Autism And Our Eating Habits

This lasagne was in my freezer (now in the bin) most of the ingredients are recognisable, but this small portion is high in salt, sugar and fat, which will be hydrogenated, see previous post.

"To better adress the explosion of autism, it's critical we consider how unhealthy diets interfere with the body's ability to eliminate toxic chemicals, and ultimately our risk for developing long-term health problems like autism"
-Dr David Wallinga

I spent ten years working in special needs education and of all the gorgeous children I worked with, the burning question was always: why are some children born with special needs?

Many of the children I worked with had an autistic spectrum disorder, studies have shown that in the 1980s around one in 2,000 children had autism, in recent years this changed to one in 150, however, autism has steadily risen and today it is estimated one in 68 children has ASD. Getting to the cause, or causes of autism is proving difficult.

Some evidence suggests a variety of environmental triggers as a cause or contributing factor to the development of ASD. Pesticides or pollutants that have built up in the environment and vaccines are areas of concern. The immune system functioning of the mother is under investigation as to whether this plays a role in the child's development of autism. And while some evidence suggests that genetics play a role in autism, 90% of cases are still a puzzle to the experts.

In yesterday's post I wrote about trans fats which are just the tip of the iceberg! Processed foods contain phosphates and GMOs which have been linked to many health problems and are prolific in processed food. Excess consumption of these poisons can permanently alter the composition and function of our intestinal flora. Our body processes natural foods completely differently than it does refined, processed and heavily modified

We know that foods high in trans fats, sugar and chemicals are directly linked to negative emotions and consequently behaviour, so, are our eating habits affecting our unborn children? Unfortunately mass food production is a global money spinner and it seems that our health is of little consequence in the grand scheme of things.

Jamie Oliver has been a trail blazer with regard to junk food and our children's health, he's taken on the government, food manufacturers and fast food restaurants such as McDonald's! But we as as a society have to stop being the unwitting victims of being drip fed a cocktail of chemicals.

This is a highly controversial subject, it certainly is debatable and I am not one to shy away from controversy if it is for the better good, it's certainly food for thought!

'If we're not willing to settle for junk living, we certainly shouldn't settle for junk food!'
-Sally Edwards


Love Donna xxxxxxx

Death By Trans Fats

I have always eaten butter having never liked the taste of any of the margarine alternatives. However, we've been led to believe that butter is bad for us and the market has been swamped with spreads which claim to 'taste like butter' or are low fat, leading us to believe they are healthier.

Butter is a dairy product made by churning cream or milk, it is a good source of vitamin A and has been eaten for centuries. Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys, however, it killed the turkeys which was probably due to the fact that this unnatural concoction is extremely high in trans-fats! Trans-fats triples the risk of heart disease, increases cholesterol, increases the risk of cancer up to five times, decreases the immune system and insulin response!

Margarine, my dear people, is one molecule away from being plastic and shares 27 ingredients with paint!

You can conduct your own experiment, leave an opened tub of margarine outside in a dry, shady area and you will find after a couple of days it won't start to go off, it won't smell differently; because it has no nutritional value nothing will grow on it, and perhaps most shocking of all, no flies will touch it!

The problem is, as you rush to throw your tub of 'luverly jubberly buttery' away, that many of our foods contain trans and hydrogenated fats. White bread is highly processed and contains varying amounts of hydrogenated oils, pre prepared meals are loaded with hydrogenated oils, frozen meals and frozen pizzas, most ice cream and fast food are all loaded with hydrogenated oils!

At the risk of sounding dramatic, we are like lambs to the slaughter, sleepwalking our way into ill health by eating processed food! Quite often, and quite recently, I ponder on whether it is really worth writing a food blog, after all I'm not a professional chef or a celebrity, just a middle aged suburban housewife with some rather lofty opinions. But my passion has thus far overruled my self doubt and I hope those of you following find food Information, as well as recipes, interesting.

One of my favourite poems as a child was 'The King's breakfast' by A A Milne, do google it it's just fabulous!

'Foods high in bad fats, sugar and chemicals are directly linked to many negative emotions and behaviours, whereas whole, natural foods such as fruit, vegetables, grains and legumes-contribute to greater energy and positive emotions.'
-Marilu Henner

Love Donna xxxx

Roll Out The Barrel We'll Have A Barrel Of Fun!#Emsworth

                                             Homemade slipper pie

On Saturday Glenn and I joined our friends Kim and Linda for an evening in Emsworth. For a small town of rather less than 10,000 inhabitants, Emsworth, tucked away in the south east corner of Hampshire on the shores of Chichester Harbour is remarkable for having nine pubs!

Although there are 60,000 pubs still in existence in the UK today, four are closing daily. In London the number of lost pubs are 2,977 and here in Hampshire 792, these figures were last updated 6 April 2014.

A threat to the future of traditional pubs is also a threat to countless social groups within Britain that thrive because of their 'local'. Pubs throughout history have been central to society and whole communities can grow around a particular pub.

All but one pub in Emsworth serve food and each has its own distinctive character. The lord Raglan, the only waterside pub situated on the edge of the village overlooking the river Ems and the slipper mill pond, is a charming 18th century establishment. When we arrived on a wet and windy Saturday evening we were greeted by a roaring log fire, we cosied up in a corner by the inglenook fireplace in the beautiful oak beamed bar to study the menu.

                                               The lovely proprietor Sally Mahoney

Some pubs have a long tradition of serving food, dating back to their historic usage as inns and hotels where travellers would stay. Many pubs now have extensive menus serving anything from Thai green curry to goulash, never a good sign in my eyes as you can guarantee a long and complicated menu invariably involves frozen/microwaved food. Traditionally pub grub was about the strength of ingredients and the simplicity of a well cooked dish, these included hotpot, pies, fish and chips, bangers and mash, roasts and ploughman's with not a moussaka in sight!

The lord Raglan enjoys a great local reputation for its food and I for one wasn't disappointed!

                                       Pork belly in a Juniper berry sauce
   

We decided to opt for the extremely generous cheese platters after our main course

Followed by Irish coffees

                                                          A bit of local history

                               And a gentle reminder if you've had a few too many!

I believe that for large numbers of people, great British pubs like the lord Raglan provide the chief centre of a social life within the community, along with home cooked food, traditional ales and good wine, such pubs are an ideal gathering place for rollicking thinkers and musicians and should always be part of our heritage!

'When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England'
-Hilaire Belloc

Support your local pub!
Love Donna xxxxxxx

                                   

Les Rillettes

Whenever we are in Spain our next door neighbour Tony will cook a meal for us, he goes to great lengths to cook something special and has emailed me to say we can look forward to 'rin ran' on our next visit. Now, I could google this of course but it would spoil the surprise, rather like sneaking a peak at Christmas presents, but I have to say I'm intrigued!

On our last visit Tony treated us to lamb rashers see post: lust for life, which were delicious. Our first course was rillettes which Tony has sent over from France. Rillettes are a preparation of meat similar to pate, originally made with pork, the meat is salted heavily and cooked slowly in fat until tender enough to be shredded then cooled with enough fat to form a paste.

Rillettes can be made from either pork, goose, duck, chicken or anchovies, I enjoyed this as a starter but actually I would be happy to eat rillettes with lovely toasted artisan bread, pickled chillies or cornichons and served with a good bottle of wine, as a main meal.

Rillettes de canard

Recipe
Serves 2
1 duck carcass, or 2 duck legs
200ml dry white wine
100ml water
Sea salt
Black pepper
1 clove garlic, crushed, peeled and chopped
1 pinch allspice
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme

Cut the duck into manageable pieces and place in a saucepan
Add all the remaining ingredients, cover with a tight fitting lid and simmer gently for 1 hour 30 minutes, stirring frequently
Check the liquid level and add more wine if needed
By this time the duck meat should have seperated from the bones
Remove the bay leaf, thyme and bones
Shred the meat
Spoon the  mixture into a pot or jar, top with any juices, cool and refrigerate

For the classic pork rillettes replace duck with skinned and boned belly pork.

                                                          Tony tucking in!

The quantity for this recipe is only for two people, I would generally triple or quadruple the ingredients and store in sterilised jars in the fridge.

'Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing or wood carving or music'
-Julia Child

Love Donna xxxxxxxx

Don't Get Yourself Into A Stew

Everyone eats stew in some form or other! Stew dates back to ancient times and basically is any combination of two or more foods simmered in a liquid. Every culture has its own variation, the common thread is that most stews originally consisted of accessible and inexpensive ingredients and if meat was a component it was usually a tougher cut suitable for slow cooking.

I don't know about you but I tend to stick to the same old, same old when cooking a stew, invariably a Bourguignon or chasseur, however, I've been doing some research and I'm amazed at how many stews there are out there.

I was going to crack a joke about putting random ingredients together and taking 'pot luck' when it dawned on me that the etymology probably derived from that very process......doh! Sure enough pot luck, luck of what's in the pot, first appeared in 16th century England. This was also a common term used by Irish women who would gather to cook, with only one pot between them they would cook whatever ingredients they happened to have that day.

Where stew is concerned you really have carte blanche to combine any ingredients but I quess for many it's having the confidence to know which flavours work well together. Back to Masterchef, the cookery show I was talking about in a previous post, the common problem is that the contestants quite often combine flavours that the judges don't feel belong together. It's all a matter of personal taste but I guess if you've got some meat, which isn't cheap, you're not going to want to take a chance experimenting with flavour combinations if you know vegetables and wine work for you.

I on the other hand love experimenting, I would say nine out of ten dishes work and although on occasion I've seen Glenn and Bert grimace when I've served up a particularly strange combination, like my roast dinner curry, for the most part my meals are pretty good!

The thing I love about stew is that throughout history it has been a community dish, mulligan stew was often made by itinerant workers around a camp fire, cholent- a traditional Sabbath stew would be taken to the town bakers by Jewish families in individual pots to slow cook overnight in the baker's oven. In 1600, king Henry 1V of France declared: 'I want that no peasant in my Kingdom be so poor that he cannot have a poule au pot on Sundays.' To this day 'pot-au-feu' is regularly eaten in France.

On a recent visit to my friend Clarrie's I entered her house to the wonderful aromas of her beef stew

I knew I had plenty of vegetables at home that needed using up so after leaving Clarrie's I headed straight to my butcher's for some free range topside of beef. As I've said several times there really is no comparison between free range meat and the factory produced variety in either taste or quality (or morality.) Of course you get less meat for your money but quality is always better than quantity! In my stew I added lentils to bulk it out and they worked beautifully, they cost only pence for a whole packet and with the added vegetables my stew fed three of us for two nights!

Beef stew

Recipe
1.4kg free range topside of beef, cut into cubes
3 onions, roughly chopped
Vegetables of your choice, I used parsnips, carrots and potatoes
200g lentils, cooked according to packet instructions
Olive oil
1 chilli, chopped (optional)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed, peeled and chopped
1 bottle red burgundy wine
2 sprigs of thyme
2 bay leaves

Heat a generous glug of oil in a pan
Add just enough meat to cover the bottom and brown evenly on a high heat, cook meat in batches

Add onion and cook for 4 minutes
Add vegetables, garlic, chilli, herbs and lentils

Cook for 5 minutes, add wine, transfer to either an oven proof dish, cover and place in a preheated oven 180c/gas 4 for 2 hours, alternatively place in slow cooker for 4 hours

When cooked the meat should be glossy and soft as butter, this is a meal in itself however, you could serve the stew with crusty bread

'Talk of joy: there may be better things than beef stew and baked potatoes- there may be?'
Ray Stannard Baker

Love Donna.........and Clarrie! Xxxxxxx

If Heaven Has A Taste..........

                                'Eggs may be dressed up in a multiplicity of ways
                                 But seldom more relished in any form than in
                                 A well made, expeditiously served omelette.'
                                 - Eliza Acton

You know sometimes the beauty of simple ingredients can be eclipsed by what we can now say is an era of plenty, pretty much everything is available to us, from ingredients from around the world, to fast food and takeaways. It was a different story when I was a child, my mother shopped on a daily basis, she bought what was available in the butchers, could only buy seasonal fruit and veg, and a loaf of bread had to be bought daily as it would be hard the following day. We had a fish and chip shop but a takeaway meal was a luxury rather than the norm and we certainly didn't graze on chocolate, cakes and crisps in between meals, again these were rare treats.

Eggs were always included in mum's repertoire on a weekly basis, I loved her humble pie, a soufflé of sorts, the recipe of which went to the grave with her sadly. Eggs were a cheap alternative to meat and fish and to this day I still love egg and homemade chips!

Children being what they are, we were fussy about particular foods, however, the mantra was: you've got two choices, eat your dinner or go without! There was no back up supply of ready meals and you ate what you were given. My cousin Stephen didn't like eggs as a little boy so my ingenious aunt came up with the idea of serving him an omelette in the guise of a 'western'. Stephen 'the cowboy' was duped every time!

               From left: Stephen, Matthew and my brother David, the cowboys!

The sensual pleasure of eating belongs to 'everyday' life and my mother and mother's everywhere spent time ensuring their meagre rations were lovingly transformed into delicious meals. An omelette or tortilla is an inexpensive dish to make, however, I have eaten jooshed up omelettes with all sorts of added ingredients, smoked salmon, fresh herbs, wild mushrooms............ many restaurants now consider their omelettes and soufflés as a luxury meal to be served with a seasonal salad and a good bottle of wine.

I often make Bert a quick omelette as a stop-gap when he's rushing between work, football, the gym and god alone knows where, consequently I had photos on file. But writing this post got my gastric juices flowing and mid post I've just stopped to make myself a cheese omelette. I'm glad I did because it reminded me of how comforting and delicious this simple 3 egg dish really is!

Omelette

Recipe
Per person
2-3 free range eggs
Butter
Oil
Salt and pepper
Grated cheese

Break eggs into a bowl, season and combine
On a medium heat, warm a mixture of butter and oil, a teaspoon of each
Turn heat up, when butter is foaming, pour the eggs into the pan

Now tilt the pan to and fro spreading the eggs evenly over the pan
After 5 seconds a bubbly frill will appear around the edge, using a spoon draw the edge of the omelette into the centre, the liquid egg will fill the space, tip the pan the other way and do the same thing

When there is only a small amount of liquid left add cheese

Now speed is of the essence, flip one side of the omelette over the other and tip onto a plate, serve immediately!

