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The Arugula Fairy

After ten luxurious days lounging on the beach in sunny San Clemente, California, I returned to my garden with bronzed skin and renewed interest in dirt, weeds, and all God’s plants. Early that first morning back home I padded in my slippers out to my rock garden boxes (low-lying Stonehenge set in grass) to discover the arugula fairy had definitely stopped at my house. This sweet/peppery green had grown to the size of giant cabbage leaves. In my absence the cold and rain encouraged the arugula to show off like I have never seen—and to do so with tender sweetness. As I harvested, baskets were full to overflowing. I grazed the whole time. There are Billy goats that could not eat as much arugula as I ate. And then, like the Little Red Hen, I went inside carrying my treasure and made myself a giant salad out of the beautiful oak-shaped green.

With its assertive flavor and tenderness, arugula likes to partner with fruity, sweet flavors. Strawberries, balsamic vinegar, and almonds are a classic combo. As is oranges, feta, and arugula. Arugula also makes a great appearance on a ham and cheese grilled sandwich as well as in a chorizo sausage omelet. Getting hungry? I know I am. The following recipe got cut at the last minute from my book Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, & Sexy, through no fault of its own. Which is a real shame because this lemon-garlic-caper dressing over freshly shaved Parmigiano Reggiano, pine nuts, and arugula is a home run—help me I’m swooning. Enjoy.

Arugula-Parmesan Salad

Serves 4

When you can find beautiful fresh arugula in the market (known as “rocket” in England), enjoy this no-nonsense salad inspired by the flavors of Tuscany. Alternately, grow it yourself in a pot outside your door. Every spring this peppery green volunteers to sprout up in my garden amid more reluctant vegetables that have the sense to wait until the snow melts. Arugula loves cool weather and develops sweetness in early spring. Harvest it young for the mildest and most tender leaves. The bold flavors of this salad pair well with an entrée of roast lamb, tomato and zucchini ragout, or garlic-rubbed steaks.

1 small clove garlic

2 tablespoons flat-leaf Italian parsley

1 teaspoon capers, drained and rinsed

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 cups baby spinach, washed and dried

2 cups arugula, washed and dried

1 1/2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted

Parmigiano Reggiano or Asiago cheese for grating

Black pepper

In a small processor or blender, puree garlic, parsley, capers and lemon juice. Drizzle in olive oil and blend until emulsified. In a large bowl toss spinach and arugula with dressing. Divide between four plates. Sprinkle salads with pine nuts. Using a vegetable peeler or hand grater, top salads with cheese and a grind of fresh black pepper, and serve.

Tres Hatch is the author of Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, & Sexy.

Cookies or Muffins?

Sometimes life presents a quandary and this week it was: cookies or muffins? So I made both. Determined to use up a gargantuan amount of leftover pack pumpkin, I began with the following recipe from Taste of Home Magazine for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. Not only were they ethereal (note the past tense), but they were the perfect texture of soft and cakey, with a surprising snap to the outer crust. The inclusion of oats gave them greater moisture and heft. Perhaps…the perfect cookie.

Although tempted to make several more batches of these cookies, I had the wild hare to branch out with muffins. I took one look at a recipe I had for “skinny” Pumpkin Muffins and promptly modified it to feature chocolate chips and a sufficient quantity of sugar. Choking down an inferior muffin with half the sugar doesn’t benefit me when it is primarily a white flour cake made with butter. I’m just keeping it real. With the badly needed inclusion of chocolate and the nutty texture of sunflower seeds on top, these muffins are outstanding. They have none of the sour-metallic flavor prominent in some baking powder quick breads and with a moist crumb inside, they were gobbled up before I could say “carbohydrates.”

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes approximately 48 cookies

1 cup butter, softened

¾ cup brown sugar, packed

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour (our use half whole wheat and half white flour)

1 cup oats (quick or old-fashioned)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon, ground

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350-degrees. In bowl of standing mixer cream butter and both sugars until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla extract and beat well. In a large bowl whisk together flour, oats, baking soda, and cinnamon. In three additions fold dry mixture into butter mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by tablespoons onto greased baking sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes until lightly browned.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins with Sunflower Seeds

Makes 12 muffins

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon salt

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup sugar

2 large eggs

¾ cup pumpkin puree

¼ cup milk

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

sunflower seeds (optional)

Preheat oven to 400-degrees. In a large bowl whisk flour, baking powder, spices, and salt. Line a regular muffin pan with paper liners or brush muffin tins with oil. In large bowl of standing mixer beat butter until soft and fluffy and then beat in the sugars. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Carefully, stir in pumpkin and milk. Stir in chocolate chips. Fill muffin cups with approximately ½ cup batter and sprinkle tops with sunflower seeds. Bake about 25 minutes or until muffins are puffed and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Gratitude- Top 10 Lists

I espouse wholeness. Connecting our spirits and our bodies creates harmony and builds a complete soul. To this end I ask readers to try this exercise: Identify your top ten best physical features, and then rank your top ten worst features. This exercise has a point. Please do it now. Scribble your lists on a napkin, notepad, or even better, write them in the comments section of this blog. Don’t think or censor, just write 10 best features and 10 worst.

How many items actually made it onto your “best feature” list? Did you strain your brain to find more than five? This exercise often reveals the second list to be much longer than the first. Sadly, we tend to rehearse our flaws in our own minds as well as discussing them with others. But, rarely do we shout to the world that we have beautiful hands and an elegant nose. When was the last time you told someone, out loud, about your best features?

Identify which items on your “worst” list are not remedied with greater health and balance. (Put a star or doodle by these.) For instance, height won’t change no matter how healthy we get. Put a star by it. If I am short-waisted and have a weak chin, all the weight control in the world won’t give me a longer torso and a stronger jawline. Do not put a star by the things you can fix with surgery—no surgery will ever help you make peace with the body you have been given. Even with a boob job, there will be other traits you despair over.

Universally, we easily identify flaws but we are thoroughly unaccustomed to acknowledging attributes. Was your design a mistake? If you believe in God you know, “He don’t make no junk.” So, what could possibly make us hold ourselves up to a fantasy standard that is unachievable (height, torso, chin) and therefore, by definition, inadequate?

The answer is gratitude. When I criticize myself I just plain forget to lose myself in gratitude. It is easier to knock my skinny lips and wide hips than it is to feel grateful for those hips ability to safely birth my glorious children. When I grumble about my thin hair I forget I got it from my beloved Grandma—no thin hair also means no Grandma. It is easier to hate my love handles than to recognize I go to bed without hunger. In India millions of orphaned street children live with hunger in crushing poverty and desperation, day-in-day-out, yet my compassion for those in need stops when all I can focus on is my own jelly belly. Gratitude is the answer. Gratitude is also the paradigm out of which true harmony with my body is achieved. I cannot properly “hear” my body’s messages if I am engaged in self-criticism, and it is by connecting to my body in a healthy way that I get prompts of what to eat and when to stop eating. Psychological warfare with myself won’t help me become permanently thin and healthy. Gratitude is the foundation for thinking thin.

For all those items above marked with a star or doodle, make peace with each one of them by identifying how they are a blessing in your life. Say aloud the following sentence:

Without (insert feature here) I would __________________________________________.

Personally, I am grateful for my muscular thighs. They weren’t designed for modeling skinny jeans but they were endowed with the strength to hike Angel’s Landing at Zion’s National Park with my children. My German thighs can dig dirt and squat in the yard, allowing me to grow herbs, vegetables, and flowers. My legs can dance West Coast Swing all night long and can do endless squats in a Zumba class. My thighs power big jumps in volleyball and help me lift heavy bags of flour and sugar for baking. I can waterski and snow ski without injury or exhaustion. On this lap I held all three of my babies. Most important, I can walk. I can run. How fantastic! These are thighs worthy of my gratitude. Never again will I disrespect my design by imagining I need legs different than the ones I have.

Tres Hatch is the author of Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, & Sexy.

Chicken-Mango Salad

Have you ever opened your refrigerator to make dinner and found nothing but odd combinations of seemingly unrelated food? Perhaps an onion, half a bottle of caramel sauce, and miso paste; hmmm. To quote the Cake Boss: “Not for nuttun’, but waddya gonna do?”

In my recent foray into the realm of “make something out of nothing” I came up with this rather tasty chicken-mango salad. I know mangoes are not normally found lying about most American kitchens, but now is the time to indulge in this fruit because it is in-season and inexpensive. Select a variety of soft and firm mangoes so you can eat sweet mangoes today and have them ripen as you want them. If you are not a mango lover, which, incidentally, is the most widely eaten fruit in the world, you will be a fan after tasting the sweet, juicy, piney, peachy flesh. If you thought the prize went to bananas and apples for highest consumption, you need only to look a little further South towards the equator where human populations are dense and mango trees flourish.

This salad can be served on toast and over a bed of lettuce equally well.

Chicken Mango Salad

Serves 6 as an entree

If the prospect of separating the mango pulp from the skin and pit seems daunting, read the tip below.

2 (14.4 ounce) cans chicken chunks, drained (reserve broth for another use)

2 ribs celery, finely diced

1/2 small Persian cucumber, finely diced

1/4 red onion, finely diced

1 mango, finely diced

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely chopped

1 big glob mayo (about 1 cup)

salt and pepper

generous dash lemon pepper, or zest of 1/2 lemon

garnish with salted nuts and crushed tortilla chips

In a large bowl mix all ingredients well and adjust salt and pepper for seasoning. Serve over lettuce or on toasted bread.

*To dice a mango run a knife all the way through the middle (top to bottom/North to South) along one plane of the flat pit. Hold mango half without pit in palm of hand and score down to the skin in narrow slits. Rotate and again score crosswise down to the skin. Invert mango so flesh pops out toward you. Run a knife along the base by the skin to release attached pieces. Repeat with other half.

Ganache that’s good…

One question I am frequently asked: what is ganache? This topic may come up with great regularity because I obsessively talk about the decadently-rich chocolate confection. But, regardless of the source of the prompt, I am happy to elaborate on one of nature’s more perfect luxuries. Ganache is a combination of semi-sweet or dark chocolate (not milk chocolate) and cream, melted together in varying proportions. Equal parts chocolate-to-cream results in a mixture that, when cooled, thickens to a firm fudgy consistency. Use more cream, and it sets up softer, almost a sauce. Ganache is the stuff frequently found in the middle of a chocolate truffle. Or, as I like to call it: breakfast.

Ganache is used in more than just candy centers. When warm and liquid it can be poured over baked goods and then sets up to create a chocolate glaze. It can be allowed to stiffen and then formed into shapes as a decorative accent. Another innovation is to allow ganache to set up in the refrigerator until firm but pliable, and then whip it in a standing mixture until light and fluffy—to spread like frosting on cake and cupcakes. Add a spoonful of light corn syrup to melted ganache and it will stay soft and pliable, rather than setting up firm like chocolate bark.

However, my favorite use for ganache is to drizzle warm mixtures over vanilla bean ice cream. It hardens against the frozen cream and the texture explosion in my mouth is fantastic. Cold ice cream melts on my tongue in tandem with the buttery-tasting chocolate ganache. First, vanilla cream, then chocolate cream. Oi Veh! I need oxygen.

Use only good quality chocolate and cream because you will taste them both, unadorned, in ganache. I like any good bar chocolate: Amano, Lindt, Trader Joes, Guittard, Cadbury, Ghiradelli, Cote d’Or, etc. Use chocolate chips when in a pinch, but try to keep a great bar of chocolate on hand for a ganache emergency. Whether you actually use it for ganache or not, you will be prepared for the end of the world, because we all know chocolate will become the new currency.

The following recipe features a chocolate ganache glaze over zucchini brownies.

Zucchini-Walnut Brownies

With Ganache Glaze

Makes one 9 x 13 pan

(From Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, & Sexy, by Tres Prier Hatch)

No one in my family suspects zucchini is hidden inside these moist brownies. They are nice and chocolaty, but not overwhelmingly rich. Try using light olive oil instead of canola or cooking oil. By my estimation, with zucchini, nuts, dark chocolate and olive oil they are practically health food.

2 cups zucchini, finely grated

½ cup oil

1 ½ cups sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups flour

¼ cup cocoa

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

6-ounces good quality dark chocolate

½ cup cream

Preheat oven to 350-degrees. In a large bowl mix zucchini, oil, sugar and vanilla. In a medium bowl whisk together dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients to wet mixture. Gently stir in nuts. Mix until just combined. Spray a 9 x 13-inch pan with cooking spray. Spread batter into pan. Bake for 20-30 minutes. Cool.

In a small bowl set over (not in) simmering water, melt chocolate and cream together, stirring frequently. Add more cream if mixture is quite thick. Pour melted ganache over brownies and use an offset spatula to spread to edges of pan. Refrigerate to set icing. Cut into squares and serve. For perfect slices, dip knife in hot water and wipe dry before cutting each slice.

Tres Hatch is the author of: Miracle Pill 10 Truths to Healthy, Thin, & Sexy. She eats chocolate every day.