A very warm welcome to  Lemon House Life a  new blog from Ruth Osborn, you might remember her  Our Lady in Italy.

Well she’s now set up her own blog Lemon House Life to share her thoughts on fresh life and fresh food in northern Tuscany. Ruth moved to Italy with her partner James last year and she’s been enjoying Italian life ever since.

Read her latest blog – where she shares her recipe for beef with spiced wine and roast roots.

It’s National Vegetarian Week and the theme of this year’s veggie week – which has been annual event for the last 20 years, is breakfast.

Now we at Ella Mag are what we call pescatarians – i.e we eat mostly veggie with the odd fish dish thrown in  (normally sustainable sourced salmon). But we do happen to love our veggie breakfasts, although it has to be said we tend to rely on mock meat products like soya sausages and fake bacon which can get a bit boring.

So to celebrate National Vegetarian Week Chinese supermarket Wing Yip has come up with a few imaginative and very yummy alternatives.

We are going to have a go at making Yu Tiao, which is usually known in English as Chinese fried bread sticks. They are deep-fried strips of dough which are eaten for breakfast in East and South East Asian cuisines and often dipped into hot coffee.

Other Asian vegetarian breakfast choices include the Malaysian Paratha, which is a type of flatbread that’s apparently delicious with breakfast staples like omelette or scrambled eggs and of course Chinese Man Tao (steamed buns) are fluffy and perfect with hot soy milk – these are great, I ate them all the time when I was travelling around Malaysia and Singapore!

Mr Wing Yip, founder of Wing Yip, said: “We’re trying to help break the perception that vegetarian breakfasts are a bland alternative to the traditional British fry-up or sausage sandwich. “With a little imagination, you can create a fantastic meat-free exotic meal to surprise your breakfast guests and get a perfect start to the day.”

Yu Tiao

Ingredients:

• ¾ teaspoon instant yeast
• Two tablespoons of lukewarm water
• One teaspoon of Mai Siam Palm Sugar
• 250 ml water
• One teaspoon of bi-carbonate of soda
• ½ teaspoon of ammonia powder – available from Wing Yip
• ½ teaspoon of alum – available from Wing Yip
• 315 gms bread flour
• One teaspoon pink salt

Method:

1. Mix the yeast, lukewarm water and sugar and set aside for 10 minutes until foamy.
2. Mix the water, bi-carbonate of soda, ammonia powder and alum.
3. Sift the bread flour and pink salt into a mixing bowl then add the two other mixtures and, using a wooden spoon, mix the dough until it is combined.
4. Knead for five minutes and add a little bit more flour if the dough is too sticky to work with.
5. Cover with cling wrap and let the dough proof for two hours. After that, turn the dough onto a well-floured work surface.
6. Sprinkle some flour on the dough and roll it into a long rectangle.
7. Cut into strips that are four centimetres-wide and roughly the length of a chopstick.
8. Place one of the strips one on top of another and leave for five minutes. Then heat vegetable or sesame oil for frying.
9. Press lightly on the two strips of dough with a chopstick. Then hold both ends of the combined dough and lower into hot oil. Deep fry, turning constantly until each it turns puffy and golden brown.

It’s National Vegetarian Week this week, if you hadn’t already noticed.

Like many of my 1970- born peers, I went veggie in the late 1980s when I was 16 -  encouraged by friends who’d listened to Meat is Murder by the Smiths. I didn’t ever listen to it, I was too scared to!

I’d always been veggie at heart, at the age of six I remember being severely reprimanded for spitting out a piece of gristle from a hamburger during a BBQ. We lived in the countryside so I knew where meat came from, my reasons for turning veggie was really that meat became – over the following decade -  simply unpalatable.

Being a veggie in the 1970s was not really acceptable, after all our grandparents could still remember rationing from 20 years back; being a faddy eater was not entertained by a generation of parents and grandparents who remember what it was like to go hungry.

Now we are actually encouraged to go veggie, and there are lots of benefits, most of all is that you do find that you eat more vegetables. Much as I love my mock-meat products, you can only eat so many soya sausages a week.

The Vegetarian Society launched NVW 20 years ago!  Liz O’Neill, of the Vegetarian Society, said the theme of this year’s veggie week was breakfast. She said: “We’re hoping this year’s theme will help everyone to get off to a good start, realise how much veggie food they already eat and help to tackle head on the  notion that life isn’t worth living without a bacon butty.”

