Heating food in plastic

I must confess this one gave me a bit of a fright, I totally take plastic for granted these days, EVERYTHING comes in plastic (well it feels like it anyway). I had obviously heard about BPA (I’m a parent, difficult not to hear) and I’ll confess I half-heartedly look for the BPA-free signage on baby bottles etc but I would definitely not think to look for it on anything for myself.

So when I bought my oats in the new 2kg plastic packet rather than the cardboard box and was excited it was cheaper & explaining my win to my brother he happened to mention that maybe it was actually not as good for you because it was coming in a plastic packet. Hmmmm, time for some googling. I came across the following article (amongst many others):

http://news.discovery.com/human/health/bpa-plastic-food-hormones-chemicals-110715.htm

EVEN BPA-free plastics are not always safe – WHAT! So I read more, basically there are hormone-disrupting chemicals that ‘leak’ out of the plastic into our foods and beverages, especially when the foods are heated in those plastic containers. Horrifying to think how we are messing with our hormone balances simply by eating plastic-tainted food. This is so easy to do without even thinking – leftovers get popped into plastic containers to store in the fridge and then reheated in those containers before they are eaten (so much easier than decanting it into something else). Plastic bottles of water get brought with when we drive in the car and end up getting warmed in the sun. Babies bottles are heated, hot food is put into plastic bowls for toddlers to eat (a ceramic bowl is just not very practical for a toddler). The list goes on and on.

I think, the secret again is making small changes. I am now making my yoghurt in glass jars rather than old plastic yoghurt containers and trying hard to remember to reheat leftovers in ceramic dishes rather than plastic ones. I also (once I have money again) want to go on a shopping spree and buy some more glass jars and perhaps some glass tupperware replacements. Baby steps to a healthier lifestyle… Have you perhaps got any other good tips for avoiding this?

Full fat rather than low fat dairy

Yip, you heard right, full fat dairy products are actually healthier for you than the low fat alternatives.

I’m not going to pretend to be a scientist here but the low down is that fats really are an important part of your diet &, wait for it, actually help you lose weight by keeping you feeling full for longer. The important thing about fats is that you need to avoid the really bad kinds (trans-fats & those polyunsaturated ones found in vegetable oil) rather than avoiding all fats. Full cream dairy products contain only 4% saturated fat (compared to 2% or 1% in the lower fat varieties) and those fats are important to help your body absorb the fat soluble vitamins (A, D & K) so removing those fats also reduces your body’s ability to absorb the goodness from milk. Full fat dairy can apparently also help protect you from diabetes, cancer & heart disease.

I don’t know about you but I am very much looking forward to some full cream, guilt free indulgence 🙂

Some articles to read more:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/consumer/food/article/-/14430388/is-low-fat-milk-unhealthy/

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/05/21/why-you-need-to-avoid-low-fat-milk-and-cheese.aspx

http://www.abc.net.au/health/features/stories/2012/10/18/3607861.htm#.UW0A2qKpsyc

Grow something yummy

Green Pepper

I know, I know, who has time or space to do that. But answer me this, do you have a garden, do you have plants in your garden (even just a few pot plants on your balcony)… yes then why can’t those plants be edible? I’m not suggesting you stop going to supermarkets or make huge plans to grow all your vegetables, herbs, fruit etc but just pick something you like and use a lot of and maybe try growing that?

The best part is, you don’t even have to buy anything, plant a couple of seeds from the food you eat, water them and see if they grow. We (and by we I mean my husband, I don’t have time to grow vegetables 😉 only kidding) have started doing this and I am absolutely loving being able to eat the odd vegetable / herb totally fresh.

Baby Tomatoes

I highly recommend growing baby tomatoes (if you like them of course), they are easy to grow and we found that off one plant we could pick about 5 ripe baby tomatoes a day so we had enough to have them with a meal every few days which was perfect. Plus you don’t have to worry about them going off in the fridge because you just pick them as you need them.

Why is this a slightly healthier thing to do? I read the other day that they have been doing research and our vegetables and fruit that we purchase in the supermarkets have significantly less nutrients in them than they did even just 30 years ago. With all the genetic modification to make the food look better and last longer we are losing out on the valuable nutrients our bodies need. Plus there is all the freezing, canning, transporting long distances (so there is a long time between picking and eating & foods are picked unripe so that they don’t over ripen during that transport / packaging time) etc that all decrease the nutritional value of our foods. If you grow those foods yourself you are in control of the soil, the pesticides, the picking time and you are eating them straight away.

Why not give it a try, you have nothing to lose?

Rosemary – love this stuff!!

Go meat-free every now and then

I’ve heard this one time & time again and every time I do I get a picture in my mind of a plate piled high with eggplant & brussel sprouts ugh. Surely all good meals have meat in them!

Bring on my new resolution of healthier living (bit late for a New Years resolution) and we revisiting this idea again. This time with a little creativity & a lot of Googling.

Wow there really are some fabulous vegetarian meals out there & often they are quicker to cook AND you don’t also have to do veges… score! 😉

Last night I experimented with risotto for the first time (is it rice, is it pasta… who can tell). Yummmmmmm. I had googled some risotto recipes and come across a wild mushroom one. It had dried porcini and other specific mushrooms but I just bought a wild mushroom pack from the supermarket and used that. So wild mushrooms, onion, garlic, spinach, some white wine & vegetable stock & of course the risotto. Then sprinkled some rosa tomatoes & feta just before serving… Delicious and done in just over 30min. The actual recipe is here if anyone wants to give it a try: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/9198/porcini-and-spinach-risotto.

