Sometimes Its Hard To Be a Homeopath

The Society Of Homeopaths (SOH) of which I am a member, emails relevant bits and pieces out to its members to keep them up to date. Lately all I seem to hear from them is rebuttals and letters to editors of magazines and newspapers who have published scornful articles ridiculing us quacks and our smoke and mirrors medicine.

Its hard sometimes to remember that there is a lot of good feeling out there for homeopathy, overwhelming anecdotal evidence of it's efficacy and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who have been cured and relieved of illness, without a penny going towards a major drug company. Kinda makes me wonder where all this bad press is coming from? (and by that I mean which global drug company - in case you didn't get the inference)

Cluck cluck....

If you do one good thing today, let it be this. Sign Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall's petition for free range chicken. Think of it as salve for your karma, you may come back as a chicken one day (or if you're very good; a chicken in a house - only viewers of Bruce Parry's, 'Tribe' will get that one).

Chickens need you!

Retro Recipe Challenge #10: Story Book Food

I am just delighted to be hosting this month's retro recipe challenge and have been racking my brains for something suitably challenging. Rather than go with the obvious Yuletide theme, I thought I would go back to my childhood - the source of all things retro. Being of Irish descent, there were some pretty un-fascinating foods consumed during my childhood - butterscotch angel delight, smash, fluffy eggs (a bizarre speciality of my mother's which actually deserves its own post), and beany mince (yes baked beans with mince), and I think you'll all agree they don't hold much culinary merit or really deserve to be resurrected. Apart from the squidgy bitter-sweet Guinness cake I used to frighten my school friends with - that is truly the stuff of legend.

Instead I turned to the real culinary inspiration of my childhood - story books. From Maurice Sendak's In The Night Kitchen, through Maisie Middleton and her amazing home made breakfast to Brambly Hedge's hedgerow delicacies, I would dream about foods completely unknown to my humble tastebuds.

So my challenge to you is to revisit your childhood story books - it might be Paddington's marmalade or the tiny cake bearing the invitation, 'eat me', that Alice ate in Alice and Wonderland. Then find a way to recreate that dish using those retro recipe resources. The only stipulation is that the original recipe must have been published or originally made before 1980 (seems pretty recent to me!)



Make your story book dish and write a blog post about it - with pictures if possible and maybe even a link or image of the book you used for inspiration. Let us know where you got your recipe from too - even if it is something you remember your mother making. Then send the post to me at: naomidevlin (at) f2s (dot) com - by midnight on December 14th and I will post all the entries on my blog at the end of the month. I look forward to hearing all about it.

For 'Bring Something' Success, think Frosty

The mother reports that the chocolate refrigerator cake recipe was a total success and all her friends want the recipe. Remember that this cake can be made pretty low impact (health-wise) by using dark dark chocolate 70%-87% and eating in small slices in a meditative and connoisseur-ish manner.

Apple Day!

Its apple day today and people around the country are celebrating with fetes, cake sales, apple shows, cider drinking contests and the like. You can find out what events are near you by looking at the common ground website. But the cooks and bakers among us may want to celebrate by making something apply in our kitchens; an Eve's pudding, apple sauce for some roast pork, a Waldorf salad or just a fluffy baked apple with lashings of cream. We are going away tomorrow (for our first holiday in a LONG time) so I can't make anything today because I am washing clothes and packing. But I will refer you to my Crab Apple Brandy recipe, which you could also use some nice sharp orchard apples for, Lord Lambourne perhaps?

Orchards are fast disappearing around us because of supermarket demand for uniformity and long shelf life in the apples they sell. Small producers of old varieties just can't compete. Its our duty as consumers to make a difference here. Try buying your apples from a local producer - often found at farmers markets or WI markets.Ask your supermarket or local green grocer to stock old varieties - they may not listen to your lone voice, but they do respond to consumer demand - look at the explosion in organics. If they think it will sell, they will provide it.

