My Healthy Eating Blog: ArchiveClick here to see blog in progress Click here to see 2007 Click here to see 2006 Click here to see January 2006 Click to see entries for December 2005. Click to see entries for November 2005. Click to see entries for October 2005. Scroll down to see entries for April-September 2005.
22 September 2005Lunch boxes for kidsLast night, Nick – aged 10 – kindly agreed to allow himself to be photographed, engaged in his current favourite activity – cake making. Here he is, putting together some sensational banana muffins. We are most impressed!21 September 2005Lunch boxes for kidsIn a school year, I pack 390 lunch boxes. That’s 2 kids, five times a week, 39 academic weeks. What a thought, eh. But I’m resolved – those lunch boxes are pretty healthy now and they’re going to stay that way. No more, the shrivelled end of Red Leicester and the stale digestive, nope, I’m going to shop and plan, and I’m going to help you to do it, too. Today, I’ve written a page on how to get some balance into your kids’ lunch boxes, and there’s still plenty to say on the subject, so expect more pages to follow.19 September 2005Fascinating healthy eating fact……being that your taste buds change, along with your diet. It takes a little while, but it definitely happens. Two examples: in a bid to cut down on my caffeine intake, I started having a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon mid-morning. Fairly pleasant, but it ain’t cappuccino. I carried on, and this morning at around 11 found myself thinking, hmm, I really fancy – a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon. I have one coffee at breakfast, and a tiny one after dinner, that’s it, and it feels fine. The other example is the kids, who used to want crisps in their lunchboxes every day. I rationed it to twice a week – loud moans, it’s not fair etc – and after a term of that, started ‘forgetting’ to buy them. Guess what. They’ve got used to the corncakes, veggie fingers and other bits and pieces I dole out, and haven’t asked for crisps for weeks. That Pavlov knew a thing or two…15 September 2005Autumn fruit and vegetablesThis morning the children could see their breath as they left for school, and a fat brown spider was hard at work in the pyracantha beside the door - two sure signs that autumn has arrived. Time to start thinking of more warming dishes, although I do still like salads as well, their freshness is very welcome. So, to provide lots of inspiration, I sat down and compiled a page of autumn fruit and vegetables.12 September 2005Oven-fried fish recipeSometimes it’s hard to be a healthy-eating mum, when your children look at you with pleading eyes and say please, please can we have fried fish… I don’t have anything against a bit of cod and chips from the shop down the road now and again, it makes a nice little treat at the end of a long week, but I don’t fry fish at home, not now, not ever. So it was time to improvise, and very successful it was, too. Oven-fried fish crisps up nicely in the oven and the cheese in the coating gives it lots of flavour. And I’m not a mean old mum any more.6 September 2005Mini fruit cake recipeThe demon cake-maker strikes again! Yes, the boy was so delighted with the muffins he made, and so desolate when he’d eaten the last one, that he wanted to make more, more, more! So we spent a happy 15 minutes making a batch of mini fruit cakes, and he took one proudly off to school this morning. This is wonderful – my next step is to get him cooking supper twice a week. Watch this space…6 September 2005Healthy blueberry muffin recipeQuestion: how do you amuse a 10-year-old, who’s kicking around on the last day of the summer holidays saying, “I’m bored”? Answer: get him into the kitchen, put this healthy blueberry muffin recipe into his hand, and stand well back! My son had a great time whizzing bananas, stirring in blueberries and licking out the bowl, and was tickled pink by the results. That was yesterday, and he took one in his lunch box this morning to show his friends – didn’t quite take the agony out of going back to school, but it helped a bit!
