Tag Archives: food

Know What You’re Eating

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Read the ingredients.

Chobani Yogurt
This is my favorite yogurt these days. Just wish it wasn’t so damn expensive since I eat so much of it.

I was looking for yogurt in the supermarket the other day. I’ve been drinking a lot of smoothies lately and I wanted an inexpensive alternative to the Chobani greek yogurt I usually buy. Although I usually make my yogurt, I’ve been so busy with work around my home and cherry season chores that I figured I’d make things easy on myself and just buy a quart or two. I figured that if I could find an inexpensive brand, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble of making it myself anymore. At $5+/quart, the Chobani gets costly quickly when you go through a few quarts a week.

So I was in the dairy section of the supermarket, checking out brands I’d never really looked at before. I didn’t need Greek yogurt for my smoothies, but I did need it to be plain, fat-free yogurt — and nothing else.

Yogurt, in case you’re wondering, is milk with active yogurt cultures added. It involves heating the milk, cooling the milk partway, adding the cultures, and holding the temperature until curds form. One more step — draining off a good portion of the liquid whey — is what turns regular yogurt into thick Greek yogurt.

I looked at labels and was absolutely shocked by the additives I found in some. While it’s common for Greek yogurt makers to fake Greek yogurt by adding thickeners, I didn’t expect yogurt makers to add unnecessary ingredients to regular yogurt. Yet there they were in the ingredients list. Pectin was especially popular — nearly every yogurt contained it.

Organic Yogurt Ingredients
Good thing that locust bean gum is organic.

The ingredient list in one organic yogurt was so offensive that I took a picture of it.

Remember, yogurt = milk + active yogurt cultures. It doesn’t need pectin, corn starch, locust bean gum, or added vitamins.

You have to understand that many of my friends are organic food snobs. In their minds, if it’s not organic, it’s not healthy. These are the people who buy organic produce, sometimes paying three to ten times the price of non-organic produce. They think organic means no chemicals. (Certain chemicals are allowed in organic food production.) They think organic means healthier. (No scientifically conducted test has shown a difference in nutritional value between organic and non-organic food.) They think that the industrial farming methods that make it possible to feed millions of people cost effectively are unsafe or even evil. When faced with a choice between an organic yogurt and the Chobani I usually buy, they’d pick the organic, likely without even reading the label beyond the word “organic.” That word, which the manufacturer has paid a premium to the FDA to use, is shorthand, in their minds, for “healthy.”

Chobani Yogurt Label
It might not be certified “organic,” but at least it’s yogurt — and only yogurt.

I looked at every label for every non-fat and low-fat plain yogurt in the supermarket. In the end, I bought the Chobani. It was the only one that didn’t include additives that aren’t a part of real yogurt. I also bought a half gallon of skim milk and will be making two quarts of yogurt today, using the Chobani as a starter, for next week.

Those of you who are blindly buying products because the label proclaims they’re organic might be putting all kinds of weird ingredients into your bodies. You can keep them. I’ll stick with a product that contains exactly what it should — and only that.

Organic vs. Non-Organic Yogurt

“Street Style” Breakfast Taco

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Quick and easy hot breakfast for one (or two).

I go through phases with my breakfast choices. Although I don’t mind yogurt with granola or fruit or even cold cereal with milk and fruit, I do enjoy a hot breakfast. The trick is coming up with something that’s relatively healthy and quick and easy to make.

Preferably something that uses eggs. My chickens make five per day, on average, and they accumulate quickly.

That’s how I came up with the idea for a breakfast taco. I’m talking about a so-called “street style” taco that uses a soft corn tortilla — not crunchy “gringo Mexican” taco shells — with the ingredient tucked inside. Fold it, pick it up, and enjoy.

Here’s my recipe for one.

Ingredients

  • Breakfast Taco IngredientsSmall amount of oil or cooking spray. I usually use olive oil spray to keep the fat down a bit.
  • 2 tablespoons chopped onion or sliced scallions. About once a week I chop up an onion and store it in an airtight container in my fridge. This keeps chopped onion close at hand. Some folks use frozen chopped onion and I don’t see anything wrong with that. Sliced scallions work, too, and have the benefit of cooking faster. The taste is milder, though.
  • 1 large egg.
  • 2 tablespoons shredded cheese. I use a Mexican blend, but you can use any kind you like.
  • 1 taco-size corn tortilla. Get the real thing if you can, in the Mexican food area of your supermarket or, better yet, in an Hispanic food market. I buy them 10 in a bag and keep them in the fridge or freezer. (Just noticed that these are “hand made style” — whatever the hell that means. That’s what happens when you shop without your glasses.) I’m pretty sure my tortilla press is around here somewhere; I might actually make them from scratch one of these days.

