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    raw blueberry pie with microwaveable filling and graham cracker crust

    This mostly-raw blueberry pie is a snap to make and very versatile--the filling microwaves in a few minutes, and you don't even have to bake the zippy gingered graham cracker crust--perfect for a hot Fourth of July and all summer long.

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Taking the chaos out of batch cooking

Posted on March 28, 2014 by DebbieN

When my husband and I were much younger, we stayed a week with the children of some friends who wanted to go off skiing on spring break. In preparation, the mother batch-cooked a huge dutch oven each of chicken breasts and brisket for the week–just for their two young children and us. She left elaborate instructions about how to reheat it (I’m not sure she trusted us to know how to cook anything). I can tell you that even in my 20s I thought that was an awful lot of meat, and by the end of the week we were really, really tired of it. Even the kids.

On the other hand, a friend out here who has something in the range of adult ADD has a hard time cooking anything that takes longer than about 5 minutes because she’s so easily distracted she forgets to eat. Keeping track of multiple cooking steps  is genuinely daunting to her, as it is for many people with ADD and ADHD. She’s taken the expensive brown-rice-bowls and organic-microwaveable-freezer-meals-for-one route (keeping brand names out of it for the moment) but wishes she could find a better and cheaper way to deal with dinner. I suspect she wishes my east coast friend could supply her with a couple of dutch ovens’ worth of meals…

I bring up these two friends because lately I’ve started running across Meals-for-a-Month how-to books. They pop up every once in a while in the cookbook aisles of your favorite bookstore (or the 641 section of your local library). They’ve been reappearing since at least the early 1970s, when a major recession under Nixon led people to rethink their household budgets. Now these books are back in “For Dummies” and “Everything” versions, complete with tie-ins to About.com and other popular web portals.

The basic premise sounds ideal: shop and cook just once a month, the books promise, and you get a month of frozen real-food reheat-and-serve meals at your convenience, and you still save money. I keep hoping there’s some kind of solution in them for people short on time, cash and kitchen tolerance, but so far I’ve been disappointed.

Read one of these books and you quickly realize why almost no one follows them for long. First, if you hate to cook, you’re going to hate cooking marathons even more. Especially if they look like all-kitchen circus-style nightmares of boiling chicken and roasting AND stewing beef and slicing ham and cheese while also cutting vegetables while mixing sauces while separately packaging just enough gingersnaps for each package of the sauerbraten (assuming you even like sauerbraten or know what it is anymore) and finding the right sized bags and labels and and and and….

If you batch-cook the way these books suggest (in the intro section “game plan” complete with NFL-style charts), your once-a-month cooking scheme will probably take you all weekend (shopping alone is a full day) and wear you out from dawn til dusk. One weekend a month. I bet this is where most people flipping through to see if it’s the solution to their dilemma quietly shut the book, put it back on the shelf and edge away as quickly as possible.

These books also seem to replicate the worse aspects of frozen tv dinners, only without the convenience. The food’s too elaborate and long-cooking–mostly heavy meat stews and casseroles taken straight out of the 1950s Americana repertoire, and the scale-ups still only stretch to two or three meals for a family of four. If you go that route, you’d need ten recipes, and a huge freezer.

Also, there are no, and I mean no, shortcuts. I’ve looked. Each main dish is an hour or more by conventional methods. The reheats alone typically take at least half an hour and some extra cooking steps–and this is after having thawed the packages overnight in the fridge. Have the authors never heard of a microwave? Wasn’t avoiding repetitive, excessive cooking the whole point of once-a-month cooking? Do you really want to have to plan so much and follow so many steps–especially if you’re on the ADD end of things? Or even if you aren’t.

It would make so much more sense to simply buy a big resealable bag of frozen chicken parts and some bags of frozen vegetables and large cans of beans and tomatoes and boxes of spaghetti and relearn some cheap, easy and fast-cooking techniques from your college student repertoire. Wouldn’t it?

Needless to say, this is not the way people who traditionally have to cook big on a tight budget cook. Most people don’t have as much money at any one time as they’d need to pay for a month’s worth of food in a lump sum, nor do they generally have a dedicated extra freezer to fit it all in.

But batch cooking itself can work out and still treat you gently on a more modest scale. You just need to choose what makes sense to cook in multi-meal batches, and not do every possible big job all at once.

Unless you hunt and dress venison for the winter or have a garden with enough produce that you need to harvest and put up in bulk at the end of summer to keep it from spoiling, you don’t really need to do marathon-style cooking. Continue reading →

Filed under: Beans and legumes, books, cooking, frugality, Grains, Microwave tricks, Pasta, shopping | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Taking the chaos out of batch cooking

Starting with Breakfast

Posted on February 24, 2014 by DebbieN

“The Well” blog at the New York Times has posted a new interview with pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig about his new book, the Fat Chance Cookbook, and about the possibilities for treating obesity in children with a better, less processed diet.

Two or three takeaways from the interview surprised me by echoing things I’ve either thought or written about here since my daughter became a Type I diabetic four years ago.

Almost always, we see an obese kid come in with an obese parent. And when the kid loses weight, the parent loses weight, because the parent actually changed what’s going on in the home.

We do something called “the teaching breakfast.” Every kid comes in fasting because we’re drawing blood. So they’re all hungry. They go to the teaching breakfast with their parents – it’s six families all at a communal table – and our dietitian spends an hour with them. The dietitian narrates exactly what’s on the table and teaches the parent and the kid at the same time….We make sure four things happen. No. 1, we show the parent the kid will eat the food. No. 2, we show the parent that they will eat the food. No. 3, we show the parent that other kids will eat the food, because they have other kids at home and they have to be able to buy stuff that they know other kids will eat. And No. 4, we show them the grocery bill, so they see that they can afford the food. If you don’t do all four of those, they won’t change.

Also, and I think this is my favorite:

…my wife is Norwegian… When she’s mad at me, she bakes…My wife has learned by experimenting that she can take any cookie recipe, any cake recipe, and reduce the amount of sugar by one third, and it actually tastes better…. And you can taste the chocolate, the nuts, the oatmeal, the macadamia – whatever is in it.

Right on!

Back to the top, though, I’ve got to say I love the idea of the teaching breakfast. My one concern is the reality of time cost for families with school-aged children, because eggs and vegetables, two of the (sometimes) inexpensive staples of the UCSF clinic’s teaching breakfast, take more time to prepare than a bowl of cereal, and require more cleanup. On weekdays, that might be a real challenge, especially for families with two working parents and/or long drives to school. A lot of the families I know in this situation (long drives and no school buses being a common problem in Southern California) are used to tossing their kids in the car with some kind of makeshift breakfast to eat on the way–often resorting to bagels, pop tarts, or bananas, none of which are great choices.

Perhaps if the dietician showed some simple microwaveable 5-minute meals like oatmeal or an easy vegetable-filled frittata (with some of the yolks left out) that can be made the night before and refrigerated? The plain yogurt with fresh fruit idea is also quick and simple but not especially cheap–these days a quart of plain non-Greek yogurt goes for $2.50 at Trader Joe’s, almost the same as a gallon of milk, and costs even more at the local Ralph’s (west coast Kroger affiliate), but it serves only 4 if each serving is a whole cup. Cereal with milk is a lot cheaper–but it could certainly be better cereal, high in fiber and low in sugar and salt, and measured by the cup or on a scale before pouring it into the bowl to make sure you don’t get more than you think you’re getting.

Cutting up fruit and vegetables takes time that parents usually feel they don’t have. And berries, which don’t need cutting up, are relatively expensive fruits, even when frozen. So showing parents a couple of “instantly grabbable” ways to serve the less expensive fresh (or fresh-frozen) fruits and vegetables instead of Froot Loops might be key.

A simple “just wash and nosh” approach would probably be a good start. I know I generally rail against buying precut, expensive little baggies of manicured (and dried out) vegetables in the supermarket, but the big bags of “baby carrots” that don’t require peeling and are finger-food size would be an okay starting point to get kids and parents to think about vegetables as a good snack or even breakfast choice. My daughter lived on them for lunches (along with a PBJ on whole wheat and an apple) for most of her grade school years, and even though she has (and will probably always have) a mean sweet tooth, she still seeks out raw green beans, wedges of red cabbage, roma tomatoes and broccoli or cauliflower branches to break off, rinse under the tap and nosh on after school.

Filed under: books, breakfast, cooking, Dairy, DASH Diet, Diabetes, frugality, kid food, nutrition, shopping, Vegetabalia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Starting with Breakfast

Instant Pickles, Hold the Salt

Posted on February 5, 2014 by DebbieN

Fast-marinated cucumbers, half-sour kosher dill style

One of the things that kept me motivated for blogging SlowFoodFast after the first fine careless rapture was my indignation at how popular over-the-top salting was becoming in popular food magazines, cookbooks, blogs and TV shows as chefs became celebrities, and how dangerous I knew it was for most people to eat that way regularly. A large part of my career a couple of decades ago was exploring the history of dietary sodium in cardiovascular research and writing about the DASH Diet.

What I’ve missed the past few years is just how many people, particularly younger ones, are starting to take up the challenge of cooking low-sodium and blog about their trials and successes. There’s a whole community out there, and they’re cooking pretty well. It is definitely possible, and generally easy once you get past the “how do I read a label and cook from scratch” aspect.

I just ran into Sodium Girl (aka Jessica Goldman Foung)’s blog-based cookbook, “Sodium Girl’s Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook”. Diagnosed with lupus and kidney failure in her early 20s, she turned around her diet by dropping her sodium intake drastically to give her kidneys a rest in the hope they’d regenerate, and it worked. She’s been innovating with low- and near-to-no-sodium versions of favorite foods ever since, working with the National Kidney Foundation and other organizations. Her book, like her blog, is attractively photographed, full of cheerful writing and surprise takes on favorite foods.

One of the substitutions she makes that I have to approve of is a molasses-and-vinegar-based “faux soy sauce”. So I wasn’t the only one!

Another of her successful experiments is pickles. She goes for sugar-and-vinegar-style pickles, which makes sense, since they have no added salt in them, but I can’t help it–I have always cringed at sweet pickled anything. If it’s supposed to be a pickle, for my money, it’s gotta be a half-sour kosher dill and nothing but (or else an Indian lime or mango achaar pickle, or Moroccan preserved lemons, but that’s another story and still pretty high-salt at this writing. I’m working on it, but not yet holding out a lot of hope…)

Anyway, looking through Foung’s book reminded me of a simple, hearty and low-to-very low sodium version of my favorite pickles in the world. Continue reading →

Filed under: appetizers, books, cooking, DASH Diet, Food Blogs, Food Politics, Food TV, frugality, history, nutrition, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Instant Pickles, Hold the Salt

Pastry again: vinegar adds the tender touch

Posted on December 31, 2013 by DebbieN

Most people, if faced with a quick baking dilemma, probably go to the supermarket and buy cookies or brownie bites or something.  And it makes sense, kind of, although with a food processor, you can make pretty good cookies and brownies in less time than it would take you to fight over holiday parking, much less elbow your way through the store.

The corresponding shortcut for most people who do bake would probably have to be pie crust–to say nothing of puff pastry dough. For years I’ve been looking for ways to make a pastry dough that is close to puff pastry–flaky and light and puffy–without being as heavy on saturated fats and calories. Not the easiest combination.

Fillo (purchased, I’m not enough of a DIYer to make my own yet and my kitchen’s too tiny for rolling and tossing a huge thin sail of dough the right way)–fillo is good for a lot of things, but it’s so obviously itself and not pie dough, tart dough or puff pastry. It’s also pretty salted–I always have to comparison-shop to remember which commercial version has the least sodium per ounce (they vary within brands, because some are intended for savories and the others for sweet pastries. I think the savory ones are much too salty and use the less-salted ones for spanakopita and so on as well as for baklava).

