Turkey Meatloaf with Mom

In the snowdrift that is Long Island and taking some time off from private clients this week and next, I decided to cook some turkey meatloaf for my mother in a way she’s never had it before.

In my life and times studying and eating food, I have always loved meatloaf. However, I can’t put meatloaf and healthy in the same sentence. Usually, because the “meat” used for a traditional meatloaf was the cheapest and fattiest cut ground up with whatever leftover vegetables there were and shaped into a loaf. It was gourmet even back when it surfaced in the 1950′s kitchen, but it was cheap and easy to make.

So I bring you a slightly healthier, slightly more elegant version of my mother’s meatloaf, made with her by my side, doing what she always does – direct and nag me that I’ve dropped onions and peppers on the floor. She doesn’t care that Julia Child did as well. I could only imagine how mothers have influenced the great chefs. I wonder if Bobby Flay had the same relationship with his mother when he was inventing things as a kid in her kitchen. Love, take it any way you can!

So, here’s the recipe. I bet your mouth is watering and your heart full, the way you should always approach cooking.

An elegant Turkey Meatloaf

Ingredients:

1 small onion, diced small

1 shallot, chopped small

3 cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped fine

2 carrots, peeled and diced small

1 tablespoon of olive oil

2 lbs 97% lean ground turkey

1 28 ounce can of crushed san marino tomatoes (imported from Italy – organic is best)

2 eggs (organic, cage free are best)

1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs

Herbs de Provence (2 teaspoons)

Fresh rosemary chopped (2 teaspoons)

1 teaspoon paprika (ground)

pepper to taste (there’s enough salt in the tomatoes)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix turkey, tomatoes, bread crumbs, eggs, and chopped rosemary in a large mixing bowl with a wooden spoon (your hands are better – make sure to clean them thoroughly first!) and set aside.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a 12 inch frying pan with high sides and add onion, shallot, garlic, carrots, herbs de Provence and paprika once oil is hot. Saute 10 minutes until carrots are soft.

Add vegetables to the meat mixture. Stir to combine.

Place mixture in 13X9 baking pan and bake at 350 1 hour. Check at 1 hour for doneness with toothpick to see if comes out clean and top is set.

If you like, mom adds ketchup and breadcrumbs on top to form a crust. I would never do this, but sometimes, mom’s way is best and traditional! And traditions are important. I might also add reserve some of the tomatoes and add to the top with additional fresh chopped herbs for the same effect, but mom won this time

Enjoy the snow!

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.

Emotional Junk Food

I just returned from a glorious few days at a conference in Miami.  While I was there I encountered many deep spiritual people at the conference and had some really wonderful conversations. One of them was on the topic of love and relationships…one of my favorite topics. In the conversation I had with one of my wonderful platonic male friends we discussed the concept of casual sex and what we both collectively termed “emotional” junk food.

So often with my female clients (and myself who am I kidding) I find that we make choices based on our emotions. What to eat, what to wear, where to go, what to drink, who to see, who to sleep with. Yes, its not this black and white, but there is this concept of I feel like eating this or I do this because I feel blue. Often times I know when I am stressed out a bowl of popcorn in coconut oil is great, but three yummy chocolate chip cookies are better. I love my kale and quinoa, I really do, but faced with a break up or a bad date – red wine and chocolate are going to win out and when I am about to get my period – forget it…the chocolate is definitely going to factor into the equation.

At the end of the day however, I love and respect myself.  I always remember that with every action I perform at the core of my being is self respect. I eat, but I know that I am going to have to face myself in the morning. I am going to have to face myself every step of the way and answer – do I love myself when I make this choice to eat chocolate cake because it tastes good?  Don’t I deserve first to be healthy? Don’t I deserve a lifetime without back pain and suffering from asthma because of my weight? Don’t I want to be able to climb the six flights of stairs to visit my friend on the East Side without huffing and puffing?  Don’t I want to be able to row for two hours tomorrow morning? Yes, I want to do all of these things…but sometimes I want chocolate cake too, but I need to really think about it consciously and consider whether I want the junk food for an emotional reason or not.

But what really is this concept of emotional junk food? People are often our emotional junk food. As often as we make choices out of a lack of self respect and self esteem, we choose to be in inappropriate relationships for the same reason. Sometimes they can be draining friendships. Sometimes this can take form in romantic relationships. I have a major crush about every few weeks. I don’t even know the man, but I crush anyway. I think I just love the idea of being in love.  Something about the way he smells or smiles or a quality I think represents goodness in him. I, like most women, love to try to fix a man or save him. We love the dark brooding types. The types who never really let us get to know them. Just last night I was chatting with one of my crushes and it turns out that he doesn’t want to be in a relationship. Ladies (and men!) – how many times do we hear these words and yet we continue to pursue these amorphous friendships where we have unrequited feelings. Emily Dickinson became a very famous poet due to emotional junk food – but where did it lead her? Nowhere good.

I implore you all to examine your emotional junk food. How does it reflect on your self respect? In my line of work, I’m very cognizant of what people say. I listen with my ears, but also my eyes and my heart. Sometimes, we so want to hear things that simply aren’t there. When a man says, he does not want a relationship, listen to him, don’t just hear him. If its possible to be his friend, do so. If not, trust your heart and let him know. I know in my communication I have power. I am not afraid to be direct. Often this reduces the amount of emotional junk food I allow in my life.  It also reduces the amount of emotional junk food that will enter my life.

Health is a state of being. Emotional and physical health are inextricably intertwined. I wonder how many Doctors are affected by bad marriages. In a recent seminar I completed in early March, I knew a doctor who was estranged from his wife and son, who suffered from Autism. I grew very close to this man and always wondered what it must have been like for him, what it is like for any parent who has a child that does not meet their definition of perfect. Nothing in life is perfect and we cannot beat ourselves up or feel that we are failures if our children are less than perfect. We need to look deep within ourselves and love our children as well as ourselves. We need to bring love into every choice we make.

I once said at a BNI meeting – who doesn’t want a better love life. People laughed at me and thought me to be silly. How could I mention love at a business meeting. But love is an essential component of my business and of life. Without it, love and passion who are we. Nothing really.  Aristotle once said, “All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire.” Regardless what our actions are, business or otherwise, we will be driven by some cause. We are human after all. Leave logic for Dr. Spock. I’m a huge fan of passion.  We feel. However, in feeling, we need to make sure what we feel comes from a place of respecting ourselves. We want to radiate self respect and self love. In doing so, we attract love and respect from others in our business dealings and in our friendships, familial and romantic relationships.

love and other deep thoughts

On my super fantastic run today in central park in a glorious 57 degrees I got to thinking about love. Being that I am hosting an event on Sunday about the relationship between love and food, I wanted to express a few things about my views on love. I am a hopeless romantic. I fall in love all the time, with people, with ideas. I hurt easily. I get heartbroken over people, ideas, things not working out. I mourn and I get right back out there.

Emotion is a wonderful thing and I have to say to most people who know me, they might not see me as ever showing it. So here to the world, online, I will. Shocking. Well, I have them and they run deep.

Love to me occurs when I put another person’s happiness above my own.  There is this ability that no matter how busy I am, I always make time for the person.  There’s always a point in the day to say, I wonder what that person is doing, thinking, feeling and how they are. Are they happy, sad etc. I find time to call. Technology is great, but let’s face it – there’s nothing quite like human connection and the sound of someone’s voice even if its for 30 seconds.  I remember a while back in a relationship I was in that my partner liked to go to this cheap Mexican bar for chicken wings. I hated the place. Being into healthy food and living, the thought of going to a bar whose main service was beer and wings that it was an abysmal place. Just being seen there could hurt my credibility and there really was nothing to eat. But, it was two blocks from my apartment and their kitchen was open until midnight.  So we ate there a lot. I could not understand how my partner loved these chicken wings so much and how happy it made him to eat there. I experimented with the menu until I could get them to make something that I would eat – rice, black beans, salad and sauteed vegetables. Once they got it and I invented my version of macrobiotic plate, they made it for me all the time and knew by looking at me that it was what I wanted since we ate there all the time. Was I happy eating there, no. Would I have ever gone there on my own? Definitely not. Did I do it because I loved my partner, yes. Did I act like I was happy because I knew how he was, no. I didn’t have to act, I just was happy. I had respect and compassion for the things that made him happy.

Granted there were many things in this relationship where I did things to make my partner happy and he did a few things to make me happy that he claimed he never would have done if not for me. I thank him for that.  He changed me in a positive way, motivating me to choose my career path in health and wellness and I have no idea how or why but motivated me to complete my first triathlon. Despite the fact that there were times we just didn’t mix, perhaps because we were both too passionate and too alike.  There are so many reasons relationships are successful and not successful and at the end of the day, but we can’t overanalyze the reasons things don’t work out, but rather remember, learn and move on.  As a couple we didn’t make it, but there’s always positivity from connections we make with people and I am happy for everything I have learned and experienced and ready for a new relationship. One that is full of love, joy, sharing, happiness and of course disappointments, sadness, emotion and pain. Let’s just hope that the love, joy and sharing outweigh the other stuff.

It is easy to get jaded to the fact that love doesn’t exist. But I know it does. I know it does because I feel it. I feel it in the connections I make with people, one in particular I made yesterday, with a woman who I might do some very important work with.  I’m a very logical person and I can reason away anything. Its very easy to put reason above emotion and push people out.  However, I know deep inside that I don’t want to do that.

There’s something magical about love. There’s something even more magical about love that is requited. So many people are in love with the idea of being in love, but you can’t force a person to be in love with you or love you back quite in the way you love them. Sometimes, that happens, that we love so much and we get disappointed because the person does not return our love and then we try to hurt them or worse make them pay for things by cheating on them or withholding things from them or demanding things like jewelry and expensive meals out. We think this – it will prove his love if he buys me something nice. He didn’t buy me anything for x day (birthday, valentine’s day, anniversary) so therefore he doesn’t love me. Its not true. Love cannot be measured in material goods. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate jewelry or nice dinners out – but love is something that is a connection between two people and it is not restricted to romantic love between two sexual partners.

I love my friends and my family. I can fall in love with women, but not in the same way as men. This doesn’t make me gay, but I have a deep respect for women, certain kinds of women. Attraction is an incredibly powerful thing.  It is what makes things light up in the world. There is truth in the “he lights up when she walks in the room” phenomenon. Just as we light up by certain people, we too can be drained emotionally and physically by negativity.

This is not to say there is no room for sadness in the world. But we all have our right to be sad, to need support, to mourn for lost love. My father died when I was 13. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss him and feel some sadness over something that I can’t tell him or share with him, something I can’t get his perspective on. We look to people often for their perspective.

So, anyway, its probably because I finally got to go running and get deep into thought – something I love about running, its very meditative for me. I wish you all love. I implore you to look at the relationship with your parents. See through the nagging and complaining and remember this is the person or people who gave you life and one day they might be there and you WILL miss them. Show love to your siblings and your siblings in law even if they don’t show it back to you.  This is incredibly important. We grow to be transformed as humans in our way to show compassion and respect to people. There are a lot of people in this world I don’t like and very few I do like, but I try to see that there is something in a person – that they are a human being with loves, desires, hopes, wants and dreams – even if they are an antisocial axe murderer (well, maybe not) that I need to respect. Perhaps I don’t understand people who do drugs or have affairs or leave their children. I can’t judge their acts. I don’t necessarily need to have them in my close circle of friends, but I can respect their choices and not attempt to force my opinions on them.

There are so many moral arguments and as society we constantly want people to see things they way we do and be right. But we don’t have to. I started writing a novel 10 years ago about Israel. I modeled my main character after a woman I met in college whose family moved from Scranton, PA to Jerusalem when she was 14.  The novel became fiction after that, with many characters representing figments and pieces of people I met, people I dreamed, people I never met and wanted to and strangely, a character I wrote and then met a very close incarnation of. Life is funny that way. If the novel ever gets published, I’ll leave the recognition of the characters to the people in my life and those who have left it. You may recognize yourselves and you may not. They are just figments and pieces.

Anyway, the book is about love, my character experienced a lifetime of loss and a crisis of identity – but still like I in her many years of evolution finds love, loses love and finds it again remaining hopeful as do I that love is out there and love is multidimensional. In the middle of the story of the character I set a very subtle understory of two men who meet at Harvard (shocking I know). I hope the reader will see the men are the future leaders of some sort of one state solution that joins Jews, Arabs and other ethinc groups together in love and harmony. At the end of the day in a very silly movie with Adam Sandler this was proven. What are we fighting for. Can’t we all just get along.

Perhaps you see me as idealistic or a hopeless romantic, but if you’ve read this far, I think you see that there is some magic about bringing more love into your life and that you see as humans why we are really here. Success, money, accomplishment – these are great things, and as a driven entrepreneur I don’t think we should ever stop pursuing our dreams, but we need to make a little room for people, for love and of course, for ourselves.

Sunday’s event – A delicious affair in the afternoon

Check out this week’s time out page 38. An advertisement for my event appears.

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/events/own-this-city/270100/an-afternoon-to-spread-the-love – explains it far better than I can.

Expect to be dazzled by controversial conversation, food, drink, laughter, new friends and all you’ve ever wanted to know about food and sex. Too bad there’s no lab. But feel free to take what you learn off to your new adventures

this week’s greenmarket finds – blue potatoes

I’ve never before seen a blue potato. A few weeks back I saw them at the union square greenmarket. I fell in love with them. First of all they taste nothing like a potato. Not a white potato or a sweet potato. They are unique in flavor, like nothing I can describe. They are also blue. Incredibly blue. I guess I’ve seen blue potato chips, so they can’t be a complete mystery to me, but these potatoes – small in size and decadent to nibble are quite different than even the chips I’ve sampled so many years ago.

In my love affair with color I got some yellow and orange carrots (I was hoping for purple ones, but alas could not find any), burdock root – which is wonderfully cleansing for the liver, salsify (which is black, but white on the inside), celeraic and some chicken pieces. On my stove now simmers: the roots, chicken pieces, some lamb stock from a previous night’s dinner, dried figs and a melange of spices. I can’t wait for it to be done. I’m sure its going to be delish.

Your mouth watering yet? A recipe you demand?

Here’s the best I can do:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 white onion – local if possible, chopped

1 large orange carrot, chopped

2 stalks of local celery (hard to find in these rough NY winters – can skip), chopped

about 1 pound of chicken parts (I used breast and thigh meat, just a personal preference)

1 cup stock (chicken, beef, lamb, whatever tickles your fancy – I used half chicken (boxed) and half lamb – homemade)

1 yellow carrot

2 blue potatoes (small, the size of fingerlings, each quartered)

1 white turnip (quartered)

6-8 Brussels Sprouts, halved – little stem chopped off

2-3 tablespoons of fresh dill

black pepper

curry powder about 1 tsp

lots of love

Directions:

Heat olive oil in a cast iron stock pot. When smoking add mire poix (carrots, onion and celery) and stir 5 minutes until softened. Add chicken and sear on both sides until slightly browned (2-3 minutes). Add stock, root veggies, spices and other ingredients. Cover and cook 45 minutes to one hour until cooked through, roots are soft and your kitchen smells unbelievable. You will just know. I don’t cook with salt, but if you like salt, you can add some when you add the pepper. If you need a bit more spice – add some more curry powder. The dill and the black pepper and the taste of fresh vegetables in the stocks usually do it for me. I also added just a touch of butter when I put the vegetables in before I set the simmer.

Enjoy with someone you love!

visit www.sobelwellness.com to learn how you too could have meals prepared like these in your kitchen!

goji berries – get in the mood for love :)

I had two questions tonight for fun organic items that people don’t know much about. For any kind of female reproductive issue – I recommend Maca. It does wonders for hot flashes and regulating periods. But for all you guys out there, if you ever have that feeling where you just don’t want to give any more love to your wife, your partner or anyone else, try a goji berry. You can get them in a health food store or in chinatown for much cheaper than your average health food store or whole foods. Buy them in bulk at a health food store. I saw them for $3 a box in a random store in chinatown.

So what’s the deal with goji berries? They are organic, fun to eat and have large amounts of protein, essential fatty acids and they do wonders for enlivening passion – think natural viagra, without the side affects And you just thought oysters were an aphrodisiac, try a berry. Ladies, you will feel more in the mood as well.

who doesn’t want to be in love or more in love?

Let’s face it, we all want to be in love! And I want you to be in love. I also want you to experience health, happiness and get excited about eating vegetables! Just think if you were full of energy, had enough for the job, the kids, your spouse and yourself, you’d be happy, right? Maybe?

What if you had a place to go where the whole focus was on love? There was a place to check the kids at the door. The music was great, there were lots of wonderful, tasty but also health promoting nibbles and you had nowhere to be but here, appreciating your partner. No partner? What if we created a place where you could go be with your couple friends, but there was one rule, they had to bring a friend too. Maybe its you, but think, every couple invited is bringing their favorite single friend. There are 50 couples and 100 singles. This could be the place for you. Gay, straight, Black, White, Asian, South Asian, Jewish, Christian or Muslim (or any other faith). Here’s a place to celebrate love! Its happening. Coming soon to a party venue near you and I am going to organize it.

Are you in love with this idea as much as I am. Then I need your help. I want the world to celebrate love. I want everyone who is looking for love to find it. But I also want people to do it in a healthy way. This means eating delicious food that is also delicious for the soul and being somewhere that the celebration is focused on life and all its possibilities. I think I have the venue picked out for the first New York based party and it will take place in a few months. Stay tuned and keep the comments coming.

In the meantime, I am offering in home cooking classes for couples. Deepen your relationship while learning about wholesome health supportive food. We all have preconceived notions about what is healthy and we all think healthy food is boring, but it doesn’t have to be. And it doesn’t have to be difficult to make. Tonight in 2 minutes I made a stir fry of kale, quinoa and tofu with peanut butter, pear vinegar and soy sauce with a bit of ginger and garlic. Last night I had a spice rubbed lamb steak with sauteed mixed greens, broccoli and quinoa. That took me maybe 7 minutes to make b/c the lamb needed 3 minutes per side on the george forman. God, was that good! Classes are available now in your home as well as nutritional counseling. Learn more on my website www.sobelwellness.com.