Spelt and Apple Scones

I came up with this recipe very recently after Nora asked me to make something healthy she could snack on

while revising for exams. The resulting scones are only slightly sweet and are best spread with butter or margarine and topped with either jam or slices of cheese. The ones I tried with cheese tasted really good.

Family verdict: 
Me: 'Really lovely with cheese or peanut butter.'
Harry: 'Good. Better with jam.'

Makes: Around 18 scones.

Time needed: About 15 minutes preparation (grating apples takes time) + 20 minutes to cook.

INGREDIENTS:
300g spelt flour
1 tbs baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
100g ground almonds
100g coconut oil, melted
2 eggs
3 eating apples

METHOD

1. Heat the oven to 175 C/gas mark 4. Lightly oil a bun tin (or do what I did and use paper cake cases in a bun tray).
2. Grate the apples down to the core, retaining any juice/liquid which you produce.
3. Whisk the eggs for a few minutes until slightly thickened.
4. Sift the spelt flour into a bowl. Add the baking powder, cinnamon and almonds. Mix well then add the egg, grated apple with juice and the melted coconut oil.
5. Combine all of the ingredients very thoroughly. The mix you should end up with should be of soft dropping consistency. (It tastes similar to bircher muesli!).
6. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until cooked. The scones should rise slightly and brown.
7. When cooked, leave to cool on a wire rack. When they are completely cool, cut in two, spread with butter and your topping of choice and enjoy!

Sweetcorn Chowder

This hearty chowder is rich and extremely filling. It is a family favourite which smells delicious. Harry, our resident fussy eater, hugged me this evening when he realised what I was making. Even Nora, who doesn't like soup, will eat a bowl of this.

We eat it with toasted seeds sprinkled on top, accompanied by slices of baguette and cheddar. The one pictured I made lactose free to suit Meg but this recipe works just as well with normal cow's milk. I make a different, low FODMAP chowder for Robbie.

Family Verdict:
Meg: 'Delicious. Filling with a good balance of flavours.'
Harry: 'It's sweetcorn soup; so delicious it's an adjective in its own right.'

FEEDS: 5-6 hungry people. It is very filling.

Time: 5 minutes preparation + 25-30 minutes to cook.

INGREDIENTS:

100g margarine (lactose free if required)
1 red onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/4 -1/2 tsp dried dill
5 medium to large potatoes, peeled and chopped into smallish chunks
700g frozen sweetcorn
1200ml boiling water
250ml milk (lactose free if required)

METHOD:

1. Melt the margarine in a large pan. Add the onion, garlic, potato and dill and cook over a low heat with the lid on for around 10 minutes. Stir every couple of minutes to prevent burning.
2. Remove the lid. Season and continue to cook for another 5 minutes, continuing to stir occasionally.
3. Add all of the frozen sweetcorn except approximately half a mug full. Stir the vegetables together then add the boiling water and the milk. Bring the soup to the boil then reduce the heat, allowing it to simmer for around 10 minutes. Ensure that the potatoes are thoroughly cooked.
4. While the soup is simmering, cook the reserved sweetcorn in a separate pan according to the manufacturer's instructions. Set it to one side.
5. Once the potatoes are cooked and starting to disintegrate, remove the soup from the heat. Using a hand blender, blend the soup still in the pan until you reach your preferred consistency. It normally gets very thick. Taste and season. Stir in the reserved, cooked sweetcorn. 
6. Serve with accompaniments of your choice - bread and cheese; toasted seeds; oil of choice to drizzle, etc.

Best way yet of getting a 12 year-old boy to eat an apple...

Tea & Fruit Cake

I have been using this fruit cake recipe for so many years that I long ago stopped weighing the ingredients. Instead I have a particular mug (which my sister gave me 30+ years ago) and a bowl into which I measure the ingredients.

I know that may sound strange but it works beautifully and it also means you just need to pack the mug, the bowl and a cake tin to be able to make the cake away from home. The mug I use holds 250ml of water and the bowl holds 1 pint.

