Sweet Salad

UPDATE 1/13/10:  This salad is just as good without the figs!  I love the lemon-walnut oil dressing.  So simple, so good!  Give it a try!

Okay, I am off the crack.  I have been sugar free for over a week (minus whatever sugary sauce is on unagi and Japanese salad during my sushi cheat meal).  It has been hard.  I saw a great comparison of sugar to heroin--both come from a plant (sugar cane or beet/poppy), both are refined (molasses/opium), refined again (brown sugar/morphine), and a final time into pure, white crystals (white sugar/heroin).  They both have seriously addictive properties and alter your body--mentally and physically.  Seems extreme, but it isn't a bad comparison.  I have been cranky and craving sugar really badly.  So bad I even cried about it as my mind filled with "why me's" and tried to break me down.  But I have resisted.  I still have my fruit, but I am cutting back.  Today's fig salad was last week's indulgence and since I can't rule out its contribution to my tiredness and headaches by late afternoon (probably related to my sugar detox), I can't indulge on dried fruit as often.  It is candy, unfortunately.  Delicious, natural, healthy and even-better-than-sugar candy, but to my body it is candy nonetheless.

I definitely recommend this DELICIOUS salad.  It has helped curb my sugar appetite and has been a good segue food back into the lower glycemic living that is where I want to be.  Give it a try when you are craving a sweet salad with a lemony kick!

But first, let's talk ingredients: figs, walnuts, and lemons.  When I first laid my eyes upon figs, they scared me.  Outwardly they reminded me of pears, but butterfly when cut into gummy-looking flowers.  Exactly how do you eat them?  On my quest to boldly expand my culinary horizons, I bought dried figs. They looked safe.  Lovingly prepared by a motherly Turkish woman on the label and all tightly packed into a pretty disk-shape.  Safe.  At first nibble, I was sold.  When dried, they have such a sweetness, just like sugar, but with taste!  Reminded me of the fig newtons my grandfather always broke out when we came to visit as children.  I remember being slightly miffed that he didn't keep chocolate chips and oreos on hand for his grandchildren (what was he thinking?), but the "grown-up" fig newton cookies were pretty damn good.  I loved to eat the filling out of the cookie or eat the cookie without touching the filling.  Oh the games...  At least I was enjoying my food.  Too bad they were nowhere near healthy, "grown-up" or not...

Figs are my sugary treat when I am forgoing sugar (even honey and agave, they count as sugar too).  Figs are relatively high on the glycemic index (61) and glycemic load scales (16) (see my upcoming post for more details about those--I know, I know, I keep saying that, but I swear it is coming!  It is hard to whittle down such a huge topic to present it here).  Numbers over 50 for the glycemic index and over 10 for the load are considered high.  But that is to be expected when you dry a fruit to its sugary state.  The paleo diet doesn't recommend dried fruits for their candy-like nature, but when weaning off the sugar, to me at least, they are an acceptable crutch, in moderation (which I really have to remember!).  Figs are high in potassium, antioxidants, and fiber.  They have been studied in correlation with reduced bone density loss, and high fiber fruits such as figs have been correlated with reduced risk of breast cancer.  For more details on the health benefits of figs, check out this site.   When choosing dried varieties, try to avoid those containing sulfites, a chemical preservative to which some people are highly sensitive, especially those with asthma.  Go organic to make sure there aren't any sulfites used.  Some people also have an adverse reaction to oxalates found in some foods, including figs.  Oxalates are natural molecules in some fruits, nuts, and seeds that can form crystals with calcium and potentially harm the kidney and gallbladder.  The conditions requiring restriction of oxalate-containing foods are rare, as is overconsumption of oxalates.  Interestingly, oxalates usually move through the gut and are metabolized by your gut flora without incident.  However, when there are absorption issues from a damaged digestive tract, undigested oxalate can move out of the digestive tract and into the bloodstream, thus creating some problems when it crystalizes and gets lodged in tight places.  What is one cause of digestive tract damage leading to a "leaky gut"?  I will give you one guess.  More on oxalate issues here and at the low oxalate diet website.