18 July 2005Strawberry recipes Strawberries will probably only be in the shops for another 2-3 weeks, so I'm making best use of them while I can. If you get tired of having them by themselves, try this idea from my page on strawberry recipes. Stone and chop half a dozen ripe peaches. Put them in a serving dish. Drizzle some liqueur over them if you like, Grand Marnier is good. Hull a punnet of ripe strawberries, rinse, and throw them in the food processor. Add the juice of an orange. Blend until smooth, pour over the peaches, and leave to infuse for 30 mins before serving. 14 July 2005Gorgeous gooseberriesAt long last the gooseberries on our one bush are ripe. Last night I delved in among those lethal thorns, and picked a good bowlful, plus a handful of blackcurrants. Gooseberries are a fruit you other love, or hate. I really like them, and, if the fruit are well-sweetened, so do the children. My healthy eating policy involves enjoying the fruits of the season, and sometimes they’re at their best with cream. We don’t have fruit and cream every night, and when we do it’s good to make it special, so today I’m going to plunder my new page of gooseberry recipes, and make a light and fruity gooseberry fool.8 July 2005Hidden fatsYou need good eyesight to spot the hydrogenated vegetable oils, otherwise known as trans fats, that are present in so many of the foods we routinely buy. They're mega-bad for health, and can do more damage to your arteries than saturated fats. Once you become alert to them, you'll find them all over the place. Today I was about to buy a little sweet treat – a pack of halva, the delicious sweetmeat made from sesame seeds. I thought I'd be safe with this so-called 'traditional' item, but no, there it was in minuscule print – hydrogenated vegetable oil. So no halva for us tonight, but I did buy a bar of Green & Black's organic choc instead – you know where you are with that, and it's luscious.3 July 2005Be crafty with cabbageChildren don't always love their greens. But there are ways to make cabbage and the like more acceptable. Tonight, I finely shredded some Savoy cabbage, cooked it lightly in a little walnut oil, turning it to stop it catching. When it was tender, but still slightly crisp, I threw in some chopped walnuts and stirred them through to warm. Result? Cabbage with a crunch, and a deliciously nutty undertow of flavour, consumed with relish by children and adults alike.
15 June 2005The joy of shallotsTaking my own advice to buy something different when I shop, yesterday in the greengrocers I picked up some shallots, instead of the usual bog-standard onions. I’d forgotten how delicious they are, sweet and mild, and easier to handle than onions. I used them in a simple sauce with steamed broccoli florets, stoned black olives, garlic and a couple of spoons of pesto, stirred through angel hair pasta. Mm,hmm.10 June 2005Better ways to shopHaving just spent a tedious hour in the supermarket, I’m more committed than ever to the idea of shopping small, often, and local. It’s all to do with freshness, and knowing where things come from. I had to do the supermarket today, because over the weekend I have to feed 7 teenagers for one meal; 5 adults for another, and 4 for another - that's a whole lot of food,and I flagged at the prospect of carrying that much home from the local shops.But I do notice in the supermarket that I start to get a strange feeling in my head, something about having to fill the trolley, and buying just that bit more… Must be a subliminal message they’re feeding to us shoppers somehow. And I never, never manage to get out without buying something that wasn’t on my list. Nope, give me the little local guys any day.The healthy collection of healthy ingredients that I started on at the beginning of the week is proving very inspirational. We’ve had tuna and pasta, chopped walnuts and prunes on our cereal, and regular swigs of that delicious veggie juice. The lentils are destined for soup. 7 June 2005Healthy eating ideasLooked back over last month's blog, and yesterday decided to do something I'd thought of a while ago – at the start of the week, get some healthy ingredients out of the store cupboard and leave them out, plan being to use them all over the week.So, in my little collection this week, I havea pack of lentils, a can of sardines and one of tuna, a can of flageolet beans, some delicious, plump dried prunes, 100g walnuts a bottle organic vegetable juice. And here's what I did with the beans.
What we're eating tonight We're still in fishy mode, so I'm making an old favourite, Kedgeree but giving it a new twist with some fresh chopped coriander. 23 May 2005Fresh, herby fishLast night I had a real treat, and met an old friend for the evening. We needed a restaurant where we could linger, so we went to a very traditional Italian trattoria, and made our way through three courses, a bottle of wine, and a lot of catching-up.It was great. I'm a firm believer in not being too slavish about following eating 'rules' on special occasions, so I'd decided to have whatever took my fancy on the menu. And ended up with sardines, baked with tomatoes and garlic highly delicious, and pretty healthy too. Mind you, I'm not sure you could say the same about the chocolate cake with hot chocolate sauce that followed... Today I felt fine, but my system seemed to be trying to tell me something, like 'don't bombard me with any rich food today'. I've stuck to hot water with a slice of lemon all morning, which is so refreshing, much less cloying than tea or coffee with milk. What we're eating today 18 May 2005Growing saladsThe frosts threatened for last night didn’t materialise (in mid-May – I should think not!), and it’s time to plant those seeds that I started planning for back on 28 April. I’ve just put in one row to start with, of mixed green salads. I’ll do another one in a couple of weeks. Last year I used just half a packet of seeds and had leaves for picking right through the summer and well into the autumn.
