Paleo diet

The whole premise behind the Paleo diet is that under today's diet we have increased levels of inflammation in our bodies that is causing a wide range of health problems.  Our ancestors who ate a paleo diet didn't have inflammation, so had less health complaints; were stronger, fitter, healthier and lived longer. 

I'm not sure I agree with all of this and am interested in investigating the claims and evidence for the Paleo diet.  Particularly as many aspects of it are starting to permeate into the more general recommendations for dietary advice.  Some of it is in direct contrast to official government dietary guidelines.  The most notable one being the advice about saturated fats.  The last generation has seen us switch our choice of fat in our diet from what were supposedly bad fats that increased our cholesterol and heart disease as well as a range of cancers, the animal based saturated fats, to good fats that are vegetable based and non saturated.  Now it seems we are being led to believe that the reverse is true. Margarine, once seen as a healthy alternative to butter has become likened to poison and one of the worst things that you can possibly put into your body.
Sugar, has never been seen as anything other than unhealthy, but is even further maligned in this diet and strictly eliminated.  Grains are demonised as well, even though the advent of farming was probably one of the most significant evolutional leaps we made as a species to sure up availability of a good quality food supply. Other staples  from various cultures around the world that have enabled their survival and ability to avoid famine like potatoes, rice, oats and corn are also off the menu. Though interestingly some super foods like quinoa are on the menu, even though their availability was quite restricted.

Fats and oils

I have been reading quite a bit about good and bad oils and watched some youtube offerings on the subject as well. What is a good or a bad fat/oil depends on where you sit in the argument as both sides directly contradict one another.  The only point that both sides seem to be able to agree on is Olive oil.  If you are sitting on the fence and not sure which way to jump in the good fat versus bad fat debate, perhaps olive oil would be a safe bet.
I have read both of David Gillespie's offerings on the subject: Toxic Oil, and Big Fat Lies.  They are follow up books to his sugar free advice books Sweet Poison and the recipe book to go with it.  I read the Sweet Poison books a few years ago and have them both on my book shelf.  Fast forward a few years and now David Gillespie has twitter and facebook as well so the conversation can be continued long after you've finished reading the book.  I think that's pretty cool.

From what I understand, vegetable oils are a super processed food that our body is just not adapted to handle.  They primarily are derived from seeds, which we were never able to eat too many of due to their fibre content.  Turning them to oil strips them of their fibre and enables us to ingest far more of the oils than we ever could have, or as it turns out should have.  Vegetable oils are high in polyunsaturated oil, which is not the best kind of oil for our bodies.  Our fat cells are made up of saturated fat, monounsaturated fat and very, very little polyunsaturated fat.  If our diet is to emulate this ratio then we need to be have a lot less polyunsaturated fats.  Basically all we need consume of them is enough to ensure that we get our essential omega 3 and omega 6 oils.  We need very small amounts of these and preferably in the ration of about 2:1 omega 6  to omega 3.  Unfortunately the polyunsaturated fats that we consume, through grain fed meat and seed oils are very high in omega 6.  This blows our desirable ratio way out of the water, in the order of 10:1 and causes inflammation in our bodies.  This inflammation had been linked to our chronic lifestyle diseases of arthritis, heart disease,  diabetes, etc.

Sugar

Like the oils argument, sugar is also a highly refined product that having been stripped of its fibre and is too concentrated for our bodies.  The main problem with sugar is the fructose part, according to David Gillespie and others.  I'm not convinced that this issue is a problem so much with the paleo people as they seem pretty fond of raw honey, which would have to be very high in fructose.  It seems that the paleo diet is deliberately high in fats and so in order to not get fat, something has gotta give in the diet.  So removing an entire food group like carbohydrates would definitely help.  I'm guessing the thinking here is that apart from raw honey and some berries, very little other sweet stuff was available in our paleolithic diet 10000 plus years ago.  Given that consuming coconut oil is high on the list of desirable behaviours, I'm guessing because of the pacific islanders use of that oil for most of their history, It follows that they also would have had access to a lot of very sweet fruits.  Mmmmm mangoes, anyone?

