Healthy Yet Tasty Recipes for the Dieter.

Food for thought, it's really true!

When we give suggestions that are good, it's called food for thought, and it may help your brain keep sharp because it makes you think, we really do need to eat right, or we can't think. So the term "food for thought" is both literally and figuratively true.
While we ought to stay away from deep fried foods, an occasional treat say, once a month or something is really okay. Just make sure you're using healthy oils such as canola, peanut, flax, and other plant based that is low in fat and cholesterol. Good fats can help you lose weight. But, since some of these foods, like egg rolls, is labor intensive, so it's not something you're going to do often. I will do a special blog just on that and flautas.
Here are some good ways to create your own healthy versions of traditional and comforting foods, that are just as good, if not more flavor intensive.
With baked chicken, get chicken parts, rather than the whole chicken, and use the chicken breasts. For the stuffing, leave the croutons at the store. Those have been deep fried, most likely. Instead, keep the crusts or the stale bread from your loaves, and keep them stored in the back of your refrigerator. This will help you save money for future needs as well.
These left over pieces of bread can also be used as bread crumbs. Use your coffee grinder to turn into bread crumbs. They will be coarser, but, it's a bit heartier that way. Lay on a baking sheet, and on LOW (170F) dry the bread crumbs and store in a safe container. This is great to have on hand when you're making meatballs.
Buy spices in bulk. They keep for a long time, and you can play with amounts to ensure that you're spicing your food just the way you like it, and to please those you are feeding. They'll think it's a secret ingredient that costs money, when it's really you, and your ingenuity.
Also, when you want to do cabbage rolls and you want the sour kraut flavor but you want whole cabbage leaves, pickle your own head of cabbage by filling a pot with 2/3 water and the rest with vinegar, or save pickle juice from your favorite pickles and add it to the water. Simmer the cabbage head until cooked through. You'll need to be able to turn the cabbage head, and reserve water if you wish.

Baked Chicken

Cube enough bread slices into pieces. You'll need enough slices enough to be about a half loaf, similar to Brownberry's half loaves of bread.
Dice a large onion and 2 ribs of celery. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and sage to taste. I use about 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, and I like to use extra sage, about a tablespoon, but it can be a mock gamey taste, and I've found that just a cinch of tumeric takes away that flavor and balances it out, w/o being intrusive. You may also add parsley, up to a quarter cup, if you wish. Drop an egg or two, and mix up well.
Place the stuffing mix into a bottom of a baking pan, and layer the chicken breasts (bone in) on top of the stuffing. Cover with foil, and bake @350F until done, about an hour. Take cover off for more added crispy to the skin.
Have a salad with raw spinach, tomato, grated carrots, and slivered mushrooms before hand, and serve the chicken with stuffing next to a green veggie such as broccoli or asparagus. To cook, cut into desired pieces. In a hot pan, add a tablespoon of butter, and olive oil to coat the veggie. Add some Mrs. Dash and lemon pepper seasoning to taste.

5 Hour Stew.

2# of your favorite meat - beef, lamb, what ever you'd like. Cut into large bite sized pieces. I just get a roast, what ever is on sale, and trim the fat and cut it up myself. Stew meat is expensive.
Cube up 4 potatoes, 3 carrots, 3 ribs of celery, and a large onion. If you wish, you may substitute the potatoes with a rutabaga instead. 2 large cans of whole or stewed tomatoes. Pepper to taste. If you're using fresh tomatoes, reserve the juices of the tomato to put into the mix, and add salt. If using cans, there is enough salt in the cans that you don't need extra. 6 table spoons of dry tapioca pudding mix. Mix thoroughly with your hands. Bake @ 250F for 5 hours. No peeking!
Serve a salad with arugula & endive, and cut up an apple. Sprinkle walnuts on the salad, and use a little Miracle Whip as a dressing.

Nimono

Soak desired amount of dried shiitake mushrooms in 2 cups water.
Boneless/skinless chicken thigh meat, cut and browned in oil.
Add large chunks of carrots and daikon (a Japanese radish).
Optional are green onions.
Remove mushrooms from water, cut stiff ends off, (save water) and add to the pot.
In the water from mushrooms, add more water to make it back up to 2 cups. Then add a little dashi, 2 tablespoons of sake (or dry vermouth), 2 tablespoons of sweetener, such as truvia, 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, and pour over the ingredients. This should just barely cover the ingredients. Cover and slow simmer about an hour.
You may use rutabaga in place of the potatoes and daikon, but if you do, skip the sweetener.
Serve with brown rice and pickles. Blanch a full bag of spinach, squeeze extra water out, cut, and pour a dab of soy & fish flakes on as an extra side of veggie.
*Haikuku brand brown rice is really good, it's soft like white rice, and is healthier, doesn't give you the harsh taste some brown rice has.

