Category Archives: Food - Page 4

Muffins

Posted by on January 6, 2013 94 comments

Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas and the feast of epiphany, the day the three wise men presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Holy Family. As a day of giving and celebration, it’s a good day for treats and desserts, such as muffins.

The Place of Baked Goods in the PHD

Our PHD Food Plate has a section for “Pleasure Foods.” It occupies the stem and leaves of our yinyang apple, indicating that these should be relatively small parts of the diet.

Baked goods are not mentioned, but it would be appropriate to list “Gluten-free baked goods and fructose-free sweets” among the Pleasure Foods.

These foods are made of PHD-compliant ingredients – rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca starch in the case of baked goods – but they have a few defects:

  • Low nutrient density. As a purified macronutrient, gluten-free flour is unaccompanied by micronutrients.
  • Low water content. Whole food starches, like white rice and white potatoes, typically have less than 500 calories per pound due to a high water content. But flours and foods made from them, like noodles and pizza dough and bread, lack water and provide 1300-1500 calories per pound.

The lack of water is potentially a problem because water is crucial to digestion, especially digestion of proteins. In the stomach, food needs to be dissolved in an acidic water bath in order for protein-digesting enzymes like pepsin to work properly. Dry foods are just not digested well.

Flour-based foods may be problematic for more reasons than their lack of water. Last year, Ian Spreadbury proposed that “acellular carbohydrates” – carbohydrates that are not surrounded by cell walls and embedded within a cytoplasm – may be unhealthy because the carbs can feed bacteria in the upper digestive tract which can then infect important organs like the pancreas, gallbladder, liver, and small intestine. Cellular carbohydrates would be digested lower in the intestine, helping to maintain an antiseptic and healthy upper small intestine.

We included gluten-free spaghetti and lasagna as items in the meal plan template of our book, but only on one day per week, and only in combination with sauces that provide water.

Due to their dryness, baked goods are probably best eaten as desserts – in combination with fat and liquids, but not much with protein, as they may interfere with protein digestion.

This means they are not good for a weight loss diet, but are excellent foods for those who naturally eat a low protein, high-carb-and-fat diet: children!

Baked goods are kiddie foods. Children eat a lot of calories per unit body weight, so they generally aren’t going to be malnourished; a certain amount of empty calories is just fine. And children’s diets should be lower in protein (7% protein at infancy, rising gradually to 15-20% protein in adulthood) and higher in carbohydrate (40% carb at infancy, decreasing to 20-30% carb in adulthood) than adult diets. That means less meat and more dessert type foods for the kids.

So here’s a recipe to please your children: muffins.

Gluten-Free Muffins

For some reason, gluten-free flours sold in stores are often far more expensive than their ingredients purchased individually. They also tend to have anti-caking agents and stabilizers that are unnecessary if you mix your own.

For muffins, we start by mixing our own gluten-free flour. For 3 cups of flour we use:

2 cups rice flour
2/3 cup potato starch
1/3 cup tapioca starch

We recommend combining dry and wet ingredients separately. In a mixing bowl, combine:

2.5 cups gluten-free flour
1.5 tsp salt
0.5 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste (0.5 tsp each for us)
1 stick (4 oz / 113 g) butter cut into small pieces

With your hands, kneed this mixture until the butter has merged with the flour into a consistent texture; squeeze any buttery blobs until the butter is well mixed. At this point, mix in a cup of your choice of flavoring ingredient:

1 cup raisins or blueberries or chocolate or ground nuts

In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients:

1 1/3 cup milk
2 large eggs
1/3 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla

The final volume should be about 2 cups, add milk as necessary to achieve that.

After mixing the wet ingredients, combine them with the dry ingredients and mix well.

Pour the mix into a muffin sheet and bake at 350 F (175 C) for 20 to 22 minutes.

Eat the muffins with something fatty (butter, whipped cream, creamy cheese, or sour cream all work) and maybe a sweet topping (such as fruit, berries, jam, or honey). Note: the following photos don’t have enough butter!

Conclusion

Muffins are a great dessert or kid’s treat. Topped with 1-2 tablespoons of butter and accompanied by a drink to aid digestion, they taste great. They won’t help you lose weight, but they just may raise your spirits.

Caesar Salad

Posted by on April 29, 2012 31 comments

Caesar Salad was the invention of Caesar Cardini, an Italian-American restaurateur, who claimed to have created the first Caesar salad when his kitchen ran out of supplies on Fourth of July 1924. Wikipedia lists the traditional ingredients:

A Caesar salad is a salad of romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, and black pepper.

We used 2 egg yolks, ¼ cup olive oil, 1 tsp Thai fish sauce, 2 cloves garlic, juice of one lemon, and Dijon mustard.

You’ll also need lettuce and grated cheese. The classic ingredient is Parmigiano Reggiano (Parmesan) cheese, but we like Pecorino Romano as an alternative flavor.

Mix the ingredients in a bowl and add salt and pepper:

You can add some finely grated cheese to the sauce at this stage too.

Slice up one or two heads of romaine lettuce, mix the sauce over it, and top with grated cheese:

To make it an entrée, add beef slices or calamari with chopped nuts:

It’s extremely easy to make, and quite tasty!

Roast Beef, Beets, and Potatoes

Posted by on April 8, 2012 29 comments

Happy Easter everyone! It’s a day for feasting and celebration, and so we’ll offer a complete meal that is easy to make but delicious.

But first, some music to enjoy while cooking. Bach’s “St Matthew Passion”:

Roast Beef

Get a suitable large cut of beef. Fattier is better; prime rib is the fattiest, but here we used a 4-5 pound (2-2.3 kg) sirloin.

Because beef is not fatty enough for us, we made a glaze from butter and Italian seasonings. Melt a stick (8 tbsp) of butter and combine it with 2 tbsp dried herbs and salt and pepper to taste.

Spread the glaze on the beef until all sides are covered. Then, place the beef in a ceramic pot, fatty side up, on a bed of either fibrous vegetables (such as celery and carrots) or wooden sticks to elevate it:

We elevate the beef because we’re going to add water to the pot to keep the drippings from burning. At the end, we’ll re-use the drippings to make a sauce. If we didn’t elevate the beef, the bottom part of the roast would be boiled rather than roasted.

Preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C), and put the beef in the oven with a layer of water in the bottom of the pot. After ten minutes reduce the heat to 300 F (150 C) and cook for 20 minutes per pound if you like medium rare beef and 23 to 25 minutes per pound if you like medium beef.

It will come out looking something like this:

Move the roast to a serving plate:

Cut some vegetables for the sauce. We used tomatoes, garlic, onion, and scallion:

Add the garlic, onion, scallion to the drippings and stir fry them on the stove for 5 minutes:

Then add the tomatoes and cook just a bit longer:

This sauce is ready to be spread over the beef.

Baked Potatoes and Roast Beets

We had space in the oven so we cooked potatoes and beets along with the beef.

The potatoes were wrapped in aluminum foil and baked individually:

The beets take a bit more preparation. We peel and dice them before cooking.

Peel the beets just as you would a potato or carrot, removing the skin. Once the skin is removed, the beet flesh will stain your hands; so we put a sheet of plastic wrap between our hand the beet during peeling.

Then dice the beets and put them in a ceramic pot for roasting:

Beets deserve a sauce, just like the beef. Ours used olive oil, garlic, butter, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, and dried herbs:

Mix the sauce ingredients apart from the butter in a mixing bowl, then add the butter and sauce to the beets:

Cover the beets in aluminum foil and put them in the oven at 300 F (150 C) along with the beef and potatoes. At this oven temperature the beets and potatoes need about 30 to 45 minutes to cook.

When the beets are done they look like this:

Conclusion

The complete meal looks like this:

Roast beef, baked potato with sour cream, and roast beets. Plus an abundance of leftovers!

We wish you a joyful and blessed Easter!

Food for a Fast

Posted by on March 8, 2012 112 comments

Alfredo asked us to offer ideas for how to fast during Lent:

What to eat during fasting (other than cranberries & coconut oil) is on my mind. Looking for some variation in the fasting menu.

It’s a great question. We did have a post on one possible fasting food – Neo-Agutak: “Eskimo Ice Cream” – but never discussed alternatives or the reasons for eating particular foods during a fast.

Fasts don’t have to be food-free

Some people think a fast should involve no food at all. On the Neo-Agutak post, Don Matesz commented:

I would not say that I was fasting if I consumed more than 625 calories during any period of that “fast.”

But that’s not the position of the Catholic Church. During Lent, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are fast days. The US bishops allow one full meal and up to two snacks:

The law of fasting requires a Catholic from the 18th Birthday (Canon 97) to the 59th Birthday (i.e. the beginning of the 60th year, a year which will be completed on the 60th birthday) to reduce the amount of food eaten from normal. The Church defines this as one meal a day, and two smaller meals which if added together would not exceed the main meal in quantity. Such fasting is obligatory on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The fast is broken by eating between meals and by drinks which could be considered food (milk shakes, but not milk).

Children, the elderly, and those whose health might be threatened are exempt from the requirement to fast.

So let’s consider a fast to be any period of reduced calorie consumption – not zero food.

Basic fasting: Electrolyte and fluid replacement

It is certainly a mistake to consume nothing at all during a fast.

