For anyone who is about to overhaul their diet a good place to start is by taking a good look into your kitchen cupboards to see just what is lurking in there. And how convenient, this clear out just happens to coincide with my favourite season. I feel a Spring clean is in order! :-) There's no point embarking on a healthy new lifestyle if you have stale biscuits and other nastiness to resort to when a moment of weakness or desperation strikes, never mind all the precious space these goods take up. So we've decided to try and do this the right way.
So what should stay and what needs to go? When I took everything out of my cupboard there was a big jar of white flour, half used bags of caster sugar, granulated sugar, muscovado sugar, wholemeal flour, and stale biscuits (which I am ashamed to say I actually ate recently in a moment of desperation), stale tuc biscuits, and white pasta. These items have no place in a healthy lifestyle as far as I'm concerned and I took great joy in dumping them in the bin. They have been replaced with lovely clean jars of brown rice, lentils, pearl barley, oats and quinoa. I also kept my rice flour, spelt flour, gluten free baking powder, cornflour, coconut sugar and mammy's home made raspberry jam (though I will replace this with the healthier home made version in the autumn). 
My cupboards look uncharacteristically bare but I realised that I wasn't using half of it. Now I have all this extra space for the cool new stuff that I've bought like buckwheat, bulgar wheat, chia seeds, tapiocia and desiccated coconut. I will show you how you can use these healthier ingredients in the recipes to come. So go on, Spring clean your cupboards this weekend and maybe it will be the start of a healthier lifestyle for you and your family. Alicia
