Trans Fat for Good Breath?

You don't eat your friends, right, so you don't care what their bodies are made up of (only what's in their heart).

Likewise, you don't expect your food to be there for you when times get rough.

But food labels are different than social labels. They're supposed to be limiting. They exist to inform in one specific area: ingredients. Food goes into your organs (unlike your friends) and allows or destructs certain functioning. You need to know what's in it.

If you've educated yourself about nutrition, you already know this. If you haven't, you're probably still buying a lot of trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, suffering undiagnosable aches and pains, and playing roller coaster with your health and weight (or will be soon). More than that, you probably have no idea that foods with "0 g" next to the Trans Fat column on the label doesn't actually mean the stuff is trans-fat free.

If you're a "sometimes" reader of labels, the advice in this blog is especially for you, because it's likely that if you bother to read labels at all, you are only thinking to read them on foods you consider "staples." Which means the last place you probably check is chewing gum. Guess what? It's there.

Food processing plants and product engineers are extremely sneaky. I mean inconceivably sneaky. They're their own CIA. If I hadn't been training myself for years to wear hyper-label spectacles every time I'm near food, I wouldn't have guessed either that they were putting trans fats in my favorite gum.

About a year and a half ago was when I first discovered that Orbit, the best gum I ever bought (judged solely by how well it disguised my coffee breath), was using partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in various flavors of their product. I had been chewing the peppermint kind (free of trans fats, high in aspartame) but found myself at an unfamiliar bodega in Brooklyn once where peppermint was unavailable. I turned to "Mojito Mint," squinting at the label.

What I found was trans fat, first ingredient. So I put it down and picked up the next one (Raspberry Spasm, or something) and what I found there was the same. I looked through all the other weird flavors and couldn't get away from the stuff. I left the store empty-handed and went home to brush my teeth.

Since then, I have pretty much sworn off gum altogether. And when it comes down to it, that's best. If you can help it, don't buy mints, breath "tape" or any of it. All the food companies that are trying to eliminate trans fats from their snacks are just transferring it to stuff that's already entirely bad for you, like gum and candy, whose labels people are less likely to read because they buy it whimsically at the checkout.

Drink enough water, keep coffee to the mornings, brush your teeth more often, and you'll be fine. If you're popping gum when you're hungry, just eat real food. And if it's the kind with labels, read them.

The Best Brunch Scramble

Eggs can be so boring. And not just boring, but confusing as hell. Stand in the grocery store and just try to decide what's organic, cage-free, and factory-farmed. Get home and find out you bought the wrong kind, then break some into a bowl and meditate over what it is you're about to eat. That runny, sulphuric mess.

I go through this every week. I'm a big fan of eggs, so what I've described is basically my routine. I get upset. I have eggs in my fridge all the time, and I'm incessantly looking for new ways to make them "exciting."

While all the stuff I already know how to do with them is very good (including making that perfectly soft-boiled egg, with a yolk that breaks and runs out over your toast with the light tap of a fork) I never feel like doing any of it. And today I pulled out two eggs, followed by everything in the fridge, and went crazy. Which, as history has shown, is precisely the path to innovation.


What I came up with, and what I'm calling The Best Brunch Scramble, is the best thing I've ever seen eggs do. It's the best "egg thing" I've ever tasted. And I'm not just saying that because I invented it. I'll give you the recipe to try for yourself. You'll see.

What I think makes this scramble so interesting is that it combines all the elements of a whole meal, while maintaining its status as "breakfast" on account of the ingredients it uses. It also makes premium use of my secret weapon, tarragon.


To make The Best Brunch Scramble, you need

• 4 oz. turkey meatballs (or about 4, diced)
• 1 egg, 3 egg whites
• 6 small red potatoes, boiled
• fresh spinach, as much as desired
• 1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil cooking spray
• 1 tsp olive oil

1. Spray small skillet with olive oil cooking spray. Then add regular olive oil over medium-high heat. When surface is hot, add quartered potatoes, lightly frying for about a minute or two.
   
2. While potatoes fry, cut up turkey meatballs and chop tarragon. Add them to skillet and toss everything around to blend flavors. Add 1-2 tablespoons of water to the pan. It should be very aromatic.
   
3. In a small bowl, scramble whole egg with egg whites. Pour eggs over the potato-meat mixture. Reduce heat to medium. Eggs should cook easily, so make sure to stir them to prevent burning to the pan.
4. Add spinach, finally, and scramble everything together. Ready to serve when eggs are fully cooked and spinach has wilted and looks bright green. Serves 2.
   

Peach Muffins

Don't waste. A lesson my mother tried to instill in me ever since I was a little kid, using such clever and unique quips as "Clean your plate. You're not getting dessert until you do" and even more unheard of: "There are starving children in China."

It's only now, when I'm living on my own and supporting my own eating habits (with skimpy amounts of money), that I have at last considered the malnourished orphans abroad and adopted the habit of using every morsel of food that comes into my kitchen. Don't waste. Use up what you have. The study of economics in sum: make the resources you've got go as far as they can.

Thanks to muffins (and other foods like stew, shepherd's pie, and omelets) it's easy to avoid wasting food. You can basically put anything into a muffin, depending on your tastes. While I prefer to stick with the sweet kind, there are such things as meat muffins, cheese muffins, and of course, those super branny fiber muffins without any sugar. I don't know which of those three is worst.

What I do know is one of the saddest sights of summer is throwing away a peach because it's slowly going bad. Why didn't you eat it in time? That peach deserved more attention.

But if you peel that peach, dice it up, you're still in luck. You can fold it into some muffin batter and eat it for dessert. Or breakfast. Or any time. Snacks for a week.

For basic muffin batter into which you can fold anything (preferably edible)

Dry ingredients

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup spelt flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
cinnamon

Wet ingredients

1/2 cup agave syrup (change this if you're planning to add meat or cheese to the batter)
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
4 oz. unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. vegetable oil

Lightly spray a muffin tin with olive oil cooking spray. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a small bowl. In a separate bowl, blend all wet ingredients. Slowly add dry to wet, mixing until smooth and all flour has been incorporated.

To make peach muffins:

After completing all instructions for basic batter, peel and dice as many peaches you as desire (keep in mind too many peaches will make the muffins very gooey in the middle--too gooey) and fold them gently into the batter.

Bake at 400 F for 12-15 minutes.

Flax Chicken Nuggets

The chicken in the fridge was almost a week past its expiration date and I was getting bored with panko breadcrumbs, so I picked up a bag of ground flaxseed (it was on sale) at the grocery store to see what I could invent.

Flax seed is a pretty good source of poly-and-monounsaturated fats, as well as high in fiber (all of its carbohydrates come from fiber) so I didn't mind using quite a bit of it for coating the meat. I thought the seeds would provide a nice texture and alternative coating for chicken, and as it turns out, I was right. My only qualm is I wish I'd added seasonings to intensify the flavor.

Additionally, I mixed dijon mustard with honey for a dipping sauce. Plain honey or plain mustard would have worked equally well, depending on your yen.

To make the nuggets, you need

• preferred amount of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (not thin-sliced)
• whole ground flax seed flour
  
• garlic powder, mustard powder, oregano, basil, thyme, salt, pepper
• 1 egg white
• honey
• mustard

1. Rinse and cut chicken into nugget-sized pieces
2. In a shallow bowl, break one egg and quickly whisk egg white, tossing yolk in trash
3. In a separate bowl, dump flax seed and mix in herbs and seasonings of choice
4. Cover meat pieces in egg white, then transfer to flax mixture and coat well. Place in lightly misted baking dish.
5. Cook meat at 400 F in oven for 10-15 minutes.
6. Enjoy with dipping sauce!
   

Energy Snack: Coconut

Teeter no more on the line between love and coconut. The white meaty nuts are not just husked ornaments for those spiky trees all over California; they're actually a vital source of energy.

Coconut---the real thing, not the shredded, trans-fat mixture you find in the baking needs aisle--first found its way into my kitchen thanks to a recipe I recently tried for a snack involving nuts and dates (pictured above). But before mine, it made its way to Europe's kitchens via the Portuguese and Spanish, and El Coco, the iberian bogeyman that ate bad children, is from whence it got its name.

Before I tried the aforementioned recipe, I stayed far away from the stuff. Just glance at the nutrition label on a jar of coconut oil and you'll see why. Not only does it require machete-like tools to break open this nut, but inside it's loaded with everything you know to be bad: not just carbohydrates, but major saturated fat.

So I did my research. I thought, there has to be a reason why it's in the organic health food aisle. And what I found out is this: the coconut does have high levels of saturated fat. But saturated fat is one of the two necessary components (the other being regular fat) of basic heart health. And something specifically in coconut fat called myristic acid (a fatty acid) plays a big role in correcting cell deficiencies, and the age-related decrease of white blood cells. (If you'd like to read the article in its entirety about why saturated fats are important and how much of it we need, it can be found here.)

Anyway, it turns out coconuts are all-good. Not eaten in tremendous amounts, of course (a medium coconut, if eaten whole, contains 133 grams of fat, 118 grams of saturated fat and 1405 calories) but if you use it, for example, in this basic energy snack recipe, you'll get a nice boost of cell-regenerating fuel.

To make coconut balls, you need:

• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/2 cup dried dates, pitted
• 2 tbsp water or orange juice
• 1 small bag unsweetened coconut shredded

1. In a food processor, pulverize raisins, walnuts and dates for 1-2 minutes. Add water or juice and blend for 1-2 more minutes until mixture clumps together
2. Place about 1/2 cup of coconut on a plate. Dampen hands with a little water, then roll the mixture into 1" balls and roll them in coconut. Store in fridge.
   

Tortilla Turkey Stew

Though summer just began, it's still a bit chilly up here (upstate) in the evenings. So this stew was perfect: something hot, also packed with protein and vitamins. Real sustenance.

I found that the turkey habanero sausage I added was a great component. Not only full of protein but really tasty.

Still, when using any sausage, make sure to slit the skins and push the meat out. This is not a "clean" recipe otherwise. (And who knows how your body even digests other animal's intestines...scratch that, who wants to know?)

For my version of tortilla/sausage/tomato/spinach stew, you need:

• 1 small white onion, chopped
• 6 oz. fresh spicy poultry sausage (I used turkey habanero)
• 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano leaves
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 14 oz. can no-salt-added diced tomatoes
• 3 cups low-sodium broth (chicken or vegetable)
• 1 cup spinach
• 1 2/3 tbsp canola oil

• petite red potatoes (optional)
• fresh lime, cut in half (optional, for squeezing juice)
• low-fat Greek style yogurt (optional, for garnish)
  

1. In a large saucepan or soup pot, saute onion in 1 tbsp oil over med-high heat until it starts to soften. Slit sausage casings and crumble meat into pan. Cook, breaking the meat up with a wooden spoon until no longer pink. About 3 minutes.
   
2. Stir in oregano and cumin, then add tomatoes and their liquid to the mix. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Add spinach and cook until it is lightly steamed, and bright green.
   
3. Ladle soup into bowls and squeeze lime juice on top before serving. Also can serve with a dollop of low-fat Greek style yogurt on top, like a creme fraiche.
   

Power Yogurt

I'm starting to think that taste is conditioned by society. It makes sense. We don't exist without borrowing ideas. We don't taste without knowing from somebody else what taste is like.

So at some point, I became conditioned to like plain Greek-style yogurt and apricots, and to consider them as having a "healthy" flavor. I then became conditioned to find things with "healthy" flavor preferable and good. This was not always the case. It took intellectual and physiological effort.

But from what I've heard, even from the kitsch-food gourmands, apricots, yogurt, cinnamon and flax seeds aren't too difficult to get the hang of.

To make power yogurt, you need:

• 1 cup low-fat Greek style yogurt
• sliced apricots
• 1 tbsp honey
• 2 tsp flax seeds
• dash cinnamon

Sprinkle flax seeds and cinnamon over yogurt in small bowl. Add honey and apricots. Spoon onto palette!

Lucy's Tacos

I woke up at noon today, immediately began a search for coffee, found some around 4 pm, became enthusiastic, walked around campus for a while, and then got hungry. Too hungry to bother cooking for myself.

So I drove into town and bought a Greenie Beanie from Lucy's Tacos in Red Hook. It began to rain while I sat at the little table by the window reading Bard's Art magazine, and a local rock n' roll periodical with a picture of Bob Dylan on the front in his younger days. The burrito was delicious, but not that cheap, so I will get around to cooking again tomorrow and most of the time from now on.

In the burrito I found

• chicken
• spinach
• black beans
• sweet red pepper
• avocado
• lime cilantro vinaigrette
• all merging in a whole wheat wrap (something the burrito could have done without)

I bet you could make the same thing at home for less than the $7 I paid, but I think with places like Lucy's, leaving your house is part of the point. It's nice (and rare) to find a community nook to hang out in that serves food, is laid back enough that you feel comfortable arriving there frequently and at odd times, and where the guy who works behind the counter keeps playing infallibly great tracks over the stereo.

I'd compare eating at Lucy's Tacos to eating at 71 Irving in Gramercy Park. You do it as much for the feeling of community, of being a townie in your town, as you do for the food.

Sun Dried Tomato and Olive Dip

I thought it might be a good thing, for my first cooking escapade in the community kitchen, to make a dish you could easily "share" with passersby, should they be loitering around or passing through as you cooked.

Well I was right. And my new friend was as happy to talk to me while I cooked as he was to taste whatever I came up with. And he even approved of it, which solidified the friendship.

And I approve of this too. I think the sun dried tomatoes, which I normally dislike, gave the dip a perfect sweetness. And the ingredients and prep are super easy.

You need

• 6 sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)
• 4 oz. low fat cream cheese
• 3 tbsp black olives, seedless
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley
• black pepper to taste

1. Place tomatoes in a small bowl and pour boiling water over them to cover. Let stand 5 minutes or until soft. Drain and chop coarsely.
   
2. In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese and yogurt. Add tomatoes and olives, oregano, parsley and pepper. Stir.
3. Spread over your favorite whole grain, high fiber, low calorie crackers.
   

Kitchen Transition

The kitchen itself makes up for its own bereftness. It's like a dynasty, man. Not only huge and impenetrable but functional, and perfect for creating a community atmosphere. This is fruitful for my situation: grad students are not known for social behavior. (Cooking tonight bore me two new friends).

Check this out: