Sassy Sexy Shapely

It’s summertime, and the living is greasy… at least it is if you’re chowing down at your local carnival.  Anyone who thinks that carnival food is healthy obviously hasn’t been to one lately, but we still consistently underestimate how bad these fair foods are.

If you’re going to indulge, you may want to avoid these super bad actors:

• Deep Fried Oreos - Yikes! Each cookies is 157 calories and 10.1 grams of fat.
• Corn Dogs - At 375 calories and 21 grams of fat per dog, you could consider it a meal.
• Deep Fried Twinkie - Without the sugar, preserves, or chocolate that generally accompanies one, it’s still 420 calories and 32 grams of fat.  Imagine the stats when you add those extras on?!
• Snow Cone - Sounds harmless enough, right?  Just sugar and water.  Nope.  A 12-ounce cone has 550 calories!
• Funnel Cake - It may not look like much on that paper plate, but the average funnel cake will set you back 760 calories and 44 grams of fat.  Jeepers!
• Deep Fried Candy Bars - Anything deep fried is going to have a deeply disturbing calorie count, and at 700 calories and 44 grams of fat, this is unfortunately no exception.

Your best bet?  Cotton Candy, which has only 200 calories and no fat in each large cone.

Americans love lists, especially when we’re trying to get healthy.  The best types of exercise, the best exercise equipment, the best ways to stay on track, the best foods to eat.  Lists give us that structure we crave.  Sometimes, though, the lists can be overwhelming, particularly if they direct us to stuff that’s hard to find or overly expensive.

Never fear!  The NY Times has our back on this one.  They asked Dr. Johnny Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth“.  Here’s his list of of 11 best foods we can easily pick up at the grocery store.  The article provides details as to why these are nutritional stars and even gives suggestions on how to prepare them.

• Beets
• Cabbage
• Swiss Chard
• Cinnamon
• Pomegranate Juice
• Dried Plums
• Pumpkin Seeds
• Sardines
• Turmeric
• Frozen Blueberries
• Canned Pumpkin

Regrettably, most of these are not in my shopping cart.  But, a couple are.

I almost always have canned pumpkin on hand because I use it to make Yum Yum Brownie Muffins, one of my BF’s faves.  I also have blueberries in the freezer in a mixed berry blend.  And, I have cinnamon, although not by itself.  It’s an ingredient in the Pumpkin Pie Spice I keep in the pantry.  I do, however, add cinnamon to my skinny latte at Starbucks. 

I have heard great things from Dr. Weill about Turmeric, who suggests drinking it in a tea, but I’ve never used it.  Pomegranate has gotten lots of terrific press recently, and I’ve just stared getting some in my diet through the Greens To Go powdered packets.

Looks like I need to make sure these items become regulars on my grocery list.

 Yay!  Another healthy fast-food meal has been added to our drive-thru eating arsenal.

Burger King has launched a mac-n-cheese Kids Meal that comes with apple sices and low-fat milk.  The new meal delivers a very reasonable 350 calories and contains:

• 4 ounces of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (180 calories)
• Apple “Fries” (uncooked, peeled apple slices) with low-fat caramel dipping sauce (25 calories for the apples, 35 calories for the caramel sauce)
• Hershey’s 1% low fat white milk (110 calories)

This is yet another example of how kids’ stuff can work for adults.  Don’t worry if somnething is marketed for kids.  If you like the food, go for it!  I love mac-n-cheese, so I’m really looking forward to trying this new offering.

MSNBC has published yet another list of ways to cut 100 calories from your daily diet.  Many of the tips are commonsense and well known.

1. Flavor your coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg instead of flavored syrup.
2. Enjoy your salad without the croutons.
3. Order pizza with grilled chicken instead of pepperoni.
4. Leave 3 or 4 bites on your plate.
5. Season steamed vegetables with fresh lemon and herbs instead of butter.
6. Choose your piece of sheet cake from the middle, where there’s less icing.
7. Add a splash of 100 percent fruit juice to sweeten fresh brewed iced tea in place of sugar.
8. Control your portions by pouring an individual serving of pretzels or chips into a bowl instead of eating from the bag.
9. Ask for the bread basket to be removed from the table.
10. Dip fruit into fat-free yogurt, and veggies into bean dip or salsa.

#1 is especially interesting.  My first thought after reading it was to suggest using sugar-free syrup instead of regular syrup.  That’s what I do when I go skinny at Starbucks.  I also season my latte with both cinnamon and nutmeg.

There’ve been a lot of reports lately about the newly discovered health benefits of cofee, but cinnamon is a nutritional star, too.  Cinnamon is celebrated for its ability to improve blood sugar control and soothing an upset tummy.  Nutmeg is no slouch either.  It ”…appears to have some beneficial effects on mood, possibly enhancing serotonin’s activity.”

Even if you don’t swap out your regular syrup, you may want to use cinnamon and nutmeg in your coffee anyway!

