HotM 22: Heart Healthy Decadence (Round-up)

This month's theme for Heart of the Matter focused on decadent treats that were heart healthy. Unfortunately, we didn't get very many entries this month, and so I waited a few extra days, hoping that we might get a late entry or two because December is such a busy month anyhow - and it seems to have worked, because we did! Thanks to the wonderful bloggers who participated this month, even in the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle!

Our first entry comes from Ricki, who authors the blog Diet, Desserts and Dogs. She reminds us in her post that real women bake cookies too (I love this!) and offered her recipe for Tutti Fruiti Christmas Cookies. Since we're already after Christmas now, these pretty little treats would still make lovely hostess gifts or anytime cookies.

Labelga, a regular participant of HotM and the author of Leafy Cooking went with some premium ingredients and made a Bisque d'homard (or, Lobster Bisque) - she served it fresh and hot and it didn't even need the cream the recipe called for, making it really healthy but still full of flavor. This truly shows that heart-heathy treats can be delicious and decadent!

Ilva, my co-host at Lucullian Delights, has posted a beautiful Apricot Almond Cake with Oats and Coconut for her decadent treat. This would make a very lovely holiday breakfast or a delicious treat any time of the year!

Lastly, my own entry was for Caramel Macadamia Nut Sticky Buns - these little treats were an early holiday breakfast for us and are perfect if you're having guests this holiday season.

Thanks again to the participants this month and I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday!

A December Full of Heart-Healthy Decadence (HotM 22)

December is a month full of festivities: holiday parties to attend and coordinate, visitors to entertain, baked goods to create, presents to make or buy, occasions to celebrate with friends and family, cards to write and good cheer to spread. For many of us, it's the busiest time of the year, but also a time of year when we get to let our kitchen prowess shine - or at least get in there and try a few new things!

For me, December means breaking out the Alabama Christmas CD for a few renditions of "Thistlehair the Christmas Bear," scouring books and magazines for new cookie recipes to share with friends, family and cookie swaps; finding new side dishes to accompany the dusty and required recipes for artichoke dip, prime rib and chicken noodle soup that make up Christmas eve and Christmas day fare; and choosing to attempt one of those "traditional" holiday treats that simply are aren't around the other 11 months of the year: yule logs with chocolate bark and marzipan mushrooms, soft and sweet panettone, fruitcake studded with jewel-like candied fruits, elaborate gingerbread houses, rum-spiked eggnog...you know the stuff. Every year, I dream of making such decadent treats, but December comes and goes too quickly, and I find myself left with only the vision of sugarplums dancing in my head and no yule log to speak of.
This year, I'm determined to make those sugarplums materialize and sink my teeth in to them.

For over a year, participants of the monthly Heart of the Matter (HotM) event been helping Ilva, Joanna and I show that food that's good for you doesn't have to be boring or bland. We've already done baked goods and holiday food as themes before, so now we're stepping it up a notch. The holiday season is a time of celebration, abundance, and culinary wanderlust - so for HotM this month, we're asking you to share your recipes for the most decadent, delicious treats you can think of - with a heart-healthy twist. What sort of mouth-watering, scrumptious recipes do you dust off from your kitchen repertoire this time of year? Do you have a something you've always wanted to try, that always seemed too over-the-top to make any other time of the year? Will you take the challenge to make those indulgent foods saved for once-a-year into heart-healthy holiday treats?

The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry(please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to phillipslayden AT gmail DOT com (please use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight on Thursday, December 25, linking to my site, The Accidental Scientist (and to the HotM blog if you’d like). Please note that this is only a few short weeks away! Since it's so soon, and I want people to be able to gain inspiration and be able to enjoy the recipes all month long but have them before the holiday actually arrives, I'll be doing the round-up differently this month and posting the recipes that have come in at the end of each week. If you've never participated before, please join us! We'd love to have some new "faces" and recipes to share!

HotM 19: grains

Grains were the subject of this month's Heart of the Matter ... and here you'll find a small number of very good ideas from some of the best bloggers around. Cooking wholegrains always seems tricky to me: there's that whiff of 70s sandal-wearing earnest hippie-dom which is hard to shake off - boring brown food that tastes like horsefeed.

Not these days. The 21st century way with wholegrains is altogether tastier, somehow less earnest. I've been experimenting with the help of a highly recommended book, A Cook's Guide to Grains by Jenni Muir. Now I'm planning to add these dishes to my staple repertoire - these are all easily achievable, mostly quite quick, all of them the kind of recipes you can fiddle with to add your own stamp.















Labelga's quinoa flakes with spinach and red chilli is ready in 10 minutes, so there are no excuses for not giving this a go. It's one of Labelga's AAP dishes - another alternative to pizza! As you can see from the picture, the flakes are spread onto the plate, then topped with this fabulous spiced mixture. Find it at Leafy Cooking.



















Christine at Kits Chow made vegetarian multigrain rice with vegetables, inspired by a Japanese rice dish, matsutake gohan (rice with mushrooms). This is something to get you experimenting - there are five grains: brown rice, black glutinous rice, buckwheat groats, oat groats and millet.





















Bee and Jai have been doing some hard thinking about what they buy, cook and eat. Their post for Heart of the Matter is interesting and inspirational - they share their personal "rules", and finish with a versatile recipe for roti: this one is sourdough Swiss chard and cornmeal. You'll find it at Jugalbandi, always a good read.

















I often think of cooking wholegrains as time-consuming, but here's another recipe that shows that wholegrains can be quick and easy. Michelle The Accidental Scientist, one of my co-hosts for HotM, makes this Mexican style rice when she's short of time, as an accompaniment to fish, tacos, beans - lots of links to these and other recipes.
























Co-host Ilva at Lucullian Delights has stuffed courgettes with kamut grains which she found when out shopping a little while ago. As always with Ilva's food, it's beautiful and packed with flavours: she calls her dish oven baked zucchini filled with kamut, olives, thyme and parsley.

Olive Oyl is a blogger without a blog, and she's sent me this variation on the traditional Greek dish spanakorizo (Spinach rice), another happy & easy meal:

Plenty for 2 hungry people, also good cold the next day

Chop an onion and gently fry in a biggish saucepan, in a good glug of olive oil. Rough chop around four heads of spinach, I often also add sorrel, baby nettles and cleavers, depending on what's growing, and add to the pan, cover and let sweat for five minutes. Next add 250gms of brown rice, 600ml of water and juice of a lemon. Bring to the boil, season,cover and turn the heat down. Check after about 20 minutes, stir, add water as needed and so on until cooked (usually around 50 minutes)you might also want to add at this point a good few fistfuls of herbs such as mint, parsley, celery leaves, dill. When cooked it has the consistency of risotto and is a beautiful emerald green. Be more or less heart healthy with a grating of cheese on top.



















Nearly forgot: I blogged two grain dishes at Joanna's Food - Skirlie, a cheap and cheerful Scots dish made with oats, and these great six-seeded rolls.

Thanks to everyone for taking part, and watch out for the announcement for December's Heart of the Matter

Announcement: grains for November

This is an announcement for November's Heart of the Matter - we're looking for recipes using GRAINS ... all sorts of grains -wheat, farro, spelt , kamut, amaranth, buckwheat, barley, corn/maize, wild rice, millet, sorghum oats, rice, rye, triticale, quinoa. And if anyone can tell me where in Britain I can buy teff I will be eternally grateful.

That list: it's not exhaustive, and it contains grains I've never eaten, never mind cooked. But it also holds promise - of delicious, healthy, cheap meals. For these grains have been the staple food of mankind over centuries, ever since we stopped roaming, settled down and began to farm.

