Guide to Grains Part 2: Life Beyond Quinoa

Freekeh with poached eggs and arugula, the only green I can stand in raw form.

Now that you’ve tried quinoa, amaranth, barley and millet, I know you’re just dying to find out what other grains are out there, right? Well, good news - there’s lots to choose from! Here are two more of my favourites:

Bulgur for Weight Loss

Perhaps bulgur is not the most exciting, sexy grain in the world (is there such thing as a sexy grain?) but one you should get to know better. You likely haven’t heard of bulgur outside of tabbouleh, but it’s a Middle-Eastern staple that deserves wider accolades in my opinion. It is basically kernels of wheat that have been steamed, dried and crushed. Because it’s pre-cooked in this way, it is super quick to prepare.

Bulgur is known as a great diet food because it is not calorically dense; in fact, a cup of bulgur has almost half the calories of a cup of quinoa (keep in mind that it has smaller amounts of nutrients, though it still has an impressive array.) It' s a fibre powerhouse and low in fat as well, so it keeps you full for less calories. What’s not to love?

Uses:

I use bulgur as a side dish similar to quinoa, in a cold salad, or as a stuffing for tomatoes or peppers. You can also use it as a filler in meatballs or burgers, as Chef Michael Smith does in this recipe.

Where to find it:

At the bulk store or the health food store.

Prep tips:

This grain is easy to cook because it has already been steamed.  Mix a half cup of bulgur with one cup of liquid and simmer for 15 minutes. Let stand for another ten minutes and then fluff with a fork. It triples in volume, so you can freeze some for later. Be careful of adding too much liquid as it will become mushy; this is why I often avoid using it in soups (use barley instead.)

Get Your Freekeh on

Raw Freekeh

My brother in law turned me onto this grain originating from the Eastern Medditeranean, which is (disappointingly) pronounced freek-a. Freekeh is made from young wheat that is still green and has a higher proportion of proteins, minerals and vitamins than mature wheat. It’s high in fibre and low in carbs.

This green wheat is roasted and smoked, which gives it this delicious intensely smoky taste that’s surprising (it tastes like you cooked it on the barbeque.) It’s firm in a way that’s similar to brown rice or barley. Because it’s partially cooked, Freekeh is also a cinch to prepare.

Uses:

Because of this unique smoky flavour, I like to keep it fairly simple – often I’ll just have it with poached eggs as above, or perhaps I’ll cook it in some chicken broth and mix in some sautéed mushrooms.

Where to find it:

This one is tricky to find because it is still relatively new to North America; your best bet is a Middle Eastern grocery store, but call ahead to check if they carry it.

Prep tips:

It’s pretty easy; bring one cup Freekeh and 2.5 cups liquid to a boil and then simmer, covered for 20-30 minutes (for whole) or 10-15 minutes (for cracked.) 

Ready to give these a whirl? Great! Here's some ideas to get you started at my Pinterest grain recipe board.

5 Marketing Claims You Shouldn't Fall For

I've said it before - never believe anything you read on the box, even if it sounds healthy. Especially if it sounds healthy. Here are five phrases you should be wary of:

Made with the goodness of wheat
This is a popular one, often found on packages of crackers, bread and pastas. Notice it doesn't say what kind of wheat. That's because it's likely refined. So basically, this says, 'Made with white flour.' Like 90% of processed food products out there. Thanks for the heads up.

Made with whole wheat/whole grains
You may think this one is better - after all, it says whole wheat or whole grains. But it doesn't say how much. So odds are, the first ingredient is still white flour. The manufacturer has likely just put in enough whole wheat/whole grains to colour the white flour brown and make you think you're eating something heathy. Again, ignore.

Made with real fruits/vegetables
Again - nothing here about how much actual fruit/vegetable is in the product. Often it's minimal (you can tell by how low the fruit/veggie is on the ingredient list.) And usually, there are enough other artificial ingredients to negate the goodness of the veggie in the first place. 

Reduced fat
This is a tricky one. Less fat is good, right? The answer is, it depends. All things being equal, yes, less fat is good. But remember: fat delivers flavour. If the manufacturers remove fat from a product, they still have to make it taste good - so they may add sugar or salt in to replace the lost flavour, and other chemicals to mimic the role of the fat. The best thing to do is to compare the original and reduced-fat versions and choose the one with the simplest ingredient list. 

Source of energy
This one kills me. Energy is measured in calories. All food is made up of calories. So absolutely all food is a source of energy. This is a claim food companies use when they really do not have anything healthy to tout about the product at all. In fact, it's usually a sign of an unhealthy product - Nutella uses this in their advertising campaigns. (Sure, it gives your kids energy - in the form of a sugar high. They neglect to tell you that little Joey will be crashing by math class.)

Are there any marketing claims you're not sure about? Let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to debunk them!


For more tips on how to read labels, see my post on Grocery Shopping Shortcuts or see whole list of posts on Navigating the Supermarket.
...and have you had your grocery list pimped yet? 

photo credit: partymonstrrrr via photopin cc

Weekly Specials

Yesterday was A's birthday. I celebrated by cooking him a dinner that had not a trace of fibre, vegetable or protein in it. Instead, it was full of butter, white flour and cheese. Oh, the cheese! It was insanely indulgent yet effortlessly simple in a way only the Italians can do. I'm talking spaghetti Cacio e Pepe, and you can get the recipe right here. Trust me - you will die happy. Perhaps a little early, but happy.

And now, back to the Wholesome side of things:

If you haven't seen AllergyKids Founder Robyn O'Brien's TEDx talk on why allergies are more prevalent now than when we were kids, it's a MUST watch. Really - this is 18 minutes that will change the way you live.

Also, you should read her explanation about why organic is better than conventional in light of the Stanford Study at HuffPo.

Fooducate explains why you can lose 9 pounds by reading food labels. 

Run out of eggs for the muffins you're baking? Here's a quick replacement (via The Faux Martha)

And have you gotten your grocery list pimped yet? That' right, send me your grocery list, and I'll give it a free healthy makeover! Details are here!

Pimp My Grocery List

In the few months since I've started this site, I've had some great feedback from you guys and I must say, that's what's kept me going. When you are marketing crackers, you rarely get people coming up to you telling you how much they love your Grainy Crunch'ems, so I find it so refreshing and inspiring to hear that you like my writing or that you are using the information or trying the recipes. 

All this is to say that I want to hear from you even more. I'm introducing a new feature on the site called Pimp My Grocery List. No, this doesn't mean that you give me your grocery list and I give you back some crazy, blinged-out car (though that would be fun!)

What I hope to do is take specific items from your grocery list and suggest healthier options instead. So, instead of the sugary fibre bar I might suggest a more natural granola bar, or instead of the noodles and pasta dinner, I might introduce you to a healthier quick dinner option. I'll write a post for every grocery list so other readers can get some ideas and inspiration too.

Wanna try it? Great! Send me your grocery list by email (info[at]wholesomehedonist[dot]com) or tweet me (hashtag #pimpmylist). I'll pick 2-5 items from your list and suggest alternatives. If you live in Canada, I'll suggest specific products; if you live elsewhere, I might suggest types of products as I won't have access to your actual grocery store. And don't worry, if you want to keep your abominable shopping habits a secret, I'll refer to you as Anonymous in my post.

So email me, tweet me and spread the word! I can't wait to pimp your list!

photo credit: Krissy Venosdale via photo pin cc

Rosemary Marmalade Chicken

I am always hesitant to make chicken recipes because although that's what the majority of the population eats most weeknights, I find it incredibly bland and boring. I am too lazy and last-minute to ever marinate the chicken, and whatever sauces or rubs I brush on top of it never seem to penetrate into the meat, leaving it tasting bland and rubbery. Usually A. will chew on it thoughtfully, while Baby M, ever the diplomat, will spit it out onto his high chair tray.

But when I saw this recipe, I knew my chicken luck was about to change. Marmalade + balsamic vinegar + Dijon mustard? Sounds like a unique, flavourful combination. And in terms of flavour, it's a triple threat - brushed on, then basted, then reduced to a sauce. With high hopes, I decided to give it a try.

Let me just say, people, that it didn't disappoint. the chicken was tender and juicy and flavourful. The sauce was thick and tangy and added flavour to the the quick grains I boiled up alongside the chicken. The onions, which I normally hate, were crunchy and savoury-sweet, filling out the sauce nicely. Overall, it's a great, easy entertaining recipe that is unique enough to stand out from the usual chicken fare. Even the diplomat didn't spit it out.

Slightly adapted from the amazing Lucy Waverman's recipe in Food & Drink

Rosemary Marmalade Chicken 

Serves 4

1/2 cup 3-Fruit or Seville Orange Marmalade
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
4 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
3 tbsp vegetable oil
4 bone-in, skinless chicken breasts
Salt & pepper
1 tbsp unsalted butter
2 cups thinly sliced onions
1 cup chicken stock

1 Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

2 Combine marmalade, balsamic vinegar, mustard and rosemary. Divide in half. Whisk 1 tbsp (15 mL) of oil, reserving remainder, into half of mixture. Brush marmalade mixture with oil on to the chicken breasts. Season breasts with salt and pepper.

3 Heat remaining 2 tbsp (25 mL) oil and butter in a large ovenproof skillet on medium-high heat. Add onions to pan and sauté, stirring for 1 minute or until just beginning to soften. Add stock and remaining marmalade-mustard mixture. Bring to boil. Place chicken breasts skin-side up over onions.

4 Bake uncovered for 35 to 40 minutes or until juices run clear, basting chicken with sauce occasionally.

5 Remove breasts and bring sauce to boil. Boil until sauce thickens, about 2 minutes. Return chicken to reheat and serve with sauce.

Note: I kept Lucy Waverman's recipe pretty much as-is because it was so delicious. The only change I made was to double the amount of sauce because I really enjoy my sauce. If it's too much for you, though, you can always store or freeze the rest to use on grains, fish, or as a bang-up sandwich spread (imagine it with chicken salad!)

Hedonist Tip: Drink your Greens

I am going to make a startling confession here. Ready? Okay, here goes.

I hate salad.

Yes, you heard right. The woman who calls herself the Wholesome Hedonist can’t stand a leafy green (or a leafy purple, or a leafy white.)

I don’t know what it is about salad. Perhaps it’s my preference for hot, hearty comfort foods, or my dislike of the bland semi-crunch of lettuce.  Whatever the reason, you will always find me far, far away from the salad bar (one notable exception is arugula, which the Italians converted me to by perching it atop a sublime pizza in Rome.)

I know greens are good for you. And I know I should eat them more frequently (and so should you.) So I have found some unique ways to work then into my meals. My best solution? Working them into a smoothie. A cup of spinach is virtually undetectable in smoothies, so I take a few clumps of frozen spinach out of the freezer and throwthem into whatever concoction I’m making, from blueberry banana to mango lassis. (It doesn’t do much for the colour, but at least I can’t taste it.)

What are your tips for sneaking in your greens?

Confessions of a Processed Food Marketer: Taking Out the Good Stuff

Ever wonder why the peanut butter you’ve been eating since you were a kid tastes different than it used to? Or why the chocolate cookies you love suddenly taste more like sugar than chocolate? And is it your imagination, or are there less blueberries in your favourite granola than there used to be?

This is one of the biggest secrets of the food industry today - margin enhancement. Margin enhancement is a fancy word for making a product more cheaply, often by taking out real ingredients and replacing them with cheaper synthetic ones.

Why is this done? Well, as I’ve said before, food companies, like all other companies, have to make profits. And not just any profits, but profits that continue to grow year by year. This is notoriously difficult in a slow-growing grocery industry.

So how to do companies do this? Well, to put it simply, there are two ways: by making new products or by squeezing more money out of existing ones. The latter is called margin enhancement.

Say a company makes yogurt.  They might decide to replace some of the real fruit in that yogurt with artificial fruit flavour - just enough so that consumers won’t notice (they do consumer testing to ensure this.) Though this might mean just a few cents savings per package, over millions of packages, those savings can really add up.

Once marketers discovered this trick, it became a key strategy in meeting their profit targets every year.  In fact, many companies have a specific cost-saving goal they have to reach, which basically means that they are committing to degrade their products year after year.

This is why the products that you grew up with just don’t taste the same as they used to. The cookies you loved when you were a kid may have had sugar, butter, flour, chocolate and vanilla in them. But over the years, through ‘margin enhancement’, they have likely changed to high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, chocolate flavouring and vanillin (synthetic vanilla). While each of these iterations probably did taste similar to the previous version, when you add them all up, they taste vastly different from the cookies you ate as a kid.

This happens all the time: cheese is taken out of cheese sauce, spices in seasonings are replaced with starchy filler, chocolate is replaced with sugar and cocoa butter. In fact, the targets are so relentless that marketers sometimes launch products already knowing what high-cost ingredients they will remove in Year Two (hence, fewer blueberries in that fantastic granola you just discovered last year.)

To be fair, the process of margin enhancement is not always profit-driven, though that is often the case. Sometimes it is due to other circumstances - if the price of sugar goes up, for example, a company may decide to replace it with a cheaper alternative rather than raise the price of their cookie. Or if there is a shortage of strawberries, it may have to substitute another berry in its fruit punch. Sometimes, companies will realize they have gone too far and actually work to put the good stuff back in their food.

But most of the time, the products on your grocery store shelf have been downgraded and continue to deteriorate as the years go by. This is why we don’t pay the true cost of food; it’s because we are paying for slightly varying combinations of fake ingredients instead of real food.

This is why I am so adamant about reading the ingredient label: with products constantly changing, it's the only way you can know what’s really in the product. The grocery store is your battlefield, and you have to go in their armed with knowledge. See my tips for tackling the grocery store here and here.

photo credit: Christi @ Love From The Oven via photo pin cc

"A good idea is worth about a buck and a half - it's all in the execution."

One of the things that most inspires me in my journey to live a more healthy, centred life is talking to others who are doing it. So from time to time, I’ll feature interviews here on Wholesome Hedonist of people who have taken the plunge and changed their lives for the better.

The first of these interviews is with Jamie Bussin, a commercial litigator-turned-publisher who is the driving force behind Tonic Toronto Magazine, a health and wellness magazine distributed in Toronto. As a relatively new magazine, Tonic has already developed quite a following, so I wanted to chat with Jamie about his venture.

You started your health and wellness journey five years ago by making some pretty drastic changes: you lost over fifty pounds and made a career 180. What prompted you to make these changes?

It all started with the weight. It was a problem in itself, but it was a factor in other problems too. It left me fatigued, weak and prone to illness, and it affected my ability to deal with stress. As a commercial litigator, people came to me during some of the most stressful times of their lives and they were relying on me to carry them through. As an overweight, stressed out, unfit person, I just couldn’t operate at my best.

I realized that if I didn't fix myself, I was not going to be in a good place. I was nearing 40, I was watching my father deal with numerous health problems and I was unhappy with my stressful career.  I knew I had to make a change.


How did you make the leap into publishing a health and wellness magazine?

Though it seems like a huge jump from being a litigator to being a publisher, it really wasn’t for me. I already had a background in writing - I had a humour column for Post City Magazine and I had written several screenplays, one of which had been optioned in Hollywood. As well, one of my clients was a publisher, so I knew the ins and out of the business.

I still use a lot of my skills as a litigator in running Tonic - for example, in negotiating contracts, in persuading companies to advertise with us, in dealing with my staff and partners, even in collecting debts. Writing the Editor’s Page is the fun part, but there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes.


What’s been your biggest challenge in running Tonic?

My biggest challenge was the start-up phase. The hardest part about the magazine business is that when you start, you have nothing. You’re trying to get advertisers to buy space in your magazine, but you can’t print that magazine until they buy space, so you have nothing to show them. I could’ve printed an initial 80 pages to show to advertisers, but I decided to only print as many pages as the ads allowed, so that was difficult.

What made it more difficult was that I had no background or connections in the health and wellness industry, so I really had to start from scratch. I was also responsible for generating advertising revenue, but I had no background in sales. Fortunately, as a litigator, I was trained to convince people, so those skills came in handy when I was trying to pitch the magazine to potential advertisers.


What’s been your biggest reward?

I love hearing that people read the magazine from cover to cover - that makes me happier than anything else.


What’s your advice to those looking to change careers like you did? What are your keys to success?

I firmly believe that a good idea is worth about a buck and a half - it's all about the execution.

You have to work beyond your fears. It's a scary concept to stop what you've been doing your whole adult life and change gears, but sometimes it’s what you have to do. Everybody has their own skill sets, and finding something that utilizes those skills (or transfers the skills you already possess) can make a huge difference.


I know health and wellness is an ongoing battle for you; you blogged last year about putting on some of the weight you lost. Many of us have had this same experience. What keeps you motivated and how do you get yourself back on the wagon?

I’m an emotional eater, and sometimes, I lack discipline. So I find that if I make a rigid rule, like ‘Don’t eat after 7 pm’, it’s easier for me to stick to it. Also, I’ve learned that making my goals public really keeps me on track. When I gained back about 20 pounds of the weight I had lost, I took drastic measures - I announced publicly my goal to lose the weight, and I even went so far as to tweet my weight every single day! Some might view this as a public shaming, but being so publicly accountable kept me on track - I lost the twenty pounds, and five more!


You’ve also talked about the fact that, as a Type-A personality, it’s hard for you to stay as calm and centred as you’d like (especially in the midst of stressful experiences.) What do you do to keep yourself centred and maintain your well being?

Exercise has been my salvation. Running clears my head and gives me a chance to work through my problems. I see running as a metaphor for the magazine - when I'm in the home stretch and I’m too tired to go on, I hear my own voice in my head saying 'don't give up!’

I also do yoga Friday afternoons. I really find it helpful. I tell my staff that if there's bad news, tell me after yoga, I'm much more relaxed!

I also believe in the importance of family mealtime (there’s a great article in the September issue of Tonic about this subject.) I have three kids, and our family eats together every night. Friday is my favourite night - everyone unwinds, relaxes, and shares experiences from the week.


What’s next for Tonic Toronto?

I’m happy to announce that we’re re-launching the website in the coming days so that it features all our editorial content (you can find it at tonictoronto.com.) We’re also extending the Tonic brand into events. I’m really excited about this because it means that we’ll be able to create a community outside of print and online to facilitate discussion and spark ideas.