Results tagged “strong bones” from Mostly Eating
There is a Chinese saying that tofu has the "taste of a hundred things" which is a perfect description for this dish. Even if you aren’t sure about tofu, there are so many other components to it that there is bound to be something in there to delight your taste buds, be it the spicy chilli, the crunchy nut topping or the punchy rhubarb sauce. Speaking of the sauce, it does sound a little unusual but really it’s a natural extension of a long line of sauces that are pleasantly acidic but with a hint of sweet; think tomato, a l’orange, sweet and sour and tagines. It’s definitely worth a try, with that astringent rhubarb flavour tempered by the honey, ginger and chilli.
There was an interesting flurry of comments over on another blog recently about tofu and its health benefits. “But it’s not a real food” said one commenter “there are better things that you could have, tofu is, after all, a processed food”. Well yes, it is processed, but is processing always the bad guy or has this become a bit of a knee jerk reaction? When we’re thinking about our shopping (either for health or environmental reasons) these decisions so often come down to doing what is a little better than what we did last week, not some hypothetical calorie and carbon footprint free ideal - we still have to eat something. I’m convinced that in the grand scheme of things it is better for me and the planet to buy [processed] tofu on a regular basis, and to keep the [unprocessed] pork for a rare treat. Though meat has long been considered to be an unprocessed food, the kept pigs will have emitted copious amounts of climate-ruining nitrous oxide gases at the same time as consuming large quantities of (ironically) processed soya-bean meal, which could have just been turned straight into food.
There was some hesitation before deciding to post this (it is after all a cheese sarnie) but as people are still working through their zucchini/courgette bounty it seemed the public-spirited thing to do.
Low-fat cream cheese used to be a regular sandwich filling but lately I’ve been conscious that it isn’t available in a cow friendly organic form and so I have been experimenting with organic ricotta. Cheeses are amazingly varied in their nutritional content and Ricotta is one of the lowest fat cheeses. It’s versatile too - think ricotta, berries and a drizzle of honey on sourdough for breakfast or substitute it in place of higher fat goats cheese in recipes (for example in my spaghetti with courgette, lemon and goats cheese, the pasta twin of this sandwich). If you fancy reading more about why all cheeses are not equal, the Good Cheese Guide from the dietitians at Hillingdon Hospital and Does cheese have any nutritional benefit? from Kathryn over at Limes and Lycopene both do a fine job.
This sandwich is a breeze to make (I know, you wouldn’t expect any less of a cheese sandwich) but this one also bestows lunch with a decent hit of calcium and one of those portions of fruit and veg. A julienne peeler (or clever knife skills) will give you a delicate tangle of zucchini strands, perfect to absorb the clean citrus and mint flavours and to disguise any bitter tendencies in the zucchini. If you don’t have a julienne peeler /fancy knife skills just aim to cut the courgette into as fine matchsticks as you can; grated, sadly, is too soggy for most bread to stand up to. Ricotta, courgette, lemon and mint are a real taste of summer; revel in them while you still can Northern Hemisphere!
Breakfast is a meal that I expect to work hard for its money (nutritionally speaking that is!). I'm very attached to the idea that if I start off with a good healthy breakfast then the rest of the day (food and everything else) will magically fall into place. A fruit smoothie for breakfast is a very tempting idea but it doesn’t really do it for me in practice - my stomach starts looking round for its next snack far too soon (I’ve no idea how those people who live on black coffee until lunchtime cope). I’m confident now that it isn’t just me being greedy because one of the top purveyors of smoothies in the UK, Innocent, have come up with a clever solution to exactly this problem: the Breakfast Thickie. Fruit, honey and yogurt blended with a handful of oats to make something substantial enough to call itself a Breakfast. I’d happily buy an Innocent Thickie every day (I can’t even whinge about creating unnecessary packaging as they are in a fully compostable “eco-bottle”) but Innocent only make one flavour at the moment (Raspberry and Blueberry) which although lovely is starting to get a bit dull, not to mention expensive.
Rhubarb is the “in” fruit in the UK at moment (by virtue of being the only fruit actually growing in the country). I don’t think anybody eats rhubarb raw (I could be wrong?) and so my technique for rhubarb is to roast it in a big batch with a sprinkling of sugar and to munch through that gradually during the week. I’m into rhubarb for breakfast at the moment; tart rhubarb plus creamy porridge is fantastic (I'm even considering freezing a few batches ready for the Autumn). But then the weather got a bit warm for porridge hence my first attempt at making a thickie, with roasted rhubarb and little stem ginger for added wake-you-up feistiness.
First of all, an apology for the appalling article title ☺
Being from Yorkshire, tea is a subject dear to my heart. I’ve noticed a few bloggers writing recently about a piece of research published in the European Heart Journal which found that adding milk to tea completely removed the beneficial vasodilation effect seen when the same black tea was drunk without milk.
The effect in question is one of the famed cardiovascular protective effects of tea and is a widening of the blood vessels therefore reducing the pressure of the blood flowing through the arteries. Given the huge number of tea drinkers in the world any high quality study on the health benefits of tea is not to be ignored. However, this is just one measurable effect of tea consumption on the body and there are plenty more that we haven’t even begun to investigate yet. In scientific terms tea is still a surprisingly mysterious and poorly understood ingredient and there are many other tea studies that have shown no difference in the health benefits afforded by tea with milk and tea without milk.
I’ve been surprised at how few people have mentioned the possible nutritional impact of hoards of people giving up milk in their daily cuppas. In the Western World at least milk and milk products are one of our main sources of calcium. If you have, say, four mugs of tea with milk every day, you probably take in getting on for 140g of milk (we’re talking about mugs here, it will be less if you have proper cup and saucer). This equates to between a quarter and fifth of your recommended daily calcium intake.
So, there are a few reasons to think twice about ditching the milk in your tea (in addition to the horrible taste, yeuch!). If you are worried about losing out on the beneficial effects described in these studies, how about one of these strategies?
