Collard Greens

Last week, I ran into ANDI while shopping at Whole Foods.

ANDI–which stands for Aggregate Nutrient Density Index–is a food-rating system developed by Dr. Joel Fuhrman that assigns a score of 1-1000 to all foods based on their “nutrient density.”  The more nutrients a food has per calorie, the higher the score.  Like one might expect from a food rating system that has to account for foods from a wide variety of groups (nuts, oils, fruits and vegetables alike), the ANDI score system is admittedly imperfect.  (Dr. Fuhrman makes it clear that some essential and healthy foods will, by design, have a low ANDI score–think peanut butter and olive oil).  To be sure, there are plenty of foods with low to moderate ANDI scores that are very worth eating (oatmeal, salmon, almonds, eggs), which is why for me, the ANDI score is most useful not as the basis for all food selection, but rather to remind me of all the nutritious foods that I’m not already eating but totally should be. For this purpose, I looked to the top of the ANDI list.  And that’s how I discovered that Collard Greens scored a perfect 1000.  And so, I decided it was time to put some collards in my grocery cart and learn how to cook them as well as experience had showed me they could be cooked.

ANDI’s pick in the Produce Aisle?  Collard Greens.

ANDI rankings featured in the Whole Foods produce department

The first time I had bona-fide, Southern collards was on a business trip to Savannah, Georgia back in 2005.  My colleagues and I wound up at Mrs. Wilke’s Dining Room, a venerable institution of down-home, Southern cooking.  As a pretty dogmatic vegetarian at the time, I was delighted to see such a wide selection of veggies on the menu!  We ordered up a whole bunch of them–Collards included– and shared them, family-style.  I enjoyed them so much, in fact, that I bought the Mrs. Wilke’s Boardinghouse cookbook on my way out.  Which, of course, was how I discovered that all of the vegetables I had just devoured were prepared with generous amounts of bacon drippings and salt pork.  Oops.

Indeed, authentic southern Collards are generally prepared with pork fatback, bacon, ham hocks or other undoubtedly flavorful fats of porcine origin.  But they needn’t always be, and can be delicious in their own way when cooked with flavorful,  vegetarian ingredients.

Cooking Collards

Generally, you’ll find collard greens prepared by braising: a method of cooking in both dry heat and liquid used to soften tough foods.  With heavy-leafed greens like collards and kale, cutting the out the thickest, toughest ribs and then chopping the greens into small pieces (or even better, chiffonading them) will help tame the texture of the cooked product to one quite similar to that of spinach.  But unlike spinach, whose raw leaves cook  down to absolutely nothing (not the most cost-effective greens to cook), braised collards maintain some real substance even when cooked down to a softer version of themselves.

No doubt this was the thought behind Rick Bayless’ unexpectedly delicious recipe for Braised Greens Tacos (pictured), which I used as the inspiration for my first collards experiment this week.  You can follow his recipe to

My riff on Rick's Braised Greens Tacos

the letter, or you can tweak it (as I did) to fit the ingredients on hand in your pantry.  (In his cookbook, he also suggests adding flaked tuna, hot smoked salmon or smoked tofu cubes to the taco to make these a heartier meal).  Personally, I added some canned black beans on my taco before piling on the greens (for protein), and used shredded yellow cheese instead of crumbled white cheese.  And instead of a red salsa, I used some homemade salsa verde we had leftover from a recent enchilada-making escapade.  The result was a fast, easy and surprisingly substantial dinner.  I’m more than a little bit embarrassed that I waited so long to jump on the Collards train!

If you’d like to enjoy collards in a vegetarian-version of the traditional manner– as a cooked vegetable side dish– one way to approximate the smoky flavor of pork-infused collards is to use chipotle (powder or sauce) or smoked paprika to season them. For a super-simple, vegetarian smoked paprika version, try this recipe for Smoky Collard Greens from Maggie at Dog Hill Kitchen.  If chipotle is how you roll, I’ll refer you to this simple and beautiful recipe for Shredded Collards with Chipotle and Garlic from Nanette at Cooking in Color, who, incidentally, also grows her own collards.  Impressive!

Collards: Nutritional Summary

Collard greens are closely related to kale, and as such, are members of the calcium-rich, cancer-preventing cabbage family (whose other members include ANDI-chart-topping mustard greens, turnip greens, watercress, bok choy, broccoli rabe, brussels sprouts and arugula).  They’re almost too nutritious to be true: a modest 1 cup serving of boiled collards contains almost 900% of the daily value for bone-building and blood clot-enabling Vitamin K; 120% of the daily value for immunity-enhancing and vision-enabling Vitamin A; 60% of your daily Vitamin C needs, 45% of your daily folate needs and ~20% of your daily calcium needs. And thanks to their 5g of fiber, all of this nutrition will only cost you about 50 calories, which makes Collards an exceptional bang for your buck.

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The yogurt which established a new Greek Empire in your supermarket

But the google-searches for lactose-free yogurts continue unabated, and since I posted that initial article, the only brand of dairy yogurt on the market that used lactose-free milk (True Yogurt) has become unavailable due to the loss of their production facilities.

Despair not, my fellow lactards.  There is another yogurt option that your intestines may find tolerable: European Style yogurt.

You may have noticed the European invasion in your local dairy aisle: there’s a veritable Greek Empire led by brands like Fage, Oikos, Chobani, The Greek Gods, Trader Joe’s Greek Style yogurt and Brown Cow Greek yogurt; then there are the Icelandic Skyrs (Siggi’s), and the continentally-inspired “European-style yogurts” (Cultural Revolution).  What these products all have in common is that they’re strained to remove a large amount of the lactose-containing liquid (whey) found in your typical American-style yogurt, so they’re a) very thick; b) naturally higher in protein; c) naturally lower in carbohydrate.  Now: since all of the carbohydrate naturally found in yogurt is lactose (milk sugar), a lower carbohydrate yogurt means a lower-lactose yogurt. For some people who can tolerate small amounts of lactose but still have trouble with conventional American-style yogurt, these products may be perfect for you.

How low-lactose are European-style yogurts?

Ounce for ounce, your typical European-style yogurt will have about half or less of the amount of lactose as a standard American-style yogurt.  (This is also very good news for people with diabetes, as plain European style yogurts are very low-carb.)

Let’s start with a standard American-style product for comparisons’ sake: a 6oz container of plain, Dannon low fat yogurt, which contains 11g of naturally-occurring sugar, all of which is lactose (milk sugar).  All conventional yogurts will contain roughly this same amount of lactose, which means any additional sugar listed on the label beyond 11g is added sugar for flavor.  (As a sidebar: if you’d like to read more about how much added sugar is too much added sugar when it comes to yogurt, read this response to a reader who asked that very same question.)

By way of comparison, a standard 5.3oz container of Greek-style yogurt contains 6g lactose (or about 7g for brands sold in a 6oz container), which amounts to 45% less lactose than American-style yogurt.

If that doesn’t excite you, there are thicker, more strained versions out there with even LESS lactose.  A standard 6oz container of Siggi’s Icelandic-style yogurt contains a mere 4g of lactose, or 64% less lactose than American-style yogurt.  (It also has 16-17g of protein and 20% of your daily calcium needs.)

If their labels don't lie, 2% fat Cultural Revolution yogurt has the least amount of lactose (2g) you can find in a milk-based yogurt

And finally, there is Cultural Revolution yogurt, whose low-fat version (2%) is an unimaginably low-lactose product: Just 2g of lactose in a standard 6oz container. That’s 82% less lactose than a conventional American style yogurt.  (Note that the whole milk version (5%) has more lactose: 5g per 6oz container.)

