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Here’s the recipe!
Planning your meals in advance is a great way to be able to keep healthy and have dinner on the table with minimum hassle. Every Friday afternoon I sit down with my recipe books and pick out some ideas for the week so that over the weekend I can grab meat from the butcher, produce from the farmers markets and the other bits and bobs from the supermarket and Asian grocer. It also stops reduces the number of visits I make to the shop during the week, which means less impulse buying.
To feed the 2 of us for a week this is what we bought and what we’ll be eating.
For my breakfast I’ll have oats or high fibre cereal with milk, quark/cottage cheese and strawberries. S is happy with the less gourmet; vegemite on toast and coffee.
Most of the chicken breast and the kangaroo meat is grilled at the beginning of the week to make up the remainder of the salads and sandwhich fillings for our lunches and afternoon snacks.
All the salad greens are soaked, spun and stored on the vegie crisper. Some of the brocolli will be steamed and the eggplant “wet fried” to make the salads more interesting. Salad fillings are divided amongst tupperwear lunchboxes to make them easy to grab in the mornings along with foil wrapped packets of pre-cooked meat. I also hard-boil half the eggs, they make for great snacks and it’s easy to separate the yolks out if your want to keep the fat low.
I’ll use the low-fat ricotta and yogurt as desert options during the week, either mixed with peanut butter, protein powder or leftover strawberries.
Dinners:
Saturday night: The beef was roasted wrapped in half the proscuitto, to keep it moist, and served with grated beetroot (leftover from last weeks produce markets) mixed with lemon and yoghurt served on a bed of rocket/arugula. The remaining meat will make sandwiches and salads for lunch for the week for Stephen to take to work.
Sunday Night: We filmed the next episode of healthy helpings TV. We made a chilli con carne with goji berries. 2 serves for dinner, 2 for the freezer.
Monday night: Thai pork salad using the herbs and pork fillet (should have bought extra for leftover gourmet lunches!)
Tuesday Night: Homemade pasta from the pasta maker is S’s little indulgence. We’ll eat it simply with some grilled chicken, herbs and avocado no need for rich sauces with such nice pasta.
Wednesday: Herb stuffed chicken breasts wrapped in proscuitto with a tomato salad
Thursday: Steak and salad. This is our default summer meal, we’ll cook outside and have everything on the table in 10 minutes. We’ll switch steak for chicken or fish too. I’ll probably blanch the green beans to go in the salad along with any other vegies that haven’t been eaten yet.
Friday is normally our one night dining out. We have plenty of time to enjoy our meals and relax. If we’re low energy we’ll just do a repeat of Thursday’s meal, it’s faster than ordering a pizza!
All that meat may look expensive, but before we started making our own salads my partner, Stephen, was spending up to $10 a day on food at his work and it wasn’t nearly as nutritious. In winter instead of salad you could make a big stew or soup, freeze it in ziplock bags or Tupperware and grab them as you head for the front door. Our list is based on seasonal regional produce (South Australian Summer). What’s on yours?
What does New Haven Connecticut’s newspaper The Advocate say about Healthy Helpings TV host Michelle Koen? The Dining section posted an article by Freda Moon entitled “Food Fight Network: Rachel Ray wannabes crowd the internet with homemade cooking shows.” Check this out:
There’s Michelle in Australia, a charming, awkward hipster—with carefully mussed hair and a crafty apron—who produces Healthy Helpings TV (healthyhelpingstv.com) out of her enviable kitchen down under. Up to her eyes in gadgets (an electric pepper grinder, silicone cake molds, a hard-core hand-blender) and the sort of adult accoutrements unusual among the young, creative set (a full set of matching ramekins, say, and Le Creuset pans), she seems to exist in a magical playground of food, art and technology.
More important than her fancy pans and cute clothes is the fact that Michelle, a graphic designer by trade, seems to be a skilled, learned cook—at least as far as one can tell from half a world away. She makes things like quinoa paella (tongue in cheek, she calls quinoa “the new rice”), no-bake ricotta cheesecake (using filo dough) and grilled calamari salad—the sort of fast, healthy yet still-a-bit-glamorous dishes that one would expect from a super-cool Australian hipster-geek.
Congrats, Michelle; an American Newspaper now officially dubs you an “Australian Hipster”!
Mmm, nothing is better after battling the minions of Cthulu than settling in for some calamari. But wait! Don’t FRY those beasties; grill ‘em and make a fantastic, healthy grilled salad. Let Michelle show you how!
Here’s the recipe:
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A lot of the times I plan to go work out and end up not going is because I’ll waste all my allocated time fixing to go. I have to figure out how I’m going to get to the gym, what I’m going to where, what’s on my iPod. 1 hour later I’m still not in the gym. Today I have Christmas to organise and my partner’s birthday party to host and I decided enough was enough and did a back to basics workout in my loungeroom. I’ve incorporated High Intensity Intervals and active recovery periods so that you can get the most out of your workout in as little time.
I started with a quick lap around the block with the healthyhelpings hound to warm up. If it’s snowing or horribly winterlike you can take a rain-check.
