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Posts tagged ‘low fat’

May 7

Think Thin Tuesday: Vegan Rice Crisp-easies

Do you burn potatoes in the microwave?  Do you know the difference between a rolling boil and a simmer?  Does even the act of cracking and separating an egg mystify you?  Is your idea of making breakfast putting the cereal box next to the milk?  Don’t worry.  It’s not your fault.  When women left the kitchen and entered the workforce we got fat, lazy and lost generations of cultural kitchen knowledge.

No I’m not currently the victim of an alien abduction.  I don’t actually mean to blame this epidemic of culinary ignorance on moms; certainly not with mother’s day approaching.  I once had a professor who blamed our overweight, convenience food culture on women’s lib.  This wasn’t a soapbox about forcing women back into the role of housewife mind you.  He was just trying to grab our attention and demonstrate how a shift in family structure created the opportunity for the fast food market, also known as the fat food market, to gain a stronghold.  Prior to the 40’s, women stayed at home and family meals were a daily job.  Food was made from scratch, at home, and generally was more nutritious as a result.  It wasn’t a matter of grabbing a box of processed junk from the drive thru window while juggling teleconference calls.    Don’t go rushing off thinking your shrink is right and that all your problems are rooted with dear old mom.  There’s no reason Dad can’t stay at home instead and make those meals for the kidlets.  Sadly in today’s world having either parent out of the workforce just isn’t really a possibility even when/if a parent wants to.

As a result we’ve got a whole generation to whom seeing Mom or Dad in the kitchen is an anomaly—and as a result we’ve got kids who aren’t learning how to cook at all.  Heck even stay-at-home moms are so busy with their kids overloaded schedules that cooking is still likely to fall by the wayside when we have so many convenient options for pre-made meals.  It’s all about prioritizing and if someone else can do it then delegate, delegate, delegate…right?

Never let it be said that I don’t try to accommodate even the busiest of lifestyles.  I have stretched myself even thinner than usual so I definitely understand the need for something easy to make that takes little time, little effort and little cleanup.  One party dessert popular amongst soccer moms for this reason is an American Classic: the Rice Krispy Treat.  You can make these with almost no kitchen training whatsoever.  The hardest part is melting the marshmallows and this can be done in a microwave—no stove needed!  They are also traditionally pretty low in calories and thus folks like them as a more diet friendly dessert.  The only problem?

Diet food that’s low on calories is usually low on nutrition too.  That’s because foods high in nutrition usually package those vitamins to be absorbed by our bodies—meaning fats or sugars.  My theory is that dieting isn’t really worth it when the calories you’re consuming are totally empty.  Since Rice Krispies are really just fat, sugar and empty carbohydrates I wondered: could I make these slightly healthier at all to justify them as a diet dessert?

The first step was to eliminate the “Crispy Rice” of a certain name brand cereal well all grew up snapping along with.  Instead of using fried bits of white rice, high in fat and low in nutrition, I went for air puffed brown rice instead.  You can buy for cheap at Whole Foods.  This substitution reduced the fat content of each square by 60% and introduced some fiber.  The benefit of airpuffing also means that the brown rice retains most of the vitamins and minerals; one cup has 1/3 of your daily B vitamins. I actually made these during my vegan week so in addition to being low calorie, gluten free they are also totally vegan…and yet still manage to taste like what they are.  Thus instead of using butter I used a flax based butter substitute which cut the calories from fat AND reduced the saturated fats.  As for the marshmallows…well you can’t replace that sugar but if this were 100% healthy I don’t think I could call it a proper dessert right?  Mine do have a little more sugar probably because of the brand of marshmallow but since they also have more B vitamins, zinc, potassium, fiber and less fat and fewer calories…I think I will let that slide.

One last tip: if you aren’t worried about gluten free try using puffed whole wheat, puffed kamut grains or puffed barley instead.  You’ll get even more vitamins and fiber from those!

Vegan Rice Krispeasies

An Olivia Original

  • 6 cups puffed brown rice cereal
  • 1 bag of vegan marshmallows (I used Dandies)
  • 3 Tbsp Smartbalance with Flax (this product does contain some soy)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract or any flavored extract you like

Prep a 13×9 inch cake pan with lining or a small rubdown with buttery spread.

