Feast: Summer Grilled Cheese
Some days the best days are driving around for hours in the backseat of your best friend’s car looking for a beach. Some times the best food is a grilled cheese wrapped in paper with three pickles on the side on a paper plate. To build such a day yourself, grab your friends and head to the snack bar at Stage Fort Park in Gloucester, MA. I can’t promise your friends will be as good as mine, but the grilled cheese is always pretty solid.
Frame: Happy Birthday Mike!
Happy birthday to my brother! My partner in crime, always willing to order pizza (even if I give up after one slice), watch bad cartoons, or sing the same song over and over until our parents flip out. Also, an excellent badminton/soccer/watergun fight/pool noodle race partner.
Frame: Happy Birthday Dad!
Happy Birthday today to my Dad! The guy who taught me how to drive, how to tell whether or not an avocado is ripe, and how to appreciate the simple pleasure of coffee and papers. Thanks for everything dad!
Feast: Cinquecento (500) and the BBB
Some (most) days, all I want out of life is a big bowl of bolognese (BBB). I want the noodles to be silky on the outside and chewy on the inside. I want the sauce to taste creamy, even though it is not made of cream. I want the flavors to be blended to a point where I know there are different kinds of meat, but I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. I want parmesan cheese to have been involved from the beginning, layered throughout the dish and then showered on top. I want to sop up the sauce with bread, and have it taste like butter. I want to want the whole bowl, and then want more.
Cinquecento, newest member of the Aquitaine Group, has mastered the BBB. I’d go back for bowl after bowl, not to mention the lux vitello tonnato, the lemony kale salad, and the delicate vitello milanese, all of which I also tried, all of which were excellent but eclipsed by the BBB.
Frame: Birthday Season, Happy Birthday Mom!
My mom’s birthday today kicks off birthday season – it seems most of the people I know were born between May 8th – July 6th. Happy Birthday to an amazing woman who taught me, among other things, how to cook, how to find the best Italian cookie in the North End, and how to spend 5 hours straight in frigid New England ocean water (aka how to have a beach day).
Happy Birthday Mom!
Food: Carmela Soprano’s Lasagna
If you’ve ever seen The Sopranos you know that, much like a 1940’s film makes some crave a cigarette, watching mobster Tony Soprano inhale baked ziti defies you to go another second without pasta. I was struck in particular by a character’s description of how Tony’s wife, Carmela, makes her lasagna -with a layer of basil leaves underneath the cheese. Below is my lasagna (taught to me by my mother), but with a Carmela Soprano twist. You will probably be uneasy about the ridiculous amount of fresh basil you use, but don’t worry, it’s not overpowering at all.
Carmela Soprano’s Lasagna
makes enough for 6 really hungry people, 8 less hungry people.
32 oz whole milk ricotta
2 tsp garlic powder (or 2 cloves garlic, finely minced, or equivalent amount of garlic product)
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup parmesan, grated
1 lb ground beef
32 oz tomato sauce (make your own or use a great jarred sauce, like Rao’s)
2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 lb lasagna noodles, cooked al dente (7-8 minutes) and drained
1 very large bunch basil, leaves removed from stems (about 60 leaves)
Brown the beef and add sauce. In a bowl, mix garlic powder, salt, eggs, and lemon into ricotta until blended. Begin to layer your ingredients into your lasagna pan:
Start with a thin layer of sauce just to coat the bottom of the pan so the noodles don’t stick (a tip from my mom).
Add a layer of noodles, then a layer of ricotta, then a layer of sauce and meat, then a sprinkle of parm. Next add a layer of basil leaves, top with mozzarella, then another layer of noodles to start again. You’ll probably get 3-4 layers in your pan, but remember you need an extra layer of noodles to top the whole thing, and at least enough sauce left over to coat those noodle so they don’t dry out. Finish with more basil and mozzarella, cover with tin foil. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes.
