Friday, January 15, 2010 at 07:07 AM
So many people tuned in to read about Two of My Favorite Things last week! So, I decided to make it a regular feature on A Better Bag of Groceries. I have so many favorite things to share: workout stuff, cooking and kitchen stuff, kid stuff, you name it. So for today, here’s 2 more from the fitness category – one that’s brand new and one that I’ve had for a long time.
It’s interesting that I own both of these pieces of workout apparatus – they come from two very different worlds. Even though with two kids, a job and a household to run, I have limited time to exercise, I love to mix it up. Every week I aim to get in cardio, muscle work, stretching and balance work. That means a menu of spinning, running, Pilates, weight-lifting, yoga and most recently, Kettlebell.
My New Kettlebell
My husband just picked this 15-pound Kettlebell at Ocean State Job Lot for me this weekend. I started taking a Kettlebell class this fall when it was introduced at my gym. Kettlebell is a great full-body workout. I really feel it in my trapezius, glutes, adductors, and rectus abdominus after class. I’ve been wearing my new Polar Heart Rate Monitor during class to see what the cardio effect is and it’s pretty good! Many of the moves, especially the Kettlebell Swing, really get my heart rate going. At my gym, the “training” Kettlebells weigh 9 pounds and the next step up is 18 pounds. Since I’m prone to neck and lower back injuries, I’ve been carefully working my way up to the 18 pounds. My husband’s gift of an interim 15-pound Kettlebell was just what I needed.
The foundation of Kettlebell training is the Kettlebell Swing. This picture, which I found on kettlebelltraining.blogspot.com is a great example of what the swing looks like.
My Kettlebell instructor, Gail, is an incredibly well-rounded group exercise leader. Her yoga class is as amazing as her Kettlebell class. So, she has really added a lot of core-based moves in addition to the more traditional, powerful Kettlebell exercises.
My Old Pilates Ring
I have owned this GaiamPilates Ring, which I purchased at Target for $30 for 4 1/2 years now. Six weeks after my daughter was born, I started taking Pilates and it really helped me to get my abs back in shape following my 2nd C-section. Luckily for me, my sister, Julie, was studying to become equipment-certified in Pilates since she was planning to open up her own studio. As part of her certification, she needed to fulfill lots of hours of practice teaching and I was her student! I loved it so much, that I got certified to teach mat classes and have been teaching it ever since. I like to incorporate equipment into my mat classes, including balls, bands, and of course, Pilates rings. The gym-supplied rings where I teach have a little too much give for me, so I bought my own. It’s also great to have it at home for when I practice there.
My friend, Elaina, was kind enough to snap this photo of me demonstrating an Open Leg Rocker with Pilates Ring after we finished up our running interval workout today.
As I said, I like to mix it up!
So, if I were trapped on a desert island, would I bring my Kettlebell or my Pilates ring? Oh, what a tough question. I love that you can get cardio benefits with the Kettlebell, but with my temperamental neck and back, I wonder if my Pilates ring would be better for the long haul.
Question of the Day
If you were stranded on a desert island, what fitness-related item would you bring?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Two Favorite Things
Tags: Kettlebell, Pilates Ring
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 07:45 AM
One of the best parts about my job at NuVal is that I get to work with some amazing dietitians. As someone who likes to cook, eat, and plan healthy meals, I am so lucky to have dietitians as colleagues. They are a wealth of knowledge.
Annette Maggi, MS, RD, LD, FADA, is our Senior Director of Nutrition. She lives in Minneapolis, MN with her husband and their 11-year-old son.
I asked all of my fellow NuValians to share their Trade-Up stories with A Better Bag of Groceries readers. Annette answered the call and told me about a salad that her husband makes and that her son likes. I love husbands cooking and kids happily eating so I was all ears on this one!
Annette’s husband recently discovered this recipe for Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad with Maple Dressing on Rachel Ray’s Top 30 30-minute Meals. Since Annette’s husband is married to, well, Annette and since Annette is, well, a dietitian, of course they made some changes to the recipe to make a little more nutritious.
Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad with Maple Dressing
1 sack baby spinach
1/3 lb. blue cheese, crumbled (Annette’s family cuts this down to 1/4 lb.)
6 ounces walnut halves, toasted
1/4 cup maple syrup, warmed (Annette’s family uses a “no sugar added” syrup)
1 1/2 TBSP cider vinegar
1/4 cup EVOO (Annette’s family used Canola Oil instead of Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
Place spinach on a large platter. Top with blue cheese and walnuts. Pour vinegar into a small bowl. Whisk oil into vinegar in a low stream, then whisk in warmed maple syrup, slowly. Pour dressing over the salad and serve.
That looks yummy! I have to try this out and see if my 6-year-old and 4-year-old like it as much as Annette’s son does. And I have to get my husband to make it!
I checked out the NuVal scores on this recipe.
The baby spinach is an Incredible Vegetable with a score of 100. Athenos Blue Cheese Crumbles score a 20. Walnuts are another Rock Star, with a score of 82. The maple syrup, as you can imagine, does not do so well. Vermont Maid Maple Syrup scores a 1. Annette warmed me that even using a “no sugar added” syrup or a “lite” syrup doesn’t change the score all that much. I found that Vermond Maid Lite syrup with no artificial sweeteners gets an 11. NuVal is not scoring vinegars because they contain no calories nor nutrients, so no score on that.
And here’s the part that I expect to get some comments and/or emails on. Extra Virgin Olive Oil scores an 11. Canola Oil scores a 24. That’s a hard fact to digest, isn’t it? I asked Annette why that is and she explained, “The real differentiator in liquid oils in omega-3 fatty acid content. Canola oil has more than 9 grams omega-3 per 100 grams of oil, followed by soybean oil with 6.8 grams omega-3, corn oil with 1.6 grams and olive oil with less than 1 gram of omega-3 fatty acids.” I had no idea! I will have to look for more opportunities to trade up to Canola oil.
You can read more of Annette’s Expert Insights on the NuVal website. Additionally, Annette is starting her own NuVal blog soon, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, I’m off to buy me some Canola Oil!
Enjoy!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Spinach, blue cheese, oils
Tags: Incredible Vegetables, NuVal Staff
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 07:13 AM
Whenever I get the chance to head to a Price Chopper store (which, sadly, is not too often), I make amazing new finds! I always come home with bags full of new things.
My friend Joanna, who blogs over at Fitness and Spice, has the same experience at her local Hy-Vee in Nebraska. She often blogs about her shopping experiences, discovering interesting products with NuVal scores. Joanna even found this product!
I guess that’s one you only find in the Bible Belt!
Luckily, I was able to make two trips out to Price Chopper back in December. My son, the First Grader, had a half day so we had a “Go With Mommy to Work” afternoon and hit the Price Chopper store in Marlborough, MA. It was there that I found these amazing Pinto Beans on the shelf. Check out that NuVal score: 100!!! They were off the shelf and into my cart in a heartbeat. I do that a lot on my store visits. It’s so easy when I can see the scores! So, I stock up on high-scoring staples: canned tomatoes, pasta, pasta sauce, rice, snacks, cookies, crackers, etc.
I’ve used most of my high-scoring finds in my family recipes, but those Pinto Beans are still sitting on my shelf. What to do with them, what to do with them….
So far, my Google searches on Pinto Beans are leading me to sites like www.hillbillyhousewife.com. No, I’m not kidding. The Pinto Bean recipe on hillbilly housewife adds, and I quote, “2 to 4 ounces margarine or bacon or salt pork or 1/4 cup bacon grease.” Oh my!
I’m sure that you, my faithful readers, have some MUCH better ideas. Please bring them on so that I can dust off that can of Pinto Beans and make them into something yummy.
Anyone, Anyone, Bueller?
Cookie GiveAway Winner
Congratulations to Commenter #13, Sue! She is the winner of yesterday’s Cookie Giveaway. Delicious cookies are headed your way.
Now back to the Question of the Day
What would you do with those Pinto Beans?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Pinto Beans, Price Chopper
Tags: Pinto Beans, Price Chopper
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 07:00 AM
Welcome to Trade-Up Tuesday, a weekly feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries. Today I am giving away my favorite dessert: Cookies! Not just any ordinary cookies – but cookies that get the best NuVal scores I’ve been able to find so far. For the grown-ups, there’s Kashi TLC and for the kids, Chocolate Teddy Grahams.
I’m a cookie girl. I have a very hard time saying no to a cookie. I can say no to cake, to pie, to candy – but cookies are hard for me to resist. And dark chocolate – but that’s a blog post for another time!
Cookies, as you can imagine, score rather low on the NuVal scale (1-100, 100 is best). The median score for cookies (1/2 score above it, 1/2 score below it) is only a 3. Ouch!
The Uber-Scorer in the Cookie category is Kashi’s TLC (Tasty Little Cookie) Oatmeal Raisin Flax. It gets a 40. Wow! I buy them, but I do like the other Kashi cookie better: Kashi TLC Oatmeal Dark Chocolate, which gets a 24. Still great for a cookie and did I mention that I love dark chocolate?
As for my kids, I try to steer them towards Chocolate Teddy Grahams which get a NuVal score of 25. The Chocolate Chip Teddy Grahams only score a 12. Chips Ahoy only score a 6. And lest you think that you might do better with Reduced Fat Chips Ahoy, think again. They get the same score as regular Chips Ahoy – a 6!
Today’s GiveAway
I am giving away all 3 boxes of cookies so that you can try them out for yourself. All you need to do is head on over to the NuVal website to check out the scores. Find something that makes you go hmmmmmmm. And come back here to comment about it. One lucky commenter will win my Cookie Trade Up prize. The contest closes at 11:59 pm Eastern time tonight! Good luck!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cookies, Trade-Up Tuesday
Tags: Kashi TLC, Teddy Grahams
Monday, January 11, 2010 at 06:55 AM
So, here we are 11 days into the New Year and my scale is about 3 pounds higher than it should be. Blame those cookie swaps that I went to in December. Or a couple of missed workouts due to lack of sleep. Or a few too many events with cocktails on the menu. What caused my little weight gain is not important. Getting back on track is.
I have two recipe boxes: one with all my everyday recipes and my Weight Watchers recipe box. Inside my WW recipe box is my Goal Weight pin, notes from meetings I attended, and recipes (of both the official and unofficial Weight Watchers variety) with points attached. It’s at times like these that I dig into that recipe box. But finding a low-calorie recipe that will please me, my husband and my two young children is not easy. Especially in the dead of winter. While I am happy to subsist on “Zero-Point Soup” and tofu in the name of annihilating aforementioned three pounds, my husband and kids are not. They want meatloaf. No, not the Weight Watchers meatloaf recipe that I used to make B.C. (Before Children) with salsa and oatmeal in it (truly!) They want the meatloaf recipe that is on the back of the Lipton Onion Soup box. Yum, but not exactly diet food.
However, I have found one recipe that works for everyone: Grandma’s Casserole. It is a baked pasta casserole, complete with tons of vegetables, tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. It is based on a recipe that I jotted down on an index card probably about 12 years ago at a Weight Watchers meeting. I have since played around with ingredients and amounts to make it my own. It is hearty, a little spicy, warm and delicious. And it makes great leftovers. It’s one of those recipes that I heat up for lunch and everyone in the office wants to know what it is. It’s a recipe that I often make for my girlfriends when they bring a new baby home. They can’t believe that it’s healthy. And neither can my 4-year-old daughter when she asks for her third helping.
I took my recipe and put it into the recipe builder that I have access to as an online Weight Watchers member. It comes out to only 5 Weight Watchers points per serving.
Grandma’s Casserole Serves 8
1 Tbsp butter
1 cup onion, chopped
1 large red pepper, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
10 ounces ground turkey, 93% lean (just cut the standard 1.25 pound package in half & freeze the leftovers)
1 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 cups chopped mushrooms
14.5 ounce can whole tomatoes, drained & coarsley chopped
2 cups tomato sauce
2 cups water
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella
1 3/4 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
This recipe packs in a lot of incredible vegetables!
In a skillet, saute onion, red pepper and celery in butter.
Add ground turkey and brown, breaking it up with a spoon.
Add mushrooms, salt, pepper, oregano, garlic powder and mushrooms.
Coarsely chop the tomatoes.
Add tomatoes, tomato sauce and water to the pan. Simmer, covered for 20 minutes.
Spoon enough mixture to cover the bottom of a 9″ X 13″ pan. Layer with uncooked elbows.
Spoon remaining sauce on top. Sprinkle with cheese.
Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove and let stand for 45 minutes.
So, how does Grandma’s Casserole stack up on the NuVal scale? If you choose the top-scoring items for each ingredient in the recipe, it does very well.
OK, the butter does not score so well. Land o’ Lakes Sweet Cream butter scores a 2.
But the vegetables are great!
Onion: 93
Red Pepper: 96
Celery: 96
Mushrooms: 96
The score for whole canned tomatoes can really vary. I chose one of the highest scoring brands I’ve found to date: Price Chopper Whole Tomatoes with No Salt Added. They get an 82.
Tomato sauce is another product that can really vary. There are some very high-scoring varieties and some very low-scoring brands. One of the best I’ve come across is Pastene’s “The Chateau” Marinara Sauce, which gets a 66 on the NuVal scale. Fellow Bostonians might recognize this sauce from The Chateau Restaurants in the Greater Boston area. It’s a new find for me and it is delicious.
For the pasta, I chose one of my favorite high-scoring brands: Barilla Plus Elbows. They get an amazing 91! I love that the elbows go into this recipe uncooked. How cool is that? And it’s one less pan to wash. Woo hoo!
As for the mozzarella cheese, I debated between Sorrento’s Part-Skim mozzarella, which comes in a block and requires shredding. It gets a 22 on the NuVal scale. Or I could go for Sorrento’s Reduced Fat 4 Cheese Italian. You might think that would get a better score. It does. It gets a 23. I made this on a Sunday. I had time to shred. I went for the cheese with a 22.
Now, I admit, that anytime I make a Weight Watchers or Cooking Light recipe, I’m always tempted to throw in just a little more cheese. Don’t. You will end up with a crusty, chewy mess. Resist the extra cheese. Stick to the recipe. I’m just sayin’.
So, other than the cheese and the butter, both of which are under control, portion-wise, this is a very high-scoring, nutritious meal that your whole family will love. And it will help moms to get back on track after all those cookies and festive martinis. Mangia!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Dinner Recipes
Tags: Grandma's Casserole
