The Secret Ingredient: Delicious,easy recipes which might just save your life

my story

My story begins on a lovely sunny, happy day, at a child’s birthday party. I was talking to my friends and my husband, Dogan, laughing and watching the children play. One moment, everything was just as it should be, but within one breath, my whole life turned upside down, never to be the same again.

Suddenly I felt extremely poorly. I handed my nine-month-old baby girl to a friend, and ran to the toilet. I had a feeling of impending doom, as if a big black cloud was looming over me, making every breath more meaningful. I understood immediately that something very serious was happening to me and that it was beyond my control. I collapsed on the floor, feeling as if my chest was being crushed and struggling to breathe. I felt sick and hot and sweaty. The pain I was enduring was so much worse than giving birth to any of my three babies.

I managed to get back to my friends, and what followed was chaos. An ambulance was called, and while we waited my kind friends tried in vain to help me - bringing me ice, water and a bag to breathe into. All I wanted at that moment, though, was to stare into my husband’s eyes because I needed him to be with me and to understand what I was saying to him. I managed to give him some brief instructions on what to do with the children, but I guess I was telling him something much more than that too.

The ambulance arrived, and the crew checked me over. They managed to calm me down a little and took an ECG (a measurement of the heartbeat). They said there was a slight abnormality, but because of my young age (36) and the fact that I led a healthy lifestyle and there was no family history of heart problems, they were happy to rule out anything serious there and then. Even so, we decided that I should go to the hospital immediately to get properly checked out.

After a few hours spent being looked over, I was eventually let home with some indigestion medicine!

I spent the next couple of days recovering and feeling traumatized by the whole event. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I felt something had changed inside me. A couple of days later, after clearing up the kitchen, the pain hit me again. It felt like a herd of elephants stamping on my chest. Each breath was tight and so painful. If at that moment someone had offered to cut off my right arm so that the pain would go away, I would readily have handed over the knife!

My husband called for an ambulance again, and events at the hospital this time started to unravel, like a really bad soap opera. It started with pure panic. I felt I was not being taken seriously and I was left alone in my cubicle, suffering in agony. I couldn’t call anyone to come and help me because the pain literally took mybreath away. I thought I might die alone in that cubicle and not be found for hours. Eventually one student nurse looked at my ECG and her jaw dropped. Suddenly, I was no longer alone; the room was buzzing with people all around me. At one point I had three cardiologists looking at my heart trace chart, saying that it was telling them that I was having a heart attack but that they didn’t believe it - because of my age, lifestyle, etc.

The next morning I was told by a cardiologist that my blood tests showed I had suffered a very serious heart attack. I was relieved that I had survived, but felt numb with disbelief. In fact, I got really cross with the doctor for talking such rubbish! I just wanted to go home.

Unfortunately, it was quite a while before I did. Throughout the day, I started to suffer more chest pains. I could feel myself sinking lower and lower and I kept being moved from one bed to another, closer and closer to the Cardiac Care Unit. I needed to be monitored constantly and my heart rhythm was doing some amazing acrobatics. A nurse was sent to take a scan of my heart. I suppose it is down to my natural optimism that I still expected her to say, Oh everything’s fine… probably eaten something dodgy!’ But her expression was grave. She has since told me that she was shocked - it was the most excessive damage she has ever seen in anyone so young.

I continued to deteriorate and was eventually wheeled into the Coronary Care High Dependency Unit. It had a very different feel about it - all white, very high ceilings, voices echoing. The beds in this unit had very wide spaces between them to accommodate the rescue teams of doctors and nurses. My team came to my rescue at about 5pm. I had sunk so low, the pain in my chest was breaking through the drugs they had given me and I could no longer talk. The only thought in my head was to keep breathing. Breathe in and breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. I figured if I could just keep breathing, I wouldn’t die. The doctors and nurses were quickly putting needles and lines into both of my arms and each hand. They were all moving very quickly around me and speaking in hushed voices. I managed to whisper to one of the nurses as she crouched at my bedside and held my hand with great pity in her eyes. She said they were calling my husband to come back - he’d gone home to be with the children for tea. I asked if I was going to die now, and she swallowed hard before saying, ‘Not now” - but she gave her colleague a look. She was a lovely gentle nurse but no good at telling lies.