One last–and important–lactose-related factoid when it comes to yogurt is this: the live, active cultures (bacteria) in your yogurt will have predigested some of its lactose before you even eat it, which is why yogurts (and cheeses) are often better-tolerated than straight liquid milk in people with some degree of lactose intolerance.

To put this in mathematical terms: a very low lactose yogurt + some lactose pre-digested by the yogurt cultures= a very good chance people with some (but not complete) lactose intolerance will be able to enjoy yogurt again.

Ready to give real yogurt a try again?

My recommendation is always to choose plain (unflavored) European or Greek-style yogurt if you like how it tastes–or if its convenient for you to doctor it up with a touch of your own sweetener or favorite add-in (I’m partial to almonds + 1 tsp honey, or just a sprinkle of granola).

Virtually all flavored yogurts are loaded with added sugar–often over 3 tsp worth in a teensy little container.  (As a rule of thumb, 6 tsp added sugar per day is a good limit for most women.)  Flavored Greek Yogurts are no exception, and all sugar listed on the label beyond the lactose content detailed above is straight up added sugar.  (In fact, I’ve seen many Greek yogurt products with an unheard-of 30g+ of sugar per container!  I won’t name names, but you know who you are, you sugar-pushing bullies…)  Note: if you’re concerned about lactose, you may want to avoid Cabot’s Greek Style Yogurt: their yogurts contain added whey protein concentrate, which contains lactose.  As a result, their Greek Yogurt has the same amount of lactose as your standard, American-style version.

You make a mean Skyr, Siggi.

If your tastebuds simply won’t adapt to the flavor of plain, then there are some brands that have less added sugar than others.  When I’m not buying plain, here’s what I’d buy:

• Siggi’s Icelandic style yogurt in Vanilla, Grapefruit, Blueberry or Orange-Ginger  (These flavors have 10g total sugar, or 1.5tsp added sugar.  So does the Acai flavor, but I think it tastes kinda weird.  Sorry, Siggi.)  Plus, its made with milk from hormone-free, grass-fed cows.
• Cultural Revolution yogurt in Vanilla, Strawberry, Peach or Raspberry.  These flavors have 10g-11g total sugar in the whole milk variety, which is ~1.5tsp added sugar; and only 8g total sugar in the 2% (lowfat) variety.  And bonus, its made from organic milk.
• Stonyfield Farm’s Oikos Greek-style yogurt in Vanilla only (has 11g total sugar per container, and it’s made with organic milk.)  The other flavors have way too much sugar added for me to recommend them.
• In a pinch, Brown Cow Vanilla Greek Yogurt isn’t egregious at 12g sugar per container… but it’s pushing the limits.

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An inviting citrus display recently spotted at Dean & Deluca

On the eve of the Super Bowl, I’ve got the Citrus Bowl on my mind.  Only in my world, the Citrus Bowl actually refers to a huge platter on my kitchen counter piled high with mounds of sunny, spherical fruit.  (Sorry football fans; I don’t even know who’s playing tonight…)  You see, I’ve been on a major citrus bender recently.  The available offerings this year seem even more plentiful than usual, with amazingly sweet mandarins, dramatic blood oranges and exotic pomelos playing wingman to winter standbys like navel oranges, tangelos and pink grapefruits.  It’s enough to make a girl forget about her beloved Clementines, whose season has pretty much passed.

Much Ado About Citrus

Diets higher in citrus fruits have been associated with a decreased risk of stroke. A large, prospective study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association back in 1999 quantified the protective effect as follows: each additional serving of citrus fruits (including juices) in the diet was associated with a 19% reduced risk of stroke (the effect size was even greater for women than for men).  High citrus fruit consumption in the diet has also been shown to correlate more closely with a reduced cancer risk than high Vitamin C consumption, indicating that there’s something protective going on in those citrus fruits beyond just the Vitamin C.

As the above suggests, citrus fruits are a prime example of a whole food being greater than the sum of its parts, nutritionally speaking.

California Mandarins--stems, leaves and all--are in stores now. They're astonishingly delicious.

The membranes of a citrus fruit, for example (those white and translucent skins and stringy bits that surround the fruit segments) are loaded with several phytonutrients called flavonoids.  Examples of such flavonoids found in oranges, for example, include limonoids and hesperidin; both compounds which are currently being investigated for their cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure-lowering effects.  And according to the research scientists at the USDA whom I grilled recently, while it’s true that these compounds do make it into citrus juice, levels tend to be higher in fresh-picked, unprocessed fruits (or fruit juices squeezed at home from fresh fruits)–particularly when you eat the membranes too.  And while we’re on the topic of squeezing your own juice, here’s a fun little citrus fact I picked up from my buddies at the USDA: there’s a compound that occurs naturally in mandarins/satsumas called synephrine, which is the same ingredient you’ll find in many popular cold and allergy  medications (like Sudafed).  So loading up on some mandarins or squeezing yourself some mandarin juice if you find yourself under the weather this cold season is a scientifically-based, natural way to get some relief while getting some fiber and meeting your Vitamin C requirements for the day. Take that, Sudafed!  (Note that synephrine is also the same compound that replaced ephedra in many diet pills under the code name Citrus Aurantium, although there’s no compelling data to suggest it actually helps people lose weight.)

A Caveat about Grapefruit

You may have heard that you should avoid grapefruit or grapefruit juice if you’re taking certain medications, including certain calcium channel blockers (for high blood pressure), statins (for high cholesterol), immunosuppressants and antidepressants.  Not only is this true, but the interaction also occurs with grapefruit-related citrus fruits such as Pomelos and Seville Oranges (otherwise known as Sour Oranges or Bitter Oranges; they’re popular in Hispanic cuisine). There are multiple culprits in these fruits that are responsible for the interaction, including the flavonoid called naringin, which competes with these drugs for the same metabolic pathway in the liver.  Grapefruit wins the competition, which means the drug circulates for longer in the body before being broken down.  This results in potentially dangerous blood levels of the drug and a high risk of adverse effects.

Citrus Salads, Sweet & Savory

There are so many awesome citrus flavor combinations:  Orange and mint.  Grapefruit and fennel.  Orange and beets.  Grapefruit and vanilla.  Orange and almond. It’s really hard to go wrong.  But just to get you started, here are a few of my favorite ways to work through the mounds of wintry citrus love on my kitchen counter:

• Mark Bittman’s easy and visually-arresting Winter Citrus Salad

• Fennel Grapefruit Salad from the queen of content, Oprah.  (You can use gluten-free croutons from Gillian’s or Gluten Free Pantry if you so desire)

• Mâche salad with blood orange, pistachio and pomegranate from Bon Apetit.  (Use arugula if you can’t find mache).

• Grapefruit Vanilla Salad (serves 4):  Combine 2 cups water + 3/4 cup sugar + 1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise, in a saucepan.  (Don’t worry, you’re not actually going to be eating all of this sugar…)  Stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves.  Once its dissolved, stop stirring, turn up the heat and boil the syrup for 1 minute.  Turn off the heat and let cool completely.  Remove the vanilla bean and either discard or reserve for garnish.  Pour the syrup in a bowl with 3 lbs of sliced pink grapefruit, mix well, and let marinate in the fridge for at least an hour.  Serve with a slotted spoon.    A great brunch dish.  Works beautifully with a sprinkle of fresh, chopped mint leaves, too.

