Rebuild from Depression Blog

We have treated ourselves to the best pizza I have ever tasted, all inspired by my idea to "makeover" some traditional comfort foods.

We went with a seafood theme since seafood fills the list of depression buster foods. Shrimp and iron-packed clam were the features.

I know that as a health food type, I shouldn't have the word "hot dog" on this blog. However, I found a really good one. If you need a hot dog, this is most definitely the hot dog to buy.

Applegate Farms makes a dog that is nitrate-free and comes from grass fed and finished beef. The grass fed beef used to make the hotdog means that the dog is going to be higher in Omega-3 fatty acids than a regular dog.

I have tasted "healthy" hot dogs before and really don't know why people bother. This one is special. It's juicy, rich, and has the flavor of an actual hot dog. It is lower in fat, according to Applegate, and to its credit. When you bite into the dog, the juice that bursts out is just filled with good flavor. No fat runs down your lips and your chin. I don't mind a bit of fat, but I believe that the lower fat version actually improves the hot dog eating experience.

I don't eat hot dogs or other processed meats often because the processing does reduce the nutrient value of meat. For the same calories, I can get more nutrients from a steak from my freezer. But the hot dog is a nice treat.

Have it on a whole grain bun or whole grain bread.

I purchased mine at Whole Foods.

My concern with makeup lies in its ingredients. We know that to some degree our bodies do absorb the chemicals we apply to our skin. The Environmental Protection Agency has an interesting article on its website called the "Dermal Exposure Assessment." They review studies of skin absorption using mice, rats, and other unlucky lab animals and discuss the factors that increase absorption rates. Factors that increase our skin's absorption of toxic chemicals (or beneficial skin treatments for that matter) are the following:

We all want our skin to stay healthy and cleaning it effectively and gently is part of skin health. I have tried quite a few facial care systems with a range of price tags. What I find works best for me is very simple, inexpensive, and probably sitting in your kitchen.

We don't eat a lot of grain and a grain mill is probably a real extravagance in that context. But for well over a year I have been talking about purchasing one and finally bit the bullet and purchased an attachment for our KitchenAid mixer.

Two things tugged at me over those months:

We should all be packing our lunch more with our own fresh food. I often pack salads because they are so easy to throw together. Last week I packed something even easier - some broccoli pieces and a clam dip. That very dip in the picture below was made by my mother in a video that will soon make it to this site. I added leftover clams to make it a power-clam dip. Clams are high in iron as you know if you have read the free e-book Rebuild Your Iron.

But what I wanted to point out is the cool tiffin I used to pack the lunch. This "lunch box" is available at To-Go Ware. It has two compartments that worked well for my broccoli and my dip. They are separated by a small stainless steel plate that would be handy for other types of lunches. It's a nice lunch box. No one else I know has one which also makes it cool (and it might make me ever-so-slightly cool, but I won't get my hopes up too much).

Part of the changes we have tried to make in improving our eating is packing more food for the road. We have worked on collecting reusable lunch gear and, as we find it, really cool non-plastic gear. The sandwiches have been a bit tricky on the non-plastic front (though a sandwich does fit nicely in a compartment of the To-Go Ware lunch system).

One fun item we have tried is this reusable Wrap-N-Mat. It's better than a sandwich bag because, of course you can wash it easily and reuse it. Furthermore, as you can see, it makes a nice plate. The red-and-white gingham print is extra fun because of the picnic feel it provides.

After each use, rinse the mat off with warm water if it is not too dirty. If has a lot of sandwich ooze, you can throw it in the washer with your regular laundry (though I'd give the ooze a quick rinse first). A machine wash is also good maintenance for the Wrap-N-Mat. You can find the Wrap-N-Mat at Reusable Bags.

(The bottle in the picture is made by Sigg in many different designs and sizes. The child was made by me.)

I expect I am about to disappoint the entire celiac community with this review of quinoa pasta. People with Celiac's Disease or wheat/gluten allergies cannot eat gluten and stay on the hunt for gluten-free replacements like these. Before you disappear, however, after my ho-hum review of these products, there are some very interesting grain-related resources on this blog, in particular the e-course that teaches kitchen preparation techniques to help you absorb more minerals in your grain. And now the ho-hum review.

