Tag: eating

Be nuts – eat soy (protein for beginners)

The current “protein” and carnivore craze is encouraging people towards meat-heavy diets through an extraordinary combination of social-media influencers, advertising and a powerful global meat industry, reinforced in many countries by governments with major economic interests in agriculture and meat production. Yet a meat-heavy diet has never been a universal human way of eating, and the evidence increasingly connects high consumption of red and processed meat with inflammation, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and premature mortality. The problem is not an occasional piece of meat but the deliberate promotion of meat-heavy eating as a health strategy, particularly the idea that “more protein” automatically means “more meat”. The evidence does not support that message.

Soy foods such as tofu, tempeh, edamame and other traditional soy products provide substantial protein and have been eaten for generations across East and Southeast Asia. The widespread claim that soy dangerously raises oestrogen or disrupts hormones is not supported by the human evidence. Soy isoflavones are phytoestrogens, but they do not behave in the human body like oestrogen in the simplistic way often claimed. Research has also found potential benefits for some menopausal symptoms, with effects appearing particularly relevant in Asian populations. For women approaching or experiencing menopause, soy is therefore a food worth embracing rather than fearing.

So what can we do?

Boring as it seems – soy, beans, lentils, peas, whole grains, nuts, seeds and vegetables provide all needed protein together with essential fibre and a vast range of other nutrients and plant compounds.
In the Stanford randomized identical-twin trial, 22 pairs followed either a healthy vegan or healthy omnivorous diet for eight weeks, and the vegan group had significantly lower LDL cholesterol, fasting insulin and body weight – after just eight weeks!
Alongside the wider evidence examined by NutritionFacts.org and the research surrounding the film The Game Changers, this gives us something genuinely encouraging: eating for better health does not require complicated rules or chasing ever-higher protein targets. We can simply put more beans, lentils, peas, tofu, tempeh, whole grains, vegetables, nuts and seeds on our plates, and let these foods become the foundation of our everyday meals. Small changes, repeated day after day, can move us towards a diet that supports our hearts, our metabolism, our healthy ageing and our chances of living not merely longer, but better.

see for yourself –

thegamechangers –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM
nutritionfactshttps://nutritionfacts.org/topics/protein/
the twin studyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oygkWmXyOaM

Must have Hummus

Yes – it’s true – hummus is the best – here is my recipe, and remember – once you get it right – it is so much better for you than any shop bought variety – in which there are usually many additives you really do not want to eat – such as palm oil (I mean- Why?) and artificial flavouring to name the most obvious, and they are lazy about spices so to compensate they add way too much salt

The answer is to make your own – and once made it keeps well in the fridge for many days. Also it’s a great way to get more fresh vegetables down you as you can easily and quickly prepare celery sticks, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks and paprika (bell pepper) sticks – just to name a few – to dip into your Hummus and munch on –

Also a great quick fail safe party snack and great to get kids to eat healthy food – which can often be a real hurdle. On top of that is that it is very, very economical, it costs almost nothing to make.

a tin of chickpeas in brine
Juice of half a lemon
water
2 – 3 tablespoons of tahini
ground cumin – or even whole cumin seed.
a pinch of salt

Drain the chickpeas
squeeze the half a lemon
Then simply chuck it all in the blender – and blend until smooth-ish , adding water to get the right potato-mash consistency (it does not have to be silky smooth – some rough body to the hummus is part of what makes it so delicious – then salt or add more spices to get the flavour just right!
I add ground fenugreek or curry powder to mine, and sometimes use other kinds of nut butters – peanut is possible or almond, pine nut, pistachio or cashew – but make sure you use 100% nut butters with no additives whatsoever- not even salt.
Also, you can make a hummus out of ANY kind of bean. Lima beans, black beans, red kidney beans, berlotti beans – simply try them out – see how to adjust.
You can also add fresh herbs if you wish chopping fine before adding to the blender. Try parsley or chives, garlic or dried provincial herb mix.
You can even experiment with vegetables, add some spinach, try beetroot, finely chopped spring onion.

You have choices. take them.

