DIY - Roasted Tomato Sauce

Yesterday’s post was about making beans from scratch to avoid buying them in cans. Today’s post follows a similar reasoning for tomato sauce. I’m not referring to the already-prepared spaghetti sauces that come in glass jars, but rather the tomato sauces, chopped tomatoes, and even the pastes that come in cans.

Lately, these products have been deemed as one of the top items to avoid buying for one main reason: they are highly acidic and can leach the BPA from the lining of the cans into the tomatoes. I’ve stopped buying most foods in cans for this reason, but tomatoes is on the top of my list.

One of my all-time favorite ways to make tomato sauce is with roasted tomatoes. Instead of cooking all day on the stove, the tomatoes roast in the oven for about an hour, which preserves more of a fresh tomato flavor while perfectly enhancing it. A friend of mine, Kathy Fannon, has a beautiful blog post showing how to make roasted tomato sauce. Here’s one of my favorite ways of using it: on top of roasted spaghetti squash. I make this a lot over the summer and it’s great hot or cold.

Of course this sauce can be used on any type of pasta or anywhere else you normally use sauce. And the perfect time to make it is when tomato season arrives, and there’s an abundance of fresh, flavorful tomatoes.

What’s your favorite recipe for tomato sauce? Please share it here!

DIY - Legumes

Legumes like beans, lentils, and chickpeas are a wonderful source of protein, particularly for plant-based diets. They’re also full of fiber, vitamins and minerals. They’re versatile as well - they can be added to soups, stews, grains, salads, and dips, etc., which means it’s nice to have them on hand when the need arises. I say this because cooking legumes is not a quick process and the alternative is to buy them in cans, ready to use.

Yet, there are a few reasons why it might be better to take the time to cook them at home. For example, most canned beans are fairly high in salt and a salt preservative called disodium EDTA. A can of chickpeas I’m looking at right now has 360 mg of sodium per ½ cup serving. That’s about 1200 mg of sodium in the can. Then there’s the BPA in the can that we would all be better off not ingesting. In addition, buying dried legumes in bulk can actually be more economical than buying them in cans and you won’t have to deal with the recycling.

And finally, this is a personal issue, but I’ve opened many a can of beans to see a slimy sediment at the bottom of the can that has made me wish I had cooked my own. Enough said about. : ) The reason I bring all of this up is because, it doesn’t have to be a major job to cook legumes. The secret is to cook the beans when you don’t actually need the beans. If you plan ahead, it can be a very painless process.

Legumes need 8 hours or more of soaking time (in water) to begin the sprouting process and to neutralize enzymes that make the beans less digestible and less nutritious overall. This can be done overnight, or during the day and requires only a few minutes to set them up in a bowl of water.

Following the recipe for your legume of choice (add a piece of seaweed to add nutrients and help with digestibility), cook them on the stove, then let them cool. Drain and store in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for use later in the week. Or freeze for up to six months. If freezing, cook the beans al dente, and either freeze them in the cooking liquid (if you’d like to use some of the liquid in a recipe), or drain them and freeze. When ready to use, thaw during the day and they’ll be ready to use when you get home from work. And if you cook a large batch, you can freeze multiple servings.

DIY - Salad Dressings

Two of the biggest motivators for choosing something prepared are convenience and taste. But if saving time means compromising our health, is it still a convenience? If it eventually contributes to disease, reduces our energy, negatively influences our mood, or promotes weight gain, has the time savings been a benefit? I would argue no.

This week’s posts have been about do-it-yourself foods that although they may take a little more time to prepare, will provide much greater benefits than a few minutes. In fact, the time spent preparing these foods may actually save time by keeping you healthier, happier, and more energetic – three very important factors that influence productivity.

We eat salad to get our vegetables and stay healthy, but depending on what we top our salads with, we can be undoing the goodness of the raw vegetables on our plates. For example, I checked three bottles of store-bought salad dressings and found that they contained on average, 30 ingredients, including those listed below. Some overlapped between bottles and some did not. I’ve described a few of them.

Soybean oil - This oil is high in omega -6 fatty acids that when are in excess in the diet, can lead to inflammation I the body. All three bottles listed soybean as their oil source.

Corn syrup - The bottle of salad dressing that had this had a banner above the Nutrition Facts that said “No High Fructose Corn Syrup”, yet listed corn syrup as the second ingredient after water. This means that besides water, corn syrup (i.e., sugar) is the most abundant ingredient in this salad dressing.

Monosodium glutamate - A flavor enhancer that has been linked to food allergies, migraine headaches, asthma, obesity and hyperactivity in children. It is considered an excitotoxin.

Disodium inositate - A flavor enhancer that works with MSG.

Caramel color - The Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a petition against the use of this compound because it contains two cancer-causing chemicals, 2-methylimidazole and 4-methylimidazole which cause lung, liver, thyroid cancer, or leukemia in mice or rats.

Modified corn starch

Sugar

Salt

Cellulose gum

Cellulose gel

Propylene glycol alginate

Polysorbate 60

“Color added”

Phosphoric acid

Sorbic acid

Sodium benzoate

Maltodextrin

Lactic acid

Disodium guanylate

Autolyzed yeast extract

Calcium disodium EDTA

For a few extra minutes, you can make your own, fresh salad dressing free from the ingredients listed above and with only a handful of real-food ingredients. I've listed a few below. And by the way, you will save some time with the do-it-yourself method of preparing food. Trying to decipher the ingredient list on the back of the salad dressing bottle takes time! By using simple, real ingredients, you won’t have to read so many labels!

One of my favorite dressings:

One part lemon or lime juice

One part real maple syrup

Two parts olive oil

A quick savory option:

1 part balsamic vinegar

2 parts olive oil

a few drops of tamari or soy sauce

Here are three recipes from AllRecipes.com:

A Citrus-basil Vinaigrette

A No Mayonnaise Ranch Dressing - I would try to replace the sour cream with plain yogurt.

