Dolev LLC

Eating the Mediterranean Way: How They Eat Fats But Don’t Get Fatter!

Administrator — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:29:14 +0000

Eating the Mediterranean Way: How They Eat Fats But Don’t Get Fatter!
Ask about a “Mediterranean Diet” and you will imagine pouring olive oil. Indeed, it is hard to find a Mediterranean recipe that doesn’t contain it. Coincidentally, researchers think that this is one of the components that keep people in that area in better health. But is olive oil the only source of good oil? Learn to make simple the complex terms of mono, poly, saturated and trans-fats, and how to take pleasure in seafood-Mediterranean style. Coming from a Mediterranean origin and savvy in food science, Food Coach Yael Dolev explains how olives, fish and nuts are used in the Mediterranean kitchen, and contribute to our wellness.

Chocolate – Not Just for Gods!- ideas for Thanksgiving recipe

Administrator — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:41:53 +0000

Few weeks ago, I gave a class at the Washtenaw Community College about chocolate. The students liked that though we discussed plenty of ideas of how to cook and eat chocolate; it was not a cooking but a wellness class. That is however the point and an important part of the concept, food is a wonderful tool to manage your wellness. Eating good food does not mean that one have to starve and eat few shoots of celery all day, as the common perception is. You can eat fun and delicious food, rich with tastes and aroma, and enjoy meals. Moreover, you can include chocolate in your food as chocolate is not the body’s enemy, on the contrary, cocoa – the material used to produce chocolate – is very nourishing substance, rich with antioxidants and minerals. Chocolate is also a food that gives us pleasure, and by now science confirms that pleasure contributes to our wellness. It is a win – win situation: you enjoy chocolate and the pleasure takes care of your wellbeing! However, you have to pay attention to the quality of chocolate you eat. Like with every other food, one of the basic principles is, always prefer quality to quantity. Choose chocolate that is rich with cocoa content, low with sugar, and does not contain unnecessary additive. Make sure that the sugar is natural and not corn syrups or a sweetener. Cocoa is naturally rich with fat- the coco butter- but chocolate factories add more of the butter to create smoother chocolate. You have to try to find what you like and do not contain additives and added fats.
If you use natural cocoa powder, for cooking and baking, you get less of the fat. To produce the powder the manufacturers separate the fat from the cocoa solids. Cocoa powders that are loaded with antioxidant add rich tastes to any dish that you cook, sweet, or savory. Yes, I mean it! Somehow, we are stuck with the habit to use cocoa for baking and making desserts. However, cocoa is a great addition to savory dishes. Cocoa adds to food rich, smoothing, aromatic flavor, and it plays a role in thickening and adding body to sauces. The Mexicans used cocoa along history to prepare savory dishes and sauces. They cooked meats and poultry with cocoa, as well as beans and corn porridge.
In her book “The New Taste of Chocolate” (2001, 10 Speed Press, Berkeley, Ca.) Dr. Presilla explains that the famous Mexican Mole that we all recognize as a Mexican savory chocolate sauce, is named after the ancient tribe Moles combined with Molli – the word for sauce in Aztec language. Dr. Presilla explains that except for the use of chili, there is no common ingredient that is used for making mole, and unlike what people outside Mexico think, it did not always contain cocoa. However, you can take the idea of the cocoa mole to enrich the taste of any dish: use only natural unsweetened cocoa powder to turn any beans or root vegetables dish into a celebration, where you get a dipper taste and the benefit of additional antioxidants. You can add cocoa powder to any recipe of stew that you have done until now without it, combining for example tomato sauce with cocoa. You can even add cocoa powder to readymade products like canned beans, or premade soups or chili, to upgrade their taste.
Think for an example, about the approaching holiday – Thanksgiving. You can add cocoa to almost any of the traditional dishes of the holiday: from the marinade for the turkey, to the gravy, and the cranberry sauce, they can all use some cocoa. Here is one example:

Warm butternuts Squash –Cocoa Thanksgiving Salad
This dish takes some of Thanksgiving traditional ingredients and gives them a cocoa twist. The dish can be served as a side over any whole grain to your liking, or over mashed roots vegetables blend.

4 Serving

For salad:
1 Tbs Olive oil
1 Onion, red, chopped
1 clove Garlic, minced
2 shoots Celery, clean and chopped
1 pack butternut squash, frozen squares
1 cup Cranberries
½ cup Dates for baking, pitted, cut into squares
1 Lemon, squeeze the juice
1 Tbs Cocoa, unsweetened
1 Tbs Ginger root, ground
¼ tsp Chili powder, ground
1 tsp Cardamom, ground
½ cup Coconut milk
¼ cup Water

1. Heat 1 Tbs oil in a big nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat.
2. Add onion and sauté two minutes.
3. Add garlic and sauté one more minute.
4. Add celery and sauté two more minutes, stirring the mixture.
5. Add butternut squash squares, cranberries, dates, and mix well.
6. Pour lemon juice and stir the salad.
7. Add cocoa powder and spices and mix well.
8. Add coconut milk and water, and stir well. Adjust tastes and serve.

ENJOY!

