A Practical Guide To Healthy Living

This recipe from Gourmet Magazine (RIP, sniff) is easy, fast, and takes advantage of pantry staples.  I used low-sodium soy sauce and didn’t add any of the additional salt, and the results were terrific. 

Serve up some steamed broccoli and a tossed salad (try a citrusy vinaigrette) on the side.  If you have a starch lover in your family add some lightly buttered egg noodles or rice.  It’s only 30 minutes from start to finish, yet it’ll get raves from your crowd.

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It’s well known that when it comes to eating, parents lead by example:  If you eat healthy food, your kids will too. But we also know that managing a family’s busy schedule while making good nutrition a priority is a challenge. We want to make it easier!

Healthy Habits Kitchen and Semi-Sweet welcome nutritionist Elizabeth M. Ward M.S., R.D. into the kitchen to help improve your entire family’s eating habits in 2010, without making the kitchen table a battle ground.  Liz utilizes her expertise as a mother and her wealth of knowledge as a dietitian to help cut through the health-hype to offer practical tips for feeding even the most challenging kids.  You’ll walk away from the evening armed with tools to make healthy eating a real “family affair”:  meal planning tips; suggestions for fostering healthy food choices for kids; and food swaps and additions savvy parents can make to squeeze more nutrition into every meal.

This workshop will be held at Healthy Habits Kitchen in Wellesley, the Boston area’s only source for pre-assembled meal kits featuring healthful, whole ingredients.  These meal kits provide all you need to easily prepare a healthy meal. On the night of the workshop, Healthy Habits Kitchen will offer a meal deal to workshop attendees:  $2 off any 2 meals, $5 off any 3 meals and $10 off any 6 meals.

Details:

When: January 21^st, 7-8:30 p.m.
Where: Healthy Habits Kitchen, 36 Washington Street, Suite 2, Wellesley (note: this is an office building)
How much: Free
How to register: Call 781.235.6325 or register online at http://www.healthyhabitskitchen.com/fp_menu/current_events.php
Register today! Space is limited.

About Liz:  Elizabeth M. Ward, M.S., R.D., is a freelance writer and nutrition consultant. She is the author of several books, including The American Dietetic Association’s Expect the Best: Your Guide to Healthy Eating Before, During, and After Pregnancy, The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to the New Food Pyramids, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feeding Your Baby and Toddler. Ward writes on a regular basis for USAToday.com, Men’s Fitness magazine, and WebMD.com. She is a member of the American Dietetic Association, and lives in Reading, MA with her husband and three children.  Visit her website: www.expectthebestpregnancy.com

About Semi-Sweet: The Semi-Sweet blog is indeed “A Practical Guide To Healthy Living.”  This entertaining and informative site offers cutting-edge news on local food, healthful living and food trends.  Semi-Sweet also offers quick, delicious, from-scratch recipes featuring seasonal produce and whole foods.  Each one is tested by Sarah Isenberg, a recovering lawyer, avid home cook, cancer survivor, nutrition/fitness/food enthusiast, wife and mother.  Visit Sarah at www.semisweetonline.com

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‘Tis the season for re-evaluating our weight and nutrition goals, no?  The gyms are packed, the diet center ads are running constantly, and around this time, people generally resolve to “lose weight” and/or “get healthy,” once and for all . . . .

There are lots of obstacles to losing weight and eating healthily – you probably know what they are for you.  But have you thought about why you eat in the first place?   We generally have two reasons for eating:  hunger and appetite.  The two are completely different, and keying into which is motivating you at any given moment may help you push away from the table or avoid foods that might sabotage your healthful eating efforts.

What is Hunger?

Hunger is the ‘need for food’. Your body lets you know you’re running low on fuel and that food’s needed to give your body the energy it needs to perform an activity. Hunger instinctively protects the body from depleting energy reserves.

What is Appetite?

Appetite, on the other hand, is described as the desire, or craving for food.  It might be prompted by the sight or smell of food. Passing a bakery and smelling fresh baked goods is an example. Your stomach may be full because you’ve just eaten, but the smell and sight of the bread and desserts stimulates your appetite. 

Habits and moods affect our appetite, too.  Many of us eat out of habit (i.e. noon=lunchtime regardless of whether you’re actually hungry), or in response to various moods like sadness, anger, anxiety or boredom. Habits and emotional stimuli can be very powerful cues to eat, and very often, to overeat.

How to Tell Them Apart?

Knowing the difference between hunger and appetite is half the battle when it comes to weight loss. Tune in to your body before you start eating and ask yourself whether you’re truly hungry, or whether there’s something else going on.

For some people, an effective way to get at this is to keep a journal for a week or two.  For every time you eat, write down (1) what you ate, and (2) the circumstances of your eating – meaning, what caused you to eat, how you felt when you ate.  I’ve never incorporated emotions/circumstances into my food diary, but I know that it can be enormously powerful for some people – if you have any interest in doing this, I’d go for it.  It can’t hurt and it could provide some valuable insight.

