Let's all Shout for Trout!

image: wikipedia

Ok, so that's maybe not quite as catchy as the "we all scream for ice cream" thing.

But here's the thing: trout is a pretty darn awesome fish, for reasons I will bore you with below.

Usually my main gripe with it is that it's hard to find in my 'hood and can be really expensive, but I've been pleased to see it at Trader Joes lately.  And while it's not cheap (about $9 a pound), it's been cleaned up and made into nice neat fillets.

So, no guts or tiny bones or sad dead judgemental fish eyes staring at you creeping you out!

Anyway, why am I so taken with trout?

Post-Workout Snack Recipes

You gotta figure if the word "recipe" is in the title, this is going to be a guest post--Crabby is not known for her culinary skills.  And snack recipes?  Crabby's is: "grab 1 handful of mixed nuts. Repeat.  Repeat again.  Repeat yet again, adding a few squares of dark chocolate and a heaping portion of self-recrimination.  Approach nuts yet again... stop. Curse. Leave kitchen.  Repeat again in a few hours."

So yeah. Hooray for Steph from a  A Life without Ice Cream who actually knows how to make things!

Steph is an Ottawa blogger who has been living dairy-free for over a decade. Committing to a healthy lifestyle over 5 years ago, she got her butt in gear, learned to love fitness, and lost over 90lbs. Although she has been tweaking and creating recipes for ages, she started A Life without Ice Cream  to document recipes and keep the healthy living conversation going.  Steph is not a nutritionist, just someone who enjoys food and loves creating new recipes!

So please welcome Steph!--Crabby

Hey there Cranky Fitness readers!

I’m a long time reader of Cranky Fitness so when I saw the opportunity to share some of my favourite post-workout snacks with you I couldn't resist. Thanks so much for the opportunity!

I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about post-workout snacks. It’s a tricky thing. Sometimes I come home from the gym or a run and could literally eat anything in my way. Wash an apple? Who has time? HUNGRY! Other times I don’t feel even a little hungry, but the next day, watch out. There’s a lot of debate out there about what you actually “need” after a good workout, but my rule of thumb is if you’re legitimately hungry, you should eat something. Even better, eat something healthy that gives you tons of energy.

Kale and Egg-White Scramble: Easy Recipe for the Culinarily Challenged

By Crabby McSlacker

This post has a secret sneaky agenda:  to encourage readers who can actually cook to think about sending me their awesome healthy recipes and accompanying pictures!

So let's set the bar on the low side shall we?  Here is a quick photo-guide to making...

Krabby's Krapload of Kale Scramble!

Food For Thought

Since I've embarked on my recent food-tracking frenzy I'm happy to report that (a) I seem to be slowly but surely dropping a bit of the weight I gained recently and (b) I am even more bat-shit crazy than I anticipated.

But it's a Happy Crazy, I swear!

Winter Squash: Where the Hell Have You Been All My Life?

(Photo: Dunbar Gardens)

Curious about the health benefits of butternut, acorn, hubbard, turban, kabocha, and other winter squashes? Need some recipes?

And yes, I believe I am the last health and fitness blogger on the planet to discover that the big piles of gourdy-looking objects on display this time of year at the grocery store are actually edible food items. I thought they were table decorations!

As it turns out, winter squashes are tasty. They are not nearly as caloric as you might think, given the gloriously sweet & starchy nature of them. Though some are scary-looking, they can actually be easy to prepare if you're lazy busy, and they have tons of sneaky health benefits. How did I manage to miss them all these years?


So if you haven't already read a million other posts about sweet winter squashes, or if the posts you read had too much actual information in them and not enough swearing or gratuitous cat pictures (always a problem in nutrition posts, don't you think?) then it looks you've come to the right place!

Photo: aturkus

Winter Squashes and Nutrition:

The "World's Healthiest Foods" website has the full scoop on the nutritional benefits of winter squashes, so I'll steal their content pass along some of their info.

For example, winter squash has:

• Craploads of alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta-cryptoxanthin.
• Seeds that you can lightly roast (160-170°F for 15-20 minutes) that have lots of linoleic and oleic acid.
• Particularly virtuous kinds of starch--pectins--that are "specially structured polysaccharides that in winter squash often include special chains of D-galacturonic acid called homogalacturonan."  Um, yeah. Anyway, these are good because they have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic and insulin-regulating properties.  And hooray for all that!

But WHF warns you to make sure you get 'em organic, as they are superstars at sucking up nasty soil contaminants, like PAHs.

Squash: A Better Calorie Bargain?

Starches have gotten a lot of bad press nutritionally (unless you're looking at the whole resistant starch issue; a topic for another time).  But check out the nutritional differences when Fitsugar compares squash vs sweet potatoes, and The Washington Post compares kabocha squash and regular potatoes. If you're trying to save a few more calories for inexcusably big slices of cake and big honking cheeseburgers extra portions of healthy fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins, then squash may make an excellent potato substitute.

