You can make friends with salad

For the last six months I've been obsessed with a single dish from the same food outlet. I eat it for lunch at least once a week, sometimes twice… and once I'm pretty sure I had it three times within a seven-day period. Oops.

The outlet is a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place near my office. It's called Misschu and it's run by a lady who I call Miss Chu… but only in the privacy of my head because our 'relationship' is at a point where it would be insulting to now ask her first name, even though mine is seared into her brain thanks to the regularity of my visits.

The dish is lemongrass beef vermicelli salad. I've tried other dishes from the menu: I've cheated on lemongrass beef with satay chicken for example, and while it's good, to me it's not as good. (I also have a regular dalliance with the Asian vegetable dumplings on days when I need a snack and not a meal.)

Early on in my burgeoning relationship with the beef salad, a colleague who also fell under its spell ran into my office in a panic. "This salad is soooo good. I love it but is it healthy?

Given it was now a part of my staple diet, this was suddenly a pertinent question to ask. I'm smart enough to know that because something is a 'salad' doesn't mean it's healthy, low fat or low calorie. So I applied some Diet Another Day tests to gauge whether or not regular consumption was going to move me up a clothes size:

What are the ingredients? Beef (though it's also available with chilli prawns or chicken), a mix of herbs and mesclun, vermicelli noodles, shredded carrot and a dressing which at my guess had garlic, fish sauce, chilli, vinegar, sugar and possibly the tiniest bit of oil.

Are there any potentially 'dangerous' zones? Nope. The beef used is a lean fillet, there is no greasy film inside the bowl at the end and the beef-to-salad-to-noodle ratio was good. And though it's a hole-in-the-wall, it's not one where you fear a serve of food poisoning with your pho. I may be a sucker for the marketing, but Misschu is clean, fresh and healthy, something which sets her apart from other Asian takeaway.

Does it meet my criteria for a nutritional gold star? A serve of lean protein. Check. A decent serve of mixed vegies. Check. A reasonable serve of carbohydrates. Check. The portion size is generous without being supersized, and without fail keeps me full and satisfied until dinner.

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! This is all guess work of course. I'd never ask Miss Chu what was was actually in the salad (she's lovely but I dare not risk getting my fix by offending her) but my friend Google has been a help and she confirms that it looks OK.

The bad news is I have to break up with Miss Chu. In a couple of weeks I'll no longer be working round the corner from her Takeaway Window of Joy and my visits will cease to be as regular, like maybe only once a fortnight. In the meantime I've found this recipe so I can make it for myself and my MasterChef-like brother-in-law also does a mouthwatering rice paper roll with similar ingredients.

Turns out Lisa Simpson was right: you can make friends with salad.

Thy daily bread

I won't waste your time with lengthy explanations about why I haven't blogged since 1984. I'll simply say I've been researching new material and now I'm back.

Ahem, so in the name of research I got to eat at Jamie Oliver's London restaurant, Fifteen. We ate at the upstairs bit, which is evidently not as fancy-pants as the basement downstairs, but still a definite treat considering I'd been on a steady budget-induced diet of Pret A Manger sandwiches for the two weeks prior.

I love Jamie and I loved his restaurant. The vibe, the service and the food were all swell. I was lucky enough to dine with a friend who worked at Fifteen – and I struggled not to gush when she told us she and her colleagues spent that day in a field collecting wild mushrooms for the restaurant. (Then, when they'd finished foraging, Gennaro, Jamie's friend and mentor, whipped them up a mushroom risotto on a makeshift bush stove. Love.)

I ate lots of yummy things that night, everything yummy in fact, but the taste that stays with me to this day is… the bread. It was a rosemary and sea salt focaccia, and save for my sophisticated dining companions and the fact that I was 28 (and not eight), I may have forgone 'real' food in order to have a three-course meal of that bread.

