Archive for the Food

In the midlife muffin top crushing category you wouldn’t expect to find chocolate cake. In the “excess in moderation” category it would feature prominently for some. I’m happy to say that I’ve been introduced to a product that is so darn delicious, easy to bake–it’s a mix–and versatile as a base for other desserts that I had to write about it.

Kelley Herring is a woman I’ve connected with online and whose digital product, Your Plate, Your Fate, I admire and even offer for sale in the products section on Easy Midlife Weight Loss. She’s got a beautiful, healthy food information packed blog, called Healing Gourmet, as well as a product line of no sugar, low glycemic, gluten free cakes.

I’ll admit I’m not a big dessert person–which doesn’t mean I don’t love to make them and taste them, it’s just not a meal component I’m driven to. My overeating runs towards cheese, main courses, and chicken wings. (No, I’m not making that up.)

That said I love to make special desserts. This past weekend we had friends over for dinner and I never think of making something low sugar, low fat, gluten free. So I made white chocolate raspberry tiramisu–full fat, full booze, full sugar. It was worth every bite. Even I had to have a real portion and that’s not bragging as it’s a very easy dessert to make, it’s just a really delicious combination of ingredients.

As long as I was in the kitchen, along with the above creation, I decided to bake the sample Kelley sent of her Chocolate Bliss cake. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it but I had to try this mix. She said it was great, I trusted her. It was easy to mix–water, eggs, and coconut or other oil. Bake for 18 minutes, voila. Looked and smelled like real chocolate cake. The taste test went like this:

“Hmmm, good texture, nice crumb, moist, smells rich. WOW, this tastes just like a real, sugar laden chocolate cake. How do they do that?” How they do it is by using almond flour, organic cocoa, organic zylitol, and other whole food ingredients. I’m not kidding when I say it is delicious and right away I knew what I’d be doing with it.

I created a low sugar chocolate raspberry tiramisu. The picture below shows a cross section of the cake layered with the cream, berries macerated in port and Grand Marnier. The whole is drizzled with a dark chocolate sauce, cream and dark chocolate, no sugar added. My skeptical, full sugar loving husband was skeptical when I told him about the cake itself being a healthy alternative. Last night he got the piece you see below and had a hard time not wolfing it down. Then asked when we could have that again.

I wholeheartedly endorse this product that Kelley has created. For now you have to order it online at her other site, Wellness Bakeries. You will no doubt find gluten free and sugar free cake mixes in health food stores but I’ve yet to see a mix that combines the two and uses whole foods to create the mixes. This is truly a nutritious dessert option that isn’t just fruit. When you order the cake mix you will receive a recipe for icing that’s healthy and delicious as well. By the way, this is not an affiliate situation where I’m getting a “little something” for recommending this product. It’s just that good and I want you all to know about it.

Chocolate Bliss Cake Raspberry Tiramisu

As a professional chef I have no problem using this mix as a basis for a simple or more involved dessert.

Most of us love the idea of creating desserts. With Chocolate Bliss cake mix we’ve been given an easy way to make a healthy sweet and I’ll bet most guests would never know it wasn’t the full on unhealthy, sugar laden cakes we are used to.

Ok I’m like so bummed out man. Over the past year I’ve made a considerable effort to clean up my eating–especially eliminating some sugar. I’m not a big candy or dessert eater but sugar lurks everywhere. On top of that I do like it in my coffee, and I like something sweet in my plain yogurt some days.
I can’t do those artificial sweeteners on a regular basis so I went in search of what my choices are.

I’ve blogged and done whole audio postcards singing the praises of the sweet syrups honey, molasses and agave nectar as sugar alternatives. Once I discovered I like the taste of agave, and that it was a low glycemic index sweetener, I was thrilled. (The glycemic index and load of foods indicates how much and how fast a carbohydrate food raises blood sugar. The lower and slower the better.)

If you aren’t familiar with agave syrup it’s amber like honey but thinner and has a sweeter taste than sugar so you can use very little for a lot of yumm.

Like a good love affair gone bad when the real person starts to emerge, agave had me fooled. In truth the marketers for this popular sweetener did it.

Agave–from the Greek for noble–has been around for centuries. Mexico proudly harvests 100 different species. According to Bottom Line Health, “extracts from the agave plant have been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.” Sounds like a winner right? From plant to commercially produced syrup is a long journey and there are none of those compounds found in the stuff in the squeeze bottle.

That’s not all. Although low on the glycemic index, agave is comprised of, depending on the manufacturer, between 70% and 95% frustose. Why is this a cause for concern? Fructose, when used as a sweetener, as opposed to when found naturally in fruit, has been linked to high trigylcerides, and weight gain. And it puts you at risk of all sorts of nasty lifestyle diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

We talk about avoiding high fructose corn syrup but that’s only 55/45 fructose to glucose, table sugar is about 50/50. Agave is much higher. You might hear that agave syrup gets its sweetness from inulin, a kind of fiber that does have some redeeming aspects. How much is left after processing this plant down and concentrating it to form a syrup is debatable.

I do want to be clear here about the fructose found in fruits. It comes packaged conveniently with nutrients, fiber, and a very low % of the total for many fruits. Apples have about 7% for instance. If you want to learn about fructose in fruits and look up your favorite you can at this website.

That said, too much fruit is still a form of too much sugar.

So does this mean we can never use agave syrup? Not on your life. For most of us life is sweet because we make the best choices we can and include some sweets, a little adult beverage, the occasional bagel with a schmear. 

As long as you know the truth about the myriad foods out there that vie for our attention you have choices.

Stop back often for your dose of the facts on staying healthy, fit, sassy and sane for the second half.

You might want to read this then. For some time I’ve been hearing squeaks from alternative practitioners that canola oil is not a good for you monounsaturated, flavor neutral, (I don’t like the flavor at all), all purpose oil.

After catching up with both sides of the debate, which included reading Dr. Fred Pescatore’s article “The Real Story on Canola Oil (“Can-Ugly Oil”). If you are not familiar with Dr. Pescatore, he wrote The Hamptons Diet described on his website as, “The Hamptons Diet takes the best of the Mediterranean Diet and the best of controlled carbohydrate eating and puts them together in the context of whole foods (organic whenever possible), minimally processed, nothing artificial, and with minimal use of sugar alcohols.” He also educates about monounsaturated fats, the right balance of Omega 6 – to Omega 3 fatty acids, and overall health vs weight loss.

In addition to Dr. Pescatore’s work, Dr. Mary Enig and Sally Fallon have written copious articles and books on the subject of safe and healthy fats vs the unhealthy ones, including the one you can link to above titled, The Great Con-Ola. You might be surprised to know that they have reams of proof to back up the idea that saturated fat does not kill people. And that using only monounsaturated fats with no saturates–such as those found in meat, eggs, coconut–is not only unnatural but it’s causing health problems.

Listen, canola oil–or Canadian oil, so named for the Canadian scientist who first brought it to the public eye–is a highly processed, non-nutritive version of a natural oil used for many hundreds of years in Asian countries. The modern version has too high a smoke point and as such becomes toxic with trans fats when used for sauteeing or frying. Oh, and did I say it comes with more trans fat than margarine? According to Jonny Bowden in The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, the Omega 3s in canola oil–usually a healthy thing–”become rancid and foul-smelling when subjected to the high temperatures needed to extract the oil. Therefore they have to be deodorized. The deodorizing process turns a large number of the omega-3 fatty acids into trans fats.”

He goes on to site a study from the U at Gainsville Florida which found trans fat levels as high as 4.6% in commercial canola oil, even more than margarine.

Then there is the genetically modified aspect. Rape seed, from which we get canola oil, was originally genetically modified  to lower the amount of something called erucic acid, a fatty acid that has potentially dangerous heart health implications. With the help of Monsanto it has continued through more GM permutations to make it more commercially viable which means less healthy.

So I ask you? What’s healthy about this oil? Producing a cheap alternative to olive oil and hiring the best marketers over the years has allowed the food industry–with help from the mega empire of evil Monsanto–to put a healthy spin on a mega profitable unhealthy product.

After probably years of eating products with this unsafe oil and pouring it on salads and into muffin recipes it’s time to stop. Replace canola oil with coconut, olive, nut oils, butter, ghee etc. Found in nature, processed minimally, ahh, now that does a body good!

Few  things are as delicious to me as something cooked on the grill. I’m a grill fanatic and summer time features fish, meat, veggies including carrots and sweet potatoes and if you haven’t tried those yet you are missing out on a the yumm factor girls.

A number of years ago though I read some disturbing news about the health risks associated with charred foods–not only from grilling but our love of things with bits of burned skin or bone is one sure fire way to put ourselves in the danger zone. 
You have probably heard warnings about grilled foods before but as it’s summer here in the US, and many people grill all year round regardless of weather–or because they are blessed enough to not have inclement weather–I thought it was important enough to mention.

I’m not going to bore you with the long scientific names of the chemical compounds that are produced. Instead I’m going to give you some tips for grilling safely and for ways to prevent the stuff you have to worry about. One thing I must make you aware of is, the dangers of consuming too much heavily grilled or blackened or fried foods , is that they increase risk of certain cancers substantially.

Here are some tips for healthy Q

Þ   Serve less red meat or cuts with a lower fat content. The less fat that drips into an open flame the less chance there is of carcinogenic smoke wafting up to coat your food.

Þ   Sear the meat on the hot grill on both sides but finish cooking it in the oven

Þ   Start chicken pieces on the bone, in the oven-cook about half way through. You’ll need less smoke and chemicals to cook it through and give it flavor but not sacrifice that delicious flavor

Þ   Grill fish and chicken with the skin on. Remove it and enjoy the smoky flavored food below.

Þ   Be sure to cook lots of vegetables and fish which require less cooking time. And vegetables contain antioxidants and this is just the kind of time to make sure your body has plenty on board.

Þ   Use marinade. Marinating meats before grilling or broiling them can reduce HCAs (according to some experts by 90 percent or more). Especially those with an acidic component like lemon juice or vinegar.

Grilling peppers? So sweet once they are grilled and charred on the outside but just as delicious if you char them then remove the skin before eating. Here’s a yumm recipe speaking of peppers.

Char two bell peppers red or yellow. Peel, drop into a blender and add some lemon juice or white balsamic. Garlic or none, grilled onions if you like. Pulse til not quite a puree, season with salt and pepper. Use on grilled fish or chicken. 

Happy fire fest!

Oh and don’t spare the ice cold rose or light red wine, you can never have too many antioxidants at the party.