A harvest of health

Just think of all the beautiful sunshine that was poured into these natural delights!

My resolution to eat a salad as a main meal every day for 30 consecutive days has been going splendidly. I feel so blessed by the bountiful ‘harvest’ I’m able to buy!

Of course, I’m in a city in the twenty-second century, so unfortunately my fresh produce doesn’t come to me with bits of soil still clinging to it… One day I hope to have a little patch of land where I can experiment with growing a few of my own fresh goodies, but for now I buy the freshest and the best selections I can for my money and convenience, and it’s a blessing.

This is one way I measure wealth: when my fridge is full not just of food, but of good food that hasn’t been fiddled with too much between God’s hand and my plate 🙂

There are so many diets and eating plans out there, some of which totally take over people’s lives. That’s not for me. I’m just content to make small changes for the better wherever I can.

If the label says ‘organic’ and I can afford it, I’ll buy it. And on the other end of the spectrum, if the best-before date is in a year’s time, I don’t really want to be putting that stuff in my body!

I know most of my readers will be heading for their northern-hemisphere winter now, so salads may not seem very appealing. But may I encourage you to balance out your cold-weather comfort foods with fresh produce whenever you get a chance.

You’ll reap a harvest of health 🙂

Spring Day feast

Happy Spring Day to those in the southern hemisphere! Sorry my northern friends, I don’t mean to rub it in that your warm weather is slowly seeping southwards 😉

But winter isn’t over for us yet – it was absolutely freezing icy cold this morning. When we went to church we joined huddles of hunched-over people wrapped in thick coats and jerseys. Even the heartiest singing didn’t warm us up today!

Thankfully, though, Jozi is usually sunny even when it’s cold, so as I write here this afternoon I have warm bright sunshine flooding my desk… and cheerfully highlighting all the dust I haven’t got around to cleaning… Meh.

Anyway, enough of that. What I’m really here to write about is the delightful Spring Day feast I made for Ninja and my parents today. My folks were originally coming over to meet their new ‘grandrats’, but since that’s been delayed we just turned it into a celebration of the first day of spring.

Spring Day 2013

For the decor I chose mismatched and cheerful colours, using what I had around the house instead of spending extra on new fancy stuff. For example, I had these bright orange paper cups in the cupboard, so I just prettied them up with spring-themed flower stickers.

For Marzipan

I used my multicoloured bamboo placemats and colourful serviettes left over from my first special dinner. Ninja had also bought these cool 3D/holographic bookmarks for each of us, so we gave my mom the horsey one and my dad the eagly one (oops, couldn’t resist inventing a word there).

For Daz

I also snipped a few sprigs off a jasmine bush to use as our centrepiece. I so enjoy the scent of those flowers: it always tells me my favourite season has arrived at last.

Jasmine

And now for the best part: the food 😀 I made us a three-course meal as follows:

Spring Day menu

In case you can’t see the text on the pic, our starters were those mini pizza mushrooms that I first made for this dinner and then again for this dinner. I also recently hosted my in-laws for lunch and made it for them too. In fact, I could quite easily make that starter for every fancy dinner for as long as I live, and never tire of it. Those ‘shrooms are just so darn delicious!!!

The main course was ham and spring onion clafoutis with roasted cherry tomatoes and avocado with basil pesto mayo. This is where I had the most fun, since I love experimenting with new dishes and flavours. (I’m determined not to lose that interest even though I no longer have as much spare time for experimenting as I had before…).

I’d never made a clafoutis (say: ‘klafootee’) before, but I based my recipe on this one and simply substituted ham and spring onions for the basil and tomatoes. I also used four small ramekins rather than one big dish. It’s such a simple and easy recipe, and my family enjoyed it (though we all added some extra salt, without which it would have tasted far too mild and milky).

Tomatoes ready for the oven

The roasted cherry tomatoes are an idea shared with me by my best friend. She first made it for me with pasta and wilted spinach (oh, how well we ate that day!), but the tomatoes work perfectly on their own too. Simply wash them, pop them in an ovenproof dish, drizzle with olive oil and season with whatever herbs and spices you like (I used origanum, pepper, chives and salt). Then bake them for 30 minutes at 180 °C – which was ideal in this case because that’s the same as for the clafoutis, so I baked them together.

Savoury clafoutis with roasted tomatoes and avo with basil pesto mayo

As you can see from the pic above, the poor clafoutis had no patience with me fussing with the photography… it started to deflate almost as soon as I took it from the oven 😛 Still delicious though.

The basil pesto mayo was also a hit (with everyone except my plain-eating husband, hehe). Since I enjoy basil but can’t eat the garlic they usually put in commercial pestos, I decided to make my own pesto. As a replacement for the pine nuts used in standard pestos, I added a few spoons of ground almonds. Hmmm. Didn’t do much for me. Then I simply mixed up low-fat mayo and milk, and stirred tiny shreds of fresh basil into the mix. Yum! A perfect complement to the plain avocado, with none of the disadvantages (for me at least) of using garlic.

And the dessert of fresh strawberries and hot marshmallow sauce? That’ll be my next post 🙂

Resisting temptation

Temptation

Six days left of the 21-day sugar detox, and I’m quite proud of my progress. I’ve managed to avoid sweet and carby temptations for over two weeks now – though it’s not so easy when they get handed to me on a platter!

The cute vanilla and white-chocolate cupcake pictured above is from a work colleague’s birthday tea. My friend and I who are doing the 21DSD each took a cupcake… not to eat but to freeze at home, in readiness for this coming Sunday when the detox ends.

Shew. I haven’t been so close to sugar in weeks. I held it close and inhaled the sweet creamy scent…

But since I’m so close to the end I didn’t want to spoil my good streak. So I snapped a pic and hastily stashed away the cupcake in the freezer.

A marvel of self-control.

Seriously though, this detox hasn’t been as hardcore as I expected it to be. In fact, once it’s over I think there are quite a few lessons I can take away and principles I want to adopt on a more permanent basis.

For example, I’ve discovered that I really don’t need sweetener in my tea. With the possible exception of some rather earthy herbal infusions, most of my teas are palatable enough without honey.

I’ve also realised that although carbs do have a place in my normal diet, I can happily reduce the amounts I eat and still feel full. So I can enjoy a warm bowl of oats on a winter’s morning – but it doesn’t have to be a big bowl, or every morning, or sweetened overly much.

I’ve learnt that there are many other fine flavours to be enjoyed other than just ‘level-10 sickly sweet’! So I’ve started looking at sweet treats with new eyes now. I feel drawn to flavourful, healthier, freshly baked, homemade treats rather than store-bought ones packed full of unnecessary extras.

I’ve been surprised at my resistance to my old cravings. I think the beauty of the 21-day sugar detox is that by telling your brain that ‘it’s just a detox, not a diet’, somehow your body relaxes and doesn’t feel so deprived anymore 🙂

On the downside, though, I would be happy not to see meat for the next month. Cutting out carbs has made me increase my protein portions, which isn’t so appealing to someone who was never much of a carnivore in the first place. Hmmm… methinks that once this detox is done, I should give that month of vegetarianism another shot…

A pickle pictorial

This will just be a quick post because it’s been a busy weekend and I have tons of tasks to catch up on.

When I first made my own pickled beetroot, I didn’t properly record the process. So here are some pics from last night, when I made a new batch of beets:

Cooked and peeled beets looking shiny

Of course, I had fun peeling them and got bright pink fingers again

Beetroot skins are easily rubbed off once the beets are cooked

One plate of whole beets turned into two plates of sliced beets…

From 3 small punnets of baby beetroot I got plenty to pickle!

As mentioned previously, the last batch was a bit too vinegary for my liking. This time I doubled the whole recipe but substituted lemon juice for half the vinegar. Will see if that tones down the tang.

Spices in the pickling sauce

Mmmm, spices add such pizzazz to cooking 🙂

Straining the sauce

I bought myself two of these Consol jars with clever blackboard-paint labels. It’s easy to chalk up your notes and wash them off for the next time. Also great if you’re using the jars as gifts…

Proudly pickled by Zest!

PS – I reserved some of the water used for cooking the beets and added a little sugar and a dash of lemon juice to it. Once it had cooled, I drank half a glass of that mixed with half a glass of red grape juice. It tastes unusual but not unpleasant… and I’m hoping that that way I’ve salvaged some of the nutrients, which often get lost in the cooking water 😎

Love feasts and other disasters

Uh oh. Tonight is a special bring-and-share ‘love feast’ gathering at our church. Normally I enjoy this kind of thing. But since yours truly has been working hard on a proofreading job  obsessively researching DSLR cameras  generally somewhat distracted of late, my dinner-and-dessert contribution towards tonight’s meal is currently… still under construction.

I know that the idea of a love feast or ‘agape feast’ probably sounds a bit strange to those out of the loop with church jargon. But it’s just a shared meal to celebrate as a church family something important – in this case, Easter: the time we rememember Christ’s sinless life, His sacrificial death and (praise God) His victorious resurrection. The love feasts are meant to be done in the same spirit as of those old first-century saints who gathered together regularly to share meals and worship the Lord.

So, something worth putting in effort for, right?

Except that I haven’t.

And now I’m in a flap to get things ready. And when I’m in a flap, I tend to do unsaintly things.

Such as freeze my jelly pudding to try to rush the setting process. And then forget the jelly in the freezer, only to take out a bowl of raspberry icicles an hour later. Which I then proceed to whisk into wobbly pink foam, believing that the other guests will prefer a childish pink mousse over frozen icy jelly.

Disaster-recovery on raspberry jelly

OK, so that’s my dessert half done, and back in the fridge to set. I plan to tastefully cover that delightful pink mush with a thick layer of irresistable homemade custard. Hopefully the brethren won’t think twice when I say that my dessert is “just plain ol’ jelly and custard”.

Er… yum?

Of course it’s just typical that I think about what to make for dessert first.

Now for the meal. We’re supposed to bring enough to feed ourselves and share the rest, but it’s not clear how many will be seated at our table to dip their spoons in our dishes. On the one hand, I don’t want to seem miserly by arriving with too small a portion. But on the other hand I can’t afford to create a lavish supersize dish to feed the 5 000!

So I’ve decided to make an enormous potato salad with special extras such as cheese, tinned tuna and toasted sunflower seeds. I know it’s not exactly a balanced meal, but at least it’s vegetarian 😉 And if it’s not quite what the church leaders had in mind, here’s hoping the spirit of forgiveness will pervade our love feast this evening…

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fatted calf with hatred.

~Proverbs 15:17 ~

Jokes aside, though, my biggest concern in all this is that I’ll get so worked up about making a meaningful contribution to the dinner, that I’ll miss the point of the celebration altogether. Just as we so easily get carried away at Christmastime, believing it’s more important to bake fruit pies and prepare roasts than it is to focus on the reason for Christ’s birth.

And Easter is an especially precious time for Christians because if Christ had never died or risen again, our hope for salvation and the forgiveness of our sins would be void. So this is not the time to become distracted with superficial tasks. If we do nothing else this weekend, may we pause to consider the Saviour. The only God who reached down to man instead of expecting man to reach up to Him. May we remember why He came to earth. May we learn from His life, be humbled by His death, and be thankful for His resurrection.

Bless you all this Easter!

Zest

Vegetarianism: take two

Last week a friend treated me to brunch at a lovely restaurant called Gingko (yes, check off another one for Goal #70).

Gingko: The second restaurant for Goal #70

Of course, I used it as an opportunity to work on Goal #42 as well, and eat something I’d never tried before. I ordered a shrimp, avo and ricotta frittata (shrimp being the novel ingredient for me). Here it is:

Shrimp, avo and ricotta frittata

Gingko is a lovely restaurant with seating outdoors in a leafy garden. It was a beautiful spot for catching up on some girl talk over a good meal. The food is mainly organic and mostly vegetarian or vegan, although they do cater for carnivores too.

Seeing the amazing menu, I started thinking about my weak attempt at vegetarian eating. And I think I can see why I failed at meeting my goal of going vegetarian this past month.

It’s because I didn’t remind myself of the reasons I had for putting such a goal on my 101 list in the first place.

People choose a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle for many different reasons; it could be for religion, better health, animal rights, saving the planet or just saving the ozone from all those noxious bovine gases!

My reasons for wanting to try out a relatively meatless diet are simple and personal:

1. I believe taking a break from meat for a month would be a good detox for my body.
2. I need a push to improve our diet coz I don’t think Ninja and I are meeting our 5-a-day quota for veggies and fruit.
3. While I’m still learning more about the treatment of animals raised for food, I want to distance myself from known cruelty as much as possible.
4. I’ve got about 4 extra sticky kilos that I just can’t seem to shift, so I’m hoping reducing meat will help with weight loss.
5. I want to try vegetarianism in order to challenge myself to experiment with new recipes and ingredients.

If I’d kept these points in mind, I might not have given up on this goal before the month was out.

Another reason I think I failed to stick to the plan was that it was too strict. From some articles I’ve been reading online, it seems that many vegetarians eventually turn back to include some form of meat in their diets – mainly for health reasons. I certainly don’t want to become anaemic or anything, and I need to be careful because I have low blood pressure as it is. So instead of cutting off everything at once, perhaps I’d have more success if I revised the rules a bit.

I’d like to try for Goal #36 again in the month ahead, but here’s how I’ll play it next time:

• Include chicken and fish, but only free-range chicken and wild-caught, eco-friendly fish. That way hopefully I’m only choosing creatures that had a fairly healthy and stress-free life.
• Eat no pork, beef, lamb or other red meat.
• Include eggs and dairy as before.

It’s easier for me if my ‘month of vegetarianism’ runs from one grocery shopping date to the next, i.e. the 25th March to 25th April. So I’m starting it today.

Off I go now to do grocery shopping and fill my basket with more goodness for the greater good 🙂

Vintage housewife in a pickle

The vintage housewife’s schedule was no doubt much fuller than mine. Back in the day, people used to make a lot of food themselves, rather than just grabbing a bottle, can, box or packet from the shelves. Since the start of my foray into housewifedom I’ve been meaning to attempt to replace some of our store-bought favourites with homemade versions of my own. First up: pickled beetroot.

I found this recipe online; it seemed easy and came highly recommended (don’t you just love the internet?). I bought some trays of baby beetroot on special, so I had about 16 small beetroot instead of the 4 large ones that the recipe calls for. I managed to make one-and-a-half jars with that, and the pickling liquid was just enough.

Once the beetroot was cooked, I had great fun rubbing off the skins. The recipe says you can use a knife, but I’ve always enjoyed playing with my food 😉 In the process, I managed to get bright pink juice on just about everything, from my counter and splashback to the floor, my arms and my clothes. My hands looked delightful afterwards too:

In the pink

Luckily a bit of soapy water and lemon juice took care of the beetroot juice with ease (though to be a true vintage housewife, I suppose I should have used vinegar and bicarb – the miracle cleaner of the ’50s).

I sterilised the jars by rinsing them with vinegar and then using very hot water to wash them out. Here’s my sliced beetroot ready to be pickled. The pattern of those growth rings is so pretty, isn’t it?

Beetroot

And here’s the final product. Sorry for the amateurish blurry shot; I was in a hurry last night.

Beetroot in a pickle

Unfortunately it will take a few weeks for the flavour to develop, so I can’t give you a verdict on this yet. But the recipe was very easy to follow and is worth a try for that alone. I’m keen to see if this could be the start of a whole range of homemade treats.

It’s funny how we’ve raced ahead in our technological era to invent as many time-saving devices and processes as we can, only to discover that we may have lost something special along the way. I enjoy working with fresh food; if I had my own garden I’d be trying out all sorts of homegrown goodies. It’s enjoyable being involved in each part of the pickling process. The smell of the raw beetroot reminds me of that wonderful smell of wet soil after fresh rains. I like the process of cooking the rough, hard bulbs into tender pink veggies with soft skin that slips off easily. I also prefer knowing what goes into my food; no weird preservatives or unhealthy colourants and flavourings.

I’d like to do this more regularly for Ninja and I. We’re a long way away from the healthy diet I’d ultimately like us to live on, but it’s a journey of change, and I’m enjoying each step along the way.

Quick vegetarian moussaka

One of the new veggies I cooked for Goal #46 was brinjals (also called eggplants or aubergines). I made a vegetarian moussaka dish for myself and a hearty beef lasagne for Ninja with one large brinjal.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the old trick of salting and ‘sweating’ the brinjals to remove any bitterness; apparently this isn’t necessary anymore because today’s varieties aren’t so bitter… but I wanted to try it just for fun anyway 🙂

I didn’t use a recipe at all; I just made it up as I went along (except for the sweating part, which I double-checked with my mom). But it was really easy, so here are the steps:

Step 1: Peel the brinjal and slice it into fairly thin rounds. Place rounds on a tray as shown, or lay them in a colander.

Moussaka Step 1

Step 2: Salt all the rounds on one side. Leave them to sweat for 15 minutes.

Moussaka Step 2

Step 3: After 15 minutes, dry the wet side of the rounds with a paper towel. Then turn the pieces over and repeat the process for the other side.

Moussaka Step 3

Step 4: Once both sides have been sweated and dried off, coat the rounds in a light dusting of flour.

Moussaka Step 4

Step 5: In a large pan, heat a thin layer of oil. Fry the rounds, turning over once golden brown. They tend to absorb a lot of oil, but if the oil is hot enough they don’t need to sit in it for too long. Once fried, drain well.

Moussaka Step 5

Step 6: This is where I split the brinjal into two amounts. For Ninja’s lasagne dish, I cut a few fried brinjal rounds into small bits and mixed them with his beef mince as I layered his lasagne. For my moussaka dish, I layered the brinjal in a dish with some fried mushrooms and a herby tomato sauce.

Moussaka Step 6

Step 7: I topped the last layer of brinjal with a grated cheese (a mix of cheddar and mozzarella), as with the lasagne. I baked both dishes at 180 °C for 45 minutes.

Moussaka Step 7

Step 8: Enjoy! 🙂

Mmmmm… moussaka

Rich enjoyed the extra ‘meaty’ filling in the lasagne, and my moussaka was delicious. It was rather rich and oily though, shew… I even spooned off some of the oil before serving it. I’ll have to look into other ways of preparing brinjals that don’t involve so much oil. But my thumb-sucked random recipe got 10 out of 10 for flavour!