Proverbs On Your Plate

This is officially the first guest blog for Eat, Drink, and Be Active! This post comes from Tim Brooks over at Mulligan Stew. Tim and I both grew up in Madison and he's got a long history with food. From being a chef in a restaurant to being a fishmonger in Seattle, he's had his hands (and knives) in food just about as long as I've known him. Today, he posts about getting variety on your plate, something that any dietician would approve!

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Proverbs On Your Plate

When sitting down to plan out what's going on your plate for dinner,
there's a lot to consider: Nutrition, flavor, how things look on your
plate. We've been inundated with information about the four food
groups, the food pyramid, and every fad diet craze out there, but the
greatest thing that works for me in selecting a healthy, interesting
dinner, comes from friends in Japan. Just as we're told to get five
servings of fruit and vegetables per day, Japanese mothers tell their
children that if they eat 21 different foods in one day, they will be
healthy and wise.

Examining that for a moment, it sounds like a good idea. Look at your
diet for a day. Discard things such as coffee, and the lettuce on your
burger, and you begin to realize just how monotonous our daily routine
of eating can be. Breakfast, for me, usually consists of a coffee and
a scone or pastry at work. What's that for lunch? A sandwich and a
soda? I have a long way to go before I make it to 21.

My cousin Peter has passed along a quote that says, "Eat breakfast
like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper." I tried
it, and it doesn't necessarily work for me. I'm not a morning person.
When I get home from work, I need to play catch-up with my nutrition
in order to make this work. Fortunately, I have more time to relax in
the kitchen, and working at a grocery store affords me the opportunity
to come home with a cornucopia of fresh produce.

The produce is the key. In general, I try to have something green on
my plate. A well balanced meal, from what I've been taught in the
restaurant industry, has a Protein, a Starch, and a Green. Meat and
potatoes just doesn't cut it for health. This doesn't mean that you
have to cut it out of your diet altogether. It just means that we need
a little bit of sunshine on the plate.

In my pantry, I try to have the staples of onion, garlic, and
tomatoes, as well as enough fruit and vegetables to make a quick
salad. Everything branches out from there. If I'm only making a dinner
for two, I bring home a green leafy or green flowery vegetable. Along
with a good protein, and with a little planning, here's meal can be
made in one pan.

Step 1: Assemble the vegetables. In this case, I have pea pods,
broccoli, bok choy, carrots, onions, mushrooms, pepper,  garlic, and
ginger.  Mince the garlic and ginger, finely chop the harder
vegetables, and slice the softer ones.

Step 2: Assemble the protein. In this picture, I'm using shrimp. It
doesn't have to be jumbo, and it doesn't have to have the shell, but
for best results, get the raw stuff. Most places have peeled and
deveined shrimp, but for flavor, it's better to shell them yourself.
Don't worry. This'll give you a better appreciation of your food. Peel
it, and slice it down the back. Pull out the vein if it has one. Rinse
if you must.

Step 3: Everything in the pan. Start with your aromatics. Little bit
of oil in the pan, some garlic and ginger over medium heat, and let it
sweat until your kitchen starts to smell good, about five minutes.
Next, add the other vegetables in order of hardest to softest at
intervals of two minutes. Carrots and Broccoli take longer to cook
than the others, so put them in first. Onions and peppers come next,
followed by mushrooms, pea pods and bok choy. Add the shrimp last, and
let it cook for about three to four more minutes. When it's ready, the
shrimp should curl into a J-Shape. Curled into a C-shape, they're
still going to be tender, but turn off the heat before they curl into
an armadillo ball. They'll get really tough on you.

Season it up with a little pepper or red chile flakes, and add a
couple splashes of soy sauce or low sodium tamari. If you have a rice
cooker or even a spare pot, make a big batch of brown rice and keep a
couple meals' worth in the fridge for quick access to hearty
nutrition. Spoon it over rice, and you have a colorful, nutritious
meal with at least eight different foods to get you closer to your
goal of a complete, healthy day.

As in the game of blackjack, 21 is a winner. Make it there with your
food every day, and your body will thank you.

***

For more exciting recipes and humorous anecdotes, swing by my blog at:
http://mulligansoup.wordpress.com. Just like this post, it's got a
little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

Strawberries. Forever.

