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Feeling stumped by those pie shells in the freezer aisle that come ready to go in their own individual aluminum pans? Aside from making a sweet pie, what good are they? Well, it turns out you can actually do quite a lot with them. Here are five ways to make use of this grocery-store convenience from morning to night.
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(Image credit: Bag: Courtesy of Trader Joe’s)
As the stickiest part of summer rolls in, my favorite buys at Trader Joe’s go well beyond the usual snacks and frozen foods I always pick up. These days, the items on the top of my list help me prepare no-cook suppers when I can’t stand the heat. These are my 10 favorite picks.
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(Image credit: Susanna Hopler)
Perhaps one of the most exciting summer-only experiences is when finally (finally) we can tuck into our first ear of corn, hot from the pot or smoky from the grill. Whether it’s dripping with butter and sprinkled with salt, or slathered with lime and mayo, the experience is the very definition of summer — especially if it’s being eaten outdoors while in wrapped in a towel and wearing a still-damp bathing suit.
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For a special summer dinner or just a random Wednesday night, there’s nothing better than steaks on the grill. But while your beef might be the main attraction, you can’t live on steak alone. With that in mind, we have plenty of ideas for delicious summer sides that will complement that perfectly browned and charred T-bone, rib-eye, or Porterhouse. You can give the classic potato side a salt-and-vinegar update, or add a cool, crunchy slaw to keep things light. And if you need a refresher, here’s how we grill the perfect steak.
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For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering two questions. First up, what happens when a brisk walk isn’t enough to attain the optimal fat-burning heart rate zone? It’s a good problem to have—better fitness—but it still needs a response. What activities can a person do to slightly increase the intensity without going over the target heart rate? And second, are fermented foods a potential cause of depression? If they have any effect on serotonin, could this cause problems rather than improvements?
Let’s go:
Dear Mark,
I love walking and have lost 65 pounds over the last year and a half with that, combined with some basketball and, of course a primal diet. But walking no longer gets me into my “180-my age” range anymore, my heart rate stays 110 or so even at 4 mph. Running/jogging hurts my knees, so should I try the elliptical for my aerobic work, or just stick with fast walking even at a lower heart rate? Thanks and love the blog and podcast!
Vance
I’ve got good news and bad news, Vance.
The good news is that you’re officially fitter than when you started. If you’re able to walk at the same pace with a lower heart rate, you’re building that aerobic base, those new mitochondria. You’re becoming fat-adapted. Nice work.
The bad news (that isn’t really bad news) is that you’ll have to step it up a bit. But here’s another piece of good news: the “harder” work will only be as hard as walking used to be at your old heart rate because you’re more efficient at burning fat and you’ve got all those new mitochondria to play with. This is how an aerobic base opens up new doors and promotes the exploration of new types of movement. If last year a 5 mile uphill hike made you wheeze with regret, today that same hike will be a breeze. You’ll actually get to enjoy yourself, take in the views, and hold a conversation. The physical effort will be an afterthought.
That’s why the aerobic base is so important even for regular folks and non-elites: it improves your default mode of transportation. If before a slow walk along a sidewalk was as fast as you could go and still be comfortable, now a fast walk is your default. Your new normal becomes faster, better, stronger.
As for what you can do to hit that heart rate?
The elliptical is okay. I’m not a big fan, personally, especially for the high-volume, low-intensity movement you’ll be doing. The treadmill’s linearity is bad enough. Ellipticals are totally linear. Your movements literally follow a track, forcing repetition and replication. Any repetitive motion adds up. Sprinting on an elliptical? Sure. It’s over in a jiffy and provides the desired stimulus.
Try rucking. Load up a backpack with books and walk around wearing it. Start small, maybe 10-15 pounds. Move up as dictated by your heart rate. If things get heavy, use a pack with a hip belt to redistribute the weight. Weighted vests also work well here.
Do you have any hills near you? Go walk them.
As for the machines, an inclined treadmill can work.
Rowing is great. Just keep it nice and leisurely, like you’re a 19th century Manhattan fop taking his sweetheart out on the pond. Wouldn’t want to sweat through your linen suit.
Skipping is great, too. Kids know what they’re doing. If skipping’s too intense, skip for 10 paces, walk for 20.
A nice easy bike ride.
Swimming, too. Don’t forget about the pool.
Anything works. Just explore the different types of movement and watch your HR.
Hi,
Fermented foods, like kefir and kimchi, are often praised for their health benefits, one of which is their affect on serotonin and mood.
I’m wondering, concerned even, about possible long-term effects like serotonin depletion. This is something I observe in myself after prolonged periods of enthusiastic coffee consumption, short-term indulgences with wine, and (unfortunately) even a single dose of 90% dark chocolate. It also something I’ve read about in association with BCAA supplementation.
Should we be wary of a daily kefir habit too?
Richard
There are some strange things going on with serotonin and depression. It’s not a straightforward relationship. The common “neurotransmitter imbalance” model of depression where low serotonin causes depression isn’t quite accurate and has little actual evidence to support it. Anti-depressant drugs and supplements that don’t target serotonin, as well as non-pharmacological interventions like exercise, may be more effective than SSRIs against depression. If SSRIs work, it’s probably not by “increasing serotonin.”
In mice, probiotic administration increases serotonin turnover in the brain and reduces some of the inflammatory biomarkers associated with depression. Yet in humans, elevated serotonin turnover in the brain is a common feature of depression. Weird, eh?
The evidence is quite clear, though: fermented food intake is usually associated with low rates of depression in humans, not high rates.
Among pregnant Japanese women, high yogurt intake is protective against depressive symptoms.
Among Spanish university students, high-fat yogurt (but not low-fat yogurt) is protective against depression.
A recent trial in humans even found that a multi-species probiotic supplement made subjects more resistant to sad moods. These were healthy humans, not depressed ones, and depression is more than “sad mood,” but it’s promising.
The serotonin/fermented food question is up in the air. I’m not convinced, personally. But we have a conceivable mechanism by which fermented foods might exert protection against depression: improved gut health.
Leaky gut is common and seems to play a pathophysiological role in major depression; up to 35% of depressed patients have leaky gut. If your gut is too permeable, bacterial endotoxins/lipopolysaccharide (LPS) gain admittance to general circulation. And at least in mice, LPS induces depression.
Fermented food and probiotics can help. L. rhamnosus and L. reuteri supplements reduce leaky gut, and L. rhamnosus also helps restore the gut barrier in kids with acute gastroenteritis. In rats with leaky gut, yogurt improves gut barrier function.
I don’t think you should worry about this until it actually becomes a problem. Keep drinking that kefir and fermenting that cabbage.
That’s it for this week, folks. Now let’s hear from you.
Anyone had depressive symptoms worsen with fermented food intake? Improve?
What else can Vance do besides walk faster?
Thanks for reading!
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There are some essential activities to help get through the heat of summer, and at the top of our list is drinking plenty of refreshing, fruit-filled punches. Sip them as is, or go ahead and spike them with your booze of choice.
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Fact: If you wait to invite people over until your house is perfectly spotless and everything is exactly as you would like it, you will live a very lonely life. Having guests, in spite of our flaws and those of the spaces we live in, is worth it. It gives texture to our lives and creates intimacy and immediacy in our relationships.
Plus, your guests aren’t perfect either. They too pile up their magazines, or have a collection of shoes by the door. They too could spend more time doing any number of tasks to make their own homes cleaner or more beautiful.
But while there’s lots to be said for down-to-earth hospitality, the kind where we give ourselves permission to not try and portray some perfect version of ourselves, having houseguests does call for a little effort. Some hospitality is expected to give your guests a warm and inviting impression of the space where we live.
Here is your four-step game plan.
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
(Image credit: Brie Passano)
When fresh corn is in season, it’s hard not to want to eat it every second of every day. Each sweet, juicy kernel barely needs a thing for it to taste glorious. This summer soup lets that deliciousness shine and brings the seasonal vegetable to the center of the table. But just one little upgrade transforms it from a simple soup to one that’s dinner party worthy pretty quickly. And that one little ingredient is truffle salt.
Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/
This post is from Rebel Chef, Noel.
Hello brave Rebel. Are you ready for an adventure in knife skills?
Imagine this – you’re in a kitchen-like dungeon. Torture devices hang from the walls – maces and hammers and sharp objects of varying size and cleanliness – pots big enough to boil 6 or 7 human heads. The room you’re in has a blue tile floor and several metal prep tables lined up neatly in the center of the room. A 10 burner cook top flanks the wall to your party’s right and several stacked ovens sit beside it.
It’s been a while since these kitchens have been used. They’re dirty and fly infested. They smell like mold and rotting meat. The sick, yellow bulbs of the fluorescent lights above you flicker. Most of them have burnt out, but a few remain on their last legs. You just want to get the heck out of there.
You start making your way to the swinging door on the opposite side of the room, careful not to step in the puddles of god-knows-what as you cross the kitchen dungeon.
You and your party make it about halfway across the room when the room begins to heat up. You hear a heavy, metallic *clink* as the door behind you locks shut. You’re trapped.
A red glow appears in the cracks of the swinging doorway, and a mechanistic CHEFBOT 2000 kicks his way through the doors armed with a flamethrower at his back, a massive meat tenderizer in his left hand and a sharp chef’s knife in his right. Smoke pours from atop his tall chef’s hat.
He appears to run on charcoal fire. The heat emanating from him is immense, and the smoke billowing from his hat is filling the room, sure to suffocate you and your friends if you don’t do something.
Let’s make sure you have kick-ass knife skills to defend yourself!
CHEF beckons you to the prep table in the center of the room.
You feel your skin begin to burn ever so slightly as you stand across the prep table from him. He challenges you to a knife skills duel: a battle of skill, precision, and accuracy. You reach inside your pack and pull out a wooden cutting board and place it on the table. It begins to crackle and burn slowly – you better get this over with fast.
Strapped to your leg are your weapons of choice – 2 sharp knives: a paring knife and a chef’s knife. CHEF snaps his fingers and a bowl of fresh vegetables and a prep sheet appear at your table. The prep sheet reads as follows:
In order to defeat CHEF and unlock the doors out of the kitchen, you must successfully cut each of the things on the prep sheet with accuracy.
Have you practiced your knife skills lately? You damn well better hope so, pal.
[we should link both of these to amazon links]
For this exercise, you choose the all-purpose chef’s knife.
Slice – Take your cucumber and place it across the cutting board. To slice any fruit or vegetable, line your knife up perpendicular to the vegetable or fruit and cut down, creating uniform sized slices.
With a cylindrical item like a carrot, cucumber, or zucchini, this will create circles or medallions. Do your best to slice them into similar sizes – this way they cook at the same rate.
Dice – Take your onion and chop off the top. Peel the skin from it and throw the skin away.
Place your onion so that the sliced part from the top is facing you. Carefully cut the onion in half down the middle.
Now you have a flat surface to place on the cutting board. This will help you keep control of the onion and prevent it from rolling or slipping as you dice it. Safety (even with the CHEFBOT breathing down your neck)!
Now make several incisions along the top of the onion with the knife perpendicular to the top of the onion that you chopped off. Make sure when you’re making these slices that you’re cutting ALMOST all the way through to the end. The word almost is important here, people.
Keeping the onion whole at the butt-end will make dicing much easier and will give you something steady to grip when you make your next cuts. Now your onion is pre-diced.
Place your onion on the cutting board (with the top of the onion that you already chopped off at the beginning) parallel with your knife. Turn the onion 90 degrees and make uniform slices starting at the end of the onion that you already cut off.
Slice as uniformly as possible. As you slice the onion, the bits you’re slicing off will be diced. Fancy!
Julienne – “Julienne” is a fancy word that means cut into long, thin strips. You can do this with bell peppers, carrots, potatoes, etc. First cut off the top and the bottom of the pepper. Remove the insides.
Then cut the pepper into rectangle-shaped quarters.
Now you’ll have smaller, relatively flat pieces of pepper to work with instead of a round pepper. This is safer and easier. Take each quarter of your pepper and make thin slices of it – again, you’ll want to do your best to make them uniform in size.
The more you practice, the easier this becomes.
Mince – “Mince” is a fancy word for “cut up super duper small.” It is done for more aromatic or flavorful ingredients like garlic or ginger. When mincing ginger, you’ll first you’ll want to pull your cloves from the bulb. The bulb is the big guy. The cloves are the small pods that make up the entire clove.
Next, you’ll want to peel them. To do this easily, take each clove separately and smash between the broad, flat side of your knife and the cutting board. Push them flat so that the skin cracks and begins to pull away from the flesh of the clove. You can now more easily pull the skin from the bulb.
Now you’ll roughly chop the cloves (uniformity isn’t necessary here) until you’ve chopped them into tiny little pieces.
Usually I start at one end and work my way to the other – similar to slicing the cucumber.
Then gather all those little garlic bits into a pile, place your hand over the top of the knife, and chop in a back and forth, rocking motion over the pieces of garlic, making them extra small.
You finish your cuts, sweat dripping from your brow. Behind you, the rest of your party quietly cheers you on, but they’re coughing from the charcoal smoke and ash in the air. You present your cutting board to CHEF. He stares at it quietly, his robot brain calculating the accuracy of your cuts. As the gears in his head turn, you cooly clean your blade and place it back in it’s holster at your side.
The light above the door changes from red to green as you hear the metal *clink* and the door is unlocked. CHEF steps aside. You have passed the knife skills challenge and are free to go. Covered in soot and coughing from ash, you and your party pass by the robotic CHEF ever so carefully. On to the next room of the dungeon!
You now have four basic cuts that you can practice and use in your every-day cooking. Consider this a skill formally unlocked in your character.
Remember that as you practice your cuts, they don’t have to be 100% accurate – and they won’t be if you’re just starting out! That’s totally okay!
Unless you’re working in a professional kitchen, your techniques don’t have to be perfect, but knowing what a recipe means when it says “3 carrots, julienned” without having to look up what “julienned” means gets you one step closer to making that dish.
Eliminating even the tiniest steps between you and your food (and keeping you safe) is the goal here.
And let’s be honest, if cutting an onion this way feels like too much work at first, don’t do it that way! If your mother taught you something different and you prefer that, do it her way. There’s more than one way to slice and dice! Don’t let doing it the “right” way or feeling like you do something “wrong” stop you completely from getting in the kitchen.
Your slices and dices don’t have to be perfect, but now you’ll be able to confidently cut up some veggies when you’re helping out at Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe you’ll be able to show off some of your knife skills instead of being charged with setting the table and washing dishes!
Let us know in the comments!
-Noel
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Photos: Stijn Nieuwendijk: Kitchen Knives, ArshrAAm: Dungeon Kitchen 02, clry2: Bad Robot, Stijn Nieuwendijk: Eden Classic Damask, Jenn and Tony Bot: George Mendes Bot, tmib_seattle: Dungeon door
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