Consuming Consciousness

Lately I’ve rediscovered my wok, in large part because I now have a wonderful gas stove with a wok burner in the center. This heats my wok really quickly, and allows it to stay hot when I dump in a bunch of cold ingredients. I highly recommend it to those considering purchasing a new stove since it makes wok cooking so easy and attractive.

Especially when working with a very hot wok, it’s important to pre-assemble all your ingredients so that they’re immediately to hand when you need to add them. Here’s a dish where preparation takes a bit longer than cooking, but you can have the whole, healthy meal finished and on the table in about half an hour. Clean-up, with woks, is also a breeze if they’re properly seasoned and maintained. Read the rest of this entry →

For such a rich-tasting dish, this has surprisingly few calories and packs a huge protein-wallop. It’s also a one-pot meal, very quick to assemble, and relatively inexpensive for a seafood dish.

Though I love fresh mussels, they’re hard to come by in many U.S. supermarkets, and I rarely have time to wrestle with bearding the beasts before even beginning to get around to preparing dinner. Lately, though, I’ve been finding large bags of frozen, pre-cooked mussels in my local Turkish and Asian markets in Berlin. My guess is that they’re also available in the States. Here they’re quite cheap, and I can feed four people very well for under 10 Euros. I love how easy they are to use — they’re already clean and simply need to be heated through.

Mussels have a powerful flavor and need to be countered by other strong but complementary tastes. In this dish I use a combination of garlic, shallots, chilis and hot peppers and balance it with white wine, cream and orange peel. Any citrus peel would be interesting, and next time I’ll try it with lemon. You can serve these mussels in a bowl like a stew, or spoon them over rice or pasta if you can handle the carbs. Read the rest of this entry →

A heady mixture of tastes and spices, this rich cake and its creamy frosting scream luxury. The cardamom flavor is distinct but not overpowering, and it’s perfectly complemented by the cashews. The cake itself is soft and moist, chock full of carrots and chopped nuts. For the frosting, you make your own cashew buttercream mixture. Though I’ve used only cardamom and cinnamon as spices, you can easily experiment by adding clove, ground coriander, or nutmeg either to the frosting or the cake batter. The cake would also work as well with peanuts as with cashews.

This recipe was inspired by chokylit’s cupcakes, which are lovely but deadly little calorie and fat bombs. I replaced as many of the ingredients as possible with lower-fat and healthier alternatives, including swapping out butter for coconut oil and white flour for spelt flour. It’s by no means a low-calorie dessert, but at 335 calories per rich, filling slice, I think it’s now in the realm of possibility for folks looking to control their intake. Read the rest of this entry →

Everyone is afraid of cancer, and most people feel helpless to avoid it. Aside from quitting smoking, some of the most important steps you can take to reduce your cancer risk have to do with your diet. A new report explains what you can do to help yourself, and provides a very useful chart listing foods and their associated cancer risks or benefits. The report is online at http://www.dietandcancerreport.org.

Like smoking, risky eating and drinking is a form of Russian roulette… except you won’t know for 15-20 years later whether you’ve won or lost. Russian roulette, if you’re unlucky at games of chance, at least has the benefit of blowing your head off in the moment you decide to try it — usually an unhappy moment when life doesn’t seem worth living. Cancer, on the other hand, takes you out later, at a time when you might no longer think your life is so awful or worthless that you’re willing to throw it away. Not much is worse than struggling through the hard times, making a life for yourself with people you love and enjoy, and then finding something stupid you’ve been doing without thinking for the last twenty years ago is going to take it all away…

There are certainly cancer risks you don’t have control over (genetic predispositions, environmental pollution, workplace hazards) but there’s no sense compounding them with things you can change.

AICR’s Second Expert Report, Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective, is the most comprehensive scientific analysis of cancer prevention and causation ever undertaken. This landmark document, authored by an international expert panel, reviewed 7,000 research studies and classified the accumulated evidence for specific diet-cancer links.

The most recent biennial survey commissioned by the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) shows that Americans rate cancer their number one health concern, believe it to be impossible to prevent, and continue to blame the disease on factors they cannot control.

“These are three distressing, interconnected trends, and they help to explain something we at AICR have been sensing for years,” said AICR Nutrition Advisor Karen Collins, MS, RD. “Popular frustration about cancer is on the rise. An ‘everything causes cancer’ mindset is taking hold, which causes Americans to throw up their hands and overlook the steps that can lower their risk.”

According to the 2007 AICR Facts vs. Fears Survey, which asked respondents about both proven and unproven risk factors for cancer, most Americans remain unaware that they can lower their cancer risk by changing their diet, getting more physical activity and managing their weight.

Salmon, cream cheese and avocado! What could taste richer? This is a quick and tasty snack for lunch, hungry kids, or company.

The calorie count is figured without the sesame crackers, since they vary a great deal from brand to brand. It is also calculated with low-fat cream cheese and regular mayonnaise, so you can reduce it if you use a non-fat cream cheese and a low-fat mayo. Read the rest of this entry →

 Like we didn’t know this already:

 A study slated for publication in the December American Journal of Preventive Medicine suggests that television viewing is positively associated with weight gain and hypertension among children, Reuters reports. Researchers from the University of California (UC)-San Diego, UC-San Francisco and the University of South Alabama evaluated the body mass indices, blood pressure and daily television watching habits of 546 children ages 4 to 17 between 2003 and 2005. The data, which was reviewed and confirmed by a physician, indicated a positive correlation between the amount of time children spent watching television and the severity of overweight. In addition, children who watched two to four hours of television per day were 2.5 times more likely to have hypertension than children who watched less than two hours of television daily. The risk of hypertension among children watching four or more hours of television daily, meanwhile, was 3.3 times greater than that among children watching less than two hours of television. Referencing prior evidence that minimizing screen time can spur weight loss, even without increasing physical activity, the researchers underscore the need for “considerable physician and family involvement to decrease TV time among obese children” (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 10/30/07; American Journal of Preventive Medicine release, 10/30/07).

