Subtitle: To a healthy alternative

For the past few years, we have been trying to eat much more healthily.  It started with a kick back to Slimming World, which, helped both myself and G loose the combined weight of a small human between us, to a constant battle.  This battle is ferocious, its between choosing the right food at the right time in the right combination.  It is really easy, and we both now understand (the penny finally dropped) that more exercise meant being able to eat the “naughty” foods.

My personal battle is against the diet trade itself.  Don’t get me wrong, not the organisations like Slimming World, or Weight Watchers, or the many others our there, they fundamentally do a great job of trying to reeducate people on healthy eating and healthy foods, but more the diet foods.  The diet coke which means take our the “bad for you sugar” and replace that with “even worse for you Aspartame”.  If you look at any pre-packaged “Diet Food” there is always a list of ingredients that are basically just chemicals which our bodies are just not designed to deal with.  There are so many natural “diet foods” which are available, they grow in the dirt, they hang off of the trees, they are all around us in a variety of colours!

Anyway, im getting off track slightly, so back to the blog.  On Friday, we met with a dear, close friend, for a celebratory meal.  We went to a local Chinese “all you can eat” place, which WILL remain nameless.  We started tucking into the starters, and I began feeling a little woozy, blamed it on tiredness, stress, and carried on, laughing, gossiping, chatting, eating.

That night, after going to bed after midnight, I woke, buzzing, at 4:00am.  Brain buzzing, stomach complaining, nausea, sweats, thirsty, dire.

G mentioned later in the morning that at the restaurant  he had noticed, but failed to mention, as we had already eaten, the menu stated something at the bottom, which, had I noticed before we started eating, I would have suggested we went elsewhere.  “Contains MSG” & worse “Some items GM”.  Im not that stupid that I don’t realise a lot of Chinese restaurants &  take-aways  use MSG, but it was the Genetically Modified food stuff that I had stuffed in my body!

Last night, we had planned a meal for other friends, and as through one reason or another it had been cancelled 3 times, we knew we couldn’t cancel again.  I had planned to do Thai, and made sure the meal was heavily vegetable based, raw salad based, and healthy homemade satay, along with the signature Thai Green Curry.

Above is my version of a Thai Salad.  You can click on it to see the ingredients a bit clearer.  Its simple, takes a little time in the preparation, but is delicious.  First make the salad dressing by whisking together the following:

15ml of Olive Oil
Juice of one Large Lemon
juice of one Lime
20ml of Dark Soy
10ml of Honey

Now for the salad take half a red cabbage and shred finely.  2 peppers, 1 red, 1 yellow cut into thin slices.  1 iceberg lettuce shredded, 1 mango diced.  Toss all the ingredients into a bowl, and pour over all of the salad dressing.  Its best to make this about 2 hours before you want to serve it.  Place the bowl in the fridge.

Just before serving, grate about 10 baby carrots, or 3 large carrots.  I prefer the baby carrots, as they are sweeter.

To serve, get a large platter, strain the dressing from the salad and place the mixed cabbage, lettuce mango and peppers onto the platter, then spread your grated carrots around the edges.  This makes for a perfect fresh light side dish to any Thai meal.