Kerry LowLow cheese, a review

Have you seen the ad where the mouse escapes from hundreds of traps protecting a slice of cheese on toast? Well, Kerry, the makers of LowLow, sent me some to try.

As the name suggests, it's low fat cheese; all they say is that it's made with semi-skimmed milk. I'm not a great fan of diet foods: in general I'd rather buy proper food. We don't eat much cheese, so when we do, I like it to be really good - brie made with unpastereurised milk, perhaps, Stichelton, or a piece of Mary Quickes' cheddar. So this was a departure for us.

It wasn't as bad as we feared. We all thought it was too waxy to be much good for eating, but pretty good and strong for cooking. Eleanor, who has more experience of low-fat cheeses, said that it was the best she'd tasted. I found it hard to get past the waxiness, but it's certainly flavourful, and so good for cooking.

We grated it into baked potatoes; good. We used it to brown the bechamel topping on a meaty lasagne; good. Last night I put the last of it into a white sauce (together with a little Philadelphia left from a boys' midnight feast) for cauliflower cheese - seriously rich and creamy.

Would I buy it again? Probably, although I wish I knew a little more about how they make it, and why it's got that waxiness I associate with poor quality mousetrap (unfortunate association of ideas in the ad!). But it melts well, makes a creamy well-flavoured sauce, with a little less calorie guilt.

Welcome

Welcome to new readers who have come via the forum at Taste Australian ... four and a half years ago, my apparently healthy husband had a heart attack out of the blue (on the tennis court). Soon after, I started this blog to keep notes for myself and my friends about the changes we were making to our diet. Less salt, less fat, more vegetables, more oily fish - easy to say, harder to incorporate into daily eating, particularly with a young family.

After all this time, my main piece of advice would be to take back as much control of your diet as you can from the food industry, by cooking from scratch as often as you can manage. You've got the best interests of your family at heart; the food industry doesn't even know them.

But, whatever you do, don't get worked up about getting there all in one day: baby steps, one meal at a time. And remember the 80/20 rule on bad days.

The sidebar has links to posts for people starting out on this journey ... also quick links to some of the best authorities on heart disease. Do feel free to email me if you think I can help


PS that heart-shaped stone ... my youngest, then aged about four, lugged it up a cliff from a beach in Brittany. At the top, he took it out of his rucksack, and gave it to me. It's been on my mantlepiece ever since.

A teenage guide to eating

When both the boys said YEeeeuuuuuuch to all my suggestions for lunch, I asked them to write down the all food they actually like eating. They both have a tendency to be fussy eaters - at one stage, Alfred (aged about four) would only eat pizza, but not if it had anything other than tomato sauce and grated cheddar. Horatio's always been prepared to be adventurous: aged about seven, he ordered and ate a plate of moules in a busy Brussels restaurant, and they've been a favourite ever since.

Here's the list. It's a little book. It took them half an hour. The second edition is due out soon, because they said they couldn't be put on the spot if they were expected to remember everything.























The big ambition of the title page gives way to - well, I leave that to you to decide (it's just that I wish they wouldn't make the yeuch noise when we are eating legumes as a side dish)






















Meat is the thing they like to eat best, it's what they always request ... and they'd much rather not be fobbed off with fish, or vegetables. Pasta's okay, so long as it isn't too fancy. As you see, macaroni cheese is given honorary meat status.











































The list of vegetables they'll eat is surprisingly long (and includes tomatoes, only Horatio is too pedantic to put them in this list). But they don't like any of these veg mucked about - it's no use thinking you could make guacamole, or that you might strip the corn off the cob to make, say, cornbread. Just plain, thank you, and preferably covered in butter.























As for fruit: well, I've never known either of them to choose to eat fruit, although they will if cajoled. Interesting that neither of them mentions bananas - not sure if they've been forgotten, or whether they truly are disliked.
























I can (& frequently do) cook three meals a day for them, yet still come down in the morning to find the detritus of late-night cooking. This is a list of what they like. Microwave popcorn is never on my shopping list because of the horrible additives .... but they don't use their own money to buy it, they just complain that I won't (even though the kitchen is well supplied with old-fashioned popping corn).
























The last two pages are lists of individual favourites. Alfred won't eat anything spicy hot, unlike Horatio, but he's very keen on making toasted sandwiches in a press.










































I don't have any idea how typical this list is for teenage boys. What do your teenagers eat? Any tips for widening their palates? And lessening their dependency on processed foods and on meat?

Links: diet, spam, and the Roman Invasion

I subscribe to a BBC news roundup email, giving headlines in particular areas that interest me. There were four stories I want share - and I'll start with two interesting stories from the health section:

The first is a report on an eight year study of the Mediterranean diet, which shows that very small changes to the diet (a little more olive oil, OR perhaps a little less red meat) give protection from certain types of cancers. It sounds like stuff we already know, but here we have some proof.

The second is about the effect of junk food eaten by pregnant rats on their offspring. Predictably terrifying.

The computer security firm McAfee ran an experiment to see what happened when fifty people around the world surfed for a month without any sort of protection for their computer. Doesn't bear thinking about. BUT ... fascinating national differences.

Finally - well I'm a historian, so please forgive me. The headline said there was doubt over the date of Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain. Not 55BC??? Actually, it turns out that we are talking about whether it was the beginning or the end of one week in August 55BC. Wonderful stuff.


PS if you get to the fourth link, you'll see that my photo of the White Cliffs of Dover is courtesy of the BBC

The Portfolio Diet

The Portfolio Diet is the latest in cholesterol-lowering eating. Put a group of superfoods together in a portfolio, and eventually you can throw away your statins ... have you noticed how all nutritionists cover themselves by saying you shouldn't do their diet without consulting your GP: do people really do that?

The problem with the portfolio is that in order to consume the required 2g of plant sterols a day, you have to buy Benecol margerine, or those diddly little plastic pots of probiotic drinking yoghurt. Not my scene. I find myself wondering who paid for the research into this diet, which I hope isn't unduly cynical. I'm buoyed by the thought that even the smallest amounts of soluble fibre are good. And by the news that even those who weren't following this diet to the letter were found to have improvements.

The portfolio arises from research at Toronto University led by Dr David Jenkins to see how these new processed foodstuffs fit in to a heart-healthy diet. They found that if you followed the diet for a month, it had positive effects.

Fundamentally, you need to follow the usual heart-healthy eating plan: reduce overall fats, cut right down on saturated fats, increase fruit and vegetables, also fibre. And then you add almonds, soya, soluble fibre, & plant sterols.

If you're following a heart-healthy diet, you're probably eating quite a lot of this portfolio stuff already. It seems to me that there are two problems with this portfolio: one is that you turn into a faddish eater, going against the sensible advice of Michael Pollan to Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. And the second problem is that by being prescriptive (almonds are better than, say, walnuts), you are reducing the variety of foods you eat. And variety is good, because it exposes you more micro-nutrients, without your having to worry about them.

But, anyway, here's a precis of the portfolio diet instructions given by Heart UK for quantities based on a diet of 2,000 calories per day:

ALMONDS: 30g daily. This is about 23 nuts

SOYA PROTEIN: 50g a day - we're talking soya milk, soya mince, soyabeans, soya yoghurt, soya burgers, tofu and tempeh. Stuff I never buy (Another Michael Pollan rule is useful here: Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. My grandmother would have trouble with this list, although I accept that this would not be so if we were Japanese)

SOLUBLE FIBRE: 20g daily. Here we are talking about some of my favourites, the food I would least willingly give up - oats, barley, beans, pulses, fruit.

PLANT STEROLS: 2g daily. They are naturally found in plant foods such as soyabean, corn, squash, vegetable oils and grains. In other words, a varied and balanced diet could take care of this at lower levels, no need to go to the food manufacturers for peculiar yoghurts, special margerines, orange juice with added who-knows-what. Because I find myself wondering whether there aren't side effects if you take them in quantities unavailable except by industrial process. But, these days, this seems to be a minority view. And certainly the supermarkets are full of so-called functional foods.



Links to related posts

Our basic rules
Affordable superfoods
Pyramid plan for healthy eating
80/20 rule
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's sensible slimming diet

Useful links

Heart UK, the cholesterol charity
Heart UK on the Portfolio Approach
Heart UK's healthy eating sheets download page
Amanda Ursell on the portfolio approach - she's a media nutritionist, tv and press

Fat in chicken

"The problems of overweight, inactive chickens are being transferred to overweight, inactive humans."

This is a letter published this morning in The Independent, from two academics at London Metropolitan University, Professor M A Crawford of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, and Professor J T Winkler of the Nutrition Polic Unit. It makes depressing reading:

For decades, nutritionists have been advising people to avoid fatty meats, and eat more chicken because it was lean. So it was. But chickens reared in modern intensive conditions, with energy-dense feeds, are no longer a lean choice.

For the past 38 years, we have been measuring the fat content of British supermarket chickens in our laborator. In our latest study of 52 chickens from various supermarkets, we found that there were about three times the calories coming from fat as from protein. And organic chickens were just as fat as battery birds.

Consumers, and many nutritionists too, still think chicken is a protein-rich product. The reform of the chicken industry must focus not just on how they are reared, but how they are fed; on their welfare certainly, but also on their nutrional value. The problems of overweight, inactive chickens are being transferred to overweight, inactive humans.

Mount Athos pilaf rice

I was going to cook the Mount Athos pilaf rice yesterday, but discovered there were no eggs in the house. This recipe is subtly different from other rice and pea dishes, particularly in the treatment of the egg.

It comes from The Observer/Guardian's two-part booklet about the diet eaten by the Mount Athos monks, who, it's said, have very low rates of heart disease and cancers. The information in the booklets came from The Cuisine of Mount Athos, by Brother Epifanios, published in Greek by Synchroni Orizontes Publications. Judging from the interest I've had in these recipes, it's time for an English edition.

Peas with pilaf rice
for 8

1kg peas (frozen is fine)
200g rice
3 finely chopped onions
olive oil
an egg yolk

Blanch the peas. Leave in the colander. Gently fry the onions in olive oil in a large pan. Add the peas and rice. Stir. Cover with water (1:1.5). Add the egg yolk, salt and pepper, then turn up the heat until the mixture boils. Then simmer gently until the liquid has evaporated (about 15 minutes).

Related links

Mount Athos diet / chickpea patties
Chickpea patties from Mount Athos
Chickpea patties, an update
Chickpea mash
Nohutlu pilav
Houmous
A weblog about Mount Athos

Mount Athos chickpea patties, an update

First, a warm welcome to those of you who have found their way to this blog via a search for the Mount Athos diet. I hope that you will find other things of interest in this blog.

Quick update: I made the Mount Athos chickpea patties last night, the only change being that I found there was no garlic in the house (how could I let that happen??). If you are making them, I would suggest that you halve the flour, there's FAR too much, and it makes them heavy. Also the recipe doesn't specify what type of flour; I used white, which I rather think the monks don't.

Apart from that, they are DELICIOUS, lovely and green, flecked with gold on their crusty edges. I'll be posting the other recipes in the coming few days.

Related links

Mount Athos diet / chickpea patties
Chickpea mash
Nohutlu pilav

Mount Athos diet / chickpea patties

This weekend the papers were full of food: Delia's new book, full of so-what-? recipes, appeared in at least two. Out of the Guardian/Observer fell two little booklets about the food and diet of the monks at Mount Athos, "the world's healthiest people" - men who fast 200 days of the year, who eat a home-grown, home-made version of the Mediterranean diet, two meals a day, red wine for breakfast. Everyone stops eating when the bell rings - it's rung when the ringer judges the eating to have slowed down, so no-one eats too much (and visitors, it emerges, are likely not to eat enough, at least for the first couple of meals).

I don't like faddish diets, so I'm wary. Five recipes were given, taken from a book in Greek: artichokes with potatoes, peas with pilaf rice, chickpea patties, fish soup, and cuttlefish with rice. Good, wholesome, simple food, easily adaptable to a Western kitchen. Here's one, I haven't made it yet, but I don't want to lose it in the welter of paper here.

Chickpea patties
for 4-5

300g tinned chickpeas
3 cloves garlic
1 chopped onion
1 handful chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/2 tsp ground cumin seeds
100g flour
one beaten egg
olive oil for frying

The monks do this with a knife and a pestle, but we are going to use a Magimix. Blitz the chickpeas with the garlic, onion, parsley, cumin and flour. Pepper but probably not salt. Tip into a bowl and add the egg. Mix into a dough, then rest in the fridge for 10 minutes (more?).

Shape the patties; you want them to be quite thin. Heat the oil, and fry them gently - the heat needs to be low enough to be cooked inside before they brown.

Mmm

Related links

Chickpea mash
Nohutlu pilav

PS Despite an extensive search, I couldn't find these little booklets on the Observer website, but here's a link to an article by William Sitwell about Mount Athos itself.

7-day diet with fat-burning soup

I've recently had a spike of searches for this seven-day-eat-all-you-like diet (not sure how they end up on my blog, but they do) ... it's not something I've ever done myself, and I'm not sure I'd want to. But I'd be interested to know what you all think about it ...

I'm a little wary of this claim: This diet is given to people who need to lose weight rapidly before undergoing surgery. And there's something not good about the idea of a fat-burning soup, but here's the recipe:

BASIC FAT BURNING SOUP

1 large bunch green onions
2 green peppers
28oz can tomatoes
6 beef bouillon cubes (optional)
several cloves garlic
1 bunch celery
1 large head cabbage
1 package onion soup mix
several bay leaves
herbs or spices

Cut vegetables into small bite-sized pieces and put all except tomatoes into pot. Cover with water and and boil fast for 10 minutes. Let simmer for approximately 30 minutes until vegetables are tender. Add tomatoes, bring back to boil and heat through. Add soup mix and simmer for 10 mins. May be seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, curry etc to taste. Add extra tomatoes or cabbage if desired.

The website says it's giving away the diet free as a favour to mankind (womankind??), but it's also trying to get you to spend $18 on a CD.

So I'm confused, and I'd really like your views.

Quick prawn stew

Longing to eat something not leftovers from the fridge. Something easy to make after a trip to the cinema (Harry Potter, not recommended, even by the HP fans amongst us). Also longing for fish. And feeling guilty about not having posted anything for Heart of the Matter this month (fish). Made a shopping list to buy straight after tutoring at 3.30. Hopeless - HUGE traffic jam, went to pay the paper bill instead.

They've just begun to stock fish at the village stores, so I bought a large packet of large prawns (this is where the thinking shopper gets into a hopeless muddle: on the one hand, I don't buy gigantic prawns from the other side of the world, but on the other hand, I want to support the local shop as much as I can).

With half an hour to spare before leaving for the cinema, I sweated a couple of chopped onions in olive oil, then added chopped tomatoes left over from the weekend, and beginning to be fit only for the pan. This bubbled away until everyone was ready - in this house there's always five-minutes-hanging-about-in-the-hall waiting-for-the-last-person-to-appear: sometimes me, sometimes my husband (even though he likes to think he's the one doing all the hanging about), frequently one or other or all of the (no longer) children.

When we got back, we ate avocados as the sauce came back up to temperature, and then I threw in the prawns to heat through. We ate it with bread (not home-made, but good). The tang of very plain tomato sauce set off the sweetness of the unfamiliar prawns (we generally eat coldwater prawns from the northeast Atlantic, which are much smaller). Sometimes basic is best.

This is my first entry for this month's Heart of the Matter, which Ilva is hosting at Lucullian Delights - fish, or, rather, anything that swims.

P.S. Some of you may be worrying about cholesterol and seafood, prawns in particular. I've spent a lot of time looking in to this, and the answer is - don't worry. Dietary cholesterol (found in prawns, coffee that's been kept hot on a hotplate - yes, really! - etc) is not a problem in a heart-healthy diet. The cholesterol that's a problem is that which your body makes as a result of processing saturated fats. So seafood is fine - no saturated fat, indeed no fat at all.

Blogging for positive change

I am extremely flattered and surprised to have been nominated by Amanda of Figs Olives Wine as a Blogger for Positive Global Change - it's a joint nomination with Ilva of Lucullian Delights, a pat on the back for Heart of the Matter, the blog we started together earlier this year.

The idea of Heart of the Matter is simple - each month, people contribute heart-healthy recipes on a theme - this month it's fish. That way, we build up a resource of delicious recipes for people with heart disease, people watching their cholesterol, people worried about their genetic inheritance. It's beginning to come together - and I know that it's something I would have found hugely helpful after my husband had a heart attack two years ago.

When I first began this blog, my ambition was modest - I wanted a means of keeping track of the food I was cooking (it was changing all the time, still is to some extent), and a means of sharing it with friends who saw the benefits the new diet were bringing to us, and wanted details. Gradually - does this sound familiar? - I turned into a blogger ... more frequent posts, more photographs, more engagement with the blogospere - and re-thinking a lot of my attitudes to food and the world at large.

I have come to see - I hope this doesn't sound pretentious or pompous - that what is sustainable personally is often sustainable globally ... the best example of this, the only one I am going to give now, is what happens when people decide to eat more vegetables. It's good for the individual - better heart-health, good protection from other diseases including cancer, more vitamins, huge feeling of well-being (bordering on smugness) if you grow even some of them yourself. Etcetera. And all this is good for the planet: it is fantastically wasteful to eat meat - vegetable matter has to be grown to feed to the animals before their protein can be fed to us. I'm not advocating that we all become vegetarian ... but eating more vegetables is a positive change in our diet AND a step in the right direction for the globe. And once you start thinking like that - well, the next thing I did was to start growing a few (really very few), and to stop buying any food that has been air-freighted (who wants to eat food with jet lag?).

I am a real beginner on this road. I started this blog in order to help me keep track of what I was learning. I have found that it is a useful tool in keeping me learning - I read other people's ideas, I think hard about what we're doing because I'm regularly explaining it.

Some of the very best blogs that have helped me on this journey have already been nominated for this meme ... but here, in random order, are five that are doing good work, that I hope you will find as interesting as I do:

1. The Cottage Smallholder, who no longer buys supermarket flowers. This may sound like a small change, but it's an increasing problem, as most are airfreighted, many from Kenya: it's something we'd do well to think about seriously. If you've got a garden, it can be done, just take a look at this lovely jug of flowers. If you haven't got a garden, well, you could try talking to the manager of your supermarket about how the flowers get there. Stumbling self-sufficiency is a small space - it's always an interesting read.

