Pesach and nutrition

[cellio]

Notes to self for next year:

• Use fish, a lot, to make up the protein deficit (waa! no soy!) without driving calories through the roof. That much meat, cheese, and egg is bad for you.
• But not tuna salad. I mean real fish, several times during the week. Fresh fish freezes.
• Eat more fruit. Fruit doesn't have to come in cans, you know; there's this place called the produce aisle.
• Eat more veggies too. Buy a microwave-safe casserole for this.
• There's a vitamin-balance problem, but I don't know how to fix it when the balanced breakfast drink is off limits.
• Baby carrots are not the only convenient raw veggie -- just the most convenient one. 400% RDA on Vitamin A is probably bad for you, even if it's only a week.
• Maybe you shouldn't eat matzah after the seders. It's not required, and there are other delivery systems for cheese and jam. Ok, maybe not jam, but you shouldn't be eating much of that anyway.

Comments

[jeannegrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm eating a lot of eggs. To make it a bit more healthy, I use 2 or 3 whites to every yolk when making omlettes. Still tastes yummy!

[jeannegrrl.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, same thing for egg salad. I leave out up to half the yolks when making egg salad. I leave the remainder for the birdies to peck at. :)

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Ack! You're turning them into cannibals! Next they'll develop a taste for human flesh! :D :D :D
-- Dagonell

[cellio]

Thanks! I hadn't considered using a different balance of whites and yolks than nature provided, but that would help.

[gingicat]

Unless you're allergic to milk protein, yogurt is good for protein too.

Whole wheat matzah helps digestive issues, as do bananas.

Multivitamins, fruit juice, and dairy will help the vitamin deficit.

So saith the pregnant woman. ;)

[cellio]

Thanks for the advice.

Yogurt: good point. I've been doing that, but maybe I need to do more.

Matzah: what I really want is rye matzah. :-) (I don't care for whole-wheat bread, though I like all the other grains. I should try whole-wheat matzah, though; it's not like matzah overly resembles bread anyway.) And yeah, I've been using bananas to help with that.

I know effectively nothing about vitamin supplements, as I'm used to doing it through diet. Are there bazillions of incompatable options, or will I be ok if I just hunt down anything that claims to be balanced?

[geekosaur]

Whole-wheat matzah makes for a nice change in the diet. It's not at all bad, but then I like whole-wheat bread. (Admittedly I'd like to see the rye matzah too :)

[gingicat]

Generally, yeah, any multivitamin you can get in the supermarket or pharmacy will be fine; ask the pharmacist if you're worried. I like the Nature Made brand, myself.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

Pardon me if the answer is obvious, but why "no soy"?

[cellio]

It's kitniyot, and the main thing that prompts me to rethink the whole kitniyot thing. But this would be the wrong time to make that decision; I need to have a conversation with my rabbi when I'm not in the middle of it and thus predisposed toward one answer.

Kitniyot is stuff that's not chametz but that the rabbis ruled is "like chametz", kind of the way chicken is meat not to be mixed with dairy even though you can't milk a chicken.

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

Thanks- I just looked up a list of kitniyot foods... I would be very unhappy about missing those. Quinoa was pointed out several times in my quick internet search- have you tried it?

[cellio]

I've never tried (or to the best of my knowledge seen) quinoa. Was it pointed out as an alternative or as kitniyot?

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

I noticed it because I love the stuff.
I leave it to you to decide the value of these links:

http://www.aish.com/passlaw/passlawdefault/All_About_Kitniyot.asp
http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_passoverkosher.htm

[cellio]

Aish is pretty mainline orthodox, so if they're eating quinoa on Pesach I'm not too worried about doing so. Thanks for the tip; I'll have to check our local co-op store for it.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

quinoa is fine on Pesach, with some caveats. It's tricky to find it kosher l'pesach, becaus it's usually refined (or just packaged?) in the same place as grains we can't eat. Star-K and CRC usually put notices out every year saying which brands are KLP with and without KLP on it.

[cellio]

Thanks for the tips.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I've found quinoa locally at Whole Foods and at a cooperative supermarket. And here everyone accepts it as kosher for Passover (it was part of the dinner at the first seder I went to, and someone mention having been served quinoa at every meal on Shabbat, too.)

If you get some, do rinse it before boiling.

[cortejo.livejournal.com]

Quinoa is a staple in my house. It is FULL of protien. We use it instead of rice as well as making some wonderful meals like this one:

http://www.recipeland.com/recipe/1000/

I sub any kind of bean on hand (including chick peas) for the butter beans, leave out the honey and salt, and sub black peper for the cardamom.

[cellio]

That sounds yummy! Thanks for the pointer.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

yeah, but if I remember correctly it's got a ton of protein in it. Or some such minerally goodness.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

It's ONE week. Missing those foods for one week is not devastating for any healthy person. Pesach allows you to be creative and pick up new foods and preparations along the way. It's nice.

[geekosaur]

Soybeans are in the category of "kitniyot", banned by Rabbinical enactment because of a perceived similarity to "chametz" (wheat, oats, rye, barley, spelt — except when prepared as matzot according to very strict rules; but you can't use that to get around kitniyot, soy matzot would not be kosher).

[profane-stencil.livejournal.com]

Another rapid answer! Thanks.

[vonstrassburg.livejournal.com]

You'll be happy to hear that the nearby bakery obviously got tipped off that there was some major jewish festival thingy happening about now, so they baked lots and lots of extra loaves of challah. The staff were looking sufficiently bemused and depressed when I went past there this evening that I didn't feel justified in wandering in and hitting them with a clue stick.

[cellio]

Oops. :-)

[vonstrassburg.livejournal.com]

My post-workout evening snack, which is also good for pesach includes:

* 1 x 95g tin salmon (John West, a local brand, not sure if you have it there, makes it in various "flavours" including smoked, lemon & thyme, etc).
* 1 x boiled egg.
* 1 x handful sprouts (OK, so my rabbi told me that alfalfa sprouts were kosher for passover, not sure about mung bean, check with yours).
* 1 x splodge kosher vegetable oil mayo or similar.
* 1 x tomato, sliced over the top.

The aim is for high-protein and low-carb rather than specifically kosher for passover, but it works as a protein boost, and has fibre, vitamins, and omega-3's as well. Put it on some matzah for added carbs. It's surprisingly filling for a relatively small serve.

[cellio]

Thanks; that does sound like a good combination. (I don't recognize John West, but we certainly have plain canned salmon available.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

You may not need to be that worried about the calories. JAMA has come out with a report (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/293/15/1861) from the CDC that they'd overcounted the deaths from obesity by a factor of 14. (Costs $12--it was free when it first came out.) Briefly, being somewhat above the recommended weight increases longevity. Being moderately fatter than that makes little difference. Being very fat is still considered dangerous.

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You may not need to be that worried about the calories. JAMA has come out with <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/293/15/1861">a report</a> from the CDC that they'd overcounted the deaths from obesity by a factor of 14. (Costs $12--it was free when it first came out.) Briefly, being somewhat above the recommended weight increases longevity. Being moderately fatter than that makes little difference. Being very fat is still considered dangerous.

<a href="http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3142605"Here's</a> the newspaper version.

[cellio]

That's promising. That said, though, I could stand to not put on any more pounds than I've already got.

[cortejo.livejournal.com]

My husband has a lot of food issues bu how we handle it I think could apply to you too.

We have all his food that he can eat, in this case no sugar and no dairy not no fat, on one shelf in the pantry. We have no food in the fridge that isn't going to be eaten by one of the three of us. No expired food, no condiments that one on likes, etc. We do not load up the fridge so you can't find stuff anymore.

Oatmeal is a wonderful low fat source of iron and protien and now comes in sugar free instant packets.

Wheat germ and sugar free apple sauce make a wonderful snack. It tastes like apple crips.

Small tomatoes are just as convient as baby carrots. So are grapes.

[hopeness.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about Pesach food this year, although I was smart enough to buy a package of frozen sole fillets. Also we got a lot of seder leftovers (which complicated things a bit because we were exclusively dairy at home, we ate out of styrofoam bowls and I had to do clean up in the bathroom sink!).

I think we would've eaten better this week if we had more than one pot.

[cellio]

I've definitely been adding pots and utensils to the Pesach stash over the years. While it's still kind of small (I realized last night that I would have to bake a brisket rather than my usual stove-top prep because I didn't have a meat skillet large enough), it makes a big difference. Money spent on giving yourself some cooking options is not wasted. Besides, if down the road you decide that you don't use your Pesach thingamabob enough to be worth the hassle of storing and shlepping it, you can downgrade it to regular kosher and use it the rest of the year. :-)

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I pretty much LIVE on fruits and veggies during pesach. And, like Jeanne, I tend to cut back on the egg yolks whenever feasible. I do this much of the year anyway, as Seth's cholesterol doesn't need any help inching up.

Convenient veggies: grape tomatoes. Grapes (not a veggie, but healthy and convenient) Also, if you cut up celery into snack sized portions before Pesach and keep them soaking in water, they'll last all through pesach. That's what I love about celery. Another nice snacky food is cucumbers. Slice 'em, or cut them into spears. It only takes a few minutes to peel and cut up a cucumber. And it's a tasty snack with next to no calories.

Convenient fruits too: (grapes of course), strawberries. Just rinse them off when you buy them and then you can snack on them whenever. Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. Apples. Bananas. Oranges.

I make a fruit salad virtually every day during Pesach. Pineapple, honeydew, strawberries, mango, and assorted berries. It's sweet, it's filling, it's healthy. You've probably noticed, also, that I don't believe in canned fruit.

I eat little matzoh during the week. I make few things with matzoh, even. I made farfel stuffing this year, but that can be eaten sparingly and still enjoyed.

Most of the money that I spent on food this year, believe it or not, went to the produce aisle at Whole Foods. I spent a lot of time browsing, finding interesting things and getting inspired. It worked out well, I think.

[cellio]

Thanks for the suggestions! (I didn't know that celery would keep in water.)

I rarely use canned fruit at home (only when using fresh is too much of a PITA, like pineapple, or fresh is out of season). The canned fruit is for work, where the can and a plastic spoon are all I need for a mid-afternoon snack.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

All you need for a mid-afternoon snack is a plastic baggy full of already washed grapes, a couple of fingers to grab the grapes with, and a mouth to pop them in. :)

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

oh, and yes, celery will keep in water. Also if you have droopy sad celery, cut the stalks and put them in water in the fridge. In a couple hours, it'll be nice and crisp again. :)