I have to say I was genuinely shocked at how much hidden sugar there is in food. They showed an example of a breakfast which was seemingly healthy which had about double the amount of sugar you should have for an entire day. They also showed a stir fry sauce for 2 people which had 20 teaspoons of sugar in it! (We should only be having 7 a day). It is worth a watch it certainly surprised me.
Anyway I have been considering the food we eat recently, I think having young children, (especially a baby who's only just starting to eat the family meals) makes me think more about what we eat.
We don't have ready meals (aside from oven pizza!) but we do use jarred sauces on a fairly regular basis. So I came to a decision to challenge myself to only cook with whole ingredients, using nothing processed (with a few exceptions.)
The acceptions I have allowed myself is:
bread (I really don't have the time to make fresh bread regularly!)
Dairy products- milk, cheese, yoghurt- I am however flavouring natural yoghurt with fruit and honey.
Other things I use rarely like mustard and stock cubes.
My fridge has been packed full of fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs and it certainly looked lovely on the conveyer belt at lidl!
This challenge has driven me to do some things which my husband probably secretly thinks are crazy- like making homemade ketchup. I used a Jamie Oliver recipe:
It was quite faffy and took ages in reducing and sieving time so I would reccomend doing maybe two bottles at a time if your pans are big enough. The recipe makes about one bottle worth which keeps about 6 months. It is very very yummy it is just a tiny but spicey and has a really lovely strong flavour.
Actually comparing it to a bottle of normal ketchup makes me realise how weirdly bright red ketchup is...
I do have the problem that my husband is very slim and has the opposite problem I have, he needs to eat quite a lot to not lose weight. So I have been doing some cooking for him to try and give him some unprocessed calories!
Here are my homemade potato, beetroot and parsnip crisps:
I made the equiliant of about 3 packet of crisps worth. The potato ones were definitely the easiest, I could slice them finely quickly using a peeler and they cooked very quickly in the olive oil. Parsnip was the next easiest, it didn't cut so easily into fine pieces and took longer to cook as a result however the result was good. Beetroot was defiantly the hardest, it was really tricky to cut finely and took a very long time to cook. I don't think I would repeat the beetroot in a hurry but the potato crisps were definitely a winner. I weighed all the ingredients and measure the oil used and leftover and I estimate calorie wise it is comparable to a normal crips (about 140 calories per 25g).
I also made some Mary Berry Flap Jacks with Nemo for my husband
Humm yummy. They work out about 160 calories per small portion so defiantly good for my husband to fill up on!
So anyway I am continuing on my challenge, today we are having some Moroccan chicken for dinner, yum! And I think I am going to make some banana, oat and honey biscuits for bake off night!
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