Product Review: Moo Moo's Poblano Chick (Pea) Patties

As a rule of course I prefer fresh food but we always keep a few things in the freezer that we can cook up quickly in a pinch. After a long weekend in San Francisco we were home just late enough and the fridge was just empty enough that after feeding the kid, I resorted to perusing the freezer stash.

I'm a sucker for a well designed box, so I had unreasonably high hopes for this frozen entrée. It was a disappointment. I couldn't even bring myself to eat it. The corn side dish was quite tasty but the patties tasted remarkably like hummus made from a powdered mix. The taste is ok but the texture is disturbing to say the least.

I briefly considered frying them to see if it helped but I'm just too beat from our trip. My husband, who will eat just about anything will finish this off for lunch tomorrow and I'm going to throw together an egg sandwich before I head out to do some grocery shopping so I don't have to repeat this tomorrow night.

Edited to add: My husband wouldn't even eat them. That's not good.

Cook This: Crunchy Kale Chips.

I fought this one for long. Kale chips? Sounds awful delicious, right?  I'd had them before. My husband would buy them at the coop and eat them as if they were going out of style. I thought they were ok but certainly not worth $6 a bag.  Last weekend my sister came to visit and saw the piles of kale that we'd harvested (more about our garden project in another post) just sitting in the fridge. She talked me into trying kale chips. I have to admit, I'm glad she did. The recipe took a bit of tweaking but it's official: I'm a kale chip addict. I've eaten an entire head of kale a day for the last 3 days and it's not looking like I'm letting up any time soon. And by the way...my 4 year old loves them too!

1. Preheat your oven to 300. If you have a convection function it will speed things up a bit.
2. Take a head of kale, wash well, and tear into pieces about 3 x 3 inches.
3. Spin in a salad spinner or lay out on a dishtowel to dry thoroughly.
4. Once dry put in a plastic bag that you can use to shake up the kale with oil (I use the kind of bag that they provide at the supermarket for your vegetables), use about 1 TBSP+ of olive oil and 2-3 TBSP of flaked nutritional yeast. Shake shake shake.
5. Pour out onto baking sheets in a single layer and bake for 15-20 minutes. I've found that one head of kale will fill about 3 baking sheets. The kale may need to be tossed or flipped midway if it's still moist after about 10 minutes. It's done when the pieces are crisp and crunchy and not moist. Don't brown it though or it will get bitter.
6. After pulling out, sprinkle with salt to desired taste. 

 You could also add cayenne to the brewers yeast before you put on the kale, or use a different spice mix altogether. I'm going to try it this weekend without the brewers yeast and instead just use truffle salt. It may be a bit of an odd combination, I'm not sure. I'll let you know!

Health News: Trying to Lose Weight? Less Sleep = Less Success.

Picked this one up (directly) from the Endocrine Daily Briefing- a daily newsletter I get from the Endocrine Society.

The Los Angeles Times (10/4, Khan) "Booster Shots" blog reported, "For dieters who had a full night's worth" of sleep, "more than half of the weight they lost was fat." However, "when the researchers cut three hours off their bedtime, only a quarter of the weight the study participants lost was fat. That means the other 75% being burned was nonfat mass – such as protein, valuable building blocks of muscle and other body tissues," the blog entry explained.

Vitamin D, the wonder vitamin?

Vitamin D is hitting the news just about every day of late.

Sure it's the 'it' vitamin right now, which automatically makes me suspicious, but the evidence is piling up that we may be causing ourselves immense harm by avoiding the sun.

Here is a sampling of just a few articles citing recent studies on vitamin D.

1. Higher blood levels of vitamin D associated with improved mobility for seniors. 
2. Taking vitamin D supplements during pregnancy is not only safe for mother and baby, but also can prevent preterm labor/births and infections.
3. Vitamin D deficiency leads to sharply increased risk of breast cancer spread. 
4. Low vitamin D may raise heart disease risk.
5. Low vitamin D is associated with increased prevalence of type 2 diabetes, high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome. 
6. Lower vitamin D levels are associated with greater risk for upper respiratory infection (colds/flus.) This association is stronger in those with existing respiratory diseases such as asthma or COPD.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

In response to the latest news, some doctors are just putting all of their patients on 'higher' doses of vitamin D, 1000iu, 2000iu, but I don't think that's good enough. What I've found in my practice is that each person needs a different load of vitamin D to reach an ideal level (I shoot for 60-90 as a rule) and then a different amount to keep them at that level once they get there. Therefore, I recommend that everyone have a vitamin D test. Once we have results, I decide how much to supplement and we run follow up labs in 6 weeks to see if an ideal level has been reached. If all is well I keep the patient on approximately 1500-2000iu daily and then test again in another 3 months to make sure the patient is stable.

Note, please that as an ND I always supplement with vitamin D3, not prescription vitamin D2. Here is a study comparing D2 to D3.

Next post will be FAQ about vitamin D.
Check back.

In Health,
Dr Samantha

Cook This: Onion, Bacon and Broccoli Quiche

This recipe started out as a tart recipe from Cook's Illustrated. I love this magazine because they not only print recipes, but also cooking techniques. My cooking is all self taught and now that I'm spending every Sunday in the kitchen, I'm thrilled to learn a bit more about how to prepare things more easily and with better results. After finding this mag I learned that there is a companion cooking show on PBS called America's Test Kitchen. We don't have cable so I thought I didn't have quality cooking show options (I'll pass on Rachel Ray, thank you). This show was a pleasant surprise.

The photo to the left was lifted directly from the ATC website. Please note that I did alter this recipe and the final product will be more like quiche than a tart so it won't look exactly like the photo above. 

The original recipe calls for a homemade crust. Thus far I can't seem to get myself to take the time to do that, so I purchased a whole grain spelt pie crust at our local health food store. It's a bit sweet for a quiche so I'd like to try to make the crust myself at some point...I'll keep you posted. 

Ingredients:

• 4-6 ounces bacon cut into small pieces (optional)
• 3/4 cup of broccoli cut into very small pieces. You can also use the stem if you peel it first.
• 1 1/2 pounds onions , halved through root end, peeled, and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch slices (about 6 cups.) Click here for tips on cooking onions.
• 1-2 T oil safflower or olive oil.
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt (I left this out because the bacon was salty enough.)
• 1 sprig fresh thyme.
• 5 large eggs.
• 3/4 cup MimicCreme (calls for half and half but we don't eat dairy.)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
1. Pour oil into sauté pan and heat over medium flame. Add onions and once they start slightly browning, turn down to medium-low and add thyme sprig. Cook to desired finish. I tried cooking soft as well as caramelizing and decided that cooking just soft is better or they just get too sweet. This should take about 20-30 minutes.

2. While onions are cooking pre-cook pie shells until just golden. Take out and cool.

3. In another pan, cook bacon to desired finish (you could also do this with turkey bacon or veggie bacon.) Remove and drain on paper towel. Pour out bacon grease into a jar for disposal (never down the drain...)

4. Sauté broccoli in bacon pan until just soft. If you are skipping the bacon, just use a little bit of olive oil.

5. In a large bowl mix eggs, MimicCreme (or half and half), black pepper, and salt if desired.  

6. When onions are done, remove thyme and cool slightly before mixing with egg/cream mixture, add broccoli, mix thoroughly and pour into 2 (whole grain) pie or tart crusts.  

7. Sprinkle liberally with bacon.  

8. Bake pies on a baking sheet until centers are set.

Cool for at least 20 minutes before eating.  

I usually will be cooking something else between steps so it doesn't seem like it takes quite so long. Absolutely delish though, and great for lunches too! I bet it could be doubled and frozen, I'll try that next time.

Enjoy!
-Dr Samantha 

Welcome to the Garden

As a child I was loathe to make contact with anything that had more than 4 legs. My parents would try and try to get me out in the garden and I'd come up with any excuse not to do it because simply, bugs grossed me out. As an adult I have long gotten over my antipathy toward crawling things (well mostly gotten over it) and have made numerous attempts to grow things but apparently I spent so many years thwarting gardens my payback was that anything I tried to plant died a slow and agonizing death.

I am formally thumbing my nose to my gardening history and affirming that this is the year. With my little one turning 4 in September the time has come to grow some of our own food.

We ordered raised cedar beds from Naturalyards in Southern Oregon and with a friend who designs gardens for a living, on the nastiest and windiest day in a month, we got them set up and fully planted. As we start to harvest the veggies (knock on wood) the plan will be to add recipes to the blog that include our fresh, home grown veggies. I may even take a stab at canning if I can get someone to convince me I'm not going to give my family botulism.

Cook This: Juniper Brined Pork Chops, Vegan Caramelized Shallot Mashed Potatoes and Sauteéd Green Beans

Heading into my last day of vacation I wanted something delicious but not too complicated. I remembered that I tried this recipe once before and had some kinks to work out so was excited to get back to it.

I found this recipe on the foodandwine.com (photo is from the site, not my kitchen, see link for credit). Usually I mess with recipes but this time just prepared them as-is so instead of copying the recipe verbatim I'm linking. The first time I made these they were a bit tough. It turned out I missed the "double cut" part. I used the correct cut, was more careful this time, and it was better but still not perfect. Next time I'll check them at 20 minutes and not wait the recommended 30 minutes.

The recipe calls for brining chops for 2 hours (enough time to clean the kitchen from the rest of my cooking and hop on the spinning bike for a quick workout) then browning chops and placing in the oven for about 35 minutes. I made my potatoes and green beans earlier but the oven time is just about exactly how long you need to make the potatoes and green beans.  And yes my husband took my kid out today.



Caramelized Shallot Mashed Potatoes. 
Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs mashing potatoes (there is never any agreement on this...I use yellow potatoes)
• 1 TBSP soy-free Earth Balance
• 1/4-1/2 cup (your preference) MimicCreme or organic cream/half and half if you want dairy.
• 3-4 large shallots sliced into crescents
• 2 TBSP olive oil

1. Cut potatoes into 2 inch chunks and put in saucepan with water just covering. Bring to a boil then simmer until soft.

2. While potatoes are cooking cook shallots on low until they are first soft and sweet, then continue to cook until they get slightly crispy. (If you're doing green beans you can wash and cut at this time.)

3. Once potatoes are soft, drain 90% of water and start to mash with potato ricer or fork. Add Earth Balance and cream to preferred taste and texture.

4. Add carmelized shallots and any cooking oil left in pan to potatoes. Mix and season with salt and fresh ground pepper if desired.

If you're trying to do lower carb, this recipe might work with cauliflower as well. I'll try it and let you know how it goes. 

Sauteéd Green Beans

In Shallot pan, saute washed and dried green beans (I like to cut them in half) until done to taste. If you have it, sprinkle with a little truffle salt before serving. It's spendy but a jar goes a long way. I also love to use truffle salt on popcorn. Delish. 

Enjoy!
-Dr Samantha