Category: General Information

Breaking the Fast: Part 1 – Oats

While I don’t quite subscribe to the “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” mentality, it is certainly important to start your day with something that will give you good energy and sustain you through to lunch without tucking into the snack bowl.

Breakfast food varies around the world. For many it is just like any other meal and doesn’t involve any particular foods, but for a lot of cultures there are particular foods associated with this morning routine. In the Western Diet breakfast has often come to be associated with piles of buttery squares of toast, platefuls of processed meats, pancakes, waffles, and sugary cereals. A lot of processed carbohydrates, sugar and saturated fats that cause energy spikes and crashes after a short period. In healthier diets across the world breakfast is often a more balanced affair of complex carbohydrates, protein and healthy fats and this is something I’ve tried to incorporate into our own eating patterns.

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A Note on Bread

Ah bread. Was ever a finer food invented? Whether toasted golden brown with a smear of butter or gently torn and dipped into a warming soup, this staple food is the epitome of comfort and pleasure. Yet walk down any supermarket aisle and you’ll see what horrific and torturous things we’ve done to this once noble food.

Bread at it’s simplest is flour, water, yeast and salt. Sometimes there may be the addition of whole food ingredients like fruit, seeds, olive oil, eggs and milk, but look at the ingredient list on a mass produced pan loaf and you’ll see a whole lot more going into them, many of which you wouldn’t find in a regular kitchen.

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A Note on Oils

Cooking oil is an ubiquitous element to our cooking and yet one we rarely give much thought to. This is a shame as it’s one of the most vital parts to healthy and wholesome cooking.

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