Great Way Weekly

Tonight for dinner I decided to try the Quinoa with Spring Vegetables and Walnut-Kale pesto recipe from this new blog I’ve been reading, Gluten Free Girl and Chef. I adapted the recipe to what I had on hand, and produced something that I think uses the structure of the original, but with a bit different result. I think the key to this recipe is the pesto. You can play with the other details to put more flavor into them, or you can keep it simple and serve a dollop of the pesto over simply cooked quinoa and steamed veggies. I’ve also made a vegan version of this by using a bit of nutritional yeast to replace the romano cheese. Here’s a link to the original posting.

Here’s my version, devoured by my quinoa skeptic husband:

Quinoa and broccoli with cilantro-kale pesto

For the Quinoa:

1/2 yellow onion
1/2 Tbsp Butter or Earth Balance
1-2 Tbsp olive oil, more if needed when you add the Quinoa
1.5 cups quinoa, rinsed
3 cups veggie stock (I used Imagine Foods No-Chicken Broth)
1/2 tsp salt

For the Pesto:

1/2 cup pecans
1-2 cloves garlic
1/2 bunch or more cilantro
1 bunch lacinato kale, aka Dinosaur Kale, or any other kale
1/2-3/4 cup olive oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon
optional: 1-2 tbsp grated romano or parmesan cheese (or, add 1 tsp nutritional yeast for vegan version)
Salt and fresh-ground pepper

For the Veg:

2-3 crowns of steamed broccoli florets
1/2 yellow onion
1/2 bunch cilantro
Olive oil

To make Quinoa:

Add butter and olive oil to a hot pan, and add onions when butter has melted. Saute until tender, then add rinsed quinoa. Saute until quinoa is dry and smells slightly toasty, adding more olive oil if needed to keep quinoa from sticking. Add 3 cups of stock and 1/2 tsp or more of salt. Put the lid on the pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 12 minutes. Removed lid when done to let some of the steam out.

To make pesto:

Puree pecans and garlic in food processor until uniformly chopped. Add cilantro and kale (you might need to add it in several small bunches). Puree until everything is uniform and drizzel olive oil in while machine is running. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure the pesto is uniform. Add more olive oil if necessary to achieve a silky pesto consistency. Add optional romano or parmeson and lemon juice, blend. Taste for salt and pepper.

To prepare veggies and bring it all together:

Saute the other 1/2 onion in olive oil. When it starts to soften, add cilantro and toss briefly. Add steamed broccoli and toss until reheated. Add quinoa and peraps a bit more olive oil, gently stirring to combine and maybe brown some of the quinoa.

To serve: either toss quinoa/veggie mixture with all of the pesto, or spread a small amount of pesto on the plate, and top with the quinoa-broccoli mixture. Top with 2-3 tablespoons of kale pesto, or to taste. Top with some grated cheese, if desired.

I just got back from a short trip to NYC where I took this super-fun yoga class called Anti-Gravity yoga. Om Factory Yoga in midtown has a small room full of about 15 yoga “swings” or “hammocks” that hang from the ceiling and the entire class is taught in the swings.

It was a two hour class, and we spent a lot of time hanging upside down in various positions, including forward folds and backbends. I worked up a sweat eventhough it was not at all like an active, vinyasa class. One woman got a little queasy with all of the upside down time, but I felt great. Nothing was sore after class, and I didn’t feel tired. I felt energized, relaxed and stretched-out.

Though I only took this one class, I really liked the studio, and will definitely try to return on my next visit to NYC.

Check out this listing of some great health and diet blogs: Nursing Online Ed has a list of the top 100 health and wellness blogs. Who chose which blogs made the cut? I’m not sure, but they do seem to have picked some good ones.

Scroll to the bottom for the list of blogs on alternative medicine, including acupuncture. And it’s nice to see so many people writing about being healthy!

Lifehacker (one of my husband’s fav blogs, BTW) points us to this great comparison of the calories versus the caffeine in lots of popular bevs and treats.

More at Caffeine and Calories via Lifehacker.

Lately I’ve been trying to get my patients to eat pumpkin seeds, but most of them seem non-plussed by the idea. Pumpkin seeds are loaded with magnesium, B Vitamins, protein and iron. Like all nuts and seeds, they have fat, but it’s the good kind, so that’s not such a huge worry. Click here and here for 2 links to nutritional info about pumpkin seeds.

I eat them almost daily by sprinkling them into my morning hot cereal (along with other nuts, raisins and honey), or into some of my lunches (I like them with brown rice, tofu and broccoli topped with a quick peanut/miso sauce). The ones I buy most often are not roasted or salted, so their flavor isn’t strong, but they add a very pleasant crunch to whatever I’m eating.

Another way to add pumpkin seeds (or other nuts) to your diet is to add them to sauces (or smoothies). Today I found an interesting-looking pumpkin see and tomatillo sauce recipe on the New York Times website. I’ve never made Green Pipian, but frequently make tomatillo sauces–they’re tangy and have an interesting flavor. For those with food allergies and intolerances, this recipe is great, so long as you can eat pumpkin seeds! There’s no gluten, soy, egg, or corn.

Click here for the original article in the New York Times.

Here’s the article:

This classic Mexican pumpkin seed sauce, also known as green mole, is tangy, herbal and spicy all at the same time. Serve it with poached or pan-cooked chicken breasts, fish (it’s very pretty with salmon), or shrimp. You can bathe grilled vegetables with it, or serve it with white beans and steamed or poached vegetables. Hulled untoasted pumpkin seeds are available in many whole foods stores and Mexican markets.

1/2 cup hulled untoasted pumpkin seeds

1/2 pound tomatillos, husked, rinsed, and coarsely chopped, or 2 13-ounce cans, drained

1 serrano chile or 1/2 jalapeño (more to taste), stemmed and roughly chopped

3 romaine lettuce leaves, torn into pieces

1/4 small white onion, coarsely chopped, soaked for 5 minutes in cold water, drained and rinsed

2 garlic cloves, halved, green shoots removed

1/4 cup loosely packed chopped cilantro

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

1 tablespoon canola or extra virgin olive oil

Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste

1. Heat a heavy Dutch oven or saucepan over medium heat and add the pumpkin seeds. Wait until you hear one pop, then stir constantly until they have puffed and popped, and smell toasty. They should not get any darker than golden or they will taste bitter. Transfer to a bowl and allow to cool.

2. Place the cooled pumpkin seeds in a blender and add the tomatillos, chiles, lettuce, onion, garlic, cilantro, and 1/2 cup of the chicken stock. Cover the blender and blend the mixture until smooth, stopping the blender to stir if necessary.

3. Heat the oil in the Dutch oven or heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Drizzle in a bit of the pumpkin seed mixture and if it sizzles, add the rest. Cook, stirring, until the mixture darkens and thickens, 8 to 10 minutes. It will splutter, so be careful. Hold the lid of the pot above the pot to shield you and your stove from the splutters. Add the remaining chicken stock, bring to a simmer, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered, stirring often, until the sauce is thick and creamy, 15 to 20 minutes. Season to taste with salt. For a silkier sauce, blend again in batches.

Yield: Makes about 1 3/4 cups

Advance preparation: The sauce can be made 5 days ahead and freezes well. Whisk or blend to restore its consistency after thawing. It’s easy to double this recipe and freeze a batch of it. For a beautiful main dish, double the recipe and place cooked chicken breasts or fish fillets in a large baking dish, cover with the sauce and heat through in a medium oven. Garnish with chopped cilantro and toasted pumpkin seeds.

From Great Way Blog

The Wall Street Journal has published this interesting commentary by Deepak Chopra about the real benefits of alternative medicine and lifestyle changes to improve our health and reduce our health care spending. I like how he emphasizes that our current, ineffective system is focused on treating disease after it strikes rather than on working to prevent health problems. Prevention gets talked up a lot in the press, but I sure haven’t seen anything change in how my MDs treat me or my patients. Some of the most debilitating and expensive-to-treat health problems are preventable in a large percentage of the population. Why aren’t we focusing on that as we look to fix our very broken medical system? Hopefully, someone in the Obama administration will take a look at this and maybe start requiring insurers to cover things like acupuncture. I suspect they’ll find that it’s much more cost effective than what we’re doing now.

Read the full commentary here.

For about a year now, I’ve been thinking about trying to make home-made mincemeat for my husband. My father loved mincemeat, and my mother would buy jars of Nonesuch Mincemeat and make a pie for him every winter. As a picky eater, I resolutely refused to even taste it. I don’t think my mom especially liked it, and perhaps my older brother would eat a bit. Despite my refusal to have even one taste of it, I remember thinking it smelled good. It was dark brown, and smelled sweet and spicy.

My memories of this good smell made me think that my husband would enjoy mincemeat, and that I might actually like it, too. We both love that other, much-maligned holiday treat, fruitcake (but only from Deluxe Fruitcake in Corsicana, TX–it’s the only one worth eating). I did some internet research for recipes and found one that looked like the right combination of tasty and not too difficult.

So, what is mincemeat? It’s been around for hundreds of years and no one seems to know what it’s all about. Traditionally, it did contain finely minced beef, along with fruit (fresh and dried), spices, fat (as suet) and some sort of alcohol like wine. It was a way to preserve meat and fruit in a time before refrigeration. I did find several recipes that had beef listed as one of the ingredients, but since I don’t eat beef (and since it sounds kind of yucky to put it in a sweet pie), I sought out an all-fruit version.

From reviewing several recipes, I determined that it’s a fairly flexible recipe that should contain some fresh apple and maybe some fresh orange, a variety of dried fruit (raisins, cherries, peaches, apricots), butter, spirits like brandy and spices. It’s actually really easy to assemble, and cooked quietly and happily on the stove for about 40 minutes.  I used the recipe for Bubby’s All-Fruit Mincemeat (found at globalgourmet.com), and adapted it to what I had on hand. Here’s a link to the original recipe.

I haven’t yet made my mincemeat pie, but this stuff is awfully tasty just eaten with a fork!

My adaptation of Bubby’s excellent recipe is as follows:

Cathy’s Mincemeat

1 Granny Smith apply, peeled, cored and cut into small pieces

1 naval orange, cut into small pieces (including skin and pulp)

2 small (or 1 large) Bosc pears

1/2 cup red wine

1 cup succanat (or rapidura, an unrefined sugar)

3/4 cup Brandy

1/4 cup dark rum

1/2 cup water

4 oz raisins

4 oz dried bluberries

4 oz dried apricots, cut into small pieces

3 oz mixed dried apples and peaches, cut into small pieces

5 tbsp butter

1 oz candied ginger, cut into small pieces

1 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp salt

pinch cayenne

Combine all ingredients in a 6-quart saucepan and bring to a simmer.  Reduce heat to low and let it gently simmer for about 40 minutes, or until all of the dried fruit is plump and soft, and the liquid has been reduced to a very thick syrup. Cool completely. This should keep in the refrigerator for several weeks.

Now you’re ready to make pie!

Let mixture cool completely. It is not ready to use as a pie filling, or whatever else sounds good to you.

You hear a lot these days about inflammation.  In the past, inflammation was viewed as an unfortunate byproduct of disease.  It made a lot of trouble for the patient, but the thing to do was to bring it down with things like steroids and non-steroidal anti inflammatories (NSAIDS–like Advil).

These days, inflammation is seen as a cause of illness, an integral part of the disease process. It’s something to be avoided as best you can, but how?

One of the best things you can do to protect your health in both the short and long term is to eat a healthy, balanced diet. You hear that all the time,  but what does it mean in practical terms?

The very best diet for minimizing inflammation in the body is primarily vegetarian + fish/seafood, with a little bit of lean meat on occasion.  Whole grains, lots of veggies, extra-virgin olive oil–these foods deeply nourish the body and help it make qi (or vital energy). My husband and I have been lacto-ovo vegetarians (meaning we eat eggs and milk) for over 15 years.  We also recently decided to add some seafood to our diets.  We feel great on this diet, and are the thinnest members of our families.

In Chinese medicine, we believe that food is a type of medicine.  You must be mindful of what you are eating at all times, and do your best to eat foods that give your body something to work with.  Refined, packaged and fast foods are convenient, and in a pinch, are fine to consume occasionally, but they should the the exception and not the norm.  Take the time to prepare healthy meals for yourself and the dividends will be tremendous.

Dr. Andrew Weil has redone the food pyramid to reflect our understanding of what to eat to minimize inflammation in the whole body.  Following this type of diet should pay off in more energy now, and some protection from bigger health problems in the long run.

Dr. Weil's Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid

One thing about this pyramid that I disagree with is the notion that you need to eat chocolate “sparingly.”  I think that so long as you eat dark chocolate, you can (and should) eat a little every day.  I see dark chocolate as a special “vitamin” that we need regularly.  So indulge, but don’t over do it.