Note to my regular readers – What’s Cooking with the Monamifood Blog

I have not been posting much for a while and that’s because I have been devoting a lot of my “spare” time to reading* and thinking about nutrition. What have I learned? For starters, that a healthy diet is plant based (with an emphasis on whole lower carbohydrate foods) but also with adequate amounts of meat, fish, chicken, and eggs.

In other words, I think it’s healthy to eat eat lots of low carbohydrate veggies and some low carb fruits (especially berries) and to put meat, fish, chicken, and eggs back on the plate in reasonable amounts.

So on the continuum of veg and non-veg, mine is a “hedge your bets” style of healthy eating. I think this makes good common sense. After all, the science of nutrition is constantly changing and evolving. In addition the official doctrines put out by the government (any government) and American Association of This or That are by their very nature influenced by special interest groups. And…even the scientific research published on the pages of prestigious journals depends, at least in part, on the currently held doctrines of the field (as expressed by the editorial boards).

So…making all the right food choices is impossible because we don’t have, and can’t possibly have, all the information we need to choose the most wisely.

In addition we are all genetically different, so there is no one-size-fits all diet.

Still I think there are a few absolutes to guide food choices today:

• Many whole foods are very healthy (especially vegetables) and we should eat more of them.
• Some things we think of as foods are not foods at all – just packages of refined junk with advertising to make us want what’s not good for us.

In the future on this blog you will find some delicious and easy to make veggie and non-veggie recipes that are nutritious – at least for most people given what I understand of what we know today about nutrition.

I can’t wait to share the next post I’m working  on — about making delicious and nutritious stock. It’s a winner of a recipe! Coming soon! I promise!

* If you are interested to read the book that turned my mind around and convinced me that a vegetarian diet is not ideal, read The New Atkins for a New You by Eric Westman, MD, MHS, (associate professor of medicine at Duke University Health System and director the Duke Lifesytle Medicine Clinic), Stephen D. Phinney, MD, PhD, (professor of medicine emeritus at the University of California Davis School of Medicine), Jeff S. Volek, PhD, RD, (associate professor and exercise and nutrition researchers in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Connecticut).

* If you are interested to know more about choosing healthier carbohydrates (lower in glycemic index and high in nutrients), check out  the information contained in the website for the GI Database hosted by the U of Sydney Australia. Also, I highly recommend you listen to two People’s Pharmacy podcasts which feature Jennie Brand-Miller’s (known for her work with GI index) and Dariush Mozaffarian (author of recent study on diet and weight gain published in The New England Journal of Medicine). 

 

Note to readers: Vegan plans for 2011

About a year and a half ago I started writing this blog. Thankfully, in the process, I learned far more than I could have ever imagined. As a result, I have had to re-think my own thoughts about what constitutes an optimal diet — a diet that is nutritionally adequate AND helps to protect us against the big three killers — cancer, heart disease, and Type II diabetes.

I have now become convinced that the ideal diet is a well-designed vegan diet. I myself, however, will probably make the transition from omnivore to vegan with the help of a little low fat milk/kefir/yogurt and a daily fish oil supplement.

I have already started to experiment with a vegan diet and have a lot of great recipes in the works to share with you. So look for upcoming  beans and lentil dishes and greens and veggie dishes. So much to try, test, and write about!

And what about green tea and all those herbs and spices that help to prevent cancer –the garlic, ginger, turmeric/black pepper, rosemary, oregano, thyme, mint, cilantro, etc., that you may have read about on this blog and elsewhere?  They’re potent anti-cancer foods, and I plan to use LOTS of them in my cooking.

So…what made me change my thinking and go from eating an omnivore’s diet rich in anti-cancer foods to starting to eat a vegan diet rich in anti-cancer foods?

Here are the major contributors to my “conversion:”

I heard two talks by Brenda Davis, R.D. One about how to design an optimal plant-based diet and the other about how diet can prevent (and even reverse Type II diabetes). You can listen to her presentations, too!

In addition, I became aware of recent research showing that diet directly affects our DNA, cells, and telomeres – for good or for ill.

• DNA – Diet can promote DNA damage, and DNA damage is at the root cause of many of our chronic diseases. You can listen to Michael Fenech, PhD, speaking about diet and DNA damage in his presentation at the AICR (American Institute for Cancer Research). And , if you like, you can even see all of the slides Dr. Fenech showed for this presentation at this conference!
• Individual cells – Diet, for example, trans fats, was shown to promote abdominal obesity and insulin insensitivity in monkeys.
• Telomeres – Diet may directly affect the shortening of our telomeres.

So…the research is in! Diet makes a HUGE difference at the cellular level. Convinced, I started eating a more vegan diet. Soon, I noticed two positive changes to my health. I lost a little weight (around my middle) and I no longer got those awful cramps in my legs at night. So now I get a good night’s sleep!

I am completely convinced that this vegan diet path is right for me and I am looking forward to sharing, though this blog, the healthy and easy recipes I develop as I explore a vegan way of eating.

In addition, I plan to participate in the Physician’s for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) 21 Day Vegan Kickstart program, starting on January 3, 2011! You can participate too! It’s free! But you have to register, so go to the site and sign up now!

And while you are waiting for 3 January to roll around, you can stay inspired by listening to this four and half minute video with Dean Ornish, M.D.,  about the powerfully positive (or negative) effect diet (and other aspects of lifestyle) has on your genes and telomeres – in just 3 months!

And…if you want to study up on the vegan diet, you can learn at lot from PCRM’s Q & A.

And one last thing…my blog is taking on a new look for 2011…and the index has had to disappear. But a new search button should get you to the posts you are looking for. Also you can now easily share the posts on Facebook  and via email, as well as through other means. I hope you enjoy the new look and functionality of my blog.

Let’s make 2011 a healthy and delicious year!

~Leni

Note to Readers: Why posts; Topics; “About”

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you have probably noticed that the newer posts just give the recipe and a few notes about the ingredients. For the details on the anti-cancer properties of a particular ingredient, the post refers you to a “Why ___ food?” (for example, “Why blueberries?”) post.

Since I did not have these “Why?” posts before, I’m having to create a lot of them now. And to do so, I sometimes have to take content from old posts and move that content to the new “Why?” post. So the content is shifting around.

I do not have time to go back to all the old posts and move all the “why” content to new “Why?” posts right away, but I’ll do that over time as I create new recipes that include the ingredients that I have already discussed in earlier posts.

Also, Dr. Servan-Schreiber has come out with a new edition of his great book, Anti-Cancer, and it has even more research on foods that help to prevent cancer. Starting with the post, “Why blueberries?”, I will quote only from the new edition of his book.  The source attribution found at the end of each quote will tell you which edition of his book, the quote is from. If it says “2009 edition,” then it’s from the new updated edition published at the end of 2009. If it does not say “new edition” the quote comes from the first edition published in 2007.

The “Topics” column of this blog should help you navigate to the recipes you want, as long as you know one of the significant ingredients in that recipe. For example, the new recipe, Monamifood Blueberry Muffins, can be found by clicking on the topic link for blueberries; the recipe for Spinach and Onion Crustless Quiches can be found by clicking on the topic link for “spinach” or “onions.”

Finally, I just want to add that the link “About” in the upper right-hand corner of each page is not clickable. But since it’s a permanent feature of the WordPress blog platform I am using, I cannot get rid of it without causing some problems for the site. But if you want to know more about this blog or about me, you can click on the link, “About Monamifood and Leni Reed Nazare,” that you will find at the top of the page, right under “Monamifood’s Blog”.

I hope that this information helps you to make good use of this site.

Enjoy and be healthy!

~Leni

Note to Readers: New format for posts

In most of my previous posts, at the beginning of the post, you will see a section called, “Why X ingredient?”  In that section, I try to summarize the reasons why one of the main ingredients in the recipe is considered to be an anti-cancer food.

But from here on out, you won’t find a “Why” section in the posts that contain a recipe.  That’s because, if an anti-cancer food has already been mentioned in a previous post, I will give you a link to the previous post. Then, if you want, you can read about why that food is considered to have anti-cancer properties. And if none of my previous posts explain why a particular ingredient has anti-cancer properties, I will create a new stand-alone post devoted to “Why x ingredient helps to prevent cancer” — and provide a link to the new post that’s just about the “Why” factor.

If all this sounds like mumbo-jumbo…well, it’s probably easier to experience this new format than to explain it.

Look for a new recipe post – with the new format – soon.

I hope you like it.

Enjoy and be healthy,

~Leni

Note to Readers: Add fresh thyme to your quiches

Just want to let you know that…

After posting the recipe for the Caramelized Onions and Roasted Spinach Crustless Quiches (and that was after making it at least 25 times), I discovered that adding fresh thyme made the little quiches even more delicious! And, since thyme is an anti-cancer food in its own right, (as explained in my earlier post, Roasted Grape Tomatoes and Thyme), go ahead and add plenty of thyme when you make these quiches.

Just buy (or grow) fresh thyme, wash it, dry it, and store it in your freezer in plastic freezer bags. (I don’t think that the plastic will interact with the thyme, so it’s fine to store in plastic in this case.) Freezing the thyme in a plastic bag makes it easy to remove the leaves from the stems (as explained in the Roasted Grape Tomatoes post) and it will still taste fresh.

Enjoy and be healthy,

~Leni

Note to Readers – A New Look

It’s been about six months since I started this blog. Now that the blog contains a lot more text and recipes, I think that a format that allows for easier navigation would be helpful. For this reason, I am going to experiment with a new look for this blog. But all the posts you’ve seen before will still be here! I would love to know what you think of the new format. Does it work for you? Please let me know by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Enjoy and be healthy,

~Leni

Note to Readers: FROZEN BERRIES for green tea

Dear Reader,

I just want to let you know that I have found another great way to cool the temperature of boiling water quickly so as to make the perfect cup of delicious green tea:

Green Tea with Frozen Berries

• Place about 2 tablespoons (more or less, depending on the size of your cup/mug) of  frozen berries (blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, etc.) into your empty cup. Pour boiling water over the berries. Check the temperature. Add your tea bag when the temperature is right, etc.

Using frozen berries to instantly cool the boiling water saves time AND adds flavor to your green tea! And then when your tea is all gone, you have some delicious berries to eat! This is my favorite way to drink green tea these days.

And…if you like citrus flavor in your green tea, as mentioned in the post,  Monamifood Zesty Citrus Flavor Cube, you can cool the boiling water with a Citrus Flavor Cube too. Or just add frozen berries plus some grated organic citrus peel to get a wonderful berry/orange (berry/tangerine or berry/lemon) drink!

The suggestions for cooling the boiling water by adding frozen berries or Zesty Citrus Flavor Cubes, have now been added to the post, Green Tea (Part II), under the heading, “How to cool the boiling water quickly.”

And to learn everything you ever wanted to know about green tea  – why it’s good for you, where to buy it, how to make a great cup of green tea, and more, see Monamifood Green Tea (Part I) and Green Tea (Part II).

I hope you enjoy these time-saving and flavorful ways to make a great cup of green tea!

Enjoy and be healthy!

~Leni

Note to Readers: Fun food for the holidays – BISCOTTI

Well, this isn’t exactly a healthy anti-cancer food in the same way that spinach or Brussels sprouts are, but it’s the holidays after all. So, I asked myself: What cookie tastes great and doesn’t have a lot of fat in it? A biscotti!

And if we make the biscotti with whole wheat flour (and why not?) it’s better yet. So…here’s a recipe for a whole wheat biscotti with cherries. It’s delicious and impressive — and really quite easy to make!

I experimented a LOT with the recipe for Almond Chocolate Chip Biscotti found on one  my favorite recipe sites, 101 Cookbooks. And below is my version of this recipe — which uses less butter (replaces some of the fat with oil), uses cherries instead of chocolate chips, and makes twice the quantity of biscotti. And for chocolate lovers, I’ve included two more variations — a Chocolate Chip Biscotti as well as a Chocolate Chip Biscotti with Chocolate.

Biscotti

Biscotti – version 1: CHERRY ALMOND BISCOTTI

Ingredients

1 ½ cups dried tart pitted cherries

• I used Trader Joe’s Dried Pitted Tart Montmorency Cherries

1 ½ cups white whole wheat flour

• I used Trader Joe’s 100% White Whole Wheat Flour. It’s a lot less expensive than King Arthur’s.

2 ½  cups whole wheat pastry flour

• I used Bob’s Red Mill Organic Stone Ground Whole Wheat Pastry Flour which I found at Harris Teeter’s.

2/3 cup oat flour

• If you don’t have oat flour and don’t feel like running out to buy some, that’s OK. Just take plain rolled oats and put them into the work bowl of the food processor fitted with a metal blade and process until you have oat flour. That’s it!

2/3 cup raw wheat germ

• It’s best to use raw wheat germ as the biscotti are going to bake for quite some time and toasted wheat germ would get too toasted.
• Be sure to store the opened wheat germ in the refrigerator or freezer because the oils in the germ go rancid quite easily if stored at room temperature.

1 teaspoon salt (if sea salt, then use fine grain sea salt)

2 teaspoons baking powder

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

6 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons canola oil

1 ½ cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs

• I used eggs with omega-3’s

zest of one medium/large organic orange

• Next time I will use more zest. Maybe twice as much. You can’t taste it at all when you just use the zest of one orange. And, the zest is good for you and goes nicely with cherries, so why not use more?

1 teaspoon pure almond extract

• Use pure almond extract, not imitation. I used Penzeys Spices Pure Almond Extract.

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

• Pure vanilla extract is very pricy. The extract preferred by many bakers is Nielson-Massey Pure Vanilla Extract. I didn’t have that. I used Costco’s Kirkland 100% Pure Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla. It’s OK.
• Vanilla extract helps to bring out the sweetness in a food, so, in general, when you add vanilla extract you can cut down on sugar a little.

2/3 cup chopped almonds

• To chop the almonds, I simply put whole raw almonds into the work bowl of the food processor fitted with a metal blade, and pulse it on and off. Caution: Processing the almonds in this way is very noisy; you might want to wear ear plugs!
• And you don’t have to use a food processor to chop the almonds, cutting them up by hand with a sharp chef’s knife works just fine too.

Ingredients shown above – but without all the explanation (better for printing)

1 ½ cups dried tart pitted cherries

1 ½ cups white whole wheat flour

2 ½  cups whole wheat pastry flour

2/3 cup oat flour

2/3 cup wheat germ

1 teaspoon salt (if sea salt, then use fine grain sea salt)

2 teaspoons baking powder

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

6 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons canola oil

1 ½ cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs

zest of one medium/large organic orange

1 teaspoon pure almond extract

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2/3 cup chopped almonds

Directions

Please see the “Note” at the top of this page.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Plump the dried cherries: Put the dried cherries into a small bowl and add boiling water to just cover. Let stand for 5 minutes. Drain well. Place the cherries on a paper towel (preferably one that’s not bleached white) and blot them well but gently. Set the plumped cherries aside.

Into a medium bowl, place the whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, oat flour, wheat germ, salt, and baking powder. Use a whisk to mix these dry ingredients well. Set aside.

Put the butter, sugar, and oil into a large bowl or into the bowl of your mixer. Cream the butter, sugar, and oil  together for about a minute, until well mixed and slightly lighter in color than when you started. Add the eggs, zest, almond extract, and vanilla extract.  Mix until fully combined. (If using an electric mixer, you will need to scrape the sides down a few times.)

Add the reserved dry ingredients (flours etc) to the creamed mixture. Mix just until the dough becomes stiff and the flour is almost all incorporated. Add the slivered almonds and cherries and mix until they’re well distributed throughout the dough.

Powder the counter and your hands with a little whole wheat flour. Take the dough and divide it in two equal parts. Set one part aside.  Take the second piece of dough and divide it up into two equal pieces. (Now you have three pieces of dough — two that are each equal to one-quarter the original lump of dough and one that’s equal to half of the original lump of dough.) Roll each of the two quarters into a log that’s almost as long as your baking sheet.

Take a baking sheet and line it with parchment paper or a silicone baking sheet (100% food-grade silicone). Place the two logs of dough onto the parchment lined pan, keeping the logs a few inches apart and a few inches away from the sides of the pan. Now flatten the dough with the palm of your hand. Each log should end up being about 1/2-inch high.

• If you have two more baking sheets, you can bake the remaining half of the dough at the same time. Just place one baking sheet inside the other (makes it like an air-filled baking sheet) and line the top baking sheet with parchment paper. Make two more logs out of the remaining dough and place them on the parchment-lined double baking sheet. Place this double baking sheet on the bottom rack of the oven. The timing might be a little different if you do it this way; I haven’t tested it. But it should work fine.

• If you don’t have three baking sheets all together,  just make one batch of biscotti after the other, which is what I did. Important food safety note: The dough should not remain at room temperature for more than two hours, and just to be on the safe side, it’s best to put the reserved dough into the refrigerator while you bake the first batch.

• Alternatively, the experts say that you can let the dough rest overnight or up to two days in the refrigerator and then bake the biscotti another day (but before you try this, see the P.S. bullet point below). Why can’t you refrigerate your biscotti dough for longer – just like the Pillsbury dough?  That’s because unlike Pillsbury, you’re baking with eggs that have not been pasteurized.

• For reliable information on food storage, see NDSU’s Food Storage Guide.

• P.S. After refrigerating the dough, I found it to be pretty hard and crumbly. Not good. So I tried warming it up for on the counter for 30 minutes, and that didn’t help much. Next I tried putting it in the microwave on a low setting — lower than defrost — for a few minutes. This worked great; the dough was much less crumbly and easy much easier to roll out — almost as easy as it would have been had I not refrigerated it all.

Place the single baking pan with biscotti logs on the middle rung of the preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes. After this time, the dough should be firm and starting to brown just a little bit.

Remove the baking pan from the oven and lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees F.

Let the partially baked dough cool for about 10 minutes. (It was freezing outside on the day I made these biscotti, so I set the dough cool outside and so it took less than 10 minutes for it to cool.) When the dough has cooled but is still a little warm to the touch, carefully move the cooked dough to a cutting board and using a chef’s knife cut it into slices, about ½ – ¾ inch thick.

• Note: The best way I’ve found to make sure that the biscotti slices don’t break apart when you cut is to use a chef’s knife, rather than a serrated knife (which is what I used originally). Just hold the knife over where you want to make the cut and push straight down on the knife with your other hand. This works great! And, if you cut diagonally instead of straight across you will get the professional baker’s look for your finished product.

Place the partially-cooked biscotti slices, cut side up, on the parchment lined baking sheet, leaving a little space between each piece. Place the baking sheet with the biscotti pieces into the 300 degree oven and bake for 10 minutes, or until they’re starting to get a little more golden brown around the edges of the underside. Using tongs or two forks, turn the biscotti to the other side and bake again for about 10 minutes. You’ll know they’re done when they are very lightly golden brown on both sides.

Take the biscotti out of the oven and cool them on a wire rack.

When cool, store covered at room temperature. They’ll keep well for a few weeks – if they last that long.

Makes about 30 biscotti per baking sheet; 60 in all.

Biscotti – version 2: CHOCOLATE CHIP BISCOTTI

Use the ingredients and procedure given above but substitute bittersweet chocolate chips (60% cocoa – that’s the most cocoa I could find in chocolate chips) for the cherries.

Biscotti – version 3: CHCOLATE CHIP BISCOTTI WITH CHOCOLATE

If you want Chocolate Chip Biscotti that are ultra indulgent and chocolatey, just spread a little melted chocolate (from a 70% cocoa bittersweet chocolate baking bar) on the underside of each Chocolate Chip Biscotti. Set the biscotti with melted chocolate aside to dry and when the chocolate is dry and hard, it’s ready to eat!

Biscotti – version 4: Cardamom Pistachio Biscotti

Following the directions in the master recipe above, substitute 1 cup of dry roasted unsalted pistachios (no need to chop them) for the almonds and add 2 teaspoons ground cardamom to the dry ingredients. Omit the almond extract and use a total of 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract instead.

Biscotti Tips

• If you think you’re going to make biscotti over and over again, here’s a time saving tip. Place the dry ingredients for each batch of biscotti (flours, wheat germ, salt, and baking powder) into a plastic bag and put the bag in the freezer. (It’s best to keep whole grains, and especially wheat germ, in the freezer to keep them from going rancid.) Then whenever you want to make biscotti, just pull out your homemade mix, let it come to room temperature, and then add the rest of the ingredients.
• If you have a good food scale, you can make several batches of biscotti baking mix easily and quickly – much faster than using measuring cups. Here’s how: First measure using the measuring cups and then place the pre-measured flour, for example, whole wheat flour, into a plastic container. Place the plastic container with the pre-measured flour onto the food scale and note the weight. This is the weight of whole wheat flour (plus plastic container) that you need for each batch of your biscotti mix.

Biscotti making video and one more recipe

Here’s a video from Eating Well magazine with a good biscotti recipe that uses mostly whole wheat flour and no butter at all.

And here’s the printed biscotti recipe from Eating Well:

Happy Holidays!

Enjoy and be healthy,

~Leni

NOTE TO READERS: New research re SOY

 

Good news for those of us who love soy foods! A new large scale study concludes: “soy safe for breast cancer survivors.”  More details are here and also here (Happy Healthy Long Life blog).

But soy does have its detractors… For a balanced summary of what’s good and maybe not so good about soy, see the post by Virginia and Mark Messina.

Enjoy and be healthy,

~Leni

NOTE TO READERS: Safety of Silicone Muffin Pans

Note to Readers: Is silicone bake ware safe to use?

I use silicon muffin pans a LOT. But how safe is it to use silicone muffin pans (bake ware)?

As far as I can see, heating or freezing foods in silicone bake ware that’s made of 100% FDA-approved food grade silicone is perfectly safe. Health Canada approves of silicone for cooking. And…even Dr. Andrew Weil, MD, is OK with using silicone.  In addition, I spoke with the chemist from Minnesota Rubber and Plastics, the company that manufactures the Silicone Solutions muffin pans that I have, and feel even more confident now that these products when used as directed (up to the maximum temperature for baking) are completely safe.

But I recommend that you buy a product that’s made with 100% FDA-approved food grade silicone. Unless the label states that the product is 100% food-grade silicone it may or may not be. But you can tell if the product is 100% silicone – just by doing the “twist test,” as recommended by Marion Burros of the New York Times.

When I tested of my silicone muffin pans, I was dismayed to learn that several of them (yes, I have quite a collection) failed the test (that is, they turned white at the crease where they were bent), which means they have some fillers in them (probably plastic fillers).

So do I plan to continue to use my non-100% silicone pans? Yes, but only for freezing foods that are not acidic (no orange or lemon juice) and not for heating foods. So I won’t be using these non-100% silicone pans for making a batch of Zesty Citrus Flavor Cubes or whipping up a batch of my Homemade Designer Chocolates. For those recipes, I plan to use only my 100% silicone pans.

While there are other 100% FDA-approved food-grade silicone muffin pans on the market, here are the links to the ones I found (and use) by Silicone Solutions, available online at Target (but not in my local Target store):

• Silicone Solutions 6-cup muffin pan (regular size muffins)

• Silicone Solutions mini-muffin pan

Notes re Silicone Solutions muffin pans:

• They  are made in the USA and they’re a lot less expensive than the imported ones that you can find at cooking specialty stores, like Sur La Table.

• They are thicker and less flexible than the muffin pans I have that aren’t 100% silicone, so I just let the frozen cubes sit for a minute or two to defrost before trying to pop them out of the muffin pan. It works just fine!

Enjoy and be healthy,

~Leni