Ginger Gold Apple

This is the perfect apple. Juicy, flavorful, light and crisp. Just listen to how it sounds when you bite into it, the juice running down the side of your mouth …

Remember the apple you ate as a kid? What an apple should be?

This is that apple.

Cubby Sitting

There is a wonderful editorial in this week’s JAMA by Laura M Prager, MD a child psychiatrist who worked part-time during her children’s early years. Years in which she completed her fellowship on an extended schedule, then worked only four hours a week – just enough to keep her skills honed and her foot in the door – until she re-entered the full time work force some years later when her children did not need her at home.

This work schedule gave Prader the time to be the mom she wanted to be – in her case, the mom who was able to sit outside her anxious preschooler’s classroom every day for the three weeks it took her child to adjust to the world away from her –

Drawing from my years of training in child psychiatry, I offered to be a transitional object for her or, in her vernacular, a “cubby toy.” …Each morning I walked her into the class and then retreated to the hallway outside the room, where I sat in a wooden cubby with a magazine and waited. The first week she came out to check on me quite regularly. By the second week, she waved to me when she came out to get her jacket on the way to the playground. By the third week, she was done with me. I asked her if she wanted to bring anything else with her to take my place, and she shook her head no: her shiny pink backpack full of the precious toys of the moment that we’d packed with care the night before was enough.

In addition to having what sounds like an amazingly supportive boss, Dr Prader also had a role model for her unique career path – her mom, a doc who had a successful part-time child psychiatry practice for many years. A woman who showed her that achieving work-family balance is possible with some inginuity (and some creative financing).

I have to be honest and say that I rarely ever considered working part time, and working just four hours a week would have been completely impossible financially. I was lucky enough, though, to have the world’s most amazing baby sitter, who in fact handled my youngest daughter’s preschool transition in much the same way Prader did. (I said she was amazing, didn’t I?)

And while I was not able to do the cubby sitting for my kids myself, what I did do was to carve out my own little area of medicine that made it work for me and my family – office gynecology. I first gave up OB and then surgery, giving me regular hours and some semblance of a managable home life.

At the time I chose to limit my practice to the office, no one else in my field that I knew was doing it. A few women were giving up OB, but usually at the end of their careers, when children were usually grown and out of the house. It took a lot of persuasion to convince my boss that an office-based practice was financially viable (it is), and a little more time than that to convince myself that I wasn’t less of a doc than my colleagues still putting in the grueling hours in the OR and on the labor floor (I’m not).

Now, a decade later, I regularly have residents and students asking me “How do I get to do what you do?” I’ve now become the role model for a new generation of doctors, showing them a path they might not have considered when they first became attracted to this field of medicine.

The carrying costs for a doc (malpractice, licensing, support staff, call coverage) may be too high for many practices specialties to allow them to retain an employee who only works 4 hours a week, as Prader did. And it’s hard to envision a workplace that can support more than an occasional employee working part time. Or a fellowship program that can sustain that kind of flexibility for more than one fellow at a time.

But the opportunities are expanding. They have to, with 50% or more of medical student graduates being female. At our institution alone we have one obstetrician who works regular hours as a hospitalist (we call them “laborists”) and another doing what I do, only half time. And several other women working regular hours on the teaching service, with limited on call duties and predictable hours (for the most part).

I don’t know that any of us will be doing much cubby sitting any time soon, but it’s a start.
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Tempeh, over at Mothers in Medicine, tells you how to get a part-time job in medicine.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Central Park, late Autumn 2008

As the days shorten, we turn to the light of the hearth to replace what has been lost from the sun, firing up the stove to make foods whose warmth fills our stomachs and our hearts with rich, pungent flavors that linger on our tongues and in our bosom long after the last spoonful has been eaten.

Food like mushroom soup – for me the perfect antidote to the cold that permeated my bones hours after I had ridden the Central Park Bike Loop this morning with Linda and Paula. Makes me feel good enough to want to do it again next week.

