New Food Safety App

"Is My Food Safe" is a newer free app to help you with those nagging questions, such as:

• Is that leftover item from last weekend still good?
• How long can I keep that opened container of sour cream?
• How long does it take to roast this whole chicken?

There's even a quiz "Is my Kitchen Safe?"  I took the quiz and got one wrong! Even though I am the Queen of Food Safety (and no one wants to hear about that, by the way), I missed the question about the safe way to thaw food. I picked the answer "in the refrigerator", but the right answer was "in the refrigerator and in the microwave".

Ok, I know you can thaw stuff in the microwave. But I also know that microwaves cook and thaw unevenly, and I was thinking about a friend who thaws meat in her microwave in the morning, and there it sits until she's ready to cook dinner (Yikes!)

To read more about the app, check out the Home Food Safety web site.

What's For Dinner: Italian Salad

Today I'm featuring a simple fresh salad to go with your fall dinners (we served it with butternut squash and baked chicken legs). I call it Italian Salad because it is similar to the one I sold as a deli clerk at Kroger's (many moons ago). This is a great way to use up tomatoes that are getting a little wrinkly and cucumbers that can't wait two more days to be used. This is what I did:

Recipe: Italian Salad

• 1 cucumber, quartered and sliced (I used an English hothouse cucumber because I like to see cucumber skin and I don't like to wash the wax off; these are wrapped in thin plastic and not waxed)
• 8-10 small tomatoes, quartered, then halved again (I used Campari cocktail tomatoes; they are the size of a golf ball)
• 1/4 cup diced sweet onion
• 1/2 red bell pepper (another item that needed to be used)
• 1/4 cup Newman's Own Olive Oil and Vinegar dressing
• Salt and pepper to taste

In medium bowl, add cucumber, tomatoes, onion, red pepper and dressing. Mix well and refrigerate for at least an hour. This can be kept in the fridge for 2-3 days so you'll have fresh salad without fuss.

Makes 6-8 servings.

Nutrition information per serving:  86 calories, 1 gram protein, 6 grams fat, 7 grams carb, 2 grams fiber, 0 milligrams cholesterol, 60 milligrams sodium.

"Healthy" Oat Chocolate Chip Cookies

So how can a cookie be healthy? When whole wheat flour replaces some of the white, when it contains oats, and when it has half dark chocolate chips and half semi-sweet.  If you came to my house for a visit, these are the cookies I almost always have on hand.

This recipe is an adaptation of the oatmeal cookie recipe on the Quaker Oat box. It took a few tweaks to get it to the point where I am happy with the results.

Here's the reason why I thought I had better retype the recipe I actually use:

Can you read all those extra scribbles in the margins? Me neither. But I have the recipe memorized; I keep this old recipe cut from the box just in case I have a brain fart.

Anyway, here's what I really do:

Healthy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies       

• 1-1/4  cups (2-1/2 sticks) margarine or butter, softened (I use one stick butter and the rest margarine)
• 3/4  cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2  cup granulated sugar
• 1  egg
• 1  teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1  teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2  teaspoon salt
• 3  cups Quaker® Oats, uncooked (I use “quick oats”)
• 2 cups chocolate chips (half 60 percent Bittersweet Ghirardelli dark and half Nestle Toll House chips)        
• Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, beat margarine, butter and sugars until creamy. Add egg and vanilla; beat well. In separate bowl, combine flours, baking soda and salt; mix into sugar / margarine mixture. Add oats; mix well. Add chocolate chips, mix well.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls (I use a one-tablespoon scoop) onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake 10 minutes. Cool 1-2 minutes on the cookie sheet; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Store tightly covered and freeze.

Nutrition information per cookie: 128 calories, 1 gram protein, 7 grams fat, 15 grams carbohydrate, 1 gram fiber, 9 milligrams cholesterol, 88 milligrams sodium

Q & A: What's Wrong with White?

Q.  I was told by my doctor to “avoid everything white”, but I’m not sure what that means. Can  you help? M.S. Grandville, MI

A.  I have never been a fan of simplistic advice, which seems to have multiplied with all the access to health and food/cooking shows on the TV.  Advice like this usually confuses more people than it helps. 

At least once a week, but usually more often, someone asks how to eat now that they aren’t allowed to eat white food. The person who gave the “no white food” advice hasn’t really thought through how people take that message. Believe me, very literal people will look at every white food as suspect. And others will assume that a whole grain “brown” food is so good for you that it doesn’t matter how much you eat of it. 

But wait a minute! What about other white foods? There are a number of white foods that are very good for you. Don’t believe me? Look at the partial list below, from the September/October 2012 issue of Diabetes Self-Management magazine:

• White beans
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Mushrooms
• Onions
• Parsnips
• Rutabaga
• Turnips
• Water chestnuts
• Yogurt
• Cottage cheese
• Mozzarella cheese
• Flesh of bananas, apples and pears 

Please people, quit giving black-and-white advice about white food. There are usually exceptions and grey areas in most recommendations. 

Tidbits: Quick Acorn Squash

It's fall in Michigan and time for squash!

