Health Food and other Random Facts

We've given up processed sugar for lent. (Don't worry birthdays and celebrations have fallen on the feast days, so don't feel sorry for us.) Lately, cooking various fatty meats has started to make me internally sick so I thought this was also a good time to not eat as much fatty meats and to experiment with healthier recipes. So I brought out all my healthy cookbooks and began to search.

Over Christmas I received this cookbook from the "You Are What You Eat" on the BBC (you watch all sorts of different shows that you didn't know existed while nursing.) This book has so many healthy recipes, and admittedly some of them are a tad unusual. But I've pressed on and have been reading and cooking all sorts of things. We've tried the chickpea burgers, tofu burgers, the sleepy lettuce soup, the cabbage soup, a carrot/leek/fish dish, some fruit smoothies, and the chicken burgers. It has been hit or miss. The husband calls some of the dishes "British health food," but we are discovering some nice healthy meals that we enjoy.

Unfortunately this cookbook takes some getting used to, because it's British. For instance the temperature conversion. As long as the Internet conversion charts are available I get the oven put on the right setting. Also the weight conversion from grams to pounds is tricky, but the Internet again saves me. Then there are the actual ingredients. Many a time I have gone through this cookbook and had to look up the specific vegetable that it was calling for. Who knew that "garden rocket" is really arugula?

Another ingredient that seems not to exist in the US is wheat free vegetable bouillon. When I made the tofu burgers. I forgot the wheat free veggie bouillon so it was not tasty. So, I searched and searched and could not find any. Not finding any wheat free bouillon powder for the chickpea burgers I improvised and used cubes. Not so tasty. The cube to powder ratio seemed off. But today I put the perfect amount of bouillon in our chicken burgers. Except you actually had to chop up gooey raw chicken and put it in the food processor to "grind" it.

As I was processing I got sort of queasy inside. I had to plug my nose so as not to smell the chicken. The tofu burgers look pretty good to me now.

Maybe I was supposed to be a vegetarian for lenten season?