Tag Archives: healthy eating

Tomato glut salmorejo

Fresh back from a workation summer in southern Spain (more of that to come in a future blogpost), I am missing A LOT about being away – including salmorejo. Turns out it is super-easy to make at home. Perfect if you’ve got a glut of homegrown tomatoes, Here’s how.

This recipe is a translated (and very slightly amended) version of a salmorejo from an awesomely enthusiastic Spanish chef who runs an organisation called Gastronomia y Fitness (@gastronomiayfit on Twitter, where I discovered him). He is 100% committed to wellbeing through food, fitness and eating well.

Super-delicious recipe

His salmorejo recipe is here. It is super-easy and super-delicious. Much simpler than gazpacho, and used in Spain not just as a soup but also as a sauce. Numerous dishes came with either a small dipping bowl of salmorejo on the side, or a thick smear of this delicious tomato-based puree on the base of the plate, when we were in Sevilla this summer.

Perfect for hot weather, I made some tomato glut salmorejo for lunch today and it took less than 10 minutes. Here’s how (serves two):

Throw 500g of ripe tomatoes and 75g of stale bread cubes in a powerful blender along with a small clove of garlic, 75ml of good olive oil and a tablespoon of white wine vinegar. Blitz until smooth. Thin down with cold water to get the consistency you want (depends on whether you are eating as soup or using as a sauce / puree). Salt to taste (go easy!). Chill until needed.

Serve either as it comes, or throw on some healthy toppings such as hard boiled egg, herbs, or feta.

TIPS: I used the blender rather than the food processor for a more powerful chop, as I was using tomatoes from the freezer (from my homegrown glut) and tough sourdough bread cubes from the end of a stale homemade loaf. I didn’t bother peeling the tomatoes. It is easy to thin down further with ice cold water if it has thickened up in the fridge.

Thanks, Gastronomia y Fitness for your salmorejo inspo – keep up the good work!

4 best ways to rock veggie January

a rainbow of vegetables for veggie January — Rainbow vegetables: among the joys of vegetarian January

Another vegetarian January is over, and this has been the least troublesome one ever. So much so that, come Feb 1, I couldn’t think of a meat-based recipe I actually wanted to cook.

So here is my four-point guide to enjoying a delicious, healthful, inspiring month of veggie cooking.

Yotam Ottolenghi: The year we discovered the joys of this genius chef’s cookbook Plenty was the year our vegetarian January became both seriously enjoyable and sustainable. The way he combines ingredients to create mouthwatering dishes is pure genius. I now own the full set of his books, having received a copy of his new Nopi for Christmas, and am itching to try out some of the meaty recipes now veggie Jan is over.
Raw slaw: Hell, I LOVE raw slaw, so in my household it is certainly not just for vegetarian January. I combine any mixture of shredded uncooked beetroot, red cabbage, green or white cabbage, carrot, radish and celeriac with toasted walnut pieces, dried cranberries or sour cherries, and a shredded apple, then dress it with sesame and olive oil, mirin, pomegranate molasses, vinegar and a sprinkle of rock salt. It keeps well in the fridge, so I always make a huge batch and it tides me over for a few days. Delicious alongside griddled halloumi and roasted aubergine (see Ottolenghi for The Best Ever aubergine recipes).
South East Asia: Thai red chicken curry – without the chicken – is now a Feelgood family favourite. I have a tub of homemade red curry paste in the fridge on a permanent basis, meaning it’s a matter of moments to chop up a load of vegetables for this non-meat version that is in fact as tasty as the carnivorous alternative. Just make sure you throw in the veg in order of how long they each take to cook ie green beans, chopped celeriac first and sliced onion first, followed by diced butternut squash, and courgette last.
The wok. Fuchsia Dunlop is another favourite chef, and she includes some brilliant vegetarian versions of her Szechuan meat-based recipes in her inspiring cookbook Every Grain of Rice. Who knew that Ma Po Dofu could be as good without minced beef as with it? Stir-fried greens with garlic and soy sauce were a staple of my student days, and I still love them as much as ever: near raw and therefore bursting with vitamins, they give my veggie January a real healthy zing.

Nourish your digestion

And that’s the key to a successful meat-free start to the year: rather than seeing it as a time of restricted eating, think of it as a time to extend your cooking repertoire, try out new recipes and cooking styles, and a chance to nourish your digestion with more raw foods, unprocessed foodstuffs and lower fat options. It’s easier – and tastier – than you might think.