Well, maybe not that good…

Cream of Mushroom Soup

For this soup, I married elements of two recipes from a pair of my fave chefs – Jamie Oliver and Ina Garten. You can make this soup as light or as heavy as you like by varying the fat content of your milk. (I used a mix of half-and-half and skim milk.)

1 lb assorted fresh mushrooms (I used cremini and shiitake), sliced.
a few ounces dried mushrooms (I used chantarelles; Porcini are more readily available.)
1 cup boiling hot water
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
2 large shallots, minced
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, un-chopped
1/4 cup white wine (Sherry is also nice)
1 liter chicken broth
Sat and pepper to taste (be generous with both)
Milk, cream or half and half to total 2 cups
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley

Place the dried mushrooms in a 2 cup Pyrex bowl and pour over boiling hot water to cover. Let steep for 20-30 mins. Take out and rinse the mushrooms to remove the grit, the roughly chop them and set aside. Strain the broth using a coffee filter and set aside.

Heat up olive oil and butter in a soup pot over moderately high heat. Add the cremini, shiitake and reserved hydrated chantarelles, stir for a moment or so then add shallots, garlic and thyme along with some salt and pepper. Saute over moderately high heat till the mushrooms have given up most of their liquid. Add the wine or sherry and cook off for a few minutes. Add the chicken and mushroom broths, turn down heat and gently simmer for 30 mins. Cool slightly.

Remove half the soup from the pot and puree in a food processor or blender till smooth. Add back to the remaining soup in the pot. Stir in milk/cream and 2 tbsp parsley, heat through and serve garnished with remaining parsley. Serve with fresh warmed bread or crostini and a cool glass of white wine.

Medicine 2.0

My friend Linda diagnosed and successfully treated herself for Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo using the Internet.

It’s a new world, folks.

Why You Weigh Less in the Morning

In my last post, I posed the question “Why is my morning weight lower than my bedtime weight?” It’s true, you know. Your lowest weight is always in the morning.

Let’s see if I can explain it.

Basically, overnight weight loss is a combo of (1) water lost via the skin and respiration, (2) basal metabolic caloric expenditure and (3) urine loss in the morning. Water loss, excluding urine and feces, accounts for over 80% of the weight lost while sleeping.

Overnight weight loss may vary depending on how much time one spends in Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) vs REM sleep, with longer duration of SWS correlating with higher sleep weight loss. Slow wave sleep has been called the restorative phase of sleep, and increased exercise during the day leads to an increase in time spent in SWS during the night.

Energy expenditure during sleep varies with varies with circadian rhythms as well as sleep cycle. So one could hypothesize that disruption of these rhythms night lead to aberrations in weight.

The sleeping metabolic rate in non-obese individuals appears to be higher than that of their obese counterparts. Meaning that thin folks may stay that way, not just because of what they do while they are awake (namely, eat less and exercise more), but also because they burn more calories while they are sleeping. (I know. Totally unfair.)

Sleep deprivation has been found to be associated with obesity in adults, and appears to be a possible cause for the rise in childhood obesity. In this regard, I will tell you that I used to stay up till the wee hours blogging. But I don’t do that much anymore, and am definitely getting more sleep. I wonder how much that has contributed to my weight loss success?

Bottom Line

While most of your overnight weight loss is water loss, don’t discount the loss that comes from the energy you burn while you are sleeping. It may not be a lot on a given night, but multiply it by 365 nights a year and it adds up.

The amount of energy you burn while sleeping seems to depend on how well and how long you sleep, so make sure you get enough shut-eye.

And while you’re awake, get some exercise. Exercise improves the quality of your sleep, and that may lead to more weight loss.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s way past my bedtime.

