You are what you eat

Ending the juice fast

To make a long story short (or shorter, in any case), I ended the juice fast early. I did it for 7 days instead of 10.

(My reasons for discontinuing the daily blogging of the fast had nothing to do with becoming disenchanted with the fast or fearing that I wouldn't finish the ten days. Let's just say that sometimes life hands you a rough patch.)

The morning of Day Eight, I realized that I didn't want to continue, so . . .  I didn't.  I'd read, and heard, that the first few days were the hardest, but that wasn't true for me. The first few days were really easy, and at the halfway mark, I was confident that it would be a breeze to finish the 10 days.

What happened was that I craved protein and carbs. My first foods off the fast were a boiled egg and a bunch of peanut butter-spread saltines. My daughter laughed when I told her what I'd eaten after deciding to ditch the fast. "It figures" was what she said (more or less).

I have no regrets about starting the fast or about quitting early. I will do a juice fast again, because it really was good for me. I felt good while fasting, and I looked good. In the meanwhile, I'll be juicing regularly as part of my usual eating habits. And I do think that making an extreme departure from one's usual eating habits can kick-start a healthier way of eating--for some people, anyway. 

What I learned on the fast:

1. It's really important to put the pitcher at the end of the spout where the juice comes out of the machine. If you forget (say early in the morning when you're a little groggy), it's messy.
2. If you're going to go off caffeine, do it before you start the fast itself. I had to do it gradually because of vicious caffeine-withdrawal headaches. Take that possibility into consideration.
3. Mean Green is not only palatable, it grows on you, especially if you tamper a little with the ingredient  amounts and add a pinch of salt. Who knew liquefied kale could be so tasty?
4. In fact, vegetable juices overall are really underrated. They don't get the respect they deserve. I know that I used to be revolted by the very idea of carrot juice. I was an idiot. Raw juices are delicious and you can practically feel the vitality pouring into your body.
5. But overcoming the strangeness of smelling beets or spinach in your glass might take a little time. Stay with it, because you'll get over it.
6. A juice fast will not leave you weak, tired, and hungry. At least it didn't leave me that way.
7. A juice fast will have you trying fruits and veggies you may never have tried before.  And that's a good thing.
8. I started to crave protein around the end of Day Six. Not sure I can overcome that in future fasts. This is just my experience; I'm sure every experience with a juice fast is different. And I don't think omitting protein for the length of a brief fast has any ill effects. I'm talking about cravings only, not malnutrition.
9. I'm definitely not consigning the juicer to the basement or the closet. I love the raw juices and will continue to use the juicer. I've got a great track record when it comes to actually using the kitchen gadgets I buy, and this will be no exception.
10. A macerating juicer (the kind my daughter has) really is better than a centrifugal one (mine). However, for the money, I'm not sorry about my choice of juicer. Previously, the price of juicers only added to my reluctance to try the whole juicing thing. I may trade up in the future, though.
11. Having a compost pile is a great idea if you're going to juice regularly. Lots of trimmings, plus lots of pulp. Why let it go to waste?

So, if you've got the means, I'd really recommend juicing and a juice fast of whatever length. If you can afford it, juicing will ensure that you get the veggies your body needs (and probably craves, if you're eating the SAD [standard American diet] way). Vitamin supplements are all very well, and I take them myself, but they can't replace actual plants with all their micronutrients.

If you decide to take the plunge, I'd love to hear about your own experience. You can also join the Reboot Your Life community and see what others have to say, as well as check out what it's all about.

Bon appetit! 

 [cross-posted to View from the Loft]

Me on a juice fast??

Yes, me on a juice fast.

It all started when my daughter told me about a documentary called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. (You can read her take on the film and juicing here, here, and here). I watched it on Netflix's instant play.

The documentary was inspiring and even, at times, moving. To see Phil--morbidly obese, dependent on medications, lethargic, and depressed and despairing because of his poor overall health--transformed into an energetic, healthy person who no longer needs medication is quite compelling.  No, I don't have his health problems or his weight problem, but most of us could use a little boost from time to time, and if a side benefit is to shave off a few pounds, so much the better.

I've often thought of buying a juicer, but the expense put me off, as well as the worry that if I did spend the money, I wouldn't actually use the machine. But at the website connected to the film I found a juicer that's actually quite affordable, and I thought to myself that I could do a juice fast every so often throughout the year just to drop some pounds and some toxins and perhaps revitalize myself. That's called a "reboot" by the filmmaker. And it appealed to me. Making fresh fruit and vegetable juices part of my regular diet also appealed to me.

The juicer I went with isn't the best kind of juicer, but it didn't cost hundreds of dollars and it's going to suit me just fine. I'm not even going to get into the types of juicers available; you can Google that yourself if you're interested.

My Breville juicer arrived yesterday, so the spouse and I made a trip to the supermarket for produce. We bought a slew of it: oranges, limes, apples, pears, cherries, carrots, spinach, kale, ginger, parsley, cilantro, carrots, tomatoes, radishes, beets, celery, cucumbers, bell peppers, and a watermelon (I'm probably forgetting something). My husband is not joining me on the juice fast, but I have a feeling he will benefit considerably just from having so many veggies around. I told him I'd cook for him but it would be mostly vegetables accompanied by simply prepared protein of some sort. He's cool with that.

I started off this morning with fruit juice. (There's a juice constantly in evidence in Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead known as "Mean Green," but I'm working my way up to that one.) Breakfast  was juice made from an apple, a pear, haf a lime, and about a dozen cherries. It was delicious. Midmorning I had a carrot-kale-spinach-apple-ginger concoction and it too was tasty. It's something of a jolt to put all that bulk into the machine and end up with only two cups of juice. Makes you understand that the only way to get lots of phytonutrients and significant protein is by juicing, as no one could eat enough of the raw, fiber-filled veggies to ingest the amounts concentrated in the juice.

I'll be writing about my experience--the first time I've tried any kind of fast--here and cross-posting to View from the Loft. If you're at all interested, at least you can see how one person's juice fast goes.  

Do McDonald's hamburgers decompose?

According to one artist, the answer is no.

Sally Davies has kept a Happy Meal in her home for 6 months, with no noticeable change other than "it's hard as a rock." You can compare the photos yourself at the link.

McDonald's accuses Ms. Davies of fabricating the whole thing. Well, I don't know ... have you seen this video of the Bionic Burger? And the museum of ancient McD "food"?

 

Bodega!

Have I already posted this? If so, sorry. I just watched it again and had to put it up.

 

 

Michael Pollan's new rule

Michael Pollan has found a need to update his rules. The minimalist  set of rules: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." The expanded set includes such things as "don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" and "don't eat anything with more than five ingredients on the label."

Pollan is an advocate for un-processed food, and one of the markers he used to identify highly processed foods was high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This is not something the home cook can add to a recipe. It's manufactured using highly technical processes, and thus, when it appears on a food label, serves as a warning that the product has undergone intensive processing in a manufacturing plant.

But now that HFCS has been identified as a no-no, food companies are going back to sugar. Yet sugar is not a health food and is not particularly desirable. As Pollan says,

But to boast about your product not having high-fructose corn syrup as being some kind of virtue is really stretching it. And I think what we see here is another example of the food industry’s ingenuity in taking any critique of industrial food and turning it into the next marketing strategy. It’s a lot like the low-fat campaign, you know, which began as a government critique of food, you know, beginning with George McGovern in the ’70s saying we should eat less red meat because of heart disease. Whatever you think of the science of that, which turns out not to have been that good, it was a well-meaning campaign to improve the American diet. Industry came back and re-engineered the whole food system to have less fat in it and no fat in it. And that campaign sold a lot more food. And, in fact, since that campaign, we’ve been eating about 300 more calories a day, and we’re a lot fatter. So, you can’t—you just can’t underestimate their ability turn any critique into a way to sell food.

Too true.

As a result, Pollan has formulated a new rule: "Don't buy any food you've ever seen advertised":

And with all this new marketing based on these ideas, my new suggestion is, if you want to avoid all this, simply don’t buy any food you’ve ever seen advertised. Ninety-four percent of ad budgets for food go to processed food. I mean, the broccoli growers don’t have money for ad budgets. So the real food is not being advertised. And that’s really all you need to know.

Amen.

Quick vegetarian meals, part one

This post is in response to a friend who asked for some fifteen-minute vegetarian recipes. I laughed and said, "Well, maybe 30-minute recipes ..." and she replied that even that would be helpful.

I was a vegetarian for nine or ten years, and believe me, it was no hardship (except, as my friend pointed out, in restaurants, which can be a problem in that you always end up having a pasta dish or the meatless pizza or some such). At the time I didn't object to soy-based meat substitutes, but today I'd balk at that, so I'm not going to include these in my menus or recipes.

Most vegetarians depend on legumes for much of their protein. I love beans, lentils, and split peas, and I relied on them for many of our meal plans. During my vegetarian years, I didn't have a pressure cooker, which was foolish of me. A pressure cooker makes fast work of dried beans, even if they're unsoaked.

But let's start at the beginning. (I want to state right here that my friend probably knows all this, and I'm just throwing it out there for anyone who hasn't stopped to consider these points.) I'm a believer in meal planning, and I plan meals covering one to two weeks. This simplifies grocery shopping, I never have to wonder "what's for dinner," and I don't rely on those nasty processed foods. I have all the ingredients I need to make dinner on a given night. It also ensures variety and gives me the advantage of being organized, so that I know I have to soak beans on Tuesday night for Wednesday's dinner. I'm not rigid about this stuff, but having a general plan works great for me.

So, the first thing to do is to plan your meals around your schedule. A busy day followed by an evening of work or social obligations is not the time for an elaborate dinner. Save that for weekends or whenever you have the luxury of time.

Second, I can't emphasize enough how much a pressure cooker can help. I can whip up split-pea soup in under half an hour, including chopping the veggies. In the smaller of my two pressure cookers, I make risottos whose taste cannot be differentiated from the time-consuming stove-top, constant-stirring-required version. Dried beans are cooked through very quickly compared to the hours of simmering they otherwise require, and they're far superior to canned beans (cooked dried garbanzo beans, in fact, seem like an entirely different vegetable from the canned variety). Vegetable broth is done in a matter of minutes.

The slow cooker (crock-pot) is also extremely valuable, especially for the working person. I had forgotten this handy tool until one summer when I had so much to do out in the garden that I never felt like cooking at the end of the day. Putting dinner in the slow cooker before noon meant that we were guaranteed a decent meal after the busiest (and grimiest!) of days. And it doesn't heat up the kitchen much, either. Among other conveniences, the crock-pot cooks previously soaked dried beans overnight so that they're ready for the next day's meal.

Next, let's consider the meal itself. Your meal should include protein, so if you're having, say, spaghetti with marinara sauce, it's a good idea not only to sprinkle your pasta with parmesan, but also to have a side salad that incorporates feta and chickpeas, or whatever cheese and bean varieties you like. To simplify putting a balanced meal together, it's helpful to have the following on hand:

• Washed salad greens. Either buy pre-washed salad greens, or wash the greens, spin them dry in a salad spinner, lay them on paper towels, roll them up in the toweling, and put them in a plastic bag. Don't add juicy veggies like tomatoes and cucumbers until you put the actual salad together, as they will cause wilting and sogginess.
• Cooked dried beans, or canned beans. These can be added to salads and pasta (and pasta salads!) and soups and casseroles ... you get the idea. Having a bean salad in the fridge is even better; use two or three kinds of beans for variety, throw in some scallions, tomato, bell pepper, sliced black olives, celery, or whatever, and toss with a vinaigrette, and you've got lunch or a dish to round out a dinner. Add cooked pasta for a great main dish salad.
• Hummus, if you like it. Spread it on a pita, topped with some fresh veggies and/or sprouts and some good yogurt, and you've got an instant lunch.
• Cheeses that you like. These can be shredded into salads, rice, pita sandwiches, quesadillas (I'll get to that), refried beans, vegetarian chili, etc. to complete the protein in a meal.
• Hard-cooked eggs. These add protein to a tossed salad, fit well in many pasta salads, and are good to eat out of hand or as deviled eggs. I love egg salad, which can be used to stuff a tomato as well as serving as a sandwich filling.
• Tofu, if you like it. I don't, but I wish I did. It can be used in all manner of dishes, including salads, soups, stir-fries, breakfast eggs or shakes, etc.
• Better Than Bouillon, vegetarian or mushroom type. This is somewhat expensive, but even a little really strengthens the taste of soups and stews. You can also make a good mushroom gravy using fresh mushrooms and the Bouillon.