After having made a variety of pie doughs–standard flour-butter-salt-water, olive oil tart dough, rugelach butter-cream-cheese dough, and even a puff pastry recipe with about half the fat called for in the classics–plus croissants that I finally got right–I can say my latest experiment is something of an eye-opener for me.

All of these worked okay as doughs, but except for the olive oil tart dough, which I use routinely for quiche, none are really all that light-tasting or actually light in terms of fat content and overall calories. And rolling them thinner than the standard 3/8 inch (thinner equals less dough and fewer calories per serving…) sometimes leads to a tough pastry. The fact that I tend to use bread flour instead of all-purpose or cake flour is probably at fault as well, I’m sure, but I’m mostly a bread baker and not exactly a perfectionist, so how many different sacks of flour do I really want hanging around my cramped galley kitchen at any given time?

A week or two ago I checked out an older cookbook (late ’80s) on Armenian food and tried to puzzle out the Armenian, Lebanese, Turkish and Russian influences–it’s a real mix. I was looking for a recipe for bureka dough, and this book had one.

The recipe for spinach burekas had an accompanying (and aging, over-tinted ’80s-style) photo of a browned and flaky dough wrapped around a log of improbably-green spinach filling on a platter lined with too-green lettuce and too-orange tomato slices underneath. But other than the color enhancements, the spinach log, kind of like a spinach Wellington, looked pretty nice.

To my great surprise, the dough was quite similar to some of the ones Joan Nathan had in The Jewish Holiday Kitchen.  The key ingredient differences from my standard pie doughs are:

1. slightly more butter for the amount of flour than for standard pastry dough (to be expected–you want it flakier, you probably need more fat in the dough) though a lot less than for rugelach or puff pastry

2. a little vegetable oil as well

3. an egg. Nathan’s “muerbeteig” egg dough for a plum pie calls for a hard boiled egg yolk, of all things, but the one here is raw. I’m not sure what it’s for, exactly. Perhaps for leavening or some other structural purpose–maybe it helps the dough puff into layers and hold them better with less hard fat than puff pastry requires?

4. a quarter-cup of dry white wine–which I didn’t have, only red, which would have turned the dough gray…so I substituted half apple cider vinegar and half water–the vinegar because Nathan had used it in a dough with egg. Why wine or vinegar? I think–don’t quote me–it’s the acidity, which breaks down gluten a little and tenderizes the dough. Certainly it did in this case compared to my usual experience.

So anyway–this dough came out surprisingly well. It doesn’t puff anywhere near as much as puff pastry–at least not while rolled out as thin as possible, and I haven’t tried it thicker–but it’s light, crisp and tender at the same time and not heavy or greasy. It’s unsweetened and mostly unsalted and would be equally good for savory pastries, Wellingtons and other encased main-dish things (like pot pies, coulibiac of salmon, and spinach-type fillings) where it’s the top layer or a wraparound, and for sweet ones like the impromptu almond paste and apple tartlet at the bottom of this post. Continue reading →

Filed under: baking, books, cooking, Desserts, fruits, haute cuisine, holiday cooking, nutrition, nuts, Revised recipes, wine | Tagged: , , , | Comments Off on Pastry again: vinegar adds the tender touch

Celebration Update: “Mashup” Does Not Mean “More Potatoes”

Posted on December 20, 2013 by DebbieN

Two or three Thanksgivings ago I railed (as I often do) at the lack of imaginative and good-looking (both aesthetically and nutritionally)  vegetarian offerings for Thanksgiving main dishes. I wasn’t having a whole lot of luck being impressed by what I saw in the newsstand food glam magazines, vegetarian and vegan cookbooks, food blogs, my local newspaper food section, or even the freezer section of my local Whole Foods. So I came up with a list of suggestions for vegetarian centerpiece dishes.

This year, we had the double-double challenge: Thanksgiving fell on the first day (though only the second evening) of Chanukah for the first time in over 100 years (1860s was the last time?) and won’t again for another 77,000 or so (well, some sources say there’ll be another Thanksgivukkah moment in about another 100 years and then the big schlep out to 77K. Either way, for most of us, this is “that moment”).

For me, mashing up Thanksgiving and Chanukah just this once gives us some ideas for rethinking the kneejerk popular way of celebrating the big important holidays in general. Maybe even exploring what’s so vital about holidays and family and clearing away some of the thoughtless excesses.

Chanukah came so early this year that we had nearly no chance at buying or making tons of presents before having to schlep ourselves up the I5 to my in-laws’, so none of us was expecting anything but silly socks, a paperback or so, and maybe a stop in Solvang for Danish marzipan-based sweets on the way back home. That’s all to the good–Chanukah was never really meant to be a “more presents all the time” kind of holiday, it’s about freedom of religion, freedom from outside oppression, and gratitude for the miracle of having enough resources to go around. Thanksgiving is about those things too.

Unlike most years, I didn’t find a two-page checklist that Martin Luther would be jealous of, listing all the acceptable giftees our daughter wanted, posted on the fridge. Partly that’s because we wouldn’t be home to see it, and partly because she already had her bat mitzvah in June and she’s old enough now to feel like it’s more than plenty in the way of gifts. Plus by now she knows me–I have a strong tendency to roll my eyes and cross most of the stuff off the list with the familiar yearly litany of:

“Library…library…library…library…not wearable at school or synagogue, so what’s left, the mirror?…we have an unusually skilled cat and I don’t really want to think about hamsters in that context, do you?…library…library…not until you practice piano…I know I promised you could get your ears pierced eventually…maybe next month…”

It’s just a matter of practice. And a willingness to channel Sylvia (one of my favorite cartoon characters,  by the great Nicole Hollander).

Anyway, I have no idea if any of my ideas the last time I riffed on vegetarian centerpiece dishes gave someone else ideas–I hope so–but recently I ran across a vegan cookbook with dishes that look like they’d be just right for a celebration. It’s too late to recommend for Thanksgiving or Chanukah, but maybe for Christmas and onward? Continue reading →

Filed under: books, cooking, DASH Diet, Food Blogs, holiday cooking, nuts, Revised recipes, shopping, Vegetabalia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

10 (or so) Warning Signs of a Half-Baked Diabetes Cookbook

Posted on November 4, 2013 by DebbieN

For the past two months I’ve been scouring the library and bookstore shelves in search of practical guidelines for preventing and managing Type II diabetes with  diabetes-careful meal plans.

I have two goals for myself:

1. Get down to a healthier weight by eating less and exercising more–this is the big one with the best correlation to reversing prediabetes. And it’s going okay but slowly.

2. Eat balanced meals with somewhat less carb per meal, fewer free sugars and fewer calories overall than usual. This is the easier one generally…as long as I keep a food diary. Luckily, I know how to cook and I’ve been doing meal planning for a Type I diabetic child for four years now, so I know how to count carbs. And when I don’t, I have a copy of the American Dietetic Association’s handy, simple and cheap $3 or so guide on the shelf. And a link to the USDA nutrition database for the exotic occasional items like chestnuts in the shell (note to self, about 5 grams apiece).

But I still wondered if the diabetes and weight loss cookbooks I see around are solid and I’ve just been too lazy, arrogant or impatient to take them seriously all these years. Hence the trips to the library.

Because no doubt about it, the diabetes cookbook scene is burgeoning. There are loads of good-looking cookbooks out with pretty, gourmet-looking recipe photos and promises of perfect blood sugar management amid the desserts on the cover.

Here’s the short version of this post: a read through most of these books is NOT encouraging. All the popular diet book gimmickry of the past 40 years seems to have been transferred to a lucrative new target (read: gullible victim) market, complete with bright, shiny new drug company advertising and sponsorship potential on the coordinating web sites.

Considering that there’s no precise required diet for diabetes, just guidelines for budgeting meal carb totals and keeping some kind of commonsense balance between starches, fiber and sugars, even the premise of prescriptive diabetic cooking guides is a little shaky to start with. But what’s actually being presented as guidance in these popular books is far from that approach.

Even cookbooks affiliated with or endorsed by organizations like the American Diabetes Association and so on fail some pretty simple commonsense tests for honesty, accuracy, consistency, or relevance to standard public health guidance on preventing, managing and reversing Type II diabetes by way of diet. And if you don’t already know your way around carb counting and portion size measurement, they’re extremely confusing. Sometimes even on purpose.

So here are the main common flaws I’ve discovered in most of these books, with a few books singled out for personal ire and bemusement. You might want to consider these as warning signs if you’re looking for actual guidance to get you through.

10 Warning Signs that Your Diabetes Guide Cookbook is Half-Baked

1. The Dessert First approach to diabetes management. Telltale sign: does it show cake or ice cream on the cover? About half the books I scanned do. They treat desserts and snacks as a top priority, as though that were what diabetes control is all about. As though sweets were somehow necessary at every meal, or even every week. None of them ever say, “just stick with a small apple or orange most days. No recipe required.” Actual endocrinologists recommend keeping desserts occasional and snacks un-glamorous and limited in carb.

1b. Aside: Many of the dessert-first books show cheesecake on the cover, usually a 1/8 to 1/10 cake portion–a pretty hefty wedge by any standards. This is a come-on–cheesecake is usually high in fat calories, so it’s rarely a good pick for anyone attempting to lose weight (the main strategy for Continue reading →

Filed under: books, cooking, Desserts, Diabetes, Eating out, Food Magazines, nutrition, top 10, unappetizing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 10 (or so) Warning Signs of a Half-Baked Diabetes Cookbook

Fifty, or “Sugar Shock, Part II”

Posted on October 9, 2013 by DebbieN

I’m back, though a little bummed out. I didn’t post anything at all in September. There’s a reason for that. No, it’s not because I turned 50 last month (which I did). No, it’s not because I rebelled and declared against cooking anything ever again (which I almost wish I had, even though most of what I cooked was pretty good).

It’s because my routine physical showed up with a higher-than-normal-for-nondiabetics A1c even though my fasting blood glucose was under 100. The A1c measures the fraction of hemoglobins (the red blood cell proteins that include iron atoms and transport oxygen) with glucose molecules stuck to them. There’s always some level of glycosylated protein in the bloodstream, but above a certain threshold it means your average blood glucose for the previous 3 months or so has been over 100.  Not a good thing at 50. And when I borrowed my daughter’s old glucose meter and tested myself before breakfast a couple of days in a row, I saw why my A1c had been up–my fasting glucose was now hovering about 105, 110, even though it didn’t happen to be up on the day I tested at the lab.

Don’t that just figure, I thought. Happy birthday to me.

So I’ve been pretty PO’d and somewhat panicked. I do NOT want to become a full-blown diabetic. One in the family is more than plenty, thanks. Even though all the finest news outlets announced today that Tom Hanks is now diabetic. Not a huge comfort.

I think of myself as eating a generally healthy diet. I know full well how to count carbs, having had to for the past 4 years. My blood pressure’s good. I walk nearly every day. I know how to balance a meal.

But the Type II diabetes prevention and management advice I can find in the popular diabetes magazines and cookbooks (and online sites), even the ones endorsed by the American Diabetes Association, always seems to be ludicrously lax and useless compared with what we already have to do at home.

I’ve spent the past month reading up and seeing why the popular diabetes cookbooks and magazine recipe sections seem so useless–or even deceptive. Next post, coming up this week. You won’t believe what I found in most of them (other than all the pharmaceutical and sweetener ads, of course).

But for now, back to basics. Can I do the simple common-sense stuff they tell you (without actual instructions) at the doctor’s office to back away from diabetes risk?

Marion Nestle has pointed out that in large studies, the factors with the highest Continue reading →

Filed under: books, cooking, Diabetes, Food Politics, nutrition, unappetizing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fifty, or “Sugar Shock, Part II”

What she said

Posted on May 3, 2013 by DebbieN

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. I’m about to admire and recommend an article by LV Anderson of Slate.com.

Against foodies: Alison Pearlman’s Smart Casual reviewed

Yes. LV Anderson, the Slate columnist/editor of “You’re Doing It Wrong” infamy, the one who so often makes unnecessary, fussy, time-consuming and sometimes even adverse recommendations for how to “fix” some fairly common and popular foods like chili or muffins. Or guacamole. I’ve disrespected quite a number of her columns over the past year or two, and so have many Slate readers.

