Golden Paste recipe – I didn’t forget!!

This recipe may be used for humans as well as animals. I use EVOO as the oil and generally halve the recipe. I have a 1/2 tsp 2-3 times a day or when I think about it. The inflammation in my hands goes away after 3-4 days. If I stop it returns. Also good for cancer prevention. The link has lots of good info on it too. Dr Doug English is an Aussie based in good old Qld (my home state) Oh, and buy your turmeric from a good supplier or health food shop, to avoid any additives. Good luck. CM xx

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (125 mls/60gms) organic turmeric powder
1 cup water (250 mls) PLUS 1 cup water in reserve, if needed
1/3 cup (70 mls) one of the following oils: Raw (unrefined) Cold Pressed Coconut Oil, Linseed (flaxseed) oil or Virgin/Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2-3 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

Bring the turmeric and water to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer until you have a thick paste. This should take about 7-10 minutes and you may need to add additional water along the way.

Add the freshly ground pepper and oil at the end of cooking, when the turmeric and water mixture has cooled down to just warm. Stir well to incorporate the oil and allow to cool.

Omit pepper if you cannot tolerate it. The absorption of turmeric will still be improved by cooking the paste AND by the inclusion of oil, BUT remember it will be less effective without the pepper.

The Golden Paste will keep for 2 weeks, refrigerated or freeze a portion if you think you have too much to use within two weeks.

Use for Golden Milk, Smoothies, stir into Yogurt, add to your dinner plate as a condiment… AND don’t forget your pet’s dinner plate or your horse feed … run wild!

Golden Paste recipe – see, I didn’t forget!!

This recipe may be used for humans as well as animals. I use EVOO as the oil and generally halve the recipe. I have a 1/2 tsp 2-3 times a day or when I think about it. The inflammation in my hands goes away after 3-4 days. If I stop it returns. Also good for cancer prevention. The link has lots of good info on it too. Dr Doug English is an Aussie based in good old Qld (my home state) Oh, and buy your turmeric from a good supplier or health food shop, to avoid any additives. Good luck. CM xx

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (125 mls/60gms) organic turmeric powder
1 cup water (250 mls) PLUS 1 cup water in reserve, if needed
1/3 cup (70 mls) one of the following oils: Raw (unrefined) Cold Pressed Coconut Oil, Linseed (flaxseed) oil or Virgin/Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2-3 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

Bring the turmeric and water to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer until you have a thick paste. This should take about 7-10 minutes and you may need to add additional water along the way.

Add the freshly ground pepper and oil at the end of cooking, when the turmeric and water mixture has cooled down to just warm. Stir well to incorporate the oil and allow to cool.

Omit pepper if you cannot tolerate it. The absorption of turmeric will still be improved by cooking the paste AND by the inclusion of oil, BUT remember it will be less effective without the pepper.

The Golden Paste will keep for 2 weeks, refrigerated or freeze a portion if you think you have too much to use within two weeks.

Use for Golden Milk, Smoothies, stir into Yogurt, add to your dinner plate as a condiment… AND don’t forget your pet’s dinner plate or your horse feed … run wild!

JJ – I just had a veggie & konjac stirfry for dinner!
I have looked for konyaku in a block, but haven’t been able to find it. I mostly buy Changs “Low Cal Wok Ready Noodles” – only Coles seem to stock these (they’re shelved with the other noodles, not with the gluten free products like Slendier is). Although the label doesn’t mention konjac, when you read the ingredients it’s clear that’s what they are made from. I prefer this brand as it’s about half the price of Slendier. These have the same v. low calorie profile as Slendier.

