Baked well tart

Much classic cooking is simply about creating different textures and combinations from basic ingredients such as flour, eggs, milk and water.

So we set about making a salicylate-free equivalent of the Bakewell Tart. And it worked.

Actually my other half did the work. I'm told this is what you do.

Partly cook a thin layer of pastry on the bottom of a baking pan.

Lay sliced Golden Delicious apple on top - and then plain cake mixture on top of that.

Bake.

Delicious!

It's not quite as jammy as proper Bakewell tart. We need some ideas. Perhaps prepare the apple beforehand and add some sugar?

* Talking of apple, we bought some cut-price green apples from Asda's. I was wondering why I had symptoms today - itching in various places and a strange bleed on the lip tonight. Then I realised that although they looked like Golden Delicious there was no guarantee they were. They tasted a little stronger than GD. They were probably something else such as Granny Smith.

I tend to live with mild symptoms without complaining - but maybe I should make more effort to identify what is causing them.

RAS

Cheap bananas

A few weeks ago I bought a big bag of market-price bananas from Tesco's. If you're lucky with these bananas they are edible. If you're unlucky they go off fast or fail to ripen properly. For a few pence, it's hit and miss.

These were large bananas and apparently just about ripe and at first quite edible. We put them in the fridge, where the skin turned brown but the inside stayed white.

Usable bananas are usually quite expensive and that's put me off experimenting with them. This was different. As time went by the flavour changed - they began to taste like the banana you get in tinned fruit salad, so far as I can recall tinned fruit salad. Not especially pleasant to eat raw.

I've tried cooking with bananas before. This time I fried up a mix of banana, golden delicious and tuna, with a little cabbage - then adding soy sauce for more flavour. I ate it with spaghetti. It was delicious, and, surprisingly, it tasted like curry. So maybe it would be even better with rice. I wonder how I can make it even more like curry. There is still the outstanding mystery of why tandoori appears on the diet list.

I used one for a banana split meal - with ice cream and cream. You could add chocolate sauce as well, I suppose.

After nearly two weeks, we used the last few bananas to make banana cake. Delicious and it lasted for a long time.

Now I wonder about fruit salad. I could make it with banana, golden delicious apple and green grapes. But I wonder where the juice would come from. Commercial salads often use a syrup - but the better quality ones use a fruit juice. Does anyone know how you could make a juice? I am thinking of a fruit salad with ice cream and cream. I am thinking and salivating.

RAS

Dark chocolate

I'm not addicted to chocolate - I'm not - but without coffee it's the only stimulant that can help with working. I've been trying to eat plain, dark chocolate because it's supposed to be better for you. And I tend to buy cheap 200g bars from Tesco or Asda.

The visit to the GP about the health check still hasn't happened -  but fitness and weight are now serious matters in my mind.Maybe some very dark chocolate would be the answer. It kills the appetite quicker than smoother, sweeter chocolates and should contain as much kick. It should be a way of cutting down fat and sugar intake. So a bar of Tesco 75% cocoa chocolate seemed a good idea.

In all this the research I did two years ago was forgotten. The problem is the darker the chocolate, the more the caffeine. 200g of plain chocolate is said to be equivalent to two cups of instant caffeinated coffee. Let's say the plain chocolate is 50% cocoa.  So 40g of 75 per cent cocoa chocolate would be about 60% of a cup of  caffeinated coffee.

And that's how it felt. Yes it killed the appetite and gave me a kick. It also gave the digestion a kick. It may be responsible for the ulcers in my mouth. It may also have triggered a bout of left-side syndrome (with gout in the left arm and leg and soreness in the eye.) It felt like the after-effects of drinking defac, filter coffee - which always seems to contain quite a lot of caffeine.

Tesco are now selling another brand of cheap, dark chocolate by Ryelands, and it's cheaper than Tesco's own brand. It claims to be about 50% cocoa. That's probably too strong but I'm trying it.

Depending how I get on with the doctor - if I ever get round to it - I may have to find a way of doing without chocolate.

RAS

Cookies

Sometimes I need a sharp reminder there's a problem. I normally assume cookies are okay. After all they are just dough and chocolate chips, aren't they? I've always loved them and cheap cookies from Tesco or Asda don't cause a problem.

Someone gave us a packet of Maryland cookies and I have been happily munching them - even in spite of the visit to the doctor I must arrange to discuss the health screening. I was wondering about the crunchy bits, especially as my throat is getting lumpy and my tongue feels funny. I have checked the packet - they are indeed choc chip and hazelnut cookies.

Reminder to me: nuts are a problem, a real problem. Now to find a montelukast.

* Ref that health check: a friend had an identical scary letter from the screening company received on the same day. He went rushing to his doctor only to be told his cholesterol was mildly elevated. No pills, no exercise prescription, nothing. On the other hand....I must do something about it.
RAS

Bad news! Health check results

It's well over three months since I had my NHS healthcheck. So I was gob-smacked today to get a letter telling me I have failed it. The letter actually says some of my indicators are 'outside the normal range' and that I need to see my GP, who will tell me about it. No information about which indicators.

I've been in a bad mood all day. My first thought was to write straight back and demand they give me the indicators before I see the GP. I was out walking for three hours this morning. At first I got really hot - which suggested to me I was about to have a heart attack. In truth I was too well wrapped up against the cold. Then I felt nothing - and that's been a problem with walking recently. I don't feel like it achieves anything - probably because I'm fitter than I was and stepped up my walking during the cold and snow, while others stepped down.

