Jane Kennedy - Omg! I Can Eat That?: Indulgent Food Minus The Boombah

OMG! I CAN
EAT THAT? Indulgent food minus the boombah OMG! I CAN
EAT THAT? Indulgent food minus the boombah Jane Kennedy Published in 2010 by Hardie Grant Books Hardie Grant Books (Australia)
85 High Street
Prahran, Victoria 3181
www.hardiegrant.com.au Hardie Grant Books (UK)
Second Floor, North Suite
Dudley House
Southampton Street
London WC2E 7HF
www.hardiegrant.co.uk Design and Typesetting: Trisha Garner
Photographer: Mark Roper
Props stylist: Leesa O'Reilly
Food stylist: Deborah Kaloper
Food preparation: Michele Curtis, Andrea Geisler The publisher would like to thank the following for their generosity in supplying props for the book: Space Furniture, Dinosaur Designs, Izzi and Popo, The Junk Company, Market Import, Hub Furniture, Manon, Country Road, Flowers by Joost and The Essential Ingredient. Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available from the National Library
of Australia. ISBN 978 1 74066 9 924 Colour reproduction by Splitting Image Colour Studio
Printed and bound in China by C & C Offset Printing Co. LTD Text copyright Jane Kennedy 2010
Photography copyright Working Dog Pty Ltd 2010
Design copyright Hardie Grant Books 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
To Mum, Dad and Carrie, all that eating I did as a childhad a sense of purpose after all! Thank you for sharingall those dishes with me.To Rob, Mia, Josh, Max, Bailey and Andy.

Thank you forall your dipping, stirring, tasting (and spilling)in my test kitchen. I still love our circus. CONTENTS
BOOMBAH (adj)
Word to describe food
that makes your
arse huge. I love food. And I love eating food, but I cant eat whatever I want because I get FAT. And heres a confession: I love food like lasagne and moussaka and pizza and fried rice. Food we generally refer to as COMFORT FOOD.

But it sure doesnt love me. And it seems to have it in for my arse. But do without it forever? Um, is there an option B? I think there is. When I started on this mission, one important realisation came early: comfort food has been hijacked. Our notion of what comfort food is has changed and its making us HUGE. What used to be an occasional treat has become a super-sized everyday indulgence.

Its become DISCOMFORT food. The minute youve eaten it you feel guilty, bloated, miserable and overweight. In my first book, Fabulous food minus the boombah, I wrote about the years of trying every fad diet out there and finally realising I couldnt do white carbohydrates on a regular basis anymore. Rice, pasta, bread, potatoes theyd make a beeline for my stomach. Some women can get away with it, possibly because theyre training for the Olympic games. Some people get there on genes, coffee and cigarettes, or whatever else theyre doing.

And then theres the rest of us. So I embarked on a quest to create dishes that were basically low in carbohydrates and low in calories but BIG on flavour. Food you can look forward to. I used the same approach with comfort food. I wanted to find ways to get that hit without the boombah. So I went back to the lab.

After lots of experimenting, I gradually developed versions of all those creamy, cheesy, crispy, crunchy foods we THINK we cant live without. Youll find there are heaps of recipes with all those comforting elements, but without much boombah in them. In fact not a lot of boombah at all! (I reckon my version of fried rice is bloody unbelievable.) I guess Im asking you to weigh it up like this: if youre serious about changing your boombah ways, you can go hard-arsed and eat a lettuce leaf and a carrot stick a day, or you can get 80 per cent of the hit of what your tastebuds enjoy and be SATISIFIED and HAPPY and HEALTHY. Buying exercise equipment off
TV is absolutely ridiculous Trust Auntie Janie here. Buying equipment off the telly is really, really silly. I know. I know.

Ive bought it MYSELF. I too was a big fat sucker handing over my credit card details in search of a miracle cure or a quick fix in a delivery box. One of the great selling points about the piece I bought was that it could easily store under the bed. And thats where it stayed. Unopened. Until we moved house.

I know that when I dont exercise I feel lousy. And when I do, I feel pretty good. For me it can simply be a (pacey) 30-minute walk. But exercise alone wont make you thin. You have to be accountable for what goes in your gob as well. Exercise is not an excuse to reward yourself with one of those monster muffins.

Add to that a milky skinny latte and congratulations, youve eaten your fourth meal of the day. You're not seven anymore After releasing my first cookbook I hit the publicity trail. There were a lot of questions about the recipes. Most were good. Others were like this: You know your cauliflower rice recipe? I cant stand cauliflower, what else can I use? (Um, rice?) Or, I dont like pumpkin or broccoli or zucchini. What else can I eat? (Er, potato?) And, I dont like fish (yes, but you like it battered).

Here is my answer to those questions: GROW UP. Its time to get over the histrionics. Its time to start cooking and tasting and enjoying all sorts of foods youve avoided. Thinking you dont like something just wont cut it. In that world, boombah wins. In a face-off between fragrant spicy roasted pumpkin and a bowl of crispy fried potatoes, its game over.

You know the spuds will win. So get rid of the spuds. You know theyre boombah. Try the spicy roasted pumpkin. Its delicious. Take the time to add flavour to broccoli, or zucchini, or cauliflower with sesame seeds, garlic and olive oil.

Youll really start looking forward to these meals and it wont feel like dieting.