Pasta with spicy sausage and cream

Ingredients

• 25 g butter or olive oil
• 700 g freshripe tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped – or 2 x 400g tins of tomatoes
• 4 cloves garlic, grated or crushed
• 2 tsp chopped rosemary
• sugar
• 225 g kabanossi sausage or chorizo, sliced into ½ cm rounds
• pinches dried red chilli flakes
• 175 ml single cream
• 2 tbsp chopped parsley
• 500 g farfalle, rigatoni or penne
• 4 tbsp grated parmesan

  Method

  1. Melt the butter or olive oil in a large saucepan and add the chopped tomatoes, garlic and rosemary. Season with salt and pepper and a pinch of sugar. Cook the tomatoes until they have begun to soften, or for about 5 minutes.
  
  2. Add the sausage to the pan with the chilli flakes, cream and half the chopped parsley. Allow to simmer with the lid off until the mixture has reduced by half, 10-20 minutes, stirring frequently. Take off the heat and check and adjust the seasoning.
  
  3. Meanwhile cook the pasta in a large pan of salted boiling water until it is slightly al dente (8-10 minutes). Once cooked, drain and toss with the sauce.
  
  4. Plate the pasta in a big serving bowl and scatter with the grated parmesan cheese and the rest of the parsley and serve immediately.
  
   

Toad in the hole

Ingredients

• 225 g plain flour
• pinches sugar
• pinches freshly grated nutmeg
• 3 eggs
• about 275 ml milk
• 25 g dripping
• 8 best-quality, locally sourced pork sausages, pricked with a fork
• salad or steamed green vegetables, to serve

For the onion gravy

• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 2 large onions, finely chopped
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 600 ml dark stock
• dash gravy, browning

  Method

  1. Sieve the flour, sugar and grated nutmeg into a bowl and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Make a well in the centre and break in the eggs.
  
  2. Using a hand-held whisk, start to slowly incorporate the eggs. Then, while continuing to whisk slowly, add the milk. You may need a little extra milk – the batter should be the consistency of double cream. Whisk thoroughly to ensure there are no lumps of flour in the mixture.
  
  3. Put the batter in the fridge to rest for at least 1 hour.
  
  4. For the onion gravy: heat the oil in a heavy-based saucepan, add the onion and cook until soft, but not coloured.
  
  5. Stir in the mustard, then pour in the stock. Bring the mixture to the boil, then stir in a dash of gravy browning. Reduce for 10 minutes or until the liquid is reduced by half.
  
  6. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6. Put a 30 x 20 x 6cm roasting tin in the oven to get really hot.
  
  7. Add the dripping and the sausages to the hot tin and return to the oven. Shake the roasting tin frequently to keep the sausages moving, till they are coloured all over and the fat in the tin is really hot.
  
  8. Remove the batter from the fridge, give it a quick whisk and, when the sausages are evenly coloured, remove the tin from the oven and immediately pour the batter over the hot sausages in the tin – the batter should really sizzle.
  
  9. Return the tin to the oven immediately and cook for 30 to 40 minutes, until the batter is well risen and golden.
  
  10. Serve immediately with onion gravy and either a salad or a green vegetable or mashed potato.
  

Quit Smoking Tips: Sure-shot Suggestions

Smoking is injurious to health. This is the statutory tag which anyone can find on the cigarette packet. It is not clearly described what kinds of injury are caused when anyone smokes. Even a school student can find how smoking affects the human lungs. Everyone knows that the physicians advise the patients to give up smoking. The patients suffering from diabetic, blood pressure, nervous, digestive and cardiac ailment should not touch a single cigarette. Smoking of cigarettes, it is now established, can turn one into a patient with ailment of cancer.

Injuries caused by smoking are much more. The smokers do not know how their near and dear ones become serious victims as they are forced to inhale the smokes of burnt tobacco passively. It is said that effect on the passive smokers is more harmful. Millions of smokers have been attacking the environment with unfathomable volume of smokes everyday, and the environment gets polluted more and more.

