new spin on the salad…

It may be slightly cliché, but usually I find myself eating a giant salad around dinner time, not just because it’s easy and fast to prepare, but because it’s a really good chance to sneak in some veggies. You may think that eating vegetables comes naturally to a dietitian, but I definitely have to be intentional about working them into my meals. 

And salads can certainly be more refined than the icky iceberg lettuce and dried out carrot shreds that compose most packaged mixes. I have found this spiralizer super helpful in making my salads a little more creative. The above salad contains:

• spiralized cucumber
• spiralized sweet potato (roasted in olive oil and dijon mustard at 400 for 15-20 minutes)
• candied almonds (slice almonds and heat in a frying pan with a slight sprinkling of sugar)
• feta cheese
• spring mix

Tahini is a nutrient packed and makes a great salad topper. I like it mixed with a little balsamic vinegar or BBQ sauce (weird, I know but so good). I also will often top my salads with hummus. I find that eating so many green things at once is both energizing (hate eating heavy meals and then going to bed a couple hours later) and definitely filling.

If you find that salads just don’t fill you up, add some extra protein in the form of nuts, seeds, cheese, or an egg.

Also a new soup recipe for you (adapted from here).

Black Bean and Quinoa Soup

• 1 T olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced small
• 1 tsp. minced garlic
• 1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 cans black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can tomatoes
• 3-4 cups homemade vegetable or chicken stock
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in heavy soup pot, add diced onion and cook over medium heat for 6-8 minutes, or until onions are just starting to brown.  Add minced garlic, chili powder, and fresh-ground black pepper and saute 1-2 minutes more or until spices are becoming fragrant. Add cubed sweet potatoes, black beans, and stock. Simmer on low-medium heat for 25-30 minutes or until sweet potatoes are cooked.

And wouldn’t you figure…after a crazy weekend of snow traveling and skiing, it was 60 degrees today, and I ran a lovely 4 miles outside in the sunshine in shorts. Crazy winter, but I’m not complaining.

Fave ways to eat vegetables??

 

p.s. post on wheat grass in the works…

germtastic

Let me just preface this post by saying that everyone at my place of employment has some kind of cold or upper respiratory illness. This means I am slathering on the hand sanitizer like nobody’s business and using bleach wipes to clean my desk every day. Germs!

This makes green smoothies packed with greens, fruit, and oats especially appropriate. I drank one on my way to work the other day, and I’m sure everyone was wondering what sort of green sludge was hanging out in my to-go tumbler.

One of my coworkers ate chicken noodle soup the other day, which I thought was pretty brilliant considering the cold weather and cold illness going around, so I decided to make my own version +/- a few ingredients.

anti-germ vegetable soup

• 1/4 cup onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup celery, chopped
• 1/2 cup carrots or sweet potatoes, chopped
• 1 T butter or oil
• 1 cup quinoa or noodles of your choice
• 1 cup kale
• 5-6 cups vegetable or chicken stock

Sauté onion and celery in butter until translucent, 3-4 minutes. Add carrots or sweet potatoes (or both) and cook for a few more minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and heat until quinoa or noodles are cooked.

And when I feel a bug coming on, I usually do the following:

• drink tons of water or hot tea
• take vitamin C
• eat more fruit and vegetables (natural nutrients)
• get lots of sleep
• cut out sugar

What’s the theory on sugar and infection? This one is up for debate, but some experts think that sugar inhibits the body’s natural defense against invading pathogens and promotes an environment favorable to the growth of pathogenic organisms. Others say the similar structures of sugar and vitamin C create competition for uptake into the body’s cells. Whatever the proposed theories, I have certainly found this to be true.

What about zinc and vitamin C as immune boosters?

According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, oral zinc may help reduce the length and severity of colds, but it also has potential to cause side effects (GI effects) and participate in drug nutrient interaction. Intranasal zinc should not be used due to risk of severe side effects.

Vitamin C has not been proven to prevent colds but may slightly reduce their length and severity.

So, while everyone else is stocking up on puffs plus, I’m having another round of wheat grass [oh joy].

what are your go-to strategies for preventing the plague of death?

february so far

Well, hello February.

