Zola

All My Dead Appliances, May They Rest In Peace

If there were such a thing as an Appliance Graveyard, mine would have plenty of headstones. I have gotten rid of quite a few appliances that used to take up lots of space in my cupboards.

Good news is I didn’t bury those appliances in my backyard like some kind of pet cemetery. I gave them away or donated them.

But why did I get rid of them in the first place?
The answer is...carbohydrates.

Let me explain. For those who don't know my story, I was the self-proclaimed Queen of Diets that Didn't Work. I tried diet after diet until I got so fed up, I did my own research and started my own diet. 7 years later, my diet has helped almost 5,000 people across the country lose weight and keep it off for good. What's the secret? The truth is, there's no secret. It's all about clean eating with a plan, getting the right education and support, and learning how to distinguish real-food based science from clever food marketing.

In the past, one of the biggest things that thwarted my weight loss efforts were the excessive amount of processed carbs that are part of most "normal" diets. They'd stall my efforts every time. As a diet expert, I can tell you, if you're trying to lose a serious amount of weight, those starchy foods absolutely must go. And those clever little appliances that encourage a high-carb lifestyle? They are no longer welcome in my kitchen.

So I did a purge.

Let’s take an inventory of what I got rid of and why:

My bread maker. I used to be the queen of custom bread at my dinner parties. I managed to time the baking of the bread to coincide with the arrival of guests. The house would have an amazing aroma no matter what I was cooking up as the entrée. The bread would permeate. I’d take the bread out of the bread maker and it would still be warm to serve when dinner was ready. My specialty was a lemon-pepper bread. It went with just about every entrée style. The average slice of bread has about 22 grams of carbs in it. I don’t eat more than 80 grams of carbs per day now, so there’s no room for bread in that total. If I eat bread, it will be a warm baguette right out of the oven at a restaurant. And I’ll slather that with butter to keep the glycemic uptake down. No blood sugar spikes for me.

My waffle maker is gone. I know now that I could be making low carb waffles, but I didn’t know that then and I really don’t miss it. I almost never made regular white flour waffles; maybe if company came and requested them, but not often. What I used to make, that was delightful, was a cornmeal waffle that was used as part of a dinner entrée. During the summer it was nice to have the hot cornmeal waffle topped with a nice pile of grilled shrimp tossed in a chunky, cold, tomato salsa. Very summer. Very different. People raved about it.

My pasta maker went to see its maker. It has a happy new home now. The carbohydrate concentration of pasta is even worse than bread. The average serving of pasta has about 40 grams of carbs in it. That’s a big YIKES! On the extremely rare occasion that I eat pasta, I cook up a small amount of commercially made pasta or buy some fresh. The difference is I’m only eating a cup of it (at most) and I pile on the sauce. The sauce is the satisfying part, anyway.

I do have a very happy memory of making pasta with some friends late one night. We went to an evening football game at the university. The game didn’t end until about 10 pm so we were definitely eating late. I came home to make up a batch of penne while guests had cocktails. I paired it with a lovely tomato-vodka sauce. Making pasta really doesn’t take all that long; boiling the big pot of water to cook it takes time. When I want to have those memories again, I can still make the tomato vodka sauce and it’s still a BIG YUM.

Gone too, is my toaster. Hasta la vista, baby! I discovered two things. Did you know you can make “toast” in your oven? You just put it on a cookie sheet and toast it. Yes, it might be a bit of a waste of energy to fire up the oven just to toast bread, but I’ve only done it twice in 10 years, so it probably isn’t that big a deal. The other thing I discovered is you can put buttered bread in a non-stick fry pan and toast it like that; just like a grilled cheese with no cheese. And it can be buttered on both sides to taste even more decadent. I have not missed my toaster in a very long time. Before I donated it, I even had it put up into one of those very high cabinets that could only be accessed by my husband, or get out the ladder. So I surely wasn’t using it daily to toast bagels or frozen waffles. Those days are long gone.

My cupboards are cleaner now. Everything is neatly organized.
My digestive system is cleaner now, too.

Rest in peace, appliances.
Cheers,

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Put it in the pot and let the magic happen.

by Zola

The Goodness of Ghee

My first encounter with ghee happened when I was a little kid. I had no idea it was ghee, but it had a special fascination for me.

