Category: eating

NEW RECIPE! Potato, Carrot and Leek Soup

On By Cultivate WellnessIn eating, Health and wellness, Nutrition, Recipes6 Comments
carrots
Fresh in-season carrots are so sweet and delicious.
leeks
Don’t be afraid of leeks. They are awesome.

I picked up my CSA box yesterday that contained two fresh leeks and a bunch of carrots.  Because it’s late August, my immediate thought was “I’ve got to make some soup!”.  There was a time when I was petrified of leeks.  Like, I had absolutely no idea how to use them or prepare them.  I found myself intimidated.  But I decided several years ago to just get over myself and once I went leek, I never went back.  So, I got home from the farmer’s market, found a bag of potatoes in the pantry, and got to work. It was lunchtime and we were hungry so I didn’t stop to snap photos.  Trust me, though, this is a soup you’ll want to make over and over again.  Note: When leeks are unavailable, substitute any mild sweet onion such as Vidalia.

This soup is hearty without being overly heavy.  It smells fantastic while cooking. My husband, who was outside doing yard work, kept catching whiffs of it as he walked by the back door and couldn’t resist asking for a sample before it was done. You will find yourself making this a go-to soup all fall and winter long.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2-3 Tablespooons butter (or olive oil if you want a vegan soup)
  • 2 large leeks, washed well and chopped, white and light green parts
  • 5 celery stalks, chopped
  • 8 cups vegetable broth (I prefer using Better Than Bouillon)
  • 6 large potatoes, scrubbed and quartered (I leave mine unpeeled, and you can use essentially any kind.  Russets might get mushy if you care about that kind of thing.)
  • 8 carrots, chopped (again, I wash mine well and leave unpeeled)
  • 1 squash, any size, quartered (you can omit this, but I happen to have a lot from the CSA box to use)
  • 1-2 teaspoons salt, depending on the salt content of your broth/bouillon
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 3 cloves of garlic, diced
  • Pepper to desired taste (generally 1/4-1/2 teaspoon)
METHOD
  • Melt the butter in a large stock pot over medium-high heat.  When the pot is nice and hot, cook leeks and celery until softened, about 5 minutes.  Make sure not to burn the vegetables.
  • Add the broth, potatoes, carrots, squash,  garlic, salt (if desired) and bay leaf
  • Bring the soup to a boil and cook until potatoes and carrots are fork-soft (about 20 minutes).  Remove bay leaf.
  • Using an immersion blender, blend soup in short bursts until you have a mixture of smooth and chunky soup.  If you prefer totally creamy soup, use the blender until everything is combined.  We prefer more of a “stew” consistency.  (If you don’t have an immersion blender, a counter top blender would also work.)
  • Return the soup to the burner and simmer on low another 20 minutes or so to let the flavors come together completely.

This soup makes fantastic leftovers.  The soup with thicken the longer it sits.  If you want a thinner soup, just add some water or other liquid when you reheat.

Japanese Meatballs — Review and Recipe

On By Cultivate WellnessIn Cooking, eating, Health and wellness, Kids, Nutrition, Recipes10 Comments

meatballs and sauce

As you might already know, I’ve committed to cooking my way through Gwyneth Paltrow’s newest cookbook It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great. This, by the way, is a huge statement.  These recipes will make me LOOK GOOD?  AND FEEL GREAT!? I feel like I should take before and after photos or something.

We last made Vegetable Potstickers that were a huge hit.  We ate those up very quickly.  To summarize the experience: they weren’t super difficult to make (although they weren’t easy either) but were very messy.  I was looking forward to making the Japanese Meatballs because they looked much easier and less messy to make.  Plus we like meatballs.

With some help from my blog readers, I decided that I am allowed to make substitutions to recipes as I see fit.  My good friend Becky pointed out that I was actually doing my readers a service by suggesting substitutions and tweaks that other busy people might also appreciate.  Take, for instance, the Chinese Five Spice Powder called for in the dipping sauce.  I really dislike the taste of this particular spice blend.  My sister in law told me that she hadn’t ever heard of it and could I please recommend something different.  I’m thinking that a lot of other people probably don’t have it on hand.  So, I made the Hoisin Sauce without the spice powder thinking that I could taste it and add something back if I thought it needed it.  Turns out the Hoisin Sauce tasted phenomenal without it.  So, there you go. Another substitution came in the form of using turkey rather than chicken, because the grocer was out of ground chicken.

Here’s the recipe, adapted:

MEATBALLS

1 lb ground turkey or chicken (or beef or lamb or any combo you prefer)

1/2 teaspoon salt (I like sea salt)

1/2 teaspoon pepper (Gwyn would say freshly ground, I say use whatever)

1 garlic clove or more if you love garlic, finely minced

1/2 teaspoon ginger powder or 1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger

1 tablespoon soy sauce (low sodium if possible)

2 teaspoons real maple syrup

meatball spices
Look at these beautiful spices and ingredients.

METHOD:

Mix all ingredients in a bowl with your hands and form into small balls.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes but keep an eye on them.

Hoisin Sauce (recipe below)

1 tablespoon canola oil

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 cup miso paste

1/4 cup real maple syrup

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

METHOD:

Heat oil in small saucepan over medium heat, add garlic and cook about 30 seconds.  Add the rest of the ingredients and whisk to combine.  Bring to a simmer and cook, whisking constantly for a couple of minutes.  Let cool and serve.

A couple of notes about the meatballs: there are no bread crumbs in there.  Gwyneth is gluten-free (of course she is.  I mean, obviously) So when you are shaping them they have a very soft, sticky, almost doughy consistency.  See?

uncooked meatballs
Uncooked meatballs

Not to worry, they bake up very nicely.  The recipe states you can bake, pan fry, grill or however-you-want these meatballs but gave no directions for any cooking, so I looked it up and decided I’d bake mine at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Check every few minutes to make sure they aren’t being overcooked. 

The result was that my family really enjoyed them, the sauce was my favorite part (visually, it isn’t beautiful — My daughter and I thought it looked like apple sauce, and my husband assumed it was a peanut sauce). I would definitely make these again and double or triple the recipe for freezing.

Stay tuned for the next recipe!

Japanese Chicken Meatballs Are Coming Your Way!

On By Cultivate WellnessIn Cooking, eating, Health and wellness4 Comments

TurkeyMeatballs

See the photo above?  That’s the wishful thinking version of how I envision my meatball will turn out.  As we witnessed with the Veggie Dumplings, my reality wasn’t really on par with the beautiful photo I wishfully posted.  That’s ok though, because they were still really tasty.

We are moving on to the second choice winner in the Gwyneth Paltrow cookbook IT’S ALL GOOD, which you might remember is the Japanese Chicken Meatballs.  These seem quite easy to make.  They were featured in “The Kids’ Menu” section.  There’s a hoisin sauce to serve on the side which includes miso paste.  Weirdly, I found some in my fridge from the time I decided I was going to make homemade miso soup and never did.  So, we will have to ascertain if that container will give us botulism or if I need to purchase a new one. Other than the ground chicken and the possibly the miso, I’m super excited to announce that I have all the ingredients for this recipe!  The ingredients include pantry staples like garlic, sea salt, ginger, soy sauce, maple syrup and Chinese five spice powder.  The last one is tripping me up a bit because I have used it before and am not a huge fan of the taste.  I’m wondering as I cook my way through the cook book if I should be allowed substitutions based on my family’s personal preference, or if I really should follow it to a “t”.  What are your thoughts?

One last thought of the night, which has literally nothing to do with meatballs or Gwyneth Paltrow (that I can reliably confirm anyway):  OLESTRA.  Remember Olestra?  It was that super creepy calorie-free fat substitute that was featured in all those potato chips and snacks back in the late 1990’s/early aughts?  It was supposed to be this super awesome ingredient that would allow us to eat snack food guilt-free?  That was until weird things started happening to people’s digestive systems .

tummy ache

I wonder when we will stop looking to quick fixes and magical products to allow us to continue to eat junk food and just realize that maybe we need to cut back on the junk food. I love chips and fries and crackers.  I really do.  But if I’m going to eat them I’m going to eat the real version, and I am going to moderate my intake.  I know they aren’t good for me and that they have no nutritional value (except I did tell a friend today her potato chips had a ton of potassium in them, which is actually true, so there. For more on why potato chips are not super villains, check out this link). I don’t believe every single thing we eat has to be virtuous.  Let’s just aim to do 80% virtuous and 20% whatever we want.  But if you are at 30%/70% I would say you can start slowly by trying to achieve 50/50.  And then 60/40, and so on.  Small changes beget bigger changes.

I will post my Japanese Chicken Meatball recipe as soon as it’s tested!  Until then!

Vegetable Dumplings — The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

On By Cultivate WellnessIn Cooking, eating, health, Nutrition, Recipes11 Comments

veggie dumplings

Remember those beauties?  Vegan Dumplings were the big winners in the poll for the first recipe I would test from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good cookbook.  You’ll remember from a previous post that I received the book as a birthday gift, and that Gwyneth and I have a long, complicated history.  Mostly it’s me not being sure if I should love her or loathe her.  It’s so hard to decide.  Regardless, I love the look of many of the recipes in her cookbook and so I decided I would cook my way through it and report back. What I want to find out are:  Are her recipes approachable?  Can a middle aged busy mom without a nanny, a cook, a housecleaner and other household help actually find the time to make the creations within?  The only way to find out is to try.

I accumulated the ingredients for the dumplings pretty easily (you know what, I like to say potstickers better, and I think the way I made them are more like potstickers, so let’s go with that from now on).  It wasn’t a crazy list with lots of expensive, hard-to-find ingredients. 

My kiddo has been in camp all week and I really wanted her help with this one, so I waited until today to make these.  You’ll notice in the photos she’s wearing her Angry Birds pajamas.  In this house, we cook in our pajamas.

The end result is that they turned out amazing.  They were really delicious and perfect and we couldn’t stop eating them.  They might not be as beautiful as the stock photo I used above.  I’m thinking I should invest in a food styling course.

finished potstickers

The downside is that they are really messy to make, including a lot of splattering if you choose to pan fry them (which we did, because PAN FRYING IS AWESOME). The cleanup wasn’t fun, but then again it never is.  My best piece of advice is to always try to clean up as you go so it isn’t so overwhelming at the end.  Here is my kitchen at the end of everything.  SO. MUCH. MESS.

dirty kitchen

So here’s the recipe, adapted from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Vegan Veggie Dumplings (I can’t legally reprint the whole recipe here without her permission, and even though I emailed last week to ask for it, I’m guessing her people have better things to do, which may or may not include sourcing local and organic tomatillos for her kids’ lunches.)

Vegan Potstickers Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups green cabbage, roughly chopped
  • 1/2 small red or yellow onion, or even two or three green onions, roughly chopped
  • 1/2 cup crumbled firm tofu (I haven’t tested this but I bet you could use ground chicken, turkey or other animal protein in place of the tofu.  You know it wouldn’t be vegan anymore, though, right?)
  • 1 garlic clove, crushed
  • 1/2 cup frozen peas
  • 1/2 cup cooked quinoa (I love adding a bit of vegetable Better Than Bouillon to my quinoa when it’s cooking.  It adds flavor)
  • 1 tablespoon reduced sodium soy sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
  • 2 tablespoons neutral oil (I used olive oil which technically isn’t a neutral oil but it worked out fine.  You could also use canola)
  • Pinch of coarse sea salt
  • 48 square wonton wrappers found in the refrigerated section, typically near the tofu
  • Dipping sauce for serving (see below for recipe)

Vegan Potstickers Directions:

  • Pulse the cabbage, onion and garlic in the bowl of a food processor until finely chopped.

potsticker filling in food processor

  • In a large non-stick skillet heat the oil over medium-high heat and add the cabbage mixture with a hefty pinch of sea salt.
  • Cook and stir occasionally until the veggies have softened, about 5 to 6 minutes.

potsticker filling on stove

  • Add in the tofu, peas and quinoa and continue cooking until the peas are soft, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the soy sauce and sesame oil. Use a potato masher to smush up the mixture until it sticks together.  We allowed some of the peas to stay whole because we wanted a bit more texture.

mashing poststicker filling

  • Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.
  • Make an assembly line of several wonton wrappers and put 1 teaspoon of the filling mixture in the center of each wrapper. Wet your finger in a small bowl of water and use it to moisten the edges of each dumpling. Carefully fold the corners over making a triangle, making sure you press all the edges to form a good seal.

filling potstickers

  • Heat a bit of the neutral oil (like canola) in a large nonstick skillet set at high heat. Cook the dumplings for 2 minutes, or until they are golden brown on the bottom.

potstickers in pan

  • When the potstickers are browned to your liking on the bottom, add 1/2 cup of water to the skillet, putting the lid on and allowing the dumplings to steam until the wrappers are completely soft, about 2 minutes. Serve with the dipping sauce recipe below. ***Make sure if you are using a skillet that isn’t non-stick that you pay close attention to the potstickers because they will cook a lot more quickly than in a non-stick skillet. (See the photo below for what happens when you don’t pay close enough attention.)

burnt potstickers

  • Vegan Potsticker Dipping Sauce Ingredients:
  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce (I use lower sodium)
  • 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Combine all ingredients with a fork or a whisk and serve alongside the potstickers.

EAT WELL!

Perfection Is An Illusion

On By Cultivate WellnessIn eating, health, Health and wellness, Nutrition, wellness7 Comments

Gourmet_hot_dogs,_corn_dog_and_home_fries

This morning I was scrolling through my newsfeed when I saw, for about the 3,654th time, a headline that said “THE 10 FOODS THAT DIETITIANS WILL NEVER EAT” .  I have a problem with headlines like these.  For one, all dietitians and nutritionists are not exactly the same.  They are a huge community of people who have very different belief systems about food.  It’s not like they all got together at some huge conference and decided “Hey, let’s vote on whether pretzels are evil, ok?”.  It doesn’t work like that.

Secondly, I am willing to bet that a vast majority of nutrition professionals indulge in “no no” foods all the time.  Not constantly.  But once in a while.  I’m willing to bet they have the same philosophy as I do, which is that life is too darn short to not have an ice cream cone once in a while.

I feel that statements like these set everyone up for failure.  Imagine you are someone struggling with healthy eating, just trying to do your best.  Maybe you are at the very beginning of cleaning up your diet.  Maybe you’ve ditched Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for some whole grain pretzels, and you’re feeling pretty good about it (as you should!).  Now imagine you read an article like the one above in which a dietitian says she will only consume a pretzel if she is quite literally starving.  What does that say to you?  What I’ve heard time and again by people who are working on eating healthier is that when they hear statements like these, the first thing they think is something like “Screw it, I’ll never be good enough and so I might as well go back to my Flamin’ Hot Cheetos”.

Blanket statements as they pertain to nutrition just aren’t helpful, in my opinion.  When I hear a nutritionist say that they would never ever in their whole entire lives eat a hot dog, I feel sad for them.  I love hot dogs.  I don’t care that they might contain weird animal parts.  Isn’t part of being ecologically responsible using up all the parts of the animal so we produce less waste?  And I just really love the way they taste.  So when I’m at a BBQ and that’s what’s served, I am ok with that.  I will throw some sauerkraut, pickles, onions, mustard and ketchup on that thing and enjoy every bite.  

Is 80% of my diet healthy, nutrient-dense foods? You bet! Do I love deep fried pickles once a year when I go to the state fair?  Oh heck yeah! You see, I think eating a healthy diet is what helps me walk 18 holes of golf (about 8 miles) while carrying my bag.  It is what allows me to keep my kidneys and brain and heart healthy so I can hopefully live a very long and contented life.  But if I subsisted only on chia seeds, kale, salmon and blueberries my whole life (all things I love by the way), without any of the added extras, I think it would actually decrease my quality of life.  There is something to be said about joyful eating, especially when it’s with people we love, and its affect on our happiness.

These are just my opinions.  Everyone is different.  But one thing I do know is that perfection is an illusion.  The perfect diet, the perfect marriage, the perfect job.  They don’t exist.  And while we are all chasing our perfection, we might be missing out on the best parts of life.