The Heart of the Matter 23 - The Roundup

I asked for entries and you rose to the occasion! You can't imagine how nice it was so see your entries trickle in after fearing that this was the last edition of the Heart of the Matter-Eating For Life event - Thank you so much! And the variety of entries is also inspiring to see, we have a lot to choose from when we want heart healthy slimmer recipes and they come from all over the world too. Now I better get on with the roundup, if I missed someone or if there are links that doesn't work, please tell me!


First entry to arrive was from Andrea of Cooking Books who created a really good looking Lentil Soup for us, I like the chunkiness of it, it gives me the feeling that I will feel nicely full after eating it!

Our HotM veterans Jugalbandi are back with the most incredible Beet Chocolate Cake to slim our guilty feelings! And as usual, if it comes from Jugalbandi, you can be sure it is healthy!

My friend Meeta of What' For Lunch Honey? made me happy by sending in a mouthwatering entry, her Szechwan Pepper and Ginger Sprouts look great!

Sarah of What Smells... So Good? offers us a total lycopene kick with two bagel recipes, her Pumpkin-Spice Bagels and To-Mato Bagels really makes me feel like having a go at them!

This filling Sun-Dried Tomato-Tortellini Soup comes from Patsy K from Family, Friends and Food, it looks really good and all those vegetables are pure health.

Johanna of Green Gourmet Giraffe has created an amazing Miso Soup with Tofu, Noodles and Vegetables that makes me crave a serving straight away despite I'm not a miso soup fan!

Labelga of Leafy Cooking is also a HotM veteran apart from being a blog friend and she offers us a fresh Grated Salad with Budwig Mayo(naise) and gives you the recipe of a healthy mayonnaise version, I didn't realize that it could be done! Thanks!

Take a look at these Mixed Flour & Root Vegetables Paratha/Flatbread from Soma of eCurry and try to convince me that you don't want to grab one and stuff it into your mouth straight away! I won't believe you

Ching-Chong Salad is how Bird's Eye View of Food and Laughter has named this China inspired salad which has a nice spicy dressing that I must try!

We have several entries from Indian food blogs, next comes from Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and it is a Dal Panchratan ( A Five Lentil Gravy Preparation). I love Indian cooking and I wish I had the ingredients to prepare this!

My lovely HotM sister Michelle from the accidental scientist, made a really intriguing pasta dish, her Walnut, Parsley and Flax Pesto on Angel Hair Pasta sounds great, I have to try it!

Ellen of Feeding My Enthusiams gives us exactly what you need up here in the northern hemisphere right now, just the name of her entry, Sunny Citrus Chicken, cheers me up, not to talk about the dish in itself!

Then we have the Chicken Gazpacho that Navita of Zaayeka sent me and which I absolutely will try as soon as it gets hotter here!

Ning from Heart and Hearth (couldn't be more fitting for the HotM)serves us fish, her Braised Fish Fillet in Black Bean Sauce looks so incredibly good! I want it now!

Priya of Priya's Easy N Tasty Recipes sent in a warming and good soup, her Tomato and Barley Soup would be perfect after being out all day in the sunny but chilly weather we are having right now!

But we need sweet food to, don't we? The Apple Oats Bars that you find over at Curry Leaf's blog Experiments, Emotions, Experiences with Food are both good and healthy so there's no need to feel guilty!

Joelen of Joelen's Culinary Adventures is next, her colourful Vegetable Frittata can easily be made even more heart healthy by using only egg whites instead of the whole eggs in case you need to be really careful with animal fat. But I think it is good as it is!

Yesterday I received a last minute entry from Lynn of Sacatomato, she has made a lentils soup with the wonderful name Black Beluga Lentil Soup, with vegetarian Beluga!

I posted a Green Cauliflower Soup with Capers and Lemon

and yes, another lentil soup, mine had green beans, sun-dried tomatoes and thyme in it.

Yet again I want to thank all the participants -Thanks for making this event!

