Two Fantastic Local Food Lunches

After being in Athens, GA for four years, I feel like I’m a semi-expert on great places to eat in Athens. I was surprised to learn about a little restaurant in one of my favorite areas in Athens that gets their produce from local farmers. How did I never know this place existed??

There are several really good restaurants in Athens that support local farmers, and I was extremely excited to learn about another one!! If you haven’t tasted a vegetable that was grown 10 miles from you and harvested less than 24 hours ago, you are seriously missing out! Local food is the freshest and most delicious food you can eat.

The restaurant is called White Tiger Gourmet (check out link to learn more). Its a small little white building in a historic neighborhood and has a gorgeous outdoor seating area. I got the seared salmon salad.

Local and organic green beans, cucumbers, and mixed greens with seared salmon, sliced apple, and a lemon vinaigrette. Incredible!

Another view just for kicks

Saturday morning, I was volunteering at the Athens farmer’s market. I have been a volunteer coordinator for a local non-profit organization that promotes local food in Athens since last September. I was there bright and early to set up our table. Our farmer’s market has such a great atmosphere and a wonderful community of people who support it.

Our table was right next to the Daily Co-op, who was selling freshly made vegan coleslaw, spicy bean dip, and a rosemary garlic spread that morning. The guy working it had brought his little boy to help out, who was probably about 7 years old and had a gorgeous head of dark curly hair. We asked him what his favorite food was….he thought about for a few seconds and then said, “Asparagus soup!” When I was 7, I probably would have said Oreos or something. It makes me so happy to see all the kids at the farmer’s market that are learning to appreciate real food that doesn’t come from a box with a cartoon character on it.

When I got back from the farmer’s market, my roommates and I made eggplant and swiss chard sandwiches!

We put a crazy combination of ingredients on this sandwich, and it was perfect! Here is how we made them:

 

1. We spread pumpkin hummus and avocado on both slices of bread.
2. Sauteed eggplants sliced and swiss chard.
3. Layered eggplant and chard on sandwich with swiss cheese and tomatoes.
4. Toasted on a pan, and enjoyed!

The swiss chard was from the Athens farmer’s market, and the eggplant was from the Dekalb farmer’s market (my roommate goes when she is in Atlanta for her internship). Tomatoes were from Publix, but as soon as tomato season peaks in Georgia, I will not touch grocery store tomatoes. My parents have actually been growing tomatoes in our backyard for several years now, and they are 1000000x’s more flavorful than tomatoes from the store! I can’t wait till they start growing this summer!

Hope you all had a great weekend!!

Sunflower Seed Butter and Pumpkin Hummus

I’m cheating on my almond butter this week. I discovered sunflower seed butter, and I am in love lust (we just met…). This stuff is too good!

First taste, I thought it tasted a little peanuty (peanuts = one of my few strong food dislikes), but I loved that I was full of whole sunflower seeds so I kept eating. Then, I got hooked on the sweet/salty flavor and declared it a wonderful alternative to almond butter as a banana topping.

Nutrition info for “Sunbutter: Natural Crunch”

2 Tbsp contains 200 calories, 16 grams of fat, 7 grams of carbs, 4 grams of fiber, and 7 grams of protein. Also has 27% of your daily vitamin E recommendation.

Ingredients: Sunflower seeds, Dehydrated Cane Juice, Salt, Natural Mixed Tocopherols to preserve freshness

What the heck is a tocopherol?? A tocopherol is a compound with vitamin E activity. This is the form of vitamin E found in supplements. Most supplements actually use synthetic forms, so I like that Sunbutter uses natural tocopherols. I’ve never heard of them used as preservatives before, so I thought that was interesting. 

Moving on to hummus! I about died and went to heaven when Caroline from The Broccoli Hut posted all her hummus recipes. I knew it was time to step away from the Sabra and buy some tahini when I saw her homemade pumpkin hummus recipe!

When I got home with my tahini, I realized I was missing one essential ingredient– chickpeas/garbanzo beans.* So I decided to substitute white kidney beans.

The ingredients:

 

• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup white beans
• 1/2 cup pumpkin
• Generous shakes of Emeril’s Southwest Essence (I love this stuff…)
• 2 tbsl sesame tahini

 

After blending in the food processor, the hummus was a little think for my liking. So I added some pumpkin seed oil that I got in Austria.

This oil is so unique and delicious! It is a dark green color and has a really nutty taste. When I was in Austria, I was told that Austria is the only place that it is sold. While I think it is exclusively produced in Austria, you can definitely buy it online here.

The finished product:

Sorry about the messy presentation. The food processor container is actually perfect for storage when you put the top back on, so I wasn’t about to get another container dirty and create more dishes to clean….

See? It’s very convenient

The hummus turned out fantastic!! I served it last night when I had some friends over with some white cheddar cheese and Carr’s water crackers. Delicious combo!

*Chickpeas/garbanzo beans have tons more names! They can also be called Indian peas, bengal grams, ceci beans, kadale, kaalu…etc. Why do these beans get so many names??? I think I normally say chickpeas. What do you like to call them?

A New Smoothie and Sensible Memorial Day Indulgences

I don’t usually post my green smoothies because plenty of other bloggers do everyday, and do you really need to see another one?? Today I felt the need to share my smoothie because it was especially fresh and delicious from the addition of fresh mint that was left over from mojitos on Saturday

My Mint Green Smoothie had:

• 1 banana
• 1/2 cup frozen mango
• 3 handfuls of spinach (it’s amazing how much spinach you can fit in these smoothies!)
• 1 cup milk
• 4 fresh mint leaves

Tasted like summer. I loved it! And I drank several servings of veggies before lunch time .

This afternoon, I went to a cookout that one of my friends from work was having. They were grilling out hamburgers and hot dogs, and I brought my own bread and a head of romaine from the farmer’s market. 

My burger had pepper jack cheese on it, and a spooned some salsa on the other side for some extra flavor! The bread I brought was Masada Bakery Sunflower Seed bread. So good!

Cheese and salsa oozing out! Mmmm…. I very, very rarely eat red meat. I think it had been over a year since the last time I had a hamburger! However, from what I’ve read about nutrition lately, I think that I should not be so scared of red meat and start cutting down on my desserts instead!

After my burger, I had some grilled corn and fruit salad.

The fruit salad was simply fresh pineapple, strawberries, and bananas. Perfect! The corn was also really sweet and delicious.

When I got back home, I decided to try out a new ice cream I had just bought.

Haagen-Daz now makes a line of ice cream flavors that only have five ingredients!!! I almost died of happiness in the grocery store when I made this discovery. It is still heavy in calories like most Haagen-Daz (230 calories for half a cup!), but I feel so much better eating a product that does not have a bunch of additives, fat replacers, and high fructose corn syrup.

I picked the ginger flavor. The only ingredients are milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and ginger. You can’t get more natural than that. And the flavor is out of this world!! Ten times better than ginger ice cream at sushi and Japanese restaurants, I promise! And even though it is high in calories, I was truly satisfied with a small serving, so it was a sensible indulgence. It’s very rare for me to say that about ice cream…normally I go nuts and eat half the container! 

Edited to add: I realize I just completely contradicted myself because I said that red meat is not so bad and I should eat less dessert, and then I dug into my ice cream the second I got home! There is no way I can give up sweets cold turkey, and I will never completely eliminate them from my diet. This Haagen-Daz is a huge improvement over the ice cream I normally eat because it is so flavorful and satisfying that I actually can control my portion sizes! Just to clarify :)

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day!

Strawberry Salsa with Avocado

Considering how much free time I have had this summer, I have not been doing enough cooking!! Its very hard to cook for just one, so I called one of my good friends or a cooking date!!

The star feature that we built our dinner around was strawberry salsa with avocado adapted from this recipe.

mmm...fresh strawberries

I’m so glad that strawberries are in season again! Strawberries in the winter are so bland…these tasted like summer. Yay!

chopping up a white onion

All the ingredients in a bowl before being stirred up. Cilantro was not in the recipe, but I bought fresh cilantro at the farmer’s market that morning, and I was dying to use it! I highly recommend this addition.

Strawberry Salsa (adapted from Gourmet)

• 1 cup chopped strawberries
• 1/4 cup finely chopped white onion
• 1 fresh jalapeno chili, diced
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh lime juice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• a few springs fresh cilantro

Then, I cut up 4 corn tortillas and fried them in olive oil to make tortilla strips for dipping.

