What about breakfast & tea?

Since I retired from work a few years ago we have got into a routine with our meals; breakfast when we get up [usually between 8.00 and 9.00], dinner [or as my Granddaughter corrects me - “Actually it’s lunch, Grancher”] between 12.00 and 1.00 and an afternoon tea around six-ish in the evening. We prefer to have our main meal at lunchtime these days and don’t like eating too late in the evening. There’s the dilemma. Our teas in the past were a mixture of cheese sandwiches, cheese on toast, cheese and ham sandwiches [notice a theme?]… need I go on. Whereas the recipe books will sort our mid-day meal, I need some ideas for tea time. We have over the last few days had sardines, banana sandwiches and beans on toast tonight. Any help would be appreciated.
And then there’s breakfast, normally this consists of cereal and there are some healthy options out there, but why as the cereal gets healthier does the taste more and more resemble cardboard? I prefer the sweet cereals that are less healthy so I’m probably going to have to “sex-up” the cereal with fruit or nuts to take away the cardboard taste.
I didn’t cook for lunch today as we had the leftover meatloaf from yesterday served with salad and new potatoes accompanied by a Thai dipping sauce[recipe below]. The meatloaf was excellent cold indeed Sylvia commented that it tasted better than yesterday, the dipping sauce certainly perked up the meal but it was VERY HOT!!! In future I would probably reduce the amount of chillies in it but the overall flavour was good, with the initial sweetness being overtaken by the sharpness of the vinegar and lime before being overwhelmed by the hotness of chilli.

Thai Hot Dipping Sauce.

     Ingredients

• 
  
  2 tablespoons caster sugar.
• 
  
  Juice of 1 Lime.
• 
  
  6 tablespoons of water.
• 
  
  2 tablespoons white wine vinegar.
• 
  
  3 Red bird’s eye chillies – thinly sliced [seeds & all]

Simply mix all the ingredients in a saucepan, bring to the boil and cook for around 2 minutes. [Adjust the amount of chilli according to taste, I’d probably start with 1 next time and build up].

The New Regime.

After returning from the doctor’s with the news that her cholesterol was still too high coupled with an elevated blood pressure Sylvia has decided that we should both go on a low cholesterol diet. In fairness I don’t know what my cholesterol reading is as I have never had it tested but the chances are that with my weight situation, it will not be low. The first stop was a visit to Waterstones bookshop in Cardiff to peruse the cookery section to get some inspiration to kick start the new regime. Unfortunately no books were ready to hand and at W H Smith the story was similar with the exception of two books – Healthy Eating for Lower Cholesterol by Daniel Green and 101 More Low-Fat recipes from the BBC Good Food Series.

Although slightly disappointed by the lack of literature covering such an important area, I decided to use these two books as a base for my cookery exploits over the coming months. This blog will be a diary of these attempts to lower our cholesterol levels and avoid statins. Any input would be welcomed including suggestions for recipes, web-sites, other books – in fact any thing that may be interesting to my readers. Two words of caution, one I am not a chef but an interested amateur, please excuse me if I get the basics wrong. Secondly I am certainly not a doctor and have no medical qualifications so please bear that in mind if you follow this blog. Hopefully I will be able to report that cholesterol levels have started to fall as the project progresses.