Happy 2015: Winter Weather & Clean Eating

steamy stir-fry

 
 
 

Winter eating can keep you slim and trim if you use all the tools at your disposal to stock your kitchen and plan your meals. And, if you have had some excessive holiday eating, getting back to healthy foods is not a lost cause.

I like to make steamy and stir-fried vegetables a daily habit in winter and soups an easy back-up. I have been making vegetable broth on weekends to drink throughout the week, continuing my green tea habit and keeping myself relatively cleansed.

And yet, I still find social activities and dinner obligations get in the way more in winter. Or maybe when I am within reach of really great Belgian fries, I start to think "What the heck?" and go for it. I think the urge to go for those heavier winter foods (I like an occasional pizza without cheese) should be met, just don't let them snowball into daily events. Providing occasional heavy dishes at home, more nuts and seeds, an avocado, sea weed snacks and kale chips helps keep me in line. And, I always admit to diving into the nut butters with reckless abandon.

Clean eating sometimes is associated with summer salads and freshly picked spring greens, but in winter there is ample supply of fresh food too. Some local farmers use tunnels and greenhouses for winter food production and the tougher rugged greens like kale and collards are still available. Potatoes, winter squash, turnips, parsnips, and other root vegetables are around in full force but feel starchy and heavy. And, well, these days a grocery store has year round greens making it easy to go for leafy greens like kale, lettuce, spinach and Swiss chard, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, carrots, mushrooms and many more obscure vegetables like mustard greens, watercress, and all sorts of sprouts.

So, I still make winter salad bars for the kids but I include some warm dishes like cooked kale and mushrooms, warm lentils, chick peas and beans. Tonight, they had chili, but Lizzie staged a protest, eating it with a fork because she was outraged that I made it too thick. I also made a big sautéed vegetable dish from bean sprouts, onions, cabbage, zucchini, and lots of fresh strips of ginger to ward off winter sicknesses. I added turmeric for good measure and then I put a little too much Dave's Insanity Sauce on mine.

Other ways to keep off that winter weight:

watercress salad with earthy carrots from Union Square greenmarket

• Drink hot broth (either with or instead of a meal)
• Drop the carbs (a few days without grains is very energizing)
• Eat within a shorter time span (either eat a big lunch and a light snack instead of dinner; finish eating all of your meals by 5 or 6; or even skip lunch and eat a big early dinner). Sometimes just changing the timing of food leads to weight loss. Many cultures eat their biggest meal at lunch. If all of your eating is pressed into the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., that is better than spreading eating out from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• Eliminate snacking and have tea or hot water with ginger, mint, lemon or cinnamon.
• Drink your breakfast. A liquid can be a better start to the day. Vega is a great nutritional boost. Tea, vegetable juice, and even (gasp) coffee can be beneficial.
• Have a good drenching sweat. While exercise is preferable, a sauna can help too.
• To start, pick any of the above suggestions and do them just every other day or every third day. Finding even three nights to have dinner really early can set you on a good path.

My favorite quick vegetable broth:

• mushrooms (about a half a pound of crimini, two portabellas, a couple shitakes, maitake (if available)
• celery (one whole bunch of celery with leaves)
• cilantro (very cleansing; very tasty)
• about 1/2 a pound of swiss chard, kale, spinach (anything goes)
• watercress (I am an addict)
• mustard greens
• half a yellow onion
• small handful of some kind of microgreen or sprouted green if available
• the VERY BEST WATER you can find.
• Boil everything for twenty to thirty minutes and then let it sit for an hour more. The vegetables will lose their green look but all those nutrients will remain in the broth.
• Add turmeric, black pepper, cayenne pepper, hot sauce (stay away from the Dave's Insanity unless you are hardcore) or don't add anything. All vegetables have some natural sodium, so there is no need to add salt.



winter salad bar





For work lunches, I sometimes add either mushrooms or bean sprouts to my hot broth and bring it in a thermos (with my so-called "miracle thermos" I burn my tongue at 3 p.m. even if I heated the soup at 7 a.m....it is Thermos brand), or I bring vegetables or salad. But I have had to fall back on either kale and Brussels sprouts from Dig Inn or a Pain Quotidien soup or salad in a pinch.


My grand conclusion: winter tends to be a more challenging time for overeaters and, well, for everyone. So, making a plan that is attainable and allowing some wiggle room for those fries on a weekend might be the best we can do.