Finding joy in the everyday

“Sugar is now the most ubiquitous foodstuff worldwide, and has been added to virtually every processed food, limiting consumer choice and the ability to avoid it. Approximately 80 % of the 600,000 consumer packaged foods in the United States have added caloric sweeteners.”  Dr Robert Lustig Since the mid 1970s it has been well known that processed foods containing high levels of sugar, fat and sodium are not good for our health. Governments have attempted to change dietary requirement guidelines and with each attempt, powerful lobbyists from the food producer and food manufacturing industries have threatened and convinced one administration after the other to put a stop to any change in the reduction of sugar, fat or sodium in manufactured foods. Thus far, they have won and we have lost. Our food has been hijacked by powerful and rich corporations who now control what appears in our supermarkets and what we eat. They bombard our children with food commercials ...

Did you know that worldwide more people died from obesity than from being underweight. Fewer people are dying from starvation—we are killing ourselves from overeating. This week I am looking at the damage fast foods and proceeded foods have had on our health—here is some sobering statistics on obesity.  Internationally ( source: World Health  Organisation ) * Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980. * In 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 600 million were obese. * 39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2014, and 13% were obese. * 42 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2013. * In 2013, 42 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese. Once considered a high-income country problem, overweight and obesity are now on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings. In developing countries with emergin...

I cook and I love to cook from scratch My mother taught me to cook and I taught my two sons to cook.  I much prefer a home cooked meal over takeaway. I make my own pizzas rather than buying as mine as so much more tastier and I know what is on them! I rarely use pre-cooked meal from the supermarket, too salting, too sweet, too processed.  Americans now spend 27 minutes per day preparing food and another 4 minutes cleaning up. In 1965,  Americans spent 54 minutes preparing food and 8 minutes cleaning up. But lets go back even further.  During the early 1800s, cooking dominated the time and energy of the average housewife. A woman’s life was scheduled around cooking and meals. Preparing meals was not just a matter of starting a fire for cooking. Spices, such as nutmeg and cinnamon, and seasonings, like salt and pepper, had to be ground up with mortars and pestles. Milk had to be brought in from the family dairy c...

I LOVE mushrooms and so do my family. But I do know people who don't like them and I find this very strange!! Life without mushrooms sounds rather dull to me. As you know, I love facts and figures so I couldn't go past some information on the humble mushroom ( source ):  * A 100g serving of mushrooms contains more dietary fibre (2.5g) than 100g of celery (1.8g) or a slice of whole-wheat bread (2.0g). * Mushrooms contain more protein than most vegetables.They are excellent for vegetarians and vegans (which is why I buy them for my son). * Mushrooms are low in kilojoules: 100g of raw mushrooms contains just 100 kilojoules. * Ancient Egyptians believed that mushrooms grew by magic, because of the way they could appear overnight. * Mushrooms are one of the few natural sources of vitamin D, which is essential for healthy bones and teeth. Amazing fungi! * Mushrooms are a great source of B-vitamins: it contains Thiamin (which controls the release of en...

Have a go . . . try something new.  Be brave — don't be afraid Take a risk and do something you have never done before and see where it lead you.  What can happen? Not a lot! It doesn't matter if you aren't very good, the more you try, the better you become and suddenly before you know it, you are really quite good and then you are an expert! *** I wanted to learn to quilt. So I gave it a go. I am no expert, but I am giving it my best and I am slowly improving. I borrowed some books from the library, I bought some second-hand and I attended a short course. I found a quilting buddy and we have been learning to together. Its been fun.  *** I love homemade jam and even though I had watched my parents make it as a child, I thought it might be too tricky to make it myself, so I kept putting it off. One day I decided to give it a go. I spoke with my dad (who is a jam making expert), checked out cookbooks plus the internet and made stra...

What job/task/activity do you do that you do for your husband because it makes him happy ? Mine is making Harissa.  I don't like making it, it makes my eyes hurt, I start to cough and even though I wear gloves I can still taste chilli on my hands. And, I do not like hot chillies and I don't eat Harissa. I can't even eat what I make. However, dear husband loves my homemade Harissa so I make it for him and it makes him happy. I think one of the problems with modern marriages is that many wives no longer do special things for their husbands just to make them happy.  Sadly, we live in a very selfish world where we no longer think its important to " think " of others, in particular our spouses.  The recipe I used was similar to this one, however I used many more chillies than the recipe recommends:  http://www.coffeeandcrumpets.com/harissaa-most-versatile-hot-sauce/ And like any cooking - the dishes need to be done, but at least with Haris...

In one year you will eat 1,095 meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner). With life expectancy around 80 years for a woman, you will consumer 87,600 meals in your life time. If you are married for 50 years, you will prepare 54,750 meals for your husband. That is a lot of cooking and eating!! Each of those meals you cook for your husband, you have decided on what to cook, how healthy it will be, the cost, the length of time it will take, what food you need to buy . . . . you have been one busy lady in the kitchen. As wives we all have a responsibility to cook healthy meals for our husbands and the best and cheapest way of doing this is by home cooking. It isn't hard, it doesn't take as long as you might think and it tastes 100% better than anything you buy in the shop.  My mother was a great home cook and she taught my three siblings and I how to cook and I have passed on those skills to my sons. I am forever thankful for having a mother who gave us these inval...

