Stressed Mum

Posts Tagged ‘healthy eating’

What better lunch can there be on a cold day than home made soup? Of course it can take a while but not with my new Vitamix blender.

I bought the blender just before Christmas after watching a demonstration at the Good Food Show. It is big and powerful. It makes light work of making smoothies with as much ice as you like. It’s fab for houmous and makes frozen desserts in minutes but the most amazing thing is watching it make hot soup from raw ingredients in a matter of minutes. There is no heating element, the soup is heated by friction from the blades. Take a look at the soup I made today.

I started by washing the raw ingredients and throwing them into the blender, whole or halved. There was a slice of onion, a garlic clove, a couple of small carrots, a couple of baby plum tomatoes, a stick of celery, a slice of butternut squash, a slice of cabbage and a mushroom. With some water in the bottom of the blender, some powdered bouillon, chilli powder and cumin it was switched on and turned to the highest speed.

After five minutes there was steam coming out of the top of the blender and it was switched to a low speed while I threw in a couple of spoonfuls of red kidney beans and sweetcorn. Ten seconds later I switched off and lunch was ready.

The soup was delicious and healthy too! There was hardly any preparation, no stirring and the Vitamix is cleaned in two minutes by running it with some hot water and washing up liquid.

I recently discovered a great new product. It’s a Graze box. It’s delivered to the house each week full of lovely healthy snacks. So far I’ve had pistachios, olives, seeds,spicy rice cakes and crackers, dark chocolate, nuts and dried fruit such as mango, cherries, blueberries . My daughter and I look forward to it dropping through the letterbox each week. We get to try a few healthy treats and enjoy the surprise element. You can rate the foods on the website so you don’t get anything you hate and get more of what you like.

The first box is free if you use a friend’s code and the friend gets £1 off their next box or can donate it to charity.

If you want to try it you can use my friends code for your free box. The code is K47MM4M
http://www.graze.com/p/K47MM4M

Let me know what you think.

I’m still trying to eat healthily most of the time.

Needing a quick healthy lunch I decided to make a quick butter bean dip to have with pitta bread and carrot sticks. I used a 400g tin of butter beans but if you have more time you can soak and cook your own. I added the juice of half a lemon, 2 generous tablespoons of low fat creme fraiche, a crushed clove of garlic and a heaped teaspoon of curry powder. I whizzed mine in the food processor attachment of my Kenwood Chef but it can easily be mixed by hand. Make it smooth or chunky depending on your preference. A generous handful of chopped coriander finished it off and it made a delicious lunch with toasted pitta bread, carrot sticks and baby plum tomatoes. Low fat, healthy and delicious, perfect.

I have made a start on my healthy eating plan. I know I
have to improve the diet of my family so I decided to incorporate
lots more vegetables into some of their favourite meals. This is
not a new idea but I have let it slip recently.

Today I have made a large pan of bolognese sauce. Not terribly exciting, you may think,
but at least everyone (except veggie me!) will eat it. As well as
the usual minced beef, tomatoes and herbs this one contains onion,
carrot, celery, yellow pepper and mushrooms. Of course my son is
not keen on any of those so I gave them a good whizz in my Kenwood
food processor attachment first until they were all a similar size
to the mince. Cunning, yes? In the finished sauce most of the
vegetables really cannot be seen and what cannot be identified is
much more likely to be eaten. I used up a glug of red wine hanging
around since Christmas too.

As part of my plan to eat more
economically I have made more than I need and will get a few single
portions stashed in the freezer for those days where I need a quick
meal for someone, hopefully this will save on requests for fast
food as there will be something ready in just the ten minutes it
takes to boil the pasta.

This year I have decided to break with tradition and actually make some New Year’s resolutions. This is not something I have done in the past as I never felt the need, I don’t smoke, gamble or drink too much so I didn’t have anything major to ‘give up’. This year, though, I have begun to feel there are positive changes I could make to improve my life and those of my family. Obviously I don’t really need to make those resolutions public but putting them here on my blog will, I hope, make me more likely to stick to them!

Here goes then. The resolutions are in the form of instructions to myself, reminders to keep me on track, I want them all to be positive so there is nothing to give up. (I couldn’t give up my two main obsessions – Manchester City and Twitter – anyway!)

Don’t do anything for the family they could easily do for themselves. I know it sounds negative but it isn’t really. Having three adult children living in the house as well as a teenager and a husband creates a lot of work. They all need to be independent so I am going to encourage them to take greater responsibility for clearing up after themselves, getting themselves to where they need to be and doing a share of the household chores. It will be good for them as well as me!

Eat more healthily. As a vegetarian I consider myself to have a fairly healthy diet, although it could be improved, but I cook for the family and don’t think they eat as healthily as they should. So I am going to make an effort to plan and cook cheap, healthy meals which suit everyone. This is something which I have let slip recently so family beware, I am going to be working on this one. More veg, less meat, proper home-made meals. If they don’t like it they can always buy and cook their own, so long as they clear up after themselves!

Get more exercise. Since having some problems with my foot I have walked much less and I can tell! So the plan is to take a walk every day for thirty minutes. This is no problem on match days as there is a long walk to the stadium from the car park, no problem in the summer when it is lovely to get out in the fresh air but will be more of an effort in rain, snow and wind. I have a new camera so I will take that with me and hopefully persuade someone to come along for company but I will still go whatever the weather.

That’s all. Nothing too difficult but it will take some effort on my part. All of these things will have benefits for myself and those I love and I hope to be seeing those benefits sooner rather than later. It will not be a great failure if I slip sometimes, I will be able to get back on track and hope the benefits I see will spur me on.

