Happy Thanksgiving!

So, somehow it got to be November and the middle of November at that. I am three quarters of the way through my third semester of my second masters (and hopefully the start of my PhD!) and I have a few new cooking clients. I feel blessed, challenged and that everything in my life is coming together. It has been a ton of work, but I’m finally starting to see the blossoms of all the bulbs I planted long ago.

Where are you in your life?

Every year when thanksgiving comes around, I get a ton of questions, concerns, anxiety, tears and rants from my clients and my community. People ask me what should I make? How do I change this recipe to make it healthier? How do I avoid this person at the holiday table? How do I get through dinner sober? Yes, I am sure that many of us have these same concerns.

Being a foodie, chef and nutritionist, I will answer the food questions first, because they are my favorites! The best way to enjoy Thankgiving is to not go into dinner hungry! Eat breakfast. Be it, two eggs soft boiled with a slice of whole grain toast, steelcut oatmeal with berries, a berry/greens smoothie and sprouts (what I had this morning, but I know, not for all of you!) or something a bit more decadent? A muffin and coffee, your favorite cereal and milk with coffee…just have breakfast, whatever it is. If you can make a healthier choice, its better, but no breakfast is better than none at all. Same goes for lunch. Usually Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t start until 4pm, many of us don’t sit down at the table until after 6pm. That’s a long day to not eat. Eat lunch. You don’t have to have a large lunch, but have something simple: a salad, a piece of quiche, a hard boiled egg if you didn’t have one for breakfast, salmon, gefilte fish (I’m Jewish, its my go to snack or lunch on a day when I know I am having a big meal – might not be yours – but seriously its pretty good – 5 grams of fat, a little carb from the matzo meal, lots of protein – perfectly balanced – and have with a bit of green salad and lemon and you are good to go) or something like that. Again, lunch is better than no lunch and a healthier choice is better than an unhealthy one…but whatever you do…eat breakfast and lunch.

Now we get to dinner, if you are cooking – use butter, just use 1/4 of what the recipe calls for. Use sugar, but use 1/2 of what the recipe calls for or do what I do – use agave nectar, brown rice syrup or another natural sweetener. This whole year I have been learning about Splenda. So far what I have learned is there is no evidence that Splenda causes cancer, birth defects, neurotoxicity etc…but the reason there is no evidence is that there have been no studies! Splenda has simply not been on the market long enough. So as a good scientist I cannot advise against Splenda, as a concientious and cautious skeptic, I’m not advising or myself using a lot of splenda. Like with everything, use a little.

I saw fresh cranberries at the farmers market this weekend. Try using them in your cranberry sauce or try using unsweetened canned cranberries and sweeten them yourself using 1/2 the amount of sugar the recipe calls for or use honey, agave or brown rice syrup in 1/2 the amount. I use whole grain pie crusts in my sweet potato pie or I forgo the pie crust altogether…especially if I know I want one slice of pie for dessert.

The best way to make turkey is to brine it. There are many recipes out there. But this one is a favorite of mine. I might go with slightly less salt and ignore what they say about kosher salt (don’t use more). I’d say 1/4 cup heaving is enough salt. I’d use a fleur del sel or a celtic sea salt (or a natural sea salt gathered from maine or anywhere else in the northeast if you are in the northeast or somewhere local to you if there’s oceans nearby!) Any healthfood store or whole foods will carry it. Many farmers markets sell local sea salt too. Bake that Turkey in a bag with some vegetables (carrots, onions, apples, oranges) at 500 degrees F (260 C – Thanks Eitan!) for about 2 hours or until a meat thermometer in the thigh reads 170 degrees F (sorry celsius folks – but the formula is Tc = (5/9)*(Tf-32)).

As for side dishes, let’s have some green vegetables! and lots of them, because our plates should be 1/2 vegetables, 1/4 starch and 1/4 protein. And eat enough to fill one plate. The best thing I do at Thanksgiving is fill my plate only halfway so I can go back for seconds! I try a bit of this and a bit of that – keeping to the proportions above. I make the vegetables at my Thanksgiving feast – so I know what’s in them and I know there’s something for me to feast on and then I can try the other things. I suggest you do this too. Also if you are asked to bring an appetizer – bring a tasty tray of vegetables with a homeade dip. Here’s a great recipe for a homemade tahini based tip that is delicious and not super high fat or high calorie!

As for dessert, don’t skip it! Just don’t eat dessert Today, Tuesday or tomorrow, Wednesday and certainly not on Friday. Feel free to have dessert again on Saturday!!!! On Thursday, have 3 small slices or portions of dessert that would equate to one full slice. Imagine that dessert will be 500 calories and that you have that budget. Dinner is about 750 and you had about 750 calories between breakfast and lunch. If you want to proportion it differently do so, but still aim for about 2000 for the day. Get up, move around, help in the kitchen, enjoy Cousin Susie’s new baby and have an amazing time! Just remember Thanksgiving is about family, friends, love and joy! Food is secondary, but you should feel free to celebrate as well! Just don’t overdo it. Also, get a walk in there, either before or after dinner! With the wonderful mild weather we’ve been having, I’d plan a long one either before or after dinner – especially if there’s family you haven’t seen in a while, its a great way to catch up! Wishing you a wonderful holiday! Thanks for reading.

beverages pushing up our diabetes risk?

Hello everyone,

I’ve just started doing some research on blood sugar and diabetes. I did a little quiz the other day in a gym I had a promotional table at – for 20 ounces of vitamin water, coke and snapple (16 ounces) iced tea – which has the most sugar? Most people don’t realize…let me all know what you think.

8 ounces is one serving. Typical bottles are 16-20 ounces. We never drink just one serving.

What about diet? its better right?

not really aspartame has been associated with many different health problems from headaches to fatigue, but aspartame is hardly the problem…diet coke – whether its caffeine free or not has phospohoric acid in it – part of the “cola” and this substance competes for calcium in the bones. Drinking diet coke can actually increase your changes of osteoporosis and throw off the calcium balance in your blood. Not good girls or boys.

The best drink is water. The next best is to make your own slightly sweet sodas from grapefruit juice or 100% pomegranate juice, a drop of agave nectar and pure mineral water such as pellegrino or perrier. Plain old seltzer water works too. Club soda has all sorts of funky preservatives in it – so stay away.

Keep your blood sugar constant by avoiding white, refined foods including pasta. Instead enjoy whole grains – like quinoa. lots of dark leafy green vegetables and high quality lean protein, low sugar fruits like apples and berries.

When you eat fresh garden vegetables – you’ll taste the difference. For more info check out my website and sign up for my newsletter.

good to meet all of you.

best,

meredith sobel

sobel wellness

www.sobelwellness.com

Sobel Wellness featured in world bride magazine

Read about some winter motivations and see some great recipes in world bride magazine. Read more about it here:

http://www.worldbridemagazine.com/health_and_welness/Health.htm

Some great inspirational stories, recipes and good stuff await.

vegan baking, gluten free cookies and en masse cooking

So I have been experimenting with gluten free baking. What’s the deal with gluten anyway? So many of us are inflamed and on top of it have poor digestion. My body is so attuned to eating that if I go one day eating a non-whole foods diet, I get a bit ill. Most of us however walk around stressed, overworked, underpaid, underloved and our blood is literally boiling, and we don’t even realize it. Eating non-plant based fatty foods from animals that have not been eating a quality diet, or fats that are highly refined as well as excess sugars and foods that turn quickly to sugar once ingested (high glycemic foods) doesn’t help reduce inflammation, it actually increases it. Eating a plant based diet rich in whole unaltered grains (i.e., not ground into a flour and not removing the fiber – whole grain flours are better than non-whole grain – but once a flour you are already starting to lose some of the whole gain goodness). The problem is, sometimes we want something a bit sweet. Inflamed and all. I would love a piping hot bowl of pumpkin soup sweetened with agave, but sometimes I either don’t have the pumpkin on hand or I don’t want to cut them up (thanks to my super heavy vegetable knife, its a bit easier, but sometimes I feel like I need a cleaver or a machete, which the people who run my cafe said we have somewhere, oh boy!).

