Fresh bread

Posted on 7 June 2016 by SJPONeill

Jalapeño corn bread on the left, kumara bread on the right, each less an initial tasting slice….

Life is a little intense at the moment so I have been working quite hard to keep busy…idle hands and all that…

I tend to hoover up recipes that interest me and then have trouble find an opportunity to both cook and consume them…last week a flu-ey friend provided an excellent justification for a bake-athon…which proved unexpectedly therapeutic as well…I didn’t finish til after 1AM but was surprisingly refreshed when I emerged from under the covers into the brutal cold of Raurimu at 6AM…

I liked the concept of Jen Rice’s jalapeño cornbread and liked my first attempt at it but it didn’t rise very well. I’m not sure if that is just down to me, the use of beer as a yeast, or the specific beer that I used. It did have quite a good kick though, which is kinda the whole point of putting jalapeños into anything…

To address the rising issue, the next time, I just added the corn and jalapeños into my normal bread mix for the breadmaker. I didn’t reduce the water enough to compensate for the moisture in the corn and jalapeños but it still rose OK although the greater bulk meant that the jalapeño effect was a lot more subtle – it still got a thumbs up from the taste team though…

So, last week, I was keen to master breadmaking sans breadmaker – mechanical breadmaker, anyways – and I had this recipe from the Nadia Lim collection to try.

Ingredients

orange kumara (sweet potato) 300g (about 1 medium), peeled and chopped

active dried yeast 1 tablespoon

sugar 1 teaspoon

lukewarm water 1 cup

high-grade flour 1 cup + extra for kneading and dusting

wholemeal flour 2 cups

salt 1 ½ teaspoons

Rosemary 2 tablespoons finely chopped

extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons

Method

Cook the kumara in boiling salted water until soft, about 10-15 minutes. Drain well and mash with a little salt to taste.
While the kumara is cooking, combine the yeast, sugar and warm water in a bowl. Leave on the bench for about 10 minutes until frothy.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, salt and rosemary. Add the oil, mashed kumara and yeast mixture, and mix until well combined. If the dough is too wet, you may need to add a little more flour.
Knead the dough for about 10 minutes on a floured surface, adding a little extra flour as needed, until dough is soft and elastic.
Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover it with a tea towel or clingfilm, and leave it to rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes – it should have doubled in size.
Line a baking tray with baking paper. Cut the dough in half and shape into two loaves. Place the loaves on lined tray and cut a few 1cm-thick slashes on top of them with a knife.
Now would be a good time to preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius
Leave the dough to rise for a further 20 minutes or so.
Dust the loaves with a little flour. Bake for about 25-30 minutes or until a crust has developed and the base sounds firm and hollow when tapped. Remove from the oven and allow to cool a little before slicing.

The only changes I made to the recipe were to zap the kumara in a microwave steamer instead of cooking it in a pan; using only high-grade four with a 1/4 cup of bran flakes to add the wholemeal content – this is how I do my wholemeal bread and it seems to work out OK; and I’m using black sea salt for all my salt contributions…

Pink…

…pink…

…turns black when wet

I had bought some active dry yeast last year for my pizza experiments – although I had done a few pizzas since, I hadn’t checked the ‘best by’ date which was some time in February. The yeasting issue was in doubt for a while – we can’t just pop down to the supermarket here: the closest one is 40km away, the closest 24 hours one a good two hours away – but everything eventually frothed up nicely after a half hour or so…it helped, I think, putting the bowl up in the mezzanine for a while in the warmer air from the fire…night-time temperatures here have been below zero the last couple of weeks…

Once the kumara bread was safely in the oven, I made up another batch of dough, waited another 30 minutes for the yeast to do its thing and swapped out the kumara and rosemary for a can of drained corn kernels and a half cup of drained pickled jalapeños – you simply cannot buy them fresh here, it would appear – and completed the recipe as above…

As you can see above, the finished loaves look pretty good and they taste pretty good too…I have been toasting 3-4 slices each night to dip into my dinner soup and lunch today will be toasted cheese (still trying to polish off the last kilo brick that I had in the freezer) on jalapeño bread…

This recipe seems to be a keeper for bread from scratch. It is very simple and painless and makes two loaves versus one from the original recipe I was using. The loaves will freeze well and so I may do a stock-up bake in the next couple of weeks: even with the cost of the can of corn and the jalapeños, it is way less expensive than buying speciality loaves from the supermarket…

Beets, feta and rice

Posted on 25 May 2016 by SJPONeill

Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.

Source: Dream | The Daily Post

This is one of those kitchen experiences where everything just came together perfectly…a dream to prepare and more so to consume…

The foundation was another of Jen Rice’s cracker recipes, Roasted Beets With Goat Cheese And Honey…if you have any interest at all in spicing up your kitchen and your diet, you really must check out Jen’s site Sugar Soil: it’s chock full of great ideas and cues to try different ingredients. Living in rural New Zealand, our local shops don’t have the same range of more exotic items as larger centres: at the moment, I’m making regular purchases from Happy and Healthy for things like root tumeric, agar, black rice and bulk almonds and chia seeds.

Anyway…as I’ve discussed on a couple of occasions previously, my green journey is driven by a desire to eat and be more healthy and less by any philosophical issues – although the Hot Doc’s insights into what gets pumped into commercial chicken and cattle gives me pause – so I’ve not gone entirely vegetarian or diary-free, just adjusted my habits for more healthy outcomes…which is why I’m quite comfortable with the dairy content of this particular dish…

As you can see, it is quite simple to prepare but I did make some minor changes:

I thought that I was buying baby beets at the supermarket: I was but it was only when I opened the packets to actually use them that I realised that they were precooked. I should have and will in future just buy normal beetroot.

Jen’s cooking time for this is up to four hours in the oven – I don’t get home from work til around 6 and there is no way that I will be waiting til after 10PM for dinner. My cunning plan was to just toss it all in the slow cooker while I was at work. This sounded like a good plan until I found that the beets were precooked.

I wanted a rice base to bulk it out as a meal – as writ in the original recipe it is more a snack or an entree than a meal in its own right – so set up a cup of black rice to pre-soak through the day so that the only cooking and delay in the evening would be cooking the rice.

I couldn’t find any goat feta locally so opted for the stuff from cows…I think I’ll survive.

I used black sea salt instead of normal salt – I bought some of this just to try but then found I had run out of normal salt any way so it is going into anything calling for salt.

I warmed the honey so it would mix better with the balsamic and spread over the beets.

I was worried that the precooked beets would just turn into mush after a day in the slow cooker. I needn’t have worried as they were still nice and firm when I nervously lifted the lid off that evening.

From there it was just a matter of flicking the rice cooker to ‘cook’ and dicing up a third of the feta…and then racing up to the National Park Village just before it closed to get the Greek yogurt that I had forgotten on my way home – they had none so I had to settle for natural yogurt: not a biggie for this non yogurt connoisseur. They only had a mega container though so will be applying yogurt to the next week or so of meals just to burn it up…

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Yes, my plating still needs work but OM-bloody-G!!! Did this taste good or what??? The best meal I have eaten in a long time – if I do say so myself – even better than the coriander tacos from Eat in Ohakune or my meal at Kokako the last time I was in Auckland and I COOKED IT!!!!

The challenge now is to be able to recreate this success next time. yes, it is possible that the sugars in the beets and the honey contributed to some extent to my sky-rocket level of satisfaction and enjoyment but then my serving also filled me up…

Whether by accident, chance or skill (most likely one of the first two!), this meal offers a great combination of texture and flavour:

The soft smooth beet, yoghurt and cheese is offset by the texture of the black rice.

The sweetness of the beets and rice is balanced by the more tart cheese and yoghurt.

Even the colours work well with the dark red of the beets and the black of the rice contrasted nicely by the lighter cheese and yoghurt.

