Life etc recipes
Posted by kathryn in All In A Day's Work
The latest issue of Life etc is out, complete with my regular recipe column – Ten Minute Kitchen – three recipes that only take ten minutes to prepare. This month the theme is herbal flavour and the recipes include:
- Rosemary veal with parsley salsa
- Bocconcini, tomato, basil and walnut salad
- Fish parcels with dill&mint
As per usual you can download the recipes from the Life etc website – the button is about half way down the page on the right hand side. Alternatively the magazine is available from newsagents and ABC shops.
Back from holidays
Posted by kathryn in Blogging
I’m back from holidays . Had a wonderful, wonderful time visiting outback NSW. Saw many sunsets; camped in the bush; shepherded sheep, feral goats and emus of the road; saw more kangaroos than I thought possible and most definitely cleared my head of the city hustle and bustle.
Despite the current Sydney downpour, our trip has made me realise exactly how dry this land is.
Thanks to all of you who sent emails, visited and commented while I was away. At the moment I’m catching up on emails, clients and reading, so there won’t be a lot of blogging until next week. I’m posting interesting articles to my del.icio.us account, so if you’re looking for some news, reading and recipes, then take a look at the What I’ve Been Reading section in the sidebar.
Many teenagers eating an unhealthy diet
Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet
It may not be surprising to many parents, but a recent survey of the eating habits of 3,800 teenagers found that many teenagers are eating an unhealthy diet. More than a third “rarely or never” eat fruit, while one in five have fast food every day and more than 90% have extra or non-essential foods (such as fast foods, lollies, crisps and sugary drinks) every day.
I’m probably more shocked that two-thirds of teenagers are eating fruit every day , particularly when you compare it to a lot of adults’ diets .
However, teenagers and their growing and changing bodies need good food. If your diet is high in junk, while it contains plenty of kilojoules, it’s almost certainly deficient in the vitamins and minerals so important for the efficient functioning of our bodies. Without a good diet teenagers are going to be more tired, more sick and more moody than they should and could be.
It’s tough getting teenagers to eat well – they’re asserting their independence and are often guided more by friends than parents. As ever, it comes back to education and . . . tapping into their vanity if necessary. Encourage your teenager to eat well because it will make them feel better, it will make their skin better, and they’ll have more energy and vitality.
Technorati tags: teenagers , fast food , junk food , teenage diets
Standard drinks
Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet
I’ve been posting a lot about drinks recently: juices , ribena , water, so it seems apt to be linking to Chew On This talking about wine: * Supersize me: when one glass of wine is almost three * . Paula’s article covers what exactly is a standard drink and how many of them are you allowed? There’s a lot of confusion about this in the community, so this is a good summary.
Spiced apple muffins
Posted by kathryn in Fruit and Breakfast
A couple of weeks back I made some more muffins. This time I had two little helpers – a two and a four year old who were staying with us.
The four-year-old only liked apples, so I adapted my usual recipe and this time I used tinned Baker’s Apple. SPC Ardmona make a variety that is 100% apple – no sweetener and no juice. It’s like using chunky stewed apple, but quicker and easier than making your own.
I didn’t take a photo, but they turned out really well – moist and spicy with chunks of soft apple.
I needed 500g of fruit, which is more than one tin – but I used the remainder the next day on my breakfast porridge.
Spiced apple muffins
Makes 12 muffins
- 1.5 cups plain wholemeal flour
- 3 teaspoons mixed spice
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 cup yoghurt (I used Jalna vanilla)
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup raisins
- 500g tinned Baker’s Apple
- 4 tablespoons jam
Preheat the oven to 170°C and grease a 12 hole muffin tin.
Sieve together the flour, spice and baking soda.
In a separate bowl whisk together the yoghurt and egg. Add the raisins and mix through.
Mix the apple and jam together in a bowl, roughly chopping the apple with the side of the spoon as you go. You want the fruit and jam combined, but there still to be some texture and lumpy-ness to the fruit.
Stir the fruit into the yoghurt mixture and then combine that with the flour and spice. Mix together until just combined – do not beat or over-stir. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tin. Place the muffins in the middle of the oven and cook for 15 – 20 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, before transferring to a wire rack.
Nutrition information per muffin:
- Total kilojoules: 383kJ
- Protein: 4g
- Total Fat: 1g
- Saturated fat: 0.2g
- Carbohydrate: 17g
- Fibre: 2g
- Sodium: 21mg
- Number of fruit serves towards daily total: 0.5 serves
- Additional nutrients: potassium, vitamin C and other antioxidants.
My top 5 ways to keep a cold at bay
Posted by kathryn in Seasonal Health
You know the signs. You start feeling a bit more tired than usual, maybe a bit achey. You may be off your food. There’s a tickle in your throat and your nose just won’t stop running. These are all sure signs your body is fighting something and a cold may be on its way.
Cold and flu season can be a horrid time for many people. If everyone around you is coughing and spluttering, what can you do to keep the colds and winter lurgies at bay?
1. Get re-acquainted with your couch
As soon as I know something’s coming on, I clear my diary for a few days, restrict my work hours and take it easy. Being tired is guaranteed to make you more susceptible to the viruses going round. Now’s the time to catch up on your sleep and take a bit more care of yourself.
If you have a cold, then don’t soldier on. Take sick leave from work, stay in bed with a hot water bottle, keep warm and keep horizontal.
2. Drink lots and lots of cold and flu tea
I’ve always found this ginger, lemon and honey tea to be a a miracle worker. It’s an easy and effective remedy, that acts as a mild expectorant and is antimicrobial.
You need to drink lots of it though – between four and six cups a day. I often make a large plunger up in the morning, drink that and then refill it after lunch.
Start drinking this at the first sign of a cold and it will often keep the illness at bay.
3. Eat light, nutrient dense foods
Now is the time to feed your body with vitamins and minerals, by eating a good diet. These nutrients will help your body withstand the winter onslaught. A good cold-preventing diet regime could be:
- wholegrain toast with hummous and tomato
- fruit and a few nuts mid morning and afternoon
- some soup at lunch: I most frequently make quick & easy lentil soup and lablabi in winter
- a stir-fry in the evening with protein, lots of vegies, ginger and garlic
4. Keep off the grog
While it might feel like alcohol helps, it doesn’t really. Stick to water and herbal teas and keep well hydrated.
Hot Foods
When unwell I find I crave Tom Yum soup and it’s hot, sour flavour. It’s a craving I’m happy to satisfy. Hot foods, like ginger, chilli, garlic, wasabi and horseradish are fantastic for your immune system. So use them liberally in your cooking:
- make stir-frys with ginger, chilli and garlic
- add wasabi and garlic to mashed potatoes (it’s really good)
- add extra crushed garlic to your shop bought hummous
- add a grating of horseradish, or a couple of dried chillies to tomato-based dishes
It’s quite normal to get one or two colds per year, but if you look after yourself you should also get over them quickly. Eat well, cut back on the grog and get a few good nights of sleep – your body will thank you for it.
What do you do to keep colds and flus at bay during the winter months?
The marketing of bottled water
Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet
Plus from the SMH an examination of the marketing of bottled water. Here in Australia we drink 252 million litres of bottled water, at a total cost of $385 million and the market has grown by 42% since 2002.
Water, it seems, isn’t just a drink. It’s a health product, a status symbol and now – with the arrival of New York’s $US40 ($51) Bling h2O (“a couture water that makes an announcement like a Rolls-Royce Phantom”) – a fashion statement.
Water it seems is big business.
Why is water important?
Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet
We all know water is important to our health, but why exactly is that? Over at The Diet Dish, Cynthia Sass has been posting about water: why we drink it, which is better, bottled or tap and exactly how much water should we be drinking?
Take a look – part 1 and part 2 .
Photo by Wassa under the terms of the Creative Commons License .
A low GI potato
Posted by kathryn in Vegetables and Carbohydrates
News from the GI group at Sydney University: they’ve found a low GI potato . . . and it’s the Nicola.
Nicolas are not a new variety of potato – they’re one of my favourites and I’ve been using them for years. They’re a lovely, waxy potato that holds it’s shape and doesn’t go mushy when cooked, making Nicolas perfect for curries, stews and potato salads.
While most potatoes have a high GI rating of between 75 and 101, Nicolas have a low GI of just 58.
If you’re trying to control your blood glucose levels; have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, Syndrome X or PCOS; or are simply trying to lose some weight, then make the switch to Nicolas. For information on how to do this see How a simple knowledge of the GI can improve your energy levels.
Photo: gisarah under the terms of a Creative Commons License
Burger King to improve ethical treatment of pigs and chickens
Posted by kathryn in Sustainablity
Burger King, the second largest fast food chain, have announced plans to start sourcing pork, chickens and eggs from farms where the animals are not reared in cages and crates. Here in Australia, Hungry Jack’s is Burger King’s local franchise.
The transition will take place over an extended period of time, with their immediate goals being quite small. Starting now, 2% of their eggs will come from cage free chickens, while 10% of their pork will come from farms where the pigs are allowed to move around inside their stalls. By the end of the year they plan to have 5% cage free eggs.
From the SMH :
The company said those percentages would rise as more farmers shifted to these methods and more competitively priced supplies became available.
