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Posts tagged ‘eat your vegetables’

May 14

Think Thin Tuesday: Sweet and Sour Patch Soup

Oh the Fad diet.  Most people have tried at least one.  Fasting, juicing, celery sticks, eating only foods of a certain color or only having sugar on days that end in Y…most Americans have been there.  They almost never ever work and when they do, you end up gaining back all the weight you lost and then some.  That’s because most of the time what you lose is primarily water and muscle.  Yet we continuously cycle back to them as a culture because we want to get skinny and we want it NOW –just like everything else.

One fad diet I distinctly remember from being a kid growing up in the 80s was the cabbage soup diet.  You know, 7 days of a stinky, flatulence inducing bland soup promising to help you drop 10 pounds!  Miracle of miracles.  Except it didn’t work because people go bored, people got gassy and people were basically just filling up on nutritionally empty soups loaded with fiber.  I don’t remember if my mom ever tried this diet because we ate cabbage soup as a Ukrainian/Russian Jewish thing and our cabbage soups were far from boring and bland.

Cabbage itself is actually really quite good for you when eaten raw or steamed.  It has amazing cancer fighting properties—specifically colon, bladder and prostate cancer.  It contains the chemical sinigrin—present in pretty much all the incredibly bitter and offputting vegetables we love to hate as kids.  Brussel sprouts, broccoli and horseradish are all high in the stuff but Savoy Cabbage especially is loaded with it.  Makes you wonder if Russians and Germans have a lower incidence of these really nasty cancers—all that sauerkraut does a colon good?  Red cabbage is also a particularly potent anti-inflammatory agent.

As such you really are better off eating cabbage for health either raw or steamed…but sometimes we just want a really tasty, low calorie, warm and filling recipe for those freak cold nights before summer.  At least I know I do.  The cabbage soup recipe that comes from centuries of Jewish cooking also manages to round out some of the lacking nutrition through the addition of tons of vegetables and tomatoes.  Thus it’s got a nice dosing of vitamin C so I don’t feel like I’m just filling up on fiber and water.   Plus we spice it up with some caraway seeds—which are also great chemical powerhouses of cancer fighting agents.  So even though this recipe is more diet fadly than diet friendly…it’s something that you can eat once a week to reduce your over-all caloric load and still feel like you’re doing the body some good.

Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup

Just like Nana used to make…with a few Olivia Modifications Read more

Apr 26

Heads will Casserole

Okay Olivia so far for this “vegan” thing you shared a muffin, a cake and some vegetable broth–not exactly convincing that you are getting substantive fare on a vegan diet.  What about an actual meal?  Alright first of all I’m not necessarily advocating a full vegan lifestyle—remember the word I discovered is “flexitarian” but in being a flexitarian I do need a good vegan main course menu item or two.  Going Vegan for a main course doesn’t mean you have to rely on those expensive and often bland tasting “meat substitutes” they sell at your local grocery store.  Actually I kind of love the veggie dogs but that does not a meal make.  Organic, local vegetables can get expensive too—a meal at Wendy’s is much cheaper than a salad at Whole Foods.  So how do you work with this to make a budget friendly, vegetable heavy and still tasty vegan dish?

Let’s start by eliminating the idea that your only option for protein replacement is going to be tofu.  I love tofu.  It’s delicious when prepared correctly but it’s also soy based and just like corn, we have way too much soy in our diets.  Where corn fills the gap for producing cheap sugars, soy stands in many of your pre-packaged products because it is the cheapest form of complete protein to grow.  It’s cheaper even than the “beef” produced by the corn chomping factory farmed cows Ronald McDonald loves to use.  If you breakdown what goes into the modern American diet…it’s 50% corn and soy.  That’s nuts!  Again from an economic and agriculture standpoint, the high level of soyfarming we do is horrible.  It’s bad for the environment.  One place that loves to factory farm soy is Brazil—in land that used to be rainforest.  There’s also the not so awesome fact that most soy is GMO.  I don’t have a problem with GMO foods themselves; so far there hasn’t been anything to indicate that GM soy is inherently dangerous.  Remember I’ve got a biotech degree.  That being said, the way it’s been manipulated is so that the soy can withstand large quantities of herbicide to kill of weeds.  This means your factory farm can spray much higher levels of chemicals on your food—run off in the water and the seeping of those chemicals into the soy?  Not so good.  All the corn is GM too but depending on the modification we’re discussing I have less of a problem with it.  That’s a post for another day.  Back to the main point: more chemicals sprayed on my food is not something I’m eager to embrace.

There are also the health concerns.  Over-exposure to anything is going to be bad for you and soy is no exception.  Soyeans are high in phytoestrogens which are perfectly fine for you in small doses.  A wide array of our produce contains these chemicals which are plant based—legumes, cereal grains, fruits, vegetables and flax seeds all have phytoestrogens.  Too many?  Well…higher incidence of breast cancer, thyroid cancer and a lowering of testosterone levels which can be bad in men.  Soy also contains phytic acid which inhibits uptake of minerals that we need and some protease inhibitors which actually make it harder for us to digest protein.  Oh and overexposure?  That’s thought to be the cause of the seemingly increased number of allergy sufferers now.

Don’t lose your head and go running to the doctor just yet. Don’t think you have to stop eating soy completely.  Vitamin C can make you sick if you eat enough.  We just need to stop mono-dieting and make sure that our bodies are fed as wide a variety of foods as possible.  Since soy isolates are in over 70% of what’s on a typical supermarket shelf, I’m going to share a main course recipe that doesn’t have any soy products but is still high in protein.