January was a busy month as evidenced by my lack of blogging. This warm winter has been fantastic, though, especially because I walk to work. A couple of weekends ago we did finally get some snow, but it’s completely gone now.

I don’t know if you’ve tried lentil hummus yet, but I’ve been a bit obsessed with it lately. It’s also really inexpensive to make, probably even less expensive than homemade bean hummus ($0.12/oz). The last time I did a comparison this = 3x cheaper than storebought hummus.  

With the new month, I’ve noticed a change in breakfast patterns. I have been on 3 different breakfast kicks since starting this blog during grad school in 2009.

• [2007-2010] oatmeal in every way imaginable
• [2010-2011] egg + toast
• [2012] green smoothies are making a comeback

I have to admit that this latest kick has been inspired by convenience and trying to streamline my morning routine.

Overnight, I refrigerate directly in the blender container:

• 1/2 cup oats,
• ~1 cup almond milk
• 1 cup of raw kale
• 1 T peanut butter
• 1 banana
• cinnamon, and a little vanilla extract

In the morning, I just turn the blender on, and breakfast is served in 2.5 seconds.  

Do you eat the same thing every day for breakfast?  

And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about food and the standard American diet (SAD), how nutrition is a simple yet seemingly impossible solution to a wealth of diseases, how we have the power to take control of our health yet continually choose quick fixes, and how we have to make decisions about whether or not what we buy at the grocery store is real food. Nutrition isn’t simple stuff anymore.

The ready availability of energy dense, nutrient poor junk food and fast food doesn’t help anything. I know a lot of these thoughts are coming from frustration after reviewing a lot of diet records filled with processed products, but it just makes me sad that so many people truly don’t know what it looks like to eat things that don’t come out of packages and boxes…and for that matter, why the American Dietetic Association even promotes some of these products. Personally, I find that incredibly shameful, and it’s part of the reason I’m no longer a part of that organization (still a registered dietitian, just not a formal member of the ADA).

But enough on that…in other [good] news, my ankle is nearly healed; thanks for all the well wishes. Running is such a huge outlet for me, and I’m glad that it can be part of life again. And I’ll try to be more careful this time. ;)

nutritional yeast and B12

Good thoughts on the USDA’s rollout of My Plate. Andrea made a really good point; the plate does NOT encourage non-processed food over processed food, but because the food industry is so huge, I have to say I’m not surprised.
I went to the Jolly Pumpkin, an Ann Arbor craft brewery with some friends this weekend. Definitely a fun place; they have a rooftop deck that is perfect for summer nights. And they use ingredients from sustainable farmers, organic growers and artisan producers, which is pretty fantastic.

[photo via b.rostad]
Sunday is always a big food prep day because I have pretty much zero energy to pack lunches or cook during the week. I experimented with this recipe for tahini curried carrot salad.

I’m not crazy about sweet vegetables, so I had to do a little improvising. I left out the raisins and added some spiralized cukes (this is the spiralizer I have). I think next time I’d leave out some of the maple syrup, too.

The recipe also calls for nutritional yeast, which is big in the vegan world because it contains vitamin B12.

Vitamin B12:

• required for proper red blood cell formation, neurological function, and DNA synthesis; plays a role in fat and protein metabolism
• bound to protein in animal products and is released by the activity of hydrochloric acid and gastric protease in the stomach; however synthetic vitamin B12 (aka that in nutritional yeast) is already in free form and doesn’t require separation
• the body needs very little B12 on a daily basis; B12 is stored in the liver, so unless you have been a vegan for a long time without supplementation or have digestive issues or kidney disease, you don’t likely have a deficiency.

.

• amounts listed on a nutrition label are based on 6 µg/day; the nutritional yeast I have contains 40% of the daily value for B12 or 2.4 µg per tablespoon.
• it is beneficial to get B12 from a variety of fortified sources because absorption can vary.

Do you eat animal products? If not, where do you get your B12?

preservative-free snackage

I officially finished M. Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma this past week. If you haven’t read his books, I’d highly recommend them for an in-depth look at what our food system has become. Seriously scary.

            

Many of Pollan’s sentiments regarding food echo my own, and I’ve definitely become enlightened on the whole industrial organic scheme and the crazy ingredients in packaged products. I don’t eat many, but even the ones I occasionally buy sometimes make me cringe.

