Strawberry and pistachio lolly

This simple lolly is simply chopped up frozen strawberries, chopped up toasted pistachios, mixed with natural yoghurt and frozen.

It's a little sour, but delicious, and great in the hot weather.

Baked cranberry and nut apples

For the baked apples, you'll need:

4 apples

A handful of dried cranberries

100 ml water

A selection of nuts - we used almonds, pecans, walnuts and pistachios

1 teaspoon brown sugar (leave it out if possible)

1 tablespoon butter

A generous pinch of cinnamon

Soak the cranberries in water.

Roast the nuts - either in the oven or dry roast them on the hob in a pan.

Bash the nuts to chunky pieces in a pestle and mortar.

Mix the butter, sugar, and cinnamon together.

Add the nuts and the strained cranberries.

Core the apples.

Stuff with the nutty mixture.

Cook at around 200 C for around 45 minutes.

Serve hot with greek yoghurt.

Eat cold for breakfast!

Quinoa and Haloumi Salad

As I've progressed on this diet my blood sugar has dropped and so has my weight. Recently both my weight and my blood sugar have plateaued which I understand is fairly normal - the body thinks it's in trouble so fights back. Seems a bit more effort is now needed to kick the weight loss and blood sugar back in line, so a few more salads, a few less creamy things for a while. 

On today's course we started with a quinoa and haloumi salad. This is so full of flavour and texture. And the quinoa makes it surprisingly filling.

Ingredients

200ml vegetable stock 

2 tablespoons quinoa

100g haloumi cheese

4 separate tablespoons olive oil

4 shallots

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 large red pepper

10 cherry tomatoes

a generous handful mint

a generous handful coriander

5 or 6 spring onions

2 limes

Heat the oven to around 200C.

Make a vegetable stock. 

Whilst this is cooking, toast the quinoa. You can either do this in the oven, or, for a really popcorny taste, fry it in some butter.

Slice the haloumi cheese into pieces and fry it in 1 tablespoon olive oil.

 Using this pan, mix the quinoa and stock. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for around 15 minutes, taking care not to let it boil dry.

Cut the shallots into quarters, almost, but not quite cutting right through. 

Put them on a baking tray and carefully pour olive oil and balsamic vinegar in to each onion. 

Cook in the oven for around 45 minutes.

At the same time cook the cherry tomatoes in the same oven until well done.

 

Put the pepper on a barbecue for around 15 minutes until the flesh is scorched.

Peel the burnt outer skin off and remove the seeds from the pepper, leaving the juicy flesh.

Remove the seeds and thinly slice the pepper

Chop up the herbs and spring onions and toss them together in a mixing bowl.

 Add the roasted tomatoes

And the shallots

And the now cooked quinoa

 And the lime juice, then toss the salad gently.

Add the pepper slices

And the halloumi

And it's ready to eat.

Gorgeous scrambled eggs.

Eggs make a great start to a low GI day. They are packed with protein. I do miss having them on toast but they make a fantastic side to bacon and sausages and roast tomatoes. 

Good scrambled eggs are very easy and have just two ingredients - eggs and butter, but so many people try to shortcut the five minutes work involved and end up with something that just isn't nearly as good.

To make gorgeous scrambled eggs, take 2 fresh eggs, per person (or one, plus one for the pan if you are eating them with other food), and a tablespoon and a teaspoon of butter, chopped finely.

Mix the eggs thoroughly with a fork until you can't see any white. 

Melt the tablespoon of butter in a non stick pan over a low heat.

Add the eggs.

Stir.

Stir.

Stir.

Don't stop stirring.

When the eggs start to harden slightly on the base of the pan, lift it up and stir away from the heat. 

Replace it on the heat, lift, replace, all the time stirring. It'll cook in the heat of the pan, even when the pan isn't on the hob.

When nearly done, switch off the heat and add the remaining butter. Stir till it's incorporated.

Pour on to a plate - it will cook just a little more still.

Eat immediately

Tuscan Bean Soup

A first look through this recipe and it seems, well, just a bit dull, but somehow these flavours work amazingly well together. Tuscan bean soup is one of my all time favourite soups, full of flavour, filling, wholesome, it keeps well, both in the fridge and the freezer, and it's fairly economical. What's not to love!

 

For the Tuscan Bean soup, you will need:

For the roasted tomatoes (if in a hurry, tinned tomatoes could be used)

1 kilo tomatoes 

For the stock

A handful of dried mushrooms

1 onion

3 bay leaves

10 peppercorns

celery offcuts

leek offcuts

For the soup

2 onions

A few sticks of celery

A leek

A tablespoon butter

A tablespoon olive oil

3 cloves garlic

Two or three stalks of rosemary 

Paprika

Beans - tinned (butter beans or a selection - either works well) or dried, soaked and cooked

One savoy cabbage

Cut the top off the tomatoes and roast them for 2 hours.

Make the stock by adding all the ingredients to a pan of water and bring to the boil. Simmer for around one hour (the stock ingredients can be pureed into another soup after).

Saute the onions, leeks and celery in butter and olive oil. 

Once soft, add garlic, paprika and finely chopped rosemary. (Rosemary can be frozen without any great impact on the flavour, just wash it and freeze it). 

Boil for about 20 minutes then add the  tomatoes (I prefer roasted tomatoes, but tinned ones will do) and stock which we'd made from dried mushrooms, onions, garlic and bay leaves. Chicken stock works well too. Once it was boiling, we added beans - we used a mixture of different beans, but any will work, and a finely shredded savoy cabbage. 

Once back to the boil, it's ready to eat.
 It also freezes well.