Lastly, have you noticed how even in apple season many of the apples are still bought over from New Zealand and South Africa? Make sure you boycott these apples, they are contributing to our enormous carbon footprint and it doesn't need to be that way, you can often find an apple that has come no further than a few miles, to be crunched, juicy and sweet in the knowledge that you have done a little bit for the environment!

Finley's Chocolate Cream Pudding

Finley (aged 6!) designed and made this confection himself - with a little guidance from me. Pretty amazing stuff I think you'll agree?

Food For Tired Bunnies

This is not a post about rabbit food - although I do recommend rabbit food highly, look what it does for rabbits....

Moving swiftly on... one of the questions I'm asked most frequently by patients is what they should eat in the evening when they are tired, short of time and can't face the idea of peeling carrots - let alone cooking up a wholesome and nutritious meal. The high carb/low veg options we choose when tired and stressed often compound the situation by creating a carb roller coaster that dumps us out the other side feeling even worse. Well I can't wave a magic wand, and as much as I would like to order up a personal chef for each one of these tired people, some cooking is necessary in order to eat well. But it doesn't have to take hours, be boring or taste like rabbit food.

All you need is a few basic easy meals that are balanced to see you through to the weekend, when you can tinker about merrily getting excited about food and feeling homely. So I thought I would post some ideas for slow release suppers that you can vary by having a well stocked spice cupboard, some choice condiments, fresh herbs on hand and some useful store cupboard preserved items. I'm starting today with pasta and over the next little while will post ideas for some emergency suppers that require only a little bit of cooking and some that need no cooking at all.

Pasta
Pasta is a great quick meal as long as you don't just boil up a big plateful of the white stuff and smother it in store bought pesto. Choose wholemeal wheat / spelt or buckwheat pasta. The pasta should make up only a quarter of this meal. Put a big pan of water on to boil.

While it's coming up to the boil, sort out the protein part of the meal - which should make up another quarter. You could use any of the following, but it's not an exhaustive list; anchovies, chickpeas, strips of flash fried pork or beef, tinned fish, fresh fish (steam above the pasta or grill), prawns, mozzarella chunks, salami, ham, soft boiled or poached egg (done in the pasta water), tofu, Quorn, feta cheese, bolognaise sauce that you make for the freezer.... Not all of these, you understand - make a choice of one!

Then sort out the veg component, again just choose one or two. Cherry tomatoes (just squish if you can't be bothered to chop), courgettes, frozen peas, fine beans (add to the pasta water half way through), spinach (chop into fine shreds after washing and stir into the hot pasta), fresh herbs, parsley, basil, oregano, mint, finely chopped rosemary, savoy or sweetheart cabbage (steamed above the pasta in a double boiler or sauteed briefly with a knob of butter and black pepper) rainbow chard steamed and drizzled with olive oil and lemon... You can even make a kind of pea pesto by briefly cooking frozen peas and blitzing them in the food processor with a big spoonful of bought pesto, some shaved Parmesan and if possible a handful of basil leaves.

Here's where it pays to have a well stocked cupboard. You could also add sun dried tomatoes in oil, olives, artichoke hearts, sweetcorn (go easy on this though), preserved mushrooms, peppers, aubergine - think anti-pasti ingredients. Or you can keep a jar of vinaigrette dressing in the fridge and just add leftover vegetables to it to pickle overnight. A note of caution though, don't just keep adding the veg or you will end up with sourdough starter! veg will keep for a few days like this but throw them out if you haven't used them by then. Green beans, carrots, cabbage, beets, even boiled potatoes all benefit from this treatment and can really lift the next dish you put them into. 

Flavoured oils  I have a big jar of rosemary oil (just fill a jar with fresh rosemary and pour in oil to cover - leave for at least a week making sure 
that the leaves don't poke up and go moldy. When it's strong enough, 
strain out the herbs and seal) You can do this with any fresh herb,
chillies (be careful!) lemon zest and so on.

Chuck the pasta into the boiling water and get the sauce and veg ready while it is cooking. I have suggested ways of doing that above. Below are some combinations that I would suggest - but basically just look in the cupboard and fridge and try not to reach for the biscuits while you're doing it.....

Slow cooked courgette and garlic with chickpeas

Pea pesto with crisp bacon or ham - have with greens on the side

Sun dried tomatoes, flash fried beef, cherry tomatoes and urfa biber chili flakes

Buttered pasta with wilted spinach and poached egg

Fine beans, tuna, rosemary oil and olives

Buckwheat pasta with mozzarella, fresh figs, basil and walnuts - eat with salad

Room temp pasta with feta, red onion, cucumber, olives and tomatoes

You can make these meals with rice or another grain instead of the pasta, just remember to balance that plate and get enough veg and protein on it! Have some real parmesan on hand in the fridge to shave over the top of any of these meals - don't use the ready grated stuff, no matter how tired you feel!

The Importance of Being Earnest

I am just coming to the end of the long process of self evaluation necessary to continue being a registered member of the Society of Homeopaths. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) encompasses the growth and practice of your business, evaluating effectiveness, self reflection, learning and fulfillment. As part of this process I have had to address how it is that I want to work.

When I graduated from college as a homeopath, I imagined that my charm would be enough to bring patients to my door (ah I was young and naive then!). Although I do have a steady stream of patients who refer to each other, folk who respond to a poster I put up or a talk I give - there are many people out there who have no idea what I do or how I can help them. There are many people out there who can't afford my services. I want to reach them! I don't want homeopathy to remain the preserve of the elite few who can afford it (although your health is worth saving up for) I want to bring homeopathy to the masses.

So what to do? I can't reduce my prices any more - I'm already the cheapest homeopath in town and it's listed in the code of practice that we should all aim to charge similar amounts. So my plan is to reach out to the NHS and my local primary care trust (PCT) and ask them to consider referring patients to me. You see it has been shown that PCTs can actually save money by referring patients to alternative therapists. As strange as buying in another service to save money may seem, what complementary medicine does is reduce the need for costly drugs, put patients back in charge of their own health, focusing on prevention of illness as well as cure. Studies have shown that when doctors refer to complementary therapists, they reduce repeat visits to the surgery, improve patient satisfaction by dealing with complaints for which they have no solution and offer patient choice. In short, it makes them look good too.

So my new mission, as part of my CPD plan, is to become part of an integrated health care provision. I know being Earnest is not enough - I need to do my research and provide some good statistics. I just need to get a foot in the door and show them I mean business.

Retro Recipe Challenge - Ballymaloe Fruit Tarts

Although I was prepared to use wheat for my retro recipe challenge entry, I hoped that I would find something retro that also answered my need for a gluten free treat. Unfortunately most of my pre 1980 recipe books were based almost entirely on flour, lard and raspberry jam with pips carved from wood shavings, by women with their hair permanently in curlers and a lipstick stained cigarette tucked in the corner of their mouths.

So I turned to Jane Grigson and Elizabeth David for something made with real ingredients. Jane's, 'English Food' (published in 1974) came up trumps with this recipe for Ballymaloe Fruit Tarts - so called because the original recipe originates from Myrtle Allen at Ballymaloe House near Cork in Ireland. This being the town of my forefathers I was instantly drawn to look further. Jane said in her preamble that you had to order these tarts at the beginning of your meal to ensure that they were not already sold out by the time you reached the desert course. She suggests topping them with any fruit that is in season - gaining the recipe another big tick in my book. So I chose raspberries from Hereford and erm....pomegranates because frankly I'm obsessed by these exotic blushing crowned fruits and I had one handy.

The formula is simple, almond pastry base, dollop of cream and as much fruit as you can cram on top without making the whole thing unwieldy. I used fairy cake tins for mine and they didn't really spread out that much, so I was left with the flat scone type shape you can see above. I think a muffin tin might yield better results. I also used fruit sugar, because I try to avoid using refined sugar where possible and this doesn't behave in exactly the same way as the refined stuff. Fruit sugar tends to result in a slightly softer biscuit - maybe it has humectant qualities? I also didn't sweeten the cream because, well - it's going with a sweet base and has sweet fruit on top, you need some contrast here no? I give the original recipe below, but if you want to use fruit sugar, use 2/3 of the amount given and reduce baking temperature by 20 degrees C. Jane instructs you not to be tempted into grinding your own almonds, no matter how much you want to - you need the flouriness of commercially ground almonds here.

Even with these changes and caveats, they were delicious!The base was almondy and cakey, with a satisfying marzipan chewiness set off by the cool unctuous cream and tart berries on top.

Ballymaloe Fruit Tarts

4oz Ready Ground Almonds
4oz Caster Sugar
4oz Lightly Salted Butter

Whipped Double Cream (I suggest around 300-350ml)
Seasonal Fruit - prepared accordingly

icing sugar to dust if you like that sort of thing

Preheat the oven to mark 4, 180C or 350F. Set out 20 small tart tins (or use muffin tins).

Mix almonds, sugar and butter to a dough in a processor - or by hand. Put a teaspoon into each of the tins without spreading them. Bake for about 10 mins until you have 20 golden saucers rimmed with slightly with brown - keep an eye on them towards the end. Cool slightly in the tins and then remove to a rack before they stick.

Just before serving, whip the cream - adding sugar if the fruit is tart. Put a blob or pipe a rosette onto each tartlet and arrange the fruit on top.

Et Voila........

Sloe Gin

The sloes this year were just so plump and black I was almost tempted to pop one in my mouth just to see if they were any sweeter than usual. But luckily, once you have experienced the mouth puckering dryness of a sloe, you don't want to go there again in a hurry, so I held back, knowing that I would find out just how good they were after they had been macerated in Gin for a few months. Some of these sloes were even a little sun dried, like a small soft prune - I am very excited about this year's sloe Gin!

I'm not going to give a separate recipe from the Crab Apple Brandy one below. But I must mention, that you don't need to check this and take out the sloes until you are ready to try it in a couple of months. You can even leave the sloes in for up to a year if you have that much will power! Add a little more sugar to start with than for apples, but not too much, you can always sweeten it later using some more sugar sprinkled in and left for a week to dissolve, or using a simple homemade sugar syrup.

When you do finally bottle this after 3-6 months, try pouring in a bottle or two of sherry and leaving for another few months. You have to like sherry of course, but this does make a lovely after dinner drink too.

Crab Apple Brandy

Now it may seem hypocritical to post one day about healthy eating and give a recipe for an alcoholic treat the next. I assure you it's not! Buying a bottle of something from the supermarket is easy, and its just as easy to sit and work your way through quite a bit of it unawares. But if you go out and gather something from the hedge (maybe walking or cycling there?), add it to a jar of alcohol and then wait for at least a couple of months, you are going to savour that special homemade delicacy in small glassfuls.

We whizzed past a whole hedgeful of wild fruit on an off road bike ride the other day, with me exclaiming wistfully, 'look, more huge sloes! aah, some late blackberries! Gosh, some crab apples!' and ruing my lack of carrier bag. I was determined to go back and harvest some of that delicious free stuff, so I rode up the near vertical hill (see we were going down it the other way before!) with my empty panniers at the ready. The sloes were like damsons, and I sang with the sun on my back as I climbed over the fence and helped myself. I only managed to scrump a few crab apples as the best ones were just too high up, but I still found enough for a couple of litres of apple brandy to warm and comfort on winter nights.

