Cooking up some goodness!

As the weather cools, we naturally migrate towards warmer, carbohydrate-based dishes. But don't think this means only freshly baked cakes and cookies! A lovely friend of mine just reminded me that not everyone knows about the grain I consider my favorite....Quinoa (pronounced: Keen-Wa).

Quinoa is nutritious whole grain which is high in fiber and a great source of protein (containing all eight essential amino-acids) - its protein content being what sets it apart from other whole grains. I particularly love it because it is gluten-free, so helps me on my path of trying to find filling and satisfying foods which agree with me! As you might suspect, Quinoa is as old as the hills, and was a primary staple of the ancient Incas. It has a slightly nutty flavour, (but don't worry my nut-sensitive audience, it's a grain, not a nut).

Not only is it a nutrition-powerhouse, but it is really versatile which makes it a good household staple ... I eat it as a warm porridge in the mornings when it's cold outside, and also as a substitute for pasta for lunch or dinner. I often have a big batch of cooked quinoa in my fridge, and in the mornings I just warm some up with soy or rice milk, add fresh or dried fruit depending on the time of year, a few nuts and/or seeds, and blue agave to sweeten - easy! I also have a handful of much-loved dinner recipes and here I give you my favorite to help inspire you to try it! Yum....

Quinoa with Roasted or Grilled Vegetables

I love this recipe – it’s a great, easy and can be served at room temperature in the summer or warm in the winter. Due to the high protein content of quinoa compared to other grains, it is a meal in itself, but feel free to add grilled chicken, goats or feta cheese, and nuts and seeds to make it more filling!

Serves 4

· 255g/9 oz quinoa
· 1 red or orange pepper
· 1 green pepper
· 1 yellow pepper
· 2-3 small courgettes (zucchini)
· 1 red onion
· 3 carrots, peeled
· 10 mushrooms

· 1/2 a butternut squash
· Olive Oil
· Salt and freshly ground pepper
· 3 good handfuls of mixed fresh herbs (basil, coriander, mint, flat-leafed parsley)

Preheat the oven to 425°F

Chop all the vegetables into similar sized ‘large-bite-size’ pieces. Cut the mushrooms in half or leave whole if they are small. Toss in a bowl so that they are covered with olive oil, salt & pepper.

Either:
Place on a roasting tray, as spread out as possible. If the roasting tray is too small for them to be only 1 layer, use 2 trays.
Place them in the oven to roast – 40-50 minutes. Shake them around in the tray once or twice during this time.
Or:

Put them on the grill / BBQ, turning occasionally, until they are cooked through.

Boil the quinoa according to packet instructions. Drain.
When they are soft and crisp, remove the vegetables from the oven and toss them into a bowl with the quinoa. Throw in the fresh herbs, loosen with a little more olive oil, toss and season to taste!

Notes:
1. Quinoa is similar in taste and texture to couscous but it is wheat-free and has a higher protein content. It’s a great grain to keep in your cupboards! I love it.
2. Remember that you can substitute different vegetables, depending on what you feel like and what is in season.

A word on Probiotics.

If you are often on antibiotics, or have a digestive system which is frequently upset (bloating, constipation, diarrhea etc.), then you might be interested in learning more about these oft-talked about 'friendly' bacteria which are available as a supplement.....

The general term 'probiotics' is described by wikipedia as 'microorganisms thought to be healthy for the host organism'. To be more specific, when you take a probiotic supplement, you are replenishing the 'good' bacteria in your body (these are wiped out by courses of antibiotics and recurring diarrhea). Having a healthy community of 'good' bacteria in turn offers a whole spectrum of gastrointestinal health benefits ranging from promoting gut and intestinal functions to developing a healthy immune system.

So, can you get these from food? Yes; most yogurts contain 'Live Active Cultures of Probiotics', but the reality is that you really do have to eat a huge amount of yogurt to receive the benefits of its probiotic content if your existing bacterial ratios are challenged. If you feel that you have had gastrointestinal upsets or would benefit from re-balancing your body's bacteria, I really recommend seeking out a supplement. If you need more guidance, feel free to email me!

Here's to a healthy digestion for the holiday season!

(Oh, and as a side-note - there are probiotics specially for toddlers and infants....they can work wonders on upset little systems!)

I'm soooooo full......

As a follow-on from last week's blog, and as we approach a food-heavy time of year(!), I wanted to touch on the all too common behaviour of over-eating. We've all done it, and we'll all do it in the future, but if this is something which is more normal than abnormal for you, then it might help to understand why you might be falling into this uncomfortable trap.

My July/August '09 publication of Nutrition Action discussed the reasons behind the over-eating phenomena which seems to have so many in its grip, and apparently, the fault lies not in us, but in the intelligent manipulation of the sensory circuits of our brain by 3 simple ingredients: sugar, fat and salt.

Each of these (alone or together), make food compelling and indulgent in ways we cannot control, and together with some clever marketing, deem certain foods very difficult to resist. So, if you've ever been staring at a packet of chocolate chip cookies, wondering how on earth you are ever going to stop yourself from eating the ENTIRE packet, then you can rest assured that it is the sugar and fat-heavy ingredients at work, not your lack of willpower! Afterall, I challenge you to have the same thought when looking at a bag of zucchini/courgettes?!

So, how does one navigate this in everyday life? I have three succinct pieces of advice:

1. Avoid the center aisles of the grocery stores/supermarkets. These are the aisles loaded with fat, sugar and salt!
2. Control your environment when possible. Don't EVER think that you will be able to outsmart a bag of chips or a plate of cookies! If you know they're your weakness, take them OUT OF YOUR HOUSE. Fill your kitchen with all the fruit, nuts and vegetables your heart desires, but remove all traces of foods which make you want to over eat.
3. When out at restaraunts, try and pick foods which satisfy rather than stimulate your apetite ... (hint: these tend to be foods which are close to their natural forms: fruit, vegetables, lean meats and whole grains).

And as a final note, Eastern Medicine states that if you eat something which is high in salt, it stimulates the body to crave sugar, and visa versa, so be aware of the difference between using salt as a 'seasoning' and a 'flavoring'!!

What do you feel like....?

I am reading 'Intuitive Eating' by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA and it's inspired me to really consider how infrequently we, as members of a western society in the year 2009, actually check in with our bodies to determine if or when we are hungry. Let me explain.....

It makes sense that we would let our internal cues guide us on when we want to eat, what we want to eat, and when we've had enough of that food, right? I mean that's the idea behind having the highly sophisticated bundle of biology, chemistry and physics that we name our 'body'. However, we are so often pressurized and influenced by clever marketing, social expectations, past associations and even the time of day, that I have found that we rarely tap into these cues. Instead, we continually override them in order to conform to something either predetermined by our mind or externally influenced.

Now, I'm not suggesting a movement to disrupt the conventional rhythm of the breakfast-lunch-dinner-day, nor do I recommend walking through life with a permanent nose-bag on our hips, but surely there's a happy medium somewhere, which allows us to channel what we feel into driving what we want, rather than determining what we want intellectually and ignoring what we feel??

We all know that it only takes an involuntary shiver to convince us a hot cup of coffee is a good idea, or a whiff of freshly baked bread to suggest that we are hungry.....there are a million external cues out there, and 'Intuitive Eating' states that the more we use them to determine our eating behaviours, the more our internal cues are supressed and silenced. Maybe that's why we've all come such a long way from only eating when we are hungry?

Just for a day, an hour, a minute, try and strengthen your internal cues. Take a second to think about what your body is telling you, and act accordingly.

It's amazingly satisfying.

Not all fats are equal - have a look at Coconut Oil.

Coconut oil (or butter) often gets a bad rap due to it's relatively high levels of saturated fat in comparisson to other vegetable oils. However, I have recently been asked about it more than once, so I started experimenting with it again and my initial flirtations with this lesser-used fat are proving to be both delicious and healthy!

While coconut oil does have its fair share of saturated fats, its predominant fat is made up of medium chain fatty acids which the body processes quite differently to most other types of fat....specifically, they are used mainly for energy production and are less likely than other fats to add to our 'fat deposits' (yay!). Due to this unique feature of coconut oil, it has a pluthora of health benefits which make it a food worth concentrating on:

• It is a great moisturizer - I'm presently using it on my long-suffering hands which are plagued with cracking, bleeding excema due to the harsh environment of Vegas. I'll let you know how I go with it - so far, I'm loving it. It is also reportedly healing for cases of dandruff, psoriasis and acne.
• One of my best friends in Sydney, Australia, uses it on her face and swears by it. There's a movement which suggests one shouldn't put anything on ones skin that one wouldn't eat...it makes sense if you think about your skin being your body's largest organ?!
• It's a proven immune-strengthening food, having anti-bacterial and anti-viral activities.
• It's beneficial to a healthy heart.
• It has been shown to decrease LDL cholesterol levels.