Really my main point is this: if you want to get healthy, get away from processed foods.  When you do eat them, read the labels and know what’s in them.  I minimize my intake of what comes out of a box so I don’t worry about it as much if I want to have delicious tofu in wasabi cream sauce once a week or two.

I know most vegan food people think looks like dog food.  I guess this one kind of does too but don’t go running away.  I know it looks like health food but one bite of this casserole and you will be transported to Italy.  It’s the sun-dried tomatoes that do it.  Those little nuggets of tomato goodness can make anything taste amazing.  In fact I haven’t made my sundried tomato basil bread in ages.  I need to do that soon.  The original recipe came from Vegan with a Vengeance but it was very simple and un-seasoned.  Since I largely know people who wouldn’t eat broccoli if it were pureed and hidden in a chocolate bar, I decided I needed to jazz the recipe up a bit.  I was craving pizza and this is what came out.  It’s delicious and trust me one bite…your head will roll.  Plus garbanzo beans contain all of the essential amino acids needed to make it a complete protein for an adult.  Bear in mind that histidine, which is the 9th “essential” amino acid to create a whole protein, is typically produced by an adult body in sufficient quantities so long as the other essentials are present.  In children however this is not the case so if you have a little one to feed be sure to add some whole grains to this meal OR mix it up and use some cauliflower or mushrooms in the recipe.  These veggies contain histidine too.

Broccoli Tomato Garbanzo Casserole

Adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance Read more

Apr 9

Think Thin Tuesday: Avoiding Vegetative S(t)ouper

My number one piece of advice to someone looking to force themselves to get more active, and also save a little money, is this: cut the cable.  Do it. It’s scary I know and if you are a sports fan…well I can’t help you there as much but if you aren’t addicted to ESPN cut the damn cord.  Cable is expensive and with the myriad of online subscription options expanding every day you don’t need it.  Add them up and they are still cheaper than your hundred dollar plus Comcast bill.  Do you own a tablet of some sort that streams video?  Even more reason to get unhooked to the actual idiot box.  Not being stuck in front of the tv all night after work will get you moving and doing other things.  The advantage to streaming is that you can watch when you want—catch up on a day when you are genuinely immobile or commuting on the metro.  Take it with you on the plane.  When you don’t have a choice about being immobile, that’s a good time to watch.

But Olivia I don’t want to fall behind on my shows. In fact I like watching them LIVE when I can.  Fine you whiner I already thought of the solution to that AND it gets you moving.  Ready? Now here’s what you do with that money you saved: buy a gym membership.  There are a lot of cheap deals out there for 30-40 bucks a month.  Spend the money on online subscriptions and gym membership.  How does a gym membership help? Well with the exception of certain premium stations like HBO, big gyms with cheap fees like 24 hour fitness have cable subscriptions.  If you want to watch oh say, Glee on Thursday night at is actual broadcast time—go to the gym and use their television.  Hop on a treadmill and walk a light pace; you don’t have to break a sweat if you don’t want to.  3 miles an hour is fine—hell 2 if you’re really lazy and an annoying as fuck slow walker….  The point is you save money and instead of sitting on the couch eating, i.e. gaining weight while actively doing nothing; you can get a little bit of electrical activity in your legs and watch the show.  This way you aren’t munching away an entire bag of potato chips.  I mean we’ve all done it.  Instead you burn maybe 100 calories that hour, keep your metabolism awake and get to watch your favorite tv show for half the cost.

Genius no?

I think it is so shut up.  This plan works really well for people who just abhor cardio with a passion.  If you just can’t find the enjoyment in going for a run, cycling classes, aerobics or swimming and you need to distract your mind to get your body moving this is the perfect fix.  It’s not going to get you Spartan abs ala 300 and it won’t result in significant weight loss in the long run, but it will help you lose a few pounds or just avoid the late night vegetative stupor that comes with primetime tv.  If you hate gyms and can afford it then just buy a damn treadmill/bike/stair climber…whatever you prefer and put it in front of the tv but you better use it. Typically I see people buy equipment with this intent and get lured in by the seductive nature of their couches.  Just can’t resist those alluring fibers and springs….  I like the gym membership because it really forces you to go get moving.  You can’t sit on a couch and use the gym tv.  And for those channels that air our favorite shows but aren’t carried by the gym’s cable?  Well that’s where your PC tablet comes in handy.  I’m not going to tell you how to get ahold of Game of Thrones without a cable subscription but I know some of you have it so…get walking.

And for those nights when it’s cold, windy, and rainy and you just feel crummy and need to curl up on the couch…well how about a nice vegetable skinny soup?  It’ll fill your tummy without all the excess sodium and empty calories the bag of lays has AND it might be one of the few things that help you to avoid becoming what you eat.  Indulge in a sourdough roll with it since the soup is so light on calories and fat OR you can bulk it up a little more with rice or whole wheat pasta.  The choices are endless.

Italian Vegetable Soup

An Olivia Original Read more

Feb 26

1 Comment

Think Thin Tuesday: Salad for Bone-heads (shoulders, knees and toes!)

Do you ever have those moments of realizing something that shakes your world, makes you sit back and say “well, fuck.”