Crab Apple Brandy

First catch your crab apples and see how many you have. you can make up the quantity with some fragrant eating apples such as Worcester or some of the quinces that are arriving now. Cut the apples in half and aim to fill a jar half full with them. Cover with brandy to twice the volume - ie; a pint of apples to two pints of brandy. Shake in a little sugar, not more than a tablespoon per 70cl bottle and weight the apples down with something ceramic or glass, but most definitely not metal. If you don't weight it then the apples on top will oxidise and slightly alter the flavour and darken the colour a little too. It won't spoil your eventual enjoyment if you can't find an inert weight.

Put the jar into a cupboard or at least out of direct sunlight and shake it occasionally for a week. After a week get a clean teaspoon and taste a little bit. If it's really sharp already then take the apples out, add another spoonful of sugar - use your judgement - and seal it up for a couple of months (well almost until Christmas). If it's not sharp at all, leave the apples another week or two and then test again. You don't want something sharp, just appley - it’s just that crab apples vary hugely in sharpness. Use the apples to make a preserve, mincemeat or chop them into your Christmas cake mixture.

Change the World by Eating Something Real

Its Blog Action Day today, when many thousands of bloggers from around the world will post something relating to environmental issues. Now for some serious exploration of environmental engineering and how to make a difference that way, please visit carbon limited.

However in my humble way I hope to be making a difference by considering that our approach to how and what we eat is as important as how green your car is, or how many solar panels you have on your roof. On the radio news today I heard medical researchers forecasting that obesity could become more of a problem for us than climate change (although I think that's just rhetoric, they are both huge problems however you look at it). It made me think about the work I do with my patients and their diets, or the chats I have with my mother in law about dietary help for her husband with diabetes, about raising awareness about how much salt, sugar and processed food even my hippy friends allow their children to eat - because we have absorbed this stuff into our lives.

Its not that I'm a food fascist, or ascetic - come on, look at my blog overflowing with chocolate, cream and baked goods! I just think that we need to re-educate ourselves to eat real food again. It doesn't have to be low fat, tasteless, worthy pap. Food should be stimulating, comforting, sustaining and colourful. It should be real with flavours that come from herbs, spices, fresh fruit and vegetables, free range meat, fresh fish, unpasteurised milk, live yogurt - not some artificial rendering of those real foods.

One of the key elements to the work I do is identifying when people switch off from food as a source of joy and start to see it as a terrible combination of guilty pleasure and annoying chore. Once I can get people back into preparing real food - as close to when it came out of the ground as possible - the connection with themselves is re-established. Its easy to shovel crap into your mouth if you no longer have a connection with your body as a tool for living, a beautiful, creative, efficient organism that needs nurturing. Once you shut off from your body and allow stress to take hold, the next step is generally to turn to refined food as a comfort blanket.

So, as today is action day I would like to hold the torch up for starting the day with a good breakfast (hopefully something containing oats or eggs and some fruit, maybe some yogurt...) and tucking some fresh fruit or raw veg into your lunchbox or briefcase to munch on during the day. I would also like to suggest that in the name of good mental health, you find at least ten minutes today, and tomorrow and definitely the next day, to do something just for you, quietly, that reminds you of who you are and grounds you again. Like Richard Gere in that terrible movie, 'Pretty Woman', take off your shoes and feel the grass under your feet, stand at a window and feel the wind on your face or just take a glass of water to a bench and people watch.

The only way we can really change the world is by starting with ourselves. It may seem like just a raw carrot and some oatcakes to you - but it's gonna make a difference, I promise.

Mr Frost's Chocolate Cake

Konditor and Cook Tiffin

The mother rang this morning asking if I could suggest something other than her usual salad offering to take to a friend's leaving supper. Contrary to what you might expect, my culinary knowledge was not learnt at my mothers knee - although she does a mean stew (being Irish, I think it's in the blood). She just wanted something simple and quick that would still appear thoughtful and generous - ie; not a bag of pre washed salad. The main factor in deciding what to suggest is that my mother does not posses an oven (gasp) and so everything must be done on the hob. After exploring a few savoury options we decided that as her friend was actually a chocoholic, why not just go with that?

As part of my retro recipe challenge research I have been revisiting Jane Grigson's English Food and came across a recipe for tiffin entitled, Mr Frost's Chocolate Cake. Apparently Jane's husband adored the tiffin that Mr Frost made in his Cirencester restaurant and asked for the recipe so his wife could make it. She being somewhat sniffy about what she terms, 'infant cornflake cookery', had shied away from such recipes until presented with this one - which she so graciously deigned to make for her husband. She was pleasantly surprised, but instructs us to only make it using fine desert chocolate - as if I would entertain using anything less? I have altered it slightly to include some preserved ginger and ginger biscuits - if you don't like ginger then use the alternatives listed. To make a sweeter cake use half milk and half dark chocolate. I think entirely milk might be a little nurseryish.

Mr Frost's Chocolate Cake (Tiffin)

200g slightly salted butter
200g dark chocolate (60-70% cocoa)
200g gluten free gingernut biscuits (or gluten free digestives)
125g whole almonds
125g whole hazelnuts
50g preserved stem ginger - in syrup (or prunes/apricots/figs)

square baking tray lined with baking paper or rice paper

Toast the nuts very slowly in a dry pan until an almond squeaks when you bite it - don't let them colour too much. Put all the nuts in a clean tea towel and rub the skins off the hazelnuts. Cool and chop roughly. Chop the preserved ginger into small chunks.

Make piles of the biscuits and cut them downwards into roughly 1cm chunks, with lots of crumbs too (or put in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin to make chunks and crumbs).

Melt the butter over a low heat. Off the heat add the chocolate and leave for a minute to start to melt. Stir gently until smooth, then stir in the nuts, biscuits and preserved ginger. Smooth into a baking paper or rice paper lined tin, aiming for a layer not more than an inch thick. (If using rice paper, press another layer on the top and weight down with a book). Chill until set - over night is good. Then cut into fingers and enjoy after dinner with a strong coffee.

Little Tash Shows Them How It's Done

Tash made the dress that she asked for directions on in august and customised the wig with baby dolls heads as you can see. For more burlesque glamour and links go to her website

and drool over those cute hats.

A Fragrant Quince Supper

Stuffed quince is one of my favourite autumn treats, so when I saw a box of them glowing yellow in the window of the greengrocers I knew what to do. I don't think I had even realised quince season was here with the late summer and all, so I have been spared the usual wait as the weather turns and I anticipate the quinces. I will also be making Quince Brandy to savour after dinner and Membrillo (quince paste) for all those lovely winter pork dishes or just to nibble at with a piece of sheep cheese.

Dolmeh e Beh (or stuffed quince) is a Persian recipe in which you slow cook the lamb stuffed quinces in a little broth scented with saffron - salivating yet? Its rich so you may just want one quince between two people. I serve it with some steamed rainbow chard or kale (or other fresh deep green) and a small mound of rice cooked with barberries or a flatbread to mop up the savoury juices with. Pomegranate seeds or chopped pistachios are a beautiful garnish scattered over the top.

Persian Stuffed Quinces – Dolmeh e Beh (serves 4-8)

4 Quinces
350g Lamb Mince
2 Medium Onions
1 tsp Turmeric
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Tomato Paste (make sure it is sugar free for SCD)
Juice of one Lemon
2 dtsp Fruit sugar (3 of ordinary sugar or 4tsp honey for SCD)
2 dtsp Butter
Bunch Flat Leaf Parsley
250ml Water
2 Pinches Saffron Threads
Turkish Chilli Flakes (or regular chilli)

Preheat the oven to 170 C / mark 3 / 325 F

Chop the onions finely and sauté them in a little oil with a pinch of salt till soft and pale gold. Grind the saffron with a teaspoon of the fruit sugar and a pinch of salt and set aside. Wash and chop the parsley roughly.