Feast: NoMad, or Yelp Doesn’t Know Shit
As it is one of my favorite Boston restaurants, I follow The Gallows on Facebook, and I was psyched to see them post the above picture a few days ago. The comment card text, “Yelp doesn’t know shit” hits it – especially because the online review site almost steered us away from NoMad in NYC. Forutnately, we didn’t listen to the crowd-sourced smarmy-ness, and NoMad turned out to be one of the best meals I’ve ever had.
Here’s a few of the first Yelp comments you’ll get when you look up NoMad:
“Overpriced and underwhelming.”
“Roast Chicken – We saw every table ordering this. Presentation wise, it looked phenomenal. However, was it heavenly? No, it wasn’t. Some parts of the chicken was over cooked. The dark meat is delivered on the side with some sauce. It should be the other way around. Also overpriced.”
“The food was so salty, especially the butternut squash. And one of the staffers had awful body odor.”
Accusation #1: NoMad’s Roast Chicken is overpriced.
Fact: NoMad serves a Roast Chicken for Two, for $79.
$79/2 = $39.50. Under forty dollars for an entrée in New York? Empirically not overpriced.
Accusation #2: “However was it heavenly? No, it wasn’t. The dark meat is delivered on the side with some sauce. It should be the other way around.”
Fact: The roast chicken has foie gras, black truffle, and brioche stuffed under its skin. It is presented to your table whole, then left to rest, then carved. It is served with the white meat on a main plate, and the dark meat in a smaller black skillet, covered in a frothy hollandaise. It is perfect. And yes, it is heavenly.
So no, please don’t drench the chicken breast in gravy. Please, allow me to devour it as God intended, with its crispy stuffed skin intact and untouched. Please, accent the gamey dark meat with creamy, mildly acidic hollandaise that makes me want to order two more chickens to go. Please.
Accusation #3: “One of the staffers had awful body odor.”
You might want to check your own armpits, friend. The staff was nattily dressed and smelled lovely… a bit like the best chicken I’ve ever had. Moreover, everyone at NoMad was helpful and welcoming.
I hereby vow never to let Yelp decide my dinner location again.
photo by Dave Copeland
Gluten Free – Results and Pizza
i searched “pizza” on the internet and found this. this picture is not mine.
Here it is folks, the results of my 6 weeks on a gluten free diet!
Pounds lost: 13.5lb
I lost a significant amount of weight the first two weeks, but this quickly tapered off to 1 lb a week for the last few weeks. Remember, the contributing factors to this weight loss were exercise 3-4 times a week and counting calories with Lose It. I may have lost the same amount if I hadn’t been working out or paying close attention to quantity, but I’m suspicious. Remember, Wheat Belly claims you can lose 14 lbs in 14 days – it took me six weeks to lose less than that, and with a lot of hard work. I will note that the first week on the diet- when I lost a whopping 6 lbs – I was not counting calories, nor was it my best workout week. So I do believe that the initial detox phase of going gluten free jump started my metabolism, which is great.
Blood Test Results:
Every year I get the same battery of tests done – my employer offers them for free. This year I planned my gluten free experiment to end on the day of the tests, to see if doing this for 6 weeks would make a measurable difference in my blood pressure, blood sugar (triglycerides), and cholesterol. My blood pressure was marginally better, but my cholesterol was marginally worse. However, my triglycerides were phenomenal, well below the “optimal” range set by the American Heart Association. Interestingly, when you have high triglycerides (I didn’t, but I still did better on this test this year), they suggest you cut out starchy foods and sugar – which is basically what the Wheat Belly diet does. Conclusion: not a huge change after six weeks, but can clearly see the positive effect on blood sugar.
Other Results:
Cravings: My only indiscretions on this diet were some sweets on Valentine’s day, and one really good roll at dinner one night. And while I may have incessantly talked about pizza and inhaled the smells of every passing bakery with gusto, I was able to stay away from gluten-y foods. Maybe it’s because I knew there was an end date to this diet, maybe it was because I was seeing tangible results, but whatever the cause, this was one of the easier diets I have tried.
