Eating out without Blowing It -- Part 1

Guest Healthy Foodie Alexis Bonari has some great tips for us about how to eat out -- which Americans do an average of at least four times a week -- without sabotaging our healthy-eating principles. I'm posting Part 1 today, with Part 2 to follow within a few days. Thanks, Alexis!

Tips and Tricks for Eating Out: Sticking to Your Healthy Food Ethic

If you’ve been working hard to maintain a healthy diet, you certainly don’t want to blow everything on a restaurant, no matter how delicious the cuisine might be. Although it’s usually best to avoid eating out, when you’re at that inevitable lunch date or birthday dinner, there are plenty of ways to make sure you stick to your healthy foodie guns. Check out the following advice for making the most out of the healthy options in any restaurant.

Pre-Game

If you know you’re going out to eat, grab a healthy snack just before you leave. This will keep you from ordering an appetizer and will help minimize your frustration if your friends dig into one. Try something light but substantial, such as apple slices with a little peanut butter or half of a bagel with low-fat cream cheese. Yogurt is also a great choice, but you might want to add some carrot sticks to keep something in your stomach while the appetizers make the rounds at your table. While you’re preparing your snack, think about what you’re going to order. If you’re unfamiliar with the restaurant, look it up online and check out the menu to figure out what you’ll order. Making the decision before you get to the restaurant can help keep you on track with your healthy diet by minimizing temptation.

Get Specific

Make sure you’re familiar with everything about the dish you’re ordering. Ask questions if anything seems vague and don’t apologize for your “picky” behavior. It’s your prerogative to order exactly what you need from a restaurant. Once you know what you’re getting into, order all sauces and dressings on the side to avoid consuming too much of them. Many dishes arrive drenched in potentially fatty, cream-based sauces and dressings like ranch or bleu cheese that can ruin your diet. Don’t order anything fried; instead, inform the waiter that you’d like the dish grilled, broiled, steamed, or cooked in a similar healthy way. Often, menus will let you know when you have multiple preparation options like these.

Coming soon: Minimizing liquid calories and being mindful of your portions

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education, researching various online degree programs. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

Blueberry Mustard Sauce -- great with pork, chicken, even salmon

For my upcoming birthday, my BFF gave me a pile of blueberry products she got up in Michigan (a.k.a. blueberry heaven) -- she knows it's my favorite fruit.
One of the items was blueberry mustard, which set me on a quest to use some late-season berries in a somewhat unusual way.
If you don't have blueberry mustard, that's fine -- just use regular mustard in this recipe.
For company, I had it with grilled pork tenderloin, served here (in photo) on a bed of greens, mixed veggies and grains. The sauce received rave reviews!
I had enough leftover to sauce another dish; I popped it in the freezer for now and will likely use it with chicken or fish in a couple of weeks.

Recipe: Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Blueberry Mustard Sauce Serves 4
Ingredients:
One large pork tenderloin, about 1 1/4 pounds
3 T minced garlic
2 T canola oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 medium to large shallot, finely chopped
2 T olive oil
1 1/2 pints fresh blueberries
1/4 cup dry white wine
3 T mustard (or blueberry mustard)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 T sugar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:
In a flat bowl large enough to hold the tenderloin, mix together garlic and canola oil. Season pork with salt and pepper and place in bowl. Turn pork to coat all sides with garlic mixture. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour and up to 6 hours. Remove pork from marinade and scrape off garlic bits (they will burn when grilled).
Preheat a grill until hot. Cook pork on medium-high heat to desired level of doneness.
While grill is heating, make the sauce:
Heat the olive oil in a medium frying pan and add the shallot. Stir and cook for about 3 minutes, until shallot starts to soften.
Stir in blueberries, wine and mustard. Cover and reduce heat to low. Cook for about 5 minutes, then uncover and increase heat to medium-high, letting mixture boil and give up some of its liquid. Add lemon juice, sugar and seasonings. Taste and adjust as needed, adding more sugar if you think it needs it.

Let pork sit on a cutting board for a few minutes after you remove it from the grill. Slice pork thickly (about 1 1/2 to 2 inches) and arrange on a platter. Top with a small amount of sauce, then pass the rest of the sauce in a gravy boat at the table.

What Matters More: Diet or Exercise?

Ideally, we'd all like to be thin and athletic, right? We'd never eat junk, fit perfectly into our skinny jeans and compete in marathons, or at least be able to run up flights of stairs without getting winded.
But since most of us can't do all that, it's interesting to think about what our top health goal should be.
Well, according to new research, it seems that being active -- getting regular exercise -- is more important than dropping the pounds.

Here's the scoop, from Real Age:

"Is your health goal to get thin or to get active? Science suggests it may be best to think more about breaking a sweat than about stepping on the scale.

"In a recent study, being inactive translated into a higher risk of heart disease, regardless of a person's body mass index (BMI).

Get Moving
"BMI is a measure of overall body weight that takes into consideration a person's height. Medical experts have used it as an indicator of body fatness and thus a tool for determining disease risk. But in a recent study, inactive people were in a higher heart-risk category no matter what their BMIs were. Seems their couch-potato ways translated into a disproportionately big waist, irrespective of how much -- or how little -- they tipped the scales. And a too-big waist means big trouble for the heart.

Body Composition
"Having a BMI within a normal range is great, but it's not the be-all and end-all of good health. You can have a normal BMI and still be unhealthy -- especially if you don't exercise. In the recent study, inactive men had a higher risk of future heart disease compared with active men. Again, this was regardless of BMIs and bathroom scales. Inactive women fared even worse than men when it came to heart disease risk, and it's all because activity affects body proportion. Exercise makes it less likely that your body fat will get stored in the most dangerous place you can store it: around your abdomen."

My honey's breakfast

My husband wanted to share his daily breakfast creation with Healthy Foodie readers.
He makes this creative cold cereal concoction seven days a week, and swears by not only its health profile but also its tasty excellence.
He mixes three different cold cereals -- raisin bran, Cheerios (the Trader Joe's house brand) and some granola, usually from a local purveyor called Claddagh Farms.
Next comes chopped walnuts, sliced almonds and as many types of berries as he can fit into the bowl. There are always blueberries, and raspberries and/or blackberries if they're on hand.
He tops it off with a banana and adds skim milk.
Every day, without fail....plus coffee and orange juice.

Seafood salad entree for a crowd

This beautiful summer dinner will feed eight hungry folks -- all you need to serve it with is some crusty bread with olive oil and a dry white wine of your choice. Of course, you can cut the recipe in half if you're not feeding that many people.

Recipe: Grilled Tuna and Salmon Salad
Serves 8

Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds fresh tuna steaks, rubbed lightly with canola oil
1 1/2 pounds salmon fillet, rubbed lightly with canola oil
Salt and pepper for the fish
10 cups (approximately) salad greens
1 pound green beans, trimmed and broken into bite-size pieces and steamed until just tender
1 carton small cherry tomatoes, such as Sun Gold, cut in half
1 1/12 pounds small red potatoes, salted and steamed, cut into bite-size pieces
3 T capers, drained and rinsed
Salad dressing of your choice; preferably a lemony vinaigrette

Instructions:
Grill (or saute) tuna and salmon to your desired level of doneness (I like medium rare tuna and medium salmon). Let cool, then slice into bite-size pieces.
Dress the salad greens and spread them onto a large serving platter.
Sprinkle green beans, tomatoes, potatoes and capers evenly over the greens.
Place tuna on one side of the platter and salmon on the other side (or mix the two fish together -- your choice).
Serve, passing additional dressing at the table.

No-Martini Lunch :-(

My BFF treated me to (early) birthday lunch at downtown Cincinnati's trendy Mexican resto, Nada. This is one of the city's most hopping bar scenes, patio crammed on a gorgeous late summer day, filled with young movers and shakers scarfing down tacos, guacamole and baskets of tortilla chips.
We settled in and ordered our margaritas. Then we looked around. Not ONE alcoholic beverage in sight at nearby tables.
I must be overly influenced by the glamorous, fictional world of "Mad Men," nostalgic for the boozy lunches of yore. That's not modern work-ethic America, you might say. But what's the matter with these thirty-somethings, can't they handle their cocktails?
I heard Jerry Della Famina, the ad exec whose agency reportedly was the model for "Mad Men," telling an NPR interviewer that if anything, in the 1950s and '60s they partyed even heartier than the AMC-TV series depicts -- and did a lot of creative, award-winning work after enjoying their three-martini lunches.
For better or worse, times certainly have changed.

The margaritas were delicious, and our shared vegetarian tacos (very tasty filling) and "goat cheese quesadilla salad" were good if not great. Disclaimer: I just returned from the southwest including Santa Fe NM, and have higher than usual standards for Mexican fare.

Oven-fried fish (in this case, cod) with sauteed summer squash

If you'd like a crunchy coating for mild, flaky fish but don't want to deep fry, try dipping the fish fillets in an egg wash, then in seasoned bread crumbs. Bake the fish for a short while in a hot oven, and you should have the dish you were looking for -- but it'll be way healthier than a fried fish dinner.
This also works quite well with boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
For a side dish, I simply sauteed mixed baby squashes from the farmer's market, adding some diced shallot, chopped roasted red pepper (from a jar) and capers.
To top the fish, I put a little of the sauce from the squash and served with lemon wedges.

Recipe: Oven-Fried Fish (Serves 2; can be doubled)

Ingredients:
2 8-ounce fish fillets, such as cod, flounder or tilapia
2 eggs, lightly beaten with 2 T water
1 tsp lemon-pepper seasoning
Dash of salt
1 cup plain bread crumbs
1 tsp dried thyme

Instructions:
Pat fish fillets dry with paper towels.
Place eggs and water in a medium, shallow bowl; add lemon-pepper and salt to eggs.
Sprinkle bread crumbs on a large sheet of waxed paper and sprinkle thyme over top of crumbs.
Using tongs, dip one fish fillet in the egg mixture, let excess drip off, then dredge fish in the bread crumbs. Use hands, if necessary, to evenly coat the fillet with seasoned crumbs. Place fillet on a clean sheet of waxed paper.
Repeat with other fillet.
Cover fish gently with more wax paper and refrigerate for 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Place fish on a large baking sheet that has been coated with cooking spray.
Bake fish in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes (depending on thickness of fillets). Remove when coating has begun to brown. Don't overcook -- the fillets will turn dry if they stay in the oven too long.
Serve with lemon wedges.