A Practical Guide To Healthy Living

I am a Whole Foods sucker.  I think there is a little Sarah Isenberg detector that goes off when I pull into their parking lot:  “Whoop!  Whoop!  Put out your most expensive munchies/probiotic supplements/seasonal chocolates/cheese!”  But today, my impulse-shop paid off in spades.  I have a new love.  This is not new to the market, but new to me . . . . WFM’s own Thai Ginger Marinade.

I was in the Fresh Pond Whole Foods this afternoon and as I sidled up to the fish counter, I was overwhelmed by the tastiest aroma.  After I procured my cod (the Isenberg fish of choice, 24/7), I turned around and visited the nearby guy doing some grilling.  Turns out he had marinated either mah-mahi or swordfish (can’t remember which, I know that neither were Isenberg-approved varieties) in WFM’s Thai Ginger Marinade.  I bought the marinade, untasted, because it smelled so. damn. good.

I re-worked my whole menu tonight around this marinade – we were on deck for cod Veracruz and some accompanying sides in a similar vein, but I went Asian.  I used up some cabbage I’d shredded last night and made my cabbage slaw, then basted my cod fillets with the marinade and poured a little around them in a baking dish.  I baked them, basting every 10 minutes or so, for around 25 minutes.  I also steamed some green beans and made some lo mein.

This marinade knocked my socks off.  The ingredients are simple:  canola oil, shoyu, water, fish sauce, lemon juice, sesame oil, ginger, cliantro, garlic and crushed red pepper.  It’s got a great soy tang, but it’s more complex than your usual soy-saucey sauce – probably because of the fish sauce.  It’s also got a nice deep roasty flavor from the sesame oil, and it’s got a kick to it.  It is strong on cod, so if you’re a cod-purist, it might not be for you.  But it was so good that I put a teaspoon over my green beans.    I could think of 1,000 applications for this stuff – for instance, as a marinade for tofu – then do up a stirfry with loads of veggies and season the whole shebang with more of the marinade.  Or I’m pretty sure it’d be great thinned out a bit (to mellow the flavor, not because it’s viscous) to make a dipping sauce for plain baked or fried tofu triangles.  Or dumplings.  Or to dress your plain Chinese noodles. 

Yum.

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We all have those nights – they happen more now that school’s in, I think.  The day gets away from you and you’re sitting at your desk (or in your car, mid-schlep) at 4:30 and you’re suddenly caught up short.  “What are we going to have for dinner?”  The easy choice is takeout or fast food, but the angel on your right shoulder says “You should be feeding your family something healthier.”  And face it, are you really going to be able to get to the market before you have to sling hash?  Probably not.

Enter Healthy Habits Kitchen of Wellesley.  I discovered Healthy Habits Kitchen last spring – I was Googling meal assembly places (a la Dream Dinners) nearby, and the HHK site showed up.  I put them on my to-try list and never got around to it.  Then the Foodie Mommy favorably reviewed HHK in early September.  Her review incentivized me to finally check it out.  [Read more →]

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I suspect that lima beans aren’t on your top 10 favorite veggies list, but who knows?  You might surprise me.  I have a great recipe for you today that that just might convince the haters out there . . . trust me, OK?  This is easy, very tasty, and very quick – 15 minutes max from counter to table.  How’s that for incentive to try?

Lima Bean & Feta Salad

Cook the limas according to package directions until just tender – do not overcook them!  Drain them and set them aside.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a heavy frying pan and add the tomatoes and garlic.  Cook over medium-high heat until the tomatoes are beginning to color.  Add the feta to the pan and toss the ingredients together for about 1 minute.  Tip into a large bowl and mix with the beans, dill and olives.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve warm or at room temperature. 

This serves 4-6 as a side dish, but it’s a great light lunch or dinner if you serve it with some nice fresh Syrian bread.   How do you tell it’s fresh bread?  Do like all the little old ladies do and squeeze it . . . if it feels soft and slightly springy, it’s the good stuff.  Don’t be shy!

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Today I’m proud to announce my first guest blogger, Jill Feldman.  Jill’s going to tell us about a passion of hers, Nia – a workout, lifestyle and personal growth program all rolled into one. Many, including Jill, have found that Nia’s a fabulous way to condition, heal and transform the body, mind and spirit.

Maybe Jill will inspire you to try Nia?  It can be incredibly refreshing for your body and your mind to take up a new form of exercise after many years of doing the same ol’ thing.  I’m going to try it out and I’ll keep you posted – Jill is going to lead me in a special Nia session adapted to my current zero weight-bearing exercise restrictions . . . yes, you can even do Nia in a chair!  [Read more →]

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D. and I had a sitter on Saturday night, and we didn’t have a plan.  We were in the mood for a delicious dinner, and hadn’t been to Scampo in a while, so at 5:30 I gave them a call – their tables were booked ’til 10:30, but the Mozzarella Bar was wide open, and the seating there is first-come, first-served.  We were in!

