New Year's Day: "This year, I will eat more healthfully!"
By EMILY BATTLE
Food is one of the things that makes the holidays memorable, but if the number of local-news segments on "how to keep from packing on the pounds on the holiday party circuit" are any indication, it's also one of the biggest stresses of the season.
So inevitably, by the time New Year's Day rolls around, so many of us cling to that new calendar as a fresh start, a chance to say, "This year, I will eat more healthfully."
Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers buy loads of commercial air time. The diet books are trotted out to bookstore front tables. And at work, the lunchroom fridge fills with Lean Cuisines, diet shakes and other manufactured helping hands in the weight-loss game.
But here's a thought: If your goal is to be healthy, why not look at the midday meal as an opportunity to introduce more color, more variety and more unprocessed food into your diet, rather than lean on the same old frozen entrees that taste the same, no matter how many trendy ethnic twists their manufacturers give them?
The lunch break should be a bright spot in the day, something to look forward to and a chance to refuel both physically and mentally. Even if you're swamped and have to eat at your desk, a fresh, healthy meal is going to get you a lot farther than one of those meal replacement bars.
Resolving to eat healthfully isn't about kissing the pleasures of food goodbye. It starts by making small changes in the way you think, plan and prepare your food.
I could go on forever about how bringing a decent lunch to work is a key defensive move, and helps you ward against afternoon coffee cravings and the temptations of that box of donuts someone's always bringing in to put by the copy machine.
But this is a food column, not a diet column. So we're going to talk about ways to make the lunch you tote to the office a brighter, more pleasurable bit of midday fuel.
The bad news is that there's no magic wand here. It does take a little more work and planning to take something other than a frozen Lean Cuisine to the office. But just a few strategic moves on your weekly grocery trip, or during the weekend, can pay dividends during the work week.
The first key is shopping. Think of the things you normally buy for lunch, and try to find fresher, healthier and more appetizing replacements for each of them.
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Start with bread. The key here is to mix things up. One week, you might buy your old standard whole wheat loaf. But try mixing in pita, wraps, hoagie rolls, baguettes and other types.
Find out if you have a good bakery in town and sample a different style of bread each week. Bread alone can make your lunch sparkle.
If you really want to make a change, consider experimenting with making your own bread. It's not half as hard as it sounds, and a homemade loaf beats anything you can buy at the store.
Now let's find something to put on that bread. There's a tendency here to buy those flat packages of slimy deli meat that just doesn't smell appetizing.
Sometimes fresh deli meat can help you out here, but you can do better than that. A quick batch of homemade hummus takes two cans of chickpeas, a little lemon juice, some garlic, cumin and sesame oil or tahini. You zip that up in a food processor and you've got a good base for a different sandwich every day of the week.
Eat it with turkey and cheese and avocado, with cucumbers, bean sprouts and tomatoes, with the leftover chicken from last night's dinner or with anything else that looks appetizing.
The mix of flavors here is a lot more satisfying than the same old meat-cheese-mustard combo you've been eating since you were in grade school.
Chips are another opportunity to diversify. One place to look for inspiration here is a growing niche in the food-blogging world: bento box lunchmakers. Talk about taking lunch seriously!
Do a search for "bento box blogs" and you'll be amazed at how much time some folks are spending making the food they serve themselves and their children look pretty. If you're not into scrap-booking with food, just troll these sites for ideas for new foods to put in the "chips" slot on your lunch menu. Edamame, fruit and nut mixes and raw vegetables are a few options.
And then there's dessert. If you're like me, you need a little sweet at the end of your midday meal, otherwise you'll dig right into that donut box.
This is where a little home cooking will go a long way. I love to make homemade cookie dough on the weekend, and bake it off as the week goes on so I've got relatively fresh cookies to end my lunch with.
Is there butter in those cookies? Yes.
Isn't that bad? Well, yes, if you eat five of them, but I'd argue that the freshness and flavor of one homemade cookie will satisfy your sweet tooth better than two or more Chips Ahoy.
The other good thing about making them yourself is that you have complete control over what
goes in them. Not only can you keep out preservatives and other overprocessed ingredients, but you can always add value with things like whole wheat flour, wheat germ, dried fruit and nuts.
A good base to start with is a basic oatmeal cookie recipe. I'll dump a few tablespoons of wheat germ and whatever complementary ingredients are laying around into the dough.
This might sound like a lot of work, but my point is to urge you to have fun with your midday meal. Use it as a way to pull you away-if just for a moment-from the stresses of the day.
Replace some of your processed store-bought fare with homemade or whole ingredients. The meal you end up with will be a lot easier to stick with than that can of Slim Fast.