Back to our ingredients.  Where were we?  Ah, yes, walnuts.  Walnuts pair superbly with figs.  They are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which account for their anti-inflammatory benefits, cardiovascular protection, and cognitive boost.  Walnuts contain antioxidants that inhibit cancer growth and promote immune function.  For more on the health benefits of walnuts, check out this site.  The Paleo Diet book by Loren Cordain advices us to eat walnuts because they are rich in monounsaturated fats which lower cholesterol, risk of heart disease, and risk of cancer.  They are also rich in polyunsaturated fats that also lower cholesterol.  Cordain recommends walnut oil second only to flaxseed oil* (and mustard seed oil, which is a hard to find oil in the US).  He promotes a balance of omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids, trying to achieve a ratio of between 2-3 to 1.  Omega 6 is unhealthy in excess and accounts for too high a portion of our dietary omegas, coming from highly-concentrated sources like cereal grains, grain-fed meat, and vegetable oils.  Even on the paleo diet it is always a push-pull to keep omega 6 fatty acids low.  They are in nuts, seeds, avocadoes, and even lean, grassfed meat.  However, omega 3 is very beneficial as discussed above with its recovery boost and protective benefits.  So we are always trying to counterbalance the omega 6 in our diet by consuming more omega 3 in the form of fish oil, fatty fish, and nuts.  In general nuts have too high a ratio of omega 6 to omega 3, but walnuts are a good choice with a closer to ideal ratio of 4.2.  Read more about fatty acids and nuts on the paleo diet website.  Bottom line: walnuts are one of the best nuts to eat!

Finally, lemons.  Lemons are interesting when looking into acid-base balance, an important component of the paleo diet.  While they (and other citrus fruits) seem acidic, the body treats them as a base.  Why is this important?  Ideally, we want to balance the acids and bases in our diet because if we don't, the body has to compensate and pull what it needs from the body to balance it out.  Osteoporosis is a leaching of calcium, a base, from the bones.  Many of our foods are acids and only fruit and veggies are bases.   To quote Loren Cordain, paleo diet founder:

Bone health is substantially dependent on dietary acid/base balance.  All foods upon digestion ultimately must report to the kidney as either acid or base.  When the diet yields a net acid load (such as low-carb fad diets that restrict consumption of fruits and vegetables), the acid must be buffered by the alkaline stores of base in the body.  Calcium salts in the bones represent the largest store of alkaline base in the body and are depleted and eliminated in the urine when the diet produces a net acid load.  The highest acid-producing foods are hard cheeses, cereal grains, salted foods, meats, and legumes, whereas the only alkaline, base-producing foods are fruits and vegetables.  Because the average American diet is overloaded with grains, cheeses, salted processed foods, and fatty meats at the expense of fruits and vegetables, it produces a net acid load and promotes bone demineralization.  By replacing hard cheeses, cereal grains, and processed foods with plenty of green vegetables and fruits, the body comes back into acid/base balance which brings us also back into calcium balance.  The goal is to avoid a net acid load on your kidneys.

and

In addition to promoting bone demineralization, a net acid-producing diet also contributes to the following maladies and illnesses: calcium kidney stones, age-related muscle wasting, hypertension, stroke, asthma and exercise-induced asthma.

To read more from this article and check out the ratings of different foods, look here.  The bottom line: we are trying to load up on fruits and veggies to counterbalance the acidic load of meat and salt in our paleo diet.  When life gives you lemons, make salad dressing!

* Flaxseed oil intake is a topic under much debate.  Check out Mark's Daily Apple for some introductory information on the issues.  I will try to put together a post on the findings in the future!

Fig Salad with Lemon-Walnut Dressing
Crunchy greens and a sweet and tart dressing make this an elegant salad!


