 2 medjool dates, 1-2 frozen bananas (sliced) and 1 Tbsp almond meal into your Thermomix/blender. Blend on high speed or in Thermomix on speed 8-9 for 8-10 seconds.

    Eat immediately or put into Popsicle moulds.

    Serves 2