Add more color to your diet

When I go to the grocery store or farmer's market, I try to switch up what I normally buy. If I ate spinach last week, I'll buy kale this week. I'll get walnuts instead of almonds or quinoa instead of rice. I try to eat what's in season locally too.

Eating a variety of whole foods is beneficial for your health. Foods contain different types and amounts of minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, and phytonutrients. For example, tomatoes contain lycopene, carrots contain beta-carotene, collards contain calcium, and egg yolks contain Vitamin D.

So this week when you're perusing through the grocery store, fill your cart with foods you don't normally buy. Buy colorful foods like radishes, butternut squash, avocado, purple potatoes, beets, blueberries or salmon. This will break up the monotony of dishes you usually make. It begs for you to be creative in the kitchen. You'll enjoy it and I'm sure those you're feeding will too.

An example of a colorful meal is my lunch from last Friday. It consisted of lentils (good source of non-heme iron), brazilian collards (great source of calcium and magnesium), and roasted sweet potatoes (full of carotenes).

Red lentils cooked with yellow onion, ginger, curry, allspice
Brazilian collards the greens were thinly sliced, so they cooked quickly with oil and garlic
Sweet potatoes roasted with coconut oil and cumin seeds

A natural sweet, dates.

Dates are a naturally sweet fruit. They are great to keep around if you have a sweet tooth, and are a better alternative than refined sweets.

I love the coconut date logs from the bulk aisle of Whole Foods. They only contain two ingredients, dates and coconuts. I decided to make my own.

This is so simple and done in minutes. Chop up dates. Make sure you remove the pit. Roll into balls (your choice at the size). Fill a small dish with your favorite toppings (coconut, cinnamon, cocoa, nutmeg, sesame seeds). Then roll the dates through the toppings, covering the entire treat. Store in the refrigerator.

You can also stuff your dates. Instead of chopping the dates, cut them in half, remove the pit and fill with nuts, seed butters (sunflower or tahini), or shredded coconut.

My first tofu dish

This isn't my first time eating tofu, but my first experience making tofu at home. Some vegetarians (and vegans) live on tofu, but I don't eat a lot of it. I order it at thai restaurants or add it to my salad at Whole Foods occasionally.

I made the orange ginger tofu dish from Terry Walter's Clean Food. I marinated the tofu overnight Thursday and enjoyed it for lunch Friday with brown rice, steamed sugar snap peas and roasted broccoli*. The marinade was rich in orange and ginger flavors making the tofu a little sweet and a tad tart from the orange juice and red onions. The flavor was perfect. Both the roommate and I thought it was delicious.

*Beautiful table setting, roasted broccoli, and brown rice courtesy of the roommate, Ryan.

A new cookbook, Clean Food

I've been enjoying this rich coconut, butternut squash soup (recipe below) this week. I made a big batch last Sunday morning. Preparing foods on the weekend and storing in the fridge (or freezer) is a great way to have a quick, healthy dinner versus relying on takeout.

I was inspired to make the recipe by reading Terry Walters' cookbook, Clean Food. Terry says that "Clean Food is a holistic approach to cooking with love and good intention." I love that the cookbook is organized by the seasons. It's mostly vegetarian with some vegan recipes. Terry uses natural sweetners, adds seaweed to stocks and soups, and cooks with red wine. I'm itching to the try her orange ginger tofu recipe and this vinaigrette. Her bean soups would also be perfect for long, winter days.

Coconut butternut squash soup
3 tbsp olive oil (or coconut oil)
1 tsp cayenne
1 tsp allspice
2 tsp curry powder
1 butternut squash
1 sweet potato
1 yellow onion
2 garlic cloves
4 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
1 can of coconut milk
3 c. water (or more if you want it thinner)
kaffir lime leaves
1/2 lime

Preheat oven at 350.

Cut up the butternut squash + sweet potatoes into similar sized chunks. Put onto a baking sheet or a 8 x 8 inch dish. Mix 2 tbsp olive oil (or coconut oil) with allspice, curry, and cayenne. It should form a thick paste. Drizzle over sweet potato + squash chunks, and mix in with hands. Pop into oven for 20 minutes.

Heat remaining tbsp of oil and add onion. Cook down onion for about 10 minutes, then add ginger and garlic. After about 20 minutes, remove root veggies from the oven. They will not be entirely soft, which is fine. Add to onion mixture, along with coconut milk and water. Bring to boil, toss in kaffir lime leaves, then simmer on low, covered, until root veggies are soft.

Remove lime leaves, puree with hand immersion blender (or in a regular blender, but be careful soup is very hot!). Squeeze lime over soup. Pour into bowls, garnish with pumpkin seeds and cilantro.

My amazing friend, Simon.

You might remember my friend Simon from this post. He's an amazing photographer from NYC. He did a cross country road trip, solo I might add, late summer.

Simon and I studied abroad in London in the Spring of 2005. We lived at Ralph West Hall in Battersea with a lot of other students. There were only four Americans, including us. We bonded on our daily commutes on bus 344 to Elephant and Castle for our classes at the London College of Communication. We spent weekends at Spitalfield and Portobello markets, evenings at the pubs, and nights dancing in the heart of London.

We've seen each other twice since then. Once at a Renassiance Festival in Maryland for his friend Jonah's birthday and last summer on Simon's first stop of his cross country tour.

Simon left for Haiti two days ago and has been tweeting about his experience so far. I wanted to let him know that I'm thinking about him and am so very proud to call him my friend.

Yes, Simon you are doing some good.

Theda's coleslaw

2010. It didn't start out quite like I hoped. My grandmother was rushed to intensive care on the 1st and passed away on the 8th.

My grandmother, Theda, was a nurse for many years and loved helping people. She volunteered her time at church and different organizations. She was a very active lady and ate healthy. She often reminded (sometimes scolded) the family to take vitamins daily, exercise frequently, and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. A ziplock bag of carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, or apple slices resided in the refrigerator door for easy snacking.

Six months ago, I enrolled in an online holistic nutrition education course. I want to educate people to live healthier by making better food choices, managing stress, and exercising more. Only after she passed, did I realize how much she had influenced my decision in pursuing my passion for nutrition.

My first recipe for 2010 is one of my grandmother's favorites. She would always make this dish for me when I was home. It's a great alternative to mayonaise rich coleslaw.

Theda's Coleslaw

1/2 head of Green cabbage, finely shredded

1 Green bell pepper, diced

1/8 c Sugar (I used about 4 tbsp honey)

1/4 c Raw cider vinegar

1 tsp Celtic salt

1 tsp Pepper

Mix cabbage and bell pepper into a bowl. Mix sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper into a smaller bowl until sugar dissolves. Mix wet ingredients with cabbage mixture. Refrigerate overnight.

I garnished mine with cilantro. Enjoy this coleslaw as a side dish or on top of a veggie burger.

Happy holidays!

Enjoy the next few days with your friends and family, gathered around the christmas tree or sharing a meal together. Merry Christmas!

An early morning breakfast of fresh butter, baguette slices and a friend's homemade blueberry jam with one of my best friends, Lauren. 

Good sweetners

America has a giant sweet tooth. We reward successes, celebrate birthdays, and mend broken hearts with a slice of chocolate cake.

The holiday season also moves people into the kitchen to bake cookies and sweets for friends, family, and colleagues. This isn't fair for our waistlines.

This year think about cutting back on some of those sweets. If you're doing all the baking, replace refined sugar with natural sources. Eliminating processed sugar from your diet will improve your health. Stay away from those pink, blue and yellow packets that reside by the coffee machine. Raw sugar (brown packets) are the better choice, but the sugar is still refined. Drink more water and tea than sugary sodas. These foods are full of icky ingredients like saccharin, high fructose corn syrup and other artificial ingredients.

The best alternatives are fruit, honey, date sugar, molasses, agave nectar, sorghum syrup, brown rice syrup, brown malt syrup, fruit juice concentrate, stevia, xylitol.

A few healthful tips:
Buy plain organic yogurt and sweeten with honey and fruit.
Protein or a 15 minute walk is a better pick-me-up than sugar-laden sodas.
Skip the sugar in your coffee or tea and sweeten with honey or almond milk.
Skip the ice cream and make a fruit smoothie.
Enjoy a bowl of fruit sprinkled with cinnamon and shredded coconut.
Nut butters mixed with raisins and molasses spread onto apple slices are a better, low sugar snack.

Sugar is extremely addictive which is why we crave it. But try to to reduce your sugar intake a little each week and note how you feel. Make goals and try to stick to them. And instead of making cupcakes from the Duncan Hines box, whip up some of these instead.

What sweetners do you prefer?


(Bauman College, NE104 Lecture notes)

It's almost Christmas?!

Wow I can't believe Christmas is really next week. I feel like summer ended not too long ago. The past few weeks have flown by with Christmas shopping, working, school work, spinning (took my first class this week) and cooking. I finished my shopping two weeks ago, but I have a few small things left to pick up.

After a lunch of mexican and an afternoon of sweets, I decided to make a simple healthy dinner on this chilly December evening.

A spinach salad with cherry tomatoes, carrots, celery, chickpeas and dressing (lemon, shallots, nutritional yeast, olive oil, raw vinegar) with a side of roasted sweet potato chips. Oh and a glass of merlot.

I'll be posting more soon, but I wanted to say hello and see if Christmas snuck up on you this year too.

Protein, a macronutrient.

Being vegetarian, a common question I get asked is, how do you get enough protein?

The average person (non-athlete) needs 0.8 g per kg. So a 150 lb person needs about 55 g of protein each day. This isn't a tremendous amount. For example, 3 oz of salmon delivers almost 22 grams of protein. It's easy to see how people can over consume protein if they're not conscious of what they are putting in their bodies.

The quality of protein matters as much as the quantity. Sources of protein include legumes, nuts, seeds, dairy, fish, poultry, eggs and meat. Eggs have the highest biological value of protein of any whole food.

A complete protein is comprised of the 8 (or 9) essential amino acids. These essential amino acids are Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Phenylalanine, Threonine, Tryptophan, Valine, and Histidine. Animal products are rich with all of these essential amino acids. But vegetable proteins must be combined to form a complete protein. For example: legumes + grains (black beans + rice), legumes + nuts/seeds (chickpeas + tahini), grains + dairy products (granola + yogurt).

Additional protein can be found in booster foods such as bee pollen, algae and nutritional (brewer's yeast). Protein powders and bars are another way to get more protein in the diet especially during or after an intense workout. Selecting protein bars that have the lowest sugar and least amount of processing is optimal. This Cherry Pie Larabar only contains unsweetened cherries, almonds, and dates.

Remember everyone's intake of protein (fat and carbohydrates) varies based on stress, age, genetics, and activity level. Pregnant women, children, athletes, fast metabolizers and people recovering from injuries will need more protein in their diet than the average person.