I think this is the last in a series of posts about being sugar free (unless anyone has any questions for me…). To summarise again – in the first post I wrote about all the unexpected places sugar is hidden in food e.g. crisps and stock cubes (read more here). In the second post I listed 10 reasons why I have quit sugar – did you know some claim it can make you look older (read more here)? Then I wrote about how some simple techniques helped me overcome my addiction to sugar (read more here).  This blog post is about what I actually eat, instead of the sugar filled foodstuffs.

For breakfast I eat:

In the summer I have soaked rolled oats (I use water, my kids have milk) with cinnamon, ginger and sunflower seeds sprinkled on them.  Sometimes I flavour them with lemon balm from my garden instead and I have some other ideas for flavouring oats here. My kids also have chopped up banana or pear in their soaked oats. Some people soak them overnight (I think the non-rolled oats would need longer soaking), but I find it is fine to ‘soak’ my rolled oats in the morning (i.e. pour on water or milk, mix and eat).  In the winter I cook the oats and make porridge.

Other sugar free breakfast options include:

• eggs – scrambled, fried, poached – however you like them
• Full fat plain yoghurt with fruit pieces and/or cinnamon or other sweet herbs added to it (I make my own yoghurt – see how here),
• Cooked quinoa (in place of porridge) – I would also have it with cinnamon, ginger and sunflower seeds.

For lunch I eat:

In the summer I have salads, in the winter I have soup.  Both home made and home grown where possible… Instead of adding stock cubes to soup I add homegrown herbs (where possible) like sage, thyme, oregano, lemon balm, rosemary and bay leaves.  I also sometimes add freshly ground sea or rock salt, pepper and sometimes yeast extract (which is a key ingredient in stock cubes). I don’t usually add any salad dressing to my salads, although I might drizzle over apple cider vinegar and cold pressed extra virgin olive oil occasionally…

On the weekends when I am out and about with kids I often make myself rice cake ‘sandwiches’. I have fillings like cheese and cucumber, homemade houmous (click here for houmous recipe), peanut butter, cream cheese…(if you want to avoid the plastic tub that comes with the cream cheese, I have a spreadable yoghurt cheese recipe here) I just use rice cakes in place of bread.  We always take chopped up fruit and veg with us too e.g. slices of apple, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks and satsumas…  I do need to find an alternative to rice cakes though as I don’t like the packaging they come in…

I sometimes make rye waffles (click here for recipe) which I have with houmous or peanut butter.

For snacks I eat:

Apples, satsumas, pears which aren’t too ripe, walnuts, brazil nuts, cashew nuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, carrots, cucumber, celery. peppers (plus other fruit and veg as available – in the summer we have lots of berries, mange tout, sugar snaps and tomatoes which we grow in the garden).

Plus I eat rice cakes (other sugar free crackers could work as well) with peanut butter, coconut oil, houmous, cheese and so on.

For the kids usually mid morning I make up a plate of sliced up fruit, veg sticks, slices of cheddar cheese and a rice cake with yeast extract or peanut butter on it and sometimes I join in.

The other day I had a go at making savoury flapjacks, which I like the idea of, but my recipe needs some work…

For dinner I eat:

To start with I ate wholegrains of all sorts, but after a while gave up wheat (I did this because I thought it might also not be agreeing with me and wanted to see if it made a difference – not sure about that yet…)

I tend to make a lot of meals up as I go along, but this is an example of the types of things I might have for dinner:

• Roast chicken, roast veg and roast potatoes
• Baked potatoes with cheese or houmous (click here for houmous recipe). I do also have baked beans but they do contain sugar…
• Burgers, chips and peas (sometimes I make them myself, sometimes I don’t)
• Fish fingers (or oven cooked salmon) and chips (as above but probably would have a polenta crumb rather than breadcrumbs these days see my first attempt at fish fingers here)
• I used to eat pasta with a cheese sauce (using wholewheat pasta and wholewheat flour in the cheese sauce).
• I used to eat wholewheat homemade pizza.
• Salmon, broccoli and brown rice (used to have noodles drizzled with soy sauce) – cooked in a 3 tier steamer
• Omelettes – I use two eggs mixed with a little milk.  Sometimes I add courgette chunks to the pan before I pour the egg in.  Then I lay slices of cheese over the top of the egg and once cooked fold it in half and serve.
• Stir fried chicken (usually left over from when we have had a roast) and vegetables with soy sauce with brown rice (also drizzled with soy sauce). Soy sauce does contain wheat, but I haven’t quite managed to give that one up yet…
• Spaghetti bolognaise or meatballs in a tomato sauce (I started off with wholewheat spaghetti, but now more likely to have with brown rice, quinoa or grated carrot).  See my meatball recipe here (might use rye flour in future…) and my tomato sauce recipe here   
• Oven baked trout with quinoa or brown rice mixed with homemade tomato sauce (and probably with some peas/ courgette chunks / other veg added to the tomato sauce)
• Lentils and barley, with stir fried veg (including onion and garlic) with added tomato puree and passata or this lovely coconut and coriander lentils
• Very occasionally I do slow cooked lamb with roast potatoes.