Seafood! And SOUP!

So as I am sure you have seen before, I am really into the idea of making a big batch of something and then having it for the whole week. It's really good for my busy schedule and frees up my time so I am not CONSTANTLY cooking. This week I made New England Clam Chowder. I went though a bunch of recipes online, and found one on epicurious that boasted being totally authentic. It said in the recipe that real New England Clam Chowder should be simple and thin like milk, rather than rich and creamy with tons of ingredients.

So here is what I used:
1 can of crown prince boiled clams
1/2 bottle of crown prince clam juice
1 1/2 cups of organic half and half
1/2 yellow onion chopped
A bit of olive oil to saute the onions
3 Smallish red potatoes, cubed
 a bunch of shallots chopped
1/2 cups chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste
3 strips of uncured bacon

So first what I did was fry up the bacon in a pan and put it on a few paper towels. Then I chopped it up into chunks

 Then I began to fry the chopped onions in the bottom of a soup pot. After they softened I added the broth, shallots, and potatoes. I then simmered it covered for 10 minutes, and uncovered for 15 minutes until the potatoes were soft and most of the stock was evaporated or absorbed into the potatoes and onions.

Then I added the drained the clam juice, putting it aside, and rinsed the clams in a strainer. I then added the clams clam juice from the can, and about half the bottle of clam juice. I let that simmer for about 3 minutes.

Then I added the half and half, and bacon that I had prepared earlier, and let that come together for about five minutes. It was great!

Ready to go!

This recipe provided about four servings.

Another great seafood to make are sardines. They are really high in Omega 3, and taste great when they are good. You can get good brands of canned ones like crown prince or others (just make sure it's not packed in a low quality oil like cottonseed) Also, if your sardines come in oil you might want to USE the oil in whatever you are making, since some of the Omega 3 oil will probably leek into the oil used to pack it.

Even better though, are fresh sardines cooked on the grill, although I couldn't be there, my parents made sardines last weekend on the grill and my dad sent me this picture of him cooking them!

Jealous!

 If you can't get all your Omega 3 from fish, as so few of us can, make sure that you are taking a high quality fish oil supplement. If you are getting a bargain price you want to be wary because fish oil, like any other oil, can go rancid and then it is doing more harm then good. If you are getting fishy burps, its a sign that your fish oil is rancid.

So enjoy your seafood everyone!

Name something better than SNACK TIME! Nope, you can't!

Snacks are just great! How often are you working on something boring and distract yourself with a snack? All the time, if you are me. Many experts say that it is important to try to eat more than just 3 times a day, so it is good to have healthy snacks around so you don't get driven into the vending machine routine.

Hey now.

Although there are a lot of simple snacks that are good like nuts, fruit and raw veggies, I thought I would provide an idea for if you want something new and maybe takes care of more of a snacky craving.

Last week, I made swis chard chips!

1) Preheat your oven to 350
2) I started out with a nice big bunch of organic swiss chard. You can also use another type of green like kale or spinach.

3) Wash and dry the greens and roughly rip in into sections, keeping in mind that it will shrink a little bit in the oven
4) Spread the greens out on a cookie sheet
5) Coat the leaves lightly in olive oil and toss them around for an even coverage.
6) Spread out the leaves on the cookie sheet, and send it into the oven for about 20 minutes! Check on it every once in a while. You want them to be crispy like chips.
7) After the leaves come out, sprinkle with sea salt.

THATS IT! So easy and tasty

PS, Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

My Favorite Breakfast

One thing that really keeps people from eating healthy is forgetting to eat breakfast. I know we have all heard it a million times, but it is really important to eat not only a breakfast in the morning, but a healthy breakfast that will also keep you satiated until it is time to eat again.

I for one, find that if I only eat fruit in the morning, I will be hungry again in a really sort amount of time. And when it comes to breakfast bars and breakfast substitutes you can just forget it.

This is the ingredient list from a Nutrigrain bar.

Another thing I hear a lot is that people are not hungry, or even disgusted by food, when they first wake up. I don't really see this as an issue because there are ways (like the recipe I am about to share with you) to bring an easy breakfast with you that make it possible for you to eat whenever you feel ready.