Acorn squash is a winter squash, meaning that it has a hard shell and can be stored for a month or more in a cool, dry place for later eating. Acorn squash has a medium yellow flesh, and contains some vitamin A (but if you're looking for lots of beta carotene/vitamin A, check out hubbard squash with over ten times the carotene, or butternut squash, with over 20 times the beta carotene. The darker orange the flesh, the more beta carotene it contains). Acorn squash also provides 110 calories per cup, 20 grams carb, 9 grams fiber, and 22 milligrams vitamin C.

Normally, it takes a little planning to have a fresh winter squash for dinner. The traditional way of preparing them is to wash the outside very well (they sit in the soil), carefully slice them in half, scoop out the seeds, and then season and bake for an hour or so at 350 degrees F.

If you don't have that much time, but want to have squash, here is a quick tip I learned from a farmer at the market last year.  Wash the acorn squash, poke it with a sharp knife in several places, then microwave on high for 15 minutes. Be sure to cook it on a glass pie plate or something similar so you can get this hot squash out of the microwave oven. Ask me how I know.

Now, slice the squash in half, scoop out the steaming seeds (save them for the squirrels). Season squash and eat. I microwaved the squash above, but finished baking it in the regular oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes because I like it to have a little brown color (and the chicken legs were lonely in the oven).

Tidbits: Getting the most Bang for your Vitamin D Buck

Vitamin D is known as the “sunshine vitamin”, because skin exposed to the sun can produce vitamin D for you.  If you live nearer to the equator, it is more likely that you have OK blood vitamin D levels, because the sun is at the right angle most of the year to produce vitamin D via skin exposure.

But in the U.S., if you live above the 42^nd parallel (roughly a line from Boston to Chicago to Portland, Oregon), the sun is at the correct angle only from mid-March thru mid-October. This means that for over half of the year, people above this line cannot produce their own vitamin D, even if you were outside in the sun all day. (More quick facts about Vitamin D here.)

It was not common to be tested for Vitamin D levels until fairly recently. And if you were found to have a low vitamin D blood level, your provider often recommended supplementation with vitamin D, such as 1000 to 2000 units of vitamin D daily, or if the levels were very low, a prescription for 50,000 units vitamin D weekly.

(By the way, it is not very wise to take extra vitamin D “just because”, as it can build up in the body to toxic levels. To be safe, it’s best to ask for a blood test to see if you even need extra vitamin D.)

Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation Bone Clinic noticed that some of their patients did not achieve optimal vitamin D levels despite taking large doses of vitamin D for months.  They noted that many patients took the supplement either on an empty stomach or with a light morning meal.

Because vitamin D is fat soluble, meaning that it is better absorbed into the body with a fat-containing meal, they asked the study participants to take the vitamin D with the biggest meal of the day, thinking it may help improve absorption.

Sure enough, after two to three months, average blood levels of vitamin D in the participants jumped 50 percent, from about 30.5 nanograms per milliliter, to 47.2 ng/ml.

So the lesson to be learned: If  you need to take vitamin D to correct a deficiency, you are likely to get the most benefit from vitamin D if you take it with your biggest meal of the day (and be sure the meal contains some fat).

What's For Dinner: Vegetable, Beef and Barley Soup

It's getting cooler in the midwest, so time to get out the soup pans. My Vegetable, Beef and Barley soup is tried and true, and easy to whip up in a flash if you keep the ingredients on hand.

Vegetable, beef and barley soup

3/4 cup quick barley

4 cups water

1/2  tablespoon beef base (or 2-3 beef bouillon cubes)

24 to 32 ounces low-sodium V-8 or tomato juice (or add 3-4 cups more water if  you are out of tomato juice)

1 pound lean ground beef (or ground turkey)

3/4 to 1 cup chopped onions

1-2 clove garlic, minced  (or 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder)

1 pound package frozen mixed vegetables (corn, peas, carrots)

14 ounces canned diced tomatoes           

1 tablespoon chili powder (2 tablespoons if using ground turkey)

1/2 cup chopped celery tops and leaves (optional, but a good addition)

In large soup pan (Dutch oven size) bring  4 cups water to boil and add barley. Simmer for 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile in large nonstick fry pan, brown ground beef, then drain well on paper towels. Sauté the chopped onions and garlic over medium heat in the ground beef pan, just until they start to turn translucent (don’t brown them).

Add the tomato juice, ground beef, sautéed onions and garlic, mixed vegetables, chili powder and celery tops to barley in Dutch oven.  Simmer for 30 minutes (or at this point, you can add the ingredients,  then put in the refrigerator for tomorrow – the frozen vegetables help cool the soup and the soup tastes better the second day, just like a lot of things).  When reheating, add more water as needed to get the consistency you like (barley keeps soaking up liquid and makes the soup thick).

Serves 6 hungry people. Serve with grainy rolls and salad. 

Nutrition information per serving: 338 calories, 24 grams protein, 8 grams fat, 41 grams carbohydrate, 10 grams fiber, 60 milligrams cholesterol, 527 milligrams sodium.

Cook’s notes:    I usually double this recipe, but use a large stock pot.

This soup can feed a crowd, and it’s also perfect to give half away to a friend, or to someone recovering from surgery, or half can be frozen for a later meal. Also, if desired, add a can of drained black beans or another bean to the soup for more protein.