On rare occasion, my mom and dad would take us out to dinner on Sunday evening. We usually went to a little bar/supper club call Bleiers. The long bar in front was usually crowded. There were booths along the side but we never sat in the booths. We were taken to a back dining room. That’s where families ate.

The dining room was dim but inviting. To this day, I like to sit in the dimmer part of the dining room rather than a bright spot. When you looked around the room the tables had those classic red, glass candle holders. Sunday evenings those candles were always lit. I find the romance in that.

The place was not fancy but the food was excellent. Every once in a while, one of my parents would order lobster tail. Only the adults were allowed to order lobster but if we were good, “us kids” might get a bite.

Before the lobster arrived at the table, there was a little contraption that arrived courtesy of the waitress. It was a metal stand that also had a little candle underneath it. It was lit and what was above it was a container of bubbling, melted butter. Yummy, bubbling goodness.

I now know that wonderful, warm butter was ghee. In the United States, we’d call it clarified butter. In southern Asia they’d call it ghee.

So what’s clarified butter (or ghee).

Clarified butter is butter melted on a low temperature until the water evaporates and the milk solids sink to the bottom.

Courtesy of my favorite food science guy, Alton Brown, here is a recipe for clarified butter and its cousin, ghee.

Alton Brown has an amazing capacity to take what others would explain in a complicated fashion and make it accessible. Thank you, Alton.

When I grew up and worked in a French restaurant, I was intrigued when I saw the chef making a pot of ghee. He took 12 pounds of butter and put it in a big soup pot early in the morning. It took all morning to melt down and become the golden goodness he used so liberally in his kitchen.

Ghee has an amazing capacity in the kitchen. It’s not only good for you, and tastes amazing, but one big reason to use it in cooking is the flash point. Use it instead of butter. Butter burns. Olive oil can burn. Ghee does not. So you can saute at a higher temperature and rest assured your food will cook perfectly, yet quickly. Restaurants use ghee all day long. You can even store a jar of ghee in your cupboard at room temperature. It won’t spoil. Clarified butter has to be stored in the refrigerator, but it will last quite a while.

There are tons of health benefits to ghee, too.

Ghee contains some healthy vitamins; A, E and K. They help with bone growth, tooth development and regulation of the immune system.

Ghee is a great source for quick energy. Ghee is metabolized quickly rather than being stored as fat. Your body happily eats it up.

Ghee helps keep your gut healthy. It can block the growth of bad bacteria and help promote the growth of beneficial bacteria in your gut. Take that, fancy yogurt.

Ghee is actually good for your heart. It can lower cholesterol and help keep your heart healthy.

Go to your local grocery store and in the cooking oil aisle you’ll find Ghee. Scoop some up. It’s not cheap but a little goes a long way.

Cheers,

by Zola

Everything Goes Better With Bacon

If you’re trying to eat healthy, (aka clean eating) you’re likely to have an opinion about bacon. I have a very dear friend from Iowa. The land of pork.

He’s the kind of guy who gets his pork products directly from the farm. He was raised on a farm so he still has lots of friends in the farming business and he chooses his purveyors carefully.

He’s really picky about his bacon. He wants his with no nitrates, no nitrites and he wants it uncured. Those things all sort of go together as we are about to find out.

For this column I am going to do something I don’t usually do. I am going to fully source an article I found written by the fine folks at Prevention magazine. I am going to interrupt their findings with comments of my own, but I think they did the best job of laying out the controversy surrounding bacon. They also do a great job of defining the elements involved; namely nitrates, nitrites and curing.

So….
Are nitrates and nitrites good or bad?

To answer that question, you first need to understand how they’re different. Nitrates and nitrites are both naturally occurring chemical compounds found in soil, water, plants, and even our own bodies. One of the most common forms is a natural salt called sodium nitrate, which is exceptionally good at preserving meats and has been used for this purpose for generations. But, near the turn of the 20th century, meat producers made an important discovery: When sodium nitrate interacts with bacteria in meat, it converts to sodium nitrite. Today, just about every manufacturer skips that bacterial conversion and just adds synthetic sodium nitrite directly to cured meats. It’s the “synthetic” part that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

In some ways, that’s a good thing: Nitrites keep the fat in meat from going rancid while inhibiting the growth of dangerous bacteria like listeria and botulism. But in the 1970s, researchers discovered that when meat containing sodium nitrite is heated above 266°F, it creates nitrosamines, or compounds that are carcinogenic to animals. That triggered the USDA to limit the amount of nitrites that may be added to cured meats and to require that all products containing nitrites include vitamin C, which prevents the formation of nitrosamines. Still, in 2010, WHO (World Health Organization) listed ingested nitrates and nitrites as probable human carcinogens.

But here’s the shocker: For all the fuss that’s been made about nitrates, nitrites, and nitrosamines, cured meats only account for a minuscule 6% of our dietary nitrate intake. Around 80% of our nitrate consumption comes from veggies, according to the CDC (about 21% is accounted for by drinking water). Celery, leafy greens, beets, parsley, leeks, endive, cabbage, and fennel are the most potent sources, but you’ll get some nitrates from almost any plant you eat. You’ll notice that these all grow in the ground and most of them are fairly leafy.

Why are plants so high in nitrates? They pick them up from soil, nitrogen-based fertilizer (another reason to do your best to eat organic), water, and nitrogen in the atmosphere. When we eat nitrates in plants, bacteria in our mouth convert them to—you guessed it—nitrites. Nitrites are then absorbed and stored in our cells until they’re turned into nitric oxide, a compound that’s proven to relax blood vessels and increase blood flow. I’ve seen this reference more than once, from different types of sources, so that gives me hope.

Nitrites are so essential, in fact, that our bodies even create it on their own. “For every kilogram of body weight you carry, your body naturally produces about a milligram of nitrite,” says Jeff Sindelar, PhD, associate professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison department of animal sciences.
The bottom line? Some researchers have found associations (but not direct causal links) between high nitrite consumption and certain cancer risks. “There is some epidemiological evidence suggesting that, when added to foods, these compounds may be associated with esophageal or stomach cancer,” says Johanna Congleton, PhD, EWG senior scientist. “Those studies are the ones that give us cause for concern.”

So often these studies come up with the cautionary “more work needs to be done”, yet they go ahead and publish anyway. I guess they just want to be first to get published. But others have called for the re-classification of dietary nitrates as a nutrient, not a potential carcinogen. “Worrying about consuming these products at high enough levels where they might be considered toxic is really an insignificant concern,” says Sindelar. (That’s not a carte blanche to gnaw on salami logs every day. There is well-documented consensus that high consumption of processed meats can up your risk for heart disease, cancers, and death—no matter what preservatives have been added to them.)
There’s no simple answer. Whether nitrates and nitrites are a boon or a blight may depend heavily on what foods they come from and the particular human ingesting them. One thing is for sure: Nitrates’ and nitrites’ reputation as avoid-at-all-cost, cancer-causing nasties does not appear to be entirely accurate.

So leaving Prevention magazine’s input, what is curing? And what does it have to do with bacon?

Cured vs. Uncured

Cured bacon is preserved with a commercial preparation of salt and sodium nitrites. Nitrites are additives that are responsible for giving bacon its pink color, among many other things.
There are two methods of curing — pumping and dry-curing. The concentration of nitrites cannot exceed 200 parts per million (ppm) in dry-cured bacon and 120 ppm in pumped bacon, according to the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

“Uncured” bacon is bacon that hasn’t been cured with sodium nitrites. Usually, it’s cured with a form of celery, which contains natural nitrites, and plain old sea salt, as well as other flavorings like parsley and beet extracts. Uncured bacon has to be labeled: “Uncured bacon. No nitrates or nitrites added.”

So, here are my takeaway points:

1. Eat organic if you can, to limit the amount of nitrogen-based fertilizer you end up consuming.
2. Avoid buying a lot of “lunch meat.” I used to buy the stuff shrink-wrapped and hanging from hooks. No more.
3. When I do buy any kind of meat from the deli I try to buy items that have been roasted in house. They are fresher.
4. And I try not to make too many of my meals from this kind of food. I know folks still take a sandwich to work every day in their lunch box. I eat that stuff maybe once a month or even once a quarter.
5. I do buy uncured bacon that is nitrate and nitrite-free. Reason is when it’s cured they use sea salt and celery salt to preserve it. That way I know I am not getting excessive amounts of processed salt in my body. I’d rather eat sea salt every time.

Enjoy your bacon! Give me mine, crispy!
Cheers,

by Zola