holiday

A Combination Easter Basket and Table Decoration

April 16, 2014 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

I spotted these mason jar and candy combos today. I’m always on the lookout not just for good, healthy food — but also for anything that accompanies food that potentially makes it taste better and also might make the dining experience more enjoyable.

These mason jar and candy combinations fit into the second category and made me, and lots of others, smile. They’re really inexpensive to make and can easily serve as both Easter “baskets” as well as great centerpieces for your holiday table. The tulips and Peeps are so awesome that I wasn’t the only one whipping out my phone to take some pictures. They’re just M&M’s on the bottom with Peeps around the sides, some fake grass, and a small vase stuck in the middle that is filled with tulips. Happy, easy, and it makes you smile!

Your Holiday Eating Cheat Sheet

December 5, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Are you feeling some holiday pressure? Are you, along with lots of family and friends, jumping into entertaining and cooking mode?

Is food a good antidote to all of that stress (at least in the moment)? What about the pressure – subtle and sometimes not so subtle – to eat everything that’s set out on the table by those close to you?

Then there’s the anger/guilt about eating way too much – and then repeating the whole process.

Consider These Ideas:

Don’t feel obliged to eat out of courtesy – especially if you don’t want the food or you’re full –because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. Get over it – the calories are going into your mouth, not theirs.

Give yourself permission to NOT eat something just because it’s tradition. Whose tradition?

Only eat it if you want it. Eat what you want not what you think you should.

Say no to the friend or relative who is pushing the extra piece of pie. You’re the one stepping on the scale or zipping up your jeans the next day – not them.

Have some personal rules and commit to them. An example might be: I really want pecan pie for dessert so I’ll have only one biscuit without butter with my meal.

Make a deal (with yourself) that you can eat what you want during dinner. Put the food on your plate and enjoy every last morsel. Clean your plate if you want to. But – that’s it. No seconds and no double-decking the plate.

Make trades. Trade the biscuit and butter for wine with dinner. Limit the hors d’oeuvres. They really pack in calories. Make eating one or two your rule.

Choose your beverages wisely. Alcohol adds calories (7 calories/gram). Alcohol with mixers adds even more calories. Plus, alcohol takes the edge off lots of things – including your ability to stick to your plan.

Drink water. It fills you up. Have a diet soda if you want. If you’re going to drink alcohol, try limiting the amount – think about alternating with water, seltzer, or unsweetened beverages.

Control your environment. Don’t hang around the buffet table or stand next to the platter of delicious whatevers. Why are you tempting yourself?

Talk to someone. It’s hard to shove food in your mouth when you’re talking.

Get rid of leftovers. Leftover stuffing has defeated the best-laid plans.

Don’t nibble during clean up (or preparation for that matter). Broken cookies, pieces of piecrust, and the last spoonsful of stuffing haven’t magically lost their calories.

Don’t starve yourself the day of a grand meal. If you do in an attempt to save up calories for a splurge, you’ll probably be so hungry by the time dinner is ready you’ll end up shoving food into your mouth faster than you can say turkey.

If you end up overeating, add in some longer walks and a couple of days of moderate eating afterward.

Do you want some more really helpful (and sometimes humorous) info about the holidays and holiday eating? Check these out:

New on Amazon: 30 Ways to Eat Your Holiday Favorites and Still Get Into Your Jeans

Available from the iTunes store: Eat Out Eat Well magazine

How Far Do You Have To Walk To Burn Off Halloween Candy?

October 30, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Here’s another way to think about Halloween candy — how much walking will it take to work off the candy calories?

According to walking.com:

1 Fun Size candy bar (Snickers, Milky Way, Butterfingers, etc. is about 80 calories. You’d need to walk 0.8 miles, 1.29 kilometers, or 1600 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

2 Hershey’s Kisses are about 50 calories. You’d need to walk 0.5 miles, 0.80 kilometers, or 1000 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

2 Brachs caramels are about 80 calories. You’d need to walk 0.8 miles, 1.29 kilometers, or 1600 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

1 mini bite-size candy bar (Snickers, Milky Way, Butterfingers, etc.) is about 55 calories. You’d need to walk 0.55 miles, 0.88 kilometers, or 1100 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

1 Fun Size M&M packet – Plain or Peanut, is 90 calories. You’d need to walk 0.9 miles, 1.45 kilometers, or 1800 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

1 mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup is 33 calories. You’d need to walk 0.33 miles, 0.53 kilometers, or 660 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

1 full size chocolate candy bar (Snickers, Hershey, etc.) is about 275 calories. You’d need to walk 2.75 miles, 4.43 kilometers, or 5500 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

1 King Size chocolate candy bar (Snickers, Hershey, etc.) is about 500 calories. You’d need to walk 5 miles, 8.06 kilometers, or 10000 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

1 small Tootsie Roll is 25 calories. You’d need to walk 0.25 miles, 0.40 kilometers, or 500 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

If You Ate . . .

