June 

 

The world belongs to those with the most energy. 

 -Alexis de Tocqueville

 

Snack Attack

There’s no denying that everyone, at one time or another, has had a snack attack. Views on snacking differ. Some feel that snacking is bad and that eating between meals leads to weight gain. Others believe that eating many small meals and snacks throughout the day is healthy for maintaining energy levels and optimal weight. If there were one way of snacking that was right for everyone, we would all be doing it!  

To alleviate snack attack guilt, try to understand why you are snacking and what snacks work best for your body. Perhaps you snack because your daily diet is missing nutrition, or because you are eating too little at meals. You might be snacking to soothe jangled nerves when you are emotional, or to entertain yourself when you are bored. Whatever your reason, acknowledge it and start thinking about how to create a life that is nourishing and truly satisfying.

 

Although snacks are no substitute for loving your life, they can be great energy boosters. Many convenient snack foods are highly processed and full of chemicals, additives, damaging fats and refined sugars. When a snack attack hits you, try foods that are filling and satisfying, but also nutritious. Here are some tips:

• Snack on things that don’t come in a plastic wrapper or a box, like fresh fruit, leftover vegetables or rice cakes with almond butter and fruit spread.
• Make your own signature trail mix, organic hot chocolate made with almond milk sweetened with agave nectar, or blue corn chips with hummus.

You can also try “upgrading”:

• If you are craving something crunchy, upgrade from potato chips to raw carrots, apples or whole grain crackers.
• If you are craving a candy bar, upgrade to a handful of nuts and dried fruit.
• Instead of a cup of coffee, upgrade to green tea.

Instead of ice cream, upgrade to applesauce with cinnamon.

Upgraded snacks are high in nutrition and give you a greater sense of satiety and satisfaction; you won’t feel physically or psychologically deprived, and you’ll have plenty of energy to sustain your activities for hours.

 

Snacking is enjoyable and there is a wide variety of healthful goodies for whatever you’re craving, be it sweet, crunchy, salty, creamy or spicy. Dive in, be creative and enjoy your snack attack.

 

Food Focus: Fruit                                                                                                 

A healthy lifestyle is the key to longevity, optimum weight, abundant energy and balance. By using fruit to satisfy our taste for sweetness, we can leave behind the use of chemical, processed and refined sweeteners. Fruits are easy to digest, are cleansing and cooling and are great for those who are overstressed and overheated from excessive mental strain or hot climates. Fruits are filled with fiber and liver stimulants, which act as natural, gentle laxatives. Whenever possible, buy fresh, locally grown fruit as opposed to imported fruits shipped from far-off places. This keeps you eating in season, and more in harmony with your environment and climate.

 

Eating raw fruit in summer months is highly cooling, while baking it in the winter months neutralizes the cooling effect. Fruit in the form of juice is a great choice for cleansing the body, but be aware that juice rapidly raises blood sugar levels, leading to an energy crash soon after. Frozen, whole, puréed or juiced fruit can make great summertime cool-down treats. Try frozen grapes, banana-coconut smoothie popsicles or lime juice ice-cubes in iced tea!

 

Whether you are having fresh fruit for a light early morning breakfast, a midday snack or evening treat, enjoy nature's sweetness and whenever possible buy organic. Here are a few summer fruits and their health benefits:

 

Apricots: Great for lung conditions and asthma; used to help treat anemia due to their high copper and cobalt content.

Bananas: Help to lubricate the intestines, treat ulcers, detoxify the body and manage sugar cravings; are rich in potassium (which helps hypertension).

Cherries: Slightly warming in nature; increase overall body energy, remedy arthritis and rheumatism and are rich in iron, which improves the blood.

Grapefruits: Treat poor digestion, increase appetite during pregnancy, alleviate intestinal gas and reduce mucus conditions of the lungs.

Papayas: Tone the stomach, act as digestive aid, moisten the lungs and alleviate coughing; contain carpaine, an anti-tumor compound.