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Now, if the word ‘Borscht’ conjures up romance-quashing images of hardscrabble nineteenth-century Eastern European peasantry for you, then I’d like to make the case for why this beautiful potage has just as much right to kick off your Valentine’s Day meal as the Red Velvet cupcake has to finish it off.

Of course, if you’ve never heard of Borscht, then I’m delighted to introduce you to this versatile and time-honored beet soup.  You may find it served hot or cold, vegetarian or meaty, Ukranian style or Russian style, clear and magenta or spiked with sour cream to produce an opaque, creamy pink color.  However it’s executed, you can be sure that every self-respecting Borscht-lover will claim that their grandmother’s version is undoubtedly the best.

Borscht is heart-y

Borscht is made with beets, and beets are loaded with nutrients that nourish your heart and support cardiovascular health. (It’s not a coincidence our grandparents lived so long despite their habit of spreading chicken fat (schmaltz) on bread and eating chopped liver by the gallon.)

For starters, beets are an excellent source of folate and a good source of blood-pressure-lowering potassium.  Diets rich in folate-rich foods have been associated with a decreased risk of heart disease in multiple large studies, though researchers are still trying to figure out why.  (Folic acid supplementation has not been shown to have the same effect.  Go figure.)   1 cup of boiled beets contains about 75 calories, 16g of carbohydrate (of which 3.5g are fiber), ~35% of the daily recommended intake of folate, and 15% of the daily value of potassium. (Canned beets lose about 30% of their folate compared to beets you boil yourself, but remain a very good source despite that).

Betacyanins are the purply red pigments that give beets their rich, gorgeous magenta color, and they happen to be powerful antioxidants.  While antioxidants are used throughout the body to help prevent cell damage that can give rise to mutations, animal studies suggest a possible benefit in colon cancer prevention in particular.

Betaine, another compound found naturally in beets, has anti-inflammatory properties. Studies have shown that people with diets rich in foods containing betaine had lower levels of inflammatory markers in their blood–like C-reactive protein and homocysteine–compared to be people with diets low in betaine-rich foods.  These inflammatory markers are associated with an increased risk of heart disease, so it seems that the lower the level, the better.

Borscht is hip

Veselka, the venerable and hip Ukranian diner in NYC’s East Village, features Ukranian Borscht as the very first item on its menu, and reportedly serves 5,000 gallons of it every year.  A photo of the restaurant’s famous borscht adorns the cover of its recently-published cookbook, whose pages feature not one but FOUR separate recipes for their intoxicating magenta brew, including their Famous Borscht, Cold Borscht, White Borscht and Christmas Borscht.  (You can get their famous Borscht recipe here, but vegetarians beware that their version calls for pork butt and beef stock.  Try their Christmas Borscht version for a meatless option, and see below for some cooking tips.)

Borscht is so hip that I suspect its only a matter of time until Bobby Flay challenges Veselka owner Tom Birchard to a Borscht Throwdown.

How to cook and enjoy Beets

While beets can absolutely be eaten raw (usually you’ll find them grated in a salad), you’ll most often encounter them roasted or boiled. Beets cooked from scratch are a thousand times more flavorful than canned beets, and have a much lovelier texture, so if you’ve tried the latter and were unimpressed, you might want to give them another try!  Cooking beets is a cinch, but can be a bit messy.  Here’s how it goes:

If you buy beets still attached to their greens, trim the greens off, leaving about an inch on top. Leaving some of the stem helps keep the healthful pigments from leeching out during cooking.  Save the trimmed portion!  Beet greens are super nutritious and you can chop them up and drop them into any ol’ soup… they’re sort of like swiss chard taste-wise…a bit bitter.)  Just soak them a few times in cold water to remove all of the dirt before cooking.  Wash them if you’re going to boil, but really give them a good scrub if you’re planning on roasting them.  DO NOT PEEL the beet before cooking, or they will bleed more of their nutritious colorful pigments… and make a giant mess.

Nothing says 'I love you' like a bouquet of boiled beets

To boil: Drop trimmed beets into boiling water.  Let them boil until they are soft enough to be pierced easily with a knife, anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, depending on size.

To roast: Rub clean beets with a little bit of oil (olive or grapeseed works well), wrap well in foil, and place on another foil-lined pan.  (The double-foil will make sure that the sugars from your roasting beet don’t drip onto the pan and burn).  Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes to an hour (depending on size).  Your beets are ready when they can be pierced easily with a knife.

To peel cooked beets: peel cooked beets while they are still warm (but cooled off enough to handle.)  Some people like to use gloves for this to avoid staining their hands.  My favorite way to peel a beet is by scraping the sides of the beet with a plain ol’ spoon while standing over the sink… the peel will slide right off and the mess will be contained.  I do it bare-handed ‘cuz that’s just how I roll.

One of my favorite ways to eat beets is cooked, in a composed salad, spiked with some sort of vinegary drizzle (a syrupy balsamic vinegar works great here) to cut the sweetness.  Beets pair beautifully with citrus fruits for a colorful, seasonal salad that injects some gorgeous color into your wintry food wardrobe. Try this classic (and easy) recipe for Beet, Citrus & Mint salad to take advantage of the amazing bounty of winter citrus available right now.

Beet Pee

Don’t be alarmed if, after eating a heaping serving of beets or borscht, your pee is tinted pink or reddish. It’s called “Beeturia” (I swear, I don’t make this stuff up), and it’s totally harmless.  Be forewarned that your number twos might also take on a bit of a rosy hue a day or so after you’ve gone on a beet bender…. once again, totally normal and totally harmless.  Consider it a post-Valentine’s Day treat for your colon.

Now, back to the Borscht

There are countless versions of Borscht.  Russian style tends to have more “stuff” in it: piles of cooked or pickled beets, cabbage and/or potatoes, making for a heartier soup.  Ukranian style tends to be brothier, but often features some meat or a mushroom dumpling or two floating around, which adds some heft. You can approximate the homemade dumpling effortlessly by tossing some store-bought mushroom tortellini or ravioli into your soup.  For a gluten-free version, look forDePuma’s (amazing) gluten-free Wild Mushroom Ravioli, or  Conte’s gluten-free Potato Onion Pierogis. Other common borscht accessories include lima beans, hard boiled eggs, meat, potatoes, or any combination thereof.  All borschts are generally garnished with dill and a dollop of sour cream, which can be swapped out for a fat-free plain, greek-style yogurt seamlessly if you’re looking to keep your borscht on the lighter side.

I made Veselka’s vegetarian Christmas Borscht (pictured to the left, recipe link above) and used the gluten-free Conte’s Pierogis instead of the (homemade, 2+ hour-prep time mushroom-onion dumplings) the recipe called for.  Considering my grandma used to serve store-bought Borscht from a jar, I figured she probably wouldn’t have disapproved of this little shortcut.  It was delicious, and the house smelled amazing while the beets were pickling on the stovetop and the aromatic vegetable broth was simmering.

A multi-culti V-day: Ukranian borscht with Polish pierogis (hidden) and Greek yogurt

However, in case you want to find your own Borscht beshert (that’s Yiddish for ’soul mate’) before committing to the recipe I used, here are some other attractive candidates for you to consider, both vegetarian and non:

Hot Beef Borscht: for the meat and potatoes man…and the woman who loves him.

Russian Borscht: vegetarian; served chilled, with hard boiled eggs.  To cool down after a passionate Valentine’s encounter, perchance?

Hot Borscht recipe styled after the version from the Russian Tea Room of old: A quicker version; uses store-bought beef broth and includes cabbage and tomato.  For nostalgic New York couples who can’t afford the new, $18-a-bowl version offered on the restaurant’s current menu.