We had a fabulous meal, there at that bar.  It’s a fun place to sit if you haven’t before – lots of theater behind the little glass screen.  This is where all the breads, pizzas and the mozzarella dishes are prepared.  That’s a lot of food being readied in a small space, and it’s fun to watch the various players do their thing.

We both love to sample lots of things, so we went the small plates route.   We started out with an order of the flaky puffed pan bread with zataar & lemon labneh.  Our bread came, all puffy and warm, in its own little pan.  The lemon labneh was drizzled over the top and the zataar was sprinkled over the top.  The bread was delicate and just a little crunchy and delightfully messy, the labneh was subtly lemony and provided just the right amount of coolness and creamy richness. 

Then came the mozzarella with prosciutto, napoleon of crisped pear and potato and handmade quince preserve.  The prosciutto was super flavorful and expertly sliced into wafer-thin pieces.  The mozzarella was delicious and the crisped potatoes were spectacular – crispy and just a tiny bit greasy and super salty.  The pear chips were interesting – hard to distinguish by looks alone from the potato chip, but not on taste.  They were a bit chewy and super sweet.  The quince preserve was delicious, but I felt that it overpowered the delicate tastes of the prosciutto and mozzarella – but the sweet was a nice counterpoint to the prosciutto.  I think I’m just a prosciutto-purist.  Love the stuff.

Next out was a choice of mine – the pizza with whipped bacala, romesco and soft egg – definitely like no pizza I’ve ever had before.  It was so delicious.  Delicate, crunchy and flavorful crust, topped with fluffy, creamy whipped bacala – no overt saltiness here, only a nice brininess.  The romesco was delicious, but overly abundant.  That’s my only criticism of this dish – the romesco overpowered the thing.  The eggs . . . oh those eggs . . . broke those open and let the warm yokes run all over the mess – they added a great richness to the pizza and were a perfect foil for the peppery romesco.  I look forward to ordering this again – next time I might make this and a simple salad my entire meal.  [Read more →]

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Since I started Semi-Sweet, people have asked me “do you really eat like that all the time?”  “How on earth do you manage to avoid junk?”  The answers are “no” and “I don’t!”  I’m just like you, people.  Have you not seen the Cheeto banner that comes up sometimes when you visit the site?  I like junk food just as much as the next gal – it tastes good, right?  Why wouldn’t it?  It’s filled with salt and sugar and fat – all those ingredients make food tasty.  But here’s my “secret,” I limit the quantity I eat.  I practice little healthy habits that overall lead to a far healthier diet than the average American.  If you’re looking for specifics, I’d say I eat crap once a week, usually on the weekend.  I swear to you, if you start, slowly even, to incorporate more healthful, whole foods into your diet, you will notice a difference in the way your body feels.  You will certainly be doing yourself a favor in the long run. 

But for right now, say you’re not committed like I am to this whole foods lifestyle.  Maybe you don’t like to cook so much.  Yet you still want to amp up your nutrition and clean up your act in small ways?  Here are some easy tips – try one a day if you can:

• Brew a pitcher of green tea and put it on ice for the week.  You’ve heard the buzz about how good green tea can be for you – its catechins are purported to fight off some cancers and to speed up metabolism (although, I should be a skinny b*&tch for all the green tea I drink – so I’m not sure of this one).
• Buy some pre-shredded cabbage slaw mix and whip up a mayo-less slaw.  Try my Asian Slaw, or one of the Cabbage recipes I posted earlier in the week.  Research has linked a cabbage-rich diet (also other veggies in the brassica family like broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collards and kale) to a lower risk of breast and other cancers.
• Try starting your meal with soup, or an apple.  Researchers have shown that if you start out with a low-cal soup or an apple, you will feel fuller so you consume fewer calories.  There are some nice veggie soups that are sold in aseptic packs – practice BPA-avoidance when you can.  And I often eat an apple while I’m making dinner so I don’t “pre-eat” all the other stuff while I’m cooking. 
• If you’re having trouble getting enough veggies into your diet, try drinking low-sodium vegetable juice.  I don’t usually endorse juice as a fruit or vegetable replacement (and I don’t drink it myself) because you don’t get all the good fiber you would from eating whole food, but desperate times, people . . . . V-8 could be your ticket to 5-a-day.
• Serve fruits for dessert.  They’re sweet, vitamin-rich and fiber-full.  Once you start eating fewer Oreos and other processed sugary-stuff, you really will taste the sweetness in fruits.  Trust me on this.
• Steer clear of candy with dried fruit.  While dried fruit does have a lot of calories and sugar, it does at least have some food value and fiber.
• When you eat grains (breads, cereals, pastas), make them whole grains – a recent study reported that people who consumed whole grains, and bran in particular, as part of their regular diet were significantly less likely to develop hypertension.