Post-yoga energy balls

Apricot and maca powder protein balls

Meet my new go-to post-Bikram energy booster: little balls of power that are quick and easy to make, taste great and are easy to digest after a 90-minute session in the studio.

Think lots of nuts for muscle-mending protein, maca powder for replenishing sapped energy reserves and dried apricots for a blood pressure-friendly potassium boost. Delicious, healthy and portable: pop a few in a pot and share them with your yoga buddies after your next Bikram practice.

To make a dozen or so small protein balls, blitz the following ingredients in a food processor then use your hands to squish the results into balls, roll in desiccated coconut (optional) and allow to harden a little in the fridge. The whole process should take about 15 minutes.

Ingredients:

Mixed handful of dried apricots and goji berries
1/4 cup of cashew nuts
1/4 cup of almonds
1/4 cup of pumpkin seeds
1/2 teaspoon of chia seeds
1.5 tablespoons of coconut oil
1/2 teaspoon of maca powder
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
a big pinch of ground salt flakes (after Bikram yoga you need to replenish the salt you have sweated out)
A couple of tablespoons of desiccated coconut

Enjoy!

Why cutting your sugar intake is about more than obesity

UK health experts want to see less sugar in the foods we eat, fruit juice and fizzy drinks banned from the dinner table, and possibly even a sugar tax.

In an instant, the current recommended sugar intake has been halved, so that an adult woman should now aim to consume no more than 25g of added sugar (5-6 teaspoons) per day; 35g (7-8 teaspoons) for a man.

About time too. If as a nation we don’t take action on improving our diets, there is no chance of beating the obesity crisis whereby in the UK, 67% of men and 57% of women are either overweight or obese, according to a recent Global Burden of Disease study. More than a quarter of children are also overweight or obese.

But cutting your sugar intake is about more than obesity. Being overweight increases your likelihood of suffering from a whole raft of unpleasant conditions, with type-2 diabetes sitting right there at the top of the danger list. That’s right, you won’t just be fat. You will also be seriously unwell.

One in three adults in the UK are at risk of developing type-2 diabetes, and sufferers are getting younger. What used to be a later life condition is turning onto a middle age problem – and younger. But despite these warning signs, new research from ShARP (the Simply Health Advisory Research Panel) reveals that more than 60% of us are unconcerned about it, and 40% admit to general ignorance about Type-2 diabetes.

Maybe it’s time to start getting worried: if you’re overweight, inactive and have a family history of diabetes, the bad news is: You Are Likely To Get Diabetes. Fact.

Which means …
1. You’re FIVE TIMES more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke, because diabetes damages your vascular system.
2. Painful foot ulcers caused by nerve damage as a result of diabetes are likely to reduce your mobility.
3. You’re 20 TIMES more likely to require a foot or lower leg amputation.
4. You’ll suffer more infections, because diabetes means high sugar levels in your body – and bacteria and fungi thrive on sugar!
5. You’ll be low on energy and suffer from extreme tiredness.
6. You may suffer renal disease because of the damage caused by high blood sugar to the small blood vessels within your kidneys. Kidney disease kills one in 10 people with type-2 diabetes.
7. You’re at increased risk of glaucoma and cataracts, which occur 10-15 years earlier in people with diabetes.
8. You are also more at risk from blindness as a result of retinopathy, because fluctuating blood sugars – especially high blood sugar, as in diabetes – damage the blood vessels at the back of your eye.
9. People with diabetes are 10-20 times more likely to lose their sight than a person with normal blood sugar levels.
10. Getting diabetes in middle age increases your likelihood of a form of brain damage associated with dementia.
11. In fact, blood sugar problems can actually shrink your brain: diabetics have an average of 2.9% less brain volume than non-sufferers, scans at the world-famous Mayo Clinic have shown.
12. Your long- and short-term memory will deteriorate as a result of diabetes: a condition known as vascular dementia.
13. You are at high risk of suffering from depression.

Well, wouldn’t you be depressed on realising that you’ve contracted a preventable disease that entails serious life changes (ongoing medication to control your diabetes and related conditions, taking more exercise, avoiding foods that contain glucose – that’s sugar, folks) – for the rest of your life?

Go easy on the sugar and do your whole body a favour.

Bravo! ‘mangerbouger’ France

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