beets – Page 3 – GUTSy Performance Nutrition

Autumn, Journal, Nutrition + Health, Winter

comforting red flannel hash

January 2, 2017January 1, 2017by Rebecca4 Comments

And so it goes. A brand new year. If you have experienced anything like the collective, 2016 was a tough one. The excitement for new goals, resolutions, and the prospect of being better and different is all around us. Honestly though, there were a lot of exceptionally good happenings in the last year too and I’m not so quick to wish it all away.

Even so, I went home for Christmas week to my parents and I admit I ate more than I’d have liked. Not too much, but more than “enough.” More cookies, more servings, more mindless chomping to fill a void I didn’t realize existed until I was there, in it.

And here we are back at it.

We’ve been a whole year now in our new house. I’ll call it new even though it’s the oldest on our street by far and we’ve been here all these months. It still feels new and not quite a home just yet. There’s a blank wall in the living room still, waiting for the right photo, a total lack of rugs on cold tile floors, and the dog fence and house in the back I want torn out. There’s talk though of a kitty–even as there’s the one of us that’s extremely allergic. Let’s just never mind that for now.

Yet we’ve made the place our own in small ways that feel significant. I’ve had food to eat growing since last February and even as I keep kicking myself now for not putting in more of an effort at a winter garden, there are leeks, greens, and roots to be harvested yet, we just finished the last of the Brussels sprouts, and we sat down to a NYE meal that was largely from our own back yard. Small gains that mean a lot.

What do you eat in this new season of reset to get back on track? I tend to forego the cleanses, green juice/smoothies, and cold salads, and just focus on what sounds good. This time of year, that means gently warmed greens that grow through the winter like kale and collards, roasted or steamed roots including beets, parsnips, carrots and the like, warming spices (cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, rosemary, sage, nutmeg and cloves!), hot drinks, and squash.

Lots of squash. I eat it in my oatmeal often, and spoon little cupfuls of plain roasted puree in between or to round out meals because that’s how I like it best. I know. I know. William curls his nose and tells me so.

Comforting Red Flannel Hash, serves 4-6
1 pound potatoes (2-3 medium), diced into 1-inch pieces
1 pound sweet potatoes (1-2 medium), diced into 1-inch pieces
1 pound red beets (3 medium), diced into 1-inch pieces
1 Tbs. extra-virgin olive or coconut oil
1 large onion, medium-diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
sea salt and black pepper, to taste
2 Tbs. each minced parsley and fresh dill or 1 tsp. dried dill
add-ins such as tempeh, diced greens, etc.

Steam the potatoes and sweet potatoes in a steamer basket set in a pot of simmering water, covered, until it is fork tender, which will take about 12-15 minutes. Drain, remove, and repeat the same steaming process with the beets.
Meanwhile, heat a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high and add in the oil. Cook the onion until it is translucent.
Then stir in the garlic, potatoes, and beets and season them with salt and pepper. Flatten the vegetables with the back of a spatula to compact them a bit. Cook the hash until it is brown and a little crispy on the bottom. Stir occasionally, and once the bottom is nice and crispy, flip it over to crisp up on the other side. Once the whole mixture is browned to your desired consistency, sprinkle over the herbs, and serve or stir in the add-ins, as desired.

Autumn, Journal

early autumn collard wraps with beet hummus, orange quinoa salad + apple slices

October 1, 2016by Rebecca3 Comments

I cooked my first winter squash this week, a delicata from the garden. I added it into the lovely split pea, rhubarb and apple soup from Vegetarian Everyday/Green Kitchen Stories. I sipped a rendition of Izy’s autumn-spiced coffee, planted purple sprouting broccoli for a late winter/early spring harvest, and kicked the heat on to a measly 62 degrees in the house. It ran almost all day while I wore my down vest and a blanket and powered through week four of term three–grad school life; the workload is intense; it calls for blankets and my first coffee in well over a year–and yet I love it. I’ve scheduled myself to take one-two days off from the material right now and I still wake up on those mornings ready to dive back in.

It’s safe to say summer is well on its way out. Ever the seasonal sleeper, I’m waking much later in the mornings. And catching up on processing my recent transition out of school garden education. I also began writing in more detail about my experience with running, eating disorder recovery, faith, and mental health in general–topics that might be a little too intense here. If you first came to this blog for those posts, feel free to read more on my new blog. Otherwise, below are a sampling of the many short and longer reading I’ve enjoyed these past months, a couple podcast episodes I feel are worth sharing, and a few seasonal meals we’ve been enjoying.

Reading
How to Build an Empire
The Salkantay Trek to Machu Piccho: perspective + privilege

David has been cooking with and sharing/photodocumenting the stories of Syrian refugees in Turkey this last week. It is a beautiful experience, important to share, and I think relates a lot to the point made by Ashlae, above.

Why I haven’t weighed myself in 2 1/2 years
The Starvation Study that Changed the World, I’m still reflecting on these last two but they are both well worth reading in terms of body image, eating, and/or weight struggles.

Longer Reading
Food and Healing by Annemarie Colbin. I just finished. I loved it.

Listening to
Up Your Game
How to Cultivate Non-Judgment
Andrew Wheating on Strengthening Your Winning Muscle (I’ve listened to this on repeat for weeks!)

Seasonal Eating–Basically, I only want to eat Moroccan or Middle Eastern flavors and/or eggplants so we’ve been enjoying these:
Moroccan Eggplant Mini-Galettes with Chickpeas + Harissa
Moroccan Tagine with Sweet Potatoes + Beets
Roasted Vegetable Pizza
Eggplant & Olive Caponata
We also enjoyed the Eggplant Meatballs from Love & Lemon’s new cookbook at a friend’s last weekend. They were delicious.
And I’m eating all the pears from my favorite pear farmer and these Chai-Spiced Pear Oats, daily.

early autumn collard wraps with beet hummus, orange quinoa salad + apples, makes 4
Every once in a while I get a craving for collard wraps, always with beets and a grain salad of sorts and perhaps some fruit. Wrapped up tight, they make for a delicious and nourishing lunch. This version is inspired by a recipe in Vegetarian Everyday with my own beet hummus (still delicious and addicting), thinly sliced crunchy apples, and locally grown chickpeas.

1-2 batches Beet Hummus
1 cup quinoa
1 tsp. fennel seeds
zest and juice of 1/2 an orange
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup toasted, chopped walnuts
2-3 spring onions or baby leeks, thinly sliced
2-4 Tbs. minced parsley
sea salt, to taste
2 cups cooked chickpeas
8 large collard green leaves
3-4 small apples, thinly sliced

To make the quinoa salad, bring 2 cups water and quinoa to a boil in a small pot. Add the fennel seeds, turn down to a simmer, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Add orange juice and zest, raisins, walnuts, leeks or spring onions, parsley and salt to the quinoa.
To assemble the wraps, trim the base of the stem off the collard leaves and take a serrated knife and thinly shave down the remaining stem, getting it to the same thickness as the rest of the leaf. Then soften the leaves by either drenching in warm water briefly or heating in the microwave for a few seconds.
For each wrap, arrange two collard leaves head to foot, overlapping them halfway. Spread a generous amount of beet hummus, then quinoa salad, garbanzos, and finally a few apple slices in the center. Fold over each end, tuck one side under, and roll tightly like a burrito. If it’s in danger of coming apart, use a few toothpicks to hold it together, and slice in half.
Continue as above to create the remaining three wraps. There should be apple slices leftover which are great eaten on the side.

Autumn, Nutrition + Health, Running, Winter

Roasted Sweet Potato + Beet Soup

September 17, 2016by RebeccaLeave a Comment

Sometime in the early months of 2013, I discovered a whole new genre of food blogs. At the time, I was coming home from work to an always empty house, laying on the floor for an hour to re-calibrate from my day, working myself into a 30 minute or so run, and then reading a couple food blogs over dinner (usually a sweet potato, roasted during that run, with black beans, salsa, and a pile of greens), working another couple hours just to survive the next school day, and falling into bed into a deep and dreamless sleep before my alarm clock wrenched me out and up and into another day that was much the same. I was exhausted and unhappy — but I was learning so much and I could tell if I could just keep putting one foot in front of another and trust my intuition, I’d end up in a better place. Also, I was learning a new way to eat and cook and it’s safe to say in my years-long shift in eating, a major one was slowly taking place.

One of the blogs I discovered during that time was Sarah Britton’s My New Roots, and it was from her that I first learned about the “holy trinity of flavor,” or what I’ve now learned is referred to as FASS. Personally, I like to call it the four corners of cooking.

Sarah shared about an experience in her cookbook of a chef thinking her soup was bland and teaching her that every dish needs to have an acid, a salt, and a sugar, or will taste a little less than ideal. This is Sarah’s holy trinity of flavor. In the four corners, a fat is added to that trio, to make FASS. For each of the four components, a little can go a long way.

It was soup week this last week in my cooking lab for nutrition, and we experimented with refining the four corners of our recipes. Flavor is a very personal thing, but I found that very simple recipes with few ingredients, a little fat, an acid, a sweet note, and some salt can work wonders in making a recipe taste delicious. After eating different types of soup for several days and using William as my second taste-tester, I felt the need to share the humblest of soups from this week. I say it is humble but it was also the one that absolutely hit the spot, more than once, after coming home late from long days of work, hard runs, and commuting.

I wrote up a description about working with the four corners of flavor for class this week, and because I think everyone should cook with flavor, I’ll share a rendition of it here: First, when refining flavors, make sure the dish is at the temperature you will serve it at, as the flavors will change, depending on whether you are tasting it hot or cold.

For any given recipe, it is likely that a fat source as either butter or an oil will likely be used in building the base. The fat type can add flavor, if it is intended to, or if added near the end as either a cream or nut cream, can add mouth feel and a change in texture as well. Adding a fat such as lightly toasted and chopped nuts can also be a flavor-enhancing garnish to round out a finished recipe.

As an acid component, a squeeze or two of lemon juice or one of the many types of vinegar can be added. The small amount of acid added at the end of cooking will enhance and sharpen the other flavors of the dish.

Salt, the third component, is likely the most important, and can really heighten the other flavors. The right amount of salt is a very personal thing, and it can easily be overdone to the recipe’s detriment, so add it in small amounts and taste as you go. You will know when you’ve added the right amount.

The fourth corner is sugar. Depending on ingredients, you might already have a sugar component. For instance, in this roasted vegetable soup, the roasting of the vegetables prior to adding them to the broth brought out their natural sugars through the process of caramelization. For this soup, I did not need to add any additional sweetener. The sweet flavor balances and rounds the soup and also will satiate the appetite, which is why if it is missing from a meal, we often finish wanting more, even though we’re physically full.

Roasted Sweet Potato + Beet Soup, serves 2-3
Feel free to use whatever root vegetables and beans are on hand or desired. Recipe adapted from Eleonora Gafton.

1 Tbs. olive oil
1 sweet potato, medium dice
1-2 large beets, medium dice
1 large carrot, roll cut
2-3 small turnips, medium dice
1/2 large yellow onion, medium dice
1 clove of garlic, minced
4-5 cups vegetable broth
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
1 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
2 Tbs. fresh parsley, minced
1 1/2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
sea salt to taste
ground black pepper
a squeeze of lemon juice, as necessary

Place all diced vegetables on a large baking pan and drizzle with olive oil and a pinch of salt.
Roast them in a preheated oven at 400 degrees F for 20-30 minutes or until the vegetables are soft.
In a large pot, add the roasted vegetables and herbs, along with the broth and beans. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.
Season as needed with additional salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Serve with fresh chopped parsley, and if you’re in the mood, fresh baked scones or cornbread.