Grains

Grains are out too.  They have phytates which block absorption of essential minerals.  There are plenty of other sources of these minerals (for a non vegetarian) that eating grains is rendered unnecessary. I'm pretty sure that some grains and seeds were consumed in our caveman existence and made up an important part of the diet in between big animal kills.  Examination of native bush tucker for Australian Aboriginals showed consumption of starchy roots, nuts and seeds in addition to their meat.  It didn't take the Aboriginals long to prefer the easy meat and grains offered by the Europeans in the form of mutton and  flour, over the arduous process of the hunter gatherer lifestyle.  Granted, we stole a lot of their hunting grounds and they still enjoyed supplementing with traditional tucker.  But there is no way this country could have supported a population the size that it has now with a hunter gatherer approach.  The country could barely feed it's native inhabitants with some tribes being pushed right to the edge of subsistence living. Agriculture definitely ensured  the proliferation of the human race.

Potatoes, corn and oats have been the staple diet of different groups of people throughout history.  But each of these, and soy are much maligned in the paleo diet.  Again the same argument is used as for grains, that these vitamins and minerals can be gained from elsewhere in the diet, so consumption of them is not necessary.  Sweet potatoes are on the list as desirable food, which is great for me as I grow sweet potato in abundance in my garden. Based on my garden, at the rate sweet potato grows I am sure we could solve world hunger just by simply planting sweet potato right across the world.

Super foods such as quinoa and chai seem to be popular additions to the paleo diet as they are considered to be ancient grains  They have amazing properties such as omega 3 oils and many nutrients. I often wonder, though, that if wheat (or oats or potatoes, insert your chosen starch) was discovered today wouldn't it be seen as a wonder food?  I know that it has been genetically altered over the ages to produce greater yields but it has the sort of nutrient profile that would herald as something pretty amazing if we discovered it today.  Because it's been around for so long we are quite ho hum about it.

Meat and dairy

Meat is a big part of the paleo diet, and raw dairy.  I'm not sure that we particularly had access to dairy foods in the stoneage.  Dairy strikes me a very domesticated, farming activity. I do grant that meat would have been a large part of the diet when they could get it.  But all parts of the animal would have been eaten. I know that I am no big fan of organ meats, or eating the skin and other yucky bits.  ( I think this maybe where bone broths and gelatine come into the diet).

Supplements

Any newest, and most wonderful diet that is the answer to all our ills and that also requires us to supplement sounds somehow flawed to me.  If the diet is so great then supplementation should not be needed.  In my view supplementation is about as highly processed as you can get.  To take the individual nutrients instead of the whole foods, that contain them and other properties besides, sounds very unnatural.  Surely a wider diet encompassing a greater variety of foods would be preferable to supplementation.  Supplements, like diets too, I guess, are faddish.  Every year there is the lastest greatest supplement that you just have to have or you will die early and in great pain, whilst having lived a demented life where you are chronically tired, fat and have a crap sex life.  Have I covered all the things that each new supplement claims to improve?

Modern diet and weight gain consists of junk food, high access to a lot of very high calorie foods with low nutrient value. We are eating more and getting fatter.  anytime you remove a major group of foods from your diet you are likely to lose weight.  It restricts your choice of food and immediately prevents you from snacking as effectively and reduces your unhealthy choices when dining out or socialising.  Don't under estimate the calorific punch of a regular handful of bikkies or a slice of cake with your cuppa.

There's so many things that we are not evolved for if you take the premise that anything that our ancestors from the paleolithic period didn't do, we shouldn't do.  Surely if diet has such a big effect, so would shelter, population density, artificial light, pollution, and many other modern parts of life that would have been totally alien to a stone age man.  I quite frankly don't buy that they lived longer healthier lives.  They died younger and never had the opportunity to develop life long chronic medical conditions.  And if they did suffer from chronic conditions, how would we know? How could we know if they were generally happy with their day to day life and health?  We can't.

Every diet I have ever seen involves the same basic principles packaged differently so that they look like the newest latest thing. If you pick up the junk food, excess fat, sugar and oil and toss them out of your diet, whilst incorporating more salads, fruit and whole (real) food in your diet you are automatically healthier and going to lose weight.  And yes, paleolithic people probably ate more like this, they certainly didn't have bags of chips, lollies, cakes and biscuits.
Add to this the removal of a major food grouping and you also automatically drastically reduce your food choices, again removing the opportunity to as easily overeat.  This would have had parallels to paleolithic people too, they had drastically less food choice and food availability compared to what we have today.  This would mean they would tend to be leaner, and also more prone to be at risk of starvation or malnutrition during extreme times.

And finally, just to complete this ramble, what is it with coconut oil?  How many of us have the genetic lineage to claim that we are evolved for eating coconut oil?  Surely you would have to claim some more recent northern African or South East Asian  descent to be able to say we are used to that food.  Most of us spent an awful lot of years in cold old Europe with no sign what so ever of coconuts.

I know I still have a bunch more to read on this topic, so my views may change over time. But at first investigation this is where I sit.  Maybe I will find  some answers to my questions and I will discuss them in a future blog, or perhaps not, we'll just have to wait and see....

What is happening to my guts?

I'm sure at sometime at the beginning of this week I spied the again messy house with resigned loathing, because I do remember the thought crossing my mind, 'just how more messy could the house get if I just didn't do a thing for a whole week?'

Well I shouldn't have tempted fate.

I have spent most of the past week in bed and pretty much indisposed in the housework department.  But not out of gratuitous spiteful choice.  I already mentioned the cold I had and the sore back, well going for the trifecta, yesterday I threw in some weird tummy bug thing too.  Tuesday, Wednesday were devoted to the cold.  I had half of Thursday where I was okay, but it was my birthday.  By Thursday afternoon I was bedridden with my sore back and this extended to Friday and half of Saturday.  Just as the pain looked like it may have been improving I got half way through a banana and blueberry smoothie when I thought 'hmmmm not really enjoying this, I might not drink anymore.'

Within about an hour I had cramping pains in my guts, it was like the pain from my back had migrated forward to my gut area.  That last statement is really making me sound like a hypochondriac. Maybe it was just a case that the tummy pain was so bad, that the back pain diminished in comparison.  Knowing that Harry had had a nasty tummy bug just a few days ago, me catching a tummy bug was definitely a possibility.

I was just left wondering 'why me?'  Three maladies in one week, now that is hardly very fair, particularly a week that includes my birthday.

The cramping pains continued for a couple of hours with me not certain, when it eventually happened, which end the explosion was going to come from.  Without going into graphic detail the explosion was not quite the grand gut bug incessant vomit and diarrhoea affair that, based on the pain, I was expecting.  I did erupt out both ends but only relatively little.  It was mostly cramping and effort.  I still feel sore today in both my gut and my back which leaves me wondering whether there is some connection between the inexplicable back pain and a very stuck up crampy sort of gut bug.

Either way I've been incapacitated for the good part of a week.  I have done dishes and swept floors, so the whole "wonder what the house would look like if I just didn't do any housework for a week" experiment was a bit of a failure.  Of course what it does leave is an even bigger mess than the one I was lamenting at the beginning of last week and it still needs cleaning.  Oh where are the cleaning fairies when you need them?  Oh that's right, I think somehow when I wasn't looking I got designated as the cleaning fairy.  Bugger.  How do I get out of that one?  If I find the magic fairy cleaning wand I'll be sure to slip it under someone else's pillow while they are sleeping

Eyre The Forgotten Explorer

I have just finished reading the ebook, Eyre the Forgotten Explorer, that I downloaded from the local library.  Our library here in Coffs has recently started lending ebooks and what a fantastic idea it is.  So far their collection is quite small, but I am hoping that with the aid of technology that they have the capability to amass a truly enormous collection.

Only the other day I was searching for a book that I was interested in buying.  I found that I could purchase the hard copy for around $24 or the ebook for $17.  Even though the ebook version was cheaper I found that I had a real problem buying the book that way, and ended up buy a the hard copy.  My reasoning was that ebooks feel too insubstantial and like you don't really own them.  One little technological hiccough ( and let's face it they are reasonably common) and poof the book disappears.  That's $17 down the drain which is a substantial amount of money to get nothing.  I like the feel and the idea of having areal physical book on my book shelf so am prepared to pay the little extra for that.