Note: I have recently learned that olive oil is not stable at high temperatures, so it can form cancer causing free radicals when heated. I actually bought some grapeseed oil at TJ’s that is supposed to be stable at high temperatures. My friend just laughed at me when I asked her if she had any grapeseed oil at her house, so we decided to live dangerously and use her olive oil for frying .

We also mashed one avocado to go with the spread. Here is the final presentation:

This was very easy and delicious! Make this today!!! You won’t regret it

Drink accompaniment = mojitos!!!

The Perfect Mojito?

My friend found this recipe on ehow for the “perfect mojito.” For each glass, it called for:

• 2 tsp sugar
• 3 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 4 or 5 fresh mint leaves
• 2 oz rum (we used Barcardi Limon)
• topped with lemon lime soda

I was pretty sure that most mojito recipes use club soda, not lemon lime soda, but we went with this recipe anyway. It was dangerously sweet! You could not taste the alcohol AT ALL. Besides being too sweet, they were pretty good. But next time, I would use club soda.

I would also like to add that we had pretty amazing music in the background for our cooking date. The source?

That is Pandora Spice Girls Radio!!! I love Pandora. And this radio mix was too much fun. Lots of old school N*SYNC, Backstreet, Brittany, Destiny’s Child, plus some newer Rhianna songs, and plenty of Spice Girls, of course .

Hope you all had a great weekend! And for those of you who were teenie boppers during the boy band era, were you an N*SYNC or a Backstreet Boy fan? (I feel like most girls had a preference…I was all about N*SYNC!). 

 

More Thoughts on GC, BC + Mexican food!!

The front cover on Good Calories, Bad Calories has praise from Michael Pollan calling it, “A vitally important book, destined to change the way we think about food.”

Approval from Michael Pollan gives the book much more credibility in my eyes. But before I cried and threw out all my bread, cereals, and starchy vegetables, I got back out my In Defense of Food book by Michael Pollan to re-read it for some sensibly dietary advice. I was surprised to see that he actually referenced GC, BC in his book. However, he does not support the theories in GC, BC as much as his quote on the front of the book implies. Here is what Micheal Pollan had to say about Gary Taubes and GC, BC:

“The healthy skepticism Taubes brought to the lipid hypothesis is nowhere near in evidence when he writes about the (also unproven) carbohydrate hypothesis. Even if refined carbohydrates do represent a more serious threat to healthy than dietary fat, to dwell on on any one nutrient to the exclusion of all others is to commit the same reductionist error that the lipophobes did. Indeed, Taubes is so single-minded in his demonization of of the carbohydrate that he overlooks several other possible explanations for the deleterious effects of the Western diet, including deficiencies of omega-3s and micronutrients in plants.”

Thank you, Michael Pollan. It seems to be true that the promotion of a low-fat diet as a heart-healthy diet had little scientific backing, but there is also not enough evidence to promote a low-carb diet either for cardiovascular health either!

So what do we eat? Real food. I liked Pollan’s advice on how to eat real food so much that I did a week’s post on it after I read In Defense of Food. These are my favorite posts from that week:

 

• Explaining the 5 day Challenge to eat Pollan style
• Day 2: Dinner recipe- Caribbean Quinoa with Shrimp
• Day 3: Sandwich on Homemade Bread (plus other eats)
• Day 4: Natural dessert recipe- Muesli Chocolate Chip Cookies!
• Day 5 and recap!

 

I took a break from stressing out about nutrition to enjoy some Mexican food for my roommate’s 22nd  birthday! She is a sales representative in Athens, so she is always on top of new businesses opening up that would be potential ad buyers. She recently found out about this new Mexican restaurant that just opened up this week!

I got some chicken tacos with cilantro and onions in corn tortillas. (I also got a big scoop of guacamole on the side that I smothered my tacos in!)

I also snapped a picture of my roommates’ food. Birthday girl got Steak Mexicali:

Sauteed steak with peppers and tomatoes with rice and beans!

My other roommate (not the birthday girl) got shrimp fajitas!!

She was happily surprised to see that her shrimp came with zucchini!! We are always very generous with sharing our entree when we go out to eat (we love food and we want to try everything!!), and I would say her shrimp won (although I loved my chicken tacos! Very well seasoned…).

Everything was really fresh and delicious! Then, we got a plate of churros for dessert. Deep fried cinnamon and sugar wonderfulness. Not healthy at all, but it was her birthday, and it felt good to spite Taubes and GC, BC (“Look at me! I’m eating sugar, and I have low cholesterol, low blood pressure, and I’m not obese!”). Its all about moderation of course. No picture b/c we were eating outside, and it was too dark to get a good picture by dessert time. 

That’s all for now! Happy Friday!

Nutrition Rant- What am I supposed to eat?!!

Ok, I haven’t posted in a while because I have some very strong opinions on the information I have been learning from Good Calories, Bad Calories, and I have been trying to think of the best way to put these feelings into a coherent post. I have not yet finished the book, but I read chapters from every section, and I have been doing a lot of research on of the issues he addresses. 

First, the book explains how the idea that saturated fat causes high cholesterol and heart disease was a hypothesis made by a physiologist named Ansel Keys that was never actually proven. It took 10 years for the American Heart association to support this hypothesis, and 30 for the rest of the world to follow. Researchers disagreed on how to interpret the ambiguous evidence, but since heart disease was rising in America and Keys was convinced that he was right, a low-fat diet was aggressively marketed to Americans as a heart-healthy diet. 

While researching this further online, I found a clip from a documentary called Fat Head that does a great job of summarizing one of Keys’ studies and showing how ridiculous it is that his hypothesis was accepted as a fact.

I am dying to see the rest of this documentary. (The guy that made it also has a really interesting blog.) Both Fat Head and Good Calories, Bad Calories promote the idea saturated fat intake is not linked to heart disease and obesity, and that excess intake of sugars, starches, and processed vegetable oils are to blame.  The science behind this actually makes a lot of sense, and I want to learn more about it. However, I really don’t like the approach Fat Head takes at proving these theories.

Fat Head is basically a spoof on Supersize Me (the documentary where Morgan Spurlock gains a bunch of weight and picks up a slew of health problems by eating only McDonald’s for 30 days). In Fat Head, Tom Naughton decides that he is also going to only eat McDonald’s for 30 days except instead of stuffing himself with supersized portions, drinking large sodas, and ordering a bunch of desserts like Spurlock, Naughton uses his “functioning brain” when ordering at McDonald’s and ended up losing 12 pounds and improving his triglycerides.

Ok. It doesn’t really surprise me that it is possible to lose weight at McDonald’s if you eat consciously. And his case against the saturated fat and heart disease hypothesis is well presented. However, that does not mean that eating McDonald’s is a good idea! Why not instead promote eating meats that are not produced in huge industrial facilities that destroy the environment and feed their animals the cheapest diet possible. When you eat a hamburger at McDonald’s, you have no idea where that beef is from, and it is most likely made up of meat from multiple cows. Eww. If everyone ate fast food all the time, then industrial meat processing plants would continue to make huge quantities of low quality meat while polluting our air and destroying our land. Oh wait. Most people do eat fast food, and this is already happening. 

That being said, Good Calories, Bad Calories gives a lot of convincing evidence that carbohydrates are not essential nutrients and that proteins and fats should make up a larger percent of our diet.He also gives examples of cultures that eat meat based diets and lived long, healthy lives. (Example: the Inuits ate no fruits or veggies and lived off of seal and polar bear meat. None of them were obese, and they didn’t develop heart disease or diabetes.)

I’m not a vegetarian, but I don’t like the idea of having a lot of meat in my diet. Even if this can be a healthy way to live, it is not possible for everyone in the world to eat this way. Raising animals for consumption takes so much more land and water than growing vegetables. Everyone cannot eat a huge steak everyday. We don’t have the resources. It’s not a sustainable diet. If we can get adequate nutrients without eating large quantities of meat, shouldn’t we?

This book is challenging so many of my nutrition beliefs, and it is making me paranoid about what I eat. After reading all this carbohydrate bashing, I couldn’t bring myself to make my usual bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, and I made an omelet instead!

I used two eggs and stuffed it with sauteed spinach (from the farmer’s market!) and some baba ghanoush hummus (hummus with roasted eggplant). It was delicious, but then I felt silly for avoiding my oats. I actually prefer to eat omelets for lunch rather than breakfast, so tomorrow I will return to my big bowl of carbo-licious oats .

This is getting to be a long post, and I have so much more to say. There will have to be a Part 2. I’m dying to hear your thoughts on this.

My Heart is Drenched in Wine

I love summer in Athens, GA. Summer time is perfect for sitting outside and enjoying a bottle of wine…shared with friends, of course. I walked across the street with one of my good friends last night to this restaurant:

And we sat outside and wined and dined (well, wined and snacked actually…we ate dinner before to save money!) in the gorgeous May weather. We got a bottle of a Pinot Grigo:

I usually prefer drier wines like Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blac (my current favorite!), but I really liked  this Pinot Grigo. It was very fruity and refreshing.

We also got some bruschetta:

Sourdough bread, fresh basil, tomatoes, and feta cheese. This is the only place I’ve ever had feta on bruschetta, and it is DELICIOUS! Before eating, we doused the plate with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Mmmm….

Going backwards in the day, I worked a lunch shift at Casa Mia, so I ordered their awesome 3 course lunch special when I got off work!

First Course: Salad Amazonas

Lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, avocado, and a house-made mango dressing!!!

Second Course: Catch of the Day

Salmon topped with red pepper, mango, onion, and cilantro served with black beans and cous cous. The salmon is one of my favorite things on the menu! If you haven’t tried salmon with mango before, you are seriously missing out!

Third Course: Chef’s Dessert

Ummm….so this was a chocolate brandy cake. I got really excited and forgot to take a picture. Whoops!

Edamame Guacamole and Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Mouthgasm.

I found this recipe on the whole foods website for edamame guacamole, and had to make it immediately!! I had the essential ingredients: edamame and avocado. And I actually found a pretty old looking lime at the bottom of our fruit bowl…looked a little nasty on the outside, but still seemed fresh enough on the inside. I adapted the rest of the recipe for personal preference/ what I actually had in my kitchen, and it turned out great! The only ingredient I really really wish I had was fresh cilantro.

Tyler’s Edamame Guacamole

• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 cup shelled edamame
• 1/2 small avocado
• juice of one lime
• 1/4 cup cottage cheese

Mince garlic in food processor. Then blend all other ingredients. That’s it!

Adding cottage cheese to guacamole is a trick I learned last summer to extend your avocados. We were making a large batch of guacamole for a party we were throwing and didn’t want to spend all out party $ on avocados…. I really like the flavor and texture the cottage cheese adds, so now I add it to guacamole even if I am just making a little for myself! Plus you get some added protein and calcium.

Disclaimer: I love garlic! You may want to reduce the garlic to 1/2 clove if you don’t want a strong garlicky taste and/or are planning on kissing someone in the next 12 hours .

To accompany my guacamole, I roasted some sweet potatoes and topped them with a mango key lime salsa I found at Earthfare. The salsa was a little pricey (b/c most things at Earthfare are overpriced), but they had free samples out, and it was so good I had to buy it! That’s what happens when you grocery shop hungry. After I finish this jar (which will be soon b/c I frequently just eat it with a spoon out of the jar…), I want to figure out how to make a similar one myself.

I made the roasted sweet potatoes by microwaving a sweet potato for a minute so that it was so enough soft enough to cut, cutting it into cubes, tossing it with some olive oil and southwestern seasoning, and putting it in the oven at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. Exactly what I was craving! 

A question for runners: The past couple times I’ve been running, I’ve gotten some lower back and hip pain. It’s not a sharp pain, but it feels sore and uncomfortable while I’m running. Made my last run very very slow! I’ve been very fortunate that as much as I run, I have not had much experience with injuries, so I have no idea what could be causing the pain. Could it be a strain? A stress fracture? Has anyone ever experienced any similar pain while running?

Super Creamy Coconut Avocado Banana Berry Smoothie

Since finals are over, it’s officially summer time which equals smoothie time! (Despite the fact that cloudiness has chased away the wonderful 80 degree weather we had last week ). This morning I created a super creamy coconut avocado banana berry smoothie. I should think of a shorter name for this smoothie…any suggestions?

Smoothie Ingredients: (serves 1)

• 1/4 avocado
• 1/2 banana
• 1/3 cup light coconut milk (I used Trader Joe’s)
• 1/3 cup skim milk
• 1/2 cup frozen berries
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup or agave nectar (optional)
• Handful of ice

Avocado + banana + coconut milk = a very creamy, milkshake-like smoothie. The berries add flavor and sweetness and makes it fresh and summery tasting. The sweeter isn’t completely necessary, but I had a maple-agave blend from Trader Joe’s I was dying to try out, and I think it enhanced the flavor without making it too sweet.

Here are the nutrition facts that I added up (not including sweetener): 259 calories, 12 grams of fat (from the avocado and coconut milk), 30 grams of carbs, 7 grams of fiber, and 5 grams of protein.

Summer Reading 

Since I now finally have some free time, I want to do more reading this summer. My mom owns the massive book Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, and I decided that it looked like an interesting read.

From what I’ve skimmed so far, it seems that this book examines the flaws in many widely accepted nutritional recommendations and primarily blames intake of refined carbohydrates on the obesity epidemic and diseases that follow. The book is 600 page thick, so it should keep my busy for a while.

I would also like to read some books just for fun this summer. Anyone have any good recommendations?

Graduation + Mother’s Day= Weekend of Good Eats!

Thanks so much for all your words of congratulations on my graduation! It’s still all a little surreal to me. I was planning on a pancake and champagne breakfast with the roomies before graduation, but we were running late (of course) and didn’t have time for a gourmet breakfast. We were supposed to be at the stadium at 8:45 AM to get organized for the 9:30 AM ceremony, and I ran in at about 9:25 AM just in time to walk onto the field for the ceremony.

Being at the stadium when we were supposed to would have been very out of character. It is much more my style to barely make it in time .  Thank goodness I had amazing friends in my major to help me get through those upper level dietetics classes. From Biochemisty to Medical Nurtition Therapy, these girls were great study buddies for tests, due date remeberers for all of our projects (I’m spacey right brained and terrible at using planners…), and happy hour dates for after big exams.

I couldn’t have done it without these wonderful ladies. I can’t believe we are finished!!

After graduation ceremony, I went with my family to one of my favorite restaurants in Athens: The National. (I posted about another lunch I ate there in this post.)

The food there never fails to be incredible!! For my entree, I chose the Mahi Mahi, which came with fingerling potatoes, sugar snap peas, and a yogurt herb sauce.

It tasted even better than it looked! (if that’s possible…) It even got a “WOW!” from my dad, who is a pro at grilling/seasoning foods.

Wine selection: Savigon Blanc. Didn’t think to take a picture of it, but it was the perfect accompaniment to enhance both my meal and my post graduation bliss.

And of course we got some desserts to share.

A lemon tart with strawberries and vanilla creme. Very fresh and summery!

A chocolate crust filled with caramel and dark chocolate and topped with carmelized banana. Oh. My. Gosh. This one was the winner!

Good food continued this morning for Mother’s Day at the Blue Ridge Grill in Atlanta. I decided to get a very classic brunch item: eggs benedict.

Whenever I go to brunch with my family, half the table always orders eggs benedict. We love eggs benedict! My grandma, my mom, and I all ordered it today. What is your favorite brunch item?

I also ordered a side of grilled asparagus that was served family style and got passed around the table before I could snap a good picture. Asparagus + eggs benedict is an awesome combination.

Dessert was fantasically excessive. Mom and I were debating between the berry-apple cobbler special and the chocolate lava cake. We chose the cobbler, but I guess the waiter saw that my love for chocolate in my eyes because he ended up bringing out BOTH!!

chocolate bliss

slightly less photogenic than the chocolate cake, but incredibly delicious!!!

The rest of the family was not very helpful at assisting mom and me with our decadent desserts, and we couldn’t let such amazing food go to waste! We did a pretty good job of finishing off most these….and then fell into a sugar coma. I’m never eating again!!! Just kidding, I’m sure my appetite will return soon .

Hope you all had a good weekend! And for those of you who are done with finals…yay summer!!!!!!