Next I moved onto 5 minutes of intense cardio. I jumped rope for 20 seconds and then did shuttle sprints from one end of the house the other and back. Repeat for 5 minutes.
Skipping is a great form of cardio exercise. Use it as your warm-up before weights or as an alternative to traditional cardio. Skipping ropes are the ultimate cardio equipments, they’re affordable, take up no space and can be set up anywhere. For a warm-up try jogging skips, then move on to double and single jumps or hops.
Plank-pushup-burpies: Get a full body workout. Hold the plank position for 15 seconds, lower yourself into a pushup, push up, then jump you knees into a squat and explode upwards, hands overhead. Land, then squat. Put your hands down and jump out to a plank. Do as many as you can in 1 set then jog on the spot or skip for an active recovery, repeat 3 times.
High jumps, long jumps, crab walks and lunges- Start at one end of your hallway or longest room and jump from one end to the other trying to see how far you can jump. When you get to the end come back, this time jump for height instead of length. When you reach the end turn sideways and walk to the end and back sideways in a wide squatting stance. Finish up by taking nice long lunging steps (don’t let your knee pass your toe on the front leg) from one end of the corridor (and back). If your arms and chest still can handle it, add in a few pushup-plank-burpies at each end. Jog on the spot or skip for an active recovery and then repeat 3 times.
Cool down and stretch by walking around your house picking up and putting away anything that’s out of place.
When I don’t have time to go to the gym or get on my bike, I make my own circuit workout. Today I was being a bit creative and came up with a full body workout that I can do at my dining room table!
The table and chair workout:
Perform these exercises in quick succession to make a circuit.
You’ll need:
2 sturdy chairs
1 sturdy table
Warm-up for a few minutes before performing this workout. Either jog on the spot, jump rope or climb stairs if you have them.
Step ups onto a chair.
Make sure your chair isn’t going to move. Carpeted floors work best but placing the back of the chair against a wall helps on wooden floors. Alternate legs until you have done 10-15 steps on each leg.
Chair Tricep Dips (to combat turkey wings): Stand with your back to the chair, as if your were going to sit down but about 1.5ft further way. With your palms facing behind you place your hands on the front of the seat. Lower your body, keeping your back straight until your elbows are pointing backwards and bent at 90º. Pushing using your hands (not your feet) raise your body to a straight armed position and repeat up to 15 times or until failure.
Chair Glute-crunches: Lie on the floor facing the seat of the chair with your knees bent, so that your feet are slightly under the chair. Straighten on leg and place it on the chair. Push through the heel of the foot which is on the floor and squeeze your buttocks, raising your hips off the ground. Slowly lower your body and repeat 10-15 times for each leg. You can add an adominal crunch or crunch twist at the end of the movement for added ab work.
Table chinups: Lie underneath the table with your head and shoulders protruding, so that your shoulderblades line up with the end of the table, legs straight. Grip the tabletop, palms facing up. Squeeze your shoulder-blades together and pull your chest towards the underside of the table until your chin is touching the edge of the table. Keep your body in a plank. Slowly lower your body to the starting position and repeat. If this is too hard bring your feet in and bend your knees slightly, keep your body straight.
Bulgarian split squats: Stand in front of a chair (as if about to sit). Take on large step forward and place the toe of your rear foot on the chair. Keeping your body upright and chest high lower your body towards the floor until your front leg is bent at 90º. Make sure your front knee does not pass your toe and that you are not twisting your body. Squeeze your buttocks and push through your heel to help raise your body to a starting position. Repeat 10–15 times for each leg.
Chair shoulder press: Place 2 chairs, seats facing each other, 2-3ft apart. Place your body in between them with your palms on the edges of the seats, fingers pointing towards your body gripping the edge of the seat. Extend your legs infront of you either fully or slightly bent for an easier version. Slowly lower your body towards the floor until your arms are bent at 90 degrees. Keep your shoulders back and body tall and upright. Push through your palms to raise your body slowly to a starting position. Repeat 10–12 times.
Sit down, stand up… and up: Start by sitting in a chair with good posture. Try to stand up without using your hands, squeezing the abs and buttocks to help raise your body. Push through the heels. Once you are standing, transfer the weight to the front of your feet and raise up onto the balls of your feet, hold for 10 seconds and slowly lower to flat feet and then to hovering just above the seat, hold for 10 seconds and repeat 10–15 times.
To increase the calories burnt during the workout include an active recovery of jogging or skipping on the spot for a minute between each exercise. The circuit should take about 7 minutes to complete, perform it up to 5 times. To increase the intensity of these exercises do them wearing a backpack with something heavy in it, sacks of flour and sugar are ideal.
Don’t forget the other most important exercise these holidays: The put down and push away: Put down your fork and push away the plate when you’re full.
Fellow Grasshopper Becky McCray presents her choices of wines and spirits to accompany five of host Michelle Koen’s recipes that aired earlier this summer, including:
Ma Po Tofu
Vietnamese Fresh Rolls
Aromatic Asian Poached Chicken
Vietnamese Pho Soup
and granola (!!!)
Salut!
Snap 1
Michelle has always loved to cook, eat and share food with friends. Now she's here to share her healthy recipes with you and hopefully inspire you to create some of your own.
