How I Made Brussels Sprouts Lovable...

How I Made Brussels Sprouts Lovable
                                       – Without Requiring a Vulcan Mind-Meld

Copyright 2017, Victoria C. Leo

             

              Yeah. Brussels sprouts.  I wanted to pick the most difficult palatability challenge just like I chose the toughest demographic when I began working on weight loss challenges in my business nineteen years ago [women 35+ with full-time careers or businesses, kids, cats, parents, poodles, a 21^st century household with 12 different kinds of insurance to fill out forms for, and cars, appliances and electronics that break, need cleaning or explode at the least opportune moments; you know, people like YOU!]. 

I’m going to prove you to you that it’s just as easy to turn this tough tiger into a sweet pussy-cat as it is to – well, pet a pussy-cat.  All the vegetables that you “can’t stand”?  Bring ‘em on!!

What’s the matter with…

1)   Brussels sprouts

2)   Green beans

3)   Peas

4)   Spinach

5)   Kale

6)   Swiss and red chard

7)   Collards

The problems, if you think about it, fall into one of two categories: either the greens are bitter, have an “aftertaste,” are tough to chew, etc.  or they are just boring.  Beans, peas and spinach fall into this latter category.

How to Make the Boring Exciting

One of the best things to do with peas (and everything else on the list) is to toss frozen peas into soup or stew.  101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less has a whole section on soup and stew.  Start with a low-sodium soup and hype it with more fresh or frozen veg, or start with vegetable or seafood stock and do the same.

But here’s what so many people forget: you can radically change the Yum rating of food by adding spices.  That’s why Europeans and Middle Easterners wanted so desperately to find new, faster, cheaper routes to Indonesia, aka The Spice Islands, and India.  And if you’ve ever eaten traditional English cooking, you’ll wish they’d tried harder, sigh.  In 101 Healthy Meals, I explain the sweet prices and sharp spices in more detail.  The short version is: pepper, garlic and stuff like that all taste good together; all the sweet spices taste great together.  Don’t fuss over exactly which one to use.  Just throw a moderate (sharp spices) or generous (sweet spices) amount in the soup/stew.  Set the burner to medium, set a timer to 15 minutes and go back to writing your memoirs or paying the bills.  Come back and stir it at intervals until you taste it and it tastes good.   It will!

Peas, spinach, that boring white tofu or anything else that you don’t want to eat because it’s blah – give it the spice treatment.

Another option is taking boring veggies and putting them into a burrito or omelet. 

·Turn a pan on medium heat, spray it liberally with olive oil, and saute (lightly cook) your spinach, onions or other greens.  For the noxious ones like kale, chop them small, removing the stems.  Put a lot of greens in the pan, because greens are mostly water and the volume will shrivel to 20% of what you started with.

·When the shriveling is well along and things are making sizzling noises, turn things over with a spatula, so the warming is equal on both sides.

·Add eggs or egg substitute and when the egg mixture has set, add Daiya or similar brand of non-dairy cheese.  The “cheese” is made of tapioca or something equally innocuous and non-fat, with lots of nice digestible protein.  Keep turning it over so it doesn’t burn.  Add sweet prices!

·Shovel parts of it into tortillas, and make wraps or burritos, or just plunk it on a plate and eat it. 

The cooking removes the bitterness from the bitter greens.

Another option, instead of an egg dish, is to add a small amount of pasta sauce and the non-dairy cheese.  This gives you a “pasta-type” flavor, especially if you add some (not a ton) of parmesan or romano blend cheese on top. 

Bitter Greens

You can dump them in soup or make egg and other saute-veggies in pasta sauce dishes.

The key to taming the taste is to chop them up as small as you can, and give them a good amount of saute time.

For kale and collards:  spray with olive oil, put them in a broiler and get the broiling started.  Then pull them out, throw on some sharp or sweet spices, and finish the broiling.  You get a really good “crunch” with this, although it might not come out perfectly the first time. 

Baking is another great way to tame the bitter taste. 

·You can make a “meatloaf” with veggie-substitute for ground round, plus chopped up kale and collards, and the filler. 

·You can bake fish on a bed of quinoa, brown rice or couscous, with a ton of kale and collards and chard.  [All of these are in 101 Healthy Meals so I assume you know the basic procedure.]

·You can bake any form of protein, including beans, with pasta sauce and get your Lasagna fix with these no-longer-bitter greens.

So now you can see so many different ways to make really yummy meals and side dishes from all kinds of leafy greens and peas.