I had to great fortune to be in sunny California for a quick visit this past weekend just as the strawberry stands were opening. According to my Grandma, strawberry season there is from April to October. I don't generally use sports references, but imagine having a pint of fresh-picked strawberries to eat at every single baseball game of the season! Craziness. The rest of my family who came out from the Midwest was equally as excited as I was about having delicious fresh fruit so we bought somewhere around 20 cartons from this stand just outside of Sonoma:

We even had to stop and buy more on the way home because we had indulged in a few too many strawberries while stopping in at a couple of wineries! That night we made a delicious take on strawberry shortcake. With apologies to everyone living in a place where the strawberries are still being flown in (myself included now that I'm back on the East Coast) here is a modified recipe for healthy strawberry shortcake:

1. First, buy a lot of delicious strawberries. 
2. Then, go to your favorite locally owned kitchen shop or on Amazon to buy a Strawberry Slicer which is similar to an egg slicer and works like a charm. 
3. Next, cook your favorite (and healthiest) biscuit recipe. This weekend I cheated a bit and used a mix, but I just found this recipe for Whole-grain buttermilk biscuits on the Mayo Clinic website that looks worth a try! 
4. When the biscuits are fresh out of the oven, split open and heap sliced strawberries on top (no sugar is needed, the berries are naturally sweet). Top with your favorite low-fat vanilla frozen yogurt and savor!

Nina and I enjoying our first(ish) strawberries of the season! 

Plant Based? Like… a VEGETARIAN??

I recently wrote a guest-blog post for my friend Tim over at Mulligan Stew (check out the post here). I’ve been thinking more about one of the aspects that I wrote about so I thought I’d expand on it a bit in my own blog!

All of the recommendations coming out these days, as well as many of the ones from the past, suggest that eating a more plant-based diet will help reduce the risk of several chronic diseases such has type two diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. It’s what the Mediterranean Diet is based on, it’s explicit in the newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it’s everywhere.

While the term “plant-based” might sound pretty easy to figure out for some of us, I think that others jump to the conclusion that it means, “you must become a vegetarian.” It’s not too surprising then that those same people run to bacon and beer festivals or their local BBQ joint. You can almost hear them covering their ears and yelling “you can’t make me!” However, I think that if people understood the suggestion a bit more they would understand that there is room in a plant-based diet for some bacon and the occasional burger or steak.

Even I actually misinterpret it sometimes, trying to make my diet as vegetable and fruit-filed as possible and suggesting to friends who are looking for suggestions on eating healthy that they do the same. I figure if you focus on fruits and veggies, you’ll probably end up getting adequate amounts of other nutrients, just not in excess. However, I think that what we need to focus on to eat health is quite literally how long ago what we are eating was a plant. This doesn’t just mean that the apple in your hand was attached to a tree growing in the ground; it means that it didn’t become something else (like apple sauce with added sugar or a McDonalds apple pie).

So you go to make lunch and look through your cabinets and fridge. Which is better for you, a bowl of brown rice with tofu and veggies or a sandwich with turkey and a piece of lettuce? Which has the most ingredients that more recently were plants? That’s all I’m suggesting you ask yourself; not to become a vegetarian or eat ONLY fruits and vegetables, but to think about what process has happened to your food since it was a plant, and what non-plant ingredients may have been added to it. And if you’ll enjoy all of that plant-based food better with a side of bacon and a glass of milk, by all means! Anything in moderation.

Running is in the Air

Earlier this week was the 2011 Boston Marathon. This is an exciting time for me and hopefully for others in the area - so many visitors, all of them here for one reason: fitness (aka being ACTIVE!). You can almost feel healthiness in the air, especially if you spend the three days leading up to the marathon at the Sports and Fitness Expo which is full of - you guessed it, active people. Over 80,000 people attend the expo over three days before the race. That's a lot more than the 27,000 people who are there to pick up their race number, so clearly there are some others that are interested in sports and fitness (or at least want free stuff and good deals of things relating to sports and fitness).

The first two days I was working in the Clif Bar booth, chatting with runners and their friends and families about the awesome Clif products that we were sampling. One of the things I overheard the most was "oh wow, these actually taste good!" indicating that they'd tried some less than stellar samples that day. The last day before the race I volunteer at registration, giving runners their number and trying to answer any questions they might have. The Sunday night shift is always interesting because a lot of people come directly from the airport and are somewhat distressed, whether their flight was delayed or they got lost taking the train in.

