Go nitrite-free

Sodium nitrites make processed meats look fresh and pink and prolong their shelf life. But their effect on the human organism appears to be the opposite: the chemical is a known carcinogen. This “preservative” is so dangerous that the United State Department of Agriculture tried to ban it the 70s. But, as it happens in this just world, the mighty meat industry fought the ban and won.

So how do you go nitrite-free? One, quite radical I must say, option is to become vegetarian and eat organic root vegetables. If you think you were born a carnivore, the following options can help:

- Cut out most all commercial hot dogs, lunch meats, sausages, bacon, and processed meats (even that in canned soup).

- Look for nitrate/nitrite-free varieties, such as nitrite-free O’Doherty’s Black Bacon from Co. Fermanagh.

- Don’t be fooled by the word ‘organic’ on processed meat labels. Many organic farms still use nitrites in the curing process.

- Eat RAW fruit and veg rich in antioxidants, particularly vitamins C and E, which inhibit the conversion of sodium nitrate into those nasty nitrosamines. I say raw because vitamin C is easily destroyed during cooking. You can also use good strong vitamins C and E supplements.

Healthy make-over for brownies

So many times I’ve heard that a good brownie can make anyone happy. Not sure about that but, certainly, twisting a traditional brownie recipe to make it healthier makes me delirious!

Two days ago I found a brownie recipe that got 100% positive feedback and gave it a healthy make-over without compromising its naughty and heavenly taste. I didn’t use cooking chocolate as it is traditionally suggested, thus cutting back on fat and sugar contents. Instead I used organic cocoa powder with a bit of butter and little milk. In addition to that I used only half of the recommended amount of sugar and a third less of butter. So my brownies are lower in fat and sugar and wheat-free. But they are still, oooh, so sinfully yummy!

Chocolate brownies

250 g dark cocoa powder (at least 72%)
125 g butter, melted
½ cup low fat milk
150 g light brown sugar
3 medium eggs, beaten
150 g pecans, walnuts & almonds, chopped into chunks
1 tsp vanilla extract
125 g spelt flour


Preheat oven: 180°C, fan 160°C, 350°F, Gas 4
Line a 11" x 7" tin with baking paper.

Heat the milk in a microwave, pour it into a large mixing bowl and start adding the cocoa powder, mixing it into thoroughly to avoid any lumps. Stir in the melted butter and then the sugar and mix well.

Add the eggs to the mixture, about 1 egg at a time and mix well between adding each egg. The mixture will start to feel a bit elastic, but keep beating until all the eggs are fully incorporated.

Add the nuts and vanilla extract and mix well together.

Stir in the spelt flour and make sure that all the ingredients are well combined. Taste a tiny bit of the mix to see if it is sweet enough for you. If not, add a little (!) more. Pour into the prepared tin.

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes. To check whether the brownies are cooked insert a toothpick into the centre of the brownies, the toothpick needs to come out slightly sticky. It's better the brownies to slightly undercook than overcook.

Remove the brownies from the oven and allow them to cool while still in the tin. Remove from the tin and place on a cooling rack, cut into squares and allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

These tasty brownies will keep in an airtight container for about a week. You can also freeze them.

Warm welcome for ugly fruit and veg

Let’s thank the EU for making our grocery shopping cheaper! Starting from last week misshapen fruit and vegetables can be bought in supermarkets and retailers say that they could be 40% cheaper than the standard produce.

For more than twenty years, the European Union standards has ensured that only the best looking (not always best tasting, though!) produce gets to the supermarket shelves. Garlic was not allowed to be sold with a bulb missing, cauliflower's diameter had to be over 11cm, and a string of onions had to have at least 16 bulbs.
The lifted ban will also mean less food waste and happier farmers, who will sell more products.

The classification system will still apply to 75 percent of the produce, such as apples, citrus fruit, kiwi fruit, lettuces, peaches and nectarines, pears, strawberries, sweet peppers, table grapes and tomatoes. These can be sold as irregular, but must be labelled “cooking”.

Fruit and vegetables that can now be sold as irregular are: apricots, artichokes, asparagus, aubergines, avocados, beans, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflowers, cherries, courgettes, cucumbers, mushrooms, garlic, hazelnuts, cabbage, leeks, melon, onions, peas, plums, celery, spinach, walnuts, watermelons, and chicory.

Get Creative

While doing some research online I stumbled across a blog on the Washington Post website about the Eating Down the Fridge challenge, Round 2. It runs from June 20 until June 26. During this time, the goal is to do zero food shopping. More info here

That is such a great idea! Challenging, yes, but it can, certainly, help to save money, get more creative with cooking and waste less food. Although, the challenge has been on for two days now, I decided to join in. After surveying my fridge and cupboards I came up with these quick and tasty dishes: a lazy vegetable quiche, energy boosting bean and carrot salad, delightful polenta in a tomato sauce and oh-so-good hummus. More than enough for a week! Frugal living rocks! Find two of my recipes below:

Lazy vegetable quiche
6 servings

Pastry: 1 cup of flour (I use corn flour), 2 oz of butter, 1 tbsp of yoghurt or old mayo, ¼ cup of water, salt and pepper to taste.
To make the pastry mix the yogurt with water and add to the flour. Mix thoroughly. Melt the butter in a microwave and add it to the flour. Mix with your hands to break any lumps and obtain smooth texture. Form a ball and leave in the fridge to cool for 10-15 mins.

Filling: broccoli, small courgette x 1, frozen spinach x 3 chunks, brie, 3 eggs, ½ cup of yoghurt or mayo.

Chop the vegetables into small pieces. Add the defrosted spinach to the mix. Preheat the oven to 190C. Heat up the quiche baking dish in the oven and grease it with a bit of butter or margarine. Take the cooled pastry out of the fridge and line the bottom of the quiche dish. Place the chopped vegetables over the pastry. Mix the eggs with the yoghurt thoroughly and pour over the vegetables. Slice the brie and place the slices on top of the quiche. Season to taste.
Bake the quiche for 30 mins. Let it set for 5-10 mins before serving.
Tip: add some finely chopped fresh thyme to the vegetable mix for a lovely Mediterranean flavour. You can add a can of sardines (mash them into smaller pieces first) or tuna for a more filling option.

Bean and carrot salad
Tin of butter beans (or chickpeas, or any other long-forgotten tinned pulses)
2 carrots, grated
Juice of ½ lemon
4-5 tbsp olive oil
Thyme, chopped
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper to taste

Drain the beans and mix them with the grated carrots in a bowl. To make the dressing mince the garlic and mix with the oil, lemon juice and thyme. Pour over the salad. Season to taste.
Tip: the best beans for this salad are borlotti, especially Lamon.

Grill Safely

As the summer sun shines (will it last?) the suburban air fills with lovely smells of outdoor grilling.

But before you get your BBQ going, repeat after me: heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Doesn’t sound tasty, does it?

HCAs are cancer-causing compounds produced by grilling "muscle meats" (red meat, poultry and fish). They have been shown to cause tumours in animals and said to possibly increase the risk of cancers of the breast, colon, stomach and prostate in humans. PAHs are formed when fat from meat, poultry or fish drips on the hot coals and via smoke goes back on the food that is being grilled.

The American Institute for Cancer Research advise to marinate meats (see a marinade recipe below) before grilling, which can significantly reduce the amounts of carcinogenic HCAs formed.

Also you can reduce your exposure to the carcinogens by:
- Choosing lean meats for grilling and trimming fat;
- Scrubbing the charred skin off the grilled fish;
- Removing the skin off the chicken before grilling;
- Avoiding high-fat ribs and sausages;
- Keeping meat portions small as they’ll need less time for grilling (think kebabs);
- Turn the meats frequently, which according to some research actually accelerates cooking;
- GRILL VEGETABLES, THEY ARE HEALTHIER!(corn on cob, asparagus, aubergine, tomatoes and mushrooms are all great BBQed)

Delicious Mediterranean marinade:

½ red wine (or vodka, as they do in Russia)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
¼ onion or shallots, finely chopped
1/3 cup fresh thyme, rosemary, oregano, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients in a deep bowl. Coat well the meat in the marinade and leave it in the bowl for 40-60 minutes.
Grill safely!

Small but mighty

Sardine season is starting! Sardines make a great choice: they are safe to eat, produced in a sustainable way and, oh, so tasty grilled on a barbecue!

Sardines are at their best and juicy from the end of May to the end of October. I have to be realistic and admit that there is a very slim chance we can find sardines as good and fresh as they are in, say, Portugal. But even the catch sold in Ireland can be fine and certainly healthy.

This lovely small fish is mighty good and contains unsaturated fats, which reduce the level of cholesterol. It is also rich in vitamin B12 and D, calcium, phosphorus and selenium.

A recent report shows that sardines have only slightly less protein than beef or chicken, slightly more fat and nearly the same number of calories. Yet, statistics show that the cost of the protein from sardines is four or five times less than that of or beef and half the price of chicken.

I’ve bought good sardines at the fish stall in Leopardstown, A. Caviston in Greystones and the fish shop in Dun Laoghaire on the Coal Pier.

So next time when you glimpse a ray of sunshine get your BBQ going for some tasty sardines. They should sprinkled with coarse sea salt and placed on the grill about 6-7 inches above the coals. Leave the tails on the outside. Grill the fish for 3-4 minutes on each side until the fat begins to ooze. Serve the fish as they do in Portugal, with boiled baby potatoes and loads of green salad. Sardines have a strong distinctive flavour (the fresher the better!) and can be served with hearty red table wines.

Enjoy your Omega-3 feast!

Local, inexpensive, organic and tasty

The Happy Pear has the most delicious organic salad leaves mix from Marc Michel, who has an organic farm in Kilpedder, Co Wicklow. There is adorable baby pak choi, baby spinach, rocket and mustard leaves, which give the mix a piquant bite. At 20 euro per kilo it is certainly a better deal than you can get at any supermarket for organic baby salad leaves (that are always pre-packed and lack in flavour). It ticks off all my boxes: local produce, inexpensive, organic and tasty! But hurry, this mix is so good it flies out of the shop. The Happy Pear also sell a more traditional rocket and mustard leaf mix, which is great too.

Don’t be put off by the sign above the box with the salad mix which says that it is exported from Holland. As one of the owners told me they keep forgetting to change the sign. How laid-back they are!

The Happy Pear, Church Road, Greystones, Co. Wicklow. Ph: 01 2873655

Microwave is your best buddy!

Next time when someone says to you that microwaving vegetables is just plain lazy, use scientific facts in your self-defence. According to the latest research microwaving is good!
A study (full text here) published in the Journal of Food Science demonstrates that microwaving vegetables without water until they are just tender can minimize nutrient loss.
Green bean, celery, and carrot seem to increase their antioxidant scavenging capacity after microwaving. Vegetables like beetroot, green bean, and garlic can keep their goodness regardless of cooking methods. Asparagus and spinach appear to be good candidates for microwaving as they retain a lot of their nutrients, whereas cauliflower and pepper are too delicate and loses over 50% of their radical-scavenging activity with its health-related properties.

Baking is another great way for cooking vegetables as it doesn’t appears to cause major nutrient losses.

To summarise, water is not the cook’s best friend when it comes to preparing vegetables, but your microwave is!

Russian Style Breakfast

Being bored of oat porridge breakfast I decided to go back to my roots and start eating buckwheat again. In Russia we eat buckwheat porridge (kasha) for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You can make it with wild mushrooms, meat, dried fruit or just milk.

Advantages: Buckwheat should be on your list of healthy options well ahead of oats: it is lower on calories and fat, rich in magnesium and manganese and health-promoting flavonoids (rutin and quercitin). If you think oats are great for filling you up, try buckwheat: oats’ GL index is 40 and buckwheat’s is 14, which means the latter will keep you full for longer. Buckwheat can be safely eaten by people who have celiac disease as it does not contain gluten.

Drawbacks: it takes longer to cook (about 20-25 mins) but it keeps well in the fridge for up to two days, so you can cook three servings in one go.

Where to buy: stay away from health food shops – the buckwheat there is far too expensive (4.50 euro for 500g)! Instead go to Eastern European food shops (e.g. Lituanica), where you can find it for 1.49 euro for 800g.

Tips: buy cracked buckwheat groats, they’ll cook quicker.

Interesting: While many people think that buckwheat is a cereal grain, it is actually a fruit seed that is related to rhubarb and sorrel. Buckwheat flowers are very fragrant and used by bees to produce a special, strongly flavoured, dark honey.

Hearty buckwheat porridge
3 cups buckwheat cracked groats
5 cups water
1 cup soya milk
Small knob of butter
Salt to taste

Rinse the buckwheat thoroughly under running water before cooking, and remove any dirt or debris. After rinsing, add the buckwheat to the boiling water. After the liquid has returned to a boil, turn down the heat, cover and simmer for 20-25 mins stirring every few minutes. At the end add the soya milk, salt and butter. Let it cool before putting in the fridge.
To heat the cooked buckwheat porridge add a little soya milk and microwave for 3 mins.

To read more about the goodness of buckwheat go to Whole Foods

The Last Winter Dish

Jenny at the farmers’ market in Leopardstown had organic chard for sale today. The season for this lovely dark-green leafy vegetable is really finished, but when I saw it my heart skipped a beat. I always buy it in Italy in winter (there it is called bietola), and, as the day was dull and rainy, I decided to cook the last hearty (but very quick!)winter dish before embracing the spring (which will hopefully be here soon!).

