I selected a recipe from my current cookbook, Honey and Spice Pork, because the combination of cinnamon and honey is thought to reduce inflammation, a primary issue in multiple sclerosis and other auto-immune diseases.

However many health benefits this recipe may offer, this recipe is mostly just a crowd-pleasing meal that offers a multitude of variations (swap out the pork for chicken or salmon… mmmm! or make it vegetarian with seitan (a wheat gluten meat-substitute product found in the refrigerated section of a health food store, near the tofu).

Find the recipe for Honey and Spice Pork below.

Honey and Spice Pork
Serves 2

My kids love the sweet and spicy flavors of this meal. The pork together with the potatoes, carrots, and green beans offers a kid-friendly, well-rounded dinner loaded with nutrients and low in fat. Look for boneless center-cut pork loin, 1/2-inch thick. Or substitute a turkey tenderloin, a salmon fillet, or even chicken for the pork.

1/2 to 3/4 pound pork tenderloin
sea salt and ground black pepper
1/4 cup honey
3 tablespoons Dijon or Cajun/Creole-style mustard
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
6 to 8 small new potatoes, scrubbed
2 carrots, sliced in coins
15 to 20 green beans, trimmed, or 2 cups frozen

- Preheat the oven to 450° F.
-  Spray the inside of a cast iron Dutch oven and lid with canola oil.
- Put the pork in the pot and lightly season with salt and pepper.
-  In a small bowl, mix together the honey, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves and pour over the pork.
-  Slice the potatoes in half and add to the pot, then scatter the carrots and green beans over the potatoes.
-  Cover and bake for 45 minutes, or until 3 minutes after the aroma of a fully cooked meal escapes the oven. Serve immediately.

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Aloha Elizabeth, When the recipe says, 1/2 lb chicken breast, can I cut it up or
do I have to use it whole? I’ve made your delicious: Yucatan Fish, Flageolets and Sausage,
Pasta Tricolore, Southwestern Quinoa, and Springtime Paella.
Tonight it will be the Savory Port-Mushroom Chicken.
- Mahalo, Rudy P., Melbourne, FL

Hi Rudy!

Glad to hear you’ve enjoyed so many yummy GOPMs!

You can use any form of chicken you’d like. Boneless skinless breasts, bone-in skin-on thighs, sliced fajita strips… any way you prefer will work just fine. You can even put boneless chicken in frozen, as long as it is frozen in pieces rather than a huge mass, and it won’t change your cooking time.

Enjoy the Savory Port-Mushroom Chicken recipe — I just had a family of a single dad and two teen boys rave about how Glorious One-Pot Meals has turned their dad into a great cook. They told me it was their favorite recipe in the book!

Happy cooking!
Elizabeth

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Banana Amaranth mini muffins

If you’ve followed my blog you know that while I’m not the greatest of bakers it’s mostly because I have a hard time following a recipe “as written”. With baking, not following the directions to the letter can often end with inedible results.

But not today. Today I translated a regular recipe for banana bread into something that is gluten-free, wheat-free, tapioca-free, rice-free, dairy-free, and lower in fat than the original to boot.

And it’s a delicious recipe. I think my kids each ate 9 of them already.

So then I made another version that is wheat-free but not entirely gluten-free (it uses spelt flour), that is perhaps even a tad bit better, though the jury is still out. Since my son is sensitive to wheat but tolerant of spelt, it’s one of my favorite alternative flours to use.

I needed to make a lot of banana bread because Door-to-Door Organics produce delivery service was kind enough to sponsor my presence at the Land of Nutrition at the Denver and Boulder Walk MS events this month with beautiful crates of organic apples, strawberries, and bananas to distribute to hungry walkers. Most were eaten at the event, but a week later I was still looking at more than a dozen organic bananas getting browner by the day. To me, that says “banana bread.”

Or rather, mini-muffins this time. So much fun to eat!

Ever since we discovered my son was sensitive to wheat through the MRT test, we have gone wheat-free in our household. It’s really wonderful that there are so many wheat-free products on the market these days that cater to those with problems digesting gluten (Celiac’s disease). It makes it easier than ever to find wheat-free alternatives to many packaged foods.

Banana Spelt mini muffins with chocolate chips or cashews

Unfortunately for us, my son is also sensitive to the most common substitutions for wheat in baked goods, namely tapioca flour, corn flour, and potato starch, which puts a lot of those products off limits to us and makes successful baking that much more challenging.

Spelt has some gluten since it is related to wheat, but in much smaller doses. Because it does have some gluten, it is one of the easiest non-wheat flours to bake with. I often add a little xanthan gum and arrowroot starch to my non-wheat flours when baking to give the dough that stickiness that gives baked goods structure.

While my son used to be sensitive to eggs, we eliminated them for a while and have been able to add them back in for baked goods. To make this recipe egg-free, see my egg-free egg-substitute post.

Gluten-free, Dairy-free Banana Bread or Mini Muffins
makes 1 loaf or about 48 mini muffins

1/4 cup apple sauce
1/4 cup safflower oil (or other oil)
1 cup sugar (or other sweetener)
2 eggs (or egg substitutes)
1/4 cup coconut milk (or other dairy or dairy alternative)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (not “flavoring”)
3 bananas
1 cup amaranth flour or spelt flour
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour (name notwithstanding, buckwheat is not related to wheat)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon arrowroot starch
1/2 teaspoon xantham gum powder
Optional add ins: 1/2 cup nuts, chocolate chips, coconut flakes

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Cream applesauce, oil, sugar, and eggs together.

Add milk, vanilla, and mashed bananas and blend.

Mix remaining dry ingredients together in a separate bowl, then add to bananas and mix well.

Grease loaf pan or mini muffin tins well and bake for approximately 20 – 50 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Salmon is a desirable food to eat for those living with multiple sclerosis because it is full of omega-3 fatty acids to help maintain and repair the nervous system.

Of course, this recipe is delicious for those not living with MS, too! Find the recipe on page 28 of the 2009 Glorious One-Pot Meals cookbook, or below.

Dill Salmon Serves 2
This is a great, light summer meal and is particularly great for filling your diet with omega 3s! Adding a thin coating of olive oil on top of the fish will result in a less-dense fillet. For an even richer flavor, place several pats of butter on the fish.

Olive oil spray
2 scallions, white and green parts, chopped
1/2 to 3/4 pound salmon fillet
1 teaspoon olive oil
Salt and freshly ground white or black pepper
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/2 lemon, thinly sliced
5 to 7 whole dill sprigs
5 or 6 red potatoes, thickly sliced
2 large carrots, cut into long strips
1/2 medium zucchini, cut into sticks
1 celery stalk, sliced
1/2 medium cucumber, cut into sticks

1.    Preheat the oven to 450F.
2.    Spray the inside and lid of a cast iron Dutch oven with olive oil.
3.    Scatter the scallions in the pot. Set the salmon on top of the scallions, skin-side down if not skinned, and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, followed by the garlic.
4.    Top fillets with the lemon slices and half the dill sprigs. Scatter potatoes around the fish. Add the carrots, zucchini, celery, and cucumber. Tuck more dill sprigs into crevices and lightly season again with salt and white pepper.
5.     Cover and bake for about 43 minutes, or until 3 minutes after the aroma of a fully cooked meal escapes the oven. Serve immediately.

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Hi Kereebler!

I’m psyched to learn my book has made it into the desert around the world! And yes, you can still prepare Glorious One-Pot Meals even if you don’t have a built-in oven.

An easy solution is to get a toaster oven that fits your Dutch oven. In the summertime, I plug my toaster oven in on my back porch and prepare my meals outside so as not to heat up my house.

However, one of my readers, Cas from Wyoming, discovered that GOPMs work just as well on the stovetop as in the oven.

This needs a little bit of advance prep to accomplish because you have to ascertain the temp of your stovetop. Start this on a night you do not plan to cook a GOPM.

The first thing to do is set your empty cast iron Dutch oven on  your stovetop burner. Set an oven thermometer inside your empty pot, put the lid on and turn on the burner to medium. Check back in a few minutes to see what the thermometer reads. You may have to adjust the heat up or down for it to reach 450 F. When the heat inside the Dutch oven stabilizes at 450 degrees F, note the number on the dial of your burner, as this will be important.

Be sure to let the pot cool completely and remember that hot cast iron will crack if it comes into contact with cold water. If you are using an enameled cast iron Dutch oven,  you may see some minor scorching on the outside of the pot where it touches the burner. If you can live with this, you’re good to go.

When you are ready to cook, build your recipe in a room-temperature pot as written in the cookbook. You may want to use water instead of broth, if called for, as the fat in the broth may burn to the bottom of the pot. Otherwise, prepare you GOPM as normal. When the pot is full, place it on your burner and turn the dial to the number you noted earlier.

As when oven cooking your GOPMs, resist the urge to lift the lid before you smell the aroma of a fully-cooked meal wafting from the pot. It should take about 45 minutes to cook — the same as if you were oven cooking.

Don’t give up if your first try doesn’t come out perfectly; you may find that you prefer the way some ingredients turn out over others when you cook this way vs. in the oven.

Thanks, Cas, for figuring out this great work-around for those of us who are oven-less!

