everything but the kitchen sink stir fry

When I was growing up, my parents were firm believers in the clean your plate club. Essentially, I had to stay at the table until I cleaned my plate. One time my mom made stir fry and I mistakenly saturated it with Worcestershire sauce instead of soy sauce (hey, I was little and the bottles looked pretty stinking similar). I had to eat the. Entire. Thing. It was nasty. The thought of the cold, salty veggies still makes me a little queasy. Needless to say, I wasn't a major fan of stir fry for a while. It wasn't until college when I was short on cash and even shorter on time that I learned to love the stir fry.

I'm a big fan of one pot meals, and not just because I detest doing dishes. They are a quick and simple way to serve up some awesome food, and can be relatively economical if you're living on the cheap. Stir fries are an easy one pot meal and an excellent way to use up all your extra veggies. For example, you can make typical Asian stir fry with broccoli, carrots, snow peas, water chestnuts, bean sprouts, edamame, and even a handful of peanuts. Or, you can make Mexican stir fry with peppers, onions, black beans, corn, cabbage, and top with avocado. You can even make Italian stir fry, like my Italian sausage stir fry. You can serve stir fry as is, or atop rice, noodles, or quinoa. The possibilities are endless!

One stir fry I made recently that was super easy contained literally all of the veggies I had laying around. It was made of everything but the kitchen sink, baby, and boy was it tasty!

I threw the following in a large skillet with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil:
-1 cup chopped asparagus
-1/2 cup diced bell peppers
-1/2 cup diced onion
-1/2 cup frozen cubed butternut squash
-1/2 cup frozen sweet potatoes (I used sweet potato fries and cut them into smaller chunks, about 1" long)

-3 gloves of garlic, minced
-1/3 cup frozen edamame
-1 cup fresh spinach

If you're using a combination of fresh and frozen ingredients, start with the frozen ones first so that they have time to thaw. Also, always add greens like spinach last, because they wilt rather quickly.

I topped the stir fry with a bit of sliced avocado and some coarse sea salt. It was so good it didn't even need any sauce. Also, my meal was entirely plant based (vegan) and I didn't feel the slightest bit deprived. I think one key to embracing a more plant based diet is to combine really flavorful foods with a variety of textures, so that your senses stay intrigued. It felt like there was a party in my mouth.

Enjoy, and don't be afraid to get creative!

the best effing tuna salad EVER!

Happy Spring everyone! I'm so happy the sun is finally starting to make an appearance in Seattle. We've finally had 3 days above 60 (and I realize that sounds incredibly pathetic, but hey, I'm embracing the positive!) and I even was able to wear a t shirt and flip flops to the beach and not freeze! Speaking of beaches, as swimsuit season is nearing, I'm finding myself uber motivated to cook foods from scratch and steer clear of overly processed items.

At the insistence and nudging of some of my friends who are more fledgling cooks, I'll be posting some more basic recipes on here. One thing I make really well is tuna salad. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I recently made this for one of my best friends for lunch and he said it was pretty much the most amazing tuna salad he's ever tasted. So rest assured, folks, you're in good hands! (And a note to my gentlemen readers: even though there's some random ingredients in this thing, it has been dude approved.)

Amazing Tuna Salad:
Combine the following in a large bowl:
-1 can solid white albacore tuna, flaked with a fork. This is key folks. That chunk light crap looks and tastes like cat food. Solid white albacore is the key to amazing tuna salad!
-1/2 chopped crispy apple, such as a honeycrisp or pink lady
-2 diced celery ribs
-1 large or several small diced crispy dill pickles. If you can find garlic and/or spicy pickles, they taste even better!
-1/4 cup unsweetened dried cranberries (or regular craisins - I'm still avoiding sugar a bit)
-1.5-2 TB regular lemonnaise - the key to good tuna salad is not too much mayo. Just add enough to moisten and adhere all of the ingredients together. We don't want a goopy sloppy mess!
-2 TB minced fresh dill
-Cracked black pepper, to taste

The tuna salad works great either as is, served atop spinach or mixed spring greens, or served warm and gooey with havarti cheese as a tuna melt. (Note on gluten free breads: I made this as a tuna melt with Rudi's multigrain gluten free bread and it was pretty awesome. Even my friend Ryan said it was good.) It pairs well with sour cream and onion kettle chips, which incidentally, are also gluten free. Enjoy!

starch and candida and inflammation, oh my!

As most of you know, I'm a dietitian. I spent the past three days at the Washington State Dietetic Association annual conference, and my head is swimming with new knowledge about vitamins, plant based diets, and dietary interventions to combat inflammation, amongst other things. Though several of the topics didn't exactly apply directly to someone suffering from say, A.S., it did set my mind a reeling.

