Slow Food

I do love the flavor of slow roasted dishes from the oven and long simmered soups and sauces but honestly, I have never been a fan of the slow cooker., aka Crock Pot.  Until now.  At delisheeeYo-my frozen yogurt shop and now…veggie lunch cafe… we don’t have a stove, so I decided to try working with a crock pot to make my soups.  Without the benefit of browning veggies and building flavor I have, in the past found crock pot dishes somewhat unsatisfying until I figured out how to enhance seasonings to make a super tasty potage.  This latest recipe for Cuban Black Bean Soup is one of the best I’ve made, and my customers think so too.  It’s dead easy and inexpensive to prepare and includes nutritious sweet potatoes and a couple of unusual ingredients such as Smoked Paprika and Virgin Coconut Oil.  Check the recipe page and give it a whirl.  Great for the cool weather ahead, a nice party offering and an excellent lunch.

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Paying the Turkey Penance

I hope everyone had a fun Thanksgiving.  Most of us have much to be thankful for.  For me; great health, a beautiful home on a gorgeous island, a wonderful small business that makes people happy, friends, work that I love and all the goodness that my life is made on.

Did I over-eat on Turkey day?  Of course.  It’s so hard not to, the tastes and textures of this holiday meal are just so spectacular, my flavor lust was running amuck.  But what I did do to help lighten the load was practice low fat preparations of all of the meal components, and Iblasted out a power yoga class at 9 am the next morning to try and burn some of it off!

My house guest was watching me cook (she took the photo) and I was relating to her how much butter, oil, margarine or other kinds of fat most people, including my mother, would typically use to prepare the meal and how little of that is actually needed when you begin with purchasing superior quality ingredients.

Now we have another big meal or two coming up in the next weeks so this is still relevant…and I will be posting the holiday recipes to accompany the philosophy so stay tuned…and for now, begin thinking about how you might up the anti on food quality at your table. There are a lot of “bargains” offered on holiday ingredients but what are you trading off when you buy discounted food? Here is an example; rather than selecting standard russet potatoes for my mash, I bought organic baby creamers and mashed them with the skin.  I used very little butter and 2% milk for the mash.  Why creamers? The potatoes are naturally a little buttery tasting and a touch sweet. They are so flavorful that they just don’t need much amending.  Leaving the skin on adds fiber and flavor. Later my guest said the potatoes were her favorite part of the meal.  A typical serving of mashed pots done the traditional way would have had 5 times the calories due to fat-the most calorie dense food.

And my favorite part of the meal?  The stuffing!! I never add butter to my stuffing…I honestly don’t know where that practice started because it is possible to do the entire dish with nothing but low fat broth.  I simmer celery and onions and herbs in turkey broth (that I make the day before with the neck, wing tips and gizzards, amended with some organic low sodium chicken broth), mix in the dry bread (I use bakery fresh sourdough bread…I love the tangy flavor and dry it in the oven the day before) and moisturize the bread with more fat free broth…no butter or oil of any kind is needed to make an amazing stuffing.

I do stuff the bird though to soak up all that lovely juiciness and absorb the aroma of the roasting meat.  Turkey isn’t that fatty to begin with so not much fat is added to the stuffing when done in the bird…and the flavor is so much deeper than dressing done on the side. Despite the prep, stuffing isn’t light weight and you have to control the portion size, but it is much lower in fat and calories when done from start to finish with broth.

For the turkey I chose a Kosher bird.  One of the best I ever roasted was Kosher, the second best was a farm fresh bird from a local grower.  I am not sure what it is about the kosher birds but they have great flavor…maybe it’s the blessing and all the fuss.  I have already removed the fatty wing tips for stock and I also remove the parson’s nose (the tail) which is all fat so that the pan veggies will be a lean as possible. Again-many people like to heavily lube the bird with all kinds of butter and oil, under and over the skin, unnecessarily ramping up the fat,  I find a few ounces of olive oil with dried seasonings mixed in; sage, rosemary, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper-rather like a thin pesto makes the best rub.  I go inside the bird, up under the skin and all around the outside with the seasoned oil, then stuff him and roast him on top of lots of organic carrots, celery, onions and sometimes other root veggies…all of which impart flavor during the roasting.  No extra oil for the veggies, no salt….everything just tastes delicious simmering in the turkey juices.  My guests next favorite on the plate were the pan roasted organic carrots…they caramelized on the bottom and were like candy…so yum!!

Moral of the story.  We aren’t going to give up the best meals of the year and we don’t have to toss out tradition.  We just need to spend the extra money on the organic stuff, the specialty meats, super good grains, fresh herbs etc. and  practice a light touch with oil and salt.  The goodness of your base ingredients will shine through so you can have an amazing meal that you can feel good about.

Finally, there is no getting around the importance of portion sizes when faced with a feast meal like Thanksgiving, and with a couple of big holidays still to come it’s never too soon to get your mind set on how you are going to chose your food over the next weeks.

Me and my little helper on Turkey day.

Stay tuned for a Christmas Feast featuring a much overlooked protein: Venison.

Did I forget to mention:  I am grateful for you!  Now go take a walk…

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