In a microwave safe bowl heat your marshmallows and butter substitute on high.  Watch these carefully and stop periodically to stir and continue heating.  Once entirely smooth remove from the microwave.  Stir in the extract if you want to add a little oomph of flavor to these treats.

Mix the puffed brown rice cereal into the melted marshmallows. Spread into your prepped pan and let cool for at least 1 hour before slicing and serving.

Vegan Rice Krispeasies: (1 serving – 12 total) 128 calories | 1g Fat (<0.5g Saturated) | 28 carbohydrates (17g sugar) | 1g protein

TraditionalL1 serving – 12 total) 140 calories | 4g Fat (2.5g Saturated) | 28g carbohydrates (14 sugar) | 1g protein

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 24

3 Comments

Vegan Stocks – A farmer’s market

Bad Olivia.  Bad.  I totally missed my post yesterday and I had a great recipe to share but alas my job has been ramping up and sore throats have been passing around…so I’ll keep the subject of yesterday’s post in my pocket for another time.  Today I really wanted to get into a cornerstone recipe that really anyone should have, but that will be especially useful in building vegan recipes: a beefy vegetable stock.  This is a great recipe to have because it’s full of flavor without any meat products and even the most carnivorous fiend could find uses for this.  I fully attribute the beef-like flavor to my trick, and not so secret, ingredient which I’ll reveal below. But before the recipe a little detour and there might even be a trivia question along the way.

What is this secret beefy flavoring?

I was researching the idea of being a social vegan and discovered a new breed of eater: the flexivore.  It turns out that there are other omnivores like myself who have looked around and decided to continue to eat meat, but make a conscious effort to reduce their consumption overall out of objection to how the meat industry is currently run.  I suspect this aligns a great deal with the publishing of Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” which managed to really open my eyes to a variety of issues in the world of food—both exposing new problems and flushing out ones I was already familiar with.  I’ve read a lot on the topic of food (shocker!) but this is still one of my favorite books to hand off to friends because I think it manages to be both entertaining and compelling while being highly informative.  Plus it profiles my favorite farmer in the whole wide world.  No not McDonald – a libertarian hippie out of Virginia by the name of Joel Salatin.  (l)ibertarian hippies are the best and I’m probably just saying that because I am one *wink* Therefore I openly admit a little bit of a political bias to my love of this book.

But even with that in mind you can’t fight the facts.  My number one reason for eating vegan when I eat out is summed up in one, surprising word: Corn.  As it turns out that one word—corn—is synonymous with another word in our diets—Oil.  No not the kind you cook with.  The kind we drive and have land wars over.  Let me explain.  No there is too much.  Let me sum up.  **Name that movie for a prize!!** I know my readers have short attention spans so I’m not going to give you a detailed book report because really it would take pages so let me just explain my issue with meat and how it relates to corn and oil.

Why the scientist, nutritionist and health conscious me objects to the modern meat industry:

  • Stock base

    Agribusiness raises our meat on a diet of corn because corn is cheap and cows get nice and fat off it.  Fat means lots of saturated fats which taste good to the consumer and cheap corn feed for the cows means high profits.
  • Cows can’t digest corn properly.  It makes them sick.  So sick that we pump them full of antibiotics—not to cure the disease mind you because it’s not bacterial.  No we use the antibiotics to cure the symptoms of their gastrointestinal distress.  The antibiotics also make the cows bigger and fatter.  Win for agribusiness! 
  • But wait…doesn’t misuse of antibiotics mean resistant bugs?  You are a winner.  Yes it does.  And there’s more…see the antibiotics actually change the chemistry of a cow’s stomach.  A cow’s stomach is distinct from a human’s and should not normally incubate bacteria that can make us sick.  The antibiotics change that.  Now the cows harbor germs that can make us ill, and are breeding resistant version of them.  All this while they are kept in highly unsanitary conditions…like standing in 6 inches of cow poop all day instead of grazing.
  • Agriculture accounts for 60-70% of our antibiotics in this country and largely for these unwarranted applications.

