Nell Stephenson's Blog, page 9
December 9, 2020
Shortcut Your Soup Prep with Broth
Shortcut your time in the kitchen by using a properly curated and prepared bone broth.
Add a side of your favorite leafy greens and you’ve got the perfectly balanced meal: heavy on the veggies, a nice dose of good fat and a bit of properly sourced protein to boot. Bon Apetit.
INGREDIENTS
3 pounds grass fed and finished chuck roast
2 Tablespoons duck fat
Himalayan Salt
4 large parsnips, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
750 mL organic sulfite-free red wine, such as chianti
2 cups grass fed and finished beef bone broth
2 bay leaves
1 sprig rosemary
INSTRUCTIONS
Pat roast dry
Cut into 1″ cubes
Heat fat over medium high in dutch oven
Preheat oven to 350
Sprinkle beef with salt
Brown evenly on all four sides, roughly a total of 12 minutes
Remove beef
Add parsnips and carrots and brown, stirring occasionally, until brown
Add wine and broth
Place meat back into oven
Add rosemary and bay leaves
Cover and place in oven 3-4 hours
Remove and let cool briefly before serving
The post Shortcut Your Soup Prep with Broth first appeared on Paleoista.
November 23, 2020
Top Ten Ways to Incorporate Bone Broths into Your Holiday Prep
So, who’s not cooking this week?
With many celebrations being not exactly what we’re used to given the pandemic, many are staying home and having smaller celebratory dinners with immediate family only, so odds are strong that even those who may not have tested their culinary holiday skills before will be doing so this year.
Below are ten easy ways to incorporate bone broth into your countdown to Thanksgiving:
DURING PREP
Keep on top of your own nourishment during your prep the days before: simply heat, add a tablespoon of grass fed butter and blend, then top with a squeeze of Meyer lemon with chicken or lime and chili flakes for the beef shiitake. (I get so busy, there’s no time to stop and eat!)
Use it cold as a medium for a brine; add sage, thyme, clove and lemon with natural apple cider
Have it on hand to remedy too-dry stuffing
Whip it into your mashed potatoes for a creamier texture
DAY OF
Simmer it in a pan on the stove top instead of water as a tasty and simple way to prepare broccoli, cauliflower or asparagus side dishes
Use it to baste your turkey to add a flavor boost
Create a simple starter for your holiday meal by pouring a soupçon into a small bowl or ramekin and garnishing with rosemary
Add it to any pan drippings as turkey rests to make a more flavorful, thicker gravy
DAY AFTER
Use it as a starter for a leftover turkey soup
Incorporate it as a base to blend with yams remaining from your feast to create a lovely soup puree, garnished with sage
Granted, the holidays are going to be different this year, but that’s no reason to not have them. It just means you’ll have more foods to enjoy in the days after the meal!
The post Top Ten Ways to Incorporate Bone Broths into Your Holiday Prep first appeared on Paleoista.
November 4, 2020
Braising: Easier Than You Might Think!
When you see a photo of a delish recipe such as the one shown above, braised short ribs with cauliflower mash, what comes to mind?
Something that looks amazing but too complicated to cook?
Or a dish that you just don’t have time to prepare?
Perhaps too rich and sinful to actually be good for you?
I’m happy to share than all of the above are false.
Even with the busiest of schedules, and not a lot of kitchen experience, if we stick to a few basic principles, we can bank on making meals that are healthy, cost + time efficient and that the entire family with relish with gusto!
STEP ONE: Source everything as locally + mindfully as you can. Check out what grass-fed meats and organic produce are available to you from farms or ranches that are as close as possible. Why? Closer equates less cost due to transportation (and less cost to the planet due to decreased carbon footprint), a higher degree of freshness and as a result, a better flavor, less in need of heavy sauces to jazz up flavor.
STEP TWO: Worry less about following recipes to the tee and focus more on creative. One of my favorite things to share with clients and blog readers is that in cooking, we have so much more wiggle room than in baking and as such, it’s really hard to make a mistake that can’t be fixed (with the exception of burning or over-salting). Don’t get me wrong; I love recipes and I’m certainly not suggesting not to use them, but rather, to be flexible with them. If the recipe calls for carrots but you only have parsnips, go for it! Or maybe you’d prefer not to use wine in a stew; use broth instead. You get the idea. Once you start to give yourself some leeway in the kitchen, the experience begins to get a lot more enjoyable.
STEP THREE: Double or triple what you’re making to create more servings which can then be dolled out as is, or recreated into new dishes. A parent in a family of four, for example, might chose to make a stew that yields 8-12 servings, so that spouse + kids can both have plenty for at least a couple of days.
STEP FOUR: Incorporate your veggies and your proteins into one dish; this is easy as we lead into winter, and then have extra veggies on hand to serve the main dish on top of. A chicken stew stocked up with carrots, celery, mushrooms and cabbage and be served on top of a puree of cauliflower or a bed of leafy greens, both of which are easy and quick to prepare.
STEP FIVE: Most important of all, make it a team effort whenever possible. Clients from far and wide, with all different goals do have some things in common, once of which is the more the whole family eats together (and possibly even shops and preps together), the easier it is to all be on the same page with making healthy, tasty eating the top priority.
Say goodbye to feeling like you’ve got to make a separate dinner for each member in your family.
Click here for my easy to follow recipe for Braised Short Ribs. In a word, this dish is amazing!
The post Braising: Easier Than You Might Think! first appeared on Paleoista.
September 28, 2020
Strategic Eating / Earning Your Carbs
I saw this phrase the other day and it occurred to me how succinctly this positions the idea of what to eat when.
Let’s start with a caveat: this is not a post about planning to eat a hot fudge sundae after ‘earning’ it by doing two back to back Peloton sessions.
Rather, by simply learning about how the three macronutrients that make up our food work (protein, fat and carbs), we can position what to eat and when based on how active we will be.
Let’s start with a basic reality check:
More than two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese (1).
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that carbohydrates make up 45 to 65 percent of your total daily calories (2).
Further, the types of carbohydrates recommended by the USDA are not remotely separated by how healthy or not they may be; we are told to ‘make half our plate fruits and veggies’ and to ‘make one quarter of our plates whole grains’ (only 1/2 of which should be whole grains)… and to move to fat free milk (3).
No wonder there’s so much confusion about what to eat.
If we move instead to a more common sense model, we might consider a plate which is made up of:
half to three quarters fresh, local, in season, organic veggies, leafy greens preferably
a palm sized about of mindfully sourced, local protein, such as wild local fish (remember, salmon cannot be a daily go-to for most of us) or grass fed and finished beef or a couple of soft boiled pasture raised eggs
plenty of natural fat, such as grass fed butter, olive oil, avocado or properly sourced animal fats such as grass fed tallow or pasture raised lard
fruit in moderation, with a focus on high fiber berries
This is a basic template of eating I utilize as a foundation of customizing an eating plan when working in my nutrition practice with clients.
For most, omitting for a short period of time those foods which are likely causing inflammation does wonders for the person’s ability to learn how specific foods + groups make them feel. In addition, doing the self exploration by removing and then possibly testing certain choices results in a feeling of empowerment through education. When we determine by using our own body’s responses as our gauge which foods work and which do not, we then have the experience and eduction to make sound decisions, which tends to resonate far more deeply compared to being handed a list of foods to avoid because ‘they’re not paleo’ or because a doctor has developed their own protocol based on a plethora of supplements they pedal to treat a specific health condition.
We then build upon that to determine when, if at all, to include:
Intermittent fasting. This is something that can be incredibly beneficial when done properly and wreak havoc on a body when not planned and executed properly or when practiced by those with specific health concerns.
Nuts, seeds, nightshade plants and egg whites, all of which can be contraindicated for those dealing with autoimmune issues.
