Metabolic Disease Foundation is giving away FREE low pro food!

Most of you will know that I sit on the board of directors of the Metabolic Disease Foundation and was, in fact, one of the founders.

Well, I’d like to share with you the fact that this month we are giving away two fantastic baskets of low protein food when you make a monetary donation!

The money you donate to MDF is used to cover running costs and provide assistance to metabolic patients all over the world – the more donations we get the more people we can help.

The best part is this: the prize is available to anyone from ANY country!

Click on the link below to go to the MDF website and please consider setting up a monthly recurring donation of $5 or $10 US.

Metabolic Disease Foundation.

Veggie stroganoff – a quick and easy low pro meal

While shopping last week I decided to do the unusual (for me at least) and check out the pre-made sauces in Woolworths. I’m so glad I did because I picked up the Masterfoods Beef Stroganoff recipe base and I found that per serve it’s free! Yay!

So tonight, feeling thoroughly exhausted from a full day of house hunting, I didn’t want to cook so I decided to give a veggie stroganoff a go.

As it turns out, it made a delicious, low phe and relatively healthy meal! It was so yummy that I stuffed it down before i realised I hadn’t taken a photo (yes, photographing my food is a rather quirky habit of mine if you hadn’t already picked up on that one! lol).

Simply chop up your choice of veggies – free, not free – it depends on what your phe tolerance is and what you like. I used green beans, mushrooms (really an essential for this recipe), onion (again, essential!), carrots, parsnip and pumpkin.

Sautee some garlic, the onion and mushrooms (if you’re having them), meanwhile you need to cook the other veggies – boil, steam… anything goes. When the veggies are cooked throw them into the pan with the sauteed ingredients, add the pouch of Beef Stroganoff Recipe Base. Simmer for 10 minutes, add two tablespoons of light sour cream, simmer for another minute and voila! You have a delicious, healthy low pro meal.

The beauty of this is that you can do half and half – that is half low pro and half normal. Tonight I used half the pouch of sauce on my veggies and the other half over sauteed garlic, onion and a cooked sliced up sausage for Ed. He loved it and it was so easy to do.

Serve with whatever suits your diet. I had mine over 2g of brown rice to make up my phe, but it would go very nicely over low pro rice, with bread or even on a baked potato/sweet potato.

PKU adult Debbie Colyer interviews me about PKU in Australia

As a lot of you will already know thanks to Facebook, my good PKU adult friend Debbie Colyer has been staying with my husband and I in Melbourne for the last couple of days.

Having Debbie stay has been fantastic – we’ve had a real PKU fest and have had a lot of discussions about raising PKU awareness and fostering more of a sense of community amongst PKUers here in Australia. A big focus for our conversations has been the huge differences in support and even treatment between PKU clinics within Australia and also the issues facing PKU adults here in Australia. We’ve also done a bit of cooking, and I’ll post pictures and recipes in the coming days.

Last night was Debbie’s final night staying with us and she sat down with both Ed and I and interviewed us both about PKU. Debbie has been taking part in the Vodafone World of Difference program for the better part of the last year which has seen Debbie work full time for the New South Wales PKU Association. She has had the opportunity to learn a lot and has been to two major PKU conferences in the US, interviewing people linked in some way to PKU along the way.

I was thrilled Ed agreed to be interviewed by Debbie, though I did have to promise him that I wouldn’t get offended, angry or upset about anything he says – I meant it too, because I know how difficult I can be to live with and to love sometimes when I’m not as compliant with the diet as I should be. I’ll post that interview in the coming days as well, but in this post I have included a 25 minute long interview with me which discusses a lot of issues surrounding PKU in Australia. I hope you enjoy the interview (which I’ve had to split into three parts because of the length) and any feedback and input you’d like to provide would be really valuable to the exciting things we’re planning to do this year.

Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

Orgran Gluten Free Chocolate Mousse – review

Orgran Chocolate Mousse Mix - try it for a lower protein chocolate hit

I’ve known Orgran had a chocolate mousse that was a bit lower in protein for a while now. It’s not super low – 2.2g of protein per 100g of mousse, but it’s still a good dessert alternative if you have the phe allowance.

Yesterday my curiosity finally got the better of me and I caved and bought a packet to make up.

My first impression was that it was very easy to make – you just add water and mix on high with your electric mixer for 3 minutes and hey presto, you’ve got chocolate mousse!

Once it was made I thought it looked a bit gritty and rich (I thought that might be because I whisked instead of using a hand mixer), but it was fine.

I served some up for myself and did the all important taste test. In my opinion, it tastes like it’s missing something. I tend to like creamier tastes (not always a good thing having PKU) and the taste was a little artificial and not creamy enough for me. Plus, as it happens, I discovered I just don’t like mousse texture.

That said, if you love chocolate and want to get your choccie hit without the high protein count I recommend giving it a go as you just might like it. It’s actually quite filling, but just not for me.