So here is a sweet potato quiche that you can make on a Sunday, cut it up, and freeze it for the week!

This is you cooking up your great breakfast

I got the original recipe from the Weight and Wellness website but I tweaked it a bit so this is how I make it.......

What you will need for 6 portions:
12 eggs
1 of the little cartons of whipping cream
1 large Sweet Potato
1/2 a chopped onion
1 bag of frozen spinach (you can use fresh too)
Olive Oil or Butter
Another veggie like Broccoli or Cauliflower, or some healthy sausage (whatever you like in your quiche, I like the Applegate farm sausage with apple!)
Some Cheese to sprinkle on top
Salt, Pepper, hot sauce and Garlic to taste

9X13 pan for the oven, and a big pan for the stove

1) So first what I do is I peel the entire sweet potato until you just have a big pile of peels.

Just keep going!

2) then I take the onion and begin to saute them in a big pan with olive oil and some garlic.
3)After a few minutes I add the potatoes and fry them until I basically have a big pan of home made sweet potato hash browns
4) While your potatoes are frying crack all of the eggs in a bowl and whisk them a little to break the yolks.
5) Add the cream and mix it in fully.
6) Take the 9X13 pan and grease it either with butter or oil.
7)Take the hash browns and spread them through the bottom of the pan. Try to make it even but it's okay if you have a few bald spots.
8)Take the Spinach and defrost it a little so you can work with it. You might also want to get any excess water out of it with a strainer. Then spread the spinach on top of the sweet potatoes.
9)add the eggs mixture, and then put in the sausage and other veggies you want to add.

Here are some fall veggie ideas that might be good ideas for add- ins

Bake at 350 degrees for about 35-45 mintutes or it looks golden(ish)on top.  When there are 5 minutes left you can add cheese to the top if you want to. This is a really great breakfast because it is healthy and also has a good amount of fat and protein to start your day and feel full for quite a few hours!

Enjoy!

OH MY GOODNESS OH MY GOODNESS!

So I was listening to my favorite show on the Radio, Dishing up Nutrition which I listen though a podcast. And I was listening to the menopause episode which I had missed a few weeks ago and all of a sudden I hear that they are making a shot out to my blog on the radio!!!!!!! I was so excited I started jumping up and down in my living room shouting! It was so unexpected!

So thanks to Dishing Up Nutrition! I find them so motivating to try to eat healthy and even though everyone slips up, they have been a HUGE part of my weight loss thus far. I love them and I can't wait to eventually have a phone consultation with them!

Now I am really motivated to keep this blog up since I might have people in the St Paul area looking at it! WOAH!

Busy Schedule Solutions

So I haven't updated in over a month! It's so sad but I just haven't had much free time since school started to keep up the blog. However, I have been trying to keep up with developing healthy eating habits, which in the end is what it's supposed to be about. It's not always easy, and requires a lot of planning.

A lot of people complain that they, like me, are too busy to make lunch and bring it to school/work. I think that this is one of the pitfalls for people trying to eat healthy, because they either end up not eating, or eating out which is very hard to control.

Healthy *LOOKING* muffins and the like start to look pretty good when you are on the run, hungry, and didn't pack a lunch. However, this really isn't what you want to be eating through the day (you can just ask my friend Martha, she was a witness and occasional causality to my former muffin addiction)

One thing that I find a real life saver is to make big batches of food, pre-package it into Tupperware and freeze it. Then I just pull it out through the week and everyone I eat with is jealous of me. It's great!

Tonight for dinner I came home (after a full day of school, just like you!) and made asparagus soup!

This is not the soup I made! But it looks just like it and I forgot to take a picture!

 

Here is what I did:

Ingredients: Asparagus, cauliflower, a can of chick peas (I think mine was around 10 oz), some butter, water, salt, pepper, garlic, and thyme

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: I originally was going to use a broth for the base, but obviously I didn't have time to make a broth at home. So I went to the deli under me and looked at the broth they had. College Inn was the only brand they had and it was FULL of chemicals including autolyzed yeast extract, which is actually a re-branded version of MSG. So be careful that you don't turn your healthy soup into a pot of chemicals!