Squash Recipes

Some of these big-ass squash look so intimidating it's hard to think what you might be able to do with them.

Photo: Rochelle Hartman

But if you'd rather eat them than disguise them, there are lots of ideas out there!

What Crabby Did

I peeled a butternut squash (pain in the ass, by the way), cut it up, & brushed lightly with olive oil. Baked for over an hour at 350 until the pieces were soft, then mashed them with some chicken broth and nutmeg. Easy-peasey, and tasted good!

Photo:  BourgeoisBee

OK, so that wasn't exactly helpful.  Sorry, frowny cat. But I believe that's a summery squash you're dealing with there anyway.  Hmm, is there anyone else out there who has some ideas for winter squash?

Pathetic Bid for Attention From Reaching Out to New Friends at... the Dole Health Summit!

So if you google squash recipes, especially if you have a particular kind in mind, it's not like there's any shortage.  But in honor of the upcoming Dole "Health and Happiness Summit," (which I'm sure you'll be hearing about later, or I'll never get invited to another blogging conference again),  I thought I'd check out the blogs of some of those folks I'll be meeting. Do any of them have any winter squash recipes?  As it turns out, many of 'em do! However, apologies to @APSandy, who is an awesome twitter person to follow but whose blog I couldn't find, and Tish from Luv and Kiwi who has an excellent blog but saw me coming and hid all her winter squash recipes where I couldn't find them and steal them.

So in no particular order:

Check out the fabulous FBG's  Acorn Squash Dip with Roasted Pumpkin Seeds!

Over at Meals and Miles, Meghann gussies up some hubbard squash by adding hummus, cheese, apples, and other tasty ingredients.

At Bookieboo's ginormous and helpful site, there's a tasty looking recipe for Stuffed Acorn Squash with Quinoa that looks really, really tasty.

Iowa Girl Eats has a recipe and nearly-pornographic pictures of a Butternut Squash Lasagna. Visit if you dare.

Tina at Carrots and Cake tried out Hungry Girl's Cheesy Butternut Bake, adding amusing commentary and a picture of a seriously adorable dog.


Over at The Token Fat Girl, yet another great blog, you can find a quick recipe for Recipe for butternut squash fries. And doesn't the world need more non-guilt inducing fries?

And finally, at Run Eat Repeat, there's a super-easy recipe for pumpkin creme which makes a creme to put on waffles. (Is pumpkin a winter squash? What the hell, close enough.  But dangit Monica, with your tasty breakfast pictures.... suddenly I'm in dire need of a waffle!)

BTW, I've been offline much more than I thought this week, what with our cross-country move and the odious unpacking, storing, schlepping, errands and chores exciting organizational challenges and functional fitness opportunities that's brought.  And I realize I may be a bit distracted by the Dole thing as it's my first blog event ever. (Can't imagine why "Crabby McSlacker" wouldn't be a welcome guest at any marketing event!)   So my apologies for unanswered emails, unvisited favorite blogs etc.  Will catch up eventually, I promise!

So, um squash. Or any new food item you recently discovered, or thoughts about conferences or moving or anything on your mind today? And if you've got favorite recipes, please throw in a link!

Ethnic Eats: How Healthy Are They?

Photo: stevendepolo

Remember how back in the nineties, the Center for Science in the Public Interest took on Chinese food? There were headlines in all the papers exposing the fact that the kind of Chinese food Americans were eating was shockingly high in calories and fat and sodium.

So did people get mad at the Chinese restaurants for not trying to make dishes healthier? Or, did they get mad at themselves for ordering the least healthy options? No, neither of those. As I recall, they mostly got mad at CSPI for reporting on the issue at all. CSPI was accused of being a nagging whiny cranky spoilsport for dissing stuff like egg rolls, fried rice and chow mein.

And I remember thinking at the time: duh! Stupid people, don't shoot the messenger! Did you really think the presence of a few chopped up vegetables in your deep fried carbs would magically transform the whole greasy mess into something healthy? But many people thought this was unfair, because clearly they were taking the high road by going to Chinese restaurants, and eating in close proximity to vegetables. So what if they weren't actually putting many in their mouths?

(And when CSPI revisited Chinese food a couple years ago, they found more healthy options. But still, there is a shocking amount of sodium, fat and calories in a lot of these dishes. Like, sometimes 2 days worth of sodium in a single dish. Also, you can end up eating 900 calories in something that sounds light, like an order of stir fried greens.)

Anyway, so here's my problem, and it's one I hope y'all can help me with. I love Chinese food, as well as Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indian, Korean, Ethiopian, Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, Italian, Mexican... and all kinds of other foods from faraway places. (Though for some reason, not a big fan of Japanese. Sorry, sushi!)