Borscht with Beet Greens: for the frugalista and her coupon-clipping man, who love the idea of using every last bit of the beet…greens and all.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your Borscht of choice!

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Gigante beans: Some foods are OK to supersize

If you know not the creamy comfort that is biting into an enormous and aptly-named gigante bean, then it is my mission today to convince you to seek out this elusive packet of leguminous deliciousness.

I’ve gone on about my love for beans–and their nutritional virtues–in the past.  And while many folks profess to like beans well enough, too, they fail to see what inspires my unbridled passion for these little packets of complex-carbohydrate goodness.  After all, the American bean vocabulary tends to be pretty limited: we know garbanzos, kidneys, black beans and cannelinis.  Occasionally we dabble in pintos or black-eyed peas.  But unless it comes in a can, most of us can’t be bothered to expand our bean horizons.

If ever there was a bean to inspire a nation to abandon its lazybean tendencies, however, surely the Gigante (aka: Gigande, Yigante, Hija) must be it. Most popular in Greek cuisine (yes, the same clever people who brought us geometry and democracy have also retained this most delicious of beans in their collective leguminous repertoire), gigante beans boast a divine creamy texture and the ability to maintain their shape after all sorts of cooking.  I decided it was time to start making my own gigantes after the $9.99/lb Antipasto bar at Whole Foods lured me in one time too many with that ridiculously delicious Gigante Bean salad of theirs.  (What kind of person spends $18.98 on an impulse bean purchase?!)  Like all bean varieties, Gigantes are an excellent source of complex carbohydrate, protein, fiber, antioxidants and a good source of iron.

Buying Beans

My new favorite place to buy beans is Purcell Mountain Farms, an Idaho-based farm with an excellent online store.  In addition to having the most reasonable prices for my favorite hard-to-find Gigante beans and Beluga lentils, they offer a surprising variety of organic and heirloom bean varieties with romantic names and fashionable appearances.  If you’re bored to tears with your kidneys and pintos, surely an Eye of the Goat, Jackson Wonder or Mortgage Lifter bean will liven up your winter soups–and spirits–mighty fast.    And if you’ve eschewed standard beans for their dull, lackluster appearances, might I suggest the speckled Dapple Grey variety, or perhaps a melange of Orca, Jacob’s Cattle and Painted Pony beans to match the animal-print napkins at your next dinner party?  There are so many gorgeous, interesting, delicious historic bean varieties to try if you’re willing to venture beyond the supermarket aisles.  And by buying heirloom bean varieties, you’re doing your small part to support environmentally-sound practices that promote biodiversity.  Forget  blue ketchups and animal-shaped nuggets to entice your finnicky kids to eat; let them pick out their own mix of fashion-colored and patterned beans and see if that doesn’t get them engaged in the healthy eating process.

If you are a bean buff and are interested in learning more about the folklore behind the wide, wonderful world of beans–as well as how to prepare them–I strongly recommend Aliza Green’s essential cookbook, Beans, from which I learned, for example, that Gigante beans are a variety of so-called “runner beans” that were brought to America from Greece and Spain.

Cooking beans from scratch

While I resisted it for years, I have come to discover that cooking beans from dry isn’t nearly as annoying as I had thought it would be. If you have the foresight to plan ahead, tomorrow night’s dinner beans into a big bowl of water in a ratio of about 3 cups water per 1 cup beans before you go to bed is the easiest way to prep your beans for a faster cooking time the next day.  And if you’re as Type A as I am, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with multi-tasking overnight will lull you into a happy, albeit geeky, slumber.   This would be the regular soaking method.

The quick-soaking method takes about an hour to an hour and a half.  In this case, you’d put your beans in a large saucepan so that they’re covered with 2 inches of water.  Bring the water to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes.  Then, turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let your beans soak in the water for 60-90 minutes, until tender.  Drain the water and proceed with your recipe.

The #1 rule when cooking any dry bean is to avoid adding acid of any kind with the bean until it is already tender.  Don’t add any vinegar, wine, citrus juice, tomato product or anything else acidic to the cooking water until your beans are nice and soft; otherwise, the acid will prevent your beans from softening no matter how long you cook them.

Gigante Beans: Two Ways

Yigandes Plaki: Loosely translates to "Why, oh why, was I not born to a Greek grandmother?"

I am obsessed with this first recipe for Greek-style Baked Gigante Beans, (aka Yigandes Plaki) which was adapted from Nancy Harmon Jenkins’  The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook and posted on another food blog.  (Better they should have to deal with the copyright issues than me!)  While I’ll admit that it took forever and a half to make, don’t forget that I live in a freezing house and am all for any recipe that involves keeping the oven on for long periods of time.  (If you pre-soak your beans overnight, the first 40-50 minute bean simmering step can be cut in half.)  It strikes me that this recipe would be perfectly suited for a slow-cooker, but since I have yet to figure out how to use the slow-cooker I got for my wedding, I will defer to any ambitious crock-pot enthusiasts out there to adapt this recipe on our behalf and post their findings in the comments section.)  Since I didn’t have fresh herbs, I used a bunch of dry ones (including basil and oregano), which resulted in a final product that, in addition to being mouth-meltingly creamy, gave a similar flavor effect to lasagna…in the best possible way.  In fact, I would recommend serving it like you would lasagna; accompanied by a nice garlicky side dish of broccoli rabe or sauteed bitter greens to counteract the sweetness and bring some green to the plate.  It is absolutely delicious.  If your children don’t like this recipe, then send them back for a refund.

Another easy way to serve gigantes is as a room temperature bean salad appetizer.  Gigantes are commonly featured among the mezze in Greece, and a salad is a perfect way to pay homage to this civilized bean.  Mark Bittman offers an easy-to-follow formula for a Greek-style gigante bean salad in his modern kitchen staple, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Of course, to replicate the Whole Foods Antipasto version that I’m so addicted to, here’s the closest recipe approximation I could come up with, reconstructed from the posted ingredient list on their salad bar signage:

Recipe: Tamara’s Whole Foods Gigante Bean Salad Knockoff

• Cook 1/2 lb of gigante beans per the cooking instructions above
• Roast 1 small red pepper and 1 small green pepper over open flame (your gas burner will do just fine).  Peel their skins off and slice peppers into super-thin strips.
• Mix cooked beans with 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 2 TBSP olive oil, 1 TBSP fresh chopped parsley, 1/2 cup (or more, to taste) or roasted pepper strips, 1-2 minced garlic cloves and salt to taste.
• Let salad marinate in fridge for several hours so flavors can blend.
• Serve at room temperature.

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Introducing the Burgeriest (soy-free, gluten-free, vegan) homemade Veggie Burger

For some time, friends and readers have been asking me to share a recipe for a good, easy to make, homemade veggie burger.  And so my New Year’s Resolution this year was to make good on my promises to do so. (Besides, it’s a heck of a lot easier than losing weight.)

As it turns out, there’s a lot of dissatisfaction out there with the available options.  Most commercial offerings have gluten or soy; ingredients which many people avoid by choice or necessity.  And most recipes for homemade versions are incredibly time-consuming, multi-step ordeals; I still have nightmares about the 2-hour Shutter’s veggie burger project I took on two summers ago that involved cooking brown rice from scratch (45 minutes), cooking beets from scratch (1 hour), and mixing them with a laundry list of hard-to-find-GF-versions-of  pantry items* to produce a delicious but exhausting veggie burger.  Then there was that Martha Stewart Chickpea burger that tasted suspiciously similar to falafel.  (Tasty…but if I had wanted falafel, I would have just made falafel…).  I had all but given up on finding a tasty, easy homemade burgery veggie burger until the most recent article in a recent New York Times series on the safety (or lack thereof) of ground beef sold in America provided the second wind I needed to find a delicious, easy, healthful ground beefless recipe for my dear readers to make at home.

Resolved: Eat Less Red Meat in 2010

Even if you’re not a vegetarian, swapping out a beefy burger for a meatless one every so often will do you good– and help you make good on those New Year’s Resolutions to start eating more healthily.  In a landmark study of over 550,000 people aged 50-71 years (that’s crazy huge, by the way) by Sinha et al published in March, 2009 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers followed subjects for 10 years to determine how various dietary factors contributed to mortality. They controlled for all sorts of factors, including race, smoking, alcohol use, weight, exercise habits, vitamin use and multiple dietary habits.  And they found that men and women who ate more red meat were  31% and 36%, respectively, more likely to die for any reason during the 10 year period when compared to people to ate the least red meat. Cancer was the leading cause of mortality, followed by cardiovascular disease.  On average, the group with the lowest red meat consumption ate only about 1/3 of an ounce per 1,000 calories in their diet, compared with the highest meat consumption group, which ate about 2.5 oz red meat per 1,000 calories in their diet.  In other words, in a typical 2,000 calorie diet, the lowest-risk group ate less than 1 oz red meat per day on average (~4.5 oz per week), versus the highest risk group who ate about 5oz per day (~17 oz per week).  The results were statistically significant for trend, meaning that even reducing red meat consumption somewhat from the highest level (without going as low as the lowest-intake level) was still associated with a reduced risk of death.

The bottom line: swapping out one average beef burger a week with a meatless version brings you 3-6oz closer to the group whose dietary habits have been associated with the lowest risk of death within 10 years. And what better New Year’s Resolution than to live past New Year’s 2020?

The Best Homemade Veggie Burger Recipe

And so, after countless veggie burger experiments, spanning several years and multiple genres, I’m pleased to point you in the direction of Mollie Katzen’s Lentil-Walnut Burger. I know what you’re thinking when you hear “lentil-walnut.”  You’re thinking about long-

Two Lentil Walnut burgers on a (gluten-free) bun

haired tree huggers.  70’s style health food stores that smell like vitamins. Hemp, bean sprouts and Birkenstocks.   But do try to keep an open mind.  Mollie loves food, and she knows food.  As such, this burger tastes nothing of lentils or walnuts; it’s greater than the sum of its parts.  The batter has a similar texture and appearance to ground beef–it looks like a beef burger when cooking and when cooked.  Not in the creepy Boca Burger way, but in a ‘it definitely feels burgery rather than bean-pattyish’ way.   The burgers have that same savory, umami flavor profile of a beef burger–delivered by the cider vinegar and mushrooms?–rather than the more bean-and-vegetably flavor typical of a veggie burger.  And you can make the whole batter in the time it takes to cook lentils: 30 minutes flat.  (If I may offer a tip: mash the cooked lentils with your hands–squeeze ‘em real good until they’re totally mush.  It helps make a very coherent batter.) So give this tie-dyed, hippie burger a chance, will you?

To make Mollie’s recipe gluten-free you have several options instead of the bread crumbs/wheat germ/oats she calls for:

1. Use gluten free breadcrumbs, like Gillian’s, Hol-Grain, or Glutino
2. Use gluten-free oats, like Bob’s Red Mill
3. Use the Quinoa Flakes you have leftover from making my gluten-free Quatzoh Balls (of course this will make the recipe more hippie than it is already)
   
4. Make your own gluten-free breadcrumbs by toasting your favorite frozen gluten-free waffle and tossing it in a food processor (Click here for instructions from the clever gluten-free goddess who came up with this nifty idea

Approximate nutrition info per burger (assumes each recipe makes 6 burgers and you use 1 TBSP of oil to cook the burgers in a non-stick pan.  Excludes bun.):  250 calories, 29g carbohydrate–of which 10 huge grams are fiber (so, a net of 19g of carbohydrate–or one and a half diabetic exchanges), 11g protein, 12g (heart-healthy, unsaturated) fat, and 3.8mg iron (~20% of the daily value of 18mg).  Serve with ketchup and a slice of tomato to help absorb the iron from the beans and spinach.

** If I haven’t scared you away from the Shutter’s recipe and you’re up for the challenge, you can substitute Wheat-free Tamari sauce for the soy sauce.  Premier Japan makes a gluten-free Hoisin sauce.  And use any of the bread-crumb-replacement strategies listed above in place of the oat bran or wheat germ she calls for.  And for goodness sake, use canned beets instead of roasting your own fresh ones as I foolishly did and you can redeem that extra hour of your life to play Rhythm Kung Fu on the Wii Fit Plus you got for Christmas.

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Curry leaves: If you can't find them, why not grow your own?

I’ve got a bit of cabin fever this holiday season.  Between yesterday’s all-day rain-athon, the gray, dreary weather last week, and having to work on Thanksgiving, Christmas eve and Christmas day, I’ve been dreaming of getting away.  Alas, since there are no vacation days in my future, I decided to create a faux getaway by visiting Newark Avenue near Journal Square in Jersey City, a veritable slice of India right in my own backyard.  Granted, it’s not the most picturesque of neighborhoods.  But it boasts a half dozen “cash and carry” markets where the offering of vegetables, herbs, beans and pantry items capture the imagination… and inspire me to cook dishes that make my house smell wholly unfamiliar.  The perfect cure for cabin fever.

I scored a bag full of goodies to fuel a week’s worth of cooking experiments, but the fresh bag of curry leaves I bought for a mere $0.50 turned out to be the magic ingredient I needed to transform a pantry of mundane, workaday foods into Iddiyappam: a bright, unusual accompaniment to the aromatic lentil dal (stew) Alex was working on.

Curry leaves bear no relation to the spice we know as curry powder.  (In fact, curry powder isn’t actually a spice so much as a blend of multiple spices that vary by brand.)  Curry leaves are narrow, edible, green leaves grown on (what else?) curry trees–also known as Kari trees– and are sold fresh on the branch.  They smell nothing like curry the spice, nor do they taste anything like curry the spice.  To me, they smell a little bit nutty, but others describe the aroma as bell-pepperish or citrusy.  To unlock their distinctive flavor, you just fry them in some oil; this process unlocks their alchemistic ability to transform a dish beyond the mere sum of its parts.  (If you’ve ever fried sage leaves, you’ll understand what I’m talking about here.)  I don’t recommend leaving them out of a dish that calls for them.

If you are lucky enough to live near an Indian market–or a specialty grocery that carries fresh curry leaves (you may seem them sold as “meetha neem” or “kadhi patta”)–buy them. Alternatively, if you love Indian food and live in a temperate climate– California comes to mind– why not consider planting yourself a curry leaf plant? The species name is Murraya Koenigii, and you can order one online from a variety of sources.  According to Carol Selva Rajah, the Sydney-based co-author of The Food of India (Murdoch Books, 2002), her outdoor curry plants have grown to over six feet tall (!) in sunny Sydney.  (However, you can grow more modestly-sized plants potted indoors).  Just think of all the great produce you could barter with your neighbors with that many curry leaves!  Note that dried leaves have nowhere near the flavor or aroma as fresh leaves, so if you find some fresh ones, it’s best to freeze any extras for a rainy day and thaw them when needed.