Inflammation: The Wheat Belly books claims that eliminating gluten will reduce inflammation in your body. I’ve heard this said other ways – that carbs make one look puffy, that if you want to slim down quick you should cut out sugar. I think this is true. I look and feel far less puffy, and after my workouts I feel far less sore. After my experience I would definitely suggest anyone with a chronic soreness problem give this a shot.
Overall:
A lot of people have asked me “but do you FEEL better on this diet?” It’s hard to answer that one in a vacuum. Yes, I do feel better – but why? Is it because I lost weight? Is it because I am exercising more? Is it because I just feel more energetic eating a more plant-based diet? I think it’s probably all three. The Wheat Belly cookbook claims that just by cutting out gluten one can achieve these results, and maybe you can – I certainly think it was a big contributor to the last few weeks. But it wasn’t the only factor that made me feel better.
What now?
Well first, I’m having pizza for dinner tonight. But on the whole, I’m going to be eating differently. Less pasta, bread, and red meat, more fish, vegetables, and wine- I mean fruit. I’ve got my eye on the newly hailed Mediterranean Diet, and I’d also like to try the “Fast Diet,” a new idea that intersperses two days of fasting with 5 days of regular eating. Fasting here is defined as less than 800 calories a day – which, compared to the fasts I’ve done, is luxurious. Stay tuned!
Frame: One Month Gluten Free
I’ve been gluten free for one whole month, and while I’ve seen some great benefits, I’m really starting to crave my old favorite foods. This past week I slipped and had what I knew to be a particularly good dinner roll. I loved every bite of it, but I knew it was just going to make my cravings worse. Oddly enough, it’s not my beloved pasta that I’m missing the most – it’s pizza. All I want is an enormous, cheesy, doughy pizza, followed by a sugary, frosting slathered cupcake. I imagine that at this point that combination of carbs and sugar would actually stop my heart. I don’t care, it would be worth it.
I initially pledged to do this for at least one month. I’m going to keep it up for 9 more days, and I’m even having some blood tests done on March 6th (last day!) to see if this experiment has had any effect on my health, good or bad.
I’ve also been diligently tracking my calories on my Lose It! App, but this recent NPR article – Calorie Counts: Fatally Flawed, Or Our Best Defense Against Pudge – has me wondering just how accurate they are. Some of the main points against using calories as a weight loss tool:
- It’s much easier for the body to extract nutrients from cooked and processed foods than from whole or raw foods. People get more energy per ounce out of cooked hamburger than they would from a raw steak.
- Some foods, like almonds, deliver a lot fewer calories than they contain, probably because we don’t chew them enough to fracture all the cell walls and release fats.
- Calorie counts don’t account for the 5 to 30 percent of energy used up in digesting and absorbing a meal.
- Refined carbohydrates – foods with a high glycemic index — make people hungrier sooner than an equivalent calorie amount of whole grains, encouraging overeating.
The last point, about refined carbohydrates and whole grains (both of which are discouraged/forbidden on the Wheat Belly diet), is interesting, but I wish they were comparing carbohydrates to more calorie dense vegetables. One thing I’ve re-learned on this diet is that veggies are my friend. I can fill my belly to my heart’s content with cucumbers and carrots and actually feel full without gaining weight. Common sense stuff, but easy to forget when all you crave is a bowl of pasta.
Frame: 3 Weeks Gluten Free
It’s been three whole weeks since I’ve been gluten free, and aside from some indulgences on Valentine’s Day, I’ve stayed steadfast. No pasta, no bread, no cupcakes this whole time – a feat I would have thought impossible three weeks ago. So, how has it been?
I’ve lost 10 lbs, and that feels pretty great. I’d like to attribute this to equal parts working out, using my Lose It! App, and eliminating gluten. However, the truth is that I had been working out and watching food intake for a few months before this, and hadn’t lost anything. It wasn’t until I lost the gluten that I lost any weight.