And luckily, lots of these food contain very healthy ingredients. Like fresh exotic veggies and nuts and olive oil and healthy spices like curry and a variety of whole grains I don't usually get around to eating.

But... when I go out to eat, I have the same problem I do at most "American" restaurants: it's often hard to avoid a lot of ingredients I don't want to eat much of: like sodium and white rice and white flour, butter, cured and fatty meats, and many vegetable oils that may not contain transfats but are high in Omega 6's rather than Omega 3's.

(Huh? What's wrong with corn, sunflower, safflower, soy, and cottonseed oils? The tedious explanation is back here in this Omega 3 and Omega 6 post).

So I obviously have a few options here:

1. I can go to ethnic restaurants infrequently and order very carefully;

2. I can do takeout from these restaurants a little more often if I healthify the meals a bit when I get home; or,

3. I can cook more ethnic dishes from scratch so I can control the ingredients and make it as healthy as I want, and eat it every damn day if I feel like it!

So far, I've been doing mostly #2 (and I have some suggestions I can pass along on that). But I'm figuring if there's anyone can help me on #3, it would be clever Cranky Fitness readers.

Can you help a cooking-impaired Crab with some healthy international ideas?

First, a few tricks for healthifying Ethnic Take Out:

1. Swap out White for Brown: many Asian restaurants don't offer brown rice; many Mediterranean restaurants don't offer whole grain breads, wraps or pasta; many Indian Restaurants have the white Naan but not the whole grain Roti. If this is the case at your local joint, try to remember to stock your freezer with some whole wheat pita or already cooked and frozen nukable brown rice (Trader Joe's is a good source). Or, many grocery stores now have little plastic bowls of pre-cooked brown rice that sits in your cupboard. (It's not as good as the frozen kind or the real kind but it's easier to find).

2. Spare that Sauce! Often what's wonderful about Indian or Thai or whatever are the wonderful rich spicy curries and oils and gravies. However, these are often full of sodium, drawn butter, cheese, suspicious oils, lard, or who knows what. In my opinion, life's too short to skip these! But often restaurants send you home with far more sauce than you need to douse the other ingredients. So don't mindlessly pour it all on your plate; pick out extra vegetables and meat and use the sauce more sparingly. Then you can often make another meal the next day with the addition of more nuked chopped vegetables, some more brown rice or bread, and an easy protein source like frozen cooked shrimp or tofu or leftover chicken or chickpeas or whatever the heck you keep around.

3. Be a pain in the ass when ordering! (Always fun when the person taking your order is speaking English as a second language). Sometimes, especially if you're a regular, you can get them to go easy on oil, add more of your favorite veggies and go easier on the meat, replace butter with olive oil, etc. Dr. J has a helpful post on how to do this.

4. And don't order stupid things! Sometimes people take a perfectly sensible choice about cuisine "I feel like Chinese," or "Let's do Italian" and then use that as an excuse to eat junky stuff because it's "traditional." A fried doughball is a fried doughball, whether you get it from an Indian restaurant or a Chinese restaurant or Dunkin' Donuts. And even if the "Mediterranean diet" is generally good for you, fettucine alfredo is not a health food.

Okay, so that wasn't very many tips. Whatever. Perhaps you folks have some more good ones!

But What About Cooking Ethnic Food at Home?

Here's why I don't do it enough:

Most recipes you get from American sources, especially "light" cookbooks or cooking magazines, don't end up tasting all that much like real ethnic cuisine. (Premade sauces from the grocery store are even worse). But if you find a more authentic recipe, it often calls for tons of exotic oils and herbs and vinegars and spices that are either hard to find or really expensive. Plus there's usually something Evil in there that makes it taste good, and if you try to modify that too much it doesn't taste nearly as good as it does in a restaurant.

Do you guys have any good suggestions? I suspect there might be some good healthy international type recipes that require just a few non-standard ingredients, not 87.

Like Camevil's awesome lentil salad, which besides the basic ingredients required only the purchase of garam masala. And garam masala turns out to be a lovely spice that I wouldn't have known about otherwise! (The dish turned out to be quite tasty and I'd definitely make it again. And the second day I added some chopped nuts and dried fruit to it cause I'm weird that way, and it was really good that way too.)

So what sort of ethnic/international food do you guys eat? Do you go to restaurants, modify take out, or make it from scratch?

Simplest Smoothie Recipe Ever

Want a better post about Smoothie Recipes? This one is a bit old and incomplete; I've got a new, bigger, better Smoothie Recipe post right here: Healthy Smoothie Recipes! (And sorry, googlers, for the extra click).

This post is not just a cynical attempt to discover if "Smoothie Recipe" is something people might google someday and suddenly find themselves at Cranky Fitness.

Well, OK, partly it is. As Merry mentioned in a previous post about squash, we find ourselves forever indebted to our reader Susan for her stuffed bell pepper recipe. It brings us almost as much traffic as some of our most popular search terms: "big fat ass," "flat belly diet," and "big bouncy breasts!" We don't know if it's something particular about stuffed peppers, or if it's just having "recipe" in the title. Whatever it is, we'd certainly like to encourage it.

But really, that's not the main reason for suddenly posting about smoothies.

It's just that lately I've rediscovered drinking smoothies for breakfast. Sometimes I go through smoothie phases, where nothing sounds better. Healthy and easy, but tasty too--it's like getting to drink a milkshake at 8 a.m., but with no guilt!

But then all of a sudden, for no particular reason I'm all: meh, no thanks. Done with smoothies. Buh bye. Catch ya' again in another 6 months or so.

As Easy as Pie! Wait, pie isn't easy...

Now there are different schools of thought on smoothies, and lots of people like complicated smoothies with all kinds of exotic and nutritious ingredients in them. You folks: sorry, this recipe will seem pathetic. There is nothing green or fermented or powdered or specially imported.

(I'm hoping you'll all share your smoothie tips with us in the comments, because smoothies are a personal thing--so the more options, the better.)

No, this recipe is probably better designed for people who end up buying the overpriced kind at the mall food court every now and then, hoping it's a relatively healthy choice. (Alas, not always. Unless, for example, a 560 calorie pina colada smoothie from Smoothie Factory with 105 grams of sugar sounds like a nutritional bargain). This super-simple recipe is to encourage you non-smoothie making folks to buy a blender, or if you have an old relic in the basement, to find it and resurrect it.

(Note: If it still smells like Cuervo, lime juice
and triple sec, you probably need to wash it).

If Crabby can do it, you certainly can. There's only one tricky part, which we'll get to in a moment.

Finally, The Recipe:

Ready? Here we go:


Easy Smoothie Recipe:

1 cup milk (I use nonfat)
1/2 cup frozen banana slices
1/2 cup Some Other Tasty Frozen Fruit
A small splash of vanilla (optional)
And maybe a little bit of sugar, honey or other sweetener to taste (also optional).

I usually pour the milk in first, since the lines on the blender measure it for me, then I dump in the frozen fruit, vanilla, and (gasp) a tiny bit of splenda. Next, I hit the "Frappe the hell out of it, baby," button.

Voila!

It's basically just nonfat milk and fruit, but the frozen bananas magically transform it into something that tastes like it should be evil.

The tricky part I mentioned? It's having the damn sliced frozen bananas and some other kind of frozen fruit on hand. It just doesn't taste as good with ice and room temperature fruit.

So when you buy bananas and they start to go bad, you gotta cut 'em and freeze 'em. This is one of those annoying "think ahead" things. I usually use frozen blueberries for the other fruit, which is why I have such an awesome memory, but mango is also pretty tasty.

Do any of you drink smoothies? What do you like in 'em?

What the hell do I do with all this Squash?

[By Merry]

I've been thinking. We need more recipes thrown onto the blog once in awhile. That stuffed peppers one has been really getting a lot of attention. (I'll have to go back and check -- did Crabby advocate stuffing in some illegal herbage into those peppers or is there some other reason it's so incredibly popular?)

It occurred to me that another post might be welcome if it were centered around recipes for... wait for it...

SQUASH!

Zukes are cute? Who knew!

Anybody who's got a garden and been foolish enough to plant one little wimpy-looking squash plant is now up to their uvula in squash plants. (Oh come now. That's a perfectly decent word. Honest.It's not the poor word's fault that it looks funny.)

Sneak Your Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Night was celebrated a couple of weeks ago. (Note: the womanagement at Cranky Fitness wish to stress that they in no way encourage the Zucchini sneaking methods listed at Allrecipes.com -- but only because we don't want anyone to complain about us. They do sound fun.)

If you missed that, you might be in the mood for some ideas. I mean, these guys are healthy, they can be served in a tasty and tasteful manner, but even so... after a few back-to-back meals of these vegetables, you'll come to fully appreciate why they're named Squash.

Peasant women perform the annual Stomping of the Squash.
Coincidentally, peasant women rarely spend large amounts of cash on therapy.

- Cook squash with tomatoes, freeze for later on. Come November, it's dark out and rainy and you forgot to got to the store, serve this with some pasta and you'll feel virtuous.

Squash sauteed with tomatoes and basil; seasoned with garlic and rosemary; and finished with balsamic vinegar

- Make squash fritters with beer. I read somewhere -- can't remember the cook book -- that you should let the beer stay out until it goes flat for best results. Of course, this presumes you live in a household where you have beer around and more importantly where you can leave a half-empty can of beer out to go stale without someone drinking it or throwing it away (or both, hopefully in that order). There are various recipes out there for this; it makes a tasty treat. Not as healthy as some recipes, but it beats the hell out of deep fried twinkies. Really, doesn't taste bad.

