I AM BACK

I got a new computer. Fast, mean, and ready for photos/cooking/recipe sharing.

Lemon Angel Food Cupcakes from Cooking Light

My friend Maria made these for Meg's birthday...and I snatched one. And it was awesome.
Totally awesome.




Cupcakes: 1/2 cup cake flour (about 2 ounces)

3/4 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup egg whites (about 5 large eggs)
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind

Lemon Frosting:
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon 1% low-fat milk
1 to 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Edible flowers such as pansies or rosebuds (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°. Place 16 paper muffin cup liners in muffin cups. Set aside. Lightly spoon cake flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Sift together flour and 3/4 cup powdered sugar into a medium bowl; repeat the procedure 2 times. Beat egg whites and salt with a mixer at high speed until frothy (about 1 minute). Add cream of tartar, and beat until soft peaks form. Add 1/2 cup granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until stiff peaks form. Sprinkle flour mixture over egg white mixture, 1/4 cup at a time; fold in after each addition. Stir in vanilla and rind. Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups. Bake at 350° for 18 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from pan; let cool completely on a wire rack. To prepare frosting, beat butter with a mixer at high speed until fluffy. Gradually add 2 cups powdered sugar; beat at low speed just until blended. Add milk and lemon juice; beat until fluffy. Add more lemon juice as needed to adjust the consistency. Spread 2 tablespoons lemon frosting over each cupcake. Garnish with edible pansies and rosebuds, if desired.



Yield: 16 cupcakes (serving size: 1 cupcake) NUTRITION PER SERVING CALORIES 144(18% from fat); FAT 2.9g (sat 1.8g,mono 0.8g,poly 0.1g); PROTEIN 1.6g; CHOLESTEROL 8mg; CALCIUM 4mg; SODIUM 58mg; FIBER 0.1g; IRON 0.3mg; CARBOHYDRATE 28.9g

Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil

So I recently found a energy/protein bar that I border line love. I've never liked Powerbars, Cliffbars or anything of that sort. I tried to eat them when I was a psycho cross country runner in high school, but they always tasted like sawdust. Recently I was famished and drained after a Bikram Yoga session and I was wandering the organic section of Hannafords, and I spotted a Kashi GoLean Peanut Butter and Chocolate bar. Since I avoid Reese's, my mind got excited for some peanut butter and chocolate. I opened it up and instantly found a bar that I really like. So does everyone else because the box is empty 50% of the time I go to buy them now.
Well, as you know, I'm a label freak and I was noticing one ingrediant: Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil. That sort of sounded like a cousin to Partially-hydrogenated oil, so I googled and found this really good article on it.

DrWeil.com

Question:

I've noticed an influx of "health" foods containing fractionated palm oil. How is this different from regular palm oil and from palm kernel oil? Is it healthier?

Answer:

Updated on 3/30/2005

You've asked a good question about a rather confusing subject. The African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) or its American hybrid variety (Elaeis oleifra) is widely cultivated in tropical areas and produces a fleshy fruit from which two oils are extracted: (1) palm oil from the fruit and (2) palm kernel oil from the pit. Both contain a lot of saturated fat, but of the two, palm oil is the healthier, both because it has less saturated fat and because it has high antioxidant activity from a significant content of natural vitamin E (including both tocopherols and tocotrienols). It can also be extracted gently by pressing the pulpy fruit.

Rees Moerman, product engineer at Spectrum Naturals, a California company, which sells high quality expeller-pressed oils, tells me that unlike palm oil, palm kernel oil can't be obtained organically. Instead, the oil must be extracted from the pit with a gasoline-like hydrocarbon solvent. In short, palm kernel oil is a cheap, unhealthy fat, and I recommend avoiding food products containing it.

Fractionation is a further phase of palm oil processing, designed to extract and concentrate specific fatty acid fractions. Fractionated palm oil, as found in food products, has a higher concentration of saturated fat than regular palm oil and is used for the convenience of manufacturers who like its stability and melting characteristics. The healthful aspects of natural palm oil are largely lost in the process. I've noticed that fractionated palm oil is a common ingredient in many power bars sold in health-food stores.

The bottom line is that of all these oils, organic, minimally processed palm oil is the healthiest, followed by conventionally processed palm oil. Palm kernel oil is less healthy still, and fractionated palm oil is the least desirable.

Andrew Weil, M.D.

