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Wednesday 16 March 2011

(Socca) Pizza and (Sweet Potato) Brownies for lunch!

If I told my friends or work colleagues that I regularly ate pizza and cake, they wouldn't believe me. "But I thought you were really into healthy food" would be the reply. Well, if it wasn't for all the great blogs I read, I wouldn't have been able to imagine healthy versions of all my favourite treats either! Today's lunch is just such a meal:Leftover oaty socca topped with passata, goat cheese and chilli spice mix, baked for 10 mins or so. Served with traffic light salad (rocket, carrot, red pepper, mustardy dressing- just mustard, EVOO and ACV). I love twice baked socca!! (Thanks Twins)

Dessert was two little orangey sweet potato cocoa muffins (thanks Alex and Heather), sitting comfortably on a bed of organic plain yogurt.
A delicious plant based meal full of veggies, protein, healthy fat, fibre, calcium, iron and vitamins galore. It's all very minimally processed as well as refined carb, gluten and sugar free.
As well as being healthy, that sort of food is so satisfying. I know many women who eat nothing but cup a soup and cardboard rye crackers, maybe a banana, for lunch, while chatting about their latest diet or last week's disappointing Weightwatcher's weigh in. An hour later I see them buying a candy bar from the vending machine. Unfortunately so many of these women sabotage their own health plans by eating as low calorie as possible at meals, but end up ravenous and totally powerless before the vending machine/biscuit tin/wine rack (and depressed, possibly due to the lack of important vitamins and minerals more than disappointed at failed attempts at dieting). I guess I'm lucky to have found such a wealth of information and ideas from other bloggers to make healthy AND delicious food:) What I've learnt over the last year and a bit is that to maintain good health, if you eat nutrient dense and minimally processed foods in reasonable sized portions, you don't need to worry about calories or percentages or anything like that, and you won't feel deprived either.

Do you enjoy healthy treats? Do you find they help you stick to a healthy lifestyle? What's your favourite treat, and do you enjoy it as is, or do you either avoid or always make healthy versions?

I'd say I usually go with a healthy version but I think occasional indulgence is just as important as part of a healthy lifestyle (as opposed to "diet") if that's what it takes to stick with it- that said these days I actually prefer the healthy version, because I get no 'junk food hangover' that way:)

1 comment:

  1. It's so funny how we've been writing about the same topics! I agree - we ARE lucky to have the blogger network, to learn about foods. Socca and healthy cake are two things that anybody would love; it's great to be able to eat comfort food that's still healthy. :)

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