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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

What We Should Be Eating & Making Now

July 15, 2020 by Mary 6 Comments

So, I have been trying out new recipes for you BUT, I haven’t found any that are great enough to share with you. They just aren’t and I’m sorry I haven’t had the time to fuss with them to make them better and therefore sharable! However, recently I came across this article that outlines the diets of the longest living, healthiest people on the earth, and there are six tenants for What We Should Be Eating & Making Now.

Here are the highlights from the article entitled The 6 Golden Rules of Eating for Longevity, According to the Longest-Living People on Earth by Allie Flinn from the blog Well+Good.

1.) Drink wine after 5 pm.

It’s 5 pm somewhere! Ideally with friends and a meal. I’m in!!

2.) Eat mostly plant-based foods.

Now I do eat meat, almost every day, but I have been trying to have more meatless days…

3.) Include plenty of carbs in your diet.

Surprising to me! They eat grains, greens, tubers, nuts, and beans. Beans seem to be most important, and I know when I am hangry (hungry and angry because of it), beans or lentils calm it the most.

4.) Enjoy meat only on occasion, and only 6 ounces at a time.

Your portion should be no bigger than a deck of cards – that is enough.

5.) Stick to black coffee, water and wine as your beverages.

In other words, pure stuff, no sugary nonsense.

6.) Practice modified forms of intermittent fasting.

I personally have been fasting 16 – 18 hours per day and I have lost weight and feel so much better. So, I may eat dinner at anytime between 6 pm and 8 pm and I will not eat anything the next day until 1 or 2 pm and that really works for me. At that time, I do have a really good meal, like a full dinner, with protein being eaten first. This is working for me in so many ways, I hope you try it for yourselves. And no, I do not miss breakfast first thing. You do not need it at our age.

I will also add to this list a few other things that I have been doing:

Practicing mindful eating.

Eating and chewing slowly, being conscious of what you are enjoying, is so important. This practice will result in eating less as it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to tell you that your stomach is full.

Intentional choices for your food.

I was having high blood pressure readings, most likely from the stress of trying to remake my life after the sudden passing of my husband, Steve, as well as lack of sleep from the stress, so my doctor immediately wanted to put me on blood pressure medicine, but I was not going to go in that direction. Instead I did some research and started eating a lot of broccoli – raw or barely roasted – sweet potatoes, flax seed crackers and taking the oil in supplement form, and eating 6 cashews a day as a preventative action for cancer. I am happy to say that my blood pressure is back to my usual good-to-low readings.

And then of course, are you drinking enough water

Years and years ago, I once had a doctor explain to me that your body needs plenty of fluids flowing always, to transport the white blood cells around to kill any infections that might be lurking. So drink up that filtered water!!

Food can have a profound impact on how people think and feel.

I would love to know the diets of the violent rioters. I wonder if they’re full of processed foods, high in saturated fats and simple carbs?

What do you think?

Since I don’t have any new recipes at this time that are good enough to share, here is a reprise of some of my summer favorites!

Feta radishes watercress and mint toasts platter.
Feta, radishes, watercress and mint toasts
Midwest potato salad in a white Le Crueset bowl garnished with parsley.
Midwest potato salad at Tanglewood
Best potato salad with fennel, Parmesan cheese, cipollini onions and picholine olives.
Best Potato Salad with fennel, Parmesan cheese, cipollini onions and picholine olives.
Sorrel pesto on a spoon.
Sorrel Pesto
Greek Roasted chicken, chicken with parsely garnish
Santorini Grilled Chicken with a Lemon/Garlic Basting Sauce accompanied by a Greek Salad
Greek Salad, salad with feta cheese tomatoes cucumbers greek
Tomato and cucumber Greek salad

Make and serve all with LOVE!