HotM 23 - Slimmer Recipes

I wish it was as easy to shed whatever it is that you don't like about yourself and your life as it is to change into a new year. It really would be very nice if it went as automatic as the clock ticks over from one year to another but alas it isn't. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make the effort so here we go with new spirits and hopes. Lately the Heart of the Matter has lost a lot of it geist and there have been fewer entries but we, me, Joanna and Michelle want to give it another chance to recuperate its vitality so we have decided to give HotM one more chance because we believe very much in it. Both in healthier cooking because it is good for us and in the idea of storing all the roundups here on the Heart of the Matter blog, so that it is easy to go there and search for a healthy recipe when you need one. But if HotM is going to survive, you have to participate! And we hope you will, this month I am hosting and the theme is Slimmer Recipes; we want heart healthy (less (animal) fats, lean meat, less salt, more vegetables, more fruit, more fish are the main aspects, check out the HotM blog for links to more information) and tasty dishes that you eat when you want to loose some of that excess weight we tend to accumulate over the Christmas and New Year celebrations. Salads, soups, casseroules, pasta, desserts, baking-whatever you want and as many entries you want as long as it is heart healthy but slimming food usually are so this will be very easy for you! Please send me your entries to luculliandelights AT gmail DOT com before midnight (your) on the 28th of January, please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness!

HotM 22: Heart Healthy Decadence (Round-up)

This month's theme for Heart of the Matter focused on decadent treats that were heart healthy. Unfortunately, we didn't get very many entries this month, and so I waited a few extra days, hoping that we might get a late entry or two because December is such a busy month anyhow - and it seems to have worked, because we did! Thanks to the wonderful bloggers who participated this month, even in the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle!

Our first entry comes from Ricki, who authors the blog Diet, Desserts and Dogs. She reminds us in her post that real women bake cookies too (I love this!) and offered her recipe for Tutti Fruiti Christmas Cookies. Since we're already after Christmas now, these pretty little treats would still make lovely hostess gifts or anytime cookies.

Labelga, a regular participant of HotM and the author of Leafy Cooking went with some premium ingredients and made a Bisque d'homard (or, Lobster Bisque) - she served it fresh and hot and it didn't even need the cream the recipe called for, making it really healthy but still full of flavor. This truly shows that heart-heathy treats can be delicious and decadent!

Ilva, my co-host at Lucullian Delights, has posted a beautiful Apricot Almond Cake with Oats and Coconut for her decadent treat. This would make a very lovely holiday breakfast or a delicious treat any time of the year!

Lastly, my own entry was for Caramel Macadamia Nut Sticky Buns - these little treats were an early holiday breakfast for us and are perfect if you're having guests this holiday season.

Thanks again to the participants this month and I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday!

A December Full of Heart-Healthy Decadence (HotM 22)

December is a month full of festivities: holiday parties to attend and coordinate, visitors to entertain, baked goods to create, presents to make or buy, occasions to celebrate with friends and family, cards to write and good cheer to spread. For many of us, it's the busiest time of the year, but also a time of year when we get to let our kitchen prowess shine - or at least get in there and try a few new things!

For me, December means breaking out the Alabama Christmas CD for a few renditions of "Thistlehair the Christmas Bear," scouring books and magazines for new cookie recipes to share with friends, family and cookie swaps; finding new side dishes to accompany the dusty and required recipes for artichoke dip, prime rib and chicken noodle soup that make up Christmas eve and Christmas day fare; and choosing to attempt one of those "traditional" holiday treats that simply are aren't around the other 11 months of the year: yule logs with chocolate bark and marzipan mushrooms, soft and sweet panettone, fruitcake studded with jewel-like candied fruits, elaborate gingerbread houses, rum-spiked eggnog...you know the stuff. Every year, I dream of making such decadent treats, but December comes and goes too quickly, and I find myself left with only the vision of sugarplums dancing in my head and no yule log to speak of.
This year, I'm determined to make those sugarplums materialize and sink my teeth in to them.

For over a year, participants of the monthly Heart of the Matter (HotM) event been helping Ilva, Joanna and I show that food that's good for you doesn't have to be boring or bland. We've already done baked goods and holiday food as themes before, so now we're stepping it up a notch. The holiday season is a time of celebration, abundance, and culinary wanderlust - so for HotM this month, we're asking you to share your recipes for the most decadent, delicious treats you can think of - with a heart-healthy twist. What sort of mouth-watering, scrumptious recipes do you dust off from your kitchen repertoire this time of year? Do you have a something you've always wanted to try, that always seemed too over-the-top to make any other time of the year? Will you take the challenge to make those indulgent foods saved for once-a-year into heart-healthy holiday treats?