There’s not really anything that I would change about my ingredients or preparation of this dish – if it ain’t broke… – other than use raw beets next time and see if I can find some Greek yoghurt…This was the first time that I had used the black sea salt and the black rice but both performed well: many recipes mention the need to soak the black rice overnight but it came out well after soaking through the day and also came out of the rice cooker, even after presoaking, better and cleaner than normal white rice…

15 out of 10 on the yummilicious scale!!!!

My Green Journey so far…the next bit…

Posted on 24 May 2016 by SJPONeill

I must have made more progress than I thought as I need to flow over into a new post…my previous post talked about the results of reducing caffeine and dairy from my diet…

Smoothing out the rough edges

DSCF9624 I usually drink 2-3 smoothies a day now, almost certainly two, and three perhaps if it has been a long day…I’m learning what makes a good smoothie and how to keep it affordable. Part of affordability is keeping on top of what fruit and veges are in season and steering away from more expensive out of season items. Coconut water is less bland than the plain rainwater that comes out of our taps but @$5/litre kinda pricey so it’ll become an occassional. Rather than using storebought juice (if it is really juice!), I’m going back to making my own from whatever fruit and veges are cheap…it’s only a week or so before the ‘Kune Eclair shop re-opens with its cheapest bags of carrots and parsnips, heralding a mega juicing and freezing effort…

kune ecalir shop

Being clever with meat

I’d already been reducing my meat intake over the last couple of years, a step partially driven by simple economics: it doesn’t take too much in the way of smarts to be able to stretch half a kg of mince from 1-2 meals to 4-5 without feeling that something’s missing…

Lighten up

I used to rely heavily on potato in my old diet, mainly mashed or fried, i.e. chips but now that all feels just way too heavy…Living rurally, I tend to buy a lot in bulk and so this year I have slowly consuming those stocks down to zero and either not replacing them or substituting a healthier alternative.

A lot of the time now, rice is the new spud and the Irish in me is comfortable with that. The chips, potato, fried, chunky that used to be a staple of my diet are now an occasional treat, usually with fish…

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It does mean, however, that I will need to experiment with some new roles for the air fryer beyond healthy(er) means of making chips…

Turn to the dark side

As much as possible I am moving away from processed food and ingredients, getting as close to the raw material as possible…I’m not sure whether “if it’s white, it’s bad” is a solid rule (maybe just not as good), but white food like bread, sugar, flour, salt has generally been uber-processed….is the white just what’s left after all the good stuff is taken out?

For the most part, a healthier alternative is easily sourced and at not much additional cost, if any…

Yes, I do still mainly buy white flour, but offset this by adding bran flakes when I’m baking…summa-summa for baking bread;

Raw sugar instead of white sugar (+ banana is often a good sub-in),

Sea salt instead of common kitchen salt,

Brown or black rice instead of white rice: if you use white rice, rinse it first: all the sediment that comes off after the first rinse may be a good argument in favour of darker rices…

Spice up your life

A little spice goes a long way…spices and herbs make for tasty meals without the need for sugar to taste…it is now so easy to use spices and herbs to spice up what might otherwise be quite mundane…adding a chunk of ginger totally vitalised my juices last winter…and jalapeño in bread adds a whole new dimension of flavour…

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Butter…? From Apples..? Really..?

Posted on 23 May 2016 by SJPONeill

For the last couple of weeks, I have been having apple butter on my breakfast toast…

It all started when I collected up a bag of windfall unripe apples…before following what had been my standard previous practice and just dumping them in the compost, I did a quick Google for any recipe that might use unripe apple.I found many references to apple butter, which I had never heard of but which my American taste testers assured me was a ‘good thing’.

Primary processing…peeling and dicing in front of TV…

It wasn’t hard to make: the greater challenge was finding a recipe that wasn’t laden with sugar; after a lot of research, I settled for this one from Allrecipes although I did replace the brown sugar with a banana and accidentally maxed out the cloves: looking into the box there didn’t appear to be much left so I just upended it into the pan – to find that there had been at least a tablespoon concealed in a fold in the internal bag…Too late and I’ve always been keen on cloves so there was nothing for it except to see how it came out…

All spiced up in the slow cooker…just apples, spices and a banana…

I left the skins and cores as there seemed to be some agreement that, in unripe apples, there is more goodness trapped there…apart from one lady online who was very concerned about the cyanide content of the pips!!

