I think I will write a book about how to be really healthy. The bulk of the book will be about healthy eating – specifically, it will highlight a low-carb, no-processed food, lots of fruits and veggies, low sugar diet. It will also feature sections on healthy activities and lifestyle choices, and another section on detox-foods.
What do you think? Will you buy it?
I’m totally joking of course. Even thought this is what people do, over and over again. Dr. Andrew Weil already published a book like this… as have hundreds of others. And each one makes such a buzz – people are like, “oh, THAT’s how I can be healthy??!?!?! I will recommend this book to everyone I know! I will live by every precept!
The other day, while walking to my car from the library, I suddenly wondered, “I wonder what my leg would taste like.” No, I don’t thrive on the macabre. And I would sooner DIE A HUNDRED DEATHS before EVER eating human flesh.
The thought must have come from looking down at my calves, which I am trying to firm up with exercise. Have you ever been creeped out by raw animal meat still on the bone? Or even just raw meat? That’s how my leg would look, if it were chopped up. I would do very poorly as a long-ago pioneer traveling the plains or hunter because I just can’t look at dead animals – in whole or part – without connecting with it in a very visceral, spiritual sense. It makes me sad. It makes me sad because that animal lived, just like I live, and it walked and communicated and used its muscles, just like I do. And now it is lifeless matter, just flesh and bones and blood. Despite my feelings, my attempts at being vegetarian have been in vain.
If a dinosaur came along and ate me, I think my leg would taste pretty good. Just enough muscle, and a good amount of fat to satisfy such a hungry creature. I just hope I’d be dead and unconscious before he took a bite.
HISTORY: While I was growing up, my parents were friends with another couple with kids, and my mom made this recipe for them EVERY time they came over, for some unknown reason. But I think they kept coming because they knew they’d get these brownies. People’s brains are so tied to food, even when they don’t realize it! This was also a great go-to for birthday “cake,” especially for my dad, who could live off chocolate bars, fudge, hot chocolate, chocolate ice cream, chocolate croissants, and chocolate-covered cherries.
RECIPE:
Put two squares of butter (REAL butter is always best) into a saucepan on medium heat. Stir in 5 generous (ie. overflowing) Tbs cocoa and turn off the heat when the butter is melted. Then add 2 cups of sugar, followed by 4 eggs.* Stir in 3/4 cup flour, 1 tsp baking soda and 1 tsp vanilla. Bake in a greased pan at 350 for 25-ish minutes. Voila!
With or without frosting, you will never taste better brownies.
This is exactly how they look, although I found this picture online. Yum!
* IMPORTANT – it helps to mix these separately and then stir them in quickly. Once, in my teens I made these with a friend and we added them in slowly to the still hot sugar/butter mixture and ended up with cooked egg pieces before the brownies entered the oven. gross. Haha, we still cooked the brownies, hoping that somehow the cooked eggs would go away! They didn’t. Sorry to gross you out. Just wanted to protect you from making the same mistake.
Nut butter is one of the most wonderful things on this planet. I love nuts, and I love nut butter. Especially peanut butter. It’s good on almost anything – so perfect for snacks and decadent desserts. Even soups (I have a favorite African soup I make and the secret ingredient is peanut butter!)
Like many people, I grew up with the sugary/hydrogenated oil cheap peanut butter. Most brands make this type, which is strange to me. Why process it more, add more stuff, and then sell it for less? Why not just chop and moosh the nuts and call it good? Because this IS good. SO much better. I actually like Laura Scudder’s brand the best, which has a little salt added in. It’s like perfection in a glass jar. It seems like the main thing that bugs people about buying natural peanut butter is the gross-looking peanut oil that gathers on the top, that you have to stir in before you refrigerate the container. I came up with a brilliant solution, that I am sure a few other smart people have also discovered. Why not take some of this precious oil out and save it for cooking other things later, like curries or soups? How Awesome! So I just scoop out about half of what’s there, putting it aside in another container, and then I stir the rest of the oil into the peanut butter – with no sloshing over the sides! It is great. Here is a picture of my precious peanut oil, after I spilled some of it accidentally.
Anyway, I would suggest doing this, and your experiences with natural peanut butter will forever be improved.
History: This is the only homemade syrup in my book. It tastes very similar to real maple syrup and nothing like the icky sticky gluey store-bought variety. (ie high-fructose corn syrup with a dash of imitation maple flavoring). I have a funny story of when I was little. My sisters and I made some pancakes for breakfast one weekend morning, and got out a jar of what looked like syrup from the fridge (it was always stored in a glass jar with a metal lid). After heating it up and pouring it on our pancakes, we were TOTALLY grossed out by how they tasted! We couldn’t figure out what we had done wrong (did we add a cup of salt instead of a tsp?) until we realized it was the “syrup!” It wasn’t syrup after all, it was leftover au jus from the roast beef sandwich dinner the night before! Ew!
RECIPE
Boil 1 cup of water in a saucepan. Stir in 2 cups of sugar and turn off the heat. Add 1 tsp maple extract (Mapeline). Voila! You are done.
This waffle just needs butter.
Refrigerate leftover syrup for any length of time (ok a year might be too long). If you are frugal and health-conscious like my mom and you like it to be more like sweet water then you can add less sugar, like 1 1/2 cups. (soggy waffles are not my thing though) Yum!
After spending some time in South Korea, I always wondered why most Korean women are slender. I initially lost weight when I got to the country, but eventually I gained weight and it was hard to lose it again when I got back to the states.
What was their secret? Were they physiologically different than Caucasions of European descent (such as I)? Was I doomed to slowly gain weight after hitting my peak in life, or could I possibly learn their secrets?
Skinny skinny. Photo curtesy of google images.
One day I simply asked a Korean woman, who was about 30, beautiful, fantastic-looking, etc, what she did to lose weight so efficiently. She described it to me like it was something everyone already knew – why was I asking? I suppose this is what they all do when they really want to lose weight. It was fairly simple, but sounded like torture to me.
Here are things you are supposed to DO:
1. Exercise like crazy (at least an hour) every day. Do the types of exercise that burn the most calories, like running, and keep your heart rate up.
2. Drink lots of water.
3. Eat a tiny bit of rice each day, but just a bit because too much rice makes you fat.
4. Eat lots of vegetables, grains (no processed), seeds, nuts and legumes (for Koreans, this includes all types of kimchi).
5. Eat fruit, but don’t overdo it – just a few a day.
6. Eat/drink dairy – milk, yogurt and eggs – but no cream, butter or cheese.
7. Eat meat.
8. Sleep all you can so you don’t think about eating.
Here are things you are NOT supposed to do:
1. Do not eat until you are full. Eat until you aren’t hungry any more.
2. Do not eat rice, except for a tiny bit (like a few bites) each day.
3. Do not eat bread. At all. Bread makes you fat.
4. Do not at cheese or cream or butter.
5. Do not eat sugar or candy or ice cream. Sugar makes you fat.
6. Do not stop exercising daily.
Voila! In about 30 days, you will be looking great, and in about 60 days you will be skinny as a stick. This is not surprising, since it is pretty much a low-carb, low-calorie, high-protein, vegetable/meat diet coupled with a lot of exercise. I think Korean women just turn to this diet whenever they want to lose weight. It’s also clear looking at this list why I do not look like a slim Korean woman. I like to overdo almost all the things on the DO NOT list. I have tried to go for a week on this diet and it actually makes me feel great. Plus I lose a few pounds. I just can’t go longer than a week… possibly for psychological reasons, I don’t know.
DISCLAIMER: This type of diet may lead to stomach upset, diarrhea, and other unpleasant side effects. Also, if you currently consume a lot of calories daily, you should very slowly transition to a hard-core diet like this (ie, slow your calorie intake down over the course of a year, then start this diet). But wow, you will have the body of your dreams if you can stick to it!
HISTORY: This one has more than a few ingredients but it is delicious and easy to remember and so I will share it. I came up with this basic recipe and it is just really good. I like to eat it with crackers or toast.
RECIPE:
Saute 1 onion with a little oil or water. After a few minutes, add 1/2 cup chopped ham. Add 2 chopped potatoes and 2 chopped carrots. Saute together for ~5 minutes, then add 2 cups dry split peas and 6 cups water. Simmer for about 45 minutes. If you desire, add 2 cups spinach. Add salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste. If you like it creamy, add 1/4 cup cream or milk. Enjoy!
My sister is convinced that microwaves emit radiation. She won’t even stand in front of one. She will quickly jump at least 5 feet away or get behind a wall while one is running. She grabs children and babies and moves them out of the way. Part of me wants to believe her, but then I think back to my grandparents’ microwave. This was some 25-ish years ago, in the 80s. Their microwave must have been one of the very first models, maybe from 1982, or something like that. It was SO OLD. It had a strange knob, like a twist-timer, to set the time. There was one level of intensity, and not even a popcorn button. I scoured the internet for a similar picture, and found this remarkable one – I think it might be the same exact model as my grandparents!
That makes me so excited. I don’t know how long they had it, but they used it a lot. Just for fun, I will post this related picture:
I don’t know this guy but I think this was taken in my grandparent’s kitchen
Anyway, I think if microwaves emitted radiation, all 30+ year olds would be mutants from being in the same vicinity as these babies. As far as I know, I am not a mutant, nor are most other people that weathered the 80’s. In my opinion, if we are worried about radiation from microwaves, then we should be worried ALL THE TIME (since radiation is directionless, knows no boundaries like walls and doesn’t wane with relatively short distances like 100 miles), and we should probably be more worried about cell phones, since the ratio of microwaves to cell phones is like 4:1 and cell phones are used 100x more frequently.
