Serves 2
Ingredients:
300 ml Kefir 200 ml coconut water
Papaya peeled and deseeded large handful of kale
2 tbsp chia seeds
Method:
Put all ingredients in to a blender and blitz.
Category Archives: superfood
Smoked mackerel and rice noodles
Serves 3 Preheat oven to 180c / gas mark 4
Ingredients:
1/2 butternut squash deseeded and chopped in to small chunks
plum / cherry tomatoes
3 smoked mackerel fillets torn into large pieces
300 g rice noodles
rocket
tamari (soy sauce if non gf)
Olive oil
Method:
Put butternut squash on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil. Roast in oven for about 30 mins until cooked and edges crisping.
Put a drizzle of olive oil in a frying pan and, once hot, add the rice noodles. Stir for a minute. Add the tomatoes and fry for a further minute. Drizzle with tamari. Add the fish and heat through. Finally add the roasted squash, stir and serve on a bed of rocket.
Wild keta salmon on courgetti, chickpeas and pine nuts
Serves 2
Ingredients:
2 salmon fillets
2 courgettes – spiralised 1/4 cup pine nuts
1 cup of chick peas (tinned) 1 tsp ground ginger
Tamari to flavour – 1 tbsp olive oil for cooking
Method:
Bake the salmon fillets in the oven in a tin foil parcel for 10-15 minutes – no additional flavours / oil added.
Whilst it is cooking, heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the chick peas, pine nuts and ginger and cook for 1 minute. Add the courgetti and cook for a further minute. Add tamari – heat through and serve.
Carbohydrate -friend or foe?
I have really tried to change my view of carbohydrate over the last year. I always believed it to be my foe, my nemesis even, and would try and avoid it like the plague. Each day I would try to keep my intake to below 50 g – 60 g a day – 200 -240 kcal of carbs a day. Each day I would mentally beat myself up if I hadn’t achieved this.I always felt that carbs were the reason I would put weight on and when I severely restricted them…the weight came off. Then I started to think more logically:
I need carbs for my energy needs; I can control the types of carbs I eat.
Government guidelines presently state 50-55% of daily food intake should be carbs – of that 45% complex starchy carbs and non-starchy polysaccharides – fibre and no more than 5% from free sugars. (I know this guideline has been challenged recently because of the rise of obesity – but it is all about eating the right carbs – eating carbohydrate is not just about eating white bread, pasta and potatoes!) The healthy high carb foods I eat include vegetables,legume, whole grains, nuts and berries / low fructose fruits. I avoid unhealthy carbs.
This thought process has enabled me to take back control – with careful food choices I can ensure I give my body sufficient energy sources for its needs. Intake of carbs from refined foods will have a totally different effect on my body than if I get all my carbs from unrefined foods…in other words …if I cook from scratch, opt for foods high in fibre and with a low GI, and just eat real foods I will be eating ‘properly’ and giving my body the nutrition it needs. So this is what I do 🙂
Doing this, and keeping my free sugars to below 5% of my daily intake has improved my health, ensured any excess weight has come off and means I don’t have blood sugar spikes during the day and crave snacks in between meals…and counting calories is a thing of the past!
Mackerel and stilton salad
Delicous mix of flavours: Smoked mackerel, quail eggs, beetroot, avocado, watercress and rocket covered in crumbled stilton. A really hearty and filling salad.
Lemon and rosemary infused quinoa stuffed peppers
Cup full of quinoa washed thoroughly and cooked. Whilst hot squeeze juice of 1 lemon into it and add 2 cubes of rosemary frozen in olive oil – or a sprig of fresh rosemary. and a dash of olive oil. (I put any leftover fresh herbs in to ice-cube trays and cover with olive / coconut oil and then freeze)
Cut the peppers in half and deseed. Roast for about 10 minutes and then stuff with the quinoa mixture and put back in the oven to roast until the peppers are cooked.
I served this dish with cayenne and olive oil roasted sweet potato and butternut squash chunks (neither peeled) and a chunk of corn on the cob.
Mixed salad served with avocado, free range poached eggs and smoked salmon
Salad of rocket, radish, tomatoes and sharon fruit.
Superfood
I have been pondering a couple of thoughts this week and haven’t yet come up with an answer…any thoughts / ideas etc. gratefully received.
The first notion meandering about my brain is that of superfoods. I had just #superfood for one of my instagram postings and it got me thinking. The hashtag was for kale – the latest superfood. When does a food become a superfood? Who decides? What is the criteria. If I think about kale – I used to eat it all the time when I was little. Then, it wasn’t a superfood – just another vegetable on the plate eaten in the same way as Savoy cabbage. As far as I am aware it hasn’t been genetically modified in any way so why the relabelling? The same with avocados. In the 80’s trendy ‘hippie’ types, as my elderly aunt would call people who ate anything that wasn’t meat and two veg, ate the new fruit – avocado. I distinctly remember putting the ‘pear’ in a fruit salad and being deeply disappointed. I also remember the trend of suspending the stone in some water and growing an avocado plant – I grew several. It then went out of fashion for being too calorific. and full of fat as the low-fat diets swept the country. Now of course we know that the fat within this food is good for us. I adore avocado and eat/ drink it daily.
The other thought entwining my grey matter is that of recommended daily intake – food agencies determine using scientific evidence the recommended daily intake of various food stuffs. What I don’t understand is that the daily recommendations vary for different countries…but we are all people just living in different places. The UK recommends at least 5 portions of fruit/veg a day whereas the Australian Government guidelines are 5 portions of vegetables / legumes a day and no more than 2 portions of fruit. It’s different again in Japan – 5-6 portions of vegetable dishes and only 2 portions of fruit.
How can we mere mortals hope to keep up if the facts are always changing?
Quinoa tabbouleh topped with free range eggs
A simple one pan dish
Ingredients:
1 cup of quinoa well rinsed, cooked and drained
1 red onion – chopped
2 peppers – roughly chopped
Handful of kale
Tamari (soy sauce if not needing gf)
1 – 2 tsp Garam masala
Coconut oil
2 free range eggs per person
Method
In a large frying pan, saute the onions and peppers in coconut oil. Add Garam Masala and the kale. Cook until the veg is the desired crunch. Add the cooked quinoa and generous splash of Tamari. Once heated through, crack the eggs in to small wells and cook until desired consistency.
Turmeric milk
A delicious drink that is packed full of goodness and very simple to make.
Ingredients:
Mug of full fat milk
1 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp cinnamon / piece of cinnamon stick
1 tsp ground ginger / finely chopped cm piece of fresh ginger
Pinch of black pepper
Method:
Put all the ingredients in to a saucepan and heat gently bringing to the boil. Remove from the heat and if you have used fresh ginger and cinnamon stick – strain the liquid.
Drink and enjoy – I often have this with a piece of 85% dark chocolate.
Jo's food bites. 