Simply Perfect Baked Broccoli

With broccoli being so cheap right now its a good time to eat some! Broccoli benefits from very light cooking. The standard method for this is blanching but I find that baking is even easier and in many ways better. I'm certain that I'm not the only person who intended to lightly blanch/steam/or boil my broccoli and accidently Cooked It To Death!

Also, broccoli really has a delicate- almost mildly sweet- flavor. As such, if you want to savor the broccoli in all of its glory you need to keep you preparations and ingredients reigned in. This recipe is the easierst, cheapest, and best way to showcase the flavor of broccoli

You will need:

A ziplock bag or a container with a tight fitting lid

An oven safe dish large enough to let the broccoli lay on it in a single layer
An oven - set to 350

Ingredients needed (for 1 serving):

1 Cup Broccoli, chopped
1-3 tsp Olive Oil
1 dash Salt




Directions:

1.Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees
2.Place chopped broccoli, oil and salt into the bag/container with a lid.
3.Shake the broccoli until well coated with oil. Add a little more oil if needed.
4.Spread the broccoli on the oven safe dish in a single layer.

5.Bake for 5 minutes, until the broccoli is bright green and tender-crisp.

Nutrition facts created by: http://nutritiondata.self.com

Vegetable of the Week: Broccoli

It is coming up on the end (hopefully) of winter. As such you might disrepair of finding any good fresh vegetables in the market. Well, fear no more! There are many vegetables that are in season now, including broccoli.

The broccoli that you typically see in the store is actually called Calabrese broccoli, a relatively modern cultivar of the Cruciferae/Brassica family of vegetables. Other Cruciferae/Brassica vegetables include the much maligned Kale and Cabbage as well as brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I found some debate as to its exact origin...but most of the articles I read (see references below) agree that the broccoli we are familiar with today was created in what we now call Italy, though it was quite some time ago (perhaps as early as the first century CE). This is still relatively recent in comparison to its original parent vegetable which was eaten over 5000 years ago.

Broccoli gets a bad rap - broccoli farts, anyone? This smell is due to the naturally occurring sulfur compounds in the vegetable. They are worse if you over cook the broccoli or wait too long to eat it (either letting it grow too long in the garden before picking or letting it sit too long after buying before cooking). But those very same sulfurs may be really important to your health! Its a load of complex chemistry...but the end result is that compounds in broccoli (and other Cruciferae/Brassica vegetables) break down into antioxidants known to protect against cancer.

Ever hear of "magic smoke"? I'm not talking about what is now legal in colorado. I'm talking about the joke that is shared between antique vehicle enthusiasts and computer repair people."magic smoke" is what you smell or see right as a component in the machine fails (typically ozone). The joke is that if you let the magic smoke out of the machine it no longer works - as though the smoke was what was powering the item. The same holds true for broccoli - but in this case the magic smoke is the sulfur smell. If you smell the sulfur, you let out the magic and the broccoli is not a nutritionally valuable to you anymore. So don't overcook it!

There is no reason why you can't just eat it raw. It is great this way. There is some discussion as to whether the nutrients in broccoli (or any food for that matter) are more bioavailable if they are lightly cooked. 

I prefer to lightly blanch my broccoli so that it turns bright green. I often don't even place the broccoli into the boiling water. For instance I will take a full sized pasta pot and boil up some lightly salted water...get it to a nice rolling boil. Then I place the raw broccoli into a colander and simply pour the boiling water over the broccoli. 

In addition to the sulfur in broccoli...why should you eat it? Nutritionally it is a powerhouse (superfood is such an annoying term). It (like most vegetables) is low in calories  - only about 30 in a 3 oz serving. In those 3 oz though you get more than 100% of your daily recommended intake of Vitamin C (64.9mg) and over 100% of your Vitamin K (141 mcg), you get about a third of your Vitamin A for a day (1548 IU) and a reasonable amount of Fiber (3.3g) plus lots of other important stuff.

Another reason you should eat it...right now -  its cheap. Its not normally the most expensive of vegetables but now its even cheaper. It is getting to the end of the broccoli season here in the United States. Soon we will have to import it from areas in the southern hemisphere. So take advantage of the discounts and get some broccoli now.

Buying broccoli

If buying it fresh you should look for tight closed and uniformly dark green - almost purple- flower top. The stalk should be firm and pale. Any leaves should be very dark green and not wilted. The cut end should not appear slimy or brown.  Most people prefer the tops of the broccoli to the stalks. It is perfectly acceptable to buy only the tops if you can. 

Frozen broccoli is acceptable for most dishes (not salads of course) and as frozen vegetables are picked at their peak in the season and blanched and frozen right away, the nutritional difference is negligible (though you should still try to cook it as briefly as you can).

Resources.

The world Encyclopedia of Cooking Ingredients, Christine Ingram, 2004

The Wellness Encyclopedia of Food and Nutrition (UC Berkley), Sheldon Margen M.D., 1992

http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch44.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broccoli

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22303412

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/antioxidants/

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/research_says_boiling/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioavailability

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products

Absolute Beginners

So as I wrote about last week...I have started using the BodyBug activity monitor in conjunction with Jillian Michaels.com (JM.com). I laid out the general info about the site but I only alluded to my personal complaints with the site. Today I'm going to cover my issue with the exercise routine that the website has offered to me as its beginner workout plan.

This...more than anything else...proves to me that Jillian Michaels is not actually involved in the website. In theory, she knows that a beginner would look like (Biggest Loser competitor) however she has this incredibly challenging setup for the workout listed as for the beginner.

First off I want to say that I do not consider myself to be a beginner...I'm more like an out of shape dabbler. I never go for more than a month without going to the gym...but I seldom go more than 3 times a week. When I signed up for the program I was given options for the level of experience I had in the gym. I selected beginner, because I wanted to make sure I had the basics down before I advanced too far. I expected the exercises to be not exactly easy...but I did expect them to be do-able.

I realize that exercise is important for weight loss. It needs to be a part of everyones day-to-day life. But I have difficulty doing an exercise routine everyday (How will I ever get it to be routine if I don't work at it everyday?!) JM.com wants me - the beginner - to work out 5 days out of 7. I'm really not sure this is a possibility for any real beginners either for reasons of lifestyle or ability. For me the big issues here are:

1.) I work 9-12 hour shifts and simply don't have the energy or location I can use at 5 am to exercise before my shift.

2.) I'm really sore the day after I do these exercises and need a rest day between or something as I'm not going to be able to do these exercises every day.

More importantly, I feel. I'm not that much of a beginner. What are these exercise expectations going to look like to a true absolute beginner? If you weigh over 300lbs are you going to do squat presses?! No, of course not! It would fuck your knees up.

Here is an example of one of the circuit training routines you - as a beginner- would be asked to do:

Not a bad routine if you are already in shape but not for a weak ass obese person like me. I do what I can in hopes that by pure stubbornness I will get to the point that I can do all of these exercises.

I think that its terrible that JM.com doesn't have truely begining exercises so I'm going to come up with some truely beginner exercises to share with you all so I can do my part to help everyone get healthy.

Here's is today's damage:

 Breakfast: Nothing I was feeling really sick so I stayed in bed until 11

 Lunch: Ham sandwich with mayo and a red bull

 Dinner: Not yet eaten.

 Exercise: Not yet...But now that I'm feeling better I'm feeling like hitting the gym.

Weight:  201

Back in the game

Its been a while! I ended up taking a professional cooking job and that chewed up so much of my energy that I ended up taking a really long hiatus from blogging. But no matter.

 I'm back and ready to begin with renewed vigor!

 I'll start by saying that I gained all of the weight back. I was exactly 205 (same as my starting weight last time I did this) on New Years Day this year...which reminded me I needed to get back on track.

