Sometimes you’re just aching for something sweet, spicy and homey to warm you from the inside out. You know what I mean? If it sounds like I’m describing you, then try this recipe. Sundays are a great day for this one.
Author Archives: Dr. Sukol
Nutrition in a Nutshell
Here’s my elevator speech about nutrition, what I choose to say to the patient with just 10 seconds for some advice. “Can you fit it into 10 seconds, doc?” You bet! “Eat more fruits and vegetables.”
Marion Nestle says it like this: 1) Aspire to variety (the more colors the better), 2) avoid partaking heavily of any single food category (notably meat, dairy, sugar and white flour), and 3) moderate your portions. That works.
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Chicken Paprikash
This week I’m channeling my inner Mark Bittman. Not sure whether it’s his common sense approach, or his love of old chefs and recipes, or the contented look on his face as a bit of fresh tomato sauce drips off his chin. This recipe is adapted from Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express.
Pesticide Levels: The Dirty Dozen & the Clean Fifteen
While preparing my upcoming talk on organic vs. nonorganic fruits and vegetables for Dr Roizen’s Preventive & Integrative Medicine Conference in Las Vegas, I came upon an interesting couple of lists called the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. [Don’t bother to count; the lists I found contained sixteen “dirty” entries and seventeen “clean” entries. Crazy, huh? Don’t worry; as far as this story is concerned, the more the merrier.] Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Turkey Wild Rice Casserole
Right now I’m guessing that there’s a turkey, or turducken, or tofurkey, or stuffed pumpkin in your house, being readied for your great big Thanksgiving celebration. You don’t need fresh ideas, just a good-sized oven. But come Friday, when you’re looking for things to do with your leftovers, this recipe will be a welcome choice. The original version, from which it is adapted, may be found at kitchenparade.com.
Humans Have a Short Memory
In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading for Las Vegas, where I’ll be speaking at Dr Roizen’s Preventive & Integrative Medicine Conference on two subjects: 1) differences between omega-3s and omega-6s, and their impact on inflammation in the body, and 2) organic vs. nonorganic fruits and vegetables. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Celebrate the Season’s Root Vegetable Stew
On the wall alongside my desk at work, I put up a bumper sticker that says “I ♥ Crock Pots!” And it’s no exaggeration. There is something about slow cooking that draws the best from ingredients, blending them together in a most extraordinary way, filling our home with scents so sublime that we have been awakened by them as they cooked through the night, and then warming us, body and soul, with complex flavors at once sweet, spicy, sour, and umami.
Use It or Lose It
I have two personal aphorisms to share with you. The first is “I’ll pay any price to keep you mobile.” The second is “I’ll pay any price to keep your blood sugars in the normal range.”
These are high priorities — the highest, in my book. When my kids were in high school, and they were in a mood (I’m cranky; I don’t feel well; I’m bored; I have too much homework), I would always say, “Go for a walk!” It got to be a joke in our house. They, of course, took it to the next level. Fever? Go for a walk! Migraine? Take a hike! Appendicitis? Walk it off! Broken leg? Very funny, I said. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Ginger-Thanksgiving Relish
So this is a very good time to start thinking about what’s going to be on your Thanksgiving menu this year. Since I am a cranberry fiend, and I absolutely adore ginger, I consider it the perfect recipe!
If you avoid candy and sweets most of the time, the relish should be sufficiently sweet to eat by itself, as is, on your fork. If, on the other hand, you’re still working on taming that sweet tooth, then plan to spread it on a slice of turkey, or drop a spoonful in a bowl of squash soup. If it’s still really not quite sweet enough for you, add a few drops of warmed raw honey. Thank you to eatingwell.com for yet another opportunity to eat well.
Diet Coke: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bubbles
For at least 20 years I drank a diet Coke at about 3:30 in the afternoon. I acquired this questionable habit as a young college grad, newly hired in Clinical Virology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to a team of other ambitious, young women. Every day at 3:30, anyone who wasn’t titrating virus or infecting cell lines on a deadline would tromp down a few stairs to get themselves a Diet Coke. We’d stand around chatting, enjoying a break in the almost nonstop action, and consulting with one other about boyfriends, graduate school, snafus in the lab, or whatever else mattered at the moment. I loved the break and would occasionally get anxious if it looked like I might have to miss it that day. Continue reading