Every one a coconut.

After the coconut milk had been made,  I still had no inclination to get to “work”, and besides, I was technically in the middle of home school. So while I listened to the girls reading, I made ice cream and macaroons.

The ice cream was a big hit and super easy:

• 1 banana


• 1 cup of coconut milk


• as much vanilla essence as you like (or none at all – I used just shy of a teaspoon)


• honey (I used aboout 1.5 tablespoons, and found it rather sweet)

Blend everything well in a food processor, then freeze. This amount of mixture made six ice lollies, and froze reasonably fast. It was delicious but I think next time I will take it out of the freezer and beat it a couple of times to get the crystals out. If chocolate was allowed on the SCD I would definitely dunk the ice lollies in melted chocolate. So much of nice.

The macaroons were less successful. I’ve made macaroons many times and while I’m no Daniela, they’ve always been edible and in most cases people ask for more.

Not today.

I think I hadn’t squeezed enough coconut milk out of the coconut, and I also substituted honey for sugar, so almost immediately my light and fluffy egg whites swirled into slightly separated strangeness. I thought a tablespoon of macadamia nut butter would help to reconstitute the mass into something that would sort-of hold together, but that was a mistake and I knew that before I even opened the jar.

It wasn’t all bad, because after 20 minutes of baking, the macaroons began to resemble the correct consistency. I let them cool, scraped them into a bowl, and formed the lot into 9 little balls. Baking these yielded something … well … something. But it’s edible. And you don’t need a spoon.

I won’t post the recipe until I have one that works.

Oh the depth of wickedness I have plumbed!

I have a very sweet tooth. It’s not a good thing, since sugar tends to make me squirly. (Although I am assured by my fans that it’s most amusing to watch!). I love chocolate. I loved fudge. I love condensed milk.

Fortunately, my allergies have been a strong deterrent. The sugar makes me squirly, as I’ve mentioned. Dairy does unkind things to my complexion, and the combination does both, with a side order of twitchy headache. It’s a good thing, because without symptoms I’d be gigantic. In fact, part of me is convinced that God got tired of trying to answer my prayer for will-power, so He gave me allergies instead. Effective.

Until today.

Dairy-free condensed milk. Toffee-like and delicious.That’s because a simple and poorly-intentioned Google search revealed the key to dairy-free desert nirvana: a simple recipe for making your own condensed milk! Oh wow. So I made some. Since I was experimenting with ingredients, I made less than the recipe suggested, but I will confess that as I write this, scarcely two hours since I started the experiment, there’s precious little of the gooey, toffee-coloured deliciousness left.

The original recipe can be found here, but this is what I did. (Heads up: this is an easy snack, but not a quick one).

Ingredients

• 1 litre dairy-free milk. I used soya milk, although I imagine rice or almond milk would work too.


• 1 cup granulated sugar -greatly reduced from the recipes I found online (can also use brown sugar). I totally used thick treacly sugar for this … *sigh* … Next time I might xylitol or even, if I’m feeling particularly adventurous, stevia.


• 1 tablespoon butter (Optional – to thicken the milk). I used margarine. I might omit this next time.

Thick and gooey and ickily sweet. Yumm.Method

1. In a heavy-bottomed pot, bring the milk and the sugar to a boil over medium heat.


2. Reduce the heat to low and simmer very gently for about two hours (yeah, I know..) until the volume is reduced by half. The mixture should be barely simmering and never bubbling at any point. Stir every 15 minutes or so to keep the milk from forming the “skin” on top. I forgot to stir and the milk burnt slightly and turn yellowish instead of remaining white. The original author said this but I did the same thing, so I’m leaving it in.


3. After 2 hours, stir in butter.


4. Remove the pot from heat and let the milk cool. The mixture will thicken further after it has cooled. Try HARD not to eat the fresh, hot condensed milk. It does scald, although the sheer bliss masks the symptoms for a bit.

لذيذ! (Delicious!)

I have no idea how to pronounce لذيذ but it is the Arabic translation of delicious (thanks, Google!). It’s appropriate for this post because it refers to the deliciousness of our Moroccan dinner this week. Enjoying cooking is a relatively new adventure for me, and thanks to the Internet, it’s possible – nay, easy! – to create virtually any concoction you can imagine. I had so much fun making delicious Moroccan Soup andHerby Flatbread. (Click on the links – they’re worth a look and there are loads of other yummy things there, too).



What made it even more entertaining was being assisted by DD#2 as she began the journey towards domestic mastery for herself. She’s so entertaining and uniquely, innocently wise. What a joy! We peeled and sliced and diced and chopped and mixed and stirred and then cleaned it all away. She also made me a miniature garden from roses and celery leaves, and populated it with a Lego village and Lego characters. Considering the available space in our cosy cottage kitchen, that is quite an achievement.



I so enjoyed the language style of the recipe writers: practical and unfussy and really doable. Of course, in true Me-style, I substituted what I needed with what I had. And garlic. In fact, I wrapped most of a bulb of garlic in foil, drizzled it in oil and herbs, and roasted it in the oven as an aperitif. *Sigh*. Perhaps next time DH will get some. I’m afraid this time (third night, third experiment, same outcome) I ate the lot. So much of hhmmm.



I managed to remember the camera before I had served the food, so here are some pics from the delicious event.

 

 

Cost-cutting cuisine

For as long as I can remember I have loved healthy food and been fanatical about nutrition. I think two key things contributed to this in my formative years. The first was that my brother has cystic fibrosis and so a lot of our early years revolved around what he could or couldn’t do or eat, where he could or couldn’t go, and so on. We knew a lot more about healthy nutrition at that age than any of our peers.

Secondly, our family has a colourful and diverse range of allergies and intolerances, so growing up involved a lot of careful juggling around what would fill us, taste good and not kill us! (That’s an exaggeration, you understand).

In my adult years I have become heavily dependent on truly brilliant supplementsthat keep us healthy and well (not just “not sick”). So much so, in fact, that I even share these great supplements with anyone who wants them, and after seeing the phenomenal turn around in our family’s health, that list includes pretty much most of the people we know.

Even so, however, good nutrition is about more than just popping pills. It’s also about what we do put into our bodies, and what we don’t. That’s why I try so hard to feed my family good, balanced, nutritious, low GI meals and healthy snacks as much as possible. We usually have masses of fruit in the house, and if there are biscuits I try to keep them low GI, gluten free, dairy free ones. Where possible I replace sugar with xylitol or honey.

The more I think about it, the more it seems like it would be a good idea to share some of my adventures here, on my blog. I am no Nigella, and not even much of a run-of-the-mill domestic goddess. Most of my meals fail on presentation, but at least they’re USUALLY delicious and almost always nutritious. Not to mention being super-affordable, which is key right now.

Here’s tonight’s offering:

Pasta with Lentil Mush (title needs work; suggestions welcome).

Slowly heat red lentils with salt and Italian herbs until very soft. Drain.
Cook gluten-free pasta to taste.
Roast some vegetables in the oven. Broccoli and courgettes work very well for this, as do carrots and beans.
Finely chop a large onion and braise until soft and transparent/golden, then add 2 chopped tomatoes, a coupe of peeled and chopped carrots, some ginger and some garlic (to taste).Add the lentils and mix well. Mix in the roasted veggies (try to get some of their “veggie juice”, too – yummy!).
When this mixture is thoroughly smooshy, add some good quality tomato sauce (rich in lycopene, an essential antioxidant).
You may want a little more tomato sauce for the colour.
Serve the lentil mixture on the pasta – hot!

We added Nando’s hot chilli sauce for the grown ups because a) Chillis are a good source of capsaicin, which is good for nasal and chest problems, and induces feelings of happiness as a result of the release of endorphines, and b) We love it! The girls had their’s neat.

Everyone said it tasted great. DH even had seconds … I don’t know if he actuallyrealised he was eating lentils!

I’d share a picture but we ate it all, sorry about that  .

The great thing about this meal is that it is full of goodness and low on cost. Seriously, we all have onions and lentils in the cupboard right? You can make anything with those two items alone. Kinda …

On a side note, don’t stint on tomato sauce. I know we’re all on budgets here, but a good tomato sauce is an awesome and worthwhile investment. The antioxidants are great for the whole family and many kids eat anything when it’s disguised in a tomato sauce super-hero cloak. The problem is that a cheap, synthetic tomato sauce is so bad for your family it would be better to feed the kids fries than to disguise broccoli in that swill.  I’m just saying.