Tweeting my lunch!

I am not one to 'tweet' about what I had for lunch, infact if anybody I follow does do that I tend to unfollow them!
But today was different as, just as I was thinking about what healthy lunch to prepare there was a knock on the door and there was a delivery man delivering me a great box of tenderstem broccoli!  Now I know most girls would probably prefer a bouquet of flowers, but I was perfectly happy with this great veg parcel!
That's the delight of doing the work I do, you never know quite what you are going to be offered next - although sometime deliveries are better than others!  I have a kitchen full of gadgets that I hardly ever use, but PR companies like me to try them out.  I have lots of random un-matching crockery (which I do quite like), and cupboards full of unusual ingredients (see previous blog entry!).
But back to lunch.  What to do with the gorgeous green stuff?
Well, in the pack alongside the tenderstem were a few other random ingredients, so like a top  Ready Steady Cook chef I was off in a flash, and this is what I produced within 10 minutes - Quinoa with tenderstem broccoli, chives and parsley, topped with pan-fried halloumi and hazelnuts with a lemon dressing - delicious - thank you Tenderstem!

The Benefits of Coconut Oil

After the last post I was asked where I find so many 'weird' ingredients?!  To me they are not weird, just unusual and sometimes the research is new so supermarkets haven't quite cottoned on to them yet.
Coconut oil is certainly not weird, it is delicious!  And has been used for cooking in countries like Sri Lanka for a very long time.
More recently it has been heralded as an answer to Alzheimer's disease, with its' ability to boost the brains energy supply through Ketones - high level fuel that is produced by converting medium chain triglycerides (MCT), which are abundant in coconut oil.  Coconut oil has the largest concentration of MCT, apart from human breast milk, and these go directly to the liver and are transformed into energy and not fat.  
MCT's promote what is called 'thermogenisis', which increases the body's metabolism, producing energy, so not only is it recommended for Alzheimer's, it is also very useful for athletes or weight loss.
Lauric acid is the name of the fat found in coconut milk, it is a saturated fat that is known to enhance the immune system through it's antiviral and antibacterial effects.
So how can you use it?
There are so many uses of this gorgeous oil, it's hard to know where to start!  You can add it to pretty much anything - it makes smoothies really creamy, and I use it in baking instead of butter.  Another friend spreads it on his toast in the morning!  And because it has a high smoke point, it is very stable, and slow to oxidise - perfect for cooking food at high temperatures, stir-fries for instance.
And it's not just for eating - massage it into your skin or hair for a really indulgent treat.

Creamy Sultana Porridge

Serves 1

40 g rolled oats

30 g sultanas

300 ml non-dairy milk

1 tsp Coconoil

1 knob stem ginger, diced

½ banana, peeled and sliced

drizzle of honey

• ·          Place the oats, sultanas, non-dairy milk and 200 ml water in a pan and leave to soak for 10 minutes.
• ·          Place over a medium heat and slowly bring to the boil, stirring most of the time, until thick and creamy.
• ·         Stir in the Coconoil until it has melted, then serve the porridge in a bowl.
• ·         Sprinkle with the diced ginger and sliced banana and drizzle with honey.

  More of my recipes can be found on the Coconoil website.

    

   Joy xx

   PS  For any Triathletes reading this, go to Total Sports Nutrition magazine for my latest feature, to help your improve your performance.

Eating for the rest of your life

It's now a few weeks since I gave up so many of the foods I thought I couldn't live without, and still I don't miss any of them.  It helps I suppose that I wasn't really 'hooked' on anything too addictive - no caffeine or alcohol to speak of, but it's more that I really want to feel that I am 'feeding' my body good nourishing food. ( I do have to admit to one slight glitch - a visit to beautiful Southwold would not have been the same without a portion of fish and chips on the seafront!).
We don't tend to think of eating as feeding ourselves, the way we do when we 'feed' plants, when we think they need nourishing - well so do we!  So instead of eating because we are hungry or because we happen to be passing a shop that sells foods that our body actually has no idea what to do with (most junk food), we need to get the idea into our heads of eating foods that can help our bodies to function, and hopefully carry us on into healthy old age.
And that is another way to think about 'diets' (how I hate even the word!) - unless you can sustain that way of eating for the next ten years, then there is no point - you need a healthy eating regime that fits into your everyday life FOREVER.
But even when eating healthily you need a few treats, and for me the Happy Kitchen brownies are one of the best raw chocolate brownies I have tasted - I just love the texture and thick fudge-like consistency.  So, needless to say, over the past week I have been trying to make my own version, and this comes pretty close, using ingredients from two of my favourite suppliers - Coconoil and Naturya, trying to use the healthiest ingredients I can, keeping them gluten and dairy free.

'Raw' Chocolate Fudge

Makes 30-40 squares

175 g Coconoil
1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
100 g dates, stoned
100 g Naturya Cocoa Nibs
75 g brown rice flour
20 g hemp protein powder
50 g mixed ground seeds (linseed, sesame, sunflower or pumpkin)
grated rind of 1 orange

Place the Coconoil and molasses in a pan and gently heat until the Coconoil has melted.
Meanwhile, place the dates into a food processor and blitz until broken down.
Grind the cocoa nibs in a coffee grinder to give a smooth powder.
Stir the ground cocoa powder and rice flour into the Coconoil and molasses mixture and then add to the food processor with the remaining ingredients and process until smooth.
Spoon into a base lined 18cm square tin and press until level.
Chill until firm, and then cut into squares and store in an air-tight container.

