Rule # 42 - Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism

Innovation is always interesting, but when it comes to food, it pays to approach new creations with caution. If diets are the products of an evolutionary process in which groups of people adapt to the plants, animals, and fungi a particular place has to offer, then a novel food or culinary innovation resembles a mutation: It might represent an evolutionary improvement, but chances are it doesn't. Soy products offer a good case in point. People have been eating soy in the form of tofu, soy sauce, and tempeh for many generations, but today we're eating novelties like "soy protein isolate" from soy and partially hydrogenated soy oils, and there are questions about the healthfulness of these new food products. As a senior FDA scientist has written, "Confidence that soy products are safe is clearly based more on belief than hard data." Until we have that data, you're probably better off eating soy prepared in the traditional Asian manner than according to the novel recipes dreamed up by food scientists.

Dogs wrestling with Tila!

Strawberry pancakes for dinner! 9/27/11

Strawberry pancakes made with almond milk and 100% Pure Organic Dark Amber Maple Syrup!

Rule # 41 - Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.

People who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than those of us eating a modern Western diet of processed foods. Any traditional diet will do: If it were not a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn't still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others, Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, for example, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy 9lots of saturated fat and white flour?!) as much as their food habits: smaller portions eaten at leisurely communal meals; no second helpings or snacking. Pay attention, too, to the combinations of foods in traditional cultures: In Latin America, corn is traditionally cooked with lime and eaten with beans; what would otherwise be a nutritionally deficient staple becomes the basis of a healthy, balanced diet. (The beans supply amino acids lacking in corn, and the lime makes niacin available.) Cultures that took corn from Latin America without the beans or the lime wound up with serious nutritional deficiencies such as pellagra. Traditional diets are more than the sum of their food parts.

Vegan enchiladas & home made Spanish Rice

Rule # 40 - Be the kind of person who takes supplements - then skip the supplements.

We know that people who take supplements are generally healthier than the rest of us, and we also know that in controlled studies most of the supplements they take don't appear to be effective. How can this be? Supplement takers are healthy for reasons that have nothing to do with the pills. They're typically more health conscious, better educated, and more affluent. They're also more likely to exercise and eat whole grains. So to the extent you can, be the kind of person who would take supplements, and then save your money. (There are exceptions to the rule, for people who have a specific nutrient deficiency or are older than fifty. As we age, our need for antioxidants increases while our body's ability to absorb them from the diet declines. And if you don't eat much fish, it couldn't hurt to take a fish oil supplement too).

Tila!

Veggie lo mein 9/22/11

Cook noodles according to directions on package (7 min)
Heat up 2 tablespoons of veg oil on med, stir fry broccoli, mushrooms and garlic for 5 minutes
Add in 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
Mix everything together!

Quick and easy! :)

Pedicure

Ahhh...nothing is like a good pedi!

Jenna's Granola

2 cups rolled oats
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 cup organic 100% pure maple syrup dark amber
4 tablespoons Safflower oil, plus more for greasing baking sheet
1 cup of the following - golden raisins, Craisins pomegranate, Craisins blueberry
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 285 degrees

Arrange the oats on a large rimmed baking sheet and bake, stirring every 5 minutes, until lightly toasted, about 15 minutes

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine salt, maple syrup and 4 tablespoons Safflower oil, stirring until well blended. Stir in toasted oats.

Grease the baking sheet. Spread the granola evenly on the sheet and bake, stirring every 5 minutes, until golden brown, approx 20 minutes. The mixture will still look and feel wet. Mix in the remaining ingredients. Let it cool! ENJOY! :)

Here's some pics of a time I have made the granola in the past. I added in dried apricots - you can change it up!

Rule # 39 - Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself

There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking a soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them every day. The french fry did not become America's most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes - and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they're so much work. The same holds true for fried chicken, chips, cakes, pies, and ice cream. Enjoy these treats as often as you're willing to prepare them - chances are good it won't be every day.

My thoughts = I love making fries! But I make oven fries. :)

Happy Fall!!!

Good morning everyone!

I have been missing in action lately. I got super sick but I am now feeling much better! I'm back in action and better than ever!

Happy Fall! Fall is my favorite time of the year. October is my favorite month. I love the clean, cool crisp air.

Have a good weekend!

Rule 3 38 - Favor the kind of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone-ground

When grindstones were the only way to refine flour and oil, flour and oil were generally more nutritious. In the case of grain, more of the germ and fiber remains when it is ground on a stone; you can't get white flour from a stone. The nutritional benefits of whole grains are impressive: finer: the full range of B vitamins; and healthy oils, all of which are sacrificed when the grain is refined on modern roller mills (as mentioned, highly refined flours are little different from sugar). And the newer oils that are extracted by modern chemical means tend to have less favorable fatty acid profiles and more additives than olive, sesame, palm fruit, and peanut oils that have been obtained the old fashioned way.

Rule # 37 "The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead"

This rather blunt bit of cross-cultural grandmotherly advice (passed down from both Jewish and Italian grandmothers) suggests that the health risks of white flour have been popularly recognized for many years. As far as the body is concerned, white flour is not much different from sugar. Unless supplemented, it offers none of the good things (fiber, B vitamins, healthy fats) in whole grains - it's little more that a shot of glucose. Large spikes of glucose are inflammatory and wreak havoc on our insulin metabolism. Eat whole grains and minimize your consumption of white flour. Recent research indicates that the grandmothers who lived by this rule were right: People who eat lots of whole grains tend to be healthier and to live longer.

Tila! :)

Rule # 36 - Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk

This should go without saying. Such cereals are highly processed and full of refined carbohydrates as well as chemical additives.

Rule # 35 - Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature

In nature, sugars almost always come packaged with fiber, which slows their absorption and gives you a sense of satiety before you've ingested too many calories. That's why you're always better off eating the fruit rather than drinking the juice. (In general, calories taken in liquid form are more fattening because they don't make us feel full. Humans are one of the very few mammals that obtain calories from liquid after weaning.) So don't drink your sweets, and remember: There is no such thing as a healthy soda.

Labor day - Have to grill

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been MIA lately - I took 4 very needed days off of work! :) It was the best staycation EVER!

On Labor Day, I grilled a veggie patty for me, and grilled 2 regular cheese burgers for Nate!

Rule # 34 Sweeten and salt your food yourself

Whether soups or cereals or soft drinks, foods and beverages that have been prepared by corporations contain far higher levels of salt and sugar than any ordinary human would ever add - even a child. By sweetening and salting these foods yourself, you'll make them to your taste, and you will find you're consuming a fraction as much sugar and salt as you otherwise would.