Posted by kathryn in Easier eating

Today I’m very pleased to have a guest post for you, this time from the lovely Liz of Bizzy Lizzy’s Good Things. This post is part of an occasional series on Limes and Lycopene, around the theme of what makes it easier to eat well? I first “met” Liz on Twitter and I’ve come to love her blog for it’s combination of traditional recipes, seasonal ingredients, as well as Liz’s obvious enthusiasm and passion for local produce. Over to Liz . . .

It all adds up, you know.

Middle age, plus a seriously busy desk-bound job, plus not making time for ample exercise, plus, quite frankly, eating way too much chocolate (and cake and other snacks), equals unscheduled weight gain.

My reality check happened recently in a David Jones fitting room. Imagine the scenario, if you will. Mirrors at all angles, I’m in my undergarments mindlessly trying on a new skirt and blouse for work. I glance behind me and discover that a tutu-wearing hippopotamus has squeezed into the cubicle! Wait a second. Lordy, that’s not a hippo, it’s me! Gah!

Quite a while ago, Kathryn very kindly invited me to write a guest post for her series What Makes it Easier to Eat Well?. The weeks and months have flown past and over this time, to my great disappointment, the kilos have slowly crept on. I’m possibly exaggerating here, but my usually athletic frame now has womanly curves, a rounded belly, tuckshop arms, and thighs like a front row footballer! At least it feels that way. My clothes are tight and I don’t like it.

The truth is, I don’t eat badly for the most part. A quick look at my web site Bizzy Lizzy’s Good Things will reveal that my focus is on fresh produce, home cooking and great-tasting food. I grow my own vegetables and rarely eat out. Unlike some colleagues who feast on burgers and pizza, I bring my lunch from home, usually a salad and fruit, but always seem to gobble it down while standing up or hunched over my desk glued to the computer screen. My other downfall is that I’m surrounded by lollies and chocolates at work, and have poor willpower and self-control when the adrenalin starts to pump. There are boxes of fundraising chocolates less than ten paces from my desk. What’s worse is that team members who are dieting bring in unwanted Easter eggs and boxes of chocolates and leave them on a centrally located table for all to help themselves! On top of this, deadlines and demands at work have seen the end of lunchtime walks to the lake and back.

The time has come for me to think and act strategically when it comes to eating well and getting back into shape. I haven’t been brave enough to weigh myself, so am using my clothes as a gauge. And rather than ‘dieting’, I am implementing the following:

Move more and eat less:

• I get out of my chair and walk brisk ‘laps’ of the (very long) floor of the building as frequently as possible.

Eat foods that nourish and satiate:

• I am now having a Weet Bix with sliced banana, low fat milk and a drizzle of honey for breakfast.
• I also take a bread roll, together with can of salmon and a tomato for lunch, instead of just a salad;

Beat the 3.00pm craving for sugar:

• I snack on sweet and tangy passionfruit rather than mini chocolate bars and have a stash of fresh passionfruit in my filing cabinet (this is working really well, in fact, I find if I have run out of passionfruit, I am more tempted by chocolate). According to Catherine Saxelby’s Food, What’s in It, passionfruit seeds ‘not only provide fibre, but also protein and niacin . . .[as well as] moderate amounts of vitamin C, riboflavin, potassium, magnesium and zinc’. Wow!

Drink more water:

• I make sure there is always plenty of cold water in a jug on my desk and drink it regularly;

Cycling:

• My partner and I hibernated last Winter (it was so bitterly cold in Canberra). To try to counter the hibernation phase during what is shaping up to be another bone chilling season, we are cycling at every sunny opportunity on weekends.

Explore lighter options for the evening meal, such as Vietnamese:

• Vietnamese dishes are full of flavour and can be prepared with very little fat. The following recipe published recently on my web site is a great example and is a regular on our menu. We grow our own wombok, carrots, cucumber, bean sprouts, coriander and mint. The freshness of the vegetables is key to a beautiful salad and it can be prepared sans chicken for vegetarians.

Goi Ga (Vietnamese Chicken Salad)

For the salad:

500g chicken fillet (breast or tenderloin)
1/2 a small wombok, finely shredded
1/4 cup mint leaves
1/4 cup coriander leaves
a few Vietnamese mint leaves, torn (optional)
1/2 cup bean sprouts, tails removed, rinsed and drained well
1 small carrot, peeled and julienned
1 small Lebanese cucumber, julienned
1/4 cup roasted peanuts, chopped, for garnish
a few coriander leaves extra, for garnish

For the dressing:

2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
3 tablespoons raw sugar
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 clove garlic, very finely chopped
1 small chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

First gently poach the chicken. Allow it to cool. Drain and chill it in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Combine the prepared wombok, mint and coriander leaves, bean sprouts, julienned carrot and cucumber in a salad bowl. Shred the chicken and arrange it through the salad.

Make the dressing: combine the fish sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and water in a small saucepan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. You can chill the dressing at this point for a really refreshing point of difference. Just before you are ready to serve the salad, add the finely chopped garlic, chilli and lime juice to the dressing. Taste and adjust the flavours to suit your palate.

To finish, sprinkle the dressing liberally over the salad immediately before serving. Garnish with the chopped roasted peanuts and additional mint and coriander leaves. Serves 2-4 as a light lunch or light main meal (dependent on your appetite). Cover and refrigerate any leftovers immediately and enjoy the next day. 

Summary

So, how’s it all going? It’s all baby steps at the moment. I know what I have to do to get back into shape sensibly and without crash dieting, so here’s hoping I can stick to my plan and report back as a ‘slender hippopotamus’.

In closing, I would like to thank Kathryn for inviting me to submit this guest post. You are such an inspiration when it comes to eating well, Kathryn!

• With all due acknowledgement to Hazel Edwards.

6 comments 17 May, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Vegetables and Easier eating

Over the last few weeks I feel like I’ve got my cooking mojo back. For a while it had disappeared. Meals seemed difficult and I couldn’t decide what to cook. My usual ability to make a meal from the cupboards just wasn’t working and I was finding it hard to get enthusiastic about cooking.

This happens to me occasionally. While I usually spend a lot of time thinking about food, planning what we’re going to eat and cooking. Just sometimes the urge and interest deserts me.

As my enthusiasm has returned, I’ve been reminded of one of the fundamental principles of eating well – the importance of having good ingredients in the house.

Usually we get a vegetable box each week. However, for various reasons I’d recently dropped the subscription. A combination of being away from home, forgetting to re-subscribe and foolishly thinking we didn’t need it, meant we went about six weeks without our regular vegetable box.

The return of my mojo has exactly coincided with the renewal of my vegie box subscription. Which has been a good reminder of how much this helps me to eat well. Like Cindy from Where’s the Beef, we usually get a vegetable box each week and it’s the foundation of our meals. Having the vegetables in the house means having really good ingredients to play with and be inspired by. It also motivates me to cook, as I hate the thought of wasting the produce.

As my enthusiasm has returned I’ve been cooking up a storm. A dangerously sagging bunch of silverbeet was used in this dairy free Spinach Pie; a hunk of pumpkin was roasted and combined with chickpeas in this soup; and I made Have Cake Will Travel’s Caraway Seed Bread. I re-made a couple of old-old favourites, including Martha Rose Shulman’s Lettuce and Potato Soup and Jamie Oliver’s recipe for Baked Beetroot with Balsamic. I’ve also been loving Alice Hart’s Vegetarian book (so much so that I’ll be posting a review on my Everyday Kitchen blog at Reader’s Digest later in the week) and have made her Spiced Roasted Chickpeas and roasted Tahini Seeds.

I haven’t just been following recipes either, I’ve also cooked some delicious meals, making it up as I go along – my normal way of cooking. We’ve been particularly enjoying a combination of thinly sliced and panfried eggplant cooked with chilli, kaffir lime, fresh lime, red lentils with just a few tablespoons of coconut cream to thicken the mixture.

It’s been a good reminder of something I know, but sometimes forget or disregard. Good ingredients and having a fridge full of food actually motivates me to cook and eat well. By taking away a lot of decisions, a vegie box simplifies our weekly meals and makes good food easier and less bothersome.

What motivates you to cook and eat well?

7 comments 09 May, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Autumn

I’ve been thinking about Easter eggs and hot cross buns this week. You see, I love them both, particularly hot cross buns. Nothing wrong with that. However, much like seasonal eating, I think an integral part of my enjoyment is their limited availability. I’d never buy or make a fruit bun normally and I rarely eat chocolate. However I wouldn’t dream of missing out my annual hot cross bun or Easter egg.

However these foods are not simply available for a few days each year. More and more they’re in the shops months before Easter arrives. I spotted hot cross buns at the beginning of February, Easter eggs soon afterwards.

Because these foods are only available in the build up to Easter, we think of them as being treat foods. However if they’re now available for two or three months of the year, there’s a lot of opportunity to treat yourself.

And yet of course, too many hot cross buns and Easter eggs are not good for our health.

At the risk of being seen as a crusty, killjoy, I’ve got a radical idea: why not just eat hot cross buns and Easter eggs at Easter?

Don’t have them for months on end and don’t bother with the cheap-o rubbish ones. Buy really good, delicious chocolate eggs and hot cross buns. Revel in them and eat as many as you want. Thoroughly enjoy them, but thoroughly enjoy them for one day and leave it at that.

A good idea, or am I being a crusty killjoy?

10 comments 03 April, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Dairy

I was asked recently if butter was better for you, because it it was a “natural wholefood”. This question made me pause, because you know what, I think we’re in serious danger of over-sentimentalising butter.

Butter used to be made on individual farms, by people churning the extra cream from their milk. Some people still make it this way for their own use and there are also small artisan producers who are continuing this tradition of hand made butter.

However this is not how the vast majority of butter that’s consumed in Australia is made. Instead, most people buy their butter from the supermarket and it’s produced by an industrial process.

• In the large scale production of food, one of the most important things, from the manufacturer’s point of view, is consistency. They want the product you buy to be the same every single time you buy it. To achieve this they need to be able to control and to some extent, manipulate, the ingredients involved. In the case of butter the main ingredients are cream and water.
• Cream is removed from milk during the production of both full fat and skim milk, and it’s this which is used to make butter.
• Like all milk products, the cream that goes into butter is pasteurised to improve its shelf life and destroy harmful bacteria.
• The fat content of cream varies. Therefore to maintain a homogenous product, water is added to cream to ensure a fat content of about 80% – depending on the brand. Australian butter generally contains about 16% water.
• Butter is made during a process called high speed continuous churn. This is a highly cost effective process, where butter is continuously produced. It also means the final butter has an even texture, unlike home-made butter.
• During spring and autumn, cows produce more milk. To even out the supply over the year some of the extra butter that’s produced is frozen.
• During summer and winter, when milk supplies are not so plentiful, some of this frozen butter is added to the new butter which is being made. Which means your “fresh” butter can be up to 10% frozen butter.

With all this intervention, can butter still be called a “natural” food?

Don’t get me wrong. I love butter and love the flavour of it. I’m not against people eating it, in fact, I’ve stated my position on eating butter before in the comments on this post. I also realise there are a number of really good, small scale producers who are making butter which has nowhere near this level of meddling. However small scale producers are not where most people buy their butter.

I like people to have a realistic perspective on the food they’re eating and how it’s made. I don’t think that sentimentalising food, or viewing certain products through rose tinted glasses helps us make informed choices.

It’s also why I don’t like labels such as ‘natural’ they’re too ambiguous and open to both misinterpretation and manipulation.

Over to you – what do you think about butter?

15 comments 13 March, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Easier eating

I’ve been talking to clients this week about getting rid of their dietary low hanging fruit. These are the habits and foods which are easy to get rid of.

I find most people have some eating routines which they don’t really care about. Not when they actually think about it. It might be something they continue doing out of habit, or because it’s what they think they want. Sometimes it’s a food habits which people enjoy, but not that much. Not enough to feel deprived if they stop.

It could be the second cup of coffee, or the half teaspoon of sugar they’re having in the coffee. It might be the fruit juice at lunch, the extra teaspoon of honey on the morning porridge, or the thickness of the butter they spread on toast. The list is endless.

By it’s very nature low hanging fruit is highly individual. The habits I might find easy to drop are different from the ones you could get rid of.

If you’re trying to improve the way you eat it’s often easier to start with the low hanging fruit. While you might want and need to make larger scale changes to your food, by focussing on these smaller habits you get some early wins.

And don’t underestimate the power of small changes. Tweaking your habits, making better decisions are all part of edging your diet along the continuum of healthy eating.

What’s your dietary low hanging fruit?

7 comments 29 February, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Easier eating

Following Charlotte’s guest post on freezer love, I started thinking about all the foods I keep in my freezer. Sure there’s normal stuff like bread, leftover meals and ice. However I also put a lot of foods in my freezer, which other people probably don’t.

Driving this is my hatred of wasting food. Rather than have something go off, I’m more likely to put it in the freezer and see if that works. Some things don’t, like the time I froze raw broccoli. While other foods I just don’t like from the freezer, for example cooked rice, pasta and potatoes. However many foods freeze really well, or rather they freeze well enough for me.

1. Milk

This is a trick I got from my parents. I don’t use a lot of milk, so never go through a full carton before it goes off, which means being able to freeze milk is perfect. Mum and dad freeze their milk in the carton, whereas I separate it out into one cup portions and freeze those. You should note milk does expand when it’s frozen, because of the water content, plus it changes colour slightly. However, it does return to normal colour once defrosted.

2. Hummous & bean spreads

I love bean spreads and regularly use them on toast and salads, as well as in sandwiches. However I wasn’t using them up quickly enough, the last quarter would start going fizzy and I’d have to chuck it out. I now split a batch of hummous into quarters and freeze each portion separately.

3. Pesto & harissa

I love both of these and regularly make batches of both. However I don’t like adding stacks of olive oil to either, which means they tend to go off quickly. So I freeze harissa in tablespoon quantities and pesto in small tubs.

4. Bread dough

I never would have thought this possible, until Ganga recommended it as a way to store the leftover dough from her beautiful no knead focaccia recipe. However it works. There are some qualifiers to this. I’ve only ever stored no knead bread. I defrost the bread dough in the fridge. It’s sometimes a bit wet, so I usually scatter with a bit of extra flour and shape. I then allow it to come up to room temperature before cooking – this takes about an hour (the coming up to room temperature not the cooking!).

Update. Ganga (my oracle on this topic) has left more information on freezing bread dough in the comments below.

5. Cheese

Again, we’re not a big dairy household, plus I’m fussy about the type of cheese I eat. A single block could last us weeks and I noticed we were eating more than we needed, just to use it up. So, as an experiment, Richard stuck some in the freezer and it was fine. Again a few qualifiers here. It does change the texture slightly and so we only use freezer cheese for cooking. I’ve only ever frozen tasty/cheddar and yellow mozzarella cheese. I really would not recommend freezing an oozey camembert or some specially imported Roquefort.

6. Lime halves

When we moved into our current house we were overwhelmed with limes from the tree in our garden. There was no way we could get through the harvest, so I consulted Making a Meal of It and ended up storing some in the freezer. I have lime “cups” and half limes in the freezer and they’ve been really useful. I use the cups in drinks and squeeze the half limes into my cooking.

7. Kaffir lime leaves

About a year ago a friend gave me a pile of kaffir lime leaves. Far more than I could possibly go through in a few days. Lucy suggested freezing them and it worked perfectly. I put the kaffir lime leaves in a single layer in a ziplock bag and placed these flat in the freezer. I then get a leaf out whenever I need one and use it straight away.

What unusual foods do you keep in the freezer?

27 comments 21 February, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Labels & advertising

I read about this product last week, have been thinking about it ever since and am intrigued to know, what do you think about Avofresh?

Avofresh is avocado in a tube. There’s a choice of Smooth, Firm or Chunky and there are three flavours – Original, Seasoned and Spicy. Each tube contains the equivalent of two avocadoes.

The avocadoes are grown in Australia and the unopened product stays fresh for four weeks.

They’re not completely additive free. Along with the avocado, Avofresh contains lemon juice concentrate, to prevent it from browning. The ‘firm’ version contains a thickener (401), while the ‘Soft’ and ‘Chunky’ versions contain vegetable gum (425).

I must admit when I first saw the report on Avofresh I thought “oh please, you’ve got to be kidding”. I thought it was another instance of a perfectly good fresh ingredient being turned into something which masqueraded as fresh while actually being full of unnecessary salt and sugar.

However the report I read stated they are using smaller and second grade avocadoes in Avofresh. Fruit that would otherwise not be sold as it was too small or the “wrong” shape for sale. Which is not only creating a more profitable industry for Australian growers, it’s also using up a fresh ingredient which would otherwise be unnecessarily dumped.

I’m conflicted, so I’m interested to know what you think – would you buy Avofresh?

22 comments 01 February, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Vegetables, Breakfast, Baking, Snacks, Summer, Winter and Vegan

There haven’t been any Friday Quicklinks for ages, but I’ve spotted some good stuff on the ’net this week, so here goes:

• The Great Muffin Makeover: Harvard School of Public Health have a great piece on making better-for-you muffins, as well as recipes and a comparison of their muffins vs coffee shop ones.
• Chilli Kaffir Tamarind Tofu: Via @Ganga108 comes this delicious looking recipe for stir fried tofu marinated in chilli, kaffir limes and tamarind. I think it looks a-mazing.
• Breakfast: Via @shauna, @Elle_Ann and @sophiemostly I came across these two pieces on breakfast. One is about make ahead breakfasts and the other covers hot breakfasts for a cold morning. Lots and lots and lots of lovely ideas.
• Fixated on Brussels: For Northern hemisphere readers, a couple of Brussels sprout recipes. Firstly this one from 101 Cookbooks for Brussels with an oregano drizzle sauce and secondly Sophie’s ruby red Brussels and gruyere salad.
• More recipes: Some of my recipes have gone up on the Readers’ Digest website including these goat cheese and radish bruschetta and a Sri Lankan inspired fish curry.

A reminder that you can still enter Dietgirl’s 11th birthday competition to win a copy of An Honest Kitchen Cooking for One.

Plus for those of you on Facebook, the clinic where I work has a new Facebook page. It’s another way for you to follow Limes and Lycopene, plus we’ll be posting recipes and links to articles on health, good food and exercise.

4 comments 20 January, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Blogging and An Honest Kitchen

Couple of notices today.

Firstly, The Amazing Adventure of Dietgirl is 11 this week. Eleven whole years old, which is quite remarkable. To celebrate, the lovely Shauna is having a series of giveaway competitions, including some copies of our eMagazine An Honest Kitchen – Cooking for One. To win you just have to leave a comment on this blog post. And then cross your fingers.

Secondly, I’ve just put together my 2012 clinic cooking class schedule. Classes take place on Saturday afternoons, cost $25 and cover topics as varied as vegetarian cooking, one pot meals, how to get your five serves of vegetables and eating to prevent diabeties. To find out more click here.

The first class is on Cooking for One and if you book now you’ll also receive a free copy of An Honest Kitchen – Cooking for One. All the details are on the clinic website.

No comments 18 January, 2012

Posted by kathryn in Vegetables and Easier eating

Today I have another guest post from Cindy, one half of Where’s the Beef?. This is part of an occasional series on Limes and Lycopene, around the theme of what makes it easier to eat well?. Cindy and Michael blog about vegetarian eating in Melbourne and their soy bomb recipe is wondrous. Anyway, over to Cindy.

While I’ve been writing a food blog for over five years now and loving my veges for many years more, I think one of the best shifts in my diet has occurred only recently. This has come from ordering a set vege box delivery to my home. Here are some reasons why:

Convenience. When all I have to do is move them from the door to the fridge, there’s no excuse for not getting enough fruit and vegetables into my mouth!

Seasonal produce. Choosing the set option means I receive the fruits and vegetables that are at their best right now, without the need to consult guides or squint over labels.

Variety. The best way to access the full range of nutrients we need is to eat a wide variety of foods. My vege box ensures that every week I eat more than just the safe, favourite foods I tend to fall back on when I’m shopping. For example, I’m not usually much of a fruit buyer or eater. Yet now that there’s consistently a bowl full of it on the table, I work fruit into my breakfast and often pack a piece for an afternoon snack.

Vegetables become the centrepiece. Vegetables (and fruits!) should take up the most space on our plates at meal times. This is much more achievable when meals are planned around the produce I want to use, instead of the other foods I have on hand.

Trying something new. Every now and then my vege box turns up something I’ve never cooked before (and farmers’ markets are even better for this!). It’s a great opportunity to discover a new favourite. While fruits can often be tasted as is, I like to gently roast vegetables with just a little oil, salt and pepper to get a sense of their flavour and texture.

Using a vege box also has its challenges. The big one is the potential for waste. Over time, I’ve developed some strategies for avoiding it.

1. Eat the early spoilers first. These are usually the leafy greens, while root vegetables last the longest. I take a peek at the crisper each day to check what’s starting to wilt, and prioritise it for my next meal.
2. Work on some favourite recipes for the vegetables that appear often. I’ve sighed over the fourth or fifth consecutive delivery of cabbage or silverbeet but after some googling, trialling and substituting I’ve found recipes that I’m happy to make again and again. (They’re no-mayo coleslaw, baked spring rolls and palak paneer/tofu, for the record.) I still sigh over repetitions on celery – let me know if you have any favourite recipes for it!
3. Work on some more flexible recipes or techniques for the produce that’s past its peak. I tend to roast vegetables or grate them up into fritters; soup is also very forgiving. Fruit can benefit from baking or stewing. Then there’s always stock or juicing and at worst, composting.

(Check out Kathryn’s excellent tips for using up a vege box too!)

Now that I have these strategies in place, my vege box helps me to eat well every week. If there’s a company or co-op offering pre-selected vege boxes in your neighbourhood, you might enjoy the convenience, quality and variety they offer too.

Cindy is one half of the blogging duo at where’s the beef?. There’s no beef at all, since she and Michael are cheerfully vegetarian.

11 comments 14 January, 2012