Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 08:28 PM
For the next few days, I’ll be blogging from the ADA (American Dietetic Association) conference in Denver. I arrived today after what turned out to be a great three-and-a-half-hour plane ride. I was dreading my middle seat, but it turned out that I was sitting between a Registered Dietitian who works for the National Dairy Council and another woman who is an author of children’s books, including some of the American Girl Doll books. Not only were both my seatmates incredibly courteous (thank goodness considering the duration of the flight and my bad seat), but it was so interesting to speak with both of them. We covered all my passions: parenting, books, the Boston Globe, children’s literature, Julie and Julia, cooking, nutrition, work. It was a great ride.
The Colorado convention center is huge.
And outside of it is a ginormous bear.
Luckily for me, two of my colleagues had already arrived and had done most of the legwork for our NuVal booth.
It looks great.
And we are showcasing some NuVal scores with our supermarket shelves.
Back at home, I missed a milestone. My son lost his top front tooth!
I’ve given explicit instructions to the tooth fairy!
It’s going to be a busy but fun 3 days meeting lots of dietitians and teaching them all about NuVal. I am really looking forward to meeting many RD’s whom I’ve met via my blog and Twitter. Stay tuned!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: Uncategorized
Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 11:01 PM
Wednesday’s Boston Globe included an article on Conde Nast’s plans to pull the plug on Gourmet Magazine. In it, the most famous chefs and foodies in Boston were interviewed and they added their commentary on the 68-year-old magazine’s demise. Food historian and author, Laura Shapiro, who reviewed the movie “Julie and Julia” in a recent issue added, “This is another nail in the coffin of literate journalism.”
Now, I have been a subscriber of Cooking Light and Weight Watchers Magazine in the past, but never Gourmet. My Dear Husband and I, however, back in the day (i.e., before kids) used to buy an issue of Gourmet every now and then and try out some new recipes. The result of that is that we have some old dog-eared and food-splattered copies of Gourmet tucked in between our cookbooks.
One of my favorite recipes that my DH likes to make for me is Spicy Sauteed Broccolini With Garlic from the January 2002 issue.
2 lb Broccolini or broccoli rabe, ends trimmed
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp dried hot red pepper flakes
1/4 low-fat chicken stock or low-sodium fat-free chicken broth
Cook broccolini in a 6-8 quart pot of boiling salted water until stems are crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Drain in a colander, then plunge into cold water to stop cooking. Drain again and pat dry with paper towels. (Wow – that’s labor-intensive. Now you can see why we did this Pre-Kids!)
Heat 1 1/2 teaspoons oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking. Add half of garlic and 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes and saute, stirring, until garlic is golden, about 1 minute. Add half of Broccolini and 2 tablespoons stock and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. (OK, dividing ingredients makes me crazy! Again, a recipe we used to make Pre-Kids!)
Transfer to a serving dish, then repeat with remaining oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, Broccolini, and stock. Season with salt.
Today, when my DH wants to do something particularly romantic for me, he buys the ingredients for this dish that I love so. Usually the Broccolini or broccoli rabe sits in our refrigerator for about a week, wilting by the day, until he finds the time to drag out the big pot and fill the sink with ice water – all between work, home improvements, cub scout meetings, soccer, lawn care, lunch-making and laundry. But eventually he gets to it, knowing how much I just love my leafy greens that have been treated Gourmet-style.
So, why all this talk about broccolini and broccoli rabe. Two reasons! First, I just finished reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food where he recommends, “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.” It was a great reminder that the best foods out there are just that: Food. Not processed food. And plants. Like vegetables and fruit. While I feel I do a really good job of following his advice, I also find that I get into a rut of eating the same things all the time. It’s time to try some new vegetables. Second, if there is one thing I’ve learned from working at NuVal it is this: Vegetables are Rock Stars. With rare exceptions (iceberg lettuce gets an 82), almost all vegetables score in the very high 90s or 100. And I feel my best when I eat lots of them. Broccolini and broccoli rabe both score 100.
Was I surprised by the Gourmet announcement last week? A little bit, but then, not really. I have some cookbooks that I will never give away and my DH just gave me a copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking as an anniversary gift (and yes, I find that romantic). But these days, when I am looking for a new recipe, I do what we’re all doing. I go online. Bonsoir, Gourmet.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: broccoli rabe, broccolini, Gourmet magazine
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 10:36 AM
There’s nothing like a 3-day weekend. This Columbus Day was special because the whole family either had or took the day off. My plan for the Monday holiday was to drop the kids at my gym’s babysitting and take a great cardio class while my dear husband spent some time at home painting the bathroom that we’re remodeling. Well, that plan was dashed when we all slept until 9 am! I guess we all needed our beauty sleep. We also needed a lazy, quality-time family day since I’m now headed into an 11-day work week that includes a trip to the American Dietetic Association conference in Denver this coming weekend. So instead of exercise and home improvement, we spent some fun time in the kitchen trying a few new things.
The kids wanted pancakes so it was the perfect time to try out the Aunt Jemima Whole Wheat Blend Pancake mix that I picked up on a recent shopping trip. I figured that it must get a better NuVal score than the Original and I was right!
Aunt Jemima Whole Wheat Blend Pancake Mix 24
Aunt Jemima Original Pancake Mix 5
I also will confess right here that I used to give my daughter Aunt Jemima Frozen Mini Pancakes – until I found out that they scored a 6! I’m still getting over the guilt.
Here’s what the pancakes looked like. You can see that they are pretty wheaty!
Somehow the kids could sense that Mommy & Daddy really wanted to hang out, read the paper & drink coffee. The sight of Mommy & Daddy relaxing on the couch is foreign to my children. Mommy & Daddy must be busy, busy, busy. So, they next asked for fruit smoothies. No problem. I got out my old blender (a 12-year old wedding gift that my sister makes fun of) and put in the following ingredients:
some plain Greek yogurt (Score of 91)
some skim milk (Score of 91)
a banana (Score of 91)
some strawberries (Score of 100)
some frozen blueberries (Score of 100)
That was one healthy fruit smoothie. And somehow, everything is more exciting when you put a straw into it.
The kids loved the whole wheat pancakes so we made a whole bunch and put the extra in the freezer for quick heat-ups during this crazy stretch of work that I have ahead of me.
In the meantime, I’ll be preparing for my absence from home for four whole days. Thankfully, my mom will come to the rescue, my DH is SuperMan, and my BFF can’t wait to take by daughter to ballet (she has 2 boys!). The bad news is that I will be away for my daughter’s School Picture Day. Horrors! I mean my DH is amazing, but his talents end when it comes to doing my daughter’s hair. One of my friends suggested that I cancel my business trip. Oh well, there’s always Picture Retake Day!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Fruit Smoothies, Pancakes
Tags: Fruit Smoothies, Pancakes
Friday, October 9, 2009 at 11:44 AM
As I mentioned a couple of blog posts back, I got out to a Price Chopper store last week to help with an upcoming news story on NuVal. It was great to walk the store and see over 10,000 NuVal scores on their shelves. While I work for NuVal and get to see scores all the time, it really hits home when you can see them on the supermarket shelf and see how the products you like score.
And that is when I saw it. The product I have been tossing into my cart for over a year now in a quick attempt to avoid a mid-aisle meltdown: Scooby Doo Macaroni & Cheese. OK, I will confess. It is not just Scooby Doo who makes it into my cart. It’s SpongeBob Square Pants, Pokemon and Spider Man too. Back when the kids were smaller, before they had been sucked in by the power of Marketing to Children, we used to buy Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese. Once I started working for NuVal (but before we at NuVal had started scoring products in the Macaroni & Cheese category), I was pretty sure that Annie’s really wasn’t going to score much better. So I succumbed to the whine of “Mooooooommmmmm! Can we get Scooby Doo Macaroni and Cheese? Please!!!!!!!!” and bought it. It also does the trick on especially busy weeknights when I need there to be few fights at the dinner table.
So, (drum roll please), here you go, the scores my Mommy friends have been waiting for:
Kraft SpongeBob SquarePants Macaroni and Cheese: 4
Kraft Spiderman Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Kraft ScoobyDoo Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Kraft Easy Mac: 8
Now, Kraft does have 2 products that get a slightly better score.
Kraft White Cheddar Shell Macaroni and Cheese: 10
Kraft Whole Grain Elbow Macaroni and Cheese: 18
That’s great. But my kids want the ones with SpongeBob, Spiderman, and Scooby Doo!
And as for Annie’s, my instincts were right. The regular Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese does not score any better than Kraft. And the Annie’s Whole Wheat version scores only slightly better than Kraft.
Annie’s HomeGrown Cheddar Cheese Regular Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Annie’s HomeGrown White Cheddar Shell Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Annie’s HomeGrown Whole Wheat Shell Macaroni and Cheese: 21
Now, I know that some of my Super-Mommy friends will leave me comments with their recipes for homemade macaroni and cheese that has butternut squash in it and wheat germ too. That happened to me on CafeMom back when I wrote about Pepperidge Farm Goldfish vs. Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies. A mom wrote in and gave me her recipe for making her own “Fishies” from scratch. Yes, she shaped them into little fish. I am not making this up. Of course you could make your own Macaroni and Cheese and with the right ingredients, it would be healthier. Use a Whole Wheat Pasta, use a reduced fat cheese or a veggie slice alternative. Check out some NuVal Cheese scores and let your imagination run wild. But that is not the point! The point is that you are busy and your daughter has gymnastics and your son has cub scouts and you need to finish that thing for work and oh yeah, you need to get dinner on the table and get your kids to eat it quick so that everyone can back out the door for aforementioned activities.
You know what, you’re better off making a grilled cheese with a good 100% whole wheat bread!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Macaroni and Cheese
Tags: Macaroni and Cheese
Monday, October 5, 2009 at 08:58 AM
This weekend I heard that the Chobani website has some great recipes that use one of my favorite ingredients: Greek yogurt. Now, let me just say up front, that NuVal is not partnering in any way with Chobani nor am I being compensated by Chobani for blogging about them. I just really like the stuff. When I saw that there was a recipe that included two of my favorite ingredients (Greek yogurt and avocados), I had to try out this recipe: Holy Guacamole!
I bought my ingredients on Saturday during my regular shopping trip which was sans kids thanks to cancelled soccer. Woo hoo! I carefully chose my avocados. My sister Julie, a Mexican food aficionado, once explained to me that you should try to make a dent in the avocado with your thumb. If the dent stays, you’re good. The avocados I chose passed the test, but I also put them in a paper bag over night so that they would ripen just a bit more.
Sunday proved to be busy with church, my DH working on remodeling our downstairs bathroom, and me getting ready for FNCE, the American Dietetic Association conference coming up in a couple of weeks. However, since this great recipe took only 15 minutes, I whipped it up around just as the New England Patriots were winning their game and called The Neighbors Most Likely to Drop Everything and Come Over for a Cocktail at a Moment’s Notice. Since it suddenly felt like summer again, we paired it up with frozen margaritas for the Moms and cold Guinness for the Dads.
Other than the cocktails, our little Happy Hour got a great NuVal Score. The recipe consists mostly of Avocados (Score of 89) and non-fat plain Chobani yogurt (score of 94). While I could have gone for Garden of Eatin No Salt Blue Corn Tortilla Chips, the highest ranking Salty Snack with a score of 52, I like salt. Instead, we had Price Chopper Tortilla Chip Blue Corn Flax (score of 46), which I had picked up during my trip to Price Chopper last week.
The verdict? We all loved Holy Guacamole. It is a little creamier than your usual guacamole, but it went down quick with our blue chips. We also thought that it would make a great spread on a tortilla with grilled chicken or in a wrap for a sandwich. So, I’m off to buy 2 more avocados to make some more. You will find me in the produce aisle poking my thumbs in the veggies!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Chobani
Tags: avocados, Chobani, Holy Guacamole