Strategic carbohydrate. Adding in some baked yams or Japanese sweet potato to dinner the night before a long hike or bike ride makes perfect sense. Snaking on a ripe banana while sitting at your laptop and trying to focus does not.
Here’s where the phrase earning your carbs comes in; a very straightforward way of determining whether or not you need some starchy carbs with your meal.
Are you going to be moving your body? If so, for how long and at what intensity? For example, if you’re a healthy human being and you’re planning on a light 30 minute run, you can likely do this in a fasted state, and it will likely be beneficial to you.
On the other hand, if you’re planing on a century ride and you’ve never done a workout in your life without eating first you’re better of not making that your first foray into fasted exercise.
If we get familiar with balancing our meals based on the simple description above, we can begin to shift away from relying on the label of a package telling us that its contents are good for us just because it’s tagged as vegan or paleo or keto or gluten free.
And if 90% or more consists of all of the above, you then have significantly decreased the net inflammatory load on your body, subsequently allowing for a bit of wiggle room for that piece of premium dark chocolate (I love the real deal: 100%), that beautiful mezcal or whatever your thing might be.
Anything in a package is going to be more processed and less nutrient dense than something picked locally from a farm.
Granted, many of us don’t exactly go outside and pick kale from the garden and hop over to the neighbors farm for some freshly laid eggs.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t improve our level of awareness about where our food is coming from and how healthy and fresh it truly is by the time it reaches our plates.
The more those of us who are fortunate to have access to local, fresh, real foods, especially from farmer’s markets, continue to support our communities, the less demand there will be for the cheap (in price and quality) food byproducts that for far too many families are the sole option.
17.6 Million Americans still lack access to healthy food (4).
It’s up to each of us to first teach ourselves, then our families and those around us.
Then, to act on what we learn and actually start doing the work vis a vis supporting farmer’s markets, CSAs and just not buying junk, quite frankly.
How does this all circle back to carbs and what to eat and when?
It’s simple – what ties us all together is that we’re all in human bodies and we all have similar basic needs in terms of what foods to eat.
There are nuanced as well as great discrepancies from one body to another based on ancestry, and lifestyle choices, but suffice it to say that most of us will thrive with more greens, more good fat, less (or ideally no) inflammation causing agents in our diets, and a bit more action in the exercise department.
Toss out the idea of labeling, both for food as well as for diets or those who choose to eat a certain way and let’s just welcome back eating the way our not too distant relatives ate.
(We’re talking grandma and grandpa, or great-grandparents at best… we don’t have to go all the way back to Paleo to find examples of why eating real food is best).
https://www.healthline.com/health/obe...
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-li...
https://www.choosemyplate.gov/WhatIsM...
https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/ame...
The post Strategic Eating / Earning Your Carbs first appeared on Paleoista.
August 26, 2020
Why Eating Salmon Year Round Doesn’t Work
Boneless, skinless chicken breast was a go-to protein option for me, for years.
So were egg whites.
And so, too, was salmon.
I can’t even remember back to what my initial foray into the confusing arena of food labeling was, it’s been so long, but it started with the idea that chicken being labeled as free-range was all I needed to be aware of.
In actuality, a “producer” as they’re referred to by the USDA, must simply “demonstrate to the agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.” (1)
The rest of the bird’s entire life could still be spent in a cage stacked to the ceiling in a dark barn.
Once a consumer has an eye opening experience such as this was for me, we then have reason, and the opportunity to learn more about where our food is really coming from and how many steps it may have taken to get from where it grew, was raised or where it swam to our dinner table.
As such, when we begin to look at another go-to option for what many of us view as a healthy, good for you protein option, salmon, we’d best set ourselves up for what will inevitability be an invaluable learning experience.
First things first: salmon is not a fish that is naturally available on a year-round basis in all parts of the world.
Being that I’m in Los Angeles, and am writing from the standpoint of what is local and sustainable here, we’ll drop a pin in Southern California and use it as our starting point.
When is wild salmon in season?
Great question.
Not very often; in fact, Wild Atlantic Salmon were “basically fished to the brink of extinction,” so the seafood industry turned to farm-raising them (2).
We hear about farmed fish, and it’s easy to chose not to listen.
I recall many an occasion when being inside several different grocery stores and overhearing a conversation between a customer and clerk behind the fish counter.
Typically, I’d see a beautiful array of fish, positioned side by side and labeled in small print with the price per pound and in even smaller print, where the fish was from and whether it was wild or not.
The customer would ask why the wild salmon was, for example, $29 / pound while the farmed, which actually sometimes looked more vibrant (thanks to added dyes often found in farmed fish) was less than half that price.
The clerk may or may not have a reasonable and accurate answer and many a time, the customer opted for the lower priced version.
This isn’t to say that I’ve never eaten farmed salmon or that the cost of food isn’t an issue for many.
However, it speaks to a general theme that grossly needs to be addressed, encompassing education about where our food comes from and how it was sourced and separately, the growing economic divide the determines whether or not one even has a choice between either of the two… or any at all.
Farm-raised salmon, and many other fish are everywhere, from your local grocery store to fine restaurants to convenience stores. But that comes with an environmental cost.
So how can we learn what we should and shouldn’t be eating from an environmental perspective?
It’s up to us as consumers to self educate and to be open and willing to roll with the fish options, or any other proteins for that matter, that we can find locally and in season which, by the way, taste better, too.
One great resources is the Marine Stewardship Council https://www.msc.org/home
They recognize and reward efforts to protect oceans and safeguard seafood supplies for the future, and help protect our oceans by choosing fish and seafood products with the blue MSC label.
Another manner to increase your chances of getting mindfully sourced fish, and other proteins, is to frequent your local farmer’s markets. Granted, you’ve still got to do some question asking, but if you’re at the market speaking directly to the guys who caught the fish you’re about to buy that morning from the local bay, you’re in better hands than you’d be at Costco.
In terms of the price conversation, one more thing to keep in mind is to balance it out with portion sizes of both the protein as well as how the meal looks on your plate.
We don’t need nearly as much protein as the average person thinks they do, so if we make a simply shift of eating an 8 oz portion of fish to a 4 oz portion, and instead, increasing the sautéed spinach, kale and collard green mixture two or three-fold, topping it off with a good douse of olive oil, we reduce the overall cost of the meal and subsequently, the cost on the environment.
The reality is that in the US, we are in a country where food is a business, yet so many of the things we are being sold are so highly processed, they’re hardly even food anymore anyway.
These faux foods, making up a large percentage of what the standard American Diet consists of, create the foundation for many of the new health conditions we see so often these days, many of which never even existed a couple of generations ago.
If we do our homework, learn what’s available to us on a local level and begin a movement, even if at first on a small scale, to driving up the demand for this type of eating, it can gain traction.
When enough traction is gained and enough people who do have the means to shop and eat this way, a slow shift away from these very people demanding the highly processed foods can begin, eventually bringing down the prices of food to open up the options for different income levels to begin to be able to have access to real, healthy, unadulterated food as well.
Gross oversimplification, perhaps, but trending in that direction is certainly a part of the move we must create in order to address the current state of health, or lack thereof in our country.
Food is medicine. It can heal.
We just need to create a way to get food to everyone.
https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/food-labeling/meat-and-poultry-labeling-terms/meat-and-poultry-labeling-terms
https://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-fo-sustainable-seafood-michael-cimarusti-20170526-htmlstory.html
August 7, 2020
Blending: The Broth Game Changer
When we think about smoothies, chances are we automatically think of using our blenders to create them.
Similarly, those of us who are on board with the concept of fat coffee, whether following a keto diet or simply because it tastes so good, are also accustomed to using this household appliance day in and day out.
So why is it that for some, the concept of using it for a food (or drink, rather) that we should also be consuming day in and day out hasn’t crossed our minds?
Enter: the blended bone broth.
When we first launched our broths over two years ago, part of our recipe testing in the commercial kitchen involved just that- blending the broths, freshly prepared, prior to packing them in our signature glass containers.
This is what spawned our delicious Bacon Latte flavor, a serving suggestion of our pork + bacon bone broth, in which, after heating, a shot or two of espresso is added and then the whole thing is blended, resulting in a creamy texture, not unlike a latter.
After achieving such great results with this flavor, we began testing it out on all our other flavors, both on their own as well as with added spices.
And then came the ultimate: blending with grass fed ghee and MCT oil.
Not only is the rich, creamy texture incredibly satiating, by consuming the quick-digesting fat found in MCT oil, the body rapidly absorbs and metabolizes it for fuel, while more of the slow-burning longer-chain fats like that found in beef tallow digest more slowly.
The result: a broth that boosts your energy and keeps you going strong for hours.
Mark Hyman, M.D., calls MCT oil “the secret fat that makes you thin” and states that “MCT oil is a super fuel for your cells because it boosts fat burning and increases mental clarity. (1)
From a mouth feel perspective, since our broths are not skimmed to be low fat or fat free, by placing them in the blender, the fats are broken down and evenly distributed so each and every sip is just as enjoyable as the previous.
One word of caution to the wise: since not all blenders have a hot setting, start by pouring just a little broth into your blender the first time you prepare it, use a low setting and hold a towel on top of the lid for good measure.
Cleaning up bone broth splatter all over your kitchen would not exactly be the most enjoyable way to experience your very first blended broth!
July 31, 2020
Savory Almond Banana Bone Broth Smoothie
What comes to mind when you think of a smoothie? Chances are, you’re thinking one or more of the following:
Meal on the go
Healthy for me
Great for a post workout meal
An easy way to do prep food
While all of the above are valid ideas to consider and prepare a smoothie, it’s also just as easy to overlook exactly what the smoothie is made of, even more so if we’re not making it ourselves at home.
Choice of protein powders (how can you decide which is best?), what ‘milk’ to use as the base (and why do we always have to think ‘nuts’?) and how to create a balanced macro nutrient profile in order to not spike your blood sugar and leave you aptly satiated?
Start by changing how you approach your smoothie making.. by choosing to use all real, fresh food.
By using bone broth as your base, you automatically eliminate one of the key issues with so many other liquids you might choose: creating a drink that’s actually very inflammatory.
From soy milk to ordinary dairy (as opposed to raw) and from almond milk with gum stabilizers to coconut milk in plastic containers with additives, it’s a real challenge to find something that is suitable for anyone dealing with inflammation (which is most of us) as well as someone who’s already healthy and wants to keep it that way.
By using bone broth as the base, you’re starting with the most gut-healing option of call.
Then, by adding just a small portion of a higher glycemic fruit, such as a banana, you’ve covered your bases if you’re using this as a post workout option.
The protein from properly sourced, not over-cooked eggs is a must-do in order to allow for this to be a suitable sub for a meal.
Further, by including fat, and increasing it more, if need be, you’re creating a better macronutrient ratio, which will support your focus and energy until your next meal.
Blend it up and go!
July 24, 2020
Cauliflower Rice Versus Real Rice
Cauliflower rice is a thing.
It’s such a thing that now you can buy it already ‘riced’, either in the fresh produce section or frozen, as a time-saving trick to make it that much easier to incorporate it into your paleo or keto regime.
But what if you’re not into Paleo, or Keto, or trying to lose weight?
Is cauliflower rice still the better option?
After all if you were to compare a container of pre-riced cauliflower to a giant bag of dry rice, the former is always going to have a higher price point than the latter.
First things first: from a cost standpoint, if you purchase a whole, organic cauliflower from your local farmer’s market, it’s going to cost far less than a container of riced cauliflower from the health food store (which, by the way, is most likely going to come packed in plastic… another reason to pass this up.)
Next up: yes, cauliflower, being a veggie, is friendly to Paleo, Keto and weight – loss, but its benefits don’t stop there.
