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.

Is it Paleo chart

A few non PKU friends have been eating a Paleo diet and they are feeling great and amazing results with their body transformations (yes, I’m talking fitness here). I like the whole idea of eating clean though it can be very, very hard on a low protein diet – if not impossible. Still, if anyone is game here is a chart that can help you decide what to eat and what not to. I am thinking about giving it a try. Maybe. We’ll see.

Is-It-Paleo.jpg (517×640).

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.

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!

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.

Eating healthily – FATE sweet potato curry recipe

As promised, here is the first of my healthy PKU friendly recipes!

FATE Sweet Potato Curry

This is a recipe by Eileen Green from FATE Special Foods in the UK. It is absolutely delicious, and as I discovered today it works brilliantly cooked either the way the recipe states or by following steps one and two, mixing in the curry powder and then throwing the whole lot into the slow cooker for six hours or however long you want to leave it.  You can also do this recipe with different combinations of veggies. Tonight I did half sweet potato and half pumpkin and it is just as delicious!

However, if you choose to use a slow cooker, beware! It magnifies the heat of the chilli!

This recipe makes enough for you to have a hearty and healthy meal and then freeze extra portions. It reheats well in the microwave.

Ingredients
2 tbsp oil (I use olive oil)
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 – 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tbsp fresh ground ginger, chopped or grated
1 or 2 medium sized fresh chillies, chopped (you can tweak this to your own taste)
250g onion, roughly chopped
2 tsp ground coriander
4 tsp curry powder
2 tbsp fresh coriander, roughly chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
500g sweet potatoes, cut into bite sized cubes
150g french beans, snapped into medium sized pieces
2 x 400g tins tomatoes
200ml water
Salt and pepper to season

Method
1. Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the cumin seeds and cook over a gentle heat for about 30 seconds until they turn darker, but not burnt.

2. Add the chopped garlic, ginger and chillies. Cook for about 1 minute. Add the onion and leave to cook over a high heat for about five minutes, until softened and starting to brown lightly.

3. Add the ground coriander, curry powder and fresh coriander, stir well. Leave to cook for a couple of minutes to cook the spices. Stir in the tomato puree.

4. Add the sweet potato and french beans then add the tins of tomatoes and water. Stir and use the back of the spoon to gently crush the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and leave to gently cook for about 30 mins or until the vegetables are cooked.

A healthy PKU friendly meal idea

Sometimes finding food that is both healthy and PKU friendly can be a real challenge. That’s why I’m always so excited when I find something that checks both of these boxes.

While out shopping with my mum yesterday I was browsing the gluten free range in the hope of finding something useful for the low protein diet when my mother ran over to me flapping something manically in one hand – like me, mum gets excited when she finds something lower in protein and healthy!

She had found rice paper. Now, most likely its taken me a while to catch on but I’d never even considered using rice paper for lower protein meals before. In fact, even though I knew rice based things were sometimes lower in protein (like rice pasta) I never even picked a packet of rice paper up. I had a look, and yep, the rice paper was quite low in protein. I was still skeptical – as much as I love to cook and make a mess in the kitchen while I experiment with low pro dishes, the reality is that I often end up going for whatever is quick and easy, especially since I do low and high protein versions of most meals (for my hubby). I figured rice paper was going to be really difficult to work with.

Now don’t get me wrong – there is definitely a knack to working with rice paper, but on the whole it is a lot easier than I

Vegetarian rice paper rolls are low in fat and quite low in protein too. They make a healthy and delicious meal.

expected and the rolls I made were awesome dipped in honey soy sauce.

To make the rice paper rolls I stirfried strips of carrot, zuchinni and onion with garlic and a little soy sauce. I then soaked the rice paper in tepid water for about 30 seconds, moved them carefully (this is where the knack comes in – they smoosh and stick together quite easily) onto a clean tea towel. You then pat them dry with another clean towel on top (very gently), move the paper (which should now be kind of see through and rubbery and very, very floppy) onto a small plate. I then put a small amount of the veggies in the middle of the paper, folded the top and bottom down, the left side over the top of the veggies and then making it as tightly bound as I could I rolled them up. Its a bit hard to describe but you’ll get it when you make it! You could use whatever you like in them, including fruits.

You will need to calculate the protein count depending on the brand of rice paper you buy.

If you try this I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Grilled Zuchinni and Sweet Potato Salad recipe

Now I realise that for a lot of you it’s winter at the moment, but here in Australia it’s well and truly salad weather! My mum has been making this salad for years and it’s one of my favourites. You will need to calculate the phe yourself as going by my foodlist this is free

This recipe serves 4.

Grilled Zuchinni and Sweet Potato Salad

Ingredients

500g zuchinni, halves lengthways
500g sweet potato, sliced to the same thickness as the halved zuchinni
2 tbsp olive oil
4 cups baby spinach leaves
1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved
1 punnet golden peardrop tomatoes (or other yellow tomatoes if you can’t find those), halved

Lemon Chive Dressing:

1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
1/4 tsp Dijon Mustard
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
1 small brown shallot, finely chopped
1/4 cup snipped chives

Method

1. Heat a griller (can be a health grill, stove top, whatever) to moderate heat. Combine the sweet potato and zuchinni in a large bowl and toss in the olive oil. Set aside.
2. Grill the vegetables until tender (about 15 – 20 mins, maybe less for the zuchinni). When cooked set aside to cool. When cool enough to handle cut into bite sized pieces.
3. To make the dressing combine the salt, lemon zest, lemon juice and mustard together and whisk until salt has dissolved.
4. Gradually whisk in the oil until the mixture has thickened. Whisk in the chives, pepper and shallot. Set aside.
5. In a serving bowl, combine the vegetables with the baby spinach leaves, tomatoes and dressing. Serve immediately.

