Have we lost the Balance?

 

Have we lost the balance?

In spite of being a nation addicted to recipe books, celebrity chefs and TV cooking competitions it is said that a large percentage of us no longer have the necessary skills to put together nutritionally balanced meals on a daily basis.

Is anyone to blame?

Certainly children are not receiving as much ‘food education’ as in the past and we all admit that we don’t allocate enough time for meal preparation. However I also believe that those very recipe books and TV programmes that are supposed to get us cooking are giving us too many confusing options.

Back to Basics

I am always reading recipe books  searching for new ideas and inspiration and when recently looking through a friend’s book collection came across Hamlyn’s ‘Complete Cook’. The recipes for main courses were categorised under their major protein source: Fish & Seafood, Meat, Poultry & Game. Each recipe included a seasoning or sauce for the protein and you were left to chose your own accompaniments which could be chosen from the vegetable dish section and the pasta, noodle and rice section if you wished. The book also included a variety of traditional recipes from around the world to include huevos rancheros, paella, caribbean black-eyed beans & rice, szechuan noodles … There were also plenty of well balanced vegetarian dishes although they did needed to be searched for among the vegetable, pasta, noodle and rice dishes.

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