Eat the Whole Thing!

Whole Lot of Flavor: My recipe for Georgia Pecan Confetti Quinoa
with yellow squash, zucchini and carrots!
Recipe Below

Whether it’s snacking on a granola bar made with whole grain oats, ordering a whole-wheat hamburger bun or choosing the sushi made with brown rice, it’s getting easier to enjoy healthy whole grains in your favorite foods. Chefs and home cooks are giving side dishes a whole grain makeover too as mashed potatoes and egg noodles get pushed aside in favor of couscous, quinoa and whole-wheat pastas.

See the Grains section of My Plate? Make half your grains whole grains for good health.

That’s a good thing since U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend that  all Americans eat at least half their grains as whole grains--that’s at least 3 to 5 sixteen-gram servings a day for most of us. Nutrition advice to eat the “whole” thing is based on evidence that diets that are rich in whole grains and low in fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol can help promote proper digestion and reduce the risk of heart disease and some cancers.  Whole grains may also play a role in insulin management and weight control when eaten as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle. So, whole grains have a whole lot to offer!

Had Whole Grains Today?

So, have you had your whole grain breakfast granola cereal today? How about a slice of pizza on a whole-wheat crust? If your answer is “yes”, then you’re doing pretty well - since according to The Whole Grains Council most folks consume only one serving of whole grain per day and over 40 % of Americans never eat whole grains at all!

But, that may be changing as whole grain options move to center stage for delicious meals and satisfying snacks. For example, all of Sunbelt Bakery’s tasty granola and fruit & grain bars have at least 4 grams of whole grains. Some have as many as 9 grams.    

Chocolate Chip Chewy Granola Bar with whole grain oats
from Sunbelt Bakery with a glass of fat free milk.

 Also, all Sunbelt Bakery products are made without any preservatives or high fructose corn syrup. Their fun flavor varieties include chocolate chip and banana, and their Family Pack bars are just the right size for portion control. And because they are delivered to communities each week, Sunbelt Bakery’s snacks and cereals have a bakery-fresh taste. It’s great to feel good about this win-win for taste and nutrition!

What’s a Whole Grain?

Whole grains, or foods made from them, contain all of the essential parts and naturally occurring nutrients of the entire grain seed.  A whole grain is made up of three layers--the bran, the germ and the endosperm. If the grain has been cracked, crushed, rolled or milled into flour and the proportions of the three layers remain the same, then it contains the same balance of nutrients found in the original grain seed.

Add a sprinkling of crunchy whole grains for fitness, fiber and fun.
Greek yogurt "parfait" with berries and Sunbelt Bakery granola cereal

 What Counts as Whole Grain?

Some examples of whole-grain ingredients include buckwheat, bulgur, millet, oatmeal, quinoa, rolled oats, brown or wild rice, whole-grain barley, whole rye, and whole wheat. That's a whole LOT of choices. And remember you can mix things up. Try half white rice and half brown rice or other rice and grain blends. 

All Sunbelt Bakery bars, for instance, are made with whole grain oats or whole grain wheat.  One my favorites is Sunbelt Bakery’s Golden Almond Chewy Granola Bar. They’re only 130 calories and contain 6 grams of whole grains per bar.

Disclosure for this post: I am thrilled to serve as the official Registered Dietitian for Sunbelt Bakery. Though I am compensated, all views and opinions expressed in this blog post are my own, and are based on my knowledge and experience as a Registered Dietitian. 


RECIPE: 
Georgia Pecan Confetti Quinoa

Quinoa is a delicious gluten-free grain that cooks up light and fluffy like rice but contains more protein. This super side dish recipe featuring confetti colored sprinklings of orange, green and yellow veggies is flavored with garlic and rosemary. Crunchy Georgia pecans add even more great taste and nutrition because pecans are a super source of heart healthy fats and antioxidants. 

By Carolyn O’Neil, MS RD co-author The Dish on Eating Healthy and Being Fabulous!

Yield: 6 half-cup servings 

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons olive oil

½ cup diced carrots

½ cup diced zucchini squash

½ cup diced yellow squash

1 garlic clove, minced

2 cups cooked quinoa (prepared to package directions)

¼ teaspoon finely chopped rosemary leaves

¼ cup toasted pecan halves or pieces (reserve 2 Tablespoons for garnish) 

Preparation:

Heat oil in large skillet and add carrots, zucchini, yellow squash and garlic. Cook until crisp tender. Fold in the cooked quinoa, rosemary and pecans. Season to taste with freshly ground black pepper and sea salt. Present quinoa on a large platter and garnish with additional toasted pecans.