PKU: Share the knowledge!

I’ve just realised that this blog is basically one big sounding board about my life with PKU.

When I started this blog I did so because I wanted to help other people with PKU. We all know that living with PKU isn’t easy, but let’s face it – there are so many worse things out there that we could have!

Now that I have actually started blogging again I’m going to be posting more informative and interesting pieces, as well as photographs and recipes. It just so happens that I absolutely love experimenting in the kitchen, especially with low protein food.

I think I’ve mentioned on here before that here in Australia we don’t have access to the widest range of PKU products and they’re not always that palatable.

As I come up with new recipes, hints and tricks for your low protein cookery and on how to make old recipes that bit more tasty!

Also, I’m on a real personal weight loss mission at the moment – I have put on a great deal of weight in recent years, including 4kg when I was pregnant (from eating no protein and tons of calories… its more complicated in that, but that explanation will do for now ). I now have about 30 – 35kg to lose (somewhere int he region of 70lbs). As I find things that work I’m going to be posting about meals I eat that help me to lose weight and the exercise I find that works. I know I’m definitely not on my own being a PKUer with weight issues, and if my weight loss efforts can help anyone else out there in a similar boat then I’ll be a happy camper!

I have a few recipes I’ll post in coming days - they’re not all that healthy, but they are very yummy!

PKU and weight loss

PKU and losing weight is most likely going to be an issue that crops up on this blog fairly regularly as its one of the toughest issues I face as a woman with PKU. I have so many friends with PKU all over the world, and one of the most common issues amongst us seems to be how truly tough it is for a lot of us, both men and women, to lose or even maintain a healthy weight while on diet.

I’ve battled with my weight for most of my life. When I was a teen I remember walking into clinic and my doctor saying ”Kate, we need to lose some weight. Now.” Kinda traumatic for a self concious 15 year old girl! And then when I did, it was too much, too fast (oh for the days where I could just stop drinking coke and the weight would drop off!).

It’s so easy to put weight on and so, so hard to lose it. The basic prinicipal of eat less than you burn off seems just that much harder on diet – I always lose weight so much more easily off diet, which is terrible for my health! This time I’m trying to lose weight while on the PKU diet, and although its a slow process, its working. Formula doesn’t help – so many of them are so high in sugar, and sometimes in fat as well, to help them taste better (not that any of them are particularly palitable to me!). I’m currently taking Lophlex LQ Orange, which is gross, but less gross than some of the others.

Eat less, exercise more definitely still rings true for weight loss on the PKU diet, but it seems to be so much harder to follow. Everywhere I go, people are telling me to eat a high protein diet to help me build muscle, and I get so frustrated being told this all the time. Another thing that really annoys me is people telling me they can ‘cure’ me (mostly people who work in health food shops), but that’s another post!

In the past I have largely blamed the PKU foods available for my lack of weight loss, but I have realised this time it comes down to the choices you make. I don’t eat any of the PKU biscuits, but I keep in a good stock of pasta. I am not eating much bread – white bread isn’t the best for weight loss, but obviously we have to eat some things!

This is my general diet for the moment:

Breakfast: 2.5 exchanges of Weetos with half an exchange of PKU milk (either Milupa or the Loprofin one!)
Lunch: A pasta salad made up from veggies (some free, some not), 1 cup of pasta (before its cooked), herbs and salad dressing and a can of diet soft drink (made with splenda)
Dinner: Some veggie based dish – maybe a casserole or just boiled veg
Snacks: Fruit, sultanas (to help sugar cravings), celery

As much as I hate to admit it, taking my formula seems to be a key to me not snacking more than I should as the protein in it helps to fill you up. By the way, contrary to what a lot of people think, small snacks are a good thing as eating every two hours or so boosts your metabolism. While most people would snack on a few nuts or something though, we need to make it something low protein AND low cal, which can be such a challenge. My friend Maureen told me celery is good because its free and you burn more calories actually chewing it than you take in from it!

Something that kind of complicates things is that I don’t have a clinic. I’ve just moved back to Australia after living in the UK for three years where i had an excellent clinic and the most amazing support of my life. I also had the lowest blood levels of my life. I had been on the pre-conception diet, had successfully brought my levels down for pregnancy and my husband and I were trying to start a family (its still on the cards, just on hold for now!). I’ve been in Australia for three months now and am living in Queensland but to cut a long story short, I’m on a waiting list for the PKU clinic and am apparently ‘low priority’. I was told I would have to wait my turn and fend for myself, though I don’t see how that can possibly be ethical. Anyway… don’t let me get started on that! But basically, I’m trying at the moment to do the diet myself, without a clinic, and without being able to do my bloods unless I pay (a lot… more than I can afford) for it. That makes all this doubly interesting! Whew! Rant over lol.

I keep my food and lifestyle  fairly healthy (and getting in carbs are important for us because they help to stave off the hunger), but I’m getting very frustrated because although I’m definitely losing centimetres (and clothes sizes! ), I’m not losing scale weight! I do mostly cardio – I work out with a personal trainer twice a week, do ballroom dancing, play beach vollyeball and I walk/jog on my off days – still slimming down but not getting lighter!

I work out a LOT and I really push myself, and as I’m about to take on the training of three young horses I’m about to be exercising even more, but if anyone has any ideas for increasing my scale weight loss I’d love to hear from you!

In the meantime, I’m considering posting my before and after pictures (well, more like work in progress pictures!), but as I’m quite ashamed of them, and am not altogether keen on the idea of people I know seeing all my wobbly bits (and me in my underwear!)… we’ll see.