But wait there’s more….why the economist, libertarian and peace loving hippie me object:

  • Corn is cheap to produce, the bulk of what we grow is inedible to humans as well as cows and gets sold at a loss to these big farms yet we grow more each year.  Why?
  • It all started with a post-world war 2 surplus of U.S. government owned ammonium nitrate for making bombs.  Ammonium also makes good fertilizer.  Since the government was out of the war business it went into the fertilizer making business instead.
  • Corn became King, or as Pollan puts it Queen (as in the Welfare Queen) since it was cheap to grow and could be converted to a number of things like high fructose corn sugar, ethanol and utilized as food for chickens and pigs who can digest it.  Excess fertilizer on the market meant cheap fertilizer and the advent of monoculture.  (Simplified definition: Monoculture refers to the practice of farming where fertilizer is used to replenish soil deprived of nutrients from over farming of a single crop)
  • Corn flooded the market because it was such a good seller…at first.  Then we had too much and prices went down.  Farmers started growing more to try to sell more to make up for previous year losses. 

  • Today the cost of producing corn is subsidized by 50%–that’s taxpayer money and translates to 6 billion a year.  And the cost keeps going down.  We’re investing in a loss year after year.  Why?  Because big agribusiness and Uncle Ronald McDonald depends on the stuff. 
  • ¼ of the goods you buy in a supermarket contain corn products.  A chicken nugget which is comprised of 38 ingredients is almost a third corn and no that doesn’t mean it’s good for you.  Sorry Dad.
  • Oh and by the way, the fertilizer to make that corn each year?  It requires oil.  That stuff we get from the middle east.  Conservative estimates show that 1 bushel of corn = ¼ gallon of oil.  How much corn do we produce in a year?  Well in 2007 we grew over 13 billion bushels.  The number has come down to closer to 12.5 in recent trends.  That’s still well over 3 billion gallons of oil in a year…to grow a crop we have too much of and lose money on.  And that doesn’t even account for the other hidden oil costs—like how much we need to run the plants that process that corn into things like corn syrup; the cost of the machines to farm it; the cost of healthcare as consumers eat excessive amounts of cheap sugars and get fat and sickly.
  • Don’t get me started on how this impacts our healthcare system.  I’m already at two pages.  But while the corn investment cost might not be much (6 billion is nothing compared to our military budget) if you consider the impact of cheap sugar/fat foods on health and our health care costs this becomes all the more shocking. 

And I’m still not getting into it all.  Now admittedly going vegan doesn’t really mean you stop supporting this overuse of oil for fertilizer since the other two gas guzzling crops are wheat and soy—a staple in most vegan diets.  It is however a start.  I also avoid soy as much as possible for other reasons I’ll explore on another day.  Tomorrow I’ll hopefully get into a little bit more of the environmental impact of factory farming, the meat industry and the corn connection but for now I’ll move onto this soup stock—something which is definitely worth investing a little thyme into.  Soup stock is essential not just for soups but as a way of adding a boost of flavor to an assortment of dishes.  It provides the backbone for a number of sauces and gravies.  A good stock is central to any kitchen pantry…or in my case a freezer.  You can make a huge batch of this stuff and then freeze it in various quantities. 

My favorite trick?  Ice cubes.  Pour this into an ice cube tray and then store into baggies once frozen.  This creates perfect 1-2 tbsp allotments that you can use in a pinch without having to thaw a huge batch or keep fresh stuff on hand all the time.  This is the only stock tip I’ve ever taken from Martha Stewart.  My ultimate vegan vegetable stock uses dried mushrooms–and don’t skimp on the porcini! No it doesn’t taste like mushroom soup thanks to the plethora of other vegetables but what the mushrooms do is impart an undeniable beef-y flavor quality which will leave your guests asking many questions.  Questions like “Who made this amazing soup/gravy?” and “You mean this is VEGAN?!” but never will you hear “where’s the beef?!”  Do not fear the fungi.  It’s your best friend in this recipe so even if you don’t normally like to eat mushrooms, try this out.  It might start to turn you….

