Project 333--Gettin' Your Greens On Day 3

So, how is it going so far?  You might be noticing some changes by today.  If you suffer from inflammation, and that inflammation shows up in your face and body tissues, the puffiness may be beginning to reside by today.*  Your head may be starting to clear and your thinking getting sharper.

Here are our menu suggestions for Gettin' Your Greens on Day 3.

Day 3 Breakfast--Super Green Smoothie (or Farro with Super Greens and Fried Egg)

Another Su;per Green Smoothie? Or...

We're recommending that you have a Super Green Smoothie again this morning because we believe in their powerful healing properties.  However, if you find that they're just not for you, try substituting our farro and fried egg breakfast.

Cooked farro is absolutely delicious and adding a fried egg makes this meal look more like a traditional breakfast.  Be sure to add those super greens on the side for super energy!

Bring 1 cup of farro* to a boil in 2 cups of organic chicken stock.  Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 25 minutes.  Stir in 4 tablespoons of grass fed butter and salt and pepper to taste.  Top a serving of the farro with super greens sauteed in olive oil, salt and pepper.  Gently fry a grass fed egg in grass fed butter and place it over the super greens and farro.  If desired, pour a tablespoon of flax oil over the top for additional anti-inflammation healing.

*If you can't find farro, try amaranth grains or pearl barley.  They're all delicious prepared this way.

Day 3 Lunch--Spinach Wrap Sandwich

Here's an easy-to-pack lunch.  Using a large tortilla style wrap, make a sandwich with fresh kale, sliced red bell peppers, cucumbers, shredded carrots, hummus and tzatziki sauce or hummus and baba ghanoush.  (You can find both the hummus and tzatziki at Trader Joe's.)  To make lunch more filling, you could also pack 1/2 avocado with a little lemon juice, salt and pepper and your choice of fruit.  Or, if you love a treat, try our fabulous recipe for low gluten, no sugar Toll House chocolate chip cookies, here.

Roll 'er up, folks!  A hummus and kale wrap that is delicious, filling and healthy!

By the way, if you are on an anti-inflammation diet, you can use a gluten-free wrap. The wrap we used here is made primarily from teff, which is gluten-free.

Day 3 Dinner--Add an Arugula Salad

For tonight's dinner, how about adding an arugula salad to whatever protein and vegetable you have planned.  If it's summer time, we love arugula and watermelon sprinkled with pine nuts and a little feta cheese.  In the cooler months try arugula, pears, walnuts, dried cranberries and a little goat cheese.  To make a great vinaigrette, mix together 2 T olive oil, 1 T flax oil, 1 T lemon juice, 2 t apple cider vinegar, 1/2 t Dijon mustard, 1/4 t dried dill, 2 T finely chopped shallots, sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.

Pears with arugula and other super greens, cranberries, goat cheese and walnuts.

We're hoping by this point you're getting the hang of Gettin' Your Greens On.

It's easy to add greens into your daily life.  Just start each day with a Super Green Smoothie or add some sauteed greens to your eggs or cooked grains for breakfast.  For lunch, fortify your favorite sandwich with a big handful of fresh greens to add taste, flavor and healing punch.  For dinner, add several handfuls of greens to just about any soup recipe, serve a salad made with super greens, or saute greens and serve them as a side dish. Hey, you're getting this!

 It's all just a matter of getting in the habit of Gettin' Your Greens On!  


*If you're one of those people that tends toward puffiness, it really takes a week of this to see radical results.  In fact, if you want to ban puffiness altogether, make sure to avoid gluten, dairy and sugar while you're Gettin' Your Greens On.  You'll be amazed at what a week of avoiding these three inflammatants and adding super greens will do for your appearance.  Your skin will glow, your eyes will sparkle, your body tissues will de-puff and you will be leaner, stronger and more clear headed.

Project 333 --Gettin' Your Greens On Day 2

So day 1 was easy and we're starting to see that it's not so difficult to add greens to every meal.  What's on the menu for day 2?

Day Two Breakfast--Omelette with Spinach

This couldn't be easier, just add a splash of water to a small omelette pan and add in several generous handfuls of spinach.  Saute until tender.  Dress the spinach with olive oil, salt and pepper and move to a serving plate.  Then melt a little butter in your pan and swish it all around, add in two eggs stirred up with a tablespoon of water and some sea salt and pepper and you have your omelette.  For a little fun, here's Julia Child with her omelette tutorial.

Omelette with sauteed greens.  Oh, if only I could nail the Julia child wrist flip!

Super Green Smoothie fans:  By the way, we're showing you the omelette for a little variety, but if you like the Super Green Smoothie, go ahead and have it every day. Keep it up for a few weeks and you'll be amazed at how much energy you have and how clear your head gets.  

Day Two Lunch  --Super Green Salad with Tuna Tarragon

Tuna is an excellent ingredient for anti-inflammation because it's high in omega-3 oil. Just mix up our tuna tarragon and serve it on a bed of super greens of your choice. You can drizzle a bit of vinaigrette over the greens if you wish.  (Combine 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar or lemon juice.  Season with salt, pepper, dry mustard, dry dill and chopped shallots.)  If you use flax oil for some or all of the oil in your dressing, you'll be upping the inflammation fighting omega-3s even more.  

Tuna tarragon on a bed of super greens.  

Day Three Dinner--Add some greens to your favorite soup recipe.  

What's your favorite soup?  Chicken noodle?  Mexican chicken?  Italian meatball?  Whatever it is, toss a generous quantity of super greens into it.  If you want to try something new, how about this Indian tomato spinach version:

Indian Tomato Spinach Soup

Ingredients:
3 T olive oil
2 leeks chopped
2 bay leaves
1/2 t ground cardamon
1/4 t cinnamon
1 1/2 t salt
1/2 t ground pepper
2 t curry powder
3 cups organic chicken stock
2 cans organic stewed tomatoes
6 boneless organic chicken thighs cut into bite-size pieces
1/2 cup cooked basmati rice
1 can organic chick peas (also known as garbanzo beans)
4 cups spinach or other super green

Put olive oil and leeks into a soup pot and saute until leeks are softened.  Add all ingredients up to tomatoes and simmer for 20 minutes.  Add in chicken and continue simmering until chicken is just cooked.  Add in rice, chick peas and spinach and heat just until spinach leaves have softened.  Serve.


See our next posting for Day 3

Gettin' Your Greens On--Project 333, Three Days, Three Meals a Day

Let's face it, these days pretty much everyone is aware of the tremendous healing power of kale and the other super greens.  However, many people are unsure of just how to harness this power by adding enough greens into their everyday lives.  Sure, we've all had a kale salad somewhere, but how do we actually significantly add more super greens into our daily meals?

The project--eat more super greens during the next three days.  In fact eat them at every meal for the next three days.  Think of it as a mini-green-cleanse, if you will.  Can it be done?  Greens at every meal for three days?  Three meals, three days.  Of course it can, and we'll show you how.  But first...

Super greens are powerful inflammation fighters.  As you may know, inflammation in the body is a cause of most diseases.  Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, all the auto-immune diseases, arthritis, and many more illnesses are directly related to inflammation.

What are the super greens?  All the dark leafy greens are what we refer to as super greens.  Kale, chard, spinach, collard, beet, arugula, mizuna, quinoa and amaranth, among others, are some of the dark leafy greens that you may be able to purchase at your local supermarket or Farmer's Market.  

Okay, so that said, let's get started.

Day One Breakfast--Super Green Smoothie

At NutritionScienceRX, we're all doing it.  We love our morning Super Green Smoothie.  In fact, we're absolutely addicted to them, especially for the energy and brain power they give us.  Click for our recipe for the Super Green Smoothie.

Start with fresh organic fruits and vegetables.  And don't forget the super greens!!!  There are amaranth greens in this batch, hiding underneath the parsley.  Switch it up--add a different super green each time you fire up your processor or blender.

We look forward to this every morning!

Day One Lunch--Easiest way to get your super greens--Trader Joe's salads!  

Delicious, too.  Trader Joe's has a fabulous collection of affordable pre-made salads.  We keep our refrigerators stocked with them.  Look for salads that have super greens like this Broccoli Slaw and Kale Salad with Chicken.  By the way, this is a favorite of just about everyone who's tried it.

This salad is one of Trader Joe's most popular products, according to my checker last week!

Day One Dinner-- Pea and Greens Salad 

I brought this dish to a church potluck.  It's similar to a salad Nigella prepared on one of her shows.  Just about every ingredient in it is anti-inflammation.  The recipe below makes half the quantity shown in the photo.  Serve it as a side dish for dinner.  In fact, why not make dinner easy, toss an organic chicken in the oven to roast along with some sweet potatoes.  Nothing could be more simple than roasting a chicken.  I just prop the chicken up on a vertical roasting stand (see bottom of posting) and cook until the skin is golden and the juices run clear near the leg joint when poked with a fork.  By the way, organic grass-fed butter is an excellent inflammation fighter.  So go ahead and enjoy those sweet potatoes with butter, salt and pepper.  There you have it.  An easy, PEAsy dinner!  

Pea and Greens Salad

1 16 oz package of frozen peas

2 T olive oil

1 T flax oil (very anti-inflammatory)

1 T lemon juice

1 T apple cider vinegar

1 t mint dried

1 t Dijon mustard

1/2 t sea salt

1/2 t ground pepper

1 1/2 T finely chopped shallots

butter or bibb lettuce

spinach leaves

avocado

fresh mint

Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, dried mint, Dijon, salt, pepper and shallots.  Prepare the frozen peas by boiling them for a few minutes in a few inches of water, being careful not to overcook.  Drain them and run cold water over them to keep them from continuing to cook.  Shake the colander to remove as much water as possible.  Pour the vinaigrette over the peas and taste.  If it needs more punch, add additional salt and another t of apple cider vinegar.  Spread the greens on a platter and toss in the peas turning all the peas and leaves together so that the dressing is spread throughout.  Top with avocado and fresh chopped mint leaves.  Nigella used toasted pine nuts, as did I, but I actually think the recipe would be better without them, so I left them out here.  

See tomorrow's posting for Day 2!

Brown Rice with Fennel and Tangerine Peel

Very few of us have the kind of lives where we can present Julia Child style meals to our families each night.  Most of us are simply too busy to devote hours and hours to cooking the day's meals.

However, if you're reading this blog, you probably love food and want to enjoy delicious, seasonal flavors frequently.  For me, that means that I often mix simply prepared foods, like Italian sausages or roast chicken, with side dishes that have a little something special added.  

For example, this Brown Rice with Fennel and Tangerine has a few extra ingredients compared to plain brown rice.  It tastes special.  And yet, it only takes a few minutes more to prepare it.  I love that it features fennel and tangerine, two in-season foods, and two flavors that I find very complimentary. 

One little tip--  This recipe calls for chicken stock.  I often make my own chicken stock and other bone broths.  I find it very simple to just toss leftover bones into a pot along with a few vegetables and spices and let it simmer over my lowest heat setting for the entire day. A quick five minutes of prep work and a little awareness throughout the day equals delicious flavor and super healing power.  (see here for my bone broth recipe).  However, I blow through chicken broth at a rate that I can never keep up with preparing my own.  I just don't have enough bones.  Lately I've been buying Trader Joe's* organic free range broth for $1.99 per carton.  The price is excellent, but I really like the broth.  It seems to have much more intensity and color than the other commercially prepared broths I buy, especially for the price. 

Brown Rice with Fennel and Tangerine Peel

1 cup brown rice

2 cups chicken broth

2 T olive oil

1 fennel bulb sliced

1/2 t salt

Ground fresh pepper to taste

Grated peel from 2 tangerines

Juice from 2 tangerines

Bring the 2 cups of chicken broth to boil in a sauce pan and add the brown rice, olive oil and fennel bulb. Reduce the heat to simmer and cook the rice for the amount of time indicated on the rice package. When the rice is 5 minutes before completion, add the salt, pepper, tangerine peel and juice.  

*Eat Thrive Heal is not sponsored or paid by any stores or products.  We just pass on tips about what we like and what we find makes our cooking lives easier.

Another fennel and tangerine combo we love.  Click here for the recipe.

Scrambled Eggs and Smoked Salmon

Simple, Easy-to-Make, Anti-Inflammation Meals

Some days we're crunched for time or just simply too pooped to put in much effort cooking up a fabulous meal.  There's a place in everyone's cooking repertoire for a few simple, easy-to-make meals that we can pull out of our hats. After all, let's be practical, we're not always able to devote a lot of time to meal prep, and yet we want to be able to serve up healthy, healing foods.

Not always this perfect...

Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon is just that; a pull-out-of-your-hat meal with healing power.  It's delicious and fast, of course, but one of the very best things about it is that it's loaded with inflammation-busting omega-3's.  Omega-3s are not found in a lot of foods, however, three excellent sources are wild salmon, pastured eggs and pastured butter.

Wild and pastured are the keys here.  Farm raised fish are not high in omega-3s.  Factory raised chickens do not produce eggs high in omega-3s and cows raised in feedlots do not produce butter high in omega-3s.  So be sure you get the wild and pastured.  They fix your health while the others harm it.

Conveniently, eggs, smoked salmon and butter are things that last in your fridge for a while and are easy to add to your shopping cart whenever you do a big shop.  If you make it a habit to keep yourself stocked up, you'll always be able to whip up a quick, yummy and healing meal.

We garnished our eggs with a big fist full of fresh sprouts.  Sprouts, leafy greens and fresh green herbs are all nutrition-packed inflammation-fighting resources.  Whenever you can, add these babies in generous quantities to your meals.  

Scrambled Eggs and Wild Salmon

2 pastured eggs per person
1 t water per person
1 T pastured butter per person
Freshly ground sea salt and black pepper (I love the Pink Himalayan salt grinder from Costco)
Wild Smoked Salmon (I used Trader Joe's Wild Smoked Sockeye Salmon Hot Smoked with Cracked      Peppercorns, Mustard Seed and Lemon--utterly packed with flavor--not sure if this available year        round)
Sprouts (the pretty blend in the photo also came from Trader Joe's)

Crack the eggs into a bowl, add in the water, salt and pepper and whisk together.  Melt the butter in a pan and pour in the eggs.  Add in the salmon in crumbled chunks.  Let the eggs set up a little bit against the pan and then gently push the egg and salmon mixture around the pan, getting the spatula under all of the egg mixture. Wait a little bit again as the egg mixture cooks for a moment against the pan and then push the mixture around so that more of the wet mixture is exposed to the pan.  Continue to wait for a moment and then push and redistribute the eggs until they are cooked through entirely.  Garnish with a generous fist full of sprouts.

For more information on omega-3s, see here.  

For more information on inflammation of the body and how it causes most diseases, see here.

Snack Attack Series--Pear Butter on Yogurt

Seasonal Snacks--Winter

I'm always on the lookout for snacks that satisfy.  Sometimes snacking calls for a little sweetness, but not too much.  Sugar is not a part of healthy snacking.  But, of course, you already know that!

Part of being a good cook is being a good shopper.  When you run across something like this Amish Pear Butter made without sugar, grab it.  If you don't have the special ingredients on hand to make a meal nice, it's not going to be nice.  That's just plain fact.

Having a few easy ingredients on hand is the key to successful snacking. If you plan ahead and stock your fridge and pantry, you can throw together a tasty snack in less than a minute.  Almond yogurt with pear butter and walnuts is a good example of a tasty snack that makes up effortlessly.

