The Powerful Pom

When I was growing up my best friend Melissa's mom used to give us a pomegranate each day during the winter season. The other parents said she was a bit of a hippie but I had no idea what that meant at the time. All I knew is that these funny little fruits were so much fun to eat and when we were done we would be covered with bright red juice that we used to create fabulous finger paintings...mostly on our clothes.

It seems as though her hippie-sense was right in deciding to feed us pomegranates. The pomegranate is one of the most powerful superfoods with a good amount of vitamin C and polyphenols. Polyphenols help with cellular health (i.e. prevent your cells, including the ones on your face, from aging).

Although it took us hours to crack open that pom (which may have been the real reason that she fed it to us) it really is quite easy if you use the right technique. There is a great illustration here.

As luck would have it pomegranates are also in season so you should find them stacked at any local health food store or farmer's market. If you are feeling super adventurous, try some of these recipes.

Oh, and November is National Pomegranate Month! Who knew?

Brining Turkey

Thanksgiving gets such a bad rap when it comes to eating, however the core components of Turkey Day are actually quite good for you. Where we get into a bind is when we douse our food with creamy heavy sauces.

Luckily there are some easy tricks to bring out the flavor of your food so you don't need to cover it up. One of these tricks is brining your turkey. Brining helps enhance the flavor of poultry and lock in the moisture so you aren't stuck with a dry bird. Because nobody likes a dry bird - especially pilgrims.

Here is the secret Coleman brine recipe brought to America from the old country (possibly via the internet).

Ingredients:

• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 oranges, quartered
• 2 lemons, quartered
• 6 sprigs thyme
• 4 sprigs rosemary
• 1 (10-12) lb turkey

Directions:
Dissolve the salt and sugar into 2 gallons of cold water in a nonreactive container (such as a clean bucket, large stockpot, or a clean heavy-duty food grade plastic storage bag). Add the oranges, lemons, thyme, and rosemary. Note: if you have a larger turkey use 1/2 cup salt and 1/2 cup sugar for each additional gallon.

Remove the unspeakables from the inside of the turkey (ugh, that's the worst part). Rinse the turkey inside and out under cold running water.

Soak the turkey in the brine, covered and refrigerated for at least 4 hours and up to 24.

Cook as usual, or until the little thing pops out...another trick from the old country!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Fat Land

I recently received a book from a good friend called Fat Land - How American's Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser (should I be offended?). It is basically an editorial of the sequence of events that have lead to our nations rapidly expanding waistline. I wanted to share an portion of the book that I found particularly interesting.

In this section Crister is talking about the evolution of fad diets. For the most part they were rather predictable with calories in having to be less than calories out. That is until the Atkins Diet Revolution, followed by the Zone, then Protein Power, etc. etc. These string of fad diets had a particular impact on the American diet mentality. Crister explains below:

"The point, of course, is not that the publishing industry...was publishing pure schlock (although most of it was). There had been legitimate scientific debate about such things... The point is what the new diets did not say. For completely missing from the new genre was one increasingly strange and distant concept: self-control.

The very notion of self-control was anathema to the new generation of diet books. A diet - even a weight loss diet - was no longer about limits to one's gratification. Instead, the subtext was one of scientific entitlement. After all, if one had worked so hard to get so far in one's career, well, how could self-control really be an issue? To even suggest such was to make fat a moral issue - and how appropriate was that? No, it was all a matter of using nutritional science to "trick" the body into doing what it should be doing anyway."

As a nutritionist, I know that being overweight isn't as simple as Critser makes it sound. Most of the time it is lifestyle and sometimes it is medical, however, it always involves change. Change is work, it involves self control, and is not always convenient. If it was, we wouldn't be in this situation. What I can promise you is that the feeling that you get from eating clean, exercising, and feeling good in your own skin is far far better than any short term junk food gratification.