This summer I’ll be turning 25 which in all honesty is still a very young age.  My ovaries aren’t about to cough up their last egg.  My hair isn’t near turning grey though to be honest I’ll never know when it does thanks to an amazing hair stylist.  I may already have a few wrinkles from frowning too much but they aren’t age related…yet.  Aside from an old ankle injury and a bundle of tight nerves I am in pretty good physical health.

But 25 is ¼ of 100; even if I live to be 100, I will have lived a quarter of my life already.  That’s a bigger chunk of the pie chart than pac-man’s mouth.  PacMan has eaten 25% of my life.  Well, fuck.  Plus 25, well that’s when things really official start to slow down.  The metabolism of your youth is not going to be nearly as reliable when you eat that second donut.  Bones aren’t storing any additional calcium you get into your diet.  Your body in general is going to start losing that springy bounce-back-ability from nights of partying.  In short: it’s time to grow up kid and start thinking about making sure that you are able to enjoy the next 50 years in good health.

As a woman one of the things I need to worry about especially is the calcium issue.  A lot of us get the “Got Milk” message in our youth and there’s a lot of emphasis placed around getting calcium for growing bones.  Did you know that’s not JUST about the initial growth phase though?  True you need to make sure you have this vital nutrient to get big and strong but it’s actually also about making sure you get an influx of calcium to store in those bones—to last you the rest of your life.  Around your mid-twenties your body stops storing calcium in your bones.  Around your 30’s you start to lose bone density—you start losing calcium.  It’s caused by a lack of exercise (which reinforces and strengthens not only muscle but bone) and it is exacerbated by a lack of sufficient calcium absorption in your diet.

Oh and do you know what else studies are revealing causes a breakdown of bone density?  Soft drinks.  Soda.  The December 2008 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that long term soft drink consumption had a strong correlation with bone loss.  Mom thank you so much for keeping us from drinking coca-cola growing up.  I owe you.

The reason your body starts to lose calcium is because your heart needs calcium to work.  Calcium plays a pivotal role in some cellular functions and I will try not to bore you to tears with the details.  Basically in order to move certain chemicals in/out of your cells your body needs calcium to open a drawbridge of sorts.  If your body isn’t absorbing enough from your diet, which it gets worse and worse at doing as you age, it starts to seek elsewhere for this resource.  Guess where?  That’s right.  Your bones.  t, that big scary word that we always see old ladies talking about on TV is essentially the result of your body mining your bones for precious calcium and leaving them porous and weakened.  Women have it especially bad because the hormonal hell that is menopause also contributes to bone loss.

Thankfully there are a few things that really can help fight this off.  Regular exercise will keep your bones strong and encourage calcium uptake from your diet.  Running, hiking, weight lifting and anything that involves surface impact will help.  Unfortunately from what I’ve read activities that are better for the joints (i.e. swimming) are less helpful in this regard.  So try to vary your physical activity but ultimately any workout is better than none.  There are also foods you can eat to help you retain bone density.  Fermented foods and Fennel are especially good for you.  Of course getting calcium into your body isn’t about just eating calcium.  Our bodies usually require a delicate balance of various macro and micronutrients to successfully integrate the benefits from each.  Calcium is much better utilized for example, when your meal is also high in potassium, magnesium and vitamins D&K.  This is why it is still so, so much better to get nutrition from your food rather than a pill.  Nature has designed her vegetables and fruits with our bodies partly in mind.

So here is one of my favorite slaws to eat with a meal.  It’s got a ton of fiber and heart helping vegetables, in addition to being low calorie and full of healthy fats, and it tastes amazing.

Celery Root, Fennel Apple Salad

Adapted from a recipe published in Bon Apetit Feb2010 Read more

Feb 22

Fantasy Friday: A bowl of eastern medicine

“Don’t be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then in order to maintain our sanity.”

With that line I officially decided that I liked this month’s Sword and Laser bookclub pick—the 1984 fantasy novel “A Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was” by Barry Hughart.  I like it a lot.

“Bridge of Birds” is a fantasy novel set in a grand and fantastical ancient imperial China.  The book follows the troubles of a small village where all children between the ages of 8 and 10 are struck down by a mysterious illness following the silk worm festival.  The lead character, Lu-Yu known as Number 10 Ox, is a young man who is exceptionally strong though not exceptionally bright.  He is sent off to find a wise man to bring back to the village to determine how this plague, which has sent all the children into a comatose state, can learn to count—because it is only a specific age group struck—and to find a cure.  Wise men do not come cheap and the best Ox can afford is an old drunk who actually turns out to be one of the wisest men in all of China—Master Li whose wisdom could not save him from a falling of grace due to a “slight flaw of character.”  Li quickly unearths what has befallen the children and discovers that the only cure is a rare ginseng plant known as the Great Root of Power.  Together Master Li and Ox travel through China, and Chinese folklore, to find this healing root in time to save the village children.

“Take a large bowl.  Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy.  Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization….and drink… ‘And I will be wise?’ he asked. ‘Better’ I said ‘You will be Chinese’.”

