I must have Asian food!!!!

I love Asian food and ate so much of it when travelling. I was proud of the fact I managed to eat 27 curries when I was in India for two weeks and had virtually no western food during the 6 week stints I spent in Thailand and roaming south east Asia. The joy of authentic Asian food is that it's the real deal cooked with pure, fresh ingredients and lean meat rather than the unhealthy versions we get over here...which are AMAZING once in a while but not something I eat every week!

I do though, to satisfy my curry cravings, make something Asian inspired every week. One of my favourites  is vegetable korma quinoa because it's so good for you. Google it for yourself, but quinoa is a low GI food, full of protein, good fats, amino acids, and has anti-inflammatory properties. The texture  is nice too-  somewhere between boiled white rice and couscous. I've only ever made this recipe using korma paste, so should probably experiment with some different curry pastes to see what I end up with!

This recipe was originally from the BBC Good Food website, but I have tweaked and changed it a little.

Ingredients:

1 onion
4 tbsp of Pataks korma paste
500ml of milk (skimmed, full fat, lactose free,whatever) mixed with 500ml of water to make a litre of fluid in total.
750g frozen mixed veg (I use the Aldi one with carrots, broccoli and cauliflower)
175g quinoa, well rinsed.

Method:
Fry your onion, add a splash of water to the pan and your korma paste,then allow the lot to simmer for a few minutes. Add the litre of fluid, the frozen veg and quinoa. Bring to the boil and simmer until the quinoa is cooked. The whole mixture will be thicker (see below) when it is cooked and the quinoa will have the texture of boiled rice when ready. I serve this as a side dish with baked salmon, or take a portion to work for lunch and reheat it in the microwave. It freezes too, so batch up any leftovers to put into your freezer.

My soup maker recipe I tried this week was out of the instruction book! This recipe for chicken and sweet corn soup is filling, tasty and a lot healthier than your regular Chinese take away. I just need to buy some proper ramen noodle bowls, then I'll feel like I'm in Wagamamas!

Ingredients:
320 g tinned sweetcorn
1 red onion, finely diced
250g shredded cooked chicken (I used a packet of the fresh, ready cooked chicken from Asda rather than the sandwich meat-type stuff)
100g water chestnuts, sliced (in a small tin down the Chinese aisle of big supermarkets- I think mine were Blue Dragon)
1 teaspoon ground ginger
750ml chicken stock (about 2 stock cubes made according to instructions)
2tsp corn flour, mixed with a teaspoon of water to form a paste- add a dash more water of needed.
4 spring onions, finely sliced
1 red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
10 g coriander (fresh or dried)
200g hot, cooked noodles (I used the ones from Aldi that are part cooked, so you boil them for two minutes in hot water).
Soy sauce to serve.

Method:
Chuck everything apart from the noodles into your soup maker and select the chunky setting.  Put the cooked noodles in bowls and ladle the soup over them when finished!  If cooking in a pan, fry the onions and spring onions first until softened, then chuck everything else in. Bring to the boil and simmer until the veg is tender.

Next post will be my slow cooked skinny chicken korma recipe and a gluten free/ dairy free/ refined sugar free ice cream recipe to use up the rest of the coconut milk!  Happy, healthy eating gorgeous people!  #notofaddiets

What I like to munch on.

What do I tend to eat then?  Well, I'm a creature of habit; being busy and manic means I tend to stick to food that is quick, good for me and what fills me up more than a weight loss drink or milkshake. I choose low GI foods (so anything brown over white) and have very little refined sugar, if any, though you will see from my food photos so far, that if I want some chocolate, I'll have it! That's mainly because there's a lot of the stuff in the house since Christmas, otherwise, I try not to have it in the house. My diet means that I don't deny yourself and if you're surviving on nothing but crappy, manufactured diet juice to sustain you, you will fall off the wagon in spectacular fashion and have a full on binge of food when you decide to let loose.

The food I eat keeps me full and when I do feel hungry, my stomach starts to rumble but I don't have the awful sugar crash that goes with it- that's thanks to the brown, low GI foods I eat. These foods release their energy slowly, meaning you don't have the full on sugar crash with the shakes, sweaty lip and feeling in immediate need of sugar.

Typically, my day food wise looks like this:

Breakfast- usually at around 6.30am on a weekday and it's my favourite meal of the day! Hot water with lemon is closely followed by a coffee!
Say yes to either: 3 pieces of wholemeal toast with margarine and one with peanut butter, or porridge with blueberries or banana made with unsweetened soya milk (or regular milk) and sweetened with a little maple syrup. This is a natural sugar, much better than the horrible white stuff.  Prepare porridge the night before by soaking it in a mixture of milk and water, then heat in the microwave. Use plain porridge oats and be warned that the sachets or plastic tubs of instant porridge contain between 7.5g of sugar (Oat So Simple) to 44g (Leon porridge) and they won't keep you going for as long as porridge in it's natural, home made form will.
Say no to: fruit smoothies, as blending the fruit breaks up the sugar too quickly, meaning that although seemingly 'healthy', fruit smoothies make you pile weight on. Trust me, I've been there! Also say no to the breakfast cereals that masquerade as healthy options: bran flakes, Special K, cornflakes, etc are all high GI foods and will crash your blood sugar way before your morning break time. These foods are the worse for making you put on weight. Avoid granola at all costs- it is full of sugar and I only have the occasional bowl on a weekend. Fresh orange juice isn't great all the time either.

My breakfast part 2 (at about 9am) is then either my daily chocolate treat or some nuts, natural and not sweetened or salted. Plus a cup of decaf coffee!

Mid-morning snack- cup of tea with either an orange/ satsuma, a portion of cherries or now and then, a banana. Don't overload on fruit as although natural sugar, it is still sugary compared to vegetables.

Lunch- either a sandwich on rye bread, home made soup (recipes are on my last blog post) or s tuna/ chicken / salmon salad, with a cup of green tea and jasmine.

Afternoon snack- always a Cripps pink apple with a decaf coffee. I have this when work is finished and I'm on my way to the gym.

Dinner- whatever I've cooked! I rarely cook on a weeknight and instead do all of my cooking over the weekend, freezing it to then reheat. I do crank up the slow cooker (recipe below!) a lot too meaning that dinner is ready for when I get home. Dessert is either a yogurt or some sugar free jelly.

Evening snack- I find that I'm not usually hungry in the evening. I sometimes have a low calorie hot chocolate (made with water) before bed.

So basically, I have a day full of fresh, home made, filling, healthy food. Much better than a Juice Plus for breakfast, lunch and dinner!   As well as tea, coffee and de-caf coffee, I also aim to drink 2 litres of water a day.

One of my favourite dinners this week has been slow cooked chilli, served with a sweet jacket potato and salad.

Ingredients:
Big packet of minced beef, I think mine is about 800g from Aldi.
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic,crushed.
1 oxo cube
1 pepper, sliced.
A few mushrooms, sliced.
Mild chilli powder, plus chilli flakes for an extra kick! You could even throw in some jalapeños along with this for an extra spicy chilli!
1 tin of chickpeas, drained.
1 tin of kidney beans, drained.
A generous squirt of tomato puree, which probably works out at a couple of tablespoons.
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste.

Method: Throw all of your ingredients into the slow cooker (I don't bother with any of the precooking such as frying your onions), then stir through the tomato puree and tinned tomatoes. Give it all a good mix and cook on low for 8 hours.  If you'd rather make this in a pan, fry your chilli, garlic and onion for 10 mins in a little oil.  Add the mince, vegetables, chickpeas and kidney beans and fry for s further 10 mins. Then add the tomatoes, puree, oxo cube, bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Serve with low GI side dishes, so either a portion of brown rice (cook in advance and freeze- it defrosts and reheats perfectly) or a sweet potato. A small sweet potato takes about 5 mins on full power in a microwave (pierce it in several places with a knife first). The tougher skin gives it the texture of a regular oven baked potato, but unlike a white jacket potato, a sweet potato has a lower GI and will keep you fuller for longer.

So until my next post,remember that sensible, healthy food isn't a diet, it's a life lifestyle choice- the weight loss and then being able to maintain a healthy weight is a natural bonus!

Feel full my friends and say no to fad diets!

Gizmos and gadgets

I got a Morphy Richards soup maker for Christmas. Don't worry, it was on my Christmas list. I am already the proud owner of quite  a few gizmos and gadgets in my kitchen at home. They weren't whim buys either and I genuinely use these things a lot to help out with my healthy cooking and make it fit around my busy life. If any one of the following were to break, I'd be straight out to buy  replacement asap!

1. My Morphy Richards digital scales...another Christmas gift but also something I desperately needed as they are far mor accurate than my original scales. Please don't' judge me...!

 2.  My spiralizer- something I first read about in the Hemsley Hemsley Art of Eating well book. Mine is by Basily and cost me about a tenner from Amazon.  This nifty gadget allows you to turn vegetables into either spaghetti or noodles, depending on which end you stick your piece of veg into (I can't quite tell the difference). I often use courgettes as an alternative to spaghetti  in spag bol, or instead of noodles with a stir fry.

 3.  My slow cooker- I bought this in the Tesco January sale last year for £20 and I use it at least once a week. It means I can leave healthy food to cook (all in one pot) whilst I'm out of the house.

 4.  My new, beloved soup maker! I used to spend hours boiling and then blending my own soup but this does everything for you in about 20 minutes- just add your stock and chopped vegetables.

You've probably noticed on my photos that I have eaten lot of soup this week. I love the home made stuff which is healthy, comforting, filling and really cheap to make your  own. You can squeeze in as many vegetables as possible into a batch but minus the massive quantities of salt that goes into manufactured, tinned soup. Mainly this week, I've been adapting and tweaking my own soup recipes to produce the best result from my soup maker.

Two awesome soup recipes to get you started though would be sweet potato and leek, and also butternut squash and sweet potato. I've used sweet potatoes where original recipes have stated white potatoes, but sweet potatoes are delicious and keep you fuller for longer rather than the white ones do. I serve my soup with rye bread which is gluten free and also a low GI food that will keep you fuller for even longer than brown bread, which is still always a healthy alternative if you don't like the taste/ texture of the rye bread. No white bread please! It's nutritionally pointless.

Sweet potato and leek soup

Ingredients

2 onions, chopped.

2 cloves of garlic, crushed.

2-3 leeks, sliced.

450g sweet potato, sliced.

2 carrots, sliced.

2 sticks of celery, diced

1 and a half pints of vegetable stock (usually two stock cubes made up according to the packet instructions. Aldi stock cubes are the best).

To make this in a pan, fry your onions and garlic with a splash of olive oil for about 10 minutes, until the onion has softened. Add the rest of the veg and fry for a further 10 minutes. Next, add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for about half an hour or until the vegetables are soft. Finally, blend the soup and pour into foil or plastic cartons for freezing. If the soup is too thick for you after you've blended it, you can always add a touch more stock or a splash of milk to get the consistency you prefer.

To make the same recipe in a soup maker, I've found that the magic weight you need is 900g of vegetables, along with your pint and a half of stock. You might find that when using a soup maker for this recipe, that you need to cook your soup in two batches. Simply throw in 900g of your chopped ingredients, add the pint and a half of stock, select the 'smooth' setting and let the soup maker do the rest of the work for you! If your second batch of vegetables is slightly short of the 900g, throw in some spare carrots, leeks or whatever else to make up the extra weight. Again, cook this second batch of vegetables using the 1 and a half pints of stock. This recipe will give you 5 very generous servings, so it's a week's worth of lunches for me! This soup freezes brilliantly too, so stock up your freezer!

Sweet potato and butternut squash soup

Ingredients

One butter nut squash (or more if you like)

Some sweet potatoes

1 and a half pints of vegetable stock (usually 2 stock cubes made up according to their instructions).

