Don’t get bored with healthy food
Healthy doesn’t have to mean boring.
For me there is nothing worse than eating bland uninteresting food.
If I don’t enjoy my meals then I often start looking for something else to eat that will satisfy my taste buds.
Cooking from scratch means that you can make colourful, interesting and tasty dishes. I don’t see myself as an amazing cook but I get real satisfaction from making something simple that looks appetising and colourful.
The first thing I look for in a recipe is time factor. I very rarely want to spend more than half an hour in the kitchen.
Secondly, do I have the ingredients and if I don’t can I substitute one of them for something that I do have? For example, if it is a recipe that uses pork mince and I have beef or turkey mince, would that work for me?
Next is where to get great healthy recipes and ideas. I use our Weight Watchers cookery books, our new book is called No Count and I’m halfway through it already.
For the last three weeks every meal I’ve cooked has been from this great book. The recipes are so easy and don’t involve using obscure ingredients that I don’t have.
My favourite so far is a chicken paella recipe which was a great hit when I made it for visitors last week.
Google is also a great place to find recipes and ideas, you just type in what you are looking for and an assortment of recipes with photos and star ratings will come up for you to choose from.
Most recipes can be adapted to make them more healthy. If a recipe calls for oil to be used then I would substitute by using an oil spray. For cream I would use either zero per cent crème fraiche, Quark or zero per cent fat Greek yoghurt.
Bananas are a fantastic sweetener. Recently I’ve been making a banana loaf using very ripe bananas.
I find that riper the bananas are then the sweeter they become, this means that I can use a very small amount of sweetener in place of the sugar in the recipe.
Stevia is a sweetener which comes from a plant and it comes in powdered and tablet forms.
I’ve also been known to use frozen cherries in place of sultanas in my loaf, this adds colour and interest and also brings down the sugar content of the recipe without compromising on taste.
Most people eat the same amount of food every day so just by making a few tweaks an unhealthy diet can very easily become a much healthier one.
If you need some help making healthy food choices, find your nearest meeting at www. weightwatcherslocal.co.uk