What I really enjoyed about this book was the interspersing on the main plot with many other stories and samples of ancient China.  I’m a self-proclaimed scholar of fairy tales (I took those classes in college that make me an expert after all :P ) but I must admit that my rather expansive expertise largely only covers Western culture.  I have some familiarity with Arabian/Middle Eastern tales as well but my knowledge of East Asian culture is embarrassingly lacking.  I enjoyed how unfamiliar I was with these stories.  So often I get caught up in tellings, re-tellings, re-imaginings of the more traditional European folklore.  There’s nothing wrong with knowing what I enjoy but I’m not really expanding or learning anything new when I see Cinderella retold for the umpteenth time.  If you have a vested interested in fairytales/folklore/mythology you will enjoy this book.  The tales aren’t traditional Chinese folklore but retellings or inspired by more traditional tales.  Very clever Hughart, now I have to go out and read MORE so I can compare and fill in my knowledge gaps.  Getting me to read, damn you!

The stories follow the Grimm tradition of being almost shockingly violent and bloody at times.  The opening of the book focuses so much on children’s rhymes and humor that when the first really violent scene unfolded it caught me off guard.   If descriptions of torture and blood are difficult for you there will be sections of this novel that make you queasy.  There were moments where I actually had a hard time reading depictions of some ancient Chinese torture techniques—and I can stomach a lot.  Two characters in particular, the Duke and the Ancestress, are villains that especially revel in the blood lust.  The Ancestress is a bit more comical and I imagined her as a Chinese version at times of the Queen of Hearts from Wonderland; she’s rather fond of decapitation.  The violence gets a treatment with some levity at times—one of the good guys runs around with his axe happily shouting “Chop Chop Chop!” with comical emphasis as he hacks and saws apart his enemies.  I think the humor actually makes the violence seem more shocking but that could just be me.

My biggest complaint about the book, which has been echoed on boards, is that it starts off pretty slow and has some moments where it meanders.  I’ve noticed that is a common problem in quest based stories.  It seems like there’s always a point where information gets told rather than shown—and in those moments where the author gets stuck the characters are usually stuck meandering around in the woods somewhere as well.  Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings….  It happens.

Of course like any good folk tale at the root “The Bridge of Birds” is a love story but you won’t realize that’s what you’re reading until a good third of the way in.  I liked that.  It was pleasant to go on this journey with the two lead characters and get some genuine surprises along the way.  So often I find writing, especially television writing, to be extremely predictable.  I’d predicted the outcome of the book before the end but there were still a number of surprises for me and I absolutely LOVED that.

“Ginseng hunters refer to the plan as chang-diang shen, “the root of lightning,” because it is believed that it appears only on the spot where a small mountain spring has been dried up by a lightning bolt.  After a life of three hundred years the green juice turns white and the plant acquires a soul.  It is then able to take on human form, but it never becomes truly human because ginseng does not know the meaning of selfishness.”

When I wasn’t being grossed out by depictions of body parts oozing and being removed, I was learning a great deal about the medicinal mysticism surrounding ginseng.  Most Americans are only exposed to this root as an ingredient in herbal teas.  It’s a highly sought after additive and as I discovered at my local Korean market, very expensive when purchased fresh.  The list of supposed health benefits is long and largely unverified but there is sufficient correlative data in the medical community for a select few.  Ginseng has shown to be a good supplement for your immune system; it seems to boost white blood cell count and immune response—especially in conjunction with vaccinations.  It also promotes insulin uptake and therefore makes it a great supplement for those suffering from diabetes.  Some more popular, though less supported claims, are that it promotes mental acuity/alertness and is a popular supplement for a certain male specific…dysfunction.  It’s no wonder then that this plant has such a huge place in East Asian culture and tradition.  It is also similar to mandrake roots in that it is often described as looking human-ish thus inspiring a sort of religious reverence to the plant.

My question in reading was: does ginseng ever get used in food dishes?  I am familiar with a South Korean soup called “Samgyetang” which features a chicken stuffed with rice, a bunch of things I was unfamiliar with and ginseng.  As it turns out this is a popular soup in Chinese cuisine as well—the Cantonese refer to it as Yun Sum Gai Tong—but since 99.999999% of all Chinese restaurants are American Chinese, you aren’t likely to find it on the menu.  Some more authentic Korean spots will have it though but be warned that Ginseng is rather bitter.  I tried my hand at making this soup at home inspired by the book and despite my best efforts you just can’t take away that slight bitter bite in the root.  On the other hand that’s what means it’s good for you!   The soup is supplemented with Jujubes, a sweet red date, ginger, garlic, rice and water chestnuts.  I’m so glad I made it too.  The weather has been unseasonably warm and over the weekend a cold snap came in to remind everyone that it’s still February and not to get so cavalier about winter ending.  The day the cold hit I ran to my kitchen to get to soup making.  My poor roommate came down with a fever literally the day after I brewed a batch of this stuff so I’ve been shoving it at him every time he emerges from his bedroom.  It’s entirely selfishly motivated—I don’t want to get sick!

Yun Sum Gai Tong

An Olivia Original inspired by “The Bridge of Birds” Read more

Jan 29

Twofer Tuesday: Duck, Duck…Soup

Introducing Twofer Tuesdays – Two recipes for the price of one!  This week is also a Think Thin post but I’m retiring that title for more general use so you might get think thin thursdays or random healthy recipes as I kickstart back up my own diet.

