Everyday Cooking Versus Holiday & Celebration Cooking: Cauliflower

Everyday recipes should include few ingredients and steps.  One can either make a big batch for multiple leftovers, or prepare with ease after a long day.  Roasted cauliflower is convenient and tasty:

1-2 heads of cauliflower

Salt, pepper, garlic powder

Olive oil, preferably in a mister

Healthy Italian Style Meatloaf

While I am not a vegetarian, I tend to cook like one.  However, this recipe is my current favorite meat dish.  I’ve made it many times.  It has even converted a “vegetarian” into an occasional meat-eater.  It’s that good!  If you can chop some ingredients and get your hands a little messy, you can definitely make this meal.  The whole house smells amazing, and leftovers are even better.   So without further ado…

Italian Style Meatloaf

In terms of Chinese Medicine, this dish serves to supplement blood and it is warming in nature.  In general, foods that are red (eg. red meat, tomato sauce) in color are said to nourish blood.  Other blood-nourishing foods include beets, red wine and red grapes, and leafy green vegetables.  Patients who are blood deficient, specifically heart blood deficient (palpitations, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, thin, weak pulse, pale tongue) are advised to eat red, blood-nourishing foods.

Pumpkin, Chickpea, and Red Lentil Stew

This recipe is an easy, no-mess, healthy meal that tastes delicious.  You can cook it all day in your slow cooker and come home to the smell of dinner.  This dish is perfect during the cold winter as it is warming and nourishing.

Pumpkin, Chickpea, and Red Lentil Stew

According to Chinese Medicine winter squash, or pumpkin, is considered especially good for those with diabetes.  It helps to regulate blood sugars by warming and strengthening the spleen and stomach and boosting qi.

This use of food therapy is supported by scientific studies which identify compounds in pumpkin that enhance insulin function and lower blood sugar levels.  For example, see:  Anti-Diabetic Effects of Pumpkin and Its Components, Trigonelline and Nicotinic Acid on Goto-Kakizaki Rats

Notes:  *Squash can be difficult to cut, so I kept it simple and bought organic pre-cut butternut squash (another example of a winter squash) from Whole Foods.  *To easily peel ginger, scrape with the tip of a small spoon.

This recipe is full of healthful ingredients.  Try it, and report back!

You are what you eat.

In good health,

Molly

Miso-Tahini Green Beans

Are you looking for a last minute, extremely easy to prepare, gourmet-tasting, and of course, healthy recipe to round off your Thanksgiving spread?

This recipe is from Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen, a cookbook written by some of my favorite teachers, supervisors, and mentors:  Yuan Wang, Warren Sheir, and Mika Ono.

Americans do not consume enough vegetables.  Plain and simple.  Often times when I recommend vegetables to my patients, their first response is:  “I’ll eat more salads.”  For some reason in this country, salads are the go-to health food.  While they do contain healthy vegetables, salads are raw and cold in nature and can be difficult to digest if there is any weakness in the digestive system.

I have found that many of my patients have weakened spleens and stomachs.  According to Chinese Medicine, too many raw and cold foods (salads, smoothies, sushi, etc) are very taxing on the digestive system.  Think about it:  Our body is 98.6 degrees.  If we dump a lot of raw, cold foods into our guts, we must also provide the extra energy needed to warm, break down, and digest them.  With time, over-consumption of these foods can leave the digestive organs tired and sluggish.  Other factors that can weaken the digestive system are:  eating at irregular intervals, eating quickly and on the run, and eating while emotional.

Ginger Crinkle Cookies

Many recipes for cookies are full of refined ingredients with very little nutritional value.  While these cookies still contain fat and calories, they use several natural and nutritionally beneficial ingredients such as black strap molasses, turbinado sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and whole wheat pastry flour.  Foods that contain real food, fat, and fiber tend to be more satiating (and satisfying!) than their fat-free/sugar-free alternatives.   Try them – they make the whole house smell amazing.  Personally they are one of my favorites, and I’ve made dozens of batches.  Let me know what you think!

Ginger Crinkle Cookies

In terms of Chinese Medicine, these cookies are warm in nature and are suitable for those with cold and deficient conditions.  Ginger and cinnamon are two foods that are used in Chinese herbal medicine.  They are warm, harmonizing, and moving in nature.  Those who experience nausea or stomach pain due to cold should eat foods with such characteristics.  People with excess heat or dampness should avoid or minimize consumption of these cookies as too many could aggravate their symptoms.  Not sure what your pattern is?  Ask your Chinese Medicine practitioner 🙂

In good health,

Molly

Molasses Muffins with Flax and Dates

As we transition into autumn, it is time to start preparing and eating more warm and nourishing foods.  Everybody needs to eat breakfast, and starting with wholesome grains is a good way to go.  Try spreading some ghee (clarified butter) on these delicious and healthy muffins.

Are you somebody who normally grabs a muffin on the run?  Often, convenient choices that we find on line at the local coffee shop are full of sugar, hidden calories, and processed ingredients that are difficult to digest.  The ingredients in this recipe offer a lot of nutritional value and will give you a good start to the day.  Try making a batch on Sunday night, and eating the muffins throughout the week.  You can freeze them too.  That’s convenient!

In Chinese Medicine, dates are said to nourish the blood and calm the spirit.  Additionally, flax is a good source of Omega 3 fatty acids and can be beneficial in lowering LDL (bad cholesterol), blood triglycerides, and blood pressure.

Molasses Muffins with Flax and Dates

In good health,

Molly

Vegetable and Chickpea Curry Recipe

This recipe is delicious, very healthy, and makes your home smell great!  I made it last week for the first time and it got rave reviews.   You might try making it on a Sunday morning, eating it for Sunday dinner, and then having leftovers for Monday (and Tuesday and Wednesday!) lunch.

Instead of curry powder, I used 1 TBS of coriander and 1 TBS of tumeric.  I didn’t peel my potatoes or seed my serrano chile.   If you’ve never worked with fresh ginger before, you can peel the skin off easily by scraping it with a spoon.  For this recipe, I chopped the ginger into lots of small pieces, but you can grate it as the recipe lists as well.   It’s not an exact kind of recipe – do what feels right!

Check out the nutrition information too – low in calories, high in fiber.  There are lots of colors of the rainbow represented in this dish – a sign of a healthy meal.  

Miso…and a really great recipe

Miso is a fermented paste made from soy beans and other grains.  It is a staple of the Japanese diet and different varieties exist throughout Asia.  One of the unique aspects of miso is that it contains healthy microorganisms (yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and sauerkraut also contain these probiotic qualities).  Healthy bacteria are required to keep bad bacteria from growing wildly, and studies suggest that taking probiotics may prevent infection and combat allergies and some chronic illnesses.    The healthy microorganisms found in these foods and some supplements are similar to the healthy bacteria naturally found in the gut.

It makes sense.

Why do women commonly get yeast infections after taking a course of antibiotics?  Because the antibiotics kill bacteria – both the good and the bad, and the bad proliferate greatly without healthy bacteria to keep them in check.  This scenario is a common example of illness that occurs when the good and bad bacteria are out of balance, but improper diet, chronic illness, and strong medicinals can all alter the balance of bacteria in the gut, resulting in a range of gastrointestinal symptoms (gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation…).

Yogurt is the food that most people reach for first when wanting healthy microorganisms:  It is convenient and readily available.  However, according to Chinese medical theory, yogurt is very cold and damp in nature.