Tomato, tuna and tummy

I tried my home-made tuna and tomato sauce. As I'd got a supply of tinned tomatoes I made the rest of the family a bolognese sauce at the same time. I cook  for others like Beethoven wrote music - I have no idea what it tastes like and cannot taste as I go along. It's all pure guess work.

We also obtained a pack of shallots - which are allowed but we very rarely use. It was the last pack in Tesco's and reduced in price to 75p. I feel I could do more with them - can you pickle them like onions?

That was about two weeks ago and I may still be suffering. I had severe tummy-ache for several days following the meal. The Italian restaurants must be using a magic ingredient that counteracts the tomato - perhaps olive oil? This needs to be investigated further. I used about a third of the tin of tomatoes on myself and gave the rest to the others.

So I cannot recommend tuna and tomato as a way of getting tomato into the diet. However in case you have to cook bolognese sauce for the rest of the family when they refuse to share your sardine/mackerel/tuna and cabbage sauce, here is what I did:
brown mince in rapeseed oil;
stir fry some leek, cabbage and shallot in separate frying pan (and that formed the base for my own meal);
add the fried vegetables to browned mince, along with tin of tomato;
add a liberal dose of Italian herbs;
add a little bit of soy sauce;
add two beef stock cubes;
simmer and add some water from the pasta saucepan. If still too runny add a little flour to thicken.
I did not taste this once but they assured me it was delicious - and I did not catch them making faces behind my back.

RAS

Trying tomato

Sometime ago I reported eating out in an Italian restaurant and having to eat a dish packed with tomato and herbs. The dish seemed to be fine because it was fish, rather than meat.

I've now had the same experience again. We found a reasonably-priced Italian restaurant with a good variety of choices. The dish I chose was linguine and king prawn. I didn't expect it to have quite so much tomato in it - that wasn't advertised. But it was delicious, really tasty. And there have been absolutely no side-effects, zero side-effects. I did leave most of the chunks of tomato - but there was plenty in the pasta sauce also.

It helped no doubt  I took a montelukast that day and also helped I was eating a sea-food meal. But after a Christmas season which was quite difficult - and that may have been down to drinking white wine - it's fun to enjoy a meal with strong tastes and suffer absolutely no after-effects.

Now, if I remember right, my last list suggested tomato was low in salicylate - not high and not zero. But I've avoided it as I've avoided onion (see a current discussion on this site), because it seemed strongly implicated when problems first started. I vividly remember that meal of celery and cherry tomato when I was on a near-starvation diet and how my mouth just swelled up. The allergy consultant was also impressed by that story.

And Italian food was strongly linked to my initial symptoms. My body could not handle spaghetti bolognese and pizza. So should I try to introduce more tomato into my diet?

RAS

Coping with Christmas

I love this time of year - but every year now I have to check my anticipation. As I approach the season I think of stuffing myself with mince pies, a rich, dark Christmas pudding and turkey laced with cranberry sauce, stuffing, parsnips and rich gravy - followed somehow by taking the first bite of a rich dark Christmas cake.

It is all fantasy - and now I'm saying to people that Christmas is a time I lose weight when they put it on. I've been circumspect this year. I used to love those early Christmas dinners with work colleagues, friends and associates. Now I'm avoiding them. If I won't be particularly missed, I don't go - it's just too awkward to keep asking for the turkey to be served without gravy and for an alternative dessert to the Christmas pudding. I'm trying to persuade the family mince pie maker to make Golden Delicious apple pies with the same texture as mince pies. I'm still waiting.

There's flu around. I wonder if I could pick up the swine flu virus on Thursday in time to allow me to drink loads of wine to see it off - as I've done for the last couple of years. No sign of it coming anywhere near me so far. Perhaps I'd better go and sit in the doctor's surgery and see if I can pick it up...

RAS

No bananas?

This Danish study alarmed me as it says what I've always feared someone would say - that bananas aren't that great for you. Nor grapes.

The authors claim it pretty well settles the question of which diet to use to lose weight - low-carb, low fat and high protein. That seems to have sense, but what about fish - which surely is quite heavy in fish fat? I rely on bananas for my five-a-day, I find Golden Delicious apples increasingly unpalatable and probably rather more expensive than cheap bananas.

The conclusions of the Danish study are interesting but I'm not sure it settles the question of diet. For a start it involved barely a thousand families. I am certainly still stepping up my consumption of fish. I've just discovered the joy of grilled sardines. The grill helps to heat the house on a cold day and they make a reasonable quick snack for lunch or a light dinner.

And the good news is that my left arm has all but healed - no doubt thanks to grilled sardines. It has taken weeks but now it is no more than a little stiff - and it is getting better not worse in spite of Britain's icy weather. It's been a slow process and that's my excuse for only posting once before in November.

RAS

Fish oil toothpaste?

Scientists seem to have confirmed what some of us have known for a while - that fish oils can prevent gum disease.

http://www.englemed.co.uk/10/10nov022_fish_oil_gums.php

This is the story that we know: gum disease is not only caused by infection but by inflammation;

if you have salicylate hypersensitivity you know that eating fish will reduce reactions and reduce inflammation.

What's  interesting about this sort of study is whether it is, in fact, picking up and averaging out the impact on a sub-group of people who react badly to omega-6. Or whether everyone benefits from this kind of effect. In the research 8.2 per cent of people had gum disease.

There could even be other explanations. For instance that eating oily fish or cod liver oil kills the appetite and deters the consumption of sugary foods - Atkins diet style. Just a thought.

Toothpaste made of fish oil anyone?

RAS