Low-Carb Banana Bread

The feedback on this blog is about 50/50. Half enjoy reading the blog, the other half are left wondering why I don’t just write up the recipes and have done with it. The two in tandem works best for me. On an emotional level, I thought leaving a legacy of my memoirs for my two girls to look back on when I exit the planet, would be welcomed. Being more pragmatic, Primal Plate is a much needed platform to freely express myself and to air my gravest concerns about what the government and so-called experts tell you to eat (turns you into a carb junkie!) versus what foods can help you get and stay slim, healthy and disease-free. Without any formal qualification, it’s a hard slog convincing people to take heed of anything I tell them. But it’s okay, I carry on regardless because I personally reap the rewards of developing and growing my library of recipes so I never feel the urge or need to participate in the great poisoning going on all around me. Unfortunately, not being at one with most of society has its drawbacks.

My youngest daughter Sarah, when previously referencing my biggest ongoing challenge with relationships, often paraphrased Mohadesa Najumi’s quote:

“The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet.” 

To translate: If I insist on going through life exercising my right to freedom of speech and expression, I can expect to be disowned, disavowed and dishonoured. It’s an unfair and lonely path to take but, on the plus side, I don’t waste too much time with infuriatingly boring people who decapitate every attempt at adult conversation. I sleep easy because …

“If the truth makes you uncomfortable, don’t blame the truth, blame the lie that makes you comfortable” 

I only have to mention “they faked a pandemic, they faked a test and they faked the cure”, or “Putin is a good guy saving the world” or “I like President Trump” and suddenly, they’re in crisis and running for the exits. Frankly, it pisses me off. Never has the fight for truth been greater than at this moment in time. My job is to speak my truth out loud - helping to raise awareness is not fearmongering - and theirs’ to own their ‘triggers’ and to do the research. Only then will they be much less likely to be scammed or coerced by dubious means into doing the wrong thing. 

Confusion and fear is how tyrants foment hatred and division amongst the plebs. The global Cabal needs chaos, casualties and financial destruction to create the desperation necessary for people to give up their freedoms and give in to tyrannical control. So they invert truth and propagandise lies… and boy, do they lie about everything! It’s how they start wars for profit, no less. To date, the Committee of 300 has been extraordinarily successful in achieving its goals because as WEF member Henry Kissinger said: 

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

We can add to that list, ‘who controls the media controls peoples’ minds’. After years of trying to encourage people to do the ‘thinky-thing’, which I had assumed all responsible adults did naturally, I’ve had to surrender to a new reality, which is that most people just don’t want to know. Radically blind to the blatant hypocrisy and corruption all around them, they will have nothing to do with anything that goes against the narrative they’ve been programmed to believe in. Consequently, they cannot even grasp the meaning of the equation: Depopulation Through Forced Vaccination = the Zero Carbon Solution = Gates/WHO/WEF’s Dream Come True. It’s in your face people, it’s in your face! 

Don’t believe me? Here from a 1981 book by Bilderberger Jacques Attali is an example of the Elite’s mindset:

“The future will be about finding a way to reduce the population… of course we will not be able to execute people or build camps. We will get rid of them by making them believe it is for their own good. We will find or cause something, a pandemic targeting certain people, a real economic crisis or not, a virus affecting the old or the elderly, it doesn’t matter, the weak and the fearful will succumb to it. The stupid will believe in it and ask to be treated. We will have taken care of having planned the treatment, a treatment that will be the solution. The selection of idiots will therefore be done by itself: they will go to the slaughterhouse alone”.

There’s no doubt in my mind that CV-19 and its ‘cure’, calamitous weather events, world war, financial crashes, food and fuel shortages, decades of poisoning our food, water, land and air and weaponised pharmaceuticals have all been part of the plan from the start. It’s all hidden in plain sight if only you dare look. 

Despite how things currently seem to be playing out in the Cabal’s favour (much of it fake news) it is not all doom and gloom. In the corridors of conspiracy I walk down, it is understood that old control systems put in place eons ago by the elite powers-that-be, are now failing dramatically. Slowly - much too slowly, in my opinion - their shitstorm of lies, deception and murderous intent is being ‘leaked’ - even in mainstream media. More people are waking up. Those who have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the brains to think and hearts big enough to forgive, now have a clear expectation of how this game ends and it’s all for the good for humanity. For those that are still clueless about what is happening to them, curiosity and courage is a good starting point. 

For context, read and remember this quote by Edward Mandel House, who said in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson [1913-1921]:

“[Very] soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a National system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology, we can compel people to submit to our agenda, which will affect our security as a charge-back for our fiat paper currency.
Every American will be forced to register or suffer not being able to work and earn a living. They will be our chattel, and we will hold the security interest over them forever, by operation of the law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans, by unknowingly or unwittingly delivering the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation, secured by their pledges. They will be stripped of their rights and given a commercial value designed to make us a profit and they will be none the wiser, for not one man in a million could ever figure our plans; and, if by accident one or two would figure it out, we have in our arsenal plausible deniability.

After all, this is the only logical way to fund government, by floating liens and debt to the registrants in the form of benefits and privileges. This will inevitably reap to us huge profits beyond our wildest expectations and leave every American a contributor to this fraud, which we will call ‘Social Insurance (SSI)’.

Without realising it, every American will insure us for any loss we may incur, and in this manner every American will unknowingly be our servant, however begrudgingly. The people will become helpless and without any hope for their redemption; and we will employ the high office of the President of our dummy corporation to foment this plot against America.”

The ruling elites ambitions to rob the poor and give to the rich doesn’t just apply to Americans, its reach is worldwide and, for now, they carry-on as if it’s business as usual. Meanwhile, behind scenes ‘good guys’ are quietly dismantling the three control centres that managed the Elites’ privately-owned network of dummy corporations: The Vatican (Luciferian cult), the City of London (gangster banksters) and Washington DC (warmongering military). For centuries, these soulless, dead entities - ‘corp-oration’ refers to corpse, meaning a dead body - have both figuratively and literally sucked the lifeblood out of every living, breathing man and woman from cradle to grave. 

I’ll spare you the gruesome details of their debauchery and Satanic rituals and focus on the practicalities of how it is we the people are slaves to their systems of control. It starts when we voluntarily register our privately owned property - be it our children, our home, our car, our marriage, our pets and business interests - thereby giving away our private property rights and God-given freedom to a bunch of soul-less parasites. All these resources are then registered as ‘human capital’ owned by the State. What we’re left with - but only if we behave like good little citizens - are ‘user rights’ and ‘privileges’, plus crippling interest payments and tax liabilities. 

Even fiat currency is owned by the central bank that printed it. It doesn’t belong to you. You’re the ‘depositor’ in the bank or building society where you keep what you think is your money. Wrong! The people have been given use – and only use – but never ownership.

Klaus Schwab was half right when he said:

“By 2030 you will own nothing and be happy.”

The truth is in 2022 we already own nothing but I for one am not happy about it. 

Two truths emerge when you do the research: 1)They always tell you what they plan to do, and; 2) They cannot act against you without your consent. It’s a tricky transaction because we don’t know how to read the dog-Latin sign language and deceptive, dual-meaning words used to fool us into playing their game. And the rules we inadvertently agree to play by are often too well hidden.

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse”, which is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely by being unaware of its content. While there is nothing we can do about the legal system (N.B. legal is not the same as lawful), there is much we can do about our ignorance. All those money-grabbing corporations - the bankers, the government, NGO’s, the police force, the judiciary - that we’ve been conditioned to think have authority over us, actually don’t unless we agree to it. They are bluffing! Their only power comes from ambiguous words and incomprehensible language, which they use to entrap us. It takes a lot of work and many hours of study, but if you learn the meaning of these words - make sense of them - then you can take their words away and/or use different words to expose the fraud. Poof! The system is more fragile than you could ever imagine. 

We are at the precipice and must decide: Sovereign or slave? I do not intend to let my future turn into eating crickets and owning nothing… do you? Before it’s game over, super freedom-loving people must unite against our common enemy and stop fighting each other. We need to learn how to own our own power, stand tall and walk the earth in dignity while living in extraordinary times. 

People who don’t understand the reality of what is happening because they buy the official narrative will be unable to ignore the truth for very much longer. It will be a rude awakening. There is no recourse for those that have already poisoned themselves and their children “for the greater good”, and no white knight coming to save us from the abusive diktats and unspeakable horrors still in the pipeline if we don’t come together to create the future that we want for ourselves and our children. No matter how hard you try to avoid reality, it eventually catches up with you. We stand at a crossroads where every adult must decide in which direction to go from here. The question is not “Left or Right?”; it is “Up or Down?”. 

‘Up’ means taking responsibility for protecting your own health, wealth, rights and freedoms… to do no harm, to keep your word, to help your fellow sovereigns. 

‘Down’ means continuing to abdicate all responsibility for yourself, obeying ‘officialdom’ and trusting that if you put-up and shut-up you will be kept safe. Has it not yet sunk in that dependancy equals control? The time is coming when it will be impossible to embody the three monkey maxim “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil” and millions of minds will be blown! Many will seek the help of a conspiracy theorist friend - you know, the person the majority of society wanted to attack and trash - just to make sense of it all. 

The war we’re fighting is a war of good versus evil; humanity against anti-humans. In the words of Jesus “With men this is impossible but with God all things are possible’. If you have it in you, now would be a good time to pray. None of us are immune to attack so if you truly want to be free, silence is no longer an option; it’s time to pick your side. Mine is resisting transhumanism and totalitarian, technocratic global governance. To strive for spiritual honesty and peace while rejecting the false gods of money, science, status, fame, and all things ‘woke’ that go against natural law. According to me, God wins. 

Whilst geo-political events are about to get even more ugly from hereon in, do not consent to fear. ‘They’, the perpetrators of our suffering, are not going to go quietly, so prepare yourself. Humanity’s come-back and peace on earth will only happen when people say “No more” and actively choose the best possible perspective and beneficial interpretation of reality. It’s vital we find joy and laughter in the life we are living today and to spread ‘good vibes’ around. Demonics hate that! Giving your attention to what you desire, the people you love and the things you love to do is the way of it. 

Health creation is a desire and I believe it’s also the first and foremost step to being sovereign. There’s a reason why governments all over the world support a diabolical system of food production that is wilfully blind to the effects of the food it produces and a system of medicine that is wilfully blind to the source of the problems it treats, but never cures. It’s all part of the published World Economic Forum’s 2030 agenda (look it up if you don’t know what I’m talking about). 

The good news is that the Georgia Guidestones - that most evil monument anonymously erected in 1980 to forewarn humanity of its impending demise - has finally (6 July 2022) been shattered into a thousand pieces. No one knows by what means - lightning strike or direct energy weapon? - but in my view, it’s a signal that good always triumphs over evil. Ergo, if it feels good I trust it as true; if it feels bad I discard it as not true. We who are living through this most remarkable time in history have the privilege and power to choose self-determination and to rid ourselves of the scourge of Neo-Marxism once and for all. It’s all about your mental attitude and changing your limiting beliefs, which for the most part are illusions passed down to you as a child by your parents, teachers or from other external sources. When you know, you know. Govern-ment is derived from the Greek word ‘mente’ which means mind. Govern-mind translates to ‘mind-control’. No thank you, I decline the offer. I am discharging government’s presumed authority over me and taking back my individual rights and freedom. Granted, my approach is somewhat radical and not for the faint-hearted. That said, it’s not that hard to change things for the better by steering clear of ultra-processed food and allopathic medicine as a priority. No ifs, buts or maybes. 

Nutritious, home-cooked food and intermittent fasting is the most effective way I know to turn what and how I eat into the most powerful medicine of all. Eating the rainbow as part of a low-carb diet helps put you back in charge of your health, which is the only safe place to be. Although sugar-free, Low Carb Banana Bread is more beige than beautiful, its visual impact is secondary to the gustatory pleasure it offers. Slightly sweet and perfectly moist, lathered in raw, grass-fed butter and warm from the oven, it reminds me of the less-than-healthy Scotch pancakes I loved when I was little. That’s why I predict this delicious bread made with eggs, ground almonds and tiger nut flour will be a hit with the whole family. Gluten-free, grain-free and only 7g net carbs per slice, it is perfect for breakfast, teatime or a healthy low-carb snack to power up your energy and mood at anytime.

Now I’ve reached the end of this blog post, I am reminded that George Orwell wrote in ‘1984’

‘It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.’ 

In retrospect, if I had to choose between writing the blog or sharing my recipes, the latter would win hands down. Cooking is an act of rebellion and eating well the means to me staying sane and carrying on the human heritage. When the dust finally settles, I intend to host a weekly cookery club. Meanwhile, this easy-to-make Low-Carb Banana Bread recipe is one of the best recipes to get you over life’s humps. Hold on, happy days are coming!

Sugar-free Low Carb Banana Bread (approx 18 slices)

Ingredients

225g very ripe organic bananas(approx 2 large, peeled weight), cut into slices. 

6 large eggs

100g organic unsalted butter, melted

2 tsp vanilla extract

200g almond flour 

100g tiger nut flour

4 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp organic stevia leaf

½ tsp Himalayan pink salt

25g organic flaked almonds

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F / Gas mark 4

Line a loaf pan 9" x 5" (23 x 13 cm) with non-stick parchment paper

In a small saucepan, gently melt the butter over low heat, then take off the heat and allow to cool slightly

Add the banana, eggs, vanilla, and melted butter to a food processor - or a medium-sized bowl if you are using an electric hand mixer - mix until smooth.

In a separate bowl, whisk all the dry ingredients together until there are no lumps, then add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix again until well-combined.

Fill the line loaf tin with the batter, level the surface then sprinkle the flaked almonds evenly over the top.

Bake in the oven for 50 minutes or until you insert a knife and it comes out clean. 

Check the loaf halfway through. If the top is getting too brown, cover loosely with tin foil.

Let the cooked banana bread cool in its tin for at least 30 minutes, the turn out onto a rack to cool down completely.

Cut in slices and enjoy with butter or low-carb nut butter.

7g net carbs per slice

Notes:

Banana bread will keep for 1-2 days on the countertop, but will last for up to 1 week if it’s kept refrigerated in an airtight container. You can also slice and freeze for a month or more. Take out a slice and heat when you need it!

You can toast slices of the bread under the grill (or in a toaster) but the best way to re-heat them is in a non-stick ceramic frying pan set over a gentle to moderate heat and cook until golden. Turn the slices halfway through the cooking time and eat straightaway with lashings of butter.  

The bananas need to be ripe. The riper the banana, the sweeter it is. Think very ripe with brown spots for the best flavour. Although bananas are high in carbs, there is only a very small amount per slice, and virtually no carbs in the minute amount of stevia leaf.

I haven’t tried it myself but If you’re allergic to nuts, you could try making this recipe with 300 grams tiger nut flour

Check the bread after 40 minutes to ensure it's not getting overly brown on top. If it’s already nice and golden, lightly cover with a sheet parchment paper or non-stick foil for the last 10 minutes of cooking time.

Sweet & Salty Chocolate Cookies

Ever since I watched Nigella Lawson extolling the virtues of Deep-Fried Mars Bars and demonstrating how to cook them on a BBC cookery show, I’ve never been a fan. The very thought of eating such a thing and the innuendo associated with Nigella still makes me want to gip! Fast forward 16 plus years and she’s ever so slightly redeemed herself because today's recipe was inspired by a recipe of the same name that features in her book ‘Nigella’s Cook, Eat, Repeat.’ I’ve simply ‘ketofied' it to create something decadently healthy. 

WARNING: If you are only here for the simple act of making Sweet & Salty Chocolate Cookies (nothing wrong with that!) please stop reading now and scroll down to the recipe below. I do not give offence, but you may take it!

Mother’s Day treats!

Albert Einstein said “Three great forces rule the world. Stupidity, fear and greed.” A year last Christmas, I had my own epiphany. Suddenly, I was made to realise I was being ‘played’ because these forces were alive in me. I was in fact spell-bound, and my foolishness cost me much of that I hold most dear. 

One of the hardest things in life is letting go of what you think is real. The unanticipated, ‘new world order’ thrust on me in the name of a “reset” that someone gleefully told me I would never be coming back from, made no sense to me at all. I just knew the only way I’d make it through was to ground myself in love and truth and stay present. I stopped drinking and started praying. It’s true to say, that if you can endure suffering without anaesthetising or distracting yourself, it teaches you survival. One year on, my mind is clear and my heart cannot be so easily bewitched. 

Before the rest of the world was even told it was in the grip of a (generated) pandemic, I’d already felt the pain of social distancing and cancel culture. Down but not out, my rebel archetype and INFJ personality have seen me through my darkest days. 

In these weird times we’re all living through, I remind myself:

“Empaths did not come into this world to be victims, we came to be warriors. Be brave. Stay strong. We need all hands on deck.”

You’ll never know how strong you are until you need to be strong. I now know my place on earth and I do not kowtow to liars and BS, nor do I consent to being genetically modified or muzzled. I have searched for, and found, my soul tribe… a fearless, incorruptible army of selfless, free-thinkers offering the truth and FACTS that run counter to the official narrative and media fearporn, that keeps the coronavirus pantomime alive until enough of us get the jab. 

It is my virtual family, which includes many of the world’s top scientists, well-credentialed medical experts and spiritual visionaries, that keep me steady on my feet as I watch the world go to hell in a hand basket. I count amongst them Justin Bellucci, a brilliant wedding photographer and videographer, whose music video TRUMP - SILENT RUNNING turned my world view upside down. 

The magnitude of lies we’ve been told is enormous. If you still believe governments worldwide are doing all this in your best interests, have a word with yourself. Shutdowns, lockdowns, social distancing, mandatory masks are psychologically destructive terrorist tactics designed to isolate you and scare you witless, so they can trample all over your civil liberties and get away with it. After 11 months of living in a self-imposed hell, people are now so desperate for a way out they think that being first in the queue to be covid-vaccinated and nano-chipped is the equivalent of winning the lottery. More than 50 years ago Malcom X warned us:  

“The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent and that’s power because they control the minds of the masses.” 

Stop allowing yourself to be brainwashed. Switch off the TV and ignore the mainstream press and social media who uniformly support the official government line. These are your enemy’s weapon of choice. 

In the first year or so after home-birthing each of my two beautiful girls, I was so absorbed in taking care of them that when anyone asked me how I was, I would respond: “World War 3 could have broken out and I wouldn’t know!” Today, World War 3 has broken out and the majority of folk don’t know because they’re covid distracted, mind poisoned by government-controlled fake news, gagged and kept in solitary confinement. 

This letter, said to have been written in 1942 by C.S. Lewis to his nephew, sums up where the collective consciousness is in 2021:

One young devil asked the old man: “How did you manage to bring so many souls to hell?” The old devil answered: “I instilled fear in them!” Answers the youngster: “Great job! And what were they afraid of? Wars? Hunger?” Answers the man: “No, they were afraid of the disease!” For this [the] youngster [responded]: “Does this mean they didn’t get sick? Are they not dead? There was no rescue for them?”

The old man answered: “But no… they got sick, died, and the rescue was there.” 

The young devil, surprised, answered: “Then I don’t understand???” 

The old man answered: “You know, they believed the only thing they have to keep at any cost is their lives. They stopped hugging, greeting each other. They’ve moved away from each other. They gave up all social contacts and everything that was human! Later they ran out of money, lost their jobs, but that was their choice because they were afraid for their lives, that’s why they quit their jobs without even having bread.

They believed blindly everything they heard and read in the papers. They gave up their freedoms, they didn’t leave their own homes literally anywhere. They stopped visiting family and friends. The world turned into such a concentration camp, without forcing them into captivity.

They accepted everything!!! Just to live at least one more miserable day... And so living, they died every day!!! And that’s how it was very easy for me to take their miserable souls to hell.”

Where the mind goes, the body follows! If you like your life the way it is and you think you’re being kept safe from only God knows what, I do not judge. But if in your heart you know something is deeply wrong with the way we’re living, it’s time to wake up. You have the power and the responsibility. Understand, we cannot endlessly fight a naturally evolving, constantly mutating virus and win. We must take the fight to the fiction… the battle for truth over lies… common sense over idiocy… faith over fear… good over evil. Dig deep and do your research or “perish for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6) Be wary of those people who label reality as conspiracy. Use your common sense. Trust your intuition. 

If you want to know why humanity is facing the biggest manmade s**t storm since the beginning of time, go read The Rockefeller Foundation’s ‘Lockstep’ scenario (2010) and the WEF’s (World Economic Forum) White Paper “authoritative report” (October 2020)  This is not a conspiracy theory. Sars Cov-2 was the excuse to use lockdowns to destroy medium-sized and small businesses, and plunge humanity into poverty. Then the globalist solution will be ‘The Great Reset’ - meaning the cancellation of all debt and a worldwide basic income, in return for giving up all private possessions. That’s why they tell you: “You’ll own nothing and be happy.” Honestly, did you really think that there would be no consequences to lockdowns and furloughs? 

Their end game is world governance, transfer of wealth, mass enslavement and genocide. As far as ‘Mr Globalist’ is concerned, all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle for their diabolical New World Order are rapidly coming together (saith the reptilian eugenicist, Bill Gates). Fear of an invisible virus is a clever ruse that kills two birds with one stone; economic collapse and depopulation. You don’t need to drop bombs on people when a little prick can do the job for you! If you don’t know by now - one year on - that our sacrifice was for naught, it’s because you don’t want to know. On the face of it, submissiveness is the path of least resistance but not just for you; when you meekly obey tyrannical diktats, you’re enabling your enemy too. There will always be casualties of war, even innocents, just remember it’s by your own free will if you make yourself a direct target. Let me give you a heads-up, bully boys at Pfizer are demanding countries put up sovereign assets, including bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings, as collateral for expected vaccine injury lawsuits resulting from its COVID-19 inoculation! Go figure.

In the end, you have to ask yourself what’s more important… lies, damned lies and statistics or a healthy immune system? You know what is right. Do not get the vaccine. Get away from the 5G kill grid and the psychopaths controlling you and ignore MSM news. Their days are numbered. You are in charge. Get back to nature and live and love joyously. The world is a beautiful place and it’s a great time to be alive. 

Taking care of the body, honours the soul, which is why I cook. It’s a simple but priceless gift to feed people well and I’m glad it’s my passion. I make no apology for indulging the senses with wickedly delicious food that first and foremost, does no harm. If you love chocolate, you’re going to love these intensely chocolatey, Sweet & Salty Chocolate Cookies. No GMO’s, no processed vegetable oils, no crappy e-numbers, no sugar, no grains. Part cake, part cookie, they’re perfect for when there’s just the two of you.

Make, bake and eat one of these and you’ll know I speak the truth.  

Too beautiful for words…

Sweet Salty Chocolate Cookies (makes 2 large cookies )

Ingredients

50g ultra-fine organic tiger nut flour - naviorganics.uk (they’re the only people that sell ultra-fine flour)

10g organic cacao powder

⅛ tsp gluten-free baking powder

⅛ tsp bicarbonate of soda

⅛ tsp fine Himalayan pink salt

50g organic unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

20g organic erythritol

1 dsp organic maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

25g organic dark chocolate chips

¼ tsp sea salt flakes

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 180C / 160F / Gas mark 4. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment.

Add the tiger nut flour, cacao, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and fine sea salt together in a small bowl and combine with a balloon whisk until there are no lumps. 

In a slightly larger bowl, using an electric whisk, beat the butter, erythritol, maple syrup and vanilla extract until you have a creamy mixture.

Add a generous tablespoon of the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar and beat in gently. Then in two more batches, gently beat in the rest of the dry ingredients. Once the dry ingredients are absorbed, beat the mixture vigorously into a rich chocolatey dough. Stir in the chocolate chips. 

If the mixture seems a little too soft to mould immediately, place in the fridge for 10 minutes to firm up. Then weigh the mixture and divide it into two (my mixture weighed 166 grams i.e. 83 grams per cookie). Squidge each half in your hands to form 2 fat patties about 7cm/2¾in in diameter and place them on your baking sheet, at least 10cm/4in apart; they spread while cooking.

Sprinkle ⅛ teaspoon of sea salt flakes over each cookie and bake for about 12 minutes, until the top of each biscuit is cracked. At 10 minutes the surface will be utterly smooth, but in the next 2 minutes they seem to transform themselves. Watch carefully until you see cracks appearing. 

Once the surface is cracked, the cookies are ready. They will, however, feel very soft - even uncooked - to the touch, and you will doubt they’re done. Trust me and carry on… 

Immediately whip out the baking sheet, leaving the cookies in place for 5 minutes. Then slide the cookies still sat on their baking parchment to a wire cooling rack. The warm cookies will easily fall apart if manhandled! N.B. You’ll need a wide, flat, metal spatula to transfer them to individual serving plates. 

For optimal eating pleasure, leave for 20-25 minutes before biting into one.

Fat 33g Protein 3g Carb 24g - per cookie

Cauliflower Cheese Soufflé

It’s two months since Sushi my cat lost another of her nine lives. It seemed to us she was at death’s door when we ventured out during ‘lockdown’ to take her to the vets. We may have overreacted because aside from diagnosing her with a urinary infection and constipation so bad it was suggested she might have to be put under anaesthetic to unblock her, the vet thought Sushi was the healthiest looking twenty-one year old cat she’s ever seen! It’s all in the name ‘Sushi’, or rather her diet. She’s called Sushi because the day we rescued her as an abandoned, farm-yard kitten, I vowed I would only feed her wild fish and raw, organic meat… never commercial cat food.

Almost three years to the day, we’d taken Sushi to a different vet for the very same reason. She’d stopped eating for five days or so and was badly constipated. I’d only asked them about giving her an enema but, after a brief examination, the vet advised Sushi wasn’t constipated; she most likely had cancer; she was too sick for us to take her home; and because of her age, we should agree there and then to her being euthanized. You’re kidding me! As if any of this was going to happen on my watch! Instead we took Sushi home and under the guidance of our current vet, administered the enema ourselves. A somewhat intimidating veterinary procedure, but it worked!

By the time we’d remedied Sushi’s most pressing health issue she was already half-starved, so I enticed her back to eating again with Lily’s Kitchen organic chicken dinner, which she rather gratifyingly scarfed down. Witnessing her initial enthusiasm was such a relief that from then on I convinced myself that wet, organic commercial cat food would be a healthy adjunct to my raw, homemade offerings that might be deficient in ‘essential-for-cat’ nutrients… taurine for one. It was also a pain trying to stay on top of all the boning-out, chopping, grinding and kitty-cat portioning. And, as with all convenience food, once you’ve decided on one exception to your ‘eat real food’ rule, you can easily succumb to others. In Sushi’s case, I told myself that very small quantities of no-grain (albeit non-organic) kibble would do no harm and in fact it might even be good for Sushi’s teeth if I supplemented her diet with something to crunch down on.

Rationalising the problem away is what most humans resort to when they want an excuse for why their behaviour does not tally with their previous stated values and beliefs. I’ve known for a long time that ageing cats are susceptible to kidney disease and the worst thing you can do is to feed them dry food. So although we only fed Sushi miniscule portions of biccies as a treat, it all went horribly wrong when she suddenly became addicted to a new bag of chicken-flavoured kibble that I recently purchased. Long story short… a week before her last visit to the vet, she refused to eat almost everything we put in front of her unless it came with a generous side of kibble.

No more! A quick check online reminds me why dry food is so unhealthy and unsafe for our pets. The upshot is, Sushi’s health has (yet again) been radically transformed within a week of us reverting back to only feeding her a diet fit for human consumption. She now gets first bags on the freshest, organic, grass-fed meats whilst John and I get by with cooking and eating her rejects! To avoid our human diet becoming too meat heavy, I try to ensure that every meat-eating day is followed by a day of eating vegetarian.

When it comes to cooking a vegetarian meal that’s tasty - very tasty indeed - this Cauliflower Cheese Soufflé has it all. The combination of light-as-air, lemony freshness, nutty sweet cauliflower and deeply satisfying, baked golden cheesiness (who doesn’t like scraping crozzely bits off the sides of the dish with a spoon?) means that whenever I can get my hands on an organic cauliflower during these unusual times, this delicious Souffléd Cauliflower Cheese for supper is a foregone conclusion.

Suitable for an everyday main meal or as a vegetable accompaniment to grilled steak, chop or a portion of chicken, even if your budget won’t stretch to buying organic, cauliflower is one of the safer vegetables to eat in terms of minimising your exposure to toxic pesticides. Good news if you’re looking for a simple-to-prepare, very low carb, healthy, vegetarian meal that need never be off the menu.

We think Cauliflower Cheese Soufflé goes best with a dressed green salad and sliced tomatoes.

Cauliflower Cheese Soufflé (serves 4)

Ingredients

450g organic cauliflower florets

50g organic butter

150g thick, preferably homemade, organic mayonnaise

15g organic Dijon mustard

finely grated rind of 1 organic lemon

6 large organic eggs, separated

175g organic Cheddar cheese, grated

1 tsp Himalayan pink salt

a generous grinding of organic black pepper

Instructions

Cook the cauliflower florets in boiling salted water for about 5 minutes or alternatively, put the florets in a steamer basket set over a pan of salted boiling water and lightly steam for a similar amount of time - they should retain their crispness. Drain well.

Butter a shallow gratin or ovenproof dish and place the drained florets in a single layer in the bottom.

Pre-heat the oven to 190℃ / 375℉/ Gas mark 5

Put the mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, lemon rind and salt and pepper in a medium bowl, stir in the egg yolks and 100g of the grated cheese.

In a separate bowl, using an electric whisk, beat the egg whites until stiff.

With a large metal spoon or spatula, carefully fold the egg whites into the mayonnaise mixture.

Spoon the mixture evenly over the cauliflower and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes until risen and golden.

Serve immediately.

Notes

Leftovers can be stored in a sealed glass container in the refrigerator and re-heated for about 15 minutes at 190℃ without spoiling, which is to say it will rise again!

I like to serve the reheated soufflé as part of a tapas-style meal with a selection of Spanish charcuterie, Manchego or thinly sliced Parmesan cheese, buffalo mozzarella, black and green olives, caper berries with their stems intact and thin slices of toasted keto bread.

Fat 62g Protein 22g Carb 6g - per serving

Lemon & Cardamon Shortbread Biscuits

When I was young and naive, I was told that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” No problem, I thought, if that’s all it takes to land myself a decent bloke I’m really up for learning how to cook! In reality, it didn’t quite turn out as I expected. I am now married to my fourth husband John, albeit that we’ve been together 24/7 for the past 29 years “an’ it don’t seem a day too much”. He is my rock.

It was most probably my Dad who introduced me to this paternalistic thought form, knowing it would invoke my compulsive caregiver that first emerged in me when his wife, aka my mother, left us when I was just five years old. Ostensibly, I was told by a social worker to ‘shape-up’ because my uncontrollable crying - as in, I couldn’t stop grieving for the loss of my mother - was upsetting my father and that I needed to say I was “sorry” and gift him some chocolate to make him feel better. Since then, me caring very much and its shadow side - feeling uncared for - has significantly shaped my life. It’s been a bane and a blessing both. Only recently did the penny drop that when I care enough for my Self, I actually think I’m worth it.

In the positive, the caregiver’s nurturing behaviour compels me to cook for my family every single day and to write this blog… even though there are times when I lose my mo-jo and try to resist. Usually, without success. It’s also probably why babies, young children and animals take to me like ducks to water. Sarah used to call me “the child whisperer”, a very handy attribute to have at her disposal when doing Mirror Imaging baby shoots and family wedding line-ups. But guess what? Being habitually driven to prioritise other people’s needs before your own leads to unhealthy self-sacrifice, resentment, misunderstandings and more often than not, your help and concern being taken for granted. Or worse, after you’ve served your purpose, your best effort being unfairly labelled as ‘interference’. Oh Lord, how many times have I left myself open to being shortchanged?

In the swinging 60’s, it was easy to fathom out that if I went along with my father’s wishes and married an ex public school boy turned doctor or lawyer, I might well have been playing to my strengths as a cook-cum-hostess (I was a dab hand at cooking family meals and ironing my dad’s shirts long before I was out of schoolgirl ankle socks!) but I’d also be playing second fiddle to a man’s ambitions at the expense of my desires and personal freedoms. Naturally, I took a stand and married a second-hand car salesman who couldn’t make enough money to keep body and soul together!

I never blamed Dad for wanting me to take the quick and easy route to a secure and comfortable life. It’s a risky business turning your back on traditional tribal values and wandering off into the great unknown to explore what individual choice, freedom of expression and personal responsibility looks like. Turns out, being an adult isn’t pretty. My father gave up trying to control my unruly behaviour the day I left home. He must have resigned himself to the fact that because I’d insisted on making my own bed, I’d best lie in it. First stop for me, a cockroach-riddled, scruffily furnished flat; second stop a freezing cold council flat, which we couldn’t afford to heat if we wanted to eat. I felt impoverished, lonely and above all disconnected from my Dad, who’d lost his second wife just three weeks before he ‘gave me away’ (such weirdly old-fashioned terminology) to my first husband. It wasn’t long before I realised that not all tribal laws are entirely without merit. And, heaven never lets you forget your regrets!

Did my cooking skills at least serve me up the man of my dreams? Well yes, but no. Firstly, there’s got to be a reason that none of my ex husbands voluntarily left me. Secondly, the only men that have truly loved me are the ones that are totally ‘switched-on’ by good food. True to his word, in the beginning it was my dad that was my biggest fan. The last time I saw him face-to-face, was at my second wedding celebration for which I’d done all the catering - a variety of exquisite, just one-mouthful canapés that completely satiated the hunger of our ‘Champagned-up-to-the-gills’ guests. As Dad and I parted that day, he told me “I am so proud of you.”

These were his final words to me and in the saying of them I had a vague premonition of what was to come. As I watched him walk away, I turned to my husband to ask “Do you think I’ll ever see him again?” It was during dinner on the second night of our honeymoon that we received the news that Dad had suffered a massive stroke. For four agonising days and nights we waited by his hospital bedside as he drifted in and out of semi-consciousness. Watching someone die is never easy. The worst part was when Dad momentarily ‘came-to’ just as his priest was performing the last rites over him. His terror was palpable in the face of “the grim reaper” but still he resisted the inevitable for two more interminable days and nights. Even his nurses wept with me. My father was my first love and at the time I would’ve willingly taken his place to spare his suffering.

Thankfully, the natural laws of the universe do not change according to human sentiment and sixteen weeks later I was pregnant with my first child and the ‘cycle of life” began all over again. With the passage of time I’ve learned that unless you can handle death you can’t handle life. The abandoned child isn’t a one-off event, she’s stayed with me into my seventies reminding me that nothing is forever; I'm not entitled to anything; and even when you give someone the world it’s not certain that in return you’ll have a place in it. It has nothing to do with reward and punishment, it’s evolution when the truth you’re holding on to simply evaporates. It’s hard to 'hang out’ in gratitude when your life is crumbling but the upside is being free from the weight of deception.

My sister believes that the reason I feature sweet treats on Primal Plate’s blog is because I’m “sweet-toothed”. However, the real reasons are more weighted towards the practical than the emotional. Firstly, as Sarah is no longer assisting me with Primal Plate’s blog, stepping up to do my own food photography is far less stressful when I’m not watching hot food go cold because I’m taking too long to capture the image. Secondly, my partner John takes the majority of sweet hits for the team because any snack that sustains his energy when he’s doing physically demanding work is a basic necessity. And lastly, as someone who’s successfully transformed their own health, I feel it is my duty to reassure others that low-carbohydrate, zero hunger weight loss, health and vitality doesn’t involve depriving yourself of the food you most love. Nor come to that, killing yourself at the gym. Nutrition fixes obesity; exercise helps strength and fitness. Don’t confuse the two, because unless you’re a professional athlete, you’ll never be able to outrun your fork.

Besides, not all biscuits are created equal. There’s a world of difference between shortbread biscuits made in a factory and these homemade Lemon & Cardamon Shortbread Biscuits brought together by hand and baked within the hour. When I recently offered them to a determinedly “I never eat biscuits” person (who ended up eating three) I discovered they even held together when he ‘dunked’ one in his coffee. It’s not what I’d do, but I think just knowing ‘you can dunk ‘em if you want to’ sort of elevates them to the highest echelons of biscuit appreciation.

Okay, I’m willing to admit that I am a teeny bit addicted to these particular shortbread biscuits. Not too sweet, with the sophisticated complexity of flavours from sweet, salt and spice - the clear notes of eucalyptus and citrus undertones of lemon shine through with every bite - I think you might find them equally irresistible. Certainly when it comes to the Brits and their love of tea and biscuits, these low-carb, shortbread biscuits are in a class of their own because they give you the best of both worlds.

Delicious and nutritious, Lemon & Cardamon Shortbread Biscuits spark joy in everyone who eats one… you know, that certain je ne sais quoi, which makes life worth living? Plus, no sugar, no grains means no reason to abstain.

As much as I love to nurture others, self-care begins in the kitchen too. There’s no time like the present for me to change the habit of a lifetime.

Lemon & Cardamon Shortbread Biscuits (makes approx 16)

Ingredients

8 organic cardamon pods

50g non-GMO erythritol

100g organic unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

zest of 1 large organic lemon (or 2 medium ones), finely grated

¼ tsp fine Himalayan pink salt

100g extra-fine organic tiger nut flour

75g organic ground almonds

Instructions

Split open the cardamon pods and crush the seeds in a pestle and mortar.

Finely zest the lemon(s).

Place the cardamon seeds, tiger nut flour, ground almonds and salt in a medium bowl and whisk together to combine and break up any visible lumps. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, using an electric beater, whisk the softened butter and erythritol sweetener together until pale and fluffy (takes about 4 minutes on high speed), then add the lemon zest and briefly whisk again to combine.

Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and, with a wooden spoon, combine together well until a dough is formed.

Bring the dough together with your hands and mould into a rough ball. Place the ball of dough in the centre of a large sheet of baking parchment. Cover with a second sheet of parchment paper (or cling film) and flatten the dough slightly with the palm of your hand into an even round shape. Roll the dough out between the two sheets of parchment to a thickness of about 6mm.

Preheat the oven to 150℃ / 300℉ / Gas mark 2.

Line a large flat baking tray with a separate sheet of non-stick baking paper.

Remove the top layer of parchment from the rolled-out dough and stamp out biscuits using a 6cm cutter.

With the help of a long flat metal spatula, gently lever the biscuit rounds off the base layer of parchment paper and transfer to the lined baking tray.

Gather up the off-cuts and roll out again as before to make more biscuits. N.B. You may need to cook them in two batches but I can just fit mine on to one large baking tray.

Bake for 18-20 minutes until nicely golden. N.B. I turn the tray around after 10 minutes to ensure even cooking. Please also see Notes below.

When baked to perfection, remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 5 minutes on the baking tray before transferring to a wire tray to cool down completely.

Notes:

I prefer these biscuits when made with N’avi Organic’s extra-fine tiger nut flour but you can also source cheaper tiger nut flour (along with the ground almond flour I used) from Real Food Source.

This shortbread is best eaten when the biscuits have been allowed to cool for at least an hour. Good luck with that! Even the smallest amount of residual heat means they remain more soft than biscuity.

The correct ‘doneness’ of your shortbread biscuits will depend on their thickness, the heat conductivity of your baking tray, oven ‘hot spots’ and variations in oven temperatures. I therefore recommend that after about 18 minutes of cooking time, you start visually checking-in on your biscuits to ensure they don’t get overly browned (it can happen in the blink of an eye!). Also, don’t undercook them or they won’t have the desirable crunchy, crumbly texture of shortbread.

The shortbread keeps well in an airtight container for three days… not that my husband ever lets them linger in the biscuit tin for that long.


Fat 9g Protein 1g Carbs 3g - per biscuit

Chocolate Cherry Celebration Cake

I’m writing this blog post on Mother’s day 2020 and for the first time in 44 years nothing special has been planned. This isn’t to do with the COVID-19 pandemic separating us from the people we love, but rather me experiencing a loss that essentially means dying to my old life and being reborn into a new one.

For a long time, I’ve jokingly complained that John and I suffer from ‘attention deficit disorder’ so for us, the government’s instruction to self-isolate is not a big deal. In fact, we feel more a sense of togetherness knowing that everyone is in the same boat as we are.

It seems as if this pandemic is divine intervention reminding humanity that all life lives and breathes as one. When it’s done with us, will we honour that truth or will we continue to grab ‘what’s mine’ and forever ask: “What can I have more of? How can I feel more safe?” Scrambling over each other for money, power, status and in the current crisis, toilet rolls, not only harms the other - including trees and all of nature - it harms us too. Like it or not, we’re a global community and we’re all in this together. The coronavirus doesn’t respect boundaries but it does provide an opportunity to reflect on the truth that like a virus, each of our thoughts, words and deeds has an energetic force that passes through the air waves into the collective consciousness. We’ve all contributed to the carnage and chaos that besets the planet, thus telling us that it’s time to raise our game. We can either marvel at and be humbled by an entire world in ‘lockdown’ and emerge from the experience with more compassionate, open-hearts or else distract ourselves with booze and entertainment until we can get back to ego-centric, self-serving normality.

My intention is to stay sober and console myself with cake! On a practical note, I’m going it alone for this blog post because Mirror Imaging isn’t available to take professional photos today. Forgive me if my images look a bit meh in comparison! And although Mother’s Day will have been and gone by the time I post up this recipe, it is less than three weeks to Easter Sunday and a rather lovely teatime treat for birthdays too.

That said, do you need an excuse? There aren’t many better things you can do than bake a cake when you’re forced to stay home. Spread the love and enjoy.

Chocolate Cherry Celebration Cake (serves 12)

Ingredients - for the cake

325g organic ground almonds

75g organic fine tiger nut flour

150g organic dark chocolate (at least 80% cocoa solids) See Notes below.

225g organic unsweetened sour dried cherries + an extra handful for decoration (I used these)

⅔ tsp Himalayan pink salt

1⅓ tsp baking powder

1 tsp organic ground cinnamon

1 tsp organic ground ginger

1 tsp organic nutmeg - freshly grated

125g organic unsalted butter + a little extra for greasing the tins - melted

3 tbsp organic brandy

6 tbsp organic maple syrup

4 large organic eggs - beaten

1½ tsp organic vanilla extract

Instructions - for the cake

Grease and line with non-stick baking parchment the base and sides of two x 15cm (6 inch) loose bottomed cake tins. Then lightly grease the lining paper.

Pre-heat the oven to 175℃ / 350℉/ Gas mark 4

In a large bowl, add the ground almonds, the tiger nut flour, cherries, chocolate, salt, baking powder and the spices and mix together well.

In a separate medium bowl, mix together the melted butter, brandy, maple syrup, beaten eggs and vanilla extract.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well with a wooden spoon until a smooth, soft cake batter forms.

Divide the mixture equally between the two cake tins, pressing the cake mix down into the tins and levelling it out with the back of a metal tablespoon.

Bake on the middle shelf of pre-heated oven for 40 mins.

Whilst the cakes are cooking, make the chocolate butter icing below.

When the cakes are cooked, remove from oven and leave for 10 minutes in their tins. Then carefully transfer to a wire cooling tray, remove the baking parchment and leave until completely cooled.

When cold, add some of the frosting to the top of one cake and put the other cake on top. Then add the rest of the icing on top of the second cake, roughly swirling it with the tines of a fork. Decorate with extra cherries, if liked.

Ingredients - for chocolate buttercream icing

60g 85% organic dark chocolate

1 tbsp organic coconut oil

115g organic unsalted butter, softened

85g organic full-fat soft cheese

60g Sukrin Icing - sifted

2 tbsp organic cacao powder - sifted

1 tsp organic vanilla extract

Instructions - for chocolate buttercream icing

In a medium heat-proof bowl, melt the chocolate and coconut oil together over a pan of gently simmering water. Once melted, remove the bowl and set aside to cool down to room temperature.

In a large bowl, preferably using a hand-held electric beater, beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth.

Gradually add the powdered sweetener and cacao powder (a couple of tablespoons at a time) to the buttercream mixture, beating together after each addition until well combined.

Pour in the melted chocolate and vanilla extract and beat until very smooth.

Notes

For the cake I used 100g of Pacari’s 85% dark chocolate & 50g of Pacari’s 70% chocolate because these dinky chocolate drops save you the hassle of chopping chocolate and messing up your kitchen worktop. Always a bonus!

Admittedly, Chocolate Cherry Celebration Cake is a bit heavy on the carbs but it’s still only the equivalent of eating a medium sized banana.

Fat 30g Protein 6g Carbohydrate 26g - per serving of cake including buttercream icing

Stilton Soup

It’s not been the most promising start to 2020. I was sickened by the worst, lingering, cold virus I’ve experienced in a very long time…since the start of the millennium to be exact. Coughing and spluttering my way through the first half of January - it seemed a lot longer - wasn’t something I expected because I always do my best to stay healthy by eating real, organic food paired with immune boosting vitamins, getting regular, adequate sleep, walking in nature, avoiding toxins, not overdoing the alcohol and not cramming my social calendar. According to me, I shouldn’t get sick. I just forget how too much stress can get you down and make you vulnerable to illness. 

When faced with difficulties, I won’t sit tight for the sake of a quiet life and let any issues that surface fester. It seems to me that feeling vulnerable is never an excuse to fall on your sword of self-pity so I always tackle problems head on. Not necessarily the best when you’re unwell. Pushing through hard times when your body and mind need some downtime to recuperate means healing is slowed right down. My new year’s resolution? Meditation before confrontation!  

Anyway, I’d barely recovered from said virus before launching into a frenzied week of emptying our kitchen in its entirety so the decorators could move in. Since then we’ve been navigating our way past twenty-five huge boxes stacked in the hallway - where the hell did we put things? - alongside two refrigerators, a wine rack, two waste bins and cat feeding and toilet stations. The only place for us to sit and eat is in the utility cum ‘make-do’ kitchenette now rammed to the gunnels with more storage boxes and day-to-day kitchen essentials overshadowed by coats, hats and shoes. Twelve days and counting, the kitchen remains off-limits for at least another three. Stressful or what?

This domestic disruption coincides with having to check-out a long-term tenant from our gorgeous five-bedroomed property, which when we visited last week, looked more like a dosshouse than the show house we proudly rented to her. Trepidation best describes our mood whilst we wait to see what maintenance and cleaning issues we’ll be faced with today when we’re finally handed back the keys. Hoping for the best, expecting the worst and psyching ourselves up in anticipation of the heartache and hard work that potentially lies ahead does not equate to resting easy in our bed at night. 

Conscientous, caring landlords for more than eight years, our enthusiasm for renting out beautiful spaces to people that may or may not pay their rent and then leave us with a property dud, has dwindled to zero. Ergo, we’ve had enough of being patsy landlords and ‘fixer-uppers’ so intend to sell all our rental properties as and when they’re vacated. We have no idea if we’re headed in the right direction. Maybe the loss of rental income will prove to be even more stressful.

When things are in disarray and falling apart, resistance only makes a bad situation worse. A few weeks ago I believed I was on the cusp of living a quiet and peaceful life close to the people I love. Now, just 4 weeks into this new decade, I’m reminded that contentment, convenience and feeling safe have never been, and probably never will be, as significant to me as learning the lessons that adversity tries to teach.  

Learning to cook at a young age because my mother up and left our family home when I was just five years old, is the gift she (inadvertently) gave. Nothing grounds me faster or brings more joy than being able to put good food on the table. Takeaways, eating out and processed food are the very antithesis of staying on top of your game. The best foods to eat are anti-inflammatory, stress-busting homemade bone broths, soups, stews and fresh vegetables. Thanks to Sarah, we’ve been taken care of during this period of displacement. Night after night she’s conjured up delicious, healthy meals that have done us proud. So proud, I would happily intermittently fast in-between, but not so my partner John, who balks at the prospect of having to survive on just one meal per day. Fair enough. 

It takes a bit of culinary cunning to eat well when you’re overwhelmed but finding uncomplicated recipes is what I can do to help myself and others. This one is taken from Rose Elliot’s ‘Vegetarian Four Seasons’ with a few additional tweaks made by me. Far from losing sleep over what to eat, being excluded from the kitchen has opened up a world of possibility and discovery for keeping meals simple. As well as eggs - omelettes, frittata, boiled, scrambled, poached and fried - that can all be cooked in a single pan - uncomplicated, one-pot meals (hello slow-cooker) and the freshest Vitamix blended soups (no pan, ho hob, no hassle) are the order of the day. With keto bread rolls on stand-by in the freezer ready for a quick toasting and a daily salad, you’ve got this. 

The other culinary life-saver is a stand-alone induction hotplate that I purchased for the ridiculously cheap price of £29.99. I don’t know how this gizmo hitherto escaped my notice but it’s a brilliantly ingenious solution when you have to go back-to-basics or need extra hob space. 

With heat source sussed, I recommend you keep this Stilton Soup permanently on your radar because it’s just the easiest and most flavoursome soup you could ever make. With four ingredients prepped in minutes - chopped leeks and celery thrown together in a saucepan with water (better still, homemade stock), simmered for 1 hour and blitzed together with Stilton cheese - you have a meal in a bowl that’s worth writing home about. 

Healthy, appetising, silky-smooth, tangy, deliciousness… take it from me, when the need for stress-free food arises, there’s nothing better than this.

Stilton Soup (serves 4)

Ingredients

250g outside sticks of organic celery - prepped weight

250g organic leeks - prepped weight

850ml organic homemade vegetable or chicken stock  or freshly filtered water

150g blue Stilton

Himalayan pink salt 

freshly ground organic black pepper 

2 tbsp organic double cream, optional

squeeze of organic lemon juice

snipped chives or chopped parsley to garnish

Instructions

Wash the celery and run a potato peeler down each stick to remove any stringy bits. Trim and clean the leeks under running water.

Shake dry then roughly chop the celery and leeks and put them into a large saucepan with the stock or water.

Cover the pan, bring to the boil then switch the heat to low and leave to simmer gently for 1 hour. 

Put the soup into a high powered blender and crumble in the cheese. 

Whizz to a smooth puree then pour back into the saucepan. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice to sharpen the flavour and stir in the cream, if using.

Reheat gently without boiling and top with chives or parsley. 

Fat 17g Protein 10g Carbohydrate 10g - per serving

Maple Ice Cream

Continuing the theme of Susan’s very merry, get-ahead Christmas, this is the recipe I promised to share in my last blog post and it’ll be my last culinary ‘hurrah’ of 2019.

With lots of celebratory meals to cook during the next two weeks, I’ve recently been on a mission to find super-simple, festive food that can be prepared in advance so that when party-time beckons I’m not a slave to the task. So far so good. Last Tuesday we celebrated John’s birthday with a knockout Coq Au Vin and ketofied cranberry & cinnamon cheesecake with a single sturdy candle atop to transform it into a “Happy Birthday to You” cake. 

As much as there was some debate between the boys over how to divvy-up leftovers (they took half each), Sarah’s boyfriend already knows what he wants for dessert on his birthday next month and it’s this scrumptiously creamy Maple Ice Cream, which I recently discovered in Rose Elliot’s book ‘Vegetarian Four Seasons’. However, because organic whipping cream isn’t widely available, I’ve adapted the recipe by combining raw milk with double cream for the same smooth, velvety and decadent result. It tastes divine. 

Made in about 20 minutes with just four ingredients, the star of the show is clearly the pure maple syrup flavour that shines through. The caramelised pecans were an afterthought but add a nice, nutty crunch, which Sarah thought elevated Maple Ice Cream far beyond the luxury “cookies & cream” commercial ice cream available in shops. 