The Vagaries of the Scale

I’ve been dieting since July 15, and while things have slowed down a bit, they are still moving in the right direction. I am down 29 pounds, and am very happy about that.
That’s 29 pounds when I weight myself naked and after my morning shower, which is how I always weigh myself. That’s because I know it’s the lowest number I can get. (Except, of course, if I were to weigh myself after a good sweating work out, in which case it would be another pound or so lighter. But I consider that cheating.)

My morning post-shower weight is always a pound less than the weight I am when I wake up. And 3-4 pounds lighter than the weight I am right before I go to bed.

Why is that?

Not to get graphic, but let me just say that although I know that what goes in must eventually come out, nothing much is happening on that front between the time I go to bed and the time I wake up, other than emptying my bladder once in the morning. And, me not being George Castanza, nothing is happening on that front during my shower. (Seinfeld fans will get this one, it’s too embarrassing to try to explain it to the rest of you…)

So here is my question – what is causing the weight loss between going to bed and my morning weigh-in? I know that I am digesting my dinner and burning a few calories, but 2 and a half pounds? Is it really all water? I’d have to weigh my morning urine to be sure, and am hoping not to have to do that to answer this question. But I know that if I empty my bladder during the day, I don’t see a drop in weight, so I don’t think that is it.

And what is it about a shower that causes one to lose a pound? Evaporative water loss?

When you are tracking your weight loss, you need to be consistent about when you weight yourself, because there are rather significant differences as you can see, depending upon the circumstances. Clearly the weight I am tracking is my morning post shower naked weight. I’d be nuts to do anything else.

But the little part of scientist in me is intrigued by the variability in weight over such a short time.

Other similarly-intrigued dieters and non-dieters are encouraged to comment.

Family members reading this post will most certainly feel the need to comment on how I am my father’s daughter. And they will, of course, be right.
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I decided to answer my own question – See my post entitled: Why you weigh less in the morning

Biking the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail

The pleasantly warm fall weather has extended both the biking and the softball season. So on this gorgeous November Sunday, I left Mr TBTAM at the ballpark in Hastings-on-Hudson with the Usual Suspects, and joined my friend Paula, whose husband was also in the game, for a 10 mile ride along the Old Croton Aqueduct Park Trail.

The 26 mile trail runs along top the Old Croton Aqueduct, an engineering marvel built in the 1842 to supply water from the Croton Reservior to New York City. The aqueduct is dry now, having long ago been replaced with a more modern water system with higher capacity. What remains is a wonderful trail that runs from Croton Reservoir to Van Cortland Park, easily accessible to New York City by car or rail.

The OQA Park Trail is really designed for walkers, but bikes are absolutely allowed. The way is unpaved, and there are not infrequent roots or rocks, so leave your thin-tired racer at home. I had no problems with my touring bike, but those with mountain bikes would do even better.

The trail is not a straight shot, and crosses more than a few streets unevenly in the Southern part, so make sure you bring directions, a trail map or like me, a friend who knows the trail. I’d also recommend leaving smaller children home, since the path is raised rather high in some narrow spots and has no guardrails. We were fortunate in this regard that there were few to no muddy spots and the leaves had dried from the prior day’s rains.

Our journey took us through the Hudson River towns of Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington and Tarrytown, affording backyard and town views with occasional glimpses of the Hudson. (I made a google map of our ride to measure it)

Paula, who knows more about nature that Eull Gibbons, pointed out to me various unusual tree leaves, ginkgo pods and these large black walnuts, almost as big as oranges, on the trailbed.

Did you know they can be used for dye? Here, I’ll let Paula tell you all about it…

Paula also told me that Laura’s Ingall’s father in The Little House on the Prairie used to hunt squirrels in the fall just to get at the black walnuts in their stomachs. As she puts it “A squirrel’s full belly’s worth of nuts, washed and dried in the sun, would be just about right for a tasty walnut pie, so they say. Have you ever wanted a walnut pie that bad?” Can’t say I have, Paula…But let’s get back to the ride.