People deprived of fluids and electrolytes die quickly. In a famous case cited in Wikipedia (“Starvation”), Drusus Caesar, son of Agrippina the Elder, was starved to death in 33 AD by the emperor Tiberius, and managed to stay alive for nine days only by chewing the stuffing of his bed. When Saint Maximilian Kolbe and nine others were starved in Auschwitz, seven of the ten died within two weeks.

When fluids are provided, however, survival can be much longer. Even in his 60s, Gandhi was able to go without food for 21 days. In the Irish hunger strikes of 1980-1981, no one who fasted less than 46 days died, and about half those who fasted between 46 and 73 days died.

So fluids and electrolytes extend the duration of a fast by about a factor of four. Since we want our fasts to be safe and health-improving, we should certainly take:

  • Water.
  • Sodium and chlorine. During a fast protein is converted to glucose and ketones, releasing nitrogen waste in the form of urea. Sodium and chloride are excreted along with the urea. Salt loss can be fairly rapid during a fast, equivalent to as much as a teaspoon of salt a day. A large amount of water is lost along with it.
  • Potassium. Potassium is the intracellular electrolyte, sodium the extracellular, and osmotic pressure must be balanced. So potassium will be lost along with water and sodium, and should be replenished with it.
  • Calcium and magnesium. These also serve electrolytic functions and it is desirable to maintain their concentrations.
  • Acids. These are beneficial for the digestive tract and metabolism, and also for solubilization of minerals. Citrate, for instance, helps prevent kidney and gallstones.

Vegetables are the best source of potassium; bone broth is a source of calcium and magnesium. The best acids are citrus juices, such as lemon juice, and vinegars, such as rice vinegar. Sea salt, or salty flavorings such as soy sauce or fish sauce, can provide sodium chloride. So the most basic food to take during a fast is a soup made of vegetables in bone broth, with salt and an acid added.

Here are some pictures. First, make up a bone broth by cooking bones in acidified water:

It’s best to use a ceramic or enameled pot to prevent leaching of metals from the pot.

When you’re ready to eat, put some scallions or celery and cilantro or basil in a bowl, and add hot broth:

Add salt, pepper, acid, and spices to taste.

Spinach and tomatoes are great vegetables for these broths, because they are rich in potassium. Here is a tomato soup:

Here’s a slightly fancier example. I think this had tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, and kohlrabi:

Served with parsley and scallions, rice vinegar, and sea salt:

Adding some food

So far we haven’t provided any calories to speak of. The next step in reducing the stress of the fast is to add some nutrition to the soup.

The stress of a fast is largely due to the absence of dietary carb and protein. The body has limited carb storage – glycogen is depleted early in a fast – and is loath to cannibalize lean tissue for protein. On the other hand, the body has abundant fat reserves. So

Two strategies may make sense in different circumstances:

  • A protein-sparing modified fast. Protein, which is convertible to glucose, is eaten to relieve the carb+protein deficit.
  • A ketogenic fast. Short-chain and medium-chain fatty acids, such as are found in coconut oil, are eaten to generate ketones. Ketones can partially substitute for glucose utilization.

What these have in common is that they reduce the carb+protein.

Probably 90% of people who fast should favor the protein-sparing approach. Those on ketogenic diets for neurological disorders should probably favor the ketogenic fasting approach.

An example of a food suitable for a ketogenic fast would be Neo-Agutak: “Eskimo Ice Cream” (Dec 5, 2010).

A suitable food on a protein-sparing modified fast would supply most calories as protein; carb and fat calories would be from nutrient-dense sources. Egg yolks, which are rich in phospholipids like choline, and potatoes are good examples of nutrient-dense fat and carb sources.

The easy way to implement this healthy fast: just add eggs, potatoes, and maybe some fish or shellfish (which tend to be protein-rich, and comply with the Catholic guidelines for Friday abstinence) to any of the soups shown above. Heat the soup in the microwave and there you have it: a healthy fast-day meal!

Conclusion

Those on weight loss diets will notice that by adding protein, carbs, and a few nourishing fats to our fast-day soup, we’re getting very close to our recommended diet for calorie-restricted weight loss diets: see Perfect Health Diet: Weight Loss Version (Feb 1, 2011).

There’s a good reason for that: both posts work from the same design principles. Both aim at the greatest possible nourishment on the fewest calories.

Would you like to lose weight? Consider making these nourishing soups a staple of your diet.

Even if you’re not fasting or trying to lose weight, consider making these soups a regular part of your daily meals. It’s very easy to make a broth on the weekend and warm it up and pour it over diced vegetables at mealtime. You might find them a very satisfying addition to your diet.