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Tuesday 8 May 2012

Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy Eating Intentionally: Respect Your Fullness

Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy Eating Intentionally: Respect Your Fullness

Link to Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy

Eating Intentionally: Respect Your Fullness

Posted: 07 May 2012 07:04 PM PDT

my favorite food

You may or may not have noticed, but I derailed a little bit in April. I had some other stuff going on (namely, finishing up my e-book that is now being edited and formatted), so I took a little blogging break, and in the process, totally neglected my Eating Intentionally series.

But I’m back now. So here we go.

I’m just going to totally skip principle #4 (Challenge the Food Police) because it kind of echoes a lot of the aspects of principle #3 (Make Peace with Food), and I feel like continuing in that vein will only result in beating a dead horse.

So onward and forward to Principle #5, which is: Respect Your Fullness. Ah, now, here we get to the good stuff. 

I have read in many different places about how the French people (any actual French people out there who can attest to the accuracy of this analysis, please feel free to pipe up!) eat foods that we would often consider “bad for you” or “fattening”, but they’re typically quite skinny, and fairly healthy as a society. Many people speculate that one reason is because the French eat very slowly, enjoying their food; and they rarely eat seconds.

I think this is where we as Americans struggle the most. Besides the obvious fact that the average American eats a lot of junk, one big cause of our obesity issues is that we simply eat too much. Food looks appetizing, so we indulge. And we take another helping, because wow, that was some good stuff! We go to buffets and have to sample every single option offered.

In short, we are trapped in our abundance. Even people on limited budgets, like myself, have a wide array of enticing desirable food options, and our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.

So the secret is to gain a little discipline: learn to stop eating when the stomach is full. I have seriously been concentrating on this recently. So far, I haven’t seen an improvement on the scale yet, but I have definitely learned that I don’t need to eat as much as I’m accustomed to eating.

How does this work practically? Here are a few tips:

  1. Start with small servings. Chances are, if you put it on your plate, you will eat it. This is why the oft-repeated advice to use a smaller plate is so effective.
  2. Eat slowly. Use all the tricks: put your fork down between bites, take a sip between bites, converse with your fellow diners, etc. (Note: this is where it comes in really hand to have mastered the principle of Honoring Your Hunger. If you are starving when you eat, it will be difficult to eat slowly, and you will inevitably end up over-eating.)
  3. Pay attention to the taste and texture of the food as you eat (more on this in principle #6).
  4. After eating a portion of your food, ask yourself, “Am I starting to feel full? Am I still hungry?”
  5. When you’re finished your meal, note how you feel: stuffed? comfortable? satiated? Learn to identify the feeling of satiated – no longer hungry, but not stuffed or “full” either.

For more information, please read Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resche.

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SRC: Orange Chocolate Macaroons

Posted: 07 May 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Wow,Secret Recipe Club time came around fast this month! It totally caught me by surprise near the end of my OAMS cycle, and due to poor planning on my part, I happened to be completely out of flour and oats. That pretty much eliminated any baking, and I didn’t have time to try any main dish recipes. Thankfully, Cupcake Muffin, my assigned blog, came to my rescue with a simple recipe that not only requires minimal ingredients (that I happened to have on hand, miracle of miracles) but that also tastes amazingly delicious. Even better? I’m the only one in the house that can eat them, so they are all mine. Muahahahahahahah! There are some perks to being the only person in the house without any dietary issues.

As for next month: I will not run out of wheat flour and I will finish my Secret Recipe Club long before it’s due. I’m trusting you all to keep me accountable, OK?

Secret Recipe Club

Now back to my assigned blog: Cupcake Muffin is written by Sara, a grad student at Berkeley who cooks up some pretty amazing stuff. From creative ways to serve vegetables (Carrot Fennel Salad, for example), to delicious new twists on old dinner-time favorites (try the Chicken Tinga Tacos), to decadent desserts (how about some Grapefruit Mint Tarragon Chocolate Tart?), she’s got you covered! After all, she’s been blogging since 2007, so there’s a lot of great content to be discovered.

For reasons already mentioned, I chose to make her Orange Chocolate Chip Macaroons, which turned out to be quite serendipitous. Orange and chocolate is a combination I love , and I always enjoy trying new recipes to utilize it. These macaroons were no exception! Delicious, in a word. You definitely won’t be able to eat just one.

I made only a portion of the recipe, since, as I mentioned, I’m the only one in the house who can eat these. So here’s my small batch version, which doesn’t differ much from Sara’s original recipe.


Orange Chocolate Macaroons

Ingredients

  • 5 oz dried coconut
  • 1 tsp orange zest
  • 1/4 unrefined sugar
  • 1/4 cup chocolate chips
  • 1 egg white

Instructions

  1. Place the coconut and orange zest in a bowl, and smoosh together with your fingers until the orange zest is evenly distributed throughout.
  2. Stir in the sugar and chocolate chips until well blended.
  3. Stir in the egg white until the mixture begins to hold together.
  4. Use a tablespoon to scoop out the mixture, making sure to pack it in tight. Turn upside down onto a cookie sheet or stone lined with parchment paper.
  5. Bake at 325F for 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned.

Number of servings (yield): 12

I would recommend using Let’s Do Organic  or Tropical Traditions  dried coconut for this recipe, as most other versions have lots of sugar and other unnecessary ingredients in them. If you use the right kind of coconut, these will actually be some pretty healthy cookies!

These cookies were so QUICK to make – they do take a long time to bake up (25 minutes) but the prep time was minimal, 10- minutes or less.

Deliciously EASY, too. For some reason I always thought macaroons were hard, but not so!

This recipe uses minimal ingredients (especially in a small batch, which is great if you don’t need a large quantity), so it’s a great CHEAP treat.

If you use the right kind of coconut, and chocolate chips with real ingredients, these cookies can be relatively HEALTHY. They still have sugar, so they’re not a health food, but they’re a healthier option for snack than most cookies (especially store-bought ones!).

Intrigued by the Secret Recipe Club concept? Join here!



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Menu Plan Monday: The Kindle Edition

Posted: 07 May 2012 04:25 AM PDT

menu plan mondayI got a Kindle for my birthday, and now I am so excited to be able to have easy access to all the e-books that were formally hidden in random files on my computer! In particular, I can’t wait to use all the e-cookbooks I have collected but rarely use: the Kindle will make it so much easier to access all those recipes. So you will see quite a few of those recipes sprinkled throughout this menu. And if you haven’t yet, enter my giveaway for Real Food Real Easy and get one of my favorite e-cookbooks!

Breakfasts

Lunches

  • Leftovers
  • PB&J (and Sunbutter & J!)
  • Baked Beans (from Real Food, Real Easy)
  • Sweet Potato Pancakes

Dinners

Snacks

  • Nuts, Raisins, Cranberries
  • Popcorn
  • Orange Chocolate Macaroons
  • Whole Wheat Sweet Potato Gingersnaps

In My Kitchen Today

 

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at 04:06

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