2. Mike's Allotment Diary has a wonderful address: surelythisisn'tinteresting. But it is, Mike, it is. The first time I visited, I laughed out loud at his title page: this diary is really for my own benefit as I can never remember when I've sown/dug/harvested anything and it always annoys me when Monty Don mentions that he harvested his first sweetcorn of the year 20 minutes earlier in 1976. The deeper I've got into blogging, the more I find I no longer need mainstream media for information - if you're new to veg growing and you don't have an allotment, Mike is the experienced gardener you need for useful tips and pointers. Who needs Monty Don? Can't remember the last time I watched Gardener's World.

3. David Hall at Book the Cook teaches children how to cook healthy food. He writes about that, and also about how he feeds his own young family. His blog is full of infectious enthusiasm and good recipes - check out this vegetarian Turlu Turlu, definitely a keeper. I'm always pleased when BtC is bold in my feed reader.

4. I'm amazed to find that no-one has yet nominated A Year in Bread ... this is a collaborative blog by three experienced bakers, Susan, Beth and Kevin. They take a topic each month, and post their own take on it, often contradictory, always interesting. Baking is soothing in itself (personally sustainable), and globally sustainable - less plastic bags, very likely less trips to the shops, almost certainly using flour from a more local source.

5. Janelle at Brown Bag Blues is full of ideas for healthy packed lunches - she's keen to educate children into eating well, using wit (I seem to remember an entirely pink day for her daughter) and sound nutrition. Although I don't have to make daily packed lunches, I've used lots of her ideas as a starting point for picnics, and indeed for meals in my kitchen.


Should they wish, nominees may now proudly display the BPGC badge on their blogs. If any nominees have someone in mind that they’d like to nominate in turn, just be sure to pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging.

The participation rules are simple:

1. When you get tagged, write a post with links to up to 5 blogs that you think are trying to change the world in a positive way.
2. In your post, make sure you link back to this post at Climate of our Future so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Leave a comment or message for the bloggers you’re tagging, so they know they’re now part of the meme.
4. Optional: Proudly display the “Bloggers For Positive Global Change” award badge with a link to the post that you write up.

Healthy eating - a reminder

Here's a reminder about healthy eating ... it's easy to backslide, especially when you're busy. I'm not sure I've been so good about my five-a-day in the past week or so, what with all the huge quantities of food I've been cooking for hungry oarsmen, and my children working out the best way to cook roast potatoes.

Abby's absolutely right - the easiest way to improve your diet is to eat more vegetables and fruit. I'm not sure I could ever manage 17 a day, though!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's slimming diet

I've just come in from the garden, where I was sitting in an arbour hung with scented roses as night fell. When it got too dark to read, I began to count the sounds I could hear - birds settling down for the night, the muffled roar of a distant motorbike, the last plane in the Heathrow stack, a blackbird (the only bird in the garden not in its nest) calling to his mate to share a titbit. The stars began to come out in the unclouded patches of sky. The cat jumped off my lap to start his night's hunting - time to come in.

I was reading Hugh Fearlessly Eats it All, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I'm on the first chapter, a rant against the big and vested interests of the food industry. Some of it is funny, but overall it's a little tiring to read because of the strident tone. I was beginning to get slightly fed up with it, considering skipping to the next chapter, when I came across a rant against the Atkins Diet. It ended with Hugh's slimming diet. It's funny, it's healthy, and it's good advice. Here it is in full:

Hugh's anti-Atkins diet

This is principally a diet for energy and health, not weight loss, but serious fatties will probably find the kilos fall off. By rights I should earn billions for this, as it is guaranteed to keep you well-nourished and fit for the rest of your life. But here it is, gratis, from the goodness of my happy, healthy heart:

For breakfast

Eat a bunch of fresh fruit. Then, if you're still really hungry, have a piece of toast.

Mid-morning snack

Eat more fruit. Then, if you're still really hungry, have another piece of toast.

Lunch

Eat a bunch of veg. Raw if possible. If you're still hungry, have a sandwich (but not two), or a piece of chicken, or a lump of cheese (but not both). Eat with juice or water, not Coca Cola or Fanta.

Mid-afternoon

Have another piece of fruit. If it's a bad day, have a biscuit too.

Supper

Eat whatever the hell you like. If you're actually trying to lose weight, eat whatever the hell you like, but not too much of it.


It's very good advice, especially when added to the heart-healthy stuff about not too much saturated fat - limits on cheese, butter, meat, and, above all, processed food.

Pyramid plan for healthy eating

Until recently, health departments displayed a healthy eating plan using a pyramid: the base showed complex carbs - bread, pasta, cereals, pulses, rice; next, fruit and veg; then protein, divided into meat/fish, and dairy products; the tip - meaning only tiny daily amounts - represented fats and oils.

