Day two of my low sugar experiment and all is going smoothly. I read an article from the Telegraph published a few weeks ago about the sugar that manufacturers put into their bread. It made me cross, especially the bit where the manufacturers defended the addition of sugar to wholemeal bread by stating that it ‘masks the bitter taste of wholemeal flour” What a load of rot. I made some wholemeal bread yesterday with flour, water, yeast and a little salt and I can tell you that it isn’t bitter at all.
One thing I am noticing is that my creativity in approaching food seems to be increased by a constant vigilance for avoiding sugar. Yesterday I made a sort of tabbouleh but with more bulgar wheat than one would normally use which was so good that my daughter asked that I make extra so she could take some for her school lunch. These are the moments that remind me there is a wider impact of thinking about what I eat. Food is something which connects us and it cannot help but have some sort of influence on the people around you.
When I hear people say they don’t eat salad I feel sympathy. Salad isn’t a few lettuce leaves and a tomato. The dictionary definition isn’t much better coming up with “A cold dish of various mixtures of raw or cooked vegetables, usually seasoned with oil, vinegar, or other dressing and sometimes accompanied by meat, fish, or other ingredients“. This is so far short of my interpretation that we could be talking about completely different subjects. So much can go into making an interesting salad, vegetables, leaves, herbs, pulses, grains, fruits. Some might be cooked, others raw, some might be dressed with a concoction which takes longer to create than the ingredients it is mixed with and others might need only a hint of the juice from something citrus. There might be cheese or meat, there may be good bread or it might be perfect on its own. The salad is restricted only by the imagination of its creator and with only balsamic vinegar out of bounds due to its sugar content I have at my disposal riches which are more abundant than is strictly necessary.
There’s an added benefit to eating a lot of salad. It does wonders for your energy. Try it, and start with this.
Tabbouleh (ish)
60g Bulgar wheat
Handful of sweet cherry tomatoes (they need to have some flavour!)
A large bunch of parsley
A bunch of mint (half as much as the parsley)
A red onion or a few spring onions
3 tbsp Olive Oil
3 tbsp Lemon juice
A sprinkling of salt
Put the bulgar wheat in a bowl and cover it with 120ml of boiling water for 20 minutes until it has absorbed the water.
Chop up the tomatoes, the parsley and the mint and add it to the cooked bulgar wheat
Add the olive oil, lemon juice and the salt and give everything a good mix.
That’s it..yes really.
PS. Sorry but it was so tasty we ate it all before I had a chance to take a picture of it. But trust me, just make it and eat it as it is or with a bit barbecued fish or meat and you will never look back.
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