Something my friends have learned from my instagram and photo streams:  I share photos that will either whet your appetite or turn your stomach.  Case in point—I’ll switch between taking snapshots of doughnuts and cookies to images of post-surgery body parts oozing and gushing.  Yum yum!  I recently had to have another ingrown toenail removed (why am I posting about this on my food blog?) and put up a picture that got an array of disgusted responses.  Don’t worry I won’t be sharing that here now.  Suffice to say it hurt, it still hurts and is in fact in such a bad way that I’m on antibiotics – read between the lines ewwww she’s infected.  Who said pretty girls can’t be gross?  We fart and burp too.  Yup yup yup!  Some hot girls even do it on microphones—I’m looking at you Adrienne Curry.  That woman is insanely hot, insanely geeky and insanely disgusting and I love her for all three.

But on the topic of grossness, I feel awful.  Not sure if it’s because I was in so much pain from my wee toe that I could sleep last night or these antibiotics I’m on—4 times a day!  What?!  I’ve never had antibiotics I had to remember to take so often and I was even on Bactrim years ago which is a huge honkin’ horse pill of a triple-acting antibiotic regimen.  Yuck.  I’m not usually sensitive to medications though I can’t stomach Tamiflu.  Literally can’t stomach it which kind of sucks since it’s the only real anti-viral that exists on the market.  Thankfully I seem to avoid getting the flu year after year in favor of my standing appointment with bronchial infections that have plagued me since childhood.  Or at least I used to.  January has almost come to a close and I have officially made it over a year—a year—without a sinus infection.  Is it a bird, a plane, a miracle?  Nope.  It’s Bikram yoga but I’ll wax and wane poetical about that another day because while I’m grateful to be healthy in a way I’ve never before experienced, I’m in a piss poor mood right now about this stupid toe thing.

I think I’ve been indulging too much as well.  I feel bloated and disgusting and know I’ve gained back a pound or two in the last few weeks.  It’s hard to balance the desire to hunker down in the winter with warm fatty comfort food and efforts to lose or maintain weight loss plans, isn’t it?  We instinctively want to eat more in order to put on that heat insulating blubber that our bodies needed before the modern first world marvel that is the indoor heater.  Part of the problem is that I’ve been on a mad woman quest to develop the PERFECT chocolate chip cookie and as such I have made and eaten way too much cookie dough and finished products.  I’m giving em away as much as I can but really how is a girl to resist warm, gooey cookies fresh from the oven?  I’m happy to say that I’ve finally gotten the recipe tweaked to my liking, as my hips clearly show, and as of today I am officially back on a rigid diet until my weight is back to where I want to maintain it.  But how do you balance that still with cold, overcast weather?

Soup.

Soup is a great meal for dieting in the winter so long as you are making the right choices i.e. avoiding those bacon, cheese, cream and potato laden bowls of deliciousness.  I know baked potato soup is amazing but it’s also NOT a diet friendly option.  Good news though: you don’t have to sacrifice rich, decadent flavorful soups for skinny jeans.  I’ve got a recipe for a Duck broth vegetable soup that will warm you up from the inside out.  The flavors always summon up for me the feeling that I’m in a French countryside cottage with a fire roaring, keeping my toes toasty despite snow on the ground outside.  It’s got all the indulgence of French cuisine without the guilt.  I’ve paired it with a great recipe for some sweet potato biscuits and while the carb load isn’t exactly on diet, if you can constrain yourself to JUST ONE, then you can still have a delicious rustic dinner for under 500 calories—and you never knew that a bit of soup and crust of bread could taste so good.

 Duck Duck Soup

an Olivia Original Read more

Jan 22

1 Comment

Think Thin Tuesday: Kiss my Kvass

**Disclaimer: all images used today are from the company website / facebook.  I do not own any rights and am not profiting from their use.**

 product-line

It’s past the mid-way point in January and this is when diets and all those resolutions have started to falter.  It’s HARD I know, especially on the heels of an indulgent holiday season.  I am struggling to readjust back to my own lifestyle maintenance diet and stay away from the cookie jar.  Today I’m doing a product placement post for a great health drink—it’s one of the only ways I indulge in “drinking” my calories.  It’s a hard product to find and when I moved I deliberately made sure whole foods in my area carried it.  Why?  When I have one of these during the day I find that my mental state is just more motivated to make healthy choices.  I’ll skip the chocolate on my coworker’s desk and eat a handful of almonds instead.  Having positive motivation and things to keep you on track are, in my humble opinion, the key to any successful lifestyle change.  The biggest influence on your goals?  Friends.   Friends can be the wind beneath your leaf or destruction of your self-discipline.

293098_494619540568219_1781620976_nSee in life I have found that friends are typically one of two types: supportives or negatives.  I’ve had a lot of people in and out of my life who were negatives.  I usually wind up disassociating from them over time.  I’ve got enough negativity all on my own.  What do I mean by negatives?  Well I can recall as an example the first time I tried to do a Bikram 10-day challenge.  You do 10 days in a row.  There’s no prize at the end…other than the improved health that comes from making time to retain an active lifestyle.   The challenging aspect isn’t even the physicality of it but rather making yourself take the time to do this routine.  I had a range of reactions from friends but the one I appreciated the least was “Oh, so you’re going to die?”  It’s such a simple comment and was meant to be a funny joke but to me it really came off the wrong way.  I don’t need someone implying that I’m going to suffer or be unable to attain my goal.  A more appropriate response might be “Wow that sounds hard.  Good luck!” or a cautionary “Wow that is a great goal but be sure to take care of your body and don’t push it” is appreciated but don’t just outright dismiss my goal as something impossible or unattainable.

footer-bottleMaking the decision to get healthy is hard and it can be even harder if you have friends who don’t support it.  One of the biggest pitfalls in dieting or trying to get healthy is balancing that with a social life.  My new roommate commented he wants to lose weight but he also goes out quite frequently.  Social settings can mean a total undoing to your hard work.  Peer pressure to participate in the activity (which usually involves pub food and drinks) will wear away your resolve.  Friends who place an emphasis on how miserable you are going to be or who will make achieving your goals all the more difficult.  A good friend will offer a few words of encouragement.  A real friend will try to help you achieve your goals—they’ll even help by cooperating for alternative social settings so you can avoid temptation.  A bad friend will passively work against you—like insisting you go out for pizza when you have said many times that you are watching your weight and would like to go somewhere healthier.  Negative friends will actively say or do things that work against your mental determination. Just like in another post where I wrote about how hard it can be to say NO to your friends, sometimes when you have these negative forces in your life you just need to say KISS MY ASS and move along.  Not a highly positive message here I know which is funny since I’m writing specifically about removing negative forces.

To all my friends with new goals this year I sincerely hope I am able to help you.  On a budget?  I’ll try to find cheap/free things for us to do and will, out of respect to you, stop inviting you to costly events you have to decline.  On a diet?  I won’t offer you the cake I made and I’ll encourage healthy eating habits.  We can skip the bars this Saturday night and try out the ice skating rink instead.  Trying to get motivated?  Quick—help me find my Sunnydale cheerleading outfit!  Damn it where did that end up in the move?  Are you looking to sneak more vegetables into your diet?  Gee have I got a product for you!  READ ON my friends, read on.

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Traditional KVASS is a Russian fermented beverage made from sourdough rye bread.  It’s got a miniscule alcohol content, less than vanilla extract for example, and not considered an alcoholic drink by any means.  Over the years the drink became flavored and now a variety of forms exist.  KVASS made entirely from beets being the current most common incarnation of the stuff.  My personal favorite brand and variety is a Vegetable Medley, sweetened only slightly with Stevia, it packs a falcon punch of raw, veggie nutrition with no added sugar or chemicals. How good for you is it?

229834_507033212660185_853031825_nThe drink is fermented but raw so all those vitamins and minerals from the vegetables are not only preserved but made highly bio-available.  This means your body is able to absorb them.  The fermentation also means the drinks contain probiotics (remember those digestive bacteria that make your immune system better) and also helps your digestive system.  Some people have a harder time eating things like cabbage or kale but when they are fermented your body will be able to digest them much more easily.  No more excuses for avoiding those veggies!  Fermented drinks are also thought to be even more hydrating than water as they contain electrolytes.  I will often chug one of these juices after doing a double yoga class and feel pain free the rest of the day.

My favorite is the All-Vegetable Kvass.  It’s only 30 calories for the bottle (so really I’m not doing much damage at all) and it’s sweetened only with Stevia and some raw apple in the blend.  Even the “higher” end bottles are at most 100 calories and none of them are made with added sugar.  Only stevia and fruits.  It’s fantastic.  Interested in trying them out?  Check the company page to locate Zukay near you.

Super Green Kvass ingredients: Water, Organic Cabbage, Organic Fennel, Organic Green Apple, Organic Kale, Organic Spinach, Organic Chard, Organic Watercress, Organic Wheatgrass, Organic Spirulina, Celtic Sea Salt, Live Active Culture, Raw Organic Stevia

Nov 27

Think Thin Tuesday: Eat to cure what Kales you

“Every time you eat or drink, you are either feeding disease or fighting it.”  Heather Morgan – MS, NLC

I saw that quote on pinterest the other day and immediately printed it out and pinned it up at my desk at work.  I love how simple and succinct it is—and true.  More than anything else I like how it manages to sum up an entire philosophy in one little sentence.  What you fuel your body with extends far past your taste buds—the food you eat does affect your physical, emotional and mental health.  For some reason Americans have become a society of people who don’t want to be bothered to take more than two minutes to think about what they eat but we’ll spend hours or weeks researching our gadgets, wardrobes or car purchases.  We’ve become a culture of convenience when it comes to the stuff that we physically put inside our bodies but if it has Bluetooth, boys, then we pay attention.

We don’t learn it at home—there’s no time in busy households with working parents.  We don’t learn it at school—budget cuts and a cultural bias to push students toward “intellectual” pursuits rather than skill based coursework.  Does anyone have auto shop anymore?  As a new car owner I’m realizing how important those kinds of basic skills would be but they were always seen as classes for the “less intelligent” and “not-college bound” echelons of high school.

This is very, very wrong.  It needs to change. What you choose to ingest WILL affect your entire health from psychology to cardiovascular disease to cancer to emotional stress management.  High sugar, high fat diets promoted by fast food (McDonald’s, Taco Bell etc.) and chain restaurants (Chili’s, TGIF etc.) are making you sick.  If you put premium fuel in your car at the pump but scarf down on a doughnut for breakfast evaluate those choices and realize how eating well is the same thing as putting quality fuel in your vehicle.  It will not only be higher quality food but it is designed to keep your parts working better, longer, and healthier.

The first step toward making the change is education and I hope I haven’t lost you so far with my ranting and rambling.  Let’s tackle perhaps the most reviled fuel source for our bodies and yet one of the most super-charged foods out there: Kale.  More specifically raw kale.  I’m going to tell you WHY it’s so damn good for you and give you a recipe that will have you happy to eat it.  Ready?