It is a very, very easy recipe. The texture of the cake varies depending on the flour used and how long the fruit has soaked. I made the cake pictured using spelt flour so only left the fruit soaking for about 6 hours.  The remaining tea which hadn't been absorbed helped to keep the cake moist.

MAKES: A 2 lb fruit cake - around 10-12 slices.

Time needed: 6-18 hours to soak the fruit + 1 hour (approximately) to bake.

Family verdict:
Drew: 'Love it. Perfect with a cup of tea. You can make it as many times as you want!'
Harry: 'Delicious.'
Robbie: 'Phenomenal.'

INGREDIENTS 

1 pint bowl filled to the top with dried fruit
1 teabag + boiling water
2 mugs of spelt or any other flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 mug of unrefined brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 egg

METHOD

1. Boil the kettle. Put the tea bag in the bottom of the 1 pint bowl. Fill the bowl up to the top with dried fruit and pour the boiling water on top, covering the all of the fruit if you can.
2. Leave the fruit to soak for at least 6 hours. Overnight works well, but probably best not to leave it for more than around 18 hours.
3. Heat the oven to 150 C/Gas Mark 3. Grease a 2 lb cake tin, either a loaf tin or a round cake tin.
4. Measure 2 mugs of flour into a mixing bowl. Add 1 mug of sugar, 1 tbs baking powder, 1/2 tsp ginger and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Tip the fruit and any remaining tea (but not the tea bag!) on top. Mix well with a wooden spoon.
5. Break the egg into a cup. Beat lightly with a fork then add to the other ingredients. Mix thoroughly.
6. Tip the cake mix into the baking tin. Bake in the bottom half of the oven for at least an hour. The exact cooking time will depend on a number of factors, including the ingredients you have chosen and your oven's temperament. Be warned: the aroma of this baking will make everyone in the house feel hungry!
7. To test whether the cake is cooked, insert a thin skewer into the middle. If it comes out clean, the cake is cooked. If it has a lot of sticky cake mix on it, the cake needs longer.
8. Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin and then run a knife around the edges before turning the cake out. It should keep for quite a few days wrapped in foil and/or in an airtight tin. However, it generally doesn't hang around for too long.

Dreaming of Marmalade - 3 Weeks of No Added Sugar

So, at the end of today it will be 3 weeks since I switched to a 'no added sugar' way of eating. Actually, it's probably more like 19 days since my initial decision was to try only eating savoury things for a few days, taken after an annoying lunchtime trying to find something appealing in a supermarket 'free from' range which wasn't sweet, i.e. not a cake, biscuit, muesli bar.

I was at the time yet again avoiding wheat in order to eliminate bloating. (By bloating I mean starting the day wearing a trouser suit which is comfortably loose at the waist and ending it looking 4 months pregnant and wishing I could undo my trouser button when I sit down). Unfortunately sugar in any quantity has always left me feeling 'off' and itchy skinned and I had rapidly become fed up with reaching for something sweet - even for fruit - when my concentration started to drop mid afternoon. Enough was enough. Time to step away from the sugar.

That weekend, after watching Dr Robert Lustig's lecture Sugar; the Bitter Truth then reading the labels of various foods in our cupboard, I realised that obviously sweetened food was only part of my issue. I had stumbled across the growing groundswell of opinion that life without sugar is better all round. However, if I wanted to enjoy all of the possible benefits, I would have to go further.

Unfortunately the currently best selling books and popular websites devoted to giving up sugar are not entirely consistent. Some seem to be advocating a diet containing almost no complex carbohydrates, relying instead on fresh vegetables, full fat protein, a bit of fruit and the odd super-grain. One website waxed lyrical about how much healthier and happier the author felt without sugar - but also said that she now rarely went out out to dinner with friends, in order to avoid complications. Meh. For me, a vaguely  foodie vegetarian and mother of growing kids, that does not sound like the recipe for a happy life.

