Salad sandwich fillers are a Summer lunch that is easy, quick, tasty and delicious.
My boys used to love this stuff in their sandwiches for their school packed lunches, and I have to admit so did I occasionally. But I doubt I would eat it now after reading Chris van Tulleken's book Ultra Processed People and then reading the ingredients list on it's label.
For one thing I wouldn't touch Xanthan Gum with a barge pole, especially after learning that it is also an ingredient of wallpaper paste!!
Food is just continuing to shock me at the moment!
These days I make my own sandwich fillers, and I have done for a long time.
Experimenting with leftovers and a dash of mayonnaise is pretty much guaranteed to make a sandwich filler that is tasty, quick and much better for you than a jar of shelf stable long life 35% vegetable mush.
I tend to use a couple of tablespoons of my choppy salads when I have some in the fridge, it's easy, quick and very tasty. Chopping the already chopped up salad veggies a little bit smaller and adding just salt, pepper and a squeeze of mayonnaise ... either bought or homemade ... and this time I added some dairy free cheese that I had ready grated in the fridge. Within minutes I had a fresh tasting and relatively healthy lunch.
If I had to eat some of the jarred stuff I think I would load the sandwich up with lots of crunchy lettuce and cucumber and try not to think of wallpaper paste while I ate my lunch.
You're not really supposed to take a harvest from newly transplanted rhubarb during it's first year, but I had no option. Like something out of The Day of the Triffids it sprawled over most of the woodchip area of the garden getting bigger and bigger by the day.
I pulled most of the stems leaving just a couple behind for the plant and after a good wash and a chop cooked it all up. I ended up with enough for a rhubarb and custard tart, two containers that are now in the fridge that can be turned into crumbles in the blink of an eye, and the excess juice from the cooking I poured into the little jug. This was drunk over the course of a couple of days mixed with sparkling water and was beautifully refreshing.
Literally a week later and the plant is almost as big as it was before ... I'll have to watch it doesn't eat one of the dogs!!
In my ongoing ultra processed foods discovery journey I had my occasional breakfast of Aldi dupe weetabix with almond milk. Although I didn't have the cereal box to check the ingredients of the Wheat Bisks I could look it up on the Aldi website. This is what I found -
I find it so relaxing watching someone else cooking or cleaning, and it's been nice to take it easy with a cup of coffee first thing in the morning and watch from my armchair.
Next a massive haul for Freakin Frugal, thank goodness there's some food that can be rescued before it ends up in landfill.
I hope you enjoyed a couple of those, I'm always on the lookout for more channels to watch so if there's one that you love do let me know in the comments below.
It's the Scarecrow Festival here in our little northern town, so it will be quite busy around town and the carparks will all be full. The theme this year is Films. On the canal one of the narrowboats near to our house is now the Titanic, I do hope history isn't repeated. 😉
While in the Pizza shop, Laurel and Hardy seem to be tucking into a lovely Italian meal.
Happily, we have had to drive around town twice today so we have managed to see most of the scarecrows and we can avoid the crowds tomorrow and Sunday.
I'm currently just over halfway through my latest book, Chris van Tulleken's Ultra Processed People, andI'm finding it absolutely fascinating, although there's so much to take in that it's taking me far longer to read through than perhaps it should.
One of the things he states in it right at the beginning is that you should continue to eat all your normal foods while you're reading the book, in the same way that a lot of people did with Allen Carr's book 'Easy Way to Stop Smoking'. This worked well for a friend of mine who had tried to give up smoking for years before finally reading the book and then quitting, so I knew that it worked.
Reading and still eating all your usual foods does make you a bit obsessed with reading the labels and I have already found a few things that I thought were the healthiest and really they are not ... the bread rolls mentioned last week for instance. I think moving forward I will be picking my poisons carefully, keeping in my diet the ones that I love the most and finding alternatives where possible for others.
These 'No Chicken' Garlic Kievs from Aldi are delicious and make for a quick evening meal when I'm not all that hungry, so they will stay ... unless I can find a suitable alternative for them.
I usually fill the dish up with peas when I have these with either new potatoes or rice, but I just wasn't in the mood that evening. So simple it was.
Every morning I have a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon, after drinking this the slice of lemon gets popped into a glass of water and left in the fridge for another drink later in the day. On the days when I don't have any lemon slices left ... I can't always get unwaxed lemons in town, and even washing the waxed ones thoroughly leaves a film on the water, so you know the wax is still there ... I have been using a dash of bottled lemon juice.
I had never read the label until last week!!
My old bottled lemon juice on the right ... and my new one on the left.
This is the ingredient list from the old lemon juice bottle.
One thing really jumped out at me so I Googled it to see just what I had been consuming.
We made the most of the lovely hot weather on Saturday and took the dogs to Williamson Park in Lancaster, it's only 15 minutes up the road from us, just long enough to enjoy the cool of the air conditioning in the car as we travelled the A6.
Once there we admired the Ashton Memorial, I hadn't seen it close up for years although it's a feature you can see from the motorway very clearly. It's a remarkable building and I love architectural gems. Then we shade hopped around the it and the pavilion where the café, shop and butterfly house are. We shared a bowl of chips ... me Alan and the dogs ... and then shade hopped for a while more before returning for another cup of coffee for me and a cold drink for Alan and the dogs.
Then we worked our way back to the car stopping at every bench that was in the shade for Suky to get cool and me to rest my back.
The dogs snoozed the rest of the day away ... and Alan might have joined them. 😄
I nipped out to Booths for this weeks fresh vegetables, washing them in lovely cold water when I got them home.
I'm finding it's better to wash everything ready for use before I put it into the fridge these days, I used to wash things as I needed them. But this way am more inclined to use what I have instead of grabbing a snack or something less healthy.
I'm still reading my book and now I find that I am reading the label of everything that I eat. I thought these wholemeal bread rolls were healthy ...
... until I looked closely at the ingredients, now I think slightly differently!!
I guessed that there would be about 7 ingredients, Alan guessed at 4, we were both shocked to find out that's it's actually over THIRTY!!
I understand now why Chris van Tulleken tells you to carry on eating what you would usually eat while you read his book and not to make any drastic changes straight away. As well as learning while you go, imagine cutting that many additives out of your diet straight away from all the foods you eat, what a huge shock to the system it would be.
I doubt very much I'll be cutting everything that is ultra processed out of my life but I will be very carefully choosing the things that will be remaining.
