Recipe – Simmered Quinoa

Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) is one of my favourite whole grains. It is light, nutty in flavour and unlike a lot of other grains, it is good hot or cold. Quinoa is an ancient grain (actually a seed) of the Incas, grown high in the Andes mountain on rocky, alkaline soils. It is hearty to extreme temperatures and high radiation, ideally adapted to its growing locale. It provides an excellent vegetable source of protein, complete in its amino acid profile, an abundance of calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese and zinc, as well as the B vitamins.

If you buy quinoa in bulk, it will likely have grit that is difficult to remove even with washing. I advise clients to buy the boxed quinoa. In Canada and the US you can get Ancient Harvest Quinoa. Start with the ivory coloured grain as opposed to the red, only because it is a little lighter in flavour and would probably appeal to the palate of most people.

Serves 2 as a main course or 4 as a side dish.

1 c. quinoa
1 2/3 c. purified water
1/4 tsp. unrefined sea salt

Put quinoa in a medium sized mixing bowl, cover with cold water and swoosh the grain thru the water with your hand. Drain the water in a fine strainer. Repeat 2 more times. Bring the water to a boil in a heavy-bottomed, medium-sized cooking pot. Turn the heat down low, then add the quinoa, and the salt. Let simmer on minimum heat with the lid on for 15 minutes or until the water has been absorbed. Remove from the heat and keep the lid off for 5 minutes to let the steam dissipate and minimize the stickiness of the grain, or serve immediately.

As with any simmered grain, you can flavour it with a combination of the following

1/ Good quality fat – olive oil, sesame oil, flax oil, hemp oil or butter
(olive oil combines well with flax, hemp and butter so you can do them alone or in combination)
2/ Saltiness – sea salt, herbed salt, tamari (naturally aged soy sauce) or gomasio (combination of roasted
sesame seeds and sea salt)
3/ Herbs (preferably fresh) – ginger juice, parsley, cilantro, chives are particularly good on grains
4/ Seeds – sesame, hemp, ground flax, cumin, caraway

Stop Talkin’ Calories

This long held notion that you lose weight when you eat less calories than you expend is overly simplified.

I’ll use a metaphor to explain.
We could say that there is truth that if you were a moutain climber and you put one hand and one foot in front of the other, always going in an upward direction you would eventually make it to top. What do ya think? Some element of truth, but overly simplified? We wouldn’t be accounting for the extreme weather conditions, for the level of skill, for the support and training and tools that you have, for your mental capacities and motivation, or for that matter the unknown obstacles that every climber will inevitably run into.

The same is true for how any individual’s body uses the calories that they take in. Every organ system in the body makes use of the energy resources of the foods that provide the calories. The efficiency of a person’s systems, the food intolerances, medications, allergies, insulin resistance, thyroid function, emotional state, thought processes, etc, etc, etc will determine how the caloric resources get used.

There is also the quality of the food that the calories are coming from. 1800 kcal of nutrient rich food will mean weight loss for one person. 1800 kcal of refined food will mean weight gain for that same person.

All this to emphasize the importance of staying clear of oversimplified notions of how it is we lose weight. And more so, if you are a person who has not struggled with your weight, do not get caught in the judgment that someone who is overweight should just stop eating so much and start exercising more. More often than not, it is not that simple.

Emotionally Unintelligent Culture

I caught the tail end of an interview on CBC radio (Canada’s national radio) yesterday. Health Canada has come out with new statistics on obesity and the Canadian population. Possibly because of that, a science research writer was reviewing the research results of various factors on obesity. They talked about the effects of quitting smoking, of removing physical education from the schools, about calories in vs. calories expended and I am sure other issues that I had missed. At one point the interviewer says something like, “but really all of this comes down to what we have known for a long time – just don’t eat more calories than you expend”. How many thousands of times have we all heard that one. (See what I have to say about that simplified bullshit in my blog Stop Talking Calories). In the five minutes of the interview that I did hear, I was waiting for something insightful, some humane understanding beyond the ‘this is what the research says’ kind of jargon. I was waiting for something that spoke to the emotional, mental, spiritual and physiological issues that all people who have a longterm struggle with their weight have to deal with.

Finally, with me sitting on my seat in anticipation, the interviewer says “there must be some effect that the psychological plays in all of this” and the woman who is the oh so knowledgable science research writer, says “oh sure”. End of interview.

The culture of science and all those who ascribe exclusively to it keep missing the point. All the numbers do is confirm what we already know or intuit. How about we start talking about what really matters – people are stressed out, confused about their life, feel out of control, unhappy, and are judged. They feel emotionally, mentally and spiritually heavy and they don’t know where to turn next because there are so many experts telling them about the next best way to eat. What and how you eat is important to know but it is irrelevant if you can never stick to what you know.

Let’s get this clear. To lose weight and be healthy for the rest of your life is up to you. You need to take responsibility for your body, for your self and for your life. But it is not made easier by a culture that is scientifically focused and emotionally unintelligent to the realities that the weight loss struggle holds. As a culture we need a paradigm shift away from superficial attempts at weight loss, towards a more comprehensive understanding of what being heavy really means.

Get out of the kitchen fast

Do you ever find yourself at the end of a good healthy meal, no longer hungry but wanting to eat something else?

Here is one idea to help you break the habit of eating more than you need.

GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN AS FAST AS YOU CAN! Go do something that entices your mind in a different, but encompassing way.

If your mind is refusing to leave, then take a small amount of what you are craving, put the rest away, make a deal with yourself that you can eat it when you get to another room and then leave the kitchen and eat it just before you get involved in something else that occupies your mind.

P.S. This works best if you do as much as you can of your kitchen clean-up before you sit down to eat your meal.

Try it and let me know how it works for you, or what challenges you run into.

Creativity for Emotional Release

The other night, I was feeling that dull anti-climactic boredom of having completed a huge project, in this case my new website. In the past, boredom, along with avoidance, were my biggest catalysts to eating when I wasn’t hungry. But with years of practice of recognizing what is going on, I sat still long enough to figure out that I needed to get this feeling out, and I thought about what would be the best way to do that.

I pulled out a flipchart size pad of paper, my markers, a magazine that I saved for collaging purposes and a glue stick. I sat on the living room floor, armed my non-dominant hand with a marker and let it rip. This was not about artistry. It was about expression. For the next 15 minutes, I made whatever frenetic markings I felt like. I used varied markers, ripped three colourful magazine pages up into little pieces, glued, scribbled and then wrote the words that came to me in big letters BOREDOM TRANSFORMS TO CALM FRENETIC EXPRESSION. When I was finished that picture, I did another, this time with lighter colours, eventually etching out the words as they popped into my mind JOY EXPRESS, ONWARD HO, PARIS IN SPRINGTIME, I LOVE YOU TZABIA. Logical no, informative of my feelings, yes.
I felt satisfied and free of the heavy feelings I had 30 minutes earlier. I cleaned up and went to bed.

i wanted to share this with you as an example of how honouring our feelings with creative expression can inform you of what is really going on, and then leave you transformed.

CREATIVE EXPRESSION = INFORM + TRANSFORM

Chicken Stock Recipe

I often suggest to my clients, when they are ready, that they get into the habit of making stocks for soups and stews. Stocks offer a richness that a water based soup does not. In addition there is the added mineral content from the bones and vegetables.
Here is how we do chicken stock in our home. Barry’s bubba, who was a great cook (so he says), passed this on to him. I often make double this recipe in a huge stock pot, so I can freeze enough for at least 4 big soups.

Please note that all of my posted recipes have room for flexibility so if you don’t have the exact same ingredients or amounts, no worries. Experiment. Some of the best discoveries in the kitchen have come from adaptations.

Ingredients:

6L. of purified water
2 – 3 lb. chicken (backs and necks are cheap and work well for stock, but if you can’t get them,
legs are the next best option)
1 large onion, skinned and cut into quarters
2 large carrots, washed and ends cut off
1 large parsnip, washed and ends cut off
2 celery stalks, washed and ends cut off
Leaves from head of celery, washed
2 C parsley, leaves and stems, washed, left whole
1 Tb. sea salt
2 tsp. peppercorns, put into a spice ball

Put all ingredients into a stock pot and bring to a boil. Simmer for minimum of 1 1/2 hours, preferably for 2 hours. Let cool. Strain. Use stock immediately, refrigerate or freeze.

Thinking of Coffee

I want to talk about a substance that I get asked about a lot and is near and dear to many ‘a hearts… the beloved dark brew… coffee.
Admittedly, I am hardly a coffee expert, as I was an “I can count on one hand the number of cups of coffee that I have had in my life” herbal tea-toteller until four years ago. That was when I met my partner Barry, who turned me on to the subtle pleasures of good quality coffee. It is a contagious joy that Barry expresses in his exploration of the dynamics of the coffee bean. As I write this, he is outside in our urban backyard roasting Nicaraguan beans that he will blend with previously roasted Ethiopian beans – as an experiment. Will it have just the right combination of acidity and body to appease our palates?
To the surprise of many who are satisfied with any or all of the commercial expressions of the black gold, there are varying complexities to the quality of coffee, as there are of wines. At a coffee cupping (coffee’s equivalent to a wine tasting) at The Merchants of Green Coffee www.merchantsofgreencoffee.com , I was introduced to the acidity and body of coffee, the character of beans from the regions of the world and to the subtleties of taste on my tongue.
The key to great tasting coffee, is in the quality of the green beans, the freshness of the roast and proper brewing technique. There are 800 volatile coffee oils in coffee beans which will become stale (due to exposure to oxygen) within 5 days after roasting, 3 hours after grinding and 15 minutes after brewing. According to the Merchants of Green Coffee, 95% of all coffee sold to the consumer is stale, as the minimum time that it takes to get coffee from the central roasting facilities to the consumer, is one week at best, and two months on average. Even vacuum packaging won’t save the coffee from its predestined breakdown. Could the rancid oils of stale coffee contribute to a lot of the negative health effects of coffee consumption? Certainly rancid oils of other seeds and nuts are a source of free radicals, which are major contributors to degenerative disease. How much more benefit would we get from coffee drinking if we kept our intake moderate and drank only fresh coffee, as defined above by coffee science?

In response to those who ask me, “should I eliminate coffee from my diet?”, I say consider how it makes you feel. Do you drink it because you ‘need it’ or because you really enjoy the flavour. Could you let it go without too much trouble or are you attached to the caffeine high? Any attachments we have, to food or otherwise, are worth investigating and detaching from, for physical, emotional and spiritual reasons. At the very least become moderate (1-2 cups daily, or less) in your consumption. If coffee or caffeine does not create any acute symptoms, drink it because you get pleasure from its flavour. Savour it. Try eliminating the milk and sugar so that you can really taste the quality of the coffee. Go for the freshest you can find. Consider switching over to green beans that you roast yourself, (the Merchants will ship their roasters and beans worldwide) or find the local spots that serve only fresh roasts. Feel free to contact me if you want to know where those coffee houses are in Toronto.

Chickpea Blueberry Pancakes

Okay this is my first entry into the recipe files. Why did I choose this one? Maybe because it is such a hit in our house, requested on a frequent basis by my son Sasha. I have played with pancake making for years, and I am turned on by creating flour products that are gluten and dairy free, which these are. Got the inspiration from a meal at Zucca, my favourite Italian restaurant in Toronto. They make a chickpea foccacia that makes me salivate when I think of it.

Let me know any questions that you have about the recipe. Would also love your feedback.

Chickpea Blueberry Pancakes

The best pancakes that I have ever made, they have been received by all with rave reviews. They are thick and fluffy, but be sure to cook them long enough before flipping. They should be almost dry on top before you flip.
Makes about 16 medium sized pancakes
1 c. chickpea flour
¼ c. tapioca flour
¾ c. buckwheat flour
1 tsp xantham gum
2 tsp non-gluten baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
2 tbs unrefined coconut oil, + extra for frying
1 c. rice milk, soy milk or almond milk
1 ¼ c. purified water
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
3 eggs, separated
½ – 1 c blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Sift all dry ingredients together.
Melt the coconut oil over low heat. Do not boil or smoke. Let it cool.
Separate the eggs, dropping the yolks into a large enough bowl to hold all of the wet ingredients. Keep the whites aside for now. Mix the oil in with the yolks. Then add the rest of the wet ingredients in with the egg mixture.
Add the wet to the dry slowly, mixing as you go.
Fold the blueberries into the batter.
Use a beater to whip the egg whites until they form a stiff peak.
Fold them into the batter.
Place a skillet on low-medium heat with enough coconut oil to melt to cover the bottom of the pan. When the oil is heated enough to create a slight bubbling of a dab of batter dropped into the pan, the skillet is ready.
Flip the pancakes when they are dry on top and nicely browned on the bottom.
Serve with real maple syrup or your favourite fruit sauce.
Option: These pancakes are also excellent with sliced apples and 1 tsp of cinnamon in addition to or instead of the blueberries.

Large Radiant Women

I was searching for another site when I stumbled across www.radiancemagazine.com , a site and mag for large, well-endowed women. My curiousity sent me exploring through some of the back issues.

I was moved by two articles from the Fall 1997 issue. Wonderfully Endowed by Jeannine Dettoney, is her journey to love her big, beautiful black hips and butt and the women in her life and culture who inspired and dignified her beauty.

I was reminded of one of the stories in Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a book that I read over 10 years ago. I might be slightly astray with the details but the crux of the story stayed with me. She recounted her own story about her body esteem being challenged by being in the presence of the thin, white girls that she went to school with and the American culture that supported that white notion of beauty. It was not until Estes went to visit her extended family of Amerindian/European/Hungarian roots that she realized that her body type was part of her heritage, and she was trying to fit a naturally large body into a thin representation of beauty.

Reading Wonderfully Endowed, as well as two other articles that moved me, Big Beauty, One Photographer’s View (Fall 97) and Confessions of a Radical Registered Dietician (Spring 95), reminded me to do a check in on what is most important in the work that I do. I have asked some of my clients if they were healthy but had to choose between losing the weight that they want to lose yet not being more peaceful or being at peace with themselves but not losing weight, which would they choose? All of them have chosen peace over weight loss.

As a coach and a nutritionist, I feel compelled to help them achieve both, but that is my learning too. I need to find peace with not being able to change what may not meant to be changed. Despite all my research into how people create real transformation in their lives, there are some things that just need to be accepted for what they are, especially our bodies.

A woman who lives healthfully, mind, body and soul in a large body is a powerful woman, and one that our culture needs more models of.

‘Being With’ My Body

We live in a small house east of the downtown core of Toronto. It is a sweet place, one that I believe reflects our warmth and our love of beauty. But it is small, and none of us have space of our own. Recently though, there was an added blessing to the house. The large apartment upstairs that we rent out, was vacant for 8 weeks. After 2 weeks of being empty, a light bulb went off over my head, and I moved my stability ball, portable stereo, CD’s, labtop and files up there. The living room is about 160 sq. ft., enough room for me to dance, have a little space to meditate and write and lots of room to do my coaching work. I thrived. I danced almost every day, started this blog, designed a workshop, coached, read the better part of 3 non-fiction books, meditated, slept, offered a movement/collage workshop for three coaching colleagues and created a larger space in my mind for my work and my life.

Now that I am back downstairs, cramped, with no room to move, except maybe the space between the dining room table and the wall or the kitchen, I am trying to put it into perspective, and find meaning beyond my own experience. This is what I am reflecting on:

My body and my home are both spaces that I occupy. My body I am with for the complete range of my life, my only constant companion throughout. So with it, I am dedicated to loving and being with it. Finding the acceptance, forgiveness, patience, compassion and kindness to occupy that space as gracefully as I can. With my home I am in a finite relationship. It has served us well for a time, but the end is nearing and so I am seeing how my visionary capacities are being engaged, as I prepare for change. I do not know yet how or when it is going to happen, I just know it is happening soon.

With what we cannot change, we need to settle in and find peace in the ‘being with’. With what we can change, we need to engage all of our mind’s capacities to take action.