Olivia’s Beefed up Vegan Broth

An Olivia Original – Makes about 8 to 10 cups 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

Apr 2

1 Comment

Think Thin Tuesday: Angelicized Eggs

And so our Virtual Seder comes to a close on this last day of Pesach.  I hope you’ve learned a lot.  We talked about the 4 questions traditionally asked to guide each seder—after the last question there is an additional blessing of the matzah, the eating of the bitter herbs and then finally the move to the meal itself.  But wait…there’s one last item on the Seder plate before the meal!  I think this is officially the LONGEST seder I’ve ever attended and even with all this I still haven’t really explained all the proper procedures.  I didn’t realize how involved this holiday was until I started writing all this out for non-Jews.  No wonder you must get so confused about it.  Anyway on to the final piece of the traditional* seder plate: The final piece of the plate is….a hard-boiled egg – also known as the Beitzah.

Yup.  It’s not just an easter thing though I’m guessing some of you have leftover pastel colored eggs that you’ve got to use up dontcha?  Well let’s talk a wee bit about the significance of the egg in Judaism and then I’ll share with you a great skinny recipe for deviled eggs—half the calories!—that embraces all the delicious flavors of a good Jewish Deli.

After the story of Passover is told, hands are washed again, the Matzo is blessed, the Maror is eaten dipped in salt water and then in the Charoset only to finally be placed between two pieces of Matzo and eaten as a sandwich.  Then the hard-boiled egg is eaten and the meal can begin.  So what’s the significance of the Beitzah?  The egg in Judaism is a symbol of mourning—served at funerals.  I think this is because the egg is kind of the symbol of the opposite of death—new life and new beginning.  It is a reminder to be resilient and that life continues even in the face of the inevitable cold grasp of mortality.  Judaism is a very life affirming religion.  You might be familiar with “L’Chaim!” as the traditional toast offered up by your Hebrew friends.  This translates literally as “To Life!”  Life, and the protection of it, is the most sacred thing in Judaism—even if to defend it means to defy G-d.  That’s how important it is.

For Passover the egg as symbol of mourning ties back to the grief of loss of the Holy Temple.  The egg is also dipped in the salt water to mimic tears.  Such a happy holiday.  Anyway with this last piece we move onto the actual meal which is concluded with additional prayers, two more glasses of wine and the eating of the Afikomen—that last piece of Matza that gets hidden for the kidlets to find.  Between

the Matzo hunt, the paschal lamb and the eggs the holiday isn’t too far off from Easter after all is it?

My last piece to offer up is that the traditional seder plate contains all the items we discussed here but in recent years reform Jews have added a last element to the plate: an orange.    The orange symbolizes women, as well as homosexuals, in the Jewish faith and their fruitfulness.   Some families choose to incorporate this addition.  Others don’t—either because they are more Orthodox or just more traditional about their practices.  I’m not going to judge either way…at least not publicly.  Though I may have an orange Passover friendly recipe to toss up here this week just to be fair—almond cupcakes with orange cream cheese frosting anyone?  Just depends on how much time I have and if I figure out something to do for SciFriday this week.  But enough public pontificating.  Mazel Tov!  You made it through our Virtual Seder.  Now use up those hardboiled eggs and join me for some pizza and beer when the sun goes down because DAMN I could use a beer.

Now onto the Deviled, or maybe in this case I should call them Heavenly Eggs because with a little thought and effort I managed to reduce the typical caloric content of one single serving by half.  I don’t know about you but I can never eat just ONE deviled egg and after four or five you’ve basically consumed an entire meal.  Not really the best nutrition option for something that’s traditionally an appetizer or Hors d’oeuvre right?

Pesach Heavenly Eggs

An Olivia Original

Makes 24 deviled egg halves from 1 dozen eggs Read more

Mar 25

L’Chaim Muffin Monday: I’ll bake to that!

Passover begins tonight.  For the goyim readers out there Passover is a Jewish Holiday, one of the more important ones really, but it’s relatively glossed over during Easter time in the stores.  Don’t worry I’m not about to rant about how most Americans only know Hanukah (a far less important holiday) or how a very Catholic girl I knew once said “Yeah they always show the Moses story for Easter but I don’t know why.”

