doublecheese's Journal, 11 January 2014

There are about 1001 recipes for cabbage - doesn't get much cheaper.  

What type of food are you in the mood for? For breakfast you could have oatmeal with fresh or frozen fruits or an omelette. Dinner could be a chicken breast and dry rub of your choice made in the oven. 

I totally get you Doublecheese. The first thing you have to be aware is, sweets only make other food taste awful and they also make you want even more sweets. Bread also has a very high glycemic index and eating it is almost as bad as sugar (that's what I read at least). As for making healthy stuff that's tasty :) I'm also not a great cook but these are the foods I resort to daily to keep full. They don't taste bad (lol) and they could easily taste much better if I added more ingredients. The most important though is they're healthy. I usually make a salad (the main green being arugula in my case because I love it) I throw in lots of stuff including fruit, cheese (lots of types of cheese taste good in the salad but I usually use mozzarella, the ones that come in a package dipped in water), tomato, you can add like olives, and very importantly, to give it taste and make it not so dry, like 1 or 2 tbsp of olive oil (extra virgin is best) and about the same quantity vinegar (either balsamic or cider). You can add lots more things and it has a tendency to become tastier the more things you add but it will taste really good for me just as that. Tastier than sweets) :) Don't abuse the olive oil since it's very caloric but also don't put too less or the taste will be compromised. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also, soup is not exactly the easiest thing to cook but it has lots of great advantages: Once you cook one big pot of soup, it will last you a long time for lots of meals; it's a very healthy food; It's a versatile food you can take away in a container and eat when you're out. It makes you fuller for longer. I usually make soups with beans or chickpeas as a base (to help me make fuller) and then add other ingredients. I will assume you don't know anything about it, even if that's not the case. I always use a pressure cooker to cook the beans (because it takes double or triple the time to cook it in a standard pot). Ok so let's begin: - The day before you cook the soup (we're planing on a large pot of soup that will last you almost a week of easy instantaneous meals depending on your appetite) you have to put 1 package of dehydrated beans soaking in water (water like at least 3 cm above the beans) - The next day, throw away the water soaking the beans, rinse the beans and put them in the pressure cooker; poor water on the beans like some 10 cm above the beans and close the pressure cooker (Danger! check if pressure cooker is properly locked!!) set the fire (or level of heat) to maximum intensity. - When the pressure cooker starts steaming, turn the heat (or flame) to the minimum and count 15 minutes, after which you will turn off the heat (fire). - I don't know how modern pressure cookers work (I have a very old one). You have to lower the pressure of the pressure cooker before opening the lid (see instructions on how to do this. (Danger! do not open the lid until you make sure there is no pressure anymore!!) Google the article: Wikihow - "how to use a pressure cooker" and check the topic "Part 4 of 4: Removing Food from the Pressure Cooker" - after you make sure there is no pressure in the cooker, open it, remove the beans, poor them in a bigger pan with like 10 cm of water and add some salt. This pan should already have the heat turn on it so the water is already hot when you poor the beans on it (careful not to splash hot water when pouring the beans! It's probably better to transfer them with a spoon or something. - When the mixture on the pan starts boiling, lower the heat a little just to sustain the boiling at minimum, add 1 sliced onion, 1 cabbage sliced in small pieces, and like 1 or 2 carrots also sliced. 1 or 2 minutes after adding the veggies (you are not limited to the veggies I mentioned), now add the rice (half a cup or 125 mL) - This mixture will boil for 10 minutes. After this time has passed, the soup is made turn off the heat (I usually additionally turn off the gas that supplies the oven for added safety). You can now add 4 tbsp of olive oil (extra virgin is best but never use it for frying stuff since it becomes toxic at very high temperatures) Let the soup cool down and when it's cool, put it in the fridge. If you need it to cool down faster, you can put the pan in a container with cold water and change the water periodically until it's cool. You can then divide the soup in several smaller containers and voilá! instantaneous food ready to eat whenever ;) This is just one way of making this soup, since I've made it the first time, I have made countless variations that are, practically speaking different soups with very different tastes, but this is the basis of how I make my soups. It's very easy and fast once you get the habit One thing you can never forget is to soak the beans in the day before (I leave them soaking for some 10 hours but I think you can wait less). Any questions just ask! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, every day, one of my meals consists in a mixture of dried fruits and I will eat like 2 hazelnuts, 2 almonds, 1 walnut, 4 grams (g) raisins, 1 half dried apricot, 1 dried fig, 1 dried prune and 4 g goji berries. I also eat with this 4 g pumpkin seeds and 1 cherry tomato. These are all very small foods but eating this mix takes care of one of my meals and guarantees lots of nutrients that are important in these types of foods. I usually additionally either drink 1 cup of whole milk (whole milk is healthier when it comes to cow milk) or 1 piece of fruit with it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also, my protein meal usually consists in a can of sardines (sardines are a great fish because they have small concentration of heavy metals and high levels of omega-3). The fact that they're wild adds to their nutrient value. I usually get those conserved in tomato sauce. I will eat these sardines with eggs (also a healthier animal food source). I usually fry them in refined olive oil (not extra-virgin) though, which is not as good as if you boil them but I like dipping the sardines in the egg's yolk for better taste. I will sometimes add a fried onion (has to be fried in a separate pan) to the plate and some lemon juice heheh. I can't guarantee that you'll like it but I like it a lot lol. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I want a smaller snack, I will usually just eat one or more pieces of fruit or drink a glass of whole milk (I love whole milk lol). Like I said, I avoid bread since it causes insulin spikes. These are my main ways of filling my stomach that I can remember right now ;) 

I'm not telling you to stop eating sweets, only to be aware of their effect on you ;) 

* Regarding the soup, many times, I use those packages of pre-washed mixed vegetables for soup 

Don't forget that you can always add things to make food taste better or spicier. Lemon juice, onions, garlic (don't abuse garlic because it's anti-bacterial including good bacteria in your intestines responsible for nutrient absorption), spicy sauces, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and many others that I'm not aware of. These things can make tasteless food taste great ;)  

I also eat 1 date with my dried fruit meal. But one thing regarding these dried fruits and nuts. You should not eat more than a certain quantity of each daily. Don't end up eating like 5 dried figs, 7 dates etc. That's very bad because, while healthy in a moderate dose, they have a considerably high GI. And eating all those different dried fruits in one meal is already enough of it. Don't eat more than that ;) There's no problem if you just eat like 1 each because they're small. 

I don't have a pressure cooker at home! But I'll try to make some without one :D I bought a lot of frozen veggies so I can make some soup with that. And I'm not really a fan of sweets/dried fruit (except dried mango :D). I am addicted to bread, pasta, etc. though, that's why I decided to only have pasta, pizza etc. on special occasions. Haven't had any for about a month! Except for some whole wheat Weetabix every now and then. Maybe I could buy sardines too, I'm sick of eating tuna all the time lol  

You can definitely cook the beans without the cooker but the cooking time is different (you'll just have to check the cooking time on a normal pot) :). Although this inconvenient makes you spend more gas/electricity on heat to cook the beans, it also makes it more simple to make the soup since, this way, you'll only be using one pot (you can add the extra water right from the beginning). The reason why you would generally add water after the pressure cooker is that the pressure cooker usually doesn't allow for much water or it will start spewing water from the valve lol (this is a usual problem at least it used to be heheh). Be careful with too much pasta (and bread, and pizza dough) since it's a reasonably high GI food and causes insulin spikes (and desire for more food) Yeah, you definitely do well to minimize the consumption of those! Make sure that your breakfast cereals (no matter how healthy they try to look on the box information) doesn't have excessive sugar and salt. Most breakfast cereals are a big problem in those regards (including the ones popularly known as healthy like Corn Flakes) Dried mango? Haven't tried it yet but definitely sounds promising! :) My favorite dried food is dried prunes and dried strawberries (I'm not sure about this last one but almost lol)---- Regarding the pressure VS non pressure cooking of beans again, with a pressure cooker it takes between 15 to 30 minutes to cook the beans while, without the pressure cooker, it takes between 1 to 2 hours (this information is on the package. It also says that it should be soaked in water from 10 to 12 hours. But I found that 10 hours is usually more than enough. Tuna is very tasty and would be a great fish if it wasn't for the fact that it's a predator, high up on the food chain, and very susceptible higher concentrations of heavy metals and other toxins they accumulate. The lower on the food chain is the fish, the best in those regards. Sardines, for example, only eat plankton. ;) It's not as tasty as tuna though (at least for me) but you can improve the taste with other ingredients. I usually avoid the sardines (and other fish) canned in oil because you end up eating lots of oil even if you rinse it with water. I'm in the process of finding other healthy things to eat or to start making other soups so I don't get tired of the same thing. If I find something new that I like I will share ;) 

lol, in the soup recipe, where it reads "poor water", please read instead "pour water" :) 

Oh but I think Weetabix are fine :P 95% whole wheat, 25.7 g carbs per portion, of which only 1.7 g are sugars; 3.8g fibre. I read it has a high Gl level but the fibre slows down the absorption etc. + If you add fat or protein to it you can slow it down even more. (The same amount of Corn Flakes has 32.1 g carbs of which 4 g are sugars & 1.3g fibre // Honey Pops (my fav) has 33g carbs/10.5g sugars/0.38g fibre) 

*per 37.5g 

They do look fine! Also very importantly, check for sodium! Some breakfast cereals that have low sugar, will have lots of sodium in them for flavor. But they do look ok! :) I've became very suspicious of breakfast cereals after reading some articles about them lol.