But her review of local (LAish) professor Alison Pearlman’s new book on the shallowness of foodieism is really good. It’s thoughtful, sharp and thorough without being annoying.

Anderson has clearly been stuck in an awkward niche for a year or more; her cooking tips are not much to write home about but her book review is, so I’m doing it.

Filed under: books, Eating out, Food Magazines, Food Politics, Food TV, haute cuisine, shopping | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Pinned for Purim!

Posted on February 25, 2013 by DebbieN

Thanks to Yael Shuval for choosing my Low-Carb Hamantaschen for her board at Pinterest.com.

Three years ago I developed almond-meal based hamantaschen for my daughter, who had been diagnosed with Type I diabetes only a couple of weeks earlier and needed something that was low enough in carb that (at the time, anyway) she could actually have one or two when all the other kids were having theirs and without having to get an extra shot of insulin.

Almond meal has only about one-fourth as much carbohydrate per cup  as wheat flour, so it seemed like a good substitute. To our surprise, although the dough was a little finicky to work with, the hamantaschen came out tasting pretty good, and they were indeed pretty low carb, about 4-5 grams per mini-hamantaschen. Granted, they were also pretty small, but it was a symbolic triumph in the first few weeks and made us all feel like being diabetic wasn’t going to be the end of having fun.

Now that my daughter is on an insulin pump, getting an extra shot is no big deal, though in our experience the pitfall is that it’s now just a little too easy, especially for a preteen, to “eat anything you want, at any time, without thinking about it, as long as you program the insulin for it” which is one of the less responsible marketing messages in Medtronic’s brochure for teenagers (note: the pump itself is pretty good, but it still doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful about what you’re eating). Those sour gummy heart candies the teacher handed out for snack earlier this week and left on my daughter’s desk, for instance….well, candy never seems like as much food as it really is, and I think my daughter gained a valuable lesson when she added up what she’d really eaten…she wouldn’t be the first one.

It’s always good to have a general plan in place for holiday eating so you don’t overdo the treats or eat an entire meal’s worth of carb in just a few cookies or candies or whatever…what can I say, we’re working on it.

Still. In the last year or two I’ve mostly gone back to making standard hamantaschen based on Joan Nathan’s classic cookie-dough recipe, which I like a lot and which looks and tastes much, much better than the dry, pasty-white horrors at the annual Purim carnival.

hamantaschen1

What I like about the standard flour-based recipe, other than that it tastes and looks good and is easy to work with, is that I can roll the dough out very thin and get crisp, delicate hamantaschen that are a decent cookie size but still hold together nicely and are not extravagantly carb-laden, particularly if the fillings are reasonable and you don’t eat ten at a time (the big challenge). They’re not as low-carb as the almond meal ones, but they still work out okay–about 7 grams apiece for a 1.5-2″ cookie. They taste good even made with pareve (nondairy) margarine instead of butter.

The LA-area idea of hamantaschen usually involves M&Ms, colored sprinkles, anything completely artificial. I bet gummy sour hearts (this afternoon’s culprit) would be a huge hit too. I don’t think they’ve heard of either prune or poppyseed out here in at least a generation.

Traditional fruit or nut fillings are a much more decent bet for carb, and they taste better (and look nicer too, because I’m not 6 years old and don’t insist on rainbow colors anymore). They’re also easy to make from scratch in a microwave or on the stove top so that you can decide how much sugar to put in them. Continue reading →

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You must read this. Take an hour if you have to.

Posted on February 20, 2013 by DebbieN

Today’s New York Times has an excerpt from investigative reporter Michael Moss’s forthcoming book on the processed food industry’s push to engineer addictive foods. It’s a long article, more than 12 pages, but well worth the read.

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food – NYTimes.com.

Filed under: books, Diabetes, Eating out, Food Politics, history, kid food, nutrition, Oddities, shopping, unappetizing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on You must read this. Take an hour if you have to.

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