There’s lots of inspiration on the website National Vegetarian Week as well as events near you.

At Ella Mag – we’ve been using our breadmaker to cook up some yummy breakfast treats.  We’ve been making spelt bread, which is a tasty and wheat-free alternative to wholemeal bread (which we do also love).

For lunch, we’re going for goats cheese salad with rice and vegetables, followed by a banana smoothie, and if we are hungry mid afternoon, it’s organic homous and oatcakes for us.

And for dinner, we’re going to be cooking Nigella’s Cheddar cheese risotto

Yum – who needs meat?

By Simoney Girard

When I think of spaghetti carbonara, I usually imagine a gorgeously creamy béchamel-style sauce, with mushrooms and chunks of bacon clinging dreamily to the pasta.

So when my friend Fiona invited me to hers for a meal, and said she would be cooking carbonara, that is what I had in mind.

What I got was something completely different and wonderfully tasty, far removed from the saucy carbonaras we are used to in the UK.

She said it was a traditional way of cooking it in Napoli, her home town. And I think it is much better than the creamy style: it’s healthier for a start and you can taste each individual ingredient.

However, her recipe does not involve mushrooms or pine nuts – and I need them – so I’ve adapted it to suit my own tastes, as all the best recipes do.

You will need:

Some good spaghetti – cheap is cheerful, but it tends to boil too softly and break. A firm, whole wheat spaghetti adds a nutty flavour to the meal.

A very good guide to how much is to make a circle with your index finger and tip of the thumb; this is the average portion per person. If you are like me and you have a Greek boyfriend, use three portions.

4-6 medium sized, coarsely chopped slices of pancetta (if you are on a budget, just use back bacon instead)

A generous handful of button mushrooms, cleaned well and chopped

2 medium sized eggs

1 large onion, chopped

1-2 cloves of garlic, to taste

Olive oil, salt, pepper, etc

Several sprigs of fresh parsley

Pine nuts (to be extra)

Some parmesan or pecorino cheese, grated into a dish (If you’re on a budget, just use cheddar – shock, horror! Yep, it still tastes good).

To prepare:

Start boiling some water into a saucepan.

Get a nice big skillet or frying pan on the heat, pour in some lovely extra virgin olive oil and add the onion and cloves of garlic.

While these are browning nicely, add the chopped mushrooms and pine nuts and give them a stir. Add the pancetta.

If the water in the saucepan is starting to boil, put the spaghetti into it and gently push it down into the water using the lid of the saucepan until it’s soft enough to put the lid on the pan. Leave it to boil, then simmer for a few minutes.

While this is boiling, get a bowl, crack the eggs and beat these nicely as if you were going to make scrambled egg. Add some black pepper and salt.

Check the pasta. If the spaghetti is done (I still love the old ‘chuck a strand against a wall’ test) then drain the spaghetti, pour some olive oil into the saucepan, add the mixture from the frying pan and stir in the egg over a medium heat.

You will see the egg start to take on a ‘scrambled egg’ effect. Keep stirring every so often to make sure it doesn’t catch, but when the egg is all cooked and sticking to the spaghetti, the Carbonara is ready to serve.

Dish it out onto a plate, add the pecorino/parmesan/cheddar to taste, a sprig of parsley and sprinkle a few more pine nuts on for extra effect.

a gusto!

You can always team this with a light white wine – and I’m sure fellow EllaMag blogger Geordie Clarke can suggest something suitable!

You can follow Simoney on Twitter @MoorgateMermaid She blogs at  Mermaid of Moorgate

Our guest cookery blogger Simoney Girard has a recipe that will get you feeling summery, even if the weather is rubbish.

Meringue sandwiches are so easy and fun to make that it’s great to get the children involved with it.

However this can prove difficult, not least if you don’t have children and people ask me ‘why have you got those kids in your house making meringues?’ and then I have to explain all sorts of community projects to them and it gets a bit hairy.

So it’s best only to let the children help you out making these if a) they’re your own children b) you actually know the children!

You will need:

To be good at making your own meringues

Or

Two tubs of mini-meringues, which can be bought easily and fairly cheaply from any decent store. I know which I would choose

Some fresh strawberries

A few tablespoons of icing sugar

Nice thick whipping cream (some stores have a low-fat version, which is great)

To make the meringue sandwiches

Take three or four decent-sized strawberries and blend them into the whipping cream until it is nice and stiff and pink.

