Our favourite supermarket offer is back on in Marks & Spencer shops till Tuesday, and it’s perfect for this hibernating time of year. They have a couple of healthy-ish options on the list this time, such as the whole chicken, the salmon fillets or the ‘lightly dusted lemon sole’. (I wish they’d say what it’s dusted with though. Dust?).
The full menu is available on the M&S website.
Image from sxc.hu
Mmmmmm falafel. There are few things tastier than those little deep-fried balls of crunchiness, and the flavours of the salads and sauces that they come with are pretty special as well. Our reader Becky has helpfully given us a recipe for falafel that avoids deep-frying, and makes it a healthier choice. It’s also an easy and quick recipe as you can feck everything in the blender.
Ingredients:
- 1 400g tin of chickpeas- rinsed
- 1 small onion roughly chopped
- 1 clove garlic
- half lemon juiced – lime also works
- 1tsp each of cumin and coriander powder
- 1 chilli chopped, or 1 tsp of chilli flakes (adjust to your own heat preferences)
- 1 tsp harrissa paste – can be left out but so lovely if you can find it. I usually get it in Tesco
- Small bunch of chopped fresh coriander
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Optional – handful of toasted sunflower seeds
Those of you who are enraged by excessive phone use might enjoy proposing a fiendish new game to your friends. A Californian blogger, sick of his friends spending meals engrossed in their phones, came up with this challenge: when a group sits down to eat, everyone has to place their mobile in a stack on the table. The first person to reach for their phone pays for the entire meal. If everyone gets through the meal without touching their phone, everyone just pays for themselves as standard.
Can you see your friends agreeing to take on this challenge? And does smartphone fiddling during meals get on your nerves? I don’t mind it too much, but hate when people take long calls when they’re in the company of others. However I have been reprimanded on occasion for my Twittering, so I don’t have a leg to stand on. What do you think?
23 Jan, 2012
Recipe: Sicilian Fish Stew
Posted by: jean in: Can of Tomatoes | Healthy Eating | Main Meals | Recipes
Sicilian Fish Stew, with wholegrain bread and a glass of white wine. Good!
I’ve been trawling through the very excellent BBC Good Food website in order to learn some new healthy dishes and avoid dying of boredom while eating healthily. I found many lovely recipes including a great one for Sicilian Fish Stew.
I tried it out, made a few tweaks, used a generous hand with the lemon juice, garlic and chilli, and was very happy with the results. Leftovers the next day were very good, and best of all, it’s a one-pot dish.
Sicilian Fish Stew
Ingredients
Serves 2
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 anchovy
- 400g tin plum tomatoes
- 125ml white wine
- 400ml fish, chicken or vegetable stock
- 100g couscous (wholemeal if possible)
- 250g white fish fillets
- Juice and zest of half a lemon
- Pinch chilli flakes (or more to taste)
- Black pepper
20 Jan, 2012
Healthy Eating: voices of sense
Posted by: jean in: Food Blogs & Websites | Healthy Eating
Looking for sensible, unbiased, well-researched advice about eating is a tricky business. Food and nutrition are two of the most fad-ridden areas imaginable, and snake oil salesmen are everywhere. Quacks like Patrick Holford and Gillian McKeith are depressingly ubiquitous, but there are also writers out there who are operating from a more qualified and less dubious position.
Keeping in mind that no-one is right all the time, all these writers have their critics and there are many schools of thought – I’ve gathered together a short list of some of the writers that I’ve found to be quite sound on the subject, and I hope you’ll share your favourites too.
- ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’ These famous words of advice came from Michael Pollan,a New York Times food journalist and activist. I’ve been looking through his website recently and there’s a wealth of interesting reading on healthy eating and food production. This piece where Pollan answers questions on food from readers of the New York Times contained some insights and tips that I found particularly interesting. Michael Pollan’s books are available online, and there’s a lot of articles archived at the site above.
Thumbs down to the incredibly rude table (Photo: sxc.hu)
A terrible person did a terrible thing in a lovely restaurant, and I want to know what our lovely readers think about it.
We’re in Runiccini, a gem of an Italian restaurant in Kilkenny (full review to follow). The service is impeccable and professional: white tablecloths, waiting staff in black and white uniforms. The restaurant is busy and buzzing.
Across from us, a large party are gathered for their post-Christmas office party. The mains are finished. And then, amidst the chatter, a noise brings an abrupt end to all conversation in the building.
19 Jan, 2012
Special offers in supermarkets, January 19
Posted by: peter in: Bargains & Special Offers
Special offers at Aldi
Special offers at Lidl
Special offers at SuperValu
Special offers at Dunnes
Special offers at Superquinn
Special offers at Centra
Special offers at Londis
Special offers at Mace
Special offers at Spar
Special offers at Tesco
Rebecca Flynn, a friend and food lover, is the author of today’s guest post review, about a new cafe on Dublin’s Stephen Street.
Photo from the Eastwood and Mays website
Myself and my cousins had our inaugural cousins’ Christmas get-together this year. We wanted to make it special and had heard good things about Eastwood & Mays, a new cafe and deli on Stephen Street Upper.
Eleven of us arrived in, chilly and hungry, on a blustery December’s eve. We had arranged to order from their set Christmas menu, with a glass of Prosecco on arrival as part of the deal; a good start to any evening. We enjoyed our bubbly and mulled over the menu, one of our party was late to the table, but we never felt under pressure to place our order. We ordered a couple of bottles of the far too quaffable Le Maestrelle to start with, priced at €21, it was really reasonable.
The Christmas menu, while slightly limited, offered really good value. Most of our family of carnivores ordered the same thing, it would have been madness not to: at €30 a head, prawns to start and steaks for mains is a great deal.
17 Jan, 2012
Reader’s Recipe: Nanazolie’s ‘Holier Than Thou’ Lasagne
Posted by: jean in: Main Meals | Recipes | Vegetarian
We put the call out for interesting but healthy recipes last week and a few of our commenters came back with some real gems. Lovely long time reader and commenter Nanazolie shared this delicious veggie lasagne recipe with us. It’s hard to imagine a lasagne being healthy, but if you use wholemeal pasta and go easy on the cheese and heavy on the vegetables, this will be both nutritious and very satisfying.
Courgette and Mushroom Lasagne, by Nanazolie
You can add some minced turkey if you must have meat, you’ll end up with a bit more sauce that will be lovely with spaghetti for another meal.
Ingredients
- 8 sheets of “no precook” lasagne
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 courgettes, grated
- 250 gr mushrooms, finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- one tin chopped tomatoes
- 1 stock cube dissolved in 200ml boiling water
- 60 gr grated Parmesan
- Dried herbs de Provence (oregano, thyme, marjoram)
- 250ml low fat milk
- 2 tbsp corn flour
Open fire in Arthur's
I was torn about whether to write about and recommend Arthur’s on Thomas St. It’s a thoroughly lovely pub and you all deserve to know about it. But there is a part of me that selfishly wants to keep it a secret, so that it’s always peaceful and I can always get the seat by the big open fire.
Arthur’s is at the corner of Thomas St and Bridgefoot St in Christchurch, just two blocks down from Vicar St which makes it a very good spot for a post-gig pint. It has an unusually spacious, tasteful and uncluttered interior for a Dublin pub. There is an open fireplace, friendly staff and delicious pints of Guinness.
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