Happy New Year to you all and do share your resolutions.

It has been a while since my last post. Life has been busy, and stressful. I have been ill and one of my daughters involved in a car accident, fortunately she is ok just a broken ankle.
I decided it was time to get back to my blog and back to baking so this post combines the two!
Latest fun thing for me to make is bagels. I have to follow a low fat diet at the moment and they are great for that. I have tried out different types of flour and different toppings and decided that I like fennel seeds as a topping and 75% white, 25% wholemeal mix for the flour (although all white is good too!).
I use 450g flour, 1tsp quick yeast, 1Tabsp sugar, 2 tsp salt and 300ml warm water to make the dough. My trusty Kenwood Chef makes short work of the kneading and then I leave the dough to rise for an hour.
The fun aspect is dropping the bagels into boiling water with three tablespoons of sugar dissolved in it. After the dough has risen and the bagels shaped (twirling them round the handle of a wooden spoon is quite fun too!) they are dropped, 3 or 4 at a time into the water. They rise up to the top and you turn them over. After a couple of minutes you lift them out, drain off any water, sprinkle them with yummy seeds if you like and then bake them for 25 minutes. Delicious!
Check out my photo and give them a try, they really are easy. Let me know how you get on

We are all aware that we should be eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day for the sake of our health. So how do you persuade your fussy children to do the same? Here are a few suggestions that have worked for my family, try them and see if you can turn your faddy eaters into healthy choosers.

The most important thing is to start with what they like. Don’t make too many changes at once and try to add to the foods they are already happy with rather than giving them completely new foods. You may have adventurous youngsters who love to try new things, I’ve heard they exist, your little one may refuse to eat anything except chicken nuggets and marmite or, most likely, you’ve got something in between. It doesn’t matter. Start from where your child is and make the changes small and gradual.

The best way I found to give my finicky eaters more of what I wanted them to eat was to hide it in something they already liked. When my daughter was six she decided to become a vegetarian. I couldn’t argue with this, as I am a vegetarian myself. The trouble was she didn’t really like vegetables! While she was at school the food processor came out and in went onions, mushrooms, butter beans or chickpeas for protein and any other things she wasn’t too keen on. Then I made a casserole with potatoes, carrots, peas and sweet corn and incorporated my healthy puree into the sauce. She had no idea how healthy her tea was. It is easy to do the same with a tomato sauce for pasta, add in some red lentils which cook down to nothing, carrots, onions, courgettes, broccoli and herbs and whiz it up in the blender. You can spread this sauce on a pizza too.

A great way to incorporate vegetables into meals is to make soup. Even the cheapest stick blender will hide any number of vegetables beyond recognition. Onions, carrots and potato fried gently then cooked with some stock and herbs and a tin of tomatoes will blend into a sweet, tasty soup most children, and adults, will enjoy. Lentils can be added to any mixture of vegetables and stock to give a more substantial soup. Serve the soup in bowls as part of a meal or in mugs to drink after school in the winter, filling, warming and good for you too.

When it comes to packed lunches and snacks you can have lots of fun. Make sandwiches tiny or in fancy shapes, my youngest daughter had a duck shaped cutter she loved when she was nursery school age. Make them appeal to the child’s taste, a wizard’s hat for your Harry Potter fan, chicks and Easter egg shapes, Christmas trees and stars, horses or cats. There are lots of cookie cutters available so make lunchtime fun. Children as young as one or two can easily cut out shapes with a little help. When it comes to fillings you really want a little protein and plenty of vegetables or fruit. Peanut butter, cheese spread or hummus make good fillings with salad vegetables. Don’t worry if they don’t like salad; add crunchy carrot and cucumber sticks, bags of mini carrots and grapes, satsumas or little apples into their lunchbox. When they need a drink or snack make that healthy too. Banana milkshake, strawberry smoothie, mango smoothie or fruit salad are always popular. If your children love their desserts then make some fruit puree to pour over ice cream or stir into natural yogurt. Stewed apples, pears or rhubarb are good with ice cream, yogurt or custard too and don’t forget that old favourite bananas and custard.

When you really want to introduce them to new foods you can hide them at first in sauces as above. Then try chopping the food up really small so it’s difficult to distinguish and only when they’ve accepted that should you move to bite size pieces. This may take several weeks or even months but it is worth the effort. Of course they may still resist but does it really matter? Think of any foods that you’re not keen on; there are probably a few. Does it affect your life or health if you don’t eat these foods? Probably not, so don’t worry if your children don’t like the same foods as you. As long as their diet is healthy most of the time and they get a variety of foods and nutrients during the week one poor meal won’t hurt them. You can always make a game of eating new foods too, a three year old can be allowed to have three spoonfuls of a new food before leaving the rest, moving up to four after a birthday.

When it comes to family meals no one wants to make several meals to give everyone their own choice. Try to make the choices part of the meal and your children may surprise you by trying things you may not usually offer them. A pasta bake can be made quite basic (with hidden vegetables in the sauce maybe) and then served with separate bowls of tuna, sweet corn and roasted vegetables for everyone to help themselves.

So, the general advice is to make the changes small at first. Try again after a few weeks if they resist change. Make mealtimes fun, relaxed mealtimes are pleasanter for everyone. Let the children get involved in choices and preparation. Lead by example, you may be so busy with the family you forget about yourself, so make sure you are getting plenty of fruit and vegetables too and eat a healthy snack at the table while the children eat tea if you are eating later.

Finally, don’t worry, faddy young children often grow up to be health conscious teenagers and adults, so don’t give up, have fun, enjoy your children and your food.