Use the icing sugar to help keep the mixture firm and not runny or the filling won’t be solid enough to stick the meringues together properly. If you use too many strawberries there’s a chance the mixture will be too runny.

Spoon a generous, firm dollop of mixture onto one meringue base and stick another one to it. When they’re all made up, put them in the fridge for a few hours to cool.

When ready, take them out, and serve them with an arrangement of chopped strawberries (gently ‘dry’ the cut berries on a clean piece of kitchen towel so they don’t dissolve the meringues’.

Disclaimer

(1) I have never had children in my house making food of any kind. I have however made top hats and caramel krispies and other mummy tray bakes at youth groups, in the company of other responsible adults.

Read more of Simoney’s recipes for Ella Mag here.

While most people associate Los Angeles with sunshine, papparazzi, celebs and aged hippies, the area also has thriving wildlife. The Rockies end where LA’s urban sprawl begins, as if the mountains decided this was the place to chill out, dude.

And the untamed forests of the hills overlooking the city are a constant source of winged and furry beasties.

The sky in Pasadena and other LA suburbs is regularly darkened by flocks of green parrots. The belief is that some escaped from or were released by an eccentric owner in Malibu, and then they bred. They do no harm, but they can be noisy. Just imagine a thousand birds simultaneously screeching “Who’s a pretty boy?”

Thanks to having a freeway between me and the rolling hills, I have so far been spared a bear. But a couple of miles north, they are a common sight foraging through dustbins. A phone call to the local animal welfare centre is usually enough to get them caught and reintroduced to the wild, but it sounds alarming.

I get plenty of smaller critters: squirrels, raccoons, coyote, possum, skunk. The squirrels are so tame that one came and sat in the patio chair just across from me. Next he’ll be demanding an umbrella in his pina colada.

So there was a sense of inevitability about our latest visitors: mice. Amazing, really, that we haven’t seen them before, as we are surrounded by gardens.

The first sighting was in the kitchen. It moved so fast that Lynne, my partner, thought it was a floater in her eye. However, that night as I was switching the light off I saw a brown blur cross the carpet and vanish under the bed. It emerged on the other side, to Lynne’s squeaky consternation. We knew we had a fight on our hands.

The next day our campaign strategy was laid out by Trebor, our slightly hippy handyman who likes to keep a crate of beer in our fridge. To take the edge off.

The first task was to choose weapons. We ruled out poison on humanitarian grounds. The mice often crawl away to die a slow, agonising death. A bit like watching Lost. We couldn’t wish that on them.

We went for sticky traps, baited with finest artisan-baked rosemary bread. That night the cheeky rascals daintily tiptoed onto the glue, had a few bites and tiptoed off again.

So no more Mr Mice Guy (sorry, too tempting!). We set old-fashioned snap traps and put the sticky one outside by the dustbins.

They carefully stepped round the snap traps, but we returned home to find one trying to disentangle itself from the glue outside.

The next day, we had a small mouse in a snap trap surrounded by a pool of blood. Could that be the end of it? 2-0 up and with any luck Mice United was running out of substitutes, but we couldn’t be sure.

Alas, next morning our hopes were dashed by new shavings from attempts to gnaw under the bedroom door. I could see us setting traps until Christmas, just to be on the safe side.

All went quiet, then few days ago they came up with a master stroke to terrify us. We woke to find traps upside down and the obligatory pool of blood – but no body. We searched high and low without success. I scent a classic LA film noir.

If anyone sees a headless mouse running around, it’s ours.

A big welcome to our cookery and all things frugal blogger Simoney.  Simoney is a writer of all things foody and, under the guise of OriginalShimmeringDesigns, likes to make beautiful things on a budget, from dangly silver earrings to chocolate cherry cupcakes.

I am not a great fan of doing any unnecessary work in the kitchen. Most of us live extremely busy lives, balancing work, family and  social events so the idea of having to slave over a table making pastry or labouring to create the perfect icing is simply unappealing.

While I am all for doing things on a budget – and making pastry or icing from scratch is cheaper in the long-term – there has to be a limit to being a domestic goddess.  Not all of us have kitchens the size of a supermarket, despite what TV chefs would have you believe.

Not all of us are so wealthy that we can afford not to work but can live a life of baking luxury. There has to be a line drawn between doing it yourself and doing yourself in.

And this is where my fruit pizza comes in. It’s simply called Fruit Pizza. I believe I made this up out of my own head, having tried a recipe for making my own savoury pizza, and deciding that I could make a dessert along the same lines. I certainly have never seen this recipe anywhere else!

Fruit Pizza

This recipe will have your friends, family and even children oohing and aahing and getting all excited, despite the fact they are basically eating fruit – lots of it.

It looks amazing when it comes out of the oven, in all its sizzly glory and tastes divine. You can mix and match fruits to your heart’s delight – but a word to the wise, oranges, clementines and satsumas do not seem to sit well with the other fruit. Leave the strong citrus fruit alone and stick with berries and orchard fruit.

You will need:

1 large, flat pizza tray, circular or square, lightly oiled

1 sheet of Jus’roll puff pastry

2 large apples

1 cup of blueberries

1 cup of strawberries, sliced lengthways

1 cup of blackberries

1 cup of raspberries

½ cup of custard – pouring custard will do but you can make it yourself and keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. Don’t allow it to be too thick-it has to be spreadable.

Two tablespoons of icing sugar to dust

Some cream – Elmlea low-fat pouring cream does the trick

What to do:

Roll the pastry out over the pre-oiled tray – whether square, round or rectangle, it doesn’t really matter. Score a distinct line about 1cm away from the edge of the pastry all round – this will help the edges to rise up in puffy goodness and go all brown.

Don’t make the base too thin – the fruit juices will penetrate the pastry base otherwise.

Take the cold custard and spread it over the base as if you were spooning tomato puree over a savoury pizza base. Sprinkle some nutmeg or Allspice if you like.

Start laying the fruit onto the custardy base. Have fun creating faces, patterns or just being liberal-handed. It doesn’t matter.

Cook it for 20 minutes on gas mark 6 or the electric equivalent. Personally, cooking with gas is just the best thing in the whole wide world, until the government announces that we’ve run out. I’ll cross that ecobridge when I come to it.

When the edges are all puffy and goldeny brown, take it out of the oven, dust it with the icing sugar and serve immediately at the table, using pizza cutters and a slice. If you leave it too long before you get to the table, the icing sugar will have dissolved. Serve with low-fat Elmlea double pouring cream (30% less fat than normal cream) or go the whole hog and serve with vanilla ice-cream.

How to be extra:

People at school used to say I was “being extra” if I drew in the margins of my essays. If you want to be extra, crush a meringue nest into pieces and put that over the top. These usually come in packs of eight and you can use the other seven for another fabulous dish like cherry meringues or Eton mess. Or just eat them by your own, when nobody but the cat can see. And he can’t tell a soul…..

How to save money

1) Berries freeze brilliantly if you are using them for baking or for smoothies. So I tend to buy bulk whenever there is an offer on for blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. So if you freeze these – and they keep for ages – you can save money and time when you make this in the future. Apples can also be cut up into nice slices and, if sprinkled with a little lemon juice to prevent oxidisation, can also be frozen. However, strawberries do not freeze well AND keep their shape afterwards, so best to buy these fresh.

2) Make your own custard – but not from scratch, using vanilla pods and all that. Who has the time? Insanity. But do always have a tub of custard powder and granulated white sugar in your cupboard. This will help you save lots of money as buying a carton of pouring custard is exceptionally costly – you use it once and it’s gone.

Our favourite things

I look cool now but you should've seen me....

It may have felt selfish at the time, but making herself the pet project of a  ‘mummy’ makeover saved her sanity, writes editor Samantha.

“My name is Samantha and I am an exercise-a-holic. There I’ve said it, I worry – just a tad (okay quite a lot) – about my health. And don’t get me going when it comes to that of my family…

“My obsession with being as “healthy as possible” has probably bordered on the unhealthy; I’ve dabbled in veganism, demi-vegetarianism and embarked on a wheat-free, gluten-free, caffeine-free diet which  took me to the edge of insanity and sense of humour failure.”

“I’ve ditched the extreme diets, but my activity regime still borders on the extremely dedicated. For the best part of 15 years rarely a week went by without at least four visits to the gym. I did spinning, running, weights, street dance, yoga and pilates.

That was, until I had Imogen two and a half years ago. At six months pregnant, still suffering from morning sickness and having to hold down an extremely full-on job, I gave up on exercise.

I’m not someone who believes in moderation. During my first pregnancy I put on about four stone – my body went from weighing 8st 12lbs to over 12 stone, it could have more but I gave up weighing myself at 36 weeks.