2 Brachs caramels, 2 Hershey’s Kisses, 1 small Tootsie Roll, 1 Fun Size candy bar (Snickers, Milky Way, Butterfingers, etc.) 1 mini bite-size candy bar (Snickers, Milky Way, Butterfingers, etc.), 1 Fun Size M&M packet – Plain or Peanut, 1 mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, 1 full size chocolate candy bar (Snickers, Hershey, etc.), 1 King Size chocolate candy bar (Snickers, Hershey, etc.)… the grand total is 1188 calories. You’d need to walk 11.88 miles, 19.16 kilometers, or 23,760 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps.

For kids — as a guideline, to burn off 7000 calories a one hundred pound child would have to walk for almost 44 hours or play full-court basketball for 14.5 hours.

Don’t Worry Too Much …

Just remember – we and our bodies have an amazing ability to compensate for occasional holiday overeating – as long as those holidays don’t turn into weeks that turn into months.

So, enjoy your trick or treating and all of the ghosts, princesses, pirates, animals, cars, trains, skeletons, witches, and any other creature that rings your doorbell shouting “trick or treat.”

Happy Halloween!

Has Your Perfect Pumpkin Ever Caved In?

October 17, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

One day your pumpkin is bright orange with a nice sturdy skin – looking just glorious. The next day it has collapsed in on itself and is just a slimy orange mess. What happened?

Many commercially available “Halloween” pumpkins are specifically grown to be oversized, thin-walled, with a huge seed pocket and a relatively small proportion of flesh, perfect for carving funny or scary faces. The smaller sugar pumpkins have more fleshy pumpkin meat for cooking and often have better flavor and texture.

A bit of pumpkin trivia: Pumpkins are a type of squash and are a member of the gourd family – think squash, cucumbers, and melons. We think of pumpkins as vegetables, but biologically they’re a fruit because they come from a flower and have seeds.

How To Avoid Pumpkin “Cave-In”

Because pumpkins come in many sizes, shapes, and colors you can look for one that appeals to your creative self. But, to avoid pumpkin “cave-in”:

Pick one with no cuts, bruises, or soft spots and with flesh that feels hard and doesn’t give easily. According to a pumpkin grower at my local farmers’ market, organisms can easily get inside any cut in the flesh – even a small nick — and cause rot. Your perfect pumpkin will be great one day and the next day it has totally caved-in on itself.
My farmers’ market source also told me that pumpkins can heal themselves (really, that’s what he said) – if you see a cut in the flesh, expose the cut to air and keep it dry.
There’s some chance that if your pumpkin is greenish in color you can leave it in a cool dry spot – not refrigerated – and it will ripen and turn orange.
A pumpkin’s stem should be attached, but don’t use it to pick the pumpkin up. Stems break off easily and can leave potential entry spots for organisms to invade and cause the dreaded pumpkin cave-in.
Gently tap your pumpkin and listen for how hollow it sounds. Lift it (not by the stem) to get an idea of how dense it is. The heavier a pumpkin is, the thicker its walls. If you’re going to carve a Jack-o’-lantern, thick walls will block the candlelight and no one will be able to see your fantastic (or maybe not so fantastic) carving.
Tall, oblong-shaped pumpkins are often stringier inside — which makes it difficult to make precise cuts.
Store your pumpkin carefully, especially if you pick it off the vine. You can toughen-up, or cure, a fresh-picked pumpkin by keeping it in a dry place without handling or disturbing it. Curing toughens the rind and makes it less prone to rot.

After The Carving . . .

A carved pumpkin starts to dry and shrivel up as soon as it’s cut and exposed to air.

To keep your jack-o’-lantern fresh longer:

Keep it cool and out of direct sunlight
Spray it with an anti-transpirant (like Wilt-Pruf and other brands).
If you’re having a party or just want a big “reveal,” drape your pumpkin with a damp towel until just before show time.
Protect your masterpiece from animals who might find it appealing.
Don’t leave your Jack-o’-lantern outside if there’s a threat of frost.

Jelly Beans: Do You Eat Them By The Handful Or One-By-One?

March 27, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Jelly beans: do you think they should they should come with a warning label, “STOP NOW or you’ll keep eating until they’re gone?”

Seriously – it’s pretty darn hard not to love those little nuggets of sweetness that come in multitudes of colors and flavors and get stuck in your teeth!

The Birth Of The Jelly Bean

The gummy insides of the jelly bean might be traced back centuries ago to the treat, Turkish Delight. Their outsides bring to mind the colored hard candy coating, developed in the late 17^th century, for the Jordan almond.

The modern jelly bean became popular during the American Civil War when Boston’s William Schraft encouraged sending candy to Union soldiers.

Jelly beans were the first bulk candy. They became one of the staples of penny candy that was sold by weight in the early 1900s —

first mentioned in an ad in The Chicago Daily News on July 5, 1905 for bulk jelly beans at nine cents a pound.

Around 1930 they became popular as Easter candy because of their egg shape, which represents spring, fertility, and resurrection.

The Many Flavors And Colors Of Jellybeans

Standard jelly beans come in fruit flavors but there’s a huge number of flavors available — some goofy, some sophisticated — like spiced, mint, gourmet, tropical, popcorn, bubble gum, pepper, and cola. They also come in a sugar free version (seems weird, but true).

Whatever your flavor preference, Americans eat a whole lot of jelly beans – around 16 billion at Easter — enough to circle the globe nearly three times if all the Easter jellybeans were lined up end to end.

Handfuls Or One By One, And What Flavor?

Do you go for handfuls at a time or pick and choose your colors and eat them one by one?

70% of kids ages 6–11 prefer to eat Easter jellybeans one at a time
23% say they eat several at once
Boys (29%) are more likely to eat a handful than girls (18%)
Kids say their favorite Easter jellybean flavors are cherry (20%), strawberry (12%), grape (10%), lime (7%), and blueberry (6%).

What’s In The Hard Shelled Nugget Of Sweetness?

Jelly beans are primarily made of sugar and also usually contain gelatin (Jelly Bellies don’t), corn syrup, modified food starch, and less than 0.5% of citric acid, sodium citrate, artificial flavors, confectioners glaze, pectin, carnauba wax, white mineral oil, magnesium hydroxide, and artificial colors (takes some of the fun out of them, doesn’t it?).

Even though they may give you Technicolor insides, they are fat free. On average:

10 small jelly beans (11g) have 41 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no protein, and 10.3 grams of carbs
10 large jelly beans (1oz or 28g) have 105 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no protein, and 26.2g carbs
Jelly Bellies have 4 calories in each bean, or about 100 calories in a single serving (25 beans) with approximately 1 gram of carbohydrate per bean and no fat.

Jelly Belly Jelly Beans

Jelly Bellies were invented in 1976. They were the first jelly beans to be sold in single flavors and to come with a menu of flavor choices.
It takes 7 to 21 days to make a single Jelly Belly jelly bean.
Very Cherry was the most popular Jelly Belly flavor for two decades until 1998, when Buttered Popcorn took over. Very Cherry moved back into the top spot by only 8 million beans in 2003.
Some jelly beans do contain gelatin, Jelly Bellies don’t and, according to the Jelly Belly website, are suitable for vegetarians although strict vegans may have issues with the beeswax and shellac that used to give them their final buff and polish.
Jelly Belly doesn’t use wheat, rye, barley, or oats in the basic recipe for Jelly Belly jelly beans but does use cornstarch as the modified food starch.
Jelly Belly beans have been certified kosher for the last two decades by the Kashrut supervision of KO Kosher Service. Since 2007 all Jelly Belly products have been certified by the Orthodox Union.
Also Kosher: Teene Beanee Jelly Beans and Just Born Jelly Beans are Pareve and OU.

Easter Candy Tally

Eating 25 small jelly beans, 5 Peeps, a 1 3/4 ounce hollow chocolate bunny, and 1 Cadbury Creme Egg, which is not an unusual amount of Easter candy, tallies 730 calories.

You’d need to walk 7.3 miles, 11.77 kilometers, or 14600 steps, assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps to walk off that number of calories. Sounds like a lot, but very doable over a few days.