Of course, I never had all these things on hand at all times, but having some of them, at least, does make things easier when time is at a premium.

Other things to consider:

• When you cook dried beans, cook more than you'll need, and freeze the rest in some of the cooking liquid for another recipe down the line. Toss cooked beans into salads, rice dishes, pasta, soup, etc. for a protein boost.

• Cook more rice than you need for a recipe, and plan to use it as fried rice in the next day or two (more on this to come).

• Freeze leftover soup, or dishes like lasagna or eggplant parmesan, in amounts suitable for lunch or for another dinner. The freezer is your friend!

• Make veggie stock when you have time and freeze it in amounts you're likely to use for your favorite recipes.

• Think about how to use one recipe two ways. For example, leftover vegetarian chili is great as a burrito filling (just simmer the excess liquid away) or even an omelet filling.

Neither of the above lists exhausts the possibilities, of course, but it should give you some ideas about planning, using ingredients efficiently, and so on.

Next up, I'll post some ideas and recipes for quick meals.

Wasted food

There's a whole blog out there devoted to the issue of wasted food: wastedfood.com.

This is not a trivial issue. Some estimates are that 40% or more of the food Americans buy is thrown out--more than $100 billion worth of food per year. Let's think about that for a moment. Consider, too, the packaging that goes into all that food we didn't actually need to buy, and the carbon footprint of the industrial food system that produced that unnecessary food. Worst of all, think about the 37 million or so people in this country who are "food insecure," who could surely use some of what the rest of us so cavalierly toss out.

I've always been unhappy about throwing food away. It just seems so wrong ... When I don't get around to canning or freezing my garden produce, the guilt is terrible--even if, as my daughter points out, it's not a total waste because it goes into the compost for next year's garden. Better, I suppose, than going to a landfill. I feel just as bad wasting whatever I've bought at the supermarket.

The freezer is indispensable in cutting down on waste. Yesterday I put two pint boxes of black bean soup in the freezer; we'd eaten leftovers for lunch a couple of times, but after two or three days one starts to worry about spoilage, so into the freezer it went. Putting leftovers in the freezer means that on any given day, I have a guaranteed no-fuss, just defrost-and-warm lunch.

When we have a large cut of meat, such as a roast, I plan for the leftovers even before I cook the roast. Roast beef sandwiches, beef-and-pasta salad, barbecued beef sandwiches, beef pot pie, roast beef hash: these are all possibilities, and rarely do I have to throw out meat.

With whole chickens, it's the same: I plan to use the leftovers for another meal (chicken divan, pot pie, etc.), and I make stock out of the carcass. Often I freeze the carcass until I have the time and inclination to make broth out of it.

I use whole grains, so I take care to store them in the freezer if I know I won't use them up before they become rancid. Whole cornmeal, steel-cut oats, whole-wheat flour and the like must be used within a few months, and I surely don't want to throw anything away, so once again, the freezer is the answer. I store nuts and seeds in the freezer as well.

One of the keys to not wasting food is to not buy too much food. Seems self-evident, and yet people do buy too much. Perhaps the large bag of salad, with its lower per-unit cost, is just too good to pass up, or there's a buy-one-get-one-free sale, but for whatever reason, Americans often buy more food than they can eat.

There's also another phenomenon at work, one I saw illustrated on the British show You Are What You Eat; people buy fruits and vegetables because they know they're "supposed" to, but then the produce doesn't get eaten. On the episode I saw, the woman of the house bought fruit galore, but the entire family, including her, passed it up in favor of cookies, donuts, chips, etc.

Late last fall I found myself with several lemons that were drying out and looking rather ill, so I juiced them all and made lemonade. I find myself doing more of this sort of thing as my horror of food waste grows. Apples, peaches, and pears can be sliced and the slices dried in the food dehydrator; berries can be frozen; overripe bananas can be frozen in their skins to be used in baked goods; citrus fruits can be juiced, and so on.

Anyway, pop over to wastedfood.com for some thought and discussion on this topic. It might serve as a reminder and an inspiration to all of us who have worried about food waste.  Oh, and check out this article in the Austin-American Statesman, too.

Does your pantry need an upgrade?

I had to laugh when I read this column by Mark Bittman (author of How to Cook Everything). I laughed because most of the changes he advises are changes I've come to slowly over the past two or three years, and I wondered if I'd have gotten to where I am, or my pantry is, sooner had I read this a few years ago.

Probably not. And that's why it might be futile to link to his advice: it seems that humans have to learn everything the hard way and take their own paths to their eventual destination. Nonetheless, I hope you'll read the article and take some of his admonishments to heart. It really will improve your cooking.

I won't lie to you: I don't live by all of the "rules" Bittman lays down. He says to throw out canned stock, but I do use it from time to time (organic only, of course). He has no use for dried basil, while I use it plentifully (others before him have said that dried basil is useless, but I don't find that to be true; naturally, I'd prefer fresh, but I can definitely taste basil even when it's the dried variety that goes into my spaghetti sauce). I'm also not going to stock up on anchovies (I don't like them) or fish sauce.

On the other hand, I couldn't agree more when he encourages the use of dried beans instead of canned, homemade salad dressing instead of the bottled variety, and homemade bread crumbs and croutons instead of packaged. And I haven't used bottled lemon juice in ages--it's quick and easy to cut a lemon in half and squeeze it through your fingers to filter out the seeds, so why bother with the inferior stuff?

So take a look and see whether your pantry needs an overhaul. I guarantee that making even a few of the changes Bittman recommends will make a difference in the taste of your (already fabulous I'm sure!) home-cooked meals.

A convert to breakfast

For most of my adult life, with the exception of my pregnancies (when I once set a personal record by eating 7 large--not four-inch, as in the recipes--pancakes, a bowl of cereal, bacon, juice, toast, and milk), I did not eat breakfast.

I might eat breakfast foods for lunch or dinner, or I might eat brunch, but never breakfast, as in the meal that's eaten upon rising. I dismissed all the propaganda about breakfast being "the most important meal." Give me a cup of coffee or two or three and I'd be fine.

I'm not here to try to convert anyone. If you're not a breakfast eater, that's your business, and what's more, I understand perfectly.

But I've gotten to like eating breakfast, really like it. It all started with my making sure Jim ate breakfast--very important for someone with glycemic issues--and occasionally joining him. And then I read a book called The Diet Cure that completed my conversion.

I suppose there were other factors that contributed, like buying an 18-pound bag of grapefruit on sale (that purchase made me dust off the citrus-juicer attachment to my food processor, too)--you feel rather compelled to eat grapefruit several mornings a week when you've got all that fruit to eat up. Steel-cut oats will become rancid if left too long, so I started eating maple syrup- or honey-laced oatmeal. (Steel-cut oats take a while to cook, but you can cut the time in half by soaking it overnight; you can also cook it ahead of time until nearly done and then warm it up next morning). I had decided I wasn't eating enough fruit, so I bought several bags of frozen fruit and dug out the blueberries I'd frozen from last year's local crop to add to the oatmeal. Yogurt-fruit smoothies came next, with added honey and vanilla or almond or orange extract, depending on the fruits I used.

Next thing I knew, not being a fan of packaged cold cereals but needing a fast alternative to my other choices, I was looking up granola recipes. Even the best, most whole-grain of the packaged commercial breakfast cereals are extruded. Granola is the only way I eat rolled oats, which I don't much care for cooked up as porridge. I dislike milk, so I eat a yogurt-granola-fruit "parfait" when I don't feel ambitious in the morning. The yogurt is always organic, full-fat yogurt. I can hardly wait for fresh fruit season(s), but frozen fruits aren't bad when blenderized.