The sad fact is that a bowl of pasta bolognese (of the size I want to eat) has something like four times as many calories than some roast chicken and potatoes – or even a steak – not to mention a ton of Evil Gluten. (I can’t say this knowledge makes me feel good, and I hope to filter it out of my brain over the next year or so.) Going gluten free might not have the same effects on someone who is less gluten-addicted than myself, but what I’ve learned is that if I want to trim down, breaking from bread is the answer.
Other perks:
I don’t feel as hungry as I thought I would. This is a side effect well-touted in Wheat Belly– that ridding yourself of the addictive gluten allows your appetite to normalize and curb your cravings. I think this might actually be true. The first few days are rough, but it gets better quickly.
I sleep better. A fact about me is that I am a really good sleeper, but lately I had been sleeping fitfully, waking up often, and not feeling very rested. This past week I’ve been dead to the world, even through the 2am-5am snow removal my town decided to perform outside my window. I rarely wake up in the middle of the night, and I feel annoyingly perky when I wake up.
My muscles are a lot less sore. I can’t tell if this is because I have adjusted to my workouts, or if what Wheat Belly says is true- eliminating gluten reduces painful and disease-causing inflammation in your body, making joints less sore. Either way, it’s worth a try if you have bad joints or muscle pain.
It did take three full weeks to feel all of these benefits of going gluten free, so if anyone is trying this and wants to give up after a week, I’d suggest sticking with it. Just remember- a LOT of different ice cream is gluten free.
Happy (non) Gluten Free Valentine’s Day!
I’m in the middle of Week 3 of Gluten Free, and I’m pretty excited to have an excuse to cheat today. Thanks Valentine’s Day, and thanks Dad for the Burdick’s chocolate mice!
Gluten Free Feast Under $5: Eggs and Avocado
This is a pretty satisfying meal, either for breakfast or dinner. The spices give the eggs more flavor, but use whatever combination you like. Note I do not use butter or milk in these eggs, but you can add either of those things in if you like.
Eggs and Avocado
(serves 2)
6 eggs
1 lemon (see below)
1 avocado, diced and spritzed with lemon
1 tomato, diced
2/3 cup monterey jack cheese (half for each bowl)
pinch cayenne
tsp garlic powder
tsp pepper
tsp salt
handful chopped parsley
optional add ons: sour cream, diced grilled chicken
Whisk eggs in a bowl, together with spices, salt, and parsley. Scramble eggs in a non-stick pan – if you use a non-stick pan you really don’t even need butter or oil. Your pan might be harder to clean but you save on fat content. Divide cooked eggs among the two bowls, then divide cheese, avocado, and tomato and top eggs with each. Finish with sour cream or grilled chicken, if desired.
Food: Gluten Free Lifeway Frozen Kefir
My evening with Arctic Zero may have been a bust, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying Gluten Free frozen desserts. I found a much better alternative in Lifeway Frozen Kefir, available in many different flavors (Mango, Strawberry, Chocolate, Pumpkin, Pomegranate, Original, and Dulce de Leche). Kefir is a type of grain that ferments milk, and appears on your grocery shelf as a thick, milk-like drink or yogurt. It is loaded with good for you probiotics, and the frozen, ice cream substitute version has significantly less carbohydrates than regular ice cream (serving size: 1/2 cup)
Calories Fat Carbohydrates
Frozen Kefir 90 1g 18g
Average Ice Cream 260 18g 28g
A more fair comparison would probably be made between Frozen Kefir and Frozen Yogurt, but I don’t really like Frozen Yogurt, so I’m comparing with ice cream. Kefir is tangy, so fruity flavors are better, but the texture and consistency is great- just like ice cream. I could definitely be satisfied with this, though the Strawberry flavor was eye-squinchingly tart – mix it with the Mango or the Original.
Another thing to note is that a lot of regular ice cream is actually gluten free. Ben and Jerry’s even provides a list online. As long as you’ve been good the rest of the day, and you don’t eat an entire pint of ice cream, you can certainly indulge in a bit of the regular, fully delicious stuff.
Food: Gluten Free Snacks
To strictly follow the Wheat Belly diet, one is supposed to limit carbohydrates. But the truth is, you (or, at least, I) need that starchy feeling – one can not live on grilled chicken and lettuce alone. So I’ve been in search of some lower carb, gluten free options. Here are three – all are gluten free, all natural with no preservatives:
SERVING SIZE FAT CALORIES CARBS
Angie’s White Cheddar Popcorn 2 cups 10g 150 15g
Snikkidy Eat Your Vegetables Chips 13 chips 7g 130 17g
Enjoy Life Plentil’s (Lentil Chips) 31 chips 6g 130 17g
My hands down favorite of the three is Angie’s Popcorn. It doesn’t taste like a substitute food because it isn’t one. However, the tenets of Wheat Belly suggest that you shouldn’t be eating anything made with corn because of its effect on your blood sugar. This gets relegated to the “once and awhile” pile, but it is absolutely delicious. Slightly higher fat and calories than the other options, but good serving size, lower carbs, and totally worth it.
The Snikkidy Eat Your Vegetables Veggie Chips are not something to be eaten by themselves. This isn’t to say that they taste bad, but they aren’t all that exciting- this is a good gluten free substitute for potato chips or tortilla chips if you need something to use for salsa or guacamole. These are a good vehicle, but for the nutritional content and serving size, there may be a better alternative out there- I’ll keep looking.
The Plentils (Lentil Chips) were good! I tried the “Margherita Pizza” Flavor (Gluten Free snacks don’t always come in a “plain” flavor) and they can be enjoyed on their own, with a satisfying crunch. The flavoring is mild enough that these could also be used to dip into salsa etc. A good chip substitute or everyday snack, and the serving size is generous.
Week 1 Gluten Free Results and Lose It App
Yesterday marked 1 week of being Gluten Free, and the scale says I’ve lost 6 lbs. I would say this is motivation enough to go for another week. This diet has not been quite as hard as I thought, though it is still very present in my mind that this is temporary – the thought of pasta brings a tear to my eye and I may have spent a substantial part of my Monday daydreaming about cupcakes.
Aside from avoiding gluten, I’ve become mildly obsessed with recording my food intake on my new “Lose It!” App on my iPhone. The basic app is free, and it tracks your food intake and exercise per day and per week, showing you a pie chart of your total diet divided into carbs, fats, and protein. This is particularly helpful when you’re trying to watch carbs, as it does all the work for you, especially on things like fresh veggies that don’t come with a nutrition label.
The app took a few days to get used to, but now I love it. You can look up many restaurant foods – say “Starbucks Tall Skinny Vanilla Latte” and it will upload the exact nutritional information. Otherwise, you will probably have to build your meal – 8oz chicken, 2 cups spinach, 1/2 cup chick peas, etc. – but this teaches you how many calories each component is worth. I’ll admit, I really thought I had a handle on the “cost” of everything I was eating, but I’d gotten fairly out of touch.
Some foods aren’t exact, and the calorie ranges for some exercises aren’t perfect either- but if the label on the pudding you just ate said 60 calories in 1 cup, and the app says pudding should be 120 per cup, you can adjust the serving size down to reflect the accurate amount of calories. Likewise, if the “calories burned” listed for “Walking” don’t match your heart rate monitor, you can just increase/decrease the time. The app might not be perfect, but you can get it pretty close. I also find that the planning aspect of this app is great – if I know I’m going to have a big dinner, I can input the components in the morning and see what calories I have left to play with for the day. Often this leads to more motivation to go to the gym, so I can eat a little more and not go over my calorie count. Maybe this is backwards logic? Oh well.
I’ll admit that this kind of calorie counting is wildly out of character for me. I don’t love that I’m so into it right now. But it’s getting me some much needed results, so I’m going to keep it up for a while. Search for “Lose It!” on your iPhone and try it yourself.
The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread 