Sometimes your day (and by “your day” I mean “my day”) consists of a little boy repeatedly unrolling the toilet paper, pulling stuff out the recycling bin, and methodically removing books from the shelves.
Or maybe you spend too much time on Facebook, too little time doing your hair, too much money on the heating bill and not enough on pedicures.
Perhaps you look in your pantry and see nothing except a bag of lentils.
Then you turn around and the little boy has a piece of kitty litter in his mouth. Again. Meanwhile, the kitty ate some kale out of your shopping bag and proceeded to throw it up all over the white carpet. Also the repair guy never came by like he was supposed to.
Well, shit. You’re not feeling very fancy today, are you?
Another post pre-written to hold us over while I’m in the early days of motherhood But I think it’s a good one! Can’t wait to be back blogging “live,” but in the meantime Danny has gained weight, had a great checkup with his pediatrician, and I’m eating like mad to keep up with a 9 lb. baby’s demand for food!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but frozen yogurt shops are kind of a big deal. I see one every time I turn around. Like Pinkberry. Are you familiar? Because apparently they’re in 14 states and 6 countries outside the U.S. And they have a catchy little song with lyrics like these:
“It doesn’t feel like I’m cheating when I’m eating it”
That’s funny, what would I be cheating on? Oh, that’s right, I’m supposed to be on a diet aren’t I? Obviously I have a weight problem or at least a body image issue. Because…I’m a woman. And I imagine the name “Pinkberry” is targeted at me. So it’s nice to imply guilt right off the bat, because women should feel guilty about how much they weigh and what they look like. Right. Thanks, Pinkberry! I almost forgot!
Weekends are getting interesting around here. We started with Newborn Essentials – a class to teach us how to swaddle and take rectal temperatures. Oy. Next up is Breastfeeding Basics. And Hypnobirthing. And Stroller School. I suppose it might be overkill, but it really does make me feel calmer to learn from an expert. Anyway, to keep the weekend fun and relish our quiet time while we have it, I whipped up some delicious and filling pancakes that are way, way better than anything out of a box.
The win for me? Whole grains and no added sugar! Otherwise, pancakes put me directly into a sugar coma and I’d be starving an hour later.
The win for my husband? They’re so good he doesn’t even bother adding maple syrup. I couldn’t believe it, but it happened. (This is a man who adds maple syrup to a glass of milk to drink with dinner. What the…?)
I was so excited to get my knife set in the mail from CSN stores this week. If you need anything, from a new bag to a bar stool to a baby crib, check ‘em out. I got my package 3 days after I ordered. Sweet.
Ok, so I’m a little embarrassed. I usually proudly display my meals and recipes…but today I’m a little sheepish. Truth be told, I absolutely suck at cooking fish. Especially nice, beautiful pieces of fish. Either it’s undercooked or overcooked or falling apart or something else unattractive.
But you know what? It always tastes good. So, whatever.
I last posted about seafood in June when I was pregnant but not telling yet. I knew that wild salmon was good for my growing baby. Yet in my first trimester I felt so sick that after one serving of that meal I couldn’t even think about it without gagging. Ha! How’s that for a secret! My own blog post made me want to puke every time I looked at it.
You’re trying to be healthy. Maybe you’re trying to lose weight. What if I offered you something fried for dinner? What if I offered you something refried?
Aughh! Fried food? No way! “Give me some steamed mixed vegetables,” you’d cry.
And then you’d eat those steamed vegetables and hate every bite because of course you don’t want to put any butter on them and anyway they’re totally mushy. Now you’re depressed and craving some chocolate.
So what if I told you that frying food wasn’t really such a bad thing? That it’s been done for centuries before heart disease was an issue?
Impress your friends, impress your family and impress yourself with the most simple meal ever: roasted chicken. I mean, duh. Isn’t this the kind of thing moms have been making forever? But for some reason cooking a whole chicken has gone out of style. Boneless, skinless chicken breast for 3x the price has crept into the public mindset as the “it” way to do chicken.
And why? First of all, everyone is afraid of the fat. This is good fat, people! Chicken skin? Yeah, I’m pretty sure humans have been eating that forever. If you feel like worrying about fats I suggest you turn your attention to margarine and “buttery” spreads with god-knows-what inside. Remember, you need fat!