When the onions are golden add the lamb to the pan and turn up the heat to medium, stirring until the meat is starting to sizzle and brown. Don’t let the onions burn. Sprinkle in the turmeric and stir for another minute to cook off the bitterness.

Add the tomato paste, two teaspoons of the lemon juice, cinnamon, half the parsley, a good twist of black pepper and a couple of pinches of Turkish chilli flakes (one pinch of regular chilli flakes). Fry gently for another few minutes until the tomato smells sweet – add a little water if it seems really dry and starts to stick. Off the heat stir in the rest of the parsley and set aside.

Cut off the top of each quince to make a lid and hollow out the core and a little of the flesh with a teaspoon – the flesh is tough, but you can do it! Trim the bottom of the quinces if they do not stand up easily. Fill the cavities with the lamb mixture, mounding it up a little and squidge the lids on top. Place them in a deep sided enamel or earthenware dish with a close fitting lid. Something not much bigger than the quinces is ideal. You could use an ovenproof saucepan with a lid as an alternative.

Add the water, fruit sugar (or sugar or honey) and lemon juice to the ground saffron and stir to dissolve. Pour it over the waiting quinces and add the butter to the pan in a few knobs. Cover tightly with the lid, or a double layer of foil and bake in the oven for 1 ½ hours, basting with the juices twice during cooking. Serve with the golden juices drizzled over, some dark greens and a small mound of rice or flatbread.

Pawn Queen

I haven't posted anything about Fin's winsome ways for a while and tonight gave me an opportunity I couldn't pass up. Nick and Fin were playing chess at the kitchen table before supper, Fin complaining about any aggressive moves Nick made to take a particular pawn. 'Take something else!' he kept saying, 'I want to make this pawn into a queen'. Nick, growing more exasperated as the game crawled painfully along broke out with, 'Fin you're obsessed with becoming a queen, maybe we should call this game, 'Becoming Queen' instead of chess. 'I am not obsessed with becoming a queen', replied Fin indignantly, 'I just want this pawn to get to the other side and turn into a queen so I can win'. Then in a moment of clarity, 'why don't we call it, 'Pawn Queen', instead of chess?' (eliciting a huge snigger from me) and sensing he was onto a good thing, 'Pawn Queen, (snigger), Pawn Queen, (chortle), Pawn Queen!' (guffaw). He knew it was good, he just didn't know why.....

Fig Semifreddo

Fin was a little tearful on the way home from school yesterday - Spike had invited someone else home to play for the afternoon and he felt hurt. To add insult to injury, I'm trying to keep his sugar consumption down and told him he couldn't have a (wheat and dairy free) ice cream from the health food shop - because, it's basically made of soya stuck together with sugar and factory magic. So he whinged and whined until I suggested that I make semifreddo for desert. We got some cream and headed home with lighter hearts.

Once home I had to come up with something not loaded with sugar. I wanted to try a lemon semifreddo, but you have to counteract all that sharpness with sugar, so that one was out. What I did have was a bowl full of ripe figs that needed using, so I fiddled around with them and this is what I came up with. (semifreddo is an Italian un churned ice cream made with a high proportion of cream to keep down those nasty ice crystals).

The image above is not of my semi freddo, it belongs to Laurie Smith. You see Nick had the camera at work and we just couldn't wait....

Fig Semifreddo (serves four to five)

284ml double organic cream
8 large ripe fresh figs
a lemon
runny honey
tsp brandy or frangelico or 2tsp rose schnapps (all optional of course)
vanilla extract


remove the fig stalks and process until coarsely chopped in a food processor - or just mash well with a fork.

Stir a couple of teaspoons of honey with a squeeze of lemon juice until it dissolves, add the cream, a dribble of vanilla and the alcohol if using. Whip until it forms soft peaks. Fold in the figs gently and not very thoroughly to leave nice pink bands running through the mixture.

Pour into a shallow tray and freeze for a few hours, or until semi solid. If it gets too hard in the freezer, just leave to ripen in the fridge for half an hour.

We had ours topped with chopped roasted almonds, a little drizzle of honey and the tiniest sprinkle of cinnamon. It's rich, be warned!

Cornflakes and Other Banned Substances

What is it about cornflakes? I'll put that question in context for you; we just had a little stay in hospital with Finley - he's ok now. When breakfast time came, the only thing he could eat, being gluten intolerant, was cornflakes. He was delighted of course, as I don't let cornflakes in the house as a rule. I watched him working his way through the bowl, lips smacking and savouring every moment of the crunchy, corny, salty sugary flakiness. It was like they held some sort of primal attraction for him. Of course as soon as we got home, the usually pounced upon granola was rejected in favour of a whining request for cornflakes. It's like crack - one try and you're hooked.

Cornflakes are a highly processed food that speaks to all of the receptors in your mouth. They are really salty, but you don't perceive them as such because of the high sugar content. The carbohydrate base that makes the flake is maize, one of the quickest release carbs out there; making cornflakes like the culinary equivalent of a machine gun, just aim and fire. Then you drench them in creamy cold milk and sometimes even add some extra sugar (to counteract all that salt). You can crunch a whole bowl in 2 minutes flat and hardly know you've done it.

In fact you can eat them anywhere; you may have seen the advert for crunchy nut cornflakes (now don't get me started on them) where a woman sits in the front seat of her car and pours milk into a box of flakes before burying her face in the box and chomping grossly as milk and flakes spill over her nice business suit. The thrust of the advert is; don't hold back, we know these things are addictive - look she doesn't even care about her suit or car anymore, she just wants flakes, you want them too because they are sooo good! Replace the flakes with a syringe full of junk and you have a government warning about the dangers of drugs. Well people are mainlining refined carbs out there without realising the damage they are doing to themselves and their offspring, and Kellogg's are dressing it up as some secret club for cornflake lovers. Don't let yourself be fooled into thinking they are just a bowl of flakes. They are just the tip of a junk food iceberg waiting to pull you into an endless round of sugar cravings.

Now I don't want to leave you feeling helplessly depressed when you get up tomorrow and view the collection of cereals in your cupboard. Breakfast can be the best meal of the day - you have been fasting all night, are properly hungry and need something sustaining to get you through the morning. Cereal is generally what most people reach for, but then find by lunchtime they are so hungry they could gnaw their own hand off. Below are some tips and suggestions on good ways to start the day.

*What you want is some carbohydrate that is slow releasing, a bit of protein and something to hydrate you. Try to choose grains that have not been highly processed as these will release carbs into the bloodstream at a manageable rate. Think, oats, barley, brown rice, wholemeal bread, rye bread...

*If you need tea (as I do) or coffee, make sure you drink a nice big glass of water too or follow with a cup of hot water and lemon to stimulate your liver.

*Try to sit down to have breakfast - if you really need to get up and go then gulp down a big glass of water and grab a piece of fruit, but make sure you sit down within the next couple of hours to eat something more substantial or your blood sugar will fall dangerously low.

Some things that we eat are:

*poached/scrambled egg, grilled tomato, baked beans and toast or oatcakes

*homemade granola with sunflower seeds and chopped banana

*yogurt, fresh fruit, chopped nuts or flaked almonds

*fruit smoothie made with yogurt

*wholemeal toast and peanut butter

*revueltos - Spanish scrambled eggs with vegetables and chorizo or prawns

*porridge with baked or stewed fruit (bake the night before) and Greek yogurt

*oatcakes, goats cheese and fresh figs

*nuts and dried fruit and some carrots

*eggy rice

I'll post a recipe for my homemade granola when I can work it out - I do it by feel you see. Next batch, I'll measure it. Happy breakfasting!