New Articles on Cooking, Meal Planning, and Healthy Living

I’ve posted several articles to a site I’m new to, Associated Content, that you might find interesting depending on what search brought you here to my old blog. Check them out!

Cooking Tips to Help Picky Eaters Learn to Love Vegetables
Use these ideas for how to prepare vegetables to create tasty, less bitter dishes that will entice reluctant eaters to try these new foods. Getting picky eaters to eat vegetables just takes patience and a little ingenuity.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1898892/cooking_tips_to_help_picky_eaters_learn.html

Picky Eaters? Tips on How to Introduce Vegetables
Know a picky eater? Are you a picky eater? Try these strategies to introduce vegetables, notorious for turning up noses, to people who are afraid to try new foods. Celebrate small victories on the way toward achieving a truly healthy diet.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1898414/picky_eaters_tips_on_how_to_introduce.html

Get Started with Easy Meal Planning to Save Time and Money
It’s simple to start planning meals: It takes nothing more than a piece of paper and a pocket of time. Collect ideas as you go, then organize them into a list or on a calendar, and you’ll be set to start saving money and improving your health.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1899112/get_started_with_easy_meal_planning.html

Strategies for Eating Out at Restaurants Without Wrecking Your Healthy Diet
Restaurants offer rich, indulgent food that can easily throw your weight-loss plan off track. These tips can help make it possible to enjoy the occasional night out without regretting it when you step on the scale in the morning.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1888016/strategies_for_eating_out_at_restaurants.html

Avoid Dehydration This Summer with Thirst-Quenching Tips
Five tips for keeping yourself hydrated through the hot summer months that won’t break the bank or pack on the pounds, based on my experience with dehydration and living in the crazy Las Vegas heat.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1858229/avoid_dehydration_this_summer_with.html

Slowing Down, Speeding Up

It’s obvious I’m not posting here with the frequency I once did. Food blogging is a lot of work, and I have to hand it to the people who do it consistently and well. I’m a bit more slow and methodical than most when it comes to producing content, so what might take them 30 minutes to throw online takes perfectionist me two hours.

I’ve decided to focus my efforts on venues that are more about writing (which I have a talent for) rather than photography (which I don’t). I just don’t think recipes are so much fun to read without a photo alongside, but photos are what keep holding me up with most recipe posts.

I’m still writing about food, though! Not only will I find time to still put up the occasional post here, but I’m now posting to a new blog that has a broader focus. Pennies & Pounds focuses on nutritious eating, losing weight for better health, and managing a kitchen to minimize waste and stress while maintaining a budget. I’d love for anyone reading this to come check out my new articles there. As a bonus, I’ll even gradually be bringing over updated and otherwise revised versions of some of the more popular articles from this site. You’ll feel right at home.

Incidentally, if you happen to be an educator or parent reading this, I’d like to give a shout-out to the other web site project I run, Sharp Pencils. It’s an evolving site focused on encouraging kids to write and aiding their language-arts teachers.

Back to food . . . here’s links to a few of the latest posts over at my new site, Pennies & Pounds:

A Jackpot within Reach

I tried and tried. Oh, did I try!

I bought nothing but light mayonnaise, skim cottage cheese, low-fat this, reduced-calorie that. I stocked my car with 100-calorie snack packs to ward off post-work hunger. I switched to healthier, whole-wheat pasta and bread. I bought diet books and tried to follow my magazines’ eating plans. I even joined a gym!

It didn’t matter. My weight, which had been inching upwards all through college, shot up dramatically. I gained more than 20 pounds in less than two years!

Articles of Independence (Day)!

I’m polishing up the first couple of posts for the site still. Look for more soon on weigh-ins and fruity deliciousness! In the mean time, check out this week’s articles of interest:

New York Times – The Claim: Mayonnaise Can Increase Risk of Food Poisoning
I’m glad to see they’ve finally taken on this old saw, and just in time for July 4th picnics. I discovered mayo had been given a bad rap years ago on the wonderful Good Eats.