Have you ever heard of a " cheese " wedding cake? A cake 'made' entirely from cheese.  I hadn't and found it fascinating when I was told by a friend that he had been to a wedding and the cake was made of cheese!! He was expecting a cheese cake in the traditional sense. Here are some ideas I found on Pinterest - what do you think!! Whilst I loooooove cheese, I think I would stick to the traditional cake!! ******

Could you make a fresh, healthy family dish for just $5?  Our  local YMCA, in a recent newspaper article, asked the community if they were able to cook for a family on just $5. ( LINK to newspaper article ) I had a  discussion with a group of friends and we came up with meals that we thought we could make for a family of four for $5 or thereabouts. We decided that all the meals  needed to be made from scratch to keep costs down, using lots of in-season vegetables, bulked up by rice, pasta or legumes (as they are cheap and filling), exclude meat from several meals per week (we eat far too much meat as it is), avoid processed food (far too expensive and not heathy), look out for sales and eat everything in the fridge to avoid waste was the way to go. On our list we had:  Soup (with lots of in season vegetables) Stuffed baked potatoes  Macaroni cheese with vegetables Quiche and salad Savoury ...

What is everyone reading/watching this week? Being winter,  my two favourite activities are; curling up in bed with a book in the evening or wrapped up in my cosy throw rug on the lounge watching a DVD. I can't think of a better way to spend time in the evening!! Thought I would share the books I am currently read (I usually have 2 on the go, its all I can manage!) and tell you about the DVDs I have been watching. BOOKS 1950's Housewife:  Marriage and Homemaking in the 1950's by Sheila Hardy I am half way through this book and finding it very interesting. This is not a nostalgic journey through the 1950's (in Britain), rather looks at the ups and downs of young married women at that time.  These women were the product of war and children of parents who had gone through World War One, the Great Depression and just come through World War Two. They knew all about austerity (and ration card) and loss and that coloured their views on life and their ear...

This is the easiest bread to make at home, and even I, who works full time outside the home, can make this once or twice a week for my husband and I.  This is a no-knead bread recipe and requires very little effort, in fact, probably no more than 5 to 10 minutes!  It is cheap to make, smells wonderful and tastes so good to eat + it only contains 3 ingredients (no sugar which makes it far better than anything you can buy in the bakery).  3 cups bakers flour 1 teaspoon of dried yeast (this loaf is made from fresh yeast) 1.5 cups of lukewarm water Mix by hand and cover.  I usually cover mine with plastic wrap and drape a tea-towel over top. Leave for as little as 8 hours or up to 20 hours on kitchen shelf. How hard it that. Check out the full recipe HERE at Streamykitchen.com Once you have made this, you will never want to go back to shop brought bread again. We had the freshly baked bread with Kale, sausage, chorizo and bean soup (a slight modi...

Every morning I heat a 1/2 a glass of milk (40 seconds in the microwave) and add one tablespoon of Chai Seed and I drink it (by the time I am near the end of the drink it has become quite thick). Chia seed is full and overflowing with goodness (one of those superfoods) and includes my daily dose of fibre plus many other good things. If you have never eaten chia seed, its very similar to tapioca and the longer it is in liquid the softer it becomes and it starts to thick the liquid. The tiny seeds expand more than 4 times their size. One of my favourite summer desserts is chocolate chia seed pudding, which looks just like the photo above. It is both healthy and yummy which is always a great combination. There are many recipes on the web for chia seed pudding and I have attached a few of them. Most recipes tend to use coconut milk, however you can use cows milk (as I do) or any of the non-dairy varieties, it doesn't really matter. To sweeten the dessert you can use honey, ma...

Look at what my son made this evening - Stollen - and it tastes gorgeous.  He raced around to our place with one of the Stollen he made and left his wife and her uncle to eat the other one!!  I have so much I have plenty to take to work with me tomorrow and share with my colleagues.  I am sure they will also love it.  My eldest son has been trying out German Christmas cooking over the weekend and so far he has done a marvellous job.  This is why you should teach boys to cook as they make excellent cooks as adults.  Yesterday he made a big batch of Pfeffernusse which were better than the bought varieties I have eaten. I just love tasting his cooking!!! Now I am off for some more Stollen with my cup of tea. 

Mondays to Fridays I eat porridge with a cup of Jasmine tea. Nothing fancy - 1/2 cup rolled oats (I don't use the quick oats) and 3/4 cup of full cream milk. No sugar or honey, not even cinnamon. It keeps me full all the way to lunch time.  I cook the porridge in the microwave so its very very simple but very healthy.  As a child I didn't like porridge very much partly because I ate it so slowly that it when thick and cold and that is the worse way to eat porridge.  My grandfather was a Scotsman and he ate porridge all his life and I think one of my brothers also eats porridge.  On Saturdays and Sundays I eat toast (2 slices) with a cup of Jasmine tea in bed with a book!  At the moment I am enjoying honey on my toast, but sometimes it is one of my homemade jams (strawberry or mixed berry are my favourites).  When my sons were little I would make them pikelets on Sunday mornings.  But now that its just me who like...