The team managed to stabilize me enough to move me to another hospital, where, they said, I would get fixed up. They had arranged for me to have an angiogram, expecting to find a blockage somewhere in my heart that was causing the problem.

An angiogram involves inserting a tube, via a vein in your groin, into the heart. Dye is pumped through the tube and an x-ray shows the blood and oxygen flow and any blockage. If there is a blockage, it can often be cleared by fitting a stent or by performing a bypass.

At this point, I was passing in and out of consciousness. I was aware that I was just hanging on, and wasn’t at all sure how much longer I would manage. We arrived at the new hospital, and the surgeon, who had been dragged out of bed, told me all the risks associated with an angiogram and the mortality rate. Even in my perilous state, I could do the maths - and thought there were things I’d much rather have been doing.

The Cath Lab, where they were going to perform the procedure, was very cold and I had to lie on an even colder table to have the angiogram. By this point I was relatively relaxed, partly due to the drugs I had been given but also partly because of what was happening to my body. I was starting to shut down. I felt myself let go a couple of times and it frightened me… but it was not unpleasant. It would have been very easy just to drift off. I knew my situation was very bad but the thing that surprised me was how calm I was by then.

The surgeon started his procedure, putting a small incision in my groin. I felt the blood trickle over my leg. He then fed the line up into my heart to pump the dye in and x-ray the results. I felt very close to the edge, but I was still quietly determined just to keep breathing. Yet I almost gave up when I heard the surgeon start to swear under his breath. I looked at his face and saw an expression of shock and disbelief and then panic and then nothing. It was when he started to swear that I think I began to understand just how dire my situation was.

Even so, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The surgeon took off his gloves, then left the room with his shoulders drooped. The nurses and assistants followed quietly as if embarrassed - I was all alone. Everyone really had gone. Upped and left. Gone. I was alone. Completely and utterly alone in this dreadful room on this cold table. I thought for a moment that I was dead and this was what it was like.

I stopped forcing my breath and let my natural breath take over. Each breath was so shallow and light but it was all I could hear in the room. I couldn’t fill my lungs. Was I still alive? I could drift off really easily and when I did the pain in my chest went away. I did it a couple of times to see what it was like. It was fine. Just fine. I would then pull myself back and the hurting returned, but it had turned into a ‘good’ pain because it proved that I was still alive. I really needed that confirmation. And I really needed to feel the pain.

After what seemed like a couple of hours, but which was probably only a couple of minutes, Dogan, my husband, walked into the room. He was sobbing. He said that he loved me. The doctors had told him that I had suffered another massive heart attack; that my heart had sustained a shocking amount of damage, which could not be repaired; and that I was going to die. So as he walked into the lab, he was coming to say goodbye.

I would love to be able to write that I told him how much I loved him and we held each other tight. That didn’t happen. Since I had just discovered that I was still alive, and I’d allowed myself to think for a second about my little ones at home, I was filled with an all-consuming need and desire and passion not to let myself die. I can’t put into words how strong this feeling was. It was this surge of emotion that literally saved my life. It must have been all about the people that I love. It was instinctive and I decided there and then that I would never, ever give up breathing.

I had so much to live for.

What had actually happened to my heart was something so rare that none of the cardiologists that I saw subsequently had ever encountered it before. In fact, it was the reason the surgeon had become so defeated and left me in the lab. My main left artery, the one inside the heart that feeds the heart muscle blood and oxygen, had literally unravelled and fallen apart. The condition is called ‘spontaneous coronary artery dissection’, and is usually diagnosed post-mortem. My artery just simply fell apart, which meant that the blood coming into the heart, instead of being pumped straight out to feed my body, was actually just leaking away. My heart was literally bleeding and being starved of the blood and oxygen that it needed to function, and my body and vital organs were also being deprived. I had just enough output, or blood trickling through, to keep me alive. Just.

At this point, I was wired up to monitors and machines and felt overwhelmed and in a complete state of shock. Nobody can really explain why I survived that night. According to all the medical books, I shouldn’t have. My condition is incredibly rare, with only 200 or so recorded cases worldwide and about 30 survivors - ever! However, I was also fit, a healthy eater and a non-smoker, so this all worked in my favour. I am also a great believer in fate, and with three babies at home I had the most precious of reasons to keep breathing.

