The original Bahrain Foodie, Marie-Claire Honeywill, shares her thoughts on the hype around healthy eating
Anyone who knows me knows that I would much rather tuck into a nice juicy steak with mashed potatoes (made with butter and cream of course) and gravy, than nibble on a salad. It’s unlikely you’ll ever find me reaching for carrot sticks when I’m in need of a snack and the crisps I like to munch on are very definitely not made of kale!
However I have recently concluded that it’s time I started eating more healthily. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to turn into a salad fiend and avoid all things carbohydrate and sweet, it simply means I’ve decided to pay attention to what I eat. Contrary to long-held beliefs, I’ve recently discovered that eating healthily isn’t necessarily about eating tiny portions of rabbit food and cutting out as many fats and carbohydrates as you can humanly live without, it’s about eating as purely as you can. By that I mean avoiding as many processed foods as possible and cooking and eating as much fresh produce as your wallet and schedule will allow.
In other words making as much of what you eat as you can yourself. It’s not about never eating pizza again, it’s about making your own healthier pizza.
Well that’s MY interpretation of eating more healthily anyway. The truth is, the degree of healthy eating we all settle on is going to be different for each of us and unless you’re a trained nutritionist who knows exactly what you’re doing, it can be a lot harder than you think. Just a few minutes doing research on the internet will show you how complicated and confusing the whole process is. One article will tell you one thing and the next will tell you something completely different. There’s this research and that research and sorting through the fact from the fiction can be a very daunting process. And that’s before you’ve even touched on all the latest up-to the-second healthy food trends; organic, farm fresh, super foods, healthy fats, good sugars etc… The list is endless and overwhelming, demoralising and intimidating and what’s good for you one day, research will show, is bad for you the next. And vice versa.
At the end of the day, my love for food means I could never cut out all the things that are bad for me, and I wouldn’t even if I could, because cream and butter make just about anything taste better!
My Spicy HummOus
Ingredients
• 1 large can chickpeas, drained (save the liquid)
• 2 tbsp tahini
• Juice of 1 lemon (you can add more depending on your taste)
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 2 tbsp olive oil,
• ½-1 tsp crushed sea salt (to taste)
• Tabasco sauce to taste
Method
Drain and rinse the chickpeas, reserving the liquid. Put all the ingredients in a blender with 2-3tbsp of chickpea liquid and blend until desired consistency is reached. Serve with toasted pita bread… or carrot sticks if you must.
