13 reasons to eat at home

I’m sure I must drive my poor, long suffering husband crazy! He often invites me out for dinner, and my answer is almost invariably no, thank you. Eating in is just so much easier.

1. I plan my meals, so I know how much I can eat come dinner time. I don’t want to pay for an expensive meal – in money and kilojoules – if I need to only eat a light dinner.
2. I know what and how I’m cooking, so no kilojoules / calories are ‘wasted’ or ‘hidden’. Those restaurant sauces are made with cream and butter, and the veg are also likely to be buttered and sweetened.
3. If we eat at home I don’t have to get ‘dressed up’ to go out. Going out involves at least a change of shoes, jacket, handbag etc, plus I’d have to do my hair.
4. We eat healthy sized portions. Restaurant protein portions, as I’ve mentioned before, are more than double what your body needs.
5. We get our recommended fruit and veg intake for the day. Last time we ate out I ordered a steak with vegetables. The vegetables consisted of one very small rocket leaf and chips! And the (lady’s) steak weighed 200gms
6. My meals are freshly prepared. My veg have not been precooked and left sitting in a bain marie for hours.
7. I get to eat dinner before 7:00PM. Much kinder to the digestion and the waist line. Going to bed on a full stomach is likely to cause discomfort and heartburn.
8. We don’t have to wait ages for a waiter to take our order. Admittedly, I’ve chosen our meal beforehand and my husband doesn’t have much of a say… but I gave up asking him what he would like to eat when he kept answering ‘food, please’.
9. Then wait another age while the kitchen prepares the food. There is still a wait while I cook, but I am only cooking one meal and not tending a dozen different orders.
10. I don’t see other plates being delivered that look more interesting than mine. I think all menus should show photographs, so you know what to expect. I have ordered ‘fancy’ – i.e. expensive - salads at several different restaurants and been very disappointed with the actual content, some of them didn’t even contain the ingredients listed on the menu.
11. There is no bill to pay – the food has already been paid for.
12. The wine at home is less than half the restaurant price for the same bottle.
13. There are no parking problems.

 

So I will continue to happily devise new recipes and eat at home.

 

 

Baby foods

There are many commercially produced baby foods available these days. I used to, occasionally, buy the fruit purees for my children when they were babies, but having tasted the bottled ‘dinners’ once, I never bought them again. Cereals are the exception to my ‘home-cooked only’ rule; they are the correct consistency and texture (according to age) and are usually fortified with various vitamins and minerals.

Babies often prefer bland tasting foods and it is really easy to prepare fruit and vegetables for them at home. By cooking at home you have complete control over the amount of salt and/or sugar added, plus the added bonus of the food containing no preservatives, flavourants or colourants.

To begin with, a baby will probably take no more than 2 to 3 teaspoons of ‘solids’ at one time. Obviously, you won’t want to cook that quantity fresh every day, but you can successfully freeze tiny portions in an ice-cube tray. One vegetable I don’t like to freeze is potato. To me, it develops an unpalatable flavour when it is frozen or refrigerated, but you can overcome this by mixing half potato with half sweet potato.

When first introducing ‘solids’, it is probably best to start with root vegetables, although some people do introduce fruit initially, apples and pears often being the favourites. Breast milk and formulas are both sweet, so babies will readily accept fruit, but there are long-term advantages to getting them accustomed to savoury flavours first. Carrots and butternut are both naturally sweet, and most babies will enjoy them.
Broccoli and cauliflower are strong flavours perhaps best kept for bigger babies.

If you feel you must use commercial baby food, then try to buy ‘organic’, and always check the nutrition label and contents. The contents of all food products is always listed from most to least, so if you are buying strained carrot, then carrot should be the first item on the list. And hopefully salt, sugar and fillers will not be included at all.

Sunshine fruit

Bananas are fascinating. They look good. They taste good. They are the perfect shape for holding in the hand. They don’t make a mess when you eat them. They are rich in vitamins B6 and C and potassium . Bananas vary in size and colour – green, yellow, red and purple. The green ones are normally used for cooking – they are called ‘plantains’ and are starchier and less sweet than the yellow dessert bananas we normally eat.

Although the plants can grow up to 7 metres tall they are not trees, but rather flowering herbaceous plants growing from a corm. Each trunk or, more correctly, stem is a ‘pseudostem’ which only produces a single bunch of fruits before dying. The corm produces new pseudostems as off-shoots. Each stem usually produces only one sterile male flower; the female flowers, which do not require fertilization, become the fruit. The male flower is called the banana heart, which is used as a vegetable in South East Asia – the flavour is said to be similar to that of the artichoke.

There are some wild species of bananas that have large, hard seeds, but the commercial dessert banana seeds are no more than specks along the centre of the fruit. On the bush, bananas grow pointing upwards, rather than hanging down. They are non-seasonal, and so are available all year round.

Banana plants are used in textile manufacture, too. In Japan the leaves and shoots are harvested and processed to produce differing grades of yarn for specific uses, from hard-wearing table cloths to soft and silky kimonos. In Nepal the pseudostems are softened and the fibre is extracted for use in rug making, these rugs have a silk-like texture.

There is archaeological evidence in Papua New Guinea to suggest that banana cultivation goes back to as early as 5000BC, and this is probably the primary area of cultivation. There are references to bananas in Islamic texts as early as the 9th century. By the 10th century bananas were known in Palestine and Egypt.
Although bananas were available in Europe, they were not widely known there until the Victorian era. Jules Verne gives a necessarily detailed description of bananas in ‘Around the world in 80 days’ (1872).

Bananas can be eaten raw, fried, baked or steamed. They can be sliced and dried. They can be made into jam. Dried bananas can be ground into flour.

I like them best mashed on a slice of toast.

Tuck shops

When I was at school (millennia ago, it seems!) there was no such thing as a ‘tuck’ shop. We either took a packed lunch from home, or ate a ‘proper’ cooked meal in the school cafeteria (I can still conjure up the smell!), and at break we were given 1/3 pint of milk. These days, every school seems to have its own tuck shop, staffed by volunteer mums.

I find these venues to be easy roads straight to unhealthy eating. The menu may include ‘toasted sarmies’ , hot dogs, pies (of dubious vintage) and Chelsea buns the size of a small pick-up truck! Other than these delicacies, there are inevitably sweets (candy), chocolates, cold drinks (sodas) and chips (crisps). And the poor child who doesn’t have tuck money is sometimes pitied, oftentimes ridiculed.

We don’t have a Jamie Oliver in South Africa, and our volunteer tuck shop mums don’t seem concerned about the sort of tuck their children are tucking into. So our children fill up on starch, fat, sugar and E-numbers at break, and more than likely go home to a sandwich or 2-minute noodle lunch! Did they eat a healthy breakfast? Do they get a decent evening meal? I’m willing to bet that many of them have take-aways – pizza, fried chicken, burger and chips – more than once a week! Do they even know what vegetables are? Oh, they may have a passing acquaintance with lettuce (1 leaf), tomato (1 slice) and raw onion, because those come on a burger. No wonder most children are squeamish when it’s time to go to Gran’s for Sunday lunch, and they are expected to eat all their vegetables (although in South Africa, Gran is probably going to have a braai (BBQ) anyway, and the veg can be sidestepped yet again.

And where’s the fruit, other than in juice form in a box?

Take a close look at what your children are eating on a daily basis. Are they developing healthy eating habits? Do they get the opportunity to make healthy food choices? You are the only example they have, and you are the only one who can educate them. Now. Before they become overweight and even more unhealthy.

Free radicals – but who wants them?

I’ll give you a very simplistic definition of ‘free radicals’. (I'm not a chemist)

Free radicals are atoms or molecules with unpaired electrons. The ‘missing’ electrons make these atoms and molecules highly reactive in that they will scavenge for an electron, attaching to and destroying other atoms and molecules. Free radicals occur naturally in the body, and not all of them are bad: some help to kill germs and fight bacteria. External triggers causing free radicals include tobacco smoke, chemicals, exhaust emissions, radiation and alcohol.

Free radical damage is thought to be responsible for: heart disease, many cancers, ageing and post-exercise muscle soreness. Unchecked free radicals can damage DNA, destroy enzymes and disrupt red blood cell membranes. They are undoubtedly involved in tissue damage in, for example, rheumatoid arthritis, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and malignancies.

What can we do to protect ourselves? Most of the external triggers are unavoidable in today’s polluted atmosphere. And free radicals occur naturally anyway.

Bring on the big guns – antioxidants.
Antioxidants disarm free radicals and render them harmless. So where do antioxidants come from? I’ll take the super large size package, please.

Antioxidants come from:

• Vitamins A, C and E
• Selenium
• Carotenes
• Flavonoids
• Phytochemicals

and these are all in the top ten foods to fight free radicals:

• Blueberries
• Strawberries
• Plums
• Oranges
• Red grapes
• Spinach
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Beetroot
• Kale

Which only goes to show that when you eat a good variety of foods from each of the different food groups every day, and you keep your food colourful, Nature supplies everything you need.

Making fresh food last

It’s all very well going to the supermarket and doing the grocery shopping for the coming week, but how fresh is the food you’re buying? I guess the best thing is to find out when the main fresh deliveries come in. My local supermarkets seem to restock on Mondays (after the weekend) and Thursdays (before the weekend). This didn’t seem to be the case last Thursday.

I’ve been feeling really weak and tired – I have a bad head cold and cough and I’ve been feeling thoroughly chilled. Because of this, my husband did the shopping for me on Saturday afternoon and reported that the shelves were bare! Very limited (and very sad looking) fresh produce. Okay, Saturday was May Day and, yes, the world and her husband were out shopping. Fortunately he managed to get the basic essentials for me, and I will just have to go again later in the week.

Anyway, I digress (sort of). I actually wanted to look at fresh fruit and vegetables, and extending their lifespan. The lifespan depends on whether the item is ‘ripe and ready to eat’ (a label not always to be believed – but store in the fridge) or intended for ‘ripening at home’ (store on the counter until ripe, and then refridgerate). And a lot depends on how you store the product.

All fruits and vegetables give off a harmless, tasteless gas called ethylene, but some give off more than others - specifically apples, apricots, avocado, bananas, figs, melon, nectarines, peaches, pears and plums. Ethylene can build up in the fridge and cause other fruits and veg to spoil, so these fruits need to be stored either on the counter (until ripe) or in a separate drawer of the fridge. In South Africa we get ‘multi-fresh’ bags which do seem to contain the ethylene and keep stuff fresher for longer.

Lettuce, watercress, basil and mushrooms can all go slimy in the fridge, because they are hydro-tropic (they attract moisture). I have found that sealing a piece of kitchen paper in with the product helps to keep it at its peak for longer (this helps prevent mould on cheese, too). But some things are best eaten within two to three days of purchase – they just taste better. Soft berries spoil very quickly, and green beans ‘rust’ while you’re looking at them.

And some things just never seem to ripen, like the mango I bought two weeks ago which is still rock hard.

Food waste is awful. And costly. Don’t buy more than you need for the week, and use it before it spoils. I don't care if it is marked down or on special, unless you know you're going to use it all, don't buy it.

How clean is your food?

I personally think that a little bit of dirt never killed anybody – in fact, children raised in completely sterile homes are usually more likely to become sick when they are exposed to the real world – so I am not overly obsessive about cleanliness.

Yes, I use an antibacterial handwash before preparing food. I keep a hand towel in the kitchen for drying hands (not dishes) and I change my washing and drying up cloths twice a day. Okay, maybe I am just the teensiest bit obsessive – but, hey, it’s food and food preparation I’m talking about!

All fruit and vegetables should be thoroughly washed before being prepared. Even the stuff you’re going to peel. Bacteria and chemical residue from production and storage can transfer from the knife you use to peel and chop to the flesh of the food you’re preparing. Cooking may well destroy bacteria, but it won’t remove toxic chemicals. If you are preparing food which is going to be eaten raw then the cleaning process is even more important. Even if your pillow-pack of lettuce says ‘washed and ready to serve', give it another rinse just to be on the safe side.

Use cold water - you can add a splash of vinegar, if you want. Leave leafy veg like spinach and lettuce to soak for two minutes, shake off the excess water and then use a salad-spinner or swing the veg around in a clean tea cloth (this is best done outside!). Soak broccoli and cauli for a few minutes, too. Many are the little bugs I have drowned in this way.

Remember that all the fruit and vegetables you buy have been sprayed with preservative chemicals and insect repellants (unless they are organic) and have been handled by many people before arriving in your kitchen.

Reducing our carbon footprint

Everyone seems to be increasingly aware of health - our own and that of the Big Blue Marble on which we live. We've all heard about CFC gases, carbon emissions and the state of the ozone layer - even if we don't understand much about them. But out of concern for this and future generations, we should each do our little bit to be green.

Organic produce - whether animal or vegetable - is free from pesticides, antibiotics and growth hormones, and therefore it is kinder to the environment, livestock and our health. But I have my doubts about how truly 'clean' it is, growing as it does in our generally polluted atmosphere.

Unless you live in an agricultural belt, all produce still has to be harvested, packaged and transported to the supermarket shelves and coolers. The refridgerated trucks used for transporting are not environmentally friendly (have you ever driven behind one?), nor is the plastic wrap generally used for packaging. And how far has that produce been transported? Where did it originate?

The moment vegetables and fruits are harvested (organic or not) they start to deteriorate. The longer they are wrapped in plastic the more estrogens they absorb (the softer the plastic, the more estrogens there are given off). How long has the stuff been sitting in the supermarket? How long has it been sitting in your fridge? Most of the fruit sold in this country grows in the Cape (much of the best is exported) and it is a long way from the Ceres valley to our northern borders, and the rest of the world - making a large carbon footprint!

So support your local farmers. Their produce has probably been harvested within the last twenty-four hours, will more than likely be in it's natural state (not packaged) and it will still be full of nutrients.

Or you can always grow your own.