'Anticancer' Book & Diet - Dark Chocolate! (Not a ton of course)

I plan to read the book Anticancer: A New Way of Life soon. I leafed through it last night at a bookstore and placed a request for it online with the library. The book first came out in September 2008 and contains a lot of advice about which foods to eat and which ones to avoid. One of the foods the author endorses is dark chocolate :-) (not in huge amounts of course). I first got introduced to dark chocolate by someone lactose-intolerant and I think it's so much better than milk chocolate. I like Ghirardelli but there are several good brands.

This post from the author's website contains some basic cost-conscious advice.

(By the way, I've read several books that advise eating more vegetables and fiber, and I don't remember any of them mentioning Beano, which does wonders in reducing or eliminating the flatulence that results from eating those things. I haven't received any coupons from Beano as a result of posting this, and don't expect to. The stuff works. Not on absolutely everything, every time, but since I live with the Human Bloodhound, aka the Super-Smeller, Beano is very useful. :-) (Yes, I borrowed the nickname "Super-Smeller" from "Psych.")

Back to Anticancer -- here's a short description of the book from the author's website:

"When David Servan-Schreiber, a dedicated scientist and doctor, was diagnosed with brain cancer, his life changed. Confronting what medicine knows about the illness and the little-known workings of his body’s natural cancer-fighting capabilities, and marshaling his own will to live, Servan-Schreiber found himself on a fifteen-year journey from disease and relapse into scientific exploration and, finally, to health. Combining memoir, concise explanation of what makes cancer cells thrive and what inhibits them, and drawing on both conventional and alternative ways to slow and prevent cancer, Anticancer is revolutionary."

Food-related humor: "I have to go pick up my monkey"

A coworker told me last fall she had to go pick up her monkey, and I played dumb to be funny, so she emailed me back: "I have a two-year-old, which is a lot like having a monkey. It’s easier if I think of him as a monkey, because then it makes more sense why I have banana on my nice clean suit. :-) "

Back to more typical posts soon, I think..

NY Times: How Restaurants Use Menu Psychology

This article in today's New York Times is interesting:

"People like the names of mothers, grandmothers and other relatives on their menus, and research shows they are much more likely to buy, say, Grandma’s zucchini cookies, burgers freshly ground at Uncle Sol’s butcher shop this morning and Aunt Phyllis’s famous wedge salad. ...

Tabla is just one of the many restaurants around the country that are feverishly revising their menus. Pounded by the recession, they are hoping that some magic combination of prices, adjectives, fonts, type sizes, ink colors and placement on the page can coax diners into spending a little more money."

Speaking of Adventures in Food: Tarte Tatin

One food adventure that didn't go well for me was the attempt a few months ago to make Tarte Tatin, which is kind of an upside-down caramelized-apple pie. I think it was the Julie & Julia movie that got me wanting to try this, but I can't remember.

Above is what a Tarte Tatin is SUPPOSED to look like (photo credit: MarthaStewart.com)

The problem is that the recipe I used called for caramelizing the apples without being able to see them - they were under the puff pastry that serves as the crust. And, given the high heat you use, those apple slices caramelize FAST - mine burned. So when I flipped over the tarte, on top was a gooey black nasty-tasting mess (see above -- yes, I tasted it).

So I think the next time I get an urge for something like that, I'll either have it at a restaurant or try doing something like an upside-down caramelized-apple cake. This recipe from Rachael Ray's Everyday magazine is an example (credit for photo at left: Richard Press/Everyday with Rachael Ray).

There's also a very tempting recipe in the book Rustic Fruit Desserts for upside-down pear chocolate cake that I think could be adapted with apples and maybe also simplified. (There are some amazing photos in this book.)

Oat-Whole Wheat Pancakes Made with Improvised Buttermilk

The New York Times has an ongoing series called "Recipes for Health," and this weekend I'm attempting to make these pancakes, but without the blueberries. A weekend with a lot of snow seems like a good time for a breakfast or brunch that takes longer than my usual breakfast of pouring a bowl of Kashi cereal. (I'm also planning to make a simple chicken soup that's based on a Joy of Cooking recipe, plus apple crisp, probably based more on the Food Matters recipe.)

In addition to skipping the blueberries, I'm also not using buttermilk in the pancake batter. We don't keep buttermilk on hand, since it's unlikely we would use a whole container before it would go bad. So I tried a tip I found several places online -- adding "a tablespoon of lemon juice into a cup of milk and letting it sit for about five minutes." Apparently the key thing with the buttermilk is that the acid in it reacts with the baking soda to make the pancakes fluffy. Several websites also say you can use vinegar instead of the lemon juice.

UPDATE: The pancakes turned out ok, although they definitely cook differently than regular pancakes. They do spread out some but they stay a LOT thicker than regular pancakes. The recipe says to drop 3-4 tablespoons' worth at a time into the pan (or on the griddle). That makes HUGE pancakes. More importantly, at that size, they get brown on the bottom while the top is still a bit runny, so you'll get some "splat" in the pan when you flip them over. They still cook up ok -- they just aren't as perfectly round and pretty, if that matters to you. :-)

Instead, I would recommend making them at a smaller size so they cook more evenly. In any case, these pancakes are definitely "a quick, substantial breakfast" as the NYT website says.

NOTE: After you get done making the batter, you're supposed to put it in the refrigerator for at least an hour - and overnight is fine (we refrigerated ours overnight).

Better Half put some dried cranberries in one of the pancakes as it cooked, and he liked it.

(photo credit: New York Times)

Funny: Not taking healthy food TOO seriously

The hilarious Lewis Black, from his "White Album":

The people who told us about sun block were the same people who told us, when I was a kid, that eggs were good. So I ate a lot of eggs. 10 years later they said they were bad. I went, 'Well, I just ate the eggs!' So I stopped eating eggs, and 10 years later they said they were good again! Well, then I ate twice as many, and then they said they were bad. Well, now I'm really screwed! Then they said they're good, they're bad, they're good, the whites are good, t-the yellows - MAKE UP YOUR MIND! It's breakfast! I gotta eat!

Encouraging news: 'Healthy, organic and cheap school lunches? Order up'

OK, I'm a bit late to this one, but it's good news (sometimes hard to find lately!) and worth posting:

USA Today, Dec. 2: Healthy, organic and cheap school lunches? Order up

... it's big news when someone tries, even on a small scale, to feed kids well for under $3 a pop.
... For the first time, a small, privately held start-up is pushing to do just that: producing what are by all accounts fresh, healthful, all-natural school meals for just under $3 apiece. Starting with just one school in spring 2006, Revolution Foods has quietly grown year by year and now delivers about 45,000 breakfasts, lunches and snacks daily to 235 public and private schools in California, Colorado and the District of Columbia.

The page also has links to the recent investigative articles the paper did on school lunches.

Funny: Taking Healthy Food Too Far (for me, anyway)

This is a clip from one of my favorite comedy episodes -- ever. On an "Everybody Loves Raymond" Thanksgiving, Marie and Debra decide all the dishes are going to be healthy, with the central dish being a "turkey" made of tofu.

Product Reviews - Healthy Frozen Burritos and Lunches

I've been trying to eat somewhat less meat (mainly due to the environment - there's plenty about that in Food Matters) and also avoid always eating standard processed foods with a lot of chemical-y-sounding ingredients that no one would have recognized as food a few generations ago (inspired by In Defense of Food). But I don't usually have time to cook up enough stuff to have healthy leftovers to take to work for lunch. So I decided to start tasting my way through lunch-compatible burritos and other items from the frozen organic/natural section.

Two from Amy's Kitchen were terrific:

Amy's Cheese Pizza in a Pocket Sandwich - very flavorful, tasty - "Classic cheese pizza combination of mozzarella cheese and our flavorful organic pizza sauce."

Amy's Vegetable Pie in a Pocket Sandwich - this was fantastic -could qualify as comfort food. I think this was the first time I had tofu and liked it - it's not in chunks - it helps give the pot pie sauce/gravy a nice thickness and creaminess but it still tastes normal. If you, like me, aren't a tofu enthusiast, think of this pocket sandwich as "tofu made tolerable" or more accurately, "tofu made tasty."

Another from Amy's was good, although I wouldn't put it on the same level as those first two. The (meatless) shepherd's pie was decent, but one drawback is that it wasn't that filling -- it only has 160 calories, 5 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber -- it's about half a lunch for me! The human body has to run on something, ya know.

Now, for two burritos I won't be buying again:

Amy's Breakfast Burrito - bland, and just meh generally. If you don't like (even small) chunks of tofu, avoid this one.

Guiltless Gourmet Mediterranean Spinach Wrap - the taste was only so-so, and as I looked at the wrapper, I realized I should have read it more closely. Sure, it says "70% Organic," but guess which part isn't? A part that really counts -- the spinach! And organic vs. non-organic spinach matters because it's one of the "dirty dozen." Also looks like the cheese wasn't made from milk that was free of antibiotics or hormones, which may not bother you but is something I prefer and something I'd expect in a "guiltless" wrap in the organic frozen section.

I'll close with an RIP for one of my favorite healthy frozen lunches that both the grocery company and Kashi told me hasn't been selling well enough for them to keep making or carrying it. Sigh. Kashi's Chicken Rustico pocket bread sandwiches are filling, only take about 2 minutes to microwave, are very tasty and just right (for me) in terms of calories, protein, etc.

From Prevention Magazine: The 7 foods experts won't eat and 11 health food impostors

Ran across these two interesting lists recently, both from Prevention:

The 7 foods experts won't eat

Some of the 7:

- Canned tomatoes (due to the danger of bisphenol A -- why haven't companies just taken the BPA out of the damn cans already? For more on BPA, see Marion Nestle's BPA posts.)

- Microwave popcorn (due to chemicals that vaporize and go into the popcorn during microwaving)

- Non-organic potatoes (The article says:"Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won't," says Moyer, who is also farm director of the Rodale Institute (also owned by Rodale Inc., the publisher of Prevention). "I've talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals.")

- Non-organic apples (also due to high rate of pesticide absorption)

(Potatoes and apples are both on the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list - the 12 fruits and vegetables for which EWG says it's worth the money to buy organic.)

The other interesting list from Prevention is 11 Health Food Impostors, which include:

- vitamin water (yay, zero-calorie water with lots of calories added in!)

- spinach wraps

-"calorie-free" spray margarine (labeling loophole means it does have calories)

The margarine one got my attention because I like cooking with olive oil, but sometimes trying to drizzle it (for example, over potatoes before roasting them) yields pretty uneven results. So, as the article recommended, I bought a Misto sprayer last weekend and so far, so good. The Misto cost $8 plus tax at Bed Bath and Beyond (original price $10, before one of the 20% coupons they often mail or include in the newspaper).

And it even appears to be American-made -- "assembled" in the USA at least, according to the box.

Prevention says "Olive oil lessens inflammation throughout the body, which helps your heart and lowers cancer risk, thanks to monounsaturated fatty acids." Good to know, although taking a cue from Michael Pollan and others, I think it's still important not to overemphasize a nutrient out of its original context in whole foods (What's next? "hey, this Easy Cheese includes omega-3s!" Why do I crack wise about Easy Cheese? It was recently included in an article on "The 6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods.")