One important thing is that, despite all that have been stated above, none of the governments have the guts to order the cigarette companies to stop producing cigarettes. Quit smoking tips are to be followed against this spectrum.

Most of the smokers do not believe that they can quit smoking. Some of them hold the view that they will quit this habit gradually. This will not produce any effective result as these smokers do not want to distant them from regular contact of the effect of nicotine. Some others want to tell that they know the ill-effects of smoking cigarettes and that they will quit smoking very soon. This is a promise left to be considered sometime in the uncertain future. Promises of this kind are hardly kept.

The best way to address this problem is motivation. The smokers can be motivated externally and internally. It is possible to organize and run serious and continuous campaign against smoking cigarettes. Campaign against smoking must be turned into a tremendous social movement with active participation and patronage of governments, non-government organizations, offline and online printing media and general health workers. This campaign can create constant pressure on the people who hesitate to take final decision in favor of giving up this bad habit.

Lastly, the smokers can motivate them in this respect and quit smoking immediately. This is definitely the best way to quit smoking.

For more information, visit: http://www.quitsmokingpillcoupons.com/

Breakfast smoothie

Ingredients

• 2 bananas
• 300 ml fruity bio yogurt
• 150 g blueberries
• 400 ml cranberry juice
• 1 tbsp clear honey
• 2-3 tbsp wheat germ
• chopped toasted Hazelnuts, to serve

Method

1. Put everything apart from the nuts in a blender and blitz until smooth.

2. Sweeten to taste with extra honey if desired.

3. Pour into glasses and scatter over the nuts. Serve immediately, as the blueberries will cause the smoothie to thicken (if this happens, simply stir in some extra cranberry juice).

Tips on how to get good quality sleep

The clocks go back at the weekend and experts say it will take many of us three days to adjust to the change in our normal sleeping patterns.

It's bad news for anyone who already struggles to get enough shut-eye. So here Dr Neil Stanley, who has been researching sleep for 28 years, gives his tips on getting a good quality kip.

1) Your bedroom should be a nest to encourage sleep. Block out excess light and noise, especially from gadgets like mobiles, which could disturb you unexpectedly. Make your bed as comfortable as possible - after all, you spend a third of your day in it.

2) You should be in a relaxed physical state for sleep. Eat big meals at least three hours before bed or your body will still be digesting it. But don't go to bed hungry, either - if you're peckish, eat something simple, like toast and butter. And don't exercise three hours before lights-out, or your body will still be buzzing from the natural high we get from vigorous activity.

3) You need to be mentally calm to sleep. If your mind's still ticking over, you won't nod off, so don't tackle a tricky Sudoku last thing at night.

4) Sleep's as important to our health as diet and exercise and you'll feel the instant benefits of a good night the next day. Go to bed early for a change.

5) Our sleeping patterns are as individual as our shapes and sizes. Anything between three and 11 hours sleep could be normal for you.

6) Research has shown that half of disturbed sleep is due to our partner tossing and turning. Consider having separate beds or even separate rooms.

7) Nocturnal leg cramps affect 13 million of us a year and are one of the five main factors that cause us to wake in the night. It happens when our muscles shorten in our sleep and when we stretch, we feel an instant, excruciating pain. Crampex, which you can buy over the counter, can be effective if cramps frequently bother you.

8) Most people accept tiredness as part of life, but we owe it to ourselves to try to get a good sleep every night. If you're having trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, the real cause might be due to stress or a medical problem, Your best course of action is to talk to your GP about it.

Source  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/health-news/2010/10/27/tips-on-how-to-get-good-quality-sleep-115875-22661193/

Cumberland sausage toad in the hole

Ingredients

For the batter

• 150 g plain white flour
• 4 free range eggs, lightly beaten
• 150 ml whole milk
• 2 tbsp parsley, finely chopped

For the filling

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 8 Cumberland sausages
• 1 large tomato, sliced
• 6 medium field mushrooms, sliced

  Method

  1. For the batter: put the flour in mixing bowl, make a well in the centre and pour in the eggs with a little milk. Stir, gradually bringing flour into the centre and adding the remaining milk as you go, until you have a smooth batter. Set aside for 2 hours to rest.
  
  2. Preheat the oven to 170C/gas 3.
  
  3. For the filling: heat the olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Add the sausages and cook until brown on all sides. Pour any fat from the pan into a roasting tin, place the sausages on a rack over the tin and cook in the oven for 10 minutes.
  
  4. Take the rack and sausages off the roasting tin, increase the oven temperature to 200C/gas 6. Lay the tomato and mushroom slices in the roasting tin and cook for 5 minutes.
  
  5. Add the chopped parsley to the batter mix. Put the sausages on top of the mushroom and tomato slices and pour over the batter. Return to the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until the batter is well risen and golden.

Health tips for pregnant women dealing with diabetes

We all know that the condition of pregnancy can be difficult for any women but it can be more challenging if the woman has Diabetes. So if any of you is about to get pregnant then there are many precautions that you need to take care of and bad habits like smoking or drinking should be avoided. Here are certain health tips that help you out in dealing with pregnancy and diabetes at the same time:

Maintain a healthy weight

Maintaining a healthy weight can help you in avoiding injuries and keeping a check on the blood sugar level. It is very easy to maintain a healthy weight by performing routine exercise designed for pregnant women. Loosing excess weight and taking prenatal vitamins can assist in keeping blood sugar under control.

Women who are dealing with diabetes type 2 are more at risk for PCOS, which is also known as polycystic ovary syndrome. In this complex situation, it is very difficult for a woman to get pregnant. However, there are certain medications that can assist in stimulating the ovulation like Clomid and Serophene.

Constant checkups

Woman dealing with pregnancy and diabetes at the same time deal with complex problems quite often, that is why it is very important for her to undergo regular checkups with her doctor. Regular monitoring, blood sugar level checkups and ultrasounds with the doctor can be of great help in detecting any sort of problems earlier on before it gets late. It is very important to keep the blood sugar under control by regular blood glucose monitoring so that your diabetes does not create problems in pregnancy stages.

Source http://www.womencitizen.com/health/3261-health-tips-for-pregnant-women-dealing-with-diabetes.html

1931 diet tips still relevant today

“The science of nutrition travels so rapidly that it is almost impossible to keep up with it,” wrote Lenna Frances Cooper in her textbook, “Nutrition in Health and Disease.”

Wow, is she right! Nutrition research findings hit the headlines daily. It’s a lot of information to digest. But, get this: She made that observation in 1931.

Cooper, a nurse and dietitian, was a dean at the Battle Creek Health Care Institution in Battle Creek, Mich. She was one of the co-founders of the American Dietetic Association and was appointed to the staff of the U.S. surgeon general.

You know how most folks think of healthy foods as the ones that don’t taste very good? Well, Cooper was even on the case when she wrote in the foreword of her cookbook, “The New Cookery”: “Many food faddists have attempted to prepare wholesome foods but have neglected the almost equally important requirement — palatability.”

In honor of Cooper’s pioneering diet advice from 1931, here are a few tips to dine out more healthfully today.

● Celebrate the season with a variety of salad greens.

Today: So-called “winter greens,” rich in anti-oxidants and disease-fighting beta carotene and abundant in autumn, include Swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, collards and escarole. Chef Joe Schafer at Parish pairs sweet potato ravioli with the pleasingly bitter notes of Swiss chard.

1931 advice: “The quality of lettuce, which can be obtained all the year round in almost all sections of the country, has improved enormously.”

● Choose the whole-grain version.

Today: You can find whole-grain versions of everything from tortilla chips to doughnuts. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee tells us to eat fewer refined grains. Choose brown rice over white and whole-wheat bread over white. Discover the taste of “ancient” whole grains such as quinoa, spelt and amaranth that are showing up on restaurant menus.

1931 advice: “As a class, the whole cereals are rich in minerals, but these are found particularly in the germ and outer layer, which are usually discarded in the milling process.”

● Break the whole egg for breakfast.