Junk Food Jihad

Junk-Food Jihad
Should we regulate French fries like cigarettes?
By William Saletan
Posted Saturday, April 15, 2006, at 7:31 AM ET

Goodbye, war on smoking. Hello, war on fat.

In a span of two months, smoking bans have been imposed in Scotland, enacted in England, Denmark, and Uruguay, proposed by the government of Portugal, and endorsed by the French public. China has banned new cigarette factories. In Virginia, our third most prolific tobacco state, senators voted to ban smoking in nearly all public places. The Arkansas legislature, backed by a Republican governor, passed a similar ban and voted to extend this policy to cars in which a child is present. Tobacco companies have won a skirmish here or there, but always in retreat.

So, we've found a new enemy: obesity. Two years ago, the government discovered that the targets of previous crusades—booze, sex, guns, and cigarettes—were killing a smaller percentage of Americans than they used to. The one thing you're not allowed to do in a culture war is win it, so we searched the mortality data for the next big menace. The answer was as plain as the other chin on your face. Obesity, federal officials told us, would soon surpass tobacco as the chief cause of preventable death. They compared it to the Black Death and the Asian tsunami. They sent a team of "disease detectives" to West Virginia to investigate an obesity outbreak. Last month, the surgeon general called obesity "the terror within" and said it would "dwarf 9-11."

How do we fight it? Everyone agrees on exercising and eating responsibly. The debate is over what the government should do. Health advocates want to restrict junk-food sales, regulate advertising, require more explicit labels, and ban trans fats (also known as partially hydrogenated oils), which are often put into crackers, cookies, and other products to prolong shelf life. They marshal the kind of evidence that won the war on smoking: correlations between soda, junk food, obesity, disease, and death. Lawyers who made their fortunes suing tobacco companies are preparing suits against soda companies. Two months ago, when President Bush gave a health-care speech at the headquarters of Wendy's, activists compared the hamburger chain to Philip Morris. They see themselves as waging the same brave struggle, this time against "the food industry."

But somehow, "the food industry" doesn't sound quite as evil as "the tobacco industry." Something about food—the fact that it keeps us alive, perhaps—makes its purveyors hard to hate. For that matter, the rationale for recent bans on smoking is the injustice of secondhand smoke, and there's no such thing as secondhand obesity. Last year, a Pew Research poll found that 74 percent of Americans viewed tobacco companies unfavorably, but only 39 percent viewed fast-food companies unfavorably. This week, a Pew survey found that more Americans blame obesity, especially their own, on lack of exercise and willpower than on "the kinds of foods marketed at restaurants and grocery stores."

These obstacles don't make the assault on junk food futile. But they do clarify how it will unfold. It will rely on three arguments: First, we should protect kids. Second, fat people are burdening the rest of us. Third, junk food isn't really food.

Targeting kids is a familiar way to impose morals without threatening liberties. You can have a beer or an abortion, but your daughter can't. The conservative aspect of this argument is that you're entitled, as a parent, to decide what your kids can do or buy. That's the pitch Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, made last week in a bill to crack down on junk food in schools. The liberal half of the argument is that kids are too young to make informed choices. In this case, it's true. Studies show that little kids ask for products they see on television; fail to distinguish ads from programs; and are heavily targeted by companies peddling candy, fast food, and sugared cereal.

This stage of the fat war will be a rout. In schools, the audience is young and captive, and the facts are appalling. According to a government report, 75 percent of high schools, 65 percent of middle schools, and 30 percent of elementary schools have contracts with "beverage"—i.e., soda—companies. The sodas are commonly sold through vending machines. The contracts stipulate how many thousands of cases each district has to buy, and they offer schools a bigger cut of the profits from soda than from juice or water. Soda companies, realizing they're going to lose this fight, are fleeing elementary schools and arguing that high-schoolers are old enough to choose. But health advocates refuse to draw such a line. They're not going to stop with kids.

To keep junk food away from adults, fat-fighters will have to explain why obesity is the government's business. Some say the government created the problem by subsidizing pork, sugar, cream, high-fructose corn syrup, and other crud. Harkin reasons that the government pays for school lunches and must protect this "investment." But their main argument is that obesity inflates health-care costs and hurts the economy through disability and lost productivity. Last month, former President Clinton, a confessed overeater, told the nation's governors that obesity has caused more than a quarter of the rise in health-care costs since 1987 and threatens our economic competitiveness. It's not our dependence on foreign oil that's killing us. It's our dependence on vegetable oil.