Raspberries: Benefit the liver and kidneys, cleanse blood of toxins, regulate menstrual cycles, treat anemia and can promote labor at childbirth.

 

Recipe of the Month: Fruit Nut Smoothie

Prep time: 5 minutes

Yield: 2 servings

 

Ingredients:

1 banana

1 cup soy or rice milk

1 cup berries

1 cup diced melon

1/2 cup almonds

2-4 ice cubes

 

Directions:

1.   Mix in blender for 1-2 minutes and serve.

Note: You can add other ingredients for added nutrition such as a spoonful of bee pollen, coconut oil, flax seed oil, spirulina powder or a scoop of protein powder.

 

Forward to a Friend

It’s such a pleasure to help those closest to us become happier and healthier. Please forward this newsletter to friends, family members or colleagues who might be interested and inspired by it.

 

I've had a craving for kale the past 2 weeks.

Nothing wrong with that, in fact, there is a lot right with it, except that I don't like kale. So I resisted the craving. (Funny...I used to resist cravings for cookies, cake, donuts, pizza, sausage, because I didn't want to gain weight, and now I am resisting a craving for kale...)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I am a health and wellness coach, and that kale is one of the most nutritious vegetables on the planet...that's why it's so hot right now...but I just never liked the taste.

Being from the South, I was raised on turnip, mustard, and collard greens and I love them, at least the way my mother and grandmother cooked them, with a teaspoon of sugar to cut the bitterness.

But I'm not about to put sugar in kale, so...I just don't eat it. I know lots of people who love it, but it's just at the bottom of my personal list for taste.

When my craving didn't go away, I decided to stop resisting the craving and purchase a bunch of kale at my favorite store, Mariano's. www.marianos.com. Because I knew the craving meant I needed one, if not all, of the many nutrients in kale. Stay tuned for more on that.

I decided I would juice the kale and hope that some other fruits or veggies would cut the bitterness.

So as soon as I got home, I got out the juicer and looked up the recipe for Joe's Mean Green Juice. Joe is the creator and star of the film, Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead www.fatsickandnearlydead.com, and I just heard him speak at IIN Live www.integrativenutritionschool.com over the weekend.

The film tells the story of how he lost weight and cured himself of an autoimmune disease by going on a 60-day juice fast followed by ongoing healthy eating, juicing, and exercise.

Before I get to Joe's recipe, let me share some of the benefits of kale from www.mindbodygreen.com.

Did you know that kale is higher in iron than beef? Iron helps transport oxygen throughout our body and assists with cell growth.

Kale is high in Vitamin K and antioxidants, both of which can help protect against cancers.

It is also high in Vitamin A (great for vision and skin) and Vitamin C (great for your immune system and metabolism).

And, here's a surprise to most of us: kale is higher in calcium than milk!

It's also a fantastic detox food.

Now for the Mean Green Juice recipe. If you do not have a juicer, I suggest making a green smoothie in your blender, just add a cup of filtered water first and make sure to chop up the apples and other veggies in smaller pieces than you would if you were juicing.

1 cucumber (if not organic, peel)
4 celery stalks (use organic as celery is one of the "dirty dozen"--most filled with pesticides)
2 apples, I use Granny Smith
6-8 leaves of kale, which in Australia, where Joe is from, is called Tuscan cabbage!
1/2 lemon (peel if not organic)
1 tbsp ginger (I use fresh ginger, peeled, about an inch).

Wash all produce
Juice
Pour over Ice
Enjoy!

It. Was. Delicious! So I had some again today. And I might have some more tonight, before bed. Granted, it is not as sweet as the carrot/pineapple/ginger juice I usually fix, but maybe I just don't need that sweetness now...I obviously needed iron, Vitamin A,K, or C, or calcium, or a detox, or all of them...

And it feels so good to have that craving diminish, because whether they are for a Snicker's bar or kale, cravings are annoying!

I think this is a perfect lead-in for a post on intuitive eating and listening to your body, so be looking for that in the next week or so.

