Princeton Immersion, Thanksgiving, soup, and stuff

I went to Dr. Fuhrman's Princeton Immersion last weekend.  It was a wonderful trip for many reasons!  It was a great road trip with my friend Suz.  We stopped in Pittsburg to see my best pal Gail, sadly, only for a few hours.  I worked with a student for a day at Princeton which was very productive.  We visited with Suz's parents in Philidelphia.  And the immersion was fantastic.  It was jam-packed with lectures. Dr. Fuhrman is so energetic and interesting, you really can listen to him for hours.  Even better was the food.  This is the main reason I go, though I did learn a lot from the lectures.  I thought I knew it all by now, but one thing I get out of the in-person lectures is what Dr. Fuhrman is passionate about, and what is less certain scientifically.  It helps reinforce what the most important things are to keep in mind.  But the food!  It was the best I've ever had at one of these events.  I think that was in large part due to Chef Martin Oswald's contributions.  He owns a nutritarian restaurant in Aspen, Colorado!  (called the Pyramid Bistro).  He gave a talk on the last day and I have been having fun putting his tips into practice!  We got the recipes from the immersion and slides from his talk.  They are worth a lot!

So today I'm back from the holidays and putting some of my new knowledge into action.  My soup today has Indian spices and I cooked up the onion as Chef Martin described:  first you heat up a stainless steel pot until hot, then put the onions and garlic in.  They sizzle up, slightly brown, and then release their juices.  You don't need oil, and they still gain a nice flavor.  Fun, it worked!  I did that with the leeks, celery, collards and kale too.  Then the pot was looking pretty burned and I thought, this will take forever to clean up.  But then I did the mushrooms the same way.  Well, they release so much liquid that it just ended up cleaning up the pot.  When they were done, the pot was clean.  ha!   a nice accidental discovery.  My soup was just my usual pile of things that I found in the co-op or my freezer.  I soaked beans, red himalayan rice, lentils, and purple barley overnight, and started cooking them in the morning.  Then cooked up the onions, garlic, celery, leeks, mushrooms, even the collards and kale, like Chef Martin described.  Added them to the pot one by one.  Oh I cooked up a festival squash in the oven, then added it to the soup after it cooled.  Oh yeah, and while cooking up the onion and other veggies, I added some graram masala and curry powder as they cooked.  Add the end I added some currants and fresh ground ginger.  It made for a nice hearty soup.  I froze most of it in single-serving containers.  yum.  I think I'll have it for breakfast every day.   I'll be doing my food prep at night this week.

My food plans for the week are soup for breakfast, and salad and roasted veggies for lunch and dinner.  The salads will be micro-salads made from lettuce, cabbage, maybe some broccoli and cauliflower, all cut up finely in the food processor; and topped with pomegranate seeds, grapefruit or orange, seed mixture, and flavored vinegar.  I love these.  The name should be changed from micro-salad to high-powered salad because it is so nutrient rich.  Tonight I'll experiment with roasted veggies.  I hope I can get this right.  I'm going to follow Chef Martin's advice to cover with foil at first so they essentially steam cook (before burning on the outside), then take of the foil to roast at the end.  I'll top with fresh herbs.  The veggies available now (that I like) are broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, onions, leeks, and sweet potato.  I'll do a little of each.  I am just learning to do this.  It would be nice to do a big batch and eat them for several days but I'm not sure how well they will keep.  I think I'll start off by just trying to do one day at a time and hope it isn't too time consuming.  I will add some flavored vinegar and mustard as marinate.  I got some fresh sage and rosemary at the co-op and have some basil from the garden in my freezer.  I hope this works!

Well, this post is long enough so I won't go into Thanksgiving much except to say I made apple sauce for my "brother-in law."  He had two 18 lb bags of apples!  holy cow, we had all the burners going:

It was fun though.  I nibbled a lot on the apples.  In fact, it was so much fun, we decided to make some for ourselves when we got home.  My batch has no sugar in it.  I'm not sure what I will use it in as I am not a great dessert maker or baker, the usual use of apple sauce.  But, heck, it probably could go in soup.

Here's tonight's quick salad I threw together, which is yummy, as salads always are:

That's got lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, blueberries, banana, small orange, seed mixture, and d'angou pear vinegar.

whew.  time to go fold laundry, then start tomorrow's food prep.  whew!  

Dr. Fuhrman's weekend immersion

The early bird pricing for Dr. Fuhrman's November weekend immersion ends on 9/15/11.  I'm going to this and I want my friends to go too, so that's why I'm telling you about it.  For purely selfish reasons.

hee hee

Can you find the picture of me in this post from diseaseproof?

I'll give an update this weekend about how my meal prep is going with my new gone-all-day-and-night schedule. I just had to make a few tweaks to the plan.

Glorious summer

Hi Folks,

Sorry I've been absent so long. This is going to be a busy, busy year. I've been taking pictures of various things I've been preparing, but just haven't had a chance to sit down and post! So I decided just to write a quick post here without pictures.

Well, the highlight of the last few weeks is that I went to Dr. Fuhrman's Health Getaway. That was so much fun. I was expecting to be inspired, to learn a lot, and to enjoy not cooking for a week! But it turned out even better than that. I had sooooo muuuuuch fuuuuun making new friends and gabbing at each meal and exercising with them every morning. It made an impact on me how important community is. It's hard for people to adopt this program of eating, because you feel so alone doing it. So that's a reason we need to support each other. I'll try to keep posting more and please feel free to write comments and questions.

Some highlights of the Health Getaway were: 1) great lectures, as always. I got reinforced how important it is to eat healthy to make up for the first 45 years of my life when I did not. Cancer takes about 30-40 years to show itself after exposure to all the harmful toxins in our environment and diet. Fortunately, a healthy diet works to reverse cancer, so we need to flood out bodies with phytochemicals and micronutrients to allow our cells to repair. Onions, mushrooms. garlic, and cruciferous vegetables work to reverse cancer. The lectures on osteoporosis, heart disease and diabetes were disturbing to me because of what he told us about the harmful effects of the drugs used to commonly treat these illnesses. Wow. It is shocking and upsetting to me how our medical system is set up to feed the pharmaceutical companies, rather than heal people. 2) A screening of the movie "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead"' but Joe Cross. This is a must-see and will be available to the public in about 6 months I think. 3) A lecture by John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods. They are doing and planning great things to encourage people to eat healthy. You can watch these changes happen by visiting your local Whole Foods. 4) The great food, which I didn't have to cook. and 5) best of all, hanging out with my new friends. 6) Oh yeah, and I entered the talent show. It was a blast, well, not my performance, but watching and laughing with everyone else.

Foodwise, I've been enjoying simple delicious foods from the garden and co-op. Tonight I had onions, garlic, greens, and herbs from the garden cooked up in the pressure cooker for a couple of minutes, and added my yummy beans, a Tbsp of pine nuts, and a bit of spicy pecan vinegar. It was yummy! I've got lots of greens in the garden--collards, kale and chard, so am eating them every day, cooked or in smoothies. We also have eggplant that I sometimes steam and blend up with a Tbsp seeds, making a sauce to add to the greens. Here's another yummy thing I made this weekend: cabbage salad made with cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli (optional), cherries, grapes, apple, orange, and vinegar (d'angou pear and blood orange). Just throw it all in the food processor using the grater blade. This was soooo good with the cherries and grapes, like dessert! I've also been making smoothies with greens from the garden and yummy berries from the co-op. Add a little vinegar, lime or lemon to cut the bitterness of the greens. A note on the smoothies: I mix collard greens half and half with romaine lettuce. All collards is a bit too strong. I use about 2 oz of collards, 2 oz of romaine and 1/2 lb of fruit per smoothie (though I make a double batch at a time). That's about it right now, just eating lots of greens, beans, nuts&seeds, and fruit.

Things I learned at the Getaway

A reader asked me to post things I learned at the Getaway that might benefit a newbie. So I'll just run through things I wrote down in my notebook. It will probably be kind of random, but actually that's part of the learning process--there were tips to be learned all the time, at the food line, from other people, from Dr. Fuhrman's answers to questions, and of course, from the lectures.

The first lecture was an overview of "Eat for Health." I didn't take careful notes. Right now I'm interested myself in why refined grains and sugar are harmful---are they harmful in themselves or do they just cause a person to eat less of the healthy food? It seems they are harmful in themselves. I'm rereading "Eat to Live" with a mind to this question. Also my notes at the Getaway were probably more focused on this question too. So that explains why I wrote "refined foods (bagels, pasta) are cancer causing." So they are harmful. Dr. Fuhrman said, "To create cancer, eat a diet high in meat and cheese, high in refined carbs, and low in veggies, fruit, beans, nuts, and seeds." And of course, do the opposite to prevent it. He also reminded me that fruit protects against cancer. I love fruit. You'd think something so delicious wouldn't be so good for you, but it is! What good fortune!

Another concept I learned was the definition of addiction: when you have trouble stopping something because you experience discomfort.

And the Mindset of Champions:

Determination, Initiative, Perserverance, Repitition, Correct Attitude...

And then the slide went away. I really liked this and I am not sure I wrote everything down. It's so important to have a positive attitude. This would be good to write down and put on your fridge.

The next lecture was "Healthy Pantry" by Lisa Fuhrman. This would really benefit a newbie and my notes only reflect things I found new or interesting, even though there was tons of information. The best grains (roughly from top to bottom) are steel cut oats, quinoa, bulghur, wild rice, brown rice, coarse whole wheat. (Keep in mind that vegetables and beans are more nutritious than grains). Most "whole wheat" bread is white bread with coloring added and some whole wheat added. Look for the ingredients list to verify, should say "whole wheat" as the first (and only grain) ingredient. Some good whole wheat breads are ezekial, alvarado, essene and manna (frozen).

Next, "Reversing and Preventing Heart Disease and Strokes." New studies are showing more and more the benefits of nuts and seeds! If you are trying to lose weight, 1 oz a day is sufficient but don't eat less. Rebecca, who lost 300 lbs, said her weight loss stalled for a while, and then she was reminded to eat nuts and seeds, and then it started coming off again. They actually help with weight loss! Also, low-fat diets with no nuts and seeds may dramatically increase your risk of ventricular fibrillation or other life-threatening arrythmias. I speak from experience because I tried a low-fat diet for a couple of weeks and my irregular heart beats (which I used to get before eating healthy) returned with a vengeance. I asked Dr. Fuhrman for advice on the forums and he said eat nuts and seeds! And it worked. Anyway, this lecture made me realize I shouldn't skimp on these. I am thin and probably need even more than the average. So my minimum should be 2 oz a day. Given how much I exercise, 3-4 oz is probably fine.

Next was a lecture on Diabetes. First were the amazing statistics: 7/10 adults deaths are caused by chronic diseases, all preventable by diet. Medical costs for chronic disease are 75% of US healthcare expenditures. Diabetes is really an awful disease, and type II diabetes is caused by being overweight. The more fat you are, the more insulin you need to push the glucose into the cells (which are covered in fat), so the pancreas produces more insulin, and the insulin makes you more fat (I'm not real clear on why but it seems to more efficiently convert calories to fat, see Eat to Live, p. 38-39 and 158-164). So it's a negative feedback situation that spirals you into weight gain and higher insulin production. In addition, all that insulin in your bloodstream is an athleroschlerotic agent, i.e., makes your heart disease worse. But too much glucose contributes to blindness and kidney disease. The good news is, if you start losing weight, you set up a positive feedback situation where you need less insulin and that makes you less fat, which makes you need less insulin, and so on. Dr. Fuhrman is writing a book on diabetes. Anyway, the other main point of this lecture was new results on how great beans are. They have resistant starch which is not digested and causes lots of beneficial short-chain fatty acids in your large intestines. Because of the resistant starch and lots of fiber, they effectively have fewer calories than advertised. I'm going to try to eat 1/2 cup of beans at lunch and 1/2 cup at dinner. Spreading them out over 2 meals works better for me, as I discovered at the Getaway. Some random useful facts at the end of the lecture were: green apples are lower in sugar than others. Some low-sugar fruits are blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, papayas, and green apples. I love all of those except I don't get good papayas in Wisconsin.

There was a session on the Nutritional Excellence Institute and becoming a certified Nutritional Excellence Trainer (NET). I plan to do this. There will be a variety of programs, from individual counseling, group counseling, food prep services, meetings, resellers of products, and corporate training. The website describing this more will be up soon.

Next was a Nutritional Research Update. I was happy to learn that grapefruits may not be bad for you if you are at a healthy weight and eat a healthy diet. There is a link between grapefruit and breast and prostate cancer but this may be because most Americans are overweight and have excess estrogen. Then there were words like ITC which I already forgot what it means, but I did learn that if you cut up your cruciferous veggies and onions and let them sit in the air for a few minutes, a chemical reaction occurs and produces ITCs, which are anti-cancer compounds. They survive the cooking process. So when you make Dr. Fuhrman's anti-cancer soup, change the instructions so you precut or pre-blend the cruciferous veggies first and let them sit for a couple of minutes, then add. Tomatoes and carrots have more anti-cancer compounds after cooking. I love raw carrots, so I guess I am missing out on the ITCs in carrots but I'll make up for it in tomatoes and collard greens and kale. Mammograms detect cancers earlier but don't increase lifespan. Chemo causes as much harm as good. Caffeine has much worse effects on diabetics. AGEs: Advanced Glycation End products (I think) are an important cause of the horrible side effects of diabetes. AGEs are increased when starchy foods are cooked at higher temperatures, like baked or roasted potatoes, (or french fries, of course!). Cooking with water insures things won't overheat. Raw cocoa has theobromide, not caffeine? Is this true? This was new to me.

Then we had a fantastic cooking demo with Lisa Fuhrman and Chef Charlotte. Here's something I learned: you can freeze bananas with the skin on it! Just throw them in the freezer when ripe. When you want to put them in a smoothie or ice cream, let them thaw for a few minutes so the skin gets soft enough and it will peel right off. All these years I wasted time peeling and breaking into pieces and putting into plastic bags. Some handy kitchen tools include a T-peeler for peeling mangos and other large fruits; a microplane for citrus zest, a good french knife, a French mandolin. Charlotte rattled off some fun recipes she made and I didn't get them all written down. She made a stir fry with cashew butter, coconut milk, ginger, lime zest, and I lost the rest, but probably you can go with veggies for the rest. We taste-tested the banana-flag cake--it was really good! Here's a nice sounding easy dessert: heat up apples, raisins and cinnamon in water, top with banana freeze (frozen bananas and soy or other milk blended up---or frozen banana, nuts and water will work just as well).

Next, a lecture on Hormones, supplements and Vitamin D. Vitamin D is amazing amazing amazing. You must take vitamin D. One study showed that it lowered the risk of breast cancer by 50% over 4 years. This suggests that is reverses growth because when breast cancer is detected, it's been growing for 20-30 years. The risk of vitamin D deficiency is at least as severe as smoking cigarettes. Don't hope that sun will give you all you need. A study on surfers in Hawaii showed some to be very deficient. Fuhrman has a newsletter on vitamin D. It also helps with depression, with calcium absorption, so many things. And you need DHA too. I didn't write down some interesting stuff because I take Dr. Fuhrman's supplements and don't worry about it. Vitamin A in supplements is very bad for you. Same with folic acid--cancer causing!

Finally, a Q&A session where you could ask whatever you want of the doctor. Some odds and ends I wrote down: for mushrooms, the white, crimini and portabella are the least nutritious! Shitake, elephant (others?) are the ones you want. Juicing vegetables removes protein! And there are lots of calories in juice, since you removed the no-calorie fiber. Pomegranate juice is the best fruit juice.

That's all...

Watermelon gazpacho soup

This is something we had at the Health Getaway a few weeks ago. I haven't tried it out yet (the recipe that is, the soup at the Getaway was great!) and am not sure I wrote everything down right.

Ingredients:
2 cucumbers peeled
1 watermelon
some mint
zest of lime
small amount of lime juice (optional)

I think that's all! blend most of the cucumber and watermelon in the blender. save some to chop up and add to the soup.

talent show at the getaway

The last event at the Getaway was a talent show and it was outstanding. I haven't laughed this hard in a long, long time. My smile muscles are going to be sore. There was lots of variety, hilarity, adorable children, and even some unbelievable talent. The format was an American Idol theme with voting. Lisa Fuhrman played the role of Simon and was hilarious. I hardly snapped any pictures because I was too busy laughing.

Here's Todd doing basketball tricks. He's owner of the Harlem Wizards.

Here's the real talent of the show, Sonny Leigh. If you live in the Denver area, go check her out. She is fabulous. Sorry for the lousy picture.

I was in a skit that turned out to be very funny, thanks to the creative work of Maggie and Sue, who wrote it. We showed the day in the life of a family in the year 2025 when everyone was a nutritarian.

Afterwards, Dr. Fuhrman let us take pictures with him and Lisa, his wife. So of course, I took part in that. And here we are:

Tomorrow we'll go on a morning kayak outing and then head out to Miami. We'll get a final breakfast and lunch, and then we'll enter back into the other world. It was fun to live in the nutritarian world for a week. I always eat the nutritarian way, but it sure was fun to have it served to me 3 meals a day with no effort on my part and surrounded by 120 other people eating the same food. Yep, this was a great Getaway. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to become a nutritarian.

Last Supper at the Getaway

I have really enjoyed trying out Fuhrman recipes that I haven't made myself yet. Tonight was no exception. I wish I could find someone to make the desserts for me because it's the one thing I don't enjoy making--the baked ones that is. I'm a lousy baker.

Here was the menu for tonight:

The butternut squash soup was excellent. I will make this:

I was in the mood for salad and vegetables. The salad bar goes on for three pictures here. Lettuce, beans, nuts, dressings:

tomatoes, potatoes, raw cauliflower, onion, cucumber:

beans, fruit:

fruit, and berries:

Here's the chard and vegetable medley with barley. I wasn't in the mood for this:

The salmon. I'm vegan so wasn't in the mood for this either:

Ah, here we go, simple steamed cauliflower. I was in the mood for this. Put some caesar dressing on that and it's yummy.

Then the healthy chocolate cake was really good! I have considered making this before but thought it wouldn't taste good because it has so many vegetables in it. I love it. Now if only I could get someone to make it for me!

birds

Sorry, off topic here, I can't resist posting a few bird pictures. This was on our short walk to the marina to go snorkeling. Today was our day off.

Getaway breakfast

Today I remembered to snap photos of breakfast. I think this was my favorite meal of the Getaway. Here was the menu for today:

This was a pretty typical menu. This is my favorite part:

oh, I forgot to include the bananas in the picture. So you put some cashew cream and bananas in a lettuce leaf and eat it like a burrito. Yummy!

Then there's tons of fruit and berries:

And today's grain dish, if you so choose, was oatmeal and muesli. I usually pass on the oatmeal in favor of the luscious berries, but the muesli was to die for. I am making this again:

Here are the ingredients:

We enjoyed a large breakfast knowing we wouldn't eat lunch, because we went snorkeling this afternoon. I'm so glad we didn't eat lunch because the waves were choppy! Lots of people looked green on the return trip home. After breakfast we did our usual relaxation at the lagoon. My feet and Gail's head are in the foreground. The lagoon is actually a great swimming pool, for doing nice long laps.

June 29 Getaway Update

This bird was fishing for dolphins. It was fun to watch her watching the dolphins. Her eyes were bigger than her stomach.

The highlights for me today were the lecture by Dr. Fuhrman of course--this one on diabetes--and the cooking demo with Lisa Fuhrman and Chef Charlotte. Everyone, as far as I know, including the Fuhrmans, loved Chef Charlotte. She was fabulous. She was given the guidelines for the eating program several months ago but not the recipes (I think that's what she said). I think this was brilliant because she then proceeded to come up with recipes of her own, such as watermelon gaspacho soup. She gave us lots of tips about produce and utensils and improving on recipes. She improved on the caesar salad dressing by roasting the garlic in orange juice. Here's Elija and Lisa preparing for the lecture. I hope they don't mind my posting this. It just conveys the excitement!

They demoed a chocolate smoothie, a cashew-orange dressing in which they didn't have oranges so it turned into a mango lime dressing and it was great. We got to taste test them, and the flag cake:

It was really good! I don't like baking, but my friend Gail said she would do it. So I'll have to visit her sometime when she's making one.

June 28 -- At the Health Getaway

The Health Getaway has been fabulous so far. Last night we got a lecture on the Certification program for Nutritional Excellence Counselors (NEC). I'm really excited about this. We have to take an exam and then we can become counselors and help people adopt this healthy eating program. I have a fabulous job and career already but I feel so passionate about this that I want to do this too. I think we can change how people eat, and even though it's an uphill battle at this point, it's worth the effort because it will save so many lives.

I've been learning a lot too, even though I've already devoured all of Fuhrman's books, lectures, teleconferences, and newsletters. He's been reporting new information and reinforcing the old. For example, I already knew nuts and seeds are good for you but after his first lecture, I realized I don't eat enough. Then in yesterday's lecture he presented new information about beans. Wow, they are an amazing food. So I will incorporate more of those in my diet. Since I feel uncomfortable eating large quantities of beans, I will try eating smaller portions more often.

The meals have been fabulous of course. I was expecting that. They are buffet style and consist of salads, soup, beans, berries, fruit, nut butters, nuts and seeds, cooked entrees, and at lunch and dinner, some sort of dessert. Here's an example from last night's meal

The salad spread: lettuce, beans, dressings, nut butters, seeds, tomatoes, avocado:

More salad spread: berries (this was right at the end of dinner, so the strawberries were almost gone), snow peas, nut butters, vinegars, melon, etc, soup at the far left (last night was quick and creamy vegetable bean):

Roasted Mixed Vegetables

Cauliflower Spinach Mashed "potatoes" (no potatoes!), a favorite on the forums:

plain ole' steamed spinach. Gail had hers with D'angou pear vinegar and loved it:

No pasta vegetable lasagna. I've been wanting to try this and finally got to without even having to cook it. It's good.

Dessert was blueberry fig sorbet:

We've been so engrossed in our own world for the last few days, I forgot what everyone else usually eats, but I was reminded as I passed by a wedding party spread. Here's the bar:

Here's the hors d'oeuvres (I had to look up the spelling of that one). okay in case you can't see this, from top left to right is meat slices rolled up in cheese slices. crackers and breadsticks, meat slices (salame?), crackers and breadsticks, is that a veggie at top right? yes, I believe so! grilled sliced zucchini I think. not bad. probably with oil and salt though. Then the bottom row is cheese.

We had great hors d'oeuvres the first night. bean dips in little pieces of lettuce (baby bok choy perhaps?). some red pepper type salsa in little lettuce wraps--I didn't get to taste those. this great coconut, lime drink. and a cantaloupe drink I didn't get to try. yummy!

off to a Health Getaway!

Today I'm on my way to Dr. Fuhrman's Heath Getaway. I've never done anything like this in my life. I've gone on vacation, yes, but not a group vacation at a resort. I'm pretty excited about it, not the resort part, but learning a lot, while relaxing and working out and eating great food that I don't have to prepare! And being among people who eat the same things as me and don't think it's crazy. And I'm going with a good friend. I'm trying not to get my hopes up so they aren't dashed, but I am looking forward to this.

I don't know if I'll have time or inclination to post. I'll definitely give a report when it's over with.