Live For Food

This starter is a twist on the traditional prawn cocktail, which would be great for Christmas day or any festive meal.

https://giannifava.org/aasn9ca7o0

Ingredients (serves 8)
6 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
2 tsp brandy
Few drops of Tabasco
2 ripe avocados
1 tbsp lemon juice
300g cooked peeled prawns
2 tbsp olive oil
Large ciabatta, diagonally cut into 8 slices
8 baby gem leaves
Cayenne pepper and lemon wedges, to serve

https://musiciselementary.com/2024/03/07/18bm937ctls Method

1 Make the sauce
Mix the mayo, ketchup, brandy and Tabasco in a bowl, season and set to one side. Cover and leave in the fridge till needed.

https://wasmorg.com/2024/03/07/wa8rfcidu 2 Mix the prawns with the sauce
Peel, then chop the avocados into small chunks, tossing in lemon juice as you go so they don’t discolour. Mix the prawns with half the sauce, add the avocados and stir gently to coat everything.

3 Toast the bread
Heat a griddle pan or grill. To make the crostini, rub a little olive oil onto each slice of ciabatta and grill on each side for 1-2 minutes until toasted.

4 Assemble
Spread a little cocktail sauce on each crostini, top with a lettuce leaf and add a spoonful of the prawn cocktail mix. Sprinkle with a little cayenne pepper and serve with lemon wedges.

Copyright BBC Easy Cook Magazine, Immediate Media Limited
Reproduced with permission

Comments
Apart from scaling this recipe down for two people I followed it to the letter (for a change!)

Verdict
This was a nice starter. The ciabatta made it a bit more special than your standard prawn cocktail with bread and butter, and the hint of brandy coming through was quite festive. It was however a bit difficult to eat, as everything fell off the ciabatta when you picked it up – I would recommend providing knives and forks! The topping was too much for my ciabatta slices anyway, so I just put the extra on the side to eat, but I suppose it depends what size bread you buy anyway.

https://worthcompare.com/qjj7hpat

These little chocolate bites make a nice after dinner treat, or would make a good homemade Christmas present. They will keep in the fridge in an airtight container for one week, or will freeze for up to one month.

In general I do try and keep to healthier recipes on this blog, and all I can say on defence of this one is that dark chocolate is full of antioxidants and that ginger is good for the stomach. And don’t eat them all at once!

https://www.jamesramsden.com/2024/03/07/bykj433 Ingredients (makes 32 squares)
300g ginger nut biscuits, roughly crushed
140g crystallized stem ginger, finely chopped
300g plain chocolate, chopped
100g butter, diced
100g golden syrup

https://tankinz.com/dzwt7xobrk 1 Melt the chocolate and mix
Line a 20cm x 30cm tin with baking parchment. Mix the crushed biscuits with most of the ginger, then set aside. Melt the chocolate, butter and golden syrup in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally, until glossy and smooth. Pour over the biscuit mixture and mix well.

https://asperformance.com/uncategorized/z8j2u337q2p 2 Leave to set
Tip the mixture into the tin and sprinkle over the reserved ginger, then flatten the top lightly. It doesn’t need to be completely smooth. Chill for at least two hours, or overnight, then cut into squares.

Copyright BBC Easy Cook Magazine, Immediate Media Limited
Reproduced with permission

Comments
I halved the recipe as when I came to make it I realised I had only bought 150g of chocolate. So I also adjusted the tin size accordingly. No ingredients were changed however.

https://www.goedkoopvliegen.nl/uncategorized/09gy7cxdatz Verdict
These are really tasty.  They remind me of a ginger version of rocky road cake. They would work with all sorts of biscuits and dried fruit if you feel like being adventurous with your Christmas presents! They did feel like they were about to melt in my hand, so if you decide to give something like this as a present I would suggest it goes straight from your fridge to the other person’s fridge. It wasn’t terribly easy to cut, because the bit longer than the length of the knife just snapped. If you have a really long knife (30cm) it would solve the problem.

I also think these would be a great thing to make together with your children, either for yourselves or for presents.  Its very straightforward with a bit of knife work for the adult, and minimal actual cooking.  The melting of the chocolate could probably be done in the microwave to make the recipe even safer.

