Happy Eating

Dear Friends,

What tactics have helped you to feel that your relationship with food is in good balance—you enjoy what you eat and feel that the way you eat is conducive to good health? We know that eating habits can be a fraught topic, and we hope you’ll help us to make the following conversation something positive. Below are the general principles that help us to feel that our food lives are full of pleasure and maintain good health at the same time. We are NOT dieticians. Please let us know in the comments what approaches have helped you.

·      Fill up on fruits and vegetables.

·      Eat meats, cheeses, fried foods and other heavy, calorically dense items slowly and in small quantities.

·      Have consistent meal times every day that include a modest late-afternoon snack (we’ve learned we have to pay attention to portion size for this snack—and often decide on what and how much we’ll eat earlier in the day, before we feel hungry) . We know what and how much we are going to eat before going into the kitchen.

·      Think about what we WANT to eat and then figure out how to eat it—shop for it or add it to the meal plan/grocery list for the week. The only things that are off limits are things we don’t want to eat. (This is the one Kate likes best.)

·      Listen to our body, don’t eat from a sense of obligation (unless we need to eat a few bites as a polite dinner guest) and stop eating when we feel full.

·      Always remember that the next chance to enjoy some food is only a few hours away, so there’s no urgency to eat a lot now.

Avoid most packaged food—we find industrialized food products aren’t as satisfying as whole foods. The research shows that industrialized food products tend to make people gain weight, because they’re designed to get people to eat more than they need, so the company can sell more products.

·      If we’re feeling an emotional need to put a lot of food in our mouths, we try to notice what we’re feeling and think about how we’d like to respond. Do we want to eat a lot of something that won’t make us feel sick—such as carrots, unbuttered popcorn, or sparkling water? Or is there a pleasurable way we’d rather spend our time, reading something for fun, taking a walk, deadheading flowers in the garden, riding a bike, talking with a friend, writing a letter, drawing, or another of many happy options. For some of our loved ones, the drive to overeat can feel so powerful that they need to do something all-consuming to distract themselves, like an intense hike or bike ride. Others are able to distract themselves just by watching a good movie.

Do you have a rule of thumb that facilitates happy eating for you? If so, please share it in the comments. We love to hear from you.

Old-Fashioned Oatmeal

When I (Kate) first lived in Russia as a twenty-year old, I had an older roommate from the Ukraine who made us oatmeal every morning for breakfast. Ludmila Romanina was her name, and during the few months we lived together she took on oatmeal as a challenge. Had she lived in Brookline, Massachusetts during those early years of Cooks’ Illustrated magazine, I’m certain a symbiotic relationship would have flourished. As it was, she planted an understanding in my heart that oatmeal had considerable potential in terms of flavor and texture worth even more than its offering of sound nutrition.    

Amelia’s bowl

Preparing oatmeal is easy, but the many approaches out there can be misleading. Made with water as the only liquid, you deprive yourself of any creaminess. Using only milk, the resulting richness overwhelms the oats’ chew and delicate flavor. Omit salt and you’ll understand why some people consider oatmeal slop—it’s the equivalent of abducting the poor oats and asking them to communicate with scarves stuffed inside their little mouths.

 The following recipe will get your oatmeal just exactly where it needs to be, freeing you to experiment with toppings—from a simple spoonful of jam to more elaborate glories. On vacation, weekends, or if we awaken five minutes early enough on a weekday, we adorn the oatmeal with granola and, depending on the season, fresh or canned fruit, a spoonful of nut butter, dried currants or cherries, a sprinkle of nuts, muesli—really, the potential combinations are so stimulating you can work yourself into a state. And we have—it’s a state called bliss. 

Mom’s bowl

Old-fashioned Oatmeal

Serves 2 or 3

• 1 cup rolled oats (aka Old-fashioned oats)

• 1 cup milk (of your choice)

• 1 cup water

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• Brown sugar, to taste

Place oats, milk, water, and salt in a saucepan. Turn heat to medium-high, bring to a simmer, then turn heat to medium low or low, to maintain a simmer but prevent boiling. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and add sweetener (I like brown sugar; Amelia prefers it without; it’s also good with honey or maple syrup).

If you are serving the oatmeal in a fairly plain way, these quantities make two satisfying servings. On a busy morning where timing-wise the choice to squeeze in oatmeal was a bit dangerous, we’ll top it with a spoonful of jam and be perfectly content.

20-Minute Roasted Potatoes

Here at the Away Cafe, everybody loves roasted potatoes. Mom, dad, Sephe, Lucia, me (Amelia), everybody. Yet, up until recently, we hardly made them. I have memories of potatoes roasting slowly in the oven, the cook anxiously resetting the timer over and over as the potatoes continued to take more time to fully cook through. They usually required a minimum of 45 minutes and often took an hour or more to roast. It was hard to get the timing right, and too much effort for one side dish.

Enter, my solution: cut them super thin! These are like a cross between a potato chip and roasted potatoes, and man, are they delicious. They roast for only 10 minutes and broil for about 2, making them the perfect side dish: quick, easy, and appealing to all kinds of eaters. Next time you’re craving some fast food fries from the pre-pandemic ages, give these a shot.

Quick Roasted Potatoes

Fills one sheet pan with potatoes slices; doesn’t make very much and could easily be doubled

• 2 medium/large potatoes, any variety (I usually use russet)

• Olive oil

• Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Wash and slice the potatoes thinly and dump them onto a large sheet pan. Drizzle about one tablespoon olive oil and and 1/2 teaspoon or two huge pinches salt (don’t be shy with the salt here) on top, along with plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Mix it all together with your hands and spread the potatoes in an even layer over the sheet pan. Wash your hands and put the sheet pan in the oven. Roast for five minutes, flip the potatoes, and then roast for another five. Preheat your broiler while they are finishing roasting. When the five minutes is up, flip them again and broil for 1-3 minutes. The time this takes will vary wildly depending on the strength of your broiler and your desired level of crisp, so watch closely.

Once they look toasty and brown, take them out and serve with ketchup, if desired.

You could definitely go crispier if you wanted to; just watch closely!

Lemon Blueberry Oven Pancake

Happy blueberry season everyone!

To celebrate blueberries’ arrival, I (Amelia) thought we should all make a giant pancake. I adapted this from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe, adding lemon and vanilla, swapping the white sugar for brown, and using kosher salt instead of table for a more present flavor. The result was a perfect weekend breakfast, one that does not require individual flipping, scooping, and burning and feeling bad about yourself because you can’t even get pancakes right. Instead, you can enjoy the weekend with something delicious and simple.

Lemon Blueberry Oven Pancake

Serves 5 

• 3 tablespoons butter, melted

• 3/4 cup (3.75 ounces) regular whole wheat flour

• 3/4 cup (3.75 ounces) all-purpose flour

• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar

• Zest of 1/2 medium lemon

• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk

• 1 large egg

• 1 1/2 cups blueberries

• White sugar, for sprinkling

Heat the oven to 350 degrees, melt the butter in a medium bowl (doing this earlier will give it time to cool before it meets the egg), and grease a 9x 13-inch baking pan.

Mix the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and kosher salt together in a large bowl. Whisk the brown sugar into the melted butter in a medium bowl, followed by the lemon zest, vanilla, buttermilk, and egg. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir with a spatula until just combined. Carefully dot the batter in blobs with the spatula over the pan (pouring it all in at once will make it much trickier to get an even layer) - it’s VERY thin! It will make you a little nervous, but just do your best to get all of the surface area covered and trust in the power of leaveners. Sprinkle the blueberries on top, followed by about 1/2 tablespoon of white sugar, and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Serve warm with your favorite syrup!

Chocolate chip oven pancake: Replace the blueberries with 1 cup of chocolate chips and omit the lemon zest, sprinkling the chocolate chips on and baking it just like the original.

I would try to eat this within the first day. Leftovers look a little sad, though toasting helps.