The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry(please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to phillipslayden AT gmail DOT com (please use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight on Thursday, December 25, linking to my site, The Accidental Scientist (and to the HotM blog if you’d like). Please note that this is only a few short weeks away! Since it's so soon, and I want people to be able to gain inspiration and be able to enjoy the recipes all month long but have them before the holiday actually arrives, I'll be doing the round-up differently this month and posting the recipes that have come in at the end of each week. If you've never participated before, please join us! We'd love to have some new "faces" and recipes to share!

HotM 19: grains

Grains were the subject of this month's Heart of the Matter ... and here you'll find a small number of very good ideas from some of the best bloggers around. Cooking wholegrains always seems tricky to me: there's that whiff of 70s sandal-wearing earnest hippie-dom which is hard to shake off - boring brown food that tastes like horsefeed.

Not these days. The 21st century way with wholegrains is altogether tastier, somehow less earnest. I've been experimenting with the help of a highly recommended book, A Cook's Guide to Grains by Jenni Muir. Now I'm planning to add these dishes to my staple repertoire - these are all easily achievable, mostly quite quick, all of them the kind of recipes you can fiddle with to add your own stamp.















Labelga's quinoa flakes with spinach and red chilli is ready in 10 minutes, so there are no excuses for not giving this a go. It's one of Labelga's AAP dishes - another alternative to pizza! As you can see from the picture, the flakes are spread onto the plate, then topped with this fabulous spiced mixture. Find it at Leafy Cooking.



















Christine at Kits Chow made vegetarian multigrain rice with vegetables, inspired by a Japanese rice dish, matsutake gohan (rice with mushrooms). This is something to get you experimenting - there are five grains: brown rice, black glutinous rice, buckwheat groats, oat groats and millet.





















Bee and Jai have been doing some hard thinking about what they buy, cook and eat. Their post for Heart of the Matter is interesting and inspirational - they share their personal "rules", and finish with a versatile recipe for roti: this one is sourdough Swiss chard and cornmeal. You'll find it at Jugalbandi, always a good read.

















I often think of cooking wholegrains as time-consuming, but here's another recipe that shows that wholegrains can be quick and easy. Michelle The Accidental Scientist, one of my co-hosts for HotM, makes this Mexican style rice when she's short of time, as an accompaniment to fish, tacos, beans - lots of links to these and other recipes.
























Co-host Ilva at Lucullian Delights has stuffed courgettes with kamut grains which she found when out shopping a little while ago. As always with Ilva's food, it's beautiful and packed with flavours: she calls her dish oven baked zucchini filled with kamut, olives, thyme and parsley.

Olive Oyl is a blogger without a blog, and she's sent me this variation on the traditional Greek dish spanakorizo (Spinach rice), another happy & easy meal:

Plenty for 2 hungry people, also good cold the next day

Chop an onion and gently fry in a biggish saucepan, in a good glug of olive oil. Rough chop around four heads of spinach, I often also add sorrel, baby nettles and cleavers, depending on what's growing, and add to the pan, cover and let sweat for five minutes. Next add 250gms of brown rice, 600ml of water and juice of a lemon. Bring to the boil, season,cover and turn the heat down. Check after about 20 minutes, stir, add water as needed and so on until cooked (usually around 50 minutes)you might also want to add at this point a good few fistfuls of herbs such as mint, parsley, celery leaves, dill. When cooked it has the consistency of risotto and is a beautiful emerald green. Be more or less heart healthy with a grating of cheese on top.



















Nearly forgot: I blogged two grain dishes at Joanna's Food - Skirlie, a cheap and cheerful Scots dish made with oats, and these great six-seeded rolls.

Thanks to everyone for taking part, and watch out for the announcement for December's Heart of the Matter

Announcement: grains for November

This is an announcement for November's Heart of the Matter - we're looking for recipes using GRAINS ... all sorts of grains -wheat, farro, spelt , kamut, amaranth, buckwheat, barley, corn/maize, wild rice, millet, sorghum oats, rice, rye, triticale, quinoa. And if anyone can tell me where in Britain I can buy teff I will be eternally grateful.

That list: it's not exhaustive, and it contains grains I've never eaten, never mind cooked. But it also holds promise - of delicious, healthy, cheap meals. For these grains have been the staple food of mankind over centuries, ever since we stopped roaming, settled down and began to farm.

I have a tendency to think of grains as part of that worthy wholefood 70s thing, brown food that tasted like sawdust. Daft really, because looking through my blog, I find dozens of delicious family favourites made with grains (and I'm not just talking about bread). In the next few days, I'm going to posts lists in groups to make them easier to find - I don't know about you, but I have a lot of half-used packets in my larder, from when I've enthusiastically cooked something new just once.

I'm also going to recommend a really good book, one I found by accident about a year ago, and which is full of useful information about grains, as well as some excellent recipes. It's A Cook's Guide to Grains, by Jenni Muir. Here's an oat recipe adapted from it - too brown to photograph well, but utterly delicious, and cheap as chips (although much much healthier).

Skirlie
for 4

Finely chop an onion and fry very gently in a solid saucepan using plenty of oil. When they're soft and golden mix in a cup (100g) of medium oatmeal and fry for a further 10 minutes or so. Stir frequently. When the mixture is nicely toasted, serve.

This is good instead of potatoes; it's also great with mashed potato. You can use it as a stuffing, either for a joint of lamb, or for a squash. It's a lovely savoury dish that would take well to being modernised with plenty of chopped herbs; it's filling, it's cheap, it's nourishing, it's heart-healthy. It just isn't particularly photogenic.




We'd love to read your heart-healthy grain recipes ... the Heart of the Matter website is a great place for ideas for heart-healthy recipes (something I wish had existed when we were changing our diet on doctor's orders after my husband's heart attack), and it only exists because so many bloggers have taken the time to share their recipes - and also because of the time given to it by my co-hosts Ilva at Lucullian Delights, and Michelle, The Accidental Scientist

The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Thursday 27th November , linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up during the last weekend of November.


PS I'll let you know soon why I'm so keen to track down the teff

Announcement: grains for November

This is an announcement for November's Heart of the Matter - we're looking for recipes using GRAINS ... all sorts of grains -wheat, farro, spelt , kamut, amaranth, buckwheat, barley, corn/maize, wild rice, millet, sorghum oats, rice, rye, triticale, quinoa. And if anyone can tell me where in Britain I can buy teff I will be eternally grateful.

That list: it's not exhaustive, and it contains grains I've never eaten, never mind cooked. But it also holds promise - of delicious, healthy, cheap meals. For these grains have been the staple food of mankind over centuries, ever since we stopped roaming, settled down and began to farm.

I have a tendency to think of grains as part of that worthy wholefood 70s thing, brown food that tasted like sawdust. Daft really, because looking through my blog, I find dozens of delicious family favourites made with grains (and I'm not just talking about bread). In the next few days, I'm going to posts lists in groups to make them easier to find - I don't know about you, but I have a lot of half-used packets in my larder, from when I've enthusiastically cooked something new just once.

I'm also going to recommend a really good book, one I found by accident about a year ago, and which is full of useful information about grains, as well as some excellent recipes. It's A Cook's Guide to Grains, by Jenni Muir. Here's an oat recipe adapted from it - too brown to photograph well, but utterly delicious, and cheap as chips (although much much healthier).

Skirlie
for 4

Finely chop an onion and fry very gently in a solid saucepan using plenty of oil. When they're soft and golden mix in a cup (100g) of medium oatmeal and fry for a further 10 minutes or so. Stir frequently. When the mixture is nicely toasted, serve.

This is good instead of potatoes; it's also great with mashed potato. You can use it as a stuffing, either for a joint of lamb, or for a squash. It's a lovely savoury dish that would take well to being modernised with plenty of chopped herbs; it's filling, it's cheap, it's nourishing, it's heart-healthy. It just isn't particularly photogenic.




We'd love to read your heart-healthy grain recipes ... the Heart of the Matter website is a great place for ideas for heart-healthy recipes (something I wish had existed when we were changing our diet on doctor's orders after my husband's heart attack), and it only exists because so many bloggers have taken the time to share their recipes - and also because of the time given to it by my co-hosts Ilva at Lucullian Delights, and Michelle, The Accidental Scientist

The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Thursday 27th November , linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up during the last weekend of November.


PS I'll let you know soon why I'm so keen to track down the teff