Today: Rethink that egg white omelet. The nutrient choline, found in yolks, helps support the brain’s neurotransmitters and is linked to new memory cell production.

1931 advice: “The egg yolk is of much greater value than the white, as it contains the majority of the minerals and vitamins.”

● Eat like a vegetarian.

Today: Eat more plant-based foods such as vegetables, cooked dry beans and peas, fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds. Check out the vegetarian entrees on menus when dining out, even if you’re not a vegetarian, to increase intake of valuable nutrients including fiber and anti-oxidants.

1931 advice: “Where an overindulgence of meat has been the habit, a recourse to a vegetarian diet often brings excellent results.”

● Dine out healthfully when there’s no time to cook.

Today: Whether it’s lower-fat fast-food favorites at Evos or chef Jeffrey Wall’s perfectly tossed orange and fennel salad with orange basil dressing at La Fourchette, restaurants are offering a greater selection of well-prepared healthful options.

1931 advice: “For cookery, lay wood shavings over the bottom of the firebox. When the wood is burning well, fill the firebox with coal. When the coal is burning without blue flames, close the oven dampers and the front door, but leave open the sliding draft in door.”

O’Neil’s advice: Get back in the time machine, use a smart phone to book dinner reservations, check the online menu for seasonal specialties, reapply lipstick and follow car’s GPS to the restaurant. Meet you there, Lenna!

Carolyn O’Neil is a
registered dietitian and
co-author of “The Dish on Eating Healthy and Being Fabulous!” E-mail her at
carolyn@carolynoneil.com.

Source  http://www.ajc.com/health/1931-diet-tips-still-713563.html

Women's heart health

While fewer Americans overall are dying from heart disease, the death rate from heart disease for women younger than 55 is increasing. One in every two U.S. women will die from heart disease or stroke.

As National Heart Month gets under way this month, here are some of the top unanswered questions about how heart disease affects women – and some steps women can take right now to improve their heart health.

Seeking answers

A recent report from the Society for Women’s Health Research and WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease outlined some of the key questions researchers are working to answer.

These questions include:

» Why does heart disease affects men and women differently, and why do women have worse outcomes from heart disease?

» What are the best ways to assess a woman’s risk for heart disease?

» What are the best ways to deal with those risk factors to reduce a woman’s risk for heart disease?

Researchers here at the University of Virginia Health System are seeking answers to many of these questions. For instance, I am involved in a study that uses a small ultrasound device to examine the arteries of 100 women and 100 men who had heart attacks to learn if the arteries of men and women are different. This could lead to different and better treatments for women.

UVa researchers, including Dr. Christopher Kramer, are examining whether MRI is a better tool to diagnose heart disease in women. Women are more likely than men to have abnormalities in the small vessels of their heart, which can be diagnosed more easily using MRI.

Taking charge of heart health

As researchers look for better ways to detect, treat and prevent heart disease in women, there are several proactive steps you can take now to protect your heart health.

The first step is knowing your risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes and smoking. Discuss your risk factors and family history with your doctor.

Good health begins with lifelong, maintainable changes to your lifestyle. Some of the most important changes you can make include:

» Get regular exercise. You should get at least 30 minutes of exercise on most days, if not every day.

» Maintain a healthy weight. Aim to keep your body mass index (BMI) below 25.

» Eat fresh foods, and avoid processed foods whenever possible.

» Find time to take care of yourself and reduce your stress level. Helping other people begins with helping yourself.

Free workshop Feb. 23

To learn more about how to make these healthy lifestyle changes, please join the UVa Heart Center’s Club Red Clinic from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Feb. 23 for a free, interactive workshop.

This session at the Omni Charlottesville Hotel at 235 W. Main St., adjacent to the Downtown Mall, will provide practical tips for healthier eating, stress reduction and ways to include exercise as part of your daily routine, including a Zumba lesson.

Registration is required; to sign up, please visit www.clubreduva.com.

Dr. Angela Taylor is a cardiologist at the University of Virginia Heart Center’s Club Red Clinic.