Healthy Cooking by design

I like to add some flavor to brown rice, quinoa, and pilaf type dishes.  In addition to onion, garlic, celery, carrots and such, I usually add bouillon.  But what kind should you use?  I would say that depends on what you currently eat.

If your taste buds are accustomed to fast food, restaurant food, and pre-packaged gravies or sauces you are used to large amounts of sodium and msg (monosodium glutamate).  And while there is lots of evidence to support that msg should be avoided, you might not want to quit cold turkey.  So when you cook rice, quinoa, or barley you may want to use a teaspoon of Wyler’s instant bouillon or a store brand bouillon.  If you decide in the future you want to eliminate msg from your diet, you can change to a healthier (and also more expensive…) bouillon.

Here are a few links with information about msg.  What Exactly Is MSG? ; MSG: A Neurotoxic Flavor Enhancer ; The Dangers of MSG ; The Hidden Names of MSG ; Does MSG Make You Fat?

If you have already eliminated msg from your diet by avoiding prepackaged meals, sauces, dressings, soups, etc, you may want to use Herb Ox bouillon, which is labeled msg free.  It has the same flavors of regular bouillon, but without the chemical that tricks your brain into thinking that what your are eating is good for you, tastes amazing, and you want more.

If you are concerned about excess sodium, you could use Herb Ox sodium free, msg free bouillon.  It is made with potassium chloride (salt substitute) and sugar.   In fact, sugar is the first ingredient listed.  (Many things that are low sodium add sugar to please your taste buds and counteract the bitter aftertaste of salt substitute.)  This one is a toss up for me.  I’m not entirely convinced that sugar with chemicals is a better alternative than salt.

Boxes or cans of stock come in all varieties - low sodium, low fat, etc.  You can read “Store Bought Chicken Stocks, Reviewed: Which are the best?” by Michele Humes at Serious Eats.  The comments on that article also provide some good input.  I personally think canned or boxed stock tastes like slightly flavored water, which is why I lean toward bullion.  I also often want concentrated flavor without additional liquid.

Which brings me to my latest idea.  What if I stewed some bone-in chicken (or the leftover carcass from roasting a whole chicken), sea salt, fresh pepper, parsley, a bay leaf, and some thyme, with tons of onion, celery, and carrots all day in the crockpot in a small amount of water?  I could food process that mixture (minus the bones and bay leaf), freeze it in ice cube trays, and then add one or two to a recipe instead of the bullion granules.  It might even be cost effective if I plan it for the day after I’ve roasted a chicken with vegetables and already have it all on hand.  Hmmm, I’ll let you know how it works.

We all like to know the secrets of success - how to have a happy marriage, how to save money, or how to lose weight.  And while there are not short cuts, there are some tips and tricks that will help us reach our goals if we apply them consistently.

We all understand how this works in reverse.  None of us got into trouble overnight in our marriage, our finances, or our weight.  So we know that lots of little choices over a period of time produced the troubling results.  Lets apply that principle and make it work for us.

The folks at Weight Free Life have a short article with 3 secrets for weight loss.  But brace yourself - they are simple.  We often think we have to use some complicated, difficult program to get results, but that is not true.  Slow and steady really will win the race.  Often, eating the right foods combined with making some simple (but consistently applied) changes brings the long term results we are wanting.

So go check out their secrets, and instead of blowing them off as too simple, try them for a month - along with eating a mediterranean type diet and see the results.

I use a variety of fats in cooking.  In fact I regularly use olive oil, canola oil, coconut oil, grapeseed oil, pecan oil, and butter, not to mention good fat in things like peanut butter and avocados.  Anyway, several companies are blending butter with different oils to make them easily spreadable straight from the fridge.  So I started sampling.

I made my own “spreadable butter” using equal parts of butter and olive oil.  It has 110 calories per tablespoon, but my family thought the olive oil taste was a bit strong.  Then I tried Land O Lakes Spreadable Butter with Canola Oil. It has 100 calories per tablespoon, and my family thinks it tastes just like butter.  My next try was Olivio Spreadable Butter with Canola and Olive Oil.   Unlike some of their other soft spreads, this one is only butter, canola, olive and flaxseed oil.  It has 80 calories per Tablespoon.

Here is how a tablespoon of each product compares:
(My beautiful chart went to this squished jumble, so until I figure out a better way, you’ll just have to read the line across the top telling you the what’s in that “column” (ha, ha) and follow the numbers in order. I give you the product name, the number of calories per Tablespoon, the % of total fat, the % of saturated fat, % of trans fats, grams of polyunsaturated fat, grams of monounsaturated fat, and % of total cholesterol. As you can imagine, it was very helpful in chart form…)

Calories–Total Fat–Sat. Fat–Trans Fats–Polyunsat.–Monounsat.–Cholest.

Butter–100–17 %–36 %–0 g–0 g–0 g–10 %

homemade Butter/Olive mix–110–20 %–23 %–0  g–1 g–5 g–5 %

Land O Lakes Sprd. Butter–100–17 %–23 %–0 g–1.5 g–5 g–7 %

Olivio Sprd. Butter–80–14 %–17 %–0 g–2 g–5 g–7 %

My favorite is the Olivio Spreadable Butter.  The lower calories and total fat are appealing to me.  We all know we need less saturated fat and cholesterol and this delivers.  As for the heart healthy monounsaturated fats, again, it delivers.  So how does it taste?  Really delicious.  This one gets a place in my fridge and in my cooking.

Now, I never make decisions on calories or fat content alone - otherwise I would never eat an avocado.  I try to use fats and oils that are minimally processed and use them in moderation.  I avoid all hydrogenated oils, no matter what the advertisement claims.  With so much evidence that hydrogenated fats are harmful to your health, here is an easy option to avoid using them - Olivio Spreadable Butter.  I buy mine at Publix in a little rectangular carton.  Just make sure you check the label because Olivio makes several completely different spreadable products.

I tried a new product the other day that just might earn a spot in a jar on my counter among my nuts, oats, and dried fruits.  That is a difficult honor to earn, because I only have a certain amount of counter space and it is reserved for those items that I want to grab a handful of quickly and conveniently.

It is called “Uncle Sam - Toasted Whole-Wheat Flakes & Flaxseed”.  I found it in Walmart with the dry cereals.  I was impressed by it’s very short ingredient list and reasonable price.  It was created in 1908 by a man (who apparently resembled our nations Uncle Sam character) who was trying to follow his doctor’s advice to include flax seed in his diet.  And boy, did he find a tasty way to do it.

I’m sure I will eat it like a cereal normally is - with cold milk and a chopped banana or sliced strawberries or maybe sliced almonds and a drizzle of honey.  But today it replaced the handful of oats I sprinkle on top of a small bowl of yogurt and it was really good.  Slightly sweet, nutty, crunchy, tiny little flakes, and flax seeds - Mmmmm.

I’m sure I will investigate its usefulness in things like dessert crusts and I will have to test it as a substitute for the oats in a baked apple crisp.  I can almost taste a squirt of cold whipped light cream on top of those crunchy little flakes and warm spiced apples.  Again I say - Mmmmm.

Just remember with flax seed you have to chew them well (or buy them crushed) to get the full benefit because those healthy omega-3 fatty acids are inside each seed.  And be aware of the calories if you add flax seeds to a lot of things.  They are 35 calories a Tablespoon, so think of them in the same category as you do nuts - very healthy, but just use a Tablespoon.  Here are a few good reasons to add flax seeds to your diet.  You’ll be glad you did.