Socca salad sandwich | Sodium | Getting real

I was hungry as I cruised my blog list and came upon Aimee's post about socca on Bitt of Raw. I'd made baked socca before in the oven, but her husband made it in a pan like a pancake. Aimee had made raw falafels, and her husband rolled his falafels up in a socca wrap. The socca wrap sounded so good and fast, and I was really hungry. I remembered making similar chickpea flour omelets like Zoa, from The Airy Way Blog, did, and not being so fond of the chickpea flour taste. But I've changed my mind about chickpea flour since then, so I was eager to roll something up in socca. Like Zoa, I used an equal amount of water and chickpea flour (1/2 cup) for my socca, plus a teaspoon of oil and a tiny pinch of salt, and I cooked up two pancakes at high speed. (Remember — really hungry.)



For the inside, I made salad with baby greens, tomatoes, avocado and some leftover chickpea chili. I needed both my hands to roll and enjoy it, so no photos. Fantastic!

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Now for something a little more serious


Do you ever think about sodium? Do you try to reduce your intake? Most of us get far too much sodium in our diets, exposing us to the possibility of high blood pressure, blood clots, heart attacks, kidney disease and certain cancers? Did you know that excess sodium leaches calcium from the body? If you're young and in good health, you may think you don't have to worry about stuff like this, but waiting until problems manifest isn't always the best method for dealing with them. And doctors are finding diseases such as these occurring in younger and younger people. The issue of sodium has come up for me recently as I've been doing recipe testing for someone, and finding the recipes much saltier than I'm used to. For recipe testing I make the recipes as written, and I don't usually mention the salt in my reviews unless someone else at the table complains. But many of the dishes taste pretty salty to me, which has me re-examining my diet.

I went to the USDA's most recent release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to see what the latest mainstream thinking is about salt. The general recommendation is this:

"Reduce daily sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams (mg) and further reduce intake to 1,500 mg among persons who are 51 and older and those of any age who are African American or have hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease. The 1,500 mg recommendation applies to about half of the U.S. population, including children, and the majority of adults."

The following offers a little more detail:

"For adolescents and adults of all ages (14 years and older), the IOM (Institute of Medicine) set the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) at 2,300 mg per day. The UL is the highest daily nutrient intake level that is likely to pose no risk of adverse health effects (e.g., for sodium, increased blood pressure) to almost all individuals in the general population. The IOM recognized that the association between sodium intake and blood pressure was continuous and without a threshold (i.e., a level below which the association no longer exists). The UL was based on several trials, including data from the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH)-Sodium trial. The IOM noted that in the DASH-Sodium trial, blood pressure was lowered when target sodium intake was reduced to 2,300 mg per day, and lowered even further when sodium was targeted to the level of 1,200 mg per day.46 An intake level of 2,300 mg per day was commonly the next level above the AI of 1,500 mg per day that was tested in the sodium trials evaluated by the IOM."

Americans, especially males, are getting substantially too much sodium in their diets. Many people consume double or even more than double, the highest recommended amount. Where is all this salt coming from? Table salt contains the following:

1/4 teaspoon salt = 600 mg sodium
1/2 teaspoon salt = 1200 mg sodium
3/4 teaspoon salt = 1800 mg sodium
1 teaspoon salt = 2400 mg sodium
1 teaspoon baking soda = 1000 mg sodium

But table salt and salty seasonings that you add to home-cooked food may be only part of the problem. If you are eating many purchased, prepared foods, including breads and other commonly store-bought items, you could easily be exceeding the salt guidelines. Here's a sampling of commonly consumed foods and their sodium content:

Breadcrumbs, seasoned, 1/4 cup - 795 mg
Baking powder, 1 teaspoon - 488 mg
Baking soda, 1 teaspoon - 1,000 mg
Plain bagel - 561 mg
Capers, 1 Tablespoon - 255 mg
Pesto, basil, 1/4 cup - 730 mg
Soy sauce, 1 Tablespoon - 914 mg
Soy sauce, light, 1 Tablespoon - 660 mg

If we eat a lot of snack food, restaurant food, commercial baked goods, etc., we could be getting much more salt than is healthy. Even if we eat mostly home-cooked food, relying heavily on high-salt seasonings also can lead to problems. But what happens to flavor when salt is reduced?

I've been reducing salt in my cooking for years, and at first, everything tasted bland. Then, after a short adjustment period, the real flavors of the food began to intensify for me, and too much salt became an unwelcome distraction rather than an enhancement. When a small amount of salt is used to bring out a food's flavor, it's completely different from when salt IS the flavor. I remember when my mother-in-law had to go on an extremely low salt diet for health reasons, one of the foods on the restricted list was celery. Celery? I couldn't believe it at the time. Celery didn't seem like a high sodium vegetable. Now when I bite into a piece of celery, I can taste the saltiness.



I still use salt, but very judiciously. If anyone wants more, they can always add it at the table. In fact, you will probably consume less salt if you greatly reduce cooking salt (including salty condiments like soy sauce) and add a light sprinkle at the table. Having salt on the surface of the food gives your tongue the impression that the food is saltier than it is. Other foods that taste salty can add a lot of flavor with less sodium. Compare 1/2 teaspoon of salt (1200 mg) with one tablespoon of capers (255 mg.). When buying canned or jarred foods like beans or tomatoes, I choose the no salt added varieties, and if I buy prepared soup stock, it's always the low-sodium kind.

Salt, like sugar, is an addictive substance, and hard to give up. You can compensate by adding more aromatic seasonings like onions, garlic, herbs and spices. For example, I found an amazing, organic salt-free seasoning mix at Costco that we use on everything from broccoli to popcorn, if we want to bump up the flavor. Most vegetables taste delicious to me plain, but if I'm feeling creative, I may add grated garlic, fresh lemon juice and zest, toasted sesame seeds, or green onions and herbs. Real food tastes so much better to me now, I don't miss the salt.

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What do we really eat?



Everything I post on the blog is something either my husband or I have cooked and eaten, but because I tend to post the better-looking stuff, you may get an unrealistic view of what we eat. Mostly we dine simply, with occasional gustatory splurges. Above you see a simple dish of steamed kale and puy lentils with carrots. The kale was enhanced with crushed red pepper, lemon and garlic, and the lentils were pretty plain, but delicious. This is how I like to eat.



And here's my breakfast — not very pretty but great tasting. It's rolled oats with raisins, banana, walnuts, frozen blueberries, cinnamon and almond milk — no added sugar or salt.



Above is a barley soup made with dried shiitake mushroom stock. (I've linked to a recipe for stock (dashi), but it's pretty flexible and can be made with or without the seaweed. It can also be soaked overnight in the refrigerator. Here's another.)



This was a yummy Indian dish called Batata Bhaji which I found on Holy Cow Vegan Blog.

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Recipe testing for Urban Vegan


Shamefully simple chickpea chili


Shamefully simple chickpea chili served over rice with broccoli/mushrooms and salad


Tofu with broccoli and black bean sauce


Tofu with broccoli and black bean sauce served over noodles

Oats and wheat pancakes

Miss E, our two-year old granddaughter, arrived Sunday afternoon for a sleepover. It's always fun to have the charming Miss E running around the house (she never walks), sharing meals and snacks with us. She loves to eat and is willing to try just about anything before passing judgement. She's just started using the word love to describe how she feels about things, and it's hilarious to hear her tiny self say things like, "I love tempeh!," or "I love pink!" or "I love quinoa!" For dinner she had some unusual-looking seitan which she tentatively picked up and nibbled before exclaiming, I LIKE it!"

Miss E likes to have pancakes for breakfast when she stays with us but I was debating between pancakes and oatmeal, and ended up making pancakes with half wheat and half oats. I even measured the ingredients so I could post a recipe. Then I searched this blog to make sure I hadn't posted the exact recipe before and nope, not the exact one. So here it is.



Oats and wheat pancakes

• 1 cup white whole wheat flour
• 1 cup regular rolled oats, ground to flour in blender or food processor
• 1 tablespoon evaporated cane juice (natural sugar)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt (optional)
• 1-3/4 cups soy or other non-dairy milk
• 1 teaspoon cider vinegar or rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons canola oil

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt, if using.
2. Add the vinegar to the milk and stir to curdle. Stir the oil into the milk.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix together. The batter will be fairly thick, but if it seems too thick, add a small amount of additional milk.
4. Heat a cast iron griddle over medium heat until hot, then lightly oil it by spreading the oil with a spatula. Throw a few drops of water onto the pan and if it hisses and jumps, it's ready.
5. Drop batter onto the pan to make approximately 2" pancakes. When bubbles form on top and the edges look dry, turn the pancakes over and cook about 15-30 seconds or until browned.
6. Serve with pure maple syrup, applesauce, or the topping of your choice.