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

1) I took a bunch of asparagus and cut off the white part at the end because I thought it would be too tough.
2) I took about 1/4 of a head of cauliflower and chopped it.
3) I boiled the two together in a pot of water for about 7 minutes with garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, and some REAL butter (This is all I had, but onions and other stuff would be good too)
4) I took out the veggies and put it in the blender with some of the water that I originally boiled it in (but not ALL of it, you sort of have to eyeball it to see how much is enough)
5) I added a whole can of chickpeas to add protein and thicken the texture
6) I blended it all and added more salt and pepper to taste, then sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on top

This was super super easy and I made enough for three meals. It probably doesn't really have enough protein to be an ideal dinner but I ate a lot of protein through the day today so I wasn't too worried.

So if you have time for Facebook and  showering and watching TV, you have time to make your meals most of the time. I'll admit that I don't ALWAYS have a lunch packed, but I try to do it at least four times a week or so. Now I need to follow my own advice and start blogging more regularly!

How much cooler are the french than us?

Prompted by my friend Connie's comment on my Seattle post, I decided to investigate and give my opinion on why America has such a different relationship with food than the rest of the world.

One example that is often referred to is the "French Paradox": how the French seem to be able to eat very palatable foods and as a population have a low heart disease and obesity.

Sign me up!

Although this is accepted to be true, I think it would be unfair to say that Americans are the only ones dealing with poor eating habits and obesity. America seems to have exported a culture of processed food that is now reeking havoc on previously healthy populations.

When I was in Italy I noticed that there was just as much processed packaged food in their grocery stores as there were at ours, and Italians have really welcomed McDonald's into their lives.

YEAH MCITALY!

As a result, most European nations are becoming increasingly concerned with a higher presence of obesity in their populations. I have even heard news stories reporting that there is even concern in Asia over an increase in obesity, especially among children.

Not only are the processed foods that we eat on a regular basis making us unhealthy, they are taking the fun and social aspect of nutritious food out of our culture. A family that prepares a totally home cooked meal every night in present day America is somewhat of a rarity. I am sure that it is no coincidence that the faster we consume and the less we cook, the bigger and less healthy we become.

I am actually reading a book that is highly relative to this topic. It is called The End of Overeating by David A Kessler MD. In it he discusses how Americans have literally become addicted through our brain's reward system to highly palatable, highly processed combinations of salt fat and sugar that leave us in a very tricky situation. We fall victim to food scientists' (who lets face it, know more about what I like and why I like it than I do!) and large corperations' brilliant ways of making us literally addicted and conditioned over eaters, having unhealthy emotional attachment to food, and losing a relationship with REAL food.

Evil scientist knows you can't resit!

And believe me, I KNOW how hard this can be to resist and I am not always successful. Knowing that it's not all your fault is helpful, but I think we need to find ways to really fight the odds. It is hard to plan meals and cook everything you eat yourself. The sheer availability of food at any time of day from any selection of lovely chain restaurants and convenience stores make success sometimes seem impossible. But if you have to make the choice between spending an hour on Facebook at night, or making sure that you cook something healthy and satisfying for the next days lunch, I think we should make an effort to prioritize eating healthy and enjoying eating food that we can be proud of, with people we care about.

Calorie Counting, striking a balance

I initially lost some weight by calorie counting. Basically, I would track EVERYTHING I ate as well as logging all of my work-outs and calculating my deficit. It could be time consuming but I really didn't mind too much. The problem is that this isn't a truly realistic way to lose weight and keep the weight off. Now that I am in school again, it is really hard to continue to calorie count.

Eating clan when you are always on the run really is hard, and I keep making resolutions to do better every day, but then something happens to mess it up. So this week (Friday to Friday) I want to try to see how closely I can eat to my healthy calorie counting ways and still lose some weight (hopefully 1 pound) without calorie counting. Hopefully I will be able to post often to report how this goes. Also, I want to try to not eat even a gram of refined sugar if I can avoid it and see how I feel. I have tried to do this a few times but I always mess up. It's amazing how food can just sneak up on you like that. This is Especially true if I wait until I am really hungry to eat, which I will have to try to avoid this week.