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Aldi’s “Bag ‘n Bowl” Makes Lunchtime Fun Again

July 28, 2017 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

I like having salad for lunch. When I switched to a low carb diet recently I had to start watching my carbs very very carefully, so I can’t choose a roll or wrap for lunch these days. (I’m sure there are low carb options available for doing wraps, but I haven’t found them locally yet!)

If you have the time and energy you can put together your own salad bowl, but I often find that salad ingredients go off faster than I get to use them. The other thing you have to be careful with is, oddly enough, carbs. While onion and carrot might seem innocent they both carry quite a a lot of carbs, so you need to keep a close eye on your consumption.

Most supermarkets sell “salad bowls” of varying kinds, with pricing from around €1.50 up to €3 or more. Making your own might be a bit cheaper, but it’s a “toss up” (if you’ll excuse the pun).

Aldi, however, have taken a totally different approach with their “bag ‘n bowl” range.

You choose between a range of greens (baby kale, mixed leaves or rocket), choose a protein (ham, turkey, chicken or falafel) and then choose a sauce. Total cost? Just over €2 if you buy all three items. Personally I’ve tried the sauces and most of them aren’t low enough in carbs to work with a ketogenic diet. A simpler solution is just to get the leaves and the protein from Aldi and use my own homemade salad dressing or one of the pre-mixed salad dressings that you can get in so many shops.

Over the last few days I’ve tried a couple of different combinations and I’ve been very happy with the quality etc.,

For example here’s the turkey with a mixed leaf salad:

Or today’s choice, which was the ham with baby kale leaves:

The bag of kale leaves was only 65c, so if you get bored with the Aldi range of protein options you can easily choose your own.

Checking if Your Ketogenic Diet is Working

July 27, 2017 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

The problem or challenge with most diets is seeing their impact. You can change your lifestyle quite dramatically but have to wait weeks to see any tangible impact or benefits.

Switching to a low carb high fat / ketogenic diet is not easy. However, unlike many diets it is relatively simple to check if your body is in ketosis ie. if the ketogenic diet is actually working. Sure, it won’t happen overnight, but you should be able to see results within 7 to 10 days. There has to be an upside to the carb withdrawal after all!

In order to get into ketosis and stay there you need to reduce your carb intake quite dramatically. In my case I’m below 40g per day most days, though I’ve heard of some people needing to get below 20g before they get into ketosis. Bear in mind that the average Irish or American person is consuming several hundred grams of carbs per day. It doesn’t take much – bread, pasta, root vegetables and sugar are all source of carbs.

The simplest way to check is to test your urine using a ketone urinalysis urine strip. You can easily get them on Amazon or elsewhere. The strips will simply check to see how high the ketone levels are in your urine and therefore tell you whether you are in ketosis or not.

For example, with the ones I bought a shade of purple indicates ketosis with the darker the shade is indicating higher levels of ketone in the blood stream.

Testing is simple and easy. Just collect a urine sample, dip one of the strips in it. Wait a few seconds and check the colour against those on the side of the container. And you’re done. No hanging about or waiting.

There are other methods for testing, though they’re either more expensive or invasive. Do you really want to spend hundreds of Euro on a breath tester? Or draw blood to test your ketone levels?

Going Low Carb With the Keto Diet

July 25, 2017 by Michele Neylon 10 Comments

For the last week or so I’ve been avoiding carbs. When I shop I read every label carefully to see how many grams of carbs there are per 100g or per portion.

It’s a little bit annoying, but I am slowly getting used to it.

Why am I suddenly so fixated with carbs?

After trying a variety of other diets over the last few years and failing to make a lot of progress I’ve decided to try out the ketogenic (keto) diet, which is basically low carb with high fat (LCHF), but with the emphasis on the low carbs and not on upping the proteins. There’s a fairly good explanation of the differences here.

Several of my staff have been on some variant of keto diet for the last few months and from what they’re saying and what I’m seeing it’s working pretty well.

For me it’s still a little early to draw any conclusions. Over the years I’ve tried a variety of different diet types, but I always ran into issues or simply fell off the wagon..

Have I lost weight?

Yes, but my weight goes up and down quite a bit. I’ve lost nearly 3kg in the last couple of weeks, which is a positive.

I’m not sure how successful I am “going keto”, though I have been doing my best to keep my carb intake low.

I have reduced my carb intake quite a bit. Whether I’ve got it low enough to be considered “keto” or not is hard to say. However if the “average” intake is between 225g and 325g of carbohydrates I’m now aiming for about 30g a day.

In practical terms that means I have to avoid bread, pasta, potatoes and rice, as well as a load of other things. That can be more than a little annoying when you’re trying to cook or eat out.

You’re encouraged to eat fat, which seems a little counterintuitive. However sautéd mushrooms are really tasty, so I can’t complain 🙂

At the moment I’m doing my best to keep within the daily limits I’ve set:

65% fat
30% protein
5% carbohydrates

What that breaks down to in “real money” is keeping my carbs below 30g per day, which is pretty low. Basically a couple of slices of bread would have enough carbs to hit your daily limit!

So what can you eat?

Eggs
salad (just avoid root vegetables)
bacon
fish (I’m getting quite bored with tuna at this stage, though I still do like it!)
cheese (full fat)
chicken
beef
pork

The list of things you can’t eat, or drink, is quite long. No bread, pasta, pizza, breakfast cereal, toast, tacos or anything else that has a high carb count. Eating out is “fun”, unless you’re in a steakhouse or seafood restaurant.

I love beer, but on this keto diet I cannot touch the stuff. This makes me sad. Very sad.

So for the last week or so I’ve been able to drink wine and whiskey, so most of the time I’ve stuck to drinking water or possibly herbal tea.

