The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
This is a great post about Spelt and the Low FODMAP diet
This recipe is really easy to make and is gluten-free, low FODMAP and low lactose. These are really nice to enjoy toasted with a little free from spread (and jam if you wish) on a cold winters day after a long walk in the countryside! It was really cold outside when the pictures below were taken but the benefit of being outdoors is the atmospheric sky and moss-covered surfaces – showing that winter is really here!
Ingredients
300 g Gluten free self-raising flour
1 teaspoon of dried yeast
2 eggs
3/4 pint of lactose free milk
Salt + pepper
Method
Remove the eggs from the fridge and leave to warm to room temperature. Heat the milk till luke warm (body temperature.) Weigh out the flour and add the eggs, milk, yeast salt and pepper. Mix well and leave somewhere warm for the yeast to begin to rise, heat a frying pan and using spray oil to fry and using a cooking ring sprayed with oil place this in the pan and fill the ring with 1 cm depth of batter, you should see small bubbles forming on the surface of the crumpet. Lift up the cooking ring turn the crumpet over and cook through. If you are avoiding yeast then try a little more baking powder in the batter instead.
Please watch and share ‘Living well with IBS’ (irritable bowel syndrome), a film made by Vicky Grant, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, and Gemma Thorpe, a professional filmmaker. Vicky has lived with IBS for over 30 years; here she talks about her experiences and the experiences of others, as portrayed through the storytelling workshops she runs through the Knowing as Healing project.
One of the recipes developed for the video is the one below – a perfect choice for meatless Monday!
Ingredients
150g of wheat free couscous
200ml of boiling water
60g of green olives
60g of hazelnuts*
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of mild paprika
10-12 strands of fresh coriander
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
4 slices of wheat free seeded bread
4 teaspoons of garlic infused oil
Five orange peppers.
Salt to taste.
Weigh out the maize couscous and add the boiling water and cover – leave to stand for 5 minutes.
Add the oil to a pan and add chopped hazelnuts and add cumin, cinnamon and mild paprika and toast the nuts.
Mix the nuts and spices with the couscous and add chopped olives.
Wash and cut the peppers in half fill each with the couscous.
Crumb the bread and add lemon and fresh coriander and sprinkle this mix on the top of each pepper.
Use aluminium foil to cover the peppers while they cook and cook till pepper is soft 20-10 minutes at gas mark 5 or 190°C. Remove aluminium foil for the last 5 minutes to toast the breadcrumbs. Watch out for other recipes soon!
*Hazelnuts do contain some FODMAP but are used in very small amounts in the recipe – if you wish you can omit them if problematic or if you are on the exclusion part of the diet.
Serves 10 – serve with some Low FODMAP salad as a light lunch
Make these for a special occasion – gluten and cow’s milk free pancakes with an extra special flair for a birthday or wedding breakfast, of in fact you can make them plain for a tasty cooked alternative to kick start the day. I was asked to review an almond flour by a manufacturer Sukrin who donated the flour for the review. I liked the flour, it was tasty and worked well for the recipe. For other manufacturer recommendations such as suitable for low carbohydrate and paleo diets, this may well be the case, however I don’t advocate removing the carbohydrate totally from from your diet or having a very low intake of carbohydrate for healthy people – carbohydrate is food for the brain and fibre containing (or wholegrain) carbohydrates are prebiotic, food for your gut bacteria. If you are having gut symptoms changing your types of carbohydrate may be a better option that stopping eating carbohydrate altogether – just ensure you have a medical diagnosis first before making any changes to your diet and request a referral to a dietitian! We do now know that changes to diet can affect the variety and number of gut bacteria that live in your digestive tract and we do not yet know what the effects low carbohydrate diets have on long term digestive health. Our gut bacteria help with producing vitamin K and produce short chain fatty acids which help to keep the tract healthy. Most dietary changes Dietitians advocate are to identify a particular food intolerance culprit – this not only has benefits in reducing symptoms, but also means you can continue to have as varied a diet as possible.
You can taste the almond in these pancakes and they are very filling. Please also note whilst these pancakes are free of gluten and cow’s milk they are not suitable for the exclusion phase of the Low FODMAP diet in large amounts, almonds should be eaten in small amounts only (almond – as nuts – less than 10 at any one time.)
Ingredients
3 eggs
100g of almond flour
2 or 3 dessert spoons of rose syrup
200ml of hazelnut milk
a few drops of food colouring and edible gold glitter if you really want a decadent treat!
Spray oil to fry.
Mix the eggs into the almond flour, add the syrup and nut milk to the mixture then add the the food colour. Spray oil into the pan and using a piping bag pipe swirls of the mix into the pan and fry until the base is cooked and then finish the cooking in an oven at gas mark six for 5-10 minutes.
This is a really tasty recipe that can be quickly prepared for an evening meal.
Ingredients
1 Marrow (or as in the picture above 1/2 a green and 1/2 a yellow marrow)
400g of new potatoes leave on the skin for added fibre
1 tablespoon of pine nuts
1 tablespoon of chopped hazelnuts
1 tablespoon of garlic infused oil
a handful of fresh coriander leaves
1/2 lemon (juice only)
Salt & Pepper to taste
Method
Wash the marrow and slice in half – remove the seeds from the centre of the marrow and discard.
Slice the marrow into 2cm thick slices.
Wash the potatoes and slice into 1cm slices
Chop the hazelnuts
Into a baking tray add the above ingredients, the pine nuts – add lemon juice to the garlic infused oil and season. Mix and pour over the ingredients and mix till the oil has covered all the vegetables.
Place in a preheated oven at gas mark 6 until soft.
Serve with a handful of fresh coriander leaves.
Clinical Alimentary 