Just Another Meatless Monday -- Cauliflower with Lentils in Spiced Tomato Sauce

Today I had my usual smoothie for breakfast and chopped salad for dinner. For lunch, I had cauliflower with lentils in a spiced tomato sauce (which I'd made last week), with cucumber and tomato salaata, and plums for dessert.

I adapted the cauliflower and lentil recipe from Mostly Vegetables, a 1996 cookbook by Susan Costner that I've had for a long time. This dish has Indian flavors very similar to the dal I cooked last week.

Here's what I did:

1 head of cauliflower (about 3 pounds)
2 cups lentils
1 1/2 tsp turmeric
2 onions, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can diced tomatoes in juice
2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ras al hanout
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 jalapeno pepper, minced fine
chopped coriander leaves for garnish
lime wedges for garnish

I cut the head of cauliflower into small flowerets and roasted in a 350 F oven for about a half hour, checking after 20 minutes to make sure they did not burn. But I did want a little bit of browning to give extra flavor to the dish.

Meanwhile, I cooked the lentils (I used small, green French lentils) in plenty of water and 3/4 tsp turmeric. They were done after about 15 minutes. Again, I kept my eyes on them because lentils cook fast and I didn't want them to get mushy.

While the lentils and cauliflower were cooking, I cooked the onions in a little bit of water in a large pot, stirring constantly, until the water had evaporated and the onions were translucent. Towards the end of this process, I added the remainder of the turmeric (3/4 tsp), the garlic, coriander, ras al hanout, cumin seed, and jalapeno. When the water had evaporated, I added the can of tomatoes with their juice, and cooked this over medium-low heat until the cauliflower and lentils were done. I drained the lentils, then added the lentils and cauliflower to the tomato sauce and mixed everything together.

I've had this with and without the coriander and lime garnish, and I thought it was a lot tastier with the garnishes. Citrus adds a sparkle to a dish that is needed when you don't use salt. Also, when I make this again I would use 2 cans of diced tomatoes in juice, as the whole thing was a little dry (the lime juice helped that, too). This made a lot of leftovers; alternatively, I'd halve the recipe and cook the tomatoes in a saucepan and mix everything together in a bowl, rather than in a big pot. 

Chia Seeds

I first read about chia seeds in The New York Times back in May. Martha Rose Schulman’s Recipes for Health feature covered using chia seeds in smoothies. She refrigerated 1 tablespoon of the seeds in 4 tablespoons of water overnight, and used one tablespoon of the mixture in her morning smoothie.

Later this summer, I saw a bag of chia seeds in my local HomeGoods store, and bought a bag. With experimentation, I decided that I liked the chia seeds with more water, so lately I have been adding 2 teaspoons seeds soaked in about 6 tablespoons of water overnight in my morning smoothie.

According to the nutritional information on the Bob’s Red Mill website (they sell chia seeds), one tablespoon of chia seeds have 60 calories, 40 of which are from fat, a high amount of which is Omega-3s. They are also an excellent source of fiber and antioxidants. Bob’s Red Mill recommend a 1 to 6 ratio of seeds to water, so I was on the right track in increasing the amount of water relative to seeds.

I also add one tablespoon of ground flaxseed to my morning smoothie. Prevention magazine’s website has an interesting comparison of the nutritional value of chia seeds versus flaxseed, and gives flaxseed the edge when it comes to nutrition.

I’m not claiming that chia seeds are the next superfood, but I do like the fact that they make my smoothie thicker, and I’m pleased that they have additional fiber and omega-3s.

The End of Overeating

After reading Salt Sugar Fat, I checked The End of Overeating from the library again. I’d read this book by David A. Kessler, M.D., former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a few years ago, and I remembered that he discussed the same salt, sugar, and fat in the context of restaurant meals and fast food, such as Chile’s, Cinnabon, Hardee’s, Burger King, IHOP, etc. This guy spends a lot of time in airports and restaurants.

Dr. Kessler covers a lot of the same territory as Salt Sugar Fat, explaining why these ingredients combine to create irresistibly delicious foods and discussing the food and restaurant industries’ engineering and marketing of foods created to get us to eat more, more, more (and thus produce more profit for the food pushers). But he goes beyond that to discuss conditioned hypereating and the culture of overeating. He then provides steps to take to break the eating habits that have been created by our culture and food purveyors. Dr. Kessler himself struggles with his weight, so he is both extremely practical and kind in his discussion of how to break the habits of overeating.

The chapters are short, and the book is easy to read. The advice is practical. As it happens, eating plans such as Eat to Live and VB6 incorporate a lot of what Dr. Kessler advises. Eliminating processed foods, restaurant meals, and fast food goes a long way towards breaking the eating cues provided by hyperpalatable foods loaded with salt, sugar, and fat. Going back to whole foods, real foods, home-cooked foods can help reduce the conditioned response to salt, sugar, and fat that helped create the habits of overeating in the first place. Eliminating snacking and getting used to smaller portions of food can help, too.

Once you are aware of the engineering and marketing of food in the United States, you begin to see the insidious nature of the problem we are facing. We record the Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives marathon on the Food Network on Mondays and watch several episodes of Triple D in a row during the week. After reading Salt Sugar Fat, watching Triple D became almost a joke between us. Pulled pork? Check. Loads of cheese? Check. Lots of salt and sugar in the dry rub on the meat, the pan gravy, the biscuits, the sauces – everything – check. Butter, oil, lard, mayo, cream, sour cream, etc. Check. So it is not just the large corporation and the chain restaurants and fast food joints – it seems that everyone who sells food has caught on to the power of salt, sugar, and fat to keep us coming back for more. Judges on cooking shows chide the contestants for not salting food enough more often than they complain that the food is too salty. Reading the label on something as innocuous as frozen vegetables leads to the discovery of not only salt added to the peas, but sugar, too.

I don't mean to say that I am never going to eat processed foods again, or that I am never going to eat in a restaurant again. But I have found that totally staying away from these types of food has broken the hold that they once had on me. I also know that when I eat these types of food again, I am going to have to be careful not to get sucked back into eating them on a frequent basis. 

If you want to know more about the cue-urge-reward habit cycle and how to break it, I recommend reading this book.

In Defense of Food

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

These are the basic food rules author Michael Pollan devised, which form the basis for this small book. It was published in 2008 as a follow-up of sorts to his 2006 The Omnivore's Dilemma.

In the first part of the book, he discusses “nutritionism,” that is, considering food as the sum of its nutritional parts, which has become the basis of our relationship to food in the Western diet. He traces this way of looking at food from the discovery of the macronutrients – protein, fat, and carbohydrates – in the early nineteenth century, to the discovery of vitamins in the early twentieth century, through the nutritional science of today. As we learn more and more about the food we eat, it makes sense to me that we can’t possibly know all the components of each fruit, vegetable, grain, etc., because we are constantly learning new things about them all the time. It makes sense that we should look at food, not merely the components of food that we know about now.

In the second part of the book, he discusses the Western diet and the diseases of civilization, as well as the industrialization of eating, which he sums up in five concepts: (1) from whole foods to refined; (2) from complexity to simplicity; (3) from quality to quantity; (4) from leaves to seeds; and (5) from food culture to food science.

In the third part of the book, Pollan goes into detail concerning his basic food rules, defining what he considers to be food, as opposed to the foodlike substances that are the bulk of the contents of a modern supermarket, explaining why he suggests eating mostly plants, and giving suggestions concerning how not to eat too much. His personal rules of thumb do help someone living in the United States in the twenty-first century to counteract the Standard American Diet (SAD).

Reading this book will give you a different way to look at food, and some rules of thumb to think about as you consider what you eat. I highly recommend it.

 

Just Another Meatless Monday -- Afgan Carrot Hotpot

Here's Dr. Fuhrman's Eat to Live suggested meal plan:

                Breakfast: fresh fruit

                Lunch: salad, beans on top, and more fruit

                Dinner: salad and 2 cooked vegetables (1 lb.), fruit dessert

Here’s what I'm eating today:

                Breakfast: smoothie

                Lunch: Afghan Carrot Hotpot and Salaata

                Dinner: chopped salad, banana for dessert

I adapted the lunch recipes from The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian by Sally Butcher. The author is based in London, and the book has a decidedly English tone, but the measurements are all given in U.S. terms so no translation or conversion is necessary. I got the book from the library, and there are some other recipes that I’d like to try. Adapting the recipes I used to fit the Eat to Live principles was easy. I basically just omitted the oil and salt. I also subbed ras al hanout, a Moroccan spice mixture, which I had, for ground cloves, which I didn’t have.

For the hotpot, I just put the following in a large pot in this order:

1.5 cups chana dal (from Indian grocery)

2 medium onions, chopped

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

1 habenaro chili, ribs and seeds removed, chopped fine

About 1 inch ginger root, peeled and chopped fine

1 pound baby carrots

3 large tomatoes, chopped

1 heaping tsp ground turmeric

1 heaping tsp ground cumin

1 heaping tsp ground coriander

1/8 tsp ras el hanout (recipe called for ground cloves, but I thought this would do)

1 Tbs tomato paste

1 Tbs red wine vinegar (recipe called for 2 Tbs sour grape juice (a specialty item) or 2 tsp vinegar)

Then I poured a good 2 cups water over all and brought to a boil, then simmered for an hour.

The original recipe instructed to fry the onions in a little oil, then add the garlic, chili, and ginger, followed by the spices, carrots, and chana dal when the onion had softened, followed a few minutes later by the tomato chunks and paste. Then salt to taste plus the sour grape juice/vinegar and water. Omitting the sautéing actually speeded up the prep work; although I probably lost some flavor this way, I upped the spices a bit from the original recipe to compensate and the hot pepper was still plenty hot enough, even though I took out the seeds and ribs. If you don’t like hot, I suggest a milder chili.

When I make this again, I’ll probably just use a can of diced tomatoes and their juice, plus enough water to make a little more than 2 cups liquid, instead of the fresh tomatoes. Also, the author says you can make this with pumpkin instead of carrots. I’ll probably try using butternut squash in the fall. I made this on Friday and had the last of it for lunch today. It was still very good and plenty hot.

As for the Salaata, I just chopped:

1 cucumber, seeded

Fresh tomatoes chopped to equal the amount of cuke

3 green onions/scallions, using both white and green parts

A good handful of cilantro

A good handful of mint

2 jalapeno peppers, some ribs and seeds removed (chopped fine)

Then dressed with juice of 1 lemon and popped in the fridge until dinnertime.

The only real change I made to the original recipe was to omit the salt and a chopped small onion, as I thought the green onions would be enough onion-y flavor. I finished off the last of this today, too. If I made this again to go with the hotpot, I’d probably omit the jalapeno so that the salad would be a refreshing counterpoint to the heat of the chili in the hotpot.

If you’re not following the Eat to Live plan, Sally Butcher suggested serving the hotpot over plain white rice, with yogurt and bread in addition to the salaata.

This was my first time trying these recipes – or any from this book. I don’t buy cookbooks much anymore, but I do get them a lot from the library. This one’s good. I'll definitely make this hotpot again. In addition to recipes, it has interesting sidebar articles. And the breezy tone of the author makes it fun to read.

 

Salt Sugar Fat

Michael Moss is an investigative reporter, and he has written an eye-opening book on food manufacturing and marketing. Salt Sugar Fat goes a long way in explaining why eliminating processed foods from your diet helps you lose weight and improve your health. It also helps explain why both Dr. Fuhrman and Mark Bittman experienced a profound change in food cravings after following their respective eating plans for a while.

Want to know why you can’t eat just one potato chip? Most food in American supermarkets is engineered to get you to crave it and to buy more of it. Food companies have figured out the “bliss point” of their sweet products, creating cravings for sweets. While there is a point at which a food can taste too sweet, there is no upper limit on fat. No wonder almost anything – including an ice cream sundae – can be improved by adding bacon. Salt is another ingredient that creates food cravings. And the interplay between these three ingredients – salt, sugar, and fat – can be very powerful.

Food manufacturers play on our desires for convenient, inexpensive foods (as well as our biology), and load up their products with these three ingredients to give us more and more of what they have conditioned us to crave. Salt, sugar, and fat cover up the unpalatable taste of all the other ingredients and processes used to make processed foods more and more inexpensive and convenient. Even the inventor of Cheez Whiz, who loved the stuff and ate it daily, discovered one day in retirement that Kraft had removed real cheese from the product and left it tasting to him like “axle grease.”

The food manufacturers have succeeded in their quest for more and more sales and profits. Americans now eat triple the amount of cheese and pseudo-cheese than we did in the early 1970s. Cheese consumption has increased 3 pounds per person per year since 2001. Consumption of sugar-sweetened soda more than doubled in the 30 years since the 1970s, and although it has since tapered off from its high of 40 gallons per year per person, consumption of other sweet drinks, such as teas, energy drinks, and sports drinks, has increased.

This book is full of interesting stories about people involved in the food business, fascinating facts, and insight into food manufacturing corporations. I guarantee you will be amazed by what you learn from this book. You will never look at a food label or supermarket shelf in the same way again.

VB6

There's no question that eating according to Dr. Fuhrman's "nutritarian" principles is not always easy. If the thought of going 100% vegan 100% of the time seems too daunting, Mark Bittman has devised a flexible plan that is not nearly as demanding to follow. He calls it VB6, and the title of the book tells it all: eat vegan before 6:00 [p.m.].