Tofu and pesto

Two delicious vegan recipes that will blow your mind

Pesto – is made from coriander leaf – yes – coriander , and pine nuts, a dash of nutritional yeast salt fenugreek powder and the teensy-est drop of olive oil. The health benefits are great – it’s a very tasty addition to your vegan meals. it keeps in the fridge for several days.

The firm tofu has been dry fried in a non stick pan with garlic ginger and chili, all three first freshly and finely chopped added to the pan with a sprits of olive oil (you can get olive oil in spray bottles now – just for this use)
Then add the firm tofu chunks and let them roast gently turning them over now and then so some sides develop a golden crust – be careful not to let the spices burn – so keep the heat fairly low – enjoy the process, take your time. At the end just before serving add a pinch of salt and a twist of pepper

Prepare your underlying salad – this one is little gem lettuce and plum tomatoes with spring onion all freshly cut.

Simple, delicious, practically oil free and low calorie as well as completely vegan

Enjoy

Today’s salad

little gem
spring onion
Mejoul dates
green olives
sesame oil
lemon juice
mirin
rice wine vinegar
radicchio
smoked tofu
nigella seeds
black sesame seed
Japanese sushi seed mix
seaweed flakes
dried parsley
red pepper

all finely chopped or shredded –
go easy on the sesame oil –
and balance it well –
use your eye and your own taste to get this right –
Enjoy


addictive food

let’s start with cheese

Cheese is highly addictive due to the casein, salt and fat in it.
The producers of cheese products know this, they have known this for quite some time, they prepare the cheese they sell to you specially to make it as addictive as possible so you will be forced to buy and eat more and more of it

They do not care what it does to your health and your mind, except to condition you into buying and eating more cheesy things. The problem is, how do you stop eating something you like to eat which is in or on just about everything we eat?
Once you know it is addictive and is so very unhealthy, how do you stop?

Despite the fact that you believe you like it.

We’ll work on this together

I had some trouble stopping myself eating cheese, it was exactly the same trouble I had when I quit smoking. Not only is it fattening and unhealthy, it is also addictive, just like sugar and salt which are also added to just about everything we eat.

Cheese is everywhere, on your Pizza, in your sandwich, in lasagne, in your macaroni, on your spaghetti, It is really hard to think of a meal that does NOT have cheese in it when you first start out NOT eating cheese. It is also, so moreish, we all love to eat lots of it. The advertisers tell us we love it and we readily and happily agree with them.

Melting gooey sticky stringy oily yellow cheese
On everything

So it’s even harder to quit that smoking, because at least these days we are not bombarded with smoking messages saying how cool it is and great it is and good for us it is. The food marketing industry is now using the exact same strategies the tobacco industry used to make us eat more cheese, like more cheese and defend our sacred cheese.

It’s such clever brainwashing we don’t even know we are brainwashed
Just look at advertising
Or rather, don’t

We have come a long way from the delightful brie made by Mr. local farmer, or the real traditional stilton. The cheese being sold to us now is not really cheese at all, certainly not in the traditional artisan sense. What we get now is a poor reflection of the old local cheese makers varieties, so much so it’s impossible to name any but the most well known mass produced ones. Think about it, what locally produced cheese can you name, or better yet, do you eat?

If we can get ourselves to the point that we stop eating this mass produced muck and go back to occasionally treating ourselves to a local handmade speciality, we are already ahead.
Try not to eat anything with cheese on it for a few days at a time. Say ‘hold the cheese’ and find out how dishes taste without it. It worked for me, it can work for you. Try it and think about how you feel.

As you start paying attention to how you feel and what you think it will become easier to stop eating cheese altogether.
Only when you have reached this stage will you realise how prevalent cheese is in your life and your diet. You will also notice you feel a lot lighter and have less trouble with your knees.

Look what I found

I love to forage.

today I found morels, some of the most delicious mushrooms on the planet, they are really hard to find.
They grow in April and May and love sandy soil

Today I shall eat them lightly fried in a little olive oil. Chefs also sauté them in butter, they can also be preserved by canning, bottling or drying. But this is just a nice little portion for one person, laid across a slice of home baked whole grain bread, with the tiniest smattering of salt.