If you’re one of those people who likes salsa on your tacos, get some of that, too. I’m not a fan of salsa on anything other than chips so I don’t use it.

Instructions

  1. In a small skillet over medium heat, heat the oil or cooking spray.
  2. Add the onions or scallions and cook until softened and just starting to brown at the edges.
  3. Cooking EggGather the onions or scallions into the middle of the pan and drop an egg on them. You might want to use this opportunity to break the yolk so it cooks. I don’t scramble my eggs before cooking, but you could if you want to. Just make sure the egg stays together in the middle of the pan so it doesn’t get larger than the tortilla.
  4. When the egg has cooked on the bottom, lower the heat and flip it.
  5. Immediately sprinkle the cheese on the egg and lay the tortilla on top.
  6. Cook until the egg is done the way you like it — over easy? over medium? — and then flip it again so the tortilla is on the bottom.
  7. Cook until the tortilla has heated through and the cheese is melted.
  8. Remove to a plate, spoon on salsa (if desired), and fold in half.

Enjoy!

I used to wait until after flipping the egg to break the yolk. That kept the yolk in the middle. Now I break it right away. I also use a pot cover to speed up the cooking process.

You can make two or three of these at once if you have a larger skillet or a griddle.

Is this a healthy meal? Well, I don’t think it’s unhealthy. After all, it uses a minimum of added fat and has fresh ingredients such as onions and eggs. Minimizing processed foods is one way to keep your diet healthy — who knows that’s in those “hand made style” tortillas I bought? The way I see it, it’s a lot healthier than breakfast pastries or sugar-filled cereals.

How to make it better? That should be obvious: skip the oil/spray and sauté the onions/scallions with some chopped bacon. Now we’re talking.

Taking “Home Made” to New Levels

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I realize that I can take home-cooking to extremes.

French Toast Breakfast
My home-made/grown bread, eggs, and honey went into this.

This morning, I made French toast for breakfast. For most people, that’s not a big deal — French toast is easy enough to make. But I realized that my French toast went beyond what most people would consider a home-cooked meal for a few reasons:

  • I baked the bread.
  • The eggs came from my chickens.
  • The honey I put on top came from my bees.

The only thing related to my plate that I didn’t make or grow was the cooking spray I used in the pan and the fresh strawberries. In two months, the strawberries will come from my garden.

While anyone with an oven (or bread machine) and a tiny bit of skill (or ability to follow directions for a bread mix) can make their own bread — and I highly recommend it! — I agree that raising chickens or keeping bees is not for the average person. So no, I’m not trying to tell you to follow my lead here. I’m just pointing out that it’s possible to have better control over what you eat.

And the results can be delicious.

How Do They Stay in Business?

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A minor rant.

Did you ever get such stupid service from a business that you wonder how they survive?

I had that happen to me last night. I was with some friends in Chelan watching an outdoor concert at the “Main Stage” for the big Winterfest 2015 festival going on this month. It had been snowing all day and it was cold. I spent much of my time on the fringe of the crowd where a fire was burning in a small fire pit remarkably like mine.

I was hungry and when my friend Pam said she was hungry, too, we looked around for a restaurant. There was a teriyaki place across the street and we decided to try that first. Although it was a tiny place with fewer than a dozen tables, we’d timed it right and a table was open for us. We sat right down.

It was about 10 minutes before the waitress showed up with menus. She started off by telling us what beverages were available at no cost. She never told us about any other kind of beverage that might be available, either non-alcoholic or alcoholic. Kind of weird, but okay. The hot tea sounded good so that’s what I ordered. Pam ordered water.

The waitress came back another 10 minutes later to take our order. We wanted to split a large tofu vegetable teriyaki dish with chicken added. It wasn’t because we were trying to be cheap. It was because neither of us wanted to eat very much and we didn’t plan on carrying take-home boxes when we went back outside for more live music. The waitress wrote it down and disappeared. She didn’t try to upsell with an appetizer or anything else.

She was back in 5 minutes. Apparently, the kitchen was too busy for “special orders.”

