Kitchen 101: Homemade Bread

I feel a little like I'm giving away a family secret in writing this but to be honest I think everyone should know how to make their own bread.  It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it (even easier if you have a bread maker!) and while no written post is the same as being taught in person, I'm going to do my best to share the basics of bread making with you now.

I've thought a lot about how to go about this and I think the easiest way will be to share my basic recipe and get to important technical things as they come up.

I use just one recipe, which I alter if I want to make something a little healthier or more exciting.  The ingredients list is simple and short and of all the recipes I love, it's the only one I know off by heart.

Knowing how to make bread is awesome if you are doing a pantry challenge since the ingredients are fairly standard and you can use the dough for things like pizza bases and lunchbox bread rolls.

Pantry Challenge: Milo Slice

The great thing about "slice" is that unlike cake or biscuits, there isn't really a required recipe or a formula - as long as you've got a good balance between fat, flour and sugar you're good to go.  A slice is a great opportunity to use up random baking stuff from your pantry since it's pretty hard to go wrong.

Pictured: random baking stuff

This was based on a recipe for a Milo slice from Lift the Lid which I adapted and altered to use up a few things.  The trick with any slice recipe is, essentially, that no matter what flour, oats or dried fruits you add, you add enough liquid (melted margarine usually) that it holds together and that you don't dry it out by cooking it for too long.

Pantry Challenge: Peachy Baked Chicken

As promised, I'm using whatever I can find in the kitchen to make inventive meals this week.  Tonight's recipe is a baked chicken casserole.  I was going for apricot and ginger but for some reason I have about five cans of sliced peaches so I went in that direction instead!

Raiding the pantry and freezer can be an interesting task, but in amongst the dead celery and year-old frozen pie, I found a large tray of chicken legs, a tin of peaches, some fresh ginger and a half can of chopped tomatoes.  With those ingredients, this meal was a bit of a no-brainer and I'm kind of nervous about what the rest of the week holds - I'm pretty sure I just used up all the hidden gems but we'll see...!

I cooked this in the oven since I also wanted to do a bit of baking, it took about an hour and a half so I think it would make a great slow cooker meal.  There is enough sugar in the fruit to provide a glaze for the chicken (which is slow cooked and soft with a yummy crunchy skin) and there's enough sharpness from the ginger and depth from the worcester sauce that the dish isn't too sweet.

Challenge Time

When I was completing my employee development thingee earlier this year, we talked a lot about setting SMART goals - targets that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely mean not only are your goals achievable, but you'll know when you have achieved them.  Saying you want to "eat better", "drink less", "exercise more" is great, but how do you know that you've reached your target?  General, long-term goals are awesome as they give us a starting place and a direction, but it's important we set smaller goals to tick off to keep us motivated and to help us see we're still on track.  Personally, I enjoy setting goals that are either very short-term ("eat three vegetarian meals this week") or very small ("eat one piece of fruit a day")(seriously, that has been an achievement for me!).  There's no harm in starting out small and I know I'm more likely to achieve a small and measurable goal like going for a short walk every day.  In the vein of setting and achieving SMART goals, I have a couple of challenges lined up for myself for the coming few weeks.

First things first, I'm doing Dry July!  For those who have somehow never heard of it, Dry July is a pledge to abstain from alcohol for the whole month of July.  It's something I've been thinking about doing for a while and my goal is to learn more about my relationship with alcohol while of course improving my health.  Having a red wine now and then is meant to be good for heart health, but it's hard to argue that alcohol in general does more good than harm, so (and I know I'm hardly the poster girl for sobriety just yet!) I'd encourage anyone to give something like Dry July a go.  I drink a couple of glasses of wine most nights and I think on average I probably drink the equivalent of about 2-3 bottles of wine per week which is definitely more than recommended.  I'm one week in already and I'm feeling good, although I seem to be super hungry which is not surprising since I've cut out around 2000 calories a week from my diet - equivalent to going a whole day without eating!

Speaking of food,

Did Someone Say Brunch?

The year before my family emigrated from the UK to New Zealand, we spent a summer over here staying with my mum's cousins.  Our first ever Kiwi Christmas, we were served up pikelets for breakfast.  New to summer Christmas customs, I remember Mum asking if a pancake breakfast was tradition and my 'aunty' Audrey saying, "It is now!".  Fast forward sixteen years and pancakes and pikelets have become synonymous with special occassions.  Every birthday, long weekend and Christmas morning we have a spread of pancakes, pikelets or waffles, hot berries, fresh Greek yoghurt  or cream and golden syrup.  Consequently, I love pancakes!  Not just for what they represent, but for the endless topping possibilities and my uncanny ability to eat my weight in them without getting full.

Mum's pancakes were thin crepes, designed to make a couple of eggs and a cup of flour feed a family of five, and perfect for filling with chocolate chips, rolling up and dipping in yoghurt!  There is no recipe in the world that can replicate the fun of sharing a table with family, eating pancakes with sticky fingers on a holiday weekend, but that doesn't mean there's no place at all for pancakes on a normal day.

Cooking for One (+Recipe!)

For the past few years, I've had very little motivation to cook nice dinners for myself.  Days spending eight, nine or ten hours studying or working left me unable to summon the energy to cook a meal "just for one".  Add to that that I've spent the last couple of years working in close proximity to a mall food court and my dinner favourites have gradually degenerated from colourful stir fries and rich roast dinners into alternating takeaways with lazy ten minute "meals" like macaroni cheese and tomatoes on toast.

Lately that has changed.  Making a real effort to eat healthier food has meant putting a bit of planning into my dinners, and while I can't always rally the energy to cook after a long day, rediscovering what it means to "cook for one" has been a total revelation.  As I've said before, growing up we were encouraged to eat a variety of foods but traditional meals always won out.  Winters were special for roast meals with pork crackling and crunchy roast potatoes as well as cakes and scones and home made bread with real butter.  Of course, these were treat foods and like anyone, my family does make an effort to eat healthily but I can't honestly say they're huge fans of brown rice, tofu and quinoa!
Cooking just for myself means I can take these not-so-well-loved but healthy ingredients and experiment with them without having to disappoint anyone with an inedible meal if things don't pan out (excuse the pun!).

And I'm glad I have been able to experiment because I was playing around with the usual suspects (brown rice, tofu, chia seeds...) and I managed to cook up a really yummy, colourful and healthy dish for dinner the other night.  I actually really like using tofu, it's like a little flavour sponge.  In this recipe the tofu is marinated in citrus and ginger which gives a yummy pop of flavour that really complements the beetroot.

Low Fat Pumpkin Pie

I promised in my last post that if I were to do any "healthy" baking I would come back here to share the results.  I have to confess that the pumpkin pie recipe I'm about to share with you is not what I would call healthy per se, and you'll see why soon enough.  It is however very low in fat, especially compared to recipes I have read online - that goes for the filling and the pie crust (feels like sacrilege to call it "pastry"!).  There are one or two simple changes I would make if I was going to cook this up again (stated below) and I think once tweaked with, this would make for a pretty healthful dessert or snack.

I've never made pumpkin pie before and usually I wouldn't attempt a healthy version of anything if I didn't know how to make it the regular way first.  I did quite a lot of reading to see what the pie filling is made up of and it's basically a pumpkin custard.  Most recipes call for a couple of whole eggs, and lots of cream and sugar although one or two suggested using mascarpone or even low fat yoghurt to create a more cheesecake-type filling.  Recognizing that I needed a mixture that thinned out the pumpkin but still set to a creamy texture once cooked, I used my baking instincts to create the below recipe. The resulting filling was creamy and spicy and pretty indulgent actually.

The pie crust is kind of a different story.  Real pastry is made up of one part white flour to one part butter; it's less of a "sometimes" food and more of a "birthday and Christmas" food. Don't get me wrong, I love pastry as much as the next person but if I think too hard about what's in it I get the health heebie jeebies!  With that in mind the pie crust below is an excellent alternative.  The recipe I used is from my trusty Healthy Food Guide magazine and was designed for a savoury pie that would be eaten straight from the oven. The pastry is pretty bland but it held itself together and served its purpose of holding all the filling in one place.  If I were to use it again for a dessert pie I'd probably add a bit of a cinnamon or maybe even some sweetener to give a bit more flavour.

First Week Update

Ok, so it's been one week since I started to really put a bit more effort into my eating habits.  I have not been perfect - as you can see from the last post there was a flat pizza night and I did have a Quarter Pounder on Wednesday (just the burger, no fries!) but I've made a massive improvement on my previous habits.  I already feel a lot more energised, and I'm not as tempted to sit on the couch and watch TV all day.
As well as making a conscious effort to eat better, I've also started taking an iron supplement once a day - I can't say whether or not this is what's behind my energy increase but I think it usually takes a couple of weeks for iron levels to improve from a supplement so I'd say my overall dietary changes are probably the cause.
I'm finding the diary very helpful, I've found it more beneficial to log what I've eaten for a few consecutive days than to try to maintain it non stop, but I can already really see where and why I need improvements.  Planning ahead is key - the meal plan I made last week was really helpful but once I'd got to day four, I had a few rushed meals that weren't as balanced as I'd have liked.  Although I intend to plan ahead more, I'm trying to negate the impact of the rush by cramming in lots of veggies into my "last minute" meals.  For example last night, after a long-ish day at work I just wanted something yum to eat.  I decided on Mexican but instead of making it with minced beef and not much else, I made it entirely out of vegetables.  Into the pan went three portions of frozen spinach, a half cup of green beans, a few chopped mushrooms, half a can of kidney beans, half a can of tomatoes and some Mexican seasoning.  I used baked taco shells instead of burritos or wraps and added a wee bit of grated Edam instead of sour cream.  Not a perfect meal by any stretch, and I probably made a little too much, but it was packed with a variety of vegetables, contained a protein source and was relatively low in fat!

I'm still wanting to experiment more and hopefully today I'll be doing a bit of "healthy baking". Last week I made a no-added-sugar banana bread which was really tasty, I might make it again soon and post the recipe.  I tweaked it a little bit and replaced the ground almond from the original recipe with wholemeal flour because of the cost.  I was a bit worried about the fat content since there was no butter and the only oils in the recipes came from the almond, shredded coconut and some peanut butter but it was actually really moist in the end!  It's funny how this all makes me realise how much I was taught growing up about the chemistry of baking!
If I do some more cooking today I'll make sure to post recipes and results up here.
Have a good day!
:)

Food Diary 31/5 - 2/6

Saturday 31/5

Breakfast
2 slices wholegrain toast, one marmalade, one no salt/no sugar peanut butter
2 mugs peppermint tea

Food (Pre)Diary

This is the meal plan I'll be basing the next few days around.  I've separated it from the rest of the post as I promised to do with food diary type entries.  It is based on June 2014's Healthy Food Guide Magazine but is not word for word since I wanted to adapt it to suit my budget and what's already in the pantry - if you want to see the original weekly plan, the magazine retails for less than $6 :)
I think the hardest thing with following this is that I pretty much never normally snack!  Maybe if I'm less hungry at meal times I can make better choices.

Day One

"Non-success"

I don't necessarily like the word "failure", if for any reason just because the internet has totally overused it, but the last few days haven't even come close to being successful.
The last two days kind of sum up my eating habits for the last week or so, and keep in mind this is me trying to choose healthy alternatives:

Wednesday
10.30am
Two pieces wholegrain toast with ginger marmalade
Special K with low fat soy milk
2 mugs of Earl Grey tea
3pm
Tofu salad takeaway - lettuce, pickled vegtables and breaded and fried tofu squares
7 pieces of Dutch Licorice
1 200mL can of sugarfree V
5-6pm
1 500mL bottle of water

7.30pm
Takeaway - Beef Burger with blue cheese and mushroom sauces, portion of fries
8.30pm
2 tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk
1 mug peppermint tea

Thursday
10.30am
2 slices of wholegrain toast with mashed sardines
1 mug of fruit tea
11am
Smoothie - banana, chocolate protein powder, 1 tablespoon peanut butter, 1 teaspoon chia seeds, 3.4 cup of low fat soy milk
3.30pm
Single serve pumpkin and feta quiche
1 x 200mL sugarfree V
Muffin Break boysenberry white chocolate muffin
7pm
1 x 200mL sugarfree V

10pm
Instant mix Alfredo flavoured pasta and sauce (later realised this was a "4 x side serve" packet rather than a "1 x meal" packet)
1 large glass water

Although this "non-success" is a little disheartening, I can see lots of patterns starting to emerge.  I'm starting the day out well at home, doing pretty average at eating well while at work and then being so tired at the end of the day I'm just eating whatever I can access with the least effort.  I'm not a fan of "meal plans" but I think at least planning lunches and dinners ahead of time will encourage me to make better choices.
There's also a fair amount of caffeine being consumed towards the end of the day - I've been feeling totally drained the last few weeks, to the point where the weekend comes and I can barely summon the energy for even the most basic household chores.  My sister said that iron supplements are like "magic" to her so I've added them into my daily routine (if you can call it that!) in case a deficiency is what's making me so tired.  We'll see how that goes!
Moving forward, I'm going to plan the next couple of days' meals around one of the Healthy Food Guide weekly meal plans.  I trust HFG since I know their advice is backed up by scientific research and government recommendations rather than anecdotal evidence and food fashion.  Their meal plans are also adjusted to fit the seasons and offer a wide variety of meal ideas with recipes included.  I'll check back in in a couple of days time to see how eating this way makes me feel.

Why Helen?

When I was about seventeen or eighteen, one of my classes at my all-girls Anglican high school was called Lifeskills.  Lifeskills was the senior version of Religious Education or Pastoral Care and we took mini courses on all kinds of things from cooking to women's health to coping with the grieving process.  One of the mini courses was called "Things Grandma should have taught you" and the idea of the class is that we'd learn how to change a tire and how to knit, that sort of thing.  One of the sessions boiled down to an open Q & A with the teacher and the direction it took turned to diet and health.  The teacher really wanted to emphasise to us how and why diets don't work and I remember her saying that if there was any one diet that did work there wouldn't be so many diet books on the shelves - it's a never ending market because people are always willing to try the next big diet, even if they've tried ten previously with no success.  "If you want to be rich," she said, "write a diet book."
It's an idea I entertained for a while.  I imagined myself writing up a diet book under a pseudonym in my free time at university and being set for life once I graduated.  It would be called the "Helen of Troy Diet" and would appeal to the notion that you could be as attractive as the most beautiful woman from mythology just by eating lots of fresh fruit and olives.  Of course, in real life my "free time" at university was taken up with working and partying and putting on musicals and I know now and did then that I could never publish something I didn't really believe in.  The ideas inspiring the diet itself however are something I can still get behind.

Even before paleo was a term anyone had heard of, I knew that going back to a more old-fashioned style of eating must be healthier.  This notion of eating like actual cavemen though, before the development of agriculture, has always seemed a bit fairytale to me.  And while I like the idea of eating lots of fresh vegetables, and limiting "carbs" and processed foods I don't understand the paleo obsession with saturated fat, it goes right against all my food instincts.  On the other hand the thought of eating like, say, the ancient civilizations - well, that's a little different, I mean, they had bread!  And wine! Plus, my mum spent a lot of time in Spain when she was young and we've always had olives and tapas platters as treat foods so it seems natural for me to have a more Mediterranean palate.  Once I got my head around all these thoughts - liking some of the principles of paleo but finding it overall counter intuitive, wanting to eat a mostly Mediterranean diet but not have to rule out cookies forever, I came to realise what I wanted out of my dietary lifestyle.  I don't want to be on the "Helen of Troy Diet", I don't want to be on a diet at all, I want to eat like Helen of Troy did.

I want to be realistic.  My inspiration for healthier eating comes from before the industrial revolution but I live in a time well beyond it, in which food has become a commercial product.  I want to eat naturally while remembering there are benefits to a modern diet.  Thanks to globalisation, I don't have to rely on the changing of the seasons to get variety and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups aren't the only great food to come from America - the Ancient Greeks didn't have foods like tomatoes, peppers or potatoes so there's no benefit in trying to eat "authentically".  My goals are to eat mindfully, for fuel and for enjoyment while channeling the dietary balance of ancient times.  And that is what I mean by eating like Helen, and that's why I've named my blog Eat Like Helen of Troy.


Further reading:
http://www.patient.co.uk/health/health-benefits-of-the-mediterranean-diet
http://www.patient.co.uk/health/how-to-follow-the-mediterranean-diet

Hello World

I think about nutrition a lot.  I grew up with a traditional stay at home mum who cooked us three square meals a day and taught us so many nuggets of wisdom around food.  Beyond the old wives' tales that eating my crusts would give me curly hair, I was taught that fibre "cleans" your gut and that oils are usually healthier if they are softer at room temperature (eg butter vs olive oil).  I was taught that the wrong fats eventually clog your arteries and that white bread is like sugar spun into a loaf shape.  I was also taught the basics of cooking and grocery shopping and that a tin of diced tomatoes can be the base for almost any meal.  

After leaving home I maintained my interest in all things food.  I love to cook and bake, and I read Healthy Food Guide fairly regularly.  I balk at juice cleanses and raw veganism and like to know the science behind a food trend before I try it out myself.

And yet somehow here I am at 24 thinking about how tired I am, how I've put on weight, how my skin has broken out for the first time in my life and then looking at my dietary habits and thinking "Hmm.".  I've lost any sense of mindfulness from my diet.  I eat a lot of processed food, hardly any vegetables and my meals are at totally irregular times.

It's time for a change, but I don't want to do something drastic.  I don't want to "go on a diet", especially not the kind that starts with a cleanse or detox program and progresses through phases of restriction.  I actually just want to eat more healthful food, to fuel my body correctly.  And when I look at a lot of reasonably healthy food programs, it looks like I would actually be able to eat a lot more if I was eating this way!

My purpose with writing this blog is to start a learning journey and to stay on it - I want to record what I eat, how I feel and what improvements I see and to further explore my relationship with food.   I'd also like to share recipes and research and look into various "food myths".  My end goal is to be eating a healthy, mostly natural and mostly Mediterranean inspired diet with some allowance for treats!

So in the interest of comparison, I've written down what I ate over the last two days to look back on in a few weeks time.  I think that in the future I will enter any food diaries into a separate post because they are boring to some people but it's important here to see why I'm looking to make a change.  What you see below isn't as shocking as something from reality TV but it is also a far cry from anything "nutritionist recommended":

Wednesday

Breakfast

One piece of toast (sandwich slice wholegrain bread) with sundried tomato hummus

Lunch
Tried to make packet mix Rice Risotto but I set the pan on fire (a first!)

Instant tomato soup

Water crackers

A small cube of creamy blue cheese

A tablespoon of hummus

3pm
Belgian white chocolate mocha

Dinner

Mum's roast chicken dinner and a homemade coconut cupcake.

And then about 6 squares of 33% cocoa chocolate.

Yesterday

Breakfast

Special K
Unsweetened Almond Milk

Two cups of peppermint tea

12pm

A protein bar

3.30pm

So Yo (snickers flavoured frozen yoghurt, sweetened condensed milk, chocolate sauce, sherbet)

A sugarfree V

7.30pm

A bowl of kakiage udon soup and noodles

A 600mL pepsi max

A small bag of pick and mix lollies

10pm

A cup of peppermint tea

My plan for the next week or so is simply to "think before I eat" and see what kinds of changes occur naturally.  From there I will look at my food diaries and see where might need improvements like eating more or fewer calories or adding in different varieties from the big food groups.  Wish me luck!