Always check all your mushrooms for worms and bugs and brush them clean with a small soft mushroom brush. Some mushrooms will be covered in sand or other debris. What I do if it is really bad is wash them under cold running water and then leave them to dry separately for several hours or even overnight so they do not become soggy.

Please never ever pick any wild mushrooms unless you have learned personally from an expert in the field.

There are, for instance, mushrooms that are often mistaken for morelles  which are poisonous and will make you really quite ill, so unless there is someone with you who is an expert in the field, do not pick.
If you are not sure of what it is, do not pick, if it is not in the best condition, do not pick, if it has been half eaten by slugs or is very damaged, do not pick.
Do not pick if it is very young and do not pick if it is very old.

If you are serious about learning to forage mushrooms, learn when they are not in the right condition to pick.
This is not something you can learn from a book or a few videos. You need to learn from an expert in the field, personally. Some experts run workshops during the relative mushroom seasons and it is possible to apply for these where you are.

I was lucky, my mother picked and so did my grandmother and my aunts and great aunts, so I learned from  childhood which mushroom is which, what is edible, what will make me ill, what is medicine and what will give me (bad) dreams, and, of course which ones are delicious and where to find them, which trees they prefer to be near or grow on, as well as all the places they knew where their favourite mushrooms grew.

I never tell anyone where these mushroom patches are, some are very rare, some are very common, some are very hard to spot, others are extremely easy. I know over fifty varieties, but I only pick some of them. I pick depending on seasonal availability, which can vary greatly from year to year.

If you do come across a mushroom patch never ever pick them all, leave one third – always, – don’t be greedy.
Let some grow up and spore, if you see someone else also knows this mushroom patch and has already picked them, leave what is left. and go your way.

I will not pass my expertise on to anyone, I have no one I want to pass it on to and do not give workshops. We have so little forest left and it is still being cut down at an astonishing rate. There are few wild meadows left and little duneland. Many of the varieties I used to pick are now rare or even endangered. If I do come across a patch of rare mushrooms I leave them alone, even hiding the patches of the rarest ones so no one else can stumble across them.

Morelles can be bought already dried, or in jars or tins, preserved for your recipes and dishes if you really want to try them, very rarely you can get them fresh. There are now growers who specialize in morles too, that would be the best bet.

Better yet find a restaurant where the chef has them on the menu and try them cooked by an expert.

 

 

A mixed bean salad

Vegan, oil free, gluten free, delicious.

This oil free recipe gets its creaminess from the Violife ‘white’ and the borlotti beans. red beans will also work. Carrot adds sweetness and cucumber a delicious coolness. The rucola is used as a herb as it is strong and peppery in flavour, all offsetting the slight bitterness from the chicory. Thus giving a wonderful easy to eat oil free salad containing all the nutrients needed.

For gallbladder and liver health it is also possible to add dandelion leaf finely chopped, it goes well in this dish adding it’s own flavour in-between the chicory and rucola. It is possible to forage dandelion almost anywhere, be careful to choose clean plants not near busy roads but in meadows or parks where the air is cleaner. Or like I do simply grow it in your garden as it is a healthy nutritious plant.

The lemon juice and salt bring out all the natural flavours of the fresh ingredients and with the rucola and the dandelion leaf you don’t need pepper.

red chicory, finely chopped
spring onion thinly sliced
grated carrot
dandelion leaf finely chopped
a small tin of green borlotti beans (red kidney beans are also good)
greek white ‘goats cheese’ Violife, in small chunks
rucola, very finely chopped (arugula)
red cayenne chilli very finely chopped
cucumber in small chunks
paprika, orange, sliced and chopped (bell pepper)
lemon juice to taste
salt  to taste

 

So lets go

Let’s take a good long look at how and what and when and especially why we eat.
Because we all know it’s not just about hunger and nutrition.

If you are or ever have been ‘serious’ about dieting you have this picture in your mind of what your preferred ‘thin’ is like. You have this idea that somewhere in the future you can be different. You want to change into that perfect person you think you are not.

You want to be this other person, this thin person.
You want to be this totally different being who is slim and energetic, beautiful and healthy and loved
Loved even by you yourself.
So who is this person you can see in the future? This person who is all these things you want to be and feel you are not right now?

We don’t really need to take a long look in the mirror to see what we really look like now, as we know what we look like now, and don’t like what we look like now, this is why we avoid looking at ourselves.
We carefully avoid the mirror, sometimes we won’t even have mirrors in the house and some of us wince when we catch sight of ourselves accidentally.

How bad is that as a body image? Is this how you really feel about yourself? I’ve noticed it about me, my body image is very negative. Do you never wear anything tight or fitted, do you also buy those roomy clothes that cover your body and hide all the lumps and bumps and fat bits? Are you afraid to be seen in public, in the gym? Will everyone who sees you notice all the fat bits wobbling on the fatter bits which you are so unhappy about? I never go to the beach in a bikini anymore because I’m afraid someone might see that I have fat bits.

It’s no way to live. I feel sad and I am angry and puzzled and by my own reactions to what my body looks like now. I do not have a good relationship with my body.
Instead I have a deep meaningful relationship with my fridge, my cookie jar, this bag of crisps and the bar of chocolate, specially the bar of chocolate.
And it is all funny, It’s hilarious, I laugh, we laugh we are all funny, because if it wasn’t funny we would be crying, so I’m snarky and sarky instead and that makes me angry too because it’s not really a joke, mainly because I have begun to worry about my health.
And still I eat
Specially the very things I know I should not be eating at all.

Let’s face it we are unhappy, have a terrible body image and don’t like who we are.

What we need to do is engage our brains, we need to think about this carefully, we need to use the mirror in a completely different way
We need to look at ourselves from the inside out, use our internal mirror
We need to look at our feelings instead of eating something

Avoiding  how we feel is what got us here in the first place, we need to look at ourselves inside out, honestly
It’s just us in here, so it’s safe here, as for everyone else – it’s none of their business, they can stop judging us right now – if they ever did.
We have to let the internal judge sail too and stop judging ourselves, look at ourselves dispassionately, calmly and kindly, without judgment.

Let’s get real inside our own heads, inside our own feelings first. Take look at what moves us to eat the way we eat, so we get to the point where we can do something about it for good, for the long term.
We need to take control.

It’s like finally quitting smoking, at first it’s impossible to do, we can’t even think about it so we don’t. Then it’s maybe something that might happen in the distant future, then it becomes possible to cut down, after that the idea of quitting becomes something that could happen someday, then one day it is possible and you find you can stop.
After that on the day you quit, not smoking is hard as it nails you down twenty times a day as you slog through the force of habit, but it is possible to continue quitting twenty times a day and not reach for that cigarette twenty times a day. Then you notice you can breathe deeply again, this is it’s own reward, your sense of smell returns, this has it’s own reward too. The smokers cough finally goes away and that feels really good, then movement, walking, running becomes easier, you’re not so knackered all the time and that is really great.

So bit by bit, not smoking becomes normal and easier till you cannot even imagine how you mindlessly smoked all those years.
But it was difficult to put that last one down, and it was very tricky to avoid the next one.
That takes control.
(if you never started smoking, really well done! That’s the best way, never start)

The point is that we can also do this with food. We can be in control of ourselves here too.
It becomes easier, and easier for us to do the right thing as we go along. In a years time, two years time – when you look back at yourself you will smile. You will have become the person you can only dream about now. The healthy active one.

The one you know you are.

So the exercise today is look at your body image clearly and kindly, notice the difference between the one you think you are and the one you think you want to be, that’s it, that’s all there is to it, get these images right in you mind. What are you now? What do you imagine yourself to be? How far apart are these two images, how different do they look to you? Remember though, neither of these images is real – neither of them.

Now, how do you feel?

Fix it

So how do you fix your diet, fix your life, get healthy and be your ideal weight?
Tall order for any diet
But this is it

The thing you gotta do is get your head round it, once you have your head in the right place anything is possible. Like not eating cheese.

Even if you like cheese, I can hear you saying, ‘but I like cheese!’
I know
I used to like cheese, at least I used to think I liked cheese.

There’s the rub

But let’s take a good look at all of it as it’s not just about the cheese
I like to eat, I have to eat
We all have to eat.

And the trouble with most of us is we like, no we love to eat a lot, and mostly we love to eat a lot of unhealthy things, let’s face it food is beautiful, and delicious and filling and good for us.

Most of the time anyway.

It’s when we lose control of our eating that the trouble starts and this is true for most of us, at least it’s true for me. I lost track of where in the distance past my dietary habits and eating patterns changed from normal to this serious weight and health problem. I don’t know what happened and I can’t see when. There seems to be no point in time, when I look back; where I can then pinpoint a moment and say ‘here is where it all went wrong’ – ‘here is where eating became a problem.’

We all look at our weight in Puzzlement and confusion ask ‘What the fuck happened?’

Where did I go wrong? I blame cheese.

So what in the hell did happen? It’s like the very thing we need to do to stay alive was hijacked somewhere along the way and turned into something that’s killing us. Laugh all you like, but that is exactly what happened. We all became addicts to the very thing that sustains our lives.

The cruellest addiction is food addiction because we really cannot live without food

We can’t just drop it forever and do a detox and never look back

If we don’t eat, we die.

So we cannot break out of it, we have to eat to live.
Like breathing,

Which is why smoking was and remains so popular despite what we know about smoking now, people still smoke, it is intricately involved in our breathing and we can’t just stop breathing and say fine see I’m all better

If we don’t breathe, we die

Alcohol and soda addiction or even energy drink addiction is just as hard to stop, we need to drink

We cannot say see I don’t drink anymore, We cannot not drink

If we don’t drink, we die

The thing about nicotine and alcohol is we can stop smoking and drinking that particular thing and still breathe air and still drink water. Can this also be done with food? These addictions and choices we make are intimately and intricately interwoven with the very impulses that keep us alive.

We need to do something, but we can’t not eat at all we can’t stop drinking altogether, we can’t not breathe the air, and we can’t not move. (I’ll get into that last one later.)

Like with drinking and smoking you have to break your addiction to the foods that are killing you.

Specially cheese,

But not only cheese, this is a challenge we need to take, a race we need to win as it is ‘win or die’. And since I aim to live long and prosper I need to win this challenge. I do not want to die, not yet anyway, I want to live to a ripe old age, laughing all the way and a bloody good diet is what’s going to get me there,

This sluggish poisonous unhealthy body I am now living in will become a healthy sleek one, and I will become more energetic and happier. I will become less grumpy less aggressive, less neurotic and less depressed as I fix all the food problems I have. I’m taking you with me, whether you like it or not.

And it is not JUST about the food, it’s a bout me and you, and our personal long term survival.

I will repeat a lot of stuff, it’ll get it into your head, so you remember, so you know. So I remember, so I know.

Also we will try to drown out the advertisers and the government propaganda. Some of you will be able to listen, some will not due to the weight of subliminal messaging and life long bombardment with misinformation, but my hope is once this thought is in your head it will stay there a and help you do something long term about the terrible eating habits and unhealthy food addictions that got you and me here I the first place.

Restaurant review L’Amandine

L’Amandine

Salon de Thé – Restaurant
chef. Myriam Cadet
host. Hugo Eenhoorn

This little place in Bussum, The Netherlands is worth a visit
If you are ever in the area  visit this a charming little tea house where lunch is as pleasant as it is in France.

Stop by if you are parched and just need a cup of tea or linger longer for lunch or dinner.

They have a sound menu where even the vegan is catered for, order a sandwich, a full hot meal or a delightful plate of grilled vegetables at any time of day.

We sampled them all and they are all delightful.
The food is of a high standard, the dishes are all cooked to order. The Chef, Myriam Cadet knows what she is doing in her little kitchen. No fast food here, just French dishes done well.

We will be returning whenever we are in Bussum. I highly recommend this little gem.

the details

L’Amandine
Salon du Thé -restaurant
Havenstraat 134 B
1404EM Bussum

http://www.lamandine.nl
+31 642133755