This Maple Ice Cream always evokes deep sighs of appreciation when my family tuck-in so I think it earns a well-deserved place in every cook’s Christmas repertoire. The only challenge is keeping shtumm about the secret stash stored in the freezer. If my lot know that it’s there…game over. They just don’t want to hear that good things come to those that wait, even if it is only three more sleeps!

Wishing everyone a deliciously happy Christmas.

Maple Ice Cream (serves 8)

Ingredients - for the ice cream

3 large organic egg yolks

75ml pure organic maple syrup

225ml organic double cream

75ml full-fat milk

Ingredients - for the caramelised pecan topping

100g raw organic pecan nuts

10g organic unsalted butter

1 tbsp organic maple syrup

15g Sukrin Gold

½ tsp organic ground cinnamon

Instructions - for the ice cream

In a medium-sized bowl beat the eggs yolks with a hand-held electric whisk until pale and creamy.

Put the maple syrup in a small, heavy saucepan and place it over a medium-high heat. 

Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium, and continue boiling for about 3 to 4 minutes, until it reaches 110 ℃ / 225 ℉ on a thermometer or a drop of it will form a thread when pulled between your finger and thumb.

Immediately pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg yolks, whisking continuously as you do so. Keep whisking for another 3-4 minutes until the mixture is cool and very thick and creamy. Set aside.

Whisk the milk and double cream together in a medium bowl until it holds its shape.

Gently fold the whipped cream into the cooled egg yolk mixture until evenly incorporated. 

Pour int o a freezer-proof, lidded glass container. Cover and freeze until firm.

Remove from the freezer about 15 minutes before you want to serve the ice cream to allow it to soften up a little for easier scooping.

Instructions - for the caramelised pecan topping (optional)

Melt the butter in medium frying pan over medium-high heat.

Add the Sukrin Gold, maple syrup and cinnamon and stir together with a spatula or wooden spoon until completely dissolved.

Add the pecans to the pan in a single layer, then reduce the heat down to medium. Gently stir, turning the nuts over from from time to time, until evenly toasted (takes about 5 minutes). Tip: Watch closely, the pecans can very quickly go from being done to burned.

When cooked, transfer to a baking tray lined with non-stick paper to cool down. When completely cold (can take a couple of hours or so) they’ll firm up and stay crunchy.

Store the caramelised pecans in an airtight container for up to a week (they don’t need to be kept in the fridge).

Notes

If you subscribe to the idea that a little of what you fancy does you good, a few caramelised pecan halves is a healthy snack, which satisfies the urge for something sweet. However, I think they’re best used for making a crunchy topping to complement Maple Ice Cream. Two irresistible sweet treats rolled into one delicious low-carb dessert? Of course - it’s Christmas. Beat that Santa!   

Fat 17g Protein 2g Carbohydrate 10g - per serving of ice cream

Fat 10g Protein 1g Carbohydrate 4g - per serving of caramelised pecan topping

Venison Chilli With Chocolate

Five years ago, when I first started eating a veggie-centric Primal diet, all grains (wheat, rice, corn, oats etc.) and legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas, split peas, peanuts etc.) were the first foods I sacked off. We still ate frozen peas and fresh green beans, just not the hard, dry variety of legumes that are too carb heavy to fit in to a low-carb lifestyle.

Hard beans such as red kidney beans contain oligosaccharides, a complex sugar, which humans cannot break down because they lack the necessary enzyme in their digestive tract. If you suffer from gas, bloating and indigestion after eating beans, you’re not alone. The Western A Price Foundation tells it how it is: “When consumed, these oligosaccharides reach the lower intestine largely intact, and in the presence of anaerobic bacteria ferment and produce carbon dioxide and methane gases, as well as a good deal of discomfort, not to mention embarrassment in polite society.”

Beans, legumes and grains - nuts and nightshade vegetables too - are high in lectins that are natural pesticides, which act as a plant’s defence against being attacked and eaten by insects, fungi, and other pests, including humans. Lectins are a type of sticky protein that can bind to the cells on the gut wall inducing an inflammatory response and causing all sorts of digestive problems, including microscopic tears in the lining of the small intestine a.k.a. “leaky gut”. A leaky gut allows toxic waste (essentially, particles of poo) to pass through the gut wall and circulate throughout the body in the bloodstream. Not a good thing!

But we’re not done yet - grains and legumes also contain phytic acid in especially high quantities. Phytic acid is an anti-nutrient that limits the absorption of vital nutrients such as amino acids (protein) and binds to and strips the body of minerals such as calcium, manganese, zinc and iron, which can lead to a nutritional deficiency.

All in all, there are some pretty strong drawbacks to eating so-called “healthy” grains and legumes but this doesn’t mean they are entirely without merit. Dedicated cooks can help improve both their digestibility and nutritional value through the process of fermentation (think home-baked sour dough bread), soaking (for at least 48 hours), sprouting and long, slow cooking. Personally, I can’t be bothered with something so long-winded (pun intended) because whatever grains and legumes offer in terms of nutrition can be found in equal or greater amounts in other foods containing a lot less carbs.

Assuming you’re interested in eating beans, they are a useful source of plant-based (second class) protein for vegans and are hard to beat when you need a cheap way to fill your belly. Not that I’m persuaded. I’m a big fan of high quality food and maximised nutrition - including certified, grass-fed animal products and organic plant foods - produced by farmers using agricultural practices that help regenerate our soils, treat animals with kindness and respect and avoid environmental pollutants.

Whilst vegan propaganda is directed at all meat-eaters, it’s our demand for cheap food that allows industrial scale farmers to profit from the intense suffering of millions of farm animals and wilfully destroy the planet. Raising 100% grass-fed livestock is not the same thing as Big Agri ‘growing’ animals unnaturally in cruel confinement on factory-farms. It’s not pastured animals that tax the environment so much as fracking, airplanes, cars, heavy agricultural machinery gouging up the earth and mono-cropping acres and acres of corn and soybeans on vast swathes of deforested land - mainly to grow cheap, reliable, GM crop-based animal feed to fatten up livestock that never evolved to eat such food.

If you care about animal welfare, human health and the environment, you’ll pay farmers whatever if costs to move animals away from feedlots to green fields where they can graze on their natural diet of grass and pasture. They then become part of the solution to global warming and food security, not a contributor to the problem.

Animal foods coming from animals that are only ever fed grass and pasture and never any grains help build soil fertility, sequester more carbon out of the air than they contribute, encourage wildlife and produce healthier meat and dairy products.

It’s why I’m more “ethical omnivore” than die-hard vegetarian. Given that I eat both meat and plants with a clear conscience in support of my very good health, should an authentic chilli be made with or without beans? I was so convinced red kidney beans were obligatory that I didn’t eat chilli for yonks. It just never occurred to me to check, so I didn’t know that the first chilli con carne was made sans beans. In retrospect, it’s a bit galling to have needlessly deprived myself when this beanless Vension Chilli With Chocolate is the best chilli I’ve ever eaten.

Simply made by combining meat with chilli peppers, warming spices, vegetables and tomatoes, then left alone to simmer forever over a low heat until reduced to rich, red, thick, spicy, meaty goodness, chilli is the original slow cooked, comfort food.

My version of chilli is made with venison, red wine and chocolate to make it a bit more luxurious and dinner party worthy. If you’re going to have a busy time at Christmas, Venison Chilli With Chocolate is a make-ahead crowd-pleaser that’ll help you avoid a festive kitchen meltdown. Either have all the ingredients in the store cupboard and freezer ready to assemble and cook long and slow whilst you crack on with the celebrations or do what I’ve done, which is to make a double quantity of Venison Chilli With Chocolate and freeze it in readiness for an effortless meal to be enjoyed whenever Chef (that’s me!) most needs a break. I fancy it’s going to be a Christmas ‘cracker’ of a meal to come home to after a long walk on Boxing Day.

Obviously, chilli is not just for Christmas. It’s guaranteed to help take the heat out of the kitchen whenever you’re entertaining. Simply serve in individual bowls topped with grated Cheddar, soured cream and a sprig of flat leaf parsley then pass your guests a glass of heady, red wine, a spoon and napkin and you’re done.

Almost…

Pudding perfection after spicy chilli is a cold and creamy, no-churn, Maple Syrup Ice Cream topped with crunchy Caramelised Pecans - to be featured in the next Primal Plate blog post. Happy days!

With so many parties on the horizon, it’s get-ahead festive treats like these that make me a very happy bunny indeed. Feels like I’m already on a roll for the best Christmas ever.

Venison Chilli With Chocolate (serves 4)

Ingredients

500g wild venison mince

½ tsp organic dried oregano

½ tsp organic ground cumin

½ tsp organic ground paprika

½ tsp organic ground coriander

¼-½ tsp organic chilli powder (depends how hot you like your chilli!)

2 tbsp organic extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 large organic onion, finely chopped

1 organic carrot, finely chopped

1 stick organic celery, finely chopped

1 organic red pepper, finely chopped

1 heaped dsp tomato puree

I fresh organic red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped (or use ½ tsp organic chilli flakes)

100 ml tomato passata

150 ml organic red wine

150 ml stock

1 tbsp organic shoyu (soy sauce)

Himalayan pink salt (or Celtic sea salt)

organic black pepper, freshly ground

250g organic closed-cup mushrooms, sliced

50g 85% dark chocolate, grated (although I used Pacari biodynamic chocolate drops to save time)

To serve:

organic Cheddar cheese, grated

organic soured cream

organic flat leaf parsley or coriander

Instructions

Mix the venison with the oregano, ground cumin, paprika, dried coriander and chilli powder. Tip: I don a pair of food safe gloves and squeeze everything together with my hands. Leave to marinade for an hour or so.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the cumin seeds and coriander seeds and gently cook, stirring regularly, until they start to smell fragrant.

Add the onion to the pan and cook for 2-3 minutes before adding the diced red pepper, carrot and celery and cook over a low heat for another 8-10 minutes until soft but not coloured.

Add the tomato puree to the pan and gently fry for another few minutes.

Now add the spiced venison and increase the heat to brown it - breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon.

Stir in the wine, tomato passata, stock, shoyu and chopped chilli (or chilli flakes).

Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Cover with a lid and simmer over a very low heat for a minimum of 1½ - 2 hours Tip: 4 hours is better! Check and stir occasionally, adding more red wine or stock if it gets too dry. The end result should be rich, red, and thickened.

Whilst the chilli is cooking, quickly sauté the sliced mushrooms in a little olive oil in a frying pan until tinged golden then lightly season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Add the cooked mushrooms to the chilli in the last 10 minutes of cooking time.

Stir or grate in the chocolate and cook for a further 10 minutes with the pan lid off.

Ladle the chilli into individual bowls then top with grated Cheddar cheese, a dollop of soured cream and a sprig of flat leaf parsley or fresh coriander.

Notes

The amount of chilli suggested above is a guide for novice home cooks. It’s true to say that a decent chilli needs a fair amount of chilli ‘heat’ but as chillies come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and heat levels you’ll need to adjust the amounts to your own taste. Go steady. You can always add an extra pinch of chilli powder but you can’t take the heat away once you’ve already made your chilli scorching hot!

Cauliflower ‘rice’, sweet potato chips, slices of avocado etc. are all good combos to serve with chilli if you’ve very hungry mouths to feed or you want to make it go further.

Autumn Fruit Crumble

Today I’m posting another Primal Plate recipe for old-fashioned, fruit crumble because it is the ultimate comfort food when the nights start to get chillier.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve made several versions of this lovely, warming pudding in quick succession - mainly because I wasn’t able to persuade Sarah to pick up her camera before she’d already grabbed a spoon. It’s perhaps as well. Initially I wanted to feature organic English damsons I’d purchased from Abel & Cole but they were too time consuming and tricky to prep.

I abandoned my first attempt at de-stoning them raw because after I’d tackled just two of the little blighters it was apparent that the rest would take me the best part of an hour and even then, most of the damson flesh would still be firmly stuck to the stones. Frustrated, I threw the whole lot in to the pan with the intention of warning my fellow diners to ‘watch out for stones’ when tucking-in.

The end result was indeed a delicious dessert that turned into a game of tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor etc…as we each lined up a pile of discarded damson stones at the side of our plates. Sarah’s boyfriend cheated by adding one of his to her’s so that she ended up with ‘rich man’. I don’t doubt him. But if you have no idea what I’m talking about…when I was a little girl sent away to boarding school, the last stone you counted on your pudding plate was supposed to represent the man you would marry. Naturally, none of us wanted a poor man, beggar man or thief! As a spontaneous game for slightly-drunk-on-champagne grown-ups it was good fun but for a sensible blog recipe, getting your fellow diners to sift, sort and spit numerous random fruit stones lurking in their dessert isn’t quite the done thing.

My second attempt at damson crumble was equally problematic. After donning a pair of food-safe gloves, it still took a long time to separate the stones from the juicy, fruity mass of cooked damson compote prior to adding the crumble topping. I thought I’d been thorough until two of us inadvertently chomped down hard on several stones that weren’t supposed to be there! Clearly apples, blackberries, rhubarb, plums or even a mixture of frozen seasonal fruits are a safer bet. I’ve chosen red plums for their vibrant colour and because they’re quick and easy to prepare.

English plums are at their best August through to September, which is when the beautiful dark red-skinned plums on my tree were ripe and ready. However, if you’re quick, you can still buy organic plums at Abel & Cole, Waitrose and Riverford Organics. A ripe plum yields to gentle pressure, firmer plums will ripen and soften at room temperature. For use in this recipe, select plums that are just on the firm side of ripe. It’s worth knowing that plums freeze well.

This no-added sugar and grain-free Autumnal Fruit Crumble is one of life’s joys. Nothing quite beats breaking through its buttery, crunchy, crumble topping to the warm, red, juicy fruits beneath. Unlike a classic fruit crumble loaded with refined sugar and starchy carbohydrates, which are best avoided if you want to achieve health, this fruit crumble helps to nourish your body and feed your soul. Tip: It’s even more delicious when served with cooling, vanilla ice cream or clotted cream straight from the fridge.

Organic plums offer impressive health benefits and the ‘crumble’, made with tiger nuts, which are actually a sweet-tasting, root vegetable rich in nutrients - vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and prebiotic fibre (otherwise known as resistant starch) - has a remarkable effect on your digestion and metabolism because it encourages the growth of your ‘gut-friendly’ bacteria. Taking care of your gut helps take care of so many other things in your body - your skin, digestion, immunity against disease, energy levels and even your moods and brain function.

Both components of fruit crumble - the fruity filling and fibre-rich, nutty topping - can be made several days in advance then covered and stored in the refrigerator until you’re ready to assemble and cook. For this reason, rather than make one large fruit crumble, I like to divide the ingredients in to individual-sized portions that can be enjoyed whenever the mood takes us. It’s a great way to feed last minute guests - albeit a bit too convenient if your intention isn’t to eat pudding every day! Our meals generally focus on lots of vegetables and minimal fruit, but when the appetite for fruit crumble strikes (oftentimes in my household) it’s good to know that plums only contain 7 grams of carbohydrate per medium plum weighing 65 grams and the satiating effects of prebiotic fibre actually helps reduce cravings for fattening and unhealthy foods.

Nourishing food that you enjoy is the ultimate goal of eating well, so in my view, there are a lot worse dietary boo-boos than feasting on a glut of seasonal fruit that at this time of year is there for the taking. The appetite for sweet, autumnal fruit is probably written in our DNA. Feasting on sugar-containing fruit adds extra padding to our bodies that was a matter of life or death for our ancestors facing winter food scarcity and sub-zero temperatures. The human body’s ability to ‘eat’ its own stored body fat for energy when close to starvation meant the ‘survival of the fittest’ came down to being one of the fattest. The opposite is true today and there’s no longer any reason for humans to gorge themselves silly on sugary foods. What we need is the means to satisfy our inherited craving for ‘sweet’ without getting fat.

Rule one is: If you’re going to eat sugar, the natural sugar contained in fresh, organic, fibre-rich fruit is the best way to get your fix. Rule two: If you’re trying to lose weight, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries and (tah-dah!) plums are the lowest carbohydrate i.e. lowest-in-sugar fruits to enjoy. Rule three: Try fasting from time to time. In this way, nature’s bounty and a cook’s love need never go to waste.

I agree that Autumn Fruit Crumble is a little carb heavy for a keto diet (although compared to a standard plum crumble, it contains less than half the carbs) but I have no problem with a little seasonal indulgence that provides an opportunity for balancing ourselves with our earth’s harvest. Translated, that means treating the large bucketful of Bramley apples in my cellar with the respect they deserve by making as many nutritious fruit crumbles as my family can tolerate. As the cooler temperatures of autumn roll-in, a warming, Autumn Fruit Crumble creates the perfect setting for friends and family to cozy up together for good food and a sense of comfort that makes it easy to say goodbye to summer. It’s one of the reasons I think Autumn is the best of season of all.

Autumn Fruit Crumble (serves 4)

Ingredients - for the filling

450g organic plums, washed, halved, stoned, then each half fruit cut into thirds

1 organic apple, peeled, cored and diced

80g non-GMO erythritol

1 organic star anise

25ml organic red wine (use fresh, filtered water if you prefer)

organic lemon, juice only - optional (see Notes below)

Ingredients - for the topping

100g organic fine tiger nut flour

50g organic butter, chilled and cut into small pieces

25g Sukrin Gold

50g organic hazelnuts, roughly chopped

1 tsp organic ground ginger

Instructions

Place the plums, apple, erythritol, star anise and wine - or water - into a saucepan, give everything a good stir to combine, cover with a lid and set the pan over a medium heat. When the juices in the fruit start to flow (only takes a couple of minutes) turn the heat down to low.

Continue cooking the fruit, stirring from time to time, until the erythritol crystals have dissolved and the fruit has broken down (takes about 15 to 20 minutes). If the fruit is collapsed but there’s a lot of juice remaining, use a draining spoon to scoop out the cooked fruit and boil the remaining juice over a high heat for a couple of minutes until it reduces down to a sticky syrup. Then take the pan off the heat and add the fruit back in to the syrup.

A this point, you’ll need to use your instincts to determine how you think the fruit compote should taste. If it tastes too tart, add a little more sweetener. If you think it lacks plum flavour, a tablespoon or two of lemon juice will enhance its fruitiness. Once you’re happy with the balance of taste, set the compote aside to cool.

As the fruit cools, make the crumble topping. Place the tiger nut flour, butter, Sukrin Gold and ground ginger into a food processor or blender and pulse to a coarse crumble. N.B. Don’t overdo it, you need the mixture to retain some texture. Tip the crumble in to a bowl and stir in the chopped hazelnuts.

When you’re ready to eat your fruit crumble(s), pre-heat the oven to 180℃ / 350℉ / Gas mark 4.

Divide the fruit compote between 4 large glass ramekin dishes - alternatively, transfer all the fruit to a shallow ovenproof dish - and top evenly with the crumble mixture.

Place the ramekins/serving dish on to a baking tray (the mixture may bubble up and spill over) and bake in the oven for approx. 20-25 minutes until the filling is hot and the crumble topping golden.

Allow to stand for a couple of minutes before serving the fruit crumble as it is or with a generous dollop of cream or ice cream.

Notes

If you have a glut of fruit or more mouths to feed, simply double the quantities above and/or store the excess fruit compote and crumble separately in air tight containers in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Experiment by adding other fruits and berries to the compote such as blackberries or blueberries.

Other flavours such as vanilla, cinnamon, finely grated orange zest can easily be incorporated into the compote and/or the red wine can be swapped for other liquids such as orange or lemon juice. Just be aware that this will impact the sweetness of the compote so you will need to adjust the erythritol sweetener as required.

Fruit compote makes a great breakfast served with yogurt and toasted flaked almonds.

Fat 22g Protein 4g Carbohydrate 33g - per serving of crumble (without cream or ice cream)

A Classic Omelette

What often starts out as a desire to share a simple Primal Plate recipe ends up as a lengthy essay about the advisability of eating a particular food. Today, it’s eggs. Are they good for you or not? 

I’m not a nutritionist or doctor and it’s not my job to tell you what to eat but, the credence given to non-scientifically valid research that’s foundational to the current, nutritionally-poor Eatwell guide - whose “politically correct” low-fat, high-carb, low-calorie dogma is repeated over and over in advertising and the media - makes me sick! Or rather, it’ll make you sick if you don’t wise up. 

For years people have been brainwashed into thinking they must avoid or limit their consumption of nature’s most nutritious foods - eggs, red meat and dairy - because they contain saturated fat and cholesterol that allegedly causes heart disease and early death. 

However, the 2015 Scientific Report from the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee states:

  “Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.”

Ergo, eat as many eggs as you want because dietary sources of cholesterol have a minimal effect on cholesterol levels in the blood! 

Because cholesterol is a nutrient that’s vital to human life, our liver naturally produces cholesterol every single day. The amount of cholesterol the liver produces depends on how much you eat. If you get a lot of cholesterol from food, your liver produces less. You can’t get cholesterol from plants so if you don’t eat cholesterol-rich food (meat, eggs and dairy), your liver produces more. Does that mean the old evidence-free advice and fear mongering about dietary cholesterol was wrong? Well yes but no but. The story won’t lie down.

In March 2019, other ‘scientists’, staying loyal to the old hypothesis, reignited a fear of eggs when they warned: “Among US adults, higher consumption of dietary cholesterol or eggs was significantly associated with higher risk of incident CVD and all-cause mortality in a dose-response manner.”  Meaning, the more eggs you eat, the greater the risk of heart disease and the chances of dying early. 

Forwards and backwards, backwards and forwards…what’s going on? Pride, profit and prejudice…that’s what. 

We’re in the midst of a fight between unethical profiteering from the public’s health and the truth. It seems that the ‘money-grabbing’ Big Boys are winning. It’s not about the public’s health, food security or saving the planet, it’s all about corporate profits and a takeover bid of the world’s food supply by the rich and powerful.

If you want the truth, you’ll have to look to yourself. Being interested in health issues doesn’t make you a conspiracy theorist, it means always being prepared to think ‘experts’ are stupid…because they often are. 

Wilfully blind to the nutritional assets of animal foods, processed and packaged food manufacturers love the UK’s Eatwell guide, which unconscionably recommends that 71% of people’s daily calories should come from starch and junk foods. Of course they do. Refined sugar and starch, along with industrial vegetable oils, are a cheap and reliable food source to feed the masses. Currently 50% of the average persons diet in the UK is ultra-processed convenience foods that are increasingly composed of inconvenient toxins in brightly coloured packages that should be avoided full stop. 

Flaked, puffed, sugary breakfast cereals, bleached, blanched, nutrient-stripped bread, industrial vegetable oils, meatless burgers genetically engineered to ‘bleed’ like the real thing, ‘chickenless’ Just Egg, ‘butterless’ butter… I don’t care what they call this stuff, it’s definitely not food. As long as Big Food and Big Pharma can get you to ask the wrong questions they don’t have to worry about giving you the right answers. What better way to protect their obscene profits than to ‘piggy-back’ public health advice that food and drug industry shills and government lobbyists help to create and maintain? 

When people don’t investigate the facts and accept what they’re told by a supposed ‘higher authority’, there comes a point at which everything is so embedded in their minds they no longer think there’s any question of choice. 

Almost 20 years ago I purchased Western A Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration - a compelling, informative read of what modern food production with its reliance on chemicals and technological fixes has got so wrong…with so many sick people as a result. Surprise, surprise! The antidote to the biggest health scam of the century is to stop eating fake food and to start eating real food in accordance with the timeless principles of healthy human diets.  

Taking responsibility for your’s and your family’s health is not what the rich and powerful want you to do. Giant corporations in food and drink e.g. Kellogg’s, Pepsico, Bayer, Nestlé, Unilever, Danone (along with Google and other Goliaths of the agribusiness, food and pharmaceutical industries) are behind the EAT Lancet report - a supposedly ‘independent’ comprehensive assessment of existing science on health and sustainability - produced by 37 so called scientists, the vast majority of whom started out with a premise that favoured vegan/vegetarian diets. Aided and abetted by media-hype (because the science doesn’t cut it) they’re on a mission to transform the way we eat by inducing a global shift to plant-based diets whereby protein and fat intake will depend heavily on plant sources rather than animals. Eggs are practically non-existent. In fact, the EAT Lancet diet recommends more calories from added sugar than from beef, lamb, pork, chicken, other poultry and eggs all added together! 

Unfortunately, their one-size-fits-all “Planetary health diet” is fundamentally flawed. It is both nutritionally deficient and unsustainable. The first thing that needs saying is that the current industrial farming/food production system is unsustainable, environmentally ruinous, and cruel to both animals and humans alike. The second is that all nutrients are better absorbed by the body in their animal form. As an animal lover, I’m afraid that’s just the way things are. The kindest, indeed the only realistic solution, is to sack-off factory farming and urgently re-introduce grazing animals to grasslands thereby allowing them to feed on the natural diet they evolved to eat and to replenish the soil with their waste. Grazing animals produce manure and urine that feeds the deep root systems of plants, which sequester carbon out of the air back in to the soil thus promoting its physical health and wildlife biodiversity. In summary, food security means including grazing animals that convert vegetation that we cannot eat (grass), on land we cannot farm, in to nutrient dense food for humans. At the same time, they re-fertilise the land that they feed on and help to reverse the effects of climate change. Sounds like a plan! If we don’t start to respect, nurture and protect the world’s soils today, experts predict that within the next 60 years there will be no soil left to grow food in! 

Meanwhile, agrochemical and seed companies and food manufacturers want to “conquer the world” with plant-based, lab-grown meat and other ‘modern foods’. They’re relying on future ‘sustainable intensification’ made possible by a range of new technologies, which they expect to hugely benefit financially from. The goal is to persuade people that overly-processed, manufactured foods loaded with artificial ingredients will cost a lot less than animal derived foods, be more nutritious, better tasting and more convenient. FFS! Our bodies are smarter than that! We were told genetically engineered crops would “feed the world” and then the grim reality hit home. Now Monsanto/Bayer faces thousands of Round-up cancer lawsuits worldwide.

An ounce of common sense is better than any university education. Aside from liver, which let’s face it is a bit of an acquired taste, eggs are the healthiest food on the planet. Since eggs are nature's perfect food and have been valued since the beginning of time, Humpty Dumpty most certainly isn’t going to fall off the wall on my watch! 

A large, whole hen egg provides excellent, high-quality protein with a perfect amino acid profile and is loaded with 13 essential vitamins, minerals and fatty acids that contribute to the health of the brain and nervous system. I think of them as a mighty multivitamin and mineral pill in a shell that are every cook’s best friend. Eggs are cheap, taste great, cook in minutes and go with just about everything. 

But not just any old egg. They must be fresh, organic and truly free-range i.e. laid by happy hens in small flocks that spend most of their days outside with access to fresh grass. I’d like to keep chickens in my own back garden henhouse one day but until I learn how, I’ll continue to buy biodynamic eggs from hens that scratch and forage in rolling pastures and nearby woodlands. I’ve always had a big interest in food and firmly believe that Mother Nature knows best. Healthy food is not produced by men meddling with nature. Frankly, I’d sooner be vegan than eat industrially-produced eggs from de-beaked, fraudulently named ‘free-range’, commercial-laying hens. Warning: Sensitive souls need not click here for the horrendous cruelty involved  but for those of you that still haven’t connected the dots between intensive farming and the food on your plate, please do me the courtesy!

Now we’re clear on that score, I do not ’chicken out’ on how many eggs I eat. Which not counting those I include in homemade cakes, bakes and sauces, is at least a dozen per week. Eggs are an incredibly versatile, inexpensive, nutrient-dense real food option for people eating low-carb. Because there are no ‘essential carbs’ in nature and I want my family to eat well, feel great and live long, the vast majority of Primal Plate recipes are based on ‘fat protein’ found in meat, eggs and dairy rather than ‘carb protein’ found in grains, pulses and beans. With a small amount of seasonal fruit, occasional starchy plants (e.g. tiger nuts, sweet potatoes, squash), nuts, seeds and vegetables thrown into the mix, we’re golden. No need to count calories, we eat what we love.

An omelette is delicious at any time of the day. Fill them with your choice of ingredients such as ratatouille, mushrooms, cheese or for a particular treat, strips of wild smoked salmon. Quick-to-make, soft and squidgy in the middle and tinged with gold on the outside, I’ve kept mine simple with the addition of fresh herbs stirred into the eggs before they’re cooked. One omelette will serve one person and, because it’s the ultimate fast food, it's not worth cooking a large one for two. The recipe is for a two-egg omelette, which I cook in a 15cm (6 inch) pan, ideal for one unless you are very hungry, in which case use 3 large eggs and scale up the size of your frying pan to 17cm.

To master the art of simple, get cracking.

A Classic Omelette (serves 1)

Ingredients

2 large organic, free range eggs (the fresher the better)

Himalayan pink salt

freshly ground organic black pepper

2 tsp finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley

1 tsp finely chopped fresh tarragon

1 tsp finely chopped fresh chives

1 tsp finely chopped fresh coriander

15g organic ghee (or butter)

To finish - optional

Freshly grated, organic Parmesan (with a glass of wine!)

Instructions

Carefully break the eggs into a bowl and using a fork, lightly blend the egg yolks and whites together until just combined - no beating or whisking allowed!

Season with salt and pepper and add the chopped herbs.

Melt the ghee in a non-stick frying pan (ceramic please, not Teflon-coated) and let it get quite hot, then swirl it around so that the base and sides of the pan are evenly coated.

Pour the eggs into the pan, tipping the pan so that it is evenly spread then turn the heat up to its highest setting. Leave the eggs to set for approximately 10 seconds or until a delicate ‘frill’ of cooked egg appears around the outside edges.

Using a wooden spoon or non-stick spatula, gently draw the edges of the cooked egg towards the centre, tilting the pan to let the still liquid egg run into the empty space at the edges.

Keep doing this until the omelette is almost set but is still a little moist on top - it only takes around a minute. It’s now time to fold your omelette in half or thirds.

To serve the omelette folded in half, run a spatula around the edge of the pan to free the omelette, then tilt the pan over a warmed plate and slide the omelette out allowing the top half of it to flip over and cover the bottom half on the plate.

Alternatively, fold it into three as illustrated in the photos. While the omelette is still in the pan, flip one third over towards the centre, then slide it on to a warmed plate, unfolded edge first, allowing the folded part to flip over and cover the rest.

Serve and eat at once.


Notes

Served with some freshly grated Parmesan sprinkled over and a glass of wine, I guarantee that even the humblest omelette achieves gastronomy status.

You can lighten-up the texture of omelettes by adding 1 tablespoon of filtered water to the eggs before combining the yolks and whites.

The fresh herbs I used are simply what I had available. Fresh chervil and sorrel are good options too.

I use ghee rather than butter because it is less likely to burn at high temperatures. N.B. Making successful omelettes means cooking them on the highest heat that you dare! If you’re using butter, make sure you don’t let it brown before adding the eggs to the pan.

Filled omelettes are usually folded into three. Simply place your filling in the centre before folding into three as directed in the recipe instructions above.

Fat 51g Protein 48g Carbohydrate 1g - per 2 egg herb omelette

Roasted Portabella Mushrooms With Leeks, Pine Nuts & Halloumi

Allow me to introduce you to Portabello mushrooms, which are basically a chestnut mushroom that has been allowed to grow to full maturity. What you’re left with is a dense, meaty texture and an intensely deep mushroom flavour. Delish! Plus, the Portabello’s large, saucer-like base allows it to be used in a variety of ways, such as stuffed, baked, grilled or even barbecued.

In my view, Portabellas are one of the best veggie substitutes for meat when you’re in a hurry and fancy something cheap and vegetarian. Low-carb and easily digested, they are a natural source of plant-based protein and contain many essential nutrients and disease-fighting antioxidants and phytonutrients to boost health and combat inflammation.

Some other vegetarian pairings that enhance Portabella’s meaty-textured earthiness are grilled goats cheese on a base of black olive tapenade; chopped pecans with celery and blue cheese and creamy, scrambled eggs topped with a sprinkling of fresh tarragon or chives. All are healthy, flavour-packed and quick-to-make but I think today’s recipe for golden, crunchy, Roasted Portabella Mushrooms With Leeks, Pine Nuts & Halloumi wins hands down as a stand-alone meal when served with a bag of organic salad leaves dressed with a drizzle of Balsamic.

Roasted Portabella Mushrooms With Leeks, Pine Nuts & Halloumi is a version of Sabrina Ghayour’s tapas recipe of similar name that features in her book ‘Feasts’. I’ve made more of a meal of them by adding leeks, toasting the pine nuts and using a tad more halloumi and butter than the original recipe states. N.B. They don’t take as long to bake as Sabrina suggests! Also, try to select Portabella mushrooms with upturned edges - not flat ones - so that the generous amount of filling I specify here doesn’t spill out during the cooking process.

Real, nutrient-dense food provided by nature and on the table in less than an hour…bring it on.

Roasted Portabella Mushrooms With Leeks, Pine Nuts & Halloumi (serves 4)

Ingredients

8 large organic Portobello mushrooms

400g organic leeks, finely chopped

80g organic pine nuts, lightly toasted

80g organic unsalted butter, softened

a small bunch of fresh, organic coriander, very finely chopped

150g halloumi cheese, coarsely grated

Himalayan pink salt

Freshly ground organic black pepper

Instructions

Heat a large frying or sauté pan over a medium heat. When it is hot add 1 tablespoon of the butter and the chopped leeks to the pan, stir together well so that the leeks are evenly coated in butter.

Cover the pan and gently cook for about 8-10 minutes or until the leeks are meltingly soft but not coloured. Set aside to cool.

In a separate frying pan set over a low heat, gently toast the pine nuts until golden. Set aside to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 220℃. Line a large baking tray with non-stick foil and/or baking paper (I use both).

Clean the mushrooms with dampened kitchen paper then cut their stalks level with the gills. Place the mushrooms, gills uppermost, onto the prepared baking tray.

In a medium bowl, combine the remaining butter, halloumi, coriander, cooked and cooled leeks and pine nuts together, then season to taste with salt and pepper.

Divide the mixture evenly between the mushrooms - using a spoon to pile one portion into the centre of each mushroom and to press it down well into the base.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until nicely browned, then serve immediately.

Notes:

For a vegetarian feast, try serving delicious Roasted Portabella Mushrooms With Leeks, Pine Nuts & Halloumi with a quick and easy to make, fresh herb omelette. If you don’t know how to make perfect omelettes, I’ll share my secret in my next post!

Celerisotto With Asparagus & Lemon

Celeriac may appear to be just an ugly, unpromising, root vegetable but its inner beauty is revealed when transformed into low-carb, silky-smooth, creamy, risotto. This Celerisotto With Asparagus & Lemon has recently become one of our favourite vegetarian keto meals - the perfect, what-to-eat, comfort food during a spell of indecisive early summer weather, which felt more like October than June.

Strictly speaking, I could have done with posting this recipe several weeks ago because the organic celeriac I’d been purchasing from Abel & Cole up until the beginning of June, is no longer available. Also, the short English asparagus season will soon be over. It’s good to Eat The Seasons but unfortunately this means I’ll be waiting until next September to buy the new season’s celeriac to make a different kind of celerisotto…perhaps replacing asparagus and lemon with autumnal mushrooms and whisky.

Whatever my food preferences, banging the drum about the importance of eating seasonal, organic food generally seems to fall on deaf ears. The number one reason to choose organic food is to avoid pesticide exposure. Not only do these chemicals threaten the environment, they’re also proven to pose a very clear and direct risk to human health. The cancer-causing, Glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup has been found in virtually every food commonly sold and consumed, so we should all take steps to protect ourselves from it. Even so, the vast majority of people are still unwilling, or sometimes unable, to pay the extra cost for organic food and they don’t give a second thought to the thousands of air miles it takes for asparagus to be flown-in from South America.

So, taking a pragmatic approach to the fact that conventionally grown celeriac and asparagus are available in supermarkets all year round, I’ve decided to go-ahead and feature this recipe for Celerisotto With Asparagus & Lemon sooner rather than later. At least then you don’t have to wait to enjoy the gastronomic delights of this quick and easy, supper ‘superstar’ in your quest to eat healthy and low-carb.

It came as quite a shock to us that risotto made from ‘grains’ of celeriac has all the taste and texture of traditional Italian-style risotto. Who knew? Turns out you don’t need any help from arborio or other short-grain rice to achieve that classic, creamy texture. Celeriac ‘rice’ holds its shape without turning to mush and softens down into creamy deliciousness with the help of full-fat cheese and double cream. Increasing healthy fat consumption whilst severely restricting carbohydrates is a good thing; it’s eating too many high-starch processed grains that add the padding.

In fact it’s fat that makes this dish a surprisingly satiating and totally delicious vegetarian meal. We think it’s best served with crunchy, tangy, featherlight Parmesan Crisps and lightly-dressed mixed salad leaves. However, if you want to ‘fill your boots’ and take this grain-free risotto to the next level, try topping it with a poached egg, slices of roasted chicken, a lightly cooked wild salmon fillet or some crispy shards of salty prosciutto to offset its creaminess. Yum!

All in all, an extremely versatile, easy and convincing addition to a low-carb cook’s repertoire. As with many Primal Plate keto recipes, Celerisotto With Asparagus & Lemon is another healthy, comfort food that doesn’t taste like it’s healthy. Serve it up to family and friends and they’ll think you’re a genius. 

Celerisotto With Asparagus & Lemon (serves 4)

Ingredients

40g organic grass-fed ghee

2 medium-sized celeriac, peeled, cubed and pulsed in a food processor in 3-4 second blasts for 12-15 times until it becomes like grains of rice

400g organic asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces on the diagonal

2 organic leeks, finely sliced

100ml organic chicken stock (I make my own chicken bone broth)

50g organic full-fat soft ‘cream’ cheese

50g organic Parmesan Reggiano or vegetarian Parmesan-style cheese, finely grated

4 tbsp organic double cream

Large organic lemon, zest only

Large handful of organic herbs e.g. parsley, tarragon, mint, coriander, basil, finely chopped

To serve:

Parmesan crisps - optional

Fresh sprigs of organic chervil or dill

Instructions

In a large frying or sauté pan, gently fry the leeks in the melted ghee for 5 minutes until soft but not coloured

Meanwhile, blanch the asparagus pieces for 1-3 minutes (depending on thickness) in a pan of boiling water, then immediately plunge into ice cold water to set green colour; drain and dry on kitchen paper.

Add the celeriac ‘rice’ to leeks with the chicken stock and stir-fry for about 6-8 mins until soft.

Add the asparagus to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes more until warmed through.

Stir in the cream, cream cheese, lemon zest and chopped herbs.

Continue to cook until piping hot.

Serve immediately with Parmesan Crisps and fresh green salad leaves.

Notes

Click here for how to make Parmesan Crisps.

If you don’t have 15 minutes to make Parmesan Crisps, some organic rocket leaves lightly dressed with vinaigrette and tossed together with a spoonful of finely grated Parmesan will suffice!

Fat 20g Protein 8g Carbohydrate 18g - per serving

Chocolate Mousse Cake With Raspberries & Cream

The starting point for this low-carb, densely intense, chocolatey celebration cake or, when still warm from the oven and oozing molten chocolate, the perfect after-dinner pudding cake, was a Waitrose recipe for chocolate ‘cloud’ cake that I recently espied in their free ‘Weekend’ newspaper.

Since my 26th wedding anniversary was imminent, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to show my appreciation for twenty-eight years of togetherness with my beloved John by baking him a cake. He needed cheering-up. Last bank holiday weekend, whilst washing up (dangerous man’s work!) a 10” heavy chopping knife fell off the draining board onto his bare foot and cut his big toe right down to the bone. A visit to A&E was pretty much pointless. By the time we’d got John back home he was bleeding just as profusely as when we’d first arrived at hospital. Nearly three weeks later, his toe is still giving him flak and he can’t walk far or wear shoes. At times like these, a spoonful of sugar - or at least sweet-tasting food - can help.

For the keto-adapted, it’s not so much the craving for sweetness per se that persuades us to indulge but rather that someone lovingly baking a cake in your honour can become the ultimate in spirit-lifting, comfort food. My job is to ensure that the sweet treats that we enjoy from time to time are made from ingredients that do the least harm.

Ideally on a keto diet you’d knock all sweeteners, including sugar-free, zero calorie ‘pretenders’  on the head. However, “when life gives you lemons…” or you simply want to go with the flow and celebrate life with decadent desserts and cake like ‘normal’ people do, dissing the grains and choosing a sweetener that mimics the taste of sugar - erythritol is one of the better ones - is the way to sustain you on your low-carb journey. Honestly, does Chocolate Mousse Cake look like diet food to you?

Everyone agrees, it’s depressing to go without food you love. So, without wishing to pander to an unbridled enthusiasm for cake, pastries, ice cream and biscuits, I think it’s a good idea to feed your desire as long as it doesn’t mean eating high-carb treats made with grains and sugar that make you pack on the pounds. Admittedly, it is socially inconvenient to reject the herd mentality that relies on factory-made, ultra processed junk food but in my view, cooking healthy treats for yourself is the most workable way of getting to your perfect weight and then staying there. Just imagine yourself healthy, happy and full of energy every day and steadily losing weight without having to count calories or deny yourself. Primal Plate recipes will make that possible.

Right on cue for Father’s Day, Chocolate Mousse Cake With Raspberries & Cream is a special treat that will remind Dad just how much you appreciate all that he does. There’s no better way to show you care for yourself and others than to take the time to cook and bake edible gifts. Besides, Dad has too many ties already!

Chocolate Mousse Cake With Raspberries & Cream (serves 10)

Ingredients

200g very dark organic chocolate, broken into small pieces (I combined 75 grams of Pacari’s 70% chocolate drops with 125 grams of their 85% chocolate drops for an average of 80% cocoa solids)

125g organic unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

25ml organic, freshly brewed ‘espresso’ coffee or alternatively, 1 tbsp organic, instant coffee

1 tsp organic coffee extract 

1 tsp organic vanilla extract 

3 tbsp organic raw cacao powder, sifted 

6 organic medium eggs

200g non-GMO erythritol, powdered

For the cake topping

170ml organic double cream 

1tsp organic vanilla extract

1 tbsp non-GMO erythritol, powdered and sifted

175g organic fresh raspberries  (if you can get them, organic raspberries are less expensive from Tesco or Sainsburys)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180℃ (160℃ fan oven) / 350℉ / Gas mark 4

Lightly grease then line the base and sides of a 25cm (8 inch) round cake tin - preferably springform or loose bottomed - with non-stick baking parchment.

Make a ‘shot’ of strong espresso coffee - N.B. ignore this step if you’re using instant coffee.

Place the chocolate, butter, espresso coffee (or 1 tbsp instant coffee granules) vanilla and coffee extracts into a glass heatproof bowl and set it over a pan of gently steaming water. Keep the heat under the pan low and do not let the base of the bowl come into contact with the water. Stir the mixture from time to time until melted then take off the heat and set aside.

Meanwhile, separate the eggs into two large mixing bowls. Whisk the whites into soft peaks.

Leave the whisked whites on one side whilst you whisk together the yolks and erythritol until thick, pale and fluffy - you don’t need to wash the whisk in-between.

Using a metal spoon, stir the melted chocolate in with the egg yolks until evenly combined. Now stir in the cacao powder.

Using a flat-edged spatula or large metal spoon, gently fold half the egg whites into the chocolate mix to loosen, then carefully fold in the other half making sure they’re fully incorporated without knocking the air out of them.

Tip the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30 minutes until set but still wobbly in the centre. If you want it firmer in the centre, cook for another 5 minutes.

Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then remove the sides of the tin and leave to cool completely to room temperature.

When ready to serve, carefully remove the paper and base of the tin and set the cake on a serving plate. Whisk the cream, powdered erythritol and vanilla extract together into soft peaks. Pile into the middle of the cake and top with the raspberries. 

Notes

To make the cake easier to slice, it is best made a day in advance and then left overnight to firm-up and set in the centre.

If you’re not going to eat all of the cake straightaway, it will keep better if you don’t top the whole cake with raspberries and cream. Just cut it into as many portions as you need before attractively arranging a generous spoonful of cream and small pile of raspberries on top of each individual slice of cake. Alternatively, this wonderful, rich cake still makes the grade when served simply with a dusting of powdered erythritol and a dollop of lightly whipped cream still cold from the fridge.

Erythritol doesn’t impact blood sugar or insulin, as our bodies actually cannot digest it. It’s about 70% as sweet as table sugar. I buy it in granulated form online and turn it into icing sugar using my Vitamix or a hand-held stick blender. You can also buy it as ready-made icing sugar.

In powdered form, it easily blends into the flourless cake mixture and whipped cream topping to ensure that there’s no grittiness from un-dissolved crystals in the finished cake.

Fat 33g Protein 6g Carbohydrate 9g - per serving with raspberries & cream

Fat 33g Protein 5g Carbohydrate 7g - per serving with cream but no raspberries

Fat 23g Protein 5g Carbohydrate 7g - per serving of cake (without topping)

Hot Bitter Chocolate Sauce

I have nothing to say today except Hot Bitter Chocolate Sauce poured over No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream is a match made in heaven.

With high temperatures and sunshine forecast for this weekend...

Make. Eat. Enjoy.

Hot Bitter Chocolate Sauce (serve 4)

Ingredients

75g of very dark organic chocolate, broken into small pieces (I use 85% raw chocolate chips - see Notes below)

10g organic unsalted butter 

85ml organic full-fat milk  (I used whole raw milk from Gazegill because it’s the only milk I ever buy)

50ml organic double cream

4-6 drops organic liquid stevia, if required

Instructions

Place the pieces of chocolate and butter in a glass heatproof jug or bowl.

In a saucepan heat the milk and cream to just under boiling point then pour over the chocolate and butter, stirring until all of the chocolate has melted.

Pour the chocolate mixture back into a clean pan, add liquid stevia if using and gently heat, whisking constantly until completely smooth, thick and hot but not boiling. N.B. Do not allow the chocolate sauce to overheat as this will cause it to separate.

Serve immediately spooned over ice cream.

Notes

Buying high quality organic chocolate chips saves the potentially messy business of breaking or chopping a solid bar of chocolate into pieces.

The chocolate for Hot Bitter Chocolate Sauce should be at least 75% cocoa solids but a higher percentage dark chocolate is much better. To minimise sugary carbs, use an 85% chocolate and judiciously add a few drops of organic liquid stevia - a single drop at a time - to taste. Don’t go overboard by making your chocolate sauce sickly-sweet. Remember, you’re aiming for ‘bitter-sweet’ to complement an already sweet vanilla ice cream. Anything less than 85% chocolate shouldn’t need any additional sweetening at all!

Fat 18g Protein 2g Carbohydrate 8g - per serving of hot chocolate sauce

Total Fat 42g Protein 5g Carbohydrate 13g - per serving of ice cream & hot chocolate sauce

No-Sugar Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream

Back in the 1960’s I had lots of friends who all used to curry favour with me in the hopes of becoming regular invitees to my weekly-held Saturday night dinner parties. Some succeeded more often than others. Notably, Alan R, the son of a butcher who worked in his father’s business, who would sequester the most memorable, thick-cut pork chops for me ‘for free’ to secure his seat at my table. It was a fair exchange.

He would cut the chops at least an inch thick so that I could I slice them horizontally through their middles to make a ‘pocket’ that I would stuff generously with sage and onion before sewing them back up with string and slow cooking in a rich cider sauce. As delicious as this meal was, what really rocked my friends’ boat was a dessert of hot, melty chocolate poured over cold, creamy, vanilla ice cream.

You’d think that the authors of Wall’s current product marketing were ‘a fly on the wall’ at my dinner parties 50 years ago, when they say: “Bring your family together with Wall's delicious Ice Cream that everyone loves, it is so easy to connect, laugh and truly bond.” 

They’re not lying. It’s exactly how I remember my ‘hostess with the mostest' glory days. Now I’m fine with being forgotten. Wall’s vanilla ice cream and hot chocolate sauce made from Cadbury’s Bournville chocolate served with aplomb in a previous life may have helped make my dinner parties legendary, but today, even the thought of serving a ‘killer dessert’ of ultra-processed foods made with very low-cost ingredients gives me the heebie-geebies. Learn the chilling truth about commercial ice cream and weep!

Let’s just say, my foolhardy pursuit of social pleasures in my early twenties, which also included smoking up to forty cigarettes a day and regularly drinking myself into oblivion, was largely done in ignorance. As daft as it seems to me now, I didn’t realise the harm I was doing to myself with cigarettes and alcohol and perhaps of even more significance, without access to the internet, I didn’t have a clue about what was going on with the food supply. At the time, there was no way of knowing that the burgeoning food industry’s new-fangled creations were essentially cobbled together from industrially-made substances to make them look and taste (more or less!) like real food, albeit with very little nutritional value.

The late 1960’s supporters of women’s liberation, as well as men resistant to taking on their fair share of domestic duties, happily abdicated the responsibility for cooking to Big Food - and with it control over their health - in exchange for more free time. We now live in a society (UK) where over half the food purchases that people make are ultra processed and I am considered strange by conventional standards because I avoid all unreal food and drink. When I recently commented to a young friend that the cocktail she was drinking was the same bright, fluorescent pink as the skirt she was wearing, she quickly retorted “At least I’ll die happy!” Actually no, you probably won’t. The inconvenience of ‘convenience’ is that Big Agri and Big Food makes you sick and Big Pharma sells you supposed cures. This generally means spending your golden years in pain and suffering whilst waiting to die more slowly. That’s not for me, thanks.

There’s only one ice cream ‘to die for’ and it’s homemade, vanilla ice cream.

This feel-good, does-you-good, No-Sugar Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream tastes like heaven…just like ice cream used to before the food industry hijacked everyone’s favourite dessert and turned it into sickly-sweet, soft-scoop, emulsified, synthetically-flavoured gunk. 

Vanilla is an orchid whose seed pods are fermented and cured to produce its popular fragrance and flavour. It’s expensive. Vanillin, the main constituent of vanilla flavouring is what men in white coats use to make vanilla flavoured ice cream. Cheaply extracted from clove oil, waste material from the paper and wood pulp industry and petrochemical products, you may not even be able to taste the difference.

Rich, smooth, creamier than cream, sweet-as-you like and packed with fragrant, real vanilla, No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream is a kind-of-magic food that LCHF naysayers tell you you’re not ‘supposed’ to eat if you’re watching your waistline. Basically, they’re talking claptrap.

What is true for both weight-watchers and the health conscious is that you can’t eat humongous amounts of carbohydrates together with unlimited amounts of fat. You can either eat fat to fuel your body’s energy needs (meat, fish, dairy, eggs and dark chocolate) or starch a.k.a glucose (sugar, pasta, rice, potatoes and bread) but whichever one you choose, you need to control your intake of the other.

There’s a turf war going on between self-serving diet dictocrats trying to foist a one-size-fits all, nutritionally deficient, primarily plant-based (grains), high-carb (sugar saturated), low-fat diet (ultra processed seed oils) and the growing fraternity of independent scientists, doctors, dieticians, journalists and self-helpers living in the real world, who know the exact opposite to be true. Dr Zoë Harcombe Ph.D. brilliantly cuts through ‘carbfusion’ in her point-by-point response to Slimmers World experts who claim that “low-carb is damaging the nations health"  and there are “13 Ways that carbs help you LOSE weight”.

It’s your body, your health, your choice but if you’re struggling with chronic health conditions and/or excess weight, a 21-day diet experiment eating low-carb (less than 50 grams daily) lets you be the judge. Listen to your body; it doesn’t lie. Most people will find the easiest and quickest way to burn excess body fat is to eat real food (start counting chemicals, stop counting calories) and to use food as an excuse to add more dietary fat…drizzle oil on top…trickle over dressing…spoon on hollandaise…dollop on cream…spread with mayo…melt over butter…garnish with cheese, olives, nuts, seeds and avocado. Getting slim and staying slim never tasted this good.

It may seem counter-intuitive that No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream made from wholesome, organic ingredients - full-fat dairy milk, double cream and biodynamic egg yolks - can help you fight the flab, but it is so. Nothing serves your body and brain better than a well-formulated, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet and this luxurious ice cream is so fat-rich that once you’ve committed to eating low-carb, you could do a lot worse than treat yourself to a bowlful each and every day! It’s not the cheapest ice cream in the world, but then I don’t want cheap food, I want nutritious food. 

Beyond buying organic food for its nutrient density and lack of chemicals, Primal Plate’s overriding advice is: cook your own meals.

With delicious, homemade keto bread and ice cream recipes to chivvy you along the road to dietary independence, true liberation is finding your way back to body wellness by doing the best for yourself. It takes courage and radical self-determination to take back control of what you eat. The question is, do you think you’re worth it?

Industrial agriculture is one of the most unsustainable, destructive practices of modern civilisation. GMO crops, agri-chemicals, ultra processed food and lab-created food substitutes are poisoning people en masse. The distressed and diseased human body is the pharmaceutical industry’s marketplace. Long-term sickcare, not healthcare, pays its shareholders. This unholy trinity of Big Business is killing humans and harming animals and the environment for profit. The answer lies in you transitioning from unreal food to natural food obtained from sustainable, regenerative, chemical-free farming.

So what do you want to eat today?

No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream (serves 8)

Ingredients

450ml organic full-fat milk (see Notes below)

450ml organic double cream 

2 organic vanilla pods

6 large organic egg yolks

150g non GMO erythritol 

1 tbsp organic vanilla extract

Instructions

Split the vanilla pods down the centre and place with the milk and cream into a heavy based saucepan pan - preferably one with a pouring edge.

Heat to just below boiling point (you’ll see little bubbles appear at the edge of the pan).

Immediately take the pan off the heat, cover and allow to stand for one hour to allow the flavours to infuse.

Remove the vanilla pods and with the tip of a small pointy knife or the edge of a teaspoon, scrape out the seeds, adding them back into the infused mixture. Discard the pods.

Gently re-heat to just below boiling point.

In the meantime, whisk the egg yolks and erythritol together in a large deep bowl until pale and thick.

Gradually pour the hot cream into the egg yolk mixture, whisking continuously until combined.

Return the mixture to a clean pan and set over a medium heat. Stir the mixture constantly until it reaches a temperature of 85℃ (takes about 4-6 minutes) or alternatively until the custard coats the back of a spoon i.e. when you run your finger through it, the trail left stays put. See image below.

Pour the custard through a fine sieve into a large clean metal or glass bowl and cover its surface with baking parchment to stop a skin forming. Tip: I use a pre-cut baking parchment circle.

Allow the custard to cool to room temperature. To save time, plunge the bowl into cold water then when its cool, chill in a refrigerator for a couple of hours or overnight.

When completely chilled, remove the baking parchment and stir in the vanilla extract.

Churn in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions until the ice cream is soft set. 

Scrape into a glass, freezer proof container and freeze for about 4 hours.

Take out of the freezer about 30 minutes before serving to allow the ice cream to soften slightly.

Notes

I think No-Sugar, Old-Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream is best appreciated when it’s served simply without embellishment. However, if you’re curious to know why my friends used to rave about my retro dessert of ice cream with hot chocolate sauce, the Hot Chocolate Sauce recipe will be the next to feature on this blog.

I use Gazegill Organics raw (unpasteurised) milk to make my ice cream because that’s the only milk I ever buy. However, because this recipe means heating and holding the milk at a higher temperature than is required for the pasteurisation of milk, it makes no difference if you use pasteurised milk to make it. For the lactose intolerant, A2 pasteurised milk maybe an even better option. 

Fat 24g Protein 3g Carbohydrate 5g - per serving of vanilla ice cream



3-Minute Macadamia Nut Oil Mayonnaise

My definitive 3-Minute Macadamia Nut Oil Mayonnaise is a real foodie staple in my house and very quick to make! Packed full of goodness and healthy fats, there’s nothing to fear from having an extra spoonful. In fact, once you’ve stocked up on the necessary ingredients it is hard to see why you’d bother with the unhealthy shop-bought alternative, which tastes artificial and cloying in comparison.

I make a batch most weeks, if not more often, and it’s the perfect side dip and sauce for a whole range of dishes. It’s especially useful as a sandwich filler, perhaps with some cold roast organic chicken stuffed into my Keto Dinner Rolls.

The health benefits of Macadamia oil are well documented and its flavour isn’t too strong, which makes it the perfect mainstay for this mayo recipe.

3-Minute Macadamia Nut Oil Mayonnaise

Ingredients

2 large organic eggs

2½-3 tbsp organic lemon (or lime) juice, freshly squeezed

1 tsp organic Dijon mustard 

½ tsp Himalayan pink salt

freshly ground organic black pepper

1-2 drops organic liquid stevia 

200 ml cold pressed macadamia nut oil

50 ml organic extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

Place all the ingredients into a tall, narrow container.

Using a hand-held stick blender, blend everything together until it emulsifies into a pale, creamy mayonnaise. Takes about 30 seconds!

Taste and add a little more lemon/lime juice and seasoning, if liked. 

Transfer to a glass container and seal with an airtight lid. 

Store in a refrigerator and use within 7 days.

Notes

Don’t worry if the mayonnaise seems a little on the runny side when it’s first made. It thickens up to the perfect consistency, when chilled down in a refrigerator. 

Ultimate Keto Bread Rolls

What’s more wonderful than lovingly home-baked bread made from the best organic ingredients? I’ll tell you what. It’s these golden-crusted, soft-crumbed, whole-mealy, Ultimate Keto Bread Rolls that are impossible to distinguish from traditional bread rolls made from wheat flour.

I don’t wish to brag, but out of the many recipes for low-carb breads that I’ve trialled and/or ‘errored' courtesy of other food bloggers online, this brilliant Primal Plate recipe is the definitive guide for making the best Ultimate Keto Bread Rolls in the world! Actually, amend that to simply “the best bread rolls in the world” - whether they’re made with digestively challenging high-carb grain flour or not!

Seriously, I’m not kidding. No one, and I mean no one, could tell the difference between these bread rolls and the ones “Chef baked fresh today” oft served up in fine dining restaurants. When you tear open and eat one of these quickly-made delicious bread rolls you won’t believe they’re low-carb, gluten and grain free. Furthermore, they don’t rely on yeast to make them rise, which means they don’t require kneading or waiting around for them to ‘prove’.

This simple, batter bread recipe calls for organic, whole, golden flaxseeds and psyllium husks that you grind yourself into the consistency of flour in a small coffee grinder, just before use. Sorry about that, but it’s vitally important that flaxseeds are freshly ground because, if you buy them ready-ground, they quickly turn rancid.

Fresh flaxseed flour is a nutritional powerhouse packed with fibre, omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, antioxidants, and cancer-fighting lignans. According to Dr Mercola, animal research shows people who eat a high-fat diet with flaxseed have more beneficial bacteria in their gut and better glucose control than those eating just high fat (without flaxseed) or a standard diet. The health of your gut is key to attaining optimal health. If you've been trying to lose weight but have seen little progress, the challenge may be helped by feeding your beneficial bacteria.

With such remarkably healthy and obesity fighting credentials and just 4 grams of carbohydrate per bread roll, you’re all good to go low-carb and eat what you love and what loves you.

Ultimate Keto Bread Rolls (makes 6)

Ingredients

150g organic golden flaxseed, freshly ground

20g organic whole psyllium husk, freshly ground

60g organic ground almonds

¼ tsp Himalayan pink salt 

½ tsp aluminium-free baking soda 

2 large organic egg whites (approx. 85g)

1 tsp cream of tartar 

2 tbsp organic olive oil

200ml freshly filtered cold water

25g organic shelled hemp seeds - to finish tops of rolls

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 180℃ / 350℉ / Gas mark 4

Line a large flat baking tray with non-stick paper.

Tip the hemp seeds onto a small plate, set aside.

In a coffee mill, grind the flaxseed and psyllium husk in to a flour-like consistency.

Place the ground flaxseed and psyllium into a large bowl with the ground almonds, baking soda and salt. Whisk the dry ingredients together until well mixed.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until foamy then add the cream of tartar and continue to whisk until they form soft peaks (best done with an electric beater)

In another bowl, briefly beat the olive oil and water together.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the olive oil and water and whisk with an electric beater until it just forms in to a batter, then quickly whisk-in the egg whites - only briefly - just enough to incorporate them without knocking all the air out!

Wait a couple of minutes for the batter to thicken into a soft, pliable dough, then tip the whole batch of mixture out on to weighing scales (I lay a piece of cling-film on the surface of the scales first).

Once you know the total weight of your dough, divide it into six even pieces (approx 90 grams per roll but use your weigh scales!) and form each piece in to a ball in the palms of your hands - I wear food-grade disposable gloves to save my hands getting messy.

Dunk the top surface of each ball of dough into the hemp seeds before placing it down on to the baking sheet.

Make the rest of the dough balls in the same way, allowing enough space between the bread rolls on the baking tray for them to rise during cooking.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Transfer the rolls from the baking tray on to a wire rack to cool down.

Serve warm or at room temperature with lashings of organic, grass-fed butter. 

Alternatively cut into halves and toast.

Notes

Beaten egg whites contain many air bubbles which expand in the oven’s heat to help leaven and lighten the loaves.

Fat 18g Protein 9g Carbohydrate 4g - per roll

Roast Loin of Venison with Cauliflower Cream & Red Wine Sauce

Today’s recipe is setting a new precedent for Easter Sunday lunch this year because instead of the time-honoured roast lamb, a loin of venison is the easiest roast in the world to cook and serve to your guests when you want to conjure up a no-fuss special occasion meal. Anything that takes the heat off the cook, especially when she’s already committed to drinking her fair share of Champagne aperitif(s) gets my vote.

This Loin of Venison with Cauliflower Cream & Red Wine Sauce not only looks and tastes amazing, most of the individual components can be made in advance and the final roasting and resting of the venison takes minutes, not hours.

As I write this blog post, I am looking at Mirror Imaging’s photos of my finished plate of food and have concluded that I’ve been watching too many episodes of Masterchef! There’s really no need to ponce about with the Cauliflower Cream as I did. Indeed, it’s such a delicious, moreish accompaniment that a generous dollop on the plate will serve you so much better than any attempt to replicate a cheffy-style splat!

I was able to get my hands on a superb selection of exotic mushrooms from Maxey’s, a farm shop close to me that supplies the local restaurant industry. However, most supermarkets, including Marks & Spencer, sell mixed or single varieties of fresh, exotic mushrooms. Any fresh fungi that takes your fancy, perhaps enhanced by some reconstituted dried wild ones for more flavour, will work their earthy mushroom-magic in this dish.

The canon of wild venison (canon is another name for loin) was a meaty treat we purchased from Gazegill Organics farm shop - you can also try Eversfield Organics or Primal Meats. After a joyful day recently spent at Gazegill farm, where we were able to interact with some of the most contented and cared for animals I’ve ever met - amongst them adorable, free-roaming, inquisitive, newborn piglets - we were left with no appetite for pork or lamb!

Although these precious, sentient beings ultimately provide healthy, organic meat, eggs and dairy from happy animals that have been allowed to grow up as naturally as possible - grazing, foraging in the fresh air and interacting with each other - so too does wild venison. Wild venison is naturally free from antibiotics and hormones (I think intensively farmed meat and dairy sucks!) and is a lean, high-protein, nutrient-rich red meat that perfectly fuels your body. It also has the meltingly tender eating quality of organic, grass-fed fillet of beef, which costs twice as much. Back in the 1960’s I vowed that when beef fillet cost £1 per pound I’d never buy it again. Today, organic fillet of beef can set you back nearly thirty times that amount, which to my mind makes a joint of wild venison loin a very good choice indeed.  

Once purchased, it was Great British Chef, Josh Eggleton’s venison recipe that inspired this recipe for Roast Loin of Venison with Cauliflower Cream & Red Wine Sauce. It’s an invitation to lunch that your friends and family won’t forget. A perfect crowd pleaser, this luxurious main course is the ultimate roast, not just for Easter, but for all those special occasions when you need to deliver good food but don’t want to grow old cooking it.

Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients. Simply tackle the following trio of easy-to-follow recipes one at a time, spread over several days (the red wine sauce and cauliflower cream can be stored in the fridge up to two days in advance), so come the day, you can wow your guests with a celebratory meal that delivers big, mouth-watering flavours for very little effort. 

Roast Loin of Venison with Cauliflower Cream & Red Wine Sauce (serves 4)

Ingredients

Venison

750g of loin of wild venison, trimmed of all silver skin (see Notes below)

2 sprigs of fresh organic rosemary

1 tbsp organic olive oil

15g organic ghee 

40g organic unsalted butter 

300g mixture of wild or cultivated mushrooms, preferably organic, trimmed and sliced

Himalayan pink salt (or use sea salt)

Organic black pepper, freshly ground

Organic watercress - to garnish


Cheesy Cauliflower Cream

1 head of organic cauliflower (about 600g), separated into florets

30g organic double cream 

50g organic salted butter 

50g organic Cheddar , grated

Himalayan pink salt or sea salt

Organic white pepper

Red wine sauce

1 tbsp organic olive oil

1 organic shallot, sliced

1 organic carrot, sliced

1 organic leek, top only, sliced

1 stalk of organic celery, sliced

1 sprig of organic fresh thyme 

1 organic bay leaf

1 sprig of organic rosemary

200ml organic red wine 

50ml organic red wine vinegar 

100ml organic port 

500ml organic chicken stock, or make your own

25g organic butter, cut into small cubes

Instructions

Prepare the red wine sauce in advance

Place a heavy-based pan over a medium heat, add olive oil and sauté the vegetables. Stir and scrape the pan until the vegetables turn a dark brown colour.

Add the herbs, red wine, port, and vinegar. Simmer until the mixture has reduced down to a few millimetres deep.

Add the stock, bring the sauce to a boil, and reduce to a simmer. Cook until reduced by half.

Pass the reduced sauce through a fine strainer. Return to a small pan and set aside until you’re ready to serve. Just before serving re-heat to boiling point and whisk in the cold butter.

To make the Cheesy Cauliflower Cream

In the base of a large steamer, bring some salted, freshly filtered water to a rolling boil.

Trim the cauliflower away from its leaves and stem, divide into florets, place in the top of the steamer, cover and cook until soft.

Use a draining spoon to transfer the cooked cauliflower to a blender along with the cheese, butter and cream. Blend until silky smooth.

Transfer the cauliflower puree to a small saucepan. Season with salt and pepper to taste then either keep warm over a very low heat. Alternatively, cover and set aside until you’re ready to serve.

To serve, gently re-heat the cauliflower cream until it’s nice and hot. Tip: Stir the puree from time to time to ensure it warms through evenly and doesn’t ‘catch’ on the base of the pan. 

Cooking the venison

Bring the trimmed venison loin to room temperature. Pat dry with kitchen paper and rub the olive oil all over its surface before generously seasoning with salt and pepper.

Preheat the oven to 180℃ / 350℉ / Gas mark 4.

Place a heavy-based frying pan over a medium-high heat and add the ghee.

Once the pan is hot and the ghee melted, sear one side of the venison for 2 minutes and then flip to sear the other side for 2 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat and transfer the venison to a baking tray or roasting tin. Place half the butter (15g) cut into slivers evenly across the surface of the meat and top with the rosemary sprigs.

Place in the preheated oven and cook for a further 5-8 minutes, depending on your preference (see Notes below). When cooked to your liking, remove from the oven, loosely cover with foil and allow to rest 5-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the frying pan with the remaining half of the butter back on to a medium heat. Slowly sauté the mushrooms for 5 minutes until softened and turning golden at the edges. When almost finished, season with salt and pepper.

To Serve

Divide the hot cauliflower cream and mushrooms between four pre-warmed serving plates.

Slice the venison into 1-2 cm slices and divide between the plates, placing them neatly on top of the mushrooms.

Finish with the red wine sauce and garnish with sprigs of fresh watercress.

Notes

To remove the silver skin from the meat, you’ll need to slip the tip of a very sharp knife between the silver skin and the meat. Starting at one end of the loin, carefully glide the knife along the meat, pulling the silver skin away at the same time. Once you’ve removed all the tough membrane, use a few strategically placed cocktail sticks to re-shape the loin and secure the meat back together again.

Don’t overcook the venison. It took just 6 minutes to cook mine medium-rare. If you don’t have a thermometer (it should read about 60℃ / 140℉ for rare to medium-rare when inserted into the thickest part of the meat) you’ll have to trust your instincts. Much depends on the thickness of your meat and the heat of the pan or oven. Clearly, there’s an art to telling when meat is cooked to your liking, but the best way to gauge ‘doneness’ is to use the finger-and-thumb test. Still not feeling it? Take a sharp knife and cut a small slit down into the centre of the meat and take a quick peek!

Fat 19g Protein 58g Carbohydrate 3g - per serving venison and mushrooms

Fat 14g Protein 6g Carbohydrate 8g - per serving cauliflower cream

Fat 8g Protein 7g Carbohydrate 7g - per serving red wine sauce

Lucky-Dip Salad Jars

This is primarily a DIY recipe that comes to the rescue of people who think salad is boring and/or can’t be bothered to cook.

You will need to stretch yourself to make a Basic French Dressing and maybe boil some eggs (only if they take your fancy), but the final eating experience will far surpass your expectations of wading your way through a plateful of bog-standard salad.

Not only are these Lucky-Dip Salad Jars as pretty as a picture (thank you Sarah at Mirror Imaging), conveniently portion controlled (no fighting over a communal salad bowl for the best bits), fun to eat and packed with nutrients - their airtight seals means they can be assembled up to 24 hours ahead and everything will stay just as fresh and perky as it was when first prepared. 

The key to success is layering a ‘rainbow’ of different, complementary salad ingredients that are shredded or very finely sliced (use a mandolin, if you have one), so that every forkful is a delightfully surprising, light and easy-to-eat, flavour fest.

Ideally packaged for picnics, for taking to the office or when you’re working away from home - I conjured up these Lucky-Dip Salad Jars in anticipation of a long-distance photographic assignment that involved an overnight stay, which would have prevented Sarah and I from eating ‘right’ (low-carb, organic, real food), for more than 24 hours. However, don’t save these perfectly balanced, perfectly dressed, ready-to-go salad jars just for on-the-hoof dining. They’re much too good for that. I now regularly bring them to the table whenever I want to add more plant-based nutritional oomph, colour and interest to everyday family meals.

You can either let your imagination run riot and buy a variety of fresh, salad ingredients to make these Lucky-Dip Salad Jars from scratch, or else ferret around in the bottom of your fridge for inspiration. It doesn’t take too much in the way of vegetables, herbs, salad leaves and other tasty tidbits to fill a 700ml Kilner jar with good-for-you things in contrasting colours, flavours and textures.

Filling the Kilner jars is more like flower arranging than cooking. Simply take your time to neatly layer your chosen ingredients roughly in the order I’ve listed below and these bright and beautiful Lucky-Dip Salad Jars speak for themselves. 

You’ll discover a ’lucky-dip’ each time you dive deep into your personal salad jar because every forkful you randomly skewer is a different combination of ingredients and flavours. It’s such a novel and moreish way to eat salad, even I don’t remember what I’ve loaded my jars with until I start eating one!

What I do know is that these Lucky-Dip Salad Jars are a convenience food that has all of the pleasure and none of the pain it takes to feed yourself healthy.

Useful tips before you start…

• You’ll need a 700-750ml, sterilised, clip-top, wide-mouthed, Kilner jar for each person - see Notes below.

• Make a Basic French Dressing (see recipe below) before you start preparing the rest of your ingredients.

• Select your ingredients from the suggestions listed and, if at all possible, buy organic to avoid eating chemical residues along with your salad!

• Let your imagination be the limit of these Lucky-Dip Salad Jars rather than the ingredients I’ve put forward for consideration, which could have gone on ad infinitum! Okay, maybe I can’t resist a few more…hummus, orange/grapefruit segments, sweet peppers, red or white chicory, very finely sliced raw cabbage, toasted seeds (sunflower, flax, pumpkin), smoked mackerel, smoked salmon, sardines, prawns, blanched asparagus, cucumber etc. etc.

• The approximate amounts given alongside each ingredient are per salad jar, but much depends on how many different ingredients you’ve chosen to use. If you’re using several ingredients of a similar type e.g. grated raw carrots and grated raw beetroot, you’ll probably need to scale back the amounts of each to 50 grams to make a 100 grams in total.

• Layer your prepared salad ingredients in roughly the order I’ve given below. They’re organised like this for a reason - for example, grated purple beetroot would need to go into the bottom of the jar first so it doesn’t ‘bleed’ into the rest of your ingredients and delicate leafy greens go into the jar last so they don’t get squashed, bruised or soggy.

Lucky-Dip Salad Jars

Basic French Dressing

Ingredients

1 level tsp Himalayan pink salt or fine sea salt 

1 tsp Organic Dijon mustard 

2 tbsp Freshly squeezed organic lemon juice or cider vinegar

Freshly milled black pepper 

6 tbsp Organic extra virgin olive oil or cold pressed macadamia nut oil 

1 tsp Organic honey or maple syrup or 2-3 drops organic liquid stevia 

Instructions

Put all the ingredients into a screw-topped jar and shake vigorously.

Lucky Dip Salad Jar Ingredients (per jar)

Dressing

• 2 tbsp Basic French Dressing

Then choose from the following suggestions:

Vegetables

• 100g Grated purple beetroot 

• 100g Grated carrots

• 100g Grated golden beetroot

• 40g Finely sliced raw ‘button’ or closed cap mushrooms, white or brown

• 30g Finely sliced raw fennel

• 30g Finely sliced celery

• 30g Finely sliced, kohlrabi

• 30g Finely sliced radishes

Protein

• 4 x Quail’s eggs, hard boiled or 1 x large hen’s egg, hard boiled and sliced

• 25g Finely grated mature Cheddar or Parmesan

• 25g Feta cheese, cut into cubes

• 50g Tinned tuna, drained and mashed with 1 tbsp mayonnaise, if liked

Fruit

• ½ tbsp Kalamata or green olives, stoned and slivered

• ½ Avocado, dressed in 1 tsp lemon or lime juice 

• 60g Whole cherry tomatoes

Nuts & Seeds

• 25-30g Pine nuts, or other nuts e.g. almond flakes, macadamias, pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts etc. lightly toasted and roughly chopped, if required

• 10-15g Pumpkin, sunflower, hemp, sesame seeds etc., lightly toasted

Leafy Greens & Herbs

• 25g Baby leaf spinach, 

• 25g Baby red chard

• 25g Mixed baby salad leaves

• 15g Rocket

• 15g Watercress

• 25g Shredded romaine lettuce

• 10g Sprouting seeds of your choice - broccoli, clover, mustard, radish, onion, alfalfa etc.

• 1 tbsp Finely chopped herbs - coriander, mint, dill, parsley, chives etc.

Instructions To Assemble Lucky-Dip Salad Jars

Place 1 tbsp of dressing in the bottom of each jar. 

Start layering up your selected ingredients roughly in the order listed above.

Seal the lid on tight and refrigerate.

When you’re ready to eat, drizzle another 1 tablespoon of dressing on top of the salad, re-seal the jar then tip upside down and shake well.

Dive in with a fork to enjoy!

Notes

I subsequently discovered the seemingly best-shaped 700ml Tala jars that feature in this blog post were not dishwasher proof, as described on Amazon’s website. You need to make sure that the clips that secure your Kilner jars are stainless steel; the Tala ones corroded and went rusty after just one round in the dishwasher! 

450-500ml Kilner jars would be a better size for children and would still have sufficient space to layer a variety of ingredients that hopefully they’ll want to eat.

As far as possible, when selecting your salad ingredients make the most of each season’s fruits and vegetables and buy organic. This makes sense because it provides your body with what it needs nutritionally at different times of the year.

There’s a bit of guesswork involved in the total amount of ingredients you need to use to fill the jars attractively. Having decided on what ingredients I’m going to use to assemble my jars, I usually eyeball the quantities of each item I need to prep (chop, finely shred, grate etc.), before separately weighing and layering that particular ingredient equally between the number of jars I’m filling. I then prepare, weigh and continue to layer-up the rest of the ingredient in the same way until the jars are full.

Don’t forget to take a fork and a small, tightly-sealed glass jar of Basic French Dressing with you if you intend eating while you’re out and about. 

Ultimate Chocolate Ice Cream

We L-O-V-E ice cream. About six months ago Sarah asked me if I’d made a chocolate ice cream for Primal Plate’s blog yet. I reminded her that I had, albeit a No-Churn Double Chocolate & Cherry Ice Cream version rather than one made from just pure chocolate. It obviously hadn’t satisfied Sarah’s need because ever since she came back from holidaying in Tuscany (12 years ago!), she’s been raving about the Italian-style ‘cioccolato gelato’ that she just couldn’t get enough of whilst she was there.

As Valentine’s day is just a couple of days away and I’ve heard dark chocolate is literally good for your heart, I thought I’d try and replicate the intensely-flavoured, Italian chocolate ice cream that Sarah still vividly remembers. It was a labour of love. My brief was lots of rich, lingering chocolatey flavour, just the right amount of smoothly soothing creaminess and no sugary aftertaste. It sounds like the perfect combination for a delicious keto dessert, but this one didn’t come easy.

Behind scenes, every new recipe I develop for Primal Plate takes at least three to four hours experimentation before I’m satisfied it works and is worthy of posting. To say I’m demoralised when I spend an entire afternoon in the kitchen and a small fortune on ingredients with nothing delicious to show for it, is an understatement. My first attempt at making Tarfuto Gelato (Italian for chocolate truffle ice cream) whilst carefully following a recipe in a well-known cookery book, turned out to be a rock-hard, grainy, under-sweetened, frozen ‘clod’ of inedible ice!

Usually, when I’m following someone else’s recipe, I instinctively know when something isn’t going to work and how to put it right, but on this occasion my cook’s intuition had gone ‘bye-byes’. In retrospect, the recipe was so ill-conceived and poorly written, I didn’t stand a chance. Sarah and John are always a little more forgiving of my foodie sorties into the unknown and nobly volunteered to eat the damn stuff, but most of it ended up where it belonged…in the bin.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Once chocolate ice cream was on Sarah’s ‘radar’, there was no turning back. Almost defeated, but not quite, I decided that if I was going to succeed in my quest to make The Ultimate Chocolate Ice Cream I’d better go ‘belt and braces’ and buy myself a decent cook’s thermometer. Another sixty-five quid to add to the mounting costs of chocolate ice cream hell!

As things turned out, it was a good call. Whilst I waited for my luxury digital-probe thermometer to arrive, I tentatively but radically altered everything I knew was wrong with the previous recipe and in one fell swoop came up with The Ultimate Chocolate Ice Cream. For a health-driven food blogger, nothing feels as good as making healthy sweet! Because what’s more Primal than to seek out the sweet taste of sugar like your forebears did? It’s an instinct that’s hardwired into our DNA. The problem is that sugar is no longer the rare and lucky find that thousands of years ago provided our ancestors with the calories their bodies desperately needed to keep moving and to survive times of famine. Today, sugar is the edible enemy that will mostly likely kill you. Not only have we inherited the sugar-craving gene, it’s thanks to Big Food (along with Big Agri, Big Pharma and the likes of Slimmer’s World) who know exactly how to exploit our biological need for sweet, that there’s now sugar, sugar everywhere in the processed foods they peddle, and lots of overweight and sick people to show for it.

Mass-produced ice cream made from milk powder, water, refined sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavours, stabilisers, emulsifiers and “substances of plant and synthetic origin” may have the taste and texture of sweetened, aerated cardboard and be a serious health hazard, but at least it’s not a sheep in wolf’s clothing. What really gets my goat is Ben & Jerry’s ‘premium’ ice cream. They’d have you believe that it’s worth paying extra for their all-natural, “Caring Dairy” “Fair trade” environmentally responsible ice cream, but surprise, surprise, they’re not for real. Their reputation has been built on a cynical global marketing ‘game of pretence’ that creates the impression, amongst others, that the milk they source for their ice cream comes from cows that are allowed outside to graze on grass. The truth is that Ben & Jerry’s uses the same milk as most other commercial ice cream manufacturers. It comes from intensive dairy farms where anxious cows are kept in close confinement for their entire (short) lives and fed a diet of soy and grains that their digestive systems simply can’t cope with.

Poison ice cream anybody? Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy ice cream is not what it seems. As well as containing whacky ingredients such as wheat flour, soybean oil, carageenan, guar gum, Dutched cocoa (alkalised to make it taste less bitter) and six teaspoons of refined sugar per 100 grams (Yikes! That’s the maximum recommended daily sugar allowance for women in just one-half cup serving) it also likely comes with its own sundae topping of pesticide! Here’s what the Organic Consumer’s Association (OCA) has to say about their “Roundup-Ready” ice cream. So far as I know, Unilever-owned Ben & Jerry’s still haven’t cleaned up their act and gone organic and for that reason, as they say, I’m out.

For me, ’The Most Important Thing’ is to show you how to nourish yourself and the people you love with real food that makes everyone want to do a happy dance. To this end, The Ultimate Chocolate Ice Cream is chock-full of organic ‘superfood’ ingredients - high percentage dark chocolate, pastured egg yolks, full-fat grass-fed milk and cream. I think it goes above and beyond the call of duty to eat well and stay slim. It’s so deliciously indulgent, people who want to lose weight, might think of it as food anarchy! How else do you think Sarah and I maintain a dress size 6? It’s not by restricting what we eat - although when you ‘go keto' you can easily intermittently fast for more than 18 hours without even realising you’ve not eaten - It’s all about never feeling deprived of the things you love to eat.

Nothing is more powerful than when you combine care with eating wonderful food. Add to that the emotional response people have to chocolate and ice cream (especially Sarah!), and it’s probably true to say that nothing speaks the language of love more eloquently than this sublime, home-made, chocolate ice cream. It’s so much more than just food…it’s the sweetness and light of the pleasure principle that our ancestors lived by and that a part of us can never forget.

Happy Valentine’s.

Ultimate Chocolate Ice Cream (serves 8)

Ingredients

50g organic 100% dark chocolate 

100g organic 70% dark chocolate 

375ml organic whole milk

3 large organic egg yolks 

100g non-GMO erythritol 

200ml organic whipping cream (combine 100ml double cream with 100ml single cream)

1 tsp vanilla extract , optional

1 tbsp alcohol (organic vodka or rum)

40g organic dark chocolate (minimum 75% cocoa solids, but I used 85%), finely chopped

Instructions

If you're not using ready-made chocolate ‘drops’ (as listed in ingredients above) snap or chop the chocolate into small pieces, then place in a heavy-based saucepan with the milk.

Heat gently, stirring until completely smooth. Do not let the mixture boil.

Remove from the heat to cool slightly.

Using an electric hand whisk, beat the erythritol and egg yolks together in a heatproof mixing bowl until pale and thick.

Heat 5cm of water in a saucepan that your mixing bowl will comfortably sit on top of without allowing any steam to escape at the sides (you don’t want to burn your hand when stirring the custard base!).

Add the cooled chocolate mixture to the eggs and erythritol, beat vigorously then set the bowl on top over the top of a pan of barely simmering water, ensuring the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water.

Cook the custard, regularly stirring so it doesn’t catch on the base or sides of the bowl until it thickens into a smooth custard that thickly coats a metal spoon (this can take up to 20 minutes). If you’re using a thermometer to check the temperature, it should reach about 85℃ / 185℉. Whatever you do, don’t allow the mixture to boil or it will curdle.

Remove the pan from the heat. Sit the base of the mixing bowl in a few inches of cold water until the mixture is completely cold, stirring occasionally.

Once cooled, add the vanilla extract and strain through a fine sieve into a clean bowl, then cover and refrigerate.

When the mixture is completely chilled, beat the cream and alcohol into the chocolate mixture.

Churn in an ice cream machine, according to the manufacturer’s instructions, until it is the consistency of whipped cream (about 20-25 minutes).

About 5 minutes before it’s ready, mix in the 40 grams of finely chopped chocolate and continue churning until set.

Quickly scrape into a glass freezer-proof box, level the surface and cover with waxed or greaseproof paper and a lid.

Serve within 2 hours.

If frozen solid, take the ice cream out of the freezer about 30 minutes before you intend to serve it to let it soften enough for scooping.

Notes

I prefer to use a metal mixing bowl to make ice cream because it transfers heat and cold more quickly. You can use a glass bowl but it will take longer to cook and cool your custard.

Whilst I recommend you get a cook’s thermometer to make The Ultimate Chocolate Ice Cream, it doesn’t need to be a fancy-pants version like the one I bought. This digital thermometer was my second choice and I think it will serve you just as well.

Although I didn’t find Pacari's professional organic chocolate couverture drops in time for this recipe, I’m really tempted to test them out. Perhaps a vegan version of The Ultimate Chocolate Ice Cream made with Pacali’s 85% chocolate drops, coconut milk and cream already beckons!

I added vodka to this recipe to try to stop it from setting too hard, but I’m not sure if I added enough for it make much difference. After 24 hours in the freezer, it took about 40 minutes to get to the right consistency for scooping. Anyway, please don’t include alcohol if you’re serving this ice cream to children - just make sure your freezer temperature isn’t below -18℃ / 0℉

I chose to use organic A2 pasteurised milk for this recipe rather than the raw, organic grass-fed milk we prefer to drink because it has to be heated anyway to make the base custard. If you normally suffer discomfort after consuming regular A1 milk, you might find that you can tolerate A2 milk perfectly well.

Fat 36g  Protein 6g Carbohydrate 13g - per serving