It’s great to buy fruit and vegetables in season. Right now we’re eating heaps of sweet corn. It’s so easy to cook: three minutes per cob (husk on) in the microwave. My son and I munch ours straight off the cob but my husband loves his smeared with butter and salt. He’s succumbed to skinny milk, cup-cake sized steak, couscous and lentils so I figure he’s allowed the odd indulgence!

Corn gets its rich yellow colour from the family of phytochemicals (natural plant chemicals) called carotenoids. Yellow, orange, red and dark green vegetables such as spinach, carrots, tomatoes and pumpkin get their colour from carotenoids. Corn is especially high in two carotenoids – lutein and zeazanthin. The macular region of the eye has a high concentration of these substances which implies that they play an important role in keeping our eyes healthy. It’s thought that they protect against light-induced damage to the eye and help prevent macular degeneration, cataracts and other eye problems.

Last night I heated some extra virgin olive oil and fried chopped potatoes, onion and asparagus. After a few moments I tossed in some spinach leaves and chopped tomato, then poured over beaten eggs. A sprinkle of cheese and a light grill to brown the top and voila – yummy frittata for an easy Sunday evening meal. The big question is have I increased my risk of getting cancer by frying in olive oil?

“Exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke or going outside without sun-block is much more likely to cause cancer than burning your cooking oil,” writes fats and oils expert, Laurence Eyres, in the October/November issue of Food New Zealand – the official journal of the NZ Institute of Food Science and Technology. But what about all those cancer causing chemicals – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – that are formed when we burn cooking oil? It’s true that when oil is repeatedly heated to its smoking point it will begin to accumulate cancer causing substances and lose its natural antioxidants. But who uses the same oil over and over again, especially when we’ve burnt it? We usually just heat and eat.

When researchers feed ‘severely heat-abused frying fats’ (more than we would ever do at home) to some poor experimental animals there are ‘very few deleterious effects’. In fact olive oil is especially stable because it is monounsaturated. Extra virgin olive oil is even better than a lower quality olive oil because it has more natural antioxidants to soak up nasty free radicals. And good news for those of us who love New Zealand extra virgin olive oil. Compared to overseas olive oils it has more antioxidants and a higher smoking point, so you can heat it hotter before it starts to burn.

It’s spring-time in New Zealand and the flowers are so pretty. I just had to show you what I see each day as I walk up my street (you’ll need Adobe Flash to see the pics above). It gives me a daily hit of happiness!

Here’s a yummy Spring Lamb Salad to put you in the spring mood. Asparagus and new season’s potatoes have just arrived in the shops so I tossed them with some baby spinach leaves, roasted tomatoes and the barbecued lamb. I had some pomegranate molasses sitting in my fridge so dolloped it over the cooked lamb. It tasted delicious with the olive oil, garlic and lemon juice dressing. Try it!

You are trying to lose weight and are about to go out for dinner. What do you choose? Salad or vegetables, vegetarian pasta or veal masala? So much depends on how it’s been cooked and what’s been added. Vegetarian pasta in a tomato-based sauce with a salad sounds low in kilojoules but if the vegetables are pre-roasted in oil, the tomato sauce has been laced with cream, the salad is swimming in dressing and cheese smothers the lot, perhaps good old meat and vegetables would have been a better choice. Here are a few healthy eating out tips to help you skip the lurking kilojoules in restaurant food.

• Order water for the table and drink at least one glass for every glass of wine. This helps to fill you up and slow down your eating – and drinking!
• Order plain bread (or toast at breakfast) with the butter or olive oil served separately. Garlic, herb or pizza bread has the fat already added.
• If the meal you are ordering comes with a sauce, ask if it is creamy. Even tomato sauces are often ‘finished’ with cream. A 50 ml dash of cream (less than ¼ cup) adds an extra five teaspoons of fat to the sauce!
• The same applies to soup. Ask if it is made with cream. Even tomato and vegetable soups sometimes have cream or butter added.
• Poached eggs are a good egg choice – unless it’s ‘eggs benedict’ wit all that creamy sauce. Scrambled eggs are often made with cream to give that creamy texture.
• Order extra vegetables or salad.
• At Asian restaurants, choose stir-fried dishes with extra vegetables.
• Check if curries are made with coconut cream which has lots of artery clogging saturated fat.
• Most sweet and sour dishes use meat or fish which has been pre-fried which adds extra fat.
• If you feel full or don’t love the flavour of something, it’s OK to leave some food on your plate. No-one will growl at you!
• If you are planning on eating dessert, order an entrée with side serve of salad or vegetables rather than a main.
• Best desserts are fresh fruit, sorbet or coffee with biscotti.
• If you need a chocolate fix, order a trim hot chocolate for dessert.
• Follow the 3 S’s rule: choose small serves, share large serves and save some for later.