New Year's Eating Habits

I'm eating a bowl of nori right now. Just sheets of nori, torn to pieces, delivered directly to my mouth. Truth be told, this is not a particularly unusual situation that calls for much explanation, but I'll offer you some anyway:

I love nori.

(It's also worth noting that if you look at this picture, you can see a primary explanation for why I don't blog as often as I should: my kitchen is a mess, and I'm too lazy to clean it up to blogworthy standards.)

Okay, the actual explanation for the nori. See, I woke up a few days ago and stepped on the scale (danger, danger!) to discover, to no one's surprise, that I had landed squarely at my ohshucks* weight. You know the weight - the number where you say, "Okay, this has really gotten out of control. We need to make some changes." My ohshucks weight is reasonable, definitely a weight that is greater than I should be, but also not so high as to be a "point of no return." I'm pretty good at obeying my ohshucks weight, so when I saw the number flash in front of my eyes, I knew what I had to do. That's right: I ate some candy.

* Not the actual terminology I use. Close, though.

See, I've managed to train most of the people in my life that, if they want to give me gifts - which is totally unnecessary - they should give me perishables. Like chocolate. It being the weeks following Christmas, there is a lot of fatty, sugary goodness in this house right now. Each day that I spend in the house, there's a little less. I spent a couple of days making no notable changes in my eating habits, and I went to bed last night telling myself, tomorrow you are going to do something different.

And I am, actually. I'm having myself a bit of a detox day - no carby foods and no sugar (besides a sprinkling in my tea). I started the day with some cheesy eggs scrambled with a bit of bacon, then a cup of tea. Lunch was carrots and broccoli stirfried with my faux-Thai sauce I'll have to write about sometime, served with quinoa (which falls outside of my arbitrary definition of "carby foods"). Now I'm bored and snacky, hence the snacking on plain nori sheets. Now, believe me, I enjoy packaged nori snacks and definitely have some aspirations of making my own (and even BLOGGING ABOUT IT [?!]), but my standards aren't really that high. Today is not the first day I've ripped up sheets of nori and eaten them, and it will not be the last. It really is a great snack - it's got that healthy sea vegetable thing going on, and it's a pretty slow calorie-delivery system. Mostly it just provides a nice distraction, which is useful for a boredom eater like me. I'm not sure what's on the docket for dinner, since we're down to just carrots and brussels sprouts (yup, same ones) in the fridge. A walk to the store for some more veggies certainly wouldn't do me any harm.

I hold no illusions that one day of healthy eating is going to magically change anything. But for me, at least, the initial stages of a lifestyle change require absolute adherence, not moderation. I am much more capable of having zero chocolate than one piece. I'm hoping today will be the beginning of some healthy changes in my habits.

And if not? Well, at least I got this awesome ridiculous stream of consciousness blog post out of it.

Yeah, that's right. Brussels sprouts again.

I am simultaneously boggled and completely understanding about some people's distaste for brussels sprouts. On the one hand: they're awesome. On the other hand: they're pretty pungent and very easy to overcook, and overcooked brussels sprouts are definitely bad, and also... flatus.

My grocery store has this thing where there are a few seasonal items that they get throughout the year, and they just stuff gallon-sized zip bags full of them and sell them like that. Green beans and okra in the summer, brussels sprouts in the winter. The giant bags appear to be the only option, no bulk display anywhere, and I have super weird anxiety about bucking the system when it comes to groceries. It took me years to ask if I had to buy all three items to get the 3/$2.99 price (unless it specifies two different prices, you don't!). So I take my giant bag of sprouts, way more than I really want, and I accept my sprouty future. The bag in the fridge right now was 4.5 pounds when it came home, and let me just say that Keith has not been helping.

So that's one food problem.

The other food problem is Lap Cheong sausage. We picked up a four-pack of "worldly" sausages at Costco this weekend, and the first one we broke into was a Chinese sausage. And we both hate it. I ate one slice of it last night and walked away. I think Keith nailed it on the head when he said, "You can't just add some five spice to an Italian sausage and call it 'Chinese.'" It really does taste that way - the ingredients indicate that the changes are more than that, but there's a clash in flavors that I just find incredibly difficult to get past. I was wondering if this sausage was literally going to go straight to waste, but I wasn't ready to call it a loss just yet.

I started thinking about pairing this mildly offensive sausage with some other bold flavors, and I was inspired by this awesome recipe from Ocean Spray. I thought the pungency of the sprouts and sweetness of some balsamic would do a great job of mellowing out the weird flavor combos in the sausage. Plus, you know. Four and a half pounds of brussels sprouts.

Turns out it was a fabulous idea. With some chopped toasted almonds and quinoa, this makes a great, complete lunch. Success!