Fruitful Snacking

Afternoon rolls around, and lunch seems like it was an eternity ago. Stomach rumbling, you reach for a snack to quell your hunger. But what should you choose?

Pick fruit! It’s an easy, pleasurable, and nutritious way to aid your efforts to improve your health and lose weight.

Unlike most “snack foods,” fruit is good for you! It offers vitamins, antioxidants, fiber and other nutrients, in a tidy, plant-based package. That bit’s important: After all, we need more plant-based foods in our diets for not only health but environmental and budgetary reasons.

Weighty Matters

I’ve long had a minor obsession with weights and measures. As a kid, I loved fussing with the balances in science class. I also found the those manual scales in the doctor’s office fascinating. In fact, I thrilled inside when I finally got to take one for a spin at the gym years later. In the kitchen, I’ve fallen for the digital food scale. I weigh portions to match nutrition labels when I’m counting calories, and I park my work bowl on the thing for measuring ingredients when I’m baking — it saves on dishes!

It’s in the bathroom, though, that I have tucked away the most important scale in the house. Every morning, I step on it to see how I’m doing at losing or maintaining my weight. Why? A firm grasp of where the scale points is one of the best tools in your weight-loss arsenal. To keep that toolbox stocked, you must weigh yourself regularly.

More are coming soon! But you’ll have to visit the new site to see those. Hope to see you there!

Eating Less Meat

A new article from Mark Bittman at the New York Times just popped up in my newsreader. It continues a theme the Minimalist has been pushing a lot lately, that of eating less (but not no) meat.

The reasons to cut back on meat consumption are many and are covered in various past articles. Some important ones are improving health (as meat is generally high in saturated fat), cutting costs (because meat is more expensive than grains and produce, even with rising costs for grain — animals here are fed grain, after all), and reducing environmental impact (in several ways, including this weird yet true bit: Cattle flatulence is a source of air pollution).

We’ve cut down our meat consumption considerably while living overseas. Our egg sandwiches are baconless, and our burgers are often made out of beans. The ultimate reason for us is that we are on a tight budget, what with the currency having tanked this year. Subbing beans for beef is economical and healthy.

Still, I’ve also reduced meat portions in straight-up meat-and-potatoes meals. Now, we share one boneless, skinless chicken breast piece between the two of us rather than each having our own, for example. (I do pound them flat and cut them into cutlets first, though, so it looks like a normal size).

But even though this is ostensibly “less,” I find it’s better this way. Growing up, we were never big meat eaters in our house. I don’t know why, but the habit of cutting up a portion of the meat dish into small pieces for the kids to take never left my mom. Thus, even as a teenager I was putting maybe six small cubes or a chunk smaller than a deck of cards on my (American-child-sized, European-adult-sized) plate and considering that a full portion. I never grew to like big meat portions much, always preferring the side dishes.

In a way, then, I feel like I’m getting back to normal rather than moving away from it.

Slips!

I’ve definitely been stalled for the past few weeks, weight-loss wise. It’s not a surprise to run into a plateau, sure, but it is depressing. Oh, and my desire to eat has long been connected to my levels of stress and depression. It’s a vicious cycle.

I need to get out and about more for exercise to reduce the stress and depression, but I have little desire to go outside in the freezing weather. I’m none too keen on exercising with my videos, though, because it’s tough to move around and still seen what’s on my 13-inch laptop LCD. Well, and also because I feel like the time investment is too high when I have to add in the extra changing of clothes (ooh, and that irritates my sore shoulder, struggling to get on the tight support tops!), the setup, and the additional showering.

This kind of not seeing the forest for the trees is a problem with my food choices, too. It’s only upon long reflection that this root of a lot of my diet issues from the Vegas years dawned on me, and the past few days have shown that I still engage in this irrational behavior.

For example, I’ll start out the day great, choosing healthy breakfast and lunch foods. I’ll stick to low-cal but high-protein or high-fiber snacks if I need them in the afternoon. Dinners sometimes end up a little indulgent, but I plan them in advance to make sure the higher-cal item is more than balanced by an abundance of vegetables to fill out the plate. (I do subscribe to the notion that the plate should be 1/4 lean protein, 1/4 carb or starch, and 1/2 veggies.) But then comes the looooooong stretch between dinner and bed.

Many days I’m OK with nothing after dinner or with a small dessert like a 1/2 cup of ice cream or a couple of chocolates. Lately, however, I’ve had difficulty due to the emotional eating. I get all anxious and both want to eat to ease it and to not eat because I will get more anxious from the knowledge I’m destroying my diet for the day, you know?

Anyway, I force myself not to eat any of the healthy snacks for a while because I want to avoid calories, then totally crash and indulge in unhealthy foods to shut up the “I want to eat!” voice.

I did this all the time in Vegas. I spent a lot of time and money on finding and buying healthy foods, only to ruin it all by talking myself into believing I deserved the indulgence of a big fast-food meal and snack chips after a long, tiring, stressful work day.

I need help, honestly.

In other news, I have been looking over this list of healthy foods. It’s nice to see some of my favorite foods (white potatoes, romaine lettuce, onions, etc.) on there when I had figured they had little nutritional value. And I do cook the potatoes in healthy ways these days — usually steamed with ketchup for dipping or mashed with low-fat cheese and skim milk.

Steamed Potatoes

4 small russet potatoes, diced
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon paprika
Salt and pepper

Toss everything in one of those big Ziploc steamer bags. Microwave for 14 minutes.

Alternatively, cook ‘em in a bowl loosely covered with plastic wrap. And the measures are totally approximate. I do it differently each time.

I love these with ketchup. It’s low in calories and the combo reminds me of fries without making me crave fries. However, if you’re feeling particularly Slovak, they’re also great with tartar sauce.

Progress in Healthy Eating

I’m starting to emerge from weeks of sleep problems and feel a little more like writing now. I thought I’d reflect a bit on the effects I’m seeing from my switch to paying greater attention to what I eat.

Mentally, I think I’ve come a long way in how I view food. I feel better equipped now to make good decisions about food from all these months of educating myself on nutrition, portion sizes, and calorie counts. I can face the dinner table and choose not to have an extra slice (or two) of buttered bread because I know that with one slice I’ve eaten a serving sufficient for my body.

I’m hoping that this will translate into success in beating off temptations when I’m back in the United States and have access to my favorite junk foods. There’s not much selection in chips here, for example, and I generally dislike the ones that are here. Back home, I will have to face aisles bursting with Fritos, flavored pretzel nuggets, and Sun Chips. I’m hoping my ability to resist picking up a bag or two at the store now is not simply due to the chips being subpar.

I do think I will be better able to resist fast food. I ate a ton of fast-food dinners while I was working alone in Vegas, partly because of stress and fatigue and partly because I didn’t feel motivated to cook when the audience was just myself. I will have Scott around full time when we get back, so his appreciation of my efforts will be encouraging for me in the kitchen (not that we take the attitude that cooking is “women’s work” — I just prefer to cook and he prefers to take on other home tasks I hate, such as washing dishes). But more than that, I feel like I have learned the error of my ways and understand that all that bad food was holding me back from achieving a healthy weight in a way that I didn’t before.

You see, before the last few months, I basically ate whatever whenever. I ate what I could get quickly when I was starving, and I ate when I felt stressed. I thought about eating healthy foods, but while I did switch to eating whole grains and tried incorporating more vegetables, I generally sabotaged those efforts by frequent trips through the drive-thru and down the snack aisles. I figured I’d chosen healthy foods at other times so I could “afford” to slack off. Unfortunately, I used that excuse multiple times per week, and no one can afford to slack off so much.

So my mindset has changed. It’ll certainly be tested when I get home and have to face more choices and the stress of more work, but here’s hoping.

I’ve also noticed lately that my digestive system is a lot happier than it used to be. I used to pop a lot of Tums and have uncomfortable, leaden sensations in my stomach. I also had other unpleasant digestive symptoms I’d rather not discuss. But now, my stomach and the rest of my guts never really bother me. True, they did somewhat on our cruises this year, but now I know why — it was all from overeating, especially overeating foods high in fat.

I don’t oppose fat in food, by the way. Unsaturated fats such as olive oil are necessary for good health.  I do try to cut a lot of fat from diet, though, both because I was definitely eating too much before and because it’s the easiest source of calories to remove. As long as you have a good nonstick pan, you can cut out a tablespoon or two of oil or butter from nearly every recipe, and that’s a huge calorie savings.

The one area I haven’t done so well in is keeping my blood sugar on an even keel throughout the day. I’m not a diabetic or anything like that, thank goodness, but from what I’ve read I know that certain foods can affect blood sugar levels even in healthy people. You know — eating simple carbs causes you to get a quick energy rush followed by a big crash. I still have times throughout the day when I suddenly turn all cranky and tired for no apparent reason and then feel much better after a meal.

Nevertheless, I think I’ve made a lot of progress, and I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished so far. I’ve managed to lose almost 20 pounds since the beginning of October on top of the changes I’ve wrought in my attitude towards food. I’m hoping all those changes are here to stay.

Favorite Frozen Meals: Gardenburger

It’s not just a veggie patty anymore.

The Gardenburger brand has expanded its line significantly beyond the original burger substitute. Not only can you now get a wide variety of patty choices in the freezer case, but now you can also find pretend riblets, wraps, and “chicken” products.

Naturally, some of these make a tasty, convenient lunch.

Gardenburger

Black Bean Chipotle Wrap

The picture of the box here is not the best, admittedly. Neither is the picture of the food on the box. I almost didn’t buy this product, which would have been a shame, as it is delicious. It’s Gardenburger’s yummy black bean patty coated in a spicy and savory sauce, sprinkled with rich cheese, and stuffed into a plenty good whole-wheat tortilla. You get two individually wrapped 240-calorie wraps per box, and they’re tastier and more filling (six grams of fiber!) than Lean Pockets.

Favorite Frozen Meals: Michelina’s Lean Gourmet

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this Michelina’s Lean Gourmet article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Michelina’s may be at the low end of the frozen-food market, but you have to give them credit. That cardboard packaging may sometimes impart a little papery flavor to the food it holds, but it’s a highly efficient design, more likely to biodegrade than all those plastic trays and cellophane wrappers we toss out after our lunch breaks.

My mom used to stock the freezer with several of these (among others) for us kids to heat up on days we didn’t feel like a sandwich for lunch or had to fend for ourselves for dinner. Actually, these really were more likely lunch fare — for dinner, it was usually the stocks of Marie Callendar’s chicken pot pie and frozen entrées that would get tapped.

Marie Callendar’s frozen food takes way too much prep time for lunch (or, frankly, dinner) most of the time, in my opinion. Plus, some have nutritional stats that make you wonder why you’re not just picking up a to-go meal from Olive Garden.

Anyway, onward to the review.

Michelina’s Lean Gourmet

Macaroni & Cheese

I realize the convenience factor is small here, as it’s not so difficult to whip up a box of mac and cheese and stuff it in Tupperware. However, when I was a kid and less familiar with the stove, this was definitely a freezer favorite. I don’t find any of the more expensive frozen mac and cheese dinners to be at all superior to my taste buds, so if I felt a desire to pack myself a plate for lunch, I bought this. The serving is definitely way small, but it’s only 270 calories.

I don’t remember most of the other meals listed on the Lean Gourmet home page — Albertson’s fails me again. Some look promising, such as this Vegetable Rice Pilaf that looks chock-full of colorful veggies, if the picture is to be believed.

Favorite Frozen Meals: Smart Ones

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this Smart Ones article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Weight Watchers endorses a lot of foods in the grocery store, both from its own branded lines and other producers. You can now find Weight Watchers cheeses and snack cakes along with the older Smart Ones frozen products, and Progresso recently introduced a line of Weight Watchers-endorsed light soups.

However, buying the food does not buy you the weight-loss support. I wonder how much they promote all these branded foods at those meetings?

I haven’t tried a lot of the Smart Ones frozen meals. My Albertson’s didn’t carry all that many in the freezer case, so I’m afraid I might have missed out on the tastier selections. Here is what I did try and enjoy.

Weight Watchers Smart Ones

Santa Fe Style Rice & Beans

This rice and beans plate is kind of like enchiladas deconstructed. A pile of mostly rice is doused in a light but creamy sauce and sprinkled with cheese. The sauce is kind of odd — I couldn’t quite figure out what it was made of — but it tasted satisfyingly rich. A good choice, though as always small. It’ll cost you 310 calories, also known as six Weight Watchers points, if you’re counting. There’s a good four grams of fiber, too, as a bonus!

Like I said, though, I never sampled most of this line. I remember a few others, but they were merely satisfactory (or bad). I do hope the new line of Weight Watchers cheeses catches on, though. It can be hard to find reduced-fat shredded cheeses, especially in the Mexican blend (my preference for sprinkling).

New Diet Book Highlights

I’ve gotten the impression from several articles I’ve read online that December and January is the season for new diet tomes. Makes sense, of course, considering that sensible people will be looking to work off the holiday overindulgence and ever-hopeful people will be making New Year’s resolutions to lose weight (again).

This particular article from the Time web site, linked to by CNN Health, gives a round-up of 10 books released recently that claim to be the solution for your weight problem. Unfortunately, the author does not dig into the books too much, giving you little idea of what the diets involve (for example, I’ve read elsewhere that the Hot Chick book recommends eating piles of spinach for its fiber and, thus, laxative effects, but the article from Time gives me no confirmation or denial of that odd recommendation).

It would also be nice to see a little more, well, meanness, I guess, in the evaluation of each book. Some of these are from real crackpots, who have little to back up their claims, and the mostly gentle summaries here are not going to save people from wasting their time and money.

But anyway. It’s a bit informative and includes more books than any other piece I’ve seen so far.

Time.com: 10 Notable Diet Books of 2008

Favorite Frozen Meals: South Beach Living (and More from Kraft)

Thank you for reading my reviews of South Beach Living and other Kraft products. Please keep in mind that these reviews were written quite a while ago, so the products featured may no longer exist. I am not affiliated with Kraft or any grocer, so I don’t know what is still available. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you find products that have vanished from your local supermarket. To find more recent information or to find a product, please visit Kraft’s web site or talk to the manager of your local grocery store. Local managers are the ones who can decide what products to carry in the store, and they value customer input.

Visit Pennies & Pounds for a revised and updated version of this South Beach Living article, along with more posts on weight loss and healthy eating on a budget!

Kraft changed the name just recently for its line of packaged foods that follow the South Beach Diet guidelines, reflecting a growing anti-”diet” trend in America. Weight Watchers (another brand we’ll be visiting in this series) is telling all who’ll listen that they’re not a diet, and Jenny Craig has signed up Queen Latifah to lose a few pounds as part of their new health-improvement advertising message.

So South Beach Living it is. I’m branching out a bit in my favorites today, though. The truth is, the few South Beach frozen meals I tried back in my school-going days were abysmal. Looking at the products listed on Kraft’s site, I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in that opinion, as a lot of the products have changed or been pushed aside by new entrées. I won’t condemn the new ones flavors untasted, but I wouldn’t load up my freezer before testing how weird-tasting the chicken is now.

