More single portions

So, here are some more single portions of fruit and veg; disclaimer as normal.

The one pound coin you see in some pictures is there to give an idea of scale.

This is two portions, probably, after cleaning.  So, one stuffed pepper half is one portion even before you add in the onion and the mushrooms, which you would if you, say, chopped up some streaky bacon and fried it slowly so that all the fat came out and then used that fat to fry a small onion and some finely chopped mushrooms (and garlic) and then added some couscous that had been simmered in boiling stock as per the instructions on the packet and some blue cheese and perhaps some walnuts or goats cheese and finely chopped sun dried tomatoes and then mixed it all up and packed the mixture into the cleaned half-shells of pepper which had previous been painted with olive oil and roasted at 200 C for twenty minutes, and then put them back into the oven for another twenty minutes to half an hour although these times are, as always, pretty fictional.

One red, on-the-vine five seconds previously rather large roast red tomato.  I said roast rather than red, because I was thinking of roasting this and its three friends (six portions altogether I believe) with about a head of garlic, broken into individual cloves but not peeled,  for about 40 minutes at a lower heat - say 160 or 140 (your oven temperatures will vary).  I'll toss the quartered tomatoes and the garlic cloves in about a tablespoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, some sea salt and coarsely ground pepper before putting them in the roasting tin and drizzling any juices left in the mixing bowl over them.

And then, when the tomato skins are beginning to char and some of the juices caramelise, I'll put everything in a bowl and let it cool before squeezing the roast garlic out of the skins and in with the roasted charred tomatoes.  And then I'll fry an onion, a finely chopped stick of celery and a carrot in some oil in a large saucepan until the onion is caramelising, add 500 mL of chicken stock and the tomato and garlic mixture and let it simmer for half an hour; then I'll puree everything and eat it with a bread roll.  And there you have at least four helpings of vegetables by the strict count and more like nine by the vegetable-matter count. This is the best soup in the world, by the way, and strangely, resembles Heinz tomato soup more closely than I care to analyse.  You can add some thyme as well.

Going to eat these with CREAM.  Going to eat these now!  Only I'm going to eat TWO helpings.

The coin adds 10g so that's one helping there.  It's basically half a punnet.

98 g.  It's a carrot.   It's a medium sized carrot. You'll basically lose about 10 g cleaning it and topping and tailing it. You basically need, probably, around 5 - 6 of these to make the carrot and garlic soup with cashew nuts, chilli and lime.  I'm just saying.

A head of chicory.  You know what?  I have no fucking idea what to do with this.  I'm told they're bitter.  I've just got my veg box.  Can you tell?

A head of spring greens, which is a proper cabbage and not one of your prissy, dandified court versions such as savoy or, you know, red.  This is a proper working class cabbage, full of lust, iron and maggots.

It's a bit manky on the outside, so when I took those four leaves off, I was left with around 120 g.  I'll take a sharp knife and excise the white ribs from these remaing leaves, piling the deskeletonised corpses  onto each other until the supplicants remaining on the stem are unformed and whimsical; I'll shred the piles of leaves into 1 - 2 mm strips with that same sharp knife and plunge the shards into boiling water for two minutes, decant, and drain in a colander.  Then I''ll warm a tablespoon of olive oil and a couple of minced or finely chopped cloves of garlic (and perhaps a chilli) over a very low heat in the same saucepan for five minutes, turn the heat up slightly and toss the drained blanched leaves in the garlicky oil.  Proper food. Proper bloody food

How much is one portion of fruit and veg?

It's been a long time.  Sorry.

In the news recently: the idea that eating more fruit and vegetables may cut stroke risk.  Well, duh.

On the back of that came an increase in the recommended number of servings of fruit and veg a day - from five to seven (1) (2).  Panic all over my friends lists and around me: "We find it hard enough with five!" etc., etc.

Which got me to wondering how much exactly is one serving of fruit and veg?

The answer is 80g.  The recommendation of five originally was so that people would ingest the 400 g of soluble-fibre-containing* fruit and vegetable matter.

So, in the interests of SCIENCE, I decided to take some photographs of what 80g of various fruits and veg looked like.  None of these pictures actually shows 80g as sometimes it's hard to find one-of-something small enough to fit the 80g criteria. Still, it's interesting.

You get four portions of strawberries in a punnet.

This will be slightly less once the woody ends are cut off, but I'd say that you get around two portions of asparagus in a bunch.

Need to eat these.  This is about a quarter of a punnet of mushrooms.

This weighs 112 g - it's a very small leek and will probably be about one portion when the ends are trimmed.  A big leek might be three - four portions.

Also need to eat this - but it's a smallish courgette.

This is a fairly large orange, and in the end, I juiced it and used the juice to macerate the strawberries (the whole punnet) with some unrefined cane sugar, ginger and pepper (If I'd had some amaretto or gin, I'd have added that as well).   Juice doesn't really count (see footnote).  If I were eating this, though, I reckon it would be about three portions.

More of these as I remember.  The killer, it seems, is having to have five *different* fruit and veg a day.

**This is why fruit juice doesn't count and is actually worse for you than Satan's STDs.