Dirty Rice – PKU friendly, low protein and low carb

Over the last few months I have become more and more interested in paleo recipes and how they can help my weight loss and body change efforts. Throughout my weight loss journey I am dedicated to remaining on diet and by taking this approach the weight is coming off oh-so-slowly but surely.

Quite often I browse websites checking out recipes for things I could try. Today I came across this – dirty rice! The ‘dirty’ refers to the colour, which in this dish comes from the large number of spices, which in addition to adding colour are high in antioxidants and abundant in flavour!

Now, be sure to work the phe out on this one for yourself. It will depend on what part of the world you live in. For me in the UK, cauliflower is a free food (as long as I follow the guidelines about this – for example, not eating broccoli in the same day). I know that in other countries it is not free.

Anyway, enjoy! And if you give it a go I’d love to know what you think.

Paleo Dirty Rice – Grain Free Rice Recipe | Elana’s Pantry.

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.

Healthy recipe: Sweet potato and parsnip curry

I’ve been doing my best to eat healthier, more filling and more nourishing food lately and as part of that I’ve got a stack of recipes I have either come up with or tried. This recipe was inspired by a meal one of my PKU friends from Ireland told me about and I have

Sweet Potato and Parsnip Curry

added my own tweaks to it to suit my tastes. You aren’t limited to the vegetables I have used – you could use anything you like and even add chilli for a spicy kick! I hope you enjoy it – I will post a picture of this recipe soon – I was more interested in eating this than taking pictures of it and blogging it was an afterthought. This recipe makes enough to freeze 2 additional large portions.

Ingredients
2 small or 1 large sweet potatoes, chopped
1 parsnip, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 x tinned chopped tomatoes or you could use fresh tomatoes
1 Knorr Beef stockpot (or a crushed beef stock cube)
Half an onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced or crushed
1 heaped teaspoon of mild curry powder
Water (use your judgement on this one)
Measured dollop of coconut yoghurt if available/allowed (to serve)

Method

1. Sautee the onions and garlic in low calorie cooking spray (eg Fry Light) until translucent.
2. Add the stockpot, sweet potato, parsnip and carrot. Stir the stockpot in until it melts and let cook just for a minute or two.
3. Add the tomatoes and curry powder, stir then simmer until the vegetables are tender.
4. To serve, add a measured dollop of coconut yoghurt if allowed. I use 2 exchanges worth of Rachel’s Organic Greek Style Coconut Yoghurt.
5. Serve with low pro rice or an allowed amount of boiled brown rice.

Best ever PKU low protein pancakes

As you all know I’ve been taking a bit of a break from blogging until we’re in a living situation that allows me to get back into the kitchen and cook on a more frequent basis. We move next week and I’m really looking forward to it – a kitchen will a full sized fridge, a splashback instead of the bare plasterboard wall we’ve got now and on the same level as the rest of the house which will make looking after my daughter and cooking at the same time much easier!

Still, sometimes no matter how much you want to avoid it (in my case for fear of ruining said bare plasterboard wall… my mother in law would kill me!) you have no choice but to cook. And as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Well, this morning I spent most of my time procrastinating… about my breakfast! You see, I wasn’t particularly well organised in my shopping this week and I didn’t plan my meals particularly well so here I am on friday morning, hanging out for my husband’s pay day on Monday, and with excrutiatingly little in the fridge and cupboards except for low protein products, various out of date things (oops!) and a few odds and ends that don’t exactly equal a meal. Don’t get me wrong, it was actually quite productive! During my procrastination I managed to feed, bath and play with the baby, put her down for a nap, make myself a low protein latte while I delighted in the gentle hum, hissing of steam  and delicious coffee smell coming from my home espresso machine, clean the kitchen and bathroom and put on a load of washing. Eventually though, it was inevitable that I was not going to be able to ignore my hunger any longer.

I knew I was going to have to get creative if I wanted a meal that was going to fill me up and not blow my morning’s phe budget. I have been avoiding doing too much low protein cooking (or any cooking for that matter) but I decided to summon up everything I had to make myself a batch of pancakes from an unknown recipe.

Here is the final product:

I’ve got to say, I’m pretty pleased with them. Now, they’re NOT phe free. I attribute that as to why they’re so good. The good thing is though, you don’t need to eat the whole recipe. My next experiment is going to be making this recipe oil free.

Kate’s PKU Pancakes (based on a recipe from Fate Special Foods)
200g fate baking mix (you can try any other baking mix you have but I can’t guarantee results)
1 tsp baking powder
450ml water
50ml oil
A good splash of vanilla extract (I didn’t measure but I used a lot)
Pinch salt
1 – 2 tablespoons sugar (I used Demerara sugar)
1 medium egg (6g protein/6 50mg exchanges)

Method
Place all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with a hand mixer until well combined. The batter should be quite thick. Heat a frying pan at a touch over medium heat and put in one or two squirts of low calorie spray (don’t use pouring oil or butter – it will make the pancakes overly greasy, gummy and not very nice).

Spoon the mixture into the frying pan and tilt the frying pan in circles (let me know if you want me to put up a video of what I mean by this) to get the mixture to spread out a bit but there’s no need to do anything else to it. You will need to flip the pancakes when lots of bubbles appear on the surface but BEFORE they burst. It takes a few goes but you’ll get the hang of getting the perfect colour soon!

To find the grams/exchanges per pancake simply divide 6 by the number of pankcakes or pikelets you make. I used a large soup ladle to put the mix into the frying pan and I made 12 pancakes plus a small pikelet.

PKU friendly weight loss meals

If you’ve read my last post you’ll know that I’ve challenged myself to prove that you can lose weight and stay on the PKU diet. To do this I joined Weight Watchers – the onus is still on me to plan and cook my own meals but the tools available to me help me to find fresh ideas, balance the amounts and quality of food I’m putting into my mouth and give me the support – and accountability – I need to make it happen. [Edit: I have since removed the posts about the weight loss seeing as I couldn't dedicate the time to blogging about it. The weight loss efforts continue on though, I haven't given up!]

I started my weight loss challenge on Thursday and so far I feel like I’m doing pretty well. I haven’t had any soft drink (my biggest weakness – when I was small I was given soft drink to wash my formula down because it was all that helped but now I can’t seem to exercise any self control when it comes to fizzy drinks), I have not gone over my phe allowance once and I have provided my husband and myself with healthy, nutritious meals every day. I have not been hungry once. An added bonus seems to be that my weekly grocery shop was cheaper than usual thanks to my meal plans!

I’ve even found some products on the supermarket shelf that have helped me satiate that mid-afternoon sugar craving without going overboard!

At the moment I’m eating 15 – 18g protein per day. I know that’s a lot for some people but I truly believe this could be done on less with some clever substitutions.

There is a lot out there that I think we probably don’t consider eating that a lot of us can work into our diet… This week during my weekly shop I came bome with Weight Watchers Cream Cheese (2.2g per serve), Weight Watchers Belgian Chocolate Brownies (1.5g) and Buttercup Wholegrain Bread (2g per slice). I also bought some goodies at my weekly Weight Watchers meeting that fill me up nicely and I can work into my diet.

If anything, the biggest problem I have had since Thursday is keeping my phe intake consistent. It’s lower than it’s been since my daughter was born in December, but I need to work on the consistency more.

Here is my food diary so far. I will start from Friday – I didn’t start until half way through Thursday because I didn’t sign up until then!

Friday

Breakfast - 1 serve of rolled oats, cooked in water with 1 tbsp of sultanas, a couple of drops of vanilla and 1tsp honey. One banana. 125ml Lophlex LQ orange flavour (4.8g)

Lunch - 75g (dry) Loprofin pasta with 25g Weight Watchers Cream Cheese, grilled mushroom, zucchini, asparagus and halved cherry tomatoes. 1 plum. Lophlex LQ orange flavour (4g)

Dinner - Jacket potato topped with fresh tomato and 25g WW Cream Cheese served with assorted steamed veggies. Formula. (5g)

Snacks - 1 cup of coffee, 1 WW belgian chocolate brownie (1.5g), 1 nectarine

Alright… no time right now to type out any more, but other meals have included grilled veggie sandwich, stirfry and veggie cous cous (4.8g and I could barely finish because it was so filling).

I will post some pictures soon!

Low protein PKU crumpets recipe

I absolutely LOVE these crumpets. They taste pretty close to the real thing and they look like the real thing too. I haven’t quite perfected getting rid of the white look on top, but I know other people have so it is possible! They take a while to make but are well worth the trouble. I have to say, these crumpets got me through the early stages of my pregnancy when I could barely eat!

Ingredients
300g Loprofin mix
1 sachet yeast (comes with mix)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarb soda
250ml tepid water
1 carton Loprofin PKU drink or 200ml of some kind of PKU milk
Oil for frying (you can use butter, which I prefer for the flavour)

Method

1. Mix the baking mix, yeast, salt and bicarb soda in a large bowl. Then mix water with the PKU drink and pour into bowl.

2. Mix with a wooden spoon for 5 mins (awesome arm workout!) or with an electric hand mixer until smooth and creamy. Cover with cling wrap and leave to rise in a warm place for around an hour (keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t spill over).

3. Once the mixture has risen put a drop of oil in a non-stick frying pan and rub into surface with a piece of kitchen towel. Heat the pan to a medium heat.

4. Take a table spoon and scoop up some of the mix, using another table spoon you can sort of shape it a bit and also helps when putting it in the pan. I actually spoon the mixture straight into greased egg rings – they keep the mixture in place and give a nice shape.

5. Cook for around 4-5 mins. The surface of the mixture will start to look dry and little bubbles will burst to create ‘holes’ like you seen on real crumpets. When you’re satisfied with this (don’t overcook the underside) flip over for a minute or two (again be careful not to burn) to finish the crumpets off. 

6. Leave to cool before eating. The crumpets are delicious still warm with butter and drizzled with honey or jam.

7. To eat just drop into the toaster like you would with regular crumpets. Enjoy!

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 Vegetable Tart recipe

This tart is absolutely delicious served with a tossed herb salad and makes a delightful light meal for lunch or dinner.

PKU Vegetable Tart

Pastry base
115g low protein flour (I used loprofin)
60g butter
30 ml (2tbsp) cold water
1 tsp French or English mustard

Topping
You can fill the pastry case with pretty much whatever you like, as long as it won’t be too soggy (so lots of sauce is a bad idea).

For this tart I used fresh garlic, fresh sliced tomatoes, torn basil leaves, onion, cracked pepper, sea salt and low protein cheese.

Method
1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C/Gas mark 6

2. In a medium bowl rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre and add the water. Mix with your hands to combine together.

3. Dust a work surface with low protein flour. Place the dough on the surface and knead for one minute. Divide the dough up into four (or however many tarts you would like to make) and roll each piece of dough out. Press the dough into a pastry case or yorkshire pudding tins. slightly prick the base and banke in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes.

4. Remove the cases from the oven and fill with your desired filling, then return to the oven. The time you bake your tart for will depend on your filling. I baked the tomato based tart for about half an hour.

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.