This slim book explains why he began eating this way and the considerations he took into account in creating this way of life for himself. He discusses the problems of both the Standard American Diet (SAD) and various weight-loss diets, as well as why this eating plan worked to help him lose weight and have better health. He gives lots of tips on how to make this eating plan work for you and your particular lifestyle, and nearly half of the book consists of recipes. And Mark Bittman's recipes are good! As usual, many of his recipes give several variations on the theme (which increases their usefulness), and he includes some very basic "building block recipes," including big-batch rice, grains, and beans, and "fast and flavorful vegetable stock" to make sticking to this plan easier. He includes a 28-day meal plan for those who want more structure in getting started

The VB6 plan is easier and less strict than the Eat to Live plan. Bittman allows oil even in the vegan part of the day, and you get to eat whatever you want for at least one meal per day, too. But he sides with Fuhrman in encouraging home-cooked rather than processed foods, and lots of fruits and vegetables over meat and dairy products.

Even with this more flexible, relaxed eating plan, Bittman reports losing weight and having better blood tests and overall health. He also reports that his dinnertime cravings began to change after only a few weeks of eating vegan meals for breakfast and lunch -- he needed less food to feel satisfied, was happy with just a few bites of dessert (or none at all), and ate such items as pizza and burgers less frequently. 

Right now, I'm happy following the Eat to Live plan. But I can see how VB6 would be much easier for me to follow while traveling, for example.

Eat to Live

The See Your Folks website got me thinking about life expectancy, so I looked for a few life expectancy generators.  SSA has an easy one at SSA.gov. And it is useful in deciding when to begin your Social Security payments. There's a longer one at UPenn. The 2 life expectancy generators came out a year apart when I used them, so the quick SSA one is probably just as good as the longer one, but it is interesting to see the factors that influence your longevity when you fill out the longer questionnaire.

Eat to Live, by Joel Fuhrman, M.D., got my interest when I really began trying to eat healthier. It provides an easy-to-read explanation of how the Standard American Diet (SAD) falls short on nutrition and promotes bad health. Most chapters begin with a short anecdote about a person who had good results following Dr. Fuhrman's "nutritarian" plan. It's simple. For the first six weeks, eat fruits, vegetables, and beans, with some nuts and ground flaxseed. You can add some starchy vegetables and whole grains and avocado, but dairy products, animal products, fruit juice, oils, and snacking between meals are off-limits. You completely eliminate processed foods.

Eat to Live also includes meal plans, recipes, and a final chapter answering Frequently Asked Questions. Although the first six weeks are strict, the Life Plan does allow for 10% deviation from the basic plan -- about 200 calories per day of animal, oil, or dairy, if you wish, or about one meal per week, so you can still enjoy Thanksgiving turkey and pie, or other holiday and special occasion meals.

One of Dr. Fuhrman's mottos is: The Salad is the Main Dish. So I took that to heart last summer and ate chopped salads with a variety of colorful vegetables and fruits for lunch and dinner, and a smoothie with greens and blueberries for breakfast. Summer is an easy time for salads. There are lots of fresh veggies and fruits available, and the farmers market provides plenty of choices. Even though I ate basically the same meal daily, the variety of fruits and vegetables kept me from becoming bored with my food. But I lost my taste for salads as the weather became cooler last fall, and fell back into my old eating habits.

I didn't feel quite as energetic and regained my lost weight, even though I tried to keep up my exercise routine. Going back to a "nutritarian" way of eating this summer has given me back my energy, and I feel much better. My blood pressure and blood test results have improved, too. And the weight is falling off again, without hunger pangs.

See Your Folks

A small item in today's Washington Post Health section highlighted See Your Folks, a website created by four guys in less than 24 hours. Using life expectancy data from the World Health Organization, the site -- seeyourfolks.com -- tells you how many times you will see your "mum and dad" before they die.

Why did they create this site? Well, in their own words:

• We believe that increasing awareness of death can help us to make the most of our lives. The right kind of reminders can help us to focus on what matters, and perhaps make us better people.

Try it. You might be surprised at the results.

PS -- Mom will be happy to know she is already living 5 years beyond her life expectancy.

Arlington County Fair

It's that time of year again: county fair season. Arlington may be small, and we may not have any agriculture to speak of, but we do have a county fair. It has everything you could want -- fair food (most important!), games, rides, entertainment, and exhibits. I spent an enjoyable evening at our county fair.

 

 

 

FOOD

 

 

EXHIBITS

 

 

GAMES

 

RIDES (ok, mostly for kiddies!)

 

 

RACING PIGS (they're fast!)

 

Go have some fun at your nearby county fair.