Jeremy Lin Got Me Drunk!

Yes, Jeremy Lin did get me drunk.  Let me explain.  The other night my husband and I sat down to watch the new basketball sensation along with the until-then-nowhere-on-my-radar-screen New York Knicks battle the L.A. Lakers.  I had never seen Lin play before, but had watched Youtube videos of him earlier in the day and he had piqued my curiosity.  So my husband and I sat down to watch the game and decided to make it interesting.  I mean, we were home alone, we had a new sports figure to get excited about, and a bottle of Whipped Cream flavored vodka just sitting on the counter.  A dangerous combination...  We decided, in our brilliant state of mind, to take a sip of this sweet luscious libation every time Lin scored a basket.  Just a sip, mind you.  Sounds pretty harmless, right?  Well, 38 points later, I was, ahem, a little unsteady on my feet.   By the 28th point, we were laughing hysterically at the amazing evening this young man was having, as well as at anything else that moved, breathed, or popped into our heads.  Congratulations to yet another fine example of a gentleman/athlete.  We love you, man!  But next time I think I'll stick to water, herbal tea, or lemonade.   You're just way too good for Vodka...

BTW, the nutritional components of Smirnoff Whipping Cream Vodka are 69 calories per ounce.  That's it.  No carbohydrates, fat, protein, or anything else good (or bad) for you.  Do I recommend it as a part of your daily diet?  No!   Like the antics on "America's Funniest Home Videos",  this was a "see, but do not do" event.  

Newton Fruit Thins - Are They A Healthy Choice?

There's a new cookie in town!  And it comes in 4 flavors:  Blueberry Brown Sugar, Cranberry Citrus Oat, Raspberry Chocolate, and, of course, Fig and Honey.  A serving is 3 cookies and contains 140 calories, 5 grams of fat, 1 to 2 grams of fiber, 2 grams of protein, and 95 milligrams of sodium.  Compared to Nabisco's last attempt to provide a healthy-choice fruit cookie (Mini Newtons), these are quite good!  I tried to get into the Mini's this past summer and did not find them worth the effort.  They were pretty tasteless - the fruit was almost nonexistent - and they simply did not satisfy.  But I digress....
We tried the Blueberry Brown Sugar and the Raspberry Chocolate flavors and gave 3 thumbs up (out of 3) to the Blueberry Brown Sugar ones.  They were nice and crispy and the blueberry flavor came through perfectly.   Would I buy them again?  Yes.  The Raspberry Chocolate ones were rather disappointing.  They tasted like "bad chocolate" with an aftertaste that made it seem like the raspberry was trying to sneak through.  Until I told my husband and son that there was raspberry in them, they didn't even know it was there.  We all gave that flavor a thumbs down.  Cranberry Citrus Oat held no appeal for us.  I don't like Cranberry scones, so I can't imagine I would like a cookie version of them.  And I imagine that the Fig and Honey ones would be o.k., but I will settle for a good fat-free Fig Newton if I get a craving for a figgie cookie.  

If any of you out there have tried the ones we haven't, please let me know what you thought of them.  In the meantime, healthy and happy eating!

All You Need To Know

Changing your diet is one of the most difficult things you can do.   Do you give up carbs?  Animal products?  Or, as a new study indicates, are potatoes to blame for the increase in obesity in this country?  In truth, the human body is not all that complicated when it comes to weight-loss.  Once you determine how many calories you should eat each day to "maintain your weight", it is a matter of applying simple mathematics to be able to determine how much you need to eat to lose weight.  500 calorie-a-day reduction in caloric intake should result in the loss of a pound a week.  Add regular exercise to your regimen and you may be able to achieve the same results by cutting down less than that.   Last year, I posted several entries that, taken together, provide all you need to know to begin your journey to effectively lose weight.  In order they are:

January 23, 2011 - "How Many Calories Should You Eat Each Day?"
January 25, 2011 - "So, in Order to Lose a Pound a Week, I Have to Eat How Many Calories a Day?"
January 26, 2011 -  "Calculating Your Body Mass Index"
February 4, 2011 -  "Bet You Can't Guess What These Random Items Are For" (on serving sizes - a BIG issue for many of us)
February 20, 2011-  "Keep a Food Diary"

Since our bodies are complicated mechanisms that need specific nutrients to operate effectively, your diet should be balanced and the food you eat, healthy and pure.  Check out additional posts, such as "To Buy Organic or Not to Buy Organic", "I was Good and Ordered a Salad", "Good Fish, Bad Fish", "Fiber - the Next Piece of the Puzzle", "Calcium Demystified", and "Better Off Dead (or Time to Talk About Vegetables). 

If your New Years resolution is to eat healthier, let me help you to achieve that goal.  Your body will thank you.   In the future, I plan to post another "healthy" cookie review, a lot more about vegetarian cooking (Lent is approaching) and critiques of some of the latest diet-related news stories. 
Until next time, though, happy and healthy eating! 

The Show Must Go On!

Tomorrow, after an almost 2 week break, my youngest son goes back to school and my husband returns to work.  Sigh.   Another holiday season is over.  I am leaving the decorations out for another week or two (or three) and the outdoor lights will stay lit until the 6th of January.  But in all other respects, the holiday is over.  I'm not really into making "resolutions".  I don't believe in making promises I can't keep.  But I do have expectations for 2012. 

First of all, I want snow.  Lots of it.  2 years ago we had 38 inches.  A repeat of that performance would be nice.  Snow has a nice way of slowing down the pace of things and letting us catch our breath when things get too hectic. 

I plan to join our CSA again and hope that this year's crops will be at least as impressive as last year's.  Kale, Swiss Chard, and Collards will start off the season and I look forward to them in a way that surprises the heck out of me.  I will try new recipes and share them with you all.   

I hope to see Westfield's baseball team take States.  I hope this will be the best year yet for both my boys, with as few frustrations as possible and with lots of good news.  I wish my husband happy days at work, with much success in spite of the economy. 

And I hope you all have a happy and healthy 2012.  

Better-Than-Most Restaurants' Moo Shu Vegetables

Whenever I go to a Chinese restaurant, depending on my mood and the season, I will either order Moo Goo Gai Pan or Moo Shu Vegetables.  I have never attempted Moo Goo Gai Pan, but last night, for the first time, I made Moo Shu Vegetables.  And they were outstanding!  The recipe came from the September issue of Vegetarian Times and I felt compelled to share it with you.  Not only because I truly enjoyed it, but because my husband did as well.  Allow me to explain.  When he walked in from work and found out what we were having for dinner, he actually scowled.   "I'm sorry", he said, "I've just never liked it."   My son, having heard my husband's hearty endorsement for our upcoming supper didn't look too pleased either.  So with not-too-mild trepidation, I spooned the filling into small flour tortillas, put a Tablespoon of  Hoisin Sauce down the center of each one and rolled them up.  And waited...

We each took a bite at the same time and were all pleasantly surprised.  My husband loved them and my son said they were amazing - better than at the Chinese restaurants.  And I had to agree.  I think it was the combination of vegetables.  Restaurant versions tend to be little more than slivered cabbage with sliced green onions.  This recipe called for a generous amount of thinly sliced shitake mushrooms, fresh ginger, sliced snow peas, and carrots.  The delightful sauce was not as runny as it tends to be in most restaurants either.  It was comprised of a perfect blend of soy sauce, sesame oil (which I cut down to 1 teaspoon since it can be overpowering), rice wine vinegar, honey, and vegetable broth thickened with a little cornstarch.  To keep the dish Vegan, the 3 scrambled eggs it calls for can be replaced with a soft-tofu scramble. 

The recipe can be found at vegetariantimes.com.  And the actual name of it is "Vegetable Moo Shu Wraps".   To quote a favorite T.V. commercial, "Try it, you'll like it!". 

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.  Until next time, happy and healthy eating!

Thanksgivng Done "Lite"

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  The day when we often eat more in one meal than we do in a week!  Between the gravy, stuffing, yams, and desserts, the calories (and fat) can really add up.  When I changed my diet about 10 years ago, this one day a year presented quite a challenge for me.  You see, Thanksgiving dinner is a meal that is always celebrated at our house.  And I don't like to feed others what I would not eat myself.  Keeping in mind that Thanksgiving dinner is a special meal with items our family has come to expect,  I am pretty pleased with what I have come up with and would like to share some of my "secrets to a lightened-up Thanksgiving" with you. 

First of all, there is the turkey.  I buy a natural, fresh one each year and cook it as recommended (without the addition of any shortening or oil).  I eat only the breast meat with no skin.  For gravy, I use just a couple Tablespoons of the pan drippings, to which I add a couple Tablespoons of flour.  I add fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth and season it with salt and white pepper.  I also stuff my bird and use the same recipe I have used for years - it's a family favorite.  But instead of a pound of pork sausage, I use a pound of lean, mild Italian turkey sausage (and after I brown it, I discard all fat, removing the meat with a slotted spoon and letting it drain on a plate covered with a double layer of Bounty towels).  I do not saute my onion and celery in the recommended cube of butter that the recipe calls for, but use just a couple Tablespoons of lite butter or Brummel & Brown margarine instead.  The other ingredients (in case you would like to make it) are 2 peeled and diced apples, 8 to 10 cups of bread cubes, and a teaspoon each of marjoram, sage and salt, and 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper.  You can moisten it with half a cup of chicken broth if you'd like before stuffing the turkey with it. 