Makes 4 — 6 servings.



Update: I had batter left over so I stored it in a glass container in the refrigerator. On Wednesday morning I made pancakes again, and they were just as yummy (maybe even better) than they were on Monday. Of course I had to add a little more soymilk to the batter because it had thickened, but having the batter in the fridge made pancakes seem as easy as cold cereal. Well, almost! Had them with date syrup.

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Food odds and ends



When my husband is out of town I tend to make myself simple suppers that usually end up being stir fries cooked in my wok. I love cooking in my wok. It's the perfect place to make a one-dish meal. Here's a little back story about our wok. We bought our favorite, flat-bottomed wok when we were living in Australia. We were visiting a living museum — a reconstructed mining town focused on the 19th century Australian gold rush era. All the businesses of the town were functioning as they would have been back in 1861; the bakery sold bread, the foundry produced metal objects, etc. Since many Chinese people had been brought to the area to work on the railroads, Chinese culture influenced the products available in the town. The foundry of the mining town made woks, and, missing my wok from home while living in Geelong, I bought one! We still have it and use it often.





Here's a dinner made from leftovers brought home from Bamboo Garden, a vegan Chinese restaurant. (Everything served at the restaurant is vegan except the fortune cookies.) The crunchy-looking tidbit on the right is fried yuba. After reheating, it had lost its crunchy texture, if not its crunchy appearance. Still tasted great, though.



This is what I currently see when I look out my kitchen door. It seems to be a rhododendron tree. Seattle is loaded with rhododendrons. They're not only abundant, they're enormous. Everywhere I go they are in bloom. I'm familiar with the shrub variety but until I came to Seattle, I'd never seen them grown as trees. The tree is beautiful but piles of the sticky blooms litter the back patio and constantly get tracked into the house. I no sooner sweep them up than they are all back again. It's hard to believe that the tree hasn't run out of blossoms yet.

Granola

I love a good breakfast, but I always seem to get stuck in a breakfast rut of repetition. There's never enough time during the week to to do much besides slurp a bowl of dry cereal, and none of my imagined breakfasts for the weekend ever seem to happen. The most I ever manage is a bowl of oatmeal. After basically eating the same cereal for about the last five years, a couple of weeks ago I finally burned out on dry cereal and couldn't seem to find one that tasted good. My husband brought home a box of super healthy (according to the box) granola but it tasted like it was made from the box with the addition of rock bits.

I decided it was time to make granola. That sounds so 70s, doesn't it? I miss those 70s granola days. As my husband went off to do food shopping at the coop, I asked him to get stuff that could go into granola. I didn't specify anything, so I ended up with some pretty basic ingredients, but granola is a very open-ended performance art, so it's hard to go wrong.


In the pans ready to go into the oven.

Ken brought home organic quick oats. Though I've only used regular rolled oats in the past, these worked just fine. He also brought dates, sunflower seeds, apple juice and wheat germ. Everything else was stuff I had in the pantry. You could use rolled barley, spelt or wheat instead of some of the oats. You could use walnuts, peanuts, etc., instead of all or some of the cashews. You could use sesame seeds for half of the sunflower seeds. You could use all dried apples,pears or other dried fruit instead of dates. (Use a clean kitchen scissors to cut the dried dates or other fruit into small pieces.) You could use peanut butter or cashew butter instead of almond butter. You can add chocolate chips. I added some Ghirardelli 72% cacao extra bittersweet chocolate chips for baking. Yikes. Anyway, this is the granola as I made it. (Just want to mention that the granola is mildly sweet — not sweet sweet like most commercial granolas. I don't like food to be extra sweet, so if you do, you may want to up the sweetener.)


Cooling in the bowl after baking.

Crunchy granola

• 6-7 cups quick oats or regular rolled oats
  
• 1 cup raw wheat germ
• 1 cup raw cashews
• 1 cup raw sunflower seeds
• 1 cup raw walnuts, halves or pieces
  
• 1 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut
• 3/4 cup apple juice
• 1/4 cup agave syrup (or maple syrup, or sorghum, or 1/2 cup rice syrup)
• 1/3 cup almond butter
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
  
• 1 cup chopped dates
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup dark chocolate chips (optional)

1. Mix together the oats, wheat germ, cashews, sunflower seeds and coconut in a large bowl.
2. Mix the apple juice, sweetener and almond butter in a small pot and warm over low heat, mixing to dissolve the almond butter. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla.
3. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. I used my hands for this because the spoon was too slow.
4. Divide between two large baking pans and bake in a 325˚F oven for ABOUT 45 minutes. While it's baking, stir about every 10 minutes to toast evenly and to prevent burning.
5. When it turns golden brown, turn off the heat and allow to sit in the oven about 20–30 minutes to continue drying.
6. Remove from the oven and stir in the fruit. Let cool and stir in the chocolate chips if you dare. (It's breakfast, after all. Be sensible!) If you do add chocolate chips, really let the granola cool well before stirring in any chocolate or the chocolate will melt. Yes, it will.
7. When completely cool, store in an airtight container.

Dog pretending to be asleep

This is a dog with attitude. She knows perfectly well I'm there but she's refusing to look at me because somehow she knows I'm trying to practice using my new camera. And no, I'm not using a flash. She hates to have her picture taken, always has, and never smiles for the camera. But I love her anyway.

Post Thanksgiving wrap-up (only a week late)

After reading about so many of your amazing Thanksgiving celebrations, I'm finally getting around to noting ours. We went to a potluck celebration at our friends' house in the country, and the amount and variety of food was astounding. Naturally, I forgot to bring the camera, but you can get a little sense of the celebration here. For our contribution to the meal, I made stuffed roasted seitan and apple-cranberry sauce. My husband made delicious chocolate chip cookies.



I photographed the seitan still in its baking dish (top photo) before we left the house, and we took the serving platter with us. On the plate l'm showing leftovers that we had the next night, since as I said, I didn't bring my camera to the event. The seitan was stuffed with brown basmati rice, wild rice and whole wheat bread cubes with onions, mushrooms, garlic, celery, chipotlé, dried apricots and I can't remember what else. One of these days I should write down a recipe so I can make it the same way twice, but it hasn't happened yet.



And this is my after Thanksgiving breakfast—oatmeal topped with cranberry-apple sauce. Wisconsin is a big cranberry growing state so both the cranberries and the apples were local.

nutty linzer cookies

Yesterday, a co-worker brought cookies to work but I couldn't have one because she had added butterscotch chips to the recipe and it wsn't vegan. Ironically, she had started with a vegan recipe and made it not vegan. This was perfectly fine - I'm not much of a sweet-eater or a snacker, and if I do snack, it's usually on something like nuts or pretzels. I especially don't find sweets appealing in the morning. (Currently, I'm most likely to snack on pistachios.) However, the cookies were very interesting looking in a healthy kind of way, and in spite of their healthy appearance, they were receiving very positive feedback from everyone who was sampling them. Healthy cookies that people like? This was a recipe worth tracking down. I got the recipe from Jen, and traced the original to this Web site where they're called, "energizing linzer cookies." My version (based on ingredients on hand and personal preference) is below. I made 21 cookies, some with raspberry jam and some with chocolate chips. The chocolate chips didn't melt as I expected them to, but they tasted good. The raspberry filled cookies were much prettier and I preferred them. The cookies are sweet, but the jam I used, organic sugar-free raspberry jam from Trader Joes, was actually a bit tart, providing an unexpected but pleasant contrast. Unfortunately, I ate too many.

Nutty linzer cookies
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup toasted, unsalted almonds
1/2 unsalted walnuts
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup agave syrup (or maple syrup)
2 teaspoons vanilla
raspberry jam
chocolate chips

Place oats, almonds and walnuts in a food processor and process until crumbly. Add flour and flax and pulse until mixed. Add oil, syrup and vanilla and pulse until mixed and dough forms.
Form into balls (wet hands help) and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet.
Press a depression into each cookie with your finger.
Place some jam or chocolate chips into each depression.
Bake at 350˚ for 14 minutes.

P.S. I was much too stingy with the jam and chocolate chips because I was afraid they would bubble up and ooze over the sides. Next time I make these - and there will definitly be a next time - I'm going to load up that jam and stuff in those chips. Jen says I should fill up the jam and put chocolate chips around the edge. Maybe I will.

Oatmeal for a frigid morning

The temperature is minus 10˚ and heading to 1.˚ I shiver for a bowl of steaming oatmeal with raisins, dusted with cinnamon, drizzled with rice syrup and cuddled by an edge of soymilk. mmmm.