I love to cook, good food is really important to me. If you are anything like me you may spend a large amount of your life in the kitchen preparing good nourishing food to eat, this is what has been going on in my kitchen this month. If you would like to join in you would be most welcome, leave a link in the comments section.
It has been over three years since I have shared with you what has been going on in my kitchen, in that time there has been some fairly radical changes to what we eat. In the mid 90s I was diagnosed with Crohns disease whilst this can be a very debilitating disease for some, I am so thankful that I have not been seriously ill with this chronic condition. In the early days, the medication that I was taking to keep this check gave me further problems due to side effects I made the decision to stop taking them and started my long slow journey into alternatives, that was in the days before the internet was there at a click of a button. Around that time I had a food intolerance test which transformed my life, within a week of excluding my list of foods my symptoms had all disappeared. Life ticked on and I continued to exclude my list of 'no' foods until a few years ago, when it occurred to me that it was great that my symptoms had not come back but after so long excluding these foods I was still unable to reintroduce them without side effects, was I really 'better' then or just managing a different status quo? I hadn't stopped reading and researching in that period but I knew that I needed to try something different. I eventually decided that I would try giving up wheat and sugar for a whole year and see what happened, if that didn't work I would try something else. Both of these ingredients formed a integral part of our diet, although sugar less so, I gave up all sugars including refined sugar, sweeteners such as honey and maple syrup and all fruit. Yes you did read that right all fruit too. I spent at least a month before I started planning and finding new recipes. It made a huge difference to me, I felt much less sluggish, less bloated and I slept so much better, but even more amazing was that during that year I started to reintroduce some of those foods that I had not eaten for nearly twenty years and I suffered no side effects.
That was back in 2017, now we eat a wheat in maybe one meal a week or less, sweeteners are used sparingly and fruit is very much back on the menu. When I look back through my old In My Kitchen posts there was a lot of baking going on then, that has all been much reduced. It has been a big change. I didn't think, before I gave it up, that I was eating a lot of wheat until I started to look at a week of meals rather than each meal individually, I am a huge believer in every thing in moderation but that was not an ingredient we were eating in moderation. It has been surprisingly easy to bring about this change, rather than look for alternatives, using gluten free flour to make pastry or bread for example, we ate differently. We now eat a lot more vegetables than we used to and with a teenage boy in the house our veg bill is large! Now I can eat out, share food with friends and family and not worry about the ingredients for the first time in so, so long. It has made a huge difference to my life and I am so glad I gave it a try even though at the time it felt like a really extreme thing to do!
When you make a fairly radical change to your diet it can mean that many of your cookbooks are full of recipes which are no longer used. I have given away many of the books on my shelves, particularly the bread baking ones of which I had quite a large collection. This has been a good excuse to buy some new ones and last year I was given two amazing cookbooks for my birthday, one (fourth book on this link) of which I use a lot and has become a firm favourite for us. We have yet to try anything from this book that has not been loved and made again, it is a book that really suits what we love to eat, a particular favourite is a Mediterrean Tray bake a dish based on roast veggies.
I am going to leave you now with a recipe for a meal that you could make for dinner* or tea, we usually eat this for dinner. It is my favourite kind of recipe as it is a collection of possibilities all thrown together to make a really tasty meal which means that it tastes different each week and each season depending on what you have in the house. If the flavourings don't appeal to you then add your own. These quantities serve two so increase/decrease accordingly.
Shakshouka (Serves 2)
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 onion or a leek or 3 spring onions
3 cups of whatever green vegetables you have
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon chilli flakes or a few drops of Tabasco
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 handfuls of leafy greens and herbs
salt and pepper
eggs
4 tablespoons of any cheese you have and like crumbled or grated
Melt the butter in a frying pan over a medium high heat, add the onion/leek/spring onion, green vegetables and cumin. Cook for 5-7 minutes.
Add the chilli/tabasco, lemon juice, leafy greens and herbs and cook until wilted.
Season with salt and pepper if desired.
Create divots in your mixture and break in the eggs one by one (as many as you want), sprinkle with cheese, turn heat to low and cover. Cook for about 5 - 7 minutes until the eggs are set.
Printable Recipe
*****