We stopped in Tarrytown for sustenance and to visit the historic Lyndhurst Estate, built in the 1830’s for NYC mayor William Paulding and later home to robber baron Jay Gould. Although we did not take a tour inside the mansion, we did enjoy rambling around the grounds

and gazing at the Hudson (that’s the Tappan Zee Bridge).

After Tarrytown, we rejoined the trail, heading north towards the Rockefeller Preserve. Here, the atmosphere becomes much more bucolic, although civilization is never very far.

A few miles into the Preserve, the boys called us and announced that their games were over, so we left the trail and met them along Rte 9. Too bad – I would have loved to continue up to the Croton Reservoir. Oh well, there’s always next season.

Thanks, Paula, for the wonderful company, great conversation and the fascinating tidbits of nature. And while I don’t think I’ll be making black walnut pie any time soon, I am keeping you to your promise to teach me how to make Lebanese stuffed grape leaves…

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More About The Old Croton Aqueduct Trail

The Ovarian Teratoma that Caused a Coma

Aunt Voula had a teratoma too – Guess they didn’t get it out soon enough…

There’s an absolutely fascinating medical story in today’s New York Times Magazine, a case that reads like something straight out of an episode of House.

It’s the story of a young woman rendered rapidly comatose with encephalitis caused by an immune response to a benign teratoma in her ovary. Teratomas are funky tumors that can contain elements of skin, hair, nails, bone, thyroid and neural tissue. An unusual immune response to the teratoma in this woman led to development of antibodies to her own neural tissue, which then began to attack her brain and led to her coma. When the teratoma was removed, the immune response waned and comatose woman woke up and went on to an almost full recovery.

Astute readers will recognize this story from a recent case report in the New England Journal of Medicine. In that article, we learn that what happened to this woman is a rare condition called called Inflammatory Limbic Encephalitis, and it is not unique to teratomas but can occur in response to other tumors, both benign and malignant.

In the Times article, the medical resident who diagnosed the patient actually comes across another case the following year and worries that there may be more young women out there similarly afflicted yet undiagnosed. (Expect a rash of pelvic sonograms, CT’s and MRI’s for everything from schizophrenia to depression looking for teratomas…) I can reassure her that in my two decades or more of practicing medicine I’ve never heard or read of even one case until now.

I did, though, allow myself about 5 minutes of wondering if perhaps my migraines were not an auto-immune reponse to some microscopic, never diagnosed teratoma hidden deep within my ovaries, too small to be seen on the imaging studies I have had over the years for various reasons. Until I reminded myself that surgical removal of the ovaries actually tends to worsen migraine in more women than it helps them. Oh well, nothing is simple…

And that’s the problem with modern medicine – it’s not simple. Case reports like these, while fascinating, can be misleading. They’re the Made-for-TV medical stories that makes curing disease seem like such a simple exercise – the cause of your problem is visible, measurable and even better, removable! (Now you understand why surgeons love what they do. Their motto is – “To cut is to cure.” If it can’t be cut out, it’s someone else’s problem. Next case!…)

Unfortunately, most of the diseases that cause morbidity and mortality in our country are chronic diseases with multi-factoral etiologies whose cures are as varied as their causes, aren’t as much fun and don’t make for exciting spreads in the Times. Disease like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. Would that there were a tiny tumor somewhere causing all those problems.

I wouldn’t count on it.

Obama, Don’t Get a Puppy

Those carpets look expensive…

Trust me on this.

You’re about to start a new job and move your family across the country to a place they’ve never lived before. Then, as soon as you get there, if not before, you have to solve America’s financial crisis, get us out of Iraq, find Bin Laden, and fix health care. You’re going to be a very busy man, and Michelle is going to have her hands full getting the family moved and settled in, not to mention doing whatever it is First Ladies do (though I would suggest she carve out something as far away from healthcare as she can – that backfired for poor Hillary).

This is not the time to get a new puppy.

Having a new puppy is like having a new baby. You and Michelle are going to need your sleep – listening to a puppy whining at night won’t be helpful in this regard. Not to mention the accidents. You don’t need to be coming home after a long day as Leader of the Free World only to step into doggy poo on the living room carpet.

Of course, you could hire a personal dog trainer. But that would make you look elitist and you don’t want to start out your tenure making that kind of impression.

No, a puppy is definitely not the way to go.

What you need is a dog that looks like a puppy, is cute like a puppy, and acts like a puppy but is already house-trained.

What you need is my dog, Lucy.

Look at her! Isn’t she adorable? She’s 3 years old, she’s well-behaved, she’s smart, and she’s hypo-allergenic. Your girls would love her, and she would love them.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, Obama. We love Lucy dearly. We do.

But the truth is, we’re all out all day long and poor little Lucy is home alone except for an hour when my friend Lori walks her. She would have a much better life there in the White House with the White House staff to keep her company when you’re all out.

Of course, like any dog, Lucy is not perfect. She does bark at strangers, but that would be a good thing what with your need for security and all. And she has never bitten anyone, so she won’t cause an international incident if you have, say, the Israeli and Palestinians over for dinner together.

You’ve said we all need to make sacrifices for our nation, and this is ours. We’re willing to give you our dog so you can focus your energies on the nation’s problems rather than wondering where to step. And save the US taxpayer dollars from being used to clean the White House carpets.

It’s the least we can do.

Obama’s Hiring

It’s been less than a week since he was elected, and already Obama’s got a transition website up and running, including an online job application form for those interested in working with his administration. Positions that are open include everything from high level cabinet appointees to short and long term committee and commission members. 

Let’s go, guys and gals. You know who you are. Time to stop talking and do something. Send in your application. Your government needs you. 

I’ll Have What She Had

Estelle Reiner, Wife of Carl and mother of Rob, died this week at the age of 94. You know Estelle – she’s the woman who, at the end of Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm at Katz’s Deli in When Harry Met Sally, turns to her waiter and says – “I’ll have what she’s having”.

Well, Estelle, I think I’ll have what you had. Teen radio singer, submarine draftsman in WW II, artist, wife, mother, anti-war activist and actor. She took up jazz singing at age 65 and recorded 7 albums! A life well-loved and well-lived.

We should all be so blessed. And so bold. Rest in peace, Estelle.

Still Doing It

I was interviewed this weekend for the online radio show And the Women Gather. We were gathered to discuss the book ‘Still Doing It – the Intimate Lives of Women over 60” by Dierdre Fishel and Diana Holzberg. I was quoted in the book about strategies for maintaining sexual health with age – kudos to the authors for paying attention to this important issue.

In the podcast, Dierdre and Diana discussed the stories of the women they interviewed for the book (and their documentary of the same name) – women who were living active sexual lives, some into their 80’s. A theme that came through again and again was that continued sexual activity did not occur in isolation. Women who continue to have active sex lives had active lives overall – they worked, they traveled, they exercised and took care of themselves, stayed involved with the world and maintained relationships, non-sexual as well as sexual, with others. Sex was just a part of their continued living of an engaged and active life. As one women put it “My life is orgasmic”.

Thanks to host Lorna Owens for a great interview and to Dierdre and Diana for including me in their book.

In Search of An Amazing Protein Muffin

I don’t know about you, but I love muffins. The problem is, despite healthy names like “Banana Nut” and Bran Raisin”, muffins are really just cupcakes without the icing. Definitely a no-no if you’re trying to lose weight like I am.

So imagine my delight to find that on my food delivery diet I get muffins! Not just healthy muffins but amazingly delicious muffins! Usually served with sausages or some non-fat ricotta, they are so satisfying that they hold me almost all the way to mid-afternoon.

I’ve been unable to find the recipe for these muffins anywhere. The closest I’ve come is this video of Chef Adriano, the guy who creates the meals I eat, making muffins for a TV show. Unfortