Sunday, March 27, 2011

Scotch Eggs


Tom and I love The Irish Rover restaurant in Louisville, KY. We don't get to eat out often but this would be in the top 10 places we might go. On their appetizers menu are Scotch Eggs, which is just a medium boiled egg wrapped in sausage and deep fried, and they are so delicious. Last night we decided to make our own. They turned out pretty good for a first attempt. I only wished we had more Coleman's Hot English Mustard. I don't typically eat pork, but this was from our friends at Stone Cross Farm here in Taylorsville. And we used our own Duck Eggs, the same ones featured in the colored eggs posting.

4-6 medium boiled Eggs, peeled
1 lb of Sausage
frying Oil
Oil Thermometer

Cover the eggs with the sausage. Make a generous layer because it will shrink during the frying process. Heat the oil to 350 degrees F. Whatever pan you use the oil needs to come up the sides to at least 1 inch. Fry the eggs turning them frequently until really golden brown. We ended up having to put some back in, even though they looked done, because the sausage on the inside was not cooked all the way. Another way to do this would have been to finish them in the oven, which is great if you are cooking in batches so they all stay hot, and it helps to drain the excess cooking oil. Enjoy.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Bean Salad-Salad


 This is an awesome way to get more lettuce into my diet without dousing it with fatty, calorie laden dressing.  I use my Bean Salad recipe as my "dressing."  Loaded with lots of detoxifiers, anti-fungal/bacterial/viral properties, and bulky fiber of beans, this makes for one healthy lunch.

 For individual portions, serve 2 cups of salad over a bed of lettuce.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Egg Coloring from stuff in your kitchen. Works on Duck eggs too!


Tom and I have chickens and those chickens lay brown eggs. Not really suitable for coloring. But we also have Ducks who lay white eggs. But I've never dyed a duck egg. The shells are different, will it hold coloring? Yes. The other nice thing about Duck eggs is that the shell is hard to crack making them hold up better to repeated assault.

Since I'm not the one to drop $4.00 on a Paas kit, and maybe I want to color eggs at other times of the year, I decided to learn how to make eye dye with stuff I already have at home. Yes, I have synthetic food coloring. But I also have natural foods to color eggs with, beet juice comes to mind and Turmeric. I'll try those out on another day. But here's what I learned today.

10 drops of synthetic food coloring
1 Tablespoons of white vinegar
1 cup of boiling water

Submerge eggs in dye bath for 3-5 minutes.

For tye-dye eggs mix 1 Tablespoon of oil in the dye bath. Special note: just dunk tye-dye eggs, do not roll them or it won't work, I learned the hard way.

And lastly if you want special colors like purple and orange you are better off following the color directions on the back of the box than dunking in two different colors, I did not get good results. And leaving the egg in the red dye for fewer minutes will not get you pink, coloring yellow and then red did a better job of this. I can't wait to try out natural foods.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Tom's Ginger Ale


1 2-Liter Soda bottle with cap
1 cup of sugar
1 T. or 1 packet of yeast
Juice of 1 Lemon
2 T. peeled, grated ginger root

Using a funnel, pour sugar, yeast, ginger root, and lemon juice into funnel. Fill bottle with water till about half way full. Shake to combine ingredients. Add water till bottle is full. Place in refrigerator for 24 hours. When bottle feels hard-it's ready. If you allow fermentation to go too long the bottle may rupture or the flavor may be ruined. Be careful when opening, it may foam over.

Makes 8 servings, about 100 calories a serving.

Chick Pea Hummus

2 cups of cooked chick peas + enough bean liquid to make puree smooth
3 Tablespoons of Tahini
Juice of 1/2-1 lemon
1 large clove of garlic
1 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blitz till smooth.

Dressed:  Olive oil, Cayenne Pepper or Paprika, chopped Parsley, diced Tomatoes.  Serve with Cucumber slices, celery sticks, carrot sticks, red pepper slices, tortilla chips, or toasted whole grain pita.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Treating, not Cheating

My sister looked like steam was going to come out of her ears when during another eating healthy, eating lifestyle/diet change conversation I came back from yet another negative comment of hers by saying "It's called treating, not cheating."

I had just read about this psychological concept the day prior and for me it clicked. Step 1: Develop a lifetime plan/goal of how to eat healthfully for me. Step 2: Be active in making the choice to eat something not on that plan once in awhile because it tastes good and I like it. I can't eat it whenever I want and be healthy, but occasionally is good. Looking at a lifetime of never eating certain foods is very depressing. But looking forward to having those foods once in awhile makes it less likely I will give up on an eating plan, or go overboard when I do make those choices. I have eaten this way before but in my mind I was cheating on my diet, even though I planned it, I considered it planned-cheating.

Cheating implies I am doing something wrong and I may be more likely to eat it more often, choose things I don't want, and in mass quantity. It sends the wrong message that I failed. And could spiral me into more unhealthy foods and eating by considering myself a failure.

The whole conversation was really over my eating gluten. I've been gluten free for 5 years. But occasionally I make the choice to eat gluten and then suffer the consequences. I do not have Celiac Disease. But I do suffer from IBS, Arthritis, Depression, and Compulsive Eating from eating gluten. I eat it maybe 3 times a year. She couldn't grasp why I would knowingly eat something that is bad for me. This is a woman whose cupboards are full of foods that are/have refined, artificially flavored, artificially sweetened, artificially colored, hydrogenated oils, HFCS, preservatives, and MSG containing foods.

I finally explained it to her that eating gluten for me is like over consumption of alcohol. Having a hangover is miserable, and you wouldn't want to feel like that every day, but once in awhile is not too bad. In regards to gluten slowly destroying my intestines keeping me from absorbing nutrients, I explained it's a slow death, like smoking. She seemed to understand both these analogies.

Discussing my diet is incredibly frustrating. Many people don't understand that even with calorie restriction and exercise, if I don't eliminate grains I'll gain weight. It's also possible (and I'll be exploring this) that maintaining a healthy weight is contingent on suppressing bad bacteria in my intestines.

But a bigger issue is yo-yo dieting. If it's not an eating lifestyle I can live with, I will gain all the weight I lost. Losing and gaining repeatedly actually causes more health problems than just maintaining weight.

I have studied nutrition, alternative medicine, and continue to read a plethora of books and articles on healthy eating/diets and conditions related to not losing weight. Yet for some reason she thinks I'm ignorant of the principles of being healthy because I am fat.

There is a world of difference between knowledge and ability. And I'm still working on the knowledge part.