Cooking oils

Having written a small post on the dangers of improper choice of frying oils, I dug a bit deeper, then couldn't stop until I felt I got my head around the cooking oil pantry.


There are several factors when considering an oil:

1. Omega 6 / Omega 3 ratio - always watch out for that.  You won't get to your Omega 3 quota from your frying oils anyway, but we could at least stay away from things like Safflower: 75% PUFA (poly-unsaturated fatty acid), almost all omega 6.
2. PUFA's (were you paying attention? Poly-unsa) become rancid at high heat (see is frying bad for you? for a pretty good answer on the subject), generating trans-fat right in your pan. Yuck!  So minimize the total amount of PUFA's and pay attention to the smoke point.
3. As a corollary, look for an oil with a high amount of saturated and mono-unsaturated fat. Those are your friends.
4. Last but not least: The source of the oil needs to be examined for nutritional value/toxins.  Ever eaten a cottonseed?  No, really! It is not intended for food!

Great.  Now, let's look at that smoke point, using this wikipedia data as a base.

First thing to note: terms like virgin and unrefined sound great and will probably yield more flavor (and likely preserve more of the nutritional value), but they are the enemy of high heat cooking.  Save those for salad dressings.

Next, our friends: saturated fat-based oils:

• Ghee seems to be the winner. Clarified butter, it is devoid of the solids that cause all the burning problems with butter, its enviable (by other oils, I presume!) smoke point is at 482F. You just can't go wrong with ghee.  Check the label for purity and you are ready to roll.
• Lard has a substantial range based on its clarity, from 360 to as high as 420. Look for lard produced via the wet rendering process and avoid the stuff from the supermarket, opting in favor of small high quality operations.  Your grass-fed producer is likely your top choice.  Did you know, lard was used to produce French Fries for the first half of this century?  I am tempted!
• Avocado oil (I've never heard of it till now!) is a win all around.  520F should be enough to satisfy almost any cooking need.  The only oil that comes close is the nutritionally crooken safflower. Does it taste good?  Have you tried it?
• Coconut oil.  The refined kind goes as high as 450F.  The virgin is only good for 350F.  So be a little careful there. 

Note this guide when frying something in a pan: 

                 450-500° high
                 375-400° medium-high
                 325-350° medium
                 275-300° medium-low
                 225-250° low

This means, don't let your virgin coconut oil in a pan that will go above medium heat.  

The only oil I use outside of this family is olive oil.  Its smoke point has a wide range based on the clarity of the oil: 375 for extra-virgin to 468 for extra light. It has a healthy nutritional profile and even boasts tiny amounts of Omega 3's if you enjoy conversations with your conscience.

Still, there is no longer a need for rancid vegetable oils to make your sweet potato fries.

The next step for me is to try them out and decide which tastes better for what purpose.  My money is on ghee.  After all, what adds flavor to food quite like butter?

I included the links to amazon for these oils.  I have the olive oil on a regular subscription, have ordered the coconut oil in the past - and avocado is on the way!
        

Grass fed: beef with taste

I don't know what's wrong with me the last few days - I can't stop blogging...  OK, I have opened a third food package I received from USA Wellness Meat.  I've already expressed my delight with their hot dogs, wrote about the nice eye of round roast the whole family enjoyed and here comes

Forget-the-spices chili

I was so upset, so worked up over personal problems, even the thought of cooking made me cry.  I looked up a recipe for chili.  Broke into tears.  I thought about what Granny does with ground beef.  Considered murder-suicide.  Finally, I figured, I'll just start throwing sh*t at the pan and something will stick.

I placed 1 lb of 75% fat ground beef into the pan and got it browning.  After a few minutes, I tasted the rendered fat.  Hey, it's not so bad!  Didn't have that oily thing going on.  Tasted more like, well, meat broth.  Cool.  Keep going.

Found a can of Italian tomatoes.  Never a bad idea.

Oh, I've got some zucchini squash.  I tasted a slice raw.  Not bad!  I should consider using it in a salad.  Sliced it up and threw it in.

5 minutes later I figured, I should consider spices.  I tasted it.  It was quite good!  I had another spoonful. Couldn't think of anything to add... Habitually, I thew a pinch of salt.

Should I add onions?  Nah, it tastes great.  So I let it reduce for another ten minutes - and there we have it!  Forget-the-spices chili.

Don't try this at home   - unless you have great ground beef.  My conclusion isn't that zucchini makes chili.  It's that this ground beef is amazing!

P.S. I don't get paid by those guys - I just love them.  :-)

[UPDATE: kids loved it.  They cleared pretty substantial portions and asked for more!]

Lunch box in a panic

Today I was running late.  The kids were eating breakfast cereal with daddy. They are still occasionally eating cereal for several reasons.  First, I am moving slowly in converting them to the primal lifestyle; don't want to push it too hard.  Second, I would like to avoid gluten intolerance which, as I understand, can result from removing gluten entirely from one's diet.  (If you have thoughts about that, I would really appreciate them!)

Anyway, what do I get them for lunch?  Still tired from late night of writing code, having had no breakfast of my own, I am opening and closing refrigerator doors. NOTHING.  Well, it's never nothing.  Just nothing inspiring.  The best I could do was leftover roast, which would be rather boring without gravy and not quite tender enough to eat cold, I thought as I tasted a piece.  Oh well!  It's the best I can do.

... Six hours later I picked them up from school. I looked into their lunch boxes. Not a scrap!  "What happened to your lunch?"  I asked.  "We ate ALL OF IT!" said Alex proudly.  "Mommy, thank you so much for the salad!" added his two-year-old sister.

And here is how it happened:

Salad

• Two 1/4 in slices of roast cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 whole tomato chopped small (about the same as the roast)
• Grated cheddar cheese sprinkled on top till you couldn't see what's under it

Sides

• Salted soy beans in a little ziplock bag
• Apple slices sprinkled with lemon juice, the best apple preservative

I guess, the tomatoes worked out to generate the perfect dressing for the beef roast and cheese - well, you know, it's cheese.  :-)  I am still working to figure out "good" cheese that tastes like cheddar.  But for now, it's the old grocery store variety.  

Still, Mommy 1, Lunch Monsters 0.

Is fried food bad for you?

I keep hearing "fried food is bad, you should stew it instead." Both of my parents believe it, and it is a common enough perception among the older generations.

I always argued that the only reason it is considered bad is, the amount of fat you introduce because you need the grease.  In response I heard a variety of things from the crust that forms on the food being unhealthy to... Oh well, I don't even remember any more.  It didn't make that much sense anyway.

OK, I am with you on french fries and any other junk food notorious for using hydrogenated oils in the frying process.  Another reason, frying is bad has to do with Omega 6/Omega 3 ratios.  Vegetable oils are mostly Omega 6.  The AMA recommends staying at 4:1. Lower is better.  Corn oil is 40:1.  How do you like that??

There is a much more important reason to avoid improperly fried foods.  I found a great answer at, of all places, Yahoo Answers!  What do you know?  :-)

Oils contains unsaturated fatty acids. You see, the normal form of the double bond of this fatty acids is on the "cis" form. When altered (e.g. :due to high temperature when cooking) , it undergoes isomerism and change into "trans" form. This form of fatty acid is due to catalytic hydrogenation of oils. These are found in food such as cookies, candies, and fried foods (espcially french fries). When ingested by humans, "trans" fatty acids do not accumulate in our body, thus it circualtes all through out in the blood and can be vulnerable to lipid peroxidation. 

Lipid peroxidation can cause free radicals which are harmful to our cells. These free-radicals can damage our tissues, which may cause cancer, inflammatory diseases, atherosclerosis, aging, and other cardiovascualr diseases. 

That's why it is advisable to use oils w/ high saturated fatty acids when cooking because it contains less double bonds, thus less conversion of "cis" to :trans" fatty acid double bonds. Furthermore, once you have already used the oil in frying or cooking, you should already disregard it and use another if trying to cook another set of food.

So, it's not just the evil food companies that create trans-fats!  You are doing the deed right there in your kitchen!  Now you know.  When frying use ghee, coconut oil, butter or another source of animal fat.  (I advise against using butter at high heat as it burns really easily due to the solids present in it, which are removed by the process of clarifying it and creating ghee.)

Roast your beef

Are you a big roast beef eater? Is pot roast regularly on your menu?  If you come from an old-fashioned family in the North-East,  the answer is almost certainly yes. For the rest of us, those menu items take some getting used to.

It's been a struggle for me and Granny to find something we could both agree on. After months of experimentation, we still don't agree on anything - but I learned quite a bit about roasting beef in the process.

Lesson 1.  Meat cooked in a covered pot, submerged in fluid will usually come out dry.  Counter-intuitive, right?  So often, I see this yummy-looking dish, all covered in au jus, obviously succulently moist, only to choke on the first piece.  So if you like your meat moist, avoid roasting it in a pot.  Meat exposed to air, such as a proper beef roast, will lock in the moisture.

Lesson 2. You can never put too many spices on the outside of the roast.  By the time it comes out of the of the oven, the spices will have penetrated the meat and there is a lot of meat compared to surface area!  I am yet to decide I have put enough spices on.

Lesson 3. To add the most flavor to the beef, melt some butter and mix the spices with it, rubbing the buttery mixture over your meat.  This will help it penetrate, add the buttery taste and goodness.

Lesson 4. The best gravy is made with real flour: no getting around it.  But there are alternatives.  My favorite idea goes like this:  remove drippings from the pan.  Add some red wine.  Cook it off, scraping the the bits (double points: now you won't have to scrub it in the sink!)  Add to drippings.  To thicken, use some tapioca powder or arrowroot.  Or else, just cook off what you've got. Add fun spices.  (Kitchen bouquet is great for gravy taste and color.)

Lesson 5. There is more than one way to roast your beef!  Here comes a very unusual recipe:

Eye of Round Beef Roast

Eye of Roast is a very lean cut of meat, which makes for excellent smooth roast beef.  (You may need to add some fat to this meal.)

Ingredients
1 Eye of Round Roast (I got mine at US Wellness, but Costco will do in a pinch.)
3 tbs melted butter
2 tsp favorite herbs: herbs de provence is a great mix
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
2 tsp salt (I told you! It has a long way to penetrate!)
2 tsp pepper (or much much more)

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 450F.
Lovingly rub the roast on all sides. (The claims that the roast cares have not been validated, but I do enjoy the connection we make!) Place roast in the oven. Do not line with foil - you will want to make the gravy out of drippings.

Cooking
Place the roast in the oven, set timer to 20 minutes.  Turn off the oven. Do not open as it needs to retain the heat.  Keep it in the oven for 20 minutes per lb of roast.  Thus, the total cooking time for a 3 lb roast is 80 minutes.  (No calculus required.)

The roast is very tender and just a little pink across.  Mine measured a temperature of 140F in the center, which is about perfect.  If you decide, you wish to cook it longer, set the oven to it lowest setting and check again every ten minutes till the right meat temperature is achieved.

I found this recipe on cooks.com. There are some very nice reviews there as well!  My gravy usually contains flour - it's one of the places I simplify paleo as I don't really have any gluten problems. Scroll up to Lesson 4 to make paleo-compliant gravy.  Enjoy!

[Kid Reviews: mixed, but ok.  The little one ate four slices - more than me.  The big one said it wasn't great, but ate the single-slice portion on his plate.]

Scientific establishment divided

It has been almost a year since I came across this weird idea: animal fat is good; grains are bad; sugar is poison. These three phrases pretty much describe Paleo principles to a T.

I have slowly been discovering that I am not part of a weird fringe culture. I have been surprised over and over again that some of the smartest people I know eat the same way I do; it no longer surprises me to find out that another family in my kids' school is following the same principles. I am getting used to the idea of Primal Blueprint text showing up in the featured section of Borders.

Today I have learned that the mainstream science is beginning its slow and cumbersome turn.  The New York Times is literally asking "What if it's all been a Big Fat Lie?"

Now a small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, may be the most visible proponent of testing this heretic hypothesis. Willett is the de facto spokesman of the longest-running, most comprehensive diet and health studies ever performed, which have already cost upward of $100 million and include data on nearly 300,000 individuals. Those data, says Willett, clearly contradict the low-fat-is-good-health message ''and the idea that all fat is bad for you; the exclusive focus on adverse effects of fat may have contributed to the obesity epidemic.''

This situation is putting medical science in a rather awkward position.

If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it.

Bottom line, many of the key mainstream medical scientists are acknowledging that it is the recommendations of their colleagues over the last thirty years, manifested in the low-fat high-carb grain-heavy food pyramid is what's responsible for the obesity epidemic.

This is basic endocrinology, Ludwig [a researcher at Harvard Medical School who runs the pediatric obesity clinic at Children's Hospital Boston]  says, which is the study of hormones, and it is still considered radical because the low-fat dietary wisdom emerged in the 1960's from researchers almost exclusively concerned with the effect of fat on cholesterol and heart disease. At the time, Endocrinology 101 was still underdeveloped, and so it was ignored. Now that this science is becoming clear, it has to fight a quarter century of anti-fat prejudice.

So there you have it. When fat first got the bad rap, we didn't know about good fats and bad fats, we were happily producing hydrogenated oils and suddenly realized this might correlate to problems.  The technology and science are more sophisticated today. It is becoming easier to see that eating healthy fats and avoiding high carbs leads to better health - but it will take a generational turn-over in scientist before it becomes the mainstream thought.

Oh, did I say carbs?  Another interesting article by the same journalist relating to sugar: Is Sugar Toxic?  Another medical researcher, Robert Lustig, published a video presentation in which he did not admonish people against overinduging in sugar - but unabashedly used the words "toxic" and "poison" alongside sugar 13 times in his ninety minute lecture. If you read the article, you will learn:

• triglycerates (fat in the blood) are not caused by fat consumption. Instead, they are caused by excessive sugar rushing to the liver, particularly in liquid form (soft drinks)
• that the beginning of the diabetes epidemic coincided with the development of the soft drink & candy industry (1890-1920)
• that there has been a lot of research that suggested that sugar, not fat, was to blame for bad cholesterol, heart desease, and other problems commonly blamed on high fat diets

And here is how you get diabetes:

You secrete insulin in response to the foods you eat — particularly the carbohydrates — to keep blood sugar in control after a meal. When your cells are resistant to insulin, your body (your pancreas, to be precise) responds to rising blood sugar by pumping out more and more insulin. Eventually the pancreas can no longer keep up with the demand or it gives in to what diabetologists call “pancreatic exhaustion.” Now your blood sugar will rise out of control, and you’ve got diabetes.

But wait!

Not everyone with insulin resistance becomes diabetic; some continue to secrete enough insulin to overcome their cells’ resistance to the hormone. But having chronically elevated insulin levels has harmful effects of its own — heart disease, for one. A result is higher triglyceride levels and blood pressure, lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good cholesterol”), further worsening the insulin resistance — this is metabolic syndrome.

 OK, seriously, why are you still reading this post? Hopefully, I have convinced you of three things:

• There are real medical science authorities that are willing to back up the most controversial wacky ideas behind the Paleo lifestyle
• That there are some amazing resources you can follow to learn more about it
• That the notions about sugar & fat you grew up with can and should be questioned

Please leave a comment if I have failed...

Mushroom soup thumbs down

So a scientist winds up in a scientist concentration camp in the middle of the desert.  Escape seems impossible: barbed wire, guards, desert for miles.  Despite the obstacles, he lives and dreams of his desperate move. His closest comrade in the prison is his confidant. Over the years, he offers him advice, support and encouragement. 

Finally, he makes his break! After days of wandering through the desert, he is brought back, barely alive, to the camp. His comrade says, "Yea, I figured..." The guy is surprised.  "What do you mean?" "Many of us have tried the same; none succeeded." "Why didn't you tell me, it was impossible?!" the guy asks.  "Well, you know, who publishes negative results?"

Sound familiar? All these recipes around the internet you've just been dying to try. Then you do, taking pictures for your blog, hoping you'll have something to share... And flop. You wind up eating a can of soup in place of the elaborate dinner you spent half the evening preparing, clean up the mess and hope to forget the whole thing... Or do you share disasters, too? Well, at the risk of being a critic, I have decided to start publishing my negative results.  Perhaps it'll be helpful to myself to find a pattern of what works and what doesn't. Perhaps it'll help others.

Yesterday, I tried the Paleo Plan cream of mushroom soup.  Interestingly, no cream.  For the creaminess, it uses avocado - neat idea.  The recipe is not a complete flop. But there is a major problem. Every spoonful tastes like something is missing. The flavors are simply out of balance.

It uses grapefruit juice, giving it nice citrusy flavor, but it is not counteracted with anything, leaving it with this floating citrusy avocadoyee sensation. I would experiment with the following to ground it:

• coconut milk or, if you do dairy regular cream
• sautéing mushrooms in bacon and garnishing with bacon bits
• grain-free starch thickener, such as arrowroot or tapioca powder
• chicken broth or soup base

Those might settle the flavor some, bringing it back down to earth.

Though personally, since I like my dairy, I will go with a real cream-of-mushroom approach next time.

Fortunately, I had a lot of chicken legs & thighs to enjoy for dinner, and they made an excellent entree for the next day's lunch box. 

Have you tried cream-of- soups? Do share your favorite as I'd like to figure out something I can make batches of and freeze.

Scallops are coming for dinner

Today was an unqualified success! What you see on the left is Alex's best attempt and posing next to his picnic of strawberries, whipped cream and shaved chocolate. I created the latter in the blender, just to add to the festiveness of the occasion.

We got home and I threw some shrimp in the pot, rounding out the meal that started with veggie chips & seaweed snacks earlier in the afternoon.

Lunch box

Tomorrow for school, I will send some of those veggie chips with them.  They are not the best as they use safflower oil.  However, the concept is neat: various root veggies used in place of potatoes.  Our favorite turned out to be beets. Could I fry those in coconut oil? I need to try!

The veggie salad I described today shall make its first appearance in a lunch box tomorrow! Shrimp takes main stage; throw in remaining strawberries and we've got lunch!

Dinner

I shall attempt bacon wrapped scallops and cream of mushroom soup. I might make both in time for lunch and have dinner be informal, starting with an after-school snack, just like today.

Today's lunchbox

As my desire to do well and my inspiration increase, I would like to commit to blog more often and about more everyday things our lives are made of, here and at ParentingIs.. .  Before I begin:

          I got a Pink Line!  We did it!

Today's lunchbox.

My goals was variety, inspired by my own thoughts about Paleo for kids and a fellow blogger's piece of wisdom:

Pack lunches every day with some of their favorites. Even if these lunches are a little less than ideal, don’t worry about it. Sending them with foods that they don’t enjoy will only intensify cravings and bring attention to the difference between their lunch and the yummy junk food lunches at school. But if they are satisfied with their lunches then they can keep focused on their friends at lunch time and not on their friend’s lunches.

Appetizer:  carrots & cauliflower with ranch dip - our favorite staple appetizer.  I use these tiny little 2 oz saucers I managed to buy in bulk, similar to salsa cups at Mexican restaraunts, so it's easy to send any kind of dip along.

Entree:  my excellent lamb recipe - leftovers from the other night.  The kids love the tender texture of lamb, the sweetness of the pineapple and the variety of flavors contained in the recipe.

Desert:  blackberries (whatever managed to get home from Costco - most of the box was gone by the time we were at the cash register!)

After school snack.

Today we are going to swim school, which is always a challenge: those damn vending machines!!!  The only way to beat them is to compete with them.  What I have with me needs to be at least as good, so I could use the power of my personality and love to convince them to forego the atrocity.

First, I analyze the appeal of the vending machine: sweet tooth, starch, convenient snackables, attractive packaging.  Now, I make the plan to outpace the enemy...

• Sweet potato chips from Trader Joe's. Perhaps not an A+ from the health perspective - but they are yummy, starchy, convenient, snacky.
• Strawberries - even vending machine snacks shouldn't be able to compete with the sweet appeal.
• Can of whipped cream.  Why?  It's simple.  Whipped cream is fun to squirt, fun to eat, and looks  amazing on top of strawberries.
• Final idea: shredded chocolate.  Don't know if I can pull that off... But if I do, we are seriously having a picknick of all picknicks!

Vending machines - beware!

Adjustments to dinner

Dinner tonight is cubed steak.  This is not too bad, except that it is likely to be a completely lean cut of meat, insufficiently filling unless you are planning to eat a mountain.  Not only is that unhealthy (too much protein is not a good thing, especially not for kids or pregnant mommies!) but I found, it is boring on the palate and very unsatisfying.

I guess, I need to make dinner more fun:

• Bacon garnish (see the second of five ways to add fat to a meal).  This means, I better pick up some uncured bacon at TJ's today!
• Vegetable salad.  Our favorite: tomato, cauliflower, bell pepper with olive oil/lemon juice/cumin dressing.  The key there: chop veggies into tiny pieces, so you can enjoy multiple flavors in every bite.
• Roast carrots.  Oh, yeah, that's another easy favorite:  toss carrots with olive (or better coconut) oil, salt, pepper & favorite herbs, stick in the oven at 400F for 25 minutes.  Out come roast carrots!

Time to execute.

Paleo for kids

I have been inspired and motivated to cook creatively recently.  After reading about the dangers of protein to kids at the PerfectHealthDiet, I understood why I have been struggling in feeding my kids meat. I was already coming to the conclusion that there need to be a variety of vegetables on the tables for kids to choose from in order to have a happy and peaceful family meal.  Now I understand why.

In brief, breast milk is composed of 7% of protein. Increasing protein to even as much as 9% in formula leads to problems.  Cordain recommends limiting protein to no more than 20-25% of caloric intake for pregnant women.

So how much is exactly right for kids? There isn't enough evidence to suggest a specific number, but it is clear that they should not eat any more than they are willing and happy to do. This means, no brow-beating them into finishing their meat or clearing their plate. Presented with healthy options, they should naturally gravitate toward a good balance. This means, plenty of dishes to choose from at every meal and lots of choices among different types of calories: protein, fat, carbohydrates.

Truthfully, it's not so hard to do.  I often start meals with a veggie dip appetizer:  A ranch dip with carrots, cauliflower, celery.  (While I normally buy the ranch dip at the store, having run out I was delighted with this incredibly easy home-made ranch alternative. If made for kids, wait to add garlic & onion powder, adding a little at a time to taste.  Otherwise it's deliciously spicy for adult palate, but I had to quadruple the recipe to get it back to tolerable for kids!)

I often slice tomatoes and bell peppers to serve on the side of any meal. They are our family favorites!

A cup of tomato soup or home-made beef/chicken stock garnished with bacon bits & cheese is a very popular option.

Salads are time-consuming, but these easy veggifiers create a splendid-looking table and guarantee that they won't leave hungry. In the meantime I am also increasing the amount of fat present in all of our meals, using the tips I worked out earlier for myself.

Finally, I am beginning to experiment with super-energy deserts.

In a food processor, mix heavy cream or coconut milk with any frozen fruit or berry and you have instant ice cream. The whole family can work together to prepare - then to enjoy. I like adding shredded coconut to mine, but the texture is too much for the kids. For them, melted dark chocolate does so much more! Making ice cream right on the dinner table with a food processor is a fun after-dinner activity and eating it right after is a tasty bonus.

US Wellness Hot Dogs

Dear US Wellness Meats,

Hot dogs as displayed
on grasslandbeef.com

I would like to share with you the wonderful experience I just had with your product.  After a lot of deliberation, many abandoned shopping carts across various sites, I finally screwed up my courage to order grassfed meat from your site: grasslandbeef.com. I emailed you citing my friends' high praise of your product and asking for a discount. I promptly received a code for 15% off on new orders.  Thanks for that!

The meat arrived soon as was rock-solid-frozen. After some time, I got a hold of the modest package of your sugar-free all-ingredients-listed hot dogs. I wasn't sure, buying hot dogs was such a good idea - but as it was my first time I went for a sampler - so there they were: grass-fed beef hot dogs flavored with onion, garlic, paprika and beet juice! I was rushed and did not have time to prepare them in any fancy way. Threw them in a pot, chopped them up and served to my kids & myself with ketchup.

My goodness! It was not just the best hot dog experience of my life - it was one of the better meat experiences period. I generally have two problems with hot dogs: one is never sure what's inside of them - and one's tummy is never really sure whether anything really landed there. It seems, they fail to fill me the way "real" meat does. Not this time! The hot dogs were wonderfully tasty - and one and a half hot dogs actually filled me up.  I felt the kind of warm energetic feeling I get after a good hearty meaty meal.  My kids cleared their plates, too.  That's always a bonus!  And this time, I didn't feel guilty about serving them hot dogs instead of food.  :-)

"Alex," I said to my four-year-old son, "These are the healthiest hot dogs you have ever eaten. They are made from super-healthy cows, have no sugar and nothing at all bad for your body in them."  "I know!" Alex explaimed, excited for the opportunity to share his expertise, "They must have lots of Omega3!"

Go Alex, and Go US Wellness Meats!

Five ways to add fat to your meal

Just in case you are new here, you might be wondering, "ADD FAT??"  Yes, Add Healthy Fat! This means:

•  saturated fat, the storage medium for pure energy employed by animals and humans alike. It is stable, easily accessible and, if you are trying to lose weight, represents the most filling calories you will encounter.  (In other words, replace 500 calories in sugar with 400 calories in fat - you'll be less hungry, avoid those cravings and lose weight. In other words, skip the 500 calorie Jamba Juice and enjoy10 pieces of bacon (40 calories each) - which of those will leave you feeling full?
• Omega 3 fat, available in grass-fed meat, fish oil, macademia nuts.

For more information on relative health value of fats (yes, some fats are actually bad!) see the definitive guide to fats.  A long time ago, when I was first getting started with paleo, I did a bit of digging on saturated fat and found that there is little evidence all the hatred is based on.

Sharing meals with family members who have not been convinced by the paleo argument, I am forced to find extra nutrition to add to meals,  which have been purposefully deprived of it.  Here are my tricks:

1. Home-made beef stock.  In Russia, the quality of the broth was judged by marbling one could see on the surface.  Real broth, not made from a box, will boast beautiful golden marble-lines on its surface.  Preparing it is super-easy:
   
   Buy soup bones at the grocery store, usually sold at $1-$1.50 a lb, optionally get additional bony meat or organ meat.  Place 3 lbs in a crockpot with two cups of water and your favorite spices. Remove the bones.  Strain.  Keep the meat for a future meal.
   
   You will wind up with the richest broth you have ever seen.  Freeze Add it to a lean soup. Thicken it with tapioca or arrowroot powder and use it as gravy for a lean meal.
   
   
2. Rendered bacon or salt pork. Remember bacon bits, that stuff apparently made out of cardboard and vaguely resembling bacon you get on top of salads? What you should do to create flavorful rich bacon to go on top of almost any meal: salad, mashed potatoes (I do sweet potatoes or mashed cauliflower), lean meat dishes, even steak sauce.
   
   Cut bacon into 1/4 inch strips. Stir-fry in a pan until bacon is somewhat crispy and golden-brown. You don't have to get those as crispy as you might a full piece of bacon as with a greater total surface area, less worry about bubbles that never reach the pan, etc, you get far more crispiness even while preserving much of the body that would be absent in a crumbly-crisp piece of bacon.
   
   
3. Coconut! Yes, it's the greatest source of pick-me-up one can have in a diet. Unlike caffeine, it does not leave me jittery, but makes a real difference in what I can accomplish in my day
   
   Add coconut cream or milk to curries, sauces, gravies. Try substituting dairy milk & cream for coconut. Despite similarly hated fat content, coconut just seems to do more for my body than cream can hope for. I am starting to suspect that perhaps non-dairy paleo crowd isn't far off from the truth.
   
   Sprinkle shredded coconut, raw or roasted, on top of any meal that can benefit from a little crunch in its texture. It's particularly good in place of granola on your yogurt. And on those days when you absolutely must have chocolate, make an instant mounds of joy (with much less sugar) by melting the chocolate with shredded coconut.  Or, to skip the mess and make a coconut/chocolate sandwich.
   
   
4. Avocado/ Guacamole. Personally, I think avocado is boring.  It's ok chopped up in salads, but does little for most meals.  Guacamole, on the other hand, is hard.  But it works as a great side/sauce/dip for a lot of different meals, from steak & roast to veggies or crock pot creations. Here is a simplified version that works quite well:
   
   Mash an avocado with a fork. To peel an avocado, cut it into quarters, around the pit, then pull the corners of the peels down, while popping the meat up.  Add several drops of lemon juice, plenty of cumin, salt & pepper. This will do in a pinch, though throwing in chopped onions & tomatoes will go all the way.
   
   
5. Ghee.  What's that?  Clarified butter. It is healthier, a much better grease that tolerates higher
   temperatures and lasts longer and it happens to have greater saturated fat content than butter (you get it by separating the oil from everything else butter contains).  Rub ghee on your steak prior to placing it in a pan; add it to gravies in place of butter, use it to cook or heat up left-overs.  (Oh, and while we are at it - despite everyone being afraid of the fat content in ghee, some studies have shown it actually reduces cholesterol, according to this wikipedia article on ghee).

Each one of these things makes a difference between a meal that leaves me feeling ok and one after which I feel I can fly.