Oy.

You might have noticed this holiday in the past though.  Maybe a Jewish friend starts whining about not being able to eat pizza or shows up to work hungover after something called “First Say-dur?” and you’re a little curious just what this Passover thing is all about.  Okay so let me explain.  No wait, there is too much, let me sum up.  This is how I explain the point of most Jewish holidays to my coworkers or semi-interested friends: someone tried to kill us, we survived, and now we celebrate surviving yet another attempted genocide by eating weird foods and getting drunk.  Sound about right?

Okay so that’s something of an oversimplified explanation but Passover can be a little hard to explain in detail to the totally unaware.  And again I’m not going to whine about how no one knows anything about Jewish holidays or how far too many people who claim to be Christian and know their bibles have no clue about a key part of the Old Testament.  I’m not.  Really.  Because you know what?  I don’t know shit really about Islamic or Hindu holidays.  I know more than the average Uh-MARE-ican.  Enough that I know what the point of Ramadan is and not to eat in front of my Islamic friends those long days.  I know that I would love to someday see and participating in celebrating Diwali and Holi because from what little I know, these Hindu holy days that utilize light and color sound beautiful.  I’m actually really intrigued by Hinduism.  There’s a lot to it from what little I’ve researched (or in other words spent hours on Wikipedia procrastinating) that appeals to me.

I guess my point is I’m at least aware of the existence of some non-mainstream Christian holidays which is all I ask of most people for Passover too.  I try not to be haughty when people don’t know the deal with that weird flat bread (Matzo) or get annoyed when people reduce it to a week of the Atkins diet.  I’ll be patient when I explain why I’m cooking up a storm for Seder dinner aka the Jewish Thanksgiving (except not really because we have a lot of those, it’s called Shabbat or every Friday night.)  ?  Oh wait, what’s a seder?  The first night, and second, nights of Passover (which lasts for 8 days) feature a large feast with prayers, songs, wine and a lavish ritual meal.  This is called a “seder” and is a very big deal for the holiday.  The point of the meal is also to teach the youngest members of the family about the meaning of the holiday through a series of questions asked every year designed to retell the story.  There’s also the “Seder Plate” which contains 7 foods present at every Seder to help with the telling of the story.  Thus I had a thought: I’m not going to get to have a proper Seder with my friends this year.  Most of them are scattered across the land anyway in faraway places like LA, New York and I shudder to think of it—Montana.  How about a virtual seder through my blog?  You’re all invited to attend.  Starting tomorrow for each day of Passover I want to feature a food inspired by one of the Seder plate offerings and give you a little insight into the holiday.

In the meantime I’m getting in my last bit of chametz (bread) with these Masala Chai Tea Muffins.  Wait—Chai?  Olivia you’re mixing up your cultures!  Chai, pronounced with a soft ch like chimichanga, is a term for flavored black tea from India.  Chai, with a hard chhhhh phlegmy sound, is the symbol for life in Judaism.  You’d be most likely familiar with the term as a toast offered by Jewish friends with wine— “L’Chaim!” which means “To Life!”  These muffins are tasty enough that you might get a little culturally flustered too.  I prefer to think of it as a melding of worlds in tasty, pastry form.  Just sit back, enjoy the ride and take your last few bites of bread until April 3 rolls around.  I promise they are a tasty way to toast to the holiday.

Masala L’Chaim Muffins!