I have to confess, I only started thinking of the distinction between my hunger and my appetite recently.  I know that in the past I ate when I was sad or depressed, and now I know that boredom is a trigger for me to munch, but I had never really thought about the technical definitions of hunger and appetite.  Since I have been, I realize that my appetite is also stimulated by reading and writing about food – which I of course do for a few hours every day.  I now realize that I have a huge appetite, but my actual hunger level is often fairly low.  If I take a minute and wait before heading to the fridge or cabinet, I can often derail eating based on merely appetite, and not hunger.

This is all best boiled down to Emma Fogt’s “food rule,” submitted to Michael Pollan when he solicited readers’ tips for eating healthfully.  It bears repeating to yourself when you’re going for that handful of Cheez-its:  “If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you are not hungry.”

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One of my goals for this winter was to make more soup, and another constant aim of mine is to cut down on food waste.  The two are compatible – soup’s a great vehicle for combining odds and ends from your fridge and freezer, and that’s just what I did last night.

The key to being able to do this kind of thing on the fly is to have a pantry that’s stocked with some staples.  Those of you who’ve been over here know that I have a lot of food stored in my “pantry” at the base of our basement stairs.  Low-sodium chicken broth, diced tomatoes and canned beans (remember, Eden Organics have no BPA in the liners) are always in residence.  I also always have peeled garlic cloves in my fridge (Trader Joe’s has some good ones that are vacuum packed so they last longer than those you get loose at Whole Foods).  From these ingredients with some additions, you can create myriad quick meals.

I wanted to make something hearty and comforting for D., who’s fighting both a cold and a wicked work schedule.  I’d planned on a funky tofu stir-fry, but for D., tofu stir-fry doesn’t equal hearty or comforting.  He loves the tofu, but not on a cold winter night when he’s feeling hit by a bus.  I got inspired by a post by The Kitchen Witch, and I was off and running . . . .

All the items were things I had on hand – this lends itself to tinkering and modifications, so go crazy!

Bit o’ Everything Tortelloni Soup

Heat the oil over medium heat in a large Dutch oven or stock pot.  Add the leeks and saute until tender, about 3 minutes.  Stir in the carrots, kale, garlic and beans and toss to combine.  After the kale has begun to wilt, add the tomatoes and the broth and stir to combine.  Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to a simmer for approximately 10 minutes, until the carrots and the kale are just tender.  Add the tortelloni and cook for another 5 minutes or until tender.  Add salt and pepper to taste and serve, topped with Parmesan cheese.

Serves 4, and takes about 40 minutes from start to finish (I was “paged” several times by L. during the course of prepping this, so this is a generous estimate!).

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Regular readers here know that for the past year, I’ve been dealing with some bad foot pain.  I am so happy to report, however, that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Things have improved so much that this weekend I got back into the kitchen for an afternoon of cooking for friends.  On the way home from the market on Saturday morning, my car packed with ingredients, I thought to myself “this is what really makes me happy.”  I love the creative effort involved in planning a cohesive menu and spending time cooking up tasty food for friends.

This weekend’s menu featured Italian comfort foods, or as D. said, “3 of [his] favorite things: chocolate, wine and beef.” 

For munchies, we started out with Robioloa cheese and cranberry pepper jelly on 34 Degrees Natural Crispbread.  I also put out an artichoke heart and Parmesan dip that I got at Sevan Bakery, along with some grissini (long, skinny Italian bread sticks) and some pitted green olives with lemon and garlic from Whole Foods.

For dinner, we had short ribs with tagliatelle, which was rich and flavorful and worth the effort.  I didn’t make any adjustments at all to this Giada recipe (but for skimming off some of the fat several times during the cooking) and it came out deliciously – the wine and bittersweet chocolate add great depth of flavor.  

These ribs are a 3+ hour endeavor, though, so this recipe’s definitely a weekend special-event deal.  And although the recipe as written calls for 3 hours of cook-time, mine was closer to 4 – I had some really thick short-ribs.  If you decide to tackle these, I’d leave yourself more time because there is NO downside to having your sauce ready while you assemble the rest of your meal – it’ll just get that much more flavorful as it waits. 

 This fresh salad with red leaf lettuce, radishes, toasted pine nuts and a citrus vinaigrette provided a nice counterpoint to the very rich main dish.  I found the recipe in my new Gourmet Today cookbook, but lucky for you, it’s online at Epicurious as well.

I had intended to steam up some broccoli to serve with a little extra-virgin olive oil, Parmesan and red pepper flakes, but that got lost in the shuffle of dinner being overdue. 

I also served up some Scali (not homemade, from Formaggio) to mop up sauce, etc.

For dessert, there were assorted amaretti and chocolate-covered butter cookies for the kids and this easy, unexpected and delicious recipe for dried figs with walnuts and mascarpone cheese.  I’d make a couple adjustments to this recipe, however.  First, if your dried figs are large, I’d halve them.  Although they do get more tender in the wine and balsamic syrup, they’re still rather chewy and it’ll be easier going with halves.  Next, I think that toasting the walnuts prior to assembling the mix in your baking dish is overkill – the walnuts toast up nicely in the oven.  Third, these were good cold, but I think that serving them warm as called for in the recipe would send them to over-the-top deliciousness.  The mascarpone is such a nice creamy complement to the sweet and tangy syrupy figs and toasty nuts.  It’s a little party in your mouth and a relatively light way to end a rich meal.

Bon appetit!

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On Tuesday afternoon I was casting about the ‘net for something original to make.  I’d planned on making an old standby, but that seemed boring to me and I wanted to jazz things up.  My only requirements were that the recipe used boneless, skinless chicken breasts and that it was fast.  I was also, for some reason, in the mood for potatoes, which is unusual.

Epicurious is great for times like these.  I plugged in “chicken and potatoes” and checked off the “Quick” box and voila!  Up came this curious recipe for “Chinese Chicken Curry.”  The list of ingredients was so random, I just had to try it.  I, of course, tweaked the recipe based on what I had on hand and my tastes (i.e., the 6 tablespoons of oil called for in the original seemed excessive to me) and came up with a flavorful, if unclassifiable meal. 

So what’s with the name of the recipe?  D. did not love this dish.  He is “not a fan of the home curry,” and when I asked D. what he’d call it, and if I should blog about it, and he said “if you’re going to blog about it, then you must call it the Freaky Chinese-Indian Curry.”  Sometimes, I actually listen to my husband and do what he wants.

I’m guessing, but I think that D.’s thought was that the dish is sorta Indian because as a rule, we don’t see a lot of potatoes in Chinese cookery.  And the curries we eat are from our favorite Indian places.  But that’s more because the Chinese food around here is primarily from places other than Northern China – where they do use potatoes in their cooking.  And the Chinese do do curry as well. 

Nevertheless, whatever its genealogy, this is a slightly sweet, slightly spicy, healthy and interesting meal that will perk up your taste buds on a cold January weeknight.  Enjoy!

Chinese Curry Chicken (Adapted from Bon Appetit)

Heat the oil in a wok or large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the onion and stir-fry until translucent.  Add the tomatoes, curry powder, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, turmeric and chili powder and stir until combined.  Mix in the potatoes, 1 c. of the broth, and the vermouth.  Cover and simmer about 10 minutes, until the potatoes are starting to get tender.  Add the chicken, cover and cook until the potatoes are tender and the chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes more.  Meanwhile, combine 1/4 c. of the broth with the cornstarch, shake or whisk to combine and make smooth.  Add this to the pan and stir, bringing the mixture to a boil for 2 minutes.  The sauce will thicken slightly.

Serves 4.

We ate this served over steamed broccoli (again, not Chinese) and it was very tasty.  It would be great atop rice (use brown for added fiber and nutrients), as it’s very saucy.  You could easily substitute tofu and vegetable broth for the chicken (I think the pre-fried tofu puffs you can get at Asian markets would be particularly tasty) to make this a vegan meal.

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Ahhh, there is nothing better than the feeling of arriving home after a long journey in the economy section of a packed jet, is there?  We arrived home on Saturday to a foot of snow in Boston.  But we arrived on-time and without any major hassles with security, so we were psyched.

Madrid was awesome, despite the rain which persisted all. week. long.  It was dismal, but we managed to squeeze out a lot of fun and make some great memories.  Not the least of which was meeting and loving up my new niece, Baby A., and visiting with my sister and brother-in-law.  And the food – sigh.  When we asked L. what she liked most about our vacation in Madrid, she said “I liked all the ham and the roasted chickens.”  Guess what?  Mama liked ‘em too.  And mama also enjoyed herself a box of marzipan, churros y chocolate, Spanish tortilla, myriad pinchos (anchovies & manchego, anyone??), chorizo, fried eggs atop fried potatoes with various amenities (roasted peppers and jamon Iberico, slightly stinky cheese), a wide variety of croquettes, empanadas . . . oh, the list goes on and on.  I need to peruse the La Tienda site more thoroughly, and order myself up some authentic tastes of Spain more often, I think.

I also read some food-related books on my week off.  I polished off The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8 Lee.  It’s a super book that traces the history of fortune cookies along with America’s passion for Chinese food.  Lots of cocktail party trivia in there, for you.  I also started Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell – it’s good, but she might be a bit too much of a whiner for me.  It is, however, a book that any lover of food who happens to be a food blogger must read, so I will soldier on and let you know what I think in the end.   [Read more →]

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“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”

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