So once you’ve scored yourself some leaves, you can try frying them in a bit of oil before starting your favorite curry recipe (especially fish) and then proceed as usual; they’ll add a surprising bit of depth and complexity. You can use them as a garnish to mulligatawny (or any lentil) soup, as Carol suggests.   Or you can use them to try out the Iddiyapam recipe that brightened up my dreary weekend; it’s a Southern Indian rice noodle based dish that makes an interesting substitute for plain old rice alongside a more strongly-flavored sauce or stew.  With Carol’s permission, I offer you her recipe–adapted only to reduce the oil slightly for my calorie-conscious readers.  (I assure you, it’s no worse for it.)  I recommend getting a big pot of water boiling at the outset and cooking the eggs while the rice noodles are busy soaking.  After 10 minutes, scoop the eggs out with a slotted spoon and keep the boiling water going for the rice noodles.

Iddiyapam: Easier to make than to pronounce

Recipe: Iddiyappam (adapted everso slightly and reprinted with permission from Carol Selva Rajah)

Serves 6

8 oz rice vermicelli (look for these in the Asian section of any supermarket)

2 TBSP oil

1/3 cup cashew nuts

1/2 onion, chopped

3 eggs

1 cup frozen peas, thawed

10 curry leaves

2 carrots, grated

2 leeks, finely shredded

1 red pepper, diced

2 TBSP ketchup

1 TBSP soy sauce (to make it gluten-free, use wheat-free Tamari sauce instead)

1 tsp salt

1. Soak the rice vermicelli in cold water for 30 minutes
2. Meanwhile, get a pot of water boiling and cook the eggs for 10 minutes to hard boil, the remove with a slotted spoon and cool in cold water.  When cold, peel them and cut into wedges.
3. Drain vermicelli and put them in the pot of boiling water.  Remove from the heat and leave in the pan for 3 minutes.  Drain and rinse in cold water.
4. Heat 1 TBSP oil in a non-stick frying pan and fry the cashews until golden.  (Note: don’t be tempted to toast them without oil to save calories; frying them in oil results in a ridiculously delicious effect)
5. Remove cashews from pan, add the onion to pan, fry until dark golden, then remove from pan and set aside.
6. Heat the remaining 1 TBSP oil in the frying pan and briefly fry the curry leaves.  Add the carrot, leeks and red pepper and stir for 1 minute.  Add the ketchup, soy sauce/tamari , salt and vermicelli, stirring constantly to prevent the noodles from sticking to pan.
7. Serve on a platter and garnish with the peas, cashews, fried onion and egg slices.

Approximate nutrition info per serving (assumes 6 servings per recipe): 300 calories, 44g carbohydrate of which 3g are fiber (total 3 diabetic exchanges), 8g protein, 10g fat.

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Hope Santa's got some Cod Liver Oil for us in that sleigh

Monday, December 21st is the Winter Solstice: the shortest day of the year.  What better occasion, then, to issue a wake-up call to my dear readers that you are all most likely deficient (or insufficient) in Vitamin D, the so-called “sunshine vitamin”?  (So much for spreading holiday cheer, huh?)

It’s not your fault, really.  As I’ve written previously, Vitamin D was never supposed to be a dietary vitamin at all.  It’s a hormone that our bodies manufacture from a cholesterol-derived precursor that lives in our skin and gets activated by the sun’s UVB rays.  For millennia of human existence, this system worked pretty well: minimally-clothed people spent long days outside working, hunting and gathering, making loads of D in their skin and storing the excess in their fat cells for the winter months.  Humans who wound up in sunlight-deprived places like Alaska or Scandinavia compensated by evolving into a diet rich in fatty fish–one of the only good naturally-occurring food sources of D, since these fish consume algae that manufacture D from the sun’s UV rays (remember photosynthesis?), and wind up storing it in their fat.  Fast-forward to our modern lifestyles: more time spent indoors, limited outdoor time spent in smoggy cities with tall, sun-blocking buildings, sunscreens, clothing, fortified foods that don’t contain the advertised levels of Vitamin D and a recommended daily value that most experts agree is entirely too low… and lo and behold, we find ourselves in an epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency.

Recent government data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) confirms my own unscientific observations that most of us have insufficient Vitamin D status.  Not a single person I’ve encountered in the past year who had their Vitamin D levels checked–from infants in the hospital I work at to my 30-something year old colleagues to our parents and their 60+ year old friends  — has been Vitamin D sufficient.  The most recent NHANES data I’ve come across, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2008) suggests that about 77% of all American adults are Vitamin D insufficient by currently emerging standards… and an astounding 90% of Mexican Americans and 97% of African Americans are insufficient.  A large study published this past September the journal Pediatrics suggests that prevalence of Vitamin D insufficiency is about 60% in young people aged 1-21.

In other words, unless you are a Caucasian sun-worshipper living in Miami, I’d be willing to bet that you, too, are Vitamin D insufficient.

Why D matters

The association between Vitamin D and rickets– the poor bone mineralization that causes bowed legs and other skeletal deformities in children– is long-established and well-known.  But in the past few decades, evidence has been mounting that points to a crucial role for Vitamin D in a host of other, unrelated health conditions.  Insufficient Vitamin D levels have been associated with an increased prevalence of diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) and digestive system cancers (especially esophageal, oral/pharyngeal, colon and pancreatic ).  Poorer vitamin D status has also been associated with higher rates of autoimmune diseases like Type I diabetes, MS, rheumatoid arthritis and Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. (While I haven’t come across any associations specifically to Celiac Disease prevalence and Vitamin D status in the scientific literature, given the autoimmune nature of celiac and its genetic relation to Type I diabetes, its a biologically plausible connection.)  A very recent study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology attributed the increased prevalence of end-stage kidney disease in black men versus white men to the higher prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in black men.

D for Immunity

For immunity, think herring.

I find it curious that so many Americans are obsessed with Vitamin C and its immunity-enhancing benefits.  On average, healthy American adults and children easily meet the daily recommended Vitamin C intake from diet alone (which is 60mg for adults, though smokers will have higher needs of closer to 100mg), and the maximum body pool of vitamin C is associated with daily doses of ~100mg (in adult males).  In other words, given the relatively low turnover of vitamin C in our bodies, daily intake of 100mg/day will saturate your cells and blood with all the vitamin C they can carry (1,500mg total), and all they need to optimize the vitamin C-associated functions they perform, including maximizing your white blood cell response to infectious agents.  Doses beyond 100mg/day are essentially pointless from a nutritional standpoint, and those megadoses of Vitamin C aren’t going to do much beyond filling your pee with vitamin C or give you a mild case of diarrhea.

If you’re serious about optimizing your immune system’s function and are hell-bent on popping a pill to do so, I’d suggest you replace your Vitamin C supplement stash with a Vitamin D one.  Vitamin D is metabolized by our macrophages–the white blood cells that engulf and destroy pathogenic invaders (including cells infected with flu viruses, by the way) that don’t belong there.  Vitamin D induces macrophages to produce one of the proteins responsible for the destruction of these infective agents, so being Vitamin D sufficient is an important condition to supporting the effectiveness of this important immune defense… particularly in sunshine-deprived cold and flu season.  Since most of us do have sufficient Vitamin C levels and don’t have sufficient vitamin D levels, taking a Vitamin D supplement is more likely to enhance our immune system’s strength than taking a Vitamin C supplement.

Get your D

We Vitamin D crusaders are eagerly awaiting a report from the Institute of Medicine in May, 2010 that will contain their committee’s recommendations regarding a possible increase in the current dietary reference intake for Vitamin D– as well as possible increases in the safe upper limit daily dose.  Until that safe upper limit is officially increased, food manufacturers aren’t likely to fortify our milk and cereals with levels high enough to make a difference in our collective Vitamin D status.  Currently, the officially-sanctioned safe upper limit for people over age 1 is 2,000 IU per day. (Your multivitamin or Calcium supplement probably contains somewhere between 100-400 IU/day.)

If you don’t know your Vitamin D status but are concerned about preventing a deficiency, I’d suggest taking 1,000-2,000 IU of supplemental Vitamin D3 per day right off the bat.  (At least in the non-summer months).  If you’re pregnant, I’d suggest starting at 2,000 IU/day, having your Vitamin D levels tested and working with your doctor on a dose that will bring you up to sufficient levels if need be; your needs may turn out to be higher and require a prescription-strength dose to meet them.  If you happen to get tested for Vitamin D and are found to be overtly clinically deficient, your doctor is likely to put you on a prescription-strength repletion protocol to bring your blood levels up to snuff; it usually involves doses from 10,000-50,000 IU for a short period of time, and is then tapered down to maintenance doses of 2,000-6,000 IU/day.

Canned fish, like salmon, mackerel and sardines, are among the best dietary sources of Vitamin D

Of course, maximizing the Vitamin D in your diet will also help.  While surveys have shown that the actual amount of Vitamin D found in fortified dairy is significantly less than what the labels claim (I’ll add this to my list of grievances against the U.S. dairy industry), fortified milk (or your favorite dairy-free milk analogue) is still among the most convenient food sources of Vitamin D. Since Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin–meaning that your intestines absorb it only in the presence of some dietary fat– skim milk isn’t going to do the trick unless you’re having it as part of a meal with some other source of fat.  Go on…switching to 1% milk in your breakfast cereal or latte isn’t going to kill you; for each cup, it’s a 20 calorie difference from skim milk, but those extra 2g of fat will help you absorb the D.  (And ordering your tall, double no-whip latte only ‘half-skinny’ will add another element of snootiness to your custom coffee creation at Starbucks.  Fun!)

Other good food sources of Vitamin D include:

• canned salmon (3oz of canned sockeye salmon contains ~675 IU; your typical farmed salmon fillet will have about half or less due to the lack of algae in the fish’s diet.  Wild sockeye used in canned salmon is among the more sustainable seafood choices available.)
• cod liver oil (1 tsp contains 450 IU.  Grandma knew best!)
• mackerel (3oz of cooked mackerel contains ~390 IU, and Spanish Mackerel is among the more sustainable seafood options currently available)
• herring (3oz of cooked Atlantic herring contains ~180 IU, and is another good choice from a sustainability perspective)
• sardines (3oz of canned sardines contain ~165 IU, and are an excellent choice from a sustainability perspective)
• canned tuna (3oz contains ~150 IU)
• fortified breakfast cereals (check the label, as it will vary by brand, but most contain 10-25% of the current daily value per serving, or about 40-100 IU)
• vitamin D-fortified orange juice (100 IU per 8oz)
• dairy products made with Vitamin D fortified milk (e.g., yogurt.  Typically, one 6oz container contains 80 IU)
• dried shiitake mushrooms (you can, of course, reconstitute them and still get the D.  But its the drying process that activates the D, so fresh shiitakes will not contain the same levels.  My calculations suggest that 1 cup of rehydrated shiitakes (0.5oz, or 3/4 cup, dry) contains about 130 IU of Vitamin D.

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With about 5mg of iron per serving, this hearty vegetarian chili is far from an anemic entree.

Iron is a problem for lots of people.

While the average American man eats enough of it, most babies, children and pre-menopausal women do not.  And that’s not even including the vegetarianally-inclined.  Iron deficiency is the #1 nutritional deficiency in the world, and remains a problem even in over-nourished America.  Data from population surveys (1999-2000) show that toddlers and females aged 12-49 have the highest rates of iron deficiency in our country, with prevalence of  7% and 9-16%, respectively.

The majority of iron in our bodies exists as part of hemoglobin–the oxygen-transporting complex in red blood cells.  (A much smaller amount is used for other functions, such as DNA synthesis, the synthesis of neurotransmitters, immune function and the metabolism of food to create energy.)  Given these varied roles of iron, it makes sense that (1) people who lose more blood lose more iron, and (2) people who are growing (infants, children, pregnant women) will require more iron to manufacture more red blood cells, new DNA for each new cell in their growing bodies, and to promote brain development.  When someone has an insufficient number of red blood cells due to a lack of dietary iron, the condition is called Iron-Deficiency Anemia (though there are other types of anemia caused by non-iron factors as well).  Symptoms of anemia range from mild (fatigue, always feeling cold, rapid heart rate or palpitations) to severe (all of the above, plus atrophy of taste buds, sore tongue, sores at the corners of the mouth and spoon-shaped fingernails.)  Children with iron-deficiency anemia may experience retardation in cognitive and motor development that may be irreversible, irritability/attention deficit, stunted growth, and increased susceptibility to illness and lead poisoning.  Pregnant women with iron-deficiency anemia are more likely to miscarry and have low-birth weight babies.

Iron absorption and storage is a very tightly regulated process in our bodies; iron is efficiently recycled from old red blood cells that have been decommissioned, and used for the creation of 200 million new red blood cells per day.  On average, we only lose about 1.2mg of iron per day, which is approximately the amount that we absorb from our diets.  When we’re deficient, our body is able to absorb more.  When we’re awash in iron, our body is able to absorb less.  (Although large doses of supplemental iron can overwhelm our body’s natural feedback mechanisms, which is why it’s important to keep your iron supplements out of reach of children–iron overdose is the #1 cause of poisoning among children under 6 years old.)

Don’t let the Daily Values deceive you

Officially, the recommended daily value for iron is 18mg, which is the amount of dietary iron needed by adult women aged 19-50. (Though women who use birth control pills only require about 11mg per day due to an average of 60% less blood lost in their monthly periods.)  Adult men and women over age 50 require significantly less–only 8mg.  Pregnant women require 27mg/day, which is why a prenatal vitamin is recommended; it would be incredibly challenging to meet these needs consistently through diet alone.

More interestingly, infants 7-12 months need 11mg–or almost 40% more than a grown adult male! This is the reason why experts recommend iron-fortified cereals or pureed meat as baby’s first complementary foods after age 6 months; with the amount of iron infants need and the tiny quantities they eat, it’s virtually impossible to meet their needs on breastmilk or formula and foods like applesauce or pureed veggies alone.

But the daily values can be deceiving, as they assume one important fact: that the average American consumes an omnivorous diet. Since iron from animal sources (called “heme iron”) is up to 10x better absorbed–and the presence of meat, poultry or fish in a meal containing vegetarian sources of iron (called “non-heme iron”) helps increase the body’s ability to absorb it– the vegetarians among us actually have significantly increased irons needs as follows:

Vegetarian adult males: 14mg/day

Vegetarian pre-menopausal women: 33mg/day (though less if you’re on the pill)

And for those of you who donate blood with any regularity, know that each pint of blood you donate has over 200mg of iron that you’ll need to replace over time (though NOT all at once… iron toxicity is very serious, and wholly unpleasant).

What foods are the best sources of iron?

Iron absorption ranges by food source, from as low as 2% for spinach and legumes to 20% for steak.  Average bioavailability of iron from a mixed diet is 18%, whereas it’s only 10% from the average vegetarian diet.

Oysters are an iron-rich, sustainable seafood choice. Slurp ‘em if you got ‘em.

