Posted by Sylvia on April 30th, 2007 — Posted in Tips
May means Spring is truly sprung and the tastiest healthy food is all in season. Asparagus may be available year-round these days but the taste in May is infinitely better, somehow greener. Buy it by the bundle and try these recipes from the California Asparagus Commission.
Salad leaves of all types are available now: get inventive and try something different instead of sticking to safe and steady iceberg; even my fussy kid loves spinach salads with croutons and bacon. Add seasonal zing to your spring salads: avocados, onions, and fresh garlic! For more ideas, take a look at How to Make Fabulous Green Salads on the Fabulous Foods site.
Cauliflower remains available and I have to bring up the lovely appetiser I had at lunch the other day: grilled cauliflower florets! Large florets sliced thick and brushed with olive oil, cooked fast over high heat so that they retained a bit of crunch. I immediately searched for a recipe when I got home and was pleased to find a recent article on hogwash, which I immediately added to my bookmarks.
Jersey Royals are ready to be lightly boiled and served with butter and just a touch of parsley but if that’s not exciting enough for you, you’ll find everyday and Chefs’ recipes on The Jersey Royal Potato website. Did you know their name comes from the neighbours calling it a “right royal fluke” when Hugh discovered them?
Dessert is a doddle with cherries just coming into season: just serve them fresh as they come! Choose Cherries claims that they are a superfruit with the “highest level of disease-fighting antioxidants compared to other fruits” All we know is that they taste good.
A few additional articles if we’ve not convinced you yet how simple it is to eat seasonally:
World Community Cookbook offer an Online Fruit and Vegetable guide as a part of their Simply in Season online site.
There’s a good article on seasonal food pros and cons over at The Tracing Paper.
Eat the Seasons offers recipes and recommendations every week so you are never short of inspiration.
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Posted by Sylvia on April 23rd, 2007 — Posted in Recipes
Albion Cooks is an blog by English ex-pat Catherine offering healthy and delicious vegetarian recipes.
For our taste-test we wanted to stay kid friendly, so we gave her Spinach and Red Onion Pizza a try.
Fast and easy, just the way we like it. And because it’s a pizza, the fussy child gave it a try! OK, so only after the haughty sounds of “Spinach? On a pizza? You must be kidding!” were completely ignored, I admit. But in the end he described it as “not bad at all” and cleared his plate.
Boboli is a fine thing but not available at our local shop. I bought pizza dough instead (yes, I can make pizza dough but I’ve found to my great disappointment that the bought stuff tastes better) and split the cooking into two stages. I baked the dough with the oil/garlic/mozzerella and onion for 10 minutes and then added the spinach and feta and baked it for another 8 minutes. Worked a treat.
If you are feeling more adventurous, I highly recommend giving her Chard, Cauliflower & Olive Soup a try.
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Posted by Sylvia on April 15th, 2007 — Posted in Links
Alanna wants vegetable lovers to speak out! She’s finished the Alphabet of Vegetables and to celebrate, she’s offering free veggie cookbooks.
There are two ways to enter: subscribe to her email newsletter or comment on her Alphabet of Vegetables. Head on over to A Veggie Venture and enter now.
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Posted by Dom on April 11th, 2007 — Posted in Recipes
This article is part of our Healthy Food Blogging series – an irregular series of articles featuring your own healthy recipes and tips which we’ve tried ourselves.
‘What’s the recipe today Jim?‘ is written by Rosie, “not so much wannabe chef as a wannabe food taster” with an eclectic combination of recipes, travel notes, and book reviews. The full set of recipes is listed down the left sidebar so you can quickly scan through to find an appealing dish.
I opted for Spiced Lamb Meatballs with Couscous for our recipe of the day. The instructions were easy to follow and the meal was quick to make. I like recipes where you can make ahead and reheat – the meatballs definitely fit this criteria. 15 minutes before dinner, my companion received a phone call and asked if we could eat late. Late ended up being an hour later but to no detriment to the meal: a winner in my book. When he was ready I just turned the heat back up on the stove and started on the couscous.
The meal itself was nice, although my son picked around the raisins in the couscous and seemed rather unimpressed with it in general. I think I might be more liberal with the lemon juice next time.
The tomato sauce was a little bit sweet, I’d be tempted to leave out the sugar next time. It got pleasant reviews from our test-tasters of all ages though, so there will be a next time!
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Posted by Sylvia on April 7th, 2007 — Posted in Misc
You don’t have to miss out on Easter treats just because you’ve sworn off sweets. I have found a lot of fun and cute food that’s healthy, too.
Easter eggs are fun to make — just a few drops of food colouring (or you could use natural dyes from food) mixed with vinegar will quickly dye the shells of hard-boiled eggs to make a pretty centrepiece and, later, a healthy snack. But you could make Chinese marbled eggs instead, using colours instead of tea. In Mama’s Kitchen has easy to follow instructions for making marbled eggs, just use food colouring and water instead of tea and soy sauce. I used cereal bowls, putting a few eggs in each, so that I could have lots of different colours.
The cutest easter rabbit I’ve seen this year is Easter brunch bunny bao on Just Hungry. They are wonderfully cute and we’ll be making it Sunday morning to serve for lunch.
Or you could follow Nigella Lawson’s example and make a simple spicy rabbit curry to serve as Hot Cross Bunny. Devilled Rabbit might do in a pinch.
And if it’s really got to be chocolate this Easter, why not check out Chocoblog! (We recommend adopting a look but don’t touch policy here!)
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