For example:

Ingredients: ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT FLOUR, SOYBEAN OIL, SUGAR, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED OIL, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, LEAVENING (CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, BAKING SODA), SALT, SOY LECITHIN

Hello, sketchy ingredients.

Enter this version:

Ingredients: whole wheat flour, salt, turbinado sugar, baking soda, olive oil, butter.

Much, much better. I left out the extra salt and butter because you’ll find these already have plenty of butter.

Now, there is no way I could possibly make as many crackers as some autobot-powered machine. However, I also was ill-equipped (no clue where my rolling pin is…I used a can of olive oil spray). I think the yield should really be between 40-50 crackers (mine was closer to 30).

These crackers are also pretty awesome with peanut butter dip [greek yogurt + PB + vanilla extract + cinnamon]. And you don’t have to eat 60 billion because they definitely are more filling than those of a certain brand.

Maybe I was excited to eat them. Or maybe I was excited that it was 40 degrees outside = perfect running weather. Or…maybe it was that extra hour of sleep I lost…

 

I also outsmarted my super sensitive smoke detector by taking out the battery…success!

What did you do this weekend?!

 

***Thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected by the craziness happening in Japan. I can’t even completely comprehend the situation but am most certainly thinking of all who are grieving…

belief ----> action

Whenever I move to a new place, it’s not long before I start to notice little quirks…like the large flock of geese that honk at all hours of the day (and night) and a very sensitive smoke alarm that went off no less than 4 times when I was roasting butternut squash. But, that just gives the space character, right?!

I had some requests for an apartment tour. Honestly, it makes me cringe to let you see everything half finished, but here’s one wall in progress; there are faux polaroid photos going on top of the corkboards eventually. Btdubs, everything is not crooked, the photographer just doesn’t know how to hold a camera straight…

Embroidery is super easy, and it makes inexpensive wall art [tutorial here!]. The frames are simply embroidery hoops that I painted in 5 minutes.

I stitched this piece during the snow craziness this weekend. To me, trees symbolize growth and hope, so I think it’s a pretty relevant piece of wall art for this stage in my life…

Lately, I’ve been pondering the intersection between belief and action. If you truly believe in something, won’t you do it? And if you don’t, does that mean you don’t really believe it after all?

For me, this means putting into practice the nutrition principles I value: eating real food, moderation, local and sustainable food, etc. I find it ironic that my busy dietitian job is forcing me to be more thoughtful about nutrition [as in, I have to plan healthful meals or they won’t happen!].

I’ve seen variations of sweet potato hummus floating around the blogosphere, so I decided to give it a try. I’m definitely more of a savory hummus fan, and the sweet potato gives this a sweet bent, so I’m not quite sure what I think of it.

[modified] sweet potato hummus :: based on gena’s recipe

• 1 large sweet potato, cooked, skin removed, and cut into chunks
• 1 can chickpeas, drained,
• 1 1/2 tsp olive oil
• 1-2 tbsp tahini
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• juice from 1/2 an orange
• 1 small clove of garlic
• black pepper to taste
• shake of cinnamon
• water

Mix everything together and blend via food processor. This hummus also weirdly tastes good with bbq sauce. Maybe because I love eating sweet potato fries with this particular condiment?

Anyone else have any unique hummus recipes?!

snow running & a recipe…

Thanks for the great responses to the commuter cycling post. Check it if you haven’t yet!

It has been a super busy week. Sometimes the best stress relief is a good run, even if there is a lot of snow outside, drivers don’t want to share the road with you…and you get sprayed by the snow plow. 

  

Another thing that can ease stress after a busy day is a quick meal. This recipe was a little tricky for me to write out because I don’t usually measure anything…I just mix until things look right and taste good.

black bean burgers

• 1 (14 oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed (rinsing for 30 seconds can remove 30% of the sodium).
• 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 2-3 T olive oil
• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 cup crackers, crushed
• 1/4 cup salsa
• pepper to taste

And here are my secret weapons…pastry cutters are traditionally used for making delicious pies, but they’re also great for mashing up black beans. Also, a jar lid greased with a little cooking spray is the best way to make burgers of uniform size that won’t fall apart. Any other helpful hints?

