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Show Me Some Heart Healthy Love With a Valentine’s Day Frittata!

eggshells

With Valentine’s Day looming, it’s time to show me some heart healthy love! How? Well, first let me sleep late in my favorite pjs, then bring me some coffee and the newspaper and tell me how adorable I am. Now, get in the kitchen and make me some eggs.

Wait a minute, I said heart healthy and then I said eggs. What’s up with that? Well, it seems that the US government is about to withdraw its warnings about consuming cholesterol. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee which provides the scientific basis for published Dietary Guidelines has recommended that the warnings be lifted. While the final report has not yet been filed with the Department of Heath and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture, it is rare for the guidelines to vary significantly from the recommendations of the committee.

This new stance will likely result in some confusion because many of us have been taught consuming cholesterol is DANGEROUS for everyone, but it appears that the science to support that conclusion was weak at best from the very beginning. About 25% of the population on average will experience detrimental effects from consuming cholesterol. The rest of us can enjoy our Valentine’s Day frittatas with total peace of mind.

Speaking of frittatas, I like them for brunch and for dinner whether it’s Valentine’s Day or not. They’re quick, easy, and a perfect delivery system for lots of yummy, fiber-filled left over vegetables. I can throw one together in a heartbeat when guests arrive tired and hungry. If I’m low on leftover veggies, I use frozen English peas which I always have on hand. Okay, I’ll admit sometimes I sauté onions, shiitake mushrooms, and red bell pepper rather than using leftovers. They make one of my favorite delicious combinations in a frittata or alongside a slice roast beef.
veggies
I don’t limit the ingredients to vegetables. Country ham and asparagus; bacon and cheddar; sausage, feta, and kale; salmon and dill are all flavor combinations I love encased in fluffy eggs. Just like the traditional one pot meal, you can throw in anything that you think will taste good.

So what’s the formula for a successful Valentine’s Day frittata? Use an oven safe skillet, get the broiler hot, coat your skillet in oil or butter, choose fully cooked meats and/or vegetables with complimentary flavors and enhance them with herbs or cheese, salt and pepper. Warm the meat, vegetables, and herbs in the oil coated skillet over medium low heat. Add a splash of water to 6-8 eggs for fluffiness before you lightly whisk them along with the salt and pepper. Add the eggs to the skillet, sprinkle with cheese and cook until the eggs set and only a tiny layer of liquid egg is left in the center on top. Finish under the broiler causing the eggs to rise and lightly brown.
frittata

Most importantly, don’t forget to include the love. It’s the most important ingredient for heart health every day!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/10/feds-poised-to-withdraw-longstanding-warnings-about-dietary-cholesterol/

http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015.asp

Bart’s Bakery Gluten-Free Cookies and Gluten Free Watchdog – A Bit of Housekeeping

Barts
Bart’s Bakery Gluten-Free Cookies and Gluten Free Watchdog – a bit of housekeeping is required before we move ahead in full force for 2015. Our March 2014 review of Bart & Judy’s The Best gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World generated a concerned response from a member of the website Gluten Free Watchdog. In an effort to bring you the most reliable and accurate information possible, we reached out to both Bart’s Bakery and Gluten Free Watchdog.

We received the following response and lab report from Bart Greenhut of Bart’s Bakery:

Hi Cheri, this is in response to your email to my son Jordan. Sorry it’s taken so long, your email got lost in my “junk” folder for a while.

We bake the highest quality cookies in the world, literally.

I spent roughly 4 months developing our own gluten-free flour as none of the standard mill flours measured-up.

We only run gluten-free cookies once or twice monthly. We do have a shared facility however we very closely control the environment when we run gluten-free, even to the extent of allowing the air in the facility to settle for 10 hours after our wash down, prior to processing.

After every run we send samples out for testing. Our latest typical test result is attached.

We maintain a proper “chain of custody”. If a test result were to be higher than 9ppm we would summarily scrap the batch.

Thank you for your interest, please advise if we can be of further service, Bart

Bart’s email was accompanied by this lab report:

From Gluten Free Watchdog, we received this response:

Hi Cheri,

Gluten Free Watchdog is a subscription-based food testing service. Results are available to subscribers only and can not be reprinted, republished, etc without written permission.

When Bart’s cookies were tested Gluten Free Watchdog released the following statement:

URGENT: Bart & Judy’s Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies We have received numerous requests from subscribers to make publicly available general information about last week’s test results on Bart and Judy’s cookies. We have made the decision to release information because of the seriousness of the findings. If information like this is important to you, please consider subscribing to Gluten Free Watchdog. Information on gluten contamination levels of food labeled gluten-free would not exist without this service and we need the support of the gluten-free community to keep it going.

If you would like to share this information please use quotation marks and post the statement below in its entirety.

“Gluten Free Watchdog, LLC recently tested a box of Bart and Judy’s Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies for gluten contamination using the R5 ELISA Mendez method. The product tested well above 20 parts per million of gluten. Detailed test results are available only to subscribers of Gluten Free Watchdog. Test results provide a snapshot picture of the gluten content of this product at one point in time. There is no way of knowing without testing many more samples whether the results of the one sample tested are representative of the gluten content of this product as a whole. For more information about Gluten Free Watchdog see https://www.glutenfreewatchdog.org/…/bart–judys-gluten…/241. This statement was posted with permission of Gluten Free Watchdog, LLC.”

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Hope this helps.

