Author: offwhiteliving

wintertime cooking fun

offwhiteliving

We got into the holiday spirit last week with some juicing and bread making.  I enjoy finding creative ways to use the juicing pulp, such as to make carrot ginger bread, which is my new fav:

Bread recipe:

3 cups spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp each: cinnamon and nutmeg
1 cup unrefined sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside

3 eggs
2 cups carrot pulp
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses
2/3 cup freshly juiced carrot juice (if there is a little ginger, even better)
2/3 cup butter or coconut oil

Mix wet ingredients, creaming eggs and butter first.  Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until ‘just mixed’.  Pour into 2-3 bread pans or cake pans and cook for 45 minutes at 400.  Serve with some powdered sugar or homemade whipping cream with orange zest on top.  SOOO good!

Magical Tithing

offwhiteliving1 Comment

Happy Holidays Bloggies!  I sure have missed you all.  Finally, the dust of finals, teaching TONS of yoga and working at the co-op have settled a bit.  All in all, I am filled with joy and gratitude for what this year has brought into my life.

Part of that joy has been reconnecting with old friends and also just peeking in on some old friends and their lives via Facebook. What can I say, I think FB has been a huge catalyst of getting reunited with people who are special to me.  For a girl who seems to move every 4 yrs, I have a lot of old friends to catch up with.

Just today I happened upon a friend from my nutrition program’s website and her blog.  She has a blog post about “Magical Tithing” – a simply way to give and support abundance this holiday season.  Not only is this gal and offwhite crusader (she once gave up all sugar for 1 year, if I recall correctly) but she’s also really insightful about staying connected to the bigger things in life.

Interested in magical tithing?  Check this out:

Christy’s Blog

Ciao my friends and happy, happy holidays to you!

the sweet truth

offwhiteliving3 Comments

a really cool article I found that lays it out about sugar:

Click HERE to read on.

I have to say, the more I’m learning about fructose metabolism, the more I’m really questioning my consumption of honey and agave as substitutions for table sugar.  The fructose is really the culprit, which is HIGH is honey and agave.  More research is needed, I think, as there are isomers of fructose (isomer = same basic structure with different specific configurations), and that may impact digestion.

Naturally as I know more, you’ll know more gang.

Good note: if you use unrefined sweeteners, such as honey and agave, you need LESS overall and LESS calories from sugar is a good thing in general!

Update on the Co-op gig

offwhiteliving2 Comments

Thanks so much for all the support, you guys!  I love working at the Co-op.  So far my food demos have resulted in increased sales on all the items, which is one of the purposes.  Apparently I’m quite persuasive when it comes to good food!

I love the Co-op because it is neither pretentious like Whole Foods sometimes feels nor is it too “Birkenstocks and granola”, like some Co-ops.  We have pretty strict food regulations and it looks like a regular grocery store (well, it is).  It’s much like New Seasons in Portland, which by the way was recently on NPR – awesome.

You can take a virtual visit at: www.davisfood.coop

I bought my T-day turkey there, and it was cool to learn about the different types of sustainable turkeys.  They sell certain breeds that were popular in the 1940-1950 era, but lost popularity to the giant breasted birds of today.  When I cook my bird I’ll tell you how it is.  Ironically, it’s from Heidi’s farm in Oregon.  Cool, huh!!

Hopefully that TV show concept will come to fruition.  I’ll settle for an internet TV show…or how bout I get my butt in gear and at least make some more videos?  Baby steps, right!

Finally, I found the culprit

offwhiteliving1 Comment

Today in Biochem I got a gem of wisdom that has made taking this 8am class (5 days/week, mind you) worth it.

We are studying sugar metabolism.  Today I learned why HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP makes you fat.

It’s call the TCA cycle.  In a very small nutshell – it’s how we oxidize sugar to produce water, carbon dioxide and heat (ie, the calories from sugar to use as energy).

Fructose, unlike glucose, doesn’t quite work in a fashion that makes for ideal digestion.  It bypasses certain steps and you end up getting the TCA cycle going in full swing.

Problem?  Yes.  When we get too much ‘substrate’ (ie stuff to metabolize in the TCA) our bodies are so clever that we have a back up plan.

Look closely at the diagram of the TCA cycle.  See that molecule called “CITRATE’? This is a regulating step in sugar metabolism.  When we get too much citrate (from lots of sugar being broken down), a second pathway is activated.

That pathway is the lipogenesis pathway.  Fancy name for making fat (lipo = fat, genesis = making/creating).  Clever, huh?

Having too much general sugar can do this as well but fructose is different because even smaller amounts will activate the fat pathway.  That is why HFCS goes right to your a**, or wherever in your body that you store fat.

Solution: Avoid HFCS.  Unfortunately, there are other sweeteners that are high in fructose, such as agave and honey.  I’m investigating the word on the science street about those sweeteners.  My mentor professor is against agave, and she’s the gal at Davis doing all the fructose studies.  They’ve shown in studies that consuming fructose (not HFCS, just fructose) elevates fasting triglycerides, and seems to promote weight gain more than glucose does.  Hmm…….

Off White might have to change it’s M.O. and be about not just cutting out white sugar, but just cutting out sugar.  Granted, that is ultimately the point, but I may be learning some things about unrefined sweeteners that aren’t so sweet.  I’ll keep you posted!

 

Asian Invasion

offwhiteliving

Last week I felt like I was on iron chef.  Our friend Henry decided to have a dinner party at our house (we thought we were just having him over,  but it was really him and 4 guests!).   He came 1 hr late, and we all had to cook this Asian feast in about 50 minutes…….all in all, it was a ton of fun!  See, this is one thing I like about being back in College – Dinner parties on a Wednesday evening; what could be better 🙂

The menu:

Pork marinated in Dr. Pepper and star anise
Steamed fish with some kind of sauce
Curried vegetables
some kind of weird mushroom soup ( He swears there were no chicken feet, but something looked fishy to me!)
rice, of course!

All in all, a tasty meal, though the curry paste he brought over had 1.6g Sodium PER 2 tbsp…that is like a lifetime supply in one jar.  I was seriously guzzling water the next day.  The pork was actually pretty good, and really you couldn’t taste the Dr. Pepper…it was just to tenderize the meat (hmmm…..if it can break down meat so well, what is it doing when we drink it….).

I’m not a huge lover of Chinese food, so it was good to have somebody introduce me to some new flavors.  Henry enlightened us to the way of the rice cooker this year, so now we have quinoa/rice/spelt ready for us regularly.  I must admit, my grain consumption has increased at Davis, but its just so easy to grab pre-made rice pilaf than to whip something up at every meal….. I digress…….

here are some pics of what we made.  Sorry, I don’t have recipes and judging by the fury that Henry put it all together, I’m pretty sure these were family recipes that haven’t been written down.  Love it!

Henry and Patty in action

Curried veggie complete with lifetime supply of sodium…but tasty!

 

 

 

even better than the real thing

offwhiteliving1 Comment

Sometimes Matt and I really strike gold in the kitchen.  We’ve been toying with some new ideas for holiday treats, and have wanted to experiment with a new pumpkin pie recipe.   Not that last year’s recipe with coconut milk was a problem, but I’ve made it so many times I’m kind of over it…. plus, I don’t think it had enough density for Matt.

Last Saturday night we really hit the jackpot.  I must give credit where credit is due…it was pretty much Matt’s concoction, which impressed me because he normally doesn’t like sweet potatoes, so his eagerness to use them instead of pumpkin puree was pretty cool. ……ahh, it’s the little things in a relationship, isn’t it?!

Here is the recipe:

Sweet Potato Almond butter pie

Low Sugar, high fiber, wheat free, milk optional:

Crust (adopted from Bob’s Redmill baking book):

1 cup spelt flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
3 tbsp fine sugar (we used an evaporated cane juice)
1/4 tsp: salt, baking soda
4 tbsp butter, chilled and chopped into pieces
1 egg
1/4 cup almond or rice milk

Place all dry ingredients in food processor and pulse to blend.  Sprinkle butter over mixture.  Pulse until just mix. Stir and pulse until it looks like crumbs.  Pour into a bowl and add almond milk and mix until it just begins to clump together.  Roll the dough into a ball, flatten the ball, and cover with plastic.  Refrigerate for 30 min or so.

Meanwhile, the filling:

1 large sweet potato, baked and peeled
1 cup almond/rice/cow milk
1 egg + 2 yolks
1/2 cup almond butter
1/4 cup unrefined sugar or molasses
1 tsp each: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger
1/8 tsp salt

Blend the pumpkin and milk in a blender or food processor.  Whisk eggs and add to pumpkin/milk combo.   Add almond butter and whisk.  Add sugar and spices and salt.  Whisk until smooth (it’s a lot of whisking, really).  Set aside

Once chilled, pull out dough and roll so that it makes a square or circle (we used a square dish) large enough to be a pie crust.  It ends up being kind of thick and dense once cooked, just so you know.  Grease a pie tin, and add the rolled dough.

Pour filling and pinch edges of dough.

Bake uncovered for 40-50 min at 350.   SOOO good!

 

 

 

 

good news

offwhiteliving6 Comments

Just got hired at the Davis Food Coop for a temp job as the holiday food demo gal…. humble beginnings here in Davis, but I’m stoked!  ya know, Rachael Ray got her start doing food demos in a grocery store………..

Uncategorized

She ain’t much to look at, but she’ll do just fine

offwhiteliving

EC garden 009

So I decided to make a garden.  As part of my own personal journey of taking my committment to off whilte living one step further, it seems logical (and fun) to make gardening a serious endeavor.  I tried a garden in Oregon and FAILED miserably.  I’m pretty sure every plant I put in the ground died or molded.  Turns out plants need sunlight on a daily basis, not just downpours of rain from my roof awning…DUH! Note to self, don’t be so hasty next time.

This time I decided to do it right.  I took my $40 to the experimental College on campus (AKA the place where you take all the holistic classes and such) and purchase a 400 sq ft plot.  She’s mine all mine.

Oh, but what am I supposed to do with this now? Thank GOD my garden tour started with sometips on digging up old plants, airrating the soil (is that even close to the spelling) and where to get the manure, rice hulls, mulch, etc.

I learned that if I’m going to plant potatoes, the manure must be laid on at least 120 days ahead of harvest so I’m not eating crap (literally) when I dig up my taters for dinner.  Good to know, these things.

So what does gardening have to do with off white living?  First, I need an outlet that is not exercise, school or cerebral in any way.  If  I’m going to quell my scholastic anxiety with something other than sugar, gardening seems like a pretty good choice.

Second, I need and want healthy food.  I will make a green smoothie with Kale in it every day if I’m not paying $1.89/head of kale.  Do the math, those greens get expensive.  Today chard was $2.99 at the Co-0p for 1 bunch.  Yikes. Same story with other veggies.  Yes, we have yolo fruit stand,  but how fun will it be to make mashed turnips with rosemary when I have grown the turnips and rosemary.  I’m hoping that if I keep my attention directed on the way of eating that I WANT (ie, move toward the positive), there won’t be room in my day, my head or my fridge for things I don’t want.

Third: It’s a way to make friends.  Already two helpers have participated in the gardening endeavors of moving branches and weeding the soil.

Tomorrow it’s seed and start buying day and planting seeds indoors as needed b/f they go into the ground.  Good times 🙂

EC garden 001

I’ll keep ya posted.

Uncategorized