Kale is from the Mediterranean branch of the cabbage family, Brassica oleracea, and described by noted Food Expert Harold McGee as a “formidable chemical warrior” with “strong flavors.”  Strong is a nice way to put it.  Depending on the variety, Kale can be extremely bitter and off-putting to a sugar addicted palate.  It will take some getting used to; I’m not going to deny that.  If you’ve spent the majority of your life where the greenest thing you ate were peas from a can and usually poured into a casserole this is not going to be a vegetable you jump into munching on solo.

The good news is that these bitter flavor compounds, called glucosinolates, are also key indicators of micronutrients and chemicals that are effective cancer fighters.  Depending on how you process your kale you can intensify or mute these flavors…of course all the tricks that mute them also cause some of the nutrients to leach out of your food.  Thankfully with over 20 valuable vitamins/minerals in concentrations ranging from 3 to 1000% of your DV—you don’t have to worry about it too much.  Yes you read that right.  1 cup of cooked Kale has over 1000% of your daily intake for Vitamin K and over 350% for Vitamin A.   It also has almost an entire day’s worth of Vitamin C.  Other minerals include: manganese, fiber, copper, calcium, B6, potassium (hard to get in your diet), iron, magnesium, vitamin E, vitamin B2, vitamin B1, folate, phosphorus and vitamin B3.  It even has about 5% of your daily intake of protein.  As for those bad flavor compounds?  Well you might find it a little easier to swallow when you find out that those compounds are directly responsible for being converted into cancer fighting agents through digestion.  They’ve been shown to help prevent: colon, breast, bladder, prostate and ovarian cancers.  Some of the nastiest, most deadly kinds around.

I include a recipe for a dressing for this salad. I actually made a quadruple batch of it to keep for the future because my mom loved it.

One of the best preparation methods is dehydration but that requires special equipment and we aren’t going to get into that today.  Steaming as a preparation method for Kale will actually increase its power to reduce your cholesterol levels because the process of steaming causes the fiber components of Kale to knit together and provide superior power to its raw form.  The fiber in Kale will bind to bile acids present in your intestine and draw them out.  Your body will need to replenish these bile acids and will consume cholesterol—specifically the bad cholesterol to do so.  Supposedly one serving of Kale does about 42% of the work of a traditional statin drug—beaten out only by collard greens for top cholesterol fighting prowess at 46%.Steaming is actually going to be the ideal way to prepare Kale but today we’re going raw.  Yup I’m going to immerse you in the flavor world of Kale and you’re gonna like, nay, love it.  No really you will.  My mom loathes raw kale and didn’t realize she was eating it until I told her.  “Wait, this is kale that’s RAW?  And I like it?  OH MY GOD” followed by many nomnomnoms.

Kale Brussels Salad w/Creamy Honey Dijon Dressing

an Olivia Original Read more

Nov 20

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Think Thin Tuesday: A split-speady holiday soup

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat…but first we’ve got TURKEY DAY to contend with.  I’m both eagerly anticipating and dreading the gorgefest that is this Thursday.  I mean I love the holiday because it’s an excuse for me to think, talk, breathe, sleep, swim, bathe, timewarp and gangnam dance all about food!  Still the thought of how much I’m going to eat, and oh I will be eating, makes my little bitty tummy cry out in horror and my tastebuds just laugh maniacally.   I love the food but oh I dread the scale and the rock feeling that comes after.  This year our menu will be slightly modified to feature a healthier assortment of fair since my Mom has been working to lose weight (and you know I have been) and my Step-Dad **should** be eating healthier though if you’ll remember at times I feel like that’s a losing battle.  This means mashed cauliflower at our table instead of mashed potatoes, though there will be molasses scalloped yams, and a heart healthy salad of kale and brussel sprouts but oh I am getting ahead of myself.  Thanksgiving isn’t here yet and none of these things have been made. 

As I’m trying to get all these things done my posts will be a bit lighter this week.  I’m taking the day before off work so I can focus entirely on yoga and meal prep.  In the meantime I wanted to bring you a great recipe that is perfect for Thanksgiving and anytime in the fall, light on calories and what is this?  Vegan?!  Twice in a week…two days in a row?  No don’t worry I’m not cutting meat out of my diet.  This was an “accidentally vegan” recipe.  I probably just instinctively gravitated toward out of a subconscious desire to balance the insane quantities of turkey I’ll be consuming later on in the week and for days after.

Once Thanksgiving passes the pumpkin stock in the stores dies down considerably…and after January especially.  They are usually still in season though so if you don’t get a chance to make this now keep it in mind for some chilly January night.  Pumpkin yellow split pea soup just gives me another excuse to use my favorite fall ingredient.  I’ll have a less healthy pumpkin recipe for you tomorrow too…and no it won’t be a pie!  Pumpkin doesn’t come only in pie and lattes ya know.  It’s an extremely healthy recipe—the soup tastes sweet thanks to the pumpkin.  There’s almost no fat and you still get a good 7 grams of protein in a bowl. 

What I really love about this recipe is how very simple it is to make.  If you are attending a family gathering Thursday and want to bring something to contribute that isn’t a storebought pie, try this out instead.  Soup can be made a day or two ahead of time and if you just purchase pre-made broths and get already diced pumpkin you will have basically no fussy prep at all.  These serving sizes are approximate but a big batch of this stuff should make 15 – 1 ½ cup bowls.  That makes it great for a large family.  If you have a smaller family meal ahead of you, freeze single portions in freezer safe bowls.  It’ll keep really well all winter long in an airtight container.  I always have soups on hand in the freezer for cold, rainy days when I’m feeling under the weather.  Oh and for a little extra crunch add on a few roasted pumpkin seeds!  Nutritional value does not take this into account.

