An Egyptian Christmas

Each year the build-up to Christmas is such an exciting time, with lots of parties, getting together with friends you haven't seen all year, and the excuse to go out and try new restaurants that normally you don't think you have time for.
This year was no exception, although the one restaurant I tried that I will not be re-visiting was Jamie's Italian in Westfield shopping centre.  It was as I had anticipated - a chain restaurant with very average food.  I have never understood the concept of eating in a restaurant that has a celebrity chef's name on it, unless of course you know he is cooking there at the time, and in this case I doubt he has ever even set foot in the place!
And, as with past years, as the great event of Christmas got ever nearer, I started hating all the consumerism that comes with it and just wanted to be away from it all.  So that's exactly what I did - I headed off to Egypt to sail down The Nile.
I had hoped that being away from all the festivities may also help me to be a little healthier than most at this time, but unfortunately with three meals a day being served buffet-style there was no chance of any weight loss, or indeed even maintaining the same weight!



It was interesting the reaction I got from practically everyone I spoke to when I mentioned where I was going - beware of getting the Egyptian equivalent of Deli Belly!  It was also interesting to hear of so many people falling ill over Christmas back in the UK.
When your body is under stress (Christmas cards, presents, shopping, parties, relatives visiting, office parties etc., etc.), your  immune system fails to work as it should, as it is busy making stress hormones to keep you going.  Then comes Christmas, and you relax, but the immune system hasn't got back on track yet and the first little bug you come into contact with knocks you down.  And if you are in a foreign country there are likely to be more little bugs your immune system does not recognise that may cause problems.

To ensure you can party through the whole festive season, or travel to remote places without falling ill, help keep your immune system healthy by eating a diet rich in good protein, high in antioxidants and B vitamins and by taking a probiotic supplement in anticipation!

Needless to say I have returned in good health, and amazingly all my clothes still fit.

The training never stops!

I am constantly asked, when is the off-season for rowing?  For some unknown reason whoever started this mad sport decided that an off-season was not required!  So the summers are spent racing short distances (1000-2000 metres), whereas the winter gives you time to explore your surroundings a little more, with distances of around 5km to contend with, normally on bendy rivers that require a little more concentration.
Which means that I don't get a chance to lay in bed whilst the beautiful snow flakes are falling outside - I am out there enjoying its' full glory!
Obviously training in such harsh conditions does require a little more energy, and that's where the good bit comes in - I can eat a little more than normal without having to worry about it!  So, purely in the interest of keeping my energy levels up (and the fact that I have lots of homemade sloe gin to use up), I have come up with a great cake recipe (which is also dairy free in case you are that way inclined!).

Sloe Gin Fruit & Nut Cake

225g pecan nuts
340g dates, stoned
155g glace cherries
75g mixed peel
50g dried apricots
155g glace pineapple
4 tbsp sloe gin
200g light muscovado sugar
140g wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs, beaten
large pinch grated nutmeg
More sloe gin for soaking

1.  Preheat the oven to 160C/Gas mark 3.  Grease and line a 23 cm tin with greaseproof paper.
2.  Place the pecan nuts and dried fruit in a large bowl then pour over 3 tbsp of the sloe gin.
3.  Add the remaining ingredients and mix together really well.
4.  Spoon into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 1 1/2  hours (or when a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean).
5.  Remove from the oven, pour over the remaining 1 tbsp of sloe gin, then leave to cool a little before removing the paper and cooling completely.
6.  Wrap in greaseproof paper and foil.  Each day for 3-4 days pour over another tbsp of sloe gin.

If you haven't made your own Christmas Cake and the shops have now sold out this would make a great substitute.

Edible Christmas Gift Ideas

It's getting to the time now, when I start to realise that I have no idea what to give friends as a small gift for Christmas.  I hate shopping at the best of times, and fighting my way through the rushing crowds of London is definitely not my idea of a fun day out, especially when it's so cold too.
So, what better way to spend the cold days than to be at home making wonderful food stuffs for friends instead.  This was all a bit of a revelation to me as, having been cooking for a living for years, I had never really got into the whole preserves thing, until now!  I've also found that people are so delighted to receive something that you have taken lots of time and care over, and obviously if you know what they love you can tailor the gift totally to their taste.
There are also so many options - jams, pickles, herb vinegars or oils, fruit liqueurs, chocolate truffles (always a favourite!) or even great cakes (one of which I will give a recipe for in the next blog).
The recipe here is for a Panforte di Siena, and for once I have used a recipe developed by somebody else - when it comes to all things Italian I figured Antonio Carluccio would know better than me!







Panforte di Siena
(Taken from 'Italia" by Antonio Carluccio, published by Quadrille Publishing Antonio Carluccio's Italia)


240g figs or pitted dates
50g honey
100g soft brown sugar
1/2 tsp each of ground cinnamon, cardamom, cloves,
       nutmeg and black pepper
250g candied fruit, such as cherries, lemon and orange rind
50g blanched almonds
50g pine nuts
50g shelled hazelnuts, toasted
3-4 tbsp plain flour, sifted
50ml Vin Santo
icing sugar to dust

Heat the oven to 150C/Gas mark 2.  Line a shallow 25cm round cake tin, or 20cm square tin, with rice paper.
Mince the figs or dates and put them in a pan with enough water just to cover.  Add the honey, brown sugar and all the spices.  Cook gently for about 10 minutes, then tip into a bowl.  The mixture should be sticky but not wet.
Add the candied fruit and nuts and mix well, then add the flour and Vin Santo and mix to a sticky mass.  Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes.
Take out of the oven and leave to cool in the tin.  sprinkle generously with icing sugar and serve cut into wedges.

If you like this you will also love his Salame di Noci - Chocolate and Walnut Salami with Candied Fruits (also in 'Italia').

The latest Fashion......in wellies and cake.

At last, enough snow to give me a reason to walk into Richmond with my rather sporty new wellies from Hunter!  Who would have thought, not so many years ago, that even this simple, durable footwear would one day become fashionable - it took me quite a while to decide between the practical yet pretty Royal Horticultural Society design (seen here), and the rather less practical but obviously more 'street smart' Jimmy Choos!  Being a practical girl it had to be the RHS, if only to remind me that once in a while I should wear them for what they are intended!
The other fantastic thing about being snowed in, is the excuse to bake cakes.  Not that I really ever need an excuse, but it's great to walk to the neighbours with something cheering when the weather is so grey, and cake normally fits the bill with most (homemade hot toddy tends to go down quite well too, especially on the really cold days!).
And as with fashionable wellies, it appears that cakes go through fashion phases too.  For the last few years it has been cup cakes wherever you look, but now it looks like there is a leaning towards the Whoopie Pie!  It has to be a fun cake, if only because of it's name, but luckily they also taste pretty good.  I tried to make a healthy option by using butternut, but to be perfectly honest, Whoopie Pies don't really lend themselves to being healthy, and at the moment we are all using up so many calories keeping warm I don't think it will matter too much!

Butternut and Passion Fruit Whoopie Pies

110g butter, at room temperature
200g dark muscovado sugar
3 eggs, beaten
250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
large pinch ground cloves
250g cooked and mashed butternut
150g cream cheese
1 passion fruit, juice only
200-225g icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas mark 4.  Line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper.
Cream together the butter and sugar until they are light and fluffy.  Add the beaten eggs, a little at a time to prevent the mixture from curdling.
Sift in the flour, baking powder, Bicarb and spices, then fold in gently before folding in the butternut puree.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture on the baking sheets, making sure to leave enough space for them to spread.  Cook for 10-12 minutes, until they feel 'springy' to the touch.  Cool on a cooling rack.
Cream together the cream cheese, passion fruit juice and icing sugar to make the filling.   Spread a little onto one pie, then top with another.

It's official....winter is here!

Just when I was really looking forward to racing down the Thames in the Scullers Head, the weather turns, and now all I can think of is how I am going to prevent my extremities from getting frostbite and falling off!
So this morning I ventured out to test the water (and temperature) to see just how bad it may be, and to assess how many layers I will need to wear before I am prevented from being able to move my body to enable me to scull.  Lucky for me I had decided to do this as, only five minutes up river the footplate in my boat (this holds the shoes in place) snapped in half!  Had I been racing flat out at the time I most certainly would have been swimming - not a great thought in these conditions.  So for once, my forward planning has paid off.
The other forward planning required is obviously what I need to eat before a race.  I have been taking this pretty seriously all week, tapering down on the training and now concentrating on getting some carbohydrates in for the 25 minutes of racing (oh, if only I could make it a lot shorter!).
As the race starts at 11.30.am the best breakfast for me is a warming bowl of porridge, with lots of added extras to top up my protein and antioxidant intake too.

Racing Porridge
It is possible to make porridge in the microwave, but you miss out on all the creaminess that comes from the stirring when you make it on the hob.

Serves 2

100g rolled oats
500ml water
200ml soya milk
2 tbsp natural yoghurt
75g fresh berries (blueberries, blackberries, raspberries)
4 Brazil nuts, roughly chopped
4 tsp Manuka honey
pinch of ground cinnamon

Place the oats, water and milk in a pan and slowly bring to the boil, stirring continuously.
Simmer for a couple of minutes, then pour into two warmed bowls.
Top with a dollop of yoghurt, some fresh berries, a drizzle of honey, chopped Brazil nuts, and finally a sprinkling of ground cinnamon.
Eat immediately!

The Great Scottish Diet!

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to have to visit Scotland, just for the day.  As founder of the charity Community Projects Africa, I was invited to visit a couple of schools in Scotland for whom we had organised a teacher exchange with teachers from Tanzania.
Three teachers from a balmy East African village arrived in Scotland on the coldest day we have had since last winter - luckily there were lots of offers of fleeces and hats!  They spent a week teaching in a village school, whilst in the evening they were shown what is on offer in the form of entertainment, with their favourite thing being watching football!
They were also offered typical Scottish foods - tablet, shortbread, Snowballs, plus lots more.  When I visited I was also treated to these things plus Taylors ice-cream, and the added bonus of a fish supper.  Hard to imagine that we live on the same huge island but that our tastes are so different - the highlight of the fish and chip supper was something I cannot believe even exists - Pizza Crunch - battered and deep-fried pizza!  Needless to say, I did not sample it!
When I asked the Tanzanian teachers what they thought of our food they commented that we eat far too much sugar.
My Scottish neighbour is a great baker and I often ask him to bake things for me - this week it was these beautiful shortbread biscuits, known as Empire Biscuits, which, as you would expect are hugely sweet, but very delicious.

An Allotment Lunch

The other great thing about travelling home to Norfolk is a visit to my Dad, and his wonderful allotment.  Even better is that his house is adjacent to two fields of allotments and, as all the growers tend to grow more than they can eat, I get the pick of the bunch!
This time it was all the lovely root vegetables - butternut (check-out his unusual looking butternut, which tastes amazing) beetroot, parsnips, swede and carrots, and to accompany them, the crispest red onions (they make the supermarket ones seem soggy in comparison).
So what to do with all this root veg?  Well, as an athlete trying to pack in lots of carbohydrates, these vegetables are a very good source.  Forget loading up on pasta and bread which, if you are slightly intolerant to wheat (which an ever increasing number of people are, with symptoms of bloating, flatulence and energy dips in the afternoon following sandwiches for lunch!),  these will also provide other important nutrients such as vital vitamins and minerals too.  And if you want to give your liver a kick, try juicing raw beetroot with some apples and fresh ginger - a real liver pick-me-up.

But I went for the simplest meal ever - peel and chop all your veg (making sure to keep them all the same size so they cook evenly), sprinkle with olive oil, cumin seeds (or your favourite spice) and seasoning, and toss them around in a roasting tin to coat with the oil.  Roast in the oven at around 200C for about 35-30 minutes, until they are tender and hopefully slightly charred at the edges where they are starting to caramelise.
Take them out of the oven and stir in a couple of handfuls of fresh spinach and a drained can of butter beans.  The heat from the vegetables will gradually wilt the spinach.  Serve them hot topped with a poached egg or steamed fish for added protein - delicious!