Sugar free banana bread

I have posted several times about what a fussy eater Noo is. You can read here and here how much his eating habits drive me crazy. I'm always swinging between the emotions of fear for his health and exasperation at the stubbornness of that little kid who is so energetic, healthy and happy, yet so under fed. If Noo sat down and ate an entire Happy Meal I think I'd probably cry with joy. You don't hear that from many parents, do you?

Noo decided last week he liked banana bread again so I was more than happy to oblige by making him some. I would make him anything as long as he ate it and it had no sugar - so I can have some too. Yes, I'm back on that bandwagon.

Last Monday I was up late trawling through Pinterest (go on, follow me!) going through the multitude of 'healthy' banana bread recipes. Egg free, gluten free, sugar free, nut free, with nuts, no oil, with oil, vegan... It was all getting overwhelming but I clicked like on a recipe I thought looked pretty good and repinned it.

The pin then showed itself on my Facebook feed and a mum I know through my online study ventures commented on the picture, chucking in her favourite banana bread recipe. It was so simple! But it included the banned substance. A further comment from me asking if I could swap out the sugar with rice malt syrup prompted a comment from my sister's mother in law who said if I was to do that I'd have to up the flour or the batter would be too runny.

And, voila! I had a recipe to try and I had to try it immediately.

At midnight I found myself throwing the ingredients together and by the time the loaf had been baked it was heading towards 1am but the recipe was a success.

Sugar free banana break mark I and Noo with a mouth full of it

Every last mouthful was eaten and the friends and family that had a taste enjoyed this delicious sugar free treat.

After a few requests on Facebook for the recipe I decided to make this delicious sugar free banana bread again, taking photos as I went to publish here on the blog. What better way to get clicks? Surely that title alone has a whole lotta SEO magic happening. Only time can tell.

Without further babbling, here is the recipe:

Sugar free banana bread

Ingredients

125 grams butter
1 cup rice malt syrup
1 egg beaten lightly
3 small-medium ripe bananas
A sprinkle or two of mixed spice or cinnamon (depending how spicy you like it)
1.5 cups of wholemeal self raising flour


Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line a loaf tin.

2. Melt butter and rice malt syrup in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

3. Mash bananas in a large bowl. Add flour and spice.

3. Combine cooled butter and rice malt syrup with egg then add to banana, flour and spice. Stir until combined.

4. Pour batter into lined loaf tin and bake for 50 minutes or until cooked.

Mix it, bake it, rise it, cool it, eat it - super easy sugar free banana bread

That's it!

Let me know if you make it and how it goes.

Yum, yum pig's bum.

V.

Disclaimer: Just because this recipe is sugar (fructose) free does not mean it is low in calories but it is super easy to make and super delicious to eat. It is a treat and should be treated as such. I take no responsibility for anyone who wants to gobble up the whole loaf in one go and then steps on the scales only to find they've stacked on a keg or two!

The BB sugar experiment: The emotional stages of addiction

It is three months since I first started thinking about dealing with my addiction to sugar. Yes, despite what some people say, my belief is that sugar is addictive. I have gone through the same emotional stages of addiction in my effort to get sober from sugar addiction as I did when I gave up my other vices.

Just thinking about quitting sugar was akin to me contemplating giving up cocaine and alcohol back in the mid 00s. At first it seemed like a ridiculous idea and likely impossible to achieve, but somewhere, deep in my heart, I knew I had to do something. Too many things in my life were not right and all the indicators pointed to that one substance: Sugar.

I started Googling "sugar", "quitting sugar", "is sugar bad"... Those types of search terms. I wanted to know the truth about sugar. I was looking for a way out. I was in denial about my addiction and I wanted someone somewhere to tell me it was ok to keep eating that delicious substance. Kind of like wanting to believe that a couple of glasses of red wine a day was good for me. Or a gram or two of cocaine on the weekend was just me being young and cool and having a good time when really it was destroying me, one line at a time.

My sister or my mum would make comments that maybe Noo's issues with food were because I allowed him to eat too much sugary crap. I got defensive and rebuked that I didn't give him that much crap food, and anyway, how could they know there would be a connection? Maybe Noo was just a fussy eater. Just born that way! The both of them pissed me off. Plus, I'd already had to give up so many of my coping methods (like drink, drugs and ciggies) and I was getting angry at the thought of having to give up chocolate too.

I bought Sarah Wilson's I Quit Sugar and David Gillespie's The Sweet Poison Quit Plan. I started thinking about just how much sugar Noo and I bought and ate. We weren't just eating the added sugar that is found in bottled pasta sauces and yoghurt, we were also eating a huge amount chocolate and lollies. My lapband had helped me lose nearly 20kg but I'd put 6kg back on which made me realise I needed to do more and I made the decision Noo and I would give up sugar together.

Three weeks into our sugar sobriety I relapsed. I just couldn't let go of my crutch. I started bargaining with myself that I didn't have to give up sugar, I could just get my lapband tightened up and start heavily restricting my portion sizes again, but still get chocolate though. Or I could just accept myself as a fat girl and learn to love myself the way I was. Both of these options, while plausible, still didn't address my feeling physically like shit and my failure yet again to start doing something about my health and my weight was making me feel depressed.

On Friday 21 September I received an email from a friend who had signed up to Droptober - Just lose 2kg. I looked into this program and thought this is something I could commit to. From that first day I found out about Droptober something clicked and I stopped eating chocolate and lollies. A couple of weeks went by and I was eating more fruit and vegetables and good healthy meat. Before I knew it I wasn't even craving the white stuff any more. I became more aware of my body's hunger signals which came around three times a day rather than having that constant need to put something in my gob which comes with sugar addiction.

By the end of Droptober, the penny dropped: Not only had I lost 3.5kgs, got my taste buds back for good food and my cooking mojo returning after a long absence, but the headaches I'd been suffering for years had disappeared too. I'd been to the doctor so many times about these headaches that the next step was going to be a referral for a CT scan.

Five weeks sober from sugar and my headaches were gone!

Then the final proof that my sugar addiction is toxic to me was the return of the dreaded headaches this week after I indulged in my birthday cake on Tuesday and Wednesday and last night. Seven weeks of feeling healthy, energetic, well slept, and craving free came to an end on my 38th birthday.

It is not all doom and gloom though. Oh no. In fact, I couldn't be happier! I have finally reached the acceptance phase of the emotional stages of addiction. I have accepted that sugar (that is all sugar, minus whole fruit) is toxic and the deliciousness of it does not outweigh the cost eating it has on my body. Just like alcohol, sugar does bad things to me, just like nuts might do to someone who is allergic to them. I am allergic to sugar: It makes me anxious, depressed, moody, affects my concentration, gives me dreadful headaches and makes me fat, lethargic and stops me from being the person I want to be.

So back on the wagon I go. Being in the acceptance phase doesn't mean that it is going to be easy from here on in, but it is better than when I was in the denial phase.

Sobriety, whether from booze or from sugar takes constant work and vigilance.

Are you on the quit sugar bandwagon too? How are you going with it? What consequences do you suffer from when you overdo it with the white stuff?


V.

Linking up with the fabulous Grace at With Some Grace for FYBF.

Recipe: Harissa roasted veggies with chicken and brown rice

Lately I've been babbling a lot about the return of my cooking mojo (see here and here).  Rather than teasing you with just food photos on my Instagram feed, I thought I'd share with you some of my recipes of late. Some are original babblingbandit.me creations but some have been adapted from other sources.

This one has been adapted from Taste.com.au which is probably my most used recipe source. I also love the Fairfax Cuisine website. On Taste.com.au they call it Brown rice and harissa roasted vegetable salad. I have jazzed it up a bit and have christened it...

Harissa roasted veggies with chicken and brown rice

Harissa roast veggies with chicken and brown rice

What you need:

1 cup brown rice

1 medium zucchini

1 small eggplant

1 small red capsicum 

1 medium red onion

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon of harissa powder

500 grams organic minced chicken

1-2 tablespoon pine nuts

Juice of half a lemon

Store bought hummus 

Handful of chopped coriander and mint

What to do:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.

2. Add brown rice to a pot of boiling water (around 3-4 cups), return to boil then turn down to medium heat and boil gently for 30 minutes. Strain. 

3. Chop veggies into small pieces, keeping onion separate.

4. Mix 1 tbsp of the olive oil with the harissa in a large bowl.

5. Add chopped veggies excluding the onion to bowl of harissa paste. Stir ensuring all the vegetables are coated in paste. Spread veggie mix on a tray lined with baking paper. Bake for approximately 30 minutes stirring occasionally.

