This warm, slightly spicy stew is great comfort food.

This dish is especially easy to make because you don’t have to worry about pre-baking the squash. The cold winter months are great for making soups and stews. Plus you can often get away with making a stew using just one pot – so there are less dishes to wash! This is a nice, sweet savory stew, that comes together pretty quickly. The trickiest bit is figuring out the best way to peel and cube the butternut squash. I like to cut it in half lengthwise and then cut the cylindrical top portion off from the bottom portion with the seeds. Then I slice the cylindrical portion into horizontal slices and chop these into cubes. Any part with peel on them I try to cut into a roughly geometrical shape like a trapezoid. There’s usually plenty of squash, so I don’t get to picky about losing a little squash with the peel.

Aside from figuring out how to turn the oddly shaped squash into cubes, this recipe is a cinch. Chop the vegetables and let them simmer. It takes a little under an hour, but very little of that time involves you standing over the stove or the cutting board. You can also make this recipe in a slow-cooker (as it was originally intended). I believe you’d want to put in the slow-cooker for 6 hours. My way yields quicker rewards.

Squash and Lentil Stew (adapted from a WeightWachers recipe)

Serves 4-6

1 tsp olive oil
1/2 medium onion chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups uncooked butternut squash, cubed
2 large uncooked carrots, diced
1/2 cup water or vegetable broth
1 cup dry lentils
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes

In the bottom of a large pot, cook the onions, garlic and olive oil over medium heat. Once the onions are beginning to brown, add the carrots and cook for a few minutes, covered. Add the remaining ingredients, mix and cook covered over medium heat for about 40 minutes. Check the carrots, squash and lentils to see if the consistency is to your liking and cook longer if necessary. Serve with a little yogurt if it seems too spicy.

Several students from Case run freshbag with advice and support of a few area businesses, but ultimately they allow people to order their food online and then pick up their order at a nearby dropoff location. To read more about the logistics of freshbag, check out this Huffington Post feature about freshbag’s founder. According to Ian Wong, the founder, freshbag helps the community on a number of levels – including bring fresh produce into food deserts and supporting the area economically by purchasing from local producers.

Sounds like a pretty great program to me – and as a future medical student, it’s exciting to hear about these kinds of grassroots efforts to address issues of food inequality.

Pureed potatoes actually make for a very creamy base in this spinach soup.

If you’ve never had fresh, frost-sweetened spinach, then you’re missing out on a real treat. This winter spinach is thick and surprisingly sweet and flavorful. I could eat it raw, but it makes great salads and sandwiches. Unfortunately this week we had a bit too much of it around the house (my parents were traveling last weekend so there were less mouths to feed). So today I decided to try a riff on a tomato-based soup that I use as a quick standby in the winter by substituting with spinach and potatoes for a base. The basic idea is pretty similar – cook some vegetables like onions, carrots, green beans, etc. in the bottom of a soup pot and then add in a liquid mixture to stew it all in. Since spinach doesn’t naturally make a good base like crushed tomatoes, this soup requires a little more fussing in the kitchen, and an extra bowl (gasp!). But the end result is quite tasty. Good and good for you, as my mother would say.

Winter is the perfect time for soup, and while cracking open a can of crushed tomatoes is definitely easier than making your own spinach/potato/milk base, this soup is a nice variation on the theme. And in the end doesn’t take much longer than hunting for a can opener.

Spinach and Carrot Soup
Serves 4-6

2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2-3 large carrots, chopped
1-2 clove garlic, minced
2 cups frozen green beans (or any other frozen vegetable that sound appealing to you)
2 medium potatoes
2 cups skim milk
1/2 pound spinach, chopped
15 ounces cannellini beans
cheddar cheese, grated, to garnish

In a medium pot heat the oil and garlic over medium heat. Add the onions and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally until both vegetables begin to become tender. Add the green beans and the cannellini beans and cook covered, checking every so often to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan. Microwave the potatoes until they are soft. Dice them and then mash them with a fork and mix them with the milk in a medium sized bowl. You may need to heat the milk slightly in the microwave, or even try to beat the milk and potato mixture to make it smooth – if you have a food processor you can use it here, and throw in the spinach (unchopped). Add the spinach to the pot and let it steam for just a minute or two, then add the milk potato mixture and let simmer over low heat until all the vegetables are tender to your satisfaction. Garnish with a little cheese, and enjoy while it’s hot.

