A Lighter Shade of Brownie

I almost burnt my house down this week.  Well maybe not, but my grill scared the hell out of me. I did what you should never do and grill chicken on a dirty grill. I honestly did not think it was that bad, but when I saw black smoke pluming out of my grill I totally panicked. I quickly turned on the garden hose only to notice that it was still attached to sprinklers so I proceeded to unscrew the hose while getting sprayed in the face and finally put out the fire.  If someone was filming me, I think that everyone would get a good laugh. I was soaked, I smelled like smoke, and my chicken was charcoaled not charbroiled.  I am a little scared of the grill now, but I will get over it fast. A success story this week is my son and I made some great brownies.

I know brownies are not healthy except maybe for the pleasure center in the brain, but I tailored the recipe so that they are better for the body and will trick my pleasure center.  I have to admit that immediately wanted a brownie after my fire mishap. I needed the comfort, so I had half a brownie. I know that the healthcare world would shun me for eating something for comfort and I can see their point, but I can also see my point and this is the difficulty so many  of us encounter every day.  Sometimes I think sugar, fat, and salt are as addictive as a drug because they activate the same place in our brains in conjunction with the nice satiated feeling in our stomachs.  How do we stop it?  I don’t know if I have the answer to that question, but I do know that it takes a balance of different aspects. 

There is self-discipline. We must eat a healthy selection of foods 90% of the time. I pay attention to what I eat and this takes some practice and is easily ignored so this does not work for everyone, but I urge everyone to try and keep a food journal for a month and decide if it suits you or not. I also think that meal planning also helps, but leave some room for spontaneity. I really think what helps me the most is that I encounter food like an artist would with paint. Really, I think everyone has that talent. This is how I pay attention to food with all five senses and relish how it makes me feel. I think of food as an adventure from the garden and store to my plate.  Change some things around in the routine for loving reasons not because you have to. That will never work. Creativity is a great way to relax.  Invite someone over and share your creativity and if it involves dessert, don’t feel guilty about it.

There are some challenges to my techniques and I am trying to pick apart these challenges and find solutions.  Examples of these challenges are the absolute refusal to change eating habits, food deserts, lack of knowledge, lack of time, and lack of money, and lack of self-esteem or a combination of these. I am discovering how to encounter this, but it takes some research.  I will probably be writing about them in later blogs. Now on to the brownies. I wish I had a picture, but they are gone.

5 oz of bittersweet chocolate chopped or chips

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ cup of almond meal

¼ cup of sorghum flour

¼ cup of tapioca starch

¼ cup of coconut flour

½ cup pureed prunes (I use two jars of baby food prunes, you could use applesauce, but the prunes accentuate the chocolate flavor)

¼ cup butter or other oil of preference

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp xanthan gum

½ tsp baking powder

3 eggs

1 ½ tsp of vanilla extract

Butter or spray cooking oil on 12x9x2 inch pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry ingredients with the exception of chocolate and brown sugar in bowl.  Combine sugar, eggs, prune puree and vanilla in larger bowl. Melt butter and chocolate in microwave in 30 second increments or saucepan on low heat and stir until smooth. Add chocolate to wet ingredients and then add the flour mixture and combine and mix until glossy and smooth.

Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes.  These brownies will have a lighter fudgy texture than your ordinary brownie, but they are very yummy. I am pretty sure you could sub all-purpose flour or whole wheat pastry flour, maybe ¾ cup.  Let me know how it works out.

Fondue It

We had a bout of early spring weather so my husband and I bought a rototiller, spread compost, and tilled the garden areas.  We still have more to till since it takes a while because we are tilling down about 18 inches.  I read that tilling deep is ideal because it helps the root systems develop therefore producing larger yields of crops in my new gardening book that I got for Valentine’s Day! What a geek, huh? A gardening book for a gift? It is very untraditional and romantic. (Although, I did get Roses too.)

I made a very Valentine’s dinner of Swiss fondue served with steamed vegetables, clams casino, and flourless chocolate cake. My health voucher for this meal is that it was an occasional treat and we each ate about two cups of vegetables and if you have read a previous post, I am not a stickler for boycotting all things fatty, sugary and made with love, but eating it in moderation. I also know what and how much I put in my dinner because I prepared it. The much larger notion is having the ability and the will to exercise self-regulation and not just eating, but in any part of life that includes the temptation to excess and result in feeling crappy about it. This can be taught early in life and it is much harder to grasp later, a challenge that I am setting forth to do with middle-school age children and later adults. Well so much for romance, but this challenge is a passion for me and I am going to do it.

I remember when I started middle school; I was ecstatic that I could take what little money I had and eat lunch at the snack bar.  This meant that some days, I only had a Hawaiian Punch and a candy bar. I qualified for the free lunch program, but still spent cash on junk food. On days that I did not have cash, I would go without eating lunch because my friends ate at the snack bar and I wanted to hang out with them.  It was only when the weather got colder that we all ended up eating in the cafeteria, but again there were so many choices and we would often eat in the a la carte line, which was more junk. Later, I would choose the cafeteria meals because they were more filling and I could only eat pizza or chimichangas so many times before I just got plain sick of them, but many of my friends would still eat those items every day.

I think that I was more excited because I had the ability to exercise choice despite how bad my decisions were. To adults, giving children the opportunity to exercise choice is important, but it is also a gamble. Schools now have to meet many nutritional guidelines, but it is still not enough because the unhealthy choices are still there and many kids, especially low-income kids do not always have the parental education that establishes healthy eating except the notion that getting more calories for the money is ideal despite how much these calories lack nutrients. I think a partnership between parents and school representatives with child input is especially important. My diet in middle school often resulted in headaches and weight loss during a time in my life that I should have been gaining.  I know growing up, we ate a lot of beans and rice and my mother did not have to deep-fry it in order for us to eat it. Sticking with cultural foods can help, but unfortunately for many people, cultural food has become very limited and supersized. With that, I am going to eat breakfast and here is the recipe.