6. Meanwhile, add remaining olive oil to large frypan or wok and saute red onion on medium-low heat until onion has softened and gone translucent.

7. Add chicken mince to pan, stirring to break up chunks and mix together with onion.

8. While chicken is cooking, in a separate pan gently fry pine nuts to bring out the flavour. You can do this under the grill as long as you watch the nuts closely because they will burn easily. Also, probably not so easy if you've got your veggies still roasting away in the oven!

9. When chicken is cooked through stir cooked rice through the chicken and onion mix. Then combine roasted veggies to the mix, as well as the pine nuts. Season with salt and pepper.

10. Remove chicken, veggie and rice mix from the heat. Stir through freshly squeezed lemon juice.

11. Serve with a dollop of store bought hummus, chopped coriander and mint and with either lemon or fig wedges.

Serves 4

I made this for my dad and me during the week and dad loved it! It is seriously yum bowl food that is sugar free, low in fat and is packed with flavour.

And obviously you can make this without the chicken if you're having a meat free night.


V.

babblingbandit.me does Droptober: It was all about the food

One of the best things about registering for Droptober - Just lose 2kg has been the return of my cooking mojo (for pictures see here). When I came home from London five years ago I lost it. I wrote about it back in 2010 so this has clearly been a long term issue. My cooking mojo has come and gone since 2007 but mostly I have been a lazy eater. Especially this year.

Back when I was working the usual Monday to Friday I always spent half my afternoon (if not more) thinking about what I would cook in the evening for dinner. I looked for recipes online or in my many cookbooks and then I picked up anything I needed from the supermarket on the way home. Preparing and cooking food was a way to wind down after a big day at the office. I loved it.

Post my break down in 2007, as my interest in food waned my waistline expanded - weird, right? You'd think I should have lost weight if I didn't care about food any more. But I replaced my drug and alcohol addictions with chocolate, lollies and cake. I ate whatever was easiest: cheese and crackers for dinner, or pizza delivery or greesy Chinese takeaway or coffee and biscuits. Lots of high fat and sugar loaded, low nutrition food.

I tried Lite n Easy, Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. None of them inspired me to feel any love for fresh fruit and veggies. I even discussed it with my old psychiatrist: Why don't I care about cooking and eating well when it used to be such a part of my daily routine? She thought I might have an association with the whole preparing/cooking/eating ritual with having a glass of wine or four. But I didn't think that was it. Before I lived in London, I never drank during the week and I was cooking most nights then. There had to be more to it.

Now most of my family are watching their weight in the lead up to summer. Even my parents have a plan to get back on the weight loss bandwagon starting from 1 November. Yolanda was trying to give our mum a pep talk the other day to get her psyched. Yo told mum all she had to do was the following, for just one month to see what happens:

1. Quit all sugar
2. Stop eating butter and cheese
3. Eat red meat only once a week
4. Walk every day

That shouldn't be too hard. Yo didn't say she had to count calories or write down what she ate and calculate points or go to the gym. But our mum, the retired chef, exclaimed: "I'll just have to lose interest in food!". Now that is a weird theory, for sure. It makes the assumption that if you want to lose weight you can only eat boring food not worth having an interest in. I know, and I bet you know, that is so not the truth!

Personally, I believe the opposite and participating in Droptober has helped me realise:

When I feel good and care about myself, when I 'heart my body' and want to treat it right, my love affair with cooking and eating good food is reignited. 

The colour and vibrancy, the smells, textures and tastes of fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and nuts, seeds and legumes and grains... become alive again!

How good does this look? YUM!

So here I am, on the evening of the last day of Droptober. As of this morning I am DOWN 3.5kg since the beginning of the month, far exceeding the Droptober goal of losing just 2kg but 2.5kg short of personal goal of 6kg.

But I have achieved a HUGE amount:

I have gone 40 DAYS without a single bit of chocolate

I have been (almost) sugar free for 40 days

My mood has been stable for the whole month (minus 48 hours last weekend)

My energy levels have been high

The headaches I've been suffering from for YEARS have completely disappeared

And, last but by no means least, I have raised $330 (as of this evening)
for the Droptober charities Variety - The Children's Charity and Kid's for Life.

How good is all that!

Rather than singing yeehah and gorging on the nearest bit of chocolate I'm on to the next challenge: Sarah Wilson's "I quit sugar pre-Christmas program" and the BB sugar experiment continues. Plenty more on that to come.


V.