HealthyFoodHeals.com

BY PATRICIA HAUSMAN & JUDITH BENN HURLEY

RODALE PRESS, original copyright 1989

There are, you may have discovered, dozens—if not hundreds—of books about living a healthier life. It’s hard to figure out, then, why so many Americans are overweight and suffer from a multitude of diseases – everything from high cholesterol to diabetes and heart disease, with everything under the sun in between. What gets more press – on television, in magazines and newspapers – are the things we shouldn’t be eating – potato chips, candy, junk food, too much meat and fried foods. It takes a great deal of perseverance to change your lifestyle around and more importantly, stick with it.

And, write the authors of “The Healing Foods”, “There are too many recommendations. Too many diets. Too many foods to avoid; too many others to remember to include   every day. Too many noes; too many nevers…”

They say “If you’ve ever had the feeling that ‘there’s nothing left to eat’, or that following all the advice you hear requires ‘a graduate degree in nutrition,” they can understand.

“One day, for instance,” write Hausman and Hurley, “nutritionists advocate Swiss cheese as a good course of bone-building calcium. The next day they warn against its cholesterol-raising effects.  There has to be a better way…”  In their book, they claim, there is.  What the authors recommend is a personalized approach carefully tailored to your needs. They also believe keeping nutrition simple is as important as keeping track of the latest research findings.

Within the pages of this book of over 400 pages, are a list of foods – starting with a West Indian berry known was Acerola (very high in Vitamin C) which has two calories per fruit. In the USA, they advise, most Acerola is marketed dried. From apples and artichokes, all the way down the alphabet to Yogurt. (and no, no zucchini – my guess is that it doesn’t rate as a healing food. The authors have a chapter on winter squash—butternut, hubbard, and acorn, – that are among the group of all around protector foods that stand out as sources of a trio of anticancer  nutrients: vitamin C, fiber, and carotene.

But, they write, “all squash are not created equal when it comes to nutrition. Summer squash – the pale green-fleshed zucchini and yellow crookneck—don’t even come close to their winter brethren  as a source of carotene. They are, of course, low in sodium and fat, making them worthwhile for controlling blood pressure and weight.  But for nutritional density, look to winter squash…”

Along with all of the healthy foods you will want to include in your diet, “The Healing Foods” is interspersed with various medical conditions, so if you problem is angina you only have to turn to page 33. Got a problem with your gallbladder? Turn to page 205 – Lactose intolerant? Turn to page 276. It’s all listed in The Healing Foods and the book even includes a number of recipes to help you get started.

Another feature that I especially like is the chapter on fish.  Twenty kinds of fish are featured (unfortunately, orange roughy and red snapper aren’t among them—but that may be a deliberate omission) –and there is a chart listing all of the fish that ARE featured, with a calorie count per 3 ½ to 4 ounces. Another thing I really like is a quickie recipe for cooking fish in a flash – an easy way to cook a pound of fish (in this instance Bluefish) in the microwave. I’m going to try this method with our next dinner of fish.

“THE HEALING FOODS” is easily available. Amazon.com, alone, has 185 used copies from one cent up, and 23 new copies from $1.99 up.  (Note that when you purchase a book from Amazon for one cent, you will pay $3.99 shipping – so your total cost is $4.00. STILL  a great bargain. Alibris has 500 copies of the Healing Foods, starting at 99c each.

This is a great book for anyone seeking a healthier lifestyle.

Review by Sandra Lee Smith

Compiled and edited by Anne C. Cain, M.P.H. M.S. R.D., and published by Oxmoor House, “The Cooking Light Way to Lose Weight” should be a bible in every overweight person’s household.  For one thing, it’s packed with over 250 “no diet, no denial” recipes.  There are no forbidden foods. There is a 12 week fitness plan. And there is a lot of information to help you discover the power of positive eating!

First, I have to admit – “Cooking Light” magazine is my next-to-first place favorite magazine (the Weight Watchers magazine holds first place).  I love the Cooking Light magazine and I recommend it to everyone on the planet who wants to live a healthier lifestyle. If you are interested in living healthier, perhaps losing some weight too, then this is a great magazine to read. I like having a monthly subscription.  And “The Cooking Light way to Lose Weight” is your next best friend. In the foreword, vice president, editor Mar Kay Culpepper writes, “by definition, a tool is something that helps you complete a job. And this book, ‘THE COKING LIGHT WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT’ is a real and effective tool to help you realize the goals you set for yourself….”

She also comments, “Like so many things in life, losing weight is at the same time both simple and difficult. The formula is certainly uncomplicated. Consume fewer calories each day than you expend. Simply put, to be successful you need to eat less and exercise more…”

Culpepper also writes, “the reasons why it’s difficult to eat less are usually personal: you have a hungry family to feed that doesn’t ‘like’ diet food, your days are too hectic, you have obligations with family and friends that revolve around food, or you need soothing on a nerve-jangling day..”

As someone who has raised a family of four hungry sons—and am now involved with feeding grandchildren twice a week – one of the things I discovered some time ago is that you can change how you cook, even if you aren’t changing everything that you cook. This is one of the ways that “THE COOKING LIGHT WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT” will help you achieve your goals. And by the way, in case you haven’t noticed, there is an epidemic of overweight children with childhood diabetes – we need to turn that around.

Within the pages of “THE COOKING LIGHT WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT” you will find 8 Reasons to be a Loser:

1. Lower your risk for developing diabetes
2. Lower your risk for developing cancer
3. Lower your blood pressure
4. Lower your risk for developing heart disease
5. Lower your risk for having a stroke
6. have more energy
7. have a greater chance of living a long, healthy life
8. Lower your cholesterol levels

Aren’t those all good, inspiring reasons for losing weight?  Chapter 4 is titled “What is Your Healthy Weight” and contains a Body Mass Index (BMI) chart and you can easily determine whether your weight is above (or even blow) the BMI.  Part 2 contains Healthy weight-loss success stories from readers of Cooking Light magazine—always, I think, inspiring.  If other people have done it, so can you.  Sometimes it may seem like an insurmountable goal; reading success stories of other people can help provide motivation.

There is so much that “THE COOKING LIGHT WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT” has to offer—But first and foremost, it’s a cook book.  I’ve never been able to understand how losing weight on a program in which you buy and eat only the food provided for you is going to work in the long run. Yes, you may lose weight by eating only their food –

But what about after that? Are you going to eat their food forever? Who can afford that? And if you are feeding a family, how realistic is it to buy special food for yourself and cook something else for a family?  And, I have known people who lost weight on those programs only to gain it back again when they stopped eating the special foods.

A healthy lifestyle has to be a lifelong commitment. Here’s where the Cooking Light recipes are going to help you achieve this goal.  You may say “Oh, I hate those diet foods” but I think you will be pleasantly surprised when you read “THE COOKING LIGHT WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT”—imagine this:

Chicken enchiladas

Spaghetti pie

Oriental salad (one of my favs!)

Cajun tortilla chips

Fresh mango salsa

Red Chicken Chili

Quick Shrimp and Corn Soup

Tortilla Casserole with Swiss Chard

Artichoke Spinach Pizza

Or how about:

Hoisin Barbecued Chicken

Chinese Style Glazed Chicken Breasts

Sizzling Steak with Roasted Vegetables

Shortcut Lasagna

Cabbage and Yukon Gold Potato Casserole

Open Faced Burgers with Onion-Mushroom Topping

And desserts!

Applesauce Raisin Cake with Caramel Icing

Strawberry Cream Cake

Chocolate Cream Pie

These are just a few of the many (over 250) recipes to be found in “THE COOKING LIGHT WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT”, published in 2003 by Oxmoor House.

You can order “THE COOKING LIGHT WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT” on Amazon.com—

They have 16 new copies from $1.27 each, and 51 used copies starting a 1 cent (you will pay $3.99 for shipping & handling – but $4.00 is a great price for a book like this).

Alibris has 19 copies starting at 99c each and

Barnes & Noble’s website has 6 new at $25.56 each and 36 used copies starting at $1.99 each.

In case you need the ISBN number it is:  ISBN 0-8487-2807-6.