An omelette will continue cooking even when removed from the heat, it's imperative that you don't cook it dry, an omelette should be light and squidgy there is nothing worse than the texture of an overcooked omelette, much like eating an old school rubber.

Alternatively and for a more substantial omelette you could first fry off some thinly sliced potatoes and add to your egg mixture

Next time you're stuck for something to eat, rustle up an omelette, you won't be disappointed!

'Oh god above, if heaven has a taste it must be eggs with butter and salt, and after eggs is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?'
-Frank McCourt

Love Donna xxxx

Masterchef-Cooking Doesn't Get Any Easier Than This!

Last week saw the start of a new series of 'Masterchef', now celebrating its 10th anniversary the show is still popular and as I've said before one of my favourite cookery programmes. This series is for amateur contestants and will be followed later in the year with the celebrity version which brings me to my favourite contestant of all time: Janet Street Porter!

Janet took part in the 2013 celebrity masterchef series and certainly lived up to her reputation as being a stroppy, opinionated force to be reckoned with! In her own words Janet is 'The queen of recycling and leftovers' a woman very much after my own heart! Whilst other contestants delivered dishes such as: sous vide sea trout, scallop mousse, fennel confit and smoked mussel cream sauce, Janet set to with a roadkill pheasant!

Masterchef is great as a light entertainment TV programme, however if you are a novice cook this programme is more likely to put you off cooking than encourage you!  I have been asked why I haven't applied to be a contestant by several friends, well let me tell you, I don't cook like this show demands! I mean come on! My hotch-potch pies hardly measure up to vanilla miso yellow tail with cavolo nero or kyushu-style pork ramen with truffled lobster gyoza! And heaven forbid if my presentation, which invariably involves dribbles on plates, burnt bits and no precise stacking of vegetables, should come under the radar of John Torode or Gregg- bootiful buttery base- Wallace.

Janet wasn't born to cook and infact didn't learn until she was twenty, she says: 'food is about taste, texture and well sourced ingredients, and cooking is not an opportunity to make a climbing frame out of vegetables or building blocks out of meat.' Janet never minces her words and in her article in the Daily Mail this Monday wrote an interesting article about modern day sin, hilariously, and spot on In my opinion she cites: telling others how to live their lives, from dieting to divorce. Pretending you're interested in your relatives (I'd go one further and add friends too) when you're not. The modern sin of fake concern. Texting and the use of phones at meal times (again I would add to that, when in company!) And REFUSING TO LEARN TO COOK, to which I say here here!

So, if you are following masterchef don't be fooled into thinking you're inadequate because you can't knock up a quince compote croustades with a caramel cage, pistachio kulfi, coconut sorbet and berry coulis. By the same token don't throw your hands in the air and say you can't cook. I hope my recipes are an inspiration to you, I know that they are easily achievable, affordable and delicious and with a slight play on masterchef's much quoted slogan: 'cooking doesn't get any easier than this'

You know every now and then I do serve up a dish that takes me by surprise, this next recipe was sensational yet I suspect it would not meet with John or Gregg's approval. I combined a simple puttanesca sauce with salmon (actually Italians often include pieces of tuna) but because the sauce is salty, piquant and hot, not a genteel sauce but coarse and robust- John and Gregg would say it was too overpowering for the fish. Puttanesca is normally served with pasta, however I served mine on mashed potatoes and the combination of fantastic flavours, wonderful textures and even the rugged presentation, made it restaurant worthy. This dish is as easy to make as a cup of tea and I promise you it was divine!

Salmon puttanesca

Recipe
4 salmon fillets, cut into pieces
2 cloves garlic, crushed
I red chilli, chopped
8 anchovy fillets
4 tablespoons olive oil
800g chopped tomatoes, tinned or fresh
100g olives

Warm garlic, chilli and anchovies in a pan with oil, stir and cook for 2 minutes until anchovies start to disintegrate

Place salmon pieces in pan, turn up heat and add tomatoes and olives, simmer gently for 20 minutes

Meanwhile rapidly boil some peeled potatoes and when cooked mash with a splash of milk and knob of butter, season
Dish potato onto plate with a generous serving of puttanesca

This was me on a 'surpassing myself' day with very little effort involved, I will warn you this isn't a timid dish, it's big and gutsy and demands boldness in the cook and a love of piquant flavours by the diner, I'm sure you'll love it!

'Sometimes I've looked at a plate of food and wondered if it wouldn't look better as a hat'
- Janet Street-Porter

Love Donna xxx