Body Conscious Ramblings

I remember as a young child at my parents' house a meal had to consist of meat, potatoes, gravy and some veggies (usually cabbage) in the following proportions: 3:2:1:1, where meat was allotted the biggest space on the plate, then came potatoes and at the end some veggies. Regardless of the size of each component the truth is that a "proper" meal had to consist of meat. If it didn't have meat it wasn't a real meal. The opposite was also true, I still hear my mother say "Don't just eat the meat, eat the potatoes (or other starch) - otherwise you're going to be hungry again in an hour". So we begrudgingly ate all of it. Now, I don't remember being told to eat the vegetables, probably because there was not much there to begin with. They were too expensive to have at each meal. All I remember was coleslaw with some sort of heavy cream dressing, cucumbers would make their way onto the plate once in a while and much later, when I was in my late teens, I remember carrots, green beans and tomatoes as a regular thing at the table brought on by my mom acquiring a piece of land just 10 minutes from the house to grow her own veggies and fruit. I'd only experience the veggie abundance for a little while, since I moved out shortly after her purchase. The moral of the story is that as a kid I've been told (implicitly and explicitly) that you have to have meat as part of a "healthy" nourishing meal. My breakfast had deli in the sandwiches, my lunch (which in Europe is a main meal of the day) had to have meat and my supper was again my trusty sandwich with deli. That was it, I was an omnivore going on to be a carnivore... because they instilled in me this idea that if you don't eat meat at every meal, you somehow don't give your body the necessary building blocks, that somehow your meal isn't complete if you don't include meat in it!! Mind you, I was never overweight as a child, if anything, I was underweight. I'd be told constantly to eat more, because my frame was too bony. All those potatoes and meat combos were not doing it for me. Or was it my metabolism that was through the roof, not letting me put on too much weight, burning all those calories? Or maybe it was the fact that snacking only happened once a month, when parents got paid? Yes, we did not snack on chips, chocolate, sodas etc etc everyday, but about once a month.... Then I moved out and didn't think twice about changing anything. What's more, by moving to North America I found myself in the land of plenty and of convenience! I learned that I don't need to spend hours and hours preparing the food, I can buy it already prepared and simply put it in the oven, wait 30-45 minutes and then serve it! How convenient indeed! Snacks were abundant as well. I didn't all of a sudden become a rich person, far from it, but "food" was much cheaper on this side of the North Atlantic Ocean! My blind infatuation with this overabundance lasted about 4-5 years, that's how long it took me to realize I was slowly killing myself with "this convenience"! All my adult life I was about 50-53kg, now I was weighting a whooping 70kg! For a while I was convincing myself that it was due to the fact that I "just" gave birth to my child. But the weight would never come off, that is until I saw my nutrition habits for what they really were - JUNK. To make a long story short, fortunately I have informed myself on the deadly habits I've been subjecting my body to and understood what had to be done to reverse those 5 years of junk in the trunk. I've ditched all processed foods and turned to natural healthy ones. I shed my extra weight and was finally back to my original jeans. Since then another 5 years passed, my weight fluctuated a bit and today I find myself at a point where I'm overflowing with information on food, food industry and treatment of our food and I'm no longer happy with the choices I'm making mostly because I no longer know what's in the food I'm consuming and feeding to my family! I've watched countless documentaries on the food industry and can no longer subject myself to the garbage they produce. So after reading on raw foodism, vegetarianism and veganism I finally decided it is time to abandon meat and most meat products and turn even more to natural foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains and seeds. I've contemplated the idea for a while, by reading various blogs on the matter and I must admit it was slow coming. Simply put it was difficult for me to envision my life without meat. Upon learning about my conversion my geek even pointed out that he has suggested ditching the meat a while back to which I "freaked out" saying that there won't be anything else to eat for us. I don't recall this outburst. Needless to say today is my 3rd day without ANY meat and these are some of the meals I've been consuming: [caption id="attachment_1798" align="alignleft" width="700" caption="Zucchini spaghetti with home made tomato sauce "][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1799" align="alignleft" width="700" caption="Spinach salad with nutritional yeast "][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1801" align="alignleft" width="700" caption="Creamy pepper soup"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1802" align="alignleft" width="700" caption="Curry Lentil crackers with Sweet pepper hemp pesto"][/caption]
In the end, after reading on my options I decided that this is going to be a semi-rawlacto-vegeterian diet, which means that many of my meals are going to be raw (as in not cooked) and I will forego all meat and eggs, but will from time to time allow dairy products (I just can't see myself not eating yogurt for now).

I first heard about Tosca Reno and Clean-eating from a friend who had a subscription to the Oxygen magazine. I gave it a try and soon started buying the magazine each time it came out. Then came the cookbooks and books on clean-eating. I've enjoyed them all, scaled back on the magazines, since they became repetitive. The books don't really bring anything new either. Nevertheless, I did purchase the latest cookbook that's entirely devoted to recipes, which I greatly appreciated. All in all it's a good cookbook, very nicely presented, with shiny pages, hardcover and clear and concise recipes. I do like the presentation a lot. Pictures are not always of prime quality, but most are appealing. There are couple of things that do bother me about this particular cookbook: 1.  The use of obscure terminology and spices - it seems like she wants to create mystery and at the same time confusion by trying to integrate other cultures in the recipes. I'm not closed to the idea of trying new spices, but she goes overboard with it, since some of us if not most of us, don't have access to fancy exotic ingredients. 2. Another thing that really gets to me is the impression I get after flipping through the book that she is desperately trying to appeal to the North America consumer who cannot envision  meal without potatoes! I found about 15 recipes that called for some form of potato! I understand she is trying to make them into healthy meals, but the truth is potato is a mostly useless starch that sends your pancreas into an overproduction of insulin, especially when mixed with fats and protein. So my only conclusion is that she is trying to make sure that the cookbook will be well received by North Americans wanting their fill of potato. 3. Another pet-peeve of mine, which is strictly speaking me being picky, is misuse of the French language - it should read "beans à la Tosca" not "beans alla Tosca" :D If you don't mind the potato overload in the book, you will like what she has to offer. Now, I have not tried out all the recipes yet, so I cannot judge the ease of use or weather or not the meals come out as promised. I do have a favourite, though. It's the Hazelnut espresso cookies, they are divine, but you do have to restrain yourself from eating a whole batch at once, after all it's just egg whites and brown sugar. Enjoy!

Calorie counting Many people subscribe to the idea that you can loose weight by counting calories. What that means is that they will follow a low calorie intake diet to lose weight. In principle it does work, but in reality it doesn't. To prove it you can take as an example an extreme case of a concentration camp worker. Yes, I know it's quite an extreme case, but indulge me for a moment. We all know the image of him being a very skinny individual and we know from history that he was fed a very poor, low-calorie, low-nutrient diet. That is extreme and nobody will go to that extent today to lose weight (or so I hope so), but it does prove that you will even loose cellulite if you limit your food intake. Now, why doesn't it work in reality ? Well, because we'll feel hunger and having food at the tips of our fingers we will have to succumb and have some and in that way we'll cross our calorie limit for any given day, whatever it might be. There is another reason why calorie counting alone won't work and it's the fact that we have to look at the source of that calorie, because all calories are not equal..... Calorie = calorie regardless where it comes from In many cases those of you who count their calories often times don't pay much attention to where the calories came from, you are most concerned with the number at the end of the day. So you might pull out your trusty notepad where you make note of every single calorie you eat during the day and in principle once you arrive at the magic number you are supposed to stop eating. However, by not paying attention to where those calories come from you add to your failure to lose weight, because not all calories are equal. To prove it let's compare the nutritional value of a Big Mac and that of raw broccoli: 1 Big Mac

• 215 grams
• 576 calories
• 292 calories from fat
• 12 grams of saturated fat (bad)
• 103 mg of Cholesterol (bad)
• 742mg of Sodium (bad)
• 47 grams of Carbs (mostly bad, coming from white bread)
• 24 grams of Protein (coming from fat meal, not good)

• 2000 grams!! - To get the same calorie intake from broccoli we need to 10 times as much in weight of raw broccoli!!!
• 560 calories
• 59 calories from fat
• 1 gram of saturated fat
• 0.2 grams of Monounsaturated fats (good)
• 0.8 grams of Polyunsaturated fats (good)
• 420 mg of Omega-3 fatty acids (GREAT)
• 340 mg of Omega-6 fatty acids (good)
• 0 mg of Cholesterol
• 540 mg of Sodium
• 52 grams of dietary Fibre (good for being regular)
• 34 grams sugar (we're talking naturally occurring sugar, of course)
• 56 grams of lean Protein (Yayyyy)
• Vitamin C  2900% of necessary daily intake!!
• Vitamin A  249% of necessary daily intake!!
• Calcium 94% of necessary daily intake
• Iron 81% of necessary daily intake