Filed Under: Appetizers, Dinner, Pasta, Poultry, Salads, Sauces Tagged With: chicken, Greek salad, potato salad, radishes, sorrel, sorrel pesto

Fried Catfish atop a Baby Kale Salad with Sautéed Radishes and Japanese Turnips  

June 3, 2014 by Mary 38 Comments

Fried Catfish atop a Baby Kale Salad with Sauteed Radishes and Japanese Turnips

I am not a fried food fan. First of all, it’s fattening, (I am always wanting to lose 5 lbs.) and of course too much of it is not good for you. However, usually once a year I make fried chicken for a dinner picnic and I also adore fried catfish. Must be the Missouri in me.

Actually one of my most memorable meals was a just-caught fried catfish in Missouri at Pere Marquette Lodge. My parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and flew everyone home and treated us all to a weekend at the resort. We used to go there for a quick vacation when we were kids so a reunion back there was memorable. And we did all the same things, except with our own kids – horseback riding, shuffleboard, playing the giant chess game, and swimming – and the best fried catfish dinner that tasted so good after all that outdoor activity. So last Friday night, I almost replicated the catfish, but served it as a dinner salad as Fried Catfish atop a Baby Kale Salad with Sautéed Radishes and Japanese Turnips. It was so good!!! The only thing it lacked was the just-caught freshness of the fish. It was very fresh, and it was very good, but not just-caught, if you know what I mean. That’s different and unless you’ve had it, you just don’t know. Everyone should have a just-caught cooked fish on their bucket list, because it can’t be beat!

This is not a particularly quick dinner. I made this on a Friday night when there’s more time. Make sure your oil is hot enough – a bit of flour as a test should really sizzle. This insures that your fish doesn’t absorb any or very little of the oil. Use canola oil as opposed to olive oil as you can get it hotter without smoking. Intellectually, I tried to balance the fried aspect with the healthy raw baby kale and you can opt to use the radishes and turnips raw but I like a little bit of warmth to mix in with the cool greens. And my radishes had been around for a week so I needed to liven them up. Feel free to work with any combination of vegetables to suit your taste, but this was a good one.

Now I understand and hear from other sources that a lot of you have been making my recipes and I want to hear from you! I know a lot of people read food blogs to be inspired but never actually make the recipes. So if you’re making them and have success, please let me know. If you have problems, please let me know, because that means I’m not doing my job. And I want to do my job, which is to help you cook healthier food easier, with LOVE, in order to live a life with boundless energy. Breaded catfish fillets frying in the pan.

FRIED CATFISH ATOP A BABY KALE SALAD WITH SAUTEED RADISHES AND JAPANESE TURNIPS – serves 2

4 oz. baby kale, washed, air dried and chilled
1 bunch of Japanese white turnips, scrubbed, sliced and chopped
8 breakfast radishes, scrubbed and sliced (or regular radishes)
1 tbs. unsalted butter
3 scallions, white and light green parts, sliced
16 cherry and sunny gold tomatoes, washed and sliced in half
2 catfish fillets
½ cup flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup breadcrumbs – throw day-old or even older slices of a baguette or other bread in your food processor and process to make crumbs
Canola oil – enough to cover the bottom of your skillet about 1/8 inch deep
Sherry vinaigrette 

Have all your vegetables ready for the salad. Make your dressing.

Melt the butter in a small skillet. Add the radishes and the turnips and sauté until golden brown as shown here.Japanese turnips and breakfast radishes sautéing in a pan.

Set out three shallow pans right near your stove-top. Left to right, with your stove on the right should be your flour, the beaten eggs and the breadcrumbs.

Wash and dry the catfish fillets. Salt and pepper one side with sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Heat the canola oil until shimmering. It should be enough to cover the bottom of your skillet by about 1/8” deep. Cover the fish fillets lightly in flour and shake off. Dip in the beaten eggs and let drain and then cover in breadcrumbs and fry for 3 – 4 minutes on each side until fish flakes and you have a nice golden brown crust.

Assemble your salad arranging baby kale leaves on the bottom, distribute the scallions, warm radishes and turnips along with the tomatoes, and drizzle salad dressing over all.