 My sister - the perennial dieter - had belonged to a diet plan that required the purchase of a Bodymedia Body Bug. She still had it but had since moved on to a different diet plan, so he gave it to me.

 I had been contemplating buying a Fitbit or another activity tracker but seeing as this was available right in my own house...I thought...why not give it a try. I checked out the website and was annoyed that there was a fee associated with using it...but there was also a special being run at that time with Bodymedia's partner Jillian Micheals (of Biggest Loser Fame). One free month. Sure I'll try anything for free!

I've been wearing and using the bodybug arm band now for 15 days. I have not yet tried everything that the Jillian Michaels website has to offer...but here are my opinions so far.

1.) I'm not sure I buy the ad copy from Bodymedia on how it keeps track of your calorie consumption or how it knows when you are sleeping. (I swear it is my own personal Santa Claus - It sees me when I'm sleeping, It knows when I'm awake. It knows if I've been bad). But by wearing this thing I'm made to be conscious...all the time...of my desire to lose weight. Like tying a string around your finger or wearing a rubber band to prevent you from doing something you don't want to do. This thing on my arm reminds me that I'm supposed to be trying to do better.

2.) Its not completely uncomfortable...but its not so comfortable that you forget you are wearing it. For the first week that I was wearing it the fat on my arm caused the band to fold in half in places. It was both unpleasant and embarrassing. Now I have lost a bit of weight or I have found a location on my bicep that doesn't cause it to create the fat roll quite as badly, so it is better. No my biggest complaint is that it has bare metal that must be in contact with my skin in order for the device to work (see point above abut scepticism on that score). This bare metal is irritating, it bothers my skin. Bare metal against my skin always bothers me, its why I don't wear a watch.

3.) Jillian Micheals website provides a very all inclusive program with both menus and exercise programs. I have some specific complaints about both the menus and the exercise programs but for now I will just say that they are not perfect but I suppose they might work for some people, just not me.

4.) It can't be all bad though...because I have lost 6 pounds in 15 days.

 Here's is today's damage:

 Breakfast: A package of Belvita breakfast biscuits and a Red Bull.

 Lunch: 1/2 Tijuana Flats mahi taco salad

 Dinner: Not yet eaten.

 Exercise? 32 min on the eliptical trainer and one complete rep of Jillian Micheals beginner (Ha!) Circuit training.

Weight:  200

Chocolate Meringue Cake

It is no fair to anyone, if you don't use your talents to make other's happy.

My talent (among many) lie in cooking and the person I would like to make happy is my friend Staci who just happens to have Celiac. Her birthday was this week and I decided to give her a cake for her birthday. Due to the no wheat restriction this could be a difficulty, but not so! I have the perfect Wheat-free cake recipe: Chocolate Meringue Cake.

You will need:

A mixer with a whisk.
A double boiler or: a sauce pan and a metal bowl that fits in it loosely.

A spatula
A whisk
An oven
A stove
A straight sided cake pan (I'm using a spring form pan for ease of serving.)
Some parchment paper

Ingredients:
½ C Unsalted Butter (1 stick)
12 oz of bittersweet Chocolate pieces
3 Tbsp of Dutch Process Cocoa
10 eggs, separated
½ C sugar

You can top with:
Whipped cream and honey or powdered sugar.

Directions:

1.Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
2.In your double boiler (or equivalent) melt the butter and the chocolate.

3.Whisk in the cocoa into the melted chocolate and keep warm
4.In the mixer beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, adding the sugar a little at a time.


5.Add the egg yokes to the melted chocolate, mix well.
6.Carefully, fold the chocolate mixture into the eggs. Do not over-mix.

7.Cut out parchment paper to line the cake pan. You want the sides to be taller than the edge of the pan.
8.Pour the batter into the lined pan and bake for 40 -50 minutes until done.