• Why not give out other little gifts? Pens, pencils, balloons, fake tattoos, stickers – or even tooth brushes!!!
• For home (maybe not so suitable for Trick or Treaters) you can make little ‘Vampire bites’ by slicing apples into thin long slices and spreading nut butter in the middle, with some bleaches almonds as teeth! Any nut butter in the middle makes a tasty healthy snack…
• Mix nuts and chocolate nuts, this will reduce the sugar and the protein in the nuts will balance their blood sugars a little bit more than pure chocolate…
• I’m not a fan of Baby Bells but it is a cheese that is suitable for Trick or Treat…and again, the protein is a good way of balancing the effects of the sugar. So when they all get home with their bags of goodies, it’s no bad thing to have cheese cubes ready to go…
• Fruit is an obvious option, not always well received, but still good to try.
• Small toys…if you can buy a pack of little somethings that can be given out in singles…
• Do you have any old Christmas Crackers lurking anywhere? Or anything else that goes bang!
• Apples dipped in chocolate is better than apples dipped in toffee, as the latter can really damage teeth.
• Even packets of crisps might be a better option than more sweet things! Still junk food but slightly less damaging.
• Better still would be salty nuts, preferably not peanuts but almonds or cashews, and in an ideal world freshly salted/roasted and salted by you so you know the salt is a healthy sea salt and is lightly used without any added MSG. In tiny bags…
• Little juice cartons – again, not a huge amount of difference perhaps between fruit juice and sugar but at least you can limit the other nasty additives in many sweets. If you buy them in packs and only give one out it’s not too expensive.

All other ideas welcome! Happy Halloween everybody – it only comes once a year so lets enjoy it and make the most of the family time together. Don’t be scared to have some fun!!!

Although it can be upsetting to find your Cholesterol levels are higher than desirable, in some ways it can serve as a very useful motivator to improve your diet and your exercise routine! We all know that avoiding unhealthy fats is important for everyone, so most people who want to have a healthy diet aim to cut out or reduce fried foods, fatty meats, too many rich and sweet foods and too many processed foods.

Alongside these changes it is important to increase amount of soluble and insoluble fibre in your diet (fibre binds to fat and carries it out of your body). So plenty of vegetables – raw, lightly cooked or juiced. And plenty of fruit (fruit is best in its whole form – too many smoothies and juice are actually very sugary and can be worse for you because of the high sugar levels). And of course plenty of wholegrain foods – bread, rice, even pasta can be made healthy by choosing the wholegrain varieties.

Apart from fruit and vegetables, another good way of improving your fibre levels is to eat porridge or muesli (not over-processed cereals like cornflakes) and add a selection of super-healthy ingredients like ground seeds (flax has the best track-record of lowering cholesterol – try Irish Health Oils ground Flax Seed) and lecithin. Some probiotic yoghurt is also excellent – preferably not a sugary yoghurt but a natural one. Add berries, grated apple or pear and you have a super-healthy breakfast!

It’s important to remember that not all fat is bad (confusing I know). For example, cooking on medium to low heats with olive oil, Rape Seed Oil or an organic Sunflower Oil is fine, and so is eating home-made salad dressings with good natural oils (for example try Flax, Udo’s Hemp, Olive, Pumpkin, Avocado). Trying to cut out all fats can actually be harmful – our bodies need fat for many purposes including keeping our heart healthy! It might seem contradictory but taking nutritional oils – as long as they are healthy oils and we use them correctly – is healthy, so for example you might decide to take Eskimo Oil ( a fish oil) or Udo’s Oil (a plant-based omega oil) to keep your ‘good’ HDL cholesterol levels up and your not-so-good LDL levels down. Call into Organico for more information.

If you are advised to try to reduce your levels in a few months and feel you need extra help, you might find it useful to try taking Plant Sterol Esthers. We have all heard the adverts for Plant Sterols, they have been shown to reduce LDL levels by at least 10% in 6 weeks, which when combined with the reduction you will gain by changing your diet and lifestyle is very significant. Plant Sterols are now being added to margarine and sweet drinks – but to me anyway it seems strange that you need to take a lot of either fatty or very sweet foods in order to get the active dose! Like many things that are healthy it is vey hard to get the required dose through diet alone. We now have an alternative called Zerochol, a tablet of pure Plant Sterol Esthers which you take once a day with your main meal. And the interesting news is that the manufacturers say it is safe to take even if you are on medication, and can increase the effectiveness of some anti-cholesterol medication to the extent that your GP might reduce the dose.

The dressing
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 clove garlic, grated
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
3 tbsp peanut butter
juice of a small lime

For the salad
1 red and 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and cut into small strips
2 spring onions, finely sliced
1 carrot grated
1/3 cucumber, cut down the middle and using a teaspoon scoop out all seeds then slice thinly
bunch of coriander, roughly chop up
2 tbsp sesame seeds

Take 1 Packet of rice noodles, approx 200g, soak in boiling water for 10 mins checking for them to go nice and soft…but you don’t want them to fall apart!

For the dressing, whisk together all the dressing ingredients in a bowl or jug.

For the salad, place all the salad ingredients into a bowl. Pour over the dressing and mix thoroughly to coat everything well. Eat!

Ingredients:

4tbsp vegetable oil
100ml maple syrup
4tbsp honey
300g rolled oats
200g rye or spelt flakes or just more oats
3tbsp sunflower seeds
4 tbsp sesame seeds
3tbsp pumpkin seeds
100g dried fruit, sultanas, raisins, blueberries… anything you fancy
50g almonds

Heat oven to 150C/fan 130C/gas 2. Mix the oil, maple syrup, honey in a small sauce pan and heat gently, stiring to combine.
Weigh out all the remaining ingredients, except the dried fruit into a big bowl,then add the oil mixture and mix well.
Tip the granola onto two baking sheets and spread evenly. Bake for 15 mins, then mix in the dried fruit and almonds, and bake for 10-15 mins more. Remove and scrape onto a flat tray to cool.

Serve with a mixed green salad and a combination of grated fresh courgette and carrots dressed with light lemon juice and olive oil dressing.

Pancakes:
120g fine maize meal
80g spelt flour
Pinch smoked paprika
Black pepper
Large pinch salt
3 eggs
450mls milk
Olive oil

Method:
Sift flours, spices and salt together into a bowl. Whisk the eggs in a jug, add the milk, then whisk them into the flour to get a smooth pouring batter. Heat a frying pan, preferable a crepe pan but if not then a good non stick one will do (I just treated myself to a great ‘healthy’ non-stick pan from the CookShop in Bantry – it’s a great addition to the kitchen). Brush with olive oil and pour a ladle of the mix into the pan, swirl around to evenly coat the pan and cook for a minute or two before flipping over for the same time on the other side. This batter will make approx 12 pancakes (you won’t need that many but it leaves room for a few trial runs!!) The quantities for the filling are rough as you can use more of any of the ingredients that you like or you simply have more of!

Filling:
1 medium butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and diced
1 big onion, sliced
Olive oil, for roasting
200g to 250g feta cheese
small bunch fresh sage, chopped finely
70g butter
Salt & Pepper

Toss the squash and onion in oil and roast on 200 degrees until soft approx 25 minutes (you can leave the oven on as you will be using it again to reheat the filled pancakes). Melt the butter and add the chopped sage, heat through for a few minutes. Crumble the feta into the squash, adding the sage but keeping back a little of the butter to brush over the pancakes. Season after tasting the filling as the feta can be very salty.

Assemble:
Divide the filling roughly into 6 in the bowl. Spoon 1/6 of the mix into the pancakes, spread it out across in a sausage shape and roll up. Brush the tops with the rest of the Sage Butter and place in the oven (medium heat) on a baking tray on a sheet of parchment paper for 10 minutes. Serve when piping hot!

Use a pasta of your choice, I use Biona Spelt spaghetti or tagliatelle but penne will work too. This recipe is delicious with really fresh local courgettes!

1 small onion, chopped
2 tblsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1 clove garlic, more if you like more….
4 or 5 small courgettes, sliced on the diagonal
Bunch fresh thyme, taking leaves off the stalks
Bunch of parsley, chopped
1/2 Small tub of creme fraiche, 100mls approx
Zest and juice of 1 small lemon… an organic or at least unwaxed one
Some freshly grated Parmesan or Manchego
and if you want to make it richer 75g soft goats cheese

Method
Heat olive oil and cook onion for 5 mins until soft with a pinch of salt and some pepper.
Put the pasta on to cook with lots of hot water and a pinch of salt.
Then add the garlic to the onions and cook for a few more minutes, before adding courgettes and thyme. Cook for a few minutes until courgettes are soft then take off the heat and add the lemon juice, zest, creme fraishe and parsley.
Drain the pasta when its cooked and add to the sauce, stir, adding the grated cheese (and the goats cheese if your using it) and enjoy!