The other reason I think no one wants to cook a whole bird? Icky! It looks like a bird! It has arms! And legs! Grosssss.
Oh my god, just writing that probably put 5 lbs. on my hips, right?
It all goes back to being afraid of fats – all fats. Well I have to tell you, if you haven’t already heard: You. Need. Fat.
But, bacon? Omigosh I can’t even imagine… Trust me, I hear you. When my mom cooked bacon I would literally pick away the fatty parts and just eat the meat. As if that were saving me from untimely cellulite.
Here’s the thing. What’s more natural than eating fat from an animal? Our prehistoric ancestors hunted down their meals and I’m pretty sure they’d have eaten it more or less whole. Not a lot of Crate and Barrels selling knives to create choice cuts of meat.
That, to me, is preferable to canola oil which is highly refined from the rapeseed and bathed in hexane. No thanks.
So I encourage you to think about the quality of your fats, where they come from, and how long human beings have been consuming them. Heart disease has only become a major issue in the past few decades – pork fat has been around forever. I tend to place the blame for sickness on stress and a processed food diet full of refined sugar.
Let’s be clear. I don’t eat bacon every day. Some people do, but I like to do things in moderation. I know that’s not sexy – it sounds better if I say “Lose 10 lbs. today on the bacon diet!!!” But an all-or-nothing culture is one of our biggest problems. I agree with Michael Pollan about eating mostly plants.
But sometimes, eat bacon. Buy the best quality nitrate-free bacon you can find. It’s real food. And it’s freaking delicious.
French Fish Stew (aka Cotriade)
adapted from Mark Bittmans’ How to Cook Everything
1/2 cup minced bacon (uncooked)
2 large onions, chopped
1 lb. potatoes, unpeeled and chopped
1 lb. sweet potatoes, unpeeled and chopped
1 tsp. dried thyme
6 cups chicken stock
1 lb. white fish steaks or fillets, cut into chunks
1/2 head curly or dinosaur kale, chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
Fresh parsley, chopped for garnish
Salt + pepper to taste
1. In large pot, cook bacon at med-high heat. Stir and cook until it’s crisp, then use a slotted spoon to remove the bacon and set aside for later. Leave the fat in the pot.
2. In same pot, on medium heat, cook onions until soft. Add potatoes and sweet potatoes and stir well. Add salt, pepper, thyme, and stock.
3. Cook until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.
4. Add fish and kale, cook another 5-10 minutes until fish is tender but not falling apart. Add lemon juice. Ladle into bowls and garnish with parsley and bacon bits.
My best and craziest memories of college are of living with 7 roommates in a gigantic apartment just a block away from campus. We were something like 42 steps to our favorite bar – yes, we counted. (Those were black strappy heeled steps, by the way.)
We drank a lot, hosted a lot of parties, and when we were hungry we went to Pizzeria Uno’s. Unless it was one of those quiet nights…the kind where we all tried to use the stove at once and fit on our black pleather wraparound couch to watch a movie.
A favorite dish? Lean chicken breast pan-cooked in balsamic vinegar. No fat. Man, did that make for a tough pan to wash!
I don’t know why. I guess because it was easy and ‘healthy.’ Mostly I noticed then, and I still notice now, that people don’t like to handle raw chicken parts.
Well, we talk a lot about eating ‘whole foods.’ Is chicken a whole food? Yes. But not when you remove the skin, the fat, and only eat the breast. That’s a partial food. It’s like eating white rice or white bread. It’s missing something. When we eat animals, if we eat animals, it is a good idea to try and eat all the edible parts. Not to mention, you’ll get much more nourishment for your dollar. Boneless skinless chicken breast costs maybe $4.99/lb. but a whole chicken is something like $1.99/lb. Worried about the fat? It actually helps your digestion. There are plenty of scary, industrialized fats out there to avoid, but this isn’t one of them.
So here’s a meal that uses a whole food. 1 whole chicken. That’s right. A whole chicken, skin and all. The good news is that you don’t have to cut it up or dance around the kitchen with it – you just toss it in a pot. Can you do that? Good. Because it’s really worth getting the healing minerals and nutrients of time-tested homemade chicken soup every now and then.
And the pot will be a lot easier to clean than a pan with burnt balsamic vinegar. Trust me.
One last word on chicken. The industry is, in a word, vile. Supermarket chickens grow in cages crammed full of birds who have their beaks ripped off to avoid pecking each other to death. It’s disgusting. I implore of you to look into these practices if you are not already familiar. And when you buy animal products, look for those which were raised with some respect. That might mean you buy from a local farmer, or maybe you just choose Whole Foods over a conventional supermarket. Do what you can. Remember – you are what you eat. A healthy bird makes for a healthy you!
Chicken In A Pot This is more like a rustic stew than pure chicken soup. The beauty is that you can toss in whatever you like and not spend hours preparing ingredients.
1 whole chicken (3-4 lbs.), rinsed
10 cups water
1 bay leaf
10 peppercorns
1 Tbl. sea salt
3 onions, peeled and quartered
4 carrots, unpeeled, cut into large chunks
Optional ingredients: celery, leeks, corn, fresh herbs, rice, etc.
Inside your whole chicken there should be a bag containing the neck and organ meats. Take these parts out and combine with water, salt, bay leaf and peppercorns in a large stock pot. Simmer for about 30 minutes, then remove the chicken parts.
Add the whole chicken and veggies that require long cooking. (For instance, you can wait to add corn or spinach) Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Using tongs, carefully remove chicken and veggies from pot and place in a baking dish. Keep warm in the oven while you strain the remaining broth into a large bowl, discarding the peppercorns and bay leaf.
Pour broth back into pot. Add quick-cooking vegetables now, and any pre-cooked ingredients (like leftover rice.) While this simmers, take your chicken out of the oven and use a fork and knife to separate the wings, legs, thighs and breast meat. You can keep the wings and legs intact, but discard all other bones. For more about carving a chicken, see these steps.
Place chicken meat and veggies back into the pot, stir, adjust seasoning, and serve piping hot.
Ok I know what you’re thinking. Bathing suit season is here and the LAST thing any of us needs is more fat.
But, I’m here to tell you that yes, that’s exactly what you might need.
Let’s start at the beginning, which for me was in high school. When I started attending my private high school, all the girls were worried about eating fat. For lunch they ate a plain bagel and drank Snapple. These were all skinny girls. So, to my 14 year old mind, the no-fat plan made sense.
I started refusing to eat anything that had fat grams on the label, much to my mother’s chagrin. What about olive oil, she said? Olive oil is healthy!
I said, “Mom, olive oil has 14 grams of fat per serving.”
She said, “There’s no fat in eggs! Eggs are good for you!”
I said, “Moooommmmm, there are 5 grams of fat in every egg! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I was irritable, as most teenagers are. I also got sick a lot. When I went away to college, my digestion went from bad to worse. I had fainting spells and we wondered if something was wrong with my brain. Tests were always negative. I was fine, according to doctors.
After college I had a conversation with my mom about how I was feeling. I told her that I just didn’t feel healthy, even though the doctor said I was. I didn’t feel hearty. I was weak. My mom asked if I was eating well. I said yes, but I felt like no matter what I ate it just wasn’t being absorbed. I could drink water all day and still feel dehydrated!
I was totally functional through all this. It’s not like I was lying in a hospital bed. I was working and going to the gym and by all standard measurements…I was fine. Except I was so NOT.
Skipping ahead a number of years, I’ll just summarize by saying that I’ve cleaned up my diet a whole lot. I started eating whole grains and lots of vegetables. Processed food got the boot. Duh, I mean, you’re reading this blog so you know that.
But fat? I still didn’t want to be fat. I kicked sugar and was happy to cook with just a drizzle of olive oil.
And then came weekend 3 at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Sally Fallon (author of Nourishing Traditions and founder of the Weston A. Price foundation) was our guest speaker. I had heard about the work of Weston A. Price and admired his research. If you are unfamiliar, dig into the WAP website, pronto my dears!
Basically, Dr. Price found that people from indigenous cultures all over the world ate very different diets but had common health characteristics. They did not suffer from the diseases we see in the West. When people from the villages moved to industrialized areas and were exposed to processed foods for the first time, THAT’s when they got sick.
What does this have to do with fat? Well, as Sally explained, traditional diets ate meat – with all the skin, organs and fat included. Some cultures ate little meat but plenty of milk – whole, raw milk. In short, naturally occurring fats were an important part of their daily diets.
