Veg Me Up! Easy and Tasty Veggie Side Dishes

We all know we should eat more vegetables - you know, really GOOD vegetables like dark leafy greens and other deep colored veggies that are so full of nutrients! But we tend to be busy and often don’t like certain vegetables due to their taste for some reason. Remember though, how something tastes depends heavily on how you cook and spice it. So I thought I’d share a few simple, yummy side dishes to help make adding more veggies to your diet a little easier.

All these recipes make two servings.

Tamari Kale
A number of my patients have expressed their dislike of kale due to its taste. This is one of the fastest side dishes I make, and it tastes really good!
Ingredients:
2-3 large washed leaves of organic kale (there are different types, but I like the curly leaf type)
1 Tablespoon organic virgin coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil
1 Tablespoon organic tamari, soy sauce, or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos

Directions:
-Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-low to medium heat.
-Chop or tear the kale leaves to a size you like (I include the leaf stem until it gets really thick).
-Add them to the warmed oil, and stir to get oil on most leaves. (Kale cooks down a lot! If you can’t cover all the leaves with oil at first because the pan is so full, don’t worry about it. You can stir better when it cooks down.)
-Once you hear the crackle of the kale cooking, start stirring and flipping so all the leaves get cooked.
-When the kale is fairly wilted, but not cooked to death (the longer you cook it, the more nutrients you lose), pour the tamari over it and stir quickly for another 15 seconds or so.
-Serve immediately and enjoy!


Yummy Honey Carrots
Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon organic extra virgin olive oil
2 or 3 organic carrots (washed and chopped to about 1/4 inch slices)
½ teaspoon organic oregano
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon honey

Directions:
-Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat.
-Add chopped carrots to the warmed oil.
-Shake salt and oregano over the carrots.
-Cover the skillet with a lid to steam the carrots a bit.
-Stir carrots every couple minutes.
-When they are slightly soft, add the honey and stir so all the carrots get mixed in it.
-Serve to eager mouths!


Roasted Green Beans
Ingredients:
½ lb fresh organic green beans (washed and tips removed)
1 clove organic garlic (diced small)
2 Tablespoons organic butter (please avoid margarine which has unhealthy trans-fats!!)

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
-Stirring occasionally, heat butter and garlic in skillet over medium-low heat until garlic becomes fragrant (couple minutes).
-Put prepared green beans in a medium-sized bowl. Pour butter mixture over the green beans and toss them to cover all the beans with butter.
-Spread green beans evenly on a cookie sheet with a rim (if there is no rim, some butter may drip onto the bottom of your oven).
-Roast for 12-15 minutes. They are done when they are getting wrinkly and slightly brown in areas.
-Eat and enjoy!


Butternut Squashed
Ingredients:
organic butternut squash
1½ Tablespoons organic butter (please avoid margarine which has unhealthy trans-fats!!)
½ teaspoon coriander
pinch of nutmeg
sea salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
-Cut squash in half; scrape seeds out of middle; and place halves face down in an oiled Pyrex baking dish.
-Bake for about an hour. It is done when you can easily stick a fork through the thickest section.
-Take the squash out of the oven, and let it cool enough to be able to handle it.
-Remove the peel, and place squash meat in a bowl.
-Add butter, spices, salt, and pepper, and mash and stir the squash until mixed and creamy. Adjust spices to taste.
-Serve the orange goodness as desired!


Easy Steamy Broccoli
Ingredients:
organic broccoli head (washed and chopped)
optional: salt or butter

Directions:
-Boil small amount of water in a pot with a steamer. (If you do not have a steamer, this can be done with a quarter inch of water and the broccoli directly in the water.)
-Add the chopped broccoli to the pot, cover, and reduce heat to a simmer.
-Steam for about 5 minutes. Broccoli is done when it can be stabbed with a fork with little pressure, but don’t let it get really soft or you’ll lose more vitamins.
-The broccoli can be great by itself, but if you desire, you can add a small amount of salt or butter for flavor.
-Serve and enjoy the tiny, tasty trees!
Note: Green beans can be steamed in the same way, and they taste really good with a little butter.


Note about oils: The less processed your cooking oils are, the better they are for you. “Virgin” and even better “Extra Virgin” means they have been minimally processed. Also “Cold pressed” is good because there was no heat used when pressing the nut, seed, etc for its oil.

Note about cookware: Try to use stainless steel pans rather than aluminum or Teflon, which leech toxins into your food when heated. You can cure stainless steel pans to help avoid sticking by doing the following: On medium to medium-high heat, warm just enough oil to coat the bottom and swish to coat the sides. Leave heating for a couple minutes, but turn it off if the oil begins to smoke. Turn off heat, and let the oil cool completely. Wipe the remaining oil out of the pan with a towel. Then don't use soap to clean your pan as it will pull the oil out of the metal. You will want to do this periodically as you find food is sticking more to the pan.

*Thanks to my patient who gave me the great idea to post these recipes!

Hope you enjoy these veggie dishes and continue making healthy choices! :)

The “O” Factor: Why Organic Eating is So Important

What was your biggest fear as a child? The dark, bees, the bogeyman, bullies at school? Not me. Nope, my biggest fear was yard pesticides. My parents never sprayed our yard (much to our neighbor’s chagrin), and I decided it must be pretty terrible stuff. So every time I saw a yard with the little white signs or with that painted fake green look, I took a deep breath, held it, and ran past as fast as I could. This, of course, helped to make me the most popular kid in school. :) Today I still don’t like pesticides on my yard and especially on my food, but now I now why.

So what’s so important about organic farming and foods? Pesticides just wash off, right? They can’t really hurt us, can they?

Oh, but they can, and they do. Here are some reasons to adjust your budget in order to fit organic foods into your grocery shopping experience.

For Our and Our Children’s Safety
There are over 80,000 chemicals on the market, most of which have not been tested for safety, and many of which build up in our bodies. Some of those chemicals are in categories such as organochlorines (DDT is one of them) and organophosphorous pesticides. Many of these are known to cause cancer, nervous system disorders, birth defects, and a host of other problems. Over time, these insidious chemicals build up in our tissues especially in fats, which store them for long periods of time, and create what is called body burden. This is the amount of chemicals that can be found in a person’s body at any specific time. Body burden tends to be worse for children because they are more sensitive and less able to detoxify such chemicals from their bodies.

Also in relation to our children, studies have shown that not only can such chemicals pass through the placenta to the fetus, but they can be found in breast milk. So we are passing our own chemical body burdens to our children before they are even exposed to the external environment and contaminated foods. This does not mean we should stop breastfeeding our infants! Breast milk is far more nutritious and valuable to a baby’s health than formula. What we need to do is avoid introducing chemicals to our own bodies, so that we won’t pass them on to our children.

For Better Nutrition
Many studies have shown that organically grown produce and organically raised livestock include more nutrients than conventional ones. The largest study on the topic done so far was by researchers from the European Union. Their findings demonstrated that organic produce can have as much as 40% more antioxidants than conventional produce. Even more significant, they found that organic milk can have as much as 60% more antioxidants and essential fatty acids than conventional milk.

Now if you look this topic up on the internet, you’re sure to find the latest news from the Food Standards Agency in the UK saying organic does not have enough of a difference in nutrient levels to be important to our health. But keep in mind that this was simply a review of the abstracts (which are measly summaries of the entire study) of 50 studies (chosen by the FSA, so here’s where some of the bias comes into play) from the past 50 years. I personally put more clout into a study that actually did research for 4 years such as the EU study I mentioned first.



For Saving the Environment
If you read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, you can understand the full impact of many pesticides on the environment. It’s a very good read if you have the time. Basically, the springtime is silent, because the bugs and animals that normally create the ambient noise outside were dying off due to the pesticide DDT. Her book led to the eventual banning of DDT in the US, although it’s still used in many other agricultural countries. Although DDT and a number of other extremely harmful pesticides have been banned by the US, pesticides are not THAT different. They are all poisons that can kill either plants or bugs, and if it kills those things, wouldn’t it harm other living things as well?

Pesticides sprayed on crops soak into the soil, where they can remain for decades. This means that future crops will soak them up through their roots. Also, the pesticides on top of and in the soil are washed into streams, rivers, and lakes during rains and irrigation, further polluting our water sources and harming the flora and fauna of the water communities. We then eat the fish that have been contaminated by the pesticides, further adding to our own body burden.

Final Food for Thought
Think about it this way. Would you feel comfortable dousing an apple with bug spray, rinsing it off under the faucet, and then handing it to your child to eat? Would water alone wash all remnants of that poison off of the apple? Would you want to take that risk? And that poison didn’t even have weeks to soak into the apple like conventional apples in the grocery store have. That bug spray under the sink that you would never dream of spraying on your food is no worse than the pesticides sprayed on conventional crops all over the world. It is poison that over time builds up in our bodies and is undoubtedly adding to the rise in disease and illness that is growing at an alarming rate in the world today.

It’s time to say “NO!” to chemical poisons in our food and “YES!” to nature, to local, to organic foods. Let’s clean up our bodies and the planet and give our children a safer world in which to grow and thrive! Buy, cook, and eat natural, organic, and local foods!

Just for fun: Check out the video Grocery Store Wars at the bottom of the blog.

Stay healthy and happy! :)


Resources for More Information

Article: “Chemicals in Mother’s Milk.” Natural Resources Defense Council: http://www.nrdc.org/breastmilk/envpoll.asp

Article: “Organic Food Is More Nutritious Say EU Researchers” Medical News Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/86972.php

Body Burden information: http://www.chemicalbodyburden.org/

“National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.” CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/

Pesticide Action Network: http://www.panna.org/

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Spring-Rachel-Carson/dp/0618249060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249068713&sr=1-1

USDA National Organic Program: http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?parentnav=COOPERATIVES&navid=ORGANIC_CERTIFICATIO&navtype=RT

Nature Knows Best: An Introduction to Healthy Eating

This is the first entry in my nutrition and health blog, so I decided an overview of how to improve one’s diet would be the most appropriate beginning. In subsequent blogs, I will go into further depth of many of the topics mentioned here. With that said, I will try to make all of these writings as interesting and informative as possible, so… here goes!

What has ruined healthy eating in America? Fast food, T.V. dinners, and processed box foods that are ready to eat after adding hot water. And why do we turn to unhealthy, quick alternatives instead of REAL food? Because as a society, we’ve decided that it’s more important to push ourselves to work hard to live the American dream by becoming the CEO of company X and raising a family at the same time. Isn’t there more to life than working ourselves to the bone and not even having time to sit down to a home-cooked dinner. Let’s take a step back and remember one of those meals in which everything was made from scratch, everyone sat together at the table, and we took our time eating really good food. This is important too, and it’s not only good for the health of our bodies but also for the health of our minds and emotions. We need to start making a healthy diet and relaxation a part of our daily lives again. What good is a third car in the driveway if you feel tired or sick all the time? So if you’ve stuck with me this far, then I trust that you are searching for a change like I’m talking about. (I’m very trusting, so please don’t let me down.) Great! So you’re ready for a change! Here are some places to start.

Eat 3 meals a day! That’s right, no more skipping breakfast. I know some of you are saying, “but I’m not hungry in the morning.” Well that’s because you’ve trained you’re body to lie to you. You haven’t had breakfast in so long, it’s forgotten about that meal. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need it, and if you start eating it, you’re body will remember and will happily accept it again.

Drink lots of water! Yes, I said, water – not soda or coffee. You’re body is made up of about 70% water; do you think soda is going to replenish that properly? I’m not going to get all exact on you and tell you that you need to drink 8 glasses a day, but that’s not a bad goal. Drinking water helps flush toxins out of your body, while drinking things like soda adds toxins to your body (caramel coloring is not exactly nature’s way of saying “drink me”). Basically, drink enough water so that your pee is relatively clear. The darker it is (assuming your body is functioning properly and you aren’t taking B vitamins), the more dehydrated you are.

COOK! I know this is a tough one in our busy lives, but we simply cannot be healthy by always eating processed foods. I will go into detail about what’s wrong with processed foods in a later blog, but for now, just know that the best things to eat and cook with are fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains, and fresh meats. If this is really new to you (you haven’t cooked a meal from scratch in years or ever), then take the first step and plan a home-cooked dinner one weekend night when you’ll have plenty of time. You could even make it a family event where everyone helps. The first step is the hardest, but once you start cooking, it will become easier and even enjoyable.

Read labels! Avoid hydrogenated oils (or partially hydrogenated), sugar substitutes (fewer calories – yes, but more healthy – NO!), high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup in general, monosodium glutamate, food colors, artificial flavors, natural flavors, and pretty much any word over 10 letters long that you’ve never heard of (does hydroxypropyl methylcellulose sound yummy to you?). A good rule of thumb is the shorter the list and the more ingredients that you know are food rather than a chemical, the better.

Eat organic foods! I know that they are more expensive than the foods that we have drenched in hundreds of different pesticides, but they are SO much better for us. OK, I’m going to get on my soapbox now, because there are just so many critics of eating organic foods. If anything might convert a pesticide-lover, it’d be the book Silent Spring written by Rachel Carson in the 1960s about DDT. And don’t think that just because DDT was banned in the US that it’s not on foods from outside the US or that other pesticides aren’t just as bad. Think about it, does it really make sense that it’s harmless to eat something on our food that has a skull and crossbones on the bottle?! Let’s give nature and ourselves a hand by eating more organic foods and lessening the chemical burden on our bodies.

Well, I have so much more to say, but I think I should save them for another blog before you start to think that this is an e-novel. To quickly conclude, let’s take time to focus on our well-being by cooking and eating healthy foods and creating life-long nutrition habits that help us to feel good all day and all life long!

Thanks for reading, and stay healthy and happy! ☺