Better Food Produces Less Waste

Administrator — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:30:56 +0000

Better Food Produces Less Waste

Last week Jewish people observed the end of ten days of awe, the ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur or the Days of Repentance. This is a time for serious introspection, a time to consider the sins of the previous year and repent before Yom Kippur Day in which people seek forgiveness for wrong doing against other human beings and God in a Day of Atonement. At the same week Krista Tippett interviewed in the Public Radio program “Being” the philosopher of ecology Joanna Macy, A Buddhist scholar and an activist who, among other eye-opening observations said “We’ve been treating the earth as if it were a supply house and a sewer. We’ve been grabbing, extracting, resources from it for our cars and our hair dryers and our bombs and we’ve been pouring the waste into it until it’s overflowing, but our earth is not a supply house and a sewer. It is our larger body. We breathe it. We taste it. We are it and it is time now that we venerate that incredible flowering of life that takes every aspect of our physicality.”http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/wild-love-for-world/transcript.shtml

I related to this view that I also hold for a while, even if I don’t know how to put it so beautifully. I felt that our atonement should be toward our earth: each person should decide to treat our earth and environment better, to help improve its wellness, and in return it will affect our wellbeing. We are now all one big entity; our actions affect our next door neighbors as well as those in the far part of the world, and we all affect the state of earth. During the last few months there were discussions whether one person activities can make a difference: “will it really save energy if I change light bulbs at my home?” It might not save all the energy that the world needs, but it will make you more mindful about the need to save energy, and make you choose additional steps to help earth.

Our city has recently changed the recycling system, promising prizes to people who recycle the most. Each week when I take out my trash bin with one very tiny garbage bag, and my recycle bin is full up to one quarter of its capacity, I think that the real prize should have gone to those who produce the least waste altogether (well, they don’t necessary pick me…). It is important to encourage people to recycle – but it is even more important to produce less waste. How do I get to waste so little? Mostly by eating fresh foods as my main ingredients. When you eat fresh food you eat almost all of what you have bought; you don’t produce package materials -I bring my own bags to the store/market; all the trash is organic and can fertilize the soil. And the best fun of all – I get to have a tasty, healthy, nourishing food that keeps me well, and produce less trash in my body. I eat better foods that take care of me and by doing so I take care of earth too. Take a month and check how by improving what food you buy and eat, you can also reduces the amount of trash that you produce, and this can be a wonderful New Year resolution.

How to Help Your Children Enjoy Nutritious Foods

Administrator — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:01:11 +0000

Do your children refuse to eat nourishing food because they think it is boring and tasteless?Are you overwhelmed with food ads that tempt kids to eat junk?

This series of seminars will help you get new insights on how to offer your kids delicious, nutritious meals. Get tips on how to find time to eat breakfast, and what to pack for lunch, what snacks to offer to the kids and how to reduce Coke consumption. and the Most important of all, Parents and kids will learn to enjoy nutritious foods.

Learn how to combine better eating habits with your child’s hectic life
Find out how to apply fun and simple techniques so kids will enjoy eating delicious and nutritious meals
Become better skilled and creative at preparing fast, tasty, inexpensive meals kids will like
Get tips on how to expose your child to nourishing eating habits
Breakfast – What Comes First – the Egg or the Cereal?
Learn how to explain the importance of eating breakfast to children
Get cool ideas of what can be eaten for breakfast
Organize fun breakfast in no time.
Lunchbox – Not Peanut-Butter Sandwich Again.
Prepare a fast tasty lunchbox for your child
Get various ideas of what your kids will eat for lunch and love
Find out how to incorporate more veggies in your kids meals
Drink! Drink! Drink! But NOT Coke!
How do you offer kids better drinking habits?
Understand why drinking liquids are important to your kids’ well being
Apply fun and simple techniques to drink more during their day
Add tasty liquids to your kids’ diets
Enjoy Snacking With No Guilt
Understand why snacking is an essential part of eating
Offer your kids nutritious snacks for school
Present your children with fun snacks at home

Happy Jewish New Year

Administrator — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 01:11:42 +0000

This week was the Jewish New Year. We are lucky to be able to say “Happy New Year” twice, once when we celebrate with the general public, and one in the fall. Boosting the “Happy Year” toward the fall is a good reminder that we need to do good and look for happiness. Originally, the New Year was in spring. From nature point of view this makes much more sense as in spring, everything starts over: new flowers emerge; birds return and build their nests; farmers saw this year crops, and we plant our new home gardens. But the Jewish New Year in fall celebrates the birth of earth, and in its land of origin it also celebrates nature: the end of harvest season; the ripening of the seven kinds, among them are the figs, pomegranates, dates, and wines. Part of the holiday tradition is to prepare many dishes that contain the seven kinds, paying attention to the characteristic of the species and creating a blessing, that symbolize its characteristic. For example, “May it be that our merits increase like the seeds of a pomegranate”. Other vegetables are used for their Hebrew or Aramaic names, using a word game to symbolize a blessing. For example, the Hebrew name for beet is selek. The root of this word SLK also means remove. Thus, “may all our enemies be removed” and a beet dish or beet’s leaves dish is served. Sweet foods like, dates (named honey in the bible) and apple with honey are being eaten for their sweetness to promises a sweet year. What I like about this tradition is that it makes people connect to the origin of their foods and paying attention to each fruit and vegetables: what its trait and special taste are. This is a long, slow eating process: you take a sample of each dish, and first you say a blessing, and only then slowly eat the dish. Then you serve the next sample. Depend on the house tradition there are between 8-15 dishes like this, that appreciate the source of our food and make people think how it contribute to our life. I wish that there were more occasions like this. Happy New Year.

New School Year

Administrator — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:20:00 +0000

The new school year is on our doorstep and this is a great opportunity to establish some better eating habits for the entire family. The house is starting some new rules anyway, like, earlier bed time; reducing TV hours, afterschool activities…Why not take this opportunity too for “Our family start new eating habits for a better wellness”? Explain to the kids the importance of eating nourishing food as a prevention tool and as means to keep our earth in a better shape. Check with them what they want for breakfast before school, and when they should be getting up to have time to eat breakfast. Discuss with them what they want to pack for lunch during weekdays, and make some plans for family dinner evenings. Make it a family adventure, not additional rules for the kids. Don’t forget to practice in the healthy eating habits, as an example but also just to take care of yourself too.

Have a great School Year