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Posts tagged ‘parve’

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 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

Mar 27

1 Comment

Early baked bread, fails to rise, makes a Jew ask why matzo is prized?

So Olivia…why is it that during Passover you complain about not getting to eat any “Chametz”?  Why can’t you come out for pizza and beer?  And why in the world are you eating those crackers all the time that taste like cardboard?

You are not to eat any hametz with it; for seven days you are to eat with it matzah, the bread of affliction; for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste. Thus you will remember the day you left the land of Egypt as long as you live.    —Deuteronomy 16:3

Matzo Brittle!

Passover is a very holiday that is very strongly focused on the children of the family.  Much of the purpose of the retelling of the story, the ceremony itself, is about teaching the younger generation about their history.  Traditionally after the dipping of the Karpas (see yesterday’s post) the youngest child becomes a part of the ceremony.   The youngest will ask 4 questions of the person leading the seder and this guides the telling.  These are the same questions every year so it’s sort of like a recital.  I’m not sure that your five year-old is itching to participate in a religious ceremonial recital but it helps keep the kids engaged.  Which brings us to the next portion of the seder plate and the first question the child is supposed to ask:

Shebb’khol hallelot anu okh’lin ḥamets umatsa, vehallayla hazze kullo matsa.
Translated: Why is it that on all other nights during the year we eat either leavened bread or matza, but on this night we eat only matza?

You might be familiar with this funny looking cracker in the Kosher aisle of your grocery store.  Every year around easter time you might notice that boxes of it pile up in the aisles next to concord grape wine and a bunch of candles.  These giant crackers are called Matza or Matzah or Matzo…or plural Matzot.  There are a lot of spelling variations.  To keep it simple I’m just going to stick with Matzo.

Matzo is unleavened bread that Jews eat during Passover to remember the flight out of Egypt.  Remember how the Pharaoh suddenly changed his mind about freeing the slaves?  Well the Jews were savvy to this possibility, or maybe they were understandably in a hurry to just get away once freed, either way in the haste to get out of dodge the story goes that the Jews wanted to get out so badly they didn’t bother waiting for bread dough to rise.  They slapped it together, baked it, packed and left with flat loaves of bread for the journey to freedom.  This bread symbolizes both freedom and servitude for while it is part of the story of liberation, it also reminds us that we were slaves.  Thus it is known as “the bread of affliction” and also as a poor man’s bread.

Yeast, the microorganism which causes bread to rise, also is what breaks down wheat and gives bread flavor.  As such traditional Matzo is pretty damn flavorless.  Passover Matzo is made of only flour and water—nothing else.    The rest of the year you can buy some pretty damn delicious versions (sour cream and onion egg matzo is delicious) but for Passover the plain kind is all that is allowed.  Additionally no other leavened grain is to be eaten.  Grains include: wheat, barley, spelt, oats and rye.  These grains and anything produced with leavening are called “Chametz” and they are forbidden.  Thus no pizza and no beer.

In fact typically the more observant Ashkenazi Jewish households also remove foods considered “kitniyot” or “small things”.  These are any foods that resemble grain.  The idea being that even having them around mind lead someone to get confused/distracted and accidentally eat Chametz with them or someone might think you are eating Chametz.  Kitniyot includes: rice, beans, corn and lentils.  Sephardic Jews are less stringent on this matter….  (Olivia what is a Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jew?  — I’ll explain that in a few days)

There really is a lot more to the Matzo than I’m even getting into here.  It’s one of the oldest and most symbolic parts of the Passover Seder.  Still I know that this post has already gone on pretty long so now I will reward you with a tasty recipe for turning Matzo into a delicious dessert.  Which brings me to one last thing….

In order to keep the kidlets engaged and alert during Seder, there’s one last tradition I should mention about Matzo.  Matzo is considered the “Afikomen” or dessert for the Passover Seder.  Right before the youngest child asks the 4 questions, and after the eating of the Karpas, the matzo is uncovered on the table.  Typically there are three pieces and the middle one is broken in half.  The larger half is hidden by the family and the children go on a Matzo hunt after the meal to find it.    Now I’ve never found anything concrete proving this but the earliest recordings of egg hunts as part of a certain other religious holiday *cougheastercough* around this time of year didn’t pop up until the 18th century…so you’ve gotta wonder whether this played into that now mainstream practice we all know about.

Anyway plain matzo as dessert?  PAH.  Not in my house.  Nope I make this insanely delicious version of matzo – matzo brittle.  Mmmmmm.  The recipe is going to list butter OR shortening—use shortening if you want to keep the dessert parve.  Don’t know what that means?  Don’t worry about it, I’ll explain another day about Kosher laws.