I could tell that the doctors were struggling the next day to say something positive to me. But they couldn’t. They believed that although I had survived the heart attacks, my chances of pulling through the next 24 hours were very slim. They were kind and gentle but, in this instance, they couldn’t perform miracles.

eating for health

Well, as you have probably gathered, having survived the un-survivable, my future health became so very important to me. I realized that I was the only person who could control how long I was to be around. Food and exercise became my saviour - and this book is my eating plan.

Here, you will find the recipes I devised when my prognosis was poor and I knew I had to take control of everything I ate in order to give myself the best possible chance of survival. At the same time I had three hungry cherubs at home and I was determined that they should grow up with a great relationship with food, as I had. I certainly didn’t want them to grow up thinking that a diet of mung beans and spinach was normal! So, scattered through my recipes you will find some ingredients often considered ‘unhealthy’. I’d like to take the opportunity to address each of these so that you fully understand what the facts are.

The first point to make is that ‘good food’ and ‘bad food’ is an old message steeped in myth and half-truth. I believe that many people have picked up unhelpful pieces of advice that they now hang on to, but actually these so-called ‘facts’ are making it far more difficult for them to enjoy a healthy diet for life. I know that the key to eating well is balancing nourishment with enjoyment; moderation is essential and it is possible to eat for health and taste in equal measure. I hope that after reading my book you’ll find it very easy to make good food choices and at the same time enjoy your food as you deserve to.

So, you’ll see that some delicious recipes that contain red meat. It is true that chicken and fish would usually be the preferred option; however, red meat is a valuable source of iron and zinc and eaten in small quantities is good for you. Be sure to buy top-quality lean meat and always cut off all visible fat. All of my dishes that contain red meat also have a high vegetable content and so are perfectly balanced to give your body the nutrients it needs.

Some recipes contain a little butter or cheese. They are a good source of calcium, however, and the quantities used are very small. What’s more the dishes are designed to feed at least four people and so do not contain enough dairy to be detrimental to your health when eaten in moderation.

Keep a close watch on which dishes are marked ‘everyday and which are marked ‘treat’. I have done this to guide you. An ‘everyday’ dish speaks for itself, but try to limit the ‘treats’ to once a week or once every two weeks to be on the fun side of safe!

Potatoes get a bad press - possibly because we often think of them loaded with fat as chips and crisps. However, in their natural form they are fat free, high in fibre and a good source of vitamin C. They are also affordable, keep well and are incredibly versatile. I use potatoes all the time, such as when I need to bulk out a meal if we have unexpected guests.

I suspect that some of you will have been put off potatoes because of the recent fashion for carbohydrate-free diets. However, please understand that your body needs a little carbohydrate every day and it’s much better to get it from a high-fibre food like a potato than a low-fibre starchy food like bread or pasta.

Eggs also have an unfairly bad reputation. They contain cholesterol, and so it is often thought that people who have high blood cholesterol should not eat eggs. Actually, the cholesterol in an egg is not absorbed into the blood stream. Each yolk contains around 5g of fat (about 8 per cent of the daily amount we should have), of which only 1.5g is saturated (i.e. bad for you). Although they should not be eaten every day, they are a good source of protein and contain more than a dozen vitamins and minerals, including iron, zinc, phosphorus, folate, riboflavin, vitamins A, D, E and B12. So you can see that from a nourishment point of view an egg packs quite a punch! I’d call that healthy eating, wouldn’t you?

I have included some of my favourite family recipes, such as lasagne, shepherd’s pie and even egg and chips (see pages 95,99 and 41)! Take a closer look and you’ll see that even these recipes contain only a little olive oil and are packed with nutrients from the high vegetable content. For most people, nutrition is an art and not a science. We all wish to eat well and be healthy and my recipes will help you achieve just that. I want you and your family to enjoy a healthy diet as much as my family and I do.

