Food Blog Two

In my quest for a healthier, leaner me I’m following a low-carb, higher-protein regime, for a few weeks at least.

Our modus operandi on the meat front has been to eat duck as a Sunday roast, turkey mince in a lasagne or pasta bake  mid-week and chicken-a la-whatever-we-want-whenever-we-want it.

Instead of relying on meat for protein I’m converting to beans and buying large tubs of Fage 5% natural yogurt. It has more fat than the 0% or 2% varieties but is low-sugar and high in protein. Parfait. I eat it for breakfast with blueberries (having bought a set of measuring cups to convert from Ozzie recipes) or as a sweet in the evenings to replace high-sugar ice cream. 

The 5% fat rating might seem too great but my understanding is that such a fat content helps you to feel full for longer and thus deflects you from the biscuit tin. Other low-fat yogurts can have a high sugar content - definitely a no-no as it does more damage to your blood sugar/insulin system. So be told! Sugar is bad. Here endeth...

My venture into the world of edamame beans frightened me, though. A tub of cooked-then-chilled beans declared frying for three minutes was all that was required. I opened the pack and believing the beans to be like peas, straight from the pod, I sampled them ‘raw’ in a salad.

At the same time Richard wanted a light cooked meal and a three-minute fry-up seemed to fit the bill. But we’ve never cooked with them before. (They become soya when older so we’ve tried their elderly relations on many occasions - if that doesn’t sound too cannabalistic.) Again I’m sure many of you knew that but I’m late to food science.

Online edamame recipes were full of 40-minute steamings with salt (exactly what we didn’t want to do) but inside our tub of beans a small instructions label stated three minutes in a frying pan was exactly the thing to do. But I was expecting stomach cramps, diarrhoea and a call to 111 as I’d eaten ‘raw’ edamame beans and hadn’t cooked them long enough. Apparently unless cooked properly they can cause terrible digestive problems. The beans HAVE to be steamed or fried as they contain something vicious which only a ‘professor of nasty toxins of the human gut’ would understand. Except they weren’t raw and all the alarmist online tales didn’t give me the facts I sought. They were pre-cooked. And I didn’t visit the loo in the wee (?!) small hours.

As an alternative to the ubiquitous baked bean tins (low-sugar and low-salt variety) we’ve always had lentils, split peas, kidney beans and butter beans. But I’m upping my game (!) on butter beans and looking out for recipes with black beans, pinto beans, navy beans and others. But edamame is what we’re trying now and in the foreseeable future. As suggested they are perfect with a green leaf salad, to which I add pomegranate seeds. They are ideal as a snack after their three minute fry-up in oil. And good with prawns. (Many other concoctions are available) 

Whilst mentioning oil it’s interesting to note that a nutritionist told me extra virgin olive oil isn’t the key but cold-pressed is the one to go for. It’s usually unblended therefore pure and better for you. And I’m a convert to olives as an aperitive. But not with salty items like anchovies.

Speaking of pomegranates, our greengrocer and farm shop - no plastic on anything, thank you very much - has them rarely but when you do find them - in larger supermarkets for instance, there’s a knack to opening them:

Slice in two, tap one half on the side of a sturdy dish then push them out from the top. You need good thumbs. But it’s so much quicker than picking out each seed with a needle.

Remember those days? The one meal that took much longer to prepare than eat.

As for next week I'll be trying ‘lasagne’ made with layers of cabbage. Mmm. 


Or mmm not.  I’ve yet to be convinced.