LJoyce, I love Konjac or as I call it Konyaku which is the Japanese word for it.
I usually buy it in Asian food shops. I love the tied ribbon variety which is similar to the slendier angel hair but tied in a knot. I also buy the variety that is just like the angel hair and is not knotted. The block variety is usually in the fridge at the Asian grocery shops. Look for an asian grocery shop that sells Japanese foods and you might find it.
I recently made a soup that I call wild mushroom soup and added the angel hair slendier to it to give it some extra body and it was delicious and not many calories at all and very filling.
I have been making soups for my FDs and I saw the forum that is for recipes so I will try to post some of them there.
Because I have gone vegetarian I am not using chicken stock only veggie stock but I really can not tell the difference in the flavours.

Is anyone having issues with delayed posted & posts no appearing? I thought I lost my earlier post and retyped it. Then it appearded!

CM – yes I’ve noticed the same thing the last 2-3 days.

LJoyce,
$1.80 is a good price. Up here Both woolworths and coles sell the slendier ones but woolworths seems to be the dearest.

The idea was that this would be an alcohol free month. Make that 5 alcohol free days. Herself, normally a none drinker thought, today being Friday ,that she would have a gin. Purely in a spirit of companionship I thought a whiskey would be in order. Mistake. I am good at total commitment but don’t do moderation at all well. The interesting thing is that after five days I wasn’t really sure that i wanted it and I didn’t particularly enjoy it. Which didn’t stop me having more than one. I have been feeling quite lively this last week and getting more done. Weight has been very easy to control. So back on the wagon tomorrow.

For the bird watchers. 30 years ago the Red Kite was almost extinct in UK, being confined to a small area in the Welsh Mountains. Today I saw one in the Wye Valley, down the hill from where I live. Some of our birds are making a comeback. Last year I saw a sea eagle on Mull.

Eep more posts than I can cope with!
Hello to everyone!

Welcome Lindsay,
My suggestion re (evil devil) scales being nasty, is to concentrate on the other things. Remember 5:2 is about long term health, not short term weight loss, so what the scales say in week 3 is irrelevant. Try on a piece of clothing and see how comfortable it feels, put the tape measure around your waist.
And just keep on making Fast Days work well in your life, and Non Fast Days be sensible, delicious, healthy food days.

LJoyce, sad the bill isn’t a mistake. I thought of it as I just got a water bill more than 10 times my usual amount, but (after several stressed emails) discovered they had accidentally read my upstairs neighbours’ meter.

JJulie, the Friday weigh in is a nice idea, but sorry I can’t join in as I am not a weigher! Happy to cheer on and commiserate with the rest of you though!
Friday, or any day!

When I was introduced to muesli it was a mixture of cereal (mainly oats) with dried fruit and nuts and seeds mixed in, to eat as a cereal. Then I met Bircher muesli which was oats, grated apple and yoghurt mixed and left til the oats were soft.
I loved making both these things. When I heard about granola (Neil Diamond 😉 ) is seemed like particularly crunchy muesli, but every recipe I have seen basically makes toffee oats for the base and I never wanted my muesli that sweet!
Anyway my ‘no sugar’ (including apples) has meant muesli went out of my diet.
However my daughter was saying how much she would like some home-made muesli so yesterday I bought all the things to make her some. So nostalgic! And then I got home and found it discussed on this thread! Synchronicity!

I’ll toast and cool oats, and then add bran sticks, chopped almonds, sunflower seeds, sultanas, chopped dried apple and chopped dried nectarine. (Ingredients ordered from most to least!).

Day before fast day for me, and I seem to be having a morning without hayfever, so I will make the most of it!

Best wishes all, cheers for your footy team! Watching NZ and German elections! It is all happening.

Welcome Lindsay, wrt your fluctuating weight after a few weeks on 5:2, my advice is to read Dr M.’s ‘Eat, Fast, Live Longer’ book before you do anything else. If you haven’t already. This gives you the scientific foundation for fasting in easy to read language that can be digested in a couple of days and referred to frequently.

Then, try to master the FDs before making any other changes. I agree with the advice already given above (the need to ultimately learn to eat within the TDEE of your new weight and so on) but I wouldn’t attempt too many changes all at once (such as attempting three FDs a week) because I feel this is just setting yourself up for failure. There is already a tendency to over-compensate how much and what we eat the day before or after a FD – more so if every other day is a FD. This will pass. Once in a routine of twice weekly fasting, you will find that your portion sizes and food choices on NFDs become shaped naturally without your making any conscious decisions. If you make no other changes, you will lose weight.

I joined this thread over three years ago. In that time, I have seen a lot of people come and go – and come again! I read that people find the weight loss slow. Those of us who’ve made it work recognise that it’s a life-long commitment, not a diet, so it doesn’t matter how long it takes as long as you see a downward trend and then are able to maintain your goal weight. There may be some fluctuations and plateaus along the way. We don’t know your age, weight or how much weight you hope to lose – if you can add a profile, that would be helpful.

If you fast twice a week, you will lose weight regardless of your activity level. There are several people contributing here who live a sedentary life due to chronic medical issues and who have lost significant amounts of weight and are now maintaining that loss.

Once you’re in a firm routine of two fasting days (what I like to call ‘naked 5:2’), you can begin to make other healthy changes to your diet. You will learn a lot on these pages but everyone is different so not everything will apply to you. This is why I recommend reading ‘the book’ before you do anything as it will equip you to filter what you read here and help you keep in mind that fasting offers many health benefits, weight-loss being just one of its side-effects – but the one we all latch onto.

Keep posting. You will find a lot of support here. Good luck.

Nice surprise today, 70.9 kg, the lowest I’ve been in years. BMI of 30.4, nearly at my “overweight” goal. I really wasn’t expecting it, I had fish and chips this week, bought too many actually and spread it over three nights. Must’ve compensated somehow I guess, I think my fast days were extra fasty.

Last weekend I was pretty sick, because I was working, without thinking I just ate noodles. I’m thinking I accidentally “overdosed” on msg, it was packet noodles for lunch and then half a large takeaway bowl of noodles for dinner. I ended up so sleepy at work that night (24 hours on call) and headachy, the next afternoon I was ill and had to go home from work. So I’m kind of glad my weight loss still progressed, I was getting a bit tired of that plateau. I won’t do that many noodles again, it was just I didn’t really have time to look after myself.

Jody

Ahoy there!

Just came across this online article and would like your opinion. I found it utter rubbish to say the least. Full of contradictions and one-sided.

http://www.sciencealert.com/8-myths-about-sugar-you-need-to-stop-believing

Copy paste into your browser.

Some really good posts today for Lindsay.

Lindsay I’ve been here since Feb and am still tweaking and adjusting to find my stride. This is a lifesyle change journey not a quick weight loss fix. Scales are helpful but can also be misleading at times. Take monthly waist measurements and would you believe neck measurements which is also a good indication of weight loss. Although not for everyone I use a fitbit watch and scales to track food and fluid intake and exercise. The data i get from that is a real motivator for me as I can see every element of how far I’ve come in such a short time.

MissD is at a birthday party so im off to do the food shopping. Another good indicator of the lifestyle change I’ve made – shopping trolly is full of fresh produce and full fat dairy products rather than processed and low fat foods.

As I mentioned I had an appointment with the dietitian this morning.
When I described the “food zen” exercise I was doing she laughed because she actually had a similar exercise for me to start. She gave me the instructions and we discussed the exercise and the differences to what I’ve been doing.
I’m posting the activity verbatim below, for anyone who wants to try it:

MINDFUL EATING ACTIVITY
The following exercise is designed to have you consciously use all 5 senses when eating high sacrifice foods to allow you to practice savouring food and recognising an appropriate portion size. This exercise is most effective if done before a meal or at a time your mind wanders to high sacrifice foods.
Q1 What time of the day do you most crave high sacrifice foods?_____
Q2 Choose a high sacrifice food_____
Q3 Think honestly about the quantity you would usually WANT to eat to feel satisfied_____
Q4 Write down how long it usually takes you to eat this quantity/type of food_____
Q5 Write down the emotion you often feel after eating this quantity/type of food_____

