menu plans

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Meatless Monday: Deliciously Ella With Friends – Ella Mills (Woodward)

deliciously-ella-with-friends

Deliciously Ella with Friends

Ella Mills (Woodward)

Hachette Australia

Yellow Kite

ISBN: 9781473655263

 

Description:

Healthy recipes to love, share and enjoy together.

The much-anticipated follow-up cookbook from Deliciously Ella, the inspirational bestselling healthy food writer who has taken the cookery world by storm.

In the follow-up to her amazing bestseller DELICIOUSLY ELLA EVERY DAY, Ella makes it easy for you to prepare delicious healthy food for you, your friends and family, whatever the occasion. No more wondering whether certain dishes go together, Ella makes life simple with her menus – whether you are planning a laid-back brunch, a last-minute lunch or a fancy supper, Ella has it covered with wonderful hearty and filling recipes that celebrate her healthy eating philosophy.

With ideas and inspiration for every foodie occasion, including cosy nights in, easy kitchen suppers, flavoursome feasts, birthday parties, picnics and mocktails and cocktails, this is the go-to book for anyone who lives a healthy lifestyle and loves sharing food with friends and family.

 

My View:

Ella Mills (Woodward) is my go to author for great plant based recipes. I eat a balanced diet, a little bit of everything with a healthy a spin (90% of the time).  🙂  We are omnivores, with vegetarian offspring – so delicious, easy to make, plant based recipes are regularly included in our menu planning.

Ella’s style of cooking busts the myth that vegetarian food is boring and salad based.  Ella’s number one tip for encouraging friends and family to eat healthier is: “FOCUS ON FAMILIAR FOOD. If you’re having a real sceptic for dinner or trying to get an unconvinced family member to try a healthier meal, then always cook something that looks and feels familiar to them. Choose a classic dish with a healthy spin on it. Something like the Indian feast in this book with bowls of coconut rice, chana masala and aloo gobi. This is a perfect meal and your guests are never going to look at this and think ‘What is that, it looks terrifyingly healthy!’ and decide they don’t like it before they try it, plus it is really satisfying and hearty, which means everyone will go home full. So remember to go easy on everyone, don’t leap straight to raw food, or anything too unfamiliar and scary looking.” P. 11  A great tip Ella, and the Indian feast – perfect – this si a meal that can be enjoyed by all my family and friends alike.

 

A great book full of tasty easy to make recipes that will hold a treasured place in my cook book library.

 

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Post Script: Fast Your Way to Wellness – Lee Holmes

Fast Your Way To WellnessFast Your Way To Wellness

Lee Holmes

Murdoch Books

ISBN:9781743366363

Description:

A simple, supportive and sustainable approach to intermittent fasting (IF), featuring balanced meals that use nutritious unrefined wholefoods to boost energy.

90 nutritious recipes to help you get the most from your fasting days and supercharge your energy and weight loss.

 

Lee Holmes presents a simple, supportive and sustainable approach to intermittent fasting (IF), featuring balanced meals that use nutritious unrefined wholefoods to boost energy. The IF diet is based on a 500 calorie (2092 kilojoule) restriction for women and a 600 calorie (2510 kilojoule) restriction for men. Among its many benefits, intermittent fasting helps the body shift from a sugar-burning machine into a fat-burning machine. Lee demonstrates that fasting can be even healthier with the right food and ingredient choices, putting you on the path to achieving good health, increased vitality and weight loss. Fast Your Way to Wellness contains 88 fasting recipes to take you all the way through from breakfast to lunch and then on to dinner. A number of different fasting methods are provided so you can choose the one that fits in with your lifestyle. Lee supplies information about the science of fasting, what it is, how it works and the enormous health benefits associated with it. You’ll find tips on how to start your first fast, incorporating exercise into your routine and how to monitor results and adjust as you go. There’s a shopping list and an intermittent fasting calorie- calculator to assist if you wish to add certain ingredients to recipes or mix and match. All of the recipes are free of gluten, wheat, processed sugar and yeast, and many are also dairy free. Each dish includes a serving amount and indicates the number of calories per serve, and there are also handy shopping, preparation and cooking tips.

 

 

My View:

It will not surprise regular readers of my blog that I am a fan of Lee Holmes series of Super Charged Food themed books – I found Heal Your Gut particularly useful and this new book provides more every day recipes that are kind to the gut, supportive of IF : “Intermittent Fasting is all about getting in sync with the natural biological processes and cues of your unique body.” P.13

This books provides you with a handy tool box of tips and tricks including an ingredient calorie guide (which I found particularly useful – it allows me to quickly assess my ingredient choices e.g. a chart that compares the calories of different types of roasting vegetables or steaming vegetables, or crunchable vegetables, or flavour ingredients or different fats , proteins, dairy and egg and a variety of flours  etc. This is so useful – a very easy and visual way to determine your food choices.  The 5/2 diet is explained, guidelines and advice provided so that even shift workers can participate in this style of energy boosting regime.  There are meals plans for both men and women (yes the calorie requirements are different) and even a hormone friendly IF plan for women.  This is not a one fit for all plan but a method of that can be adapted to fit most people needs and lifestyles. This is a great resource.

 

Author bio:

Lee Holmes holds an Advanced Certificate in Food and Nutrition and is a certified holistic health coach (IIN), yoga teacher, wholefoods chef and bestselling author of the Supercharged Food series, which includes Eat Your Way To Good Health; Eat Yourself Beautiful; Eat Clean, Green and Vegetarian; Heal Your Gut; Supercharged Food for Kids and Eat Right for Your Shape. She is a columnist for Wellbeing Magazine and is the Lifestyle Food Channel’s Healthy Eating Expert. Her articles have appeared in leading Australian newspapers and journals, as well as The Times and The Daily Express in the UK and The Huffington Post in the USA.