Enjoy!

p.s. The oven temperatures in this book are for a conventional oven. If you are using a fan oven, follow the manufacturer’s instructions.

soups & starters

carrot and butternut squash soup

everyday *

This soup is so quick and easy to make and is wonderfully good for you. It will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator.

serves 4

1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

4 large carrots, peeled

1 medium butternut squash, peeled and deseeded

freshly ground black pepper

850ml/1½ pints/3¾ cups chicken or vegetable stock

2–3 fresh thyme sprigs, leaves picked

handful of chopped fresh parsley or coriander (cilantro)

1 Sweat the onion and garlic in the olive oil over a medium heat in a large, lidded pan for about 7 minutes, or until soft.

2 Chop the carrots and butternut squash into 1.5cm/⅝in cubes and add to the pan. Season with black pepper and cook for another 10 minutes, or until the vegetables start to soften.

3 Pour in the stock, add the thyme leaves and parsley or coriander (cilantro) and bring to the boil. Now turn down the heat a little, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.

4 Finally, use a hand blender or liquidizer to purée the soup. Reheat and serve.

courgette and pea soup

everyday

An easy-to-make soup that is packed with beta-carotene, vitamin C and folate. Tastes good too!

1 Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan over a moderate heat. Add the courgettes (zucchini) and onion and sauté for about 10 minutes, or until the vegetables start to soften.

2 Pour in the stock, then bring to the boil, lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.

3 Add the peas to the soup and simmer for a further 5 minutes.

4 Blend the soup in a liquidizer or blender and stir in the basil.

5 Reheat, season to taste with black pepper and serve immediately.

serves 6

dash of olive oil

4 small courgettes (zucchini), chopped into small pieces

1 small onion, peeled and sliced

900ml/1½ pints/3½ cups chicken stock

225g/8oz/2 cups fresh or frozen peas

25g/1oz fresh basil, torn

freshly ground black pepper

exercise - the secret ingredient

I know we’d all like to take a magic pill that will make us healthier and help us to lose weight. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that pill could also reverse our heart disease, stop us from getting cancer, help us look younger, and actually make our whole lives happier, easier and longer?

Well, there is something that will do all of the above, but it is not in the form of a tablet. You don’t even need to get it on prescription. And it is not so secret after all, although many people seem to have problems realizing how easy it is to do and how fast the benefits will come.

The Secret Ingredient is simply increased physical activity. There’s nothing like it, and there’s nothing that will replace it!

I’m not necessarily talking about joining a gym or getting into pink and purple Lycra, leg warmers and ‘feeling the burn’, but I do practise what I preach and I call it ‘active living’.

When I first came out of hospital after my heart attacks, all I could manage were a few steps to and from my front gate. I couldn’t manage the short walk to pick my son up from school like the other mums, so I had to be inventive to keep up appearances. I would spend all day getting ready. I’d have a shower - then sleep for an hour. Dry my hair - exhausting work - then sleep for two hours. Add a bit of lippy - another nap and it’d be time to go.

I’d get a lift around the corner to the school and would then settle myself on the school bench before all the parents arrived, and when they did, I would smile and wave as if everything were completely normal. I did catch a few looks, as if to say, ‘I thought she was meant to be ill; she looks OK to me!’ I would then manage to stand up to greet my little man as he ran out of school, and give him the big hug that he’d been waiting for. Luckily, he was happy to be walked home by a friend; he didn’t seem too bothered that I didn’t actually walk him home, only that I was there to see him when he first came out of the school door. I would then sit back down on my ‘life-saving’ bench and wait for all the other parents to go before I’d catch my lift back home again.

baby step by baby step

Each time I did this little journey, I was left completely exhausted. Add to this challenge that I also had a nine-month-old baby girl and a very active two-year-old at home. For obvious reasons, I had to have a full-time nanny for a while to do all the physical stuff, but I even found talking to my little ones incredibly tiring. However, because I had started to push myself, baby step by baby step, I soon realized that I was getting stronger. I knew my heart was very damaged, and none of the doctors could give me a positive prognosis for survival at this stage. Thankfully, I started to tune in to my body and listen to what it was telling me. When I felt strong enough, I started to walk for maybe three or four minutes. Other days, I could manage only one or two. Little by little, step by step, I built my strength to the level that I’m at now.

Would you be surprised to hear that I now exercise every day? I swim, I walk, I cycle with the kids. I don’t do anything dramatic, I keep my heart rate nice and steady. I allow myself to get gently out of breath, never gasping, and I still listen to my body. When it tells me it’s time to stop and rest, I do just that.