The products on the left is corn and quinoa (wheat free)and come in a variety of shapes and sizes - spaghetti, angel hair, cork screws, and shells. I understand that a lot of wheat-free people like these products and, as a result, they are worth a try. I was disappointed, however. I found myself disappointed in the quinoa/kamut product as well.

First, I did not care for the texture. There seems to be a fine line between not cooked and overcooked. If there is a middle ground, it is elusive. (Whole wheat has this problem too.) I do not care for undercooked pasta nor do I care for overcooked pasta which made these products a bad match for me.

Second, I was attracted in the first place because of "quinoa" on the label. Quinoa is a fantastic nutrient-dense grain. It is a high-iron food choice for people seeking iron in plant-based foods. However, the label provides no information about how much quinoa there is in the pasta in relation to the corn or kamut. The nutritional content on the label is not any more of a standout than any other whole grain pasta, so the mineral content would not be reason to choose this pasta over another.

Since I am actually wheat sensitive, I have just come to accept life without pasta. A lasagna-like dish can be achieved with summer squash instead of lasagna noodles. Spaghetti squash is actually far better than actual spaghetti in my opinion and it increases the vegetables in my diet. On occasion I miss macaroni and cheese but I tend to get over it.

So I am going to pass on the gluten-free pastas. There is apparently a good reason that manufacturers use refined wheat. Of course I'll pass on the refined wheat too.

Try the pasta anyway and then you will know for yourself. It may be for you. It does have a fan base, just not here in California Hot Springs.

Trader Joe’s carries a really great tasting corn chip with a twist on the traditional version: it is filled with flax seeds.

The label boasts 1000 mg of Omega 3 per serving One serving is one-third of one cup and about 140 calories. It contains a total of 5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 1 gram of which is Omega 3 fatty acids. The remaining is Omega 6 fats. That puts the ratio at about 5:1 of Omega 6 to Omega 3. That’s pretty darned good for a corn product.

Corn is naturally high in Omega 6 fatty acids, a necessary fat but one we all get too much of in our diet. Our over-indulging in Omega 6s and relative lack of Omega 3s is part of our depression story.

But does this product help the cause?

I am sorry to report: No, it does not.

The problem with this product is that the flaxseeds are whole and you will not be able to digest them. You will consume the 4 grams of Omega 6 fats without benefiting from the Omega 3 in the flax seed itself.

Eat them for the flavor. (I won't deprive you of corn chips or fish and chips.) But don't buy them to improve your Omega 3 fatty acid status.

We hit the road last weekend for the central coast of California and spent Sunday morning in one of our favorite coast towns, Pismo. Pismo is home to some of the best clam chowder I've ever tasted, good surfing (so they say), pigeons pooping cryptosporidium, 1950s style beach dwellings, and the Hotlix candy store.

Hotlix was known locally for its original product, a spicy cinnamon sucker but then it got a little crazy and developed a tequila-flavored sucker with a worm inside. I knew they hit the big time when I found their tequila sucker at a truck stop in Kansas in 1992.

At Pismo I made the grand announcement to my son that we must get cinnamon suckers. I don't get out much apparently because somehow I had missed the booming insect business at Hotlix. Their display window looked like they had teamed up with David George Gordon, author of the Eat-A-Bug cookbook. We could buy worms, crickets, and apparently ants, all candied or chocolate coated.

Always looking for a high protein snack to get me through pregnancy and any excuse for chocolate, we quickly forgot the cinnamon suckers.

"Are your crickets roasted?"

"They are baked."

I am pretty open to raw food, but I do draw the line somewhere before crickets.

"How much?"

"Fifty cents for two."

"Wow, Mama, they are only twenty five cents!" Frederick interjected.

"Do you have any idea what kind of mark-up there is Frederick on that tiny chocolate cricket? People who actually eat insects don't buy them here."

I admitted I had consumed battered tarantula legs. The gals then reported that the crickets sell well and that they just taste like chocolate.

I recommended that they bundle those crickets up with Gordon's cookbook and sell them as holiday gift packages. Shockingly, my son who saw the uncoated crickets in the store window, has already eaten two of the four crickets we purchased and reports that they taste like chocolate. I doubt I'll get any myself.

But the big question is: Do they fit the bill for pregnancy snack food? At a quarter a piece, I would recommend salmon roe instead, which has the added benefit of being loaded with depression-fighting nutrients. Very few times will life allow us to justify the expense of wild caught, deep sea roe as a snack food bargain. This may be one of those times.

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