 

Heat 1-2 T of olive oil in a pan and cook burgers for 3-5 minutes on each side (depending on thickness). Top with a little guacamole for perfection.

 

Oh…my other favorite thing about winter is scraping the snow off the roof. It’s about as much fun as it sounds. And yes, the snow is up to my knees!

Alright…confession time. Are you a diehard outside exerciser, or do you stay inside in the winter?!

quick weeknight meals

Great responses on the NY Times eating before breakfast article. Last minute thoughts, then I’m done, promise!

Important things to remember when reading a media-reported health study:

• the media loves sensationalist material and often misinterprets information.
• one study will not necessarily change what we know about health slash nutrition; it takes many studies to validate results or form any sort of concrete conclusion.
• studies are often conducted in highly controlled environments with variables designed to achieve results; applying the results of a study to the general population isn’t usually realistic.

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As nutrition counseling appointments stack up for the new year, I find requests for quick weeknight meals a common theme. It’s pretty stressful to have to make any meal, let alone a healthful meal at the end of the work day.

Here’s a favorite that’s ready in no time and is a fantastic way to sneak in those vegetables.

Step 1. Chop up an assortment of veggies…your choice. Season with olive oil, black pepper, garlic, maple syrup, and a shake of parmesan cheese.

Step 2. Place vegetable mixture in foil, and form into packets.

Step 3. Bake at 400 F for about 50 minutes.

Step 4. Serve over quinoa, which takes ~15 minutes to cook. Top with feta cheese if you’re feeling adventurous.

 

Not sure how it could get much quicker [or easier] than that.

If you have extra time, you can make this whole wheat carrot cake.

[whole wheat carrot cake]

ingredients

• scant 1 cup turbinado sugar
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups applesauce
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups grated carrots
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 9 x 13 pan.
2. Combine the sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, soda, & applesauce. With an electric mixer beat in the eggs one at a time. Stir in the carrots and the walnuts. Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan.
3. Bake for 1 hour 20 minutes.

*note: I made my own frosting with vanilla yogurt + powdered sugar. I didn’t measure anything, so just mix until it’s the desired consistency.

What’s your fave quick fix dinner? If you have a recipe link, please share! I’m in the process of making a book for my clients and would love your suggestions.

Day 10: the gift of reading

Reach Out and Read is an evidence-based nonprofit organization that promotes early literacy and school readiness in pediatric exam rooms nationwide by giving books to children and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud [search for a program in your area].

You can give by volunteering to be a reader or donating gently used or new books. As someone who grew up doing a lot of reading (Nancy Drew was one of my favorites) and still loves it today, I know how much reading can contribute to educational development…and imagination.

Happy weekend, all. I’ll be in the kitchen testing out recipes for my first ever cooking class next week…wish me luck!

a sweet dilemma

As I was running today, I saw a sign outside a local dentist’s office that said “cash for candy” and offered $1/pound of candy turned in. Genius.

   =  

Now, you know I’m completely in favor of moderation, and this includes eating candy (hello, dark chocolate), but the problem is that our country has lost sight of moderation’s true meaning. The amount of candy a child collects on Halloween definitely does not fall into that moderation category, especially since junk food is no longer a special treat in our society…it is everywhere.

Could there be a more perfect time to teach kids about investing in health?! It may take a few years before they see the connection between giving up junk and saving in terms of health care costs, but it’s a good start. Thoughts?

This article in the New York Times, discusses the villainization of candy vs. drinking juice or eating cookies. Not news to me…I don’t think candy or juice should be consumed in excess. Moral of the story…eat real food. I recently read M. Pollan’s In Defense of Food, and it was really good. I say this even though I come from a nutrition science background, and you’ll understand the irony of that statement if you’ve read the book. More discussion to come…

Anyway, while we’re on the topic of real food, how about another soup recipe? I know some states have been experiencing tornado-like weather, which qualifies as soup weather to me. This black bean soup is really easy but has tons of flavor. Thanks for the recipe, Foodbuzz!

 

Don’t forget whole wheat biscuits…because every soup needs a homemade biscuit, and these will only take 10 minutes to make, tops.

Have you read In Defense of Food? If so, thoughts?!