It's a damp, rainy, chilly day here in the Chicago suburbs, and I can't help but wish I was back in the South.

It seems unnatural for it to be this cold and dreary in early November. Unnatural for me, a Southerner, that is. For my husband, born and bred in Chicago and its sprawling suburbs, it's normal.

Quite frankly, it's a bit of a downer for me, and it's tempting to reflect that if I were in Memphis, my hometown, I'd be basking in 50-degree weather, with the prospect of sunny and low 70s over the weekend.

Of course, if I were in Memphis I also might be looking over my shoulder every 5 minutes, too. It's become a dangerous city.

So, rather than be like Lot's wife and look backward, I decided to start blogging again.

This wasn't really a snap decision. I've been thinking about it for weeks, ever since our wedding in September, when I started having more free time again, but I guess the weather-induced lethargy combined with my ancestors' hearty work ethic, finally prompted me to leave the comfort of my warm bed and fire up the computer. Ancestors 1, down comforter 0, at least until about 11 o'clock tonight.

Imagine my surprise when I opened up blogger and  discovered that during my two-year vacation from this blog, I've had nearly 2,000 page views!

I'm stunned, actually.

So, to all those unknown nearly 2,000 people who have viewed this blog during its 2-year vacay, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am humbly grateful to google for bringing you my way, and that you took the time to stop in here.

This gives me the encouragement I needed to continue with Recipe for Life: Make It Fun.

A lot has changed in 2 years. We moved from the beautiful green hills of Tennessee to the Chicago suburbs. My mother passed away three months later. Chicago Man transitioned from fiance to husband, and I wound up with not only a husband, but 2 amazing daughters, a son-in-law, a beautiful granddaughter, a mom and dad, three sisters, a brother, and a host of funny, quirky nieces and nephews.

For an only child, this was the equivalent of winning the Mega Millions lottery!

After a lot of prayer and soul searching, I decided in May 2012 to continue my passion for food and healthy eating by becoming a student at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition www.integrativenutrition.com with the goal of being a health and wellness coach. I recently passed my second test at the six-month mark, and became eligible to start seeing clients.

When we first moved here, I became enthralled with all the delicious bread, hot dogs, and Italian food that make up a good portion of the food culture here in Chicago.

The end result of that was a 20-lb weight gain, and deteriorating health. I recently was diagnosed with gluten sensitivity and hypothyroidism, and have been on a gluten-free, no caffeine, no refined sugaranti-inflammation diet with good results.

I also started swimming a couple times a week, and walking about the lake near our home a couple times a week. In fact, a walk was on tap for today, but the rain and chill are not too appealing.

Anyway, I want to get back to the roots of what this blog was originally intended to be: one woman's journey to healthy eating and joyful living!

So stay tuned, and to close I wanted to share this beautiful gingko tree in its fall colors (photo credit Mark Turner). November was my favorite month when I lived in Mississippi, more than 10 years ago now, and I always enjoyed the gingko tree on the lawn of First Baptist Church in Senatobia. This isn't that same tree, of course, but it's equally beautiful.

Drink in its beauty and let it lift your spirits as it has mine.

A Tale of Tat Soi

Last Saturday, with warm weather still lingering in Middle Tennessee like a summer cold, I was on a mission.

My goal: to find some summer-y type produce at the West Nashville Farmer's Market.

Parsnips, turnips, and butternut squash just don't have much appeal for me when the temperatures are still in the 80s.

I wanted tomatoes! Corn! And I was craving watermelon, but I knew that wasn't gonna happen. The best I could hope for was a few straggly tomatoes, I knew...and then I checked my Facebook before heading out.


There it was, a post from the Farmer's Market. They really know how to reel you in with tantalizing descriptions of kettle corn and homemade marshmallows, but what intrigued me was their comment about Delvin Farms' purple-green tat soi. www.delvinfarms.com

I'd never even heard of tat soi--yet, even though it wasn't a summer vegetable I was still intrigued.

So once at the market, I headed straight to Delvin Farms' booth.

And there it was...tat soi. It was indeed purply green, and came in huge bunches with spoon-shaped leaves of varying sizes. I asked the worker about it--could I cook it like kale?

Her answer was yes, so I bought a double bunch for a mere $3. That seemed a small price for something so intriguing, and suddenly straggly tomatoes weren't so appealing anymore.

Once home, I decided to search the internet for recipes using tat soi and came across this gem at http://foodblogga.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-is-tat-soi.html, a recipe for gingery sauteed tat soi with tofu steaks. The recipe was simple, sounded tasty--and, I happened to have all the ingredients on hand.

A bit more research uncovered the facts that tat soi can be used as a salad green, that it is highly nutritious, and also that it can grow in temps down to 15 degrees and harvested in the snow--what could be more perfect since next growing season I will be in Chicago?

Here are a few pics of the tatsoi and the dish. I loved the zing of the lime and the zip of the ginger, and the brown sugar cut the saltiness of the soy sauce. All in all, it was a perfect healthy meal.
And now the temperatures are cooler, so I feel more inclined to cook with homey (and homely) root vegetables and make comforting soups. When I go back to the market on Saturday I am purchasing more tat soi and will try it in soup.

I Know My Own Strength

For whatever reason, I was a total dunce at PE when I was in school.

I was a pretty solid A/B student except for math and PE, and as challenging as math was for me, I'd definitely pick it over PE.

PE really wasn't too bad until 7th or 8th grade...until then it was more like playing.


But in 7th grade our teacher instituted President Kennedy's Physical Fitness program and PE became a state of torture for me.

There was a thing called the 600-yard run/walk...and I and our class "fat kid" Tommy were always dead last. I remember panting, groaning, sweating...OK, there are other activities in which panting, groaning, and sweating can be fun but this was not one of them. It was humiliating.

I was searching the 600 yard run/walk on google the other day and found someone of my generation who also had to do it; he was a football player and said he had trouble with it, so I felt somewhat vindicated. But back then, definitely humiliating.

Then, in high school one of my PE teachers was also the basketball coach...she wanted to use the PE time to get in extra practice, so she told me if I would sit on the bench the entire class, she'd give me a B. So I did, and she did, and my parents actually paid money for me to go to this school.

As far as other sports, I had a horror of volleyball because I was afraid of getting hit in the mouth, or of my glasses breaking.

Volleyball became like a form of bullying to me. I felt absolutely hopeless and helpless when it came to catching a ball or hitting a ball. I actually kind of liked soccer but didn't have much chance to play.


In college, I took tennis. That wasn't so bad, because the summer between 8th and 9th grade I took private tennis lessons. I wasn't good in college, but at least I had some idea of what I was doing.

Ten years later when I returned to college to get my journalism degree, I had to take another PE class. I took folk dancing, and guess what--I never went and never dropped it. Only F I ever made in my entire life!

But somewhere into my 40s I decided I wanted to be an athlete as well as lose weight, and now I am doing it!

Steve practices catching with me and once he told me to focus on the object, hey...I can catch! I am pretty darn good. In fact, when we move to Chicago I am going to try out for the Cubs and take them to the World Series!

And I am pretty good at running, too. The first time my mother saw me running in our yard a few months ago, she asked Steve if it was me! Yes, it was and I love it. No more huffing and puffing, just a feeling of coming into my own skin.

I love feeling strong and empowered from running, from yoga, strength training, and even catching.

I wish I could have experienced this feeling when I was younger, but for whatever reason I didn't.


This is what I call growing old gracefully!

Next up--kickboxing...I wanna punch something!!!

Best Homemade Tomato Sauce Recipe

The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook

I love Jillian Michaels' new Master Your Metabolism cookbook! The recipes are fresh, delicious, easy to prepare, and also contain information about how the veggies, fruits, and herbs in the recipes will benefit your health.

For example, Jillian's Simple Marinara Sauce is anti-cancer, heart healthy, boosts immunity, and boosts metabolism. She also notes that making marinara sauce at home is cheaper and allows you to control all the ingredients--no high fructose corn syrup.

I was so glad to have found this recipe, because as I eat cleaner and healthier, jarred pasta sauce (which I always used because I did not know how to make homemade) just doesn't taste right.

So here's the recipe in all it's simplicity and beauty! I've used it as a sauce for pasta, and today had some as tomato soup and it was fabulous. It freezes really well. I'll be making more again soon.

1 TB olive oil
1 cup finely chopped red onion
2 garlic cloves finely chopped
1 fresh or dried bay leaf
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes, low sodium
1 TB fresh chopped parsley or 1 tsp dried
1 TB chopped fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried
1 TB chopped fresh basil or 1 tsp dried
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper

In a large skillet heat olive oil over med-low heat. Add onion, garlic and bay leaf, and cook, stirring, until softened and just beginning to brown, 6-8 min.

Push the onion and garlic to one side of the pan and add the tomato paste to the cleared spot. Cook about 2 min. Stir onion and garlic into the paste and continue cooking, stirring occasionally until the paste is darker in color, 2-3 minutes.

Stir in the crushed tomatoes, parsley, oregano, basil, vinegar, and salt and pepper. Reduce heat and simmer 15 min. Remove and discard bay leaf.

If a smooth sauce is desired, transfer to food processor or blender and process till smooth.

Store in refrigerator 4 days or freeze for up to 6 months.

Enjoy!

It's Summer, and I'm Holding

Several days ago I was thinking back to my childhood, and realized that the only season I really remember is summer.

Sure, I remember the Halloween when I was 12 and dressed up as a gypsy; the Thanksgivings when we had a pop-up, cutout centerpiece of the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving (it's still down in the basement, a wonderful vintage reminder of times past); and of course, there's Christmas...

But other than that, all my memories are centered around summer: fishing at Audubon Lake, picking blackberries at my grandfather's farm, my grandmother's blackberry cobbler, homemade peach ice cream at the church ice cream social, the church picnic at the Marsh's house on Coro Lake, running through the sprinkler, swimming at Maywood--I could go on and on.

Summer was my favorite season then, and it's still my favorite season--or at least, until the world started getting hotter.

I love homegrown tomatoes, I still love blackberry cobbler, homemade peach ice cream, swimming, picnics and all the other stuff that goes along with summer, but the intense heat we've had in Tennessee this summer does not agree with me.

I abandoned my running schedule in June when we had three weeks of 90+ temps. Then, I ran a couple of times in July when the early morning temps were in the 60s, but once they got back into the 70s even at 5:30 a.m., I have trouble breathing.

I feel lethartic and lazy, not motivated to exercise even indoors. And I've been eating a bit more. The plus side of that is that I am not hungry all the time. And, also on the plus side is that I haven't gained any weight--I've maintained for the past month.


So at least I know that I know how to maintain! That is something I was wondering about and unsure about, because I've never been able to do it in the past.

I've had some wonderful summer meals, too. We've grilled out a lot: chicken, beef, veggies. I got some pretty darn good frozen peach yogurt at Kroger, which replaces the homemade peach ice cream, and I am trying out a new recipe for lemon-macerated okra that is marinated with Kalamata olives. And I have a few heirloom tomatoes left from my Farmer's Market foray on Saturday. I also found out that heirloom tomatoes are really, really good with pulled pork. They make a nice, low-calorie sub for slaw, which I don't care for anyway because I don't like mayo.

So all in all, it's been a good summer despite the heat. It's not even August yet, and I feel sure we have at least another 4 weeks of temps over 90.

As long as I keep maintaining, squeeze in a few yoga workouts, and maybe even go to the swim beach at Old Hickory Lake, I will definitely be able to say it was a good summer, maybe even a memoriable one!

Oh, and I'll be putting up recipes later this week...I can't wait to try that marinated okra; it has to sit for 48-72 hours and I just prepared it this morning.