The subject of weight loss is both emotive and complicated. On one hand we have people who belittle the issue and say, “It’s easy, just eat less and exercise more”, and on the other hand we see people who spend their whole lives on diets yet ultimately remain overweight.

The first set of people are right in principle. If you expend more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. But calculating exactly how many calories you expend and adjusting your food intake accordingly is not always easy.

https://www.mominleggings.com/8a7paar
The calories you use up every day are affected by many different things, including:

• How many calories you burn through movement and exercise
  
• Your metabolism, which may be a factor of both genetics and how active you are
• The thermic effects of food, i.e. how many calories you use to digest the various types of food you eat
• How much body fat compared to muscle you have

You will see for yourself that if you look up the various “calories used calculators” on the internet you will get a different answer for each one. This is because they cannot account for your personal metabolism, and also because calories burned is always an estimate of some kind based on how much exercise you say you do.

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Calories in are also not always easy to measure. There are various charts and tables you can get hold of to estimate how many calories you are eating, or you can use nutrition information on food packets if its available.

However it can be more complicated if you cook meals from scratch with many ingredients, or if you eat out a lot, or if other people cook for you.

If you think you have all above sussed, and by whatever method or diet you choose you are expending more calories than you are eating, it’s still possible that you won’t lose weight.

Any of the following may contribute to weight gain or big weight fluctuations:

• Water retention
• Hormones
• Hormonal contraception
• Time of the month (ladies!)
• Emotional eating
• Holidays
• Stress
• Underactive thyroid
• Other medication
• Other health problems

So if you want to lose weight and are finding it difficult ask yourself the Order Tramadol From Mexico following questions:

Could I be eating more calories than I think? Check by keeping a detailed food diary for a couple of weeks.

Am I not burning enough calories? Consider doing more daily activity – perhaps wear a pedometer all day.

Are there other factors at play? Depending on what they are you may wish to see your doctor, consider other lifestyle changes, or simply go easy on yourself.

If all else fails, remember that health is not always directly correlated with weight. https://elisabethbell.com/qle0onz Continue with healthy eating and exercise anyway, because its doing you good on the inside, even though you can’t see it on the outside.

Making healthy choices on a consistent basis will increase your likelihood of weight loss, and more importantly, your risk of developing illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the long term.

Weight really is a complicated equation – I hope you can manage to solve it in a way that suits your lifestyle.

I fancied trying a new quick weeknight recipe that would use up some of the ingredients in my cupboards and this is the recipe I found to have a go at – Tuna and Broccoli Pasta Bake.

https://wasmorg.com/2024/03/07/btbpwjn85 Ingredients:
two 185g cans tuna in olive oil, drained, 1 tbsp oil reserved
two 400g cans chopped tomatoes with garlic and herbs
350g dried fusilli
300g broccoli, chopped (one small “tree”)
200g pack light soft cheese
100g cheddar, finely grated
25g breadcrumbs

http://countocram.com/2024/03/07/0390kvgl Method:

https://www.worldhumorawards.org/uncategorized/ri242b4bqdk 1 Cook the pasta and make the sauce
Heat the reserved 1 tbsp oil in a large pan. Tip in the tomatoes, plus 200ml water and simmer while you cook the pasta (in a separate pan), according to the packet instructions. Add the broccoli for the final 3 minutes of cooking, then drain, reserving some water.

https://www.jamesramsden.com/2024/03/07/1s1to8357 2 Grill and serve
Heat the grill to high. Stir the soft cheese into the tomatoes until melted, then mix with the pasta, broccoli and tuna. Season. Tip into an ovenproof dish, then sprinkle on the cheddar and crumbs. Grill for 5 minutes, until golden and bubbling.

Notes:
Serves 4
Ready in 20 minutes
707 kcals per portion

Copyright BBC Easy Cook Magazine, Immediate Media Limited
Reproduced with permission

https://www.lcclub.co.uk/9395ui2dg My variations:
I have scaled this recipe down for two people and did make a few alterations.

I decided to use tuna in brine instead of oil, as its what we get normally, and left out the tablespoon of oil.  This will cut the calorie content as well.

I had some leftover passata in so I used that instead of the tinned tomatoes – so for two people I used 200g passata and the full 200ml of water mentioned in step 1 of the method.

I also cooked my broccoli for closer to 10 minutes with the pasta as we are not that keen on crunchy vegetables and I used brown pasta, to make the meal slightly healthier.

I did however add two slices of bacon that I had hanging round in the fridge. I fried them using frylight and added them to the tomato mixture.

https://worthcompare.com/k9bjn586lh Verdict:
This is probably the best pasta bake from scratch recipe I have tried. Normally I find they end up watery and fall apart easily. However the cream cheese in the passata helped to make the sauce creamier and thicker and bound everything together very well. 

The light cream cheese gave it a smooth taste which is an improvement on plain tomatoes. Finally I have found a recipe that means I don’t need to buy jars of pasta bake sauce any more.

The recipe was also less time consuming than other pasta bakes I have tried, as the final stage was only the grill for 5 minutes rather than baking in the oven for 20 minutes. 

I think that any number of different types of meat or vegetables could be added to this recipe to make different variations – chicken, sausage, mushrooms, peppers, peas, and I will definitely be doing it again sometime.

And next time I’m going to pick a recipe that doesn’t use either passata or broccoli as I can’t spell either word and have to check them each time!

When you are making food choices its interesting to review the way other people make theirs.  I love watching what other people put in their trolleys at the supermarket, and what the person in front of me at a cafe chooses.

I work in an office with at the most four other people around me on a regular basis. There is me who tries to make healthy food choices, and has a mini internal battle to justify a biscuit or piece of cake. There is another lady who is slim and can eat whatever she wants.  Then there are three men – one sometimes attempts a healthy choice and the other two generally eat what they fancy when they fancy it.

One of the men the other day was trying to decide between a pasty and a sandwich for lunch. I suggested he have a salad for a change and you would have thought I’d suggested eating eyeballs from the aghast reply!

The other day I went out to a clients where the lunch options were described to me as: a sandwich shop, MacDonalds, KFC, the Chinese, or the chippy. In my head, only one of these options is an acceptable lunch option – the sandwich shop – but that implied to me that most other people in that workplace frequent the other options. The staff however are mainly male, and a lot are warehouse men or lorry drivers.  However often at clients the female admin staff will be bringing in their own salads and sandwiches and fruit.

I definitely get the impression its easier from a social point of view to be healthy eater if you’re female. People assume that ladies watch their weight and envy each others willpower for bringing in a salad.

The men go out for a pie or a pasty or an enormous sandwich on white bread, and get called wussy if they choose “rabbit food” or fruit.

However from a physical point of view the men can get away with it. A 6 foot man can eat a MacDonalds within his calorie intake but it will probably put a 5 foot lady over her limit. What it does to their respective insides is another question.

Men also seem less likely to snack, and more likely to wait until they get hungry and then grab something to eat – whatever is closest or easiest.

Women are more likely to plan their meals and are a lot more likely to tie in their emotions both their food, either through emotional eating or by assigning good and bad characteristics to food.

Healthy food doesn’t seem by anyone to be viewed as normal behaviour. Women see it as a lofty aim or a feat of willpower rather than a natural choice, and men see it as something that makes them less of a man and more of a rabbit!

Whose fault it this? Our fault? The government? The food industry? Why do the government have to persuade us to eat 5 fruit and veg a day? Isn’t it obvious that they are good for our bodies? Are the food industry intent on addicting us to processed food with high sugar and salt contents so we buy more and more? Can people really be unaware of the dangers of eating too much, and too much of the wrong thing?

The answers may be linked to any or all of the above but nothing is going to change overnight. The only thing we have a certainty of changing is ourselves.

If we change ourselves we may even change others! My boss kindly took me to the sandwich shop that day because he knows I prefer a healthier choice. And so he had a sandwich too although I’m guessing he may have fancied a MaccyD. The day after we all had fish and chips which the client kindly bought us, and I had a salad in the evening.

Is healthy eating natural for you and those around you? Or are you fighting a lone battle?