On wheat-free, low-calorie, cheap eating

It’s hardly surprising, as a self-confessed chocoholic, that I had very little awareness of what foods were good and bad for me growing up. Of course I knew the basics: meat and two veg, lots of fruit and vegetables and not much sugar right? But somehow the details of carbohydrates/proteins/calories/poly-unsaturated things all passed me by. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you for the life of me what was high in calories and what was basically ‘free’ from calories. Except maybe water, I knew water didn’t have calories.

I also assumed that carbohydrates meant your basic staples: potatoes, bread, pasta, rice. I had no idea it extended beyond that.

Now I’m almost 6’2″ and fairly slim so losing weight isn’t high on my agenda, but taking care of myself is. Feeling healthy, alert and like I’m treating my body well, impacts my mood and general outlook, so recently I’ve been finding out a little more about food. Being wheat-free has also meant that I’ve become far more aware of what is in what I eat as I have to check ingredients all the time to make sure they haven’t somehow snuck wheat in (you’d be amazed, it’s in so much)!

Those of you who are already wheat-free will know that with this particular diet, similarly to many other intolerances, often comes a high price tag. But I’m starting to find ways to eat healthy, wheat-free, low-calorie foods for a reasonable cost so I thought I’d make a note of them in case, as is likely, I forget these little tips I’m learning.

Breakfast

Simple: fruit, yoghurt, occasionally granola if made with pure oats and natural honey

Lunch

Here’s the fun one. I’ve only recently discovered that sandwiches are unnecessary calories, which isn’t so bad because gluten-free bread is not anything worth shouting about. Get rid of the bread but don’t get rid of the delicious and the filling. There’s no point in being hungry because if you’re anything like me, you’ll just keep snacking on whatever is close at hand.

Here’s my plan: Salads, but not your traditional lettuce, cucumber and tomato (although sometimes they’re fine too). I’m more interested in quinoa, lentils, chickpeas, feta cheese, pomegranate seeds, sundried tomatoes, roasted courgette and pepper, sweetcorn, dried apricot and beetroot. You can pick and choose whichever of those you like the most and add in extras or change the basics but it’s healthy, it’s low calories, it’s wheat-free and it’s pretty cheap when you spread it out over a week of lunches. It’s also easy to get variety in there. I’m easily bored.

Dinner

The two biggest things I have learned about keeping dinner healthy and cheap are:

1. Lots of vegetables (seriously, lots)
2. Fish

I’m certainly not a vegetarian but most of the time I can give or take meat so we only have it once or twice a week and intersperse it with veg meals and fish (the cheaper fish types, rather than salmon or seabass despite our esteemed Prime Minister mistakenly believing the latter to be a modern staple of the society he governs). I also only have pasta about once a week, if at all. I’ve become more of a rice and potatoes girl.

Lots of vegetables is crucial as they tick all boxes: they’re cheap, most of them are low in calories, they’re healthy, they’re filling and they’re naturally wheat-free! I have felt so much better since I switched to eating so much veg.

Overall

There are some principles that apply across the board:

• Reasonable portion size – you always feel rubbish when you overeat anyway.
• Figure out how to tell the difference between hungry and thirsty – not as easy as you’d think.
• Don’t eat when you’re bored because you’re not really enjoying it anyway – I’m a sucker for eating a ridiculous amount of chocolate when I’m bored even if I’m not hungry.
• Don’t take the fun and yum out of food – I definitely haven’t cut out my chocolate, desserts and snacks. I eat little and often but I’m simply more aware of what it is that I’m snacking on, what actually fills me up and asking myself whether I really want what I’m eating. You don’t need to cut out on the fun stuff to eat healthily and cheaply.

So what have I learned?

• Vegetables fill you up and tick all important boxes.
• Eating fish at least once a week and meat a little less often really does make you feel better and saves the pennies.
• Lunch doesn’t have to be a monotonous calorific sandwich, nor the incredibly boring daily recurrence of soup. It can be fun and filling without being expensive. It’s all about the pulses and the variety.

So. It turns out ‘meat and two veg’ and ‘lots of fruit and vegetables’ weren’t so far off the mark after all.

Cake, ice cream and more cake

I’ve been fairly slack in keeping this blog updated with my cooking exploits so I thought I’d bring things up to date in one go. The last 2 months have seen my kitchen pretty lively…

A Sacher Torte for my mama’s birthday

Black Forest ice cream – my favourite flavour of all time. Ever.

Nutella ice cream

Papaya, sharon fruit, raspberry and banana smoothie

The incredibly bizarre combination of a dark chocolate and avocado cake in honour of the great British sporting tournament that officially marks summer, Wimbledon. I’ll admit, this one was a little strange so I’m not sure I’ll be making it again…! I might have to bake something else that’s green for the Wimbledon final at the weekend!

Baking wheat-free is definitely getting easier and it’s so much more fun than just buying ready-made GF cakes at the store. A little kitchen creativity is definitely good for my soul.

No-microwave Popcorn

I very rarely notice that we don’t have a microwave. We defrost food in good time in the fridge, we heat milk on the stove for hot drinks and we reheat leftovers either in the oven or on the stove. The only time I mind that we don’t have a microwave, is when I feel like fresh popcorn. Until, that is, a friend in Ethiopia mentioned they were making popcorn on their stove!

Why I hadn’t thought of this before, I have no idea, but it’s so simple! Just take some very hot oil and some popcorn kernels, put the lid on(!) and wait until the popping dies down to less than once every 15 seconds. You can take a sneak peak to see how it’s getting on, just be warned that you might have some excited popping kernels hop out of the pan!

Then, add your flavour – just sugar or sugar and salt is great. We tried cocoa and sugar (chocoholics as usual) but it wasn’t as good. Trying out new flavours is half the fun but I’ve yet to find my perfect combination.

It was fun though and we’ll definitely be making more!

Graze box

I am a grazer by nature. I don’t often have big portions at traditional mealtimes but I eat constantly throughout the day. Being wheat intolerant, I find (although this may be entirely in my head) that eating little and often helps with symptoms like stomach pain. Plus I like food a lot so eating all the time isn’t exactly an inconvenience.

However, I did find that I wasn’t always snacking on the healthiest of foods – chocolate was and is one of my favourite things so that featured a lot – and it was getting quite expensive to fund my never-ending nibbling.

Enter the graze box. My husband encouraged me to sign up for this for many reasons:

1. Primarily, it was something new and fun and different each week to look forward to, which he knew I would enjoy.
2. It satisfied my grazing habit.
3. It was healthy in some fashion – either low in calories, or high in fibre or one of my 5 a day. Every graze punnet has some kind of health benefit.
4. It helped with our budgeting as the same amount was spent each week.

As soon as I signed up, I ‘binned’ everything that had wheat in. I then went through and binned items I knew I wouldn’t like – I’m not a fan of coconut flakes for example so I got rid of the options that had those in. Each week I rate the choices I’ve been sent as ‘like’ or ‘love’, or I ‘bin’ them so that I don’t get sent them again. It’s super easy.

I’m so pleased my hubby encouraged me to try it out as I now have such fun opening my box every week to see what I’ve been sent, knowing that it’s all wheat-free and that I won’t be sent anything I don’t like.

And the best part? They have a wheat-free black forest slice – my favourite!

Disclaimer: I have not been paid to write this post.