- squash-with-basil soup. Can be served cold, which makes it nice on hot days. We still have a few of those left, don't we?

- squash cake. The nice thing about this type of thing is that you can grate the zucchini, freeze it for a couple months, and then whip up a healthy-but-the-kid's-eat-it-anyway cake. (I always feel more motivated to bake on cold Saturday mornings when the weather is horrible outside. Which it will be in a couple of months, I have a feeling.)

Anyone for the last piece?

- stuffed zucchinis! Why should peppers have all the fun? Hell, you can scoop out the squashy insides and use the shells for salad bowls or Mai Tai drink holders.

Carrots, celery, crumbled veggie burgers, squash, and spices in a baked butternut squash shell

- save them for a month or so and make... Carved Zucchinis!

Why should the pumpkins have all the fun?

And the fun doesn't stop there!

Start a new tradition: Hannukah Squash! They make highly original gifts.
Give Aunt Marge a gift she'll talk about for years.

Or not talk at all for years...

(Incidentally, I do love the word "Hannukah." I swear you can spell it several different ways and they're all correct. The people who thought up "obsolescence" and "chrysanthemum" should take note.)


What do you do with excess vegetables? Got any good squash recipes/gift ideas?

Reader Recipe: Stuffed Peppers

[Posted by Crabby]


This awesome looking Stuffed Bell Pepper recipe comes courtesy of Susan over at Nutrition, Fitness, Life.

She even included this picture, and if you're not hungry yet? Just hang on a second...



How 'bout now?

Anyway, rather than clutter up her post with a bunch of tedious musings on Stuffed Bell Peppers (and believe me I could--I have thoughts and opinions about EVERYTHING, including stuffed bell peppers) I'll turn it directly over to her. Thanks Susan! --Crabby


Hello everyone, and a big thank you to Crabby and Merry for inviting me as a guest on their blog! (I did take off my shoes.) I'm very honored, and I have to say that the cupcakes look even bigger from up here!

But now on to the recipe (it doesn't involve cupcakes)...

I concocted this version of the stuffed pepper while playing in the kitchen one day and was pleased with the results. I used brown rice for a healthier twist and chose lean, ground sirloin. Tofu would work as a replacement for the meat, though. You could also replace the tomato sauce with chopped tomatoes, which I bet would taste heavenly if fresh from the garden!

This recipe serves 6*, so please feel free to adjust the recipe if cooking for fewer people. Then again, these make for a good lunch the next day. :)

• 3 bell peppers (green, red, yellow… any color will do)


• 1 cup water


• ½ cup uncooked brown rice


• ¼ tsp salt


• ½ tsp olive oil or nonstick cooking spray


• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped


• 1 pound ground sirloin or ground turkey


• 1 cup corn (frozen works great)


• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped


• 2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce


• 1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce


• 2 tsp Italian seasoning


• Salt and pepper to taste


• 1 cup shredded low-fat cheese (any flavor)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C).

Combine water, rice, and ¼ tsp salt in saucepan. Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a low simmer. Cook until rice has absorbed the water and is tender – about 30 minutes.

As rice is cooking:
Rinse peppers and cut in half vertically, or cut just the top off. Remove the stem, seeds, and the membranes inside the peppers. Set aside.

In a large pan/skillet over medium heat, add oil or spray pan with nonstick cooking spray. Add chopped onions, and cook just until slightly tender, about 4 minutes. Remove onions to a dish, and set aside.

Place the ground meat in that same pan and cook until evenly browned. Drain fat.**

Add onions, corn, garlic, Worcestershire, tomato sauce, and seasonings to meat. Cook on medium-low heat. Add rice and gently combine. Turn heat to very low.

Fill large pot with warm water that has been salted and bring to a boil. Immerse peppers in water for 2 minutes and remove from water. Set peppers in a large baking dish with hollowed side up.

Fill each pepper with meat and rice mixture. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. Any leftover mixture can be stored in a container and used with salsa as a topping for tortilla chips!

Bake in oven for 15 minutes or until cheese is melted and lightly golden brown.

Let cool for a few minutes and dig in!

*Cutting just the tops of each pepper will provide a pretty dish for the stuffing and result in one, hearty serving. You can increase the number of peppers from 3 to 4 if using this method.

**I like to pour off any grease from meat into a used container, such as an old pasta sauce jar. Then I wipe off the side of the pan with a paper towel. Be careful about draining grease directly into your sink as the grease can harden and clog the drain. And please keep in mind that hot grease can cause nasty burns! Be careful not to spill any on yourself!

Reader Recipe: Sweet Potato Chili

[Posted by Crabby]


This recipe features the humble Sweet Potato.

