My Healthy Eating Blog: November 2005

28 November 2005

Jerusalem artichoke soup recipe

A mixture of sleet and rain drumming on the windows, a boy and his dad who’d been out playing or watching football all morning – what was needed, was soup. I bought some knobbly Jerusalem artichokes, here they are, fresh from a Norfolk field and still lightly covered in mud. They may not look that promising, but it didn’t take long to transform them into Jerusalem artichoke soup. Looks good, full of flavour, just the thing at the end of a cold and active morning.

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22 November 2005

Leftover turkey recipes

That was a bit of a week – last Monday evening, both kids burst into the house after school one after the other, flung their bags down and cried: ‘I feel ILL!’. I shall spare you the details, dear reader, and all I shall say is that that was the rest of the week totally written off, but they are better now, thank you. And happy to think about food again.

Meanwhile, I’ve been talking to my friends over in the USA today, and they’re all up to their eyes in preparation for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Stuff that turkey, gals! Tomorrow, they feast. And the day after? They’ll be needing leftover turkey recipes. Happy to oblige.

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14 November 2005

Healthy eating for kids

Last night, in a fit of enthusiasm, I revisited my childhood and made a bread and butter pudding. My kids liked the look of it, when it came out of the oven, but after one spoonful they stopped. Why? Apparently it ‘tasted funny’. I think the problem was the chopped candied orange peel I’d scattered in. It has a slightly bitter flavour, very pleasant to the adult palate, enough to put a child off. Never mind. Nicky, not to be cheated out of his dessert, decided to make something himself, and spent a happy 10 minutes chopping up various bits of fresh fruit and piling them into a dish of yogurt. Now, if I’d done that, they might well have said "Boring...". Because he did it himself, he called it a cool banana tower, had fun sinking the banana, then bombing it with chopped apple…you get the picture. I could learn a lot about healthy eating for kids from him. Just hand over the ingredients and let them do it themselves.

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8 November 2005

Healthy breakfasts

I don’t like missing breakfast, it leaves me feeling wobbly by 10.30. But sometimes I don’t fancy very much to eat. I’ve been looking into healthy breakfasts, and have come up with some good suggestions. Fresh fruit salad, anyone?

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7 November 2005

Water in ham

For a while now, I’ve been avoiding packaged ham which says it’s made from ‘formed’ or ‘re-formed’ ham. I suspected that I wouldn’t like it one bit, if I knew what went into that kind of meat. Last week, a report from the UK consumer group ‘Which?’, revealed that some brands contain as much as 45% water, plus a delightful cocktail of additives. I don’t want to put you off your lunchtime sandwich here, but re-formed ham is made from chunks of meat which are pulverised, then stuck back together with water and gluey additives.
Bleagh. It used to be all too easy to pick up those supermarket packs of wafer-thin sliced meat, so handy for piling into sandwiches. Now, I call in at my local butcher instead, and ask him to give me the thinnest possible slices from a joint of home-cured ham. It is a little more expensive, but it tastes of meat, and is guaranteed glue-free. Worth it.

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2 November 2005

Pumpkin soup recipe

The soup season is definitely upon us, with leaves fluttering down from the trees, and daylight disappearing soon after 4pm. There are still plenty of pumpkins in the shops, so today I bought a small one and made a batch of pumpkin soup. I like to keep it very simple, just adding an onion and a grating of nutmeg to the basic soup.

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1 November 2005

Romanesco cauliflower

I’ve still got half of the extraordinary romanesco cauliflower left from last night. I can safely say that this is the first vegetable that has ever made my daughter scream when she saw it on the plate – she jumped, visibly, when she found one of it’s spiky florets lurking under her pasta. Suppose it could have been because it was Halloween, and I’d served it up as ‘dragon spines’, but she has a point, it does look very strange. The flavour’s great, especially when it’s cooked lightly, so there’s still a bit of crunch. Tonight, I’m going to steam it, then toss in garlic and a little olive oil. Mmm, delicious dragon.

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Read more blog entries in my healthy eating blog archives.

October 2005
Cakes, curries and blissful baked apples. Healthy cake-making. Cooking with pumpkin. The weird and wonderful Romanesco cauliflower.
September 2005
Nick makes banana muffins and blueberry muffins. Healthy lunch boxes for kids. Autumn fruit and vegetables.
August 2005
A delicious and healthy chocolate cake.
July 2005
Summer fruit and vegetables, including strawberries and gooseberries.
June 2005
A warm salad recipe. Shallots. A polenta recipe.
May 2005
Growing salads. Fresh, herby fish. Beetroot soup. Pesto.
April 2005
Where it all begins: the start of my healthy eating blog.

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