So, I present my favorite meal in their refrigerated line instead. Don’t take my endorsement of only one as a knock on the others, though — I just was obsessed with this particular one so much that I never really got my teeth into the rest.

South Beach Living

Sesame Chicken Wrap Sandwich Kit

How good is this refrigerated meal kit? I was so obsessed that I actually bought the ingredients separately and started making these wraps myself. I needed to, anyway — the grocery store where I shopped was almost always out of this particular Asian-themed variety. I’d walk up to the cooler case, note the label on the shelf, look into the gaping hole, and (just in case) stick my hand in to see if there might be some goodness hiding in the back. Obviously, these weren’t just popular with me.

These Lunchable-like kits contain two whole-wheat mini tortillas, a packet of cooked chicken pieces, whole-wheat crunchy noodles, and yummy Mandarin orange and sesame dressing to make the wraps, along with a little cup of sugar-free gelatin for dessert. That dressing introduced me to the low-calorie wonders of Asian-flavored vinaigrettes, which I used to make my own knockoff version when, sadly, these were out of stock.

Note that this 220-calorie pack has got to be the smallest of the small when it comes to packaged meals. You get two wraps, true, but they are tiny. Bring an apple, banana, something or you will faint before you leave work. Even when I used to have those cheese-and-cracker Lunchables packed in my bag as a kid, my mom supplemented with other healthy foods.

Other Kraft Refrigerated Meals

Since I don’t have much to write about in the South Beach line, I thought I’d take this opportunity to recommend a few other reasonable refrigerated lunch kits I enjoy.

An advantage to these refrigerated kits is that they don’t require much prep time. Some frozen meals require a third or more of your half-hour lunch bread to heat up, which is killer on days when perhaps you did not run out the door with breakfast in the belly.

Lunchables Maxed Out Chicken Strips

OK, so some kid habits I’ve never quite outgrown. Though I find the packaging has become somewhat obnoxious, the meal offerings in the Lunchables line have evolved in ways both good and bad since I was a kid and your choices were either turkey or ham with your cheese and crackers.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed cold chicken fingers. You could always pack a few homemade ones, I suppose, but I generally bought these kind of meals for the convenience. The calories are kind of hefty at 480 per box, but if you ditch the sugary Kool-Aid packet they want you to mix into the spring water and the candy, it’s not so bad for you. Again — bring a healthy supplement to ward off hunger pangs.

Lunchables Mini Tacos

You might have let me slide on the cold chicken fingers thing, but now I’m sure you must think I’ve gone off the deep end. Cold beef taco filling?!

Give it a chance, that’s all I can say. The spicy flavor makes up for the weird appearance. And they’re cute!

Kraft labels this box as a “Sensible Solution.” I think it would be more sensible if you pawned the candy off on a little kid to knock off a few of those 450 calories, but it’s not as bad as a Jack in the Box run. But keep in mind, these are mini tacos.

Oscar Mayer Deli Creations Steakhouse Cheddar

I got a coupon in the mail for a free one of these sandwiches, but had the school year not been at a close or nearly so by then, I likely would have bought a few more of these tasty sandwich kits. The size of the meal is a good deal more satisfying than any of the other choices on this page, though you might still want a piece of fruit if you’re a hearty eater and can stand to consume more than 450 calories for lunch.

Well, you could always leave off the mayo to slim it down — trust me, the sandwich doesn’t need it, what with the tangy steak sauce also provided. That sauce makes this sort of like a spicy cheesesteak. It’s good stuff.

Oscar Mayer Beef Fast Franks

Oscar Mayer has somehow figured out how to microwave bread without turning it into a rock, between the Deli Creations and these Fast Franks. These are nothing more or less than a hot dog on a bun, but they’re a hot, convenient, and satisfying meal for only 300 calories. Of course, there’s no need to stop with the hot dog alone — I always top mine with lots of low-cal additions, such as spicy mustard, a dill pickle wedge, and chopped onions. Mmm . . .