Pumpkin Yellow Split Pea Soup

Adapted from the New England Soup Factory Cookbook Read more

Nov 2

SciFriday: Tell Tale Heart( Beets)

Mary Shelley is often considered the British mother of science fiction for her gothic horror story Frankenstein – the first published work more or less acknowledged as SF.  A bit more overlooked I’d wager is the gothic American counterpart who began to publish works related to the genre a decade or so later.  Admittedly it would not be fair to give this person much credit for the genre as he is most well-known for straight horror/ghost tales with nothing related to science at all.  You may have heard of him, just a little known author by the name of Edgar Allen Poe.

It was interesting to me when I realized in writing this post just how science fiction has its roots so firmly entrenched in the pre-existing horror genre.  It certainly makes sense that the two are intertwined—I’d guess the earliest impressions from the literary community, historically slow to warming up to the whirs and beeps of progressive science, would be wary at best.  Thus the origins of science fiction are really in anti-science fiction.  Shelley’s classic is a perfect example of this: it highlights the creator abandoning his scientific bastardization of nature to devastating results.  Long standing has been the tradition ever since of authors being the voice of caution, and quite often fantastical in scope and misunderstanding the science they write of, but voices worth listening to all the same. 

Poe is probably best known for his poem The Raven and that masterful piece of suspense, insanity and obsession The Tell Tale Heart.  Oh how that story thrilled me as a child—hands down my favorite.  Not familiar with this short?  Okay let me sum up: it’s about an insane young man who lives with an elderly ward.  I don’t think it’s ever clearly distinguished what their relationship is.  I always imagined an uncle or apprenticeship of some sort.  Anyway.  This young, insane man becomes gripped in the monomaniacal obsession with the elder’s “vulture” eye—and kills him for it. 

“He had the eye of a vulture –a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees –very gradually –I made up my mind to take the life of the old man.”

Poor old man!  Killed for something as simple as a cataract!  So yes the narrator does eventually kill him, after much obseessive dwelling upon it and I know  I’m giving away the ending a bit here but shame on you for having gone this long without reading it!  Anyway the real crux of the tale follows when the man begins to hear the pounding of the dead heart in the floor where the body has been stashed.  It’s beautifully written and permeates popular culture.   I’m fairly certain the Simpsons used this story both in a Treehouse of Terror episode and a Lisa centric episode that is one of my favorites.   She experiences jealousy over meeting a girl smarter than herself for the first time and there’s a whole scene with a diaroma that made me want to build diaromas for a year after that as a child.  I don’t know how many shoeboxes I demolished.  So you see?  POPULAR and shame shame shame if you haven’t read it.  Erm.  Sorry about that.  Cookie?

The narrative of this man who is clearly insane is haunting; he is suffering from intense paranoiawhich he self-diagnoses as hypersensitivity of the senses.  The threepeating, anxious prose in Tell Tale was always read so theatrically by my grandfather.  There are several lines where the madman raves in triplicates “It grew louder –louder –louder!” and so would my grandfather’s voice.  I have very few good memories of my maternal grandfather.  Ever the megalomaniac, he is, in my mind, the root that spawned many a rotten branch on our family tree.  In fact, if I tax myself, I can only think of three positive memories/moments/things in my life to him: 1) encouragement of my creative writing efforts – 2) getting my first computer – 3) introduction to the world of Edgar Allen Poe.  My grandfather’s voice is forever tied to the meter of many poems writ by Poe; Lenore especially has a particularly mesmerizing memory tied to it. 

So what of Poe’s more scientifically driven works?  This is SCIFRIDAY after all.  Sonnet to Science which is the first related work, follows the anti-science fiction footsteps with lines like: Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart/Vulture, whose wings are dull realities.   Poe later wrote a short story, possibly the first story ever of space exploration, titled The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall which highlights a voyage in hot air balloon to the moon.  Jules Verne is said to have been inspired by this for his own similar tale.  Another work The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion relates a story about the end of the world at the hands of a comet smashing us all out of existence in a fiery explosion…. so I’m guessing that he came around to appreciate the imaginative potential inherent in science fusing with literature. 

 To honor the American Science Fiction father I am sharing with you a recipe for some Healthy Heart Beets.  God but I do love a good pun.  Beets seemed especially fitting for this story because of their unique phytonutrient and pigment makeup.  They contain a very rare pigment called betalain which has exceptional anti-oxidant, anti-flammatory properties that support the nervous system and specifically your eyes.  Gotta avoid those cataracts folks—you don’t want to get murdered in your sleep for having a bad case of vulture eye do you?    The anti-inflammatory properties inherent to beets also show great promise in treating several types of heart disease like atherosclerosis.  I designed this recipe to use oils with a reduce saturated fat load to make it a little more “heart” friendly.  Butter calorically stands in the same and would make it taste that much better of course so feel free to substitute if desired.  This recipe utilizes the whole beet too so you’re getting all the inherent benefits not only from the red, heart of the thing but the fiber and nutrient rich, green leaves as well.

 Healthy Heart Beets

An Olivia Original 

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