Organic=Low Calorie?
Do you think organic food means that the food is lower calorie than the standard version? An article in the journal Judgement and Decision Making concluded that many people believe that it is. Unfortunately, just because a food is labeled as organic does not mean that it has less sugar, fat or calories than any other food. The study concluded that people may be more likely to overeat foods labeled as organic, and perceived the organic foods as being healthier. This is a reminder of why reading nutrition information labels and ingredient lists is so important. While a food may be free of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, this does not change the nutritional value of the food.
Add comment June 30, 2010
Cooking Class for Seniors!
Perfect Portions: Cooking Class for Seniors
Wednesday July 14, 1-3 p.m.
Living alone doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice your love of good food and homemade meals! Cooking your own food at home is healthier, tastier, more economical and can be just as easy as heating up frozen or prepared food. In this class, you will learn how to make favorite foods in smaller sizes while maximizing flavor and minimizing time spent in the kitchen.
$45 per person includes all materials (and food to take home!), recipes and tips.
All classes are developed and taught by Diana Sugiuchi, who is a Registered Dietitian and family nutritionist at Nourish Family Nutrition. Classes are held at the Senior Network of North Baltimore/Govans Presbyterian Church, 5828 York Road 21212
Call 410-370-0415 to register or email classes@nourishfamily.com.
Add comment June 29, 2010
Bread!
Back before I had kids, I used to bake all my own bread. No, I was not like Ma Ingalls, kneading and shaping and rising dough for hours on end – I had a bread machine. They were popular back in the 90’s, but you really don’t hear of too many people using them anymore. When I was sorting through some things in my basement I found my bread machine stored forlornly in a dark corner. I brought it up to the kitchen, cleaned it off and decided to put it back into use.
A bread machine is a really cool piece of kitchen equipment. If you’re not familiar with how it works, you just put all the ingredients for your bread into the machine, push a button or two and voila! – 4 or so hours later you have a fresh, homemade loaf of bread. And your house smells wonderful while it is baking. The bread machine mixes, kneads, rises and bakes the loaf of bread. After the initial measuring of ingredients and dumping them into the machine, there is nothing more to do. Unless you want to – the machine can stop after the kneading and rising phases so you can shape your dough into rolls or fancy breakfast pastries.
I realized that making bread in the machine would be a great thing to do with my daughters, particularly the little one, who is 7. We gathered together our ingredients and with just a little help from me, my daughter was able to measure everything out and start the machine. Not only did she feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment from making the bread herself, it was also a great lesson in math (fractions with the measuring cups and spoons, counting), science (how does yeast work? what does gluten do in bread?) and reading (following the recipe).
The advantage to making your own bread (or own anything, for that matter) is that you get to control exactly what goes into it. You can make your bread 100% whole grain and you know that you are not adding any dough conditioners or other chemicals. And fresh, homemade bread is such a treat, you may find it hard to go back to store bought. The bread machine is great for people who don’t have hours of time to devote to bread baking, but who like to eat homemade, minimally processed food. I am surprised that with as people become more aware of the benefits of eating whole, minimally-processed foods the bread machine has not made more of a resurgence. Or maybe it has and I just haven’t heard about it. Do you use a bread machine? Or do you bake bread by hand? Or do you buy yours at the store?
- Try this recipe book to get started. Each of the recipes are excellent and a majority use whole wheat flour.
1 comment June 14, 2010
Register Now for June Farmers Market Cooking Class!
Farmers Market: Cooking With What’s In Season (2nd in Summer Series)
Parent & Child Class
June 27, 2-4 p.m.
The wide variety of fresh, local produce available at area farmers markets can be overwhelming. Make the most of these healthy foods by learning about what’s in season and available now and how to prepare some familiar and not-so familiar produce. This is part of a regular series throughout the summer and fall and will change depending upon what’s in season.
Cost: $45 per adult/child duo, each additional family member only $10 each. Includes all materials, including food and take-home recipes and tips.
To register: email classes@nourishfamily.com or call 410-370-0415
Having fun in the kitchen at the May Farmers Market class!
Add comment June 7, 2010
Herb Stuffed Chicken Roll-Ups
Today was one of those days when I just didn’t have a plan for dinner. However, I always have some boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the freezer and thanks to the beautiful warm weather, my herbs on the back porch are going gangbusters. I decided to combine the herbs with some low-fat cream cheese and Parmesan, pound the chicken breasts thin and make stuffed chicken rolls. They looked fancy and the whole family enjoyed them. I served them with steamed broccoli and some bread. Yum!
- Here’s the recipe for Herb Stuffed Chicken Roll-Ups
Add comment June 3, 2010
Real Food For Healthy Kids
School may be nearing the end for the year, but the changes to the lunch menu in Baltimore County Public Schools are just beginning. You may remember my post last year bemoaning the state of school lunches in the public schools where I live. Things like chicken nuggets and frozen pizza are staples for entrees and children can choose from gummy snacks, chips, even funnel cake for extra items. This is particularly distressing when contrasted to the Baltimore City Public Schools, just a few miles away, where they are doing things with their lunch program that are light years ahead of the county. A group of parents and community members has just formed to help bring healthy change to the Baltimore County Public Schools lunch menu.
The name of the group is the Baltimore County Healthy Kids Coalition and the goals are straightforward:
- Reducing the number of processed-food entrees
- Adding more fresh fruit and veggies to the menus
- Buying local produce, meat and poultry when feasible
- Incorporating healthy-eating lessons into the curriculum
It is exciting to see people coming together for the purpose of improving the nutritional value of the food we feed our children. Providing children with fresh, healthy food and modeling healthy food behavior is the best way to ensure that the future generation will be healthy and have less diet related diseases. Implicitly telling children that it is okay to eat processed food and sugar and salt filled snacks at every meal by making these the principal offerings on the school lunch menu is not modeling healthy food behavior. As a founding member of the Baltimore County Healthy Kids Coalition, I am proud to be one of the voices calling for change.
Won’t you join us?
Add comment May 24, 2010
Okey-Dokey, Artichokey!
We had artichokes for dinner tonight. Not marinated artichoke hearts – the real deal. At the store yesterday, there was a display of approximately 2,000 fresh artichokes. My daughter was intrigued. I remembered how exotic I felt the first time I ate an artichoke as a child and bought 4 of them, one for each family member.
My elder daughter, who was not on the artichoke shopping trip last night, declared that she did not want artichokes for dinner because she doesn’t like that type of fish. After explaining the difference between anchovies and artichokes she was open to trying them. The little one, feeling quite superior because she knew all about artichokes after seeing them in the store yesterday, was ready to try to eat this prickly veggie.
I cooked them by boiling in a pot of water for about 20 minutes. The artichokes are done when they feel tender when pierced all the way through. I made the traditional lemon butter for dipping the leaves and put it in little cups for each person. Chicken sausages and little bitty potatoes rounded out the meal.
We sat down to eat. I demonstrated how to scrape the “meat” off the ends of the leaves with my front teeth. As the Oxford Companion to Food states, a good set of front teeth and some patience are necessary when eating an artichoke. The girls quite enjoyed the process of consuming an artichoke: peel off a leaf, dip in lemon butter, scrape with teeth, put used leaf on little plate, repeat. They both declared the artichoke their new favorite vegetable. My husband was not as enamored, saying that it was too much work for too little food. It is definitely a something that is best eaten when there is plenty of time for the meal.
These delicious veggies, actually buds that are members of the thistle family, are worth a try if you have never had the experience of eating a fresh artichoke. They are full of fiber, vitamin C, folate and magnesium. Not sure how to eat one? Here’s a video to show you how!
2 comments May 18, 2010
Parent/Child Cooking Class on May 30th!
Farmers Market: Cooking With What’s In Season
Parent & Child Class
May 30, 2-4 p.m.
The wide variety of fresh, local produce available at area farmers markets can be overwhelming. Make the most of these healthy foods by learning about what’s in season and available now and how to prepare some familiar and not-so familiar produce. This is part of a regular series throughout the summer and fall and will change depending upon what’s in season.
Cost: $45 per adult/child duo, each additional family member only $10 each. Includes all materials, including food and take-home recipes and tips.
Register in advance for 4 month Farmers Market series for special price of $140!
To register: email classes@nourishfamily.com or call 410-370-0415
1 comment May 12, 2010
Chicken Kebabs on the Grill!
This past weekend a friend who I haven’t seen in almost 10 years and her family came over for a dinner cookout. Since I know my friend reads this blog, I had to impress her with my mad culinary skills (!) but since it was a Saturday, I also had 26 things to do during the day with my family, which didn’t leave much time for cooking. Of course, it had to be something that a bunch of children would like, but burgers and dogs seemed too ordinary for such an occasion. Solution: marinated chicken kebabs!
Most recipes for marinated grilled meat call for marinating at least overnight. This clearly wasn’t going to work for me because I didn’t even make it to the grocery store until the morning of the cookout. Instead of marinating whole pieces of meat, I cut up the chicken into kebab sized cubes and marinated it for about 6 hours in the fridge. Skip the bottles of marinade from the store – it is almost as easy to make your own at home and it will taste a million times fresher and will have less sodium and no preservatives. Some lemon juice, olive oil and snipped herbs grown in pots on my deck – voila! To round out the menu I kept with the food-on-a-stick theme and made some veggie kebabs, coconut rice and guacamole and store-bought chips.
My kids loved these kebabs so much that they raided the fridge later in the evening and ate the leftover chicken. “Mom, these are so good I wish we could have them every night!” It is so easy to make the marinade ahead of time and they grill so quickly, there is no reason not to make these during the week as well.
Add comment May 3, 2010
New Hampshire Enchiladas
Tonight I made one of my family’s favorite dinners – enchiladas! What do my enchilada recipe and New Hampshire have in common? Well, to become a Registered Dietitian you must complete a year-long internship after completing an undergraduate or masters degree in nutrition. The first week of my internship program was spent in a lodge in New Hampshire taking classes. All of the dietitians-in training were responsible for sharing in the cooking duties for dinner. One of the interns made this recipe and I thought these were the yummiest enchiladas I had ever had. What’s the difference? First, they are made with flour tortillas instead of corn tortillas. Second, there is a little sour cream mixed with the enchilada sauce, which is particularly appealing to children, since the fat molecules in the sour cream moderate the spiciness of the enchilada sauce. My version uses reduced-fat sour cream and whole wheat tortillas. Since the sour cream is mixed in with the sauce the difference in fat content is undetectable. The whole wheat tortillas actually improve this recipe by contributing a great texture and the edges become nicely crispy in the oven.
I served these with some refried beans on the side (the vegetarian variety have no saturated fat in them, unlike the traditional variety) with baked chips for dipping in the beans, salsa, fresh mango and strawberries. A nutritionally complete meal in less than 30 minutes and everyone cleared their plates!
Add comment April 26, 2010
