Category Archives: Food & Drink

Monster Doughnuts With No Plastic!

Children, Eco-friendly, Food & Drink, Fun Stuff, Recreation

For an event we were running as a PTA we wanted to sell monster donuts to the children and adults who were coming so we looked around for a recipe for monster doughnuts that we could easily make.

We weren’t actually going to make the monster doughnuts ourselves but instead buy some and decorate them with monster faces. The ones that we had seen on Pinterest had edible eyes and then plastic mouths that opened over the hole of the donut  (which you can buy very cheaply online) but we didn’t want to use any more plastic than we needed to so we decided to go another route with the monster mouths! Continue reading Monster Doughnuts With No Plastic! →

How to Swallow Pills

Food & Drink, Health
How to swallow pills
Some pills (if not all!) can be hard to swallow!

If you are like me and have a really bad gag reflex and don’t know how to swallow pills without retching and bringing the thing back up (assuming it actually gets anywhere in the first place beyond your tongue) then it seems like we are not alone!

Many people struggle to swallow pills, even if they are smaller than what seems like normal bite sized pieces of food. Even to myself I think it must be some kind of psychological thing together with the gag reflex as a lot of the pills we have to swallow are not really that big in theory.

Anyway, I have found a way to swallow pills that works for me in most cases (I still struggle with the really big capsules).

What you need to do is to take a chunk of biscuit/cookie (you can use many other foodstuffs but I find biscuits/cookies are the best and also easiest just to grab on the go) and chew it up to the point where you are almost ready to swallow it. Keep it maybe a little bit more chunky than you otherwise might do before swallowing.

Once you are just about to swallow the biscuit/cookie, pop the pill in your mouth among the biscuit bits and swallow the whole lot together. If you have a pill that will break into 2 then if might be worth doing it in 2 goes. It may be harder to do with those big plastic capsules but for others it should be OK.

I have to say this works for me 90% of the time and I am one of the worst for taking tablets and pills. I hope that it works for you but I guess it is not going to work for everyone.

Give it a try and let me know if it does work!

How To Boil Eggs – Simple Instructions on Boiling Eggs

Food & Drink, Home & Garden, Recreation

Although to some people boiling an egg might seem like a simple task, it is like everything in life you only learn how to do something by either reading about it, watching someone else or learning from family etc. If you haven’t had anyone in the past who has taught you how to boil an egg and for how long you need to boil an egg for then it’s probably about as simple as changing the oil on a car would be for me!

So below are my instructions for how to make soft boiled eggs and how to make hard boiled eggs.

Basic Procedure For Boiling An Egg

Firstly it is best to use eggs that are not straight out of the fridge and that are at room temperature but if you want to boil an egg now and the eggs are in the fridge then just take it from there!

Fill a small pan with water so that there is enough water in the pan to cover the egg(s) by about half an inch or so. Put the eggs into the pan of cold water. The reason for using cold water rather than putting the eggs straight into boiling water is that this helps to stop them cracking.

Put the pan on the heat and heat it until the water starts boiling. Once the water is boiling then take note of the time – it helps to have a second hand on your watch but it is not essential. The time it takes to boil the eggs depends on if you like soft boiled eggs or hard boiled eggs.

Soft Boiled Eggs – How Long?

Now everyone likes their boiled eggs slightly differently but I like mine with the yolk (yellow) soft and the white cooked all the way through – I can’t stand any uncooked white in my eggs! So, to get soft boiled eggs like that you need to cook them for about 3 minutes 45 seconds as far as I am concerned. 4 minutes is fine if you don’t have a second hand on your watch! Try this out and see if this is how you like you eggs boiled and if you want them a bit more soft boiled or slightly more hard boiled then adjust the time accordingly.

You do need to be reasonably accurate on your timing otherwise, if you do leave them even a little bit longer then you will end up with hard-boiled eggs

Hard Boiled Eggs – How Long?

The same applies to hard boiling eggs in terms of how you like them – how hard you want the centres of the eggs to be. For me, if I want to have hard boiled eggs that I might want to chop up and add mayonnaise to and then put in a sandwich, I will boil the eggs for 5 minutes.

If you want to hard boil eggs for a picnic so that you open them when you are out and you are guaranteed of no runny bits then I would boil eggs for around 7 minutes to make sure they are totally hard boiled. Don’t boil them for too much longer than this otherwise they will likely taste a bit rubbery.

When the eggs are boiled, run them under a cold tap straight away and this should stop that green colour from appearing between the yolk and the white.

 

How to See Better in the Dark

Beauty & Personal Care, Food & Drink, Health, ,

eyeIf you were watching a recent episode of ‘Trust Me I’m a Doctor’ then you will have seen an experiment where the broadcaster Michael Mosley took a supplement for 90 days to see how it would affect his eyesight.

The results were very interesting and one particular thing that he noticed (and that was tested scientifically) was that his night time vision improved significantly as he could see much finer detail.

The supplement that he took contained the chemicals lutein, zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin and these are the important ingredients that affect the eyes.

Although you can get these substances in everyday food, with these it is really difficult to actually eat enough of the relevant vegetables that contain them so this could be one case where a supplement could be better.

The theory behind the research is that the macula is protected by certain pigments that are found in leafy green vegetables. If we eat a lot of those vegetables then the 3 chemicals above make their way to the macula and give it more protection.

There is a particular supplement that has these three chemicals in and it is freely available online. It is called Macushield and you can buy it on Amazon among other places. It is sold by opticians which gives it validity in terms of genuineness and being able to trust its claims.

So if you want to see better in the dark then it might be better to drop the carrots (or continue to eat them anyway!) and pick up this increasingly popular supplement which could help to not only help you see in the dark but also give you improved vision in other areas such as increased contrast.

You can get more information about the test results and the experiment about being able to see better by watching Series 5 Episode 2 of Trust me I’m a Doctor on iPlayer (starts at about 9 minutes in), or on the BBC website.

Where Can I Get Alginate?

Beauty & Personal Care, Food & Drink, Health, Science,

Recent studies have found that a substance that is found in seaweed, called alginate, can have inhibiting effects on the absorption of fat into the body. Here we look into where you can get alginate.

In 2014 research at Newcastle University found that alginate can stop the body absorbing fat. Alginate is found naturally in seaweed and this has also been used in Japan as a weight loss supplement for a few years now.

If the body does not absorb the fat, then the person does not put on the extra weight that would be caused by the fat. Instead the fat is passed straight through the body.

Research is still going on to see if this can be made into a bonafide weight loss supplement but in the meantime people like Jamie Oliver have put down their weight loss to eating seaweed.

So the best way to get hold of alginate is by eating seaweed itself. But obviously this may not be an option for many people so they may be looking for an alginate supplement that can be taken with food.

There are a couple of options at present that contain alginate but are not sold as specifically weight loss supplements. Care should be taken with any kind of supplement and you may wish to consult your doctor before taking them.

In particular seaweed supplements are used to support thyroid function so if you have any issues with your thyroid you should certainly seek advice.

So you can get hold of seaweed (or kelp) supplements online and below are a couple of options (in either tablet or powder form)  which purport to contain alginate so could be options to consider:
 

Another possibility is food grade sodium alginate powder. This is actually used in molecular gastronomy to form things like pseudo caviar.

Obviously this kind of product has not been tested in terms of its possible weight loss properties so there is no guarantee that this will have any kind of effect and it would be interesting to test how you could use it in an every day context!

So as discussed there is a long way to go with more testing and research required to see if alginate can be used as a weight loss supplement. In any case a balanced and varied diet, together with regular exercise is generally the best way to lose weight.