Tag: Fitness

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Belgian endive is a vegetable often served as is, uncooked and delicious. But this week Martha Rose Shulman brings the heat with a new recipe of seared endive that can be enjoyed as a main course.

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Vegetables and cheese, hot or cold, always make a great sandwich combination. Here are more ideas from Recipes for Health.

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

There’s a lot you can do with asparagus besides just eating it unadorned, steamed for five minutes or – if you’ve got nice, fat stalks – roasted. Delicate, thin stalks go wonderfully with eggs, either stirred into scrambled eggs or tossed with a vinaigrette and finely chopped hard-boiled eggs. I love to toss asparagus with pasta, and I often use it in soups. Children seem to like it, too. If the family table has seen too much broccoli, asparagus makes a fine alternative. [..]

When cooking asparagus, you must first break off the tough stem ends by bending the stalk. [..]

The tender, edible part of this lovely plant is an excellent source of vitamin K, folate, vitamin C and vitamin A, as well as a very good source of a number of other nutrients, including tryptophan, B vitamins, manganese, dietary fiber, phosphorus and potassium. All this comes in a very low-calorie package: there are about 40 calories in a cup of cooked asparagus.

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

While the brightest spring vegetables are not yet on offer, Martha notes that dark green collards, light green fennel, pale green dried flageolet beans and bright jalapeño are all available at the market. She offers a new collard greens stew, and we’ve dug up more of our favorite recipes for collard greens.

~ Tara Parker Pope ~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

The Passover meal is one of the most meaningful gatherings in Judaism, symbolizing the Jews’ flight from slavery in Egypt. As the cookbook author Joan Nathan writes, the annual event gives her “chills, knowing that I’m following what was written in the Bible more than 2,500 years ago.” [..]

But thousands of years of tradition doesn’t mean you can’t still find moments of creativity and color in your Passover meal. We have collected some of our favorite Martha Rose Shulman recipes to help you set a delicious and meaningful Passover table.

~ Tara Parker-Pope ~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Over the years I have given you a number of Recipes for Health devoted to smoothies – fruit smoothies with nuts and seeds; smoothies with vegetables; dairy free smoothies. I thought I had pretty much covered all the smoothie bases. Then I came across a recipe for a “Fresh Peach, Banana and Warm Millet Smoothie” in Bryant Terry’s impressive new cookbook “Afro-Vegan,” and a bell went off. Cooked millet in a smoothie? I had never seen such a thing; yet breakfast is a great meal for cooked grains, and also for smoothies. So why not? Adding cooked grains to smoothies would be a perfect way to thicken the drinks and bulk them up. It’s also a delicious way to incorporate more grains into your diet.

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Nutritionists will tell you that “butter is back” is not quite the right message to be sending to the public about the significance of fat in a healthy diet. We can, however, let go of our fear of frying, especially if we use monounsaturated fats like olive oil and polyunsaturated fats like grapeseed oil. Study after study has indicated that refined carbohydrates play a much more insidious role in our national health problems than fats do, and that a moderate-fat (but low-saturated fat) diet like the Mediterranean diet (about 40 percent calories from fat) is a healthy way to eat, and even more important, an enjoyable, very easy way of eating to adhere to.

When it comes to frying and deep-frying food it’s not so much the frying that is the consideration, but what you are frying. If coating vegetables in a batter that crisps up when you fry them in hot oil makes you and your kids want to eat lots of vegetables, then why not do it from time to time? Try crispy kale coated with a crunchy spiced chickpea flour batter and you will find yourself eating kale like popcorn.

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

A couple of years ago I gave you a recipe for a roasted mushroom base, a sort of vegetable Hamburger Helper that I had learned to make from Scott Samuels, a Culinary Institute of America chef. Chef Samuels combined it with ground beef to make delicious burgers. It has caught on among food service professionals who want to improve the nutritional profile of their offerings. Now they refer to it as, simply, “The Mix,” and they are keeping mushroom growers very busy.

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Last weekend it was time to reach into my vegetable crisper, pull out the lingering produce and use things up. I try not to buy more than what I need for recipe testing, but sometimes my imagination gets ahead of me and I soon find myself with a pile-up of vegetables that never made it into a recipe. [..]

These are the more-than-a-week-old vegetables that ended up on my counter: a red cabbage, a couple of red bell peppers, a bunch of beets with greens, about a pound of carrots, a bag of brussels sprouts and a fennel bulb. A disparate range but I knew I would find homes for them. I opened some of my favorite cookbooks to get some inspiration, and right away I came upon a simple, comforting rice and leeks recipe in Diane Kochilas’s latest cookbook, “Ikaria: Lessons on Food, Life, and Longevity From the Greek Island Where People Forget to Die.”

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

I used to insist on making a green salad to go with every meal. It is the way I grew up eating – in fact the first thing I learned to make in the kitchen was a vinaigrette, and my first kitchen tasks were preparing all of the lettuces and vegetables for our mixed green salads. Now my salads are not always green. This is especially true in winter, when root vegetables, roasted vegetables, grains and year-round vegetable staples like celery are often at the center of my salad plate.

For inspiration for this week’s salads, I looked at the Union Square Greenmarket website as well as some websites from farms, to see what fruits and vegetables may be arriving in your CSA baskets.

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

On Sunday I cooked up a big pot of nutty-tasting kasha, the cooked cereal made with toasted buckwheat groats. I enjoyed it all week. I stirred some into a frittata along with leeks and spinach, added it to two different salads and to buckwheat pancakes. I ate it plain, with a little milk and maple syrup as porridge for breakfast, and made a dinner in a bowl of kasha topped with mushroom ragout and kale. [..]

But this week everything changed when I bought a box of medium-grain kasha at the supermarket and took another stab at it. These groats were cracked, like bulgur, something I hadn’t seen before. (Indeed, I had reported years ago in this column that it was the medium cut of the grain that made them mushy; now I am convinced that I had it wrong, and that the cooking method also plays a key role). Cracked kasha (the package says “medium granulation”) is still a whole grain – nothing has been removed – but the grains have more exposed surfaces and are smaller than the whole pyramid-shaped buckwheat groats that I usually cook. I followed the directions on the box, mixing the buckwheat with a beaten egg and toasting it in a dry pan over high heat before adding hot water, salt and a little butter and simmering for 10 minutes. Then I did what I always do when I cook grains (and this instruction isn’t on the package): I let them sit for 10 minutes with a tea towel placed between the top of the pan and the lid to absorb steam from the grains. The kasha turned out perfectly – dry and fluffy, with the wonderful nutty/earthy buckwheat flavor I love.

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Cauliflower is a vegetable that I have no qualms about buying on impulse. It keeps very well in the refrigerator – I have made perfectly good meals using florets I found lingering in my produce drawer that had been there for more than a week. Not that I recommend this approach, but it is good to know that you need not use it up right away, especially when you find large heads weighing anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 pounds.

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~