Kitchen Reform tip 18/College cooking 101: Crack Protein

I haven't done anything to reform my kitchen all summer. After all, who needs it, just open the windows and let in the sunshine and fresh air -- grill a simple steak, serve up some local produce.

But now we're back in the swing, days end earlier, littles must be in bed sooner. And that means dinner on the table, before pronto. Here's a little trick: eggs. (Also great -- see below for effects on memory and learning -- for cash-strapped college students, who I hope are reading this blog!)

Eggs from the happy chickens at Hummingbird Hill are divine, but studies show even experts can't tell the difference in taste between free range and store bought eggs.

There's many ways to cook an egg. My favorite: over easy, yolks so runny they will sauce whatever else is on your plate (salmon hash, if you have a can of good wild salmon). But they are versatile for the whole family -- my 6-year-old will always eat a cheesy omelet, which does double duty by using up the leftover cheese ends too small to be useful for anything else in the cheese drawer.

Protein contains amino acids, the essential building blocks of the body. And get this: we lose protein every day when we shed skin, hair and nails. So re-upping our supply is crucial, especially if active. Animal proteins -- lean poultry, meat and fish, and low-fat dairy -- contain a complete array of amino acids, but those more inclined to a plant-based diet needn't worry. Plants too contain amino acids, though not the entire spectrum, making them suppliers of incomplete protein.

There's much to be said for protein, especially in highly bioavailable forms like protein powders and shakes, which go directly to the muscle rather than being digested and disseminated via the stomach. A recent study from Brescia University in Milan showed that protein powders containing three amino acids that we are unable to make on our own -- in particular leucine, which is the only amino acid capable of synthesizing protein in muscle -- can lengthen lifespan by up to 12% by activating the mitochondria in cells, which then slow the aging process. That's ten years for the average adult.

And egg yolks also contain choline, essential for regulating metabolic pathways and maintaining cell membranes that allow cells to get rid of toxins, as well as development of cells in the hippocampus crucial for mental acuity and development. Pregnant women, in particular, can benefit from increased choline as it can aid in developing these brain functions in the fetus and, according to research published in the journal Brain Research, can have aftereffects on brain development leaving an afterglow that helps resist age-related memory decline.

So go ahead, eat your eggs.

Easy Anytime Crepes

 1 cup milk

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 extra large eggs

4 tablespoons butter

Melt 2 Tablespoons of butter and cool. Put milk, flour, eggs, sugar and pinch of salt in blender and whiz together. Add butter and blend.

In an 8-inch nonstick skillet, melt 1 teaspoon butter. Pour a thin layer of batter into skillet and swirl to coat the bottom. Cook over medium heat until little air bubbles appear then turn over and cook 30 seconds more. 

Remove crepe from skillet and hold on a warm plate with a dish towel to cover, or in the oven. Serve filled with anything -- we like brown sugar, or thick preserves.

Enjoy!

Tip Two: Drink Up

Kitchen Reform: help your kitchen get healthy.

 It's a good sign in a New Year's resolution kind of blog when the second week hooks in drinking, I always say. So here goes. Drink up.

Water, I mean -- you knew there was a catch, didn't you?

So here goes, the top 5 reasons for increased H2O consumption:
        *Regulates body temperature
        *Lubricates joints
        *Helps dissolve and carry nutrients to the body
        *Lessens the burden on kidney and liver by flushing toxins
        *Helps prevent constipation

This might sound a little boring, but makes sense: the body is 60% water, and we excrete it constantly through breathing, perspiration and urination. We need to continually replenish to lubricate our muscles and joints as well as flush the system. If you work out or are pregnant or breastfeeding, your body is using even more. (Breast milk is 88% water. You have to get to give, I guess).

In just a few days of increased water, nutritionista Holli Thompson notes, you can lose a pound or two and your skin will look gorgeous. Why? "Your body holds onto water if it needs it, like a camel," she says. Once properly hydrated, the body will release the water it's holding onto, along with toxins that can dull our skin and cramp our style. Some even grant water wrinkle-reducing powers.

But how much is enough? That 8 glasses a day rule is generally correct, according to Thompson. Sounds like a lot, but consider, for starters, that the average adult produces 6.3 cups of urine a day. Plus, "a lot of food is loaded with salt, and caffeine and alcohol dehydrate us even further," says Thompson. Seems the typical American diet is setting us up for dehydration. (Rabbits, by contrast,  hardly need to drink extra water at all, as the greens they nibble all day are 85% water.) As a rule of thumb, one should be drinking enough so that urine runs nearly clear, though that is just for you to know, ok?

How in heck does one begin to drink that much? I charted my own progress, and let's just remember I am kind of a newbie at this. Extremely bad. I drink tea in the morning, which is good, but don't generally drink again until water with lunch, which is apparently not optimal. "Try to hydrate prior to eating, but 1 to 2 hours during and after eating, let the digestive enzymes work," advises Thompson.

Luckily, augmenting water with essences and herbs doesn't detract from its magic; dairy and caffeine, it seems, do. These chilly days, I like a squeeze of lemon, or mint, in warm water. Others can only chug cold H2O. The water drinking forum online has all kinds of tips for getting it down (Jello, anyone? Please. the sugar in that alone makes it not worth the work): and Thompson has a great tip sheet on her website as well.