I have a tendency to think of grains as part of that worthy wholefood 70s thing, brown food that tasted like sawdust. Daft really, because looking through my blog, I find dozens of delicious family favourites made with grains (and I'm not just talking about bread). In the next few days, I'm going to posts lists in groups to make them easier to find - I don't know about you, but I have a lot of half-used packets in my larder, from when I've enthusiastically cooked something new just once.

I'm also going to recommend a really good book, one I found by accident about a year ago, and which is full of useful information about grains, as well as some excellent recipes. It's A Cook's Guide to Grains, by Jenni Muir. Here's an oat recipe adapted from it - too brown to photograph well, but utterly delicious, and cheap as chips (although much much healthier).

Skirlie
for 4

Finely chop an onion and fry very gently in a solid saucepan using plenty of oil. When they're soft and golden mix in a cup (100g) of medium oatmeal and fry for a further 10 minutes or so. Stir frequently. When the mixture is nicely toasted, serve.

This is good instead of potatoes; it's also great with mashed potato. You can use it as a stuffing, either for a joint of lamb, or for a squash. It's a lovely savoury dish that would take well to being modernised with plenty of chopped herbs; it's filling, it's cheap, it's nourishing, it's heart-healthy. It just isn't particularly photogenic.




We'd love to read your heart-healthy grain recipes ... the Heart of the Matter website is a great place for ideas for heart-healthy recipes (something I wish had existed when we were changing our diet on doctor's orders after my husband's heart attack), and it only exists because so many bloggers have taken the time to share their recipes - and also because of the time given to it by my co-hosts Ilva at Lucullian Delights, and Michelle, The Accidental Scientist

The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Thursday 27th November , linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up during the last weekend of November.


PS I'll let you know soon why I'm so keen to track down the teff

Announcement: grains for November

This is an announcement for November's Heart of the Matter - we're looking for recipes using GRAINS ... all sorts of grains -wheat, farro, spelt , kamut, amaranth, buckwheat, barley, corn/maize, wild rice, millet, sorghum oats, rice, rye, triticale, quinoa. And if anyone can tell me where in Britain I can buy teff I will be eternally grateful.

That list: it's not exhaustive, and it contains grains I've never eaten, never mind cooked. But it also holds promise - of delicious, healthy, cheap meals. For these grains have been the staple food of mankind over centuries, ever since we stopped roaming, settled down and began to farm.

I have a tendency to think of grains as part of that worthy wholefood 70s thing, brown food that tasted like sawdust. Daft really, because looking through my blog, I find dozens of delicious family favourites made with grains (and I'm not just talking about bread). In the next few days, I'm going to posts lists in groups to make them easier to find - I don't know about you, but I have a lot of half-used packets in my larder, from when I've enthusiastically cooked something new just once.

I'm also going to recommend a really good book, one I found by accident about a year ago, and which is full of useful information about grains, as well as some excellent recipes. It's A Cook's Guide to Grains, by Jenni Muir. Here's an oat recipe adapted from it - too brown to photograph well, but utterly delicious, and cheap as chips (although much much healthier).

Skirlie
for 4

Finely chop an onion and fry very gently in a solid saucepan using plenty of oil. When they're soft and golden mix in a cup (100g) of medium oatmeal and fry for a further 10 minutes or so. Stir frequently. When the mixture is nicely toasted, serve.

This is good instead of potatoes; it's also great with mashed potato. You can use it as a stuffing, either for a joint of lamb, or for a squash. It's a lovely savoury dish that would take well to being modernised with plenty of chopped herbs; it's filling, it's cheap, it's nourishing, it's heart-healthy. It just isn't particularly photogenic.




We'd love to read your heart-healthy grain recipes ... the Heart of the Matter website is a great place for ideas for heart-healthy recipes (something I wish had existed when we were changing our diet on doctor's orders after my husband's heart attack), and it only exists because so many bloggers have taken the time to share their recipes - and also because of the time given to it by my co-hosts Ilva at Lucullian Delights, and Michelle, The Accidental Scientist

The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Thursday 27th November , linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up during the last weekend of November.