But what about Brussels sprouts.  I DO understand why it’s not everyone’s fave veg.  It takes more time to cook, yes, it does.  But does it really deserve the horror that my husband treated it to when we first started cooking together?  Nah.

The key to making the Brussels sprouts yummy is to find a way to apply a lot of heat.  Baking works.  You can put it into a baked ensemble and in 30-40 minutes, it is bubbling in its pasta sauce or light patina of olive oil and it’s as docile as a – well, not a baby if you have any experience with them; a more willful and obdurate age doesn’t reoccur until teenagehood – how about docile as you wish your children, spouse and manager were?

You can steam it easily with a microwave.  Put some water in a microwave-safe bowl and set it for 6 minutes.  Add some of that lovely cheese sub and nuke it for another 1.5 - 2 minutes.  Yum. 

You can always steam it in an actual steamer if you have one.   You can also boil sprouts, and then add a 1 minute nuke with cheese sub or Parmesan.  Finally, you can get them half-cooked in the microwave, and then broil them.  Spray them with olive oil, perhaps spices or Parmesan.

ALL of these options are really yummy!

And the Vulcan mind-meld.  If you have spent the past half-century engrossed exclusively in literary fiction or living in your underground bunker, and don’t know what that phrase means, a generous translation would be “without extensive mental manipulation.”  In other words, you don’t have to have your normal thinking reset to love the unlovable veggies; you just have to know how to cook them and your beliefs will be a natural result of your Yum response!

Enjoy!

Want a copy of the basic cookbook this references?  Go to Amazon print or e-books, or your local bookseller.

Victoria C Leo    253-203-6676    victoria@soaringdragon.biz
www.soaringdragon.biz

Facebook group: Healing Minds, Healing Bodies

Blog:  soaringdragoninjapan.blogspot.com

FREE: Extended deadline: Kick Dieting to the Curb: Get and Stay at your Healthy Weight Forever!

Extending my FREE beta class!

Losing weight and staying healthy has never been harder - and you know this.  Junk food is everywhere, employers want us to overwork and never exercise, have hobbies or any fun, and we have kids, cats and parents - not to mention cell phones - that need attending to.

But the reason we don't have what we want is only because we aren't going about it in a comprehensive way.  We CAN make time for the healthy habits that we need to have a joyful and vibrant life, with peace of mind and clothes that fit the healthy size we want to be.  Willpower won't do it, but having a touchstone will.  Buying a bike and not riding it won't, but a movement plan that fits your life as it really exists.  Sleeping for 8 hours and reclaiming your birthright of clear thinking and energy can be yours.  The deep psychic surgery that excises the voices that are keeping you stuck is hard work but you have courage, and you WILL succeed - because you have the best guide in the world, right here, working to make it happen.  It will!

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I need Beta testers for my new online class.  You get everything in the actual class - all the videos, links to inexpensive books of tools, all the support that will MAKE IT HAPPEN!

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The "fine print" is that if I let you have a $100 class for FREE, you have to make a commitment to FINISH it - no "I'm too busy" stuff.  If you aren't willing to clear your calendar for 2 hours/week to make massive changes in your "problems list" - if you don't really want to let go of the pain and disappointment that you are currently living with, then let me be blunt: don't waste my time.  I will be giving 100% to you and I need a commitment back from you.  Come back when your level of pain has reached the unbearable point and you are ready to commit.  Even though it will be $97 or more by then, if you are willing to commit, then it will work for you.  If you aren't ready to let go of what isn't working, then you aren't ready.  All is well.  You'll know when it's time, because the pain will propel you to the comprehensive solution of never having to diet again. 

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Preventing Dementia and Cognitive Decline, Part 1 More Sleep

The key to getting more sleep is to carefully train your brain to the 8 hours that you need.  If you are currently getting 5 or 6 – or less – then you need to plan your evening so that you are asleep 15 minutes earlier than usual. 

Think of your evening as your prep for a big presentation before a live audience.  You hone your speech.  You prepare notes on cards or pages.  You check the lighting and the sound.  You breathe deeply to reduce nervousness.  You hit the loo 10 minutes before show time.  Well, it’s the same thing with sleeping.  You need to prepare. 

1)      Make sure that you get at least 20 minutes of exercise/movement every day.  It helps “tune” your body to better health on all levels of metabolism and circadian rhythm, as it improves your brain, and especially memory, function.

2)      Make sure that you aren’t eating a heavy dinner less than 3 hours before bedtime.  When I worked in a corporate job, and stayed late at my desk, I had dinner in the office fridge, then came home and had a 100 calorie snack before bed.  That snack stabilized my blood sugar for sleep.  I still do the 100 calorie snack.

3)       Stop thinking about business, politics, doing Facebook, or anything else serious or potentially upsetting (no email!) for at least an hour before bed.

4)      Two hours before sleep time, use Dump the Garbage or a similar tool from Take Back Your Lost Heart or 101 Stress Busters.

5)      Sometime in the evening, HAVE FUN, something that engrosses you and genuinely brings joy – which passively watching TV doesn’t, usually.  101 Stress Busters has lots of ideas. 

6)      If you feel resistance to sleep time rather than joy, take a deep breath or five, and see if you can hear the “I don’t want to go to bed and you can’t make me!” voice.  The more it sounds like a 3-year old, the closer you are to Reality.  This is the part of you that will keep you awake until it gets some fun – and no amount of substitutes (alcohol, sweets, TV, you name it) will really satisfy.

7)      Develop an unvarying Go To Bed routine.  Unvarying is important.  You want your brain to get programmed to wind down as you go through the routine.  I cover this in the Kick Weight Loss to the Curb class and will cover it in my newsletter.

8)      If you have a spouse or partner who snores, insists on watching TV in bed (a VERY bad idea, because it associates the bed with TV, not sleeping, to his/her brain) or in any other way disrupts your sleep, sleep somewhere else.  If they want to sleep with you, then they have to SLEEP in the bedroom and do other things elsewhere.  For the last 3 years, hubby has had to get up at 3:30AM and of course, goes to bed much earlier than I.  So we have slept apart on commute days and together on non-commute days.  If your partner doesn’t love you enough to put your needs ahead of their desires, then you do what you need to do to take care of your health and safeguard your mental acuity. 

9)      If you find your sleep disrupted by trips to the bathroom, stop drinking in the evening.  I can’t drink anything after 4PM myself.  I gathered data for 6 months before I came to the latest I could absorb fluids before I had night-waking troubles.  For most people it’s 3 hours, not 6, so see what it is for your body.

Our bodies change and shift over time, usually gradually – elders have more trouble staying asleep because brains get poorer at releasing enough melatonin, and the over-55 set gets less exercise, for example.  If it’s relatively sudden, first check any changes in medications; have you started or stopped anything?  Then think: are you eating differently or taking/stopping a new supplement?  

Check with your doc or pharmacist (the latter are easier to get time with), to see if there is a known sleep disruption associated with the chemicals involved.  Supplements are less safe than prescribed drugs in the sense that there is no quality or purity control imposed by a government agency focused on our safety, but assuming the pills really are what the label says, the pharmacist can tell you what is known about effects of the supplement.  

And then there are hormones of menopause and perimenopause (starting anytime after age 43, on average), which are known to wreck sleep for a while.  Absent any of these known reasons, sudden sleep changes warrant a medical visit.

Kick Dieting to the Curb: Get and Stay at Your Healthy Weight – Forever!

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Are You Sick of the Valentine Hoopla? A view that might surprise you.....

You Choose: What Does Valentine’s Day MEAN – Mindless Commercial Holiday or Deeply Meaningful Reminder Day?

What do you really believe about Valentine’s Day, right now? 

Some of my clients don’t celebrate.  There is a continuum from those who brush it off as a concocted, artificial, commercial sham, an excuse for everyone in a relationship to be guilted into gifts and expensive dinners, to the other extreme of a mellow “Let those who want to buy chocolate, do so.  It’s not harming anyone.”  Are you somewhere on that continuum?  

Others celebrate, and again there is a continuum of what is being celebrated.  At one end of the rainbow are the “We need a romance holiday, to help us remember that romance is what started us on the road to bills, diapers and trash pickup day.” And at the other end of the Let’s Celebrate are the people who are celebrating love, not romance.

I’m in the Celebrate Love camp.  In modern US culture, romance is what we mean we say “love,” but the word has a much broader definition.  That opening of the heart that is love encompasses how we cherish our favorite family, the brothers and sisters of the heart that our deep friendships become, the animals who enrich our souls and extend our healthy lifespan.  Our heart-opening is what makes us human.  Our caring for each other, those we know deeply and those of our community and nation whom we don’t know but who are beset with illness or troubles, is what ennobles our existence.  After all, every mammal species finds food, raises young and tries to stay alive.  Caring only for oneself means nothing.  Love for others, human and otherwise, known to us and unknown but in need, is our legacy from our 10,000 generations of ancestors and our gift to the future.  I think that enormous component of our humanity deserves at least one holiday – don’t you?

Can you celebrate Valentine’s Day as the holiday that belongs to every heart that knows and practices love? 

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