I looked around the restaurant. Yes, every table and the small bar was filled. About half the people were eating. No one was waiting. It didn’t seem that busy to me.

Ordered a small chicken teriyaki. Pam ordered a small tofu and vegetables. And then we sat back to chat and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Pam’s husband came in a few times. He sat with us for a while, used the bathroom, sat with us some more, and then went back outside.

We continued to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

I didn’t mind the waiting so much. I was comfortable. The place was warm. My clothes were dry. We could see the concert right through the restaurant windows. We could see all those people shivering in the snow by the ice bar, drinking overpriced alcohol while crowding around propane space heaters. When the door opened, we could hear the band. I figured we were a lot better off inside than outside.

I could use some more tea, but in the ninety minutes we waited for our food, the waitress came by only twice. I hit her up for tea both times.

The food finally came. It was about as I expected: neither bad nor great. It was hot, though, and fresh. So I guess that’s something.

Pam’s husband came back in and shared some of our food.

I picked up the check, which came pretty quickly after the food had been consumed. We’d been in the restaurant a total of about two hours when it arrived. The total, with tip, came to $28.87.

And that’s my question: how can a restaurant stay in business when it allows its tables to be used as low-cost rest zones for cold, wet concert-goers? If the average spent by each person in the restaurant was $15 and each person was there for two hours, how could they possibly be making any money?

Let me make it clear: we did not hang around because we wanted to. We hung around because we were waiting for our food. The delay came entirely from the restaurant staff. We weren’t hogging up the table. They were just providing exceedingly slow service.

How does a business that operates like this stay in the black?

How to Calculate Nutritional Information for a Recipe

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And why you might want to do it.

As the folks who know me well or follow my blog know, I’m dieting again.

Back in 2012, I lost 45 pounds in four months and regained both my health and my self-esteem. Although I’ve managed to keep most of the weight off since then, it’s been creeping up slowly. I want to nip that in the bud so I’ve gone back on the same diet that helped me lose so much weight so fast nearly three years ago. I expect that two months of serious dieting should be enough to get back down where I was in September 2012.

Nutritional Info Example
Calculating the nutritional info for an easy and yummy looking biscuit recipe a friend shared on Facebook makes it clear that this is something I need to avoid. (In case you’re wondering, this recipe’s ingredients are 4 cups Bisquick, 1 cup sour cream, 1 cup 7Up soda, and 1/2 cup butter.)

I know the reason I gained that weight back, which is important to prevent it from happening again:

  • Portion control. Although the diet I was on basically “shrunk my stomach” so I couldn’t eat those big portions, over time, I stretched it back out by eating more and more. What can I say? I like to eat. And when you put a big plate of food I really like in front of me, I want to eat as much as I can. This is something I need to control once I’m back down to my goal weight again.
  • Bad food choices. In general, I eat very well. Lots of fresh foods — not prepared foods — cooked simply. I grill or smoke most meats, I eat salads and fresh vegetables. But occasionally I make bad choices — usually at restaurants — that include fried or high-carb (or both!) foods. And every once in a while a friend will share a recipe online that looks too good to pass up and I’ll make it.

I believe that if you’re at a good, healthy weight and keep relatively active, short forays into the realm of bad food choices should be okay. Sure — enjoy a piece of pie or a flaky biscuit or a plate of pasta once in a while. But remember that portion control! And don’t do it every day.

That’s what I’ve learned over the past two years. Now if only I could remember that when you place my favorite food in front of me!

But how do you determine what’s a good food choice and what’s a bad food choice when it comes to preparing recipes? That’s where nutritional calculators come in handy. The one I use is on a site called SparkRecipes, but there are plenty of others. You enter the ingredients for the recipe along with the quantity of each item, indicate how many servings it creates, and click a Calculate Info button. The result is a display like you see here, which I calculated this morning for a four-ingredient biscuit recipe a friend shared. The numbers make it clear just how healthy — or unhealthy — a food choice the recipe can be.

I began doing these calculations for all the recipes I share on my blog. I recently learned that by omitting part of a recipe — for example, the dumplings in the chicken and dumplings recipe I recently shared — or substituting one healthier ingredient for another, you can make a recipe healthier without sacrificing flavor. This can help you cook healthier meals for yourself and your family — something that’s especially important when weight-related health problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes is an issue.

Is calculating nutritional information like this worth the effort? What do you think? Isn’t your health worth a few minutes of time in front of a computer so you can make an informed decision?