Fun With Chia Seeds

I agree with this ABC news post that chia seeds have replaced kale as the “it food” this year. These tiny seeds, which most of us are more familiar with as giving Chia Pets their “hair” or “fur,” have gotten a lot of attention for being loaded with omega-3 fatty acids. They are also chock-full of protein and fiber, for few calories.

What’s the advantage of dumping some into your food? A nutrient boost, as well as fiber to help you feel fuller longer.

I decided to buy some on my last visit to Whole Foods, and then the experiment was on. My first stop: breakfast.

I added the chia seeds to fat-free Greek yogurt, along with honey, and I topped off this breakfast bowl with diced banana and strawberries. It was delicious, as you would expect honey and Greek yogurt to be, and the chia seeds added extra crunch. (Shout-out to ripe banana and strawberries as well.)

The interesting thing about chia seeds is that they become a bit gelatinous when exposed to moisture for a bit–which explains the paste you’ve seen slathered on Chia Pet heads in the past–so you could also consider them a thickener for whatever you want to make. It is something to get used to, and I’d think that would be what would make this a love-it-or-hate-it superfood. I didn’t mind; my yogurt got a little thicker over the course of time, but was still enjoyable, partially because despite swelling to sport a gel-like coating, the crunch doesn’t go away from the seeds.

I purchased my bag of chia seeds on sale for about 6 bucks, but a bag can hover around the $10 mark, give or take a few bucks, from what I’ve seen from the other options at Whole Foods. (I’m still on my first bag after having made several meals with chia seeds now, though, so I think it’s worth the price when on the left side of $10.) I haven’t explored yet whether chia seeds have hit the regular grocery stores of if they’re still a specialty item to be found at health food stores, but I imagine they’ll make their way to a Pathmark, Ralph’s, or Publix near you soon. (Wheat germ is still on the shelves after making its debut in 1936, according to this New York Times article, so why not?)

Chia seeds seem like they’d be a little more shelf-stable than wheat germ and, from what I understand (without having tried them), flax seeds.

Interested in adding chia seeds to your meals? Let you know what you come up with! I’ll have more recipes to share here soon myself.

These Cooking Rules Are Made to Be Broken

Last night, I was preparing fish to bake. It was a 2-lb bag of tilapia fillets, and I planned on doing half with salt, pepper and garlic, and half with Cajun seasoning. While visions of dusting the fish fillets with their respective spices danced in my head, I noticed a warning on the plastic that wrapped each fish fillet. It said that you should remove the fish from the plastic before thawing.

Too late! I routinely thaw the fish individually wrapped, in the main packaging, in my freezer. And they taste just fine, whether I’m baking them or grilling them. No harm, no foul.

Just like my fish experiences, there are other times when you can break the rules that recipes scream at you. Here are 8:

1. Use your favorite vegetables. When you’re making a casserole or slow cooker dish, go with the vegetables that you like (or the ones that you have on hand), as long as you time their cooking in a way that ensures they get cooked to appropriate doneness.
2. Go with yogurt. Fat-free Greek yogurt can stand in for cream, or for sour cream. Try topping your nachos or baked potatoes with some, mixing some into your chicken pot pie stuffing, in soups–the possibilities are endless!
3. Alternatives for desserts. Diet lemon-lime soda and liquid eggs in yellow and white cakes. Diet cola and liquid eggs in dark cakes and brownies. Pumpkin puree in spice cake. Fat-free Greek yogurt works here, too.
4. Ditch the butter and oil. No, you won’t get the same flavor, but if you want to save on fat and calories, opt for cooking spray or water for sautéing (or nothing at all, if you don’t have your temperature super-high).
5. Tweak the spices. Fresh or dried? Go with what you have, using more dried if the recipe calls for fresh. Leave out the salt if you have high blood pressure, or switch to a low-sodium salt, because if you’re cooking with certain items (like spaghetti sauce, cheese, or broth), you’re still getting sodium in the mix anyway. There’s a reason many bloggers (myself included) don’t give exact measurements for spices–part of the art of cooking is figuring out what works best for your taste. Experiment and go with the proportions that work for you.
6. Switch up the meat. Rather than a pork shoulder, try pork loin. Instead of high-fat ground beef, try lean ground beef (93% lean) or learn ground turkey. Don’t be afraid to make a recipe vegetarian, either–for many dishes, you’ll be safe opting for beans or textured vegetable protein (TVP).
7. Take shortcuts. As a rule, or in a pinch, you can buy rotisserie chicken or rotisserie turkey breast. Or, get the person at the seafood counter to steam the shrimp or crab for you, before tossing with grains, vegetables, or pasta. For vegetables? Buy pre-cut veggies from your produce section, or even frozen peppers and onions from the freezer section.
8. Don’t braise meat for slow cooking. As with using butter or oil for sautéing, braising does add another dimension of flavor, but if you want to cut corners on time, you can get along fine without doing it.

Whether you’re starting to cook more healthy now as part of a resolution, or you’re plugging away at healthy eating as a long-term lifestyle, there are areas where it’s perfectly fine to bend or break the cooking rules to bring your food to the table faster, or more in line with your taste preferences. I wish you hours of happy rabble-rousing in your kitchen!

Question of the day: What rules do you break in the kitchen? What tips do you have for making your life as a cook easier?

Between a Vegetarian and a Paleo

My eating tends to be all over the place. By that, I mean that I don’t play favorites with the kind of food that I eat–from being a South Beach Diet follower, to dabbling with vegetarian eating in my 20s, there aren’t too many modes of eating or kinds of food that I turn my nose up at. (With the exception of sardines and okra…I don’t know that there will ever be hope for me with those two things!)

Because of that, I’m not surprised that my Pinterest food board reads like a split-personality eater. I follow a lot of vegetarian and vegan pinners (here’s one of my favorites), and their mealtime picks are heavily represented among the things I like and the things I’d like to try. But on the flipside, I have posted some paleo recipes, and there’s one grill-master in particular whose ideas I’m always excited to see come up on my timeline.

As someone who has had weight loss and healthy eating on her mind for a few years now, one of the most important things that I do is to keep looking out for new foods, new recipes, and new ways of creating meals that are designed for the most nutrition in the most modest amount of calories possible. In my pursuit of new ideas, I’m don’t harbor any biases about the kinds of eaters who are supplying those ideas. I’d encourage you to look beyond the cookbooks, Web sites and pinboards that focus on the kinds of food you typically eat and look to the people who combine ingredients in a different manner to still generate tasty, nutritionally sound entrees.

Here are some things that have caught my eye on the Web lately:

• Tofu steaks with chimichurri and baby spinach, from Stone Soup: I never knew how to fry tofu, but from the picture, this recipe seems to offer the alternative protein with a beautiful crust. Plus, the chimichurri recipe can be repurposed for a lean steak.
• Roasted garlic sweet potato and poached egg, from Naturally Ella: Breakfast tends to be the meal that’s hardest for me to consistently come up with good ideas. I like the sound of this because it sounds filling, and the carb is coming in the form of a vegetable.
• Roasted Dijon chicken, from Framed Cooks: I like that this recipe creates meat and a side. It helps to take the guesswork out of pairing up items on the menu!
• Kale with oranges and mustard dressing, from MarthaStewart.com: I am a big fan of leafy greens, and I’ve heard of the kale-citrus one-two punch before. I’m curious to try it!
• Crockpot Indian-spiced lentils, from The Diva Dish: I love Indian food, and I was excited to find a recipe to make some by setting and forgetting.
• Red snapper Azteca, from Paleo Plan: Fish is always an excellent lean protein choice. In this recipe, it gets a flavor boost that sounds tasty.

I am glad to know that no matter what kind of food I’m looking for, there are tons of people out there with delicious ideas. Happy hunting to you!

Question of the Day: How has your diet changed since you’ve started eating healthy? What foods are you eating that you never thought in a million years would touch your plate?

Roasted Zucchini, Spaghetti-Style

Call it a remnant of having done the South Beach Diet more than a decade ago, but I don’t eat a lot of pasta. I guess in a Weight Watchers frame of mind, I’d rather not spend so many points on a small serving of pasta and sauce.

Thankfully I think I’ve found a good pasta alternative, in zucchini. I was inspired to make this by a recipe in an old issue of Weight Watchers magazine. The recipe called it zucchini fettucine, but used raw ingredients and a vinaigrette-type dressing to make a salad. I took my version to the oven, though, and dressed it up like your garden variety wheat noodles.

Recipe:

• 4 zucchini, peeled of skin
• Minced garlic to taste
• 1T olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 to 3/4c of your favorite spaghetti sauce
• Shredded parmesan (optional)
• Shredded basil (optional)

Preheat your oven to 350. Take a vegetable peeler and shave the zucchini into strips. Stop peeling when you hit the seeds.

Toss the zucchini with the oil, garlic and salt and pepper. Place in an oven-safe pan and roast until mostly tender, but with a little chewiness still.

Add your pasta sauce after taking the zucchini out of the oven. Top individual servings with 1-2T parmesan and a bit of the basil, if desired.

Notes: Leaving behind the skin and the seedy center, I got approximately two 1/2-cup servings out of this recipe. My suggestion would be to double this recipe for leftovers!

Looking into the nutritional value of zucchini, the Whole Foods Web site says that zucchini may retain more of its nutrients when it’s cooked by steaming. I think I’ll try that when I make this again.