When the fish is done, remove to a platter covered with paper towels and let it rest there for a minute. Then place the fish fillet on top and dig in! Serve with LOVE and enjoy!

Filed Under: Dinner, Fish Tagged With: baby kale, breakfast radishes, catfish, dinner salad, fish, fried catfish, Japanese turnips, kale salads, radishes, seafood

March newsletter coming out!

March 28, 2013 by Mary Frances 8 Comments

Just in time for Easter! Sign up for the March newsletter in the upper right hand corner of this blog for a fantastic, never before seen (here) recipe for roasted duck and some other suggestions for your holiday meal.

And just to brighten up this post, I’d like to share with you my lunch salad from yesterday. It’s some frisee with red leaf lettuce topped with tomatoes, tomatillos, radishes and a half of a leftover pork chop with some toasted pepito seeds on top. Red wine vinaigrette finishes it off and voila! This is a healthy, satisfying lunch that carries you through to dinner!Frisee lunch salad with pork chop, tomatillos, tomatoes, radishes, and toasted pepito seeds.

Filed Under: Lunch Tagged With: frisee, lunch, newsletter, pepito, radishes, red wine vinaigrette, roast duck, salad, tomatillos

Lunch with Nora

March 7, 2013 by Mary Frances 10 Comments

I was having lunch at the office today, by myself, in the conference room, reading this article by Nora Ephron that my friend Marie sent to me. Well, I was literally laughing so hard I was crying and not a sound was coming out!

Do you know that kind of hard, teary, unstoppable laugh? You can read the article here and you too can laugh your socks off. http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Nora-Ephron-on-Maintenance-Remembering-Nora-Ephron

I never met her … but I miss her. She was one great lady!

Ever since her book came out on I Feel Bad About my Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, I have been obsessed about my neck. I remember first hearing about this book on the radio, while I was in the shower, shaving my legs. They said she talks about you having to shave less as you get older and I thought, great! But then, I have to thank Nora for spending hundreds of dollars on special neck creams and doing awful looking neck exercises in front of the mirror at night before going to bed. I’m not sure if they’re doing anything, but I’m sure as hell putting in the effort.

Now on to my lunch. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about lunch. I actually like to and do bring my lunch to work everyday, including my husband’s, unless I have a lunch date set up with a client or a friend. Of course, many of our clients are friends, so that does double duty.

This all started with the great recession/ depression descending upon us several years ago now. I figured we could save at least 20 bucks a day for the two of us – that’s one hundred a week, four hundred a month! (I can do the math!) But now, I also love to intimately know what I’m putting in to my body. I care about that – and you should too. I love my lunches. They’re clean, healthy and delicious and I know everything about them because I made them. My husband usually has dinner leftovers – he calls it “gourmet fast food” and I love my salads. I think it’s very important to eat some raw food everyday. One probably gets more vitamins and minerals out of them that way, and seeds are good too – sunflower or pepita (remember Euell Gibbons?) are great as garnishes. I’ll tell you what – I feel great every day and have a tremendous amount of energy. And now here’s a funny thing. When my extended family is all together at my one brother’s house in Vermont and they’re all eating sandwiches, hot dogs, chips and dips, on the side, I make my own salad and you know what? They all drool over it, because it looks so delicious, and they’re eating crap. You choose!Red leaf lettuce salad with tomatoes, red peppers, tomatias, cucumber and roasted pork tenderloin.

I love warm meat on a salad – great protein and staying power to take you through the day. And when the warm meat juices mix with the cool lettuce and dressing, it’s nice. Here is red leaf lettuce, radishes, cucumber, red peppers, grape tomatoes, tomatillo wedges and warmed leftover rosemary roasted pork tenderloin with sauteed onions and apples.

Filed Under: Lunch, Salads Tagged With: cucumber, grape tomatoes, I Feel Bad About my Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, leftovers, Nora Ephron, radishes, red leaf lettuce, red peppers, roasted rosemary pork tenderloin, salads, tomatillos

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Mary Frances

Mary Frances

Spread love through cooking.

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