New Year, New Blog!

Happy New Year!! Another year upon us, good intentions set and possibly already broken or maybe not quite started. One of my intentions as a nutritional therapist in Edinburgh (and one of course that I shall keep) is to have a different nutritional theme to this blog each month. January will be weight loss and detox February will be mood March will be energy

And the rest to be decided!

As well as nutritional tips and snippets of research, what I plan to do is try 2 new recipes each week related to the theme and post these with my comments. It's so easy for us all to stick to cooking or knocking up the same things at meal times and this will be a great way to expand my repertoire and hopefully yours!!

So Weight Loss and Detox - 2 things on lots of peoples' minds at this time of the year. If you're determined to lose weight then do bear in mind that we store toxins in our fat cells and so as we lose the fat cells, those toxins can be found floating around our system, not doing us any favours. Keeping your diet full of fibre and antioxidant rich colourful vegetables and fruit can help you expel these toxins and feel good while losing weight, whereas adding in "diet" foods and drinks, packed with artificial sweeteners adds to your toxic load and can make it more difficult to lose weight long-term.

Here's a great recipe that's low-fat, high protein and packed with anti-oxidants (courtesy of The Optimum Nutrition Cookbook). Tried this week and went down pretty well!!

Grilled Carrot and Tofu Cakes - serves 2

• 1 red pepper - chopped very finely

• 200g firm tofu

• mashed 125g carrots

• scrubbed and grated 50g fresh breadcrumbs ( I used sourdough - wholemeal or rye are good)

• 25g ground almonds

• 4-5 spring onions

• trimmed and finely chopped 1 clove garlic

• peeled and crushed 1 tbsp soy sauce or tamari

• 1 large handful finely chopped coriander (optional - my addition, I love coriander)

• 1 tbsp sesame seeds freshly ground black pepper

In a large bowl mix the chopped pepper with the mashed tofu, grated carrots, breadcrumbs, ground almonds, spring onions, coriander and garlic. Stir in the soy sauce or tamari and black pepper. Then shape the mixture into 4 cakes and press down so that they are not too thick. Coat each side with a few sesame seeds.

Place on some foil under a hot grill and cook for about 10 mins on each side.

Serve with a winter salad with chicory and beetroot (both fabulous for your liver)

If anyone else tries, let me know what you think :-) Enjoy!!!!