Sunday, December 13, 2009

Healthy Yet Unorthodox Breakfast



Since I have been rereading “Eat To Live” (E2L) last night I was reminded of some of the bad habits I tend to fall back into. Primarily I am a grain addict. I love anything made with grain. Oatmeal is our normal breakfast, another grain. Since Doctor Fuhrman wants you to have a maximum of one cup of grains or starchy veggies per day on the six week plan I knew the oatmeal needed to go for the next 6 weeks. Additionally I tend not to always eat my four fruit servings a day that he recommends so I wanted to make certain I got some fruit this morning. What did we have for breakfast? Believe it or not we had a fruit and green salad. Weird? Yes, but it was good. Here is what I made.

Healthy Apple, Clementine and Arugula Salad with Miso Dressing
Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 ½ tablespoons miso
1 ½ tablespoon mirin
4 apples, cored and sliced
2 clementine, segmented
4 cups arugula
2 tablespoons dried cranberries
2 tablespoon walnuts

Directions:

Whisk the miso and mirin together. Add the apples to the dressing and toss to coat. The vinegar keeps the apples from oxidizing. Now add the clementine segments and arugula and toss to combine. Serve the salad with the cranberries and walnuts on top.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 391.39
Calories From Fat (15%) - 57.18

Total Fat - 7.09g
Saturated Fat - 0.72g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 497.02mg
Potassium - 731.59mg
Total Carbohydrates - 88.05g
Fiber - 12.13g
Sugar - 37.28g
Protein - 5.03g

Comments:

I made the miso dressing without the nut oil since E2L doesn’t advocate adding oil. The dressing without nut oil is acceptable. It is better with the oil, but I can do without it for 6 weeks. Who knows, maybe I will get used to it and not need to add oil when the 6 weeks is over.

Since I omitted the nut oil I wanted to add a few walnuts to the salad this morning for flavor. Once I did this I remembered that I am suppose to have a maximum of 1 ounce of nuts per day. It looks like I just had my daily allotment of nuts with breakfast. I won’t make that mistake again. From now on I need to remember to have my 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseeds with my morning fruit.

On the positive side I did get in little more than 2 and ½ of the 4 fruit servings I am suppose to eat everyday on this plan. Since eating fruit with breakfast worked well I am going to focus on having it each morning.

Overall this worked well and I feel satisfied. I plan to use the miso and mirin dressing for the next 6 weeks as my primary salad dressing. I also think that fruit salads or fruit smoothie are going to be showing up a lot for breakfast. I prefer the chew of the fruit but smoothies will be nice sometimes for variety.

Unrelated Note:

I am off to cook a pot of beans now so I have those ready for the plan. Since the doctor recommends one cup of beans a day at a minimum I know this is something that I need to make a few varieties of and stash in the freezer since I don’t buy canned beans.

I hope you all have a great day. With a little luck I will make something interesting for lunch that I can share later.

6 comments:

  1. I think you probably will get used to the no oil thing...now when I have an oil based dressing (very rarely) it is waaaaaay too oily for me. Something I like to do--and it helps get the beans in too--is to thin out some homemade hummus and use that as a dressing. So good!

    Courtney

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  2. Courtney,

    I started adding oil back to my dressing the last time right after the 6 weeks was over so I never got used to them without fat. I think you are right I will get used to it. Thanks for the reminder on hummus on salad. I first discovered that this summer and really liked it. Don't know why I haven't used it recently. However, I really appreciate the suggestion. If you think of any other tips please feel free to share. I would love to hear any suggestions you have to make this easier.

    thanks again,
    Alicia

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  3. This salad looks really good! I have one question though: your ingredient list says that the dressing is made from miso and mirin, but in the recipe you mention that the vinegar will keep he apples from browning. Since there is no vinegar in the ingredients, I was just wondering if by 'mirin' you actually meant to say 'rice vinegar' or if you just accidentally left the vinegar out?

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  4. lilli,

    Sorry for the confusion. Mirin is a type of Japanese sweetened rice vinegar. I should have been more specific what I meant by vinegar. You could substitute regular rice vinegar and a little agave for the mirin. I actually do that when I am out of mirin.

    Thanks for the question,
    Alicia

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  5. Lovely salad, but I know what you mean about it being unorthodox. I remember my post with my first green smoothie a number of weeks ago, and now I make them easily and regularly. I'm still a holdout on salad for breakfast, though. :-)

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  6. Cindy,

    I haven't embraced green smoothies with fruit yet. I have tried them but the green color with the fruit taste just don't work for me. I need to try it again.

    When I make a blueberry smoothie I can add spinach since the smoothie stays purple. I guess it is all visual with me.

    The miso dressing without any fat worked better than I expected. You might want to try that for lunch or dinner.

    Alicia

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