Prep time: less than 15 minutes

Ingredients:
1 lemon
walnut oil
dried figs to taste (I buy the light skinned dried fig rounds from Turkey--they are superior to the mission figs I have tried, to me anyway)
greens of your choice  (I am partial to peppery baby arugula, which takes this salad to a whole 'nother level)

Method:
This is crazy simple: just plop your greens in a bowl (the more the better).  Tear up the dried figs into small pieces (say 4-8 per dried fig) and add to the bowl.  In another bowl or sealable container to store leftover dressing for another use, squeeze the lemon juice and add at least 1T of walnut oil.  Mix or swirl to incorporate.  Taste it and add more walnut oil as desired to balance the lemon's acidity.  Once you are happy, drizzle your dressing over your greens, as much as you feel necessary for equal coating and taste.  Toss to mix.  Finally, devour your tasty, sweet salad!

Serving Suggestions:
Since I always have meat when I have carbs (something I took from the Zone), I usually add meat to my salad, such as rotisserie chicken.  DELICIOUS!

Figs

Apple Crumble Crisp

Can't you just smell the baked apples and cinnamon and taste that delicious, crunchy crumble?


UPDATE 1/28/10: Check out Mark's Daily Apple for his Definitive Guide to Dairy.  I briefly mention dairy at the end of this post, but I agree with Mark on individual preference through trial and error and only consume raw 100% grass-fed dairy if you do go down the dairy path.  


Sugar-slave to Sugar-free

I have been on a sugar-free kick for the past month since my self-intervention.  I had grown lax and with my baking trial and error I was eating more sweetened baked goods than I should.  It came to the point of "needing" chocolate every single night and rushing through dinner sometimes just to get to dessert.  I would buy a new bar at the store nearly every trip just in case I ever ran out.  When the day came that I bought two and started to eat them faster--more than just a couple rows a night, I began to notice a problem.  I also realized that I was on a sugar high that left my heart playing "la kookaracha."  I was having trouble sleeping and felt entirely too obsessed with sugar.  Too much of anything is never a good thing.  


So out with the chocolate.  I threw away the remainder of my snacking chocolate and started a new quest.  Trying to steer clear of even "natural" artificial sweeteners like honey and agave, I am experimenting with sweet fruits and veggies instead.  The results have been surprising and have changed my perception of sweetness from one that needs superfluous amounts of sugar to be deemed sweet, to one that can appreciate the inherent sweetness even in romaine leaves, which I now eat as a snack!  I think we would all be better off reclaiming our perceptions of the subtle natural sweetness of fruit and vegetables instead of relying upon sugar-concentrated sweeteners, even those as seemingly benign as honey and agave.  


What does this mean for my recipes?  I am using the sweetest natural products I can devise to substitute for sweeteners, and the results have surprised all of my taste testers (my husband and fellow CrossFitters).  But taste-test yourself and if you feel the pre-cooked product is not sweet enough, feel free to add a sweetener of your choice.  


Method to My Madness


Apple Crisp is a mountain of adversity to the paleo cook.  Traditionally, it consists of apples, butter, sugar, and flour.  When three of the four main ingredients need paleo substituting, this is a challenge.  For me, I first tackled the apples.  Instead of tart Granny Smiths, let's use a sweet variety to cut out some additional sweetener.  Makes sense.  Then, we need a fat substitute for butter to give it richness (why no butter? see the NOTE below the recipe).  I tried coconut oil, but the outcome was very coconut-y.  Instead, why not use a delicious nut oil, say walnut oil?  Sugar can be found in fruit, and since apples are our main ingredient, let's use apple juice, which is hellasweet on its own (I can't even drink undiluted juices anymore, they are just too sweet!).  Lastly, we have flour.  I tried almond flour, but the graininess of the crumble didn't do it for me.  Coconut flour is textured more like regular flour, so it is a great substitute, but it could use a little more texture, so I used pecan flour (made from roasting pecans and food processing them into flour--see recipe).  Pecans are a naturally sweet nut, so they can dual-task as a sweetener.  Finally, we need a crunchiness that brown sugar clusters usually deliver in the traditional recipes.  What are crunchy and hold up to baking?  Nuts!  Walnuts seemed a great choice to compliment the walnut oil (pecans tend to get a little soft anyway).  


So here is my take on apple crisp, finally, and my recommendations for tweaks to fit your taste!  Don't be afraid to experiment and explore cooking and baking.  Yes, baking is a science, but paleo baking is a virtually undiscovered country just waiting for us to explore!  And, usually, even our failures are damn tasty.  Take this recipe: it took me six scrumptious versions and left me with a delicious breakfast accompaniment to eggs and sausage for many mornings, as well as unfortunately two peeler injuries and a burn.  My husband jokes that I should wear a helmet when I am in the kitchen :)

Apple Crumble Crisp

This is quintessential autumn for me and the best result of apple picking!
Cooking Time: 1/2 hour or less to prepare, 45min baking time
Zone Blockage: let's just say this is a carb and fat dessert dish and leave it at that!  It probably isn't outrageous, though, just look at the ingredients!

1/2 c apple juice (make sure it is 100% juice!)
2 c roasted, chopped walnuts
1/2 c coconut flour
1 c pecan flour (roast raw pecans just like walnuts spread out on a baking sheet while you preheat the oven (watch carefully!  check often for golden browning!), then cool and food process into flour, but be careful not to over-process or you get pecan nut butter!)

1/4 t salt

4 t Ceylon cinnamon (use 2 teaspoons on the cut apples and 2 in the crumble)

about 1/2 nutmeg nut, grated fresh with a microplane

1 T vanilla
1/4 c walnut oil

Sweet apples, like Jonagold or Fuji, peeled, cored, and sliced about 1/4 in thick then cut in half, enough to fill a 9.5 x 13.5 pyrex baking dish most of the way up the sides 

Preheat the oven to 350.  Roast your nuts if you don't already have them from other cooking escapades.  Prepare the apples by peeling, coring, and slicing them.  Toss them into your baking dish and sprinkle on 2t of cinnamon.  Toss the apples slices in cinnamon to coat evenly.  At this point, you need to prepare your nuts by chopping the roasted walnuts (if you haven't already) and food processing your roasted pecans into nut flour (if you haven't already).  


Next, start on the crumble.  Add the 2t cinnamon, nutmeg, pecan flour, walnuts, and salt to a large bowl.  Mix well.  Then, add the wet ingredients: apple juice, vanilla, and walnut oil.  Mix well.  Now, we are going to get fancy and sift on the coconut flour.  If you don't have  sifter, try your best to sprinkle it on without allowing coconut flour balls to form.  Coconut flour is really resilient to mixing evenly--which you probably found out if you made my banana walnut muffins!  Mix well as you sift/sprinkle on the coconut flour to incorporate it evenly--despite its intentions.  At this point, you should have a crumbly, sticky "batter."  


Grab your baking dish filled with cinnamon apples and plop crumble batter over the top, getting even coverage.  Cover in tin foil and whack it in the oven until you see liquid at the bottom bubbling and the apples are a bit soft when pierced with a fork--about 30 minutes, but check at 20-25 minutes to be careful.  One of my batches was mush at 40min in, so check carefully and remember they are going to cook uncovered for a bit, so you don't want really soft apples yet.   Once bubbling, uncover and place back in the oven to allow the crumble to brown (read: NOT burn).  I looked for hardening and a more golden brown since it was all brown to begin with from the cinnamon and nuts.  It should take 10-15 minutes.  Check for browning and fork-tender apples.  


Once done, eat it while hot or reheat (microwave for 30 seconds to a minute depending upon glutinous quantity) to enjoy that warm, apple-y goodness!  And go ahead, indulge and brag to all your friends that this apple crisp is sans butter, sugar, and flour and sweetened only with apples and their juice!


NOTE: Why no butter?  Why no dairy?  Butter is a dairy product, which is a concentrated source of what cows eat plus all the other nourishment meant to help their babies grow.  Since most cows are eating grains like corn, dairy products from these cows are just concentrated grains and antibiotics, which are necessary to keep these cows alive since they are fed toxic grains (and we already know why we avoid grain).  If you can actually find 100% grass fed (NOT grain finished!), raw (the problems with pasteurization is a whole 'nother post) dairy products, then by all means enjoy them if you can tolerate them digestively and as long as you want to get big and strong like a cow.  Cow milk is meant for calves and goat milk is meant for kids, but NOT yours--theirs! (Baby goats are called kids).  Dairy products have growth hormones because they are baby food meant to nourish and help those babies grow big and strong.  Unless you want to grow big and strong and desire those concentrated grains to muck up your digestive system, you might want to avoid factory-farmed dairy products in your day to day meals.  Best bet?  Try going without dairy for at least a couple of weeks and then reintroduce it slowly.  Are you suddenly lactose intolerant?  Can you take some forms and not others?  Give it a try!  Your body is the best evidence for your nutritional journey.  

Five Dollar Muffins

UPDATE 9/30/09: Tried a batch today using hazelnut oil and 1T vanilla instead of 1tsp and made 12 regular sized instead of 6 huge ones, taking between 15-20min to bake.  They are delicious!  So I am changing the recipe below to account for this new tweak.  Enjoy!

When I think of these muffins, I think of the $5 hamburger commercials.  Something has to be a big deal to be worth $5, and these muffins are worth that or more.  Depending upon how you like them, they can be oooey-gooey on the inside and actually improve with refrigeration.  Good luck saving them for long!

The Ultimate Banana Walnut Muffins
Makes 6 huge muffins or 12 regular sized
Cooking Time: 30-45 minutes start to finish
Zone Blocks: 6 blocks of Fat for each muffin when making a batch of 12, 1.5-2 blocks of Carb and 1/4 block of Protein--so basically call each of these a 6 block Fat.  


Dry Ingredients:
2 C almond flour/meal (NOTE: I use Trader Joe's Just Almond Meal brand since it is cheapest.  Other almond flours might turn out differently, so feel free to experiment!)
1/3 C coconut flour (sifted gives the best results since it clumps easily)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg (grated fresh)
1 C walnuts

Wet Ingredients:
2 bananas, the riper the better
1 T vanilla
3 eggs warmed to room temperature
1/3 C honey
3 T oil (olive oil is fine, coconut oil when liquid is excellent, and hazelnut oil or walnut oil hits it out of the park!)
2 T almond butter (unsalted, but if salted, just add 3/4 tsp salt instead of 1 tsp)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place walnuts in preheating oven on a sheet rack to roast.  Watch them carefully--too many times have I let them burn and ruined a whole batch!  Meanwhile, peel bananas and mash them to a liquid (can be chunky) in a medium-sized bowl.

To the bananas, add honey and almond butter and mix well.  Next, prepare the eggs.  I usually crack them in another bowl to avoid stray shells, then mix them there before adding to the other wet ingredients, for better mixing.  Add those eggs, the oil, and vanilla to the banana bowl; mix to incorporate.  (Check walnuts!)

In a separate bowl, add almond flour, coconut flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and baking soda.  Mix to incorporate.  (Check walnuts!) Prepare your muffin tin.  You'll notice that I have a non-stick muffin tin, but the non-stick quality only lasted a few batches before stickage ruined the bottom of enough muffins that I gave up on it.  I need to buy muffin cups! In the meantime, I use homemade (read: lazy) parchment paper "cups" that only stay put once batter is scooped in them.  Not ideal, but they work.  If using a naked muffin tin, grease it with the same oil you used in the batter (or try mixing and matching, what the heck!).

By now your walnuts are either burnt to a crisp or you rescued them once golden brown and fragrant (I always think of the host of Good Eats, Alton Brown, saying "I smell nuts!").  Chop them up into tiny bits, but not dust.  I have found that knives pale in comparison to crunching them with a metal spatula or even a bench scraper.  The bottom of a bowl or cup will also do.  Measure out a cup or so of roasted, chopped walnuts.

If your oven is preheated, you are good to go: add the wet to the dry and scrape the bowl.  Mix well and add walnuts.  Don't worry about mixing so much that you make rocks of your muffins since we don't have to deal with temperamental gluten here, but I still stop when just incorporated evenly, just in case.  Dollop into muffin cups (see pre-muffins pic above) and bake for about 20 minutes if making 6 huge muffins or between 10-15 if smaller.  Check for golden brown color and mostly set tops.  I love oooey-gooey ones, so I never bother with the toothpick test or completely set tops.  Cool on a rack.  Store in an airtight container in the fridge once cooled.  They won't last long due to extreme deliciousness, not spoilage!