Paige Espenship, Registered Dietitian Atlanta Nutritionist

Vegan tofu noodle soup

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 22:22:43 -0500

Here is another crock pot recipe for those chilly gray winter days. Chop everything and put in the fridge the night before. In the morning, throw everything in the crockpot on low and when you get home from work, dinner will be ready.
Ingredients:
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
3/4 cup sliced mushrooms
1 tbsp minced garlic
dash of thyme
dash of basil
dash of parsley
dash of oregano
dash of rosemary
dash of poultry seasoning
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp flour
8 oz vegan noodles (or about half a box)
2 qts vegetable broth
16 oz diced firm tofu
salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Put everything in the crockpot and cook on low for 7-8 hours.

Healthy, easy, kid-friendly crockpot chicken pot pie

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:49:12 -0500

This twist on the old classic is low in saturated fat, high in fiber and protein and chock-full of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and fun:) Enjoy.

Ingredients:
1 cup organic carrots cut into 1/2 inch peices
1 cup sliced organic baby bella mushrooms
3/4 cup chopped organic yellow onion
1 Tbsp whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp regular flour
3/4 cup organic chicken broth
8oz fresh organic chicken tenderloins cut into 1 inch pieces
salt and pepper
bay leaf
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 cup organic frozen peas
3/4 cup organic milk or soy, almond or coconut milk
5 sheets phyllo dough, thawed

Directions:
In a crock pot, combine carrots, mushrooms, onion, four, broth, chicken, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and thyme. Give it a good stir to be sure that the flour is evenly distributed. Turn the crock pot on high and cook for 4 to 5 hours or low for 7 to 8 hours.
20 minutes before serving, preheat the oven to 425.
Stir frozen peas and milk into the crock pot and allow to continue cooking for 10 to 15 minutes.
Use cookie cutters in fun shapes to cut the phyllo dough. Each shape should be 5 sheets thick. Place the shapes on a cookie sheet and brush with an egg wash of desired. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until crispy and golden brown. Decorate the shapes with peas, carrots, etc.
Ladle the filling from the crock pot into serving bowls and top with the fun shaped phyllo crusts. Your kids will love it:)

Letter to a Friend

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:46:01 -0500

A friend and colleague of my husband’s contacted me on Christmas Eve to ask for some help with his diet. Earlier this month he was hospitalized with a severe staph infection and the fact that he has diabetes complicated his recovery. He found himself fighting for his life for a week in the ICU. He is not significantly overweight and he had been managing his diabetes with average blood sugars of around 120mg/dL. Since it is not always evident what is going on inside a seemingly healthy person’s body, a healthy diet and lifestyle will not only give your body the best fighting chance in an emergency situation, it will perhaps help ward off infections to begin with. I just wanted to share with you what I wrote to him in hopes that you may find a nugget of good information that could help maximize your health as well.

What a scary turn of events you have recently endured. I am also vegetarian and we ALL should be eating a "diabetic diet". I'm not a big believer in counting carbs or calories or anything like that. I used to give out that type of advice but I have found that we are all in some way emotional or stress eaters and when you have a food bank account to worry about, that tends to stress you out even more. I am more a believer of choosing high quality foods and striving to strike a balance. Let me give you 5 guidelines to help you maximize your health. These are the five things I have found to work across the board:

1. Choose high quality carbohydrates.
    High quality carbs are foods that have more dietary fiber than sugar. How do you find them? On the food label compare dietary fiber to sugar, if it has more fiber it is a high quality carb. Apply this rule to all of the dry packaged foods in the grocery store (breads, cereals, crackers, pastas, rice, beans, etc). Some examples of high quality carbs:
    Cereals- plain shredded wheat, wheatabix, kashi go lean, optimum slim, puffins, plain cheerios, grape nuts, Uncle Sams cereal
    Bread- Ezekiel Bread (in the frozen section)
    Pasta- barilla plus omega 3 in the yellow box
    Rice- brown or wild rice
    Crackers- ak-mak, triscuit, ryvita

2. Avoid Artificial Sweetners.
    Artificial sweetners increase your release of blood insulin and circulating insulin in your bloodstream is not only damaging to cells, but it also makes you feel hungrier. Check labels for artificial sweetners and avoid or at least limit to one artificially sweetened item per day.
Watch out for stevia, aspartame, sucralose, neotame, asulfame potassium, saccharin, sorbitol and xylitol. Limiting these artificial sweetners will make it difficult to buy convenience foods and many packaged foods. Which brings me to number 3.

3. Eat things your great grandparents would recognize.
   Plain yogurt with a teaspoon of honey is 20 times healthier than the artificially sweetned stuff. Frozen, preservative free Ezekiel Bread (named after the simple recipe for bread from the book of Ezekiel in the Bible) is 20 times healthier than the preservative and artificially sweetened shelved breads. Choose whole grains like brown rice, rye, quinoa, bulgar wheat, steel cut oats, amaranth, etc at every opportunity.

4. Fill half of your plate with non starchy organic vegetables at least twice a day.
    Non starchy veggies are things like broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spinach, chard, squash, zucchini, bell peppers, onion, tomatoes, asparagus, bean sprouts, sprouts, brussels sprouts, cabbage, chives, cucumber, fennel, eggplant, jicama, mushrooms, okra, herbs, radish, scallions, etc. The darker the color of the veggies, the better. Raw is best, next best is steamed, then baked/roasted/boiled/sauteed, least healthy is fried.

5. Earn or burn your extras with exercise.
    If you want a cup of ice cream (about 300 calories), burn it off with a 3 mile walk/ jog. If you don't have time to do the exercise before eating the food, don't eat it:) Sports nutrition studies show us that the best time to eat sweets is right after a workout. It is quickly metabolized and used to repair muscle tissue used during exercise.

Obviously this is a pretty broad subject but hopefully this email is helpful to you. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to call me. Also if you are looking for a dietitian to work with in your area, you can find the best of the best at eatright.org.

Just go with it

Sat, 5 Nov 2011 21:45:45 -0400

So tonight I was making dinner for my husband and me when I thought I would substitute vegetable broth for olive oil in my pesto to save us some calories. I had already added everything else and oil was the final ingredient (basil, garlic, walnuts, and salt). Once I had poured in enough vegetable broth to reach the consistency of pesto I took a taste and WOW, it was salty! I forgot to skip the salt since I was using salty vegetable broth. What to do now? There is no removing salt once it is already in there. I had no other back up for dinner and in three years of marriage I have never had to resort to takeout because of a flopped recipe. But this was inedible! I looked around the kitchen and ended up steaming a whole bag of broccoli florets and blending it in. It was better but still too salty. .... hmmm
I took a long look at the half can of organic pumpkin that I had added to my 7 month old’s cereal just 30 minutes before and without really thinking about it, I spooned the other half of the can into my troubled pesto. Amazingly it stayed green and I took a hesitant taste.
It was delish! My husband raved over it. We got some extra hidden veggies and It made enough for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow! Score.
So moral of the story, just go with it. It may turn into something tasty and healthy!

Thoughts on infant nutrition

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 14:48:55 -0400

This is my son with an avocado at 6 months.

I have had a lot of people ask me how I feed my son. As a dietitian and mother I am obviously concerned about my child’s nutrition and health. I have done some reading on pediatric nutrition and I have done some experimenting of my own. Ultimately there is no right or wrong way to do it, but this is what we did and are doing now

I believe in breastmilk only for 6 months. At 6 months old we introduced soft solids as explained in the book “Baby Led Weaning” (BLW). It was a disaster as you can see. My OCD kicked in and I ultimately decided BLW was not for us as the only means of feeding. I’d rather spend the hour after dinner playing together than cleaning the huge mess.
So I started making my own purees. You can pretty much puree anything that is steamed, roasted or boiled by adding a little of the cooking water or regular water. I use the Cuisinart Smart Stick because the little mini food processor works like a champ and is just the right size to make a couple of servings. I basically puree anything that I am cooking for my husband and me (kale and potatoes, spinach and garlic, brown rice and lentils, etc). When my husband travels, my baby boy and I just a have a puree dinner together! Last night we had pureed carrots with just a touch of cinnamon. It was actually really good! For breakfast today I pureed some canned pumpkin into his oatmeal with a little pumpkin pie spice, that was good too. Right now we are only eating whole grains, legumes and vegetables. I feel that there is no need to introduce anything sweet (including fruit) for several months after introducing foods. My son smiles and says a sweet little “mmm” when he eats anything green (Oh, how I am a proud mama!). I want him to get a taste for veggies first. I also will not introduce any wheat, dairy, animal protein, nuts or sugars until he is closer to 1 year. Breastmilk is still the primary means of nutrition. It is also important to offer plain water on a regular basis. Purees and any foods for that matter can be binding and kids need plenty of water to digest.
A typical day:
7:30am breastfeeding
8am oatmeal with some sort of starchy veggie mixed in
8:30-11am water
11:30 breastfeeding
12noon pureed spinach and white beans
12:30-2:30pm water
3pm breastfeeding
3:30-5:30pm water
6:00pm breastfeeding
6:30pm pureed kale, avocado and potatoes
6:30-7:30pm water
8pm breastfeeding before bed