I’ve been looking into alternative eating plans, including vegan and raw.  I’ve done vegan meals before and raw ones, too, but I’ve never gone gourmet with either.  How fortunate that my city offers a raw restaurant with locations on each side of town!  My BF has lots of great qualities, but, as I’ve mentioned before, adventurous eating is not one of them.  So, while he was out of town on business, I hooked up with his brother and his brother’s new GF, and we all went out for a raw dinner.

Wow!!  It was SO good!  Unbelievably, outrageously, amazingly good!! 

 My BF’s brother started with a fruit smoothie topped with granola.  Interestingly, it came in a bowl, rather than a glass, and looked like a chilled soup.  He chose the Ora-Bana flavor, which was a mix of oranges, bananas and dates.  Ooo… it was tasty.  Cool, creamy, tropical goodness with a satisfying crunch.

We each picked a meal and then shared bites with each other.  My BF’s brother chose the Mexicali Sampler, which included a Mexi Wrap with a collard green “tortilla”, Enchiladas, Flax Crax and Mexi Toast.  It was served with yam rice, “beans”, guacamole and salsa.  It had some heat, probably because of the spicy red sauce.

My BF’s brother’s new GF chose the Purple Burrito.  She’s allergic to tomatoes and corn, so she skipped the salsa and guacamole, which was made with tomatoes.  The Purple Burrito was beautiful to look at because of all the vibrant colors.  Regrettably, the pic I took doesn’t capture it as well as I’d hoped because you can’t see the deep purple cabbage.  The cabbage “cup” was filled with Mexi pate, veggies and greens topped with sour “dream” and “yam yumm”.  It also came with flax crackers.

I thought it’d be a hoot to have the raw version of a traditionally bad food, so I selected the “Burger and Fries”.  It was a veggie burger made with beets, carrots, sunflower seeds and parsley, served on living bread with hand prepared catsup, mustard, mayo, onion tomato, lettuce, sprouts, avocado and almond cheese.  The “fries” were “breaded” avocado slices. It did not taste anything like a burger and fries, but that was okay with me.  The flavors and textures were lusciously palate-pleasing.  Every bite was fresh and clean, like capturing the crisp springtime air on your tastebuds.

We finished the meal by sharing three flavors of “cheesecake”: strawberry, apple, and yam.  They, too, were very good, especially the strawberry.  It had the tang of cream cheese, but there wasn’t a bit of it in the reicpe.  I found out the filling was actually made with cashews.  So, so good!

We were all astounded by how delicious everything tasted, so flavorful, and how filling it was.  I could easily eat this way all the time, except that the prep is daunting to me.  I talked about this with the proprietress of the restaurant.  She insisted that it really wasn’t that complicated or hard to do.  I was am still skeptical, though.  I think I need hands-on experience, so my BF’s brother’s new GF and I are going to take a 2-hour raw cooking class on a Sunday in late July.  My BF joked that a raw cooking class is an oxymoron.  Goofball!  (But he does have a point, doesn’t he?!?! J)

You never know.  Maybe ‘rich and raw’ will become a new addition to the Sassy Chef’s cooking repertoire!

 Isn’t this a super darn hoot of an idea?!?!  Kudos to Sycamore Stirrings for this bit of maternal brilliance: filling a muffin tin with small amounts of your kids’ favorite foods.  This one has Goldfish, blueberry bagel chunks, cucumber sticks, strawberry yogurt, Gorilla Munch cereal, blueberries, pretzels, string cheese, dried apricots, red pepper, cheddar cheese cubes, peaches. 

It’s geared for kids.  Perhaps because I’m more of a kid at heart than most, but I love the idea for me.  It would make eating a lot more fun for me… much more entertaining.  And, the built-in portion control rocks!  I would fill mine with almonds, apple slices, fat-free ricotta cheese, Kashi GO LEAN Original cereal, Hormel turkey pepperoni slices, light string cheese cut into discs, grape tomatoes, Smart Balance Omega Natural peanut butter, cranberries, sugar-free preserves, Zbar chunks, and edamame.

I often find that stuff designed for kids, at least as far as food is concerned, is actually just right for adults.  For instance, ZBars are a staple in my pantry.  They are organic energy bars made for kids; yet they’re perfect for me in terms of calories (120-150 per bar) and even price ($0.59-$0.69 each).

Consider the McDonald’s Happy Meal.  It’s a “right sized” fast food combo that now comes with healthier options like, and it’s ideal for adult women who want to treat themselves to the taste and convenience of the drive-thru without blowing their diets.

So, when you see something nifty for kids, think about how you can use it for yourself.  You might be surprised.  J

“If we grew thinner, exercised regularly, avoided diets rich in red meat (substituting poultry, fish or vegetable sources of protein) and ate diets rich in fruits and vegetables, and stopped using tobacco, we would prevent 70 percent of all cancers.”

