Egg & Soldiers

Never in my life did I think I would eat a soft-boiled egg. The thought of a runny yolk was repulsive. But then I did try it. With my farm-fresh eggs from my CSA box. And I was sold.

Apparently, in the UK this is called egg and soldiers -- a soft-boiled egg with salt and pepper and some buttered pieces of toast to dip in. It is soooo good. I can't explain it. Also good to dip, some thin, raw asparagus spears (a la Nigella).

My perfect egg is actually medium boiled -- for about 7 minutes -- with buttered asiago ciabatta. Heaven!

Cinnamon Granola

3 cups old fashioned oats
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup nuts (I used pecan pieces)
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut
1 tablespoon flax seed
1 tsp cinnamon
(Mix dry ingredients)

1/4 cup butter or coconut oil
1/4 cup honey or maple syrup
1/6 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
(Mix wet ingredients)

Combine well and pour into a 9x13 pan. Toast in a 350 degree oven for approximately 30 minutes -- stirring once after 10 minutes and then every 5 minutes until browned. Watch closely for the last 5 minutes because it happens pretty quickly.


Cool and store in an airtight container. Serve with milk or yogurt or add some dried fruit and eat as a snack-y trail mix. The cinnamon MAKES it. So good. I have a hard time controlling myself around this stuff. Enjoy!

The Unhealthy Truth

I just finished this book, The Unhealthy Truth by Robyn O'Brien, and can't recommend it enough. The author researched the dickens out of accredited European and Australian studies to find out why things like rBGH, genetically engineered crops, artificial colors and other additives have been banned from use in countries like England, France, Italy, Norway and New Zealand.

All of these ingredients (plus alot of other scary things) are perfectly legal (and sometimes subsidized by the US government) here in the United States. The research she cites show why allergies, asthma, ADHD and cancer rates are on the rise -- they all coincide with the introduction of toxins into the American food supply.

O'Brien also uncovers the link between the Big Agribusiness and government agencies like the FDA. The book is both facinating and horrifying but it's a really good introduction into these subjects, and includes tips on how to gradually wean your family off of highly processed foods to those that aren't as bad.

The book is written from the viewpoint of a mother learning about how these unhealthy foods are affecting her young children. I think this book is a must-read for all mothers. What we're feeding our children is so important! Everyone needs to have the knowledge to make informed decisions on what even so-called "healthy" processed food contains.

Yogurt Fruit Smoothies

Into a blender:

1/2 cup homemade plain yogurt
+
1/4 cup milk
+
1/2 cup frozen mango
+
1/4 cup frozen blueberries
+
1 banana
+
1 teaspoon ground flax seed

Blend until smooth. This is another favorite afternoon snack around here or for breakfast along with a soft-boiled egg and soldiers. I used to add a couple teaspoons honey until I realized that it's sweet enough without. If you'd like your
smoothie sweeter, just add a little squeeze of honey in there before blending.

I'm working on a post about the yogurt making, so please stay tuned. I just want to perfect my method first. :)



P.S. Have you seen these stainless steel straws??? I want some so badly! I hate buying anything disposable, so I'd love to get these for our smoothies and lassis intead of using plastic. They are so on my wish list.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Pancakes

1 large egg
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 teaspoons ground or whole flax seed
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or so frozen or fresh blueberries

Whisk egg until fluffy then whisk in remaining
ingredients (except blueberries) just until smooth.

Gently fold in blueberries.

Cook on griddle heated to medium heat. Serve with butter
and real maple syrup. Makes about 10-12 pancakes. I usually
halve the recipe, but you could also make the whole batch
and freeze the left-overs. Just thaw at room temp for 10 or
so minutes and then warm in the toaster.


These pancakes are one of our favorite breakfasts. We also
will eat them without butter or syrup as a quick snack.
They are very filling (don't let the photo fool you -- eating
three of them would be quite a feat) and a healthy weekend
breakfast. Make some and eat them!

Mireille Guiliano

These two books -- French Women Don't Get Fat and French Women For All Seasons (both by Mireille Guiliano) -- are the first food-related books I ever read (besides cookbooks). They are full of wisdom about sensible eating, taking real pleasure in eating, recipes for amazing food and how to reach your equilibrium with food.



Seasonality, moderation, quality and immersing oneself in the act of eating are all key to maintaining a healthy body and mind. There are lots of other bits of wisdom and plenty of recipes (especially in French Women for All Seasons) interspersed with her wit and elegance. These are books that I enjoy re-reading when I need a dose of motivation and inspiration.

What I Have Been Eating This Week

Alright, so keeping detailed log is just too much work for me. But here are some of the yummy things I've been eating lately:

More homemade yogurt (post coming soon!)
Smoothies
My new-found perfect whole wheat bread (also coming soon!)
Walnuts-in-shell from the farmers' market
Homemade guacamole
Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce (a Jamie Oliver recipe)
Pastured chicken roasted with veggies and homemade gravy (another Jamie recipe, love him!)
Buttermilk biscuits (buttermilk from making butter)
Pastured soft-boiled eggs and "soldiers" (post coming soon for this one, too!)

And that's all I can think of at the moment. Tasty, right?

Real Food by Nina Planck

Hi friends. Sorry it's been a few days. I've been too busy reading, cooking, and eating to write about what I'm reading, cooking and eating. :) Also, my photographer has paying gigs that take precedence over my little blog. Psh!


I'll get to what I've been eating in my next post, but first I wanted to talk about the book I just finished reading. It is called Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. This book was recommended to me by my friend Morgan and luckily I found it at the library the other day (I love the library so much).

Real Food is about eating traditional foods. The foods that humans have been eating since always. The foods that we ate before the industrialization of foods changed everything. I absolutely love this book. It reconfirms everything I've always instinctively felt was the "right" way to eat, backed up by why it's the right way.

She shows why low-carb and low-fat and low-sodium and low-cholesterol and other deprivatory (is that a word?) diets are actually bad for us. Butter and lard are better than margarine. Whole raw milk is better than industrialized milk that is full of hormones and dead white blood cells, missing valuable nutrients. Pastured beef, chicken skin, chocolate, and eggs all have an important role to play in our health. And of course, most of all, lots and lots of veggies and fruit. Put most simply, eat whatever you want, as long as it's not industrialized. Planck shows that the cause of modern health problems are due to high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and other non-traditional, "fake" foods.

As with most every aspect of life (ie childbirth, breastfeeding, most health problems, child-raising, home and body products), I believe that the more natural and "old-fashioned", the better. So this book made perfect sense to me and really reinforced what I felt deep down is the best way to eat. And after being stuck in a "diet" mind-set for the past 8-9 years, it was very freeing. It's a relief to break out of that and concentrate on health and whole foods, rather than on fat grams and calories and carbs. I'm confident that by combining eating real foods with an active life-style, I can still lose the bit of weight that I'd like to lose and not hurt my body in the process. I won't be winning any hot body contests, but I'd much rather win the long, healthy life contest anyway. :)

If you're interested in how all the vitamins and fats and cholesterol and proteins and acids all work together for our bodies' benefit in traditional foods (and how they DON'T work in industrialized/processed foods), please read this book!

Butter

Could anything be easier?

1 pint organic whipping cream
+
1 tsp salt or 1 T honey



Allow whipping cream to come to room temperature (EDIT: Otherwise it will take forever. Trust me on this). Pour into Kitchen-Aid mixer with whisk attachment.
Cover bowl with a tea towel. Turn on to high and whip for 3-5 minutes. The butter and buttermilk should now be
separated, with the butter pretty much all in one clump.


Put a strainer over a bowl or jar and strain the butter milk from the butter. Save, covered, in the fridge for drinking or baking (I'll be sharing my favorite butter milk biscuit recipe soon!). Return all butter to the mixer bowl and add a few inches of very cold water.




Cover with tea towel again and mix on high for a minute. The water should be cloudy. Discard water. This process is to remove excess buttermilk from the butter so that it will keep longer. Repeat this process 3-4 times until the water is clear.

After draining off the water, there is still going to be some water that needs to be removed. Either press butter with the back of a spoon to force water out, lightly press with a spatula in a sieve or squeeze butter in a tea towel (gently). Ta da! Butter!


For salted butter, return butter to mixer bowl, add 1 teaspoon of salt and whisk on high. Ta da! Salted butter! OR squeeze in about a tablespoon of honey and beat in. Ta da! Honey butter!






The butter can be wrapped in waxed paper in the fridge or kept in a butter crock (my preferred method). Enjoy on all manner of foods!


BENEFIT OF MAKING YOUR OWN BUTTER: A pint of organic whipping cream is less than $3.50 and produces 1/2 pound of butter + 3/4 cup of buttermilk. Buying organic butter from the store is $7-8. So it's not a huge savings but you do get about 1.5 cups of free buttermilk. Plus you can be assured that the only ingredients are cream and salt. And it is very tasty.

Day One-Three

Well, people, how's it going? I meant to post on the 1st about how my first day of the challenge went but my night got away from me. So instead, here's a re-cap of the past few days.

04/01

BREAKFAST
oatmeal (organic oats from our CSA)
brown sugar (Trader Joe's organic)
tiny bit of butter (homemade and organic)

SNACK
2 organic kiwis (from our CSA)

LUNCH
Minestrone soup

SNACK
guacamole (homemade with ingredients from farmers' market)
carrot sticks (organic from our CSA)

SNACK
honey stick

DINNER
Shrimp & Avocado with Marie Rose Sauce (from Jamie's Food Revolution cookbook)
mandarin orange (organic from our CSA)

DESSERT
Paciugo gelato


First, let's talk about dinner. Wow. I didn't know what to expect with this one, but the delicious looking photos in the cookbook really made me want to try it. The dish is super simple -- lightly breaded shrimp seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika along with a watercress and avocado salad drizzled with Marie Rose sauce (which turns out to be mayo, ketchup, worcester, lemon, salt and pepper -- I left out the whiskey that the recipe called for!). So, it sounded kind of strange but turned out to be super good! We all loved it -- even the two-year-old kid. We will make it again for sure.