You would think sweet potatoes were the junk food of the vegetable world, wouldn't you? "Sweet" plus "potato" sure sounds like something that should be naughty. An uninformed person might think: Why eat a naughty vegetable when you could use those calories for other important nutritional needs?

(Cartoon courtesy of nataliedee.com)

But guess what: that's all wrong. Sweet potatoes are really nutritious! They're so good for you, in fact, that the CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) named the sweet potato the most nutritious vegetable of all the vegetables in the world!

Note: if this claim seems a bit over-the-top, it may be 'cause this Healthy Vegetable Pageant was held back in 1991. We've been introduced to about a billion "superfoods" since then, and I was too lazy to discover the current rankings. Perhaps the Sweet Potato has been demoted to Miss Congeniality by now (since she seems so sweet and all).

Screw you brussel sprouts, I'm still WAY more popular.
(Photo by Angie Doyle)

But even without the crown: sweet potatoes are full of really great healthy stuff.

So here is an awesome recipe sent in by Megan R, who blogs at Praying Horse. (She blogs about weight loss and emotional eating and has lost 135 lbs!) The chili sounds delicious to me, since I love sweet and spicy things together. As soon as I get my lazy ass in the kitchen and get around to cutting up some veggies I'm definitely gonna give this a try!


Sweet Potato Chili

1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium red onion, diced
1 tsp chili powder
2 cups vegetable broth
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 3/4 inch cubes
2 zucchinis, diced
3 tomatoes, diced or 1 can tomato bits
2 cups cooked pinto beans or 1 can
6 cloves garlic, minced (I like garlic)
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp cayenne
Chopped fresh cilantro

Heat olive oil in heavy pan over medium high heat. Add red onion and saute until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add the chili powder and stir for 1 minute. Add 1 cup of the broth and the sweet potato. Cover pan and reduce heat. Simmer until sweet potato is almost tender, about 10 minutes.

Add tomatoes with the juice and the pinto beans along with the garlic and spices. Add the zucchinis and the rest of the broth. Add pepper.

Simmer uncovered until the chili thickens and the sweet potato is very tender. Add cilantro to the bowl when serving.


Thanks Megan!

IMPORTANT NOTE: We're starting to run low on Reader Recipes... Got a tasty easy healthy one? Please email to Crabby McSlacker @ gmail . com (all one word).

Whole Wheat Whining; Plus... Plug for Panko?

You Know You Should

Nutritionists out there are always nagging us all to eat more whole grains because they're so good for you. But if you don't spend hours making things from scratch, you may have tried to buy packaged whole grain products at your local grocery store.

Seems easy enough, right? Because the grocery store shelves are bursting with products screaming "Now in Whole Wheat!" or "Made With 100% Whole Grain!"

So you grab a loaf of bread or a box of cereal or a frozen pizza and you take it home. Sometimes it tastes wonderful. Other times, it tastes...




Well, maybe a little too grainy.

But at least you tried. You either make yourself learn to like it, or you abandon the experiment and go back to the refined grain version.

Faked Out

Has this ever happened to you? You're at the grocery store and you discover that some refined flour product you used to buy is now available in 100% whole grain. Hooray! So you take it home and try it and it's not too bad!

But then one day you happen to look more closely at the package...
and discover something suspicious on the ingredients label.

Hmm. How come the first or second ingredient is "wheat flour?"

"Wheat flour" may sound "wheaty" and everything, but didn't you read somewhere that it's just a euphemism for good old refined white flour?

White flour?? You told me it was Whole Wheat!!!

So how could those lying scumbag scheming evil corporate toads product marketing specialists get away with calling a product "100% Whole Grain" when it's not?

Because... they just said it was "made with 100% whole grain."

Gotcha!

There could be just a little bit of whole grain and a lot of other things in there too, like the refined white flour you're trying to avoid. Or...


... insect parts! And hey, by the same reasoning, shouldn't these "made with 100% whole wheat" products also have to say: "Made with 100% Insect Parts?" I'd be willing to bet that the insect parts you're eating in processed foods are generally 100% insect. But oddly enough, I've never seen that particular product label.

That Same Old Song

If you are long-time reader this rant may sound strangely familiar. Yep, I wrote the exact same thing (back when no one reading the blog yet) and I was recommending "white whole wheat," which sounds fake but is really actually a whole grain (winter wheat).

And yet again, the reason for all this whining about fake whole grain products is that it explains my excitement when I find one that appears to be (a) real and (b) very tasty.

So those of you who like Crispy Crunchy things, check out Ian's Whole Wheat Panko Crumbs!



Note: of course as soon as I discovered these, they became temporarily unavailable on Ian's site through Amazon. (They currently only seem to ship their non-whole wheat ones, so this picture is of the Canadian version). However, the Ian's people have assured me you can find their whole wheat panko crumbs at a Whole Foods near you.

