I have made a pledge. I have pledged to eat fresh, unprocessed food from 13th May – 19th May 2013. Well – thanks to my Cancer, I have very little choice – but more about that further down this page…
What is Fresh Week?
Fresh week is the project of Tefal, which aims to encourage families to ditch the processed garbage full of additives, in favour of cooking healthy wholesome meals. To be honest, we don’t eat a great deal of processed food anyway. I’m not really a chicken nugget mum. I guess the processed foods we mostly use are jars/packets of sauces, instant gravy and stock and things like that. However, I don’t use vegetables anywhere near as much as I should!
How you can pledge and WIN:
If you want to pledge to join in with Fresh Week – you could get the chance to WIN a Tefal Fresh Express and a veg box from Riverford Foods. You can pledge by visiting the Fresh Week Website. Tefal will also be giving spot prizes to people using the #FreshWeek hashtag on Twitter. As a Tefal Innovation Panellist, I can assure you these are awesome prizes – I’d be lost without mine this week!
Fresh Week VS Cancer
Fresh week is not really optional for me. If you read my posts about my radiotherapy and the fact I have to go onto a low iodine diet for two weeks, in preparation for my radiotherapy, you’ll know I cannot eat foods containing high levels of Iodine. That mostly means, I can’t eat anything containing dairy, soya, salt, fish or red dye. It also rules out pretty much ALL processed foods due to salt content. I had to start this diet on 8th May. I’ll be honest. I’m really struggling with it. To the point that yesterday I ate next to nothing and had a good exhausted sob at the end of the day instead.
So the Fresh Week Challenge runs very literal to me.
Yesterday I made my own chicken stock, so that I may make a casserole today.
Today I made my own Almond milk, so that I can eat the one cereal I found, without salt.
I made a Fresh Fruit Salad too.
And Bolognese sauce from scratch.
My Fresh Express Max has been a real help. It chopped the onions & carrots for my bolognese sauce in no time.
Yesterday Bunny had a pizza & craft party with her friends to celebrate her 6th Birthday and I hate grating cheese, so it took literally a few seconds to grate two bowls of cheese in my Fresh Express, for that too.
My low iodine diet and the fact I’ve had to come off my thyroxine, mean that I’m having to plan ahead with what I might cook next week, when I will be very weak.
So… With the help of my Fresh Express Max (and my Actifry)… I am home-making my dairy free, egg free, salt free, fish free…
Spaghetti Bolognese
Chilli Con Carne with mashed potato (without the kidney beans)
Chicken Korma with potatoes
Beef casserole
Chicken, Avocado & tomato wraps (hopefully)
Chips (in the Actifry)
Chicken with parmentiers, veg, garlic and a balsamic vinegar salad
Roast dinner (so I can have the carcass to make more stock!)
Perhaps a cottage pie, if I can make it work.
As snacks –
Baked apples with raisins
Fruit Salad
Meringues with red berries (I’m allowed egg whites)
As iodine is essential as part of a normal persons diet, I will have to make seperate ones for Jonny and Bunny, so that I don’t deprive them of iodine.
Fruit Salad,
Parmentiers with chicken, yellow peppers & tomato,
Bolognese Sause,
Pasta with mushrooms, chicken and green beans!
I am finding the Fresh Week Challenge fairly easy.
I am finding the Cancer diet, very hard.
Disclaimer: I have been given a Fresh Express Max and a Riverford Veg box by Tefal to help me fulfil my pledge. All words, opinions and experiences are entirely my own.
Good luck! It sounds so hard, but also sounds like you’ve got some really good ideas for meals and snacks there. Hang on in there and focus on the end of June when things should be getting back to normal. X
Sarah MumofThree World recently posted..What she wore – M&S playsuit adapted for spring
I’ve taken the pledge! Having finished chemo and radiotherapy in January for breast cancer I really need to start eating more healthy foods so this is a great starting point for me. Cancer absolutely sucks and although my cancer was not the same as yours I too have young children so can really sympathies with the struggles you are facing. My treatment took 7 months which seemed forever at the start of it but actually went really quickly, I hope your treatment passes quickly and smoothly too. xxx
You are doing so well and I have every respect for you. I think I’d be a sobbing heap most of the time and I’d be living on home made chips and saying ‘sod you’ a lot.
Maybe once this particular cancer diet has ended it should be your turn for a pizza party x
I’ve signed up to the pledge 🙂
Bolognase sauce from scratch is so much nicer (in my opinion!) than jars anyway! We eat mostly fresh stuff, as much as we are able to.
Mummy Glitzer recently posted..Wednesday Words 8 May
I cannot believe how much you are going through at the moment and how positive you sound. Good luck – making ahead is definitely a good plan. xx
Sally (Recipe Junkie) recently posted..Slightly Spicy Mushroom Chard & Chickpea soup
Loving the look of that Fruit Salad, I want to lick the screen. Never thought about hosting a pizza party for the kids, I’m sure Roo would love to do this with her friends.
Boo Roo and Tigger Too recently posted..GIVEAWAY: Munchkin Spill Proof Cup – ends 02/06/13