Chop up your butter nut squash and check its weight. Make up the remaining weight with sweet potatoes (you need around 450g to make a thicker soup) so that you have 900g of butternut squash and sweet potato in total. Pop it into the soup maker with the stock and select the 'smooth' setting again, job done! If cooking this in a pan, fry your veg first in a little olive oil, add your stock and simmer until the veg is soft. Blend and serve.

Hope you like these recipes, more to follow. Forget fasting diets, juice diets, get some real food into you!

Welcome to a Year of Yum!

In 2014, over the course of 7 months, I lost around 10lbs of weight that had crept on and that I had been trying to shift for over a year. Even now, after Christmas pig outs, the weight loss remains because instead of losing weight through a fad diet, I simply made good eating a daily habit and religiously stuck to visiting the gym 3 times a week. I also cut out refined sugar and white food, sticking instead to slow release carbohydrates (basically, anything brown!). As a busy, working woman, I despair at the number of diets which advocate the use of pills or surviving on juice in order to lose weight. I find that whilst these diets seem to work initially, and indeed very quickly, the person eventually piles all of the weight back on as soon as they start eating normally again. I'm pleased to say though, I haven't tried these starvation diets and instead wanted to make a life long change with my eating rather than going for the quick fix- which quickly undoes itself as soon as you as much look at a piece of toast. Besides, as a busy woman with an appetite,there's no way a glass of juice or a pill would fill me. I NEED CARBS!!!!!

Luckily though, in the middle o 2014's onslaught of juice diets, fasting diets and other such nonsense, the likes of the Hemsley sisters, The Hairy bikers and Sarah Wilson saved hungry girls like me. They all advocated the art of eating well, providing us with nourishing recipes which led to weight loss because they cut out the refined crap: mainly refined ingredients including sugar. They taught us that eating well is a lifestyle choice and that when you eat the right foods,you simply won't get fat. Thank God I listened to them!

I'm not a nutritionist or a personal trainer,  but I love to cook things from scratch, go on 5k runs, and I believe that this simple philosophy shifted my excess weight and allowed me to maintain that weight loss.  Instead of feeling heavier than I like and bloated, I now feel energetic, trim and more confident. I can grab anything from my wardrobe knowing it will no longer be on the snug side, and the new found confidence that comes with eating well and being in shape works wonders in all areas of your life, whether that be your career, love life or family life. If you have confidence issues, depression or low self-esteem, healthy eating can begin your transformation from the inside, moving you onto better things in your life on the outside.

I'm also a big believer in real beauty and that beauty must radiate from the inside before it shows on the outside. I don't believe that women should change, but nobody wants to eat bad foods and feel frumpy either. A little exercise and eating the right foods will give you the best body you have ever had and allow you to stick maintain a healthyweight that is best and right for YOUR body. Yummy, real food + exercise = body confidence, beauty and wellness.

Anyway, the aim of this blog is to share recipes, thoughts and my love of food with you. Along with this weekly blog, I will update my Twitter each day with a photo of what I have eaten through the course of the day to prove that real food keeps you slim. Will there be carbs and naughty food days? Hell, yes, but these become few and far between as your body becomes more accustomed to healthy food choices. I want you to abandon any starvation, fad diets and try this instead!

Finally though, a few things we need to be clear on:
 1.  I shop at Aldi, no fancy things for me, just basic good food that I can cook. Healthy food being 'too expensive is not an excuse.
 2. I'm a busy woman who works 14 hour days, 5 days a week. Not having time to cook or exercise is not an excuse either. I also have a partner and two step children, so I know my cooking fits into a busy family life.
 3. I cook 95% of my meals from scratch, using an occasional shop bought sauce or packet mix.
 4. I cook all of my meals in advance, usually on a weekend, and freeze them. Everything I eat is home cooked, but often reheated on the hob or in the microwave.
 5. I still drink on the weekends. A girl's got to have some fun, right