An Olivia Original Read more

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 13

Think Thin Tuesday: Chipping away that fat

I don’t have the best relationship with food.  I am a binger.  It’s been a large problem for me in managing not only my weight but my mental state at times.  Right now I am weighing in at the lowest I’ve been I think since I was a freshman in high school.  I’m actually what people would call “Skinny” but there was a time I weighed probably about 30-35 pounds more than I do now.  I’m not sure exactly what my “peak” weight was.  I think at 5’4” and my Junior year end I was close to tipping 150?  I don’t remember seeing a scale go over 145 but I’m guessing that’s where I was at during my heaviest days.  Recently someone on facebook tagged me in an old photo and I was shocked, shocked, to remember just how much bigger I was.  The photo was of course a fantastic boob shot and man am I glad that those have gone down.  Gals I know you think men want big breasts, some do, but for most a handful is plenty and much, much better for your back and shirt shopping. I was never obese and actually being around 140 can be perfectly fine if you are athletic.  I wasn’t.  I was a D&D playing, twinkie loving basement geek those years.  Lately I’ve been losing weight, getting in good shape but I’m still not where I want to be for myself.  Close just not quite there.  I also wish I’d freak out less over the scale fluctuating.  It tends to trigger those bingey moments.  I also wish I didn’t feel the need to obsess over what and how much I am eating all the time.  Usually it’s fine but on days when I’m stressed out, if I feel like I’ve been unhealthy or miss a workout, it sets me on edge. 

I think it’s something that a lot of people who significant quantities of weight go through.  It’s an irrational fear that somehow missing a scheduled workout, or slipping, will cause little adipose babies to sneak in during the night and all that weight will just come flooding back.  Surprise Surprise just another control thing for me to freak out about.  Of course seeing even a pound come back on sends me into a spiral of emotional guilt.  Sometimes this triggers binges which are a horrible, horrible thing to do.  I did it a lot more as a teenager.  Now I try to funnel that into going for an extra run but I have to be careful not to let my emotions get the better of me when that happens.  That can trigger a panic attack.

I just need to remember that it’s okay and to not be so hard on myself.

Yeah.

That’ll happen.

Okay so if I can’t avoid being hard on myself then I at least need to avoid emotional eating.  Take this morning for example.  My commute was even more harried than usual due to an eight car pileup near Benicia.  By the time I got into work I felt frazzled, looked even worse than I felt and wanted nothing more than to veer into a piece of chocolate.  I am restraining myself.  Why?  Well first of all that’s how it starts.  “Oh you had a hard day, reward yourself a little.  Live a little.” Soon that thought becomes a daily mantra and you slip into bad, bad habits.  The trick to developing a habit is maintaining it even in the fact of really awful circumstances.  Yes I had a bad morning, that doesn’t mean I should sabotage myself with an indulgence.  Especially not one I’ll feel guilty about later because I’ve been having a lot of bad mornings or rough days and eventually you’ve gotta stop babying yourself with shit and just deal.  I’ve had a lot of bad food recently.  It’s time to stop the influx regardless of how many times I was cut off and nearly sideswiped.

These things must not be allowed to chip away at my resolve or mental calm.  That’s what it really comes down to.  A dominance of the mind over the body.  I do not need to give in to feelings of anxiety, stress, anger, fear, frustration, hate…join the dark side Luke.  NO!  If I just breathe and relax I can let go of those feelings and in the process also avoid the pitfalls of the candy bowl, the emotional cookie and the inevitable guilt spiral that follows.

Indulging is good.  I’m not stopping my crazy, delicious but oh so fattening baking.  Don’t think that.  I’m not advocating a fat-free lifestyle here.  Please don’t misinterpret this post.  I’m speaking instead about identifying the right reasons and in this case, the wrong reasons to indulge.  Indulgence in food should be done only when you are in a good mood and a calm space.  It’s like drinking or a number of other recreational activities.  Doing them when you are upset indicates a problem; reliance, avoidance, dependence and escapism.  Having a drink to celebrate a good time or relax at the end of the day is the appropriate time to indulge.  The same goes for sweets and “bad” foods.

The rest of the time, find ways to make healthy food be enjoyable food.  Take these Jicama Chips for an example.  I make these as an alternative to potato chips and find them to be just as satisfying but with a single serving cutting the calories by over 60%.  Plus the jicama has more fiber and nutrients and actually adds a really delicious flavor component you don’t get with potato.  Is it ever going to taste as good to my caveman cravings for fat and salt?  Probably not but I don’t feel like I’m denying myself OR over-indulging myself when I eat these.  It’s perfect and I can even enjoy more of them because they are so healthy.  Great for an hour long tv show though right now I’m pretty much underwhelmed by everything I’m watching.  I’m almost ready to give up on Once Upon a Time and Green Arrow.  Dexter is still pretty amazing though.  Things are getting MESSY on that show.  Sheesh.

The recipe below starts with 200 grams of raw jicama.  What’s jicama?  Well it’s a root vegetable that works fantastically as a substitute for potato.  Where potato is all starch, jicama is more water and fiber (good for digestion and heart health) making it a great low-calorie substitute.  As a root vegetable it’s got a lot of minerals, vitamin c and even some valuable B-vitamins.  After baking, when the water cooks out, this weight will be reduced.  I kept that in mind when calculating the nutrition info for you but bear in mind this is estimation and it could vary a little based on how much your yield is, how much water cooks out.  The upside is that so long as you know how much you started with you’ll know how much is in the total result.  My 200 grams reduced to just over 57 grams which is perfect since the standard chip serving is 28 grams.  So I’m saying this recipe makes 2- 28gram servings at about 50-60 calories per serving.  Compare that to potato chips which run anywhere from 100-210.  Not something to complain about at all eh?  Especially when 28 grams can be as few as 6 or 7 chips.  Really?  Who only eats 6 or 7?  Pringles runs their entire marketing campaign about how addictive they are.  I really hate how deceptive nutrition labels are. 

Homemade Jicama Chips
An Olivia Original Read more

Nov 6

Think Thin Tuesday: Vote! Chick off your Salad

Happy Election Day folks!  Did you vote yet?  I “chicked off my salad” and sent it out earlier on but there should still be time to get to the polls when this post goes up.   If nothing else it gets you out of work right?  So I’m about to embark on my first “political” post.  I wish I weren’t writing this in the middle of the night, half exhausted but you get what you get.  I hope it makes some sense and no one turns on me after the fact.  I promise to resume my personal boring ramblings if you hate it.  The recipe I’ve got today is beyond fast and simple to snap together.  Seriously it was easier to put together than making a decision on Prop 37 (which I discuss below) so try it out!

“Vote or Die Motherfrakkers”  No, not because I think the Presidential election matters.  That’s not really where you are going to make a difference.  It’ll either be the Demopublican or the Republocrat in office.  I cast my mail in vote for Gary Johnson because I can at least consol myself that I chose to vote for someone rather than against someone.  I usually don’t get into poli-ticks on here because my goal is not to offend anyone but if you must know I am more or less a small-l libertarian.  What does that mean?  Well the oft quoted summation is that it means I’m a liberal on social issues and a conservative on fiscal ones.  What it really means is that I’m opposed to large scale, government intervention as a rule and prefer smaller and smaller government whenever possible.  Even though I know that a third party candidate isn’t primed for a chance, and Johnson (who is actually a candidate I’m very enthusiastically in support of) won’t win, I despise this concept of “voting for the lesser evil” and choosing between the two big parties.

You know what you still end up with when you “vote for the lesser evil”?  Evil.  Did you know that more Americans identify themselves as independents than aligning with either party?  Can you imagine what could happen if we STOPPED this mentality of thinking the only way to make your vote matter is to choose between a turd sandwich or a giant douche?  It CAN happen, hell it could happen today if people en masse stopped being afraid of “the other guy” and started focusing on the guy who might actually get the job done.  I get told by folks that this is a pipe dream and that I should do my best to keep Obamney out of office because at least Romama is better on issue X.  And we wonder why nothing really changes or gets better?  How can it when every election season votes are motivated out of fear and single issue voting?  The founding fathers feared this but it’s been running our nation pretty much since the beginning.  I hope it will stop in my lifetime, I know it probably won’t, but I can at least live with myself for not being intellectually dishonest.

So why am I encouraging you to vote?  Well the Presidential election may be little more than a Watchmen-Comedian-esque joke to me, but your statewide propositions ARE a place where you have a chance to make a difference.  I hope that you, my dear readers, try to make the best informed decision on matters of smaller local government.  It’s in fact why I’m a small-l libertarian.  Smaller scale government decisions mean more visibility, oversight, transparency and direct impact by voters on their own lives.  A really big proposition here in California that I get asked for my opinion about frequently is prop 37.  I guess because I’m “foodie” girl with a degree in biotechnology I have a unique view on this matter.  Not familiar with the proposition?  It’s a measure to label California foods that are Genetically Modified.  At least on paper that’s what it claims to do.  After much examination, reading the bill and a dozen blogs on the issue, I decided to vote No.  This shocks a lot of people since I care quite a bit about consumer rights and encourage everyone to pay attention to what they eat.

Yes Monsanto, known for being eeeeeeevil, opposes the bill and so many kneejerk to thinking if Monsanto is against it, then it must be a good thing. I think it’s a little disingenuous to focus so much on who opposes the bill without looking at who wrote it: an ambulance chasing group that has used California voter passed legislation to pursue millions of dollars in cases in the past. That triggered a worry for me far more than Monsanto opposing the bill would. (now if this were a bill that Monsanto had written then I would say focus on them) I mean if you’re going to take that route let’s look at another issue: gun control. You know who was a big proponent of gun control in his own country? Adolf Hitler. Now I’m not trying to draw some ridiculous allegory here I just mean this: just because one person you hate likes chocolate, doesn’t mean chocolate is something you now have to hate.

So why is it a NO from me?  Well I think I would have to write you a term paper to properly discuss the matter.  Let me explain, no there is too much, let me sum up.  I am O.K. with genetically modified foods but I do believe they need to be labeled.  Not because the foods themselves pose a risk of giving you tentacles (which pro-37 ads would lead to you believe) but for some more boring, science reasons around protein allergens.  I probably will write up a post in the future about this because I find it unbelievably depressing how little people know about genetic modification and what it really is.

No my problem with the bill is how poorly it is written.  Loopholes for special exemptions aside, it also lets imported foods skirt the issue altogether.  So you can buy imported, unlabeled GMO products and many people probably will out of fear over local GMO labeled products.  Local NON-GMO products?  Forget it.  The prices won’t be able to compete with China.  Yuppie hipsters will buy local, foraged non GMO blah blah blah but your average family will get the apples from China instead.  Well what good does THAT do?  Nothing.  In fact it’s worse because now consumers will buy food that might be GMO, but from nations further away meaning we’re trucking in food globally and doing more damage to the environment.  Additionally, simply labeling something as GM is not enough for reasons I’ll explain in another post but the short of it is this: GM foods have unique proteins present.  These are potentially allergens.  If you ARE going to label GM food it should be to make consumers aware that a protein from say, brazil nuts, is present and may be a potential allergen for those with a nut allergy.  Right now all labeling foods as GM will do is inspire fear in those who don’t understand it.  Making it law makes it that much harder to undo.  It will actually cause more problems than it will fix.  A poorly written bill is a bad thing to support, even if I agree with the basic premise, because it takes more money and time to undo, often causing a great deal of harm in the meantime, than to wait and pass a better one in the future.  I’ve heard it said that the bill would be good because it gets the conversation going…well putting it on the ballot gets the conversation going.  Look at us right now, we are conversing.  Well more like I’m taking at an imaginary person and imagining your responses but you get the idea.  I swear being a blogger sometimes makes me think I’m crazy.  Anyway that’s the brief sum up.  There’s a lot more that pertains to the issue of GMO in general but I’ll save that for another day….

Anyway recipe time!  This is a very light chicken salad with Vietnamese flavors that is very loosely based off an old 2008 recipe from the now defunct Gourmet magazine.  It’s a fantastic chicken salad with TONS of flavor and very few calories.  Serve it up on some cabbage slices if you are watching carbs or splurge a little and put it on some French roll for a delicious, but still under 500 calorie, sandwich.  I hate that gourmet sandwiches prepared anywhere outside the home usually run the gamut at 750-1450!!  Chicken salad doesn’t have to be a gloopy, mayo mess.  This one is salty, sweet and oh so satisfying and good for your waistline. You don’t have to choose between eating well or eating tasty in my kitchen—this candidate for your stomach will give you the impossible.  High flavor at a low caloric cost.  Too bad American politics can’t do that too.

Vietnamese Chicken Salad
Adapted from August “Gourmet” 2008 Read more

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