So instead, I turn to whatever else is available…and then I pay for it. Yesterday I was preparing a miso soup, greens stir fry with bean casserole. Pretty healthy right? I also was planning to sell these gluten free ginger snaps made with sorghum flour and rice flour. I am not sure what sorghum is, but they were pretty good. However, no one wanted dessert and I was stuck with an open bag of cookies. There are all kinds of rules I am learning about selling things that are open and how long they can last, so basically, I can’t sell them. So then I got stuck with them. And they were really good, too good. Often times though these store bought cookies are a) super expensive and b) sugary. I’ve been experimenting to see what I can sell in my cafe. Despite training under a pastry chef, pastry and dessert has never really been my thing. I mean I love to eat it, but its so much more of a science than cooking, which is truly an art.

Many of my cafe and catering clients however love vegan baked items and want them, so I am experimenting with vegan baking. I do a lot of vegan cooking in the cafe, although I am not a vegan and despite 20 years of avoiding eggs, I do love my organic brown eggs, especially when I get them from Traditional Nutrition Guild or the Union Square Farmers market and they are all different colors with the speckles. Its amazing. I still don’t quite understand what makes an egg brown, white or any other color for that matter. I do understand the taste difference between a fresh organic egg and a store bought one. But I am trying other things: egg replacer (I feel like this stuff is unnatural and nothing more than cornstarch, so I am still looking for something more natural), applesauce, honey (some vegans don’t like me to use it). I’d love any feedback from vegans who are as natural as possible and have ideas for me. I can do gluten free baking, but vegan baking has been incredibly difficult. I tried vegan quiche as well and it didn’t quite come out right.

This morning I poached an egg and enjoyed it with curry powder and two slices of gluten free bread made from flax, tapioca flour and cornstarch. I think the fact that its made with corn starch, delta glutalactone (what on earth is that?) bothers me a little…but I am not yet baking bread myself. This is also a yeasted bread. I think a bowl of brown rice or quinoa or whole grain cereal from Bob’s Red Mill is still a better choice for my carb intake. Otherwise that bag of gluten free cookies is going to be calling my name.

Educating the Food Network about Diabetes

So I just came back from a taping of what I thought was a food network show where Francois Payard, owner  of one of my most favorite dessert (and also restaurant) places in New York, was giving a class on the traditional buche de Noel. So, I was trying to figure out if it was really worth taking half a day off from networking, returning phone calls and other work to further my business…and go to a food network TV taping for a show based entirely on sugar and fat. I was basically going to go on Nationwide TV (and let’s face it worldwide, this is the network that brought us Iron Chef) eating cake. A bit of irony, right?

The afternoon started with some basic networking. There were a few interesting people there. In the spirit of my networking group, Business Networking International and the great Neo-Sage, Larry Sharpe, I was determined to stay out of the box and when people asked me what I did, I said clients used me to make it possible to live in the real world and manage their diabetes. People were interested, they asked more questions. I collected a few cards. Mostly why I was there. I said I wanted to find out about what it took to shoot a cooking show and learn about the production aspects (which I did) and also just ask some basic questions to Francois about whether he’d ever used agave nectar. It so happens the person I was talking to, his first name was Javier, says, “Agave nectar…isn’t that the same stuff from the cactus plant…what they use to make Tequila.” I reply, “Yes it is and its also a great nutritive sweetener that is safe for diabetics. My new friend Javier replies and tells me his father is an Agave farmer and raises agave for Tequila. Super nifty if I am ever to need Agave in bulk. I’ll definitely keep Javier’s info on file.

So I thought I would be bold and ask some questions when they asked us if we wanted to ask Francois any questions. So I asked a basic question – how did he come up with chocolate for the Buche, when traditionally it was a sponge cake, of course I knew he is the MASTER chocolate cake guy (or whatever the French equivalent to that phrase is). He answered something to the effect that Americans love chocolate and it went over really well here – but that he actually makes 4 different kinds of Buche (not sure if there’s a plural of this word) and about 5,000 of them for only the 4 days around Christmas. That is a lot of Buche. So he starts demonstrating how to make the Buche and people ask a bunch of other questions. We are standing. I am getting a bit bored…and hungry. I decide to ask another question…this time the one I really wanted to ask. Francois – what do you think about making some of these Buche friendly to diabetics? He makes a comment how they don’t really taste good without sugar and he’s trying to make them low fat instead. To which I counter – have you ever heard of agave nectar. He says he hasn’t and he’s not really trying to reach a diabetic market. Next he walks us through the recipe where he says he’s not using sugar, he’s using corn syrup – something that really surprises me considering he’s French. I didn’t know French chefs used corn syrup – something I learned and he’s also using non-fat dried milk, which causes the cholesterol to be oxidated and therefore more sticky. So this glorious cake from a famous high end bakery is actually fairly processed.  He kept talking about the pasteurized egg yolks and cooking them in a saboyan to which he made a chocolate mousse with cream that probably wasn’t from a grass fed cow. Slightly defeated, but way more informed about what’s in Payard’s cakes and wishing I could sit down at this point, I turn to the person next to me who was extremely curious as to what agave was as were the other three people to her left.  We start whispering about it and I make a comment about how Bobby Flay loves Agave Nectar and how he had this woman making an avocado based chocolate mousse with agave on his grill it show from earlier this year. A show I tried out for.  He would know what to do with agave, but then again, he’s not a pastry chef.

And then someone walks into the studio and the woman next to me says, speaking of the devil…and there he is, Bobby Flay, and little did I know (or any of us) that this was an episode of Throw Down with Bobby Flay. How awesome! Now I don’t regret taking off half a day of work.  So here’s the good news: Francois talks about Bobby’s Buche which looks like it contains far more sugar and cream and looks straight at me and says – this cake is not for your diabetic clients. Awesome! National TV and its getting exposure – tip of the iceberg. Too bad I couldn’t (or didn’t!) say my name or website. Next time…and there will be a next time.

After the initial and taping during the tasting, a woman comes up to me. She says, “What was the name of that sweetener, I will show him. I’ve shown him Stevia. I will see if he will use it.” Thoroughly confused, I ask,  “show him?”  She replies, “I will show Francois the Agave Nectar you mentioned, he liked your question, and see if he will use it.” She turns out to be Francois’ assistant. So I ask for a card and believe me I will be following up with her. Wow, I was kvelling. At this point, I feel very powerful, and I see Bobby Flay talking with a few of the guests, so I go over. I stand around waiting through other people’s questions which were all very interesting and a woman next to me mentions the Next Food Network Star…another show I tried out for a few weeks ago. She mentions she got a call back and since he is one of the hosts, I guess she’s trying to get a good word in or something. I mention I tried out and didn’t get a call back because I am a healthy chef. He says, oh no – they should have called you back. That would be interesting, he says. So I ask him about Agave Nectar. He says he is not a pastry chef. Yet, the irony of this taping continues…but that he loves Agave in savory dishes and uses it all the time. I mention the restaurant, Tocqueville I used to work in, which is across the street from Mesa Grill and how I have been a fan of Mesa for a while. I don’t mention that I stayed up until 3am to watch him on the first and second appearance of Iron Chef and how huge a fan I am. He says he knows the Chef of that restaurant, Marco and we chat for a bit about it. I am chatting, with Bobby Flay. Wow, because this happens every day! At this point, I just feel like I am having a conversation with a friend. We talk about Miracle Grill where he first worked after visiting the Southwest. I remember going on one of my first dates in New York when I graduated college to Miracle Grill, I mention that. Mesa Grill was already open at that point, but only for a few years…and Miracle grill was pretty damn good, even without Bobby working there. I chat with his wife and his assistant about tuille cookies and how I used to make them. His wife makes a comment about what a pain in the behind they are. I concur, remembering a time when my pastry chef told me he wouldn’t feed the tuille cookies I made to his cat because they were too dark. This was all very cool indeed. I think I’m “MEMORABLE” which is what I need. They didn’t know my name, but I’m pretty sure they will remember my face. Let’s hope when I stop by the restaurant next week they still will. Maybe I’ll stop by tomorrow or over the weekend. Looks like he’s at Bar Americain these days – since he was wearing the “whites” with that label. Thinking strategy for what I can do for Mesa Grill or Bar. I’ve never looked at the menu for that place – so might be interesting to see what he’s doing over there.

I have been wanting to get into restaurant consulting for some time. Today was a fairly bold day for me, I walked into La Bonne Soupe and asked to speak to the chef and see if I could help with the menu to make it more friendly to diabetics. I feel a revolution coming on.

Anyway, I can’t give any more details on the show. I wonder if Payard will start using Agave and I’ll definitely have quite a bit of footage for a video reel to submit with my video press kit. Food Network – watch out. Meredith Sobel is here to stay!