Home › Monthly Archives › February 2010

Five new food groups

Marcia February 24, 2010 Banter, Western diet 0

So, it’s almost two months into my stop-eating-crap objective so it’s time for some pause and reflection.

The most noteworthy omissions from my daily diet are far from the most beloved. Through January and February, I had no SlimFast bars, frozen dinners, canned soups, store-bought bread, diet soda (except for one instance where no other low-cal beverage was available), 100-cal packs of anything, reconstituted hot chocolate, or fat-free half-and-half.

With these and other omissions came substitutions, trade-offs, and new habits. For example:

  • Breakfast. With SlimFast and Kashi Crunch out of the picture, weekday breakfasts, which I eat at work, have been challenging. Mostly, I’ve been eating steel-cut oatmeal or 10-grain hot cereal prepared at home, scooped by the cupful into Rubbermaid containers, and nuked for about 2 minutes in the work microwave. Sugar, fresh or dried fruit, and maybe some chopped nuts are added at various points in this operation. Outside of hot oatmeal, there’s homemade muffins and breads, and the occasional bakery scone. If I were able to prepare and eat breakfasts at home, smoothies and omelets would rule the morning.

  • Bread. Oh, how I miss the convenience of commercially manufactured bread and breadstuffs. My Pepperidge Farm Whole Wheat Swirl Bread! Kasanoff’s Marble Rye! Sahara Whole Wheat Pitas! Actually, I only miss the prepared pita, since a hummus lunch (yes, comercially processed hummus — more on that later) isn’t the same without it. This weekend will be my first try at making my own pita, but I’ve already had success with baking my own breads, muffins, and rolls.

  • Beverages. Fat-free half-and-half out of my coffee; whole milk or low-fat milk in. Diet soda has been replaced with either water—tap where available and potable, else bottled—or hot or iced tea.

Anyway, throughout my two-month acclimation towards a non-crap diet, I found myself grouping potential edibles into five categories—five new food groups, if you will:

The Five New Food Groups

The five new food groups (according to No-Whining Dining)

Let me say from the get-go that many of these categories will overlap, as you will soon see . . .
Continue reading »

Rating recipes

Marcia February 8, 2010 Cookbooks, Recipe ratings, Recipes 0

Thumbs DownI’m going to start rating or grading each recipe I follow.

There are many qualities and characteristics to consider in a recipe, such as ease of preparation, length of ingredient list, healthfulness, availability of ingredients, taste, texture, expense (in money, time, and energy), and plated appearance. I don’t have an official list of grading criteria yet, but I will use a rough preliminary grading technique on the recipe for Sautéed Grated Zucchini with Marjoram from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters.

The ingredients and technique are straightforward and simple: Coarsely grate a pound of zucchini, draw out excess water by way of salting and squeezing in a sieve, then sauté the drained zucchini in two tablespoons of olive oil or butter until lightly browned. Remove from heat, add chopped marjoram and pulverized garlic.

And now . . . the impromptu rating system makes its debut:

Sautéed Grated Zucchini with Marjoram

Source: The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
Ingredients: Easy
Overall time estimate (with all ingredients at the ready): 35 minutes
Taste: Good. Well-seasoned with a mellow butter flavor
Presentation: Good. Pretty green vegetables and herbs with a nice golden overtone (I used herb butter in this trial.)
Healthfulness:Jury’s still out. If made with butter, not sure how this will fare. I will run this through NutritionData.com’s analysis tool later this week. In the meantime, see “practicality.”
Practicality (via No-whining Dining’s current food and cooking philosophies): Poor. One and a half pounds of zucchini were used for this trial, yielding maybe a cup or a cup and a half of shredded zucchini sauté. To accommodate the published serving yield (4 servings per pound of zucchini), each serving would get only about one-fourth of a cup. So much for filling half your plate up with veggies. Also, in a world where high-calorie, high-fat, low-nutrition foods are abundant and available around every corner, vegetables such as beautiful, sweet, fresh zucchinis are a welcome, safe, go-to tasty, healthful, low-cal oasis. WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO SPOIL THAT WITH TWO FREAKIN’ TABLESPOONS OF FAT?????? But that’s another blog entry.
Overall grade: C-

I’m not sure if the permanent rating system will have grades or scores. Since this system will be largely subjective, I might as well go with grades, or even just key words. Or something. I’ll figure something out. I’m open to suggestions.

Curly, Crispy Kale

Marcia February 5, 2010 Banter, Recipes 0

Spicy Crispy Kale Chips from nutritiontokitchen.com

I ate a lot of kale this week, having purchased one bunch too many of the vivacious veggie at Whole Foods. What a spunky, curly green leaf bursting with personality! The leaves come across as bitter at first, but they can mellow with cooking, and shrink when prepared in liquid, without losing their characteristic curliness in the process.

Curly kale is just one variety of kale, of course. And kale is just one of many winter greens I desire to explore, in part inspired by the Eating Well article that included the recipe for Monday night’s meal of Kale, Sausage, & Lentil Skillet Supper. The Supper was wholesome, earthy, and satisfying, though I think a wee more spice or spark would have made it more interesting. And I added all the French lentils I had — about one and a quarter cup — which yielded an overwhelming amount of lentils. The recipe made more than four servings for sure.

OK, back to that leftover bale of kale (a baby bale?). A google search led me to Nutrition to Kitchen’s intriguing Spicy Crispy Kale recipe. Though I had decided to make this irresistible recipe on Superbowl Sunday so I can munch on something healthy while watching the Colts trample the Saints, I had nothing on tonight’s agenda so I figured I’d give it a go along with another skillet supper — this time with chicken sausage, Yukon gold potatoes, and frozen mixed vegetables.

The chips were fabulous. It’s amazing how they can enter the oven confident, firm, and flexible but emerge vulnerable, brittle, and crispy. Great crunch, great taste. Gary thought it would make a great garnish for a soup or casserole. I agreed. I will definitely be making these again.