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| Recipe of the week... ... Tuscan Panzanella Salad with Mozzarella |
Ingredients: 250g baby plum tomatoes, 30g pitted black
olives, 1 ciabatta bread roll, 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 2 x 125g balls of
mozzarella, 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, 10g fresh basil leaves, 30g capers,
half a cucumber, 1 garlic clove, 1 red onion, olive oil, sugar, salt and pepper
Time taken: Just 20 minutes – no time at all!
Serves: 2 super filing, super healthy, super tasty portions
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Hi readers,
How are you today, lovely people? Is the sun shining through
your window, like it is mine in Sheffield today? We’re enjoying some glorious
Autumn sunshine today – actual BLUE is visible in the sky. It’s grand. And it’s
Thursday.. so we’re over halfway through the working week, which is always
good!
This week, readers, I’d say I’m having a good one at work. Would
you? I’ve been on a video storytelling training course down in the big smoke,
which was most interesting indeed. And then I’m going to be heading back down to
London – can’t get enough this week – to see uni friends over the weekend. Cannot
wait for hugs and catching up with some of the best people. Love and miss them
all the time.
How about you, readers? How are you doing? What’s occurring,
of late? Hope you’re all well and having a wonderful time living life. This last
weekend – in an epic I feel so alive type
moment – I ran a 10K race. You may not know me from Adam, readers, but let me
tell you.. this is out of character for me. Highly unusual. It’s the first time
this has occurred.
And it was SO MUCH FUN. I’ve been running over the summer,
with a couple of friends in Sheffield, and to go from breathless jogs and massive
complaining, to being the kind of people who run and don’t stop to walk, for over an hour, covering over ten
kilometres. It feels like SHIT we just did that and it was really cool. We’re achievers.
So, I’ve been feeling massively proud of myself this past
week, readers, filled with self-belief. And we’re already contemplating taking
on another, trickier 10K. Perhaps with the aim of get our time under an hour
(we were only 5 minutes over!) and tackling some hills and off-road terrains.
WHO KNOWS. Many possibilities await.
I hope, readers, that whatever personal or physical challenge
you face in life right now, that you’re filled with this same fire in your
belly. Really believe in yourself and surprise yourself. And push harder and
further than ever before.. I know you have it in you!
This week, readers,
in terms of food-related thinking, I thought I’d sort of re-visit the food
habit ideas that I was bandying about last week (see my previous blog post for
full detail).
I was exploring the logic behind the notion that emotional
eating can sometimes become a habit. My last post worked through a process
whereby a thought or a situation acts as a cue, triggering an emotion. This
emotion then leads a person on to a specific eating behaviour, they eat without
even really thinking about it and perceive eating to be a reward.
Food has fixed everything, you’ve made sense of the troublesome
emotion that you were faced with, and you’ve made things good again just by
eating. Not really, right? A broken logic? But still you follow this loop all
the way through, and you won’t be able to help trucking through these same steps
next time, and it’s likely it will keep on happening before you even realise
you’re at it again. Eating away. On and on we go, stuck on repeat.
To help demonstrate this emotional eating habit loop, the
re:wellbeing program I’ve been working through uses a simple visual…
… and I find it helpful to think about each step one at a
time, in sequence. Say you begin with cues
and triggers – can you think of any cues that have perhaps triggered you to
eat unnecessarily recently? A situation you found yourself in or a thought that
struck you? When? Where? What did you see, hear or smell? Were you alone or who
else was around?
Remember – this is different from times when you maybe just
eat a bit too much. It’s more like you start for no rational reason, you don’t
fully register it’s happening or you’re powerless to stop? Perhaps, readers, you
don’t have any emotional eating habits? Nothing is springing to mind? Totes fine
– good for you!
But, say you’ve identified a time when this maybe happened,
what were the emotions you felt
before you started to eat? How did the situation or the thought make you feel,
and can you understand why? Maybe there were multiple emotions at play, or you had
one feeling that overcame you? Maybe, thinking about it now, you notice a lack
of a certain emotion?
Then, think back to your eating
behaviour. What was it you ate? Did you choose this food or was it just the
first thing to hand? Were you eating quickly or slowly? Rushed or unhurried?
Did you take any pauses? Were you alone or with others? Did you taste the food?
Was it your decision to eat, and could you have stopped eating without
finishing if you chose to?
Then, finally, how do you think that instance of emotional
eating provided you with a reward?
How did the food you ate make you feel mentally and physically, as you ate and
also afterwards? Did eating help to resolve or improve the situation you found
yourself in or the thought that struck you? Was it the fix you needed to feel
better?
I think this is all such interesting food for thought,
readers! Like – why does that loop carry on when it’s so flawed, why do we
perpetuate something that doesn’t even work? Once you see it for what it is,
it’s so motivating to make a change. In the words of re;wellbeing, “Once you understand why you may feel certain
emotions and how these are connected to your eating behaviour you are in a
better position to make changes to stop emotional eating.
“Food is rewarding –
it tastes nice, it gives us a sugar rush, it contains chemicals that can alter
how we feel, and lots of the foods that we crave are associated with positive
memories. But food can’t satisfy our emotional needs or solve our problems in
real-life. When we are emotional eating we may keep eating more and more to try
and feel better, but it isn’t going to work because it isn’t addressing our
needs.”
