The Thanksgiving Plate: A Side of Gratitude

 Photo by Quentin Bacon

Thanksgiving is the official kickoff to the season of indulgences.  Pile the plate high with 1950s cafeteria-style classics like green bean casserole, candied sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, maybe a turkey leg and some of Aunt Susie's dressing.  During a Thanksgiving special on Food Network, one of the celebrity chefs noted holiday desserts needed to be prepared with extra flavor since everyone would already be full from dinner.  Thanksgiving is an eating marathon followed by a month of Christmas cookies, gourmet food baskets, hors d'oeuvres, baked brie, latkes, egg nog, baked brie, candy canes, and office potlucks.  No wonder we start seeing ads for weight loss programs and gyms before the first of the year!

Am I suggesting we forego all the fun; have celery sticks and quinoa, will travel?  Not at all!  Celebrations almost always center around food.  Sharing a traditional family recipe or something new from Bon Appetit with family, co-workers, and friends is a wonderful part of the season!  I'm grateful for the people in my life and all the delicious dishes they prepare.  (Though, I could do without the jello mold!) 

Temptation cannot be denied, only delayed.  Nurse a club soda by the cocktail party crudite display while your friends toast with champagne or a martini and sample hors d'oeuvres.  A few hours later, you'll be digging your spoon into that pint of Ben & Jerry's in back of the freezer or horror of all horrors, a leftover cupcake from someone's August birthday!  So, allow yourself an indulgence or two.  Better yet, bring along a delectable yet healthy dish to round out the menu!

Orange Braised Parsnips and Carrots
(From Barefoot Contessa Foolproof by Ina Garten)

1 pound carrots with the greens attached
1 pound thin parsnips
1/3 cup small-diced shallots (1 large)
2 teaspoons grated orange zest
1¼ cups freshly squeezed orange juice, divided (3 oranges)
1/3 cup good olive oil

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees.

Trim and scrub or peel the carrots and parsnips. If the parsnips are thick, slice them in half or quarters lengthwise so they are about the same width as the carrots.

Place the carrots and parsnips in a pot or Dutch oven, such as Le Creuset, that’s large enough for the vegetables to lie flat. Add the shallots, orange zest, ¾ cup of the orange juice, the olive oil, thyme, red pepper flakes, 2 teaspoons salt, and ½ teaspoon black pepper.

Place the pot on the stove and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cover tightly with a lid or heavy-duty foil. Transfer to the oven and cook for 1½ hours, until the carrots and parsnips are very tender. Discard the thyme bundle. Sprinkle with the remaining ½ cup of orange juice and the parsley and season to taste. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Lunchbox Nostalgia

As Hostess Brands files in Bankrupcy Court and the "creme"-filled torpedoes, frosted pink domes, and butter-topped bread no longer roll off the assembly line, many of us face a revived nostalgia for the chemical-laden fluffy foods of our school day lunchboxes.

I was a child of the seventies.  My mom occasionally packed my Partridge Family lunch box with bologna on Wonder Bread, a Twinkie or Drake's Coffee Cake, and a thermos of water spiked with Hawaiian Punch. More often, I'd lunch on leftover brisket and ketchup on the bread that promised to "build healthy bodies in 12 ways."  Leftover brisket, meatloaf, or chicken cutlet sandwiches were usual fare. 

My mother made dinner almost every night except Saturday when she and my dad would go out.  My brother and I would get to choose a favorite frozen dinner at our local A & P.  Fish sticks, Tater Tots, Swanson's fried chicken TV dinner, or my favorite, Morton's Macaroni & Cheese.  Baked in the oven, the macaroni would come out bubbling hot, enveloped in a thick layer of melted cheese.

As Hostess fans madly dash to the grocery shelves in search of the final boxes of CupCakes, Ding Dongs, and Devil Dogs, I suspect nostalgia trumps the taste of these fluffy confections. 

As Proust said, "Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”  Of course, this is the same Proust who so eloquently penned an homage to the madeleine, the buttery scalloped Parisian cookie. 

During a recent trip to New York, I ducked into a neighborhood shop for a cup of coffee, I eyed a familiar package from my childhood.  Butterscotch Krimpets. I looked forward to sharing my technique of peeling back the salty-sweet panel of icing with  my 11-year old daughter.  I pulled apart the plastic to reveal my long-ago lunchbox favorite.  My daughter wrinkled her nose and assessed, "This smells like floor cleaner,' her usual response to anything with with an ingredient list resembling shampoo or that chemistry lab kit your brother had as a child.  The eternally-moist confections of our youth have nothing on a homemade birthday cake with buttercream. 

My daughters have been raised on a predominantly plant-based diet with occasional forays into the world of home-baked birthday cupcakes and Cavatappi with Four Cheeses.  School lunches include carrots with a side of hummus and GMO-free chips.

I wonder if my daughters will develop nostalgia for quinoa pilaf or organic tofu stir-fry...

Healthy Candy? More Trick Than Treat

Halloween.  The kick-off to the season of binging and feasting.  When your ghosts, goblins and superheroes come home with a pillowcase filled with your candy favorites or you've bought one of those Costco sacks of mini-chocolate bars, how can you make a healthy choice?

As I commented to my teenaged daughter, "Define healthy."  When my 16-year old dumped her stash on the kitchen table, we decided to go through the ingredient lists.  Bah humbug!

Since GMOs have been in the news and in our consciousness, we started with a search for soy and soy derivatives.  We were unable to find a single candy without soy lechitin or labeling denoting ingredients including "soy products."  Soy lechitin is an emulsifier derived by chemical or mechanical separation during soybean oil production.  In simple English, emulsifiers keep the cocoa and cocoa butter from separating in many of your favorite chocolate candies, from Hershey bars to Heath Bars, Butterfingers, Three Musketeers and Milky Way.  Why should we worry about soy lechitin?  According to the website Fooducate, unless a food is designated as organic, the odds are it's derived from genetically modified soy.  If you're on the fence about the safety of GMOs, check out my previous blogs or watch "Genetic Roulette" on You Tube.

Disappointed that we were unable to find any chocolate favorites without soy, we moved on to candy choices recommended by more than a few weight loss articles and websites.  If we're weighing the options, low calorie and low fat doesn't necessarily equal healthy.  Remember the 90s when we eschewed extra virgin olive oil only to binge on Red Vines and Snack Well cookies?  Our collective BMI and pants sizes went up faster than your portfolio during a bull market!

Let's take a look at one of the "lower fat" options straight from the candy pile.  Six Tootsie Roll midgies weigh in at 140 calories with 3 g of fat.  Nothing some extra treadmill time can't handle, right?  The problem isn't in the calories in vs calories out.  It's in the ingredients. Sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, condensed skim milk, cocoa whey, soya lechitin, and natural and artificial flavors.   For starters, we have the GMO factor.  When sugar isn't listed as pure cane, it invariably is derived from sugar beets, one of the top GMO crops.  Corn syrup, soybean oil, soya lechitin?  Bingo!  More of the same.  Corn syrup is essentially corn starch converted with enzymes to form a sweetener less expensive than sugar.  Corn, the commodity bankrolled by our friendly government and you've got it, likely GMO.  Partially hydrogenated oil?  AKA trans fat!  There's little disagreement in the medical community that trans fats do a one-two punch on your cholesterol, increasing your LDL or "bad" cholesterol while lowering your HDL or "good cholesterol."  An iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing followed by a juicy Porterhouse might just be a better option!

I could probably write a book about the harmful ingredients in candy but I suspect you've gotten the point.

Am I suggesting you pass out celery sticks and raisins to Trick or Treaters? Nope. For some, chocolate is a food group and a panacea for all that ails.  Binging on chocolate or some other comfort food isn't going to solve any problems.  Nevertheless, I believe in moderation and choosing your temptations wisely.

So, if chocolate is calling your name, select organic dark chocolate such as Green & Black's Organic Chocolate, Kopali Organics Chocolate Cacao Nibs available on Amazon.com or Endangered Species Organic Dark Chocolate with Almonds. 

As Charles M. Schulz once said, "All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."  Just make it organic, dark chocolate!