Go easy on yourself.  It takes a while to establish new habits.  A few weeks – 21 days.  Can you commit to trying some new things for 3 weeks?  We all know how quickly that time can fly by .  . . remember, you don’t have to cut junk out of your life wholesale, just make some incremental changes, and see if you don’t feel better. 

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Ladies and gentlemen, it’s official, I’m on a greens bender.  I’ve had a rough couple of weeks over here and for me, when the going gets tough, I like to treat my body better than ever.  Yes, I’ll admit, there are times when nothin’ says lovin’ like a brownie (or a bag o’ Cheetos, or a candy bar, or a handful of jelly beans – you are reading a woman who ate Wonder Bread slathered with Hellman’s mayo as a kid, OK?), but those things make me feel cruddy if I eat too many of them.  And like I said, I’m feeling funky already.  Greens and and other healthful whole foods make my body feel like it’s humming a happy tune.  I kid you not.

Monday night, I did up some spinach in an unconventional, delicious, yet super quick, virtually no-chopping-required way.  Thought you might want to know!

Spinach With Raisins and Pine Nuts

Put the raisins in a small bowl and cover them with boiling water.  Leave to stand for about 10 minutes until they’re plumped up, then drain.

Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium-low heat, then lower the heat further and add the scallions.  Saute for about 5 minutes, or until soft, then add the spinach (you’ll have to add some, stir it up a bit to wilt, then add the rest).  Once your spinach is wilting, toss in the raisins.  Finish cooking your spinach (the whole process will take under 5 minutes – you don’t want to over-cook your spinach or it’ll be slimy), and then add the pine nuts and salt and pepper to taste.  Makes 4 small side-dish servings, can easily be doubled and played with according to your tastes.

Adapted from The Half Hour Cook by Jenni Fleetwood.

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This first link is not, of course, directly related to food and/or toxins, but instead it focuses on another part of healthy living:  living out your dreams.  This post on achieving your dreams is from the Crazy Sexy Life site, created by Kris Carr, who as some of your know, was the subject of the powerful and inspiring documentary called Crazy Sexy Cancer.  But this post isn’t just for people living with cancer, it’s for anyone who might need a little push to remember what s/he would love to do, and who needs a little nudge to start doing it.

Here’s a good little primer on Omega 3′s from Dani Spies – you hear a lot about them, but do you get enough of them?  I have taken Omega 3 supplements for years, but also try to work in food sources as often as possible.  One other thing you should look for in a supplement is one that has been “molecularly distilled” – meaning that it’s been purified so that it contains no heavy metals . . . . would be kinda a bummer to be taking those with breakfast, no?

NYC has banned bake sales in the city’s schools – making their food policies some of the strictest in the country.  One “expert” supporting the decision says that kids don’t need “an extra source of pointless calories.”  Now folks, you know I’m all about healthful eating, but what about the pleasure of eating?  OK with me to take Doritos and soda out of the schools (Ring Dings too) but what the heck is wrong with a little real butter, sugar and/or chocolate once in a while?  This is an awfully utilitarian approach to eating.

Dannon lost a lawsuit filed against it for its claims that Activia yogurt boosts immunity (here’s Tara Parker-Pope’s ditty on probiotics from the Times) . . . what about other health claims?  Marion Nestle says NO food should carry a health claim, that foods are not drugs.  The European Food Safety Authority recently reviewed a ton of food health claims and found many of them unsubstantiated. 

Six reasons why we’re not eating enough fruits and veggies, and some quick tips for how to get more on to your daily plate.

You may have not heard the news yet – after almost 70 years, Gourmet Magazine is folding.  Shocking.  Peter Davis (Henrietta’s Table) & Ana Sortun (Oleana & Sofra) remember Gourmet.   Will all cooking pubs go the way of the Internet and t.v.?  I will miss waiting for those glossies to show up every month – sometimes that’s all the “reading” I’m up for in a given week, and I can’t bear to add to my “must-see t.v.” list – the DVR is already packed.

Oooh oooh!  Anna Romagnoli (daughter of the couple that did the Romagnoli’s Table t.v. show and were also restaurateurs) is opening an Italian specialties place on Mt. Auburn St. in Coolidge Square in Watertown – practically around the corner from me.  I’ll report here once I’ve checked it out. 

A nice post on how to eat well when you’re on the go, from the Healthy Child, Healthy World blog.  My favorite tip is at the end – preparation is key.  Sometimes, yes, you get caught up short and you have to hit a drive-through, but if you can, plan.  Nuts, cereal, cheese sticks, even sandwiches wrapped in re-sealable foil (or better yet, a re-usable container) can get you through a hypoglycemic meltdown . . . just ask L., queen of the backseat PB&J.

And last, but not least, Tara Parker-Pope again on the top 10 food poisoning risks. . . lots of my favs in there!

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