Breakfast Berry and Cream Polenta

Serves 4

1 cup skim milk

2 cups water

1 cup polenta (coarse grain corn meal)

A couple dashes of salt

½ tsp lemon zest (optional)

1 cup fresh or frozen berries (any variety) I used mostly blueberries and strawberries

1 tbls butter or omit (I used an olive oil spread)

1 tbls honey

2 or 3 tbls chopped or slivered toasted almonds

A handful of fresh berries or ½ sliced banana

¼ cup of plain or vanilla yogurt

Bring milk salt, and water to a boil in quart-sized sauce pot over medium-high heat. Watch carefully. I always forget and then it boils over, very messy. Turn down heat to medium and add polenta in a stream to boiling liquid and stir with whisk as you add polenta. Add berries and kind of mush them up in mixture. Boil till thick, if it thickens to quickly then add more milk. It should turn purple.  When thickened to preferred consistency, add butter, honey and lemon zest.  Spoon into 4 bowls and add more milk if needed, yogurt, berries and almonds.  Add a little more honey if not sweet enough. Start small.  You can save the left overs, but you will have to add more milk or water and whisk in pot the next day. 

Ode to Oatmeal (or other meals)

This week has been extremely busy with school work and other events.  When the weather warmed up a little it seemed cabin fever took its toll and we all just had to get out.  I haven’t done a lot of cooking but I have managed to produce a few good breakfasts and most of them were oatmeal.  I love oatmeal because it is cheap, healthy and blank.  I don’t want to say bland although some people would claim this. Oatmeal is a blank canvas, inviting a colorful array of flavors that will make it more healthy and delicious. 

Food appeal is essential to all of us. This is one reason why I love healthy food because it is so colorful.  It does not need to be hard to give food aesthetic appeal.  Food processors realize this so they add dyes to foods to make them more attractive. It is like food make-up and it often is not used to enhance, but to cover up or falsify. This strips many of the nutrients that are keys to good health as well as stains our taste buds. We unlearn how to eat healthy and flavorful. 

In contrast, there is the other spectrum to this with many diets like a vegan or raw diet.  Both diets offer full flavor and great health benefits that is verifiable as long as you monitor everything you eat so you get adequate nutrients. But some of these diets are more like movements that protest what humans have been doing for hundreds of years. I don’t want to put down any vegans and I appreciate their passion, but they come on really strong.  I read an article in the Albuquerque Journal in which the author used scare tactics to promote vegan eating.  I felt like she was trying to convert me to another religion. 

Is it scary to think of what a diet high in saturated fat and sugar will do to our bodies? Of course. But don’t tell me that I am going to hell because I partake in meat sometimes. It is a cultural attack and I am quite offended. Do tell me that I can partake in a variety of foods and even tell me how I can make them taste good without adding a ton of fat and sugar or sweetener substitutes. So without further ado, try this on for size, but not supersize.

Sweet, Sweet Potato Oatmeal (the four food groups for breakfast)

½ cup water

½ cup skim milk

½ cup oatmeal (we use certified gluten free)

A dash or two of salt

½ cup cooked smashed sweet potato (can substitute any winter squash or pumpkin, but sweet potatoes are sweeter)

A couple hefty dashes of cinnamon or even pumpkin pie spice

2 or 3 tbls of toasted chopped pecans (for added flavor, I had some chile spiced candied nuts)

2 or 3 tbls of unsweetened coconut

A little brown sugar to taste although the sweet potatoes help with this (start with a little and go from there)

A handful of blueberries added awesome contrast and I think bananas, raisins or apples would also do the same

Combine oatmeal, milk, salt and sweet potato in a small pot over medium heat and cook until thick consistency. This depends on you, some people like to chew their oatmeal.  Add cinnamon and stir.  Pour into bowl and add more milk if it is too thick and the remaining ingredients.

To Melt the Ice in Our Hearts

We just recovered from some record-breaking cold. According to the Albuquerque Journal, places in New Mexico like Angel Fire and Eagle’s Nest had the coldest lows in the nation last week. Here in Albuquerque, the cold crippled our government and school systems. Our governor actually declared a state of emergency because there were some communities in New Mexico that did not have gas to heat their homes. I know that there are places in the country that experience this every year, but we desert people are not accustomed to this. At least not since 1971, which is the last time it was ever this cold. I think that small catastrophes like this, although uncomfortable, bring out the humility in us. Sometimes we need a lesson that affirms we cannot or will not control everything except our attitudes.

I did not feel sorry for our family at all as I turned the thermostat down. We have options like blankets and wearing more clothes. If our gas was turned off, we had a place to go. I thought about those who were without. What did our homeless people do to withstand this cold? I know that some definitely put themselves in hospitals or jail. I read another blog post, in which the author explained how she drove around to find a homeless person in her neighborhood because she was worried about the person's condition in these frigid temperatures.

It made me think about a story I read as a child and again to my son, The Little Match Girl. The story is about a poor young girl selling matches in the street on a cold winter night. Since she was unable to sell the matches, she ends up finding a nook and lights the matches envisioning warmth, food, and love. The next morning, passersby find her dead. It is a story that hopefully brings out compassion in people. It teaches us that with a warm attitude, we can really live our dreams. I connected this story to the scripture I heard at mass yesterday, “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? Compassion=salt. When we reach out to each other—including husbands, wives, families and friends—we season each other. We have full flavor. We are not bland. Salt will melt icy hearts. Now on to commit this to my own daily dealings and I will start with breakfast.