I’ve decided that I’ll stick with it for a month. If I feel after a month that it’s working for me ie. I’m losing weight and I’m not totally miserable, then I’ll stick with it.

Separating Rubbish and Recycling: Some Data

May 28, 2017 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

When you’re making decisions or assessing ones that you’ve already made it’s good to have data to work with. Of course that won’t be possible for a lot of things in life, but when it comes to something like my household rubbish it most definitely is.

I made a conscious decision a couple of years ago to reduce my footprint as much as possible. To that end I’ve been trying to buy food with less packaging and I also invested heavily in making my new house more energy efficient. Apart from anything else the energy efficiency costs me less, as does the recycling, so it’s “win win”. But without data it’s hard to see how much impact your changes in lifestyle and shopping patterns are having.

Fortunately the company that collects my domestic waste provides an online portal where you can easily see details about each and every collection, including the registration plate of the truck that lifted the bin(s). It’s handy when I’m away and want to make sure that the bins are being collected, but where it becomes really interesting and useful is in the breakdown of rubbish by type and weight.

Here’s my data for 2017 so far:

So far in 2017 35% of my waste is destined for landfill. That’s not bad. It could be better, but it’s not bad at all.

Here’s my data for 2016:

Over the course of the year my “general waste” was under 30% of the total.

Of course there are a few oddities with my data. I travel quite a lot, so neither image is for a “full” year.

The numbers don’t include glass, as that isn’t collected. I usually go to one of the local bottle banks every few weeks and drop off several bags worth..

For the organic waste I am still using the Obeo bags, as they “just work”. For the main recycling bin I’ve got a couple of sturdy recycling bags that I picked up on Amazon.

Forget Bottle Lids, Pringles and Lucozade are the Real Nemeses of Recycling Centre (gizmodo.co.uk)

Want a Taste of Spain? Gastronomic Spain Offering Free EU Shipping and big Discounts

January 17, 2017 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

I like Spanish food, but it’s quite hard to get most genuine Spanish products in Ireland. In Dublin or Cork you can pick up a greater range of products, but I don’t live in Dublin or Cork!

Ordering online is always a good option, but shipping fees can be a killer. The guys at Gastronomic Spain, however, do free shipping offers from time to time that are definitely worth (ab)using 🙂 The current offer will give you free shipping to Ireland on orders over €89.99 (including any other discounts).

You can also use the coupon code: 5eurosHappiness to get a further discount.

I bought a a nice selection of cheeses, chorizo, serrano ham and a few other things from them a bit before Christmas and they were a pleasure to deal with. They’ve got very responsive customer service and the food products arrived well packaged and were really tasty (the cheeses lasted about 5 minutes with various friends, colleagues and relatives!)

Setting up my new Kitchen

January 15, 2017 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

I recently bought a house, so for the last while I’ve been working on getting it ready and moving my stuff into it. As someone who enjoys cooking getting the kitchen setup the way I want is key.

The house I’ve been in for the last 13 years has a very spacious kitchen, but it wasn’t the best equipped. The work surfaces, for example, weren’t exactly generous. Also the fridge freezer had a really tiny freezer compartment, which was quite annoying. I don’t rely much on frozen food, but I do use the freezer compartment for some things, such as frozen berries and the like for smoothies, as well as extra meat when I find those irresistible bargains. The current freezer compartment was so small that you couldn’t even see what was in it half the time, so you’d end up with things being buried at the back. The new fridge freezer is a “half and half”, so I’ll have more space and I might actually be able to see what’s in it!

The new house’s kitchen isn’t as big, but it’s a lot better equipped, or at least it will be by the end of the week.

There’s also a double oven, builtin microwave and a dishwasher.

As far as I can tell everything is working correctly except for the 4 ring gas hob, which I’m replacing with a new 5 burner from Siemens:

It turns out that the current hob, which isn’t working properly anyway, wasn’t installed correctly so it could be a safety risk! The new hob will be installed by a certified gas installer and will have a warranty.

As you can see from the photo of the kitchen above there are plenty of worktops in the new kitchen as well as a reasonable amount of cupboard space. Having a dishwasher for the first time makes me very happy – I hate washing up and it’s always been one of those things that I let pile up beside the sink until I had to deal with it. Now I’ll be able to load it into the machine and it’ll be out of sight 🙂

When you start delving into the world of kitchen organisation you quickly find that there are hundreds of things you can get to help organise your cupboards, drawers and even your fridge. For now I’ll be trying to keep it relatively simple, so I’ve ordered an extendible cutlery basket as well as a fridge tidy for holding bottles. As someone who likes craft beer the bottles were always rolling around on the shelves, so this little gizmo should help fix that. I know it might sound a little nutty, but the fact that the kitchen drawers in the new kitchen are so wide really makes me happy. My current kitchen has really narrow drawers that aren’t that deep, so no matter what I do it’s just a mess of junk in there.

The cupboards themselves are all fine, though one of the bigger ones is missing its shelf, so I’ll have to get that replaced, or I’ll won’t be able to make good use of the storage space.

So far I’ve resisted making a trip to Ikea in Dublin, though I know I’ll need to go soon, I’m just afraid I’ll end up buying a ton of stuff that I don’t really need!

Anyway, back to packing up my life!

Should you Join a Gym?

January 3, 2017 by Michele Neylon Leave a Comment

It’s January, which is that time of the year where a lot of people try to turn over a new leaf. January is when thousands of people sign up for a gym membership, as they’re motivated with the new year. However whether they actually stick with it or not is a totally different matter. (Hint – a LOT don’t .. )

But is a gym the best option for you?

The people over at MyFitnessPal have come up with this flowchart quiz diagram to help you decide:

As the flowchart shows, there might be more than one option open to you. Joining a gym solo might work for some people, but others might find group classes or a personal trainer work better for them.

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