I am bringing you another family favourite today but before I do there is some interesting stuff I wanted to tell you about my mum’s epilepsy. To give you a bit of background, my mum has temporal lobe epilepsy which was diagnosed about 2 years ago. We have been trying to control this condition through natural, alternative methods rather than using medication and my mum has been receiving treatment from the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicines.
She received a letter to say she had an appointment on the Tuesday just past but we had no idea what it was for and so we went to the appointment not knowing what was going to happen or what it was about. When we arrived we were greeted by a lovely woman for aromatherapy treatment which was a great surprise. The really interesting thing about it was she told us about a study carried out in 2003 at Birmingham University by Dr Tim Betts. It shows the benefits of aromatherapy with massage and hypnotherapy on epilepsy.
So from now on, although we will not be having any official treatments, I will be massaging my mum once a week and using a bit of hypnotherapy to reinforce the calming nature of the oil. My mum will also be doing relaxation at night and smelling her chosen oil of Roman Chamomile. Then once the smell is reinforced in her brain she will be able to use it to calm her and prevent a seizure from occurring. This is quite exciting and something that could really help with the condition, I will keep you updated about how we get on but for now i will tell you about the recipe.
I mentioned above that this was a family favourite and in one form or another we have been eating this salad, usually at barbecues, my whole life. The biggest change that I needed to make was that the original had egg in it and I have replaced that with tofu. Actually my mum has kept this recipe scribbled on a piece of paper, I am not sure how we kept hold of it but it is still there on the shelves with our cookbook. I do not know where she got it from but the actual paper says to use beef pieces which she replaced with “Mock Duck” or seitan so I have stuck with that for this recipe. It will be nice to have it written somewhere that we can keep it safe rather than an old scrap of paper!
If I am honest there are a few steps to this recipe and often when I was a kid my mum would leave out the peppers and seitan, it is still a lovely dish, just a lot easier to make and it the perfect accompaniment to vegetable kebabs when having a barbecue. If you want to have a whole dish then I would go for the whole thing and serve it with a fresh green salad and you have the perfect summer meal.
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Spicy Rice Salad
Serves 4
Prep Time: 20 mins (plus extra time for marinating)
Cook Time: 40 mins
Total Time: 60 mins
Ingredients
100g Brown Basmati Rice
1 Red Pepper, quartered
10 Chive strands, snipped
1 tsp Lemon Zest
Instructions
2. Put rice in saucepan with 300ml of boiling water and some salt. Heat on a high heat, uncovered until most of the liquid has been used up.
3. Cover and lower heat until all the liquid has been used up.
4. Remove from heat and leave covered allowing to cool gradually.
5. While rice is cooking place pepper quarters under a warm grill and cook until skin begins to darken and crack.
7. Remove peppers from bag and peel off skin, slice and set aside to cool.
Nutrition
- Approximate GI of 42
- eGL of 9
- No cholesterol
- High in vitamin A
- Very high in vitamin C