I make my mother's recipe for Candied Yams and have to admit that it is the best ever.  I parboil the yams just until a fork pierces them about half an inch through.  When they are cool, I peel and slice them into rounds that are about 2/3 of an inch thick and line a large Pyrex pan with them.  Then I pour orange juice over them, and sprinkle them generously with brown sugar.  Up to here, the recipe is identical to my mom's.  But instead of dabbing each yam slice with butter, I dab them with a little Brummel and Brown margarine.  Then I lightly salt them and sprinkle them with cinnamon.  They need to cook (covered at first) for over an hour to become soft and tender and for the sauce to thicken into a luscious glaze.

I make mashed potatoes with skim milk and lite butter, a homemade Maple Oat Bread, and some kind of vegetable side dish.  Usually it is a Green Bean dish of some sort.  Cranberry sauce (often homemade with fresh cranberries, orange juice, maple, and cinnamon) tops the meal off. 

For dessert, I usually make a lightened version of Pumpkin Pie or a Pumpkin Trifle, but this year I made a Sweet Potato pie with lite coconut milk, cinnamon, and ground ginger, some bar cookies (lightened versions of life-long favorites called "Surfer Squares") and French Vanilla Ice Cream.  

Appetizers vary from year to year with this year's feature being a low-fat and delicious Salmon Mousse.  (Recipe gladly shared upon request). 

The lovely centerpiece for my buffet counter (pictured above and courtesy of a very good friend) is made of a large hollowed-out acorn squash filled with assorted flowers and seasonal trimmings.  I love it and may try to do something similar for Christmas.

I pray that you and yours are warm, safe and healthy.  Happy Thanksgiving to you all!  

Milk Alternatives - Soy, Rice, Almond, Hemp???

Most of you are probably too young to remember when the milkman used to deliver cold, fresh milk in glass bottles to people's front door.  Those were the days before 1%, 2%, and skim milk became popular and when most towns had their own local dairy.  Now, we approach the milk sections of our supermarket and are faced with a bevy of choices.  Besides those varieties that come from a cow, we have soy milk, rice milk, hemp milk, and, my new personal favorite, almond milk.  And to complicate matters even more, most of these milks come in plain, vanilla, chocolate and/or carob flavors. 

For various reasons, more and more people are veering away from dairy, in particular cows' milk,  and the alternatives can leave you frustrated or confused.  One thing I have found is that if it comes in a carton in the dairy section, it tends to taste more like milk than if it comes in a carton off of a shelf.  When my older son's milk and soy allergies were at their peak, we were told to give him rice milk, specifically Plain Fortified Rice Dream.  It only came in cartons on grocery shelves and was definitely an acquired taste.  It had an almost sweet, plastic-like rice flavor and sometimes competed with the tastes of cold cereals.  It was thinner than milk and was very white in color.  My son was o.k with it, but I could never develop a taste for it.  During fasting periods, I just opted to give up milk altogether, since I did not care much for soy milk that came off of those same shelves in the same rectangular cartons.

Then I discovered Silk Soy Milk in the refrigerated section and thought it was wonderful.   It added a little bit of a very pleasant, slightly sweet taste to cold cereals.  And it worked beautifully in any hot cereal, such as oatmeal, or cream of wheat.  I preferred Plain Lite Soy Milk, both because it has fewer calories than even skim milk (70 compared to 90), and because it tasted the most like milk to me.  I didn't care too much for it as a beverage to have with a meal, but for a few years, it was my "milk" of choice.  Until, that is, I read about the calcium content of Almond Milk and decided to give it a try. 

Most milks (cows', and fortified soy and rice) contain 30% or less of the daily minimum requirement of calcium.  Almond milk contains a whopping 45% per cup!  And with only 60 calories, it beats all other milks (with Rice Dream having 120 calories per cup and 1% cows' milk 110). 

As for its taste, in my opinion, it can't be beat in cold cereal, where it goes perfectly with all the ones my family enjoys - from the Kashi Go Lean cereals to Chocolate-flavored Frosted Mini Wheats.  And when I want a cold glass of milk to accompany a meal, Almond Milk is my first choice.  It has a delightful, slightly nutty, but not sweet, taste.  I wish I could say that it is my all-around milk of choice, but alas!  I find that it falls short in how it cooks up with oatmeal or other hot cereals.   For my hot cereals, I still prefer Lite Soy Milk.  It cooks up creamier, giving those cereals the perfect texture and a taste I really enjoy (an exception is Carrot Cake Oatmeal - see 2 posts below for recipe)..  

As for how these milk alternatives work in baked goods,  both Soy and Almond milks work great (substituting them for the milk in bread, cake, and other such recipes cup for cup), but Rice Milk does not work well at all in this capacity.   

I hope I have helped those of you who are stymied about which milk alternative you should try.  I have not yet tried Hemp Milk but would love to know if any of you have and what you think of it.  My husband uses a Hemp-based protein powder and it is actually GREEN!  Please tell me that the milk is not....

Until next time, happy and healthy eating!