Lap Cheong Brussels Sprouts
Serves 1 as a meal, 4 as a side dish

• 1 tsp canola oil
• 1-2 ounce Lap Cheong sausage, chopped fine
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 ounce almonds, chopped roughly
• 1/2 pound brussels sprouts, ends trimmed, cores removed, leaves separated
• 1/4 cup water
• 1-2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Cook canola oil and sausage over high heat 1-2 minutes, until sausage shrinks and begins to crisp. Add garlic and almonds and saute for 30 seconds. Add brussels sprouts and saute for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Mix water and vinegar together and pour evenly over sprouts. Cook, continuing to stir, until liquid is evaporated. 

Have You Met Cranberry Sauce?

First, let me be clear:

I will eat the hell out of a slab of canned jellied cranberry sauce. I do not shun the mysterious cylindrical food object. I just... like options.

The many, many degrees of separation canned cranberry sauce seems to have from cranberries always made me suspect that making cranberry sauce was really difficult, something best relegated to food scientists and large corporations. Monsanto, maybe. I knew that I had witnessed homemade cranberry sauce at family dinners, but I figured it must have taken twice as much time and effort as the turkey.

It's only been a few weeks since I glanced at the back of a package of cranberries and had my revelation:

Cranberry sauce is one of the top ten easiest things you'll ever make. It's almost automatic. You boil your liquid with sugar. You add the cranberries and keep boiling. They pop! They splatter! They ruin your shirt! (Wear an apron, use a lid - do both.) About 7 minutes in, the texture of the concoction changes dramatically - aha! pectin! - and shortly after, your dish is done. If you want to, you can use a spoon or potato masher to break up the berries, but the truth is, they break up quite nicely without any intervention. Pour it into a dish (I recommend wide and flat, for optimum cooling), press a sheet of plastic wrap against the surface (unless you're one of those people who likes skin on their puddings and jellies. weirdo.), let it cool on the counter for about an hour, then toss it in the fridge. Another hour, and it'll be just about ready to go (assuming you heed aforementioned wide and flat advice). And just like that, it'll be gone. This stuff is good.

Apple Cider Cranberry Sauce
Serves 4-6

• 1 cup apple cider
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2-1 tsp baking spice (I used a mix of ginger, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg)
• pinch of salt
• 12oz bag cranberries, rinsed

Bring cider to boil, add sugar, and stir until dissolved. Add baking spice, salt, and cranberries. Simmer over low heat, covered, for about ten minutes. Mash further if desired, and pour out into serving dish. Cover surface with plastic wrap, cool for an hour at room temperature, then toss in the fridge. Watch disappear.

Serious Eats' Thanksgiving Salad

I think it's about time I gave a shout-out to one of my favorite food blogs on the net, Serious Eats. If you love food, cooking, and reading about food and cooking, this blog is likely right up your alley. I could wax poetic for a good two, three stanzas about SE, but I'll stick with the point of this post, which is thanking them for this Thanksgiving Salad recipe. If you scroll into the comments (it's safe - I assure you that SE is one of the few places in the web where there be no dragons in the comments section), you'll see me declaring my intent to make it for dinner, and a few hours later, declaring that it was awesome. And it was.

Even disregarding the fact of their clearly superior photography, it's clear that this dish is not quite the same. I made a few changes when I made it last week. I still had brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes around, so I decided to make it again today, with even more changes based on Keith's feedback. I replaced the turkey with black beans, because we almost never have meat in the house. I used orzo instead of Israeli couscous, toasted it in butter, and cooked it in no-chicken broth. I tossed everything in a punchy lemon vinaigrette (with a good dose of dijon mustard).

I gobbled it down for lunch, and before Keith had the chance to taste it and declare his clear approval for my changes, I gobbled down the rest for dinner. Gobble, gobble.

This dish lays in an interesting limbo from a dietitian's perspective. The sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts are obviously great choices, as are the black beans and toasted almonds (actually toasting your almonds is terrible for their nutritional quality, but whatevs). On the other hand, those are tossed in a bowl of white pasta, and let me tell you: I did not hold back on the fat with this dish. There's probably a good six tablespoons of fat in this recipe, between the olive oil and butter, plus the fat in the other ingredients.

But did I care about this as I wolfed it down for the 2/3 of my daily meals? Not really. Because, you know, maybe dishes like this aren't really in "limbo," but instead they strike the perfect balance. A variety of healthy choices, mixed with a few indulgences. I could try and look at this meal, chide myself about the six tablespoons of fat, and say, "This is a bad food, and you should feel bad about it." But I don't. And no one eating like this should!

What Color Are Your Greens?

[Did you know that I started this post over two weeks ago, started writing it while my greens were on the stove and overcooked my greens, and didn't look at my photos until just today... only to discover that not a single shot turned out? Yes. I am an epic blogger. Oh well.]

Have you had collard greens? Do you remember, by any chance... what color they were?

It seems like a silly question, I know, and I wish it were. But bear with me here for a sec - were they by any chance... kinda brown?

I'm a fan of some traditional recipes. I believe that, when it comes to food, traditions are made for a reason, and I've given traditional collard greens a try several times. And I'm tired of eating collard browns. So here, I'll just go ahead and say it:

You're probably cooking your greens wrong.