Wow!  That’s one bold statement in the first paragraph of Newsweek’s Your Lifestyle, Your Genes and Cancer.  It’s the kind of statement that requires one to pause and absorb.  Seventy percent… think about that: preventing seventy percent of all cancers is a BIG deal.

Research just keeps confirming that the American lifestyle is harmful to our collective health - especially when you consider that healthy populations moving here and adopting our habits see their rates of illness increase to match ours.

The bottomline is that our dietary choices and lack of activity are killing us.  We’ve finally accepted that when it comes to tobacco, but we’re only just now recognizing it in relation to weight and exercise.

I’ve never quite understood how this works but apparently:

“Lifestyle influences a person’s risk for cancer by generating growth-promoting signals that affect cells primed to become cancerous, or that already are cancerous. What primes those cells to become cancerous in the first place are changes in their genes.”

“…most of us are born with good genes that succeed in flawlessly organizing our growth and development. After all, our genes have been optimized by more than 600 million years of evolution; they ought to work well. During the course of our lifetimes, though, genes are damaged in various cells throughout the body. It is these mutated genes that drive most cancers.”

The article explores the science of this thoroughly, beyond what I can comprehend, but much of it seems to come down to minimizing inflammation through a healthy diet and mitigating the by-products of inflammation by exercising.

I exercise regularly already (although I could always do more), so I feel pretty solid on that score.  But, my diet continues to need significant refinement.  I’ve been reasonably focused on clean eating, but I think it’s time to revist my Ultra Prevention and Ultrametabolism books.  These books focus intensively on inflammation and ways to avoid it.  The authors have also published a cookbook to help with recipe prep.  I was impressed when I first read Ultra Prevention, but I was also overwhelmed.  I’ve done much more cooking now and gone more in-depth into clean eating, so I think I might be better able to tackle it this time around.

“Why does it cost more to eat less?” After asking this question, Weetabix rails against the 100-calorie packs that are fast becoming ubiquitous. I agree with her assertion that our laziness is costing us millions of dollars a year. But, the title of her article, “The reason why healthy foods cost so much,” is misleading.

100-calorie packs are not made up of healthy food. They are nicely portioned packages of low-calorie food, but that doesn’t mean the food is healthy. The food is typically highly processed with little nutritional value. Only the pre-portioning keeps it from being off the charts in terms of sugar and salt.

Truly healthy food is still relatively cheap. Fresh produce, eggs, cans of beans, potatoes, and whole grain rice remain fairly inexpensive. Get ‘em at the warehouse store or a try a neighborhood farmers’ market. Even a roasted chicken can be picked up for fairly short money at your local grocery store. We pay for convenience for sure, but convenience isn’t always healthy.

So, don’t read Weetabix’s headline and bemoan the fact that your attempts to eat healthy are breaking the bank. Remember that healthy options are most definitely available on a budget if you’re willing to make a little effort, for example, as Weetabix suggests, using your own baggies to create homemade 100-calorie packs.

Need more tips on how to eat healthy on the cheap? Visit Healthy Hillbilly Housewife for recipes, tips on dieting on a budget, and other terrific information.

When I calculated the nutrition stats for my Whole Wheat Soy Blend Peanut Butter Cookies, I mistakenly did my calculations based on 15 servings instead of 30.  No wonder they were coming out at 340 calories per cookie!  They are actually a MUCH more reasonable 170 per cookie.  Whew!  I was horrified that the calories were so high.  I am still working on the next version of these babies, though.  I want to get them as low calorically as I can while still keeping them yum-o-licious… and clean, of course.

I have some enhancements in mind.  So, tomorrow night, it’s back to the drawing board.  Maybe the 15th time will be the charm? 

 Whole Wheat Soy Blend Peanut Butter Cookies, v1

• 1 cup Smart Balance Light Buttery Spread
• 1 jar (approx. 2 cups) Smart Balance Omega Peanut Butter, creamy or chunky
• ½ cup egg whites (equivalent to 2 eggs)
• 1 cup Splenda Granular
• 1 cup Splenda Brown Sugar Blend
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup soy flour

Directions

• Mix together the buttery spread, peanut butter and egg whites in a large bowl. When well blended and creamy, add the Splenda and brown sugar blend. Mix until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and salt, and mix again. Finally measure in the baking soda, baking powder and flours. Stir until well blended.
• Shape the dough into balls about an inch in diameter. Arrange them on a cookie sheet. Spray the bottom of a glass with non-stick pray and press to flatten each cookie. Then, use the tines of a fork to create the classic cross-hatch pattern.
• Bake the cookies, on a cookie sheet coated with non-stick spray, at 375° for about 10 minutes. Cool slightly before removing from the sheet pan. Makes about 30 fairly large cookies.

Adapted from a recipe on the Hillbilly Housewife’s website.