Archive for the ‘Restaurants, Buffets, and Menus’ Category

A Time For Giving Thanks and a Celebration of Abundance

Those of us who are lucky enough to go to or host a Thanksgiving dinner are often faced with a dilemma:  overabundance.  The Thanksgiving meal has become associated with a true groaning table – a table loaded with turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes in multiple formats, cranberry sauce, gravy, green bean casserole, brussel sprouts, and traditional family specialties. For closers there’s apple pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, ice cream, cookies, and whatever other desserts Grandma, Aunt Sue, and Mom decide to make or bring.

A Feast and a Caloric Overload

How can you enjoy your traditional Thanksgiving dinner and not feel like a slug for days afterward? The ironic thing is that the usual main dish is really lean poultry (turkey), and the main vegetables and condiments are nutritional powerhouses (sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, and cranberries).  The traditional dessert is made from a vegetable (pumpkin pie) or nuts (pecan pie) so you wouldn’t think this would be so difficult.

The calories in a traditional Thanksgiving dinner are estimated to range from 2,000 to 4,500, depending on what you put on your plate. Given that people of average size who get moderate activity should eat between 1,600 to 2,400 calories per day, Thanksgiving dinner is quite a hefty meal. Not everyone gains weight over the holidays, but if you do, those pounds rarely come off.

Who Wants to Count Calories on a Holiday?

Most of us don’t want to count calories on a day of celebration. If you deprive yourself of the traditional foods you come to associate with holidays, more often than not you end up paying the piper. That’s when you find yourself standing in front of an open fridge rummaging for leftovers because you feel deprived from the stare down you had with your favorite foods earlier in the day.

Have Your Own Plan of Attack

Create an eating plan of attack before the celebration day. You know you’ll eat a bit more – or maybe a bit more than a bit more – than on a typical day. Mathematically allow for your holiday meal. Remember, calories in – calories out. Compensate by eating a little lighter the days before and after. Add in a long walk.

Don’t starve yourself the day of the grand meal. If you do in an attempt to save up calories for a splurge, you’ll probably be so hungry by the time dinner is ready you’ll end up shoving food into your mouth faster than you can say turkey.

The Key Is Balance, Not Deprivation

Inevitably if you deprive or restrict yourself you eventually end up overeating. The mantra becomes – “it’s just one day.” The problem is the one day extends to leftovers the next day – then the weekend – then to Christmas parties – then to the New Year’s Eve party. It could even extend to Super Bowl Sunday!

Celebrations the day of are fine. Celebrating for weeks on end is not. Plus, you end up hating yourself!

Try some of these:

• Give yourself permission to not eat something just because it’s tradition.
• Only eat it if you want it. Eat what you want not what you think you should.
• Say no to the friend or relative who is pushing the extra piece of pie. You’re the one stepping on the scale or zipping up your jeans the next day – not them.
• Make some rules for yourself and commit to them.
• Make a deal (with yourself) that you can eat what you want during dinner. Put the food on your plate and enjoy every last morsel. I’m not even suggesting that you leave some on your plate. But – that’s it. No seconds and no double-decking the plate.
• Limit the hors d’oeuvres. They really pack in calories. Make eating one or two your rule.
• Trade hors d’oeuvres for a luscious piece of pie for dessert.
• Alcohol adds calories (7 calories/gram). Alcohol with mixers adds more calories. Plus, alcohol takes the edge off lots of things – including your ability to stick to your plan.
• Drink water. It fills you up. Have a diet soda if you want. If you’re going to drink, limit the amount – alternate with water.
• Control your environment. Don’t hang around the buffet table or stand next to the platter of delicious whatevers. Why are you tempting yourself?
• Talk to someone. It’s hard to shove food in your mouth when you’re talking.
• Get rid of leftovers. The best laid plans have been defeated by leftover stuffing.
• Don’t nibble during clean-up (or preparation for that matter). Broken cookies, pieces of piecrust, and the last spoonfuls of stuffing haven’t magically lost their calories.

If you ignored a lot of this, you ate everything is sight, and your exercise was walking back and forth to the to the buffet table, put on the tourniquet. It was just one day — just don’t let it stretch into days or weeks.

Remember to enjoy the holidays. Be grateful. That’s the point, isn’t it?

I’ll be posting more holiday facts and tips on my blog: www.SocialDieter.com as we enjoy this celebratory season. I invite you to share some of your own.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Do you watch Top Chef?  I do.  I also watch Top Chef Masters.  And, because I happen to live in the New York City area, I’ve been fortunate enough to eat at wd–50, Wylie Dufresne’s restaurant in Manhattan. Dufresne, a contender on Top Chef Masters and a guest judge on Top Chef, is one of America’s most famous chefs who routinely uses molecular gastronomy in his food preparation.

What The Heck Is Molecular Gastronomy?

It’s a scientific discipline that studies the physical and chemical processes that happen during cooking.  According to Wikipedia, It tries to figure out things like:

• How different cooking methods alter ingredients
• What role the senses play in appreciating food
• How cooking methods affect food’s flavor and texture
• How the brain interprets signals from the senses to tell us the “flavor” of food
• How things like the environment, mood, and presentation influence the enjoyment of food

“The Scientific Study Of Deliciousness”

This is how Harold McGee, author of  the book, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, describes MG. Gourmet Girl Magazine gives these examples of MG techniques:

• Flash-freezing which involves quickly freezing the outside of various foods, sometimes leaving a liquid center.

• Spherification: Little spheres are made by mixing liquid food with sodium alginate then dunking it into calcium chloride.  A sphere looks and feels like caviar and has a thin membrane that releases a liquid center when it pops in your mouth.

• Meat glue: Wylie Dufresne’s “shrimp noodles” are noodles made of shrimp meat and created using transglutaminase, or meat glue, as it’s called at wd-50. It binds different proteins together and is commonly used in foods like chicken nuggets.

• Foams: Sauces that are turned into froth by using a whipped cream canister, sometimes with lecithin as a stabilizer.

• Edible menus: Yep, eat your menu. By using an ink-jet printer, inks made from fruit and vegetables, and paper made of soybean and potato starch, your menu can taste like your dinner.

• Dusts and Dehydration: Dehydrating ingredients into a dust changes the way to use them, for example, making a dust of certain mushrooms and then sprinkling it on food.

The Bottom Line

According to Environmental Nutrition (EN), if you’ve wondered what makes glossy white peaks form when you whip egg whites, or how an ordinary milk can  turn into rich, pungent cheese, you’ve wandered into the world of molecular gastronomy (MG).

MG, “the scientific study of the pleasure giving qualities of foods—the qualities that make them more than mere nutrients,” analyzes long standing culinary practices and old wives’ tales and deconstructs classic recipes. As you lick that delicious ice cream cone do you stop and think about ice cream’s complicated physical structure that includes ice crystals, protein aggregates, sugar crystals and fats in a condensed form?  You don’t, but molecular gastronomists might.

What Does MG Look Like On Your Dinner Plate?

Grant Achatz, a James Beard award winning chef might serve these foods at Alinea, his Chicago restaurant: tiny bits of cauliflower served shaved, fried, dehydrated, and coated in three kinds of custards; Chinese beef and broccoli plated as a traditional short rib, the plate dotted with dehydrated broccoli and peanuts then covered with a clear gelatinous sheet of Guinness beer.

Got you thinking as you lick your lips?

No kidding.  You tend to eat for a longer amount of time — and eat more — when you’re with people you like compared to when you eat alone.  It could be because you mindlessly nibble while someone else talks, you’re using the good manners you were taught in fifth grade about not letting someone else eat alone, or you’re just having fun and enjoying your food. Most of us tend to stay at the table longer when we’re with others.   Bottom line:  The longer you stay at the table, the more you eat.