You’re probably thinking, yeah, but I don’t run after yaks all day. Those people burned more fat than I do. That’s why they could eat all that stuff.
Maybe. But the truth is, our bodies require a certain amount of fats to function. Here’s an excerpt from Nina Planck’s Real Food that struck me so important I just have to share it with you:
The vital role of fat in digestion is illustrated by an obscure condition called rabbit starvation, caused by a diet exclusively of lean protein…the symptoms are lethargy, nausea, diarrhea, weight loss, and eventually death. Without fat, digestion literally fails and you starve – even if you’re eating plenty.
Bingo! That was me! But there’s more.
Did you know that your brain is 60% fat? And that mother’s milk has a greater proportion of fat to protein than cow’s milk? Fats are clearly very important for human development. Not only that, they’re important for fertility too! And I’m not just talking unsaturated fat here…I’m talking full-on saturated animal fats. (From healthy sustainably-farmed animals of course.)
But heart disease is our #1 killer? How can we eat fats knowing that they are going to clog our arteries?
Let’s refer back to Weston A. Price. His findings very clearly showed that natural, traditional foods led to good health but processed, modern foods were to blame for a sharp decline in a population’s health. So, is it really about saturated fats being bad for us? What about our man-made hydrogenated margarines that have proven far more deadly than any fat that comes from nature?
Sally Fallon told us that she eats half a stick of raw, organic butter in her oats every morning. She said that the fat in dairy products is essential for absorbing vitamins and calcium. That low-fat dairy products leave the body questioning where the rest of the whole food is…leading to ice cream cravings!
I did a little experiment. I started adding butter to my oats. A tablespoon, not a stick. Boy was it gooood! And within days, lines I had begun to accept in my face started to disappear. I’ve gained no weight and I’m now cooking with butter at almost every meal, along with other naturally occurring fats like coconut oil, olive oil and sesame oil. I’m avoiding man-made modern fats like margarine and canola oil. This all seems to be in line with eating organic produce – it’s like getting back to pre-industrialized times in the food supply.
Turns out that of course my mom was right. I’ve been trying to convince her to enroll at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition because she’s a natural.
If you don’t believe any of this talk about fats, just consider the past 20 or 30 years and the plethora of low-fat/no-fat products in the supermarket. By now, Americans should all be very slender!
But we’re not, are we? Shoot. There goes THAT theory.
I always thought Nutrition Fact labels were pretty straightforward and truthful if you took the time to read them. After all, they are government mandated! In many cases that may be true but yesterday I was watching an informative presentation by nutritionist Jeff Novik. It may still be available for viewing here, but I believe it’s only free to watch for a short while.
One of the products discussed in the presentation is Pam. I came straight home to my pantry and pulled out my own bottle of this “Fat Free” cooking spray. I don’t use the stuff often, but I remember college roommates spraying it all over their cooking pans and food. It even comes in different flavors. And best of all, the labels claim that it is fat free, or for fat free cooking, or similar claims. Sure enough, the savvy label reader will see on the Nutrition Facts label, that this product has 0 calories, 0 calories from fat, 0 grams of fat. Amazing! Spray away!
Now keep reading down to the ingredients list and you’ll see that this product is mostly olive oil. A fat free olive oil? How can that be? Amazing! Spray away!
Turns out that the government regulation states that if an amount is less than .5, it can be rounded down. Great–so each serving of Pam spray has less than .5 grams of fat. Pretty good, right? Wander up to the top of the label where the serving size is listed. 1/3 second spray. That’s the serving size! Is it even humanly possible to spray something for 1/3 of a second? Even a conservative estimate of a ‘serving’ in my guess would be 2-3 seconds.
But by making the serving size this small, all the fat and caloric information is so minute it can be rounded down to zero. Sadly, genius.
I help busy people find balance in their over-worked, over-stressed lives. Trust me, it's not an all-or-nothing situation! A few shifts in diet and lifestyle can rock your world like they did mine. (And if you're a health coach, I can help you do the same for your own clients.) Read on
But I think it’s a good one! Can’t wait to be back blogging “live,” but in the meantime Danny has gained weight, had a great checkup with his pediatrician, and I’m eating like mad to keep up with a 9 lb. baby’s demand for food!