You see, following the very low starch diet has been kind of mentally taxing for me over the past few months. Aside from the moral implications of eating so much animal product (though I try when I can afford it to buy meats that are locally and sustainably raised and humanely slaughtered - more on that to come), I've been wondering how all of this animal product is effecting my insides. As a dietitian we've read the studies about links between high levels of saturated fats in the diet and their correlations with elevated cholesterol and cardiovascular events. We've also recommended plant based diets for their health benefits, such as decreasing cholesterol, increasing insulin sensitivity, and decreasing body weight.

Therefore, I'm in a bit of a pickle following a diet where I can't even eat most fruits. It's fruit for Pete's sake! However, I did lose weight while on the low starch diet. But I also ate less packaged foods and possibly was consuming fewer calories overall. What a conundrum.

I was missing carbs something fierce, so I gradually started adding back in some starches over the past few months. I was missing legumes so much that I was literally dreaming about hummus. I've also had some delicious sweet potatoes, pineapple, watermelon, and split pea soup. It all tasted a-mazing!

I started this starch free quest to combat candida (i.e. yeast) and the thing is, the candida is still lingering, even with very low starch consumption. And some of my R.D. friends who struggle with candida say that while yeast does need sugar to thrive outside of the body, internally our bodies regulate our blood sugars so closely that decreasing sugar and starch intake may not be an effective way of combating candida overgrowth. Oy! Turns out it might be more related to stress and inadequate sleep!

I don't claim to have the answers here, but I think for now I'm sticking to eating fewer carbohydrates, and choosing gluten free starches when I do choose to eat carbs. I think it's also a good idea for me to steer away from packaged foods most of the time and try to either cook foods myself or order more whole foods when dining out. I also have heard research that supports adding Omega 3 fatty acids and antioxidants for decreasing inflammation, and with this autoimmune disease I'm living in a state of inflammation. (Another thing I learned at the convention: women with inflammatory diseases can have a more difficult time conceiving. I'm not ready for babies yet but sheesh! Time to get this stuff figured out.) Therefore I'm going to make an effort to eat more fish (Omega 3's) and brightly colored fruits and veggies (antioxidants).

One thing that is clear is that one should always try to get nutrients from foods rather than supplements, although some supplementation with probiotics, vitamin D, and even fish oil can be helpful. If you are taking a multivitamin, only take one kind and try one that only has 100% of the nutrients, in order to avoid toxicity.

I'm also going to make a solid effort to get at least 7 hours of sleep a night and work on managing my stress levels. Plus one of my girlfriends who has battled candida issues has a supplement that has worked for her that she's going to email me about. I'll post on that once I've tried it out.

I guess the message here is that each person's individual situation is different from everyone else's, so what works for one person may be more or less effective in others. The body is truly a fascinating and mysterious thing. Therefore, I guess we have to be informed, hope for the best and tweak accordingly.

Best of luck, friends!

intention

I've never been one for New Year's resolutions, mostly because I get tired/lazy/bored of my original idea and it is kind of a lot of work. My friend Kristi makes yearly "intentions" instead of resolutions. She writes her intentions down and sticks them on her fridge, so that she is mindful of them throughout the year. She said she has almost always accomplished most of her intentions since starting this process a few years ago.

I've been thinking about intentions for my year. I've been reading the book Women, Food, and God, and the author, Geneen Roth speaks a lot about intention as it comes to eating. Her book offers tips to eat mindfully, through eating what your body really wants when you are hungry, paying attention to the food and savoring it, and then stopping when you are full. This requires patience, curiosity, and thoughtfulness, since it is work to ask your body what it really wants and to be aware of when you are satisfied.

Geneen also talks about living purposefully, feeling all of your emotions fully, and fully occupying every inch of space you take up on this earth. I've been thinking about what that might look like.

Lately I've been feeling like sometimes I live life on autopilot. I think my intention for this year will be to live with more intention. I see this playing out in a variety of ways:

1) My body needs proper fuel. I've been thinking a lot about how foods make my body feel on the starch free diet. I know that starch makes me feel heavy, bloated, weighed down, groggy, itchy, and nauseated. However, I've been interpreting starch free as many nuts, meats, eggs, and dairy. My produce intake has been seriously lacking. For starters, I want to be intentional about eating more produce, trying new recipes especially for veggies, and trying new fruits and veggies that I haven't eaten before or haven't really liked in the past.

To help in this effort, I've been meeting with girlfriends every other Sunday to share recipes and plan out some dinner ideas. I'm also considering incorporating raw recipes into my diet a few times a week, mostly because every time I eat at Thrive, a raw restaurant in Seattle, I feel awesome. The problem is I've never cooked raw before and don't really know much about it, so I'll have to do some research and experimentation. I think more fruits and veggies is a good place to start.

2) My body needs exercise. I thought about which exercise my body enjoys the most and I really like high impact cardio, hot yoga, and the occasional weight lifting class. Therefore, I purchased a ten class package for my local hot yoga studio, have been hitting up weight lifting, step, and spinning classes at my gym, and have a goal to do at least one race (5k or more) per month from February to August. I have always wanted to be a better runner and I think having a competitive run each month will help keep me focused and motivated.

3) I need to work on fully experiencing my emotions. I have known I use food as therapy ever since my parents divorced when I was 17. That year I quit all of my after school activities. Instead, I would come home after school, camp out in front of the tv, and eat. Coincidentally, this is also when my struggle with weight first reared its ugly head. Until I figure out how to feel my emotions without blocking that emption through food, tv, shopping, drinking etc, I am not living a full life. I am also prone to weight cycling. Allowing myself to experience emotions for what they are is going to take a ton of effort and patience and is so much easier said than done, but it is something I realized I have to do if I want to experience my life to the fullest.

4) I need to be aware of my tendency to over-consume. This ties in so much to not fully feeling emotions. Basically, I shop too much and eat too much, usually when I am stressed/sad/annoyed/bored/wanting to prolong feeling good. I know that the excess shopping and excess eating stems from wanting some sort of rush, and I always think it will make me feel happy. These habits are toxic though. They're wreaking havoc on my wallet and my waistline. I'm saving for a new car and it's the first time I've really had to save for a big purchase. It is a good exercise in questioning if I really should be spending money, and I'm hoping this newfound awareness will be applied to multiple areas of my life.

Well, that's all I have for now. Here's hoping for a great 2011!

ps- apparently I'm not the only one with this idea. Read this blog for even more great ideas about eating with intention: http://glutenfreegirl.com/apple-fennel-slaw/

beating the winter blahs

Right around mid January I start itching for the tropics. Visions of turquoise waters and white sandy beaches fill my mind (and are usually the background on my mac). I daydream about the feel of the warm sun on my skin and squiggling my toes in the sand.

This is probably because January in Seattle is about as far from the tropics as you can get. It's wet, drippy, cloudy, and windy. Every once in a while though, we get a few days of bright sunshine in mid January. It's the kind of sun that makes me long for summer. I roll down the windows of my crappy Nissan as far as I can stand, crank the heat up, and imagine the heat from my heater is actually from the sun. For a few minutes, it's pure bliss.

Here's a few recipes inspired by the tropics. Hopefully they'll warm you up on a particularly nasty winter day.

Blackberry coconut smoothie:
Blend 1 cup frozen blackberries, 1/2 cup nonfat milk, 1/4 cup unsweetened kefir, 2 scoops vanilla whey protein powder sweetened with stevia (I like Aria women's protein), 2 tablespoons flaked unsweetened coconut, 1/4 teaspoon coconut extract, and 2-3 packets of stevia or erythritol sweetener to taste (I like Truvia or Organic Zero). Paper umbrella optional.

African peanut soup:
This is modified from a recipe from my friend's copy of Vegetarian Times.
2 medium onions, chopped
2 large red bell peppers, chopped
2 large green bell peppers, chopped
4 medium cloves of garlic, mashed
2 tablespoons canola oil
One 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes with juice, chopped coarsely
2 boxes of Pacific branch mushroom broth
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2/3 cup creamy unsweetened peanut butter
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro
Zest of 1 lime

In a large soup pot, saute the onion, bell peppers and garlic until the onions start to brown. Add the tomatoes with juice, mushroom broth, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Simmer, uncovered, over low heat for 40 minutes. Stir in the peanut butter and mix until soup is creamy. Add the coconut milk, ginger, cilantro, and lime zest, and stir until combined. Heat to a simmer and serve.

Tropical Chicken:
Drizzle a baking dish with a small amount of olive oil. Set aside. Preheat oven to 350.
In a medium bowl, beat 2 eggs. Add 2 teaspoons coconut aminos, 1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger, 1 dash of garlic powder, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
In a separate medium bowl, combine 1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut and 1/4 cup macadamia nuts, finely chopped.
Dip 8 chicken cutlets in the egg mixture, then in the coconut mixture, and place in the pan. Pour any remaining egg mixture over the chicken in the dish, and top with any remaining coconut mixture. Drizzle the juice of one fresh lime over the top and bake about 20 minutes, until the coconut starts to brown and the chicken is cooked through.

oh, we jingled all right!

Here's the long overdue update to the Jingle Bell Run!

When I woke up the morning of the run, it wasn't just raining. It was POURING. It was the kind of stereotypical Seattle rain that non-Seattleites think happens all the time (it doesn't), where five minutes outside will leave you looking like you took a shower with your clothes on. Not to mention it was freaking cold and windy. Brrrr!

And yet, it was Jingle Bell day, and I had a team to lead.

Five of my fabulous friends joined team AS Kicker and there was no way I was going to wimp out on them because of some measly rain (and wind). No way, Jose. So I woke up at the crack of dawn, pulled on my red and green striped socks, red fleece, sequined Santa hat, and snowflake gloves. I tied jingle bells to my sneakers, and I headed out for one wet run.

I so wasn't kidding about the socks...

I gathered my team, and we headed out into the elements. There were people running in garbage bag ponchos, ski outfits, elf costumes, and every red/green combo imaginable. I even saw a group of girls dressed up with glowing snowflakes on their backs. Talk about feeling the Christmas spirit!

If you look really carefully, you can see the blue glow of snowflake girl.

Despite the rain, my wonderful friends and I all successfully completed the 5k and also managed to raise almost 500 bucks! (And then we promptly headed indoors for hot coffee and brunch.) All together, team AS Kicker raised $460 for arthritis research.

I am so grateful to be surrounded by amazing friends and family who have supported me in my efforts to combat AS. 

Thanks to all of you for reading my blog, for your kind words of encouragement, and for your support!

Happy (belated) holidays from team AS Kicker! :)

breathe

December was a frenzied month of stress and overindulgence. My job was crazy, I was behind schedule in prepping for the holidays, and though I had many fun bouts of making merry and felt very festive, I also kind of felt like a chicken running around with my head cut off.

Between the hustle and bustle and twinkle lights and silver bells, I lost focus. Stealthily, starch slowly but steadily crept back into my life.

It started with egg nog. We bought the good kind, in the glass bottles from the fancy grocery store nearby. It was thick and delicious. I was only going to drink one glass, I swear...

Then there was a Christmas luncheon/reunion with old friends (one made a delicious soup with beans and corn and I felt bad not eating it). We also drank mimosas, naturally.

Then there were cookie exchanges, Christmas cocktails with friends (i.e. more egg nog, but this time in martini form), family dinners, gingerbread house building with my college friends, and looking at Christmas lights with Bailey's in my coffee (it's a Christmas tradition, after all). And who can resist the Starbucks gingerbread lattes? They come in red cups, for Pete's sake!

Christmas left me feeling like I was spinning in a sugary haze. And not in a good way.

I woke up the day after Christmas with renewed conviction. I will get back on my diet! I will go to the gym and do a four hour workout! I should sign up for hot yoga! My jeans fit  a bit tighter and this is unacceptable! I will fix this!

I signed into blogger yesterday to write a self reproaching blog, stating my renewed enthusiasm for living in a healthful way. But my homepage on blogger shows all of the blogs I'm signed up to read, and one in particular caught my eye: breathe.

I've been reading Gluten Free Girl and the Chef since I was first diagnosed with AS and investigating the gluten free lifestyle. If any of my blogs could capture even a glimmer of Shauna's wisdom and grace, I would be so grateful.

Breathe, Shauna's latest blog, reminded me to slow down. In all of my rushing around and merrymaking I had forgotten to embrace what is really special about the holidays: love. Instead of running around to buy gifts and staying up late to finish baking cookies, I should have made more phone calls to family, or spent more quality time with friends. Rather than succumbing to holiday gluttony, I should have remembered that I also need to love myself, and feed my body what it needs to thrive.

In the midst of the December crazies I did find the time to read through the new book Women, Food, and God. There will be plenty more blogs about this book, I'm sure, as it is chock full of insight and tips to ending compulsive eating once and for all. I read through it too quickly and am now taking the time to go back through and really digest it. There are so many great ideas, and I learned I need to slow down and pay attention. I need to listen to my hunger and satiety cues, and love my body through food.

The first step is just to breathe. When I notice I want to eat something, I need to pause for a moment. I am trying to ask myself "Why do you want to eat that? Are you hungry? Bored? Stressed? Does it just sound good?"

And then, when I do eat it, I am trying to really pay attention then as well. What is the texture? What favors do I notice? How does it feel in my mouth? How does my body respond? Can I tell when I've had enough?

It's the end of December, and the end of another year. It's the time for reflection and looking ahead. But before I spend too much time focusing on new goals for 2011 and get sucked back into a stress vortex, I'm going to allow myself a few more minutes to breathe and really appreciate all of the great things that 2010 brought.

Happy holidays, everyone!