27th January 2014
"If you
always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." Henry Ford
Gonna be difficult talking about food this
morning as I’ve got to have a fasting blood test this morning so no tea or
food, nothing serious just my free health check confirming I’m middle aged ;-)
Had a lovely day yesterday, made Breakfast
Muffins, the recipe makes 12 so I was glad we had visitors so they could share
them! Also cooked a Sunday roast dinner,
forgot to put the Yorkshire puddings on the dinner but I didn’t notice till
hours later, so just goes to show how we don’t always need the foods we’re used
to on a meal!
A few conversations I had yesterday got me to
thinking about cooking from scratch, I do it most of the time these days, but I
didn’t always, I used to eat cereal followed by two ready meals a day with
tinned vegetables to bulk it all out, I knew how to cook the basics but I didn’t
because I was “TOO BUSY” I believed, then I bought a few cookbooks and started
having a go, I realised I got more food for my ProPoints if I made it myself,
and I eventually got better and now I rarely eat ready meals.
This is the film I watched that someone
posted, short and interesting.
I then had a chat with my besties lad who told me they’d made Savoury Rice at school, his photo looked delicious and I will be having a go myself at something similar. It made me think of those packets you buy for both “Savoury Rice” and “Super Noodles” I used to live on those dehydrated packets of food! Now just the thought of them makes me pull a face as they don’t taste very nice once you start eating ‘real’ food. Food you make from scratch doesn’t usually contain ingredients like Monosodium Glutamate or Disodium 5-ribonucleotides or Butylated hydroxyanisole (I’ve just looked online at the ingredients!)I’ve googled these and about this last one it says “Since 1947, BHA has been added to edible fats and fat-containing foods for its antioxidant properties as it prevents rancidification of food which creates objectionable odours” The US National Institutes of Health report that BHA is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen based on evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. In particular, when administered in high doses as part of their diet”
I think some of the things that puts people
off cooking is they think it’s difficult and time-consuming – it doesn’t have
to be either and they also look at a recipe and it has so many
ingredients! Again you can find recipes
with only a few ingredients, there’s even an app called, “take 4 ingredients”.
I’m lucky that now I have all the gadgets and
utensils, I’ve bought them here and there over the years, lots of secondhand
stuff too, you can get your basics in the pound shop though.
Here’s a Simple Start, Filling & Healthy recipe
for Savoury Rice (18pp)
Ingredients
1 onion
3 mushrooms
1/2 red pepper
1 tomato
1 x 10ml spoon oil (3pp) (daily oil allowance)
150g long grain rice (use wholemeal for F&H)
(14pp)
1 x 5ml spoon vegetable stock powder or cube
550ml boiling water
50g peas (1pp)
1 x 10ml spoon curry powder
Utentils
Chopping board
Knife
Sauce pan
Wooden Spoon
Measuring Spoon
Weighing Scales
Kettle
Measuring Jug
Prepare the vegetables:
1. Peel and chop the onion
2. Slice the mushrooms
3. Deseed and dice the red pepper
4. Chop the tomato
Fry the onion in oil until soft. Add the mushrooms and red pepper and cook for a
further 2 minutes. Stir in the rice. Mix the stock powder with the water. Add the stock, peas and curry powder to the rice
mixture. Simmer for 15 minutes, until the rice is tender. Serve the rice in a bowl and sprinkle the chopped
tomato on top.
I might have that today, his photo looked
really tasty and it was in a foil tray like a take-away!
Or maybe make your own Pot Noodle (9pp)
Ingredients
1 bacon medallion,
chopped (1pp)
2 spring
onions, white and green separated and finely sliced
50g
frozen peas (1pp)
quarter
tsp paprika
2 tsp
cornflour
200ml
vegetable stock
150g
block straight-to-wok wheat noodles, or equivalent of dried, cooked (7pp)
splash
Worcestershire sauce
In a
small non-stick pan, fry the bacon for a few mins, add the white parts of the
spring onions, peas and paprika, then cook for 1 min more. Mix the cornflour
with a little of the stock to get a paste, then stir this into the pan with the
rest of the stock, noodles and a good splash of Worcestershire sauce. Simmer
for a couple of mins until thick and saucy, and then scatter with the green
parts of spring onion.
Two
easy meals that even kids can make, now’s the time to be teaching them to cook,
I was able to prepare and cook the Sunday Dinner with mom from quite a young
age, I remember with fondness helping her in the kitchen.
It’s
never too late for change, re-read the saying at the top of this blog, is it
time to try a different approach?
Have a
great day, EatGorgeous & of course BeYOUtiful. xx
No comments:
Post a Comment