A tasty low-fat meal full of protein and fiber and very high in Vitamin A. This recipe is based on the traditional Mexican Caldo de Camaron y Pulpo, but I’ve modified it to reflect my preference for sweet potatoes and for oregano and garlic in the seasoning. Though octopus and shrimp are the usual main ingredients, you can actually make it with any shellfish, depending on your budget and your taste.

I’ve noticed that large packages of frozen shrimp are readily available in many markets, and that squid and octopus are also easy to find, so I’ve started incorporating shellfish into more meals. Lobster and crab are still prohibitive for most of us, but if you feel like splurging this is a great dish in which to showcase their flavors. The broth is light and very flavorful, and the sweet potatoes are a luscious complement to the shellfish. It will keep only about 48 hours in your refrigerator, so halve the recipe if you aren’t feeding a large family or expecting guests. Read the rest of this entry →

Moving to a new apartment left my kitchen in disarray, and so I haven’t been cooking much lately. That’s going to change, though, as I get ready for my big housewarming party. Here’s a version of dolmas that I assembled after a visit to the local Turkish market. They came out so well I think I’ll make them again and again.

The filling and sauce are quick and easy, but unless you have practice, rolling the grape leaves is time consuming. Novices should expect to spend about 90 minutes on assembly, expert rollers less than half that time. Read the rest of this entry →

“Sometimes nothing is better than something,” said actress Ruth Gordon, when questioned about her single state. And she appears to have been right, in at least one regard. If you’re in a negative relationship, it’s probably better for your health to get out of it.

The quality of your social relationships has an effect on the condition of your heart, according to a new study released in the October 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives Journals.

An extensive body of research shows that social relations are associated with better health and reduced risks of cardiovascular disease. However, contradictory findings on the health benefits of structural support and the limited protective effect of marital status against cardiovascular disease among women have stimulated further scientific inquiry into the quality of social relationships.

As usual, women and poor people suffer disproportionately from the negative aspects of close relationships:

Women are more likely to be sensitive and invest more time and energy in social relationships than are men. Women report higher psychological distress and negative social interactions, despite having more close relationships and giving and receiving more support than men.

People of lower social position are generally more likely to be exposed to stressful socioeconomic circumstances that can negatively influence interpersonal relationships.

Negative close relationships were more likely to be experienced by younger individuals, women and men in the lower employment grade, and were less likely to be reported by people who were never married. Exposure to negative close exchanges was also associated with negative affectivity, deression, work stress, low confiding/emotional support, and partner as a source of support.

But, male or female, rich or poor, the evidence seems to point in the direction of beating feet when things get too bad for too long.

From the press release:

Roberto De Vogli, Ph.D., M.P.H., and colleagues at University College London studied 9,011 British civil servants who completed a questionnaire about negative aspects of their close relationships either between 1989 and 1990 or between 1985 and 1988. Although the questionnaire assessed up to four close relationships, the researchers focused specifically on the primary close relationship. In addition, participants answered questions about how much emotional and practical support they received from that person on a regular basis. They were then followed for an average of 12.2 years to see if they experienced fatal or non-fatal coronary events, including heart attacks or chest pain.

Of the 8,499 individuals who did not have coronary heart disease at the beginning of the study and who provided sufficient information for the analysis, 589 reported a coronary heart disease event. After adjusting for other factors that influence heart disease risk—such as sociodemographic characteristics and health habits—those who experienced a high level of negativity in their close relationships were 1.34 times more likely to experience a coronary heart disease event than those with a low level of negative close relationships.

The association was weakened somewhat but still significant after the researchers adjusted for negative personality traits and depression. This suggests that emotions may partially mediate the association between negative relationships and heart disease. “When one considers emotional factors and their biological translation into the body, research shows that negative marital interactions are associated with depression, often in combination with reduced self-esteem and/or higher levels of anger,” the authors write. “These emotional reactions have been found to influence coronary heart disease through the cumulative ‘wear and tear’ on organs and tissues caused by the alterations of autonomic [involuntary] functions, neuroendocrine changes, disturbances in coagulation [blood clotting] and inflammatory and immune responses.”

I decided to try my hand at making classic borscht a couple of days ago. Or almost classic, since borscht is traditionally made with about a half a pound of butter or shortening or lard. I wanted the taste, but didn’t to take the calorie hit. I was cooking for a tough audience, since my Russian partner emphatically claimed never to have tasted authentic borscht outside of the homeland. I love a challenge and rolled up my sleeves, grating beets with a vengeance. Both of us were pleased by the result, so I thought I’d share the recipe here.

For those who love beef but can’t afford the expensive cuts (like me!), a borscht, like a good stew, allows us to get the taste we crave using cheap cuts of meat that would be too tough if they were cooked any other way. The combination of red and orange vegetables gives a pleasing taste and flavor, and the spiciness can be varied by adding more or less black pepper.

Borscht tastes best on the second day and is fine on the third day but if kept longer it will begin to taste sour.

Read the rest of this entry →