Second, let's talk about dessert. This was not one of my anticipated cheats. A friend's birthday just happened to be that day and we were invited out to celebrate. However, as far as cheating goes, I think this barely qualifies. We went to a gelato place called Paciugo and it is amazing. At Paciugo, all of their gelato are made by hand every morning. The ingredients are all natural, with no preservatives or artificial ingredients. So, even though I personally did not make this, it was not made in a factory and only has good, real ingredients. Woot! Good to know that there is such a place to go for a treat now and then. :)


04/02

BREAKFAST
oatmeal (organic oats from our CSA)
brown sugar (Trader Joe's organic)
tiny bit of butter (homemade and organic)

LUNCH
guacamole (homemade with ingredients from farmers' market)
carrot sticks (organic from CSA)
yogurt (homemade -- tutorial coming soon!)
*weird snack-y lunch*

DINNER
chicken pesto sandwich (homemade bread and pesto, grilled free-range organic chicken breast)


04/03

BREAKFAST
oatmeal (organic oats from our CSA)
brown sugar (Trader Joe's organic)
tiny bit of butter (homemade and organic)
*do you sense a trend here?*

LUNCH
greek salad
fruit
chicken
tiramisu
baklava
*Remember I had a wedding to go to? So this was a cheat day in that I didn't make the food myself. However, the food was really good quality and fresh and real, so I felt good about it anyway. Plus, best baklava I've ever had!*

DINNER
Classic Tomato Spaghetti (from Jamie's Food Revolution - really yummy! Simple and fresh and fast. I'll add a photo as soon as I can.)


So, not too shabby, right? As I mentioned, this month is kind of a crazy one to do this challenge. On Tuesday I am going to a concert directly from my kid's gymnastics class -- when am I going to eat dinner? I'm going to try really hard to bring something with me to eat cause I reeeeaaaallllyyy do not want to end up junk in desperation. And then on Thursday we're off to a friends' house for a few days to party. I'll be bringing along my own yogurt and a few other things and happily, my friends like to cook real food, too, so I should be good. Phew.

I will try to post every other evening or so with details (and hopefully a photo or two) about what I've eaten each day along with recipes, some favorite things and more information I learn about processed foods and the food industry. Please join me in this challenge! Even if you can't go hard-core and make everything from scratch, just cut out all fast food for this month. Make healthy, fresh food your priority even if it means some other projects get put on hold for a couple weeks. I know that you will feel so fantastic that you won't want to revert back to how you were eating before. Real food makes such a difference in how our bodies feel! Happy bodies!

For those of you who have already started doing this with me, please comment with an update on how you're doing. And good luck!

Eat Food

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I'm tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I'll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat won't kill you, though it's better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you're much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. That's what I mean by the recommendation to eat ''food.'' Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if you're concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat."

So great, right?!

This is an excerpt from another Michael Pollan article. Read the rest of the article HERE. So amazing!

Michael Pollan

While waiting for my turn to check-out The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, both by Michael Pollan, I'm having a great time reading all of the articles he's written for The New York Times. They are brilliant! The articles are all quite long, but you should really go at least read a couple. They are full of so much good information and are really thought-provoking!

A few of my favorites so far:

Big Food vs. Big Insurance
Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch
When a Crop Becomes King
Power Steer

Please go read! I'm working my way through all of them.

French Country Salad

I recently had a super delish salad at The Cheesecake Factory called French Country Salad. It blew my mind. And so I had to make it at home. And I can not wait to eat it again.



FRENCH COUNTRY SALAD

*mixed greens
*skinny asparagus, grilled or lighly steamed (still want some crunch!)
*beets, boiled and cut into small cubes
*chevre (goat cheese)
*candied walnuts or pecans
*balsamic vinaigrette

BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE
(a variation on Emeril Lagasse's, which is my favorite!)

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 clove garlic
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup + a tiny bit more oilve oil

Combine all ingredients in a pint jar or a cruet and shake like crazy until all combined. Keep the extra in the fridge.

Toss the greens with the dressing and transfer to serving bowl or board. Add the veggies and cheese around. Give a good couple grinds of black pepper on top. Serve with grilled chicken breast, crusty baguette and some sparkling water. A PERFECTLY HEAVENLY meal for lunch or dinner in my book.





P.S. My beets were red when I started boiling them. By the time they were done they were white. What the? That has never happened before -- I guess they were a different variety or something? Anyway, that's what those pink-ish chunks are. :)