Thanks to my return to the Montignac method I've discovered a new product without which I truly can't imagine my culinary adventures anymore. I'm talking about Belsoy creamy soya preparation. In previous editions of Montignac's books he'd often times use heavy cream, which I would skip. Somehow the name itself would  scare me enough to not want to even look at it, let alone cook with it. But my most recent purchase was a french edition of his recipe book and all of a sudden this soya cream sprung into life. He uses it in everything! So I researched it and it turned out there is a slight chance of finding the product chez nous. So I went on a caper with my loved one to look for it and to my outmost surprise I did find it! The caper really didn't count as a caper, because we found it in "our" Dominion (read: it's a caper only when you spend half a day looking for something). Nevertheless, I was a proud owner of a couple of 250ml cartons of Belsoy creamy soya preparation! So what's the big deal you ask? Well, the big deal is that it's an awesome product that tastes like cream, with a very silky consistency, but without the bad stuff! See for yourself: As of 15ml

Up until a week ago or so, I cringed at having to deseed a pomegranate. Anybody who has ever tasted the delicious fruit knows what I am talking about and those who don't should go to their local grocery store and get one. Now to spare you (and those who eat the fruit regularly) the pain, mess and labor of deseeding a pomegranate the traditional way I am going to share with you my newly discovered deseeding technique. Usually, I would have put my pomegranate on a large place, prepared half a roll of paper towels and cut the bugger in half and just started poking at the seeds with whatever means available (read: own fingers). You don't want to do that! Why? It's extremely messy and everything that touches the red juice, and trust me it will go everywhere, will turn a gorgeous red colour. So here is what you do: 1. Get a big bowl and fill it up with luke warm water. 2. Cut off the top and bottom of the pomegranate. Same way you do for peeling a pineapple. Just the tough skin, do not cut in too deep. You end up with a flat surface on the top and on the bottom. 3. Score the skin from top to bottom in 4 places as if though cutting it in quarters but not going all the way through, just cutting through the skin. 4. Immerse the entire pomegranate in the water and gently break it apart into 4 quarters. You're using the scoring to do so by gently pushing the parts away from each other. 5. Once you have the pomegranate quartered you can take three quarters away on a plate and work on one at a time. 6. Now all you do, you do underwater separating this way the messy membrane from the seeds. Membrane will float in the water and the seeds being heavier will sink to the bottom. You can then fish out the membrane with a small strainer and voilà you end up with nicely separated seeds with no goopy white stuff. Now, do not strain the whole thing through a big strainer! It seems like a no-brainer, but you are going to be tempted to do it to get rid of the water. I simply fished out my seeds with my hands gently rinsing them with water before placing them in a container. I assure you that this method is the cleanest and fastest one there is. The first time I tried it I kept reaching for the next quarter when there was none left! And you will not get anything red from the juice either! I have seen another method of deseeding a pomegranate floating on the internet where you cut it in half and then pound it with a rolling pin until the seeds fall out. Somehow, I don't even want to try this method, mostly because it sounds even more messy than my old method. As for the chili peppers, my first and last encounter with them yesterday was a very painful one. I was making my mushroom soup and wanted it to have a kick, as per usual. So I had these red chili peppers kicking around in the fridge and thought I'd use them instead of the powder stuff and from then on my day went downhill. I picked the smallest there was in the package and cut it in half lengthwise. Then I scraped the seeds out with my fingers and rinsed the thing with water. As I was doing it I could already smell the spicy aroma, but somehow I wanted to make sure it was coming from the red thing and I put it closer to my nose to smell it. The odour was so strong that I jerked my head back as if punched by a professional boxer. So at that point I decided to only put a fraction of the pepper in my soup. I proceeded to cut off a tiny bit of the pepper, I chopped it up and put in my soup. At that point my nose was so full of the spicy aroma that I only had enough time to reach out for a tissue and blow it. There was no time for reflection. So I took care of my nose, wiping it thoroughly, using the same fingers that just scraped the seeds out of a red hot chili pepper! For the next 45 minutes of so I thought my nose was going to fall off! It was officially on fire and the only relief could come in a form of a wet face cloth stuck to my face. It was truly an awful experience. But I guess my loved one must be happy, because there is no way I'm ever experimenting with chili peppers again! Share