JOANNA'S FOOD: family cooking, from scratch, every day


Sunday, July 29, 2007

HoTM 6: the grill

It's time to announce the theme for August's Heart of the Matter - let's hope the weather improves, because it's grilled food.

Ilva and I have been really thrilled by the response to Heart of the Matter in the six months since we set it up ... so many of you have joined in to help us make a bank of heart-healthy recipes which everyone can consult. The main points to consider in a heart-healthy diet are: drastically reduce saturated fats (found in meat, cheese, butter, cream), increase consumption of friendly fats (found in oily fish), eat lots and lots of fruit and vegetables.

This theme is going to be a huge learning curve for me, because we rarely use the barbecue here - laziness, lack of expertise, I'm not sure of the reason. A few years ago I bought a Weber kettle barbie, and love cooking a chicken or a whole leg of lamb on that for a party, but the children all turn up their noses when I suggest that for a summery lunch for friends. And so we hardly used the Weber last summer, and haven't used it at all this summer. Although that may also be something to do with the fact that, so far, this summer has felt more like winter.

But grilling is a good way to go in a heart-healthy diet - there's lots of scope for cooking vegetables (would somebody consider doing a post on the different ways to bake potatoes on a fire?), fish tastes really good grilled, and there must be good sweets to eat apart from marshmallows on sticks (which, of course, are fine in moderation because they are made with egg whites, and all the saturated fat in an egg is found in the yolk).

So I'm really looking forward to hearing all about the things you cook on your grill: anything and everything from starters to main courses to pudding (which you now all know includes desserts!). And then I'm going to get out there and cook them one by one.

I'm sure many of you know the "rules" by now, but here's a recap: all you have to do is to send me the link to your entry at joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk before 23 August, make a link to Joanna's Food and to the HotM blog as well if you like. I'll post the round up on both blogs. In order to keep this focused on heart health we ask you to consider this as a one-entry event, i.e. we prefer that you don't use your post for other events as well.

I'm really looking forward to reading all your recipes and tips ...

7 comments:

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Katie Zeller said...

Ahhh, you're getting into my territory, now! We mainly cook on the grill from April through September... other than rice, pasta, whatever that needs to be 'boiled'. This will be fun! I'll just have to pay attention to the 'heart healthy' part... but most of our food is pretty good - I'll just leave off the gratin potatoes with cheddar...

MyKitchenInHalfCups said...

I just need to stay home for more than two days and get our grill going.

Chris said...

yum! Love grilled food! Now, all I have to do is figure out what's up with my grill and I am in like Flynn!

Figs, Bay, Wine said...

What a fabulous theme! I hope I can dream something up to participate this month!!

Anonymous said...

Aaah, I took 'grill' to mean cooking food in that top bit of the oven that you use to make cheese on toast, not the manly outdoor sort of 'grill'. How English of me! Are we allowed the indoor type too? I guess I could use my griddle pan to get stripes and sneakily pretend I used a barbecue :-)

Joanna said...

Sophie - I made exactly the same connection when Ilva suggested this as a theme. And, yes, of course you're allowed the indoor sort ... the fire sort, the gas sort, the ridged sort that makes black stripes, etc etc ... it's the food that counts!

Really looking forward to hearing all your ideas