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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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A salad in winter: counterintuitive comfort food

Posted on December 29, 2014 by DebbieN
box of winter salad

If you skip the lettuce and choose more robust vegetables, you can make a big box of salad in minutes and keep it crisp several days in the fridge.

It’s gotten cold here. Ok, so no one else is pitying us; we had 80-plus degree weather only last week, but now there’s a very dry, sunny cold spell setting in, it’s in the 50s daytime, 40s at night, and Southern California doesn’t do insulation that well. Or ski jackets. Or wool.

On the upside, it’s been cold enough so that I can run the oven and bake–a rarity in Pasadena this year. [OK again: prepare for a couple of digressions from the main topic]

I made a big round spanakopita for a Chanukah party, quick pizzas for my daughter and her friends and calzones for me and my husband, rosemary and sesame bread, and rye bread–which is still in the attempt stage; I didn’t have a properly developed sour and wasn’t scrupulous about weighing out and getting the hydration and gluten ratios right and all that the first time around, and it collapsed in the oven…

I’m determined to get the sour and the rise textures right, so now I’m following the Inside the Jewish Bakery instructions more closely, having met and been impressed by one of the authors. It’s a matter of some urgency: my grandmothers are no longer alive to schlep good deli or bread out here on a visit, Trader Joe’s has broken ties with the really good bakery that made serious “pain miche” half-rounds that tasted like kornbroyt, none of the commercial rye breads in SoCal (or most of the country) are anything more than tanned white bread, and I’m desperate for the real thing–tough, chewy, tangy, caraway-laden, with a serious crust. Before my genes start going beige and I start deciding Bing Crosby was a really good singer.

[True unexpected fact here: a church choir director I know says that because of all the practice sessions, she and all her colleagues get serious carol fatigue by about two weeks before Christmas every year. I thought it was just me avoiding the mall, but no.]

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about comfort food, because winter cold brings on the desire for heavier dishes–stews, starches, cheeses, meat and potatoes, and more starches, and the winter holidays bring their own calorie-laden version of cheer to the table with abundant puff pastry, eggnog, latkes (potato pancakes), sufganiot (jelly doughnuts), cookies, fruitcake, and all the rest of it.

Not too many people think about salad as a comfort food this time of year. Potato salad, maybe.

And yet…it’s really not very comfortable to find you’ve gained five or ten pounds in a month when you didn’t mean to, and New Year’s is coming with an actual dress-up-like-a-grownup-with-a-life party invitation. If I’ve managed not to succumb to the excess so far this year, it’s only because I’ve been cautious-to-paranoid about eating latkes and sufganiot last week and even my typical penchant for cheese and dark chocolate (not together!) has me thinking twice. I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to regain the weight I lost last year–even though it was “only” ten pounds, it was hard enough, and like many people, I could use another ten down before spring without having to work too hard.

So salad is what I have in mind at the moment. Yes, there will also be stew–this week, spicy vegetarian eggplant and chickpea stew, because I made a vat of it and stuck it in the fridge. Very hearty, filling, warming, and all that winter-holiday-recipe-talk, yet not very devastating diet-wise, and doesn’t make you feel like you need another nap pronto. Plus once it’s made, it’s really fast to reheat in the microwave. As I discovered yesterday, a mug (nuked less than 2 minutes and eaten on the run) can power me through a rushed non-cook evening–something I don’t do often or well–of ferrying my kid to the movies at the mall with her friends. During the very unpleasant after-Christmas sales season. What can I say–when put to the test, it was faster than fast food and twice as effective.

If only salad were like that [finally back on topic]. I’m not generally a cook-for-the-month kind of person, but it seems to me that if a restaurant salad bar can get away with making blah bulk salads that sit out for hours, surely I can do a bulk salad that looks and tastes lively and stores nicely for a couple of days in the fridge without going bad. Chop once, eat twice, right? Continue reading →

Filed under: DASH Diet, holiday cooking, nutrition, salads | Tagged: , , , , | Comments Off on A salad in winter: counterintuitive comfort food

DASH is US News & World Report’s “Best Overall Diet”

Posted on January 7, 2014 by DebbieN

US News & World Report asked a panel of nationally recognized nutrition, diet, cardiovascular health and diabetes prevention experts to rank 32 popular diets. DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) topped out as the overall best, including for long-term weight loss and maintenance.

The article and rankings online: Best Diets 2014 | US News & World Report

Where the experts complained–sort of–was that following it requires eating more real food and fewer boxed processed meals. So it’s technically “harder” to do than Lean Cuisine, Jenny Craig, and so on. They also said that buying produce is more expensive than eating out at fast food restaurants all the time. I’m not sure where they’re shopping or how they’re counting. But from my experience and checking out current fast food prices for a family of three, shopping relatively smart and unchic and sticking with the cheap nutritious bulk vegetables rather than the fashionable or precut, prebagged ones in the foodie magazines that cost three times as much–I’d have to say no, it really isn’t more expensive for what you get. Especially if you count the extra gasoline per trip to the fast food joints on a daily basis.

And I’m not happy that a nationally acclaimed panel of nutritionists–or the editorial staff, I’m not sure–seem more than a little veg-phobic. Buried somewhere in the blather–I mean, expanded description of the DASH Diet and how they ranked it–is the distinct suggestion that it’s too much work and too unrealistic to expect people to prepare and eat–you know–fresh unprocessed vegetables and fruits themselves. They actually put in the phrase that it’s too much “gruntwork” unless you can hire a private chef to do your cooking for you. Makes you wonder how they were raised–probably on a steady diet of Pop-Tarts.

Filed under: cooking, DASH Diet, Diabetes, Food Politics, nutrition, Vegetabalia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on DASH is US News & World Report’s “Best Overall Diet”

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”

ANDI Scores, Whole Foods, and diet scheme cha-ching

Posted on February 7, 2012 by DebbieN

If you’ve taken a walk through your local Whole Foods Market in the past year, you’ve probably seen a stand with purple and green information sheets listing foods in order of “ANDI Top 10 for Produce”, “ANDI Top 10 Super Foods” and so on. Coordinated recipe cards, a suggested shopping list, and an attractive-looking book round out the offering. And the produce and bulk bins sport matching ANDI score labels. It’s a whole system. But is it right, or just another fad?

What is the ANDI Score system, anyway, and who owns it?

ANDI stands for Eat Right America ™’s Aggregate Nutrient Density Index, a proprietary nutrients-per-calorie scoring system that rates for foods from kale to cooking oil and everything in between on a scale of 1 to 1000 points.

The ANDI scoring system started with Dr. Joel Fuhrman, the author of the diet book Eat to Live. On his home page, Fuhrman describes himself as a family physician and nutrition researcher.  His diet, which he calls “nutritarian” (and you can become a nutritarian too by signing up) is a highly prescriptive weight loss regimen that focuses on high-value vegetables and fruits and eliminates most meats, fats and carbohydrates. His evaluation of vegetables as high-scoring and processed foods, meats, starches and so on as low-scoring seems only common sense.

Fuhrman’s site claims hundreds of articles and interviews as well as numerous appearances as a nutrition expert on national TV. The site also prominently mentions his two US Nationals pairs figure skating wins back in the 1970s. Does he need to have that information on there if what he’s promoting is serious, science-based dietary advice? Altogether, the site has a very infomercial feel about it, with lots of testimonials from members who’ve lost over 75 pounds with before-and-after photos. Fuhrman himself looks very fit and tanned and taut-faced–maybe a little too much? Maybe it’s just the heavy pancake makeup that infomercial packagers are famous for plastering on their experts’ faces.

Eat to Live is a popular book. Fuhrman’s Kindle edition of Eat to Live is the #700-ranked download on Amazon.com. His web site has something on the order of 4000 subscribers, whose questionnaire responses he mines for some of his journal articles. According to one of the journal papers, his audience is about 65% female, 71% married, the largest proportion college-educated with household incomes over$100K.  (At this point, I thought, bingo, the perfect infomercial audience. This is clearly a commercial diet with legs. But wait, there’s more…)

Ahem! Enter Eat Right America, a company started by a businessman who became a fan of Dr. Fuhrman’s. The founder figured there must be a good way to automate the multi-nutrient density calculations for a wider variety of foods and developed a proprietary algorithm based on nutrient values in the USDA’s NAL database. What makes the ANDI algorithm attractive, the company says, is that they weight these calculations per calorie, not per serving. Finally, they claim, you’re getting the “right” comparison of nutrient density for the calories.

But a closer look at the the diet and menus offered on both the Eat Right America and Fuhrman web sites raises a few warning flags. Scan the ingredients list in the Eat Right America 3-day sample menu and you see frequent uses of high-priced fruits, vegetables and grains like quinoa (no surprise there about why Whole Foods might be happy with the shopping list) as well as some trendy and expensive ingredients that don’t sound all that nutritious. Dates? Avocado? Coconut?  Sun-dried tomatoes? Cashews–one of the lower-fiber and more expensive nuts, incidentally. Those are usually extras, snacks, not staples, even in a vegan diet.

More seriously, the menu designers seem to have a penchant for bottled carrot juice. They put 7 whole cups of it in a bean stew that feeds 10. Now, carrots, whole carrots, are fine raw or cooked into a stew. They have fiber and vitamin A and in whole form are relatively low-carb as well. But juice them, and you filter out the fiber. You concentrate the vitamin A and carotenoids about 3-4-fold, well beyond the RDA–risking vitamin A overdose–and you concentrate the sugars. What would ordinarily be a bean and vegetable soup with a reasonable amount of carb per serving–about 15 g per half cup or 30 g for a full cup–quickly rises, with the addition of a big 7-cup dose of carrot juice in the pot (NB also much more expensive than plain carrots) to 75 grams. That’s the amount of carb my diabetic daughter would figure for an entire holiday meal that includes a decent-sized slice of cake or pie.

Some of the Eat Right America recipe nutrition counts look like the ingredients as listed don’t quite account for them. The carb is high–occasionally the sodium doesn’t add up right either. And the overall protein is low. In the vegan versions on Fuhrman’s site, which prescribes a six-week starter regimen of a pound of vegetables a day, a pound of fruit, and a cup of beans, the protein is also incomplete or close to it. No grains, and no dairy or meat or fish. No tofu. Avocado and flax seed, two darlings of the vegan world, are recommended to supplement the caloric intake so you don’t lose too much weight (which I thought was the point, but maybe not for a whole six weeks at a time).

All these recommendations flow from the ANDI scores of the food and produce some logical puzzles. Somehow, you never see plain tofu or fish or cheese or yogurt. Apparently they don’t score as high as avocado. How is this possible? Isn’t avocado pulp high-fat and not too exciting as a vegetable?

So the next thing to check–is the ANDI food-rating method right? If you’re judging solely on the micronutrients list, which is what Eat Right America claims to be weighing into its ANDI scoring formula, no it isn’t. Continue reading →

Filed under: books, cooking, DASH Diet, Diabetes, Food Politics, nutrition, shopping, top 10, Vegetabalia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Weighing in on kitchen scales

Posted on September 15, 2011 by DebbieN

Digital kitchen scale

Farhad Manjoo, better known for his columns on computer and phone technology, has now tackled kitchen tech for the New York Times in his  ode to the electronic kitchen scale.

And while I applaud the general idea that it’s a valuable tool–after all, we use ours daily–I’m both stunned and unsurprised at the same time at the limited perspective he shows [chorus, because he’s a boy]. For Manjoo, as for the food bloggers he quotes (J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen), using a kitchen scale is about cooking more precisely and with fewer measuring cups, spoons, bowls, etc. Which is fair enough, I suppose, if you’re really worried about whether you already cook well, or if you have ambitions for exactitude.

But why do most Americans who actually have a kitchen scale get one in the first place? The fact that our kitchen scale came with a “The Biggest Loser” sticker on it might give you a solid clue.

We got our scale because our daughter developed Type I diabetes at age nine. Although we started out with half- and third-cup measures for simple foods like beans or plain pasta, we really needed to be able to calculate how much carbohydrate was in more complex or variable-density foods like breads and baked goods so we could give her the right amount of insulin for them.

Our school office manager said she’d gotten one on doctor’s orders after suffering a stroke in her early 40s, and she swore by it to help her cut back significantly on carbs and get her portions right.

Health concerns, not haute cuisine, are the most urgent reason to learn to use a kitchen scale. Not that better-tasting food isn’t important, but learning how to eat more moderately by measuring and knowing what’s in a serving would help at least two-thirds of Americans back themselves down off the high-BMI, pre-diabetic ledge. Especially since an international diabetes conference just reported something like 350 million people worldwide now have diabetes, double the number from 20 years ago.

Digital scales seem to do the most good, for us at least, in preparing homemade pastries or complex dishes (such as quiches or filled pastas). Our other best use is weighing out complex high-carb foods like pastries and candies that we’ve bought elsewhere, since they can be so variable in density or sugar content.

Unfortunately, weighing out treats is usually a big eye-opener for us as well as our daughter. That blackberry pie my husband lugged home from a specialty bakery run is worth a meal and a half of carbs if you do the picture-perfect wedge. We’ve started to cut our pieces a little thinner not just so our daughter doesn’t feel shortchanged but so we don’t get slapped when we step on the big scales the next morning.

Along the way the scale has helped us learn carb fractions for different foods and figure portions for them so it’s easier to estimate when we eat out.

It’s not so tempting to eat a whole doughnut for Sunday breakfast from the surprisingly good and inexpensive bakery three blocks away when you discover that even the relatively modest sugar twist (a real doughnut utterly unlike Starbucks’) represents 60 grams of carb, worth a whole meal without even accounting for a glass of milk, and the jelly doughnut is something like double that. And once you’ve eaten it, you won’t really feel full. Dangerous goods. Better to split the doughnuts and eat something more substantive with them.

Bonus points for my daughter’s practical algebra skills here: she’s figured out how to calculate carb fractions based on the nutrition labels for her own custom blend of low-carb, high-fiber cereal and ultra-carby granola on regular mornings, and she’s pretty fast by now. The extra flourish on the calculator may make me roll my eyes (and yes, at a certain point I’m always thinking, “Just pour it, already!”) but she’s having fun showing off. Even though she’s done the measurements and calculations often enough to be able to eyeball the amounts in a cup if she wanted to.

Because of course, it can be taken too far…

After all, you can’t lug a kitchen scale to school with you in your backpack every day. Most diabetics of longer experience count by eyeballing and estimating when they eat out rather than agonizing over every gram. You can get a little too involved and dependent on the precision a scale offers and forget how to trust–and train–your innate abilities.

Which brings me back to Farhad Manjoo’s column. There’s nothing actively wrong with the way he’s using his scale, I suppose–except for his exuberance about pouring flour straight from the bag into the mixing bowl, then pouring sugar straight on top of that. If you overpour, you should be taking some back out, but then what? Discard the excess sugar now that it’s contaminated with flour? Ignore the contamination and scoop it back into the sugar sack? Take it from a former lab rat, you’d have done better in the waste-not sense as well as the food safety sense to weigh each separately into a paper cup or onto a plate and then pour it in the bowl.

But that’s for things that really benefit from weighing. Manjoo’s using the scale to figure the exact portion of coffee beans to use each day. One of his interviewees is using the scale to weigh out the exact amount of sugar for his iced tea. These things would do fine by eyeballing–or just using a spoon like a normal person.

Do you really need a kitchen scale to figure out how much grated cheese you want in your mac and cheese? Wouldn’t grating it until it looks and tastes good to you work at least as well?

These guys have lost their trust in their ability to eyeball or cook by feel as they check and recheck their precision on the digital scale. Couple that with the cachet of doing as the French do (that is, when they bother to weigh ingredients instead of cooking by instinct, which they’re inordinately proud of) and you have a new American tech obsession parading itself as competence chic.

It’s like checking your e-mail every 20 minutes. Or bringing your new iPhone to the dinner table and looking up instant info on the Web every time your wife brings up a topic to which neither of you knows the answer. (AHEM!!!) Not that I’ve ever met (or acknowledged meeting) any certain husbands who got that obsessive over their apps. Trust me, it does NOT make them more competent or enjoyable conversationalists…even if they do occasionally bring home some serious pie.

Filed under: baking, cooking, Desserts, Diabetes, Eating out, Food Blogs, haute cuisine, nutrition, shopping | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Weighing in on kitchen scales