Being that all grains (yes, even rice) can cause an inflammatory response in the body due to their phytic acid content (an anti nutrient), which binds to minerals, rendering them unavailable to those who consume them.
In addition, all whole grains and legumes contain not only lectins, but also saponins which adversely affect human gastrointestinal physiology as well as that in animal models.
This leads eventually to increased gut permeability, also known as leaky gut, which is the threshold upon which systemic inflammation occurs (1).
Being that we’re amidst a pandemic and getting, and keeping ourselves healthy should be at the top of our collective priority charts, the last thing we’d want to do now is create inflammation in the body, as it would inherently lower our immunity and resilience.
So.. bring on the cauliflower!
If steamed seems boring to you (as it does to me, check out some of my favorite ways to prep it: whole and roasted in duck fat, or ‘riced’ using my signature chicken lemongrass bone broth!)
July 17, 2020
Chilled Berry Soup, Anyone? It’s in The Paleo Kitchen!
Writing for online publications such as the blog on the Vitacost has been a great way to reach folks who may not have connected with me otherwise.
After all, the Paleo niche can be limiting to say the least.
Rather than focus only on those who truly understand what an authentic approach to ancestral eating is, why not instead, think on a broader scale and appeal to anyone interested in bettering their health?
Given that Vitacost is an online source for vitamins, supplements, sports nutrition and organic health and grocery products, it would make sense that anyone on their site might be interested in learning how to clean up a recipe, make a slight shift towards more keto approach to eating or simply gain an idea about how to make kid-friendly snacks in a jiffy… all topics I’ve had the opportunity to write about on their platform.
My goal is simply to help people feel empowered when they make the connection between eating a food which makes them feel badly, having the ability to choose foods which make them feel fantastic, and as a result, come away one step closer toward their personal, perfect plan.
Check out their book, Paleo Kitchen, which they’re offering as a free download on their blog page. In it, you’ll find recipes from several Paleo-enthusiasts, including two of mine, such as the chilled berry soup, shown above.
Enjoy!
The post Chilled Berry Soup, Anyone? It's in The Paleo Kitchen! first appeared on Paleoista.
July 7, 2020
Sunlight, Vitamin D + Gut Health
It may have been a while since the last time you sunbathed; how inviting does lounging on a beach right about now sound?
With good reason, many of us have gotten in the habit of slathering on the sunscreen in order to reduce the appearance of aging on our skin and also to decrease our chances of developing melanomas.
However, avoiding the sun completely is not necessarily the best path to take; in actuality, it is worthwhile to catch some rays each and every day.
When our skin is exposed to sunlight, it makes vitamin D from cholesterol. The sun’s ultraviolet B (UVB) rays hit cholesterol in the skin cells, providing the energy for vitamin D synthesis to occur (1).
Vitamin D has recently has been recognized as an immunoregulator, with anti-inflammatory effects, including reducing gastrointestinal inflammation (2) and subsequently, systemic inflammation throughout our bodies.
This is relevant always, with an estimated 23.5 million Americans (and rising) suffer from an autoimmune disease and over 80% with leaky gut (3); and now, more than ever during the COVID pandemic, bringing our collective awareness to the significance of what we eat and how it affects our immunity is crucial.
The best time to get sunlight is at noon when the sun is at its highest point, and its UVB rays are most intense. That means you need less time in the sun to make sufficient vitamin D (4).
What a perfect compliment to the bone broth you’ve been drinking to create a healthy gut and resilient mind and body!
Remember, when consumed regularly as part of a plant-based Paleo, nutrient dense method of eating (abundant in local, in season veggies, ample natural fat and small portions of properly sourced proteins, such as described in Paleoista) ,you’re setting yourself up with a solid foundation for creating optimal gut health.
Step outside, put your feet in the grass and get some grounding in while you’re at it.
(1) https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/...
(2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
(3) https://foodintegritynow.org/2015/05/...
Nell Stephenson's Blog