As is well documented on this blog, I'm an unashamed carb lover – with bread chief among my passions. My new friend Jamie is a fan, too. "I'm still really mad about bread – I love it. It's so exciting. It's such a rewarding, therapeutic, tactile thing and you'll be so proud of yourself once you've cracked it," he explained to me… via our mutual friend the internet.

And the good news is bread isn't the diet devil it is made out to be. The better news is one of the yummiest breads (in my humble 'Bread Expert of the World' opinion) is the ideal choice if you're watching your waistline. A study in the (genuinely) prestigious British Journal of Nutrition found sourdough is the best bread to manage blood sugar. Yep, better than even wholemeal or wholegrain. To put it plainly – sourdough bread keeps us fuller for longer.

Lucky for me I have the World's Best Sourdough baked around the corner from me. I won't tell you where it is because the queues are already long enough on a Saturday, but the secret to its genius is the dough is developed for 30 hours – as an authentic sourdough should be (limiting the need for commercial yeast).

If you want to know if your favourite sourdough is the 'real' thing, then ask the baker. Get them to tell you how it's made. Sourdough should be properly 'aged', not tricked up with vinegar, improvers or emulsifiers. It's probably something you'll instinctively know anyway because real sourdough is AWESOME, and fake sourdough is just regular bread with a fancy fake name.

I've pretty much settled on World's Best Sourdough – with either Persian feta or Irish butter – as my death-row meal. I'm also determined to have a crack at making Jamie's rosemary and sea salt focaccia. I have the recipe and as Jamie says, making your own bread is a satisfying – and ultimately a very tasty – experience.

Meal of the moment

Every so often I try a new dish hoping it will become one of my Weeknight Wonders (a meal with ingredients that are always on hand, which takes less than 20 minutes to prepare and provides leftovers for lunch the next day). As of this week there is a new dish in my Weeknight Wonder repertoire.

Its hero ingredient is a bag of frozen vegies. Much has been written about how they are just as healthy, if not healthier, than fresh vegies because they are frozen fresh. Good news.

The bad news is I sometimes find them unpleasant to eat - it's difficult not to overcook them and can taste frostbitten even if they've only been in my freezer for a week. Despite this I tend to always have a bag of frozen veg on hand (especially peas which I seem to put in everything) for those just in case moments.

But I'm pleased to report that Birds Eye Country Harvest Spring Greens are better than your average bag of frozen veg.

They don't have that icy, frozen taste, they present well and are a mix of green vegies I happen to like a lot. Consequently they form part of my current meal of the moment – a vegie and pesto pasta which I make it with:

Rigatoni (or any pasta you like)
Store-bought pesto
Some good quality goat's cheese
Pine nuts (toasted)
Spring greens mix

The pine nuts add crunch and toasty flavour, the cheese provides creaminess and a tart kick to the dish, while the pasta and pesto do their always-amazing thing. Coating the veg in pesto-y, cheese goodness does a lot to increase their appeal and adding them means you eat less pasta. The addition of some lean protein (grilled chicken breast = perfect fit) would also be awesome.

The result? A dish which....
Takes approximately 15 minutes to prepare
Is filling and satisfying
Includes a couple of serves of vegies
And tastes damn good

This is one of my Weeknight Wonders - what are yours?

Ryan Reynolds: Healthy Eating Hero

Inspired by my good friends at The Unibrain, I dug out the May 2009 issue of Men's Health featuring His Royal Hotness Ryan Reynolds on the cover.

Ignoring the short (and inexplicable) period of time I confused him with Jason Lee, I've always been a fan of RR. I've followed him since his Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Place days, and I even stuck with him through the unfortunate dark period I like to call Alanis Morrisette.

To be fair, I'm no way near The Unibrain's #1 Fan status but he is (as of now when I thought of it) Diet Another Day's first-ever Healthy Eating Hero. Let me share these choice moments from his Men's Health interview:

• 'I attribute my results mostly to good nutrition.'
• Ryan doesn't have a personal chef, so he cooks meals in advance. For instance, for breakfast he'll make a large supply of steel-cut oatmeal and freeze it.
  
• 'If you hate your workout you're not going to do it.'
  
• 'Never do any of that carve-starve crap'
• Reyonlds is a big believe in the motivational value that having a training partner can bring.
  
• Ryan ran the New York City marathon last year in order to raise money for Michael J Fox's foundation for Parkinson's disease, a condition his own father suffers from.

Bless. It seems we are so on a shared wavelength he could practically author this blog. We should listen to him. He's fit and his abs are as steel cut as his oats. Exhibit A:

Did I also mention he's not American but Canadian and he and a mate once did a 2-week trip up the east coast of Australia, from Sydney to Brisbane (via the Blue Mountains and Byron Bay), on a motorcycle.

Yep, me and him and The Unibrain = definitely could be friends.

At left: BONUS RR Men's Health cover.

http://www.ew.com/ew
www.theunibrain.blogspot.com

This picture has roughly seven serves of vegies

It's also badly shot, blurry and not really publishable quality. But in the interests of getting dinner on the table I had to move fast.

I took it because I was pretty proud of myself. I was both the purchaser and chop-master of these health-giving vegetables – I felt like the Rainbow Bright of home cooking.

I then turned these vegies into a tasty and comforting lasagne and proved to myself and the world (who have no doubt been desperate for my verdict on this issue) that vegetables can taste good.

Assuming the lasagne puts out about five pieces, that's a serve and a half of vegetables per piece – plate it up with a side salad and you're up to two and a half. (Vegies that is, not men because then that wouldn't be an enjoyable meal but rather a very unfunny sitcom.)

Health authorities say we should eat '2 &5' every day, the thought of which makes people think they need to abandon the dishes they love for rabbit food.

Well, unless you know a rabbit with thumbs and a pyrex lasagne dish, I would say my vegetable dish was nothing like what a bunny would eat – and a serve of it for dinner, plus leftovers for lunch the next day, is a vegetable high five right there.

(If you're interested the vegies are sweet potato, red capsicum, mushrooms, leek, zucchini and basil. I turn them into lasagne with a store-bought passata, low-fat ricotta and lasagne sheets. It's easy and pretty low-fat as the ricotta makes it creamy and not dry without having to be a cheese fest.)

The week that was....

RIP Slimming & Health
I'm sad to report the demise this week of Slimming & Health. In the world of magazines, S&H was the little engine that could – hard-working, reliable, solid and useful. Sadly, forced to live at a company that wants everything to be the Orient Express, its value was no longer appreciated. Demise is in fact an inappropriate way to describe its closure as sales were solid and readers were loyal to the end but unfortunately it will no longer grace our newsstands. In fact, it was one of the few women's titles to experience growth in readership last quarter. With news outlets reporting that supermarket sales are up, eating out is in decline and the health market is growing, you would think this would a prime time for a mag like S&H. Seems it's not so. As someone noted to me when informed of the closure, 'It's a shame as it was the only mag with anything useful in it.'



Say NO to liquid calories
Despite the best efforts of CHOICE, that guy who is suing Coco-Cola on the basis of misleading claims and my ranting to anyone who will listen, Vitamin Water continues its assault. A friend informed me that a PR delivery was frantically snapped up by her colleagues like it was a miracle health tonic. Armed with my ranting in her head, said friend was a lone voice in the chaos, willing people to PUT DOWN THE LOLLY WATER. 'It's cordial,' she urged. She's not sure anyone heard over the slurping or in the haze of the resultant sugar high but the crusade continues.

Don't be fooled by the words on the bottle – energy, focus, revive, vitamin – this drink will not make you healthy. Vitamin Water is better named Sugar Water as a bottle contains 27g of the stuff, or about the same as a chocolate bar and not much less than a can of Coke.