I left the mix to slow cook overnight and by breakfast it was like this:

Looks icky, smells awesome…

Some of the recipes I had researched had used a food mill to separate the apple from skin, pips etc…another Google session provided education on the what, why and how of a food mill and I was able to score one off Trademe for $40, Tupperware no less!

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It didn’t come with any instructions and even with the assistance of Youtube, it took me a while to master the ‘milling’ process…once done though, I had a thick slurry of pureed apple which was bottled (probably around 600 mls total) as distributed to my taste testing team – none have died so far so I think we can put the apple pip cyanide theory safely to bed….

First slice from a new loaf is always eaten fresh…

The apple and cloves flavour combination is pretty strong and I only apply a thin layer to my toast but I know that at least one of the taste team team cakes it on, thick as…

Simple, spicy, and using apples that would otherwise have been composted…

Almond Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Posted on 17 May 2016 by SJPONeill

After successfully making my first batch of almond coconut milk, I was left with about two cups of moist almond and coconut meal…what to do with it? Apparently there are many things that can be done with this by-product of DIY almond milk so I opted for the almond coconut chocolate chip cookies from Minimalist Baker and originally from Sprouted Kitchen’s book The Sprouted Kitchen: A Tastier Take on Whole Foods. I took a quick peek at the online recipe list at Sprouted Kitchen and I think that I will be paying them a few more visits…

So about 10-30 on Saturday night, between movies, I decided to have a crack at these cookies, not so much because I had the munchies – certainly nothing that an apple didn’t take care of – but just to see how they came out…I did modify the recipe around the meal that I had to hand but you can see the original on the link above…

What you need:

Two cups of ground almond coconut meal

A quarter cup of dark chocolate chips

Three tablespoons of coconut oil

One egg

A third of a cup of brown sugar

Half a teaspoon of baking powder

A quarter teaspoon of salt

Half a teaspoon of vanilla extract

I left out the half cup of coconut because I already had this blended in with the almond. One of the attractions of this recipe was that it called for the expenditure of dark chocolate chips: I have some that I bought for a chocolate bread puddings but found I much much preferred this with white chocolate so the Minimalist Baker recipe offered an opportunity to expend an item that had been sitting around the pantry for some time, unused…

What you do:

In a large mixing bowl, stir together almond meal, dark chocolate chips, baking powder, salt and sugar.

In a separate bowl, beat egg until uniform in colour and doubled in volume.

Whisk in the coconut oil and vanilla, then add to dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or even overnight.

Preheat oven to 190 C.

Shape dough into 1-inch balls, place on baking sheet with 1-1/2 inch space in between each. Press down slightly to flatten a bit.

Ready to bake…

Bake until edges begin to brown, 7-10 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool before serving.

Insights

Less some scorching around the edges where excess oil leaked from the cookies and didn’t like direct exposure to the heat of the oven, these first time cookies came out really well. They are firm although soft in the middle and very chewy due to the high content of almonds and coconut, undiluted by flour as in a ‘normal’ cookie.

These would be a great snack for a days walk in the Park.

Next time I will:

Warm the coconut oil so that it will, in its liquid form, blend better with the egg. I don’t think that chunky oil affects the outcome but it looks better and ensures an more even spread across the individual cookies on the tray.

Only use two spoons of coconut oil: the original recipe may be based on an assumption that the meal is dry however mine was still moist from the wringing process. As a result the cookies were quite moist and ‘bleed’ oil on to the baking tray in the oven where it scorched under the heat of the elements.

Reduce the heat by about 20 degrees to reduce any incidence of the coconut oil scorching and also to allow the cookies to bake through.

Plan on baking the cookies longer. The stated baking time in the recipe was only 7-10 minutes: 20-30 minutes was my experience. Aggravating this is the fact that, being of the male persuasion and not advantaged for multi-tasking, when they weren’t ready in the advertised 7-10 minutes, I started doing something else and kinda forgot about them for a while.

Dispense with the chocolate chips: the taste is lost between the flavour of the almonds and coconut. I may use them one time more just to expend them and then that’s it.

Leave the mix overnight in the fridge to gel. I’m not sure that it will make any difference and the recommended minimum 30 minutes worked out OK this time, but it may allow for a firmer cookie.

Voila, albeit a little crispied around the edges

DIY Almond Coconut Milk

Posted on 16 May 2016 by SJPONeill

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As I’ve progressed along my green journey, I have started to become more discerning about my healthy alternatives.

One of the themes in Damon Gameau’s That Sugar Story/Movie (depending on whether you are reading the book or watching the movie) is that much of what is pitched at us as ‘healthy’ isn’t really. There are the obvious villains like sugars concealed in health bars and even in meats as I found with my little adventures with the pre-crumbed chicken cutlets from New World.

One learns to become quite discerning even amongst the apparently acceptable healthy alternatives. I’ve been quite happy with my change from dairy milk to almond or coconut milk (from the supermarket) but when I looked at the label recently (see above), it has just a few too many big words on the ingredients label for my liking…an alternative milk is not naturally the same colour or texture (something I know a lot about because optimum consistency for airbrush paints is that close to milk!) as real milk: that it is when poured from the carton is a marketing decision, not a natural process.

Something I like about opting for a more healthy lifestyle, apart from the obvious benefits, is that most alternatives are quite easy to prepare…yes, making your own almond milk will never attain the same level of convenience as dropping a few containers of milk into the shopping trolley and, yes, you do need to be just a little more organised in terms of ingredients and preparation…but neither the decision, its sustainment or the work are that difficult…

Locating a suitable recipe for DIY almond coconut milk – I’ve always been a sucker for coconut – Google is your friend and, after sifting through a dozen or so variations of the theme, I came back to this one from Ethical Foods. My driver for this journey is one of health more than philosophy and when I look at a recipe, I consider it more from a practical perspective. However, I did like that the author lists some pretty good reasons for having a crack at making your own alternate milk, especially the one about the packaging.

There’s not much waste here from the foil-lined cardboard containers that these products come in from the supermarket: the plastic cap gets cut out and goes into the rubbish and the container gets sliced up and goes into the landfill on the back lawn (just filling holes). Even the foil lining breaks down and any plastic liner that might survives works its way to the surface for collection and disposal (there’s not much of it). But why deal with the waste products at all if you don’t have to…?

I’m not so sure about the ‘advantage’ of DIY almond milk being “…beautifully creamy white…” because almond milk is not naturally white: look at the inside of an almond: at best, it’s an off-white…

This is so simple to make:

Place a cup of almonds and a cup of shredded coconut in the blender and run it up to the maximum speed for a couple of minutes.

Empty the ground product into a bowl and add a litre of water.

Cover the bowl and let it sit overnight.

The next day, pour the content of the bowl in some double layered cheesecloth and wring the heck out of it into a clean bowl, ideally one with a pouring lip.

Once you have wrung all the liquid from the meal, pour it into a sealable bottle and store it in the fridge for use.

Easy!

The jury seems to still be out on the shelf life for this ‘milk’ so just keep an eye on it…anything over a week is probably pushing it…

The only down side to DIYing your own almond milk is that it does cost more: probably about twice as much compared to the store-bought stuff in the cardboard cartons.A cup of almonds is about 200 grams (@around $4 per 100 grams at the supermarket) plus about $1.50 for the coconut. The water here is free, coming directly off the roof, through a filter system and then being filtered again in the kitchen: this last step is probably unnecessary but the filter is right there so why not use it?