Makes total sense. And yet when I worked through this I was
still like… OH. I do that. I’ve done that. And maybe you have, too? I’ll leave
you to ponder on this, readers, and will share with you now my latest and most
fabulous Recipe of the Week. Our recipe this week comes from Gousto, a Tuscan Panzanella Salad with Mozzarella, and
here’s the recipe in just 10 simple steps…
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Recipe: Tuscan
Panzanella Salad with Mozzarella
1.
Imagine yourself in rural Tuscany enjoying a
peaceful evening. The sun is setting and it’s warm on your face and everything
is quiet and calm. With this in mind – pour yourself a wine and get each of the
ingredients you need out onto the counter.
2.
Heat the oven to 200C and boil the kettle. Peel
and finely slice the red onion and add this sliced onion to a colander, then
pour a full kettle of boiling water over it.
ChefBeHere Top
Tip: The aim of the game here is to blanch the onion – you remove the raw
onion’s acidity, making it less harsh to eat. I’m learning something new every
day!
3.
Tip this blanched sliced onion into a small
bowl, and add the red wine vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar. Give everything a
good mix together, then set this bowl aside for now.
ChefBeHere Top
Tip: If you remember, give the contents of the bowl an occasional stir. The
vinegar and the sugar are further mellowing the flavour of the onion for you –
better believe it.
4.
Meanwhile, rip the ciabatta into small
bite-sized chunks and pop these on a baking tray. Drizzle generously with olive
oil, and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle half a teaspoon of dried oregano
over the top, and carefully transport your ciabatta chunks into the oven for
ten minutes.
5.
While your herby croutons are toasting in the
oven, you can prepare your salad ingredients. Cut the baby plum tomatoes in
half, chop the black olives and capers together roughly, and finely slice the
cucumber.
6.
Add the chopped tomatoes, olives, capers and
cucumber to a large mixing bowl. Remove the sliced onion from the soaking
liquid (but keep the liquid!) and add the onion to the mixing bowl with
everything else.
7.
Peel the garlic and grate it finely into the
soaking liquid. Add half a teaspoon of dried oregano and 2 tablespoons olive
oil, along with a generous pinch of salt and pepper, and stir together – this
is your dressing.
8.
Now add the dressing to the mixing bowl and give
everything a gentle mix – this is your Panzanella. Spoon the Panzanella evenly
between two dinner plates.
9.
Once your croutons are golden and crispy, remove
from the oven and turn the oven off. Dot your croutons about on top of the
Panzanella and rip the fresh basil leaves over each plate, to garnish your meal
with basil.
10. Finally,
pat the mozzarella balls dry and serve over the Panzanella. Season with a
generous grind of pepper and a drizzle of olive oil – now tuck in to your
Tuscan tea!
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| Some pretty fine tasting food! |
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In the words of
Gousto…
“This traditional Tuscan bread salad is made using crispy ciabatta
which is mixed with the salad itself rather than served on the side. This adds
substance while soaking up the juices from the capers, tomatoes and black
olives. You’ll serve it with a big ball of beautifully milky mozzarella. Make
sure you use your best olive oil with this dish!”
What do you think, readers? Would you be tempted to try this
recipe? Are you thinking oh NO or
perhaps oh myyyyy? If this looks like
the kind of food you like – then I highly recommend, readers. This is another
seriously tasty recipe from Gousto! Fun to prepare and filling to eat. It’s a quick
and easy recipe to take on in the kitchen and there are only a couple of
ingredients for the dish that you may need a larger supermarket for (I’m
thinking red wine vinegar and capers).
What are you thinking? Please share your thoughts, readers! Is
this an appealing recipe – yes/no/why? If you do give this recipe a go – what did
you think? How did you get on in the kitchen? Did your panzanella turn out
looking like mine? And tasting great? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this
recipe, readers, fire away!
And if anyone would like to share running-related tales or maybe
input on the food behaviour ideas I’ve been pondering – please do. I’d love to
hear your thoughts.
Wish you allll a most wonderful end to your week and a brill
brill brill weekend.
Salad safely,
Hayley
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| Bring on the weekend for fun times! |
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An informative footer
I’d like to note, the above is part of a series of posts that I’m
currently having fun writing, while undertaking a fresh start with food. Food
bloggers can’t admit they got bored with food, you say? Well, I beg to differ!
In August 2017, I made two wonderful decisions; I signed up for Gousto – a food
delivery company who send recipes and ingredients in the post – and I began a
health & wellness program to transform my food habits, with Rachel of re:Wellbeing.
In this blog post, and others like it, I share one of the wonderful recipe that
I’m taking on, and an idea that I’m exploring as part of this fresh start.
If you would like to find out more about Gousto, please visit https://www.gousto.co.uk/
(I have a sneaky discount code! If you’re new to Gousto, then click
HERE for 50% off your first 2 boxes and I’ll get a discount too for referring
you… so errrrybody wins)
And, if you would like to learn more about re:Wellbeing, then visit https://www.rewellbeing.com/
