Fall Recipe of the Week: Mushroom Soup

From fit­ness magazine

Health Ben­e­fits
For­get its rep­u­ta­tion as a worth­less fun­gus — mush­rooms are high in vit­a­min C, iron, potas­sium, and zinc. With no cho­les­terol and low lev­els of sodium, they also pack a good amount of pro­tein for a veg­gie.
Nutri­tion: (1 cup, raw) 15 calo­ries, 0.2g fat, 2.3g car­bo­hy­drates, 0.7g fiber, 2.2g protein

Ingre­di­ents

• 1 red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 pound fresh mushrooms
• 3 table­spoons butter
• 3 1/2 cups low-sodium beef broth
• 3 cups water
• 2 envelopes onion-mushroom soup mix
• 2 table­spoons dry sherry

Prepa­ra­tion

1. Saute 1 thinly sliced red onion and 1 pound sliced fresh mush­rooms in 3 Tbsp. butter.
2. Add 3 1/2 cups low-sodium beef broth, 3 cups water, and 2 envelopes onion-mushroom soup mix, and bring to a boil.
3. Sim­mer 5 minutes.
4. Add 2 table­spoons dry sherry.

Last-taste-of-summer Rolls

Ingre­di­ents

• White vine­gar for cook­ing the shrimp
• 6 to 8 medium to large raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
• Two 10-inch or three 8-inch rice paper wrappers
• Hand­ful fresh bean sprouts
• 3 or 4 sprigs mint, stemmed and shredded
• 12 (approx­i­mately) sprigs cilantro, stemmed and shredded
• Chopped roasted salted peanuts, cooked rice or cel­lo­phane noo­dles, Thai basil, grated car­rots, let­tuce (optional)

Direc­tions

1. In a small saucepan, place enough vine­gar to later sub­merge the shrimp, and bring to a boil.
2. Add shrimp and sim­mer, stir­ring gen­tly, until just pink (about 2 min­utes). Drain and rinse.
3. Assem­ble the other pre­pared ingre­di­ents by your cut­ting board.
4. Rinse a rice paper wrap­per with water (the temperature’s not ter­ri­bly impor­tant — any­where from cool to warm) — just enough to moisten both sides — and shake it off. Now you’ll need to work quickly, as you have about a minute and a half between when the wrap­per soft­ens enough to fold and when it becomes too limp and sticky.
5. Lay the damp wrap­per on cut­ting board and, work­ing quickly, assem­ble a line of ingre­di­ents on the lower third of the wrap­per. Fold in the left and right edges. You should now have straight sides, and the line of ingre­di­ents should be just cov­ered by folded wrap­per on each end. Press down the edges to help them stick, and then start rolling away from you, tuck­ing in the ingre­di­ents as you go. By the time you get to the end, the wrap­per will eagerly stick to itself, mak­ing a neat pack­age. Do not try to unroll it.

Yield

Makes 2 or 3 rolls

Sum­mer roll vari­a­tions found here→

Recipe of the Week: Zucchini ‘Noodles’

From all​recipes​.com

A tasty and fairly sim­ple way for peo­ple on a gluten-free or wheat-free diet to enjoy a noo­dle dish. Try using 4 zuc­chini and 2 sum­mer squash for a col­or­ful mix.

Ingre­di­ents

• 6 zuc­chini
• 2 tea­spoons salt
• 3 table­spoons margarine
• 1 clove gar­lic, minced (optional)
• salt and black pep­per to taste
• 1/4 cup grated Parme­san cheese

Prepa­ra­tion

1. Cut zuc­chini into thin, noodle-like strips (a man­do­line works well for this). Toss with the 2 tea­spoons salt, and place in a colan­der to drain for 30 minutes.
2. Bring a pot of water to boil. Add zuc­chini; cook for one minute. Drain; rinse imme­di­ately with cold water to stop cooking.
3. Heat mar­garine in a large skil­let over medium high heat. Add zuc­chini and gar­lic; cook and stir until just ten­der, about 5 min­utes. Sea­son to taste with salt and pep­per. Sprin­kle with Parme­san cheese.

Per Serv­ing:
Calo­ries: 146 | Total Fat: 10.3g | Cho­les­terol: 6mg

The Right Way to Weigh Yourself

Have a weight loss goal this month? It’s impor­tant to under­stand the many fac­tors that play into weight fluctuation.

Do keep in mind the impor­tance of con­sis­tency. To accu­rately track the amount of weight that you are los­ing, it’s best to weigh your­self at the same time (prefer­ably in the morn­ing) every week, on the exact same day of the week. Write down the num­ber, and at the end of four weeks, cal­cu­late the aver­age of these num­bers. Sub­tract that from your start­ing weight, and you’ll get a very pre­cise mea­sure of how much progress you’ve made.

Don’t jump on the scale after a big night out. You’re just tor­tur­ing your­self. Rich, deca­dent restau­rant cui­sine is full of salt, fat, and sugar — things that make the meal taste so good! Keep in mind that it’s vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble to gain weight after one large meal. If you get on the scale and see your num­ber go up, it’s sim­ply because your blood vol­ume level has increased due to the large quan­tity of food that you’ve eaten. The high sodium con­tent in cer­tain pre­pared foods also causes the body to retain fluid, thus caus­ing a higher num­ber on the scale.

Do take flu­ids into account. It’s tough to mea­sure flu­ids accu­rately, but two 8-ounce glasses of water can trans­late to about one pound of weight. This means that if you’ve just fin­ished a giant bot­tle of H20 and decide to hop on the scale, the chances are you’re not going to like the out­come. Don’t fret. It’s only water. Our bod­ies are highly equipped to effi­ciently use flu­ids as needed and excrete what we don’t need. In fact, if you decide to avoid flu­ids in an attempt to lower that value on the scale, you’re in for a big sur­prise. Your body will actu­ally do the oppo­site and retain fluid, caus­ing you to show a “gain.” Drink­ing alco­hol is also a key cul­prit in skew­ing the num­bers. No mat­ter the liba­tion, all alco­hol causes fre­quent uri­na­tion and may increase per­spi­ra­tion. This leads to even more dehy­dra­tion, which will cause the body to retain more fluid. It may seem con­tra­dic­tory, but be sure to add in plenty of non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated bev­er­ages (such as water) to coun­ter­act the fluid imbalance.

Don’t avoid the scale all together. It’s impor­tant to note that weigh­ing your­self on a reg­u­lar basis doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to be a neg­a­tive thing. Step­ping on a scale gives you a sense of account­abil­ity towards your actions and forces you to keep your­self in check. Accord­ing to the National Weight Con­trol Reg­istry, 75 per­cent of indi­vid­u­als who have man­aged to suc­cess­fully lose weight and keep it off con­sis­tently weigh them­selves. In addi­tion, a 2012 study in the Jour­nal of Nutri­tion and Dietet­ics con­cludes that peo­ple who lose weight are less likely to regain it if they weigh them­selves on a reg­u­lar basis.

Learn More→

Your Brain is Kinda Slow (About Hunger)

By Robin

OK, so your mind is light­ning fast, usu­ally. Espe­cially when it comes to things like:

2×4 = ?
8! BAM!

Name a Kar­dashian sis­ter:
Kim! BOOM!

But some­times your brain is slooow – like when it comes to telling if you’re full.
But don’t worry, it isn’t just you.

It takes the typ­i­cal person’s brain about 20 min­utes to reg­is­ter feel­ings of full­ness. It just takes a while for your brain to catch on to hor­mone mes­sages from your stom­ach that, “Hey! I’ve had enough food already! No need to keep eating!”

So what’s the big deal? A lot of us just keep mind­lessly eat­ing well after we’ve had enough to fill our bel­lies and meet our energy needs. Why’s that prob­lem­atic? Those extra calo­ries can lead to unhealthy weight gain.

It can be espe­cially hard to keep your­self from sec­ond help­ings if you’ve let your­self get totally rav­en­ous before sit­ting down to eat. (Enter the ben­e­fits of eat­ing five small meals, spread through­out your a day).

Think you could be mind­lessly going for sec­onds? Whether you’re try­ing to cut the last stub­born five pounds or main­tain a healthy weight, try this the next time you eat:

Serve your­self. Eat just one serv­ing or help­ing. Want sec­onds? Wait a minute! Actu­ally, wait about five min­utes. Stop and think before you pick up that serv­ing spoon.

You could: Drink some water. Start telling a cool story about your day to your table­mates. Get up and clean the kitchen. Basi­cally, give your mind some time to catch up to your stomach.

Want other tips to slow down and prac­tice “mind­ful eat­ing?” Check out these tips from WebMD blog­ging Doc, Pamela Peeke. What’s your fave “mind­ful eat­ing” strategy?