That is not say, however, that I don't love ebooks.  I do and have amassed 1000's of them.  I bought a disk from ebay containing 1000's of classics (more than I could ever hope to read) and have been downloading or being gifted various ebooks over the course of the past two years.  I like that I can try before I buy.  If I like a book that's worthy of owning I will go out and get the hard copy.  But already my bookshelf is groaning with a large collection of dusty books and I find I need to be a bit more discerning about accumulating too many more. But like an addiction, I keep telling myself this and I just keep collecting more. Now with technology I fill up my bookshelves and my hard drives with more books than I can ever hope to read. But it's so much better to be spoilt for choice than to be bereft of reading matter.

You would think that someone with such a wealth of books and ebooks would not need to go near a library.  Not so.  I love them even more than bookshops because they are free and they have so many books.  It was while I was perusing the online catalogue of the local library, looking for a book that I was interested in, when I chose to checkout the ebook section.  More as an experiment to see how it all worked than a particular desire to read a certain book, I 'borrowed' Eyre the Forgotten Explorer.  It took a bit more mucking around and technology wrangling than I expected, but I managed to set my self up to become a regular ebook borrower.

The library runs its ebook borrowing through a third party, called wheelers.  The first step is to set up an Adobe ID.  This ID allows you to access the same ebook from up to 6 devices.  I also had to down load an app onto my tablet that could read the epub version of the books. Unfortunately the books are not available in my preferred kindle format.  So I downloaded Bluefire and synced it to my Adobe ID.  Then by logging into the ebook library using my normal library card number and password I could download ebooks to load for up to 28 days.  As it was my first time I more or less just randomly picked any book to get me started, hence, Eyre.

Given my week of feeling poorly with bad back and a cold virus, I got the book read in a very short time.  I must say that I enjoyed very much.  For a historical novel it was written very well in a very easy to read almost chatty format.  It was based on Eyre's writings, he was an extensive journaler and letter writer,  (he would probably make an enthusiastic blogger if he was alive today) and other public records.  It chronicles his life in Australia and his feats at trying to find grazing land around Adelaide, a route to central Australia and an overland route to Albany.  He had many dealings with the native aborigines and was often the first white man that they had seen, so he gives some fascinating insights to their lives and their customs.  He became quite adept at dealing with the indigenous population and was often called upon to settle disputes and maintain peace not only between whites and blacks but between warring tribes.  His explorations were superhuman in what he achieved while coming so close to death, due to lack of food and water, or altercations with some aboriginals, on a number of occasions.  In some parts of the book you are left thinking that truly, life is more amazing than fiction.  The parts I really liked the best, though, were where we got insight into the struggles caused by the complex dilemma of how the European and the indigenous population could co-exist.

With that ebook finished, I now need to go back and see what else there is to borrow.  Borrowing an ebook, just like a hard version of a library book gives you the opportunity to experience possibly a wider range of books than you would normally if you had to buy them.  In that way you can pick and choose and feel free to ditch a book if it is not to your taste.  A much better option than committing to buy before you try.

birthday, bots and a bad back

Today is my 44th birthday.  Evan has decided to celebrate it for me by travelling to Queensland and

having a rip roaring time at Dream World and White Water World theme parks.  I wont actually get to see him at all on my birthday.  Yesterday I handed him his spending money and sent him on his way to his mates place for a sleep over. Before he left he handed me a birthday present which I unwrapped.  It was a gorgeous purple necklace and matching earrings. 

I started the day in bed with a sleep in, can't complain about that.  Steve boiled eggs for breakfast and I made soy decaf ccinos for us.   Then we decided to hit up the beach for a walk with Ellie and the dog.  That was when the day started to take it's own course and not go according to plan.  On the way to the beach Ellie fell asleep in the car, thus skuttling the walk idea.  We still decided to drive onto the beach but decided to just hang around a short time to give the dog a bit of a run.  I figured that I would do a bit of yoga by the car to compensate for the walk.  I did a few rounds of salute the sun and a few warrior poses, not much really.   It's about as much as I get done at home when I get the notion to engage in a spot of yoga.  I am always full of good intentions, but struggle to find much time to devote to its regular practise.

There seemed little sense hanging around for too long and ruining our baby free time, so we jumped back in the car and headed home, via a quick stop at Coles.  I needed to pick up some Lucozade for Harry as he had been vomiting and suffering the runs for two days.  For all of its amazing claims on the front of the bottle: "isotonic performance fuel"; "Electrolyte drink"; "hydrates, refuels and restores better than water"; I was expecting the ingredient list to be slightly more exciting than what was essentially just sugar and water, glorified cordial, really.  Water, dextrose, maltodextrose, glucose syrup, acidity regulators (330,331), antioxidant (300), stabiliser (414), sweetener (955), colour (160a).  We had been the house of pestilence for a few days now.  Evan had a day off school on Monday, feeling very tired and sickly.  We blamed Sarah for bringing a cold home last week.  On Tuesday I came down with it and was extremely tired and achy all over.  I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday in bed.  Today I was finally starting to feel slightly better.....

Once we got home Steve set to making my delicious birthday cake and I decided to go shopping with Ellie. Mainly to get Ellie out of Steve's way so that he could perform his magic in the kitchen, but also because my parents in law Pat and Eric had sent me a gift voucher for Dymocks as a birthday present.  I figured now would be a pretty good time to go and choose myself a book.  When I arrived at the Plaza I parked the car in one of the furtherest parking spots with the intention of getting at least a little bit exercise seeing as I'd missed out on the beach walk.  I pushed Ellie in the pram to Dymocks and we went straight to the kids section.  There was a group of three little kiddie couches that I knew Ellie would just love.  So I unclipped her from the pram and lifted her out only to feel my back go ping.  Ouch.  I placed her on the floor and she immediately sat on the couches, lounging back and looking very pleased with herself.

Meanwhile  I was in great pain.  Any movement was causing twinges, so I sat on the floor with her for a while before I managed to coax her back into the pram.  Walking around the Plaza was quite uncomfortable, but I was hoping if I walked around for a bit it would soon ease.  I visited Woollies and Big W but the pain was not improving.  So I returned to the car, all the way over on the far side of the car park.

Sarah, Harry and Steve gave me their pressies when I arrived home.  A handbag from Sarah, a wallet from Steve and a book from Harry.  Harry's was accompanied by a beautiful poem:

Dear blossoming mother,

 

whose beautiful, green eyes

spark with love,

 

As flowers sprout so do you,

 

All the love in the world cannot

compare to yours,

 

So this is why we love you.

 

Very beautiful and touching, I just wish I wasn't in so much pain to enjoy it.  Who would have thought that a slight bend and twist that I do numerous times a day could inflict so much pain?  It left me feeling 104 instead of 44 and necessitated me spending the rest of the day and night trying to find a comfortable position in which to rest.  Sitting seemed to be the least comfortable, standing slightly less, and laying on my back the best, but only if I didn't need to move or get up.

 

We had take away Indian for dinner.  We were going to try out the new Ethiopian restaurant that had recently opened.  It reminded me of days back in Canberra when Steve and I were dating.  There was an Ethiopian restaurant that we went to a few times in Civic.  You had no utensils so had to eat with your hand (can't remember now if it was right or left).  With absent and sick children we thought we'd leave that experience for another day.  The Indian food was delicious and was only surpassed by the amazing love heart cake that Steve made for me.

Chocolate and Orange cake with syrup and dairy free ganache

 

I was very spoilt and well cared for by my gorgeous family and it would have been a wonderful day if I hadn't been rendered almost incapacitated by my back.  I even managed to rid myself of all my Evony accounts, so am officially free of the game.  Now that is an excellent feeling.  After about 3 years straight I can now turn off my laptops and rest them when they are not in use.  Before this they had been running bots for 24 hours a day seven days a week.  What a relief to not have to do that anymore.  Yippee, a very good birthday present to myself, no more Evony. YAY.



 



Toy library may close

After excitedly joining the Coffs Harbour Toy Library last month, I have since found out that they look like they have to close because of lack of funds.

After speaking with one of the other toy library members I found out that for the past couple of years the committee have approached council for help with paying the rent and have applied for grants, but have gotten nowhere.  Even inviting each counsellor out to have a look at the toy library only resulted in two of them bothering to turn up.  What a shame that the council is so apathetic about a service that provides such a wonderful resource to Coffs Coast families.

In the month that I had the toys that I borrowed, Ellie has learned to walk.  She was just starting to take a few tentative steps, and I thought a few 'push along' toys would be good for her to gain her confidence.  This was the reason that I first signed up at the toy library.  It seemed silly and wasteful to buy a toy that would suit a developmental stage that she would only be in for such a short time.
On Friday we returned our first lot of toys and were able to borrow a whole lot more that now better suit her as she moves to a new developmental stage of walking independently.

Here is a letter that I have drafted and intend to send to Council.  I don't know if it will do any good, but the more people who speak up, hopefully they will start to take notice.  Families of Coffs Harbour definitely deserve a better deal.

How can the Coffs Harbour City Council sit back and allow the Coffs Coast community to lose the fantastic resource of the Toy Library?

The Toy Library has been running for 30 years and has served generations of Coffs Coast children.  It has enabled families to access a variety of quality toys at very low cost. By being able to borrow toys relevant to a child’s developmental stage of growth, the toy library ticks the boxes of being environmentally, socially, and economically responsible. Yet now, we are at risk of losing this service due a lack of funds.  The volunteer and membership base that runs and pays for the service can no longer meet its rising costs.

 

The Coffs Harbour Toy library attracts no outside funding.  It is financed through the levying of membership fees upon its members and volunteers.  Unfortunately, membership fees can barely cover rent let alone the purchase and repair of toys and general running costs.  The toy library now needs a commitment of funding from an outside source in order to ensure its survival. We in Coffs Harbour cannot afford to lose this wonderful resource.  For a relatively small investment council could reap huge dividends for the children of Coffs Harbour.  The library is already established, with a large base of toys that can be borrowed, and is staffed by volunteers. By meeting running costs and rent council could ensure the toy library’s continued service.

The toy library benefits the Coffs coast in three key ways:

Environmentally it is a winner. We often pay lip service to the mantra of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, yet here the toy library is an embodiment of this principle. By allowing families to borrow toys that suit the current developmental stage of their children, they are:

Reducing the amount of consumable products they are purchasing, which the children then out grow and then are inevitably thrown away, ending up as landfill.  Has the council looked at just how much of their landfill is comprised of discarded plastic toys?

Reuse of the toys occurs for many more years than would be the case if they were purchased by individuals for individual use. The toys are cared for, stored correctly and repaired where necessary to ensure their longevity and their availability to countless numbers of borrowers.  The toys get to fulfil a long useful life that lasts longer than they would if used by just one or two children.

Recycle, families can donate quality toys to be used by the Toy library.  These toys then can enter the cycle of reuse through lending to members.

 

Socially and economically the toy library contributes huge benefits to Coffs Harbour families. Coffs Harbour is notably a low socio economic area.  What better way to help families that are struggling financially than to have a toy lending service?  If we didn’t already have a service like this, it would be something that council would need to consider setting up in order to help children from disadvantaged families. Council has a responsibility to provide services for all ages and to provide opportunities for disadvantaged families to access relevant quality services. The toy library is one such service, and it is important to all Coffs Coast families.  It represents the type of service that the council should be obliged to provide. Yet here we are not even asking for it to be entirely funded and run by council, but for council to just contribute a regular amount of ongoing funding to ensure the service’s continuance.

 

I urge the Coffs Harbour City Council to take a serious look at the issue of funding the Coffs Harbour Toy Library service.  The toy library represents great value for council’s money because it achieves the triple bottom line of environmental, social and economic accountability.  Coffs Coast, in particular, but the council, more broadly cannot afford to let this service fold.  A commitment to regular funding or a viable solution to finding a low rent facility needs to become a council priority.

 

 

 

Emma's Sourdough banana bread

Sourdough Starter

I have been experimenting with getting myself a sourdough starter mixture happening.  It has been going for about a week now.  I started with just 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of filtered water.  These I mixed together and left to sit on my bench.  Everyday, just like a pet, it requires feeding.  So each day I add another 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water.  I mix and cover with cling wrap and leave it to sit on my bench.

So far it's going great, it's smelling pleasant and has a small amount of 'bubbly' type activity.  I am not getting any amazing doubling in size results like some people report, though our weather has been a little cooler of late.

Many sourdough starter recipes call for you, from around day 3 or 4,  to discard most of the basic starter mix each day before feeding it.  Being one to hate waste, I decided that as my bowl was getting a bit full of starter mix, I had better cook something with it.  Waste not want not.  And I figured that as there was a bit of bubbling happening that there should at least be some raising properties in the mix.

