Aromatic couscous
Monday, April 30th, 2012
Love Your Gut Blog
Winter Fruit Salad
Monday, February 20th, 2012
Find it hard to get your children to each their fruit in the winter? Why not try this warm winter fruit salad. This delicious dessert will satisfy their sweet tooth and is an excellent way to keep their digestive system nice and healthy due to the fibre found in fruit. The delicious recipe will also provide them with essential vitamins and minerals needed for their growth spurts.
Ingredients:
600g read-to-eat dried fruits (for example; dates, prunes, apricots and peaches etc.)
3 tbsp clear honey
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Mascarpone or Greek yoghurt to serve
Method
- Tip the fruits and 700ml/11?4 pints cold water into a large saucepan. Add the honey and vanilla, scraping the seeds from the pod into the pan. Bring to the boil. Stir well, lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes until slightly syrupy.
- Take the pan off the heat and stir in the tea bag. Leave to infuse for 10 minutes.
- Discard the tea bag and vanilla pod, tip the fruits and liquid into a non-metallic bowl and pour over the lemon juice. Stir, then leave to cool. Cover and chill until ready to serve.
January on a budget
Monday, January 9th, 2012
After the festive period our wallets tend to be rather tight and it may be hard to meet and ends financially particularly due to January being a five weekend month. However this doesn’t mean you need to sit in and doing nothing for the whole month. With a little initiative and thought there is lots of fun and delicious food to be had. Why not try the below tips to help you get through January without having to stretch ourselves too much.
- Meet friends in your local park and go for a walk. This activity is free; you get to catch up on the gossip as well as you will also be exercising. Physical activity no matter how little is a good way of burning off that extra weight you may have gained during your festive celebrations. Exercise can also help our digestive health as carrying excess weight around the midriff can really affect the digestive system as it can put pressure on the stomach, squashing food mixed with stomach acid back into the gullet – which can cause heartburn.
- Buy frozen vegetables instead of fresh vegetables. This is a cheaper way of getting your five a day. Frozen vegetables contain the same amount for vitamins and minerals to help keep out gut healthy. They are cheaper and there is less wastage as you don’t need to make sure they are eaten before they go off.
- Make some soups and stews. These are relatively cheaper to make as you usually use cheaper cuts of meat and then bulk up on potatoes and vegetables and grains. Soups and stews are also good ways of getting fibre into our diet which will help us to maintain a healthy gut.
- Start your own ‘come dine with me’ on a set budget. This is a sociable way of having fun but also saving money as whilst you are out the expense for the meal you cook you know that you will be returned the favour. You don’t have to do it all on one week, decide with your friends how frequently and go from there. You could even have a ‘Love Your Gut’ Theme!
New Year New You!
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
Happy New year from Love your Gut!
We hope you have all had a fantastic festive season and are ready to start 2012 off with a bang! The New Year is the perfect time to start a fresh and kick start all the things we want to do or improve in our lives. Whilst New Year’s resolutions are what most people do at the start of the year, may we suggest that you put together some New Year’s ‘objectives’ instead. This will perhaps be more achievable by the end of the year rather than feeling failure if you have not been able to keep your resolution. With objectives you can also set out ways in which you can achieve the objective and if it has not went to plan you can re-adjust it to help you achieve it in a different way.
Since Love Your Gut is all about health and wellbeing may we suggest the following objectives for you to aim to achieve by the end of 2012.
- By the end of 2012 I will exercise at least _X_times per week.
- By the end of 2012, I will have increased the amount of fruit and vegetables I have in my diet each week (this will help increase your vitamin and mineral intake and help with you immune function.
- By the end of 2012 I will cut down on the amount of sugary snacks I have during the day.
- By the end of 2012 I will have replaced white pasta, bread and rice with either brown or wholemeal goods (this is an excellent aim to increase your fibre intake which will help with your digestive health).
- By the end of 2012 I will have ensure that I will have at least one hour of ‘me’ time per week (this will help digestive health too as it will help you to de-stress).
Guilt free chocolate cake!
Monday, October 17th, 2011
Do you find it hard to get your little ones to eat their veg? Why not disguise them in this deliciously scrumptious chocolate, beetroot and blueberry cake which is packed full of vitamin C and Fibre. Or better still why not invite the ladies round for guilt free afternoon tea. This is proof that you really can have all the sweetness of a normal chocolate cake but with added gut loving goodness!
Ingredients
- 200g good dark chocolate
- 100g dried blueberries
- 300g grated beetroot
- 100ml light oil
- 200g self-raising wholemeal flour
- 4 tbsp dark molasses sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp bicarbonate soda
- 4 large eggs
Method
- Peel and grate the beetroots.
- Next, melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water.
- Blend the sugar, oil and eggs until smooth
- Tip the mixture into a large bowl and sift in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.
- Gently combine with a spatula and then add the grated beetroot and blueberries. The mixture should be quite tight and ‘dry’ but if it’s totally un-moveable, add a few tbsp of milk or water to loosen slightly.
- Turn the mixture into an 8 inch, greased and lined cake tin and bake on gas mark 4 for 30 minutes but check it after 25 minutes. (If the cake is risen but slightly gooey in the centre this is fine).
