On 9/8/04 9:44 am, in article
[email protected], "Arthur Clune"
<
[email protected]> wrote:
> Jeremy Collins <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> : If you're going to use mince, brown it in a hot dry
> : pan first, and pour away the fat.
>
> Personally I've stopped worrying about (most forms of) fat. My current diet
> aims are
> (in no order)
>
> 1) Low salt
My dad got told to go on a low salt diet to reduce his blood pressure. So my
mum (who is very much a 'cook from raw' person) sorted all the recipes to
exclude salt. After a month they tested him and couldn't believe the low
sodium level. A lot of that has spilled over into my cooking too.
> 2) No trans-fats
Indeed..
> 3) Lots of fresh veg and fruit
My kids have been nicknamed the fruit bats.. We eat so much fruit and veg it
is almost unbelievable. They'd rather go for a piece of fruit than a bag of
crisps.
> 4) No ready made meals (to ensure 1+2)
I find most 'ready meals' to be absolutely minging and only worthy of
binning. If I want a ready meal I'll cook in advance and freeze it.
> 5) Good quality organic or not-buggered around with ingredients
Hard to find. I've little worries about pesticides but do go for food miles,
trying to reduce the number of miles my meal has travelled. This has led to
some interesting things.
Don't buy foreign fruit when UK fruit is in season
Don't buy foreign honey (this means I have to get down to the farmers market
to get the local stuff)
When the allotment isn't producing (food miles about 0.5) I get deliveries
from the local organic farm who do a subscription thing (food miles about
30).
Don't buy tiger prawns, ever.
Free range chicken. The local farmers market is a good source of high
quality meat. We are starting to move to a less frequent but higher quality
meat usage.
> So I alternate having stuff like chicken (the sort that's not padded with
> pork and water...) with cider and cream cooked with butter + olive oil
Mmm!
> (not exactly low fat) with stuff like pasta + veg + pesto + herbs (very
> low fat)
Not with the olive oil and so on. But it's good fat ;-)
>
> I just avoid eating too much and very rarely have pudding. Or cake.
My wife and daughter don't eat sucrose so puddings have to be a bit more
inventive. (mostly fruit and yoghurt.) We can do good crumbles and pastry
(apple pie, rhubarb crumble etc. but this takes a degree of planning.
> Reading "Not on the Label" by Felicity Lawrence is a good, if depressing,
> thing if you want to know about the horrors that are in a "low-fat chicken
> swandwich" from most shops and much more besides.
That is one scary book, and very eye opening. Our canteen at the lab has
started to offer fairtrade tea and coffee, so I am trying to be a lot more
aware of what my purchasing decisions mean in a global context (hint: what
you do at the supermarket does affect the lives of people around the world).
Teh craziest thing was the attempt to get the EU to fund a massive
irrigation campaign so that new tracts of land can be destroyed to produce
tasteless vegetables with a low shelf price for the supermarkets.
Essentially this amounts to strip mining the countryside.
...d
