April's CR Diary

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June 4, 2007

What You Really Really Want

I love that old song by the Spicegirls. It makes no sense, but has a catchy tune.

First, the amazing whey: MR answers your question:

If she's in Canada, she can get the very stuff from here:

http://www.fortius.ca/products/level3/dynawhey.html

Or you can phone them directly (1-888-714-4697) Alternately, it's available
in Loblaws/Superstores up there.

What I've subsequently ordered is the quite wondrous custom product-blending service available here:

http://proteinfactory.com/shop/home.php

I chose just plain whey protein concentrate (lacks the extra lactoferrin
of the DynaWhey), flavored with chocolate and banana and sweetened
with a 50/50 mix of Neotame and sucralose (safer IMO than Ace-K, which
is in the DynaWhey along with the sucralose).

Second, the lower digestive tract issue:

She is taking magnesium
CITRATE; if she wants a stool-softener, she should be using the OXIDE.

Third, seconds after reading Bethsheba's comment re: the grilled chicken salads, I walked by the hotel restaurant and saw "Lunch Special: Buffalo Chicken Salad!" There is no escape! Happily, this time I packed a lot of my own food and got a hotel room with a microwave and a fridge. So I just polished off a Lean Cuisine and my home made salad, with some flax oil and salsa, as a nice dinner in my room while I was getting work done. Later on I'll go out with co-workers and they'll have dinner, but I'll just enjoy a glass of wine and the company without the calories. Lean Cuisines aren't everyday food, but they do fine in a pinch on the road, and they're much better than a lot of the God knows what you get out here. Tomorrow I have my whey that I can put in a glass of skim milk with flax oil for breakfast, and then for lunch I'm going to suggest that we all go down to the buffet at the hotel that has a huge and excellent salad bar. I somehow forgot my yogurt, but I'll pick up some while out, or just eat another whey shake with skim milk with lunch. Then dinner will most likely be a second Lean Cuisine. I far prefer my own home cooking, but it's a requirement of my job to travel so I'll do the best I can. Still getting all the calcium and Bs in my shakes, and the As, Ks, Cs, etc. in my salads.

Last night over dinner I got into a conversation with MR about how I create the dishes I make. It all started when I was telling him about a dish I used to make years ago, when I was vegan and ate a ton of carbs. It was spinich stuffed shells in a pumpkin sage sauce. It was great! Basically you stuffed the pasta shells with a mixture of steamed spinich, crumbled tofu and garlic, then you made a sauce of pumpkin, plain soy milk, garlic, and fresh sage, then baked the entire thing in a casserole dish. Garnished with sage leaves. You could smell it cooking from a mile away.

As I talked about it, I decided I wanted to make a CR version based on the same principles but something MR and I would eat. So here's how the thought process goes:

1. Get rid of the pasta. Easy -- it doesn't taste like anything anyhow.
2. We don't use soy milk, but we do use both regular organic milk and yogurt. The pumpkin sauce would be even better with the extra bite that yogurt gives it, so I'd substitute nonfat plain yogurt (but you have to add after removing from heat.
3. Spinach isn't as flavorful, IMO, as many heartier greens like kale. And MR dislikes cooked greens anyway, but greens make a great bed for any hot sauce you might serve over pasta. I often serve marinaras over beds of kale or arugula, or both. So I could pour the sauce, hot, over fresh kale. The kale would maintain its integrity but still serve as a great backdrop to the sauce. (I, for the record, like cooked kale fine but prefer raw.)
4. MR loves a creamy bite of nonfat ricotta, and it would make a good addition to the creaminess of the sauce to dot the kale bed with five tablespoons of nonfat ricotta, distributed around the greens, before covering the entire creation with the pumpkin sauce.
5. Flax oil would make an amazing buttery topping, and we eat a teaspoon at dinner every night, so there, pour that on top.

There you go: dish transformed, totally CR friendly, to MR's specific tastes, but probably tastes a lot like the original.

When I think about cooking, I start with some basic ideas about what the person I'm cooking for enjoys eating. People are very, very different in their tastes, and I've found that I enjoy cooking for someone more after I've eaten with him or her a whole lot, so that I get a sense of what buttons he or she really likes to have pushed.

For instance, MR loves to walk in and see the table set with so much food that it looks like it would take him a week to eat it. He adores volume, and he has the patience to sit there and eat for forty-five minutes. I, on the other hand, like little foods, and so I have no problem with eating things that are smaller but higher calorie sometimes, since I don't crave the volume in the first place. Usually I am done eating a good twenty minutes before he finishes, and my smaller stomach feels plenty full. I do however tend to like to eat more often, hence I frequently have a snack plus three meals in the day.

MR also likes things that are creamy. "Cream" soups (made with yogurt), ricotta parfaits, pumpkin pie, etc. He loves avocado. I can always add pleasure to his meal but dotting it with bites of pure creaminess, like the ricotta in the above recipe idea or avocado chunks in a gazpachzo. My mother on the other hand, hates anything creamy, most likely as a result of a childhood allergy to milk. She won't even eat guacamole, cause its texture reminds her of creamy stuff!

My mom loves cooked fruit. She is the woman putting mango in her Southern vinegar barbacue chicken recipe. She is rarely without a can of pineapple. So what I've learned from that is that she likes a touch of sweetness, with a little tart, in most anything. You can use combinations of vinegars, fruits, peppers, and even wines to achieve this end. You'd be amazed at how much just a combination of a dry rose wine with a dash of balsamic vinegar and a shake of pure habenero pepper flakes will punch up the flavor of shrimp, scallops, or even a vegetable if you use it as the cooking liquid.

I came of cooking age in the fat phobic nineties, so I never owned a bottle of oil until I started CR! I learned to cook in water, in broth, but more than anything, in WINE! My dad and I joke that we always cook with wine, as we love to hang out in the kitchen together throwing some of the wine into the food and plenty of it into our glasses. Red wine, white wine, rose wine, even super sweet dessert wines. You may have had pears poached in port, but what about taking the same port, mixing it with a teaspoon of hazelnut oil, and drizzling it over fresh berries? Even just cooking in wine adds flavor to most anything, and I love the smell of red wine and garlic wafting through the house. Put that with the smell of some red peppers roasting in the oven and you can alert the entire neighborhood to the fact that dinner is on its way.

Now that I use oils for their healthy fats, I've learned how they can complement a dish without overpowering if when they're used in small amounts. Flax is especially versitile, and takes on a buttery taste in savory dishes and an almost floral taste in sweeter dishes. We never cook with oil because it oxidizes in the heat, but we always add it to our dishes after removing from heat.

Here's a great recipe for a salad or vegetable/fruit dressing to make with oil, for all your fat phobes out there getting used to using oil as a flavor:

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon hazelnut oil (Rapunzel organic is a great brand)
Cinnamon or nutmeg (or both) to taste

I made this first at the Ray Kurzweil lunch auction as a dressing for our salads, and it got rave reviews. The interplay of the hazelnut flavor with the spices is amazing, and the balsamic gives it just the kick you want in a salad dressing, along with the essential sweetness that goes so well with cinnamon.

Of course my favorite season is summer, and I can't wait to get to the Farmers' Market. I love playing with vegetables. This summer I may not have much time for hobby cooking, and I'll be on the road a lot until this campaign is over. But when I can get home I'll be stopping by the Farmers' Market on the way and gathering up whatever's fresh and unusual. Concord grapes, heirloom tomatoes, weird varieties of cauliflower, purple broccoli... they're all found at the Allentown Farmers' Market, conveniently located at the rest stop on the PA Turnpike.

It always cracks me up when people say that CR people must not like food. I love food... both to eat it and to cook it. Always have... in fact, it's probably one of the reasons why I adapted rather easily to a lower calorie level. Once I realized that I could get rid of a lot of unnecessary calories without sacrificing flavor, and in fact increasing the flavor in many dishes -- try your favorite homemade marinara sauce over spicy fresh arugula instead of pasta and you'll see what I mean, while saving yourself hundreds of calories.

Speaking of homemade marinara, here's my simple tomato sauce, made to show off the tomatoes when they're at their peak of summer ripeness:

tomatoes, chopped
very dry red wine (somthing you'd drink)
garlic, minced
fresh basil

Heat the wine in a sauce pan and add garlic. Simmer for about two minutes and add tomatoes. Keep simmering, adding more wine if needed. Add the basil about two minutes before removing from heat. You probably leave the thing on the stove for a total of fifteen minutes, stirring constantly. If you wanted to simmer it for the entire half hour necessary to cook a third off the calories in the wine, you could do so by adding small amounts of water to make sure the pan doesn't go dry. But honestly I prefer the full wine version and think it's worth the extra calories.

I rarely give amounts in my recipes because I create them fresh almost every time... it explains why I have literally hundreds of meal files on my nutritional software saved on my computer. I do it by feel, and how I feel varies from day to day, with the quality of ingredients, who I'm cooking for, how much time I have, etc. I've learned how to adjust the macronutrient ratios by adding things like hazelnuts so I can figure it out as I go and still come up with the amounts I want of everything.

I'd love to have a CR iron chef game: give me your calorie level, your macronutrient ratio preference (if you have one), and a few of your favorite foods and I'll make up a meal to fit it. Anyone who wants to play should write me for reservations at our house for dinner!

Posted by april at June 4, 2007 4:48 PM

Comments

Posted by: Garry at June 5, 2007 7:04 AM

Posted by: april at June 5, 2007 9:57 AM

Posted by: Rachel at June 5, 2007 11:28 AM

Posted by: Mizzi at June 8, 2007 9:41 PM

Posted by: Heidi Shortz at June 9, 2007 9:33 AM

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