 

Chocolate Honey-Almond Matzo Brittle Read more

Mar 11

2 Comments

Monday Morning Loaf to Beholden

Persimmon Sesame Cake (7)

I vehemently dislike soliciting and accepting help from people—

This isn’t a perceived weakness issue like many people would assume it is for me.  I don’t think needing help is a sign of weakness.  We all come up against situations where you just can’t do it on your own.  Maybe a car breaks down.  Maybe a kid gets sick.  Life happens and that’s really just a more pleasant way for saying sometimes shit gets out of your control.  It took me a long time to learn to accept that I can’t reign over my day to day existence as an all-powerful, omniscient being.  Heck even when I AM that being the occasional satellite would fall out of the sky suddenly killing my Sim in front of my eyes and I may not have saved the game in the last hour.  Anyway the point is I know that we all need help sometimes.

Persimmon Sesame CakeThat being said, when I do ask for help I am always quick to define the parameters by which I intend to repay this person. See the reason I hate asking for help is that I hate the feeling of being in someone’s debt.  I hate that when you accept assistance from someone, especially for big ticket items, it comes with one or many strings attached.  Invisible and often undefined strings that will be insisted aren’t there but you know what?  They always are.  I think it’s a rule of acquisition in fact.  It might be a gift at the time but man oh man, when that person needs a favor in return that you initially can’t help with, you betcha they will bring up that “gift” again.  I once made the mistake of thinking that one of my ex’s made a grand gesture for me and accepting it as such.  He had just paid the cost of extending my plane ticket so I could stay an extra night since my classes were cancelled and joked that I had to clean his room in exchange.  I found out in a nasty telephone conversation that what I’d interpreted as a joke was actually in his mind a verbal contract.  It hurt on multiple levels—but mostly because it was a rare time that I actually took someone’s assistance/kindness without trying to give back.  Never again have I felt comfortable with a boyfriend offering to do something grand for me and quite often, with one rare exception but there were other issues in that relationship, I’ve found that instinct was correct.  There’s always some sort of expectation from men I date.  And people wonder why I’m happier being single.

So typically when I ask for help I will always include in my request some form of repayment.  I think I’ve asked for help from friends most often with the countless number of times I’ve had to move but I always, always send out that batsignal with a plate of cookies, pizza and/or beer attached.  As it stands I have one person who I still never managed to connect with and it’s driving me crazy to think that I haven’t repaid the debt yet.

You might think “Olivia you don’t owe someone just because they carry a bag for you.” No, maybe not that one time, but there’s the risk of accumulated performance of this task and that DOES eventually add up.  Trust me I know.  After a while that friend who always takes a ride home is less attractive to hang out with because you get tired of always taking them home.  Then you get invited out less and…yes it adds up.  I dislike the idea of wearing out my welcome with requests for help so I try to minimize asking for unless it’s quite literally impossible for me to do on my own.  That way when I have a genuine emergency, I haven’t cried wolf too many times.Persimmon Sesame Cake (3)

I get extremely frustrated too when it’s a persistent unsolicited offer.  I hate being asked repeatedly to allow someone to help me.  When it comes to very simple things like luggage, and I am struggling under the weight of my decision to pack too many shoes, I will actually ask for help should I need it but I much prefer to ask than have it offered over and over again after I refuse over and over again.  That repeated offer just ends up frustrating me and making me cranky.  I don’t play those social contract games where you refuse out of politeness.  I think that’s why I get so frustrated when someone will persist in offering—I feel like I’m not being taken at my word.  I’ve always been someone who feels that my word really matters. If I say I’m going to do something I do my damndest to make sure that happens.  This stems from my fear of ever letting someone down.  Plus I have that impatience issue where I really, really hate taking the time to repeat myself when it’s not needed.  I suffer from that pesky “I want to do it all”mania so for me time is extremely precious.  Yes even those extra few minutes.    Anyone who has had to use public transit should know that even the space of a minute can make a HUGE difference in the timing of your day.

Plus when it comes to things like rides or carrying heavy stuff—I like the exercise.  I like the excuse to get an extra walk in.  I want to do it.   If I had my way I’d live in a city within a 1 mile of radius of everything I needed because then I could always just walk where I want to go.  Heck 2 miles even.  I’m an endorphin junkie and I get them from moving my body.    Persimmon Sesame Cake (5)

What I don’t like is the feeling of invisible strings hanging off my body, ready to be tugged upon at a moment’s notice.  I really relish my freedom and I’m the sort of person who gets very uncomfortable when held too tightly.  That concept of keeping your palm open and letting a butterfly choose to land, stay or leave has always been an exceptionally apt analogy of how I am.  I just get squirmish otherwise.  OF course the problem is that I’ll also run away if I feel like no one wants me around.  But that’s another topic altogether and right now I’m getting hungry so without much further ado here’s a recipe I love to bake as a thank-you gift for friends.  Quick morning loaves and muffins are often characterized as the homemaker’s choice and there’s a reason for that.  A simple reason.  They are incredibly simple and fast to make but still extremely delicious.  This persimmon bread is actually a modified mango bread recipe that I updated for winter produce and played around with the flavors a bit.  It’s also incredibly, delectably moist and delightful to bite into with some nice complex flavor from the persimmon.  If you ever do get the rare opportunity to do me a big favor and I offer to bake for you, I highly recommend you ask for this.

Persimmon Sesame Bread

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 11

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Muffin Monday: Just an orangery old coot….

Deep down inside I think I’m really just an 80 year old man.  With man boobs.  Aw man. **anyone know what I’m quoting?**  I seem to be a cranky old sailor (despite my penchant for sundresses and floppy hats), ready to complain about kids hover-boarding on my lawn and I’m not even 25 yet.  People love to say I have an old soul but sometimes I wonder if that means I’m all withered up like a prune in the “fun” centers of my brain.  Then again I know of other 20 somethings who feel like they had more in common with Mr. Wilson than Dennis so maybe this isn’t so rare after all?  My friend Brian likes to poke fun at my willingness to “rage” on the internet but couldn’t that be simultaneously a symptom of immaturity as well as a lack of youthful spirit?  I prefer to think of it as righteous indignation—because that has the word right in it so clearly I must be correct yes?  Maybe righteous indignation coupled with wisdom, passion and a flawed but ultimately belligerently adorable ornery Olivia state of mind?

Ornery Olivia–she comes out when I’m tired or cranky—not that unusual I think for someone to be a little bit on edge and snappish when stressed.  The bigger issue then maybe is that I’m stressed too often and need to learn to “let it go” as it were.  “Raging” or ranting can release the frustration I feel but sometimes it just leaves me feeling worse off than before—agitated primarily at myself for getting so, well, agitated.  I just don’t know how to not be a smart ass sometimes.  I was contemplating this the other day after leaving my yoga studio.  I just got out of a particularly challenging Bikram session that left me physically drained but very happy with my practice when a young white bald man approaches me.

“Hare Krishna” he says.  I smile and nod as the social expectations dictate even though I didn’t ASK to be approached on the street by a stranger with a greeting.  My phone is in my hands and I’m trying to make sure that I don’t have any missed important messages regarding a brunch I was planning the next day.

“Can you say Hare Krishna?” the man is speaking to me like a child who doesn’t know her words.  Apparently my normally socially acceptable smile and nod was insufficient for this individual who wishes to engage me in his practice.  Ornery Olivia is tired and rears her head, which ironically provides me with a surge of energy.

“Do I have the powers of speech?  Yes I do.”

“Well are you going to say it?”  I roll my eyes.

“Thank you goodbye” my attention turned back to my phone and I shift my bag ready to walk away.

“Do you know what Hare Krishna means?” I am asked.

“Yes thank you goodbye”

“Well then what does it mean?”

“It means I’m about to punch you in the throat if you don’t leave me alone.”  Okay I admit this last bit was a thought bubble and not what came out.  I’m ornery but not generally violent, at least not toward total strangers even if they are being obnoxious.

“I don’t speak on command like a pet.  Now thank you and GOODBYE.”

“Well maybe you’ll do better tomorrow.”

“Not if I see you first.” and then I turned and walked away.

I know I didn’t need to engage but sometimes my mouth just gets away from me.  Still I just HATE being stopped on the street by total strangers.  Pan-handlers are bad enough but at least I understand the begging.  I get far more annoyed by petitioners, especially ones who dress themselves up to look like city officials, who do their best to make you feel guilty for having places to go.  What’s more I don’t find it particularly safe to just stop on the street whenever any person wants to ask you something.  It’s a city mentality I suppose, a crotchety one, but I didn’t grow up in Mayberry and I don’t think it’s wise to assume that people have benign intentions.

Then there is the other side of me.  The shiny, Kaylee, bubbly sundress wearing, parasol twirling little girl who sees the world with Vanellope Sweet-candy eyes.

I guess I confuse even myself.

Anyway after a day of being the old lady version of myself I decided to embrace some sunshiney weather with equally sunshiney orange muffins.  I turned Ornery Olivia into Orangey Olivia.

See, see what I did there?

I loved the flavor in these but not so much the texture.  I tried out a recipe from a cookbook I rarely use (because I own too many cookbooks and am trying to branch out from Dorie) and was immediately suspicious of this being too cake like.  Sure enough they were very cakey and as a result they really were only good day of baking.  I put them out for a brunch on Sunday (made them Saturday) and found that the muffins were probably the least popular thing on the table…but they sure brightened it up with their chipper appearance.  Also don’t tell anyone but they actually got a nutrition boost from my own addition to the recipe: flax meal.

Ornery Orange Muffins

Modified from “The Buttercup Bake Shop 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 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 

Read more

Sep 18

1 Comment

Think Think Tuesday: Tzimmes Down Now!

Oh my gosh! Wrapping things up at work is keeping me so busy. Everyone wants to get in those last minute requests before the transitions fully take place and before I walk out of these halls, making that final walk against the wind tunnel never to return again…. Okay overly dramatic. I’m going to be down the street and half the people I work with have my personal number. It’s not like I’m never going to be around those buildings again and hopefully I’ll still see a lot of these folks in the evenings on occasion. In the meantime there’s a lot to get through and I find myself just needing a chance to “tzimmes down now” especially as this is supposed to be a time of the year for me to reflect and work on changing those pesky flaws of character of mine.

Rosh Hashanah is almost over, for those of you who didn’t know it’s a two-day new year celebration of the Jewish religion. Most reform Jews really only actively observe the first day but it ends at sundown tonight. As such I decided that I would bring you not one but two recipes celebrating this year. No one at home was up for a big brisket and shebang this year, but in the spirit of needing to simma down and get myself steadied this weekend, I’m bringing you this recipe I’ve developed for a delicious tzimmes.

What is Tzimmes? Good question. Tzimmes is a traditional Jewish dish for the new year of sweetened, stewed carrots with honey. The honey again symbolizes the wish for a sweet new year and good blessings. The carrots are usually cut into round circles to mimic the look of gold coins. Hold the Jew Gold jokes please, the coin imagery is about wishing a prosperous year ahead but that doesn’t have to translate entirely literally. Of course a little extra cash wouldn’t hurt right?

Typically this dish is beefed up with additional root vegetables, orange juice and prunes–and the result is usually mushy and sickly sweet. Most recipes I’ve seen call for a great deal of sugar, honey, orange juice and dried fruit. 4 big sources of sugar plus carrots which are a sweeter vegetable. I loved this stuff as a kid and no wonder, but as an adult I started to find most tzimmes a little cloying. Last year I cooked my brisket with it and that helped a bit–the meat added some fat and rich flavors to balance out all the sweet but it really didn’t make the meal any healthier.

This year I balanced out the sweet a bit by using a larger ratio of cranberries to prunes (I love prunes but the cranberries add a tart bite), cutting back on the amount of honey/sugar/orange juice and rounded out the loss of liquid with extra vegetable broth. This is a vegetarian option recipe so you can amp up the flavor a bit by using a chicken or beef broth instead. I also made sure to use as much of a variety of root vegetables as possible, I just love parsnips, and even added in a little rhubarb. Rhubarb typically is spring produce but we have these weird Indian Summers in northern california so I occasionally still find some at the Farmer’s Markets. I debated using some radishes but decided I didn’t want quite that level of peppery bit in the mix. It should still be a sweet dish for the holiday. Finally there’s the matter of whether or not to peel the vegetables.

This is what 1 serving looks like.

The word tzimmes comes from an amalgamation of yiddish words that translates into “for” – “eating” but the word is also synonymous with the idea of “making a fuss” about something. The etymology for this connotation is thought to derive from the fussy nature of preparation for the dish. While cooking it takes very active effort, beforehand you typically would peel and finely chop and dice all the various root veggies. If you want to save yourself some time and get a little bit more in the way of good for you minerals, I say skip this step. For a lot of root vegetables the greatest source of nutrition lies in their outer skins so if you really want to get the best out of your meal for your body this is a great excuse to say buh-bye to tradition and cut 10 minutes off prep time.

What you wind up with using this recipe is a delicious stewed blend of veggies that pair really nicely with some roasted chicken drumettes. That’s how I’m eating dinner tonight to wrap up the holiday. Again this is still a very sweet recipe and I could easily see giving it the thanksgiving treatment and turning it into dessert with just a few marshmallows on top. I bet even the pickiest of vegetable eaters will be happy with this one. As a bonus a single cup serving is about 170 calories which makes it a reasonable side dish or when doubled a great main course.

New Year Resolution Tzimmes

Olivia Original – 6 servings – 170 calories a cup Read more

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