So, I hear you ask: 'How the hell do I use it?'....including this functional food in your diet is easier than you might think. For starters, the 'Babycakes' recipe book I blogged about last week uses it as its main fat-source, as do many other vegan recipes, but more immediately, you can use it in place of your existing fat-of-choice for your sauteing, frying and baking. While you might (correctly) imagine that coconut flavor doesn't infuse particularly well with your italian sauce, when drumming up some Thai or Indian food, it will enhance the flavors of the spices to no end.

In addition, you can add it to smoothies (1 tablespoon/serving) and even use it in place of butter on muffins/bagels/toast etc, if the mood takes you. If you're like me and you pretty much eyeball the amount of fat you use to cook with (baking aside), then you can just continue to do this with coconut oil.

When buying coconut oil, Gabriela Rosa, a leading clinical naturopath in Australia, stresses that you must try and find the raw, unrefined, organic version. I particularly recommend the extra virgin, raw, unrefined, organic variety.

And a final note on allergies; in 2006, the FDA classified the coconut as a nut. However, it has not been shown to elicit the same allergic reactions as other tree-nuts, and the small subset of the population who have shown an allergic response to coconut do not appear to be the same individuals as those who are allergic to other nuts. However, to be safe, check with your intended food-samplers before using it as some doctors recommend nut-sensitive patients to avoid it.

Allergy-free baking with 'Babycakes'....

As a sad member of the 'gluten-free' subset of the population (which seems to be growing at an alarming rate), and someone who does better without dairy too (sob), I had resigned myself to a life scarcely populated with the baked deliciousness' that we all know and love for being bad for the waistline, but damn good for the soul!......until my gorgeous friend Lizzie from Jackson Hole, had me over for brunch and introduced me to a plate overloaded with muffins which looked and smelt so good they would rival any bakery. On hearing that they were gluten free, sugar free AND vegan (aka dairy free and egg free), I tucked in with a gusto reserved only for Christmas dinner, and I've never looked back.

The secret to Lizzie's success is partly her unfair advantage as an amazing baker, but it can also be traced back to 'babycakes', a book filled with vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free recipes from it's namesake's bakery in NYC, owned and authored by Erin McKenna. The book itself is beautiful, inspiring even the most hesitant in the kitchen to get involved (yes, ummm, that would be me...), and I can firmly say that the products really are testament to the glossy photos.

So - whether your particular physiology dictates that you must look to the 'alternative' aisle for your carbohydrate fix, or you are keen to decrease the otherwise-overwhelming levels of gluten and sugar found in the average Westerner's diet, look no further, this book should be on your shelf. And for the parents out there, I just made a batch of her 'Pumpkin-spice Muffins' yesterday and they are nearly all gone....thanks mainly to individuals under the age of 3!

(And as a post-script that I can't resist adding ... even for those of you who are quite happy with your traditional baked goods, know that alleviating the load of sugar and gluten inflicted on developing and young digetive systems is a really positive step for everyone. There are many theories on why gluten-intolerance is increasing in our society, and while there are no clear-cut answers yet, there is no harm in reducing its role in our diets. And sugar....well don't get me started!)

Soy and Breast Cancer

The combination of news-bites with hearsay makes for a fabulous game of 'chinese whispers', and in my opinion, this is exactly why the population is afflicted with a love-hate relationship with soy.

To try and help set the record straight with regards to breast cancer, I am referencing my August '09 issue of 'Environmental Nutrition'. This clearly states that amongst the ever-expanding research on this topic, there is no evidence that traditional soy foods increase the chances of women at high risk for developing breast cancer or worsen the prognosis of existing breast cancer patients. To the contrary, evidence shows that 2 servings daily of soyfoods can actually help breast cancer patients (if you are a breast-cancer patient and have some questions, please do contact me and I can help you further....).

I stress the word 'traditional' when talking about soy foods because it's the WHOLE soy foods, such as those in the Asian diet, that seem to have the beneficial effects. These are soybeans, tofu, miso, tempeh and soymilk, and NOT the typical form of soy ingested by Westeners; isolated components of soy in the form of fillers and extenders in foods like protein bars, shakes, veggie burgers, soy sausages and meat-substitutes.

So that's the good news, sadly, the research also shows that in order to reduce our risk of breast cancer, we really need to eat soyfood consistently during adolesence and young adulthood....so take note, those of you out there who have young daughters....and remember, not all soy is equal, and I recommend finding non-GMO (genetically modified) whole-food sources.