Review by Sandra Lee Smith

Back in the 1980s, I began struggling with my weight (well, actually – I have struggled with my weight most of my life and family members who were skinny would tell me I had big bones) – but over a period of time I began gaining a little too much weight—once I wasn’t chasing four little boys around the house anymore. So, in 1984, a girlfriend and I joined Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers was somewhat tougher back then than it is now—I know this because, in the early 1990s, I stopped going to WW’s and began to slow gain weight…and then a lot more weight…until I finally reached my highest weight ever, about 200 lbs. My wake up call came in 2001 when I began to have a lot of health issues. I had surgery in 2001 for bulging disks and lost a few pounds along the way – but not long after returning to work, I began to regain the weight again.  My second wake up call was when a doctor said I might as well have another surgery (for knee problems) since I couldn’t exercise and wouldn’t lose weight. Well, I knew I COULD lose weight even if I couldn’t exercise –if I returned to Weight Watchers. So, in January 2006 I returned to Weight Watchers, weighing in that first time at 183 lbs. I reached my goal weight of 140 lbs in August of 2006. Maintaining isn’t easy—in some ways, maintenance is even more difficult than the struggle to reach your goal weight.

That being said, I learned to cook differently. I have to tell you – I love to cook and bake AND I collect cookbooks. Is that a triple whammy? Not necessarily. I began subscribing to Weight Watcher magazine and Cooking Light and buying many of the Weight Watcher cookbooks. (I also subscribe to the Hungry Girl website which offers so many tips about new low-fat low-sugar products).  And I began experimenting with favorite recipes, always with the idea of finding ways to make it healthier and more nutritious. And now I am cooking dinner twice a week for my son and two of my grandchildren, while my daughter in law is attending college two nights a week to get her teaching degree. I try to remain focused on healthier and more nutritious options for all of us. (Sometimes you have to sneak it in without their knowing – like using whole grain pasta instead of the white stuff, brown rice instead of white).

I would love to share with you some of my recipes and perhaps review some of my favorite weight loss living-healthy cookbooks with you.  Living a healthy lifestyle is something we all need to do but often don’t want to put enough effort into actually doing it.  The first step is getting motivated and telling yourself that you are worth it. I ask myself sometimes what is the most important goal for me right now? It’s being around to see my grandchildren grow up.  What are your goals? I hope a healthier lifestyle is one of them!

FOLK MEDICINE

BY D.C. JARVIS, M.D. published by Henry Holt and Company, 1958

A funny thing happened recently. Quite by chance, I happened to notice an old book on my shelves, a book titled “FOLK MEDICINE” by a doctor named D.C. Jarvis. I took it off the shelf and began re-reading it, knowing I read it years ago but not remembering much about it other than the good doctor’s homely prescription for apple cider vinegar and honey for whatever ailed you.  And then somehow vinegar and honey came up in an email conversation with my friend and editor, Wendy Fisher. Synchronicity – Wendy was already familiar with Dr Jarvis and she had been reading his book also!

Synchronicity, kismet, fate. Whatever.  Here we are discussing a book, albeit via email, that was published over 50 years ago. And it was that book and our discussion that led, I believe, to Wendy inviting me to share the Healthy Foods Heal website with her.  I am always in awe of incidents like this—it’s as if the Great Mind of the Universe is giving us a nudge. (And I need all the nudges I can get).

Well, let me tell you about Dr. Jarvis and his book “Folk Medicine”, because I am a firm believer in natural medicine, in the old-time beliefs that for every ailment there is a corresponding natural remedy.

In the Foreword to his book, Dr. Jarvis explains how he was a fifth-generation Vermonter on his mother’s side.  He attended medical school and interned in Burlington, training in his chosen specialty of eye, ear, nose and throat. But Dr Jarvis knew he would have to recognize another kind of medicine to gain the confidence and respect of his fellow Vermonters who lived close to the soil on back-road farms.

Vermont folk medicine, Dr. Jarvis writes, had not been a part of his formal training but it was, at least in the 1950s, deeply a part of Vermont living.  And so he began to learn about it and understanding its origins. He said it took a great deal of adjustment in his orthodox training—for instance, he couldn’t understand how a sore throat could be cured in one day by chewing fresh gum of the spruce tree.

In 1958, Dr. Jarvis’ book “FOLK MEDICINE: A VERMONT DOCTOR’S GUIDE TO GOOD HEALTH” was published. The book was on the New York Times Best Seller list for two years, ultimately selling over a million copies, more than 245,000 copies in a single year and as of 2002, it was still in print.

Doctor Jarvis passed away in a nursing home in South Barre, Vermont, in 1966, at the age of 85.  After his death, his office was dismantled and shipped to the Shelburne Museum   where it was reconstructed and is still displayed as an example of a small town Vermont doctor’s office.

The book remains a good read for anyone interested in living healthy and finding healthy alternatives. For example, Dr. Jarvis writes, “ An apple a day keeps the doctor away is a familiar adage. Its kernel of truth is that apples are very healthful for the human system.  Apple cider vinegar carries all the…minerals…from the original apple. Whether used in the form of apple juice, apple cider, or apple cider vinegar, treatment results are the same because each is a source of these minerals.”  Dr. Jarvis says you can experiment with other types of vinegars but none will produce quite as good results as apple cider vinegar and your apple cider vinegar should be made from crushed apples, not the peelings. He recommends two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water at each meal to maintain the health of your digestive tract and, in turn, the all-around health of your body.

You may find it somewhat difficult to take two teaspoonfuls of apple cider vinegar starting out. I found it more palatable adding a tablespoon of honey. Wendy says she has started out with one teaspoonful of vinegar added to one of her fruit teas.

One reason for the versatility of apple cider vinegar as a remedy in Vermont folk medicine is that it associates minerals with potassium. These are phosphorus, chlorine, sodium, magnesium, calcium sulfur, iron, fluorine, silicon and many trace minerals.

Dr. Jarvis was also a strong advocate for eating raw fruits and vegetables and a wide variety of edible plants and leaves native to Vermont and devoted an entire chapter to the various plants and edible leaves and what nutritional benefits each provided. Some, such as chives and dandelion leaves are plants we’re familiar with but there are many in his book that I would have never guessed could be eaten – such as the leaves from horseradish! He also writes extensively about the benefits of honey.

“Folk Medicine” appears to be out of print, but I did a check on Amazon, my favorite website for finding out-of-print cookbooks, and they have 128 copies available from various used book dealer vendors. It is also available in more recently published paperback reprints – you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a copy!

COOK IT LIGHT ONE-DISH MEALS” BY Jeanne Jones

For quite some time I have been wondering how to post cookbook reviews on this blog and keep them separate from everything else.  Recently, I wrote a cookbook review in my blog http://sandychatter.wordpress.com (which I hope ALL of you read!) for a book titled “Recipes Worth Remembering”, published by Favorite Recipes Press. This all came about after I had written and posted “BATTERED, TATTERED & STAINED CHURCH COOKBOOKS” which, I am happy to say, has received some good reviews from some of my readers. But if I am going to write cookbook reviews , I want readers to know how to easily find them. Fortunately, I discovered that wordpress offers a way of establishing categories for Bloggers’ articles

For about a decade, throughout the 1990s and the early part of 2000-2002, I was writing cookbook reviews for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange, a newsletter published for about 15 years by my friend Sue Erwin.  It was a labor of love; I got to keep the cookbooks. Then, the CCE, as it was known, was discontinued when Sue became embroiled in a family matter; she was also devastated by the death of her husband, Chuck, who did a great deal of the grunt work in getting the CCE published and mailed to subscribers.

Perhaps two or three years after the discontinuation of the CCE, I accidentally happened on Inky Trail News—or Wendy Fisher, editor/publisher of Inky Trail News,–happened upon me, and I have been writing a column in Inky Trail News for the past five years or so. Wendy was also instrumental in setting me up with my blog on Wordpress (Sandychatter) and recently, we teamed up to begin working on a new blog for wordpress, Healthy Food Heals, or HFH for short – and here we are.  One of my primary goals with the new blog will be writing about and introducing you to cookbooks that are HEALTHY – either light, low fat, no fat, low sugar, high in fiber—good for you recipes – and before you groan, envisioning something tasteless and unappetizing, I’m here to tell you that I have found many really great recipes and cookbooks since rejoining Weight Watchers in January of 2006 and making a healthy lifestyle my primary goal in life.

I know some of you may not have a weight issue – I’ve been battling the bulge most of my life and was, in fact, a fat baby. Some of you may not have a weight issue but perhaps, like my girlfriend, Sharon, you have a serious problem with high cholesterol. Or maybe you have high blood pressure, like my youngest son who is only forty years old and on medication. One of my daughters in law has battled overweight issues for many years and a few years ago underwent gastric bypass. Since I have a blood disorder and should not undergo surgery unless absolutely necessary, surgical intervention was never an option for me. But Weight Watcher works for me. I never considered a program like Jenny Craig or any other program in which you have to order and eat their food– because I cook twice a week for my son & his family and two meals a day for my significant other, Bob, who is thin and NEVER has to watch his weight. (Even more maddening, he has good blood pressure and cholesterol levels! Life isn’t fair!).

That all being said—I am using this as an introduction to my new category HEALTHY COOKBOOKS and whenever I tell you about a book, I will check first on the availability of it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble since both websites offer a wealth of used book vendors – it’s like having hundreds of bookstores throughout the country at your fingertips!  I love it!

So, today, I want to tell you about a cookbook by Jeanne Jones, titled “COOK IT LIGHT, ONE DISH MEALS”

Let me preface this by saying, I love one dish meals. I like nothing more than cooking soups or stews or tossing everything into a crockpot. And I think this was my mother’s preferred method of cooking. You can make a big pot of something with very little meat or fish and by adding a lot of pasta or vegetables. A little can go a long way with a one dish meal.

I have several of Jeanne Jones’ cookbooks but wanted more background information so I did some searching on Google and this is what I learned:

Jeanne Jones is a prolific author who has written thirty-two books beginning with the Calculating Cook published in 1972.  She also contributes to many magazines, such as Cooking Light, Cooking Healthy, Prevention and San Diego Magazine.

Jeanne is also a popular lecturer. With the publication of her first book came immediate demands for public speaking and media appearances. Jeanne tours the world, speaking to medical and lay persons alike, and on radio and television shows such as Today, CBS This Morning, Good Morning America and QVC.

Growing recognition and continued success brought demands for consulting services from such diverse clients as the Pritikin Longevity Center and the Four Seasons Hotels. Other clients have included The Golden Door, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, Canyon Ranch Health Resorts and Windstar Cruises.

As a syndicated columnist, Jeanne has her finger on the pulse of the world. Her internationally syndicated column, Cook it Light, reaches millions of readers each week. The continuing meteoric climb in her readership, from about 1 million to nearly 30 million in just a few years, is perhaps the best indicator that Jeanne Jones’ work continues to grow in popularity. In 2003, she published Cooking From the Cupboard and as I write this in June, 2010, I haven’t yet discovered any more recent cookbooks.

Following is a list of titles, far from complete considering she has published over thirty cookbooks. Some of the following were listed in “COOK IT LIGHT ONE-DISH MEALS” and others I found listed on Amazon. SOME of these titles are available on Amazon in their used book section for as little as one cent. (Then you pay $3.99 shipping and handling – still, you can’t beat $4.00 for a good cookbook and most of the books I have purchased from Amazon for as little as one cent have turned out to be fantastic bargains).

SOME OF JEANNE JONES COOKBOOKS:

*The Calculating Cook,       1972     *Diet for a Happy Heart       1975      *Secrets of Salt-Free Cooking 1979    *The Canyon Ranch Cookbook 1984     *Cook It Light,   1987                      *Eating Smart,   1991                         *Jeanne Jones Entertains, 1992            *Cook It Light Classics, 1992            *Cook It Light, Pasta, Rice & Beans     *Light and Hearty, 1994                 *Cook It Light Desserts 1994

The Following titles are available on Amazon.com:

• Healthy Cooking For People Who Don’t Have Time to Cook  (32 used copies available)
• Home Style Cooking Made Healthy
• Light and Hearty from Pad Thai to Cassoulet
• Home Style Around the World (26 used copies available)
• Diet for a Healthy Heart (19 used from 1cent)

All this aside, I’m sure you would like to know what “COOK IT LIGHT ONE-DISH MEALS” has to offer.  In the introduction to this cookbook, Jeanne advises that “When trying to make dishes as low in fat as possible, remember that it is aroma that creates flavor. The tongue tastes only sweet, salt, sour, and bitter.  Every other flavor is created by the sense of smell and it is often the fat that carries the aroma. You can’t just take all the fat out and expect it to taste the same because it won’t.  It will taste flat and often lack balance…”

“To achieve more flavor in low-fat recipes,” she continues, “you need to get the maximum amount of aroma out of every ingredient you use. Add herbs and spices extravagantly, always crushing dried herbs using a mortar and pestle until you can smell them all over the kitchen…”

Jeanne also advises us to use a flavored oil or a naturally aromatic oil such as extra-virgin olive oil.  She says to toast all nuts and seeds to enhance their flavor so that you will need fewer of them. There is a lot more advice but you will have to get a copy to learn all of them.  As for recipes –well, it’s no secret that I love one-dish meals, soups, stews, anything that can be cooked in a crockpot or simmering on a back burner all afternoon. My mother cooked a lot of one dish meals and so did my sister, Becky – and so do I.

What amuses me is that we never knew we were cooking a healthier way. We cooked this way because (in my mother’s case) she was stretching a ten dollar a week grocery budget to feed seven people. I cooked this way most of my married life for the same reason—we were poor as church mice and raising four sons who always seemed to be hungry.  Now my children are grown and I can cook pretty much however I please – but in order to maintain my weight and for us to remain healthy, I have turned more and more to healthy lifestyle cooking.

Amongst the one-dish meal salads in “COOK IT LIGHT ONE DISH MEALS”, look for Greek Pasta Salad, Classy Clam Salad and the Grilled Chicken Salad (the latter is my favorite menu item at some of Los Angeles’ Mexican restaurants). There is also a recipe for warm chicken salad with honey-rosemary vinaigrette…Jeanne’s recipe calls for some dried rosemary but if you have fresh—it’s so much better. There is also a Curried Rice and smoked chicken salad, and one of our family favorites, stuffed bell peppers.

Amongst the section of soups and stews, be sure to look for Beef & Black Bean Soup—or the French Onion & Oyster Soup. There is, if you can imagine it, a recipe for Bouillabaisse, and Venetian Chicken with Beans and Bacon. If you are partial to stew (we are!) there is a lamb stew (which Jeanne says can be made with beef or pork, if you prefer) and a baked beef stew and a Burgundy Pot Roast, which is sure to become a favorite dish to serve to company.

There are pasta recipes such as whole wheat pasta with fresh vegetables and Spinach Noodles with Three Cheeses (I love spinach in any way, shape, or form). Jeanne also offers several lasagna recipes; Lasagna Primavera, Southwestern White Lima Bean Lasagna and Corn Lasagna. There is a recipe for Scampi-Style Shrimp with Spaghetti and Zucchini or – if you prefer – pasta with Clam Sauce. Or a pasta with Lemon Chicken. I really like the assortment of pasta recipes—and incidentally, each recipe comes with nutritional data—the number of calories per serving, fat grams, cholesterol and sodium.

There is a chapter titled Grains and Beans which contains recipes such as Curried Lentils and Rice, another called Shrimp Conga which Jeanne says can be made with canned tuna as well as shrimp and any vegetable of your choice in place of the broccoli called for in the original recipe. Additionally, there is a recipe for Shrimp Creole that also can be made with tuna instead of shrimp (good thing to know when you are pressed for time and trying to put a nice dinner on the table. Most of the ingredients for these two recipes are things I have either in the pantry or the frig.

Another recipe Jeanne advocates keeping the ingredients on hand in the pantry is Chinese Chicken and Rice. When you are in a hurry (and tell me when we are not?) this is a recipe you can throw together in short order.

There are other categories in COOK IT LIGHT ONE-DISH MEALS; one for roasts, casseroles and soufflés, which is extensive, and a final chapter devoted to pies, quiches, and blintzes.

“COOK IT LIGHT ONE-DISH MEALS’ by Jeanne Jones, was published by MacMillan Company in 1996 and is easily available on the internet.  I checked three major sources for you and this is what I found:

Amazon.com has 8 new copies of the book and 36 used copies from one cent up. Shipping on used books is generally through private vendors and the standard price for shipping is $3.99.

Barnes & Noble’s website has 33 copies of the book, starting at $1.99 each.

Alibris.com has 27 copies of the cookbook, starting at 99c.

Happy Cooking & Healthy eating!

Sandy