PS I'll let you know soon why I'm so keen to track down the teff

The Roundup of October's HotM - Orange and Yellow

It's time for the roundup of October month's Heart of the Matter, HotM. This month I was free to choose any colour I wanted and as it is Autumn I couldn't resist choosing yellow/orange. It is emblematic of the season on up here in the northern hemisphere and it is always present in the spring that is going on in the southern hemisphere. So it was an easy choice!
We have a lot of different entries here, soups, cakes, pasta and vegetables-you name it. I think I can safely say that pumpkin/buttenut squash are the dominant ingredient but there are others as you will see!

First out we have Cara of Cara's Cravings who finally managed to use her crockpot when she made a beautiful Crockpot Red Curry Chicken with Butternut Squash that has a wonderful colour, not to speak about how great it must taste! (Do check out how she makes the cauliflower rice that accompanies the dish, it's a lovely idea!)

Andrea from Cooking Books gives us a Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Tomatoes and Thyme that really sounds and looks incredibly tasty, I wish I had it ready in my kitchen for lunch right now!

Next out is the entry from Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen. Now I love Indian food so I was really happy to get this great recipe of Subzi Dal (Mixed Vegetables In A Yellow Lentil Gravy), it has a beautiful yellow colour and I can imagine how nice it must smell!

My lovely HotM co-host Joanna of Joanna's Food found time to make an entry as well and I wonder if she was thinking of me when she made it because it is a combination that I love, her Pumpkin in Chilli Oil will definitely find its way onto our table!

More tasty vegetables, Dana of Dulcedo has made some really tasty
Roasted Root Vegetables with Rosemary for us, so perfect for chilly Autumn days! I mean, who can resist them?

I was very very pleased to receive an entry from one of my best blog friends Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, she has made a tasty Autumn Harvest Soup with Butternut Squash, Kale, and Farro or Brown Rice for us to feast on.

Priya from Priya's Easy N Tasty Recipes has made a really healthy Pumpkin and Watercress Soup that is full of vitamins and minerals, thanks for taking the time to do the research Priya, really interesting! And a tasty soup as well!

Christine's entry is delightfully colourful, savoury and simple, just the way I like my vegetables! Check out how to make her her Sautéed peppers with garlic and thyme over at her blog Kits Chow!

Here we have Pasta With Creamy Turkey Meat Sauce made by me.

and then I made some Creamy Spaghetti with Butternut Squash, Leek and Oregano, Topped with Walnuts and Parmesan.

Another friend of mine, LaBelga from Leafy Cooking obviously love orange and pumpkin ver much because she has sent me two(!) entries for this month's HotM: first a creamy dish of Pumpkin Pasta and the a wonderfully spicy Pumpkin Dessert! Love it when people get carried away!


Mansi from Fun and Food Café offers us these beautiful and yellow Pear Almond Cakes and she promises that they are perfect as a snack, I believe her, they must be great!

These Sugarless Tropical Mini Muffins from Sarah of What Smells So Good? are incredibly healthy and as they still are naturally sweet, I'm sure they are for all of us! I have to try them...

Lovely Arfi from HomeMadeS not only takes us for a pleasant walk in her garden (gardening is good for your blood pressure you know) but then she takes us in and serves us a lovely bowl of Orange Slices in Orange and Star Anise Syrup! Couldn't be better!

Just look at these Sweet Corn Muffins, aren't they pretty in those cup cake forms? Ning of Heart and Hearth has baked us a batch of heart healthy muffins to feast on!

There's one big problem when it comes to making roundups, they always make me so very hungry! So now I have to go and eat something. IF I have forgotten something or someone, if there are links that are nor working, please let me know and I will make amends! A BIG THANK YOU to all of the participants, without you HotM would be nothing!

The Heart of the Matter -October is Yellow and Orange

This month it is my turn to host HotM and I even get to choose a colour because this month whatever you make has to be colourful! I have chosen yellow-orange, I know it's two colours really but I find that there's a thin borderline between yellow and orange and I don't want to find myself in the situation of having to say no because an entry is not yellow enough. (Just excuses to cover up that I like yellow-orangy food things!) So now you have until the end of the 29th of October to cook yellow or orange (or both) heart healthy food, there are so many things to choose from, pumpkins, winter squashes, yellow apples, carrots, corn, apricots well, you can make starters, finger food, dessert, main courses, whatever tickles your mind! Either the main ingredient is yellow or orange or the final dish, I am not fussy about that but I am fussy about it being heart healthy though, i.e.not too much fat, possibly no animal fat, lean meat, less sugar and less salt. If you need to read up on what types of ingredients that are considered heart healthy, check here, here and here. As always we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events so that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness), and remember to link to event so that we make more people aware of it's existence. Please send me the link to your entry, the name of the dish and your name as well to me at luculliandelights AT gmail DOT com before your midnight on the 29th of October! Any questions?

HotM 18: Preserving the Harvest (Round-up)

Heart of the Matter (HotM) is an event designed to promote healthy eating and heart disease awareness. Specifically, each month Joanna, Ilva and I ask you to devise recipes around a specific theme that are healthy for your heart and your body and share them with the rest of us. We archive all the wonderful entries at the HotM blog, so that whenever you need a heart-healthy recipe for any occasion, you have a plethora of options to choose from. HotM has been going strong now for over a year, and we are grateful to all of you who have participated in this important event - people who have been sending in entries from the very beginning, people who have hopped on in the middle of the ride and those just now joining in.

The entries for September's theme of Preserving the Harvest comprise a surprising variety of wonderful ways for you to extend the harvest of whatever season you may be celebrating in your end of the world - sit back, grab a cup of green tea, and start planning your pantry...

The ever-faithful HotM participants, Jai and Bee from Jugalbandi, conjured up a Roasted Tomatillo Salsa. Their delicious photography and just getting ahold of the recipe for this salsa ought to be enough on its own to send you running to their site, but you'll have to read their post to get the full effect of their entry - it's hilarious!

Hailing from my old stomping grounds in Eugene, Oregon, Culinaria Eugenius has created one of the most unique entries we recieved: Vegetable Salts! What a cool way to use up extra vegetables, reduce your sodium intake while upping the flavor quotient, and have cute little jars of your own making to add to the pantry! Not only that, this woman is a Master Preserver! Check out her fabulous blog for additional recipes (and witty commentary) - from fermented pickles to dried tomatoes and beyond!

Ever end up with so many of the same vegetable that you just didn't know what in the world to do with it? Sarah from the blog, What Smells So Good?, used up her 11 lbs of carrots and got a big dose of beta carotene to sweeten the deal by making her Curry Carrot-Ginger Soup. Sounds like a wonderful way to start the cooler season to me! While this is probably an easy-to-freeze recipe too, she also suggests a great way to use up extra food: give it away to your loved ones!

Melissa, our resident nutrition expert from Gluten Free for Good, tells you all about the health benefits and nutritional details about apples, then shares her recipe for dehydrating them and turning them into healthful, tasty and easy to carry snacks that you can take with you no matter where you want to go - whether to school, to work or even hiking up a 14,000 foot peak!

Tanna, from My Kitchen in Half Cups recounts her experiences in making Preserved Lemons and takes you through a photographic feast of links and useful recipes so that not a single one goes to waste. Then, to help you even more, she provides links to other sites that have made Preserved Lemons too so that you can load up on wisdom from other bloggers and new ways to use these beautiful and tasty treats before you begin making your own!

Over at the blog, My Diverse Kitchen, Aparna made a beautiful and delicious-sounding Apple Tomato Raisin Chutney to go with some tasty-looking and innovatively-seasoned crackers. This chutney sounds like it's heaven cooked together in a pot: tomatoes, ginger, apples, anise, cinnamon, onions - the list of lovely ingredients goes on and on. Go check it out!

Forget buying those dried out, tasteless and scentless red pepper flakes from the store to put on your pizza or add spice to a dish. My lovely co-host, Ilva, from Lucullian Delights offers her simple method of sun-drying chili peppers. She keeps her Dried Chili Peppers in her kitchen for use the entire winter long, making them available whenever she needs them. What a great idea!

Last of all, I conquered my fears of fermenting my own foods and made kimchi (kimchee). It's a great, heart-healthy (and body-healthy) way to use up a head of Napa cabbage and adds tons of flavor to all types of foods. You can read about it at my blog, The Accidental Scientist.

Thank you to everyone who participated! If I somehow missed your entry or you forgot to send it in, please email me and let me know so that I can add you to the round-up. Join us next month for a new theme, when Ilva is host!

Protecting Your Heart While Preserving the Harvest (HotM 18)

After worrying for years about a family history that involves prevalent heart disease, I finally bit the bullet recently and got a total work up of all of my important "numbers" - HDL, LDL, triglycerides (TC), TC/HDL, blood pressure, etc. - that would help me assess my "actual" cardiac risk. For those of you here in Hawaii on Oahu, The Windward Heart Center is offering a free cardiac risk assessment that I highly recommend taking advantage of. No matter where you live, and even if you don't have a major concern for heart disease right now, it's good to have a baseline for all those numbers so that if they do change over the years, you know by how much.

For instance, the last (and only) time I had my total cholesterol checked was three years ago, and it was considered "borderline." It's dropped a whopping 40 points!! Not only that, but my ratio of triglycerides to HDL (the *good* cholesterol) is below "average." According to the cardiologist there, all this together means that I've got less than a 1% chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years. Yay! That made my day (and prompted me to go immediately and buy myself a snickers ice cream bar to celebrate - one of my biggest weaknesses from the shop at work - everything in moderation, no?)! Keep in mind that this was a huge surprise - I have lost all but one grandparent to heart attacks when my parents were young; the last one has had a quadruple bypass and my father has a stint; and that's not including uncles and great aunts and uncles, many with major bypass surgeries or heart attacks themselves.

Now, I'm not convinced that doctors have figured out how to accurately diagnose the risk for heart disease (check out this book if you want to be intrigued, as it has a lot of interesting food for thought), but I can't deny that for whatever reason, my cholesterol has certainly dropped significantly. And since I don't exercise on any normal basis (still a constant struggle and goal for me), I can only attribute it to what I've been eating - and a lot of that has to do with all of you and the recipes that you've been creating and submitting on a monthly basis to our little brainchild and pet project, The Heart of the Matter (HotM).

So let's keep it going! The theme for September is Preserving the Harvest. We want your heart healthy recipes that stretch out the foods of the season to last you for the days to come. Do you dry apple slices, rub them with your special spice mix and keep them for afternoon snacks all winter long? Do you make low-sugar jams and jellies? Or do you prefer pickling and brining the goods from your garden? Do you make your mother's spaghetti sauce and keep it in the freezer for those cold winter days or make batches of uniquely flavored vinegars? How about turning extra chilies into chili pepper water?

However you do it, whatever your favorite way to do it is, help the rest of us come up with new and unique ways to make the bounty last by sharing your recipes. Remember the special challenge of HotM recipes - each recipe should follow hearty-healthy eating guidelines - you can find more information here, here and here. If you've never joined us, this is a great time to start! Post your recipe on your blog and send me the permalink at phillipslayden AT gmail DOT com (or if you would like to participate and you do not have a blog, email me your picture and your recipe and I'll post it for you with the round-up). All entries will be due Sunday, September 28, by midnight (Hawaii time), and I'll post the round-up a few days later on this blog, and on the HotM blog. Thanks ahead of time for participating and I hope we'll all continue on our way to a heart healthy future together!

Resources:
The Windward Heart Center
641 Kailua Road
Kailua, HI 96734
by appointment only - Tues. or Thurs.
808.261.2441