Yesterday I had the fun job of going into the BBC building in Southampton and I got to chat about my favourite topic on the Radio – FOOD! Whoop Whoop 🙂
I chatted about how to plan your meals, keep food inexpensive and what foods we maybe don’t need to eat so much of.
Take a listen here (1 hour 34 minutes) and I’d love to have your feedback!
It’s Jam and Chutney season…..so here are some great tips from Wares of Knutsford on jamming. Enjoy 🙂
I recently made my own Plum jam and my is it good!
“Making your own jam is immensely satisfying. Nothing tastes better on toast or scones. For those of us who made jam or watched jam-making as children it also brings back some lovely memories of fruit picking, boiling sugar and full jars with fabric covers.
Choosing and tasting your fruit is a huge part of the fun. Many people fondly recall picking blackberries, plums, apples or strawberries as a child and having a little taste just to make sure it’s good enough. You can use under-ripe fruit – it has more pectin – but it won’t have the richer scent and flavour of a fruit that’s ripened a little longer. Harvesting is a magical part of the process, but don’t double the recipe because you have a lot of fruit. Jam-making is quite a science and messing around with quantities could mean it won’t set.
The secret of jam-making is speed and efficiency. Warming the sugar before adding it can speed up the process considerably and not removing the foam on top until the very end cuts down on your time and on wastage. The best jam is that made in small batches from really fresh fruit. Making it this way is faster and allows for more control over the process. It lets you experiment with the amount of pectin or lemon juice you need and your sugar quantities and should the worst happen and the bottom of the pan burn, you won’t have wasted a huge quantity of fruit. Small batches are also easier than large ones to make with a young helper if you have one, which is great for passing along the memories and love of fresh jam to the next generation.”
Every now and again I get myself into a bit of a stressful state, life feels like it’s overtaking me, I have lists of things to do, nothing feels like it’s getting done and suddenly I realise I’ve no idea what we’re eating for dinner and am running low on food. DISASTER. You know that feeling?
Hilariously as a dietitian I am often found writing meal plans for others, but then I forget to write my own. OOOPS. I love recipes, food, cooking, meal ideas and all that jazz, so actually for me sitting down and planning out the meals for the week is a relaxing and fun thing to do, it means I have time to think through the week, flick through some recipe books, bring those food ideas to the front of my brain and at the end of it I have at least one part of life under control.
Here’s mine for the next 2 weeks, I’d love to see yours!
5 Reasons to Meal Plan:
5 Top Tips for Balance over the week:
Get planning those meals and please share – I’d love to hear how you do things and what meals you include.
I’m half Sri-Lankan so loving Sri-Lankan food is a given…and the greens that my grandmother (Archchi) cooks are an all round favourite of mine. So I was very excited to be able to learn how to make this variation which uses a leaf called Mallum. I’d not heard of it before but it’s known in Sri-Lanka to be very nutritious. I also tried a Mallum salad and Mallum style porridge (very green but tasty).
I’m going to try making this dish at home with Swiss chard because that’s what I have growing in my garden. Here’s my great aunt showing us how to do it, in her kitchen in Sri-Lanka.
What are your favourite curry recipes? Have you been to Sri-Lanka, I’d love to know.
Breakfast….it’s one of my favourite meals of the day, and even more so when I’m in Sri-Lanka.
I’m half Sri-Lankan and so I have a special love for this teardop shaped island in the sun. We visit regularly as we have lots of family and also work with Young Hope – a charity that supports children orphaned post tsunami and the civil war.
One of the best bits about visiting Sri-Lanka for me has to be the food. I am a true food-a-holic. Good food makes me happy. Tasty, healthy food is even better. Sri-Lankan cuisine can be great for hitting that food spot for me.
In the UK breakfast can be a bit of a dull affair, lots of toast and cereal. Over in Sri-Lanka it’s a whole different story…. think tropical fruit, Hoppers – special pancakes that are crispy on the outside and soft in the middle, string hoopers – rice noodles shaped in a round design, omelettes, kiri-bath – coconut rice and many varieties of rice and curry. Yup that’s right, rice and curry for breakfast. I love to embrace all of this and actually rice and curry for brekkie is pretty good. My personal preference is for lentils with a fish curry served with a spoon of chilli hot sambol…..and it’s all wheat free, yay!
What’s the strangest thing you’ve had for breakfast?
I love bean burgers. They are one of those foods that want me make to turn vegetarian. But they just aren’t one of those things that I make very often. Till now.
Tonight was one of those evenings where I hadn’t got round to planning dinner, so I turned to the fridge for inspiration…. the bowl of kidney beans was calling my name. We also had  carrot and courgette’s eyeing me. Bingo.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting these to work well as I literally threw them together on a whim, but in my experience that’s often when my best recipes occur. In my opinion this is one of them.
A great recipe for Family Meals, for weaning, it’s vegetarian, gluten free, wheat free, dairy free….need I say more?! Oh, hold on… ITS TASTY!
Ingredients:
1 tin kidney beans
2 carrots
1 courgette
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp Curry powder (I used a Sri-Lanka blend, use your favourite mix)
1 tbsp mixed fresh herbs or a pinch of dried
seasoning
Method:
Last week I had the pleasure of being invited to take part in a Wellness event. A local business (Trimline Interiors) wanted to invest in their staff providing healthy taster session and information for them.
Having a healthy, happy workforce can mean having a more productive, proactive and efficient workforce. It also means less sick days so as an employee more money saved. The “Working for a Healthier Tomorrow” report found costs of sickness associated with working age ill-healthy to be over £100 billion a year. As most people spend up to 60% of waking hours at work it’s the ideal place to discuss health.
