Diet/recipe help - CSIRO?

I used to love creating yummy food and i used to enjoy dining with my friends.

Now i just cook. It's food, it fits a purpose, but it's not fun or enjoyable. It's rarely even tasty anymore. I dread cooking and mealtimes.

We don't need to diet, we are active and eat well enough - it's just that cooking and eating are a drag and no one ever says yay, wow, what a great meal.

I feel like a need a kickstart. Everyone i know is exploring diets and lifestyle changes often due to a need to avoid certain foods or additives or something. As far as i'm aware, the only thing we need to avoid is kiwifruit (yes - ironic). I don't want to go Paleo or anything like that. Everything in moderation is pretty much our way of life.

I was thinking of buying the CSIRO book, but it seems to talk a lot about changing lifestyles and being active etc. We have no issues there - the kids are active and we try to be too. I buy fruit and veg and we eat it all - it's just often cooked in the most boring dull way.

I need guidance, and i think i need a plan or book to follow. I need inspiration!!!

It sounds like recipe inspiration you need, rather than dietary and lifestyle changes...

Try logging onto the 'taste' website - it's an aussie recipe site, and it's very easy to search for main ingredients and have a choice of recipes come up... So if you've got, say chicken breast, sweet potato and green veg for dinner, you can enter the ingredients and then browse through the recipes to see what catches your eye.

I have days where I do bog standard meat and three veg-type meals, and other days where I make more complex and interesting food, depending on my mood and how much time I have. I often try to make at least one part of the dish 'interesting', even if it's as simple as adding chopped mint from the garden to the frozen pea and corn mix that I've microwaved! (Or my recent discovery, spinach microwaved/steamed with a miso soup sachet - so yummy as a side to an asian style dish!) Even a small change like that might prompt some 'Wow, that was yummy' comments, which will start to inspire you to try other new things.

If I feel I've been cooking 'same old' stuff, I sometimes think in terms of food ethnicity to inspire something different... Try Moroccan, or Mexican, or Thai, or Portuguese... The spice mixes in the supermarket make these kind of foods easy to make from scratch, too - for example, use Moroccan spice mix on chicken, and then chop it up and toss it into a salad with other Moroccan type ingredients, which you can google for ideas... say, pumpkin, chickpeas, mint, parsley, lemon, tomato and couscous? They might be the 'same old' ingredients as your family normally eat, but combined in a new way with new spice combinations makes for a whole new taste sensation!

You could also suggest a meal swap with a friendly family... You make a casserole for them, one week, and they make one for you the next. You get a night 'off' cooking, and get to try someone else's style.

Hope that helps a bit... Good luck. :)

You could also try printing off half a dozen recipes from the internet that look do-able, and asking for a family vote as to which one you will put on the table this week. That way, the family 'buy into' the meal decision, and it's not left up to you to be inspired.

My local farmer's market is often an inspiration for new dishes, too - I find a vegie I don't recognise/have never cooked with, and chat to the farmer about what it is and how I can use it. Things like garlic shoots, kohlrabi and artichoke have made it onto our table that way.

I agree with Pholi. You don't need diet books. Certainly not the paleo diet, I have no idea why anybody wants to follow the diet of a bunch of people who were chronically malnourished and short lived.

How about some good cooking blogs for inspiration?
I can post a bunch of links on FB for you.
Sometimes when I have no idea what to cook I just go and stalk Olive's FB and click on her recipe links.

the csiro diet includes a lot of meat- so if you're into that, that's fine.
i agree with what the others have said, i think you need to get on the taste website and get inspired.

Ooh, Onyx - blogs - another great idea for inspiration! My favourite is Smitten Kitchen! Divine recipes, and gorgeous food-porn type photography!

Lenny, I was feeling exactly the same thing! Our family doesn't need a "new diet" and our lifestyle is active and healthy but every week I was cooking the same meals - even our grocery shopping was almost identical each fortnight. I was bored!!!

Then, I had a sick day at home, watched Julie & Julia and am now cooking my way through Julia Childs Master the Art of French Cooking. I've made a deal with myself (and the family) that we'll try something new each week. Get us out of our comfort zone and try some new foods. I've made some pretty amazing meals and they have been well received. I'm looking forward to the weekend so I can get back into the kitchen and make some more meals that we can eat during the week.

My only rule now is that I can't cook the same thing twice for the family, although I can cook them if we have guests over. Even the family dog is enjoying my new found love affair with the kitchen ... last night our Bull Mastiff enjoyed leftover Fricassee De Poulet A L'Ancienne!

Thanks for the ideas everyone. And the list of webpages too - i have no excuse.

It now dawns on my that i'm being lazy. I wanted a magic cure for my crappiness. There is no magic cure.
Instead of a book with 30 soups and 30 light lunches and 30 dinners in it - i'll just find my own and do them. Perhaps i'll do it each weekend - meal plan and associated shopping list for the week.
If i write it by hand, i'll have to follow it - it'll be on the fridge for everyone to see. But the kids can't read and the DH doesn't frequent the kitchen much - but still, the writing will be on the wall, so to speak.

Ok, ready, set, go...

Check out Weigh It Up. Not so much for the health stuff, but some of the recipes are quite nice and inspiring. Their take on Scotch eggs is pretty tasty(just fiddly), the summer chicken is yummy and hte kids love the sticky chicken.

I think the CSIRO recipe book could be really useful to you. Basically it is a fair bit of fairly standard food - meat dishes that are packed with vegies and minimal carbs - jazzed up a bit and with lots of herbs and spices for flavour. A lot of the recipes are really really tasty. The orginal books go through the whole lifestyle thing but you can just use the menu plans and recipes in the back (doesn't require much thought :)) or the recipe book just has recipes without the other stuff.

There's a mag in Woollies called The Healthy Food Guide. It's full of healthy ideas. I've felt very much the same as you lately and it's helped to get me a bit more inspired.

I actually love my diabetic living magazine for menu nd recipe ideas, just made the most awesome lasagne out of it on weds nd we got two nights of meals from it.....shows you how decadent food can be healthy too and fantastic tasty recipes, my Dave is a family meat pie from a couple of years back that into die for! It comes out every two months and the recipe section is huge!

I love the BBC food mag. It always has lots of great ideas. I rip out my favourites and keep them in a big plastic wallet.
Must be annoying for the people who end up with my old mags at the hospital

I have the CSIRO books 1 and 2. They have some great recipes in them.

Basically on the CSIRO program you eat set amounts of certain things in a day. So for example in your carbs you get to have 2 units a day. A unit is equivalent to 2 slices of wholegrain bread or 150 g potato, or 1/2 cup pasta/rice,etc. You choose what way you have them in a day. You need to like protein as you need to eat 100g at lunch and 200g at dinner in whatever form you choose - eggs, beef/etc.

But if you only wanted to find ways to cook more interesting meals, then the books have lots of nice ideas in them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

LOL Onyx - just don't do the sudoku.

Might buy a few mags too - feeling very inspired.