Sarma

Pickle a full head of cabbage, cool off to handle. Tear outer leaves off, and lay on bottom of a baking pan. Core the cabbage to remove individual leaves of cabbage.
In separate bowl, mix up 4# ground chicken, dilute 2 packets of the fant brand papriku & sarmu spice mix in 1 cup of warm water, and add about 6-8 oz rice.
http://www.amazon.com/Seasoning-Stuffed-Peppers-Cabbage-2-1oz/dp/B000LRILHQ/ref=pd_bxgy_gro_img_b
Mix well, and roll into the cabbage leaves. Place each roll in pan on top of the layer of leaves, until your pan is full. The small leaves at the end, chop and place on top of the rolls. Sprinkle some of the left over liquid over the top. Bake until done. About an hour or so.
Enjoy with a tomato and cucumber salad with a vinaigrette dressing.

Eat your veggies! They're good for you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDUVhLzC0Es

What's for dinner?

 

Weight Loss and What You Can Eat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH5QEqqNlOk

Eat your veggies…

My last blog, we talked about how different people may need different things from their diet, and avoiding fad and crash diets. I promised some recipes and such, but let me digress and post this as a segue to those recipes. Thank you for your patience, before you become a patient.

Anyway, becoming vegetarian or vegan may sound like a good idea, or maybe a bad one, because the use of meat is forbidden, and yes, fish is still in the meat category, and more, vegans don’t consume ANY animal products, which include yogurt and honey. While the veggies you get will keep you healthy in the fact that you’ll get the fiber you need, getting your total amino acids may be a little difficult, because veggies rarely have the full string. So, make sure you eat a healthy variety – it’s the spice of life, remember. And to ensure you’re not becoming anemic, eat your dark leafy greens.

That may not be so easy if you’re a meat and potatoes type of person. So, here are tips if you’re trying to add more veggies to your diet. The next time you make a lasagna or chilli, use half of the amount of meat, or maybe cut it out, and substitute chopped spinach and crumbled up tofu that has been browned well, and put that in. I would stay away from some of the grittier grains, as this may detract from making healthier choices. Another good thing would be to try a grilled portabella mushroom instead of hamburger on your bun. Surprisingly, these mushrooms are very meaty, and you might not miss the meat, especially when you put cheese on it, or maybe even a little barbecue sauce. Here is a link that can help you sort some of the info about getting the amino acids, and how important it is to get your protein without the extra fat and cholesterol. http://blogs.webmd.com/food-and-nutrition/2012/07/the-power-of-protein.html?ecd=wnl_dia_071912

Seeds and nuts can be used to replace some meats as well. Soybeans, as well as miso soup is great, and it’s even good for you when you have a sour stomach and can’t even drink water. Take in small amounts every 15-30 minutes, just to get it down. the high protein levels will help you get strong.
Different kinds of fish can be super-foods, especially those that are high in omega 3 fatty acids. While taking the fish oil pills is good, eating the actual food is better. But it’s too expensive, you say? There are ones that are more affordable, and even canned salmon is better than no salmon, and mackerel is even less expensive. Just don’t slap someone else in the face with it, just because of the smell…

Here is a link/quiz about fish, and why you should eat it. I hope it helps. http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/rm-quiz-fish-fact-fiction?ecd=wnl_wlw_071812

Another tidbit, is that when you have time to cook, cook in bulk, so when you’re on the run, there’s “fresh” leftovers in the freezer to pull out and have. this way, you can still enjoy a home cooked healthy meal w/o having to work for it.

This is a lot of info, so I’ll post the recipes next time, I promise… Or my name isn’t Lika, it’s a pizza.

Health and Dieting.

Dieting for weight, or eating for health?

In this country, where there are many overweight people, it seems as if our obesity is getting thrown back at us, for what ever reason. Not only that, but it seems as if the ratio of being obese is ever so shrinking. Back at around the 1900's, you were obese when you were 100#'s over the average weight. Back in the 1980's, it was 50#'s over. Now it seems as if it's around 30.

Yet even without the shrinking amounts, it seems as if as Americans, we are still fatter than ever, and I'm not so sure that the decreasing levels of being obese is helping those who are morbidly obese. Then when we look around, there's fast food and easy prepackeged foods that are being thrown at us to boot.
So what are we to do? Well, surely not sit back and not take charge of our own health now, because there's no such thing as a magic pill! But then again...

Here is an article from Web MD about a new diet pill that is approved by the FDA, but seems to have it's own problems. http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20120717/fda-approves-diet-drug-qsymia?ecd=wnl_nal_wlw_071812

So, sure, it may work, but, if you figure, it raises your heart rate, and you're already prone to heart disease if you're over weight. Then on top of which, a pregnant woman may be causing birth defects in her own baby by taking these pills to lose weight.

Here is a quiz by Web MD, about weight loss dos and donts: http://www.webmd.com/diet/rm-quiz-weight-loss-dos-and-donts?ecd=wnl_lbt_071812

But then, we've heard of Atkins, South Beach, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and more... Fad diets such as the grapefruit and cabbage soup diets, it's not funny. So what should we eat? How should we eat? Should we take a pill? Follow a program? So many choices, and it's very confusing.

Anyway, it helps to know if you're eating right, wrong, over eating, etc. Find out if you may have some sort of food addiction. I know some of us may feel like we do, it's not a food addiction if you just love food. When we become dependent, emotionally and/or psychologically is when we are in trouble of addiction.
But, just because we emotionally eat, or eat because we're stressed, doesn't make it an addiction either. So what now?

Keep a diary. What you eat, when, and why. Were you really hungry? Or is the fridge calling your name? Are you bored? Or were you really hungry? And what did you eat? Was it healthy? How much was it? All of this helps. A log of what you eat, and when, because you may not think you're eating a lot, but, when you write it down, you realize you ate more than what you thought. Or maybe it wasn't that it was more, but maybe you thought you were eating healthy, and it was actually fattening.

The log will serve multiple purposes. First, you will notice a pattern, so if you were stressed, do you go for sugary or salty foods? Do you eat healthy breakfast, but have a lousy lunch? Maybe you grab a muffin and coffee for breakfast, and figure you'll eat healthy later, only to order a sub for lunch?

When you figure out why you eat, what you eat, how often you eat, and how much you eat, you will be able to develop a sense of your own schedules. Then go from there. If there is a sense of emotional eating, you may fare better with a therapist or counselor that can help you work through your stress. If it's out of cravings, start with small changes such as eating mandarin oranges instead of candy once, and then substitute other fruits and veggies gradually. If it's a whole thing about not knowing what you should eat, ask your doctor for a referral to a dietician. If you don't have a doctor, and no insurance, feel free to ask me about it, I will do what I can to help you. I am not a nutritionist or a dietitian. But I DO have a lot of experience with them behind my back. I might be able to help you find favorite foods that will go good, because many foods depend on American palates, and they don't really understand ethnic food, where I cook from a global food market.

The things I don't recommend - if you're offered a magic pill, run away from it. I also don't recommend diets that take away a whole food group or more, for example, the Atkins diet you skip all carbs. Fad diets like the grapefruit diet allows you to only eat 2 grapefruits and a scoop of vanilla ice cream a day for 3 days. The ice cream is so you won't have an acidic reaction, and w/o protein, you won't be able to think.

Most places will tell you to eat in moderation, and we all know that moderation can vary from person to person. I happen to have this genetic thing, called a 16p11.2 micro-deletion. We have a set of 23 chromosomes - for a total of 46, because we get one from each parent. On the 16th set of chromosomes, I have one normal one, and the other one is missing a small strand of information on the 11.2 band. It predisposes me to be overweight, and impacts my appetite. It will be nearly difficult to diet with this going on, so I will have to accept a diet plan that will go very slow - a super low calorie diet simply won't due, because I get way too hungry to suppress it. My son has it too, and it's more prominent in him.

Avoiding high sodium prepackaged foods will help, so please, leave the canned soups at the store, and only use those like cream soups sparingly to use with other foods to ensure that you're keeping away from them. Check frozen foods too, because the salt is hiding everywhere. Corn and peas are high in starch, and even though they're high in fiber, are really counted as starch, not a veggie.

Make sure you have 3 meals a day, and make them healthy, and have reasonable snacks. Pick one food/meal a week say, fried foods, to have. One a week won't hurt, while every day may. It's not easy, but when you include your favorite food, you won't be so tempted to fall off of the empiric band wagon.
If you have questions, please ask. And stay tuned, next blog will host healthy recipes that can easily be put into your difficult schedule. Some are so easy that you'll want to keep them, and because they will be tasty, you won't mind.

4th of July Recipes!

4th of July party time!

It's the 4th of July. Maybe you're having a family reunion. Or a block party. Or maybe getting together with the gang of buddies. Your house, park, back yard, beach, what have you...

Anyway, you're ready to roll on getting together with your friends, family, and ready to eat, drink, and be merry! And what's a 4th of July party without grilling and cooking out?

Well, here are a few that can be for yourself, or to share, along with other favorites to make sure that you have a great meal, from start to finish!

Grilling & Barbecue: The Main Course

Here is a basic dry rub, which helps make your ribs or any pork cut tender. You will need:
Up to 1 cup dark brown sugar; 1/2 cup paprika (or lemon pepper); 2 TBS salt; 1 TBS each black pepper, white pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.
1-2 tsp each dry mustard, celery seeds, and optional chili powder.
Mix up well, and use half on the pork or ribs and let sit 12 hours or more in the dry rub. Save the other half for just before grilling. You may use barbecue sauce, but it's not necessary.

Basic barbecue sauce:
Ingredients: 2 cups ketchup; 6 TBS vinegar; 1/2 cup water; 1/2 cup dark brown sugar; 1 heaping TBS mustard; 1 bulb garlic, pulverized; 1 small onion, pulverized; 1.5 tsp salt; 1 tsp paprika; 1/8 tsp black pepper.

Saute pulverized garlic & onion. Add other ingredients. Bring to a boil, simmer for at least 10 minutes. This sauce is good with chicken, pork or beef.
With either the rub or the sauce, you can adjust the heat by adding or decreasing the amount of red pepper. Good stuff, Menard! Enjoy your barbecue!

Food note; to make it happen with taste.

Because our main course such as a barbecue is already high in meat, side dishes should be complimentary to the main course, so please don't over do it in the protein, because a delicate side will go well with the boldness of the rubs and sauces, along with the deep flavor of meat.
Of course there are tons of sides to choose from, and then don't forget the desserts... the sweetness at the end should be refreshing against the acidity of the sides, as well as the flavors of starches.

Pot luck sides...

Pasta Salad:
2 boxes of veggie rotini- noodle, cooked 80% through. Cut a bunch of green onions, tips and roots discarded, and coarsely chopped. Black Olives, sliced. Optional - cheddar or feta cheese cubes. Your favorite Italian type dressings.
Please do not use a creamy dressing. I like the Newman's Caesar dressing, or the tomato basil vinaigrette. They're light but full of flavor, and after being mixed, will soak into the noodles, to soften up the rest of the way. It's also good for your vegetarian friends, unless you add ham, which is not necessary, unless this is your main course.

Seafood Salad:
1 pound of elbow or other short noodle, I like the whole grain penne or mostacciole noodle. 1 bag of frozen peas, 1 medium onion, minced. 2 ribs of celery, minced. Salt and pepper to taste. Salad dressing such as Miracle Whip just enough to wet it. Two 8oz packages of imitation crab or imitation lobster (to make it a surf n turf supper), or a can of salmon, or 3 small cans of chunk tuna in water, or even mini shrimp or clams. Optional minced green pepper to help give it some brightness.

My family baked beans:
2 pounds Great Northern Beans, soaked over night, or use quick method, reserving the liquid. Make sure the water covers up to an inch above the beans. 1.5 cups brown sugar. 1/2 cup molasses. 1 quart of tomato juice or sauce. 1 pound raw bacon. Add dash of dry mustard and a minced onion. Pepper to taste.
Mix together the brown sugar, molasses, mustard, pepper, and tomato sauce. Layer bacon on bottom of nesco oven or crock pot. Using slotted spoon, scoop out beans over bacon. Add mix & onion. Repeat process until all ingredients are gone, and pour bean water over mix, until just covered. Slow cook. Check regularly to add more bean water. The beans will soak more moisture to dry out. You will use the water.

Appetizers or other sides...

Guacamole:
6 good sized avocados (maybe more, depending), cut in half, scooped and mashed - should be lumpy. 1 tomato, small diced. 1 onion, diced. About a tsp salt. Juice of a lime or two. Cilantro to taste. Mix well, chill.

Spinach Dip (may substitute chipped artichoke):
8 oz mayonnaise. 8 oz sour cream. 1 box of spinach, heated and extra water squeezed out. 3 green onions sliced. 1 package dry Knorr vegetable soup mix. Refrigerate overnight. Serve inside of a hollowed out bread loaf.

Sweet desserts for all!

Make a graham cracker crust, and layer at bottom of a 9x13 pan. Chill.
Make your favorite gelatin dessert, I like raspberry, but any red jell-o is good. Pour over chilled crust. Set.
Cover gel with cool whip. Place blue berries in upper right corner, like stars. Line across with sliced strawberries or raspberries to stripe the 13 stripes.

Snicker Dessert:
12 frozen yogurt (vanilla bean). 1 cup cool whip. 1 package instant chocolate (or butterscotch) pudding. 1/4 cup chunky peanut butter. 3 oz grapenuts (optional).
Layer in 9x9 pan. Freeze, cut, enjoy!!