My hubbie has even suggested we do this at least once a week (eat meat-free not just this specific dish) so hopefully I’m on the right track.

 

Making homemade yoghurt

I’ve recently started making homemade muesli for our new healthy breakfast (as you would have read in a previous post). Consequently we are starting to go through rather a lot of yoghurt. Ok I’ll confess I’m also a bit of a kitchen gadget fanatic so I was thinking it would be fun to have a new machine & i googled some yoghurt making machines. While on the hunt online I came across some articles on making yoghurt without any fancy machinery so I figured that was worth a try.

I was pretty sure my first attempt was going to be a disaster, many of the articles are quite particular about temperature ranges & make it sound quite complicated & easy to get wrong. So I was very pleasantly surprised when my first batch was delicious. I know what you are thinking, WHO on earth has the time to make their own yoghurt. Before you dismiss this concept as completely ridiculous listen to how easy it is to do:

Buy 1l of milk (I used Full Cream but you can apparently use anything) & a small tub of plain yoghurt with yoghurt culture (I used normal plain Parmalat yoghurt). Bring the milk JUST to the boil in a pot / saucepan while stirring (85 degrees Celsius if you want to know 😉 and have a candy thermometer). Pop the pot into some cool water to cool the milk down just enough so you can stick your finger in without it being uncomfortable (around 43 degrees Celsius). Stir in 1 tablespoon of sugar (to feed the cultures) and 2 tablespoons of the yoghurt you bought (you can use your last batch to start a new batch if you do it within a week). Then pop your milk mixture into a tub with a closed lid – I just used an empty yoghurt tub ;), close the lid and put it somewhere warm to do its magic. I whipped out my slow cooker and put in some wet dishtowels and some warm water.

Leave it be for at least 5 hours (the longer you leave it the more tart the flavour) & voila creamy yoghurt 🙂 delicious & without preservatives, stabilisers, dead cultures etc!

If, like my second batch, you open the tub and it still looks like milk (too watery) it probably wasn’t warm enough for the cultures liking so top up the warm water to make it warmer & close it up again for another few hours.

Raw Honey

My oldest son is 2 and has recently started going to a playschool so, as you can imagine, we have started the fun journey of cold after cold after cold as his immune system strengthens. The truly fun part is that there are no cough mixtures that are really helpful for children (perhaps this is true for adults as well I’m not sure). The only thing that is meant to help is a lemon honey mixture so we introduced bottles of water with honey and lemon (don’t worry, not at nap times). He calls this his ‘Special Bottle’ and thankfully absolutely loves it.

When this more natural remedy was suggested I did some googling on the topic and found some fascinating facts on honey. Honey is an Anti-Bacterial, Anti-Viral and Anti-Fungal Substance! Other phytonutrients found in honey have been shown to possess cancer-preventing and anti-tumor properties. The only problem is that When raw honey is extensively processed and heated (such as with most store bought honey), the benefits of these phytonutrients are largely eliminated.

So, in order to make this work for us I tracked down a raw honey supplier – the Honeybee Foundation in Maitland. Their honey is not expensive, is raw & hopefully we are now benefiting from the wonderful things raw honey can offer us. Plus it tastes good so I can use it instead of syrup without feeling deprived 😉 Small change, hopefully large benefits.

If you want to read more there is some lovely honey information here: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=96

Books that may interest you:

Eating a healthier breakfast

I have never been a muesli / granola fan, I probably tasted one once with all sorts of ‘suspect things in it’ – I am a little fussy in my food tastes… I’m working on it ;). My husband on the other hand is a lot more adventurous food-wise than I am and likes pretty much everything so he recently bought himself some granola. I read the packaging with all sorts of fabulous promises – ‘Wholegrain’, ‘Nuts’, ‘Full of fibre’ – sounded fabulously healthy so I gave it to my 2 year old son for breakfast. He LOVED it – YAY score for healthy parenting. Hmmmm, until I tasted it myself and it tastes like SYRUP, SYRUP and more SYRUP! I read the ingredients list and was just a little horrified at the contents, yip you guessed it, lots of syrup!

Now what, I gave it some thought, how could I convince him to keep eating all the good bits – the raw oats, the nuts, the seeds etc but forgo all the syrup? I decided to try making some muesli myself so I bought some oats (I’ll confess I bought normal Jungle Oats rather than steel-cut Oats which are twice the price), a few different packets of nuts, some sunflower, sesame & pumpkin seeds, some flaxseed powder and some raisins and just threw them all together.

Now how to make it sweet, I definitely didn’t want to just pour syrup over it so I bought some raw honey & figured I’d give that a try. The true ‘health-nuts’ will probably argue that even raw

honey is bad because it is spiking sugar levels, but I figure it is better than him not eating the muesli at all & I can work on cutting down on the honey later. The first few times he wasn’t a huge fan – kept moaning that I had made the granola ‘funny’ ;). I persevered and now, thankfully, he loves it!

Extra benefits – I can control the contents and it is actually really yummy so I am having it too (especially with the honey – lol, oops my sweet tooth makes an appearance). Plus all the nuts, oats, seeds etc are healthy food purchases  (granola is definitely not) so we get benefits from our medical aid! Goodbye wicked breakfast cereals, welcome healthy muesli.

Some books that may interest you: