Persimmon Marmalade, Dried Persimmon Rolls with Chocolate and other ideas...

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hello Friends,

This is going to be a post full of pictures and ideas.

Golden, delicious persimmons are in season these days so I don't want to lose any more time to share this post with you.  

1) Our first recipe is Persimmon Marmalade.

We prepare this recipe with only 3 ingredients: Persimmons, lemon and chia seeds. It doesn't contain any added sugar on the contrary to the traditional marmalade recipes.

Persimmons, which to me look like some kind of golden tomatoes, are very sweet when they are mature. They are packed with vitamins, antioxidants and fiber.
Our marmalade has also chia seeds which are an excellent source of Omega 3, protein and fiber.

The trick here is that it is absolutely essential to have very ripe persimmons in order to obtain the taste and the texture we desire.

Under-ripe persimmon fruits are astringent and unpalatable to most of the people because of their high tannin content. As they mature the tannin gradually disappears and the fruit gets sweeter and more aromatic. 
If you have immature fruits you need to allow them to ripe before to use. When they are ready the flesh will become completely soft, almost liquid.

Ingredients:
500 g very ripe persimmons
20 g fresh lemon juice
50 g chia seeds

Preparation:

Sun Dried Tomato Pate

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Last year we decided not to keep doing unhealthy diets anymore in the name of (supposedly) healthy living. Instead, we agreed to adopt an essential healthy lifestyle change.

As we all are told many times by the experts and printed on our brains, there are two building blocks for this topic:
1.) A healthy balanced diet 2.) Regular physical activity

The difference of opinion among popular diets (Vegetarian, Vegan, Raw Vegan, Paleo, Low Glysemic Diet, Gluten-free, Atkins, Dukan, Mediterranean...etc) arises of how to achieve that healthy diet. This division of opinions often leaves us, the general public, with confusion.

We researched and tried to read a lot on different takes on the topic. We decided to steer clear of any nutrition trend but adopt an alimentation that we see fit at the moment for ourselves. Happily we've got our effort's worth. The "well-known" secret is being constant.

Stefano, my husband, suffers from hypothyroidism and is on medication. As people familiar with the condition may know, hypothyroid patients often find it difficult to lose weight. They suffer from lower energy levels and get exhausted more easily. We tried different diets in the past, including one by a dietitian, nothing seemed to work until recently.

Even though I didn't have problems with my thyroid neither I had much excess weight, I didn't feel myself fit enough. I had some kind of constant fatigue issue, no matter how much I rested I often felt exhausted.

As a result of our lifestyle change Stefano has lost 9 kg and myself a modest 2 kgs at a slow but consistent pace, without starving ourselves to death. Our LDL and total cholesterol reduced, HDL increased. We've started to feel more energetic. 
How did we succeed this? (I would like to share our own experience with you guys thinking it may interest some but, by all means, do not ever take me as an expert on the topic! )

- Firstly, we started to practice sport regularly, 3 - 4 times a week. I will talk about it in detail in my next post.

As for our change of alimentation...

- We increased protein intake in our diet as we noticed we didn't have as much protein as we thought we did. When losing weight you will want to lose body fat but maintain lean muscle. Protein helps you do that. By the way, there is often a misperception as if Protein = Meat. We increased our protein intake by consuming protein rich foods such as legumes (lentils and beans mostly) and eggs more often, we didn't start eating more meat.

- We have red meat not more than once a week. We rather eat fish or chicken. We are one or two days a week vegeterians.

- For breakfast we eat a mixture of oats, yogurt, raisins, goji berries, cinnamon and nuts. Mostly on the days that we do more physical activity we have protein shake.

- We haven't cut out bread, pasta and rice from our diet but reduced. We rather choose whole grain  varieties when we eat.

- We eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.

- We avoid any refined, processed and convenience foods.

- We don't consume any low/reduced fat or calorie diet products. We rather have full fat alternatives, obviously paying attention on the amount and calorie intake.

- We use extra virgin olive oil for salads and cooking. We add nuts, often toasted sunflower, pumkin and flax seeds, to our salads.

-  We cut out soda and artificial sweeteners altogether. We reduced sugar almost to none (if we don't count 1 teaspoon of unrefined brown sugar that Stefano adds in his espresso) 

- We have a daily treat. We eat 1 - 2 mini square of chocolate which obviously has minimum 70% cocoa ;) They come in many flavors: orange, lemon, mint, licorice, caramel, cocoa beans, ginger, chili, rum and many others.
Very strict diet plans are very hard to stick to. They fail you in so many different levels. You either fall off the vagon very soon or, as soon as you stop dieting you go back to your old eating habits and end up overeating all the things you starved yourself. Therefore we had better not to be too harsh on ourselves ;)

- We drink a lot of water, at least 2 liters a day, plus green, black and herbal teas.

- Even though we don't have any regular, planned snacking between meals, if we feel like to have a snack we opt for one portion fruit or a few unsalted, toasted nuts such as almonds, walnuts, brazilian nuts, hazelnuts and cashews.

- We get two Omega 3 pills a day. (Ours have 500 EPA / 250 DHA) Among its countless benefits they are told to promote weight loss by boosting your metabolism and help you burn fat, increase your HDL cholesterol and lower triglycerides.

- And finally we loosen ourselves once a week. We have one cheat meal. That special meal we enjoy whatever we please such as pasta, pizza, brunch, dessert...etc. It probably goes without saying that we eat reasonably.
This freedom is important for the long-term sustainability of your nutrition plan as well as preventing your body to go in hunger mode which would make you store more fat by slowing down your metabolism and so you'd end up burning less and less calories every day.

- As for physical activity we opted for walking and running. I will talk about that experience in my next post.

Today I'd like to share with you one of our favorite pate recipes...

Ingredients:
600 g water
250 g sun-dried tomatoes
Salt, if needed*

25 g basil leaves
1 clove of garlic
180 g extra virgin olive oil

* My dried tomatoes were already salted so I didn't add any. 


Preparation:

Simit : Turkish Sesame Bread Rings

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

I am so very happy !
There are mainly two reasons for that. The first reason is those marvelous things you see above!
Finally I was able to bake "street simit" just like I wished. 
Those who had the chance to visit Turkey for business or pleasure may be familiar with these gorgeous sesame bread rings.

Simit is a very popular bread in Turkey which you can find almost anywhere, from street vendors to pastry shops and bakeries although the texture of the ones from the last two is a little different from their street-sold brother. 

It is often served for breakfast with cheese and tea or as snack. 

When one lives abroad simit is one of the most missed things of Turkish cuisine. As I haven't been able to find a similar bread around where I live, I am either obliged to bake them myself at home or wait for my next visit to the motherland. 
With the help of our dearest Thermomix and this recipe I am now able to bake delicious street simit whenever I crave for it.

Let's come to the second reason for my happiness, which is that the number of the blog's Facebook followers is now way over 900 and going towards 1000 despite the fact that over the last months the blog was overly silent as never before. (I will tell the reasons for this absence in my next posts.)

To tell you the truth, this growing interest has been the driving force for me to finally sit and prepare this post at a time that I thought I couldn't find time for almost anything.
I hereby promise to try to be more active in the following days ;)

And here is the recipe...

Ingredients for 6 simit:

Dough:
270 g water
10 g sugar
15 g fresh yeast
500 g high gluten flour or strong flour
40 g sunflower oil
12 g salt

Top:
1/2 cup pekmez (grape molasses)
1/2 cup water
120 g toasted sesame seeds*

*  If you don't have toasted sesame seeds, you can simply toast your seeds yourselves.

Toss them in a large pan and toast by stirring constantly with a wooden spoon at medium-low heat until their color turn to be golden brown while you carefully pay attention not to overburn them. When they are done, transfer your toasted seeds into another plate so that they wouldn't continue cooking.

Preparation: