How to improve your eating with mindfulness practices

• When you are deciding what to eat, take into account how you will feel after the meal—what you think will help you stay satiated, how much you need to eat to be satisfied but not overfull, and what will be comfortable in your stomach without GI discomfort.
• Sit down while you eat.
• Don’t multitask while you eat. Don’t watch TV or videos, don’t read.
• Focus your attention on the eating experience. Note the different sensations: the aroma, what the food looks like, the taste, the texture, the mouthfeel, the temperature.
• Consciously slow down your eating. Put your utensil down between bites. Allow yourself to taste every bite.
• Once you are finished your portion of food, give yourself 15 minutes to allow the satiety signals to get to your brain. Then you can make a decision if and what you should eat next.
• When you have an urge to eat, notice if it is driven by hunger, boredom, stress, loneliness, habit, socializing, or another cause.

How much juice is too much?

 

Last week I had a discussion with a patient about juice intake. She has diabetes and was concerned that her blood sugars have recently been higher than her goal range. Together we were trying to figure out if there were any food-related culprits contributing to her higher numbers. She was familiar with carbohydrate foods, and her portions were appropriate for her needs. Additionally, her meals contained a variety of nutrients, and she rounded out her plate with vegetables and protein. We then moved on to discuss drinks. She assured me she was not drinking too much juice, and that she is mostly drinking water. As a dietitian, I like to get the details, so I asked a few questions to get clarity of how much of each beverage she was drinking. She described that she was drinking 1 cup of unsweetened black coffee in the morning before breakfast, water throughout the day, and one cup of orange juice with each meal.

This reminded me that everyone has different definitions of “not too much.” From her understanding, one cup of juice with each meal was “not too much.” Perhaps, to her, “too much” might be drinking juice in between meals in addition to at meals.

What is too much for one person could be different than what is too much for another person. For this patient, with her blood sugar goals, 3 cups of juice would make her blood sugars too high—she was not able to get her numbers in goal range with her current juice intake. She decided to do an experiment and skip the juice for a few days and see what her numbers looked like. I am happy to report that with this change, she was able to get her numbers in her goal range!

Reminder to self: always define your terms

A yogurt break

                I decided to take a break from making yogurt for a little while. I had two batches in a row that spoiled really quickly, and I was frustrated. I suspect that this was due to bad starter. I had been dividing a quart container of yogurt of yogurt into 10 little bags that I kept in the freezer and took one out at a time to use as starter. I wonder if the starters all got contaminated when I was dividing the container of yogurt into the little bags. Eventually, when I was ready to get back into making yogurt, I threw out the leftover starter I had in the freezer and used fresh yogurt. I just made my second batch with this new starter, and so far it has been lasting long enough to eat it all! I like making it, and I definitely take pride in being able to make foods on my own that take a bit more effort. Good to be back in the routine.

Trying to make yogurt with an Instant Pot

                Apparently there is always more to learn about yogurt. I was recently gifted an exciting kitchen gadget—an instant pot with a yogurt setting! I was so excited to try it, and on that weekend I made a batch of yogurt. Because I had always depended on a thermometer to make yogurt, I tested the temperature of the milk and yogurt throughout the process. After heating the milk, the temperature was only 165⁰ F. I tried to rerun that setting, but it would not heat much further, so I used the regular slow cook function to get the milk to 180⁰ F. Then, I cooled the milk as I usually do, added the starter, and set the machine to the fermenting setting for 14 hours. As soon as it beeped to let me know it was finished, I checked the temperature, and it was below 100⁰ F. The texture was much thinner than I get when the yogurt ferments at 155⁰ F. The yogurt still tasted good, but it was not quite the texture I was hoping for. 

                I contacted the Instant Pot customer support, and their answers were not particularly helpful. I am still unclear if they intended the Instant Pot to ferment yogurt at below 100⁰ F or if the pot does not work as it is supposed to. At one point they offered to send me a new heating element, but I want to see if I can get it to work well enough with the one I have first. I am going to try to ferment it for 18 hours to see if fermenting it for longer can make up for the lower temperature and still result in a thick yogurt.

Instant Pot yogurt

Sugar Cookies

                Last year I thought it would be a good idea to make sugar cookies without using margarine. And while that is a great idea on many levels, I decided to make the “real deal” this year. It was well worth it—a taste of nostalgia. I have been using this recipe to make sugar cookies for as long as I can remember baking. Sometimes I would color the dough and make fancy patterns, but in more recent years I made colorful glaze. A tall pile of sugar cookies in all the colors of the rainbow was so exciting. And the best part of it for me was sharing them with my friends and family. The joy of good food is multiplied when I can share it and let others enjoy it too.

                This year, I did not buy food coloring, but I did get margarine especially for this recipe. I had not bought margarine in two years probably. The recipe needs only two sticks, and the other two sticks are now in the freezer. (Maybe for next year?!?) I did have colored nonpareils, and the cookies did have the riot of color that I wanted, despite not using colored glaze.

                But who could I share the cookies with? I did figure that part also. I met a fried for lunch, so she got some, and I also sent a package with cookies to my family. Those cookies are still in transit, but I am looking forward to hearing that they received the coolies.

                I am so glad I made “real” sugar cookies this year. It’s a once a year thing for me. Food is not just to sustain us physically. We attach all sorts of values and emotions to food, and those are important to recognize and understand too.

colorful nonpareils

lots of cookies

MIlk

        I was never a big milk drinker, but because I now make yogurt, I go through a lot of milk. I use one and a half gallons in a batch of yogurt, and easily a half gallon or more for cereal and such. More than a year ago, I discovered that milk at National Wholesale Liquidators was $2.50. That was pretty awesome because it was around $4.00 in other stores. Last Wednesday, I was in NWL to get milk, but they had none, so I decided I would go back on Saturday night when I actually planned to make yogurt. But alas, it was not meant to be. As I approached the parking lot on Saturday night, things looked unusual. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot. Then I saw a large sign that said, “Everything is 20-60% off.” A bit more unusual and suspicious. I parked and started walking towards the doors, and then I saw the sign that said, “Store Closing.” I ended getting milk from another nearby grocery store, but this, unfortunately, will be the end of cheap milk for me.

Blondies or Greenies??

                Recently, I had a foray into gluten-free baking. We had a guest who could not eat gluten, and I wanted to impress. But I did not want to buy special gluten-free flour. I had once before made recipe that had chickpeas in it, so I decided to give it a try. This was the recipe:

No-Flour Blondies

1 can (15oz) chickpeas, drained and rinsed

½ cup nut butter

⅓ cup sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon baking powder

⅓ cup chocolate chips

Put all ingredients except chocolate chips in a bowl. Using an immersion blender, blend until very smooth. Then, fold in the chocolate chips. Bake at 350 for 20-35 minutes or until skewer inserted does not come out wet.

                Last time I made them, all came out well. They looked and tasted like blondies. But this time, I made one small change that made a huge difference. I used Sunbutter instead of peanut butter. And this is what happened.

                What happened?? According to the Sunbutter website, the chlorophyll in the sunflower seeds reacts with the baking soda and powder and the green color is a byproduct. Thankfully, it is perfectly safe to eat green blondies. But then maybe they should be greenies?