Designer Jenni Kayne travels the body-as-a-temple route, seeking help with her diet. “Pamela Salzman is my food guru. She not only taught me how to cook but also why certain foods are better than others. Eating well definitely leads to living well.”
The first time I ever made kale in a class, one student said ,”I’m afraid of kale. I don’t know what to do with it.” In each subsequent class that month, there would be someone else who said the same thing. Say it isn’t so! Are you the same people that use kale as a garnish for fruit salad platters? You’re killing me!
Kale is your friend, your BFF even! I must brag about this rock star leafy green. Kale contains tremendous amounts of Vitamins K, A and C, as well as calcium and magnesium (very calming minerals, mind you.) Allow me to keep going. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that kale is full of some powerful cancer-preventive compounds called glucosinolates and antioxidants (flavonoids), plus an amazing amount of ALA, the basic building block for Omega-3 fatty acids. What I’m trying to say is that kale will love you inside and out.
How can you incorporate kale into your diet? I love to saute it with garlic and olive oil, toss it into soups, slice it thinly and add it to tomato sauce, or roast it into a crispy chip. But this salad is one of my favorites and has converted many non-kale-eaters, or kale-fearers, as the case may be. Usually I teach a recipe so many times in a month that I never want to eat it again. Except this one. I make it at a least once per week and just change how I eat it according to what’s in season. It is even my go-to meal for traveling because it is light, but filling and can handle being dressed ahead of time. My standby is to add quinoa and chopped avocado, sometimes with a few sunflower seeds. The girls take it to school for lunch usually topped with feta, quinoa, and some grated carrots. However you decide to make this your own, the key to success here is thinly slicing the kale and massaging the dressing into the shredded leaves. I actually give the kale a bit of squeeze with the dressing. This will soften the leaves and reduce any bitterness you might expect.
I felt utter joy when my son, Mr. Picky (shown here massaging dressing into the kale), finally tried this salad and gave it the thumbs-up. I do not exaggerate when I say he had been “exposed” to this salad at least 25 times before he tried it! Don’t give up, people.
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Potatoes get a bad rap because of the misconception that they are fattening. Potatoes unto themselves are not “fattening,” but they certainly become less healthful after they have been peeled, deep-fried in over-heated, refined oil or turned into chips or mashed with their weight in butter and cream (not that those don’t all taste lovely.) The classic Russet or Idaho baking potato is a perfect example of a whole food. It came into this world as a package of vitamins (such as C), minerals (like potassium) and fiber. When eaten that way, the potato offers its maximum health benefits. Unfortunately, the majority of the potato’s nutrients are concentrated in the skin and just below. Therefore, when we discard the skin, we do miss out on the best part, nutritionally speaking.
This method for baking potatoes is adapted from Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel’s book, Two Chefs Cook for Family and Friends. No aluminum foil, no microwaves, just a perfectly cooked potato with a dry, fluffy interior and the best skin ever. I learned a while back that different types of potatoes have different levels of starch and that affects how you should cook them. High starch potatoes, aka baking potatoes, are best used for, you guessed it, baking. They likewise make terrible potatoes for potato salad (you just have to try this once and you’ll never make that mistake again.)
One of the reasons I love baked potatoes is because I can set up a topping bar at dinner and everyone can customize the way he or she wants. I find that the kids eat more of something when they are given the opportunity to control it. I enjoy my baked potato with a dollop of strained goat yogurt (my version of sour cream) and some chopped chives or scallions. I allow my 7-year-old to put a squirt of (fruit-sweetened organic) ketchup on his and the girls tend to like butter and some steamed broccoli. We can turn the potato into a meal if there’s some vegetable chili from the night before that I can dollop on top. Yum!
I just adore fennel and its hint of licorice (that’s the black kind, not the red). When I was a child, after a big Sunday dinner, my Aunt Maria would pass around a platter a raw fennel wedges along with a bowl of tangerines and unshelled nuts. We would chomp happily on the fennel the way my kids munch on celery today. Fennel is an amazing digestive aid and the perfect way to end a big meal in the fall and winter when it’s in season.
I started playing around with fennel and green apples last winter and loved the combination for a salad. The flavors go so nicely with poultry and fish and even better, my kids tend to eat more salad when there’s fruit in it. I knew this had to be a part of our Thanksgiving dinner, no doubt the biggest meal of the year. To dress it up a bit, I added greens and my favorite fall/winter salad add-in, pomegranate seeds. While the salad was a huge hit on Thanksgiving, the green and red colors were a natural for Christmas.
Whether you are serving fish, pork, turkey or chicken this Christmas, I’m sure a salad would add some balance to your meal. You can serve it with or without the greens, but the pomegranates are a must. The little red seeds are like rubies or ornaments on a tree! The walnuts were another last minute add-on, but provide some extra crunch and nutrition.
Because I have a juicer, I can make pomegranate juice easily for the dressing, but fresh squeezed orange juice would be a perfectly delicious substitute. I’m sure if you wanted to, you could add some goat cheese, but don’t overcomplicate this. The best salads are the simplest.
Hello Winter!
Whether we want to be or not, we are part of nature. One reason it is important to eat seasonally is to stay balanced and connected with nature. In the same way that we clothe ourselves differently for each season, we should also eat differently during each season.
The energy in nature starts to retreat during the fall and by the time winter comes around, the energy has contracted and further decreased and moved inward. Winter is the time for reflection, restoration and nourishing our energy reserves. Therefore the winter diet should be the most warming and typically the heaviest of all the seasons. It is important to eat more cooked, warming foods to satisfy our body’s need for heat. The diet is more calming, and combined with the cold air and lack of sunlight, we are encouraged to relax and hibernate, thereby restoring our energy for Spring.
If you are not sure what to eat during the winter, pay a visit to your local Farmer’s Market and see what is available. Nature provides us with the foods that are appropriate to eat at the correct time of year. What can you get excited about in Winter? Winter squash (too obvious?), beef and lamb, quinoa, oats, buckwheat, root vegetables and leafy greens. Fantastic seasonings of the winter can include cinnamon, ginger and garlic.
If you notice that watermelon is not available right now, that is a good thing. Melons are very cooling foods and perfect to hydrate and refresh ourselves in the summer. Overeating cooling foods like melon during the winter stresses the digestive system and thus the immune system, which are forced to work extra hard to maintain warmth in the body. This does not mean you shouldn’t eat any cool or raw foods in the winter, but rather you should adjust your diet to include more cooked food in the winter than in the other seasons.
Check out the many great recipes on my site that will keep you warm and balanced this season!
LA designer Jenni Kayne and nutrition guru Pamela Salzman invite ELLE to their popular lunch-hour how-to
class on nutritious home cooking.
Read about Pamela in the January 2011 issue of ELLE Magazine!
Everyone needs a lentil soup recipe in the repertoire. This is a classic and a nourishing one at that. I grew up on lentil soup and my mom was into creating “complete proteins” when we had a vegetarian meal. The thought back then was that if you were eating a meatless meal, then you would need to combine certain foods to create the same complete protein profile as animal protein. Now we know that it is not necessary to eat those complementary foods in the same dish to gain the benefits of consuming all the essential amino acids, but I still adore the combination of lentils and brown rice in my soup.
I prefer to use French lentils, which hold their shape much better than the flat brown ones, but really you can use what you’ve got. I vary this soup often, sometimes adding a few chopped up green beans or a teaspoon of ground cumin for an earthy twist. I always throw in a few handfuls of dark green leafies at the end, spinach and kale being my favorites. And tomatoes only get to join the party if they’re in season since I almost never buy canned tomatoes (ugh, aluminum.) Try garnishing with freshly grated pecorino-romano, it adds a great zest to the soup.
For you lunchbox-packers out there, lentil soup is fabulous the next day in a thermos. And the kiddos get a lunch that will provide stable blood sugar levels, great protein for the brain, and long-lasting energy.
Pamela Salzman has turned her passion for food, nutrition and a healthy lifestyle into a business. Her popular, in-home cooking classes fill up as soon as the email goes out.
Read the full article: http://www.easyreadernews.com/cooking-books/