Buying almonds, especially sliced almonds, in bulk will close the cost gap and I will also experiment with using less almonds: some recipes only call for 100 grams but I’m not sure how strong they would be. I am also going to try blending the almond and coconut with the water to see if that strengthens the flavour…

The finished product has both an aroma and a flavour that blend the almond and coconut together so taste-wise this is a winner…give it a go…

Edit 24 May 2016

I’m not so sure about the ‘advantage’ of DIY almond milk being “…beautifully creamy white…” because almond milk is not naturally white: look at the inside of an almond: at best, it’s an off-white…

I got this wrong because I didn’t read the instructions properly. On my second go round making my own almond coconut milk, I blended the almonds and coconut with the water before letting it sit for the day.

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Not only did I get a fraction more milk, maybe another 100 mls but what I did get had a very (cow) milk-like texture and colour.Like the commercial variety it also separates in the fridge but reconstitutes with a quick shake. My version version deposited a lot of sediment at the bottom of the bottle and needed vigorous shaking to mix in and didn’t separates into layers like this. teh flavours are also a lot stronger on this second attempt.

So the secret to good homemade almond coconut milk is to blend the solids with the water…I’ve identified a good source of less expensive almonds so will be making this every few nights from now on. Savings in the kitchen budget to offset the cost of DIYing will come drop dropping rice milk and reducing coconut water to an occasional.

A study in growth…

Posted on 7 May 2016 by SJPONeill

On Thursday, I conducted an unintentional but educational experiment.

In the interests of science

Mid-afternoon, I decided to drive to Taupo to do some shopping.

Having skipped lunch – not intentionally, I was just doing stuff and not feeling particularly hungry to that point – I stopped at the Turangi BK for a Big Feed; Whopper, fries, nuggets, caramel sundae and big Coke. I must admit I did hesitate slightly when the TV screen asked me “Coke for the drink?” – I would have opted out if I could have remembered what else BK had to offer but went with the flow, which is probably the whole idea of such a leading question. Later thought: I could have asked what other options they had to offer…

For old me, stopping for lunch at the Turangi BK was pretty much a habit on my way to points further…new healthy me had a brief think about the options – there aren’t many in Turangi and less when you’re hungry NOW and in a hurry (to get to Taupo before 5) – but habit won out..

Shopping in Taupo completed, once again habit took the helm and I found myself in the drive-in queue at the Taupo KFC – in the full knowledge that every time I have KFC, it reminds me why I don’t have KFC…a three piece quarter pack and a Big Snack burger…all that grease suppressed healthy conscience’s pricking as I drove back west…

Two things I noticed.

Firstly, how absolutely sweet both the BK and KFC offerings tasted to Way Less Sugar Me…coming up to six months along my green journey and this cynic is pretty much sold on the notion that there is a direct connection between sugar/sweetness in food and food craving…

Secondly, by the time I got home – 90 minutes max and that includes stopping at the Turangi New World and stocking up – on healthy food, I might add: baby beets, pineapples ($2.99 each!!!), pumpkin, kumara, ginger (yes, it’s time for that ripper soup again) and more, more, more bananas…Depending on my smoothie mix for the day and less any consumed in cooking, I’m averaging three bananas downrange each day now…Oh! And, almonds, in quantity as well: after reading the label on my store-bought almond milk – all the words to big to pronounce in a hurry – I am somewhat motivated to try my hand at making my own…

Compensatory healthy stuff

Oh, I distract myself…hey, look, groceries..! do I need to get out more, I wonder..? So anyway, secondly, by the time I got home, my belt was distinctly tight and uncomfortable and I had this craving for sweet, sweet, sweet stuff. Now, when I stick to my healthy options, I can and do consume a lot but never, never, since I started this journey have I felt so bloated, yuk and uncomfortable as then…lesson identified…time will tell about it level of learnedness…

Inspiring Max liked my post Earth this evening so, as I try to do, I checked out Max’s blog, it’s a tit for tat, you scratch my back bloggie thing for me…in Coffee Catchup #6, Max asked readers “If we were having coffee I would ask you what you have been up to this last week, let me know in the comments.” Since the question had been posed, I did…and this discovery popped out as I burbled out my week in response…then I thought (it happens sometimes) “…well, if this is profound enough to contribute to someone else’s blog, it’s good enough for me as well…”