If the fat-fighters win that argument, they'll reach the final obstacle: the sanctity of food. Food is a basic need and a human right. Marlboros won't keep you alive on a desert island, but Fritos will. To lower junk food to the level of cigarettes, its opponents must persuade you that it isn't really food. They're certainly trying. Soda isn't sustenance, they argue; it's "liquid candy." Crackers aren't baked; they're "engineered," like illegal drugs, to addict people. Last year, New York City's health commissioner asked restaurants to stop using trans fats, which he likened to asbestos. But he ignored saturated fats, which are equally bad and more pervasive. Why are trans fats an easier whipping-cream boy? Because they're mostly artificial.

This, I suspect, is where the war will end. Ban all the creepy-soft processed cookies you want to, but respect nature and nutrition. New York City is purging whole milk from its schools, despite the fact that milk has steadily lost market share to soda during the obesity surge. A fact sheet from Harkin implies that schools should treat milk, French fries, and pizza like soda, jelly beans, and gum. Come on. How many people died in the Irish jelly bean famine? How many babies have nursed on 7-Up? How many food groups does gum share with pizza? If you can't tell the difference, don't tell us what to eat.

A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post.

William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2139941/

cauliflower in a curry sauce

This is awesome and super easy to make

Chop up a head of cauliflower and steam it for 15 minutes.
In the meantime...
Chop 1 cup onions.
Sautee in veg/canola oil until golden brown. Then add 1 tbsp cumin. 1/2 tsp tumeric and coriander.
Sautee for two more mins, add a bit of water if it sticks.
Put in a blender with one cup of plain yogurt and puree.
Toss over steamed cauliflower and serve.
salt and pepper to taste.

I made this with coconut scallion rice. Next time I'm going to toss some chickpeas into the mix.

Barley Vegetable Soup

So I've been living off this soup all week.
I took:

2 carrots
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 potatoes
2 tbsp Better than Boullion (Veg Stock)
Water
1/2 cup pearl barley

Chopped the veggies, and put in a pot after sauteeing the onions in a bit of oil. Covered with water, threw the barley and Boullion and simmered for 45 minutes. Then I added:

1/2 bunch asparagus
1/2 bunch broccoli

Let that cook for 3 more minutes and then served hot soup with a sprinkle of Extra Sharp cheddar cheese on top.

It was AWESOME.

Be wary with Barley though, it does a number on the intestines!!

Hint to fried Rice

If you want to make fried rice, you must used cooked COLD rice. Fried rice is best made when you have left over rice from the day before.

You can't make fried rice from fresh cooked rice because it is too sticky/wet.

Green Eggs

Beat as many eggs as you want (I go for one) and then add a teaspoon-tablespoon of pesto.
Scramble.
Eat.

Yay to Green Eggs. If I ate meat, it would so be, Green Eggs and Ham.

Fast healthy breakfast

Lately I've been on the go. This breakfast is so easy and so tasty. Plus it gives you a days worth of whole grains.

1/2 cup Kashi 7-grain cereal (it's their version of grapenuts)
1/2 cup of Stonyfield Farms Vanilla yogurt
1 banana, sliced

Combine. Let the cereal sit in the yogurt for a few minutes if you don't like it so crunchy.

Mexican Style Quiche

Pastry:
(for a nine inch dish)

1 1/4 cup flour
1 stick of butter
1 tbsp cayenne pepper (more or less depending on your tolerance)
1 tsp salt if you used unsalted butter
5-8 tbspns ice cold water

First cut cold butter into cubes. Mix with flour/butter/cayenne pepper using your fingers. Keep pinching it together very fast until you get a bread crumb type mixture. With a mixing spoon slowly stir the crumbs and add the ice cold water until the mix is sticking together in huge clumps. Make a ball and wrap in plastic, and keep in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Filling

6 eggs
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk
1 chili pepper (your choice of hotness)
1 tomato (or two if small)
1/2 bunch green scallions
1 bell pepper (i used an orange bell pepper for color)
3 tbsp fresh chopped cilantro
2 tsp coriander
2 tsp cumin
a bit of salt
pepper
1 1/2 cups of mexican style shredded cheese

Cut all veggies up into small pieces. Beat eggs, sour cream and milk. Add spices.

Take out pastry from the fridge and roll it out. Put it in a buttered 9 inch pan, cover in aluminum foil, fill with dried beans (I keep a container of kidney beans around for this). Put in the oven for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

Take pastry out of oven. (Take aluminum out/beans)
Add the veggies and spread out so equally over the pastry. Add egg mixture. Add cheese.

Put back in oven for 30-40 minutes until a light golden brown on top and the egg has firmed.

Serve hot or cold.
I served mine with salsa and my homemade guacamole, which I will post up here shortly.

India Palace

Not relevant for many that don't live in the NH area. But if you do, India Palace is the best Indian restaurant I have been to in the States. Whatever you want, they have it and it is excellent. This time I had the Vegetarian Thali, which is a traditional Indian dish that includes, Naan, Raita, Saag Panner, Vegetable Korma, Rice Pudding and Lentil Dal. It was sublime.

Hydrogenated Oils Are EVIL

If anyone has ever gone grocery store shopping with me or handed me a box of snack food they would know I am label checker. I am not looking at calories/fat/cholesterol directly; I am looking at hydrogenated oils. I hate them. I think they are evil and if we wanted to cure the obesity epidemic we should make them illegal to add in any food.

Partially Hydrogenated Oils and Hydrogenated oils cannot be digested. They were invented to make good oil into oil that could live forever on grocery store shelves. In a world where no one cooks anymore, there needed to be easy way to eat food with no preparation. This change in food culture started in the 1950’s when marketing directed at housewives emphasized having a speedy meal on the table, keeping a clean home and the kids well controlled so her husband would want to come home from work instead of going to the local bar. They created an infinite amount of products to reduce the time a woman would have to spend cooking, cleaning and managing the home so she could spend more time catering to her husbands needs. It is absolutely outrageous but that is history. So this is where the sneaky hydrogenated oils got into the food chain. There was massive marketing about natural items, such as butter, or even baking bread at home because there was more germs at home than in a nice clean factory where bread was baked. Margarine became the new spread for the Wonder Bread.

So what do they do to you? They lower your HDL cholesterol (the good kind) and raise LDL cholesterol (the kind that clogs your arteries). All that hydrogenated oils can be digested so it just sits in your arteries waiting to give you a heart attack. It triggers diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

Go here for Harvard’s word on the evil oils.

Still not convinced that I’m giving you some valuable information? Try and go a week without eating any. First you will see that you can’t eat the majority of foods in your pantry. Second, you might feel ill, or even get sick. Taking your body off of these is similar to quitting a drug. You will feel side affects. Perhaps a week isn’t enough so try and go longer. Then try and eat something with them…you will feel sick, I’m sure. Every time I eat anything with these oils in them, my stomach hates me.

So what is the alternative to a life of fast food? Eating whole foods, learning to cook and reestablishing a connection to where your food comes from.

For even more information go here : BAN TRANS FATS!

Warning!!!

I made a soup last night, a LOT of soup, and I thought it would be a good idea to throw in a handful of fresh cilantro.
Waaaaay too many conflicting flavors (theres also basil/oregano/bay leaf/parsley). I'm a bit annoyed cause it had potential to feed me all weekend.
So be cautious with cilantro unless you love it, it can dominate the whole dish.

Sunday I was invited to a pot-luck party. These type of gatherings make me very excited to showcase my love for cooking... My future apartment is on the line here and I need to cook to impress potential future roommates!! I will post the results.

ThaiTofu with Red Curry Sauce over Coconut-Scallion Rice

I made this for my friend Nate and he said it was very good but he has never had anything like it. I agreed. It is definitely the most unique and interesting thing I've ever cooked. It rocks the taste buds for sure!!

You need
10 kaffir lime leaves (The Asian Market will have these in the produce section)
1 1/4 cup (10 oz) of coconut milk
2 3/4 cups of water
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups of brown long grain rice (white is fine, but I always cook brown for the nutritional factor)
1 bunch of cilantro chopped
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup dry roasted unsalted peanuts
1 tbsp Thai or Vietnamese fish oil (or 1/2 tsp salt)
1/4 c canola or corn oil
3 tbsp hot chili sauce
1 16 oz package of firm tofu, pressed and cut into 1/2 inch cubes (I get mine fresh from the asian market...I used 2 blocks for this recipe)
1/2 bunch broccoli cut into small pieces
1 cup minced scallions, both green and white parts

1. Soak the kaffir lime leaves in 1 quart of very hot water for 30 mins
2. Bring coconut milk, 2 1/4 cups of ater and 1 tsp salt to boil then add rice. Cook until it is ready (brown rice is about 40 mins)
3. Drain the lime leaves and cut into pea sized pieces. In a food processor or blender combine the lime leaves, 2/3 c chopped cilantro, garlic, and peanuts. Run until pulverized. Slowly add the fish sauce, 3 tbsp oil and chili sauce. Add more oil/chili paste if needed to make it more sauce like.

4. In a wok over high heat pour the rest of the oil. Add tofu and cook until golden brown on each sides. Transfer to a paper plate or papertowel when done.

5. Into the same wok, put the broccoli and 1/2 c of water. Cover and steam for about 2 minutes. Stir the lime/peanut paste in and cook for another minute. Add tofu and toss.

6. Stir the scallions into the rice.
Serve tofu/broccoli over a mound of coconut rice. Garnish with cilantro if you would like.

And ENJOY this intense meal!

I'm back from my adventures out West. I will start cooking again and post some new blogs this week.

Red Lentil Soup

The first meal I've cooked in weeks and it was my attempt to recreate the Asian Red Lentil soup I have had twice this week at Ceres St. Bakery.

One onion chopped
garlic
ginger
oil
red lentils
water
better than bouillion
tumeric
cumin
coriander
bay leaves
salt
pepper

=
awesome soup.

Vegetarian Blues..

I never realize how healthy I eat until I'm around meat eaters who survive on processed food. Then I find myself making grilled cheese sandwiches longing for legumes and grains.

Great grilled cheese

Butter that bread up with REAL butter
Take some munster and provolone cheese
Whole seed Mustard and put it in between the bread.

and put it in a pan and brown the sides.

The best gift I thought of

The food obsessed freak I am has come up with some great gift ideas. Two of my dear friends recently bought a house. So I was thinking of how to give them something useful and meaningful for Christmas....of course I go for the heart of it and think of the kitchen. We share a love for Indian food (mine a bit more snobby due to my time in England) so I found a great cookbook for them on Indian cuisine. The kicker is, I am about to head out and go to the herb shop and get them a bunch of spices needed for the recipes. Things like that will be the frills the definitely won't be buying when the they are worried about wallpaper and bedding.

Pat knows RICE

Whenever you make rice you might as well make twice as much as you need, cause then later on you can make fried rice, one of the easiest and most versatile leftovers meals. Here's one of the spice combinations I like to use, along with two suggestions for vegetables you can mix in. You can really use any combination of vegetables as long as you know how long they need to cook for. If you fry the rice under fairly high heat you'll get some nice crunchy bits, but if you turn down the heat you can cook whatever vegetables you have until they're done and then turn up the heat for the last minute or two to get the crispiness.



What you'll need: vegetable oil, black mustard seeds, ground tumeric, cooked rice, garlic, tamari sauce



Pour about a tablespoon or so of oil in a frying pan or wok over medium heat. Add 1/2 teaspoon of mustard seed and 1 teaspoon tumeric powder. Swirl around the oil so the tumeric is evenly distributed. When the seeds start popping add your cooked rice. Break it up so there are no chunks and stir the rice through the oil so that it is evenly coated.



Variation 1: add some broccoli florettes after you've got you're rice evenly coated with the tumeric/mustard seed oil. Splash on some tamari sauce. Cook for about five minutes, stirring occasionally, then add one or two cloves chopped garlic. Cook for another minute, then serve with black beans.


Variation 2: add some frozen peas after you've got your rice coated. Let it sit on top for a minute to defrost before stirring them in. Let that cook for a couple minutes than add a chopped plum tomato, one or two cloves chopped garlic, and some chopped leafy greans, such as spinach, cilantro, or parsley. [I find the easiest way to chop leafy vegetables is to roll them into a tube, then slice it. You don't need to mince it, they just need to be bite-size.] You can also stir in an egg if you want egg-fried rice. This goes great in a breakfast burrito.

Flap Jacks

My friend Pat and my housemate will agree that these rock. I don't understand why people buy instant pancake mix because this recipe is simple and soooooo much better than any instant stuff.

This makes a lot of batter, about 10 huge pancakes worth.

90 grams (3 oz) of butter
3 cups self raising flour (white/wheat your choice. King Arthur flour is my suggestion)
3/4 cup unrefined sugar (or reg sugar, your choice)
1 3/4 cups milk
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Melt the butter, beat the eggs, mix everything together and make your pancakes.

They are fantastic, you don't even really need to add butter because they are already buttery enough.