5 - 8 portions of fruit and veg per day

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If you have been looking at (better still, using) my recipes, you will have noticed that all of them have at least three vegetables in them or with them; if there is a shortage of veg on the plate, then I always suggest a salad. You don't have to serve the vegetables I recommend - you can substitute your own favourites - but I do try to include a variety that is seasonal, relatively inexpensive and colourful. A colourful plate is a healthy plate. A variety of colours indicates a variety of vitamins and minerals. But leave out the veg you or the family really doesn’t care for; just be sure to substitute something else. I personally don't care for pumpkin (except in pumpkin pie, when it is wonderful) - I find it watery, stringy and bordering on tasteless. But I really enjoy butternut squash which has real substance, form, colour and flavour. And butternuts come in a usable, storable size, which is always a plus in my book, unlike pumpkins.

If I use something unfamiliar to you, do try it. You might enjoy it. I bought ochra a little while ago, something I've never tried before. They were alright. Interesting. A little bit different. I don't know that I would rush to buy them again - but at least I gave them a chance.

Buy a different vegetable this week - something you haven't served in a while. Or ever. You might be pleasantly surprised.

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Vegetables

Vegetables are complex carbohydrates. They are rich in vitamins, minerals and fibre - a great food for improving overall health and preventing disease. Plus, the vast selection and beautiful colours are a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach.

It's best to eat vegetables raw, because the vitamins and minerals are easily destroyed by cooking. But unless you live in a very hot climate, and you only want to eat salads, you are going to be cooking vegetables most of the time. The most conservative way to cook veg is steaming - the nutrients are not boiled away in the cooking water. Otherwise, stir frying or microwaving is a good way to go. Whatever cooking method you use, just remember to cook for the shortest possible time, in the least amount of water.

For optimum nutrition, your daily veg intake should be varied - that means branching out from the stock standard peas and carrots every night. Try something different for a change. How about artichokes, okra or fennel bulb?
Did you know:
Artichokes and green celery leaves contain natural insulin?
Cucumber is rich in iron, potassium, magnesium, calcium and vitamin C?
Tomatoes are rich in vitamins A and C, and lycopene?
Carrots are very high in vitamin A, calcium, magnesium and iron?
My top five vegetables for boosting health are: broccoli and spinach; butternut and carrots; and tomatoes and beetroot. My favourite veg - for flavour and versatility: tomatoes and broccoli.
All vegetables are good, regardless of whether they come to you fresh, frozen, canned, dried or juiced.

All the experts are always on about '5-a-day' They are talking about five servings per day of vegetables and fruit. Personally, I would rather see that as '5 veg-a-day’, and fruit over and above the 5. Anyway, a minimum of 3 servings a day is what's recommended, so 1 serving of vegetables is equivalent to:

3Tblsp of cooked vegetables;

OR 2 cups of raw leafy veg (lettuce, spinach);

OR 1/2 cup vegetable juice.

Bok choy fry : Wk30/2

Serves 4 : Very easy : Quick

Ingredients
4 slices lean bacon, chopped
1 onion, sliced
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
200gm button mushrooms, chopped
4 carrots, julienne
4 courgettes, julienne
½ can chick peas, rinsed and drained
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
150gm mung bean sprouts
4 bok choy, chopped

240gm rice

Method
Cook the rice in lightly salted boiling water until it is tender.
Drain and keep warm.

Spray a wok with non-stick cooking spray.
Dry fry the bacon bits lightly.
Add the onion and ginger and allow the onion to soften.
Stir in the carrots, courgettes and mushrooms.
Add ¼ cup of water, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Now stir through the chick peas and pepper.
Fold in the bok choy and allow to wilt.
Stir the bean sprouts through.

Serve with the rice.

Teriyaki sauce, soy and sweet chilli sauce all go well with this dish.

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.

Food neophobia

According to research done in the U.K., up to 80% of children inherit their fear of new foods from their parents. Unfortunately, these children will avoid healthy foods like fruits and vegetables preferring to stick with less healthy but familiar foods. We all know children who reject even the idea of tackling Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower. The advice offered to overcome food neophobia is to keep serving the new food alongside food that your children are familiar with and happy to eat. Once they gain familiarity with the food, and are comfortable about it being on their plate, they may try a nibble

What intrigues me is: when we weaned our babies, didn’t we start them on strained fruits and vegetables? I know I started my children on carrots, then I added courgettes and potatoes, etc. Over time, the only thing that changed was the coarseness of the mix. Mind you, my children have never suffered with neophobia. My eldest, who used to love all her veg mashed together with the addition of a little gravy or marmite, did get fussy for a while. Then everything had to be separate on the plate – and spaced from everything else. But she did eat it all.

My middle child appeared to stop eating for a while, just long enough for me to wonder if she might be anorexic. But she started eating again after about four days, and even ate enough to make up for lost time! Years later, when she went onto the ‘maintenance’ program with Weight Watchers and continued to lose weight at a rapid rate, her lecturer even asked her if she was anorexic… her reply was that she loved food far too much for that to be the case!

My son was only ever picky about fish – which came about because he always seemed to get at least one bone in his serving. He has overcome this with age, and now enjoys fish.

The moral? Start them out right. Fresh fruit and veg, preferably prepared at home, from the very first meal. Why would they ever look askance at a vegetable?

Parsnips and carrots

I have always liked parsnips (pastinaca sativa) – apparently, they were my father’s favourite veg, too. And I have wondered why they are so infrequent in appearance in South Africa, and so expensive when they are available. I mean, we are continually swamped with carrots (daucus carota sativus) and they are basically the same shape and the same family, and with eyes closed the flavours are not that different. Where carrots grow, surely parsnips grow? Parsnips are also very closely related to parsley. Parsley can be cultivated to produce a very large tap root (Hamburg root parsley) which looks very similar to parsnip, though the flavour is quite dissimilar. Parsnips are richer in vitamins and minerals than carrots (or parsley), and they are a rich source of potassium and dietary fibre

Wikipedia tells me that parsnips are not grown in warm climates because they ‘need frost to develop their flavour’. Apparently they have been ‘naturalised’ into this country – we do get frost here, even snow occasionally – but I guess it is not a huge cash crop. Maybe if I spread the word that the Romans considered them an aphrodisiac, they will grow in popularity and demand will increase!

Carrots, on the other hand, are ubiquitous. In their early cultivation, they were grown for the seeds and aromatic leaves - as parsley, cumin, dill and fennel still are. The leaves are edible as a leaf vegetable, but are seldom eaten by humans. While the usual culinary carrot is orange in colour, other colours do exist – white, yellow, red and purple – but these are usually grown as novelty crops, not for general distribution. There is a variety of carrot grown in northern India which is pinkish red in colour, similar to a raspberry. It is unknown beyond Central Asia, but its popularity is growing.

Remember our mothers used to tell us that carrots would help us see in the dark? This story was spread by the British Royal Air Force, during the Battle of Britain, to cover up their fighter pilots’ successful use of the (then) new radar technology. British fighter pilots ate lots of carrots, so it was said, and could see better in the dark and successfully engage with the enemy. This story actually built on existing German folklore.

A lack of vitamin A in the diet does affect eyesight, including night vision, and adding vitamin A back into the diet counteracts this. 100gms of carrots contains a vitamin A equivalent of 93% of the daily requirements.

Tomatoes

Botanically, tomatoes (solanum lycopersicum) are fruits, however because they have a lower sugar content and higher acidity than most other fruits, for culinary purposes they are considered vegetables. After all, we are most likely to serve them as part of a salad or cooked in the main course of the meal, we don’t eat them with whipped cream or custard.

Tomatoes grow on sprawling, somewhat untidy bushes, and they are part of the nightshade family. The leaves, stems and unripe fruits contain a poisonous alkaloid, tomatine, but the amount is so small that it is not generally considered dangerous. In 16th century Britain, when tomatoes were a fairly recent addition to the menu, they were considered poisonous. But in reality the acidity of the tomatoes leached lead out of the pewter plates in use at the time.

100gm of tomatoes contains approximately 75kj (18kcal), 4gm of carbohydrate, 2.6gm natural sugar, 1gm of fibre and 1gm of protein. Tomatoes also supply us with Vitamins K, B5, and C, plus lycopene which is an anti-oxidant said to be beneficial against some types of cancer.

Based on the 2008 figures, China is the world’s largest commercial producer of tomatoes (25%), followed by the United States (9%), Turkey (8.5%), India (8%) and Italy(4.6%).

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.

Warming Food

I am afraid that winter has come early to the southern hemisphere. As I sit here, I am dressed in a spencer, a lamb’s wool jersey and a tracksuit top plus pantyhose, denims and slippers. And I am cold.
There is nothing like being cold to increase the appetite – especially for starchy foods: mountains of creamy mashed potato and thick slices of hot toast dripping butter! There’s nothing the matter with either potatoes or toast, it’s just what you eat with them (and the amount you eat) that can be a problem.

My favourite food solution to the winter chills is soup, it’s warming and satisfying and oh, so easy to make. I operate on the ‘rusty nail’ principle (remember the children’s story?) Here’s how I go about it.

I pour at least 1 ½ liters of water into a large saucepan and put it on the stove to heat.
Then I toss in 150gms of mixed dried peas, lentils and barley.
And 1 Tblsp of stock powder.

Next comes the ‘what’s in the fridge’ part.
Could be I have:
2 large carrots – scrubbed, topped and tailed, chopped
Celery – 2 stalks, scrubbed and sliced, leaves and all
Turnip – 1 or 2, scrubbed, topped and tailed, chopped
Leeks – 2 - well washed and sliced
Butternut – about ½ peeled and chopped
Green beans – end of the packet, looking a bit sad, topped and tailed and chopped
Courgettes – 3 – 4 topped and tailed and chopped
Aubergine – 1 peeled and chopped
I add these to my simmering pot as I prepare them.

Now, what’s in the store cupboard?
A can of chopped tomatoes with onion
A can of chick peas, cannellini, kidney- or butter beans, mixed beans (1 can, contents rinsed and drained)
Pasta? 1 cup of pasta – shells, alphabet shapes, broken spaghetti – sometimes I use rice.
These are unceremoniously added to the pot.

I check to see if I have enough water in there (add more if necessary), then I cover the pan and while it simmers away for 25 minutes or so, I dig a loaf of crusty bread out of the freezer and put it in the oven to thaw and re-crisp (about 20 mins at 180ºc). And I’ll maybe take the cheese out of the fridge – you get a better flavour when it is not so cold.

Once I’m ready to serve I blitz the soup with my hand blender – just 3 or four times, I’m not trying to puree it, only thicken the stock. Voila - wonderfully tasty, warming, filling, healthy soup.

Do you have a ‘rusty nail’ soup recipe? You can use any or all of the ingredients I’ve listed, and plenty of others. What are your essential soup ingredients?

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.