Nell Stephenson's Blog, page 85

Theme Nights

I love cooking.

I love teaching people how to cook Paleo style and helping clients make the transition from being afraid to try their hand at preparing anything more difficult than a cup of tea to becoming a chef in their own right.

Often, those who are relatively new to cooking can find themselves getting comfortable with some of the basics, but then feel as though they’re getting in a rut.  Learning how to grill chicken, sautee some greens and prepare a lovely fruit salad to finish off a lovely Paleo meal is a fantastic first step, but if that turns into the same old meal every night, it can become a bit mundane.

One fun remedy to this dilemma is to try a theme night, all the while keeping within the Paleo friendly foods to eat.   You choose the theme; it might be a regional type of cuisine or a style of eating, such as a ten course tasting menu.

Last week, after listening to Buena Vista, I decided on a lark to do a Cuban theme night and prepared my Paleoista version of Vaca Frita (using a paleo-ized recipe with grass fed chuck, rather than the traditional flank), Coconut Baked Yams (weekend dinners at the Stephensons always tend to have the yam component in some capacity to prepare for our training!) and of course, greens- I chose collards.   A little bit of appropriate music was all we needed to complete the theme.

It’s fun, easy and a great way to continue to make time spent in the kitchen something you enjoy, which is key to making sure it becomes something you do regularly, rather than approaching it as a chore you’ve got to complete begrudgingly.

What’s your next theme going to be? 

Haut Paleo

Is it possible?

Indeed it is.   

Last night, my husband and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary.  This year, we opted to stay in town and dine at one of our favorite special occasion restaurants, Melisse, in Santa Monica.

For anyone who hasn’t been, it’s a must-do!   

But wait, you might be thinking, how can a fine dining, French Haut Cuisine establishment work if you’re Paleo?  

In this instance, it’s certainly far more important to call ahead to ask that the chef can accommodate gluten free, soy free and so on, so as to find the delicate balance between being able to eat everything without worry and also being respectful of the chef’s creation.

We have dined at Melisse before and have always had an amazing experience, but last night, for the first time, we had the opportunity to meet the chef, Josiah Citrin and chat with him at length about his dedication to sourcing only 100% grass fed, local beef, to understanding different types of eating approaches and yes, even a little talk of Paleo living.

There is a ten course tasting menu option, however, again, with the intention of not being overly disruptive to the kitchen, choosing the four course selection was easier as I was able to choose the dishes that simply did not contain any of the ingredients I don’t eat.

From the amuse bouche to the scallop sashimi, the seared tuna course and all the way through our table side prepared, dry aged, grass fed cote de boeuf, to the fresh berries with house made coconut sorbet to finish, it was, yet again, another dining experience to die for.

Paleo works everywhere; there’s no need to feel you’ve good to choose between a plain, boring and safe meal or a fine dining experience.  You can have both simultaneously!

Don’t Worry, You Can Still Eat Donuts… Huh?

Don’t worry; even if you’ve f0und out you have Celiac Disease, Dunkin Donuts has come to the rescue by offering gluten free donuts. 

An article on celiac.com , a site which is a resource for ‘gluten-free and celiac disease since 1995′ shares the ground-breaking news which, according to their stats, will appeal to the ‘one in three Americans who want to reduce gluten in their diets’.

A step in the right direction?  Maybe… but if you’ve been diagnosed with Celiac disease, or if you avoid gluten because you’re Paleo and choose to eat foods that are fresh, nutritious and not inflammatory, it’s still not a great idea to eat donuts.  Period.  

There’s just nothing remotely redeeming about them.   Yeast, white sugar, butter or shortening, flour, milk and salt…all white, all refined, all inflammatory and acid forming, simply not a good idea, even the gluten free ones which would have all of the above less the flour.

We’ve got to revisit the entire way we look at what we put in our mouths, and how we deal with rewarding ourselves for achievements, with coping with loss or depression and for keeping ourselves fueled as a day to day goal.   

For many, food ends up being the go-to for all of the above, and if it were as simple as telling one’s self that ‘they’ll never eat sugar again’ or ‘from now on, they’ll only eat completely healthy foods’ it’s doubtful we’d have the obesity epidemic and rates of illness we are seeing these days.

It takes a multi faceted approach to address these issues and develop strategies to overcome them, and I’m certainly not implying it’s going to be as easy as pie.

However, I am suggesting that trying to fool ourselves into thinking gluten free versions of junk are not actually still junk is not going to help.

We’ve all got to take a good hard look at what we’re eating, and why, and how to make whatever changes might be called for if anything in our health is less than optimal.

Donuts, even the gluten free ones, are not part of the solution!

Canned Food and Paleo- Is There a Match?

There can be… but the caveat is that it should be for those ‘in a pinch’ occasions.

Please don’t go stocking your pantry with canned tomato paste, coconut milk and chicken broth.

All place a far second to True Paleo foods (fresh tomato, fresh coconut an homemade pastured chicken broth) rendering a much cleaner and far less processed product.

So when do the ‘in a pinch’ times come into play?   Well, when you’re in a pinch!  Any situation where you have to decide between two or more not very good options, sometimes the canned choice is the ‘least worse’ of the lot.

For example- you’re in the middle of nowhere and have been gone far longer than you thought you’d be.  You come across a hole-in-the-wall grocer and the best protein option you can find is a can of tuna.   Not great to eat regularly, but if the only other choice is Oscar Mayer Bologna, the tuna is definitely less offensive.

In the big scheme of things, eating a can of tuna now and then is not going to put you at risk of Mercury poisoning, nor will the sodium content in a single serving cause your blood pressure to skyrocket.

Relying on canned items, though, as a day to day part of your diet is not what Paleo is all about.  I continue to be more surprised and bothered by how many “Paleo” recipes suggest using canned tomato paste (high in sodium and added white sugar), canned coconut milk (often contains the stabilizer guar gum, derived from a bean and very high in anti nutrients)…even some that are using bottled soy sauce (huh?), but claim that since it’s just a little, it’s not a big deal.

Well, it may be that some who eat a little bit of soy sauce don’t feel sick right away, but that doesn’t make it Paleo!

Right, now back to the topic…

Take home message- if you have no better options, eating something out of a can on occasion can  be Paleo OK, as long as what’s inside is Paleo in the first place!

 

Nature’s Noodle- Spaghetti Squash

Don’t worry- I’m not about to break my track record of keeping Paleo Paleo and suggest you make a ‘slightly-less awful, pseudo-paleo version of pasta’ by using nut flours and a grass-fed butter sauce.

Rather, I’m going to rave about spaghetti squash, nature’s noodle!

Requiring little more than some water and a heat source to prepare, this easy-to-eat squash makes the perfectly Paleo substitute for pasta.

For those of you still in the process of weaning off of the calorie counting background, you’ll be happy to know that a cup contains a mere 40 calories.    Rich in vitamin A, Bs, C and K as well as manganese, potassium, magnesium, copper, iron, phosphorus, selenium and zinc, it’s a nutritional superhero compared to a cup of ‘real’ pasta, which is chock-full of anti nutrients and gluten, and not useful for much other than being a ‘filler’ in a meal.

Preheat the oven to 450.
Halve the squash, scrape seeds out with a fork and place cut side down in glass or ceramic baking dish.
Cook 30 -4o minutes or until skin is easily pierced with a fork.
Remove from oven, remove from water and allow to cool, cut side up.
Scrape squash out with fork and eat!

Toss with extra virgin olive oil,  chopped basil and some ground black pepper and serve with some grilled wild salmon and green salad, or top with a dollop of coconut oil, shaved ginger and some slow roasted pastured chicken with a side of sauted bok choy.

Simple, versatile and delish!

Please, Don’t Pacify

Yesterday, I flipped through a junk magazine in the nail salon and learned all about how I could ‘follow a cookie diet’ and lose ten pounds in week.  

Or, I could opt to do a ‘cleanse’ in order to ‘jumpstart my metabolism’ which would also render a solid, double digit reduction in weight in a very short period of time.

Interestingly, neither approach mentioned that the amount of weight one loses, might possibly have something to do with how overweight they are.    Nor did it include any hint of moving one’s body, or getting enough rest.

We, as a society, as humans, want to believe that things that we know are not good for us actually are.

If you’ve ever had to break a habit, say, for example, smoking, we can refer to this as an example.    Before you decided you’d reached the last straw and did actually quit, you probably put it off for a while and didn’t want to look at how harmful it really was.   Maybe you avoided reading the latest studies about how X years of smoking increases your risk by X-fold for X diseases.  If you’d ever come across an article that seemed to lessen the detrimental effects, you may likely have  latched on to it, using it as rationale to keep on smoking, trying to make  yourself believe it wasn’t all that bad.

It’s absolutely the same when it comes to what we eat and what we chose to believe are healthy options.

People can be overweight for a multitude of reasons.  While that’s far from a new piece of information, we need to look at the fact that the ‘diet’ industry is a multi-billion dollar one which thrives in its customer’s failure.  A repeat customer is one who has tried a diet, bought whatever pills, potions or gimmicky exercise devices, fails and then does so again.   It is in their best interest to keep their consumers from succeeding because that would mean they would not return for more purchases.

Similarly, big food companies also want us to think that we can ‘go ahead and have that one cookie’ because what harm could one cookie do?

We want to believe it’s true.

And for some, it is just a matter of eating one cookie now and then and forgetting about it.

But for most, it’s never just one cookie.  I’ve written about sugar addiction and my position that it is absolutely a drug addiction, and that it’s in mega food companies’ best interests to keep enough sugar in many or all of their products in order to keep their customers coming back for more.

So, on top of that, if they can get big, recognizable brand-name diets, magazines, grocery stores and media in general to come on board and agree and send a message to everyone who’s trying so desperately to get healthy not only that ‘everything in moderation is a great idea’ but that one can actually eat cookies to lose weight, everyone benefits!  Yeah!  

Everyone, that is, except for the person who remains in a continual struggle to lose weight, vascilating between what they consider ‘being good’ and eating a too low calorie, bland diet which is not sustainable, to falling prey for the confusing messages coming not only from media, but from their very own doctor and opting to follow something such as the cookie diet, to becoming frustrated that they actually did not lose weight on the cookie diet, to saying ‘the heck with it’ and veering so far off track for days/weeks/months that they end up even heavier, more unhappy and that much further away from a healthy, lean body weight.

We do have to accept responsibility, too.  It’s not just on the big companies to come correct; they are, after all, for profit business and what they are selling is fair game in the US.

Once again, education is where it’s got to start.

And we don’t need a degree in science to assess that eating a cookie diet is the ticket to weight loss.

Paleo is, though.

Call it Paleo or don’t, but if your diet is 40 – 50% fresh veggies, and the remainder is equally divided between wild proteins and natural fats, you’re going to be much closer to getting to your ideal weight far more quickly that if you go the cookie route.

Let your common sense lead you; not your wish to be pacified…

Is Paleo a Fad?

Real, True Paleo isn’t.

What is, however, very likely a fad, is the growing trend of more and more companies using the word at leisure to describe foods (in some cases, more along the lines of food by-products) that may have once been kind of Paleo but are now so far outside the scope of being a balanced meal with a focused on fresh veggies, wild proteins and natural fat that calling them Paleo is really stretching it, to say the least.

No one ones the word ‘Paleo’ so any company can realistically use the word without risking anything.

I have seen protein powders containing pea and rice protein called Paleo, bread called Paleo, wraps called Paleo, muffins, cakes and cookies called Paleo and the list goes on and and on.  I was just referred to a website with ‘paleo recipes’ using canned tomato paste, butter, and white sugar!  Not kidding.

Is eating these foods once in a while a big deal?  Probably not if we’re talking about a few times per year on a birthday or anniversary, but the issue is that far too many people have the misconception that replacing the standard American diet foods with these foods means they’re suddenly following the Paleo diet.

They’re not.

One of the main focal points of my brand is to continue to demonstrate what real Paleo is and for some, that may mean coming across as being a purist, perfectionist or being dogmatic.   So be it.   That’s not my intention.

Nor is it my intention to force people to go Paleo against their will or argue about it with anyone feeling skeptical about it.

There are many, many ways that one might approach eating, ranging from very healthy to very unhealthy.  

Yes, adopting even some of the principles of Paleo is a step in the right direction even if it means someone is not completely Paleo.  It’s not all or nothing and taking it in stages can sometimes be the best way to go about it.

However, replacing your IHOP Grand Slam Breakfast with ‘Paleo’ banana pancakes and bacon, your regular whole wheat bread with ‘Paleo bread’ and eating a packaged ‘Paleo muffin’ as part of your daily regime, eating dairy and continuing to barely eat any veggies or wild protein is simply just not the Paleo diet.

Please, call it something else!  

It’s just not fair to call the above example Paleo as too many people who would otherwise benefit tremendously from eating a diet comprised largely of fresh, local veggies balanced with healthy fats and proteins and lacking in fillers or additives of any kind (ie True Paleo) are never even given the chance to accurately do so.

‘Replacing’ rather than rethinking still leaves us with an inflammatory type eating regime which will not help much with weight loss, skin conditions, auto immune symptoms or many of the other health issues that real Paleo can alleviate or even cure.

Again- sure, have those things a few times per year but not as part and parcel of the daily plate.   

Or do it, but don’t say it’s Paleo!

Introducing Paleo- Make It Fun

Wondering how to ‘break the news’ to your friends and family that you’re now Paleo and loving every second of it?

It’s natural to feel uncomfortable the first few times you dine out with friends, or host a dinner party, especially when the group of people you spend time with spends time in the oh-so-social activity of eating.

Eating is, after, far more than just ‘fueling the body’; if it weren’t, I doubt anyone would eat for any other reason that being hungry!

So does that mean you can no longer do a girls’ night over wine, cheese and baguettes, or meet the guys at the local bar for beer & hot wings?

Not exactly; you just need to rethink the approach, not ditch your friends and label them as ‘enablers’!

One of the easiest ways to introduce them to your new style of eating is to host a cooking party at your house.  Make it fun and geared toward all the delicious foods you can eat, rather than turning into a lecture touting the good of Paleo and scolding your friends who came over with a bagel and latte in hand.

Being inviting, not intimidating or off putting about it is the way to draw interest rather than repel!

Chances are, some friends will have some questions about the science behind it and in that case, explain away to your heart’s content.  

Just keep it light and fun, above and beyond anything else, and let those who are particularly interested in learning about your ‘secret’ that allowed you to lose weight/clear up your skin/have more energy etc., ask when they’re ready to do so!

To make it even easier, you can use my Hour in the Kitchen as per my book, Paleoista, as a guideline and show your guests how it’s not only delicious and simple, it’s also efficient to make a lot of healthy, clean Paleo food in a short period of time.

PS: no problem with making this occasion one of those suited for the special glass of wine!

The Skinny on the Skin

I have no qualms admitting it- one of my favorite parts of a meal featured pan-seared or grilled or oven roasted wild salmon or black cod is the skin.

So much so, that it makes me cringe when I stop by the fish monger’s counter at my local market and see all the fillets have been pre-skinned.

Far too many people are still frightened of (g00d) fat and certainly would never deign to actually, purposely eat the skin.

But they’re missing out!

Not only is the taste fantastic, it’s actually part of the whole concept of eating the whole animal.   

Furthermore, the skin does not actually have the most fat; the gray layer is the fattiest part of salmon, and the skin contains relatively little by comparison.

And, for the record, wild salmon, and it’s skin, has about 50% of the fat of farmed salmon, the latter of which may be feeding on a plethora of unnatural food items and a higher percentage of which is saturated, and contains more pro-inflammatory omega-6 than anti-inflammatory omega-3s.  Not too different from stock yard beef compared to 100% grass fed.

So, go wild and eat that whole piece of salmon, or black cod, or whatever is local to you.   No more scraping the skin off to the side of your plate to discard as if it were nothing more than a garnish for presentation.   It’s the tastiest part!

 

Consumer Reports’ Ideas of Healthy Food Choices for College Students Is Way Off

Consumer Reports, perhaps you should stick to recommendations on household products and cars, and not venture into the food category if the recent piece on tips to keep college students healthy is a representation of what you’re going to suggest.

A piece published online yesterday, entitled ‘Healthy Foods for College Students to Eat‘ was so far off, I wondered if it was a farce; but it was not.  Desperate, I scanned the article, looking for fine print to disclose that this was really part of an ad for Kellogg’s or Kraft…but there was none.

The exhaustive list included:

Frozen waffles
Cereal
Snack bars
Greek yogurt
Frozen pizza
Frozen entrees
Beef jerky

Not a mention of a single veggie or even fruit anywhere to be seen.  No fresh protein (I’d hardly count commercially available jerky as a good option).  Not even a mention of drinking water?

What on earth?

So if we pretend these things are good, healthy options, I suppose we can also pretend that the ‘freshman fifteen’ phenomenon, which is now more likely the ‘freshman thirty’ isn’t happening?  Just hop on the scale and laugh it off, assuming it needs to be calibrated because it’s off and be on our merry, frozen-pizza eating way?

Speechless.