My role was to provide healthy eating advice. At the start of the day I was opened the event by giving a short talk to all the staff, my topic was “Healthy Snacking”. Personally I love visual aids so I had taken along a selection of snacks and weighed out the sugar content in them. The Mars bar and the Jelly Babies got the best reaction 😉
One of the rooms was turned into my consultation room and staff were able to book on for 15 minute consultations with me. These were a lot of fun. I asked people to come armed with a food diary showing what they had eaten the day before. Seeing as there had been a few who had been on a night out the previous evening I had some interesting alcohol and food intakes to discuss! I was able to give some hopefully really useful and helpful advice to the people who came along.
Every event like this need freebies and leaflets doesn’t it! So I had taken a range of leaflets and even some free healthy snacks, courtesy of the lovely people at Popchips. Who doesn’t like free food?
The company themselves had also provided a range of healthy snacks to be munched on throughout the day: carrots and hummous, fruit, rice cakes, breadsticks, sugar snap peas. It certainly went down a storm.
Other people were there doing massages, Nordic Walking and discussing giving up smoking. I didn’t get a free massage but it certainly caught my eye.
I think it is commendable to find a business so forward thinking and who really care about their staff. Thanks Trimline Interiors for having me.
If your business would like a similar event run please get in touch. Other services we could offer include health checks, Pilates tasters and weight loss support groups.
A little while ago the lovely Hampshire Chutney Company sent my 2 of their chutneys to try. Excitedly I opened the well wrapped parcel to find…
1. Atul Kochars Pumpkin Festival Chutney
2. Caramelised Carrot Chutney
Now I love a good chutney, they can really add that extra something to a dish. Plus I love local produce – so this was already a winning combo. I’ve spent the past few weeks trying these babies out with a whole range of foods. My favourite chutney has to the the pumpkin one. Why? Well I love a bit of spice and this has just the right kick for me, it’s great with almost everything! I’ve had it with cheese, curry, sandwiches, with sliced apple and it’s been super tasty with all of these. I love the pumpkin seeds that are in it and the chunky texture.
The carrot chutney is quite a sweet one, I’m not known for my sweet tooth but I did enjoy this with cheese or in a sandwich. My toddler really enjoyed it and the husband sampled it with a cheese board. If you have a sweet tooth this is a great way to get some extra flavour in and I love the fact that it is literally jam packed full of carrots!
So if you like a bit of chutney why not pop over and say hello to the Hampshire Chutney Company and tell them I sent you 😉
Disclaimer: this is not a paid review, all views are my own.
Yesterday was an unforgettable day. Some of you may remember that back in January I won a Small Business Sunday (#SBS) award from Theo Paphitis (well known from Dragons Den)…yesterday was the day I met Theo and he presented me with the certificate. Here we are together:
Winning the award coincided with the time I was leaving my NHS job and launching myself full-time into running my business and being a mum. It was a HUGE confidence boost and since then I’ve really been flying. Dietitian UK now runs regular clinics including eating disorder clinics, works closely with South Coast Fatigue helping clients with Chronic Fatigue, does a lot of media work and I am now the dietitian for Slimsticks too. I also works with other businesses helping them with nutritional leaflets, PR comments, training staff, doing menu analysis and more. It’s been a fantastic 3 months.
So yesterday was the icing on the cake. We travelled up to Birmingham and enjoyed networking with the other #SBS winners. They really are a great bunch of businesses. Theo gave an inspirational talk that has  given me more insight into how to move forward and encouraged me that I can do this.
I’m looking forward to all that being an #SBS winner will bring and learning more from not only Theo but also the other business winners. If you want to know more about #SBS here is the website.
A massive thank you goes to Theo Paphitis and also to the Ryman Group who hosted the event.
I was really excited to hear that Bella Italia have started to do a Gluten Free menu. As you many know I’m wheat intolerant, it’s not quite the same as gluten free but pretty close, especially as I am very sensitive to wheat, so I’m often found trawling the internet for new gluten and wheat free recipes. However every once in a while it’s nice to have a day off cooking and eat out. That’s not always easy when you can’t eat wheat/gluten.
Bella Italia were kind enough to offer for me to go and sample their menu for free, which was a real treat. We went as a family (myself, husband and my one year old) and I Â must say that it was a very baby friendly place to eat, although maybe not so great on the baby change facilities. Our little one was given colouring things, stickers and a balloon. She was most taken with my meal though!
There is a completely separate gluten free menu which makes life very easy and there is a lot of choice which is amazing – 6 pasta’s, 7 pizza’s, 4 salads and more…wow. We  ordered the “Ragu D’Agnello” (Lamb ragu with pasta) and the “Pollo Piccante” Pizza (chicken, peperonata, mozzarella and chillies) plus a side salad.
The pasta was really good, perfectly cooked and you wouldn’t know it was gluten free. Some of the pasta’s I’ve tried at other restaurants have been pretty awful, this one gets a gold star.
The pizza looked great but the base tasted pretty much like cardboard. It looked like a pre-bought one to me and was quite hard in places. However it was great to have it as a choice on the menu.
I was pleasantly surprised to see some desserts included on the menu, we shared a piece of the  “Torti Di Ciociolato” (chocolate cake) between the 3 of us, it went down very well with everyone. DIVINE.
I’d certainly recommend Bella Italia for those of you who are gluten free and have been missing Italian, I know I had. The staff were helpful and the atmosphere relaxing, what more could you ask for? Thankyou Big Bella’s how about working on a home made gluten free pizza base next?!
Disclaimer  – all views are my own. Bella Italia did not pay me to write this post, I asked to review their menu and they gave me a free trial with no strings attached.Â
