Simple and Healthy Cooking

How to Cook Lemon Sole

2009-01-23T20:14:00.003Z

Lemon sole is one of the most delicate and tasty fish in the sea. So why do people fry it until it is cremated and wasted, or even worse, lather it in batter?

We have to be very careful when cooking lemon sole. That is why I like to prepare it in aluminium foil in the oven. The foil protects its delicate flesh from the heat and preserves its healthy oils.

Click on the link below for full instructions:

How to Cook Lemon Sole

Who is Right: the Vegetarian or the Carnivore?

2008-12-21T09:28:00.002Z

Quite a topic to choose for a debate, is it not? As we all eat food, it is likely to be something which everyone has an opinion on to one extent or another, some of them extremely intense!

When I first came across the series of articles written to the title of this debate, I naturally found some very strong words written from both perspectives. I therefore decided to try and examine the issue neither from a vegetarian's viewpoint nor a carnivore's but rather from the neutral ground of an interested bystander. I have included the link below to what I wrote: how do you think I did?

Vegetarian or Carnivore: Which is Right?

Healthy Beef Recipes

2008-12-09T12:10:00.002Z

Beef is an extremely versatile ingredient, perhaps more so for any other reason, the number of different cuts that there are available. We eat beef in the form of oven roasts, stews and even ground or minced beef in dishes such as Chilli Con Carne or Spaghetti Bolognaise.

Beef is probably the strongest flavoured of the red meats which we commonly eat and is certainly a great personal favourite of mine. I love everything from sirloin steak, to steak and kidney pie, to boiled brisket and lots more besides. Below I have included a link to my healthy beef recipes site which affords lots of information about beef and a number of healthy beef recipes for you to prepare at home. I very much hope you like what I have compiled.

Healthy Beef Recipes

Healthy Sweet Potato Recipes

2008-12-01T16:12:00.004Z

How often does your family eat sweet potatoes? Are they something which you only eat on special occasions or holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas?

Sweet potatoes are an incredibly healthy and nutritious alternative to more traditional varieties of potato, providing of course that we prepare them in the correct fashion. I am aware that it is commonplace for some people to add such as marshmallow to sweet potatoes but this is not exactly complementing their healthy properties.

Instead, we should be looking not only at how we can prepare sweet potatoes in a healthy fashion but with what we serve them in order to improve our diet and subsequently our all round health.

Click on the links below for further details of what sweet potatoes actually are and where they come from and for some fantastic healthy recipes incorporating sweet potatoes, including the "Poached Chicken on Sweet Potato Mash" pictured above:

What are Sweet Potatoes?

Healthy Sweet Potato Recipes

How Can I Reduce My Grocery Bills?

2008-10-23T10:29:00.004+01:00

The recent sudden downturn in the worldwide economy has left millions of us looking for ways in which we can reduce our financial outgoings. Panic in the money markets has spread like wildfire and there can be few whose lives the knock-on effect has not touched. We are frantically thinking of where we can save some money and probably the most obvious area is in our food and other grocery bills.

There is, however, a danger in this situation that while we do succeed in cutting the bills, we also tend to be purchasing products which are of inferior quality to what we are used to and less harmonious with our health and well-being. Many may view this as a necessary evil in difficult times but that is absolutely not the case! It is entirely possible to both reduce our grocery bills and maintain - or even develop - healthy eating practices at the same time. The only question we have to ask ourselves is, "How?"

That is where the site linked to below comes in to play. Allow yourself to be guided through the stages of coming up with fresh and inexpensive ingredients, preparing your list for the market or supermarket and combining the purchased ingredients in both a delicious and healthy fashion. What's not to like? Click on the link below now and start saving money today!

Healthy Eating on a Budget

Free Range and Organic Chicken

2008-08-22T14:08:00.005+01:00

There has been a great deal made in the past couple of years of the issues surrounding chickens and the way in which they are farmed. Battery, free range and organic are just a few of the terms that have been bandied about as celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall try to encourage the great British public to change their shopping habits and give a thumbs down to cruelty, while improving their eating habits and hopefully consequently their health.

The problem facing people such as Jamie and Hugh, however, is that the difference in price between battery chickens and particularly organically reared ones is prohibitive, with organic chicken being as much as twice that of the preferred variety. This means that although a great many people who do care about cruelty and quality simply cannot afford economically to change from buying the cheaper birds. Until, therefore, a way can be found to address this disparity, be it by Government intervention or otherwise, the barbaric farming methods are certain to continue and prove extremely lucrative for their practitioners.

So what can we, the general public at large, do about this? Certainly, we can where possible choose to buy free range or organic, but we can also petition our government representatives, sign up in support of relevant pressure groups, add posts like this to our own blogs or websites and generally bring the issue to the attention of as many people as possible. No, these methods are not going to change the situation overnight, but as someone once said, "Rome wasn't built in a day!"

Why Should I Eat Free Range or Organic Chicken?

Sausages, Beans, Egg and Chips

2007-10-03T11:30:00.000+01:00

This is not the title of a recipe that many people would expect to see on a healthy eating blog or site! I am sure, however, that even a cursory glance at the photograph accompanying this text will begin to tell you that all is not quite as it first may appear. I am attempting here to prove my point that simply by changing our method of preparation, meals similar to what we enjoyed before may be still be created.

The first thing we have to do is consider the type of sausages we are going to purchase. Here, I have gone for high meat content pork and apple sausages. They should be cooked in a little oil over a very low heat for forty-minutes to an hour. Do not prick them before cooking. If the heat is low enough they should not burst.

The potatoes should be peeled and chipped in the normal fashion then parboiled in salted water for 8 to 10 minutes. Drain them well and mix them around carefully (so as not to break them) in a bowl with a little olive oil. They should then be placed on to a baking tray and in to an oven preheated to 200 degrees centigrade or equivalent for half an hour.

The egg should be poached, or alternatively, scrambled. Bring a pan of water up to a boil and add a touch of vinegar. Break the egg in to a small bowl. Stir the water with a spoon to create a "whirlpool" effect and gently pour the egg in to the centre. I like mine cooked for about three to four minutes.

The beans are runner beans, chopped up and boiled in salted water for 5 minutes.

I hope you enjoy this meal and it goes some way to proving my point.

Healthier Breakfast Option

2007-09-25T16:02:00.000+01:00

There are a great many people who, when considering a healthier diet, fall in to the biggest trap of all: they think it means that they have to make do with bland, tasteless and uninteresting foodstuffs. This is quite categorically not the case. What it does mean is that yes, we do have to consider WHAT we are eating, but just as importantly - if not more so - we have to consider HOW we prepare it.

Bacon and egg is a popular breakfast choice in many countries around the world but all too often it is fried in animal fat along with greasy sausages and served up in a manner which gets the day off to the worst possible start from a health point of view. What we should therefore be doing in this instance is thinking not necessarily what we can have instead of our bacon and egg but simply along the lines of how we may better prepare it. In the long term, this approach will make our healthy choices much easier to stick to.

The bacon, first of all, should always be grilled. It should then be shaken firmly to remove any excess grease and even lightly patted with paper kitchen towel prior to being placed upon the plate. The eggs should if possible be either poached, scrambled or even boiled but it is acceptable to fry them provided we do so in, for example, olive oil. Bread should be served toasted and not from the frying pan, with an olive or sunflower oil based spread having been selected to replace any butter or margarine.

The mushrooms in the photo above are very simple to prepare. In a small saucepan, gently heat some olive oil and add a clove of crushed garlic to sweat off for a few moments. Chop the mushrooms in to quarters, downwards through the stem and add along with a pinch of dried sage. Heat through for a couple of minutes and serve.

Ingredients

2007-09-18T17:34:00.000+01:00

Just as it is impossible to construct a decent house with poor quality building materials, it is likewise impossible to prepare a tasty and nourishing meal with sub-standard ingredients. I am not referring here to the price of the items, more to considerations such as freshness and lack of artificial additives. Vegetables which have lay in a cupboard for the best part of a week, or fish that has lain in the fridge for two days, clearly will not be as good or taste as good as those vegetables straight from the garden or that fish straight from the sea.

I am conscious of the fact that most people do not have the time, as I do, to shop on a daily basis for whatever it is they may be preparing that night as a main meal. I would, however, urge that you put some thought in to your menus and if it is, for example, fish you intend eating, that is something that really should be bought and consumed on the same day. Red meat, however, can of course be quite easily kept in the fridge for a day or two.

The whole process of eating more healthily is a logical one and just a little bit of extra thought and planning can make all the difference in the world.

Brief Introduction

2007-09-18T16:03:00.001+01:00

Hello and welcome to my latest Blog offering a whole host of advice and recipes with regards to healthy eating. This is by far my most favourite subject upon which to write and actually occupies a considerable percentage of my leisure time as well as I get creative in the kitchen. It is a subject which has been close to my heart for a very long time and I am permanently on a crusade to attempt to convince people of the merits of changing their eating habits for the better. It is my intention here to share some of the recipes I have created as well as some of the advice I have been given over the years and lessons I may have learned simply through experience.

For an overview as to what I am referring, click on the link below:

Healthy Eating Recipes