I'm a firm believer, with some exceptions, that vegetables should be brighter in color when you serve them than they were raw, and traditional recipes for collards have you cook your greens for 45, 60 minutes - I've seen up to two hours. They're not going to be green anymore. I'm skeptical they will be food. You'll also sacrifice significant Vitamin C content, as it's not especially heat stable (not that most Americans have trouble getting enough C).

A few years ago, I had a bunch of greens in the fridge and wanted them for lunch. Knowing that I didn't particularly care for the traditional long-cooked style, I started hunting for a new approach. I'm not sure exactly what search terms I used to led me to this Epicurious recipe, but I do know that I am forever grateful to them. I basically haven't cooked hardy greens any other way since then, and this is essentially still the exact recipe I use, though I sometimes use thinly sliced onions instead of garlic, often add crushed red pepper, and always, always finish with a splash of lemon. The one caveat I'll add is that the cooking time does vary widely. I've had tender, smaller leaves that cooked up in 3-4 minutes, but it's not always the case. The greens I was cooking for this post were larger than some pets I've had, and they needed nearly ten minutes to get past that "eating roughage" texture. Either way, though, ten minutes beats an hour or more, and you end up with a quick dish that's more attractive and healthier. If that ain't a trifecta, I don't know what is.

As I said, my photos turned out terribly, but contrasting two Google image searches tells all the story you need: Brazilian collard greens vs. collard greens.

I guess this one photo didn't turn out too badly, so I'll toss it in here just to break up the text.

How did I get so lucky?

I got home from the hospital today, and Keith had decided to throw together something a little nice for dinner. Now, I'm no slouch in the kitchen, but when I decide to throw something nice together, it's, I dunno, a really tasty stir fry. Totally worth eating, but still... stir fry.

My husband? Throws this nonsense together:

That's red quinoa with sauteed butternut squash, arugula and farmers market tomatoes tossed in a red wine vinaigrette, toasted almonds, and three big fat sea scallops topped with black Hawaiian salt.

Be still my tummy! What a wonderful, healthy and delicious meal. Not necessarily light, but packed with so many great ingredients and beautiful colors, I don't really care that it's a little high in fat.

I will leave you with a shot of a perfectly seared scallop. You know one when you see one.

One Day on a Ketogenic Diet

Last week in my Nutrition & Metabolism class, we were discussing... well, metabolism, in particular the ketogenic processes in the body. One of the ways our teacher keeps the material fresh is by incorporating surprising real life applications and experiences, sometimes from his work as a clinical dietitian. I think the entire class was surprised to learn that an extreme ketogenic diet is used in some cases to treat severe epilepsy in children. How extreme? Well, a typical 1500 calorie diet would include about 42g fat, 205g carbohydrates, and 75g protein - these are numbers that fall inside the Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range.

We were asked to create one day of a diet that contained 1500 calories, 150g fat, 18g carbohydrates, and 20g protein.

Yeah.

Our initial giggly thoughts centered on, you know, "Here's a cup of olive oil. Bottom's up!" But our teacher was quick to bring us back to the human element: "Remember, this is a little kid you've got sitting across from you, and you have to tell him this is what he's going to eat for the next few months or years."

I'm an emotional mess lately, so I got a little weepy thinking about that.

Not surprisingly, without access to a lot of nutrition information, no one was able to come up with a whole day's diet, but a few suggestions were thrown out: egg yolks, bacon, ranch dressing, butter, oil. I managed to look up a few items on my phone and was surprised by their nutrition info when viewed through this lens. Avocados? Not actually high enough in fat for this diet - too much carb and protein! I knew bacon was a good source of fat, but I didn't realize just how much more fat it has than protein. Very useful. And pecans? My friends: they are higher in fat than you imagine. I found the discussion really interesting and decided to finish the activity on my own.

I finally managed to come up with a diet that's at least made of actual food. It's interesting to look at this and realize that, for all its 154g of fat, there just... isn't much food here. And just this one day took me probably an hour to come up with. I kept trying to maintain some normalcy - I started with one slice of bread at breakfast, which turned into half a slice, then a quarter slice, and then it disappeared because an eighth of a slice of bread is way sadder than no bread. It's hard to imagine trying to create a diet based on these restrictions that is tolerable day in, day out for months. I'd almost rather drink my cup of oil and be done with it.

Here's one day on an extreme ketogenic diet:

Breakfast
3.5oz very high fat bacon, all drippings included
1 egg yolk, cooked in bacon fat

Lunch
1oz shredded green cabbage, tossed in 2tbsp ranch dressing
4oz celery, dipped in 2tbsp ranch dressing

Snack
.5oz pecans

Dinner
2oz spinach, cooked in 2tbsp canola oil

Dessert
Hot cocoa made with:
2.5oz cream, diluted with water
2tsp cocoa powder
Artificial sweetener to taste

The full day's nutritional analysis is at the top of the post.

Isn't that depressing? Can you imagine being four years old and hearing this is what you'll eat? This little project served as a good reminder of the power we have as dietitians, and the power food has in people's lives, and how very careful we have to be not to abuse either.