Live For Food

Here in the UK the weather is quite varied at the moment. It’s been mostly wet and cold for the time of year since Easter – around 15-18C. However every now and then we get a few days where it shoots up to the mid 20s, and a few days later its back down again.

The forecasts are unreliable and change by the hour so you assume if its nice it will probably be nice all day, but you always put a coat in and take a brolly just in case.

Consequently no-one knows what to wear – summer or winter clothes, and no-one knows what to plan in advance for their evening meal.

Its possible to plan a casserole the day before and then find its 25C and you don’t fancy it. And equally possible to plan a salad and for the weather to turn and go cold.

So here are my top tips for being prepared for any weather, turning a hot meal into a cold one and vice versa.

Quick and easy summer meals:

• Keep burgers, sausages and bread rolls in the freezer to do a quick grill or barbecue
• Keep bags of prepared salad in the fridge, and serve with new potatoes or potato salad, cheese, hard boiled eggs or cold meats from the deli.
• Turn a starter into a light main meal – smoked salmon or prawns with avocado and salad, or pate with cold toast and salad.
• Put a seasoned chicken breast in the oven for 25 minutes, with some vegetables to roast – bell peppers, onion and mushrooms and serve with salad.

Quick and easy winter meals:

• Keep a jar of curry paste and tinned tomatoes and natural yogurt in. A quick chicken and veg curry can be made using the recipe on the jar.
• Cauliflower cheese is a nice warming filler, and can be made as a side vegetable, or into a main meal with other vegetables and pasta added.
• Make extra when you make a shepherd’s pie or lasagne – the extra portions make a quick warming meal another day and can be reheated in a microwave.
• Keep a Fray Bentos pie in the cupboard. They keep for ages, as they are in a tin, and can be served with vegetables of any kind. Not the healthiest, but okay as a one off.

Turning a winter meal into a summer one:

• Planning on grilling or stewing a meat dish? Stick it on the barbecue or grill instead. Your vegetables can be made into vegetable kebabs.
• Planning on cooking chicken breasts or thighs, or in a stew or casserole? Instead chop them in slices and make stir fry or fajitas.
• Planning on making bolognese or lasagne? Make burgers, or spicy tacos with the minced meat instead.
• Planning on steak and chips with a heavy sauce? Make steak and salad with buttered new potatoes.
• Planning a roast dinner? Cook it earlier in the day and serve cold with salad and new potatoes. Or pick up a hot rotisserie chicken from the deli if you can’t bear to have your oven on.
• Planning a pasta bake? Make it a cold pasta salad.

If you want to turn a summer meal into a winter one, just swap those ideas round!

How do you deal with the variable weather when meal planning?

Sugar is in so many of the foods we eat. It’s in the obvious foods like cake, chocolate and pastries, and it’s also hidden in many foods like ready meals and breakfast cereals.

Sugar comes in many forms. Sucrose and glucose are types of sugar you will see on your chocolate wrappers. There is also fructose which is found naturally in fruits and lactose which is found naturally in milk.

So you may ask, what is the recommended daily amount (RDA) of sugar? Well, technically an RDA is the minimum of a particular nutrient that you need in the body, and as we don’t actually need sugar to live the RDA would be nil.

Sugar does give us energy but there are many other foods which give us energy in a more efficient way. The only people who may need sugar for instant energy are athletes.

A bit of browsing reveals that there is no set maximum recommended allowance for sugar either. I have seen levels for women  estimated between 25-90g a day, and for men 38-120g a day. In terms of calories that is 100-360 for women, and 150-480 for men. Quite a wide range!

The US government makes a broad recommendation based on sugar consumed being no more than 8% of daily calorie intake. For a woman eating 2000 calories and a man eating 2500 this comes out as 40g and 50g respectively which seems reasonable.

To put this into context, a medium banana contains 14g of sugar, a medium chocolate chip cookie contains 20g, and a Mars bar contains 35g.

A product containing over 15g of sugar per 100g is considered to be high in sugar, and less than 5g per 100g is low sugar. Shockingly many boxes of breakfast cereal are high in sugar.

If you tot up all the hidden sugars you eat as well, it would be quite possible to be over the suggested limit by the end of breakfast. All I can say is that I wish sugar didn’t taste so nice!

I have a jar of crunchy peanut butter in and I wanted to try a recipe out with it.  Currently my way of eating the peanut butter is off a teaspoon when I want a snack, so I thought I should try something slightly more adventurous! This is a quick and easy recipe for peanut butter cookies from the BBC Food website.

Ingredients:

8 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp caster sugar
2 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
1 free-range egg yolk
50g/1¾oz butter, softened
icing sugar, for dusting

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
• Place the flour, sugar, peanut butter, egg yolk and butter into a large bowl and mix together until combined to a smooth dough.
• With lightly floured hands, break off evenly sized pieces of the dough and roll into walnut sized balls.
• Place the dough balls onto a baking sheet lined with silicon paper or baking parchment and gently press each ball with the back of a fork to flatten slightly.
• Place in the oven and bake for ten minutes, or until just turning golden-brown.
• Transfer the cookies to a wire rack and allow to cool for ten minutes.
• To serve, place on a serving plate and dust with icing sugar.

Comments:

I followed this recipe almost to the letter, everything was as written except the egg which was whatever I had in rather than free-range. My cookies needed 15 minutes in the oven to cook. 

These are tasty little biscuits, great for a snack or for putting in lunchboxes. The peanut flavour is subtle rather than intense – having never cooked with peanut butter before I wasn’t sure how it would come out, but its nice.

The Sharon fruit is my current favourite unusual fruit. It is a variety of the persimmon, and you will hear both names used.  The Sharon fruit is native to Israel, grown on the Sharon plains, but other varieties of persimmon come from Japan and the US. 

They are a bright orange fruit with a dark leaf on top. The size varies between that of a large plum to that of a medium apple.

If you have a sweet tooth they are great because they have really sweet flesh. They almost taste like they have regular sugar in them. If you want a substitute for a bar of chocolate you will find the Sharon fruit a lot more satisfying than an apple.

You can also eat the whole fruit as there are no seeds on the middle. You just get left with the leafy bit on top. The inside texture is slightly odd, its not quite smooth, its has ridges – sort of like the way that meat has a grain.

The downside to Sharon fruit is the price. My supermarket are selling 3 small ones for £1 or a large one for £1. You could probably buy an equivalent sized apple for 25p.

If you want to eat the fruit immediately, buy one that gives very slightly when you press it, to make sure its ripe. 

I never get as far as cooking with Sharon fruit because they are so nice I eat them before I get a chance.

So if you fancy trying out a new fruit to get that 5 a day, and you’ve got a sweet tooth, why not give the Sharon fruit a go?

As most of us know, “5 a day” refers to the well publicized government campaign that we should all eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables every day as part of a healthy diet.

The intention behind this campaign was to simply get us all eating more fresh produce. A portion of fruit is one banana or apple, or a handful of dried fruit, or 3 tablespoons of vegetables (80g).  Check out this link for more details on portion sizes.

Frozen vegetables also count, as do tinned vegetables with no other additives.  Also, fruit juice and beans or pulses can count towards the 5 a day, but only count as a maximum of one portion irrespective of how much you have.

I think most people also know that potatoes don’t count as a vegetable in this context. They are treated like rice and pasta – as a starchy carbohydrate, not a vegetable.  Although sweet potatoes DO count as a vegetable. (Are you confused yet!).

Where did the goal of 5 a day come from? Well I seem to remember reading that following some research on fruit and vegetables the optimum number of servings a day was actually 8 or 9. But given that a lot of people hardly eat any at all, the UK average being around 2-3 portions a day, 5 was considered a more realistic target to engage the general public.

On the other hand you get articles like this one, which state that fruit and vegetables aren’t a lot of good apart from a few vitamins and a bit of fibre.

So I conclude that the number 5 is pretty much plucked out of thin air. However, in terms of your diet, 5 is an achievable number to aim for without being excessive.  I probably get 3-7 portions a day in myself.  Fruit and veg ARE healthy, they provide energy in the form of carbohydrates, they provide vitamins and minerals, and they provide fibre.  They add variety to the diet, and fill you up for relatively few calories.  Despite the number 5 being random, it doesn’t seem unreasonable.

However the latest confusion surrounding the 5 a day seems to be the exploitation of this goal by food manufacturers.  Many ready meals, processed foods, and even foods such as fruit bread come with claims on the packet that these items contain 1 or 2 of your 5 a day.

Many of these foods are not fresh, and contain a certain amount of sugar, salt, and fat, which seems to defeat the object of the original campaign to get us all eating more healthily.

Part of the problem is a lack of regulation surrounding the 5 a day promotion. The UK government have an official logo which looks like this:

It can only be used on approved foods, but there is nothing which stops manufacturers putting their own 5 a day claims and logos on packets.

One of the sneakiest claims which has recently come to my attention is the logo “1/2 of your 5 a day”. Beware if you see this. It may not mean 1/2 of the whole 5,  as in 2 and a 1/2 apples. It means 1/2 of 1 of your 5.  As in half an apple.

Obviously food manufacturers are there to make money.  And we buy more of things that are tasty and convenient.  We know that.

But lets not kid ourselves. Some fruit bread and a ready meal is not fruit and vegetables. We all know this. If you buy a ready meal, buy it because you want it, not because it contains 1 of your 5 a day. And then buy some fresh or frozen veg to go with it. And a banana for dessert. Sorted.