What helps me is just to keep it handy. In fact, I used to be much better at drinking water when I kept bottles in our garage fridge and grabbed them each car trip. (I stopped doing that because the bottles themselves contain toxins, and the extreme fluctuation in temperatures while water is shipping can cause those carcinogens to leech into the water, creating far worse problems than dehydration. And of course, because I read about the big patches of plastic that are spiraling about in our oceans, breaking down and infiltrating our marine life, and eventually, probably our own selves.) If you haven't seen it, check out Plastiki, David de Rothschild's boat made entirely of plastic, which he built and sailed from San Francisco to Sydney to draw attention to plastic pollution.

So we stopped buying water bottles and got an under sink filter for our drinking water, as we are on a well. Much municipal water, however, is held to tighter standards than bottled water, so either way, get yours tested before leaping for the filter, which must be maintained monthly.

Here's the deal: just keep it handy. You'll drink it unconsciously. Get a water instead of a cocktail every once in a while, and I bet that goes down the hatch too. Get a great water bottle, fill it from your own trusty water source at home, and take it in the car. (Try for a wide mouth, though; Thompson says many women are getting smoker's cracks along the top of the mouth from pursing their lips all day drinking from the tiny openings in water bottles. Which you'll have to drink even more water to get rid of.)

Cup love: porcelain, so it's nice to hold, and
a lid for going.

Cheers!

Tip One: Get out your Frying Pan

This is the first in the Kitchen Reform series, meant to help make your kitchen heatlhy. 

I hate coming back from vacation, even if I haven't gone anywhere. And coming back after the winter holiday seems especially cruel. After weeks where every dinner is a celebration, days of sleeping in, sledding and long walks and fires, here I am with my steaming tea mug and bone cold fingers.

At least I have a mission. Which today, week one of kitchen reform, is only intellectually onerous. What I want to do this week is think about cooking, the preparing of food, "from scratch," as it is sometimes called.  The term "scratch" initially meant the line scratched into the dirt as the start of a boxing or cricket match, but has evolved to mean start with nothing, with no advantage. But as Carl Sagan said, "if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you first have to invent the universe."

So if you think about it, the hard part has already been done. Advantage, us.

Cooking itself has been done since man made fire, and some say cooking made man. It is responsible for social structure and community bonds, commerce, the centerpiece of celebration from family birthdays to the beginning of dynasties and empires. If we are what we eat, then cooking has made us.

But many bemoan the death of cooking. The influx of cheap fast food, prepared food, convenience food, take-away, even the previously chopped vegetables in supermarkets has slashed the need for "scratch" cooking. It's not a new concern: back in 1882 food writer Baron von Romohr charged that "not inheriting a traditional cookery based upon the sensible preparation of local products and so resorting to soul destroying books, the respectable, virtuous wife no longer knows how to prepare meals." And it's not solely an American concern, either, just last year French chef Alain Ducasse said French mothers are no longer passing their skill with a frying pan to their daughters, relegating cooking to a weekend hobby. And just last week, my brother-in-law, who has worked in the food service industry his entire career, told me he didn't have time to make breakfast.

He's not alone: as a country, we spend less than half the time in the kitchen our grandmothers did. But many equate cooking's fall with the rise of a host of individual  and social ills. The easier it is to get food, the more we eat, Harvard's Dr. David Cutler has shown. Fast food portions are 2-5 times as big as they were in the 1970s, and our propensity to snack has increased 50%, with another 19% expected over the next five years. Not surprisingly, we are twice as fat: Nearly 30 percent of Americans are obese and twice that overweight.

The reality is, fast food might take less time, but it also might give you less time -- on the planet. Health economist Randall Strum discovered that in terms of chronic conditions, being obese is akin to aging from 30 to 50. Which solves the problem of what to do with the money you might save buying cheap fast food: We're spending it curing our hearts and our diabetes, not to mention replacing our hips and knees.  The obese spend at least $10,000 extra in health care over their lives, our country billions a year.

This is not to say that all fast food innovations are necessarily bad. But it is important to know what their true cost is -- unintended consequences, if you will.

Preparing your own food gives you back control. If you don't want to be tricked into eating too much industrially engineered crap, just say no. And say it now. Cooking will allow you to choose your ingredients, and their proportions. It saves you money, and, in the long run, gives you time -- with your family, and with you. Not with fat slug on the couch you, but with healthy, energy-filled you, with great skin and clear eyes (can't promise green, though).

Just chew on this a while. Then get out your frying pan. It's the weapon of choice in the newest Disney flick, "Tangled," and it is yours, too.

 

Egg, over easy
This is a simple meal for any time, and a good a place as any to begin. Start to finish, circa five minutes. The egg is the perfect package, protein and fat and even cysteine, suspected to relieve hangover symptoms. Throw in some toast, or an apple, or even drape it over leftover spinach casserole or potato gratin, and you have a meal, pronto. Use organic, free-range eggs if you can, and if not, please cook the yolk.


1 egg
sea salt
olive oil, coconut oil or butter


Turn burner onto high under small skillet and melt about a half a teaspoon of the oil or butter, enought to swirl to coat the pan. Add a pinch of salt, to sizzle. Break an egg into pan and turn heat down to medium. 


When egg white is set on the bottom (about 2-3 minutes depending on the heat; pictured below), insert a spatula under the entire thing and flip. Off the heat and let sit 1 minute for runny. Or continue cooking until your desired doneness.

Bon Sante!