Pasta pronto

Apologies for the sporadic blogging at the moment, work and life are getting in the way!! I am still here and still blogging, but maybe not every day for the time being!

If you need some daily motivation to keep you on track I really do recommend printing off Hailies monthly day by day health calendar from her excellent blog. Stick it to your fridge or desk and read it every day - her suggestions are super easy and just enough to keep you conscious of what you're eating, drinking and whether you are moving or not.

Anyway back to my blog and some good wholesome food.  I was reading up on some research this week and read a summary of some research into ways of lowering unhealthy LDL cholesterol.  The study gave participants either an apple, a supplement containing an equivalent level of apple polyphenols or a placebo.  What they found was that both those on the supplement and eating the apples had significantly lowered levels whilst those on the placebo had no benefit. What was interesting was that there was a significant benefit above the supplement for those eating the whole apple.

This just provides more evidence as to why we should always look to food first as our primary source of nutrition.  Supplements are a great addition to our diets and I honestly wouldn't want to try living without my supplements! But the foundation of health is to be found in whole and healthy foods, which gets me to today's recipe.

I learnt this recipe on the raw food course I did a couple of months back but today I got to try it out on hot doc, my official taste tester, and it passed!  I'm happy to admit that I'm pretty lazy in the kitchen and when I'm tired the temptation of reaching for a jar of sacla pasta sauce is strong, but this Marinara sauce recipe is so ridiculously quick and easy (and according to hot doc tastier than the Jamie Oliver version that actually requires some effort) that you just don't have an excuse to ever use sauce out of the jar ever again!  It's also full of fresh and nutritious raw herbs and veggies.

For a true raw version put some courgettes through a spiraliser to make some raw veg pasta and stir the sauce through. But it was a cold wintery evening so I stirred this into hot spaghetti (gluten-free for me) and added kidney beans to mine and topped hot docs with the easiest chicken recipe i know.

Raw Marinara sauce:

Put the following in a glass bowl or jar and blend with a hand blender or food processor until it's almost smooth ... that's it!

1 red pepper
1 stalk celery
1/2 cup soaked dried tomatoes (I use Merchant Gourmet as they don't add sugar)
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1 clove garlic (I lightly fried mine first as I can't eat raw garlic)
1/2 a handful of fresh basil leaves
spring fresh rosemary
small bunch of fresh parsley
a sprinkle of sea salt
1-2tbsp olive oil