All posts filed under: Healthy Eating

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 12 – New Flavours

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I bought millet and aduki beans from the health store last Friday and today I decided to give them a go! I haven’t made millet before and I didn’t know what to expect. I like couscous and I sort of expected it to be similar in texture and taste. It sort of is and it isn’t, I found millet a bit coarser and drier than the couscous but I think the millet has the potential to retain more flavour if boiled with the right ingredients(I added chicken stock, a bay leaf and a whole onion plus a spice mix we bought in the Greek open market, called Arabiko) . I used this recipe I found online last night but I decided to replace the lentils with my aduki beans. It came out a bit too dry so next time I will not roast the millet and I will probably add 3 cups of water to one cup of millet. I served it with fish which I marinated, inspired by Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast on Channel 4, …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 11 – Easy Week Meals

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I love cooking our meals from scratch but I don’t like spending too much time in the kitchen, especially on the days I work. So tonight I’ll be making a meal we all love that takes less than half an hour to put together: Thai chicken! These are my four magical ingredients: chicken breast, that I chop and tenderise in the pan with a bit of coconut oil, salt and pepper. Green Thai curry paste( a couple of spoonfuls) that I add to the chicken, once cooked(I never let it get brown, just not pink in the middle). Reduced fat coconut milk that gets added on top of the chicken and curry paste, once the chicken is coated in the paste. And stir fry veggies that I add after the coconut milk has boiled for a good 10 minutes and infused the chicken, only for about 3 minutes(I have overcooked veggies!). I serve it with boiled rice. How do you get sticky Thai rice? Add 1 and a half cups of water to one cup …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 9 – Nine wisdom nuggets

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Okay, so I was pondering today on what I have learnt(or have been reminded of) since I started this health challenge. 1. Whatever change you want to make in your life, start TODAY! For so long I used everything and everybody as an excuse for not eating healthily and for procrastinating . That bikini body I want, guess what? It will never happen unless I ditch the “ifs” and “buts” and “tomorrows”. 2. Start small. If you haven’t moved all winter(like moi!) then start taking short walks every day(weather permitting). If you have been eating double what your hubby ate(again, like moi…) then eat a bit less. Whatever you aim to achieve, achieve it with every meal, with every little change. 3. Congratulate yourself when you manage to stick to your resolutions, don’t beat yourself up when you stray from the plan. Okay, I had Chinese on Friday night( the most sensible Chinese I’ve ever had!), okay, I had a bit of apple pie and  crème brûlée ice cream today. As long as these incidents …

Healthy Living Challenge:Day 7-Healthier Alternatives

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I am using the few minutes left of Emma’s afternoon nap time to pass on my own burger recipes. Burger, you will say, isn’t this supposed to be one of the highest in saturated fat dinners you could have? Actually no, not when you make yours out of lean breast meat turkey, add a little bit of Cheddar cheese and absolutely no extra oil or fat. Alex loves them and I started making them in the summer in Greece because there were so many fresh flavours I could add to my burgers! Mint, fresh peppers, feta, hot chillies, fresh eggs…could you actually keep that a secret from Alex, he doesn’t really like eggs :-). Once we were back in Ireland I had to come up with other flavoursome ingredients to satisfy our tastes buds. It helped to find people who love good food and blog about it, like Things My Belly Likes, writing about their own versions of a tasty turkey burger so after taking some more ideas, adapting and blending I came up with …

Healthy Living Challenge: Day 5 – Another Dimension

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I am only now starting to realise how much I know about dieting and nutrition. Since hubby went on a dieting bender three years ago I have been accumulating- willingly or not- a lot of information about dieting. It happened mostly because I did the cooking and the portioning (at some point he lived for entire months on microscopical 100g portions of lean meat and wholegrain rice !!). Then when we travelled to see his family I noticed his brother eating an equally strict but slightly more varied diet, including “good” fats like peanut butter, tahini and fruit. Needless to say they  were both the beaux of the beach wherever we went and got all the attention but many times I wondered at what cost. Well, I got my answer this weekend when hubby had what I called a “48-hour body shut down.” He had felt tired and slightly run down for a month with a couple of bouts of cold but then we attributed it to work stress. What I never expected was for  …