Some highlights from their website include celebrating that it's 'Gluten Free!' (as opposed to gluten-rich regular water I normally drink?) and that yes, it contains sugar but it's 'a proprietary blend of crystalline fructose and pure cane sugar.' Phewf, now that I'm fooled into believing that the sugar is healthy because it's pure, and confused into thinking the made-up-in-a-laboratory sugar is better for me, I can happily gulp down litres every day. Thanks Coca-Cola for caring about my health.

This yoghurt tastes like mayonnaise....

Not really. Just a perfect chance to use one of my all time favourite movie quotes courtesy of Spike in Notting Hill. It was with great excitement that my nothing-like-Spike friend Amy V alerted me to the opening of Igloo Zoo in Australia. It's inspired by (read: ripped off from) Pinkberry in the US and it sells delightful frozen yoghurt and a selection of brightly-coloured treats to top it with. I was pleased as unlike ice-cream I can stomach frozen yoghurt.

It pitches itself as a healthy alternative to ice-cream, emphasising its antioxidant content, low-fatness and active cultures. Amy's unbridled excitement was tempered only by a final question to me about whether or not it was really healthy. I felt equal parts pride and guilt at her question - pride that I was her go-to girl for an honest and studied appraisal of the product. Guilt that I may turned my friends to be as cynical as I am.

Igloo Zoo have a very fancy website which is as informative as it is funky. I was able to answer her question from the nutritional information supplied from the site. There have been studies about nutritional labels and how many people have no idea how to read them, even when they think they do. That's mostly because to make a proper assessment you really need to do some reading between the lines, as well as have peripheral knowledge. I won't bore you with a lesson here but have some insights into how I was able to declare Igloo Zoo a good choice as an occaisional treat.

Serving size
Labels usually give info per serve and per 100g. The trouble is, WTF is a serve? These guys were generous enough to point out that a small is one serve, medium is two and large is three serves. Some high school maths and I could properly re-gig the figures for my purposes.

But a new Mexican takeaway joint at my local mall is a good lesson in why all is not as it seems when it comes to serves. They place their nutritional brochure front and centre on the counter. It's an obvious marketing ploy, as in 'We aren't trying to hide anything therefore we must be healthy.' Healthy, I don't know, but faced with other options in the food court I was hoping it would at least be healthier. A quick glance at the brochure led me to believe yes – until I noticed all nutritional info was per 100g. Me: 'How many grams in a burrito?' Teenager behind the counter: 'Er, 200.' Thereby doubling all the figures and quickly demisting my rose-coloured glasses.

Kilojoules v calories
A kilojoule by any other name is a calorie. They are both measurements of energy - one is metric (kJ), the other is imperial (cal). As Australia went all modern and metric in 1966 we're supposed to use kJ. The trouble is the US and the UK are still on calories so both remain in common usage. Damn that imperialistic imperialism. One kJ is 4.184 calories. The number of kJs you need to eat daily is dependent on so many things but should roughly be around 6,500-8,000 for an average-sized woman. For example that might be 1,500kJ for breakfast, 2,500kJ for lunch and 3,000kJ for dinner.

As previously discussed, I'm not a calorie/kJ counter but knowing this makes it easier to understand why you should order a medium at Igloo Zoo, when a large frozen yoghurt has 1,400kJ before you add any of the sugary toppings.

Sugar
Low fat isn't everything when it comes to food. We know Igloo Zoo is 99.4% fat free because their marketing material shouts it at us, so reading that part of the label offers little enlightenment. What they don't print on a sandwich board to put outside their shop, it that a large size, sans toppings, contains about 15 teaspoons of sugar. You can read why I believe sugar is very bad to have in your diet here.

THE VERDICT
I'm not buying into the spin that this frozen yoghurt is a health food. The antioxidant content is not special enough for them to explain it further and the live cultures would be in numbers too small to be useful, not to mention strains that are ineffective. But it is low in fat, decent for kilojoules and as bad for sugar as any sweet treat, and that includes fruit juice. Will I breakfast on it daily? No. But I'll definitely be trying it and hoping it tastes as good as it looks.