My friend Sally, who has an allotment and grows masses of amazing stuff, has given me a couple of handfuls of bean seeds, so they’ll go in soon, too. One lot is a lovely purply-pink with black spots, for dwarf beans. The others are runners, but the seeds are small and creamy white instead of the usual pink, and apparently the plants have white flowers instead of red. I’ve got some fantastic runner bean recipes, so can’t wait to have those on stream through the summer. 17 May 2005Salmon 'n rice is niceNeeded something really quick tonight, because everyone was going out in different directions. And wouldn't you know it, I'd been doing the Healthy Salmon Recipes page, and there was the perfect dish, Quick Spicy Salmon Rice. It was on the table in 15 minutes flat, not bad. And the whole lot disappeared. There are some things no store cupboard should be without, and canned salmon is one of them. Tuna's another. It's easy to forget that you can often use these canned fish in recipes as a substitute for chicken or red meat, particularly if it's something like this rice dish. I want us to be having at least 3 fish-based meals a week. One of those can be a packed lunch. Tuna's a great sandwich filling with sweetcorn or cucumber. But that leaves two evening meals in need of fishy inspiration. I'm going to try sorting out a few healthy ingredients I want to use at the start of each week – and putting them out on the counter, where I'll see them when I'm wondering what to cook. That might help focus the mind.
6 May 2005Pesto puzzleBoth kids under the weather this week, and have gone right off their food, most unusual for them. I’ve fed them on pasta every day, because it seems to slip down easily. Last night I did it with mushrooms and red pesto and I noticed the leftovers had been scraped out of the saucepan at some point during the evening, so they must be on the mend. While I was waiting for the pasta to boil, I read the label on the pesto bottle – now, why, why has pesto got potato in it? Could it conceivably be to bulk it out? Yuk. Next on my ever-growing list of things to try making is pesto – the recipe I looked up has pine kernels, basil, garlic, olive oil, Parmesan and nothing else. I could add sun-dried tomato. Sounds yummy, eh? Watch this space. 5 May 2005Friends to stayFirst task, is to rename this blog - describing it as 'Daily' was a bit over-optimistic! We’ve had some lovely food this weekend. Friends Jen and Toby came, so I wanted to have something a bit special, but not spend hours cooking while they were here. Never been much good at cooking and talking simultaneously. I did spiced salmon fillet with noodles, which was delicious. The fish shop had organic salmon from the Shetland Isles, fantastic stuff, close-textured, pale-coloured and not remotely greasy, as farmed salmon can be. That’s another recipe to get on to the site. On the second day we had the Slow-Baked Aromatic Chicken, which is a complete doddle to make and a wonderful dish as long as everyone has it – those whole cloves of garlic do make you reek a bit, but it’s worth it. I've just returned from chasing the cat off the little patch of freshly dug soil where I'm going to plant a few salady bits. Poppy thinks I've created a lovely new toilet, just for her – sorry, puss, but that bed is out of bounds. I am probably the world's worst gardener – get fired up by all those brightly coloured seed packets, but lose interest when it comes to thinning them out and all that. But I really want to have home grown leaves all through the summer, so it's time to get a grip. I was reading yesterday how shop-bought lettuces are often particularly heavy on residual pesticides – something to do with the size of the leaf – really don't fancy having those in my sandwiches. Possibly I'm rather better at growing a website, than growing veggies. Yesterday I wrote a check list of healthy/unhealthy foods. The idea was that you could take it shopping as a memory-jogger. Got a bit carried away, though, there was so much to say, so now it's far too bulky to pop in your purse. Think I'll do it again today as an extra, separate page, a simple list of items you can print off. That'll be far more useful for people. What we're eating today
|
The flageolet went into 
Felt the urge to cook at lunch time, so popped down to the local greengrocer to see what was on
offer. They had lovely fresh beetroot, grown just down the road. I cooked them for 10 minutes in
the microwave, easy. Click on the recipe name, to see how I transformed these into