Instant, Healthy, and Delicious Lunch

I threw this lunch together at midnight last night because I needed to have SOMETHING to eat the next day at work. It looked so pretty I took a picture of it (above).  I wasn’t so sure I’d like it, but it turned out to be DELICIOUS. The only thing I would do differently next time is include two – not just one – frozen frozen mango ‘cube’.

I really loved the mixture of quinoa, wheat berries, and mango — which I just mixed together with my fork after the meal had been heated. This contrasted nicely with the smoky-salty bean soup.  And then the kale mixed with the cilantro sauce, was another delicious and interesting flavor.

So if you are looking for a light and healthy – and easy to throw together lunch – try this one yourself!

Ingredients

1 pre-frozen portion of Whole Foods Black Bean Soup

1 pre-frozen flavor Cilantro Chutney

1 pre-frozen cube of pureed champagne mango ( Just puree peeled and seeded mango in blender, freeze puree in  silicone mini muffin pan, and once frozen store in a plastic freezer bag in the freezer – just like you may already do for all your ‘flavor cubes.’)

1 portion of cooked quinoa

1 portion of cooked wheat berries

For details on how to cook wheat berries without soaking them overnight, see Eating Well.

1 portion of lightly steamed kale leaves (stems removed)

Note: Kale is a member of the cruciferous family so it has all the benefits that cabbage has!

Directions

To make this lunch, I just assembled these items. That’s it! It’s that easy!

Enjoy and be healthy!

~Leni

Curry and More – a partially-homemade lunch or dinner

I like a hot meal for lunch. My current favorite is Curry and More. I just don’t get tired of it!  It’s delicious and, of course, very healthy.  And, since I rely on some packaged frozen food, it takes no time at all to pack lunches for the entire week – which I put into the freezer so I can grab one anytime.

BASIC INGREDIENTS – use each of these ingredients

• Tandoor Chef Dal Rajastani

• Available in the frozen food section of Whole Foods and other grocery stores.

• Tandoor Chef Chicken Curry

• Available in the frozen food section of Whole Foods and other grocery stores.

• Turmeric

• Freshly ground black pepper

• Monamifood Cilantro Sauce

OTHER INGREDIENTS – choose those that you like best

• Frozen organic spinach

• Monamifood Roasted cauliflower

• Frozen peas

• Monamifood Lemony Dal

• Baked sweet potato, cut into thick rounds

• Quinoa

• Cooked brown Basmati rice

Directions

Defrost the Dal Rajastani: Plop it out of the plastic tray it was frozen in and put it into a glass container; heat it in the microwave until it’s soft enough to spoon out.

To the defrosted Dal, add plenty of turmeric (don’t worry, keep adding and tasting until you get the right amount) and freshly ground black pepper, to taste; mix well.

Spoon one-third of the Dal into each of three glass containers. (For example,  I use a container that’s 7 x 5 x 1.5 inches.)

Now defrost the Chicken Curry in the same manner as you defrosted the Dal. If you like, you can add some turmeric and black pepper to the Curry too!

Spoon one-third of the Curry into each of three glass containers.

Place one frozen Cilantro Sauce flavor cube into the glass container.

Then fill the rest of the container with your choice of ingredients from the “Other Ingredients” list above – lots of veggies and some quinoa, rice, or sweet potato, too.

Put a lid on each container and put them in the freezer. Now you have a healthy frozen meal — ready and waiting.

Enjoy and be healthy!

~Leni

Why Quinoa?

Quinoa (KEEN-wah) is a food (actually a seed) that is:

• a complete protein (contains all eight essential amino acids)
• a decent source of fiber
• a good source of iron
• relatively low on the glycemic index

Quinoa is a great substitute for white rice and potatoes — foods with a high glycemic index. When you choose to put quinoa on your plate instead of white rice or potatoes, you are choosing to keep your blood sugar lower, and in terms of preventing cancer, that’s a good thing.

As reported on Dr. Servan-Schreiber’s website, anticancerbook.com, a recent Swedish study confirmed once again that there is a strong “…link between the consumption of foods with a high glycemic index and the risk of developing breast cancer.”

And…in addition to helping prevent cancer, there are lots of other good reasons for quinoa!  Read NPR’s summary about the health benefits of this wonderful food.

As you can see from the Nutrition Facts label, cooked quinoa contains 4 grams of fat per 185 gram serving (about 1 cup) and none of that fat  is saturated fat. So it must all be unsaturated fats (mono- and poly-unsaturated fat).

Unsaturated fats go rancid when stored for an extended period of time at room temperature.  That’s why I buy quinoa only from stores that have a high turnover of the product (for example, a thriving natural foods store) or from Costco which sells organic quinoa in four pound bags.

To keep the fat  in quinoa from going rancid, I store quinoa (uncooked) in my freezer. But if you don’t have a big freezer, just keep the uncooked quinoa in your refrigerator (along with the cooked quinoa).

Quinoa is the new superfood around my house! We use it in lots of different dishes — from soups to hot cereal (great mixed with steel-cut oatmeal), from side dishes to cold salads.

For how to make quinoa, see Monamifood: Quinoa-Plain and Simple.

Enjoy and be healthy,

~Leni

QUINOA: Plain and Simple Quinoa

Ingredients

1 cup quinoa

• Why quinoa? How does quinoa help to prevent cancer?

1 1/4 cold filtered water

Note: Most package directions say to add twice as much water as quinoa, but that results in soggy quinoa — not what you want. If you use less water, it’s so much better. Lieberman and O’Connor, authors of The 10 Things You Need to Eat (a good primer on 10 healthy foods and creative ways you can use them in cooking;  published in 2010)  say that you should use just one and a quarter cups water to one cup of quinoa. I tried cooking quinoa their way (after cooking with too much water for a long time) and voila, great quinoa! Finally light and fluffy, not heavy and soggy!

Directions #1 – for cooking quinoa to serve as a hot side dish

• Unless the package says that the quinoa has already been rinsed, rinse the quinoa in cold water until the water runs clear, and this may take five or more changes of water. It helps to use your hands and rub the quinoa grains against each other as you rinse them. Rinsing removes the outer slightly bitter, soapy coating. Drain the quinoa.
• Place the rinsed and drained quinoa and the water in a heavy pot (for example, an enamel coated cast iron pot). Bring the water to a simmer. Reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting and then cover the pot.
• Cook covered, for 20-25 minutes, or until the quinoa is tender but still chewy and a white spiral-like thread appears around each grain.
• Uncover the pot and fluff the cooked quinoa with a fork.
• Let the cooked quinoa sit for a few minutes (to let off steam) before serving.

Directions #2 – for cooking quinoa to serve in a salad

This preparation makes for fluffy and dry quinoa which is what you need to absorb the dressing and give flavor to the salad.

• Place the drained quinoa into a pan and add water to cover the quinoa by about 2 inches. Bring the water to a boil and then boil gently for 8 minutes.
• Drain the quinoa in a sieve and rinse under cold running water.
• Place the sieve with the drained quinoa over a pan of boiling water, making sure that the quinoa does not touch the water. Cover the sieve with a kitchen towel and then place the lid on the pan.
• Bring the water in the pan to a gentle boil and boil for about 10 minutes – steaming the quinoa.
• Note: Check the water level in the pan after about 5 minutes to make sure there’s enough water to boil for the remaining time; if not, add more.

Directions #3 – Quick and easy – my new favorite way to cook quinoa!

• After a friend told me she always cooks quinoa in her rice cooker, I gave it a try. Wow, it worked! I’m going to make it this way from now on! By the way, I used 1 cup of dry quinoa to 1 3/4 cups water.

What to do with quinoa?

• How about a plate of quinoa topped with pasta sauce and some veggies on the side? Yesterday, while foraging in the refrigerator at home, my daughter fixed herself the plate of food you see pictured at the top of this page: quinoa topped with pasta sauce and topped with quinoa, shitake mushrooms (just reconstituted shitakes), and steamed frozen asparagus.
• Mix cooked quinoa with Sundried Tomato Flavor Cubes or Sauted Herb Flavor Cubes – yum!
• For a powerhouse breakfast, mix cooked quinoa with cooked steel-cut oatmeal, add some almond or skim milk plus all the fixings. A great breakfast – or snack. Just keep cooked quinoa and cooked steel-cut oatmeal in your refrigerator, and you can fix a bowl of this delicious and nutritious quin-oat porridge anytime!
• Here’s the Quinoa and Black Bean Salad recipe I served at a recent picnic – a big hit! I made my quinoa salad exactly as the recipe recommends, except without the pickled jalapeno chilies. In general, pickled foods should not be part of an anti-cancer diet. Although Dr. Servan-Schreiber does not talk about pickled foods in his book (he can’t cover everything!), it’s been know for a long time that picked foods increase the risk of developing stomach cancer. In fact, for an epidemiology class in graduate school, I even did a paper on that very topic back in the 1970′s! See Medline Plus for information on stomach cancer and it’s risk factors.

Can you freeze quinoa?

Yes, definitely. Cooked quinoa freezes very well.

More information about quinoa

Quinoa.net A great site for more information about quinoa, including cooking directions for the microwave and rice cooker as well as the stove top (uses more water than I suggest, but you might like that better). In addition, great photos of the people who plant and harvest the quinoa you enjoy.

Enjoy and be healthy!

Leni

CINNAMON: Steel-Cut Oatmeal

I used to love to make steel-cut oatmeal in the slow cooker. It was nice to have hot cereal waiting when we woke up in the morning. But then my trusty 30-year slow cooker, gave out and I bought a new one. The new slow cooker cooks the oatmeal too quickly and invariably we end up with oatmeal caked to the sides of the slow cooker or, worse yet, burned tasting oatmeal. I tried increasing the amount of water to oats in the recipe, but that didn’t help very much. Then I tried cooking it for less time, but I didn’t want to lose sleep over the oatmeal!

So I’ve learned that slow cookers are not all the same. And I am no longer using my slow cooker for making oatmeal…instead, I simply cook it overnight on a cold stove. Here’s how:

STEEL-CUT OATS — cooked overnight on a cold stove

Ingredients

3 3/4 cups filtered cold tap water

1 cup steel-cut oats

• You can buy organic steel-cut oats (or oat groats) at Whole Foods in the bulk food bin or on the shelves and also at Trader Joe’s.

• Since steel-cut oats are a whole grain (that is, it contains the germ as well as the bran), I don’t store oats for a long time in the pantry. If I have more than what I need for a few weeks, I keep the extra in the freezer or the refrigerator. That’s because I want to prevent the oils in the germ from going rancid. Rancid foods have an off taste (though in oatmeal you can’t tell) and also promote oxidative reactions in the body, just what you don’t want. (That’s why we take in anti-oxidants to help prevent cancer as well as heart disease, etc.)

Directions for cooking overnight on a cold stove

The night before, bring the water to a boil in a small heavy pot (such as a Le Creuset enamel-on-steel pot).

Add the steel-cut oats, cover the pot, turn off the heat, and leave the pot on the burner with the heat off.

The next morning, uncover pot, stir the watery softened oats and then heat over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring .

Add your favorite additions, such as skim milk, almond milk, raisins, ground  flaxseeds, and, of course, lots of Ceylon cinnamon. (See the recipe below for making oatmeal in slow cooker for more information on these add-ins.)

STEEL-CUT OATS – in a slow-cooker

Ingredients

• 1 cup steel-cut oats

• 5 cups filtered cold tap water (more or less depending on your slow cooker’s size and how hot it heats up; experiment to get it right)

• Skim milk or almond vanilla milk (the variety without any added sweeteners), to taste

• Raisins, to taste

• Ceylon cinnamon, to taste

• Monamifood: Why Cinnamon? How does cinnamon help to prevent cancer?

• Cinnamon also helps to bring out the natural sweetness of foods!  That’s why it’s so prevalent in baking.

• ground flaxseeds (I prefer the golden flaxseeds which I grind in a coffee grinder)

• Monamifood: Why Flaxseeds? How do flaxseeds help to prevent cancer?

Directions for cooking in slow cooker

•   Add the oats and water to a 3- or 4-quart slow cooker; cover and cook on low overnight or about 6-7 hours.

• Stir well the next morning.

• Add skim milk or almond milk (my favorite) and raisins to taste; stir and heat the mixture in the microwave oven.

• Mix in Ceylon cinnamon and flaxseeds.

+ Note: I used to add cinnamon to the oatmeal before cooking, but it seems to lose its flavor during the long slow cooking. And I’m also wondering if the heat might possibly adversely affect the effectiveness of the proanthocyanidins — those  molecules in cinnamon that force cancer cells to commit suicide.  I have no idea if that’s so or not, but just in case there’s some truth to this, I now add the cinnamon (lots of it) to my oatmeal after it’s cooked.

Directions for cooking on top of the stove when y0u want a bowl of oatmeal NOW – not tomorrow morning

Here’s a good pumpkin pie spiced oatmeal recipe to cook on top of the stove.

As mention in my post about anti-angiogenic foods, I like to add canned pumpkin to my oatmeal. Not only is pumpkin an anti-angiogenic food but it’s also high in fiber and vitamin A/beta carotene – and delicious. Tip: Buy lots of canned pumpkin when it’s on sale around Thanksgiving! You’ll never find it so inexpensive any other time of the year.

Other additions – just a few ideas

• Fresh berries
• Dried fruit
• Canned pumpkin (not canned pumpkin pie filling which has lots of sugar)
• Fat free ricotta cheese – If you mix this in well it will make your cereal creamy.
• Egg whites (not from fresh eggs, but rather from a container because the eggs in the container have been pasteurized and there’s no possibility of salmonella) – You just stir the egg whites into PIPING hot cereal and you get a nice creamy texture.
• Mix with cooked quinoa! A great way to bump up the protein in your breakfast.

For more sweetness…just add more raisins!

• Adding raisins – a whole food that contains lots of fiber —  is a great way to sweeten your cereal.  In addition, oatmeal (and all grains) when metabolized contributes to the acidity in your blood, which is thought to contribute to the process by which our bones get depleted of calcium and become more brittle. Raisins and all fruits, on the other hand, do exactly the opposite. They contribute to a more basic (non-acidic) blood which helps protect our bones from the leaching out of calcium. For more on the concept of acid-base and bones see Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century. Starting on page 349 of this American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article, you will find a short discussion of the health implications of an acid- vs. alkaline-producing diet.

Store the leftover oatmeal in refrigerator

• If you have more cooked oatmeal than you need, just store the remaining portion in the refrigerator. The next morning you may find that you have a congealed mass of oatmeal! No problem. Just top the oatmeal with some milk (or almond milk) and then heat it in the microwave. When hot, stir until no longer lumpy.

To learn more about slow cooker cooking – good general information…

• All Recipes-Slow Cooking Is Good Cooking

And…to make single-portions of oatmeal in a metal thermos overnight…

• Overnight Oatmeal for Grab and Go Breakfasts
  

Enjoy and be healthy!

~Leni