Losing Track

Here’s the other thing:  friends and family influence what you eat.  Sometimes, it’s so easy to get involved with the conversation (or argument) that all the monitoring of what goes into your mouth goes out the window.  Look down at your plate.  Did you ever wonder where all the cookies went or how you managed to work your way through the mile high dish of pasta or the four pieces of pizza?  How many tastes did you take of everyone else’s meal and dessert?  Those tastes aren’t like invisible ink.  Those calories count, too.

Who Sets the Pace?

You tend to mimic your table companions.  They eat fast, you eat fast. They eat a lot, you eat a lot. Ever wonder why you look at some families or couples and they’re both either heavy or slender?  As Brian Wansink, PhD says in his book, Mindless Eating, “birds of a feather eat together.”

96% More

Wansink reports on a study that shows how strong the tendency is to increase the amount that you eat when you eat with others.  Compared to eating alone, you eat, on average:

• 35% more if you eat with one other person

• 75% more with four at the table

• 96% more with a group of seven or more.

SocialDieter Tip:

Think about who you are eating with – and why you’re eating with them.  If you want to have a blast and don’t care about how much you eat – eat with a big group and chow down.  But, if you want to be careful about what and how much you eat, think about eating lunch with a salad (dressing on the side, please) friend rather than the large pepperoni pizza group.  Remember, without thinking about it, you tend to adjust your eating pace to that of your companions.  So, sit next to the slow eaters rather than the gobblers if you are trying to control how much goes into your mouth.

Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusets

Where Would You Rather Eat?

Duh!!!  Obviously, most people would choose the beautiful settings in the Martha’s Vineyard or Tuscany pictures — or anywhere in the world that is just as serene and welcoming.

But . . . the real question is:  what is your goal?

The Setting And Your Surroundings Will Affect How Much You Eat

They will also affect how fast you eat and how long you take to eat.  According to Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating and director of Cornell’s Food and brand Lab, the atmosphere of a restaurant can get you to overeat in two ways:  if it’s really pleasant you want to stay longer — and therefore order and eat more, or if it is very brightly lit and perhaps loud and irritating you usually gulp and run, probably overeating before you realize that you’re full.

Red and Gold Decor Versus White Tablecloths

Fast food and high turnover restaurants are decorated for speed eating.  No pleasant pastels and soft music here. Instead you’ll find loud music, noise reflecting off of hard surfaces, and high arousal color schemes, often red and gold.  It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to communicate to your brain that  you are full and this red and gold, noisy environment makes you gulp your food and reach for more way before 20 minutes have come and gone.

On the other hand, people tend to linger at restaurants with low lighting, soft music, flowers, and tablecloths.  The attentive waitstaff are there to offer you more and more food courses — and you are likely to jump at the offer(s). In this type of eating environment you end up ordering and eating more than you had planned.

SocialDieter Tip:

Restaurant decor is not an accident — it is designed with the intention of keep you at the table longer or getting you to eat and run.  How long does it take you to gobble down a Big Mac or chow mein?  The red and gold color schemes in many Chinese and fast food restaurants encourage you to chow down quickly.   The white tablecloths and soft music of the “fancy” restaurant you frequent make it oh so easy to linger longer — and order another glass of wine, dessert, coffee, and after dinner drink.  Know your setting:  pace yourself in the speed environment and avoid the temptation to keep ordering in the relaxed environment.

My Tuscan Eating Adventures (Part 1, Farro)

My photos taken outside the cafe and during preparation of the farro salad.

I had the rare pleasure of spending last week in the village of Volpaia, Italy, resident population of 52, a picturesque fortified medieval hamlet in the Chianti Classico wine district. High on a hilltop just north of the town of Radda in Chianti, Volpaia was built in the 11th century as a fortified village on the Florence-Siena border. It is a terra murata, or a walled village, with part of the original protective walls and two of its six towers still standing.

In the middle of the tiny village square, just opposite the restored church, is a charming little café/wine shop/food shop run by a happy woman with a booming voice and matching personality.  The minute she learned I was very interested in the food she served, particularly her panzanella (bread salad) and her farro salad, she invited me into her small kitchen to watch the daily preparation of both.

