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.

Beans never cease to astound me with their versatility. As the weather heats up and our hunger for comforting stews gives way to a desire for lighter fare, beans can still be the backbone of a meal, but I’m more inclined to make them the focus of a main dish salad than a simmering ragout. I love the way they soak up tart salad dressings and the way their velvety textures play against the crunch of other salad ingredients, like fresh green beans, celery or fennel. [..]

Beans are an important source of plant-based protein. In her interesting new book, “Eating on the Wild Side,” Jo Robinson, a health and nutrition writer, cites a 2004 federal Agriculture Department survey of the phytonutrient content of 100 of our most common fruits and vegetables. Three of the four top-ranked foods were legumes (only blueberries were higher). Lentils were second, followed by black beans and red beans. The study found that a cup of cooked pinto beans had six times the amount of antioxidant activity as a cup of cauliflower and 12 times as much as a cup of carrots.

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.

This week I worked with tiny grains and seeds: millet and teff, amaranth and chia seeds. These can be challenging, and I had a few starts and stops along the way until I came up with a collection of recipes I was pleased with, including some delicious, moist savory pancakes made with beet greens and cooked amaranth. I continued working with chia seeds; this time I didn’t soak them, and added them to whole-grain muffins and pancakes. That’s how I used to use chia seeds way back when, before they disappeared for a few decades from the whole-foods scene. You can raise the nutritional content of your whole-grain pastries and breads just by adding 3 or 4 tablespoons; along with their considerable nutrients, the seeds contribute interesting texture like that of poppy seeds.

~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.

There’s so much beautiful spinach in the farmers’ markets now, and though it will soon give way to summer heat, it’s nice to know you can buy it every week and make something different with it each time. If you’re already into hot weather, you’ll appreciate this week’s cold yogurt soup with spinach and grains, which I’ve been polishing off for lunch every day this week. But even the hot soups will work on a warm day.

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.

Some of these have fed people in far-flung parts of the world for a very long time but have been of little interest as a food on the American market. Grains like sorghum have been grown here but fed primarily to animals, whereas sorghum has been a staple for centuries in Africa and India. [..]

These are chewy, hearty grains. They’re good with vegetables and with beans. Barley is wonderful in soups, and all of the chewy grains lend themselves to salads and to being stirred into cold yogurt soups along with other vegetables and herbs.

~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.

When you soak the seeds in water, they expand and become gelatinous, a property that aids digestion and contributes to their low glycemic index. When I use the seeds in smoothies, dressings and juices, I scoop up a tablespoon of the gelatinous mixture of seeds suspended in water – which is the equivalent of a teaspoon of unsoaked chia seeds – and add it to the drink or dressing. It adds substance to a drink, and I felt incredibly well nourished by this week’s chia-enriched fruit smoothies. I made five of them, adding other soaked nuts, seeds or muesli along with the chia. They made energy-rich breakfasts, perfect food for a morning workout.

~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.

Focaccia is a flatbread, not unlike a very thick-crusted pizza. It’s an easy dough to put together, and it’s forgiving; if you don’t have time to go from start to finish in one session, you can chill the dough and come back to it later. I think it’s a great vehicle for all kinds of vegetables, just as pizza is. A square of focaccia topped with tomatoes or cauliflower makes a great lunch or snack, and it’s good lunchbox fare.

Another thing you can do with focaccia is split it laterally and fill it, to make a sandwich. I did that with a mix of goat cheese and spinach, which made a better filling inside a heated focaccia than a topping.

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 pickled vegetables make great snacks and hors d’oeuvres. They look beautiful on a platter. They’re also good with a sandwich or with cottage cheese, a quick and easy way to make vegetables part of your lunch.

Note that this week we are not including nutritional information with the recipes. It isn’t possible to do the analyses accurately, because we don’t know how much of each vegetable you will eat, and each vegetable absorbs a slightly different amount of brine and ingredients in the brine. I weighed the brine before and 10 days after pickling each vegetable and found that not much of the brine had actually been absorbed. As for the yield and serving sizes, the recipes make 1 to 2 cups of pickled vegetables. The number of servings really depends on how you are serving them. They will serve more as a nibble than as a salad or side.

~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 gave you a recipe for dukkah, a Middle Eastern nut and spice mix, a few weeks ago. In that recipe I sprinkled it over the ingredients in a rice bowl. I’d made much more dukkah than the recipe called for, and found myself snacking on it until I ran out. Now it’s my favorite snack. I sprinkle some into my hand or into a ramekin and eat it by the pinch. Dukkah has so many of the attributes of a snack food – crunch, a little bit of salt (as opposed to a lot of salt), spice. I realized that very little salt is required when the salt is combined with spices and ground or chopped nuts and seeds to give your palate that hit of snack-food pleasure. And it occurred to me that dukkah could also fit the bill as a low-sodium seasoning for all sorts of dishes.

~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.

    The beautiful, sweet vegetables of spring ― artichokes and peas, favas and tender young asparagus, spring garlic and sweet spring onions ― come and go so quickly that I find myself impulse buying at the market and using them up in the simplest of dishes. They beg nothing more than pasta, and that’s a good thing because many of these vegetables are labor-intensive. It’s worth the time it takes to shell the peas, to free the heart of the artichoke from its leaves, to shell and skin favas. Then little more is required than a quick sauté or simmer with aromatics. You can always embellish, though, as I am doing this week with some recipes, with a pesto or, in the case of a baked orzo pastitsio with artichokes and peas, a béchamel.

~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’ve always been a big promoter of brown rice, and I was happily testing recipes last week for short-, medium- and long-grain varieties when I remembered that there had been reports in the past year about dangerous arsenic levels in rice, particularly in brown rice. I thought about shelving the recipe tests and choosing another subject for this week’s Recipes for Health, but then I decided to take a closer look at the reports to see if there was a way to make rice viable for health-conscious rice lovers.

The study and report, both by Consumer Reports, are disturbing. It is clear that the levels of inorganic arsenic in rice and rice products are high, and that we and especially children, babies and pregnant women should limit our intake of rice and rice products such as cereals, rice cakes and rice beverages. Rice cereal for babies should not be the go-to baby food that it has been for years.

The better news is that the extensive testing by the Consumers Union of many brands of rice and rice products shows that some products are considerably lower in arsenic than others.

~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 routinely throw them into salads of all kinds, and finely chopped walnuts can go into everything from omelets to pungent Mediterranean nut-based sauces to soups, pasta dishes and of course desserts. I consider them a pantry staple and keep a bag of shelled walnuts in the freezer at all times. When unshelled walnuts are available at my farmers’ market I keep them on hand as well. I use them up so quickly that I probably don’t need to keep the shelled walnuts in the freezer, but that’s where I always keep my nuts, because the oils in nuts are volatile and they can become rancid if they are not kept in a cool environment. I toast walnuts occasionally, but most often I prefer the sweeter flavor of fresh untoasted walnuts.

~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.

This week I made five different fish dishes and did not use any of the favorite four. I turned, as I always do, to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch pocket guide (they also have an app) for advice about best choices and good alternatives, and bought my fish from a fishmonger at my farmers’ market, from Trader Joe’s, and from Whole Foods. I avoided farmed fish, especially farmed fish from far away. The species I cooked included local Pacific sole, mahi mahi, arctic char, and Pacific halibut. Other good seafood choices are clams and mussels, striped bass, sardines, and rainbow trout.

~Martha Rose Shulman~