The pyramid was largely aimed at reducing consumption of fats, and it was influential in achieving a reduction. But since it was introduced in 1992, our understanding of the role of fats in the diet has hugely increased - we now know that there are two types of cholesterol, and that just cutting out fat and replacing them with carbs doesn't really cut the mustard, your diet needs to include some types of oils which boost "good" cholesterol - olive oil, oily fish.

And so the pyramid has been revised. It doesn't have quite the same graphic simplicity, so instead, the US department of agriculture has a website - Steps to a healthier you - which will help you to find the healthiest diet for you, depending on your own circumstances. Once you've got your healthy diet guidelines, there are tips to help you achieve it ("inside the pyramid").

Definitely worth visiting.

Hearty oatcakes with smoked trout pate

Finger food. I'm well out of my comfort zone here ... cooking for my family and plonking it down on the table, yes; producing something wholesome-but-pretty-much-undecorated for 100 at a party, yes (although I have to sit down for a week afterwards!) .. but making it all look lovely - tricky. In this house, finger food means a plate of smoked salmon on brown bread squares (use fromage frais flavoured with lemon zest or horseradish instead of butter - MUCH nicer, much healthier). But the idea of The Heart of the Matter was that we all pool our ideas for healthy heart food so that we would all have a bank of new ideas to call on. This morning I'm climbing the learning curve as fast as I can!

Finger food is an important one to crack, because most of it is pretty unhealthy - salted peanuts, crisps cooked in who-knows-what?, little bits of nonsense on pastry, sausages on sticks. Years ago I went to an elegant party where delicious finger food was handed round - crudites, little bites of fish, oysters - and it was all so elegantly served that it was only on the way home that I realised my hostess was almost certainly on a diet. So, yes, I know that presentation is all-important here, and I'm going to do my best (!).

I've racked my brains for something I could do which I haven't already written about, and which I would actually want to do again. And for something which I could make look nice. I'm afraid I've gone with Ilva's idea for heart-shaped biscuits, because, as I've already said, presentation isn't my forte, so all ideas are gratefully received - thanks Ilva!










My biscuits are oatcakes. I've chosen them because one of the biggest surprises of our new diet was discovering that bought oatcakes are full of saturated fat, as they are nearly always made with lard. It seems such a pity, since oats are a terrific food in any healthy diet. It reinforces the point that reading the labels is hugely important when you're trying to eat a healthy diet. So I was pleased to find that they're very quick & easy to make, and making them with oil doesn't affect the taste. I suppose that they were originally made with lard because that was what was to hand; now, it's just cheap fat for the food industry.

Today's topping is a basic one: smoked trout pate. There are two more to follow before the deadline for Heart of the Matter expires on Wednesday. I'm aiming for something a little more sophisticated then, but it's also important to have something quick and easy up your sleeve for parties, the moment when my kitchen is most likely to go into meltdown!


Oatcakes - enough for 20 hearts
175g medium oatmeal (NOT rolled oats)
a pinch of bicarb
two pinches of salt
1 tbsp oil
4 tbsp water

Stir the salt and bicarb into the oats, then add the oil and water. Mix to a moist dough, and turn out onto a work surface strewn with oatmeal. Knead to a smooth ball. In practice, this means adding more oatmeal until the dough is quite dry. Roll it out as thinly as you can, and then cut out your shapes (the traditional shape is a circle cut into eight sections called farls). Place on a greased baking sheet sprinkled with oatmeal. Bake in a low oven (120-150C) for about an hour. Cool on the sheet.


Fish pate

This is easy and delicious. I am not going to give you exact quantities, because you do it by eye, and you make however much you need. I like this kind of cooking. Take roughly equal quantities of 0% fat Greek yoghurt (or 0% fromage frais) and smoked trout (or any other cold smoked fish ... mackerel, cooked kipper, salmon, etc etc), and mash with a fork in a small bowl. Add lemon zest and pepper to taste (you won't need salt). Top your oatcakes with the mixture, and decorate with more lemon zest and some finely chopped chives. Squeeze lemon juice over them before serving. (I expect you already know that you shouldn't assemble these too far in advance, because the crisp oatcakes will go soggy.)

Great at parties, and delicious at breakfast, too!










More toppings tomorrow.

We were lucky

In July 2004, we set off on our summer holidays, the car laden, as usual, with sports kit - tennis racquets, golf bags, fishing rods, walking gear, several changes of footwear each: everything that was needed for the usual active family holiday. We drove to Scotland, stopping on the way to visit friends, where we would be staying with several other families from our wider family in a huge 18th century mansion in Angus, before going to to visit good friends on the island of Mull.

We both really needed a holiday: Lucius had an issue at work which made his shoulders hunch up with tension whenever he talked about it. I was embroiled in an unpleasant spat with our village council, and the first of our four children was about to go to university which would mean change for the family (this was the first family holiday which didn't include everyone). The children were happy in the back of the car, surrounded by stuff, and plugged in to their music.

We were the last to arrive: everyone was on the terrace overlooking the River North Esk having drinks in the early evening sunshine. We joined them, had dinner, and then went to find our rooms, Lettice sharing with her cousin, the boys together in the room next to ours. There was chatter and laughter, it was good to be surrounded by family; there was the promise of a whole week of activity and exploration in this beautiful place in the foothills of the highlands. Plans were made for golf the next morning, and for a group of us to visit Glamis Castle nearby.

I remember that on the way to Glamis we talked about illness, we talked about how it would affect us, we talked about cancer, everyone's fear. But, looking back, we didn't really address it, we talked about it as something that would affect other people. Despite our increasing middle age, we still felt invincible, whatever evidence there was to the contrary, and however much we knew it wasn't so.

All that confidence was shattered within moments of returning to The Burn. Lucius was playing tennis with Horatio - no longer a gentle game of adult v child, but now, a game between two males who both wanted to win, one improving every day, the other wanting to carry on unbeaten as long as he could.

"Joanna, Joanna! Lucius has come in and he's lying on the sofa and he's not very well." As soon as I saw him, I could see that something was really wrong. He was grey. He looked weak, he looked wounded. I went to the office to see if we could telephone a doctor, but the surgery was closing, and it was difficult. James, my brother-in-law, and an orthopaedic consultant, took one look and said we should take him to the nearest A&E. So off we went.

Lucius's brother Chippy drove, in his brand-new car that was not yet properly run in. James sat in the front, telephoning the emergency services to find out where to go, and whether an ambulance could meet us. No. So he talked to the hospital direct. All this in a low voice in the front. Lucius was lying across the seats at the back, his head in my lap - clammy, silent, sick.

It was an hour's drive to Dundee. We had to drive through the city, one we didn't know, and with confusing signposts. All the time, James was talking to the hospital, taking a pulse every so often. Lucius groaned, James turned to examine him in the confined space, whispered to Chippy, and suddenly, the car, already going at speed, shot forward.

"Please be alive when we arrive at the hospital, please be alive when we arrive, please be alive when we arrive ..." I couldn't stroke him, he didn't want to be touched; I couldn't talk to him, he was turned in on himself. I bit my tongue - literally, to stop myself from crying - and repeated my mantra in my head: "please be alive when we arrive."

When we got there, he was bundled into a wheelchair and rushed in to the cardiac unit. I was directed to the front desk, where a smiling Scots lady asked for his name, and I burst into tears. "It's all right, lassie, it's all right," she soothed. It was the first of many small acts of kindness of strangers.

After an eternal little while, the doctor came to find us, to tell us what had happened, but, also, to get my permission to use heavy-duty drug treatment. He talked that medical language that the healthy never learn. "So, does that mean he's had a heart attack?" He looked surprised. He explained again, only this time I understood. A clot had come to rest in Lucius's heart, luckily for him in a place where damage tended to be less; luckily for him, he lay down more or less immediately; luckily for him, he was in the cardiac unit within a couple of hours.

We didn't see him until after he had taken the clot-buster. He was in a high-tech chair, wired up to the nines, still grey, still wounded, but smiling weakly, beginning to look out again. We went home after he was settled onto the high-dependency ward, where staff outnumber patients, and where patience and kindness are everyday virtues.

It was a bad moment, telling the children. It was worst for Horatio - he couldn't believe it was serious: "Mum, he just said he wanted to stop playing because he felt sick, and then he collected up all the balls." So H had wandered off to find another tennis partner, and never gave the matter another thought. It's not like the movies - it's not even how you imagined it would be.

He stayed in hospital a week, champing at the bit by the end, longing to get back to his life. But he wasn't allowed to go to Mull, for fear of another attack, and he wasn't allowed to drive for a month. Every day he got stronger, but not as quickly as he wanted to believe. Now you would never know. We were lucky. We were very lucky.

...

We were in shock. How could this happen to my virile, averagely fit, strong husband? We got answers from the British Heart Foundation. You know them, too: smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, lack of activity, stress, heredity.

We needed to DO something. We both read the BHF booklets:

People who eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day are less likely to have heart disease. We do not know exactly why, but it is thought to be due to the antioxidant vitamins they contain ... there is not yet enough evidence that taking vitamin tablets has the same effect.

