Kitchen Nutrition

Wind knocked the hell outa my lime tree .. time for Lime Marmalade! 🍋‍🟩 😋 lime halves now soaking overnight ready for the production line tomorrow. I’m a marmalade-making virgin so any useful tips from preserve-pros welcome right here! Thing is, this might not be my last… this recipe only called for about 14 limes (1kg) … I’ve got 3 more BOXES of them sitting under the bench 😳🫣

I love new learnings, especially when it’s combined with delicious food, pretty decorations and an inspiring, fun vibe

No.33 brings to you a full meal from Graham Kerr … this one is a nod to the days of the “fat is bad” that we lived through in the ‘90s. “Minimax” might be quite nostalgic for a few of you … for others you’ll have no idea of what I’m talking about 😂 No surprises then that this is a low fat meal, with only a few teaspoons of healthy fats from olive and toasted sesame oils - knowing HOW healthy these oils are all I adapted the recipe a bit to splash in a little more than Mr Kerr suggests😏. Smoking is actually quite an easy and tasty way to cook the tuna (I couldn’t source steaks, so did fillet instead), and the barley added to the rice adds a good source of cholesterol-lowering beta-glucan (soluble fibre), along with the omega-3 fats of the tuna. And with the gut-loving pickled, coloured veggies this meal is a healthy banger … thanks Graham ☺️👍

Sunday afternoon .. Husband with afternoon-munchies: “Any cake in the house?”, Wife: “Choose me a cookbook and you’re on!” No.31 of brings to you another school fundraiser, this one from Queen Margaret’s College. I love these books because they are usually filled with manageable, tried and true winners! The title for this one, “Plonk Cake” caught my attention .. what is that??? Well, it’s because you PLONK fruit on the top before baking it! 🤣 this has 1 and 1/2 cups of fruit, and being the end of the week I only had frozen fruits left in the house which was perfect for this! No peeling, no chopping, no mess 😁 Plus, gut health hack right here: 3 different fruits (cherries, blueberries AND raspberries) and you’re already 3 different plant foods towards your 30+ per week target for a healthy gut microbiome 💥 👌 Health hack #2: always only use 2/3rds of the sugar amount (so 2/3rd cup here vs whole cup for this recipe). And to complement the almond theme with the sliced almonds on top, I swapped out a third of the flour for ground almonds and threw in a splash of almond essence. Next level 😋 ☀️

After a summer hiatus, I’m back!! 👋 .. back to finish “cooking my books”. And now that summer’s over and autumn is setting in it felt a good time to kick off with a comforting Sunday roast 😋 So the centrepiece was clearly gonna be the leg of lamb (I used a delicious orange spiced lamb recipe from Gordon Ramsey… but I’ve used his book before so in the spirit of the programme I needed a new book). The book chosen for No.30 of was Ruth Pretty’s Favourite Recipes and I turned to this for the accompaniments - and the citrus 🍋 and herb flavours of the orzo pasta was perfect for the orange-flavoured lamb 🍊 .. and especially good as a dish to be done ahead of time when having visitors for dinner 😍 With another side dish of puréed peas, also flavoured with lemon garlic and herbs, it was a flavour party in my mouth 🤤

Well, it’s been a long time between drinks, and I’m long overdue for another instalment of . So when babies come home from uni, Mumma bear gets baking .. and here’s the perfect new recipe I’ve found for my uni-student lover of banana cakes! 😍 I can hand on heart turn this one into No.29 of CMB because I haven’t come across this version yet and never cooked this one before, but I will definitely be be coming bake to it. I have been crushing on Annabelle Langbein (and her recipes) long before she graced our tv screens, and she will feature in my series here several times, coz I have at least 4 of her books. I often find myself returning to her recipes over and over and this is my new fave of a pretty common-place cake. What I love about it, firstly, is its size! It’s a big recipe which means it does indeed make enough for one decent cake (22cm) for the day, but then there’s enough to put the rest into small loaf tins, as I haven’t saved up large tuna tins like she suggests here for mini cakes - but I will SO be doing that from now on .. what a great idea!!! So now I’ve got a couple of small cakes in my freezer to pull out when I’m short of time but still want to look like a domestic goddess 😇. Now here’s for the nutritionist healthy baking hacks: I used only 1cup of sugar (not 1 1/2cup… always only use 2/3rds of sugar in a recipe, it has no effect on the outcome, and is still perfectly sweet enough, especially when topping it eventually with a bit of lemon icing ), I used half butter and half low saturated-fat spread to reduce the overall saturated fat content, I used 1/3rd whole meal flour versus all white to up the fibre content, and my mashed bananas didn’t quite make the 2-cup volume so I made up the rest with Greek yoghurt, which lowers the sugar a bit more and ups the protein 👍 This recipe was so good I bet the Carrot Cake will be just as good so I’ve kept that in the picture too. Two versions of faves that are sure winners

I’ve heard rave reviews of this book during school fundraising activities but I haven’t delved into it deeply myself.. so I was stoked to be pushed towards finally choosing a recipe from it for No.28 of . I love baking on a Sunday afternoon, and this Upside Down Pear Cake recipe didn’t disappoint - delicious 🤤 I confess I did quite a bit of tweaking: I used cashews coz I didn’t have walnuts, I swapped the treacle for half:half Agave Syrup: Date Syrup, for a lower GI sweetening, and only used 2/3rds of the sugar as I do with any cake/baking recipe. Still a perfectly sweet deliciousness for afternoon tea or dessert.

The Mediterranean Diet is the hottest thing in nutrition news right now, which is funny coz there’s nothing “new” about it 😆 Think “traditional” Mediterranean Diet… not just the pizza-n-pasta type 😉 So I was stoked when Mr 16yrs picked this book off the shelf for No.26 of . It is one that I researched and choose because it really is like a how-to-do-the-Mediterranean-diet 101. It is written by a dietitian (a Greek one at that), not a cook/chef who’s sliding in on the money-making coat tails of a current “fad”diet, and she spends the first 30pages or so telling you the fundamentals of the eating principles , plus how it looks in practice with two weeks of meal planning , and then a bunch of really accessible easy recipes! The recipe I choose doesn’t look that different to many mid-week family meals I’m sure - a meat’n’veg dish on rice . So what makes this suitable for a MedDiet eating pattern then? Well firstly it’s the portion of meat (at only 150g per serve), and it’s low ratio to veggies, then the lack of commercially bought, highly processed sauce over it , and the liberal use of EVOO (extra virgin olive oil). Get THOSE principles right and the nutrients take care of themselves. It’s that easy . 🥘 🍽️ 🍷 Enjoy 😊

Let me take you back 🥰 back to 1992 when I got given this awesome recipe book for my birthday! … thanks Big Sis! Alison Holst is a kiwi legend (duh!) and it seemed fitting to choose a recipe from this book for my 25th edition of And I decided to add to the nostalgia by choosing a recipe that reminds me of baking (and eating!) in my Nan’s kitchen as a little girl.. Oaty Fingers are such a fond memory of those times for me. You will see this recipe suggests you can eat these with butter, I admit the dietitian in my head got a bit noisy and told me there was quite enough butter in them already 🫣, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what we used to do with Nan, in fact we probably cut the butter off in slices and added it like cheese … yum! 🤤 And whilst I don’t want to disrespect a Cooking Queen of our nation, I reckon Nan’s biccies were better 😏 (maybe it was the baker here that was the problem, not the recipe?) I might just need to go and hunt through Nans old handwritten recipe book now and find the OG version 🤩 #

This one’s for all you Tupperware lovers out there 🥰 #24 of comes out of the Tupperware Cook recipe book (yes they did a recipe book! They did everything except the proverbial .. 😉). I was inspired to bake for the week ahead (thanks, sis), and this recipe looked seriously quick and easy - 1 cup of most-everything, stir, bake - yes, that easy. Fun fact: every kitchen item in this front shot is Tupperware, except the ring tin (I didn’t earn enough in my sales days to get their silicon Kuggelhopf cake mould 🙄). Fun hacks: use leftover Christmas fruit mix for the dried fruits, lower sugar content by under-filling the “1 cup” measure by 1/3rd, sprinkle more coconut thread over the raw mixture before baking for a crunchy topping. Enjoy warm with some crème fraiche or Greek yoghurt 🤤

It’s all about pumpkin for No.22&23 of 🎃 Pumpkin Soup is obviously not a new one but this recipe from the Trinity Schools Cookbook adds a great twist to a classic, with Thai-inspired spices. To be honest I felt it needed a little more punch, so I added a bit more curry paste and then squeezed in juice from two small limes at the end to ‘make it pop’ .. worked a treat and was lovely with homemade peanut butter on fresh bread as the accompaniment - gave it a satay vibe when eaten together 😋 The pumpkin scones are a Ruth Pretty classic, but I must’ve over-mixed mine as you can see from their “tight” and cracked look. I’ve never made scones in a food processor before and while the idea appealed initially it’s a technique I clearly need to master to get a good outcome 🤪 not too bad topped with k***s of melting butter though 😏

When on island time