Chard with red kidney beans

• 2 pound green chard (2 large bunches)
• 3-4 tbsp olive oil
• 2 medium onions, cut lengthwise and thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 tin red kidney beans
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 3-4 sticks of celery, finely chopped
• 2 carrots, finely chopped
• Fresh parsley (generous amount), chopped
• Salt, black pepper to taste

Sautee the onions and garlic in the olive oil for 2-3 minutes. Transfer them into a pot with the tomatoes, carrots and celery. Cook the sauce, covered, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Add the red kidney beans and cook for further 5 mins.

While the sauce is cooking prepare the chard. Discard any tough parts of the vegetable. Cut the leaves and stems into 1 ½ -2 inch pieces. Boil water in a large pot and start adding chard leaves in batches, stirring until wilted before adding next batch. Cook, covered, until tender, for 4-5 minutes. When cooked, drain and transfer to the pot with the tomato sauce. Add the parsley. Serve hot with a drizzle of olive oil and ground black pepper.

Goodbye winter!

Nutrition info: Chard is rich in provitamin A carotenoids, vitamin C and vitamin K, calcium, iron and manganese.

Artery-clogging fitness

Someone I know has started a new exercise plan for weight loss with a personal trainer. She sent me the diet plan that was offered along with the fitness training. And once again I got a proof that personal trainers know very little about healthy eating and can actually put people’s health at risk sometimes.

The offered eating plan puts a heavy emphasis on proteins. The personal trainer (let’s call him JO’C) says in his brochure: Protein sources - you must have one at every meal and lists red meats without even a hint at a portion size. Then he proceeds to explain that the body burns more calories while metabolising protein. With that approach he might be as well promoting the Atkins diet!

The fitness guru says: ‘you eat a chicken breast with 30 grams of protein that equals 120 calories (protein contains 4 calories per gram so 4 x 30g = 120kcals). That means your body will burn 36 calories (30% of 120) just to break that down... On its own 36 calories may seem small but when you eat 6 times a day you would burn an extra 216 calories’ Does he suggest eating 6 chicken fillets a day?

Meat doesn't automatically mean protein, it means animal proteins. There are many sources of plant proteins that are much healthier (soya beans, pulses etc.) Even an orange has 1g of protein! The suggested diet will lead to a protein (animal protein!) overload, which increases metabolic acid and may cause demineralisation of bone, renal damage and some other lovely detrimental conditions. Both orthodox and alternative practitioners accept that 40g of protein should be sufficient with 15% added for individual variation. So, one chicken fillet with 30g of protein is more than enough in one day!!!

When I looked at the sample week eating plan in the brochure I nearly fainted: it suggests 21 eggs a week!!!!!!!!!! I am sorry, but this is just a sick cholesterol feast! An egg contains 72% of recommended daily cholesterol requirements. Add all the meats to that and you'll have your arteries clogged in exactly one week and a heart attack before you lose any pounds.

Does JO’C realise that recommending 4oz of meat with each meal according to his plan will result in up to 20oz of meat a day? A healthy recommended allowance for red meat is 4oz a day, and not every day but 2-3 times a week or you'll be increasing your risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases tenfold!

‘Good Fats – Use freely’ declares the brochure. Nonsense! Free use of fats, even the good ones, will lead to a high fat intake and as we all know it is bad bad bad. We should consume not more than 70g of fat a day. A handful of cashew nuts, as suggested in the brochure, amounts to 553 calories and a stuggering 44g of fat! Perhaps, that is why the wise personal trainer says: ‘If you focus too much on calories you are missing the point, you need to start focusing on the nutrient content of food rather than the calorie content’.

The brochure goes on to warn that fruits should be used ‘sparingly if at all’ because they ‘affect blood sugar levels too much especially if you already had sugar cravings’ How about many low GL fruit? Or will they be too healthy to go with the artery clogging eating plan?


The fitness guru goes on how bad man-made processed carbs are and then starts promoting his protein powder, which is HIGHLY processed. I haven’t seen its ingredients but if it has any soya isolates it helps to remember that women should be very careful with those as they mimic oestrogen and are more likely to be GM. On a lighter note: whey and inulin used in most protein shakes give you flatulence!

Hang on to your sits there! JO’C assures you: ‘as long as you are following the nutrition plan, training your muscles and only eating the foods listed in the next section it is very hard to over eat’. I made some rough calorie count based on his nutrition plan and one day came to about 2500 calories. How is that for a weight loss plan? Just to remind you that an active woman should consume about 2000 calories daily. But the worst part of the plan is that about 40% of calories come from FAT!!!


J O'C might be good at fitness, NLP and life coaching but, hell, he has no clue about nutrition!