Whole Foods Kale Salad Copycat: Take 1

When I go to Whole Foods, one of the things I always pick up is their marinated kale from the salad bar. My body is a big fan of leafy greens like spinach and collards, so this salad, with a nutty, tahini taste, black sesame seeds, and carrots and red peppers for color contrast, hits the spot. Kale has been getting its time in the spotlight recently, thanks to its super nutritional profile. This article from WebMD, which calls kale “the queen of greens,” says the vegetable is resplendent with calcium (15% of the daily requirement!), vitamins A, B6, C, and K, as well as magnesium, copper, potassium, iron, manganese, and phosphorus.

With Whole Foods prices being what they are, I decided to experiment with making it myself. This is what I did on my first attempt (note that I completely forgot about the carrot and pepper!), with ideas to refine it for the future.

• 16-oz bag of cut, prewashed kale (You could also buy a bundle of whole leaves; I just didn’t find it in my grocery store.)
• 8-10 T hummus (Go with your favorite brand/flavor, but my suggestion? Roasted garlic.)
• 1T olive oil

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• Lemon juice to taste (I used half a large lemon.)

What I did was to rinse the leaves again for good measure, then mix u the other ingredients. (I ended up mixing with my [extra clean] hands, because raw kale leaves are no match for any kind of spoon.) But in the future, here’s what I’d recommend:

Don’t forget the carrot and red pepper like I did! Buy a bag of shredded carrot, or shred your own. Slice the red pepper into thin strips. It’s less of a priority for me to have the sesame seeds, but add them if you want (toasted?), to taste.

Do a little more prep of the kale leaves. Most important: remove the stems. Also, chop the leaves a little more. I wouldn’t want them to be super finely chopped, but I would recommend chopping them into more bite-sized pieces.

Mix the other ingredients together as a dressing. I’m guessing on my next go-round that it’ll be much easier to mix the kale and the tahini, oil and lemon if I have mixed them together first. I’d also add a little water to the mixture, to thin it out, as the Whole Foods original dressing has a slushy consistency.

After the fact, I noticed there are others out there who share my love of the Whole Foods kale salad. Here are some of their recommendations, shared on a Whole Foods message board for another kale recipe. I like the suggestion of pairing chili powder and mango with the kale.

Do you like raw kale? How do you prepare it? What are your tips for making the tough leaves tender and tasty?

Moroccan Carrots

It would be extremely hard for me to pick one favorite item from the Valentine’s Day dinner I had at Zahav,  but the Moroccan carrots would definitely be in the Top 5.

Using my memory of the dish, and a little Internet research, here’s how I made it at home recently:

• 1/2 lb. baby carrots (Most recipes cut up the carrots, either into rounds or on a slant, but I used them whole, to save on time.)
• 1 T canola oil
• 2 T lemon juice
• 1 garlic clove, minced finely
• Cilantro to taste (parsley would also work, but I had a ton of cilantro on hand that I needed to get rid of. Or you could omit herbs altogether–the Zahav version didn’t use any.)
• Ground cumin to taste
• Salt to taste (I went with low-sodium salt, but use your favorite kind)

Boil the carrots. While they’re cooking, chop the cilantro finely; place it in a small dish. Add the rest of the ingredients (besides the carrots); mix well.

When the carrots are tender, drain them and set them aside to cool (or rinse them with a couple passes of cold water, if you’re impatient like me). Thoroughly mix the carrots and cilantro mixture in another bowl. Serve room temperature or chilled.

Other things I’ve seen added to recipes are paprika and white wine vinegar. I may try one or both of them in the future, to add another dimension of flavor. Cinnamon is another possible spice addition.

Waffle Iron Sweet Potato Hash Browns

Sweet Potato Hash Browns, served with a lean ground beef burger.

I was inspired to make this by a recipe I saw for doing a similar thing with white potatoes at Get Off Your Butt and BAKE! I always thought sweet potato fries sounded like a good idea, but I’ve never been successful with making them myself. But I thought that the heat of the waffle iron, plus a thin layer of sweet potatoes, would make this work.

Here’s what I did:

1. Rinse, peel and grate sweet potatoes. I used 3 small ones to try out the recipe, grating them on the side of my box grater with that large holes that are used for cheese.
2. Heat up your waffle iron; when it’s ready, spray it with cooking spray. Add a layer of potatoes, sprinkle them with your spices (I went with Adobo seasoning), then spray again with cooking spray.
3. Heat in the waffle iron until crisp, about 20 minutes. (It may take less time for you, if you have multiple heat settings on your waffle iron.)

My results were crispy and delicious, even though I didn’t get the solid chunks of potatoes that the original recipe promised. But maybe I should be using more potato at a time to make more substantial hash brown patties. If I were to do that, I’d increase the cooking time. Also, I think I’ll follow the recipe for the white potato fries, and flip them over in the waffle iron rather than heating the whole time on the same side.

I’d also try different spices. I loved the Adobo seasoning, but I’d also try salt, chili powder and cumin. Barbecue spice or Cajun spice would also be interesting, I’m thinking.

Things I’ve Learned From Vegetarians

In trying to jump-start my inspiration to eat more interesting foods, I’ve been doing a lot of research on the Web. And more often than not, I find this inspiration coming from vegetarian and vegan Web sites.

I think that’s the case because I haven’t been as adventurous with vegetables as I have been with meats. But I owe it to myself to explore more in this area, as it never hurts to eat more veggies. (Michael Pollan’s diet-building advice comes to mind: Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants. I definitely have more room in my life for eating plants.)

With this desire in my mind, here are the most inspiring pieces of advice I’ve seen on cooking vegetables:

Smoke them. I have cooked potatoes in our smoker before, but never anything else that was rooted in the ground. I saw someone mention smoking eggplant and zucchini; I wouldn’t mind trying that, corn, or cauliflower. I bet smoked mushrooms would be good, too.

Use sauces, dressings, and marinades. For me, this has meant butter or cheese sauce, but there are certainly other things I can do. The recipe that inspired me was one for garlic green beans. I love them from the Chinese restaurant; why not make them at home? Similarly, the majority of the quinoa recipes I’ve found used some sort of vinaigrette to dress up this nutty grain. Quinoa soaks up the flavor of whatever you put in it, so the options are endless.

Think international. The reason why I’m excited about this exploration is because the vegetables I’ve been serving have been steamed veggies tossed with butter substitute. I need more variety! I will look to other cultures where meat isn’t eaten, or meat is an accompaniment to the main dish. When vegetables are your primary focus, you’ve got to be well-versed in making flavorful, memorable dishes. I need more of those to accompany the meat on my plate.

Many us have been turned off to vegetables by our parents boiling the life out of them and then cajoling us to eat them unseasoned.  I was one of those people, but I’ve been fortunate to learn that there are much tastier options than blanched mixed vegetables. My goal is to continue eating more vegetable side dishes, so I will keep hunting for new ideas!

Do you embrace variety and exploration in your eating? Where do you look for inspiration? What have you learned?

A Little Love for Eggplant: 5 Ideas

I’ve said a lot lately that I’m looking to shake up my eating to get firmly back on the weight loss path, and I think side dishes are key to that. If I want to not lean on couscous and flavored rice so much, I need good alternatives.

Eggplant is going to be one of those alternatives for me. I’ve had eggplant twice this week, in two slightly different ways, and I loved it! You can make that #6 on the list of foods I’m bringing back into rotation, I guess.

How am I thinking of cooking the eggplant? Here are five ideas:

1. Grilled. The eggplant was grilled for one of the times I had it this week, just sliced thinly (with the skin on, I believe), sprinkled with salt, pepper and oil. I’ve grilled eggplant before, following the instructions of Steve Raichlen in his book How to Grill, and I realize that I’ve missed it.
2. Marinated and sautéed. The other time I had eggplant this week, it was peeled rounds marinated in balsamic vinegar and, I’m guessing, sautéed (though it was mixed in with other grilled vegetables, so who knows). I’d cook it with red onion.
3. With tomatoes or tomato sauce. We know from eggplant parmesan that eggplant and tomatoes play nicely together. But for a lighter alternative, I’d love to experiment with cutting out the breading and frying and just pair these two ingredients. I could always still top it with mozzarella or provolone.
4. Indian style. Now that I think about it, I had eggplant about two weeks ago, a heat-and-eat pouch of baingan bartha. But I need the real deal! I will investigate making it on my own.
5. West African style. This preparation differs from the others I’ve mentioned because it involves meat and is more of an entrée thing. I’m going to put my husband to work on this one, making a sauce of pureed eggplant and spices to which meat is added. I’ve had his version once before; I think it’s time to sample it again!

What are some of your favorite ways to prepare eggplant? Do tell!

Things I Learned From a Month of Salads

My 2012 started off with me stocking up on lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, onions, red cabbage, peppers, and other kinds of raw vegetables to turn into salads. In the month of January, I embarked on a challenge to eat a salad a day.

I was sick and missed dinner on Day 7, and on Day 26, the realities of salad fatigue had set in. But after those two missed days, I ate two salads on the following days. So I eventually crossed the finish line into February, today, with 31 bowls of veggies and proteins having made their way through my body in the month before. Someone figure out how to turn a radish into a medal for me!

I am happy to have completed my challenge with minor hiccups. I will be glad to get back to not having to limit my food options, but I think I will incorporate more salads into my life in general. I came up with a bunch of tasty ideas that I won’t let go to waste!

Besides filling up my mental recipe box with ideas, I learned a bunch of other things about salads and their place in my life. Here are 10 of those things: