Hi! It’s been a while, I understand, but I assumed I ‘d visit and introduce you to my new project– a partnership with Super Cook and Superwoman, Hattie Rhodes.
All year, we’ll be coming up with and screening family dishes that are very easy, delicious, cheap, faff-free, fad-free … and occur to be devoid of pesky refined sugar as well.
We’re realists (and careless ones at that). We’re not aiming for 100% sugar totally free. But the plan is to avoid doing any kind of food preparation, in your home, with polished sugar this year. Certain there’ll be treats when we’re out, birthday celebration celebrations, milkshakes on the strange occasions we spend lavishly on a dining establishment meal. However in your home, we think we * might * be able to do without it.
We’ll be sharing our dishes, and the straightforward actions they receive from the children, family and friends, over on our instagram account.
In the meantime, below’s something we wrote the other day for the Huffington Post …
My five year old child is numerous points. He is fighter of monsters that is often worried of the dark. He is a hater of “girly points” that is heartbreakingly tender with his sis. He is a brave knight on horseback who occasionally needs his mum. He is a play area jedi. He is an admiral of bath-time sea fights. He is 22kg.
My child– a common 5 year old child, in other words. Twenty two kilogrammes– the ordinary weight for his age. But they are something else as well, my child and also his weight. According to research study released this month by Public Health and wellness England, 22kg is what the sugar taken in each year by the ordinary 4-10-year-old considers. That’s 5,500 dices. In a year, a regular five-year-old boy consumes his own body weight in sugar.
You can barely leave the house without a lecture on the evils of sugar these days. They are being intoned from parliament, stressed over on blog sites, dramatised on TV, jotted in clinical journals. And its best dangers are postured to children, for whom the lure of lurid desserts as well as fluorescent carbonated beverages is stickily and overpoweringly tempting: tooth decay, kind 2 diabetics issues, weight problems, heart problem and, extra quickly, sugar-rush hysteria as well as sugar-slump huffs.
Yet … is reducing sugar from a youngster’s diet also possible? And preferably, is it, well … a bit terrible? Flicking via the sugar-free blog sites and publications all of it looks terribly appealing and also tasty in a grown-up type of means. It additionally, though, seems developed for 20-something songs with disposable incomes and also desires in the direction of a “hot yoga bod”.
Regretfully, I quit all pretence of either of those years earlier as well as my kids, thankfully, are oblivious to both. We’re much more right into superheroes than superfoods. Extra Lego Chima and Green Lantern than chia seeds and green healthy smoothies. I do not have the moment or the cash to resource cacao nibs or plant pollen, and the children would rather stroll over hot coals than consume a thimbleful of kale.
My lovely children don’t need to diet to sign up to food fads and also I, well … I’m moving right into a stage of my life that includes a whole lot extra ‘comfy’ jumpers and approval. However 5,500 cubes isn’t what I desire for my child, or my two-year -old little girl right now. And tooth decay, diabetes mellitus and also obesity aren’t the future I desire for them either.
So I went to see my good friend, Hattie Rhodes, stepmother of a 13-year-old and also an expert chef that not just possesses a wonderful name (of course) however has additionally been living sugar-free for half a years. She claimed that going sugar-free does not need to entail signing up a brand-new religious beliefs.
You don’t require to buy a brand-new way of life, yoga exercise trousers, active ingredients sourced from the foothills of the Himalaya or perhaps a fashionable blender or food processor. You can simply make some basic, very easy tweaks to your common food, with conveniently accessible, economical as well as naturally pleasant ingredients like fruit, nuts, coconuts and also pleasant potatoes …
So, tentatively, we have actually decided to make some changes this year. 2016 will be a year of checking brand-new recipes together. Here and on our instagram (@thetwohatties) we will sharing both those and the honest reaction they receive from friends and family of every ages. No food fads, no faffing, no odd components. The kids guarantee that you will find “no unpleasant green streaks”. We promise you will never ever listen to words “nurture” or “glow”.
Simply delicious, easily accessible food that all generations can get penetrated preparing and eating with each other. That occurs to be sugar cost-free. Oh, and ideally includes only a solitary blending dish or stove dish so extremely little washing up (you’ve got to dream, haven’t you?).
This week– apples …
BREAKFAST BERRY AND APPLE CRUMBLE (with crunchy granola covering).
Due to the fact that there’s no better means to sweeten the ‘sugar-free’ bargain than letting your kids eat pudding for morning meal …
Fruity little bit:.
300g blended berries of selection.
1 apple, peeled off and diced.
Butter.
Crunchy little bit:.
3 tbsp butter.
a handful of flaked almonds.
a handful of porridge oats.
2 tbsp ground almonds.
6 tbsp flour.
Approach:.
1) preheat the oven to 180C. In a pan, position the berries with a few tbsp of water and also let them simmer till the combination is thick as well as gooey. After that add the apple and cook until soft. Stir in your butter and pour into a heatproof dish.
2) melt the butter for the crunchy bit in a frying pan and also once liquid, stir in the dry ingredients. Spoon over the fruity mixture and cook in the oven up until warmed up via and also the topping is beginning to get golden (this can be prepared in advance as well as maintained in the fridge up until ready to warm up with as well as offer).
3) get hold of a spoon and also dig in!
APPLE AND CINNAMON MINI MUFFINS.
50g spelt flour.
50g softened butter.
30g birch sugar *.
1 tsp cooking powder.
1 egg.
50g apple, chopped right into tiny chunks.
1/2 tsp cinnamon.
Method:.
1: preheat oven to 200C.
2: defeat the sugar right into the butter until combined. Include the staying components and also let rest for 10 minutes.
3: pour batter right into some silicon cupcake or muffin moulds (must make concerning 6 little portions).
4: bake in the preheated stove for 15-20 mins till gently risen as well as gold. Amazing on a cake rack and devour!
* We recognize it seems poncy (and also a little terrifying) however birch sugar, or xylitol, is actually readily available from many supermarkets and also every high street Holland and Barrett so its the only slightly unusual active ingredient we’ve enabled to slip its method. Its great things, in small amounts. It doesn’t cause spikes in blood sugar level levels and can be substituted 1:1 for typical sugar.
The Very Best STICKY SAUSAGE, APPLE & POTATO BAKE.
Ever before. No truly. Every member of the family will have secs. As well as it’s all in one pot, so marginal washing up.
6 sausages.
2 baking potatoes.
2 cooking apples.
4 cloves garlic.
200 ml poultry stock.
Pre-heat the oven to 200. Peel the potatos as well as slice them into bite sized portions. In an oven proof meal, include a glug of olive oil and place on the hob. Add the potatoes, stirring occasionally, to brown them.
Eliminate from the hob, add the sausages, peeled off entire garlic cloves and apples (cut yet not peeled off). Shake to cover whatever in olive oil. Period. Pour over the poultry stock, to ensure that it half covers the contents. Then stick everything in the oven for around 50 mins or till every little thing is a beautiful, sticky, golden color.