To be honest I didn’t care – having been told before I got pregnant that I was slightly underweight and, feeling unwell most of the pregnancy, food was the only thing I could actually enjoy – even if it was three packs of uncooked Linda McCartney veggie sausages.

I all but gave up on exercise, figuring out that I’d probably just about have enough time to fit in a yoga DVD once a week once the baby was born.

A botched epidural, emergency c-section ( following attempts at ventouse and forceps) later – I was told to remain as in-active as possible for 8 weeks after Imogen was born.

It didn’t bother me too much at first – I’d known from the emergency flashing light in the operating theatre and the faces on the team of obstetricians (they’d had the whole hospital’s quota in the room with us when Imogen was born) that I and my baby were both lucky to be alive.

But each night the tears came, every single night just after putting Imogen to bed, I’d retreat into the corner of her nursery (she was in our room for 4 months) sobbing about my failure as a mother – I’d been too sick to breastfeed Imogen for more than a week.

It was during one of my hormonal moments that I noticed my pink watch gathering dust on the shelf – it was my old heart rate monitor. I picked it up wondering.

At 12 weeks I was given the all clear and put on some sweats and dragged my body – my face still looked grey – for a walk with Imogen round our local park. While out I started to jog -very slowly – with her asleep in the pram.

I can’t describe how I felt coming back after my first ‘run’. Not only had my face got some pink back in it, and I’d burned 300 calories,  I didn’t cry that evening.

I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It was a cliché I don’t like using in copy (I’m a journalist) but it was so true. Just being outdoors and able to get my heart rate up a few times a week was, I am now convinced, saved me from developing full blown post natal depression.

Pramtastic

You don’t have to be a runner to start your post baby exercise regime.
In fact you already have a brilliant piece of resistance/cardio equipment quite literally to hand – your pram.

A half hour brisk walk, and we are talking some slopes here, can burn up to 200 calories. My daughter would only nap during the day if I took her for a walk first. I slowly built up to running with my pram too, a 45 mintues run can burn 450- 500 calories. I did my toning part by parking the pram and using a nearlby park bench for tricep dips, lunges and press ups.

When the running got too boring I also bought some exercise DVDs, various nightclub and celebrity themed workouts, but the only one that really worked was the Tracy Anderson Method (£11.99 from Amazon.com).
I would do this when Immy had gone to bed, and Andrew was making the dinner.

At first it was really frustrating, the routines are not easy to follow, but I soon found with a bit of concentration I was able to master them, and (using the monitor) burnt between 400 to 500 calories without even realizing.

I also bought some resistance bands, and started using my birthing ball to do squats and tummy exercises. Going to a post natal fitness class, and a local pilates class which both used bands and balls, meant I was learning new exercises each week which I could then go home and practice.

The result is that, within four months I was back at my pre-pregnancy weight. I didn’t diet either.

Here’s some advice I’ve picked up that other mummies out there might like to know:

How to get your body, and sanity back

First: Be breast aware
During (and after) pregnancy you’ll put on weight round your boobs. This can weaken the Coopers ligaments that help hold the breasts up. Wearing a good bra and doing chest-opening exercises, such as supported press ups or chest presses, can help,’ says postnatal exercise specialist Linda McDowall. ‘Not only do these strengthen the muscles that hold up your boobs, they can improve your posture that can also prevent sagging.’

Eat for one
Many women have trouble losing their baby weight because they skip meals. This may slow down their metabolism because their body thinks it is starving and therefore it conserves the calories you do eat. You need to make sure you are eating properly and drinking enough water to have a healthy metabolism and this can be difficult when you are settling your new baby in. Try and make sure you eat and drink, even if you have to forgoe the housework!

Tummy time
Even if you don’t need to lose weight there are some exercises you do need to do. “Try and do pelvic floor and core stability exercises as soon as possible after birth. This can help realign your hips, which get pushed forward during pregnancy. These exercises also strengthen your tummy muscles, improving your posture and supporting your back,” says Linda.

Your post-baby body – why you need to take it easy!

•    Lose weight slowly – aim for 1lb per week – so it’s more likely to stay off.
•    Get the calorie balance right. You need enough nutrients to stay energetic, but even when breastfeeding, you only need an extra 100 to 200 calories a day.
•    Join an exercise classes specifically designed for women who have recently given birth. Not only will the teacher have a good understanding for what exercises you can and can’t do, it will also be a great way to meet other new mums.
•    If in doubt, always check with your doctor.

Read more: Your post-baby body – what to expect