Video lag

My dad helped me throw some random clips together to capture the cuteness of Mackenzie at month 18 (while she had a broken foot). Here is the result:

 

New York City: Healthy Eats and Unhealthy Treats

Let me be the first to reassure you that we absolutely did indulge in New York pizza and the best donuts I’ve ever eaten during our stay in NYC (see the bottom of this post for those little delights).

That being said, I was determined to find healthy food to eat while we were in NYC, especially for Mackenzie, so I was always on the lookout for nutritious, cost-effective meals. Here are some discoveries I made:

1. Get a hotel room with a fridge. We filled ours with fruit and hummus (ok, and some fancy cheese Scott has been wanting to try for over a year), and it helped to have that to fall back on when we came back to the hotel before nap and bedtime.
2. Realize the complimentary breakfast may not be a sure bet. The first morning I found a lone packet of plain instant oatmeal there, and we always snagged some bananas but otherwise it was a total wash. Sugary cereal, waffle mix, shady pastries, Tang disguised as orange juice… nothing was healthy or worth the calories so I had to be prepared for a hungry toddler in the mornings who couldn’t wait until we got into the city to eat. Note that we stayed in a Country Inn & Suites, not a dive.
3. Find a bakery that makes whole grain breads. We were thrilled with Amy’s Bread and always had a loaf and a couple of rolls for munchies. Now that I see their ingredient lists, it looks like some weren’t 100% whole grain. Bummer, but seriously yummy and much better than the alternatives we found.
4. Local hummus. I wandered into a Gourmet Garage and was thrilled to find they had their own hummus without any oil added, that was the same price I pay here in Columbus. Score! This plus whole grain bread was an excellent fallback meal.
5. Farmer’s Market. On Friday Scott looked up a great Farmer’s Market in Union Square where we found cool varieties of apples, bought a 1/2 gallon of pear cider (ingredient: pears), and sipped a big cup of hot spiced grape juice (such a good idea!).
6. Go ethnic. We went to a Tibetan restaurant near NYU called Tsampa and their vegetarian menu was extensive. My dish, translated, meant “14 different vegetables with rice”. I requested brown rice, and next time I would request “easy on the sauce” but other than that it was a fantastic meal. If it wasn’t our last night there, I would have asked for another order to go and put it in our hotel fridge!
7. Pack snacks. We brought some dried fruit and Larabars from home. Even though Scott bemoaned the idea of bringing food on vacation when we left, both he and Mackenzie ended up being extremely grateful that I had them. Mackenzie doesn’t snack very often, but if the time gets away from us or we end up stuck in a place without food around mealtime her fuse can be pretty short. When this happened in NYC, a Larabar pulled out of the diaper bag kept her happy until we were ready to eat.
8. Keep your eye out for soups. Hale & Hearty have a dozen soup shops in Manhattan and I just got their everyday tuscan white bean and spinach soup, though the ten veggie soup also sounded great. Filling, pretty inexpensive lunch with plenty of good veggies in there.

None of the above are rocket science, but it was a relief to come back from a trip and feel good about what I ate and fed my daughter. For me, it’s all about balance. I’ll definitely indulge but if I’m going to really enjoy a dinner of decadent pizza, I need to eat well the rest day. Otherwise I feel… bleh.

On that note, our favorite NYC indulgences:
John’s Pizza near Time’s Square. No slices, but great ambiance and unbeatable deliciousness.

Bleeker Street Pizza – The best slices.

Donut Plant – The only donuts worth eating, now that I’ve tasted them. They’re made from scratch, on site, with no trans fats or artificial ingredients and they’re outstanding. My favorites were the creme brulee (a yeast donut) and the cranberry cake.

 

What is a Healthy Diet and Why Should I Eat One? (Part V of ???)

Read Part I: Highlights
Read Part II: Our Journey to Better Eating
Read Part III: We’re not THAT weird
Read Part IV: Recommended Reading and Watching

DISCLAIMER: I’m certainly no expert on this. I’m just sharing what I’ve learned in case someone else finds it useful.

Part V: Recipe Finding

When we started eating for health three years ago, we pretty much threw out the bad food but didn’t know where to go from there. Slowly we’ve added more and more diversity to our diet and learned to love lots of different dishes. Unfortunately, I have no miracle cookbook or recipe site to recommend to you, because I haven’t found one! (I plan on making one for our family’s use and I’ll share it here as well, but that’s another post for another time.)

Recipes Must Pass The Test

Here’s what I do recommend: First, get a good idea of what is healthy. Then, when recipes cross your path as they do so often online, simply put them through your filter. If they pass the test, or can be made to pass the test with some reasonable alterations, try them. Then you can use your normal filter for deciding if you’ll make it again. Here’s mine: Yumminess, cost, and time to make. If it’s yummy enough, we’ll make it again even if it’s pricey or takes a long time to prepare. If it’s fast to prepare, it’ll show up again even if it’s not our absolute favorite tasting dish, etc.

The key thing though, is to just be ruthless with the initial filter. If it’s not healthy, cross it off your list. Don’t spend any time on filing it, etc. Just move on until you find something that fits your criteria. There are so many thousands of of recipes out there, you can afford to be choosy and you MUST be choosy. Remember that *most* Americans battle with their weight and will get a preventable, chronic disease. If you don’t want that for you and your family, you must be ok with being different.

Here’s what I personally look for in a healthy recipe:
- No meat, or meat that can be just left out. We still eat seafood once a month or so.
- No cheese or dairy. Occasionally we’ll put in some plain yogurt, but we really find plenty of recipes that don’t lean on a layer of cheese as a crutch.
- No refined flour. Often this is super easy to adapt: just choose whole wheat pasta, serve over brown rice instead of white, etc.
- Light on the oil and salt. These are easy to dial down, but just be aware that some recipes depend on them to taste good, so you may need to cross those recipes off.

What’s left? You can guarantee the majority of calories will come from things that are healthy: fruit, veggies, beans, nuts, whole grains, etc. What you don’t want is for the cheese or meat to steal all the calories away from the things that are good for your body.

I’ve found soups and ethnic foods, in particular, are great categories to look for healthy dishes. Scott is much more willing to try new ingredients and it’s helped a ton with getting me out of my comfort zone. When I started eating better, very few veggies were in my inner circle. Now, I’m happy to say, that circle encompasses most of the produce department.

Our favorite cookbook: Veganomicon . This deserves a post of its own to tell you the recipes we love the most, but I’ll tell you one of our all-time favorites as an example.

Chickpea Romesco is heavenly and we just had some leftovers for dinner. Essentially, you saute up onion and garlic and serrano pepper, add thyme and rosemary, add blended up canned tomatoes and roasted red peppers, ground up almonds, and chickpeas. Simmer and serve over brown rice or quinoa. It’s rich, flavorful and completely healthy. Why compromise when dishes like that are “out there”?

We also find lots of recipes from epicurious.com and the recommendations from friends. I have posted lots of recipes here on the blog: Recipes on Beanland but I know I owe many many more there. I really need to share the love in this regard. It’s on The List.

You Don’t Always Need a Recipe

I never thought I was one of those people who could put together a meal without a recipe. I’ve surprised myself lately, though, after a few years of cooking with real, simple foods, I’ve gotten much better at knowing how to cook things without googling or leafing through a book.

Here’s what I really wanted to say about this, though:

If your family is willing to be flexible, consider relaxing a bit when it comes to meals. Mackenzie and I will often have a day that looks like this:
- Breakfast is steel cut oats with whatever fruit and nuts and seeds we have on hand.
- Lunch is chopped up red bell pepper, a plain baked sweet potato or squash, and fresh fruit.
- Snack is nuts or homemade whole grain bread with healthy applesauce on top.
- Dinner is leftover veggie soup with brown rice

Notice how that entire day I didn’t need a single recipe? I hear this a lot: “I would eat healthier, but I have the hardest time finding healthy recipes!”

If I’m pressed for time, or just burnt out on cooking, a single veggie soup recipe can get me through two or three days, easily. Especially when I supplement with some of the healthy food that simply doesn’t require a recipe:
- Black beans, simply mixed with salsa from a jar.
- Veggie sandwiches, store-bought hummus spread on healthy bread and piled high with fresh spinach, sliced bell peppers, sprouts, avocado, etc.
- Steamed veggies that can come straight from a bag in the freezer
- Whole grain tortillas smeared with nut butter and chopped up apple and raisins
- Salads
- Fruit & veggie smoothies

Meal Planning

If you’re a meal planner, you will find healthy recipes fold nicely into a weekly layout system like those frequently touted online. For fun, here’s a quick example:
Monday: “Something on a Bun” night – Lentil sloppy joes one week, black bean burgers another week, bean ball subs with marinara sauce another week.
Tuesday: Mexican night – Beans, rice, and fajita veggies as burritos, or nachos
Wednesday: Soup night – black bean soup, veggie soup, curried squash soup, homemade tomato soup
Thursday: Ethnic night – Veggie curry and flatbread, veggie stirfry with brown rice
Friday: Pizza night – whole wheat crust, loaded with yum like roasted garlic, broccoli, and red peppers, light on a flavorful cheese like parmesan or goat
Saturday: leftovers
Sunday: Something different – Fish, oven-baked veggies, waffles for dinner, or a new and crazy recipe.

People who menu plan (I don’t… yet?) tell me it’s really helpful to have a loose outline so you can plug favorites into the month’s menu in advance and then fill in a few slots with new recipes to shake things up.

Open to More

If you have a favorite recipe, cookbook, or website with healthy recipes… please share! Even with the pretty strict criteria I mentioned in this post, I have a surprisingly long list of recipes still to try but I’m always looking for more.

 

Tahoe Family Reunion

My immediate family consists of 2 parents, 3 older brothers, their 3 wives, almost 6 nieces (#6 is due today!), 1 nephew, and 3 yellow labs. This isn’t a super huge family, but what’s rare about it is that all of them live in California about 8 driving minutes away from each other and from work. 5 of those 6 adults work for SmugMug and thus spend most of each day together. When they’re not working? You’re likely to find them playing with all the cousins at a park, congregating at my parents’ house for swings and dinner, or visiting a local zoo.

All this to say, that when my brother suggested a family “reunion”, I laughed. These people practically live under the same roof! However although Mackenzie and I travel out there to work about once a quarter, Scott had not been out for two years and the lure of an epic reunion at Lake Tahoe was enough to get us booking tickets.

Plus, my dad is guaranteed to take some great photos when we’re out for a visit. After all, the last time he managed to get the trifecta in single shot: 3rd trimester pregnant in a bathing suit with a snorkel mask. I’d blame him for the farmer’s tan and blue lips well, but I don’t know what the next two steps up from a trifecta are. Anyone?

Moving on, I had high hopes for this trip and wasn’t disappointed. Scott had to stay in Columbus a few extra days to finish up a research project, so Mackenzie and I made the cross country flights on our own for the nth time. She managed to wriggle around just right on the airplane so she peed out of her diaper onto my lap. For the nth time. What is it about planes?