Almond yogurt is new in the markets and it's a very nice alternative to cow yogurt if you're avoiding dairy. It gives you some healthy probiotic strains without the problems that some of us experience eating dairy. Walnuts are high in all important anti-inflammatory omega-3's.  And the pear butter is there for sweetness and flavor.

Delicious, healthy and you can put it together in a minute.  What more could you ask for in a snack?

Seasonal Snack Attack Series--  One of the biggest challenges in sticking to a healing anti-inflammation diet is figuring out what to eat during those times when you feel hungry between meals.  Having a plan in place before hunger strikes is essential.  That's what this snack attack series is all about.  Over time, we hope the snack ideas will grow to become a rich full file and a useful tool that you can use to stock your kitchen with delicious healing snacks that keep your tummy feeling full, your waistline trim and your body humming!  We're just getting started, but to see the snacks we've included so far, click here. 

According to a study performed by the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “Twelve weeks of consuming a fermented milk product containing the Lactobacillusstrain was associated with a 4.6 per cent reduction in abdominal fat…”.

What is this "inflammation" we keep talking about?

If you've visited us here at Eat Thrive Heal before, you may have noticed that we are often talking about a disease preventing and healing anti-inflammation diet.

You may be wondering, just what is inflammation?

First of all, we're not referring to the inflammation you get, for example, when you cut your finger and it gets red and swollen and slightly inflamed or infected.

When we speak about inflammation, we speak about the swelling of body tissues and organs.  This type of inflammation isn't painful like the cut on your finger, but it continuously damages your organs, until eventually, your body becomes diseased.

How do body tissues become inflamed?  Stress, lack of exercise, genetic predisposition and exposure to toxins (such as tobacco) are all causes of inflammation.  But one of the biggest triggers comes from our diets.  

In fact, many of the body's diseases have now been linked to inflammation, especially all the auto-immune diseases, including arthritis.



Why does the body create swelling?  Inflammation is really the body's attempt at protection.  It's part of the body's immune response.  When something is harmful or irritating to the body, the body tries to remove it.

The body creates two types of inflammation.  Acute inflammation is the swelling you see when you cut your finger.  This kind of inflammation occurs rapidly, in a few days time for example.  You might also experience this kind of inflammation in your lungs with bronchitis, or your throat with a sore throat.  It's also the inflammation you experience as the result of intense exercise or if you receive a blow to the body.   Acute inflammation requires short term healing strategies, such as rest, icing, flushing, etc.

On the other hand, chronic inflammation is what we are trying to heal with food.  This is long term inflammation caused by long term irritants or toxins.  Many of these original irritants or toxins may have come from our diets.

One way this happens is that the body's fat tissues become inflamed because of a diet high in refined carbs and omega-6 fatty acids. When we eat a lot of processed foods, we are disturbing the body's natural chemical balances and inflammation is the body's response.  Not only do the inflamed fat tissues cause weight gain, but eventually the inflammation may spread to the pancreas and cause diabetes, to the brain and cause Alzheimers and to the heart to cause heart disease.

Consuming foods we are allergic to or have intolerances to (such as gluten or dairy for some people) can certainly cause inflammation.  But also, regularly consuming toxic and non-degradable pathogens in our food can also create inflammation.  Sugars and artificial sweeteners, chemicals, pesticides, fertilizers, hormones and metals are just a few of the substances present in our modern food and water that our bodies were never designed to process in large quantities.

Our modern diet is actually methodically attacking our body and inflammation is the body's attempt to heal this.

Healing inflammation with food requires removing all these unbalanced and un-natural foods, as well as any allergens, intolerances and toxins from our diets in order to give our bodies a chance to clean, purify and calm down from the constant attack it has sustained over the years.

So let's hear it for REAL FOOD.  The kind of food that doesn't contain chemicals and toxins. Unprocessed food.  The kind of food that grows on farms.  The food our bodies were designed to consume. The food that heals.