So, having read quite a bit and mulled it over for a while, by the end of that weekend I have devised the following rules for my personal no added sugar way of eating:

1. No processed, refined carbohydrates - i.e. no white flour, white pasta, etc.
2. Lots of wholegrains, provided they aren't in a product to which sugar has been added. (I have discovered that this is particularly an issue with bread)
3. No sweets or chocolate unless I have made them myself. (As if; I haven't had time yet!).
4. Lots of vegetables, fish, cheese, dairy, eggs, quorn, oils, nuts, seeds, legumes, etc.
5. No food to which a sugar has been added. This covers a lot of store cupboard foods, including savoury foods such as some crisps, stock cubes, etc. And marmalade...
6. No fruit juice (which is very high in fructose but without fruit's natural fibre).
7. OK in moderation - fruit, coconut products and other foods which naturally contain sugar, provided they don't come with (1). I am eating 2-3 portions of fruit a day.
8. No cakes, muffins, etc. unless it has only been sweetened with fruit or coconut oil.

It sounds quite complicated written it out but, actually, it is quite straight forward. If a food isn't in it's natural state, I ask myself whether sugar has been added to it. If it has, I don't eat it.

I'm not sure how sustainable this is. I have never been one for diets and, at the moment, I do feel slightly deprived. Mainly of something sweet on toast in the morning. Much as I enjoy eggs, Marmite, no added sugar nut butters and cheese, I actually dreamt about marmalade a few days ago, Not good.

But the last 3 weeks have also brought benefits. My experience to date:

1. Everything the no sugar advocates say about having more energy is true. I have lots more energy. I am waking up before the alarm some mornings.
2. My head seems a little clearer (although that could be down to being on a short break between jobs!).
3. My skin has improved. Drew says it looks healthier. I think my skin tone is better and it feels softer.
4. The white of my eyes are much brighter. (I have no idea why).
5. My cheekbones have come back. I wasn't exactly moon faced previously but my face has better contours.
6. My teeth feel stronger. It's weird. I find myself snapping them in the manner of a dog or something after brushing.
7. No bloating. At all. I wake up and go to bed with a stomach which may not have a 6 pack above it but is certainly not sticking out.
8. I have lost about 3-4 lbs in weight. A word of caution on this one: I have been monitoring this and it has been fluctuating quite a bit but the general trend down.
9. I look and feel trimmer. My clothes are fitting me better. (Without wishing to tempt fate, I think my repeat caesarean  'flap' may finally, after all these years, be diminishing...)
10. My palate has changed. I am much more sensitive to sweet things. I had a tiny lick of a not particularly sweet cake mixture the other day and the sweet taste felt so intense it was almost a burning sensation.

I still don't know if living a no added sugar life is something I will be able to do long term. I don't want to become a person who doesn't go out for meals with friends. I don't want to feel deprived. I want to be able to eat some of the cakes and puddings I make for the family. I certainly don't want to dream about marmalade. I love food and I love cooking. But, for now, I am keeping an open mind.

Quorn Fillets with Fennel Seed Veg and Noodles

This was tonight's 'Please can we eat really quickly' invention. It took 20 minutes start to finish and was

pretty tasty, though I say so myself.



I used noodles containing wheat as Robbie is now OK with wheat but other low FODMAPs people may need to use rice noodles instead. Also I simmered the Quorn fillets in half a stock cube, which listed onion as one of its last ingredients. This is a calculated gamble as this small amount of stock was used to flavour the fillets only and was then discarded. I am hoping that the amount of onion that actually made it on to Robbie's plate was so minuscule as to have no impact. I will let you know if not! To play it really safe I could have used a 'stock' made from an onion and garlic free yeast extract but this would have tasted quite different.


MAKES: 4 generous portions

Time taken: 5+ minutes preparation and 10-15 to cook

Family verdict: 
Nora: 'Nice. It's got that thing in it, corriander...?'
Everyone preferred this with soy sauce, but sadly that is how my lot like their noodles.

INGREDIENTS

6 Quorn fillets
1/2 stock cube
1 tbs sesame or olive oil
5  carrots
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
150g green beans (approximately)
2 baby corn. (They were left in the fridge, You could add more!)
2 spring onions (scallions) - green tops only, chopped
A handful of whole almonds
5 noodle nests (or the equivalent in rice noodles)

METHOD

1. Peel, wash and slice the carrot. Wash the green beans, chop off the ends, then cut each bean into 2 or 3 pieces. Slice the baby corn.
2. Make enough stock with the 1/2 stock cube to cover the Quorn fillets in a saucepan. Bring to this to the boil and then allow the fillets to simmer a few minutes. They should cook quickly. Turn off the heat but leave the fillets sitting in the stock to keep warm and to absorb more flavour.
3. Heat the oil in a deep frying pan. Add the sliced carrot and fennel seeds and cook over a medium heat, stirring frequently. When the carrots begin to soften, add the green beans and baby corn. Continue to stir frequently.
4. Meanwhile begin to prepare the noodles according to the instructions. Try to time it so that the noodles will finish cooking at the same time as the vegetables.
5. Add the almonds to the vegetable pan and continue to stir fry. Take the fillets out of the stock and cut them into strips.
6. Add the spring onion/scallion tips to the stir fry mix for the last minute (once the other vegetables have browned). Stir these every few seconds as they burn quite easily. Taste, season and then turn off the heat.
7. Drain the noodles and place in a serving dish, lightly tossed in a little oil. Add the stir fried nuts and vegetables, put the sliced Quorn fillets on top and lightly combine all three. Serve immediately.

Sunday Night Soup.

On Sunday evenings the kids like to have what my parents called High Tea and what they like to call 'A bit of each' - crumpets, fresh fruit and a slice of cake, washed down with a milkshake.

Most weeks Drew and I opt for a 'bit of each' broth. I try to remember to start cooking it between lunch and tea, while doing the normal getting ready for school things. If things go to plan I can cook it, leave it to cool and then reheat when we have time to sit down together to eat.

There are no set ingredients for Sunday Night Soup. It is generally based upon a time saving pack of pre-prepared vegetables picked up the previous day, supplemented with veg from the fridge and with bits and pieces from the store cupboard. These normally include a grain, which makes the broth seem more substantial.

Family verdict:

Drew: 'Wholesome and spicy.'

FEEDS 4 hungry people

Time needed: 20 minutes to prepare plus 40 minutes+ to cook

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2tbs olive oil
1 small red onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4tsp dried chillies or to taste (optional)
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
4 largish mushrooms, wiped and chopped
350g pack pre-prepared sweet potato and butternut squash (or any other suitable vegetables)
125g grain such as farro dicocco (italian spelt) or quinoa
400g tin flageolet beans (optional)
2tbs tomato purée
500ml vegetable stock (approximate measurement. The stock needs to more than cover the other ingredients)
Freshly milled salt and pepper
Grated hard cheese to serve (optional)

METHOD

1. If your grain of choice requires pre-cooking (e.g. boiling for 10 minutes), do this first so that it is ready to be added to the soup.
2. Heat the oil in a well sized soup or stew pan. Add the onions, garlic, chillies and all of the vegetables and cook over a moderate heat, stirring frequently.
3. After approximately 5-10 minutes, add the stock, flageolet beans, tomato purée and grain of choice. The liquid from the stock should cover the rest of the ingredients and this may depend upon the size and shape of the pan. If necessary add more hot water.
4. Stir well and increase the heat until the broth starts to boil.
5. Reduce the heat to a simmer. Season with a light hand and leave to cook slowly for at least half an hour, preferably a little longer.  Keep the heat low to avoid the vegetables being cooked into a mush.
6. Stir the soup and check liquid levels regularly while the broth simmers, adding more hot water as required. Over time the vegetables and grains will soften and the broth will naturally thicken.
7. Remove from the heat once cooked, taste and season if necessary. Serve with fresh bread and topped with grated cheese (optional).