So here I am, at 8-30 in the PM, writing a post, after my first day back at work after three weeks off – and it went very well, thank you very much – when I should have dinner well under way…which is how I get to skip meals and then conducting unintentioned experiments like that above…still, dinner tonight will be quite simple: a reheat of the korma I made last night where I learned how much tastier food is when cooked in coconut oil than vegetable oils like Canola…

OK, now it’s time for food and a rewatch of Spectre, surely one of the better Bonds in the last five decades…?

spectre 007

Admiration | The Daily Post

Posted on 3 May 2016 by SJPONeill

In your response, depict something or someone you admire. Bonus points if you share a paragraph or two on the source of your admiration.

Source: Admiration | The Daily Post

So there is life below 90kg…

My green journey never started out as any sort of journey or programme…it simply fell out of a conversation with Bubble in the US, some simple culinary challenges…previously my health binges have all been largely exercise-based, with only secondary attempts at dietary reforms…

The last time that I made a sustained effort towards a change towards a healthier lifestyle was following a posting from a particularly intense role where I was granted, from a great height, certain latitude in my new posting in order to decompress and ‘get my life back’. Then, I averaged 3-4 hours a day cycling, running and in the gym, often with a walk along the river after dinner – it was summer – but still, almost as a point of principle, maintaining my standard ‘eating in the Mess’ profile: big boys breakfast, big boys lunch, bar snacks and big boys dinner. By ‘big boys’ I mean all the courses, and all the options, justifying this as necessary to sustain my exercise programme. Then, with a lot of concerted effort, over three or so months, I got my weight down to around 92kg…

This time, without a great deal of willpower or effort, I’ve broken through the 90kg barrier without even noticing. I never thought to record my weight at the beginning of this journey but I never realised that I was starting any sort of journey other than to try some new ideas in the kitchen…Maybe two months ago, I stumbled (literally) over the scale in the the back pantry and found that I was around 95kg – I’m pretty sure that I was over 100kg when I started…

Pineapple, coconut and tumeric smoothie

So what have I changed that has rendered this result?

I’ve reduced dairy to almost nothing. I still use butter for cooking and occasionally might have an ice-cream like a Trumpet…

trumper ice cream

…I still have store-bought fish and chips and, when I am travelling, still succumb to the call of the major food groups: KFC, McDs or BK…but not nearly as much as I used to. Where I used to fall back on a big back of chips and/or chocolate bars like Crunchies and Mars Bars if I had the munchies, now I’ll just have a smoothie, a drink of water or just go without…I think there is definitely something to this sugar/salt addiction thing…

I have made an effort – about the only one – to reduce, if not eliminate, as many processed foods from my diet, now buying more raw materials and making my own food…

Spicy chewie apple cookies

Why bother with store-bought snacks when I can make a dozen or so of these in half an hour…and when two will hit the spot for filling me up…

What I haven’t done is dramatically change my exercise routine. In fact, after injuring my leg in January, I have done less exercise than I would normally and the bulk of that has just been working around the Lodge. It has only been in the last couple of weeks that I have done any serious walking and only today that I got back on the rower…

My advice to anyone thinking of making similar changes is to sort your diet and the rest will take care of itself…

So, in the context of this prompt, I admire Bubble for nudging me in this direction and I admire me for staying the course, although it hasn’t been terribly difficult: not much more than thinking a little differently and not being afraid to try new things…

We normally tend to admire others – and I do – but it is also a sign of good health to be able to admire yourself when you get things right and I really think I have this time…

Fission chups

Posted on 26 April 2016 by SJPONeill

…as our Australian frenz might say…fish and chips to the rest of the world…

One of my challenges in my green journey is slowly purging the house of legacy foodstuffs…I got in early and disposed on the all the processed snacky food like chips/crisps and chocolate bars (too much 4 for $4 at the New World checkout!) before Christmas. Even if the way I disposed of them was not particularly healthy, it got the job done.

I am now working my way through the big freezer in the garage where I have been stashing loads of ‘reduced to clear’ meat. The last 5-6 nights I have been watching movies while peeling and dicing this years take of cooking apples before stewing them for long-term storage over winter: in making space for them in the freezer, I found even more meat packs that need to be disposed of…so dinner selections are becoming a bit of a lucky dip until they are all gone…

Sunday night, two large hoki fillet surfaced – easily enough for two meals for me + as it turned out, a late night snack as well…I probably could have gotten two decent meals from each fillet. Needing to also dispose of the large bag of potatoes in the back pantry, I opted for a traditional serving of fish with chips over a curry or such. I don’t do deep frying any more so the fish had to be baked or pan fried, while the chips would go through the air fryer…

Preparing the chips is pretty simple:

Rinse the potatoes – I don’t bother peeling them

Slice them about 3-4mm thick and about 10mm wide.

Rinse them in the colander from a Tupperware steamer set and then dry the pieces in a clean tea towel.

Place the dried chips in the base of the Tupperware steamer, pour over a tablespoon of your choice of cooking oil, a good shaking of salt or other flavour – my chip flavour of choice at the moment is Cajun spice mix – place the lid of the steamer on and shake them all about..

Place the oiled and spiced chips into the air fryer basket.

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Turn the fryer to high and set the timer to 20 minutes. Every five minutes or so, take the basket out and give the chips a good shake-up.

DSCF9915 I had seen online a recipe for parmesan baked fish but my search couldn’t bring up one that I like so I just ran with the idea and combined what was left of the parmesan in the fridge, grated finely, with parsley and breadcrumbs – both products of home, and 3 cloves of garlic and a little sea salt. I blended this in the Tupperware Terminator and would have had enough for both fillets if I hadn’t knocked the bowl into the sink…

Two eggs, blended by hand, provided a gooey take for the crumb mix and I applied this twice to each piece to get a good thick layer. I poured the little bit of remaining egg over the fish in the pan and followed this with the last of the used crumb mix…one of the recipes I had seen recommended cooking the fish in butter with a lemon’s worth of juice in the pan as well – a great idea!

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The lemon juice made a real difference to the taste – I’ve never been a big fan of squeezing raw juice over my fish – and blended well with the flavours in the crumb mix.

Last night, being a little short on the same crumb mix, I beefed up the surviving mix with more bread crumbs, garlic, parsley and fresh coriander, blending this time in the blender to get this cool Hulk-green colour…

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They might look a little odd in the pan…

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…but tasted beautiful…anyone for a Hulk Fish Burger..?

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Still quite a healthy meal with only a small quantity of butter and oil used, mainly herbs and spices with homemade wholemeal breadcrumbs…I’m quite a way down my green journey so the quantity of potato was probably n the limit for me know but the small quantity of parmesan added good flavour but no weight…

A tale of two peppers (Part Two)

Posted on 8 April 2016 by SJPONeill

…I knew there was something fishy about the can of chickpeas as I opened it….probably because it was a can of fish…

In my second go-round on stuffed peppers, I used a tried and trusty falafel recipe from Healthy Food Guide for the stuffing:

What you need:

400g can chickpeas

1 medium onion, finely chopped

small handful fresh parsley, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons flour

Two tomatoes, sliced

Mozzarella cheese, grated

What you do:

Drain and mash the chickpeas by hand.

Add the onion and parsley then the remaining ingredients.

Let the mix rest in the fridge for 30 minutes

Cut each pepper in half and scoop out the innards.

Leave the stalk on because it looks cooler.

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Fill each pepper half with falafel mix and place a tomato slice on top

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Sprinkle a decent amount of the grated mozzarella on top. I’d recommend slicing a small amount off the base of each pepper half so it sits flat and doesn’t fall over in the oven…

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Like these ones did…

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Serve up with potato and kumara chips….it doesn’t look so sharp here as this last photo was an afterthought after I had already started eating…tasted great though….

The chips are cooked in the air fryer so only have use the bare minimum of oil, less than a tablespoon…