A Honey Mustard Dressing - Try using plain yogurt in place of the mayonnaise here too.

What are your favorite dressings to make? Please share them here!!

DIY - Pancake Mix

Here’s another convenience food that we grew up with because it took the guess-work out of measuring dry ingredients and fat that were needed to make pancakes or biscuits. Although I couldn’t find the exact ingredient composition online, Wikipedia states that this pancake mix contains flour, shortening, salt, and baking powder. That’s white flour and shortening that contributes 4.5 grams of trans fats per cup of baking mix.

Trans fats are artificial fats that can actually raise your LDL and lower HDL, which is the exact opposite situation we want to achieve because it increases the risk of heart disease. If you want the convenience of a ready-made pancake mix, simply mix up large batches of a healthier version of dry ingredients without the fat and store them in an air-tight container, free from moisture that will cause the leavening agents to go off. When ready to use, add the milk, egg, and oil or butter to a predetermined amount of the dry mix.

Here is a healthier version of a pancake batter whose dry ingredients can be scaled up. It uses whole-grain spelt flour (but you can substitute wheat flour if desired). You can substitute olive or grapeseed oil for the butter and any type of milk, just start with 1 cup first since most milks are not as thick as buttermilk. I’ve also made the recipe with 1T of sucanat and they were wonderful.

DIY - Popcorn

I know, it’s fast, it’s easy, and it tastes good. All of these things may be true, but they don’t necessarily mean it’s good for you. I’m talking about microwave popcorn. There are two health concerns surrounding microwave popcorn that you should be aware of.

First involves a compound called diacetyl that was originally used to flavor artificial butter. Diacetyl can be inhaled from the steam that escapes when a bag of freshly-popped popcorn is opened. Evidently it has been replaced, but the replacement is something very similar. This chemical is particularly hazardous for workers in popcorn factories and can lead to the lung disease bronchitis obliterans, which is incurable.

The second is the manmade chemical Perfluorooctanoic Acid, or PFOA (also known as C8). It is used in the manufacturing of non-stick cookware and it it’s in the lining of microwave popcorn bags. It’s also been found in the blood of 95% of the people tested for it, which has raised some concerns. Although it is currently unclear whether it poses a health threat to humans, it has been shown to induce DNA damage in cells, act as an endocrine disruptor, and be developmentally toxic in mice. It has also been implicated in several types of cancer in animals.

Rather than take the risk, I would rather take a few extra minutes to make my organic popcorn on the stove. I usually buy the kernels in bulk. Add a few tablespoons of grapeseed or coconut oil to a large pot and place on medium high heat. Drop a few kernels inside the pot. When one pops, add about ½ cup of kernels and swirl the pan to distribute them. It should be enough to evenly cover the bottom of the pot. Shake the pot back and forth to prevent burning. When the kernels begin to pop, put the lid on, but let the air escape frequently to prevent the popcorn from getting tough. This is actually fun to watch with a glass top : ) Once the popping slows down to one every few seconds, remove the pan from the heat and transfer the popped corn to a large bowl.

The fun part is that you can now season it however you want. Last night, I made cheesey popcorn with nutritional yeast and a little ground pepper. Try sea salt and garlic powder, or curry and cumin, or paprika and cayenne pepper. There are lots of possibilities.

Gaining Control

You might think you’re eating healthy when you grab that container of yogurt and you wouldn’t necessarily think of yogurt as processed food, but from the list of ingredients, you’d be surprised. A typical 6 oz. “fruit on the bottom” cup of yogurt can contain 150 calories, and 25g of sugar, much of which comes from fructose syrup, sugar, and high fructose corn syrup. That’s actually more sugar than is found in 6 oz. of soda and most of you wouldn’t even consider drinking soda for breakfast.

To cut back on the sugar and to make it a healthier choice, buy plain, unsweetened yogurt and customize it with nuts, seeds, chopped or dried fruit and spices like cinnamon. Then add a bit of natural sweetener like honey or maple syrup. One teaspoon will go a long way here versus the 4 teaspoons or more of the sugars you may not want to be eating in the example above.

And if you’re really adventurous, you can make your own yogurt. I like to do this using my friend Claire's method with the organic milk from a nearby farm. Slowly heat a quart of milk in a pan until it almost reaches boiling. Remove it from the stove and allow it to cool to the point where your (clean) finger can stay in it comfortably for several seconds.

Mix one cup of the milk with a cup of plain yogurt then pour the mixture into the pot of milk and stir. Transfer the culture into a clean glass container (I put it back into the milk bottle), cover lightly and let it sit undisturbed in a warm, dark place for at least 8 hours. The longer it incubates, the thicker it will get. When it reaches the consistency you want, refrigerate it. Use it in your cereal or granola, in a smoothie, or as a snack.

Digest for Week-ending 28 May 2011

This week, it’s all about eating in season, which is a great way to ensure we’re getting the freshest produce with the highest nutrient content. On a health and energetic level, eating in season also naturally gives our bodies what they need to adapt to the seasons’ changing temperatures. Here are some vegetables in the spotlight right now!

Asparagus

Best when eaten just-picked, their true season is short and it’s here for you to take advantage of.

Greens

Abundant and powerful, the many types of greens are perfect for detoxing after a long Winter!

Radishes

Pungent radishes work to help cleanse the liver as well and are high in a key protective vitamin.

Beets

Hands down my favorite vegetable that makes its way into both raw and cooked dishes!

Artichokes

Packed with fiber and nutrients, these are a little work, but totally worth the effort!

Vidalia Onions

Both sweet AND healthy, these sweet onions can accompany just about any meal and help you to pass on dessert.