Making Friends with Salads

Winter is well and truly over; so it’s time to turn over a new leaf (see what we did there?). With the Aussie sun quickly warming up our days it’s time for us to spend more time outside, enjoy lunchtime a bit more, and best of all, get together with friends and family for those great summer afternoon.

Summer lunches always seem to be dominated with a leafy salad. While we love our greens, there is so much more you can do with a salad. Lettuce forget those days, and make friends with salads (alright, we’ll stop) by wowing your friends and family with this great barley salad with carrot, date and raisin recipe!

 

BARLEY SALAD WITH CARROT, DATE AND RAISIN
Ingredients
300 grams of pearl barley
1 tea spoon of both coriander and cumin seeds. Dry-roasted, coarsely pounded in a mortar and pestle
3 carrots, coarsely grated
40 grams (¼ cup) pine nuts, toasted
40 grams (¼ cup) golden raisins, soaked in warm water for 5 minutes, drained
3 dates, pitted, cut into slivers
Juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange
½ teaspoon of sweet paprika
¼ teaspoon turmeric
1 bunch coriander, coarsely chopped
¼ cup of flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon of red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil

Method
Cook the barley boiling water with salt for 20-30 minutes or until tender. Drain and transfer to a bowl.

Set the barley aside to cool, and combine the spices with the ingredients in a bowl and toss to mix. Add barley to the mix, toss to mix and season to taste. Your barley salad is now ready to serve!

 

We love this recipe. It’s very citrusy, which is refreshing for summer, whilst the spices add a lot of flavour. Barley is high in protein and low in fat; and offers a really nice texture over leafier salads. We also recommend adding a little chilli for a bit of zing, and to serve chilled!

Gluten Myths Busted!

There is a common misconception that gluten intolerance and coeliac disease is the same thing. However, we are here to bust this myth!

 

Please explain…

 

Having a gluten intolerance (or a non-coeliac gluten sensitivity as it sometimes called) causes a stress response in the body and will result in discomfort from eating gluten- however it is not a disease.  Because it is not a disease, people who suffer from intolerance to gluten may not get officially diagnosed.

Coeliac disease on the other hand is an inherited autoimmune disorder that will stay with you throughout your life. This makes for a lengthy process to be diagnosed.

When a person with coeliac disease eats gluten, the gluten causes an abnormal immune response, which damages the lining of the small intestines walls. This can reduces the small intestines ability to absorb nutrients and can often result in malnutrition.  If a person with this disease continues to go undiagnosed, they may become very ill.

Both sufferers from gluten intolerance and coeliac disease will feel significantly better once they cut gluten out of their diet.

Read more here: http://www.coeliac.org.au/

 

The basics…

This may seem obvious to some, but many people don’t know where gluten comes from… gluten is found in wheat, barley, rye and any foods that contain those grains!

Some of the main foods that must be avoided if you suffer from coeliac disease or gluten intolerance include:

Bread, cakes, pasta, noodles, biscuits, crackers, cereals, beer and many more!

 

Top picks

There are many bad gluten free products out there but luckily for you, all our products are good!

Wait, they are better than good – in fact, you won’t even notice the difference!

Our top picks from our gluten free range:

Zehnder Bread, Kez’s Free Biscuits, Luke’s Organic & Organ crackers!

 

While we are talking gluten free, we need to introduce you to the amazing Martine from ‘Chomp Chomp’. Martine has made not let her intolerance get in the way of her pasion for food, and is a local Perth, gluten free blogger. She has some amazing photos to check out and heaps of places you can safely go out for dinner, so have a look here! 

 

To sum up

Surprising fact: many gluten free products often contain more sugar and fats to hide the “gluten free” taste, so you may need to bear this in mind if your counting calories!

Another fun fact: many people will feel better for reducing the amount of gluten in their diet, so if you are feeling like gluten might be causing you problems then try it out.

 

P.s

We loved this post from Buzzfeed about  people who are actually gluten free are tired are hearing…

I can’t live without bread

Can’t you just cheat?

Do you miss pasta? Do you miss pizza? Do you miss cake?

Our favourite… Are you just doing it because it’s trendy?