Try not to eat all at once!

J xx

Life after detox.........

Wow, what an amazing experience - and that is not what you would expect to be saying after two weeks of not eating all the things you thought you loved and couldn't go without!
Yesterday was my final day of eating the cleanest diet I am ever likely to have consumed, having removed all foods that may be slightly toxic to the body, either because they are produced using chemicals (pesticides, mercury in fish etc), or may naturally cause intolerances (gluten, dairy, deadly nightshade family, soy).  And having cut out lots of foods, this meant I could increase the remaining food groups, and eat far more!
This was the interesting bit - to start with my weight started to drop, but I didn't want to lose weight, I just wanted to eat healthily and be sure to rid my body of unwanted toxins.  So each day I would weigh myself and if it looked like my weight was dropping I increased my intake of delicious foods that day - what could be better?!
And now I'm back to a 'normal' diet, I don't want any of those bad foods back, because I feel so great without them - more energy, amazingly smooth skin and very focused brain-wise!
This is what a detox should be, it's not about losing weight and starving yourself - for detoxification to work well it needs lots of nutrient support, so increasing your intake of colourful vegetables, fibre and plenty of liquid is hugely important.
De-stressing yourself mentally and physically also helps - taking long relaxing Epsom salt baths, having a massage, or even just going for a long relaxed walk in the countryside, all help towards a more relaxed you and hopefully a more relaxed digestive system.
Changing the way you eat also encourages you to try new foods and recipes, and even though I cook for a living (so you would think I had cooked pretty much everything!), I leant a lot having less ingredients to play with, but love some of the new recipes I have come up with.
My favourite of course has to be replacing the one thing I thought I couldn't live without - creamy natural yoghurt.  But guess what?  Creamy homemade coconut milk yoghurt is just as tasty and fits in perfectly with my thoughts on eating a dairy-free diet (we should all be doing it!).
Even entertaining became fun - the recipe below I cooked for a friend who is now converted to quinoa, and who knows, I may even get her to join me on the detox programme next year!
If you'd like to join us too, do get in touch.

Grilled Mackerel with Quinoa Beetroot Tabbouleh

Serves 4

225 g quionoa
125 g cooked beetroot, diced
1 carrot, peeled and grated
large handful parsley, chopped
large handful mint, chopped
large handful coriander, chopped
large handful chives, chopped
1/2 cucumber, diced
juice of 1 lime
1-2 tbsp good tasting extra virgin olive oil
seasoning
8 mackerel fillets

Cook the quinoa in simmering water according to the pack instructions.  Drain and refresh under cold water then drain and place in a large bowl.
Stir in the diced beetroot, grated carrot, chopped herbs and cucumber.
Squeeze in the lime juice and pour over the olive oil, mix and season well.  Leave to stand at room temperature.
Grill the mackerel fillets for 3-4 minutes each side and serve on a bed of the colourful salad.

Tip:  As with all my recipes, this is just an idea - change it to suit your taste - different herbs, chopped avocado, fresh anchovies, toasted seeds - the list is endless - have fun!

Happy Healthy Eating,

Joy x

Time for a Spring Detox

Now, if you have been reading my blog for a while, you will know that I get very cross when, in the first week of January, every newspaper, magazine, radio and TV station are talking about detoxing!  You've just had the most stressful Christmas (I think that applies to at least 50% of the population!), it's freezing cold outside and all you really want to do is eat comfort food and snuggle up in bed.
Which is why, when spring arrives, the sun comes out, you feel like exercising, all the great spring seasonal foods are abundant, NOW is the time to detox!  This also doesn't mean fasting and starving yourself for a couple of weeks.  What is does mean is, removing all the toxins from your diet and your life, and supporting your body to help it detoxify more efficiently, using great foods and supplements that are based on supporting detoxification.
And what I love about doing this, is that each time I do it I learn more about how my body reacts to certain foods.  For instance, I 've been on the detox now for 3 days and my eyes are clear and sparkly!  This just shows that you really don't know how healthy you are until you change something, and then you realise how unhealthy you were before!  And I am somebody that could not be called unhealthy - I don't drink tea, coffee or alcohol (one drink a fortnight), and only eat fish (no meat), I hardly eat gluten, but do love natural yoghurt and have found this very hard to give up.  But now I realise I should.
One thing I do love to do is to snack, so finding a snack that would satisfy my sweet tooth was hard - no sugar is allowed - but then I started to play, and came up with these delicious and very nutritious seed crispbreads with raspberry jam - great whether you are on a detox or not!

Seeded Crispbreads with Raspberry Jam

200 g flaked almonds
100 g sunflower seeds
100 g pine nuts
3 tbsp ground flax seeds
75 g cooked red quinoa
75 g coconut oil, melted
150 ml water
pinch of salt
200 g raspberries
1 tbsp chia seeds

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas mark 4.
Place the almonds, sunflower seeds and pine nuts into a food processor and blitz until broken down, but not too fine.
Tip into a bowl and mix with the flax seeds, quinoa, coconut oil and water and mix well.
Leave to stand for 10 minutes (this allows the flax seeds to thicken and hold the mixture together).
Spread the mixture over a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, pressing it to the edges and making it flat.
Cook for 30 minutes then remove from the oven and cut into squares or fingers.  Cook for a further 30 minutes, then place onto a cooling rack to cool.
While the crispbreads are cooking, blitz the raspberries in a blender and place in a bowl.  Stir in the chia seeds and leave to stand - the chia seeds will gradually thicken the mixture to give you a jam consistency.

More delicious detox recipes to follow over the next few days.

And if you would like more support while you detox, just get in touch.

Joy x

Custard Tart Heaven

Another country, another rowing training camp!  In the past my rowing club visited Seville for a week over Easter every year to get some serious training in, with the coaches putting us through our paces.  But Seville is a long way to drive with a trailer full of boats.  So last year we tried the South of France, and this year was the turn of  Portugal, at a sweet coastal town called Figueira de foz, at the mouth of the Mondego river, the longest river located exclusively in Portuguese territory.
Figueira de foz itself was obviously once a pretty fishing town, but now the beach front has become a tourist's haven, with lots of high-rise hotels and apartment buildings.  Strolling around the back streets of the old town was much more fun, seeing the traditionally tiled houses in perfect tree-lined streets.
The place we stayed in turned out to be a bit of a disaster, but on Boat Race day we were invited to watch the huge TV at The Paintshop Hostel, run by a lovely English couple, and we all wished we had been staying there!
As training camp involves training three times a day for 6-7 days, there's not much time (or energy) to explore a town, but one of our girls had been before and had met the local rowers, so we were invited to have dinner with them before we left, and it was delicious - lightly battered and fried sardines (which you eat from head to tail!), followed by monkfish, prawn and rice stew, made with locally grown rice.  The locals also wanted to tell me about their traditional dishes, one of which is a dessert made from pigs blood (which I didn't try!).  Salted cod is very big here, as is great seafood, so we were not likely to go hungry, and certainly had a great supply of protein to keep us fit and healthy.
One thing I did become slightly addicted to though, was the deliciously tempting custard tarts (pasteis de nata), and found myself trying one from a different bakery each day until I had researched them all to find the best!
And as with most things I love, I then want to make them myself, as most things are better homemade, although on this occasion I think I have been beaten by the experts!  I chose to try a recipe by Diana Henry that was published in the Telegraph a few years ago, you can find it here.  As Diana so cleverly mentions, the bakers in Portugal having been making these for years, so don't expect that you will get it right first time!
One thing I would point out having tried to make them is that getting the pastry as thin as possible is important, and maybe after making your swirls it would be better to roll them out with a rolling pin before putting into the tin?  Apart from that, the custard was delicious and lemony, and the pastry beautifully flaky, so not bad for a first attempt.
I am scared about having another attempt though - who is going to eat them all?!!!

Happy Baking.

Joy x

How to start the day.....

Most of my friends who know me well will know that my favourite way to start the day is to take my sculling boat down to the river Thames and disappear for a couple of hours into my own little world of serene water, sharing it only with the water-land wildlife.  There is something very magical about being propelled by your own efforts. And knowing that I have the river to myself is such a treat (that normally happens only when I get out there before 6am these days!).
Apart from loving my surroundings, I also love returning to the boathouse to enjoy a breakfast that I know I have really earned.  
As a nutritional therapist I see a lot of rowers as well as other sports people, and I am constantly asked about breakfast and whether you should eat before training and if you are going out so early in the morning how is this possible (as you need at least one hour for your food to digest)?  As with all things related to us humans, everyone is different.  Some people can cope with eating a small amount before training and not suffer any effects, whilst others really struggle.

A lot of the scientific evidence points towards having fuel on board before training. But then there is the evidence of the hunter gatherer who certainly didn't eat before he left his hut first thing in the morning, the whole point was he was going hunting for his food, so he ran and hunted first, then he ate, and finally he slept (which also puts the post-Sunday lunch digestive walk idea onto the back burner - next time choose the sofa!).
So my advice is to find out what works best for you, but just be aware that if you don't eat before you train your training session should not be a hard one, and don't expect to reach any PBs - save those for later in the day.
What is important about breakfast though, is to make sure it's substantial - including good protein is important, not only for blood sugar control but also, if you have been training, to repair and rebuild muscles.  
Protein is also essential for making enzymes that are needed for virtually all biological processes that take place in the body, such as transmitting nerve signals or helping the immune system to work.  
The best foods to eat for protein are not necessarily those that are highest in protein as it may also mean they are high is saturated fat, such as beef or lamb. Eating a varied diet, including vegetable proteins such as rice and lentils, as well as fish, is ideal.
So if you are keen enough to get up early and start your day with a plate of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, you will starting your day in a great way.

Good morning!

Joy x