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Starting The Day With Eggs

April 8, 2012 by Michele Neylon 2 Comments

Packed of 6 large organic Irish eggs from Superquinn

Organic eggs

When I was growing up in County Clare my grandparents used to keep hens. Not chickens. Hens.

I’m not sure how many hens they had, but we always had fresh eggs which we knew were 100% natural and would probably have qualified as “organic”. Back then, in the 1970’s, the concept of “organic” food hadn’t made it as far as Ireland, or if it had, it definitely hadn’t made it as far as West Clare.

Unfortunately these days I have to go to a shop like everyone else to get eggs, and of course things have moved on quite a bit. Nowadays all the eggs have “best before” dates stamped on their shells and the packets are covered with nutritional information.

But the eggs still taste great – as long as you avoid the really cheap ones.

As I mentioned previously, I like to make scrambled eggs to start my day when I can. Usually that means weekends only. This weekend, however, is a long weekend here in Ireland, as it’s Easter. I may not be indulging in chocolate covered goodies, but I will be having eggs for breakfast every morning of the three day weekend.

There’s all sorts of good things in eggs, apart from their wonderful taste. Eggs are one of the few foods that contain vitamin D, but they also are a good source of protein.

They’ve also got vitamin B, iron and a bunch of other good things.

Of course if you eat a lot of eggs it can have a negative impact, with some studies pointing to eggs as being bad for cholesterol levels. However, like most things, if you eat them in moderation it won’t do you any harm!

Baked Beans On Toast

April 7, 2012 by Michele Neylon 1 Comment

Beans on toast (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some foods take you by surprise. Baked beans are shockingly healthy, if eaten in moderation.

Why?

Well it transpires that the humble baked bean is what’s known in some quarters as a “super food”.

They’re high in protein and are also a good source of fibre, which can help reduce cholesterol levels.

A simple yet tasty evening meal that I’ve had a few times is made up of beans on toast (a small tin – not the full size one) and a bowl of soup.

Using a microwave to heat both the beans and the soup it only takes about 5 minutes to prepare.

The toast is usually some kind of wholemeal bread with a light butter / margarine type spread on it.

It’s also incredibly cheap to make, which is always a bonus!

Other beans can be very tasty as well, though they generally come in brine only so they wouldn’t be that tasty on toast by themselves and lend themselves more to pasta or rice sauces.

Grilled Marinated Chicken

April 1, 2012 by Michele Neylon 4 Comments

I’ve always heard about marinades, but I’d never actually done one properly until this evening.

While a lot of marinades contain a lot of ingredients they don’t really have to in order to add a lot of flavour to meat or poultry.

A very simple marinade can be made in seconds by simply mixing olive oil, lemon juice and herbs together. The quantities will obviously vary on the amount of meat you need to marinate, so it’s really down to the proportions.

For every 3 parts of olive oil add 4 parts of lemon juice, throw in some mixed herbs or herbes de Provence, mix well and you’re done.

You can then add your chicken fillets after scoring them a bit.

The longer you leave them in the marinade the more flavour they’ll pick up, but you’d want to leave them at least for half an hour.

Once the chicken is more or less ready turn on your grill (in my case a George Foreman) and prepare some vegetables to go with the chicken.

Grilling the chicken itself will probably take about 10 minutes in a George Foreman, but longer in a pan.

I served mine this evening with new potatoes, broccoli and some freshly cut parsley. Yum!

Tesco Diets Changes

April 1, 2012 by Michele Neylon 2 Comments

An Italian shopping list for groceries. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tesco Diets have been making a number of subtle changes to their online system over the last couple of weeks.

The main changes seem to be centred around the “shopping list” functionality.

On the plus side it’s a lot easier to use and you can easily see what you may or may not have “in stock”, so you can edit your shopping list accordingly

Unfortunately they seem to have removed most of the options for viewing the shopping list, so you can either view it on screen or print it off.

Why does this matter?

Well if you’re trying to actually copy and paste the items into a text file or a notepad app to take to the supermarket the new format completely breaks that

Of course if they actually had a mobile application then I wouldn’t have to jump through these hoops to begin with (or provided some of the content in more usable formats)

Losing Motivation And Comfort Eating

April 1, 2012 by Michele Neylon 3 Comments

Beans on toast (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the last couple of days I’ve been misbehaving quite a bit. I haven’t been sticking to my diet as strictly as I should and I feel quite guilty, though I also feel like I lack motivation.

I’ve eaten things that I know I shouldn’t eat and earlier this evening I was very very tempted to order a takeaway (I didn’t in the end and opted for baked beans on toast and soup, but it was “touch and go” for a few minutes!)

I guess part of the problem is that I’m a little bit stressed after the entire house break-in the other day.

I’ll hopefully get past it, but even before the disruption this week I wasn’t feeling too good about my diet.

Why?

Progress. Or the lack of it.

I had been seeing reasonably good weight loss for the first month or so that I was dieting, but now it seems to have practically flat-lined.

Tomorrow, or more correctly – later today, I’ll go and do my weekly grocery shopping and stock the cupboards with plenty of fresh vegetables, fruit and the other stuff that I’ll need for my planned meals over the next week.

Hopefully I’ll be feeling a little less stressed and more motivated tomorrow!

Which Drinks Are The Least Harmful?

March 28, 2012 by Michele Neylon 2 Comments

Not all alcoholic drinks are bad for you.

Sure, there probably aren’t any alcoholic drinks that are “good” for you unless you restrict your alcohol intake to something below moderation..

The old Guinness advertising is probably illegal these days ..

But if you’re on a diet or simply watching your waistline (assuming you can actually see your waist .. ) then you might have laboured over the issue of which tipple will do your waist the least damage…

LifeHacker has a pretty good article covering some of the basics.

Some takeaways:

Mixers ie. Coke etc., are full of sugar and calories
Wine and spirits (neat) are the lowest in terms of calories

You can check the calories of a lot of popular drinks here (yes – there’s a website for it!)

Taking Shortcuts With Garlic

March 27, 2012 by Michele Neylon 2 Comments

This is one full head of garlic beside another with removed cloves (one clove of garlic has been peeled) Deutsch: Geschlossene und angebrochene Knoblauchknolle (Allium sativum) Ελληνικά: Ξερά Σκόρδα (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love garlic. It’s a wonderful food that adds a little something to a lot of different dishes.

But sometimes peeling and crushing it can be a pain in the neck.

You can use a knife to peel it and crush it, or use the heel of your palm to break it up before peeling it ..

Then there’s garlic crushers, though they’re awkward to wash and if you’re only crushing one or two cloves you’d have to wonder if it was really worth the effort in the first place..

A recent discovery for me, however, is this quite versatile gadget:

It’s both a garlic peeler and crusher in one. Simply pop a clove in, turn the handle and it does everything else.

But of course if you’re really really lazy you can always opt for “ready” garlic like the “Very Lazy Garlic” that I picked up on special offer this weekend:

Just use a teaspoon of paste for every clove you would have spent a couple of minutes preparing.

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