Here's my (made up on the spot) recipe for banana bread:

Emma's Sourdough Banana Bread

 

 

Ingredients

6 Overripe bananas, mashed

1 tablespoon of mixed spice

1 1/2 cups of sourdough starter

2 - 2 1/2 cups of spelt flour

1/4 cup of light olive oil

1-2 teaspoons of bicarb soda

 

Mix together all of the ingredients except the bicarb soda and about 1 cup of the spelt flour.  Cover and leave in a warm spot for a number of hours to prove.

When you are ready to cook it, heat the oven up to hot, about 200 - 220 degrees Celsius. Knead in the bicarb soda and the extra flour.  It will give you a fairly moist dough, much more moist than standard bread.

Place the dough into a greased and lined loaf tin.

 

Bake for approximately 45mins to 1 hour.  The timing depends on your oven and how much moisture is in the mix.  The level of humidity in the air, the wetness of the starter and the relative ripeness of the bananas will all affect the mixture's 'wetness'.  So the amount of flour added and the time and the temperature that the mix is cooked for will all need to be varied, so keep an eye on it.

 

This recipe has no added sugar.  The sweetness is from the ripe bananas.  Given how long it needs to cook, I don't recommend adding sweeteners, or it will be more likely to burn.  For my taste the end product was delicious and plenty sweet enough.  For those (like the kids) who want it sweeter I encourage you to spread the sliced loaf with butter ( or tahini) and honey.  I had mine either plain, with butter or with my homemade soy yoghurt, (which I Greek-afied by draining off the whey overnight to produce a thick creamy yoghurt)

 

You could certainly add walnuts to this recipe if you liked.

 

 



 

Emma's Tomato Salsa

The basic ingredients for a tomato salsa recipe are pretty simple:
Tomato
red onion
olive oil
salt and pepper
lime juice

I wanted to make a tomato salsa last night to have with our burgers and as an alternative to tomato sauce.  So I took the basic salsa recipe and turned it into this:

 

Emma's Tomato Salsa

 

Ingredients

3 tomatoes roughly chopped
1/4 red onion finely diced
1/4 red capsicum finely diced
1/4 zucchini finely diced
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon each of fresh basil, fresh mint and fresh oregano, very finely chopped
1-2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup light olive oil
pinch of salt
grind of fresh black pepper
a few drops of tobacco sauce

Mix altogether in a bowl and serve. Delicious.
The flavours develop and improve by the next day too. (If you have any left over)

Notes

I didn't really measure anything because I'm not that sort of cook.  I tend to throw a bit of this and a dash of that in and go by taste.  So my measurements listed above are a guesstimate of how much I thought I used.  The best idea is to go by taste, that way you can make it to your own preference.

I used zucchini because I have a surplus in my garden, so am finding excuses to slip them into everything at the moment.  They add bulk to the recipe without noticeably effecting the flavour.

I added the garlic as an afterthought.  My daughter came home from school sick with a cold, so I decided to throw in garlic for its antibacterial properties, to help her fight her bug.  It does add to the flavour, which is good for me because I love garlic. it could be easily omitted if preferred, however.

The fresh herbs happened to be the ones growing prolifically in my garden at the moment.  It could also be made using other fresh herbs such as rosemary, chives and coriander.  I am not usually a big fan of mint, but I was pleasantly surprised how well the hint of mint went with this recipe.  You could also use dried herbs and spices in this recipe. Suggestions are mixed herbs, coriander, cumin, or paprika.

I literally put a dash of balsamic vinegar in, I'm am guessing it was somewhere in the order of one to two tablespoons.  It's an area where you can adjust to taste. Similarly the olive oil was more a slug than a measured amount. So again the quantity is a guess.  How much you put in would depend on how wet you would like your salsa to be.  The light oil doesn't impart an overly dominant flavour like a virgin olive oil would.

I used Himalayan rock salt simply because it is what I had in the cupboard.

The tabasco sauce was to give the salsa a bit of a kick.  Obviously, how many dashes you put in is up to how spicy you like your food to be.

Finally, this salsa was absolutely delicious.  For my next salsa I'd like to try a fermented version.  It would have to be pretty good though to beat the amazing fresh flavours in this one.