Although I have tested this stovetop method, and Cas has used it successfully for years in his rural cabin, it has not been extensively tested all over the world like the traditional GOPM oven method has been. Please let me know your results! Happy cooking!

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

- Michelle from Bethesda, MD

Hi Michelle!

That’s great that you are on a plant-based diet – congratulations!

A quick leaf through the Glorious One-Pot Meals cookbook brings up a number of recipes in the vegetarian section that you’d be able to follow pretty much as written (look at Aloo Gobi on p. 164, Curried Veggies on p. 170, and Turkish Eggplant on p. 189 for starters), and of course, every single recipe can be tailored to meet  your (or any other!) dietary requirements.

This is one of my favorite types of sea salt!

You can always experience GOPM success when using parboiled brown rice instead of any of the white rices, too. Parboiled brown rice subs in perfectly for any white rice in recipes. It’s always your choice!

In terms of using greens as a base, check out the Fish Florentine recipe on p. 32 for the technique. Of course, you can use this technique with greens in any recipe, whether or not you choose to add fish. Your instinct for this is right on.

Personally, even though I try to use only organic canned goods like tomatoes and beans, I always rinse the beans before using them, to get rid of any extra preservatives left over from canning.

Even though I don’t like the added salt to canned foods, I do like to use a little sea salt on my food. Unlike table salt, sea salt contains 80+ trace minerals and other nutrients, won’t cause bloating or water retention or raise blood pressure. Your body needs some salt to maintain intracellular homeostasis, particularly if you are working out and sweating. It’s the sodium added to processed foods that is the problem, not natural salts.

Once you get the feel for your pot and how this techique works, I predict you’ll be off  and freely layering your greens, veggies, and whole grains for your own delicious and unique meals. 

Happy cooking!

Elizabeth

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

She points out that while most doctors recommend women get more calcium in their body to keep their bones strong, they neglect to mention that without magnesium the calcium won’t be absorbed.

A magnesium deficiency might look like constipation, infertility, migraines, muscle cramps, or a whole host of other signs and symptoms.

Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D., author of The Magnesium Miracle (Ballantine Books, 2007), reports that these (and other) conditions are also associated with magnesium deficiency: blood clots, bowel disease, cystitis, depression, detoxification, diabetes, fatigue, hypoglycemia, insomnia, kidney disease, kidney stones, musculoskeletal conditions, osteoporosis, Raynaud’s syndrome, and even tooth decay. Dr. Dean also reports that she’s seen magnesium improve patients’ PMS, painful periods, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia. She’s also seen it increase their sexual pleasure!

My favorite ways to supplement magnesium include snacking on nuts and adding Epsom Salts to the bathtub to absorb it through the skin.

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

This is what happened to my fabulous coach Rachelle Disbennett-Lee’s husband, Adrian, the other day.

Now that Adrian is retired, he will be taking over more of the household duties, including shopping for and making meals when Rachelle is working late. Luckily, they have been Glorious One-Pot Meals fans for years, so this part should be a slam dunk. Right?

On his first night as the official “chef,” Adrian selected a recipe (Pasta Primavera) and went to the grocery store to collect the ingredients. He came home and began to assemble the meal. Halfway through, he hit a stumbling block: instead of a jar of artichoke hearts, he had mistakenly purchased marinated garlic cloves! Uh-oh!

Oblivious to this crisis, Rachelle was working away in her office, looking forward to the wafting aroma that would tell her dinner was ready — a dinner she didn’t have to cook!

Poor Adrian! His lack of experience and confidence in the kitchen thwarted him, and when Rachelle emerged after her conference call, sniffing expectantly, he suggested they go out to T.G.I.F. for dinner. Becuase he didn’t have the artichoke hearts, he felt he could not move forward and complete the recipe. His first attempt at dinner was a flop!

Now, now, Rachelle soothed. What else do we have in the house that we can use instead of artichoke hearts? With Glorious One-Pot Meals, you can freely adjust any recipe to include or avoid any ingredients. Don’t have artichoke hearts? How about spinach, cabbage, or kale? She ended up adding some carrots and spinach leaves to the pot, as well as using some of those marinated garlic cloves (yum!) and rescuing the meal.

As a cookbook author, this incident provided a good reminder for me that many people lack confidence in the kitchen and believe they must follow a recipe to the letter when cooking. Let me take this opportunity to assure my readers that this is not the case when you’re cooking Glorious One-Pot Meals! You should feel free to substitute, add, or subtract any item(s) from a recipe at any time, and still be assured of creating a delicious meal.

Life is too short to be scared in the kitchen. Live passionately, eat heartily, and cook with abandon!

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

(Be sure to read all the way down for a chance to win a free cookbook!)

We love, love, love Brussels sprouts at our house, only we call them “Monster Heads.” My son will tell you they are his favorite vegetable now that he has learned that mushrooms are a fungus, not a vegetable, that is.

In my cookbook, I’ve even written an Ode to Brussels sprouts of sorts. They were not something I liked as a child — in fact, I’m not sure my mother ever served them because I don’t think she liked the 1950’s-style of overcooked Brussels sprouts that she grew up eating. But once I started tossing those little green balls into my Glorious One-Pot Meals, a love affair began.

Check out these one-pot meal recipes for delicious Brussels sprouts:
Downeaster Lobster Tails
Sweet Tart Chicken
Sweet Potatoes for Dinner

Brussels sprouts are a good source of Thiamin, Riboflavin, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Copper, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Folate, Potassium and Manganese.

Eating Brussels sprouts together with some foods, like potatoes, will create a complete protein for your body to utilize. They have no glycemic load and are mildly anti-inflammatory, too. Not to mention filling.

Here's what a Brussels sprout plant looks like

It’s fun, too, to snag a whole stalk of Brussels sprouts. What a treat!

Need any more reasons to consider adding Brussels sprouts to your diet?

Consider only peeling away the top layer of leaves when cleaning, trimming the base, and making a shallow X with the knife in the heart (helps them cook more evenly and more quickly). I was disappointed to see fully white Brussels sprouts appear at dinner one night while in England visiting dear relatives. Outside of London it can seem like the Brits have an inborn aversion to green things like leaves and vegetables. We did find wonderful organic produce down south near Bath and in London, but up north and into Scotland green foods were far and few between.

5280, the premier city magazine for Denver (yes, the title refers to how many feet we reside above sea level — 5280 feet in a mile — get it?) has noted this passion for Brussels Sprouts showing up at the nicer restaurants around this town, too.

Ha! I knew I was not the only Brussels sprout-lover out there! It all has to do with how they are prepared.

Brussels sprout season is almost over, so  get them while you can.

Oh, and if you’d like to share your favorite Brussels sprout recipe, I’ll reward my fave with a personally autographed cookbook. The contest ends March 1st, 2010, just because I have to end it sometime.

So let’s hear ‘em! Leave your best Brussels sprouts recipes in the Comments below (just click “Comments” below this post online — sorry: while appreciated, emailed responses will not be entered in the contest).

I can’t wait!!

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

What I love about stir-frying is that you can toss just about anything in a wok and it will be tasty.

What I hate about stir-frying is that it entails so much precision cutting before you start cooking, and then constant attention from the cook once the frying starts. I would prefer not to be on my feet and focused on cooking for that long — hey, I have MS, you know?

But, sometimes you just gotta do it to get the foods you love made from trustworthy and acceptable ingredients.

I began by softening a package of Thai Kitchen Stir-Fry Rice Noodles in boiling water. These have two items on the ingredients list: rice, water. Perfect for a gluten-free meal.

While I prefer to use fresh Extra-firm tofu for stir-fries, the package I pulled out of the fridge expired two months ago — eeeuuww! Luckily, I like to keep a package or two of Mori-Nu Silken Extra-Firm Tofu in the pantry for just this kind of tofu emergency. I opened and squeezed the tofu, then sliced it into bite-sized rectangles. I set the rectangles in a dish and added a quick marinade with one of my faves: Annie’s Naturals Shiitake & Sesame Vinaigrette.

I sliced mushrooms, asparagus, carrots, and a half of a zucchini that was left over from a previous meal.

I heated up my cast iron wok and put in some Grapeseed Oil with a splash of sesame oil. I’ve been cooking more frequently with grapeseed oil these days instead of canola oil and have been really happy with most of the results, especially when frying. (It didn’t do so well in our Rice Krispie treats — they turned out too soggy.)

The sesame oil adds a depth of flavor, but cooking in sesame seed oil alone can be too intense. I like to mix it with another oil.

I rolled the tofu cubes on a plate covered with Sugar In The Raw and set them carefully in the wok. I flipped them as they carmelized, then transferred them to a waiting plate. I know that you’re supposed to cook the meat first when stir-frying, but I think next time I’ll cook the tofu last. I had to wipe little bits of burnt tofu out of the pot later on, which bugged me.

Carrots went in next, were fried, and replaced with asparagus in 1″ lengths, and then the zucchini and mushrooms.

Finally, I took the drained and rinsed noodles and added them to the wok with the fried tofu and some more of the Annie’s.

At the end, it needed just a dash of sea salt to bring out all the delicious flavors, and everyone cleaned their plates. A yummy meal that you can prepare much more quickly by pre-cutting the veggies (wish I had that kind of forethought or pre-planning capabilities!).

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.