Strategy:
This exercise takes about 5 minutes. Please follow all verbal instructions, do not chew or swallow before being instructed to do so.
1) Place the desired quantity (per Q3) of high sacrifice food in front of you.
2) Look at the food – take in its shape, texture, edges, size, colour, how does it feel when you touch it?
3) Smell – sweet/savoury, tangy, strong/weak, qualities, what effect does this have on you?
4) Take a small bite – let it sit on your tongue, do not chew. Consider crumbs, flavour developing.
5) Start to chew slowly – consider taste, how flavours are released, different flavours? Listen to the sound of chewing, is it a nice sound?
6) Now finish chewing, do not swallow yet, last few chews – savour the flavour, enjoy the taste.
7) Think about 2 phases of swallowing – sensation and muscle groups involved – consider what happens after you swallow.
8) Continue to eat until you feel satisfied that you have eaten enough.

Questions to Consider:
1) What was the savouring experience like – how did you feel, what were you thinking?
2) What thoughts about food came to mind? Did you enjoy your food?
3) Was there anything different about eating this food?

The activity comes from a book by Dr G Blair-West called “Weight Loss for Food Lovers” (2008)

The main differences with what I’ve been doing so far:
– I haven’t focused on treat foods but on a broad range of snacks. I’ve used fruits, cheese, bread, chocolate and hot drinks. The above activity is focused specifically on high calorie treat foods.
– So for me it’s been about the general experience of eating and appreciating foods, and learning to take my time with the eating process, not specifically on learning to trust myself with high calorie foods – which is a key purpose of this exercise.
– I start the activity with a small portion of food and find at the end of the activity that it’s always enough. With the above activity you start with the amount you think you want (not the amount you rationally think you should eat). So if you think “I could eat that whole block of chocolate”, then that’s what you put in front of yourself. The idea is, hopefully, that buy taking your time and focusing on the whole process of eating slowly that your stopping point will be much sooner than you thought. The dietitian said that you may find that with some foods you will find you always eat the whole of what’s in front of you – these are then foods that you know you need to always portion very carefully. The hope is that with most things you can develop a fairly tight stopping point and that you actually trust yourself to enjoy the food but stop with a small portion that is satisfying. Eventually your answer Q3 will also be a smaller quantity.

The dietitian said that the reason they focus particularly on high sacrifice (or high cal, high sugar, high fat etc) foods, is because people find it fairly easy to sit down and eat a healthy meal as a sedate paste, but high cal foods are often eaten very quickly, often standing up, with almost no time taken to even taste the food – as if you are trying to make disappear fast. Which is why we want the second slice of cake or another biscuit, because we didn’t take time to appreciate the first slowly. If you are going to make the occasional sacrifice of including a high calorie treat food then you need to learn to make it count. And it also needs to become a good experience not one laced with guilt or negative feelings.

In conjunction with increasing trust, the process also aims to reduce your fear of certain foods. This is a necessary skill to learn, because continual denial tends to lead to bingeing on the banned food. At least it does with the people my dietitian is working with – those with a binge eating disorder. Essentially its a tool to more away from an “all or nothing” approach and learn moderation, control and trust.

Just had a late lunch – 1/2 punnet of strawberries and a pot of tea – it was all I needed after a big breakfast.

The strawberries were lovely – good texture and sweet fragrant flavour. I’ve had such disappointing strawberries all winter, so these are a pleasant surprise.
Thin – please thank your compatriots for me – these we W.A. strawberries 😀

Sorry hit the wrong button and it posted!

Yesterday I gave myself a little treat for dinner and had carrot and celery sticks with hommus. The hommus had quite a lot of calories in it, but still did not take me over my daily amount. But it was really good to eat!!!

Does anyone know of a good hommus with fewer calories than the normal bought ones?

Yesterday’s soup was delicious, but the quantity I made would have served 8 people. I will have some again for lunch today then freeze the remainder for later in the week.

Hope everyone has a great Sunday and take care, eat well and be happy!!

To continue JustJulie’s Japanese theme, I have just got home from watching the Russian State Opera perform Madame Butterfly. We have quite a small theatre by big city standards and I am not convinced we saw all of their first team, but the four main players were good. Butterfly was probably the best I have seen in the role. There were grown men in the audience in tears.

Good morning SHs, after some lovely sunny Spring days we now have a few cold wet days in Adelaide.

JJ – Like Cinque, I also make my own hommus. The commercial ones have a high fat content and some also have added sugar and preservatives. In summer I have a container of homemade hummus in the fridge most of the time for easy healthy snacks.
You can create the hummus in a blender, food processor or even with a stick blender and a plastic jug. (I don’t personally like using a traditional blender as I have trouble scraping all the hommus out.)
My recipe is similar to Cinque’s. You need 1/2 tin of drained chickpeas (keep the water), 1-2 garlic cloves, a lemon, 1 tsp cumin, salt to taste and up to 1tsp sesame oil. A whole tin of chickpeas will make a huge batch of hommus so I would just use half the tin (the rest of the chickpeas can be frozen in a ziploc bag for the next batch of hommus). Start with 1/2 tin chickpeas, the garlic, the juice of 1/2 lemon, 1/2 tsp sesame oil and 1/2 tsp cumin. Then puree – if it’s too thick to process easily add a little water (preferably the water from the tin). Then taste and add more lemon, cumin, salt and sesame oil, until you get a flavour and texture that you like. The reason I add the sesame oil is because it gives the sesame flavour that would normally come from tahini but with far fewer calories as you are using such a small amount. It’s a flavour-calorie compromise.
This hommus will keep in a sealed contained in the fridge for a week – if it lasts that long. It’s a really healthy snack with raw veg regardless of whether its a FD or a NFD.

Penguin – glad you enjoyed your night out. It’s the drawback of living away from the big cities – access to arts and culture can be a bit difficult, I’m glad a good performance came to your theatre.

Cinque enjoy your babysitting. I’m fasting today too, but I have a day at home.
I have some veg & konjac stirfry left from Friday and I think I’ll make a pot of lemon-butternut soup. Usually by the end of October I don’t feel much like hot soup, so this probably the last pot for the year as I still have a few containers of other soups in the freezer to get through.

After Cinque describing how much the sugar in fruit affects her I realised how lucky I am that I don’t get that reaction. As long as I stick to whole foods I seem to get away with the naturally occurring sugars in them without cravings being triggered. I can even add the occasional teaspoon of stevia/sugar/honey to something and get away with it. I was wondering how often I did this and went back and looked over my food records – it’s about 2 tsp added per week and usually stevia. Although last week my 1 square of dark chocolate most evenings added 2g sugar per day as well. However this is not counting the occasional desserts that I have away from home that are laden with sugar – I really do get cravings and a sugar hangover from them. I looked back over my food diary for those as well and realised that this is now happening 1-2 times per month, which is a significant improvement for me. What I’m also pleased about is that even though occasionally indulging in these foods will spur my appetite I have more ability to say no to it now – probably because I’m not having to deal with it constantly anymore.

Minka, I bought a small bag of coconut flour yesterday to try your bread recipe. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the powdered psyllium powder in either supermarket (no Coles here). I’ll have to wait until I can get to either Bridgewater or Blackwood where they have Coles. I might try putting some psyllium husks into my mini food processor and see if it turns it into powder.

Hope you all have a lovely Sunday.

A late FD entry for me. Joining Cinque and LJ. Embarking on a Madame Flavour choc mint tea treat. Only 2kj per bag and I make three cups out of one bag! (Apologies to the tea leaf ceremony drinkers, I’m afraid I’m not too proud to stick a bag in a mug).