Although I may sound like it, I am not a nuclear physicist. Please correct me if you are a scientist and know more than me about this!
When my nerd best friend and some of his fellow engineer friends had birthdays close together a few years back, I decided I would make them the most awesome nerd cake. What would be cooler than a Rubik’s cube cake? NOTHING. (not literally nothing – nothing as in a Rubik’s cube would be the ultimate nerd/engineer cake) So, I made a Rubik’s cube cake. It was hard, since I decided to do squares of fondant, and then somehow meld it all together atop a frosted cube-shaped cake. Well, after an untold number of hours I finished it! Here are a few pictures:
The “making of” pictures are a little too graphic. Luckily, despite all my handling, it tasted really good! I hope they liked it and experienced it to the fullest, because I will never attempt this again. I will post the fondant recipe and instructions here for anyone crazy as I am.
MARSHMALLOW FONDANT RECIPE
3 cups mini marshmallows
1 Tbs water
1 tsp vanilla
food coloring – various shades
6-8 cups powdered sugar
cornstarch
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (for black lines)
Put marshmallows into glass bowl, drizzle with water and melt on 50% power for about 2 minutes, stopping to stir a couple times. When nice and melted/fluffy/soupy, add vanilla and separate into 6 bowls. Add coloring to each bowl except 1 for white. Add about a cup of powdered sugar to each bowl, then take each and knead it atop cornstarch. Use plenty as it can be sticky. Roll it out and cut it into 6 squares or so with pizza cutter, using paper square as template, set each square aside atop cornstarch. Put extra fondant into plastic baggie and set in fridge in case you need it later (haha you’ll find it again in a month and not know what to do with it). Do this with each color until you have 45 squares. (hopefully you reserved your whole morning or afternoon)
Place 9 squares on each of 5 sides (no way you want to do the bottom of the cake) of freshly-frosted cube cake. If they don’t stick, dab the backside with water before putting onto the cake. After they are all placed, melt chocolate chips in a glass bowl (yes this requires a lot of bowls, it feels like 50) at 50% power for about 2 minutes, stopping a few times to stir. Place half into a plastic bag with tiny bit of edge clipped/pastry bag with small round tip and pump chocolate in straight lines to separate colors of Rubik’s cube. Have fun! If/when you use up the whole bag, move on to the next half of the melted chocolate. (if you used a plastic bag use a different one.) Place cake in fridge/cold place for 20 min to firm up the chocolate and fondant. Enjoy with all your nerdy friends!
Nutella: beside its weaknesses, it is one of the tastiest, most sublime forms of everyday chocolate out there. If it weren’t for it’s high content of sugar + palm oil and low concentration of cocoa, it would be true food for the gods. Especially succulent is Nutella on crepes, graham crackers, and fruit. Some of it’s deficiencies work to its benefit – like it’s inability to harden at room temperature, thus making it like a no-cook thick fondue. One must become accustomed to the distinct taste of Nutella, which is at the same time nutty and chocolatey. But once that taste is acquired, it is never lost. Some people think of it as French peanut-butter, but it’s more like world peanut butter except it is hazelnuts and contains a trace amount of cocoa.
My half-empty jar.
The label is one of the most interesting parts of this delicious oddity! My large jar (which I purchased from Costco) contains 97 hazelnuts, which I’d think would only be about 1/2 cup of hazelnut butter. Why they would they not add 5 more and label it as containing “more than 100 hazelnuts”? Also interesting is the picture on the front of the label. It could very well be the same one they have used since it was developed in 1964.
And on the back:
“Turn a balanced breakfast into a tasty one…” This first clause makes me laugh because the less healthy the breakfast before the addition of this smooth chocolatey spread, the more delicious it is! I like the thought of trading my healthy all-whole-grain breakfast for a nutella-covered no-nutrition breakfast treat. Because despite what my insides are thinking, my heart would stay happy for hours after. At 200 calories per serving, how can you go wrong? A few years back a mother sued Nutella-maker Ferrero for falsely claiming Nutella is “part of a healthy breakfast.” I wonder how many people tried similar suits for other products.
Two days ago it was announced by Grub Street that New York will soon be opening an all-Nutella restaurant, owned by “self-described Nutella enthusiasts” How awesome! The Brooklyn restaurant’s website is very visually appealing. But how will they survive, when the restaurant hinges on a proprietary product owned by another company?
“The menu for the soon-to-open aptly-named restaurant Nutelleria is filled with chocolate-nut spread-filled delights, including breakfast pizzas, crepes, croissants and a bacon-banana-Nutella waffle sandwich…”
If I find myself in Brooklyn I will definitely go (provided that Ferrero cease-and-desist letters don’t force them out of business)! And leave a detailed review here on my blog.
Charged With Chocolate 