Just as I learned to cook from my Greek, diner owner, short-order cook and dinner preparing father, she measured nothing, eyeballed proportions,  tasted everything, and used seasonal vegetables and regional products almost exclusively.

Only Use Extra Virgin Olive Oil

As I watched each salad being assembled, I was told repeatedly (and forcefully) that the most important ingredient is extra virgin olive oil.  Believe me, even when you grow up with olive oil as a staple, as I did, at ten in the morning when the booming voice repeats this as every ingredient is added, it makes an impression.  Of course, when you are in a village that has olive trees everywhere – encasing the vineyards, along every road interspersed with cypress tress, and grown in pots in front of homes and the café – with the vineyard’s very own olive press residing in  the medieval building across the way – using a generous (really generous) amount of the truly organic first pressed, intense, flavorful, and deep green, is both a cinch and a way of life.

Farro:  A Nutritious And Versatile Grain

The café’s farro salad was extremely fresh and delicious.  A little research shows that farro (FAHR-oh) is not wheat, but a plant and grain all its own that looks like light brown rice and has a nutty taste. It is lighter than other whole grains and contains a starch similar to Arborio rice (which is why it can be used in risottos).

Farro, a nutritious whole grain, sometimes referred to as spelt (which is really more like a close cousin), is rich in fiber, magnesium, and vitamins A, B, C and E; easily digested; and low in gluten. A serving size, ½ cup cooked (4 oz), has 100 calories, 1g fat, 26g carbs (3.5g fiber), and 4g protein.

Farro has history – it’s the original grain that fed the Mediterranean and Near Eastern populations for thousands of years and was the standard ration that fueled the Roman legions that marched through Italy.

A Healthy and Nutritious Whole Grain

For centuries, farro has been a mainstay of Tuscany, a region in northeastern Italy. Because farro is not an easy grain to grow and can produce low yields, farmers in the Mediterranean switched to grains that had higher yields.  However, with an increased interest in whole grains, farro is making a comeback helped by inventive chefs who are adding it to salads, soups, and meat entrees. With a  husk that adheres to the grain,  faro is high in fiber, vitamin B, and protein. Tuscans often combine it with legumes making it a complete protein meal.

Cooking Farro

Farro (botanical name, triticum dicoccum) is easy to prepare and can be found in Mediterranean groceries, specialty and whole food stores.  Check the package directions because some farros may need presoaking. It doubles in volume when cooked and keeps for 3 to 4 days, covered, in the refrigerator.

There’s a lot of leeway with cooking time, but when it is boiled it should be tender but still have some firmness in its center. People have a preference for the level of chewiness or mushiness of their farro and cook it accordingly. Most recipes call for cooking it anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes.  It can be eaten hot or at room temperature, as a salad, side dish, cereal, or added to soup.  It continues to absorb liquids even when taken off the heat, so it can really plump. It’s darn hard to overcook it.

Volpaia Salad de faro

This is the recipe from the café in Volpaia.  No measurements – everything to taste.  They put the farro in cold water, boil it for 15 minutes, rinse it in cold water, and then let it cool to room temperature before adding the other ingredients.

• Ingredients

Spelt (farro)

Tomatoes, cored, seeded, chopped

Celery

Onion

Mozarella

Salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil

Fresh basil for garnish

• Put farro in cold water. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes

• Drain and rinse in cold water

• Mix in tomatoes, celery, onion, mozzarella

• Add salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil to taste

• Mix and refrigerate

• Adjust seasonings before serving

SocialDieter tip:

Farro makes a great nutritious and filling salad.  Think about adding other proteins: chicken, tuna, hard boiled eggs, for a main dish salad.  In cooler weather use it for risotto or a pilaf or add it to soups as you would barley or rice.

Stay tuned for more Tuscan eating adventures and photographs, including my morning spent in a Tuscan cooking class and lunch at the home of the chef and owner of the Volpaia vineyards.  So good!