My neighbor Jenn sent over the most wonderful gift two weeks ago. Among other special treats, it included a ball jar filled with a vanilla bean, a handful of cardamom pods, a variety of dehydrated citrus slices, large chunks of candied ginger, a few cloves, and a couple of cinnamon sticks. The instructions said to empty into a pot of water and allow to simmer so as to fill the house with amazing smells. I am still planning on doing that, but first I screwed off the top and ate all the ginger. Continue reading
Category Archives: Breakfasts
Early Spring’s Surprise
During the growing season, I have a few trusted sources for vegetables. Sometimes my husband buys them at the supermarket, sometimes we get them from the garden growing alongside my house, and sometimes we pick up a box of CSA (community-supported agriculture) vegetables. One thing I love about the CSA option is the surprise factor. There’s nothing like opening a box to discover something either I’ve never seen before, or whose name I don’t know, or that I would not otherwise have purchased. I have always felt like this, even before finding recipes was as simple as entering the name of an unfamiliar ingredient into a search bar and tapping “Enter.” Continue reading
The Origin of “Granola”
It will probably surprise you to learn that the term granola was coined way back in the 1870s by one Dr. John Kellogg, late of Battle Creek, Michigan, where he ran a famous health sanitarium to which patrons flocked in pursuit of health and wellness. Among his many prescient recommendations was one that should be familiar to you, dear reader — that food be prepared the old-fashioned way, using whole grains instead of stripped ones like white flour or corn syrup. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Avgolemono (Lemon-Egg Soup)
Avgolemono (ahhv-go-LEH-mo-no; avgo is egg, and lemono is lemon) is Greek chicken soup, but you don’t need chicken to make it! Its simple combination of a few basic ingredients creates a deep well of comfort to satisfy your senses and soothe your soul. Even though avgolemono is about as simple as it gets, it’s an elegant recipe whose brilliance comes as much from the technique as the ingredients. As usual, the better the quality of the ingredients, the better the finished product. Also, you don’t have to use arborio rice, but it does confer a particular creamy texture that other kinds of rice do not. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Chef Ira’s Fresh Strawberries
My dad had a long and successful career in the perfume business, but he once confided to me that if he had it all to do over again, he would have become a cook. To tell the truth, I think that’s exactly what he did. Continue reading
Nourishing Breakfast Ideas for Kids and the Parents Who Love Them
A while back, a good friend of mine, an elementary school teacher at a small school north of Detroit, says “The kids are bouncing off the walls by 9:30.” It occurs to me that maybe their blood sugars are falling, though 9:30 a.m. is pretty early for that. Then he says that a snack usually helps get them back on track. Yeh, I think, it’s probably their blood sugars. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Simplest Salad
I’ve been making this salad for breakfast, yes breakfast, for months now. I know it’s a bit unconventional in the U.S. to eat salad for breakfast (though not in Europe and the Middle East), but it’s such a great way to start the day. Its success is built on simplicity. My strategy remains similar, week in and week out. It is never quite the same, and always delicious. Thank you to Alice Waters for teaching me to eat simply. This salad makes one single serving, but is infinitely flexible if you’d like to invite a friend or an army to your table to share a meal. Continue reading
Don’t Eat Bread for Breakfast
Having a hard time understanding why breakfast is the one meal of day that you should not eat toast, bagels, muffins, waffles, pancakes, cereal, biscuits, bread or grits? Here’s why. When you eat foods that are rich in fiber, fat and protein, it takes your body a while to break them down. They get absorbed into your bloodstream very slowly. But whenever you eat foods (or food-like products) made primarily from sugar or stripped flour, it’s easy for your digestive system to break down the ingredients. That’s because much of the work has already been done. The faster you absorb food, the more insulin your body needs to release to 1) catch the food and 2) escort it to the cells of your body. Insulin doesn’t work very efficiently in the morning. Especially if you are stressed out because, among other things, you didn’t get enough sleep. If you need an alarm clock to wake up, you didn’t. But you’re not alone.
Imagine you have two cars in your garage. One is a Ford F-150 truck, and the other is a Volkswagen. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that due to atmospheric conditions, gasoline doesn’t work as efficiently in the morning. That’s not really true, of course. I’m just saying it to set up a teaching point. All things being equal, and assuming that gasoline works inefficiently at daybreak, which vehicle are you going to choose to drive your kid to school tomorrow morning? The Volkswagen, of course! Does this mean you’re never going to drive your Ford truck? No. But, generally speaking, you’re not going to drive it in the morning — you’d just be wasting gas. Most of the time you’ll drive the Volkswagen. Unless you have a really good reason why not. Like the Volkswagen is in the shop for a tune-up.
So just like it doesn’t make sense to waste your gasoline by driving a gas-guzzler first thing, it doesn’t make sense to waste your insulin by eating rapidly-absorbed food for breakfast. I’m not saying that you can never eat white flour. I am saying not to eat white bread for breakfast. It’s okay to eat a slice of whole grain toast or pancakes, but nothing made from white flour. Have a bowl of cereal for dessert, after lunch. But not for breakfast.
Diabetics, please note that your blood sugars may be too sensitive to tolerate white flour any time. You can tell by checking your blood sugars 90 minutes after you eat. If your blood sugars are back in the normal range by then, your choice was okay. If they have not yet recovered from the rise associated with eating, your insulin supply was insufficient to manage all the incoming stripped carb in that meal.
You can also think about it this way. Eating stripped carbohydrates (like white flour and sugar, both of which have had all the color and fiber stripped out of them) is like hitting a man when he’s already down. Stripped carbohydrates stress out your insulin-production system. Why stress your insulin production right out of the gate, first thing in the morning? Pretend that it takes a gallon of insulin to eat a bowl of cereal. If you eat that cereal for breakfast, you’ll have used up almost your entire supply before you’ve even started your day. You don’t have a gallon of insulin to waste. It just doesn’t make sense to eat stripped carbs for breakfast.
Well, you might ask, how did they get to be typical breakfast foods? And that is a topic for another day.