Then, thanks to the bananas I'd purchased in my not-eating-enough-fruit mindset--bananas I couldn't eat up before they became overripe--I found myself looking for whole-grain quick bread and muffin recipes that wouldn't be too sweet for the breakfast table and would use the bananas. (Did you know you can freeze blackened bananas, unpeeled, and just thaw to use in a recipe calling for mashed, very ripe bananas?) Muffins with the right ingredients can be a healthy choice for your breakfast.

Since I've recovered from my fears about saturated fat, I don't mind having a couple of slices of bacon with my egg in the morning, either, especially now that bacon minus nitrites and nitrates is easily available. As for the eggs themselves, I alternate among scrambled (with fresh herbs from the garden in season), fried (over easy), omelets, and frittatas. I find myself saving odds and ends of veggies from dinner, like spinach, asparagus, sauteed bell peppers, or potato, to add to an omelet or frittata next morning.

When we splurge and have pancakes on a weekend, say when we've got overnight guests, I freeze leftovers in a freezer bag with waxed paper between the individual cakes; they warm up fast in the microwave on a weekday morning. This, of course, is a very occasional treat, as starting the day with refined carbs is definitely not the best way to go. Jim does make the pancakes with whole wheat flour and sometimes buckwheat, but still.

My adding breakfast to my daily menu hasn't resulted in any weight gain. If anything, it prevents weight gain because I'm not getting hungry and munching. Breakfast starts your metabolism up in the morning and prevents blood sugar spikes and troughs, and thus staves off cravings for highly refined carbs none of us needs to be eating. It's not only breakfast--it's important, I've found, not to skip meals. Severely restricting your calorie intake can result in a slowed-down metabolism, so that taking in drastically lower calories can still result in weight gain.

When I was young, I wanted to stay in bed till the last possible moment, which, I suppose, is one reason I didn't want to prepare or eat breakfast. (Also, I didn't feel hungry when I woke up. I still sometimes don't, but I usually eat breakfast anyway.) These days I'm an early riser, and I'm sure that factors into my newfound enthusiasm for making breakfast. It really doesn't take a lot of time, though--not even bacon and eggs. Muffins or quick bread will already have been baked and are ready to serve; granola is kept in an airtight container, so it's always available; yogurt's in the fridge and fruit's in the freezer or fruit basket.

Below, you'll find recipes for homemade granola and banana oat muffins (both from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone), along with general instructions--not a recipe--for making smoothies in the blender. Omelet and frittata info can be found here and here.

Granola

You can, of course, buy granola, and not just at the health food store any more. Just check the label for no-nos (see this for details). If you want to make your own, the following is a good basic recipe. You can vary the taste by using different kinds of dried fruit and nuts.

6 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup chopped nuts
1 T. cinnamon
salt
1 cup raisins or other dried fruit
1/2 cup oil (melted coconut oil or cold-pressed peanut oil)
3/4 cup honey or maple syrup

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Toss the dry ingredients, but not the raisins, together. Add oil and sweetener and toss to coat completely. Spread mixture in two large sheet pans and bake until golden, turning every ten minutes so browning is even. This will take at least half an hour, possibly longer. When it's nice and toasty, add the raisins and let cool. As it cools, the granola should lose its stickiness and become crunchy. When it's completely cool, store in an airtight jar or other container.

Banana Oat Muffins

Make sure the bananas are good and ripe; they should be mostly brown and very, very soft. I use a potato masher to mash them, but you can use a food processor too.

Although these keep very well, Jim and I can only eat so many muffins, so I freeze some of them, in twos, in freezer bags.

2 large ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 T. melted butter
1 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 cups flour (all-purpose or whole-wheat pastry)
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 !/2 tsp. baking soda

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Oil your muffin tin. In one bowl, combine the bananas with the buttermilk, sugar, egg, and melted butter. Stir in the oats. In another bowl, combine the flour, nutmeg, and baking soda. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir them together. Fill muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake until golden brown and springy when pressed lightly with a finger, about 25 mintues. Run a knife around the edge of each muffin and remove. Let cool.

Smoothies

Smoothies are good accompanied by whole-grain toast or muffins. Lighter, thinner smoothies than the ones I tend to make can accompany a more substantial breakfast.

You can vary these endlessly. Use whole-fat milk, buttermilk, whole-fat yogurt (my favorite), or unsweetened coconut milk; try different kinds of fruits. One of my favorite combinations is mixed berries and yogurt, sweetened with honey and flavored with vanilla (don't stint on the vanilla!).

Here's what I do: If using frozen fruit, I let it thaw (get it out the night before and refrigerate, or microwave them until they're soft but not actually warm). I put about a cup and a half to two cups of fruit in the blender, often a mix of blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and cherries. Add half a cup to a cup of yogurt (I just eyeball these amounts). Add honey to taste, probably at least a tablespoon, maybe two. Add a teaspoon or more vanilla extract. Blend until smooth. Taste and adjust amounts of any of the ingredients until it suits you perfectly.

Peaches and cherries work well together and taste good with some almond extract added. 

Coconut milk and mixed frozen tropical fruit is a nice combination as well. You might also try ripe banana, pineapple, and coconut milk. 

I've also seen recipes calling for apple juice, cherry juice, or orange juice. Use your imagination and see what you come up with!

The amounts I listed make for a couple of good-sized smoothies. If I have leftover smoothie, I simply put it into a jar and refrigerate it for the next day.

Michael Pollan on how to eat well

Michael Pollan, who wrote the excellent and eye-opening The Omnivore's Dilemma, has a new book out: In Defense of Food, and I can hardly wait to read it.

Pollan has famously summed up his advice on eating in seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Now he goes on to explore the question of just what food is in our food, or should that be "food"?

Here are his 12 Commandments on eating healthfully, courtesy of my Food First newsletter (so no link, alas):

1. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
2. Avoid foods containing ingredients you can't pronounce.
3. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot.
4. Avoid food products that carry health claims.
5. Shop the outside isles of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.
6. Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmers' market or CSA.
7. Pay more, eat less.
8. Eat a wide variety of species.
9. Eat food from animals that eat grass.
10. Cook, and if you can, grow some of your own food.
11. Eat meals, and eat them only at tables. And
12. Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

Now here's an eating plan I can get behind! I especially like commandments 1, 3, 9, 10, and 12.

We Americans are pitiable when it comes to food. We treat it as if it's not important, happy to have so much cheap "food" compared to other industrialized societies, ignorant of what we're doing to ourselves. As a people, we obsess over food, yet can't seem to find our way to eating a reasonable, health-promoting diet. We diet and then gain the weight back without ever deeply changing our eating habits and routines, only to go back to some fad diet or other.

And I think our disrespect for our food goes hand in hand with disrespect for the land we're also ruining with our huge factory farms. The two seem to me to be inseparable. We need to learn respect for the basics: soil, water, ecosystems, because those things need to be in good condition in order to grow the nutritional necessities of human beings. When we cavalierly buy our meat from CAFOs, we're guilty of contributing to some of the worst practices, the worst crimes that can be committed against land and water. And we're buying "food" that doesn't meet our human needs, whether it's grain-fed beef or vegetables and fruits grown in depleted soil that lacks nutrients. (In this regard, do read Freelearner's terrific post "A disease of malnutrition.")

I know that too many Americans cannot afford truly good food. But many can, yet they don't--or won't--pay the higher price for the better foods. Whether this is out of ignorance, miserliness, or lack of conviction that food really matters all that much, I don't know; I suspect all three are at play in the population as a whole. Making the situation worse is the lack of a national cuisine, I suppose, and the concomitant lack of the French or Italian citizen's reverence for food and food traditions.

In any case, if you yourself want to eat better, do keep in mind Michael Pollan's twelve commandments. You can't go wrong, and your body will thank you.