All in Search of Crispy Chicken

The reason I found out about these in the first place was because the awesome Elastic Waist blogger Anne had a great post on her fond recollection of Shake 'n Bake chicken.

She was all excited because she found a healthier, tastier recipe for crunchy not-fried chicken at Family, Friends, and Food. But... their recipe called for panko bread crumbs, which I've never tried cooking with before. And I thought--do I really want to find yet one more yummy refined grain product to wish I could eat more of when there are already so many, like cupcakes?

But then I googled "whole wheat panko crumbs" to see if there was such a thing, and there was, at Ian's. So I begged a sample off them, made the Chicken Recipe and...

It was really good! Crunchy and only slightly more grainy than it probably would be using regular panko crumbs. (Note: I did tweak the recipe a bit to make it better match the spices I had available, so I can't vouch for the exact combination. And if you want to try it too, don't be scared of the exotic ingredient "EVOO." For those in the know, which I wasn't, it's just extra virgin olive oil).

Summary: Great bread crumbs, great chicken recipe. Want more!

Does anyone else struggle with the Whole Grain Thing?

Reader Recipe--Commodity Cookies

[Posted by Crabby]


This recipe was sent in by one of our favorite Cranky Fitness commenters, Mary Anne in Kentucky. It's perfect for those of us who love cookies, but don't like to go to a lot of fuss to make them. And the main ingredient is oats! Oats are good enough for you that in my Unwritten Rule book, they cancel out the little bit of sugar involved. And who can argue with peanut butter and cocoa? Certainly not the Crab. Yum!
Thanks Mary Anne!


Commodity Cookies
by Mary Anne in Kentucky

I call these Commodity Cookies because when I was eating them in the high school lunchroom decades ago all the ingredients were available from the Commodities to the Schools program.

Commodity cookies
1/2 c. oil
1/2 c. milk (I substitute water due to years of milk allergy; my high school's recipe used dried milk plus water)
1/3 c. sugar
1/3 c. cocoa
Boil for 1 minute; Yes really--one minute only. No candy thermometers, no Soft Ball Stage nonsense, just 60 seconds.

Add:
1/3 c. peanut butter (preferably without sugar, unless you figure out how to reduce the 1/3 c. sugar; commodity peanut butter had nothing in it but ground peanuts.)
3 c. oats
Roll into balls.
Eat. No, not all at once.

See how disgustingly healthy it is? Do the math: all the other ingredients together are less than the amount of oatmeal. Yet it's sweet and chocolaty and has a little protein. It keeps for a week at room temperature (perhaps more--that's as long as I ever managed to keep any around); it freezes without any loss of flavor or texture.

Reader Recipe: Pesto Pasta with Chicken Sausage

[Posted by Crabby]

Welcome to our the first post in what will hopefully be a regular feature of Cranky Fitness: Reader Recipes! This is part of our ongoing efforts to make readers do our work for us make the blog more of an "interactive experience!"

(And speaking of doing our work for us... does anyone know how to make the recipe card above say "Cranky Fitness Recipes" without purchasing software or ripping our hair out trying to use Paint??)

So this first recipe was submitted by Debbi, who blogs over at Knit. Run. Repeat. It looks both tasty and mighty darn healthy. Enjoy!


Serves 2-4:

1/2 lb. whole wheat pasta – penne or farfelle
1 cup frozen edamame (shelled)
Cooking spray
1/2 lb. chicken sausages, sliced (I love Sam's Club's version)
1/2 cup celery, sliced
1 white or yellow onion, cut in half and then quartered (eight wedges)
1 red or yellow pepper, cut in half-inch pieces
1/2 cup broccoli florets
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
1 to 2 Tbsp. pesto sauce
1/4 cup grated fresh parmesan

Cook pasta in boiling water according to package directions. Add edamame toward end of cooking time.

While pasta is cooking, spray a large non-stick skillet with cooking spray. Saute chicken sausage for two or three minutes, then add celery and onions. Cook until onion is almost translucent. Add peppers and broccoli for a couple of minutes and then toss in the mushrooms. You don't want any of the vegetables to be overcooked.

Drain pasta, but don't rinse with cold water. Transfer pasta to large shallow serving bowl and toss with pesto sauce until pasta is well-coated. Add vegetables and chicken and mix well. Top with parmesan and serve. Delish!

You can vary the vegetables according to your taste, and this also works well with an added half-cup of kidney beans and a handful of pine nuts, if you can afford the extra calories.


Crabby says, Thanks Debbi, this looks great!

And to other readers who actually know how to cook healthy meals-- please consider sharing your recipes with us, we really appreciate it!

Submit a Recipe to Cranky Fitness!

[By Crabby]

Got a Healthy Recipe?

Alert readers of Cranky Fitness may have noticed that we rarely have recipes to share. And when we do, the sharing process tends to include more in the way of bad jokes and whining, and less in the way of helpful instructions for making a tasty meal.

So here's what we're thinking: perhaps readers might like do our work for us share some of their own culinary discoveries?

Please? We're getting really tired of frozen pizza and take-home rotisserie chicken.


What kind of recipes are best?
We are looking in particular for healthy, easy recipes. Recipes with 97 ingredients that use lots of fancy French terms like "en papillotte" or "court bouillon" might make awesome meals but they tend to mess with our heads and make us feel inadequate.

And while we realize that "healthy" has a variety of interpretations, recipes that include huge quantities of sugar, white flour, lard, salt, butter, and bacon will be less favored than recipes that somehow make whole grains, fruits, vegetables, healthy fats and lean forms of protein seem tasty and appealing.

Is there financial compensation?
Alas, no. If you have a blog or a favorite website you'd like to promote, we will be happy to include a link to it in your recipe post. You'll also have our most sincere and enthusiastic gratitude for your contribution!

But Beware:
These recipe posts may be published in a haphazard manner, perhaps in addition to another post on the same day. They could appear on a weekend, or be ignored entirely for months and months and then suddenly pop up long after you've forgotten you submitted it. So please do NOT send in a recipe if you have an emotional attachment to seeing it on the pages of Cranky Fitness in any kind of timely manner.

Not Dissuaded Yet?
Hooray! Because we'd love to hear about what you cook and eat and get some new ideas to share with everyone.

What if I don't have a recipe--Are you still taking other sorts of guest posts?
Yes, we are also still open to general guest post submissions too! Though unfortunately, as with the recipes, we can't guarantee we will publish all of them (and we know they're a pain to write.)

What we especially love: posts around 750 words or less on a health or fitness topic that are kinda funny and haven't been published before. Short videos are cool too since we've never gotten it together to do any of our own. These can be instructional or funny--of course both at once is awesome.

Feeling brave and generous and energetic? Please email your recipe or guest blog post submission to Crabby McSlacker @ gmail . com, all one word.

Thanks!

Chicken Soup

[By Crabby]

(Crabby's Secret Family Recipes. Why yes, they are all blank!)

Who says we never do recipes here at Cranky Fitness?

OK, we don't. Not unless it's a guest post. But just because Crabby doesn't cook all that often, why should we let foodie blogs like Noshtopia or creative cooks like Roni or Gena have all the fun?


Crabby's Chicken Soup Recipe

1. Take out a sharpened knife, find one of these and....

Grawwwk! Get the f*ck away from me!

Never mind. Just kidding.

Of course we would never kill an innocent bird for our dinner. Personally.

Let's just pretend that grocery store chickens were never actually alive in the first place, shall we?

2. Go to the store and buy one of those fancy expensive free-range organic healthy chickens and...

Crap!

All sold out. We waited too long. Plus it's getting late and we're hungry.

Hmm, what's that wonderful smell? What about one of those grocery store ready-to-eat rotisserie chickens pumped up with who-knows-what-kind-of-chemicals?

Mmmm, sounds great!

3. Pair rotisserie chicken with a salad and call it dinner.

4. Allow guilt to simmer overnight. (What's wrong with us? Why don't we ever make anything from scratch anymore?)

(Did you know simmering guilt tastes almost exactly like chicken?)

5. Go back to the store the next day and buy vegetables. For example: onions, cute little blue potatoes, green beans, zucchini, carrots. No celery because we hate celery.

6. Take rotisserie chicken leftovers out of the refrigerator (or go buy a new one if there's none left). Peel off excess skin, break up carcass a bit and throw carcass into big pan of water.

7. Chop up onions.

8. Cry.

(Onions: way cheaper than therapy.)

9. Throw onions in with chicken.

10. Boil the hell out of chicken and onions until house is smelly and every window is steamy. Maybe an hour or two.

11. Haul chicken back out, and remove bones and cartilage and icky leftover bits of skin. Curse the little tiny bones in the spine that break up and hide in the bottom of the pot. Hope, with little confidence, that you fished them all out.

12. Throw chicken meat back in the pot and add the rest of chopped vegetables.

13. Add more water as necessary and continue to boil the hell out of the chicken and vegetables until the whole thing starts to taste less like chicken water and more like soup.

14. Consider straining but remember that you still haven't bought a strainer so what the hell. No one in the household has died (yet) from the extra chicken fat or those sneaky little bones.

15. Salt and pepper to taste.

16. Realize after smelling and sampling the stuff for hours and you don't even feel like chicken soup anymore.

17. Refrigerate soup and call for pizza delivery.

18. Let guilt simmer again over night. It's better when the flavors have had a chance to marry.

19. The next night, have soup! Feel smug. You cooked!