While Burger King’s initial goals may be modest, food marketing experts and animal welfare advocates said the shift would put pressure on other restaurant and food companies to adopt similar practices.
Both chickens and pigs suffer considerably when reared in confined spaces. They are more prone to disease and suffer extensive stress and boredom, which leads to aggression. This marks a significant development in the world of fast food. Burger King have also announced their plans to continue working with animal welfare experts during the transition.
This follows the announcement in January by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor, of their plans to stop the practice of keeping pigs in metal crates over the next decade.
Technorati tags: pork , chicken , ethical treatment of animals , burger king ,
Off on a holiday and an adventure
Posted by kathryn in Blogging
As of today, I’m off on holidays for two and a bit weeks. Richard and I are packing up the car and heading out to the western edges of NSW for an outback adventure . We’re going to be visiting Broken Hill , Mutawintji National Park , Menindee and Lake Mungo . We’ve been planning this for ages and I have to say I’m VERY excited now it’s actually happening!
I’ve planned a whole series of posts for while I’m away, which will be published every couple of days – so keep coming back.
In the meantime, this quote appealed to me greatly (thanks to CK for sending it to me):
One of the symptoms of approaching a nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
__
(Bertrand Russell)
Photo: Andrew Farrington under the terms of a Creative Commons License
What about vegetable juices?
Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet, Fruit, Snacking and Vegetables
In amongst the anti-fruit-juice posts this week, Andrew asked whether vegetable juices were any different? We tend to lump fruit and vegies together in our heads and nutritionally they do have similarities. However there are a number of key differences, which makes including both of them in our diet important to our health. It also means that vegetables are a much better juicing option.
While some vegetables have really good levels of vitamin C (think capsicum and anything green and leafy), fruit is our main source of this vital nutrient. Both fruit and vegetables provide potassium and fibre, as well as carotenoids and other important antioxidants. It’s important to note that fruit and vegetables do contain different antioxidants , which is why we’re generally told to eat a mixture of the two.
Kilojoule content
One of the big differences between fruit and veg lies in their kilojoule content. While fruit is low in kilojoules compared to many snacks and other foods, it does contain some. Depending on the fruit, a serving will be between 150 and 250 kilojoules. Whereas most vegetables are much lower than this. For example 100g of apple has:
- twice the kilojoules of carrots and broccoli
- three times the kilojoules of cabbage
- four times the kilojoules of cucumber, tomatoes, celery and spinach
- seven times the kilojoules of lettuce
If you’ve ever stood in a juice bar and watched the assistants at work, you’ll know that it takes a lot of fruit and vegies to make one small juice. This is why fruit juice is so much higher in kilojoules than vegetable juices. By the time you’ve juiced five apples, you’ve clocked up 1,500 kilojoules. Whereas if you’re making a juice of carrots, beetroot, celery and spinach, you’re having about a quarter of that amount.
What does that all mean?
As I said before , when I’m out and about, I’ll sometimes buy a juice, but I’ll make sure it’s at least 75% vegetables.
However, you do still need to eat vegetables. While juicing can be a useful addition to your daily diet if you know you’re having a low vegie day, vegetable juices (like fruit juices) do not contain fibre . The fibre part of the vegetable goes down the waste tube and gets thrown away (or put on the compost), which means you’re still missing out on one of the important nutritional components we get from vegies.
Technorati tags: juice , fruit juice , vegetable juice
Photo from the National Cancer Institute: http://visualsonline.cancer.gov
Fruit and veg in season: April in Sydney
Posted by kathryn in Shopping Basket, Fruit and Vegetables
April is here, while we’re still having beautiful weather, the mornings are getting more crisp. Autumn is upon us. So what fruit and veg are in season this month?
Fruit:
- Apples (especially Jonathon, Royal Gala, Pink Ladies&Red Delicious)
- Avocadoes (particularly Fuerte)
- Bananas
- Custard Apples
- Fuji fruit
- Grapes (although the main season is probably over)
- Guava
- Kiwifruit
- Lemons
- Limes
- Mandarins (Imperial)
- Melons (while they’re going out of season, I’m finding honeydews are still beautiful)
- Nashi pears
- Pears (especially Buerre Bosc&Williams)
- Passionfruit
- Persimmons
- Pomegranates
- Quinces
- Tamarillos
Vegetables:
- Asian greens (bok choy, gai lan, etc)
- Beans
- Broccoli
- Brussels sprouts
- Cabbages
- Capsicums
- Carrots
- Daikon (white radish)
- Fennel
- Ginger
- Leeks
- Mushrooms
- Okra
- Peas
- Potatoes
- Pumpkins
- Radish
- Silverbeet
- Spinach
- Squash
- Turnips
- Witlof
- Chokos
Source: Sydney Markets
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26 April, 2007