Eating oily fish once or twice a week may help to reduce your level of triglycerides (fatty substances found in the blood), and prevent blood clots from forming in your coronary arteries. It can also help to improve your chances of survival after a heart attack. The particular oil in fish that has these beneficial effects is known as 'omega-3'. It is found mainly in oily fish such as herring, kippers, mackerel, pilchards, sardines, salmon, fresh tuna, trout and anchovies.

Well, wouldn't you give it a try? In practice, we were doing quite a bit of it anyway, but, as we looked carefully at the advice, we could see that changes were needed.

Five portions of fruit and veg a day is the most effective change you can make. If you only make one change, this should be it. Lots of people say they don't know how much there is in a portion. Well, it's one apple, or banana, or orange; it's two clementines, two Kiwi fruit. It's a slice of melon, a cup of berries. It's two or three tablespoons of fruit salad or stewed fruit. It's a small bowl of salad, a couple of serving spoons of veg. Just eat more, and keep on eating them!

Eat less fat overall, and cut right down on saturated fat. So butter, hard cheese, lard, suet - all obvious no-noes. Ghee, too, if you're keen on Indian food. But also coconut oil and palm oil - and these are used extensively in industrially processed food. So: read the labels. Welcome monounsaturates (olive oil, walnut oil, avocado), polyunsaturates (sunflower oil, soya oil, fish oils), omega-3 fats (oily fish, walnuts, soya).

Keep a healthy weight. I struggle with this. Although this way of eating helps, it is not a slimming diet in itself. Kalyn has inspired me to explore the South Beach Diet, and I'll post on how that goes. The BHF recommends checking by measuring your waist - anything over 32" is bad, over 35" very bad.

Cut down on salt. There's a strong connection between high consumption of salt and high blood pressure. There's a HUGE amount of salt in industrial food, although things are beginning to improve. Read the labels. Better still, make your own food; don't add salt, you'll get all you need from the processed food you do buy.

Watch out for hidden fats and salt. Here are the daily guidelines (men first, women second): fats 95g/70g (less than a third should be saturated); sugars 70g/50g; fibre 20g/16g; salt 6g/5g.



It's forever and it works. So don't beat yourself up when you backslide, and remember the 80/20 rule - if you get it right four-fifths of the time, that's fine. Enjoy. And then, please, share your recipes with the rest of us.


How The Heart of the Matter works: The first theme is going to be Finger Food, we thought that it would be perfect for the 'introduction party' of this event. The last day to send your entry is the 22 of March (this month, send it to i_beretta AT yahoo DOT it), please remember to link here and that we want only one-event entries.

Affordable superfoods

Superfoods: it's a daft idea, really, especially with all those newspaper scares that generally accompany them. But they don't have to be expensive (blueberries), ecologically unsound (summer fruit in winter), impossible to pronounce (quinoa), or otherwise exotic. Here's a list (not exhaustive, just to get you going) of healthy heart superfoods which are delicious, cheap, plentiful, and won't cost the earth:

* dark green cabbage / spinach
* lentils, any colour
* herrings / kippers
* carrots
* porridge
* onions
* pumpkin
* black tea
* plain unsweetened yoghurt
* dark chocolate

Soon you can add a couple of other readily available items to that list:

* tomatoes
* berries

... but not until they don't have to be air-freighted here.

My complete list (excluding any mention of quinoa) was posted when I began this blog in May 2005.

A lot of our superfoods come from Riverford in a veg box. Recommended, because a veg box forces you to think of vegetables first, make them centre stage (as in, "what shall we have with the pumpkin?" or "how shall we cook our onions tonight?"). No need if you live near a really good market, and use it regularly. But there's something about a veg box which forces creativity on you, and the Riverford produce tastes good better best!

New Year resolutions - three tips for losing weight

Health and happiness for 2006.

Last night, for the second year in a row, I made positive resolutions, things to achieve in the coming months, rather than things to give up. But I have made one traditional resolution, and that is to do what it takes to lose the couple of pounds I am sure I have put on over Christmas. Last year we were at home, and it was easy to organise a low fat feast. This year, we were away, which made it more difficult. I shall go back to the strictest form of our diet, to the sheet I posted when I began this blog.I am interested, though, in how other people set about losing a couple of pounds, and so I would like to start a meme as I am sure I am not the only person in this position at this time of year.

Three tips for losing weight
1. Cut out saturated fat
2. Drink plenty of weak tea with lemon juice
3. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables

I nominate Zabeena to tell us what her three tips are

80:20

This week, I was watching Richard and Judy whilst clearing up the kitchen, and I heard an expression which encapsulates our way of eating - 80:20. Get it right 80% of the time, and don't fret about the rest. Then there's no need to be the kind of person who won't eat this and won't eat that, & it's all easy.