Real-Life Survival and Celebration on Vacation

Hubby and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary (today!) last week with a wonderful trip to the Boston area. We had five full days of eating out in one form or another, and I thought I'd cover some things that worked well for me without mentioning too much about getting off-track from nutritarian eating.

In my carry-on I had two clementines, two apples, a sandwich bag of almonds, and a sandwich bag of several types of dried fruit, plus a small bag of green grapes.  When I returned I had one of the apples in the car on the way home from the airport, and the other is still withering in the bag.  We had the citrus the first day, and most of the grapes (discarded the others), and a few pieces of the nuts and dried fruit through the days.  I liked the feeling of knowing I had these things for when other choices weren't good ones.

We found a grocery the first evening and I bought some nice peaches and a box of Hodgson Mill muesli, plus some strawberries, I think, plus a little jar of peanut butter and I think some crackers to put it on (we had such a good time I've forgotten!). I also got sugar snap peas and carrots combined in a little bag, and I kept them on ice. Even without a fridge in our room we had a little coffee maker, and for breakfast three days I added hot water to a little muesli and a cut-up peach and was good to go for many hours. The fourth morning our hotel (Best Western Plus Plymouth) provided breakfast (and I was out of peaches), so I had their lovely untreated melon fruit bowl with a boiled egg and a slice of whole wheat toast.

Don't trust the waitress or the chef. In one family-type Italian restaurant I ordered a veggie-strong chicken dish (and it did have a lot of veggies) but asked that it be prepared with as little additional oil as possible. No go. It was covered with sauce (kind of a garlicky one, but not an Alfredo). On the other hand, at Sam Diego's Plymouth I ordered a vegetarian burrito and asked that they omit the cream cheese inside and the cheese on the outside, and the chef took the clue and also left off the sour cream, giving me extra guacamole, I think. A nice touch!

Fish is often the best choice in a restaurant, if you can get it without added oil or as little as possible for the recipe.  At Legal Sea Foods at Long Wharf in Boston I had a deliciously light luncheon-portion Cajun-spiced pollock with diced mango, pineapple, and jicama, alongside asparagus and some jasmine rice.   Yes, I noticed that Legal Sea Foods had a "vegetarian box," but I was at Long Wharf in Boston on the first day of my anniversary trip! :-)  At The Franklin Cape Ann (which we kind of stumbled into when another great restaurant we'd enjoyed 18 months ago seemed to have disappeared) we shared the amazing Grilled Asparagus Salad and I got the Pan Seared Atlantic Haddock.  Only now as I look at the website do I see that they have a vegetarian menu, too.  If I were visiting again, I might try anything on that menu (though skipping the mozzarella salad).  On the other hand, they have an English pea soup listed there with both crispy bacon and creme fraiche!  So perhaps they don't know what they're talking about when they say "vegetarian."  Probably my favorite find as a nutritarian from the sticks (and an hour from the nearest Whole Foods Market) was the WF directly next door to the Cambridge church we visited on Sunday morning, so I experienced the "Whole Paycheck" phenomenon with a big salad bar container that cost me $15!  I couldn't finish it, but it was delicious and about 95% nutritarian.  That was nice. Now that I've mentioned just about every other place we ate, I have to mention Rang Indian Bistro in Stoneham. Gorgeous, delicious food, including Aloo Tikka Chat for an appetizer, and I think I got the Dal Makhani.

I'm glad I'm not a "drinker."  Hubby and I shared a glass of wine at one dinner and a glass of sparkling wine at another, and we even had a first for us and each had a mixed drink in a hotel lounge one late afternoon. I'm glad to have enjoyed these drinks but also glad to have them be so special and not a routine part of life. I have enough challenges with other calorie options out there!  Weight Maven has a good post on this idea of specialness here.

My eating degenerates over the days of a trip.  I start with the best of intentions and practices, and the availability of amazing fun foods and the celebration mentality kind of get to me.  So I had a wrap (grilled veggies with some cheese) sandwich in the airport on the way home, and a donut from the airport Dunkin Donuts afterwards, then both a Diet Coke (my first of the trip!) and salty packaged snacks on the plane. My last hurrah, I guess.  The scale was up a few pounds the first day home, but I'm thankful that just a week later I'm down a pound from when I left.  I'm especially thankful that because I eat mostly nutritarian I didn't have a lot of detox to go through upon my return to nutritarian eating.