Thanks JJulie & LJ, I will go for the Changs non-Angel Hair. Good job to the week’s losers of which there are several. CM, I’ll join your weigh-in at 60.2kg. Would like to get back below 60kg before OH comes home as it’s our anniversary this week and I’m sure there’ll be a restaurant meal coming up.

I made another batch of cauliflower soup yesterday; unlike you LJ, I’m happy to have that year round. I bought a whopping Chinese cabbage and will make some more miso tonight, Shiitake mushrooms soaking now and a fresh piece of ginger ready to grate. Yum.

I bought some lovely Japanese shimeji mushrooms (i love these the most!!) and decided not to make another wild mushroom soup for dinner. Instead I am going to adapt a Japanese Nabe recipe into a vegetarian one and have that. Nabe is a type of hotpot or stew in Japan and usually has konyakku (the block one cut into thin slices), cabbage, shallots, tofu, carrot, daikon, and various mushrooms (shitake, enoki, shimeji and black fungi) I love the black fungi too!! the vegetables are seasonal so you can also add bok choy, mizuna, or other green vegies. The meat is usually chicken either bite size pieces of thigh meat or mince chicken with chives, mirin, soy and an egg to bind and then make into little balls called tsukune. The liquid base can be made from soy or dashi, but I love the miso base when I make it.
I am just going to leave out the chicken meat, use one of the new Chang’s noodle packets for the konyaku and add about 150g of tofu at the last minute to heat up. The tofu I have is lower in calories them the one I usually use for Nabe, but it is a softer texture and may break up if I add it too early.
I will work out the calories as I make it.

LJoyce, I am going to try your recipe for hommus, it sounds easier and less calories than the recipe I found on the internet which added olive oil and tahini to it. Thank you so much for posting it.

Well catch up with everyone tomorrow morning, Monday is fast day for me!!

Happy fasting…..

Hi Thin,

Love the Madame Flavour Choc Mint treat! Is my favourite!

LJ, I’m glad you had success turning the psyllium flakes into powder! I don’t have a spice grinder and find that the ‘Coles Simply Psyllium Powder’ found in the health food section of our local Coles, works a treat and saves me a lot of hassle, and a bag goes a long way. I’m so glad you went through the effort to turn the husks into powder, LJ, since I formerly tried a recipe that used husks and the bread was so gluggy, lumpy and baked inconsistently; a real disappointment. Some bites the texture was slim/grainy and kind of reminded me of Metamucil bread! 🙂

I’m fasting again today, so I think I’m joining you Thin and Cinque and maybe some others. Am so tired, only briefly skimmed thread. Apologies if I missed anyone else.

I’m with you LJ, I like to have my cals in the bank on a FD. I think I might panic if I knew I had hours to go and not much left to look forward to. It’s all a psychological game to play with oneself. I haven’t felt hungry at all today. I remember you said recently that a FD is easier for you when you’ve over-indulged the day before. I’m the opposite, I find it hard to fast when I’ve had too much the previous day as it sets me up for wanting to graze. I still do it regardless but I feel more challenged. Today’s a breeze. Ah really, they’re all a breeze after completing over 300 of them!

That soup sounds delish JJulie. Not so much the beetroot dip! (it’s the only food I literally cannot eat). I make my own hommus too. Agree, it can be annoying trying to retrieve it all from the depths of the blender.

Hi Minka, nice to have you with us today. I hadn’t replied to your email because I didn’t want to add to your study stress. But I know I owe you one. You’re the one who introduced me to the choc mint Madame Flavour. My fave is still the choc orange but my local Coles doesn’t stock it and this is my second favourite. So, what’s on your FD menu today?

Thin, I posted the recipe of the Nabe on the recipe site if you are interested.

I am going to try the hommus recipe that LJoyce posted, will do this tomorrow.

What is Countdown on?

I just had a worse realisation – I used to have a haircut that looks awfully like the one I can see Ted Mulry sporting.
I hope the mullet stays dead forever – that’s one rerun we can do without.