Consuming Consciousness

It’s snowing like mad outside, and I felt like baking something savory and aromatic. A quick look in the refrigerator revealed a chunk of cold Camembert that wouldn’t warm up and ripen any time soon, and I was captured by the thought of the flavor of Camembert in a corn muffin. Onions deepened the flavor, and the apples were a last minute inspiration. As muffins go, they’re a miniature cheese and fruit-plate feast.

I’ve also installed a new recipe plugin, which will hopefully make keeping track of my recipes easier. Eventually I’ll transfer all the old ones to the new format, but in the meantime check out the Camembert, Apple & Corn Muffin Recipe!

With my recent move to Bern, I’m discovering the challenges of cooking in Switzerland, a nation where food costs for fish, fowl and meat are eight times as great as in Berlin.  I admit to suffering sticker shock at the market, to the point where I wandered through the popular supermarket chain store, Migros, for over an hour without actually being able to select food.  In the end, urged on by my husband, I did manage to pick out the makings of a salad.  A month later, I’m more used to spending a minimum of 40 CHF every time I go to the market, but I can’t say I like it.  A new friend showed me a couple of Asian markets where prices seem more reasonable, but meats and fish are still only for special meals.

Nor are restaurants really an option — after fantastic Brazilian buffets in Berlin, all-you-can-eat for 9 Euro, it’s pretty tough to stomach slapping down 40 CHF per person for mediocre faux-Chinese food.

On the other hand, I have to say that Swiss milk and dairy products beat the German ones hands down. I never though I’d enjoy boxed milk, so there’s an upside to everything.  My new project is coming up with inexpensive, healthy and delicious meals that don’t break the bank!

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 →