Are you ready for your culinary close up?

Culinary Close Ups

Pretty in Pink: peel 'n eat shrimp Florida and Georgia coast menus

It’s not enough to simply relax and dine on the dishes chefs create for restaurant menus, some folks want to jump in and help cook the meal.  The promise of an “Epitourian” experience in the professional kitchens of the Sawgrass Marriott Resort in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida is what attracted Maureen and Billy Ray Price of Moultrie, Georgia. “I found it online. We wanted to go to the beach to celebrate our wedding anniversary but we wanted something different,” says Maureen Price. “My husband is a really good cook and I thought ‘he’ll learn to make even more great things for me’ and it will be fun.”

So while other guests at the golf centric resort, host hotel of THE PLAYERS Championship, headed out to play one of the areas eight championship golf courses or grabbed a book and a beach chair at the Cabana Beach Club, the Prices jumped on a golf cart with Executive chef David Scalise to visit the on-property bee hives.

Off they go to find the bee hives with Chef Scalise and Heidi Barfels of Miami

Scalise tends two bee hives tucked away in an area guests wouldn’t normally see behind tall trees and overgrown with black berry bushes and other natural plants of north Florida, “At first everyone panicked when they heard I wanted to set up bee hives on the hotel property. But these honey bees are not aggressive and finally even the lawyers understood it was going to be OK, “ says Scalise who set up the hives about a year ago. 

Sweet life: Executive Chef David Scalise tends the hives at the Sawgrass Marriott Resort

“Our first harvest yielded fifteen gallons. The honey is a little nutty tasting with nuances of the wild blackberries. We use pieces of the honey combs on our cheese platters.”  The hotel’s homegrown Sawgrass honey not only sweetens the culinary program, it’s sold in the gift shop and used in the spa for treatments. “We’re even working on using the bees wax to make lip balm, “ says Scalise.  

Proud beekeeper shows off part of the honey harvest.

He says another bonus from beekeeping is developing stronger relationships with local farmers, “We lend our bees to pollinate their crops including a strawberry farmer nearby. So then we get strawberry honey.”

Cook and Learn

Next stop for the Prices on their culinary adventure is the farmer’s market in nearby Neptune Beach to shop for foods they’ll cook with that afternoon.  On the menu for today is a lesson in making fresh pasta.  “I’ve always loved to cook. Even in college at the University of Florida I made spaghetti sauce every Sunday for the other students in my dorm,” says Billy Ray Price who’s a physician in Moultrie.   

Romantic lighting in the Augustine Grille captures the beauty of handmade gnocchi pasta with local vegetables.

A few notches up from spaghetti, Scalise led the Prices through the steps needed to make fresh gnocchi including the delicate broth based sauce that would be served to them for dinner that night as well as other guests in the Augustine Grille. So their “epitourian” experience went beyond creating their own courses, the Prices truly were part of the Sawgrass Marriott’s culinary staff for the day.

Maureen and Billy Ray Price celebrate their Epitourian experience in the Augustine Grille

Watch and Learn

If you’d rather stay out of the line of fire in a busy restaurant kitchen, but still want to be close enough to see exactly how the chef sears a piece of fish then you can take a seat at the Chef’s Table at The Cloister at Sea Island, Georgia.  

Elegant settings and sumptuous bites of the finest food and wine at The Cloister, Sea Island

Seating four guests comfortably in a small yet elegant glassed-in dining room the table overlooks the expansive kitchen of the Georgian Room where chef de cuisine Daniel Zeal and his brigade of chefs turn vegetables into jewel like shapes, expertly grill meats, poach lobster in vanilla and citrus, delicately prepare fine fish such as cobia, garnish plates with edible flowers and create multi-ingredient desserts.  Can’t keep up with the action? Just change the channel.  Above the picture window in the chef’s table dining room is a wide screen television. “We give the guests their own remote control to switch camera views around the kitchen so they can follow their meal every step of the way and I pop in to answer any questions they might have about techniques or ingredients,” says Zeal.

Under the direction of  Resort Executive Chef Jonathan Jerusalmy, Sea Island chefs
create a wide range of culinary experiences for guests.

Off the Farm

Snapper ceviche with micro greens at Edwards Fine Food & Wine, Rosemary Beach,  Florida

It’s nothing new to see the names of farms and farmers on menus today as more chefs create business bonds to bring the best in locally grown foods to their guests. But, take a look around the dining room and you may even see a farmer. 

Eating dinner one night at Edward’s Fine Food & Wine in Rosemary Beach, Florida I asked chef Edward Reese about the deliciously fresh micro greens in salads and garnishing plates. He smiled and replied pointing to the man sitting at the next table, “Why don’t you ask Claus Kazenmaier, they came from his farm this morning!”

So it seems that another component of judging culinary quality is today is how close we can get to knowing where our food comes from and exactly how it’s prepared even when someone else is doing the cooking.

Now let's head to the beach..........

Chefs Experiment with Flavors

Marinated Anchovies with Pink Grapefruit and Black Pepper
Five and Ten in Athens, GA
2012 James Beard Nominated Chef Hugh Acheson  

Dining duos such as onion and garlic, oregano and basil or lemon and pepper are flavor combinations we’ve gotten used to tasting together. But, there’s a delicious new world of flavor match making going on today as chefs season with a touch of surprise. Step aside lemon-pepper. At Five and Ten restaurant in Athens, chef Hugh Acheson’s new take on citrus paired with a bit of heat arrives with seafood. An appetizer of marinated anchovies and pink grapefruit segments dusted with black pepper is marvelous mix of briny fish with slightly bitter fruit and a hit of cracked pepper. Anchovies, by the way, are an excellent source of heart healthy Omega-3 fatty acids and these tiny fish are very low in mercury so you can eat them often. Diving into Acheson’s anchovy dish is far more fun than taking fish oil pills.

Fresh Look at Taste

Culinary Nutritionists
Andrea Canada, Natalia Hancock and Kristy Lambrou
at Rouge Tomate, NYC

Do you like hot sauce on oysters? Most folks eat them that way. But, oysters on the half shell at Rouge Tomate in New York are topped with a pineapple, ginger and mint. Marmalade of shallots and prunes perks up poultry. Lemongrass-ginger oil with jalapeno pairs with fresh fish. Natalia Hancock, culinary nutritionist with Rouge Tomate, works with executive chef Jeremy Bearman to find flavor combinations which are not only mouth watering they have to be healthful too. “There’s nothing better than when the worlds of nutrition and food collide.” While the seasonal dishes are designed to fit within a healthy range of calories there are no numbers on the menu. Hancock, trained as a chef and a dietitian, says the food philosophy at Rouge Tomate prioritizes the quality of calories, “I choose certain ingredients for a dish not just because they taste good together but because they improve the overall nutritional profile of the recipe. A bit of olive oil in a sauce helps you better absorb vitamin A, for instance, in the vegetables.” Another example of this nutritional synergy is a sauce made from a puree of green olives and avocado.



Flavor Focus



Sometimes appreciating a specific flavor means finding it in a variety of forms. In their annual Flavor Forecast, chefs and other food experts at McCormick &Company identified the “quest for the ultimate” as one of 2012’s trends. For example, combining Meyer lemon with lemon thyme, Limoncello and Lemon Peel is described as the “ultimate lemon” taste experience. Flavors known for their cooling effects such as dill, mint, melon and cucumber are combined to create the “ultimate refresher.” At Five and Ten diners can find a new way to satisfy their fish with lemon craving with Rainbow Trout stuffed with thinly sliced fennel and preserved lemons. At Seasons 52, the spring menu brings lemon to the table in a new way with Steelhead Trout in a lemongrass sauce.

World View

Borrowing from the spice cabinet of world cuisines continues to inspire cooks to try new things. McCormick’s chefs identify Korean pepper paste and Moroccan harissa as flavors showing up in everything from barbecue to baked vegetables. Chef Marvin Woods, author of The New Low-Country Cooking which explores the influence of Africa, France, Spain and the Caribbean on southern regional cooking says “It’s great to extend your knowledge. There are no boundaries and its like ‘Wow! They did that!’ and makes you want to run with it.” Woods, who shares healthy southern recipes on his website www.chefmarvinwoods.com such as Lamb Burgers with Orange and Mango Ketchup, says “Too often people think they will lose something when they hear its ‘healthy food’ but you’re adding fantastic flavors with spices and herbs.”

Spice Savvy Cooking Classes


The Cook’s Warehouse – Midtown Location

“Favorites from Masala Farm”: April 5th 7pm-9m

Indian Cuisine: Chef Suvir Saran, author of three cookbooks on Indian Cuisine.

“Red Hot Chilies”: April 10th 7pm-9pm

“Cooking with Chilies” Chef Nancy Waldeck and Cultural Anthropologist Deb Duchon