It was fun, but it's good to be home!  Our grocery stores (even in the sticks) are paradises of produce compared to what's "out there" on city streets and in restaurants and airports!

Salad Dressing Variation, Banana-Raspberry Soft Serve

With a giant salad my usual lunchtime centerpiece of the day, I like to find easy and delicious variations.  I keep coming back to a combination of a nut or seed or butter thereof, citrus juice, and garlic.  Today I made a new dressing inspired partly by "Hail to the Kale" in Chef A.J.'s and Julieanna Hever's video, linked here: 


ALMOND-LIME SALAD DRESSING


2 dates
clove of garlic
2 oz. almonds
grape-sized piece of ginger
zest and flesh of half a small lime
1 to 1-1/2 cups water


Combine all ingredients and whirl them in the Vita-Mix. A 1/4-cup serving made with 1-1/2 cups water is 1/3 oz. nuts. 


Verdict: Excellent. Creamy and yet with full coverage of the salad when made with the larger amount of water suggested.  Is it strange that I like the garlic aftertaste?  I had this on a salad of artisan lettuces and green leaf lettuce, chopped cucumber, red bell pepper, and scallion, with 3/4 cup home-cooked pinto beans, and a fruit cup on the side.


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BANANA-RASPBERRY SOFT SERVE


We are blessed to have black raspberries growing on the side of an old barn adjacent to our property, and hubby and kids have gathered a couple of gallons of them so far, I think.  For Sunday dinner I made a coulis (1 pint raspberries, 3 T. sugar, 2 tsp. lemon juice blended in the blender and then pushed through a sieve) to serve on vanilla ice cream.  For me I just added to the coulis-coated blender container 1-1/2 bananas and a little water (and, I confess, a dollop of ice cream) to get the consistency right.  I got a beautifully rosy product very similar to soft-serve ice cream (or facsimile thereof) and every bit as satisfying as what the rest of the family were having.  That helps make nutritarian eating more workable.  (By the way, I think it would have worked better with more banana, as there wasn't enough to form up correctly around the blades, necessitating the water and possibly justifying the ice cream addition.)


Bananas are magic in the Vita-Mix.  With a chocolate craving last week I put a heaping tablespoon of cocoa powder and a little instant decaf coffee into a quarter cup or so of hot water to dissolve, then added them into the blender with 1-1/2 bananas, for a completely satisfying dessert treat.


Verdict: Excellent on both of these, as well as a toasted-walnut variation I've tried in the past.

Salad Party Boats

I can't find my own post about the original idea for this, but I saw in a magazine the idea for portable Caesar salads:  romaine lettuce leaf "boats" with fillings like croutons and other things you'd see in a Caesar salad.  Last night we had some friends over to watch the sunset (well, just to visit, since it was cloudy, but the deck was nice anyway), and I put out some quick foods to feed the six of us.  I created my own version.

SALAD PARTY BOATS

Romaine lettuce leaves of various sizes, left whole
Hummus
Diced cucumber
Diced radishes
Snipped green onions
Chopped tomato
Dressing of your choice (I used a variation on my usual Lemon-Tahini Dressing, to which I added some grated ginger)
Optional: croutons of whatever sort you like

Put these ingredients and whatever else strikes your fancy in attractive serving dishes, and each diner will assemble his own. Into the depression of a single romaine leaf, spread some hummus to anchor the addition of the pieces of the other ingredients, then drizzle a little dressing over the top.  It should then be eaten by hand in a kind of open-faced burrito sort of way.

Verdict:  Very Good.  I really enjoyed mine, and I could see this being a standard "funky salad" offering when we have people over. Of course the nutritional profile will change according to the ingredients used, but it makes for a great option for nutritarian and other guests at a party.  Nutritarians might prefer to be issued a mixing bowl into which to break up their romaine leaves, or they could just be polite and eat like other folks for this one meal. ;-)

Depressing, But I'm Not Giving Up!

Dr. Arya Sharma posts this:  "Why Diet and Exercise is Not a Treatment For Obesity."

It turns out that "keeping it off" is much harder for those of us who have had to lose it.  I'm almost 20% lighter than my highest weight, but I have a distance yet to go.  But like my dad always said, "Life is not fair."  :-)

Telling final quote:  "Whoever said that treating obesity was simply a matter of ‘eating less and moving more’ (ELMM) probably also believes that they [sic] can live forever by simply breathing less."

Triple-A Salad and a Cookbook Tip

Hubby has the two kids who are home this summer out working in the fields, but supper is ready to go whenever they show up here.  I baked sweet potatoes, broiled chicken legs, sauteed turnip greens, and created this Triple-A Salad:

TRIPLE-A SALAD

1 cup broccoli slaw (packaged or make your own--just shreds or matchsticks of broccoli stem with some carrot and probably a bit of cabbage)
1/2 cup matchstick carrots (packaged or make your own)
2 stalks of celery, chopped
2 radishes, sliced thin (I quartered the slices)
4-6 snipped-up dried apricot halves
1 navel orange, diced (making sure all the juice goes in the bowl!)
1 small apple, diced
1 teaspoons grated fresh ginger (or 1/2 tsp dried, if you must)
1 oz toasted chopped almonds (Get it? The bold items are the A's. :-) )

Combine all ingredients and let sit for a half hour to combine flavors.

Verdict: EXCELLENT.  This is another variation on a theme I've come to enjoy--a crisp, bright salad of cruciferous veggies and fruit, along the lines of a carrot salad. Most of the ones I've made include the base of broccoli slaw or cabbage slaw, carrots, dried fruit (currants are nice), and apple or pear with some kind of citrus. Nuts really dress it up.

Here's a tip:  The Joy of Cooking (1997 edition) has a recipe on p. 281, "Lentils and Tomato Sauce With Elbow Macaroni and Fried Onions," and Egyptian/Syrian dish that can be easily adapted to nutritarian purposes. Its distinctive is a lovely seasoning of cumin, coriander, and allspice in a diced-tomato and onion sauce over pasta.  I served it with a topping of raita (cucumber and a little honey with fresh mint in plain lowfat yogurt).

What's in a Name?

I've been calling myself a "nutritarian," or saying that I follow "nutritarian principles," for a while now. I like the fact that the word, coined by Dr. Fuhrman, I believe, focuses on the goal of this eating style--to get in the most nutrition possible per calorie. But it's unfamiliar and confusing to people.

I've also told people that I eat "mostly vegan," but that sounds like I have an ideology that shuns animal foods. Plus, a lot of vegans eat junk--processed vegan junk food. I don't mind it that I'm contributing dramatically less to the factory-farm food industry (See Food, Inc., available in different versions on YouTube), but I have no ethical/moral/aesthetic problem with animal foods. I eat small amounts of meat and dairy and eggs when I'm eating healthy, and more than that when I'm just indulging. Michael Pollan, whose books I haven't read, seems to have a reasonable approach. 

Another term has been going around among the blogs I read, "Plant Strong."  I like that concept--it captures the idea that we should be eating mostly plants, focusing on those. But it doesn't necessarily shun animal products.  An emphasis on "whole foods" is also a good one, though that tends to go the way of people eating the WHOLE pig and such--not quite what I have in mind.

If anyone's out there reading, what are your thoughts about these terms or others and how well they describe what YOUR eating plan is?

Resuming

Despite my silence here, I've been keeping daily food logs for months at drfuhrman.com . I've decided to post again here--if not every day, then when I have something interesting to share from a day's menu, in the way of a recipe or method. This is a summer endeavor--I may cave to time pressures again in the fall.

ITALIAN STIR-FRY

2 tsp olive oil
8 oz. bag frozen Italian-style green beans (the flat, diagonally-cut ones)
1 red bell pepper cut into strips (I used the delicious long "Ancient Sweets" in a plastic bag)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic
big tablespoon pesto (mine is frozen homemade from last summer)
big handful (2 oz?) fresh spinach
grated asiago cheese to garnish

Heat the oil in a pan and add the green beans, stirring a bit before adding the pepper, onion, and garlic, then pesto, and finally spinach at the end to wilt it.  The idea is to leave the peppers and onion the slightest bit crunchy and colorful.  

Optional: I tossed my portion of this with whole grain penne and topped it with a little jarred marinara heated with a dash of wine

Verdict:  VERY GOOD.  I really enjoyed this satisfying recipe for supper. (I had about half of it with 2/3 cup pasta and a couple of tablespoons of marinara and a grating of asiago.) It's probably fine to omit the tiny bit of oil and the asiago, but you need something in the way of the pesto to perk it up, especially with no added salt. 

PEACHY-GREEN SMOOTHIE

1 peach and 1 nectarine, pits removed
1 navel orange, peeled
3 hand-sized leaves of kale
a tray of ice cubes and a cup or so of water

Combine in blender (Vita-Mix is best!) and whirl until smooth, with little flecks of nectarine skin.

Verdict:  VERY GOOD. It's good this way but has a slightly sulfur cast. I threw in a couple of chunks of fresh pineapple to improve the second glass. Lemon would probably fix it, too.  This makes over a quart, and I add a tablespoon of flax seed meal to my first glass.

Doesn't look like much for breakfast?  Remember it's over a quart of smoothie, sweet and refreshing, so it's satisfying and filling, for sure. I ran the nutrition on this recipe (including flax, not counting pineapple), and it's under 250 calories, with 7 grams of protein (about the same as a small egg), 4 grams of fat (mostly from the flax), and 10 grams of fiber. It has over twice the RDA of Vitamin C, almost all the RDA of Vitamin A, half the RDA of copper and manganese, and at least a quarter of the RDA of Vitamin B6, magnesium, phosophorus, thiamin, and niacin.  And it's all fresh ingredients, the flax seed meal the only processed item. Having this at 8 a.m. will have me properly hungry for lunch about noon.

I'm a Winner!

Life has been really busy the last several months, and creative nutritarian cooking (or assembling?) has not been my first priority. Perhaps with the summer months . . .

But I had to stop in and share an exciting announcement:  I was chosen as First Runner-Up in the Holiday Challenge Contest at Dr. Fuhrman's website, drfuhrman.com!  Read all about it here!

My prize is a set of DVD's from last year's week-long immersion retreat, plus a booklet of recipes from that event, plus a Platinum Membership to extend my current membership at the website.  I'm excited and now I need to keep going!

Puny DiGiorno Personal Pizza vs. Powerful Pear Salad!

Today at lunchtime my 13yo asked if he could have a Digiorno Small Pizza. I looked at the label and said he could have half--390 calories!  It's a puny thing, about six inches in diameter, though the box indicates two servings (unlike the one 790-calorie serving labeled on the website).  His little puny half-pizza nets 390 calories, 18 grams fat (7 of those saturated), 16 grams protein, and 3 grams fiber, plus almost 750 mg sodium.

While that was cooking for him I made my lunch salad:

POWERFUL PEAR SALAD

4 cups torn leaf lettuce
1 diced bosc pear
2/3 cup broccoli slaw
1/2 cup matchstick carrots
1/2 cup navy beans
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
1/2 oz toasted sliced almonds
2 T. plain lowfat yogurt
1 T. light honey mustard salad dressing (25 cal, 1 g fat)
dash each of cinnamon and powdered ginger

Combine all vegetables and fruits, top with yogurt and dressing and spices, then toss. Top with almonds and eat right from the mixing bowl.

Verdict--EXCELLENT. This is a beautiful sunshiny salad with a bright, fresh flavor. I think some lemon juice in the dressing would be good in the future.

Here's the nutrition comparison (and I calculated mine in my head after I made it, figuring it was about the same as the little puny half pizza--I was right!):

Powerful Pear Salad
430 calories, 10 g fat (1 g saturated), 19 g protein, 22 g fiber, and 210 mg sodium (half of that from the tiny tablespoon of bottled salad dressing!)

Puny Personal Pizza
390 calories, 18 grams fat (7 of those saturated), 16 g protein, 3 g fiber, and almost 750 mg sodium.

The pizza serving weighs just 140 g. (about 4.7 oz.) and my salad weighs 650 g, about 22 oz., or 1-1/3 pounds!  Which is more satisfying, do you think? 

In other nutrients here's the score:

• Pizza has 13% of daily Vitamin A and 15% of calcium (all that cheese, don't you know?), plus 5% each of daily iron and Vitamin C.
• Salad has 147% of Vitamin A and 31% of calcium (only 1/6 of that from the yogurt), plus 36% iron and 234% of Vitamin C.

Everybody agrees that salad is more nutritious than pizza, but that much more?!  Yes, indeed.

I just told the pizza consumer to have an apple. That will give him 72 additional calories, double his lunchtime fiber intake, and triple the Vitamin C.

Another win for the nutritarian approach to eating.

Drive-By Post

Just thought I'd stop in and share an amazing and funny and true and inspiring blog post by Robin at "Lean to the Sun":

Abundance