NPR‘s blog The Salt has some really nice coverage of the new estimates, including a closer look at how these kinds of estimates are made given that people’s behavior can be difficult to predict.

Also in the news this week: Mindful eating helps prevent weight gain. Not too surprising, but it’s a nice reminder to savor the food we eat. And an anti-childhood obesity ad campaign in Atlanta has been getting criticism for being too critical. And the new frontier in medicine – getting patients to plug in to their own care.

I thought the beets here would dye every thing red, but the cabbage managed to hold its own fairly well

Back in July to celebrate the final installment of the Harry Potter movie series, I made a British dish involving potatoes and cabbage called Bubble and Squeak. This week I thought I’d try a variation on this recipe that is just as filling but less starchy. Instead of using potatoes, I used beets. And for good measure I tossed the whole recipe with some pureed butternut squash. The end result was really delicious in my opinion. Squash, Cabbage and Beets are all actually quite sweet, so pairing these veggies with some aged cheddar resulted in some nice sweet/savory combinations. In the future I’d try adding some minced garlic with the onions and/or various savory herbs (like the paprika called for in the original recipe or maybe some sage). This meal was plenty satisfying, and definitely healthy since its largely vegetables with a little olive oil and some cheese. And it came together pretty quickly too!

You don't have to stir the cabbage in when you first add it. Just let it steam on top of the other vegetables for a few minutes, then start stirring every minute or so and mixing the cabbage in with the rest.

Squash and Squeak

Serves 4

2-3 large beets, chopped into fairly large pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1/2 medium head of cabbage, sliced into strips (I used green, but you could easily try red for some interesting color matching with the beets)
2-3 cups cooked butternut squash
1-2 ounces cheddar cheese, grated

Put the beets and about 1/2 cups water into a skillet over medium heat and cook covered for 10 to 15 minutes. Once the beets just begin to become tender enough to poke with a fork, remove the lid and let the water cook off. Add the oil and the onion and cook until the onion becomes tender. Add the cabbage and cook covered again for about 5 minutes, until the cabbage begins to wilt slightly. Stir occasionally throughout this process. Once all the vegetables look to be cooked close to  your satisfaction, add the squash puree and cook for 2-3 minutes longer. Top with the grated cheese and serve.

Looking for some more news about food? Check out these posts from NPR‘s various blogs:

The Real Holiday Party For Weight Loss Firms
Calories Trump Protein for Weight Loss
Whats In That Food? The Supertracker Knows
When Budget Foods Start To Eat Away At The Wallet
Can We Expect An Organic Milk Shortage In 2012?

The beets were cooked first with a little water in the skillet to steam them. Then we added the onions, broccoli and garbanzo beans. Top it all off with a little pureed butternut squash and some cheese and it's time for dinner.

Sure, there is some nuance here. Different ingredients take different amounts of time to cook. But this kind of knowledge can be learned and turned into intuition pretty simply. Harder vegetables take longer to cook. It’s often a good starting point to sautee some garlic and/or onions in your cooking oil to start off. But preparing dinner doesn’t have to be an ordeal. Sure, putting a lot of time into preparation and presentation of a meal can be fun (for some people). But dinner is a daily activity. It doesn’t need to be a feat of cooking innovation and technique every night.

The point is, cooking is actually really easy (unlike baking where measurements do matter). The next time you’re trying to decide what to eat for dinner, you can do better than some sort of prepared, microwaveable meal without having to whip out every pan in your arsenal. There are plenty of one pot/one pan meals that can be prepared starting with sauteeing some onions and gradually adding other vegetables in order of hardness until everything is cooked (mostly) to your satisfaction. Top it off with some cheese, maybe an egg, and voila, you have a dinner that’s easy to make, easy to change and tasty every night of the week.

I think the take away from The Salt‘s post is that we should enjoy our favorite holiday food traditions, but to do so in moderation. It can be hard to stay on top of eating healthily when there are holiday parties to go to and dinners to get with friends. And this is only exacerbated by the fact that the cold weather makes us less inclined to go outside and get some exercise. As we move forward into the new year, I’m going to be trying to treat myself to a few holiday goodies while also bundling up, getting outside and staying active. It should be pretty easy for me to stay motivated too because I’ve signed up to run a marathon at the end of May. I’ve already started training, so keep an eye out for some thoughts about what it takes to eat right as a vegetarian while training for a long distance race.

And in case you’re looking for some extra reading material over the holidays, here are some other great blog posts from NPR about healthy living to close out 2011. Happy New Year!

The Average American Ate (Literally) a Ton This Year
For Black Girls, Lack of Exercise Heightens Obesity Risk
Bonbons for Breakfast? Most Kids Breakfast Cereals Pack Enough Sugar to Be Dessert
Turning to Big Business to Solve the Obesity Epidemic
 In China, Finding a New Way to Eat in a Time of Plenty

As with any recipe, you can unhealthify (and tasty-ify) this by adding more cheese. But it tastes plenty good with a sparing amount!

For me, growing up, bread pudding was a savory dish served for dinner and not a sweet treat for dessert. My mom would make a baked pudding of cubed, dry bread with eggs, cheese and milk. And it was delicious. Health wise though, it probably wasn’t the greatest for you, chockfull of cholesterol and fat. So we’ve decided to update the recipe and make a bread pudding that uses egg whites and broccoli to make a dish that is still tasty and filling, but doesn’t have to be a rich treat saved for special occasions.

On Christmas, my mom made some fresh baked bread to enjoy during our holiday dinner. Unfortunately she didn’t add quite enough salt to the dough, so the bread came out tasting ever so bland. Fortunately there are solutions, like bread pudding, that will quickly use up the bread. Bread for bread pudding allows for a few mistakes, so you can use bread that has started to get old and dry, or bread that just didn’t make a great sandwich. The milk/egg/soy sauce mixture will add flavor and moistness to your bread base. This recipe comes together pretty quickly too.

Broccoli Bread Pudding

Canola oil, to grease the pans
8 oz day (or more) old bread, cubed
4 cups broccoli, chopped
3 eggs
4 egg whites
1/2 cup skim milk
1-2 tsp tamari soy sauce
3-4 oz cheese (cheddar, parmesan or even blue are all tasty options)

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Mix the broccoli and the bread cubes together and spread evenly in a baking dish. In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs, egg whites, milk and soy sauce. Mix most of the cheese in with the bread and broccoli and then pour the milk/egg mixture evenly over the bread and broccoli. Sprinkle the last bit of cheese over the top and bake for 35-40 minutes until the bread gets crispy, the cheese looks bubbly and the eggs look solid.

Sweet potatoes and kale are a great combination. They’re both sweet but they both go well with salty and savory  ingredients.

These bright colors suggest great taste and great nutrient content!

Shredded Sweet Potatoes and Kale (Serves 2)

Canola or sunflower oil
1 medium/large sweet potato
2-3 cups roughly chopped kale
2 eggs
1/4 cup cheddar

Shred the sweet potato with a cheese grater or a food processor and then add the sweet potato and the kale to a skillet with some canola or sunflower oil and cook, covered, over medium heat until they start to get tender. Then to make it a full meal, add the beaten eggs and cook, covered, until the egg is cooked. Top with some grated cheddar and voila – you’re ready to dine.