The best non-vegetarian sources of iron are:

• • • • • Chicken liver (12.8mg in 3.5 oz cooked)
        • Clams (11mg in 1/4 cup canned)
        • Oysters (5.6mg iron in 6 oysters)
        • Shrimp (2.6mg in 3oz)
        • Beef (2.3mg in 3oz)
        • Dark meat turkey (2.3mg in 3oz)
        • Canned light tuna (1.3mg in 3oz)
        • Dark meat chicken (1.1mg in 3 oz)

When it comes to vegetarian sources of iron, it’s tricky to talk about ‘best sources,’ because the absorbability of the iron will vary widely by what you eat the foods with. While tofu is an excellent source of iron on paper, there are compounds in soy protein that have an inhibitory effect on iron absorption.  The same goes for legumes and spinach; the presence of compounds called phytates drastically reduces the absorption of their significant iron content to as little as 2%.  The presence of significant amounts of calcium can also inhibit iron absorption, which is why prenatal vitamins have very little calcium in them and cow’s milk is NOT recommended for children under 12 months old.  In contrast, several dietary factors can enhance the absorbability of non-heme iron; these include: vitamin C, organic acids such as those naturally found in certain fruits and vegetables (citric acid, lactic acid, malic acid), alcohol, and the presence of meat, fish or poultry in the same meal (the mechanism behind this last one is unknown, so the scientific community refers to this mystery phenomenon as “MFP factor”–or meat, poultry, fish factor.  I’m not making this up.)

With these important caveats in mind, here is a list of some of the best vegetarian sources of protein:

• Fortified breakfast cereals (e.g.,Total, Raisin Bran, Cheerios): content varies, but one serving may contain up to 100% of the 18mg daily value.  Sadly, gluten-free cereals tend not to be fortified.
• Tofu (6.2mg in 1/2 cup firm)
• White beans (3.9mg in 1/2 cup)
• Lentils (3.3mg in 1/2 cup cooked)
• Blackstrap molasses (3.5mg in 1 TBSP)
• Cooked spinach (3.2mg in 1/2 cup)
• Baked potato (2.8mg in 1 medium potato with skin)
• Kidney beans (2.6mg in 1/2 cup cooked)
• Amaranth grain (2.6mg in 1/2 cup cooked)
• Prune juice (2.3mg in 6oz)
• Cashew nuts (1.7mg in 1 oz)
• Rolled oats (not fortified) (1.7mg in 1/2 cup dry)

When Life Hands you Anemia, Make Chili

Whether you make it with ground beef (or better yet, turkey) or keep it vegetarian, chili is one of the first foods I recommend to my anemic brothers and sisters looking to increase their dietary iron intake.  (One can only eat so much chicken liver, after all.)  The presence of tomatoes–which contain absorption-enhancing Vitamin C, citric acid and malic acid– help improve the bioavailability of iron in the beans.  If you use ground meat of any kind, you’ll get a two-fold effect on iron content: both from the heme iron content of the meat itself, as well as though the MFP factor’s further enhancement of the vegetarian iron bioavailability.

My go-to- recipe for vegetarian chili is this classic one for False Alarm Vegetable Chili from Martha Stewart.  It will surely go down in history as the unfussiest recipe she has ever featured, as it basically calls for chopping up a bunch of vegetables, dumping them in a pot all at once, and then dumping a bunch of dry and canned ingredients in 5 minutes later.  Voila.  It serves 10, and each serving contains ~4.7mg of iron.

If you prefer some meat in your chili, try this recipe for Colorful Turkey Chili from Whole Foods market.  It serves 4-6, and assuming one serving is ~1/5th of the recipe, each serving would contain ~5mg of iron.

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In a season where centerfolds of over-the-top seasonal desserts beckon me from every glossy foodie magazine I encounter, there’s a lot to be said for finishing off a festive holiday gathering with communal bowls of clementines and chestnuts instead.  When the dinner plates are cleared and friends linger around the table over tea or wine, I find that slowly peeling away at a clementine or fresh chestnut is a calming ritual of sorts, preventing idle hands that might otherwise be tempted to make quick work of, say, an entire gooey pecan pie. Both of these low calorie treats finish off the meal with a hint of sweetness and lend themselves to being enjoyed slowly and shared among friends.

My Darling Clementines

Clementines are seedless citrus fruits related to mandarin oranges and grown mostly in Spain and Morocco (though increasingly, I’m seeing Clementines grown in Florida and California being sold alongside the imports).  Their appeal starts from the moment you effortlessly peel off their loose skins without encountering any sort of sticky mess…it continues on as you peel off segment after segment… and it culminates with that happy little burst of sweetness in your mouth.  Eaten segment by segment, you can savor one little clementine slowly, thus drawing out the pleasure of post-dinner pecking that much longer.

One clementine has about 35 calories, 9g of carbohydrate (of which 1g is fiber) and 60% of the daily value for Vitamin C. (2 clementines would be the equivalent of one fruit serving).  Which means that even when you reach for that third, fourth and fifth clementine, ’tis no reason for guilt.  (The same cannot be said with respect to bites of pecan pie.)

***

How to choose, roast and eat fresh chestnuts

Before I met my husband, roasting fresh chestnuts was something that I thought only happened in Christmas carols.  But he taught me the fine art of choosing the best chestnuts…

• squeeze fresh chestnuts before buying and and select ones that are nice and hard
• any softness or “give” means they’re not fresh and will be impossible to peel once you’ve roasted them

… and roasting fresh chestnuts:

• score a small “x” on the flat side with a paring knife (a MUST… this allows steam to escape and prevents a chestnut explosion in your oven)
• lay them score side up on a baking tray
• sprinkle them lightly with water
• bake them at 400 degrees in a toaster oven or 425 degrees in a conventional oven for 10-15 minutes
• Note that roasting times will vary by oven; look for the scores to start curling back as an indication that the chestnuts are done.  Alternatively, you can take one out and test its done-ness by carefully peeling it (use a dishtowel or gloves…it’ll be hot!) and seeing if the nutmeat is nice and soft.

… and eating fresh chestnuts:

• just peel off the hard outer shell from the open flaps created by your x-shaped scores–while they’re still warm.   (Get cracking on the peeling as soon as they’ve cooled just enough to handle.)
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If you want a demo of the process described above–or just a voyeuristic peek at the man who roasts my chestnuts and invented the Chana Saag recipe you all know and love– Alex prepared this handy little tutorial video for you:

I’ve written before about the unique nutritional composition of chestnuts (and chestnut flour), which are technically tree nuts but have swapped the characteristic fat of tree nuts for starch instead.  As a result, they’re much lower in calories, ounce for ounce.  If you haven’t had the pleasure of tasting a fresh-roasted chestnut, they’re sweet and slightly nutty with a soft and sometimes crumbly texture.  One ounce of roasted chestnuts (about 3 chestnuts) have about 70 calories, 15g of carbohydrate (one diabetic exchange), of which 1.5g is fiber, 1g of protein and <1g fat.  It also has 12% of the daily value for vitamin C, which makes it quite an oddity in the nut world.

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As we enter into the crazed pre-holiday shopping period, I urge you not to omit these edible must-haves from your list.  By the time you’re scooping up deeply-discounted leftovers from distressed holiday retailers on December 26, these annual gems will already be in short supply.  And unlike this year’s Zhu Zhu pet that will soon wind up on the bottom of the toy box along with last year’s Tickle Me Elmo, the memory of happy times spent with friends and family in a room perfumed with the scent of roasting chestnuts and citrusy clementines is sure to be treasured all year long.  (Of course, if my friends and family were to buy me a Wii Fit for Hannukah, I’d treasure that all year long, too.  I swear.)

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