Runners watch a video of the race course during the Expo

This all leads up to the big day... MARATHON MONDAY (otherwise known in Massachusetts as Patriot's Day). This was the first year in a long time that I had the day off and was able to watch the runners. It was a gorgeous day for it and everyone looked great! I've always said that I'll never run another marathon, but watching the runners with the big smiles (even at mile 22) was super inspiring. It made me think that maybe one of these days I could tackle it again - and since I wasn't much of a runner when I took it on the first time there's enormous room for improvement. Later that night I had dinner with my inspiring friend Rebecca who had just ran a 3:22 race and didn't look tired in the least. After a long and delicious dinner, I went home and did two things: started reading Born to Run and registered for the Madison Half Marathon.

Did the marathon inspire you to take any steps to be more active? Leave it in the comments!

A Big Bowl of Delicious

I'm a big fan of one pot - or even one bowl - meals. Yes, this is made easier by the fact that I generally have only myself to feed so it might not entirely translate for everyone. But it's convenient and most of the time leaves only one dish to wash. It's also a good way to make sure that you're putting the essentials: carbs, protein, and plenty of veggies. My roommate often peers into a bowl that I'm eating out of to try to figure out everything I've put in it (my love of one-bowl meals is even reflected in my blog logo!). Inspired by an acquaintance who recently told me that he was having a hard time figuring out what to eat for lunch during the one day a week he was eating vegetarian, here are a few of my favorite ridiculously-easy-to-make one bowl vegetarian meals...

Mediterranean Mélange: Orzo mixed with sliced cherry tomatoes, diced cucumber, garbonzo beans, feta, and some balsamic vinegar and black pepper (if desired). This one is delicious both hot and cold and can easily be stuffed into a pita for easy portability if needed.

Mexican Jumble: Brown rice mixed with black beans, canned tomato with jalapeno, frozen spinach, and reduced fat shredded cheddar melted on top. Yum. If you're an athlete wrap it in a tortilla for that extra carb boost.

Vegan Health Nut: Quinoa with diced beets, green beans, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, and parsley. This one is very pretty as the beets turn the quinoa pink!

Thai Peanut Veggie: Brown rice with steamed broccoli, shredded carrot, cubed tofu, cilantro, cucumber, and peanut sauce (either bottled or mix some peanut butter with water and soy sauce).

Creamy Noodles and Veg: Pasta shells with one or two melted wedges of laughing cow cheese (and a splash of nonfat milk), spinach, and tomatoes.

You get the gist by now: take a grain (brown rice, bulger, quinoa, pasta, couscous), add lots of veggies that complement each other (the more color variety the better), some form of protein (beans, nuts, cheese, tofu), and optional sauce or topping (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, melted cheese) and voila! Delicious, nutritious, hearty meal ready in no time.

A Little Running Here, A Little Running There

I was raised to be the type of person that can't really sit still on a vacation. In my family, vacations included going to countless museums, castles, churches (ask my parents how much I loved those as a teenager!). The idea of going somewhere to just sit on a beach day in and day out has always been foreign to me. So it's no surprise that for me, travel often goes hand in hand with some sort of physical activity. I've found that triathlons have been a great way for me to explore New England, visiting various spots in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont that I never would've gone to otherwise. Running and biking is also a great way to explore a new city, race or no race. I recently did a 10-mile run in Salem, MA that took us past the historic House of Seven Gables, to the rocky shores of Marblehead, and back to the city of witches (see photo).


Going for a training ride or run or signing up for a race in a new or exotic location can also be a great way to stay active on your vacation. Sure, you might spend the rest of your time there doing little else besides eating the local cuisine and sampling the local drinks, but you'll feel much better about it if you've done something to earn it! It's also a great way to bond with family members that live far away. My brother and I live halfway across the country from each other, but we've gotten together to do a triathlon in Maine, a Livestrong Challenge in Texas; he and my dad have done a trail half marathon in California as well as a marathon in Austin. The point is, while there's never a bad place to exercise, why not take a vacation to an awesome place to exercise?

Depending on your sport of choice, here are some links you might find helpful in planning your destination event:
Best Marathons in North America
10 Most Scenic Triathlons
Road Trippin Triathlete Blog
Top 25 Best Half Marathons
Destination Marathons (suggested by Lululemon)

Oh Hello Awesome LOGO

This post has nothing to do with eating, drinking, or being active. Let's just take a moment to admire my brand-spanking new logo, designed by my good friend Chris. Looking for a logo or other website/design help? He's your man. He took my stick figure drawings on index cards and made it into the awesomeness that you see above. E-mail him at molarfilms at gmail dot com.