Here's an audio clip (it's from YouTube but there' no visual, just a still picture) of Maria Pia De Vito singing "Sleep Away" with John Taylor on piano. You could use the song as a soundtrack for reading the rest of this blog....perhaps...
I always thought I was pretty lazy. This opinion was based on the following life choices I tend to make:
-I use canned chickpeas instead of soaking my own over night and boiling them up
-the trash can/dustbin is always on the brink of falling apart before I take it outside
-I bulk buy my favourite "When Pigs Fly" bread and freeze it so that a slice is always available to me-God forbid I should have to go out to buy fresh bread
So, I've become increasingly smug as my "happy homemaker" skills have flourished in abundance. I have recently purchased more bags of various ancient grains than is necessary (farro, spelt, kaniwa) and am no longer intimidated by the cooking instruction "soak over night and proceed to boil for 7 hours." I have organised my tea tins-a tin for non-caffeinated mint melange, lemon/ginger, fennel varieties, and a tin for the caffeinated green/mint, green/cherry blossom, green/jasmine selection.
I have also become an expert at roasting my own peppers. For those of you who know me, you're well aware that my vice is sugar. I can chase a slab of Cadbury's Top Deck Chocolate with a tub of Magnolia Bakery's Banana/Cream Pudding with ease and panache. I show disdain for those souls who can buy a chocolate bar, eat a couple pieces, and allow the rest of the treat to sit around, undiminished, for days or weeks even. Poor form. Epic fail.
However, I am attempting to nip my sugar addiction in the bud (well, I have been attempting this for years now...) and have recently stumbled upon some top notch strategies. The first step was to eliminate sugar from my breakfasts. I have always been a porridge-kinda-gal. During my year in the college dorms (hall of residence for the South Africans), my trusty microwave saved me from having to face strangers in the formica-clad cafeteria first thing in the morning. I would sit quietly in my room, with my MacBook Pro, eating microwaved oats and slowly easing into the day at my own pace. And I was a very good girl, opting for agave nectar instead of maple syrup or honey or, I blaspheme, granulated sugar. Eish. When I got tired of oats, my "rise and shine" alternative would be agave-adorned Fage yogurt littered with frozen blueberries and cherries (my aunt's genius concoction).
Both these breakfast choices are pretty darn healthy. Don't get me wrong. But, after researching the methodology of other recovering sugar-fanatics, I decided to toy with avoiding processed sugar altogether. So, the new breakfast became centered around avocado, eggs, roast turkey breast, hummus and raw nut butters (cashew, almond, walnut). This long and winding history of my eating habits leads me back to the roasted peppers. I've found it useful to satisfy my sugar cravings with naturally sweet fruits and vegetables (luckily I'm not addicted to fructose, so I manage to eat fruit happily in moderation). Red Peppers are my new passion. Not only are they high in vitamin C (research says they have more vitamin C than oranges-although as I've grown older, it seems everything from kiwi's to strawberries has more vit C than the supposed Vit C King, the orange...) but they are the most fabulous shade of red (unless you're dealing with yellow or orange peppers-also good by the way).
I adore roasted peppers but find that the store-bought-bottled variety are less sweet and more oily than the homemade kind. So, thanks to an easy step-by-step guide from Smitten Kitchen (www.smittenkitchen.com), I've been roasting my own peppers every week for about a month now. It's so easy, leaves your tiny flat smelling like sugary, rosy-red heaven, and the peppers in question last about a week in a container in the fridge. My favourite use for them, which ties back into the breakfast thread, is to lay them lovingly upon a slice of warm toast and heap mashed avocado on top of them (see picture below).
So here it is-your way to filling life with sugar that counts.
Home-Roasted Peppers
A couple of red, yellow, or orange peppers
(I always put more than one pepper-sometimes 4 at a time-on the roasting tray)
Preheat oven to 375F/180C
Place whole peppers on a foiled baking tray
(keep the green stems ON)
Place in oven an use tongs to turn them every 20 minutes for even roasting
(This may seem like a lot of effort but it's worth it!)
After an hour (so 20 mins on each "side" of the pepper), remove.
Wait 20-30 minutes to peel and deseed.
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