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Hungarian-inspired Mushroom Soup Recipe

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I never met a mushroom I didn’t like, and I’ve had the pleasure of quite a few.
If you ever get the chance, take a mushroom walk with the Boston Mycological Club(or your local club). They are a perfect collection of culinary, botany and sensation-seeking enthusiasts. When I went, we found baskets-full of colorful beauties, then using field guides and spore patterns (the definitive method to differentiate friend or foe from a safe-to-eat perspective), we identified, divided up and took home our bounties for happy times of all sorts.

Gathering mushrooms from the wild is getting evermore popular, but I don’t do it because even though I’ve had some experience with my mycological friends, every year even expert mushroom collectors eat the wrong fungi and that’s it – they can kill you. There are such a phenomenal range of cultivated mushrooms now available, I suggest sticking with and enjoying that.

I love the mushrooms, dill, and sour cream that frames Hungarian mushroom soup. If you can find a good local organic grass-fed sour cream, then by all means, use that (grass-fed dairy has a more favorable lipid profile as well as being easier on the earth relative to its mass-market cousins). If you are dairy-free, you can substitute a bit of soy milk plus an extra squeeze of lemon to approximate the tang you’ll miss from yogurt or sour cream.

Here I’ve aimed to boost the nutrient density by loading up on herbs – both dill and parsley, as well as other vegetables, and lightened it up with yogurt rather than sour cream. I found that when I used this quantity of herbs, I needed to blend the finished product – herbs are so delicate that when they are cooked like this in a soup, they need to be blended or finely finely chopped or their texture just isn’t what you want it to be.

Ingredients

1 – 16 oz package organic mushrooms
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 large carrots
1/2 yellow onion, sliced & cubed
1/2 medium yellow turnip, peeled and sliced
2 cups organic chicken or vegetable stock
about 1 cup fresh dill, chopped
about 1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
2 Tbsp organic grass-fed yogurt or sour cream

Directions

In a heavy soup pot over medium heat, sauté onions in olive oil until translucent. Slice carrots and clean and slice mushrooms, and slice turnip, discarding any waxy covering it may have. Add these veggies to the pot and sauté for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Add stock and simmer 45-60 minutes. Meanwhile, chop herbs. Add herbs and yogurt or sour cream. If necessary, cool and run through a blender for a smooth and creamy texture.

Enjoy!

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Eat Well for Less: Doable and so Worth It

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Quality food and produce – organics, artisanal, delicious –  is more widely available than ever before. Yet when I check out from my whole foods grocery – especially when I’m preparing for a special holiday or family dinner, I imagine my father (a rural farmer cash-on-the-barrel sort of guy) fainting dead away at the grand total.  Yipes! The price of high quality (like organic grass-fed) meat or dairy, and fresh produce can take your breath away. You can eat well for less.

It takes some time and effort, but once you get into the swing of the practice, it’s just how you do it. The nutrition and taste benefits are very worth the effort.

If you feel the desire to eat high-quality food, but you aren’t independently wealthy, here are 7 ideas to help you eat well on a budget:

1. Try mindful eating.

Many Americans simply eat too much – be it healthy food or not. But just how much is enough? We’re designed to know. Mindful eating can help you find out how much food fills you up and gives you energy through the day. In fact, mindful eating is a practice that can help you turn down the external messages about what and how much to eat, and to tune in more deeply to your internal guidance system.

You can experiment by becoming a little more aware of the portion sizes you eat, and use mindful eating to help you experiment with just how much is enough. It’s a real sweet spot – adequate without over nor under-doing eating. It’s a practice for sure, and we humans by nature seem to over- or under-do it. So, if you struggle with this, you are not alone! Be patient and keep practicing.

How about an experiment –  quality over quantity?

Begin by experimenting with mindfully eating various foods – from treats like designer chips, whole foods take-out, gourmet pizzas and stevia sweetened sodas to more healthful choices like  fresh vegetables and fruit, beans, nuts and whole grains. See how different foods make you feel, and how much seems to be enough to satisfy and give you energy through the day (I know, easier said than done). Eating lightly (and for some, passing on snacking) can be both healthful and cost-effective. The practice of mindful eating is a great place to begin to explore just what eating lightly means for you.

2. Enjoy plants. 

If you have more than one serving of animal protein each day, you may be healthier and more frugal to look to plant-based protein to replace some of the meat and dairy you’re eating. Need some ideas on delicious way to focus on plant fare? Check out my recipe page, and my friend The Veggie Queen, who dedicates her working life to helping you enjoy more plants easily.

3. Consider a CSA or community food CO-OP.

Cut out the middleman and ensure the freshest local produce makes it into your kitchen all season long through a direct relationship with a local farm. To get stared check out Local Harvest. They will tell you how to get into the mindset, prepare to join, and help find your nearest community supported agriculture (CSA) farms and CO-OPs.

4. The bulk food aisle (or discount website) is your friend.

Get a break on nuts, spices, whole grains and just about everything beyond fresh produce. If you don’t live near a grocery store that offers bulk staples, of course the internet marketplace is there wherever you are. The Spruce has a good article on their favorite online grocery sites.

5. Browse your market’s circular

If you are so inclined to browse your supermarket’s circular, you really can shave a lot off your weekly food costs. My husband (astonishingly) does this as a practice – he plans our shopping around the meat and seafood that is on sale –  and he is truly amazing at it. The deals he gets are phenomenal! You do have to be aware that items on sale might not be the most healthful, so you need to practice discretion here.

6. Organic online coupons? Yep.

Check out All Natural Savings – a gal dedicated to online couponing –  to get you started. Whole Foods also has an online coupon book. So many ways to use them to eat well for less.

7. Keep it all in perspective.

There’s a certain new math – a longer-term economics we need to consider when we think about the higher cost of clean whole food. That new equation is hidden beneath cheap subsidized corn, sugar, meat and dairy.  As a nutritionist for the past 25 years I know that this cheaper refined food is responsible for a world of disease and pain.  In my practice I see people improve their health everyday through committing to higher quality nutrient dense, low chemical load food. Most people feel better right away when they move away from the standard American diet and learn to make small choices toward health while enjoying what they eat and feeling great regardless of the number of the scale. The benefits continue to build over time with longer, healthier lives.

When it comes to quality food, no one can eat perfectly all the time unless they have limitless income, their own farm and a small team of vegetable choppers at the ready.

So, do what you can to eat well for less, and let the rest go. Small changes can add up, over time, to transformation.

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6 Benefits of Mindful Eating

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Mindful eating – using the tenets of mindfulness meditation while eating, has done nothing less than transform mind-body nutrition. Practitioners everywhere are incorporating it.

When I work with an individual, I almost always combine clear steps to bring food and lifestyle into balance (the what of lifestyle) with mindfulness (the how of lifestyle).

Why Do It?

  1. Enjoying your food – First off, when people slow things down – and eating is a dramatic example – they tend to taste and enjoy their food more. It might seem ironic, but eating slowly is more interesting and enjoyable, once you get the hang of it.
  2. Epigenetic benefits – Epige-what? Epigenetics is the impact that choices have on gene expression. When you choose to eat a plant based diet or move your body, you actually impact your gene expression, which in turn builds a more resilient future you. It’s some of the biggest news in lifestyle medicine now.
  3. Neurobiology benefits – Mindfulness manages stress. When you slow down and breathe – particularly when you extend your exhale – you activate the whole rest-and-recover side of your nervous system. That not only manages stress, but can improve digestion.
  4. Turn down the external messages on what and how much to eat. Face it, modern life is filled with messages from the media – commercials for fast food, billboards – it’s just everywhere – that tell us we need to be eating basically all the time. It’s hard to ignore, but mindfulness can help you un-hook from those messages.
  5. Tune into your internal guidance system – instead of responding to cues from the outside, mindful eating get you more in-tune to your internal guidance system – to if you are actually hungry, and when you are satisfied.
  6. Improve your relationship with what you eat. Eating is a two-way conversation. Mindfulness is an excellent way to tune in to toes conversation.

One caveat – this practice can uncouple eating and satiety – it can help you eat less, but it can also help you undercut. Use nutrition guidelines for adequacy – adequate protein and energy needs – for your body.

So How do I do it? Check my post that gives you the step-by-step to give it a try:

Mindful Eating: The Art & Science of Eating Better 

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Mindful Eating: The Art & Science of Eating Better

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Mindful Eating
Mindful eating is a mindfulness meditation practice that has the ability to transform your relationship with food and eating. This simple (though not always easy) practice has done nothing less than revolutionize nutrition therapy, when combined with evidence-based steps that shift lifestyle toward health.

So, What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a meditation practice wherein you:

  1. Adopt a meditative mindset. We humans have the capacity to change our consciousness from our everyday distracted state to a calm, clear relaxed and open one. With this change, you focus attention inward and relax.
  2. Pay attention to what is happening moment by moment. Mindfulness is meditation while…(whatever you are doing). So, you get curious about whatever you are doing – be it walking or eating. Slowing the process down so that you can get fascinated enough that you lose yourself – you lose track of time – is mindful meditative absorption.
  3. There is a particular attitude of mindfulness called non-judgmental awareness. As you practice, you become aware of judgements like comparisons (this food is heathy therefore good, that food is less healthy, therefore not so good, for example). In mindfulness, you aim for a direct, sensory relationship with what you are eating.

Now, Apply it to Eating

In eating meditation, you slow down, breathe and relax, and enjoy your food. Just how might that unfold?
Here’s are a few steps to get you going:

  • Make an intention to meditate while eating. Clear distractions (like TV, phones, internet).
  • Eat with all five senses. Enjoy the beauty of your plate and each food item on it. Take in the aroma.
  • Notice what thoughts and emotions come up for you, as you practice. Breathe, relax and resist the temptation to ‘push away’ thoughts. Just note – there’s a thought. Feel it, honor it, release it.
  • Chew and savor. Can you chew each bite 10 times? 30?

Here is my Kripalu video on Mindful Eating.

Getting Started

Do you need to eat like this evermore? Nope. Think of it as a practice – something you do regularly, and build like you might build a muscle.
When I teach mindful eating at Kripalu, I encourage people to begin where they are, so if you don’t currently do this practice, and you take a few mindful bites each day, terrific.
If you find that you are not practicing, chunk it down until it is ridiculously easy. So, can you take one mindful bite each day? How about one mindful bite on your day off? One mindful breath? If you don’t have the 10 seconds it takes to take one mindful breath, well…you are indeed a busy person, and there’s hope for you yet! Try try again.

What Does the Science Say?

When I wrote my first book, Every Bite Is Divine, there really wasn’t much research explaining the mechanisms by which mindfulness eating meditation or yoga, does what they do. We just knew it worked. Times have changed! Now, places like Harvard are summarizing the science of why mindful eating can be helpful for weight management. Cecilia Clementi of The Center for Mindful Eating compiled a comprehensive list of references on mindful eating last year. Impressive!

If You Liked This…Check out:

Yoga’s East-West Moderation
Let’s Get Coherent

What Has Mindful Eating Done for You?

We want to know! What keep you practicing? Share your tips and reports!

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Let's Get Cooking at Kripalu

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Want to eat better? Cook.

People who cook at home are healthier – studies like this one suggest they eat fewer calories, more nutrients, less sugar and more fiber. When you eat better, you feel better, look better and just might live longer. It’s worth it – you’re worth it.

Want to really eat better? Learn to cook (and eat) at Kripalu.

When people come to do yoga at Kripalu, the largest yoga and holistic education center in the country, they rave about the food. The food there is rave-worthy, filled with fruits and vegetables lovely prepared into delicious dishes.
A couple times a year, I team up with Kripalu’s Executive Chef Jeremy Rock Smith to offer a program called Nutrition and Cooking Immersion. Over the course of a five night program, we take you through the basics plus of a mindful approach to nutrition, and the basics plus of preparing delicious balanced whole food cooking tips for home.
I think of this as the perfect program – the perfect balance of information (I teach nutrition and mindfulness in the morning) and experiential learning (in addition to mindfulness experiences in the morning, the knives come out – in a good way – in the afternoon). Through the week, you put together – while understanding why – a balanced meal with variations. What you leave with is a plan. And some skills. And the know-how to feed yourself. Well.
What unfolds looks a little like this:
Sunday night: Welcome and introductions – of each other, of the program.
Monday & Tuesday morning: The new basics of whole-food plant-based nutrition
Wednesday: Supporting positive change
Thursday: Planning for success: meals, recipes, shopping lists
Friday: Take it home

Now, let me tell you about my colleague Jeremy.

To say that Jeremy is entertaining is an understatement. He’s funny. I’ll let you be the judge of just how funny he is. He’s not only funny, however. He brings the goods. Even foodies learn a little something new from Jeremy. He’s designed the afternoon cooking session to give you cooking tips and the principles of whole food plant based cooking, and then a flexible framework to help you make it seasonal and flexible and varied.

Five-day Transformation

I’ve been teaching this program for 7 years or so, and I love to see the transformation that happens to people from Sunday night when we come together – nervous, afraid it ‘won’t work’, stressed from life, to Friday morning – roaring to get back to our own kitchens, confident and ready to go, rested and yoga-ed up. Another part of the secret sauce is the bonds you make with other people in the program – I have a growing Facebook group of grads of the program, and years later, they’re still cooking.
So, if you want to get into your kitchen with a little more enthusiasm and a little less angst, see you there.
If you want to bring whole-food plant-based eating into your life, and learn cooking tips to do that, see you there.
If you want to know the why 0f eating – and the how of eating – see you there.
Here’s where you can check out all mu upcoming workshops.
Be well.

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Asian Slaw Recipe

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Asian Slaw Recipe by Annie B Kay - anniebkay.com
Everyone should have a vegetable-based recipe or two that takes (snap!) that long, that serves as a quick meal or snack. This raw Asian slaw recipe has been a mainstay of my 3pm-give-me-carbs attack for years. It works.
The heart of the recipe is savoy cabbage and rice wine vinegar. You can enjoy (and I often do) just these two ingredients. But why not toss in some carrot, cilantro or Thai basil, and sesame oil? Add a handful of cashews, organic tofu or garbanzo beans to make it a meal.
This is a great springtime detox recipe, because it is nutritionally dense, and contains the antioxidants that support your liver in its biotransformation of cellular gunk into removable trash, which can then be flushed out of your body via the usual exit routes. This recipe also has lots of fiber, secret weapon of the weight-conscious.

Asian Slaw Recipe

Ingredients

  • ½ cup savoy cabbage sliced thin
  • ½ cup red cabbage sliced thin
  • a few fresh snow peas, sliced
  • ¼ cup diced red pepper
  • 1 medium carrot, diced
  • 1 Tbsp fresh cilantro if available
  • 2 tsp rice wine vinegar

optional:

  • 2 Tbsp Asian salad dressing
  • 2 tsp sesame oil
  • 1 slice fresh ginger, diced with skin trimmed
  • a handful of cashews, or 1/2 cup tofu

Directions

Toss everything together and eat.
Just getting started with healthy eating? This article will help.
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Wild Mustard Asparagus Soup Recipe

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Wild Mustard Asparagus Soup Recipe by Annie B Kay - anniebkay.com
Please resist the temptation to spray weed-killer on your lawn as it is filled with nutrition free for the taking. Eat your “weeds” instead! Wild garlic mustard, for example, is considered an invasive weed but is also a nutrient-dense green with spicy garlic flavor. This green is filled with antioxidant vitamins and minerals, and eating a little something wild every day connects us more deeply to nature.
I love the fact that just when we need to brush out the sludge from that long cold winter, the very tonics we need to help that happen literally spring up under our feet. Dandelion, ramps, wild strawberry and garlic mustard to name a few are everywhere now, and all we need to do is accept the invitation and support to detoxify deliciously.
Here is a nice light green spring soup recipe that I whipped up with the crew of people coming for Detox at Kripalu in mind. And of course, all my friends who are Kripalu Detox alums. Between the garlic mustard and asparagus (which is bursting with glutathione, the mother of all antioxidant and a detox power food) this recipe is made for spring nutrition. Enjoy!

Wild Mustard Asparagus Soup Recipe

Ingredients

  • 15-20 stalks asparagus, snapped into 2-inch pieces
  • 5 stalks celery, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp good quality olive oil
  • 1 scallion, chopped
  • 15 oz chicken or vegetable stock (I used Pacific Natural Organic Chicken)
  • 2 cups fresh wild garlic mustard leaves
  • 2 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1 Tbsp grass-fed butter
  • 4 Tbsp toasted sunflower seeds
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Saute celery in olive oil in a heavy soup pot until soft. Add scallion and asparagus, and continue to saute until vegetables are soft. Add stock, garlic mustard, and Dijon, and simmer medium-low for 15 minutes.
Go to it with your immersion blender.
Stir in butter until melted and incorporated into the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve warm, topping each bowl with a Tbsp of toasted sunflower seeds.
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Tahini Dressing Recipe

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Tahini Dressing Recipe by Annie B Kay - anniebkay.com
Most commercial salad dressings, I am sorry to say, are filled with chemicals. Choose them carefully, and consider making your own. It’s easier than you think.
Dressings and sauces are an opportunity to perfect and balance vegetables with nutrient dense oils, vegetable proteins and spices. Here’s a nice tahini dress to serve over cooked or raw greens, sprouts, carrots, peppers, and scallions. I am waiting impatiently for my Thai basil to grow to add to this one.
Quick & easy.

Tahini Dressing Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup Tahini
  • 1 cup sesame oil
  • 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp honey
  • 2 tsp fresh ginger, peeled and grated

Directions

It all goes in the blender until smooth.
You can make a base of this dressing, and change it up by adding one or more of the following to small batches of it:

  • Cilantro
  • Lots of garlic
  • Thai chili
  • Peanuts
  • Lime

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Elderberry Ginger Cider Recipe

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Elderberry Ginger Cider Recipe by Annie B Kay - anniebkay.com
My boon of elderberry enabled me to, in addition to making tons of elderberry syrup, make elderberry ginger cider – a variation on fire cider. For this one, I rely on ginger and honey as a base and kept it simple yet strong. It’s delicious and I’ll use it the way you would fire cider – take a shot during cold and flu season to warm up and keep the creeping crud away.

Elderberry Ginger Cider Recipe

Ingredients

  • 4 cups fresh elderberries, clean and free of stems
  • 2 slivers of fresh peeled ginger, about 1 Tsp
  • 1/2 onion, chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves
  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 2 Tbsp local honey

Directions

Place ingredients in a clean bottle. Place top on the bottle, and mix by inverting the bottle several times. Make sure the liquid covers the berries. Leave in a cool dry place for six weeks, inverting the bottle to mix every 3 or 4 days. Removeelderberries from the cider. The cider is the elixir, but you might use the elderberries in a pickle also. Enjoy!
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What Diet Works for Weight? The Science is In

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What Diet Works for Weight The Science is In by Annie B Kay -anniebkay.com
The science is in – it’s the diet you stick with, and the one that honors energy balance.
I’m reviewing the evidence on weight and yoga for the 3rd edition of my CE program, and I came across this info from the NIH Obesity Review Panel…interesting.

A variety of dietary approaches can produce weight loss. It’s all about which one you follow over time while not overeating. Do you like meat? Zone and the like works. Rather focus on plant-based proteins? Absolutely. Whatever path you choose to a healthy weight (I personally lean toward Mediterranean – people can stick with it, it’s nutrient-dense, and it’s a delicious way to eat) you’re going to have to come to terms with reducing your – I’ve gotta say it – calories.
That’s where tools like mindfulness and meditation come in – they can help us to find our way to change a little more easily. These practices help us disconnect from the immediate urge to inhale delicious foods when our body doesn’t really need them, and to relax, pause, and make a more skillful choice. Really. It can happen. It’s a practice for sure, but it can happen.
The panel found that the following dietary approaches (listed in alphabetical order below) are associated with weight loss when a reduced dietary energy intake is achieved:

  • A diet from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) guidelines, which focuses on targeting food groups rather than formal, prescribed energy restriction while still achieving an energy deficit;
  • Higher protein diet (25 percent of total calories from protein, 30 percent of total calories from fat, 45 percent of total calories from carbohydrate) with provision of foods that realized energy deficit;
  • Higher protein Zone®-type diet (5 meals/day, each with 40 percent of total calories from carbohydrate, 30 percent of total calories from protein, 30 percent of total calories from fat) without a formal prescribed energy restriction diet but with realized energy deficit;
  • Lacto-ovo vegetarian-style diet with prescribed energy restriction
  • Low-calorie diet with prescribed energy restriction;
  • Low-carbohydrate diet (initially less than 20 g/day carbohydrate) without formal prescribed energy restriction but with a realized energy deficit;
  • Low-fat, vegan-style diet (10 to 25 percent of total calories from fat) without prescribed energy restriction but with realized energy deficit;
  • Low-fat diet (20 percent of total calories from fat) without formal prescribed energy restriction but with realized energy deficit;
  • Low-glycemic load diet either with formal prescribed energy restriction or without formal prescribed energy restriction but with realized energy deficit;
  • Lower fat (≤30 percent fat), high-dairy (4 servings/day) diets with or without increased fiber and/or low-glycemic index/load foods (low-glycemic load) with prescribed energy restriction;
  • Macronutrient-targeted diets (15 percent or 25 percent of total calories from protein; 20 percent or 40 percent of total calories from fat; 35 percent, 45 percent, 55 percent, or 65 percent of total calories from carbohydrate) with prescribed energy restriction;
  • Mediterranean-style diet with prescribed energy restriction;
  • Moderate-protein diet (12 percent of total calories from protein, 58 percent of total calories from carbohydrate, 30 percent of total calories from fat) with provision of foods that realized energy deficit;
  • Diet of high-glycemic load or low-glycemic load meals with prescribed energy restriction; and
  • The AHA Step 1 diet (with prescribed energy restriction of 1,500 to 1,800 kcal/day, <30 percent of total calories from fat, <10 percent of total calories from saturated fat). Strength of evidence: High

All these different approaches to weight management can work, if  you pay attention energy balance. Everyone is different – something different works for each of us. I would say if you are looking of shift your diet and find a healthier weight, ponder the above list. What feels most satisfying to you?
Combine the approach above that is most satisfying with the emotional work of yoga & mindfulness and poof! That’s how we do it. We learn to eat a bit less, enjoy a bit more, and move, and manage stress.
When someone says theirs is the only way to weight loss, they are wrong. There are many paths to healthy weight. If you’re having trouble finding yours, stay connected with this blog and my work. I have lots of tools, resources and support to help you find your way.
You might work individually with me.
You might attend a workshop.
If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter yet, that’s a great place to start.
Be well and enjoy the holiday season.
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Roasted Vegetables – Healthy or Not Healthy?

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Roasted Vegetables -Healthy or Not Healthy -by Annie B Kay -anniebkay.com
Roasting vegetables – baking them with a drizzle of olive oil until they have a toasty color and flavor – is a mainstay of my fall and winter kitchen. I give my tomatoes and onions a light roast before pureeing them into soups and sauces and love the sweet roast flavor.
Is roasting vegetables a healthy way to eat them? There has been some attention to the downsides of charring meats and vegetables on the grill – is roasting in that category?
It depends. My favorite nutrition answer!
If you roast your vegetables to a deep crispy crunch, then well yes, you’re roasting the nutrients out and possibly creating some less-than-healthful new things that your liver will need to contend with. Too, if you are roasting over high heat – at 425F, for example, you will want to be aware of the type of oil you use. Unrefined oils, like some olive oils and certainly things like flax oil, have low smoke points, meaning that the oil begins to break down quickly at a fairly low temperature.
Here are a few tips for nutritious roasting:

  1. Choose a higher smoke point oil. Oils like grapeseed, lighter olive oils and refined oils have higher smoke points and won’t burn as easily. Coconut oil and ghee tend to be on the higher smoke-point end too.
  2. Consider lower-temp roasting. I find that roasting vegetables at 325F for 25-40 minutes gives as much roasting flavor as I ever desire. Then I can use my flavorful olive oils, there isn’t oil breakdown (you can sometimes tell by the smokiness – if you are using a low smoke point oil and use a higher roasting temp, that billow of smoke tells you that you are learning this lesson).
  3. Use your nose and common sense. Burned oils lose their nutritional benefits. If you enjoy roasting, go for it, but wean yourself off crispy charred vegetables, and enjoy the light toasting instead. Heat does destroy some nutrients. Some nutrients, however, are actually more available once they’ve been heated.
  4. Eat your vegetables prepared a variety of ways – steamed (greens), sautéed (onions and greens), roasted (tomatoes, root vegetables) and not cooked at all (avocados, carrots). That way you’ll enjoy a full range of flavor and the nutrition advantages of each method.

In the end, chef knows thyself. If you (like I) am one who knows two stovetop burner settings – high and off – then get to know this idea of the smoke point. If you put the pan on the stove, turn it to high, pour in the oil and wait until it smokes – get yourself a bottle of high-temp grapeseed oil.
Spectrum oil used to have a great chart of smoke points, but I see they no longer have it on their site. Here is one to take a look at, and here is another.

For my roasted tomato sauce, I roasted piles of tomatoes (rinsed, sliced and cored when woody), an onion and a head of garlic, all drizzled with olive oil, at 325F for 25 minutes. Then I squeezed the garlic cloves out of their husks and blended everything. I had the most delicious soupy sauce – with seeds! – that we will enjoy all winter.
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Deliciously Easy Lentils Recipe

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Deliciously Easy Lentils Recipe by Annie B Kay - anniebkay.com
If you have high cholesterol and don’t want to go on medication, beans are your friends. Studies have shown that eating beans a few times weekly can help lower LDL (the blood cholesterol most closely associated with heart disease). Actually, if you want to control your weight and not eat a lot of meat, beans are your friends.
I’ve been experimenting with spice blends over the last few seasons and if you are a fan of flavor but don’t want to purchase lots of expensive spices to mix and experiment with, this might be your flavor hack (shortcut). If you want to try lentils for their health benefits but haven’t liked them so far, this might be your recipe. It’s a snap. Tasty.
I’ve been using Mountain Rose Herb’s spice blends – I particularly like 5 Spice (which gives a Chinese flavor) and West Indies blends. They have nice clean fresh spices (not to mention lots of other goodies if you are herbal-inclined). Warning – their website is an herbal and culinary wonder-emporium…you may spend more time there than you intend.

Deliciously Easy Lentils Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 cup lentils (I used some lovely black lentils)
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 2-3 Tbsp spice blend of your choice
  • 2-3 cups water

Directions


Pour oil into a medium saucepan over medium heat, and add 1 Tbsp spice and onion. Sauté for 5-6 minutes until onions are translucent. Add lentils, water and remainder of spice.
Cover and simmer for 25-35 minutes, until lentils are desired softness.
Enjoy.
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