(Just as an FYI, Bart’s cookies are scheduled to be sent to the lab next week for follow-up testing)

Kind regards,

Tricia

As you can see, the lab report provided by Bart indicates vastly different results than those indicated in the statement from Gluten Free Watchdog. Without access to both full reports along with the lot numbers of the cookies tested, it is impossible to draw any significant conclusion regarding this issue.

Rather than engage in a debate about the safety of any specific package of prepared food, I’d rather offer you a simple alternative. The best way to know what’s in your food is to make it yourself from ingredients about which you can gather the most definitive information. Buy fresh and local as much as possible, read all labels, avoid prepackaged and processed foods, and trust what your body tells you. A damaged gut can be sensitive to many substances that will no longer create problems once the gut has healed. If a food consistently makes you feel bad, avoid it – even if it’s naturally gluten-free.

I’m looking forward to a year of simple solutions! How about you?

http://www.cooking2thrive.com/blog/best-gluten-free-chocolate-chip-cookies-world/#comments

http://www.bartsbakery.com/

https://www.glutenfreewatchdog.org/

http://www.cooking2thrive.com/blog/?s=processed+food

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Looking Backward, Moving Forward

Now that it’s the new year, do you find yourself looking backward, moving forward; looking backward, standing still; or looking forward, moving forward? I think the implied correct, societally acceptable answer is to smile and indicate that the past is the past – I’m looking forward and moving forward with gusto!

But is that really true or are most of us pretending when we say it? Watching many of my friends, acquaintances, customers, and colleagues, I feel like many of us are pretending and I’m wondering why? It seems more acceptable to say we’re moving forward and then behave in ways destined to keep us stuck, than it is to say we’re struggling.

When I have verbalized difficulties, the real ones below the surface that make me feel most vulnerable, some friends have encouraged me to call my doctor for happy pills or said they’re worried me. In contrast, they never said that when I was wearing myself out working too much, playing too much, and buying too much stuff. Whatever the cause, I feel saddened that the result is a culture that supports overmedicating, overworking, and overindulging rather than supporting feeling, and healing. Let’s change that!

If you find yourself at the apex of this new year feeling alone or discouraged, but determined to make positive change, we applaud you! Not for feeling alone, of course, for having the ability to envision a better future and the courage to practice positive change. And we’re here to let you know you’re not alone!

I have spent a lot of time looking backward in order to move forward. It’s kind of a tricky move because looking backward makes it tempting to stay stuck in the same place, especially when the past was painful, difficult, or felt unfair.

Yep, that pose is exactly how it feels sometimes! Are my emotional abs strong enough to pull me up to look ahead? Most of the time, they are now (thank goodness we’re talking emotional abs), and it’s been a long process for me to get here, but the result has been freedom and an abundance of choices! Isn’t that what all of us want as we move forward?

The recipe for practicing positive change includes these key ingredients:
Desire
Vision
Courage
Determination
Commitment
Truth
Good boundaries
Intentions
Paradox
Time to sit still
Feeling your real feelings
Trusting your body’s messages
Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude

The process will be facilitated by:
Inspiration
Acceptance
Kindness
Humor
Playfulness
Celebration
Positive emotional connections

The rest is just practice, practice, practice in a series of small shifts that lead to large change as we move forward.

Get your ingredients together. We’ll be here all year long to provide inspiration, playfulness, celebration and a safe place to share your concerns, struggles, and triumphs. Look backward, move forward, and make 2015 anything you want it to be!

Happy New Year!

Great Snacks Can Come in Small Packages!

Being 5’1″ tall, I’ve always liked the saying “great things come in small packages”, so I’m especially pleased to find that great snacks can come in small packages as well! Of course it took getting me out of my normal environment for me to notice, but on a couple of recent trips I discovered some tiny morsels of cheesy goodness.

It started with a trip to Trader Joe’s where I bought a small mesh bag of bite sized Brie rounds individually packaged in small plastic tubs. I paired these with fresh golden cherries that I stored in the mini fridge in my hotel room. The packaging makes tiny Brie an easy-to-carry airplane snack, but these didn’t last long enough to make the return trip.

When I returned home, I took a look at the local grocery and discovered that there are small serving cheese snacks here too. Not only can I buy Brie bites, I can get fresh mozzarella in this cute little packaging.
Small package

I’m excited about this because I often need just a tiny bit of mozzarella and don’t want to have to invent ways to use the rest of a large package before it spoils. Last night, I took some fresh yellow tomatoes to a Labor Day party. They were homegrown and bursting with such flavor that I really wanted them to star as my contribution to the menu, but I also wanted them to look like a finished dish.

I sliced the tomatoes, sprinkled them with a small amount of salt, then sliced a snack package of mozzarella and placed it over the top with a few snips of fresh basil. The result was beautiful and delicious. The cheese and basil added a nice finishing touch without overpowering the tomatoes themselves.
Tomato with mozzarella

This morning, I grabbed a snack bag of cheese chunks out of the fridge to eat for breakfast. It’s the perfect size for a meal that includes the word petit, which it does when we pretend we are sophisticated and speak the 5 words of French we know with a heavy accent. Hey, sometimes we sing our every move as if we live in an opera, too. You can never overestimate the silliness that occurs in our kitchen, but I digress.
Bags of Cheese

I discovered these little bags of cheese when I was meeting my Mom for lunch the other day. She lives about 3 hours away, and I was driving through town, so we met at a health food market that serves lunch. Lucky for me, they sell cheese snacks, too. I couldn’t seem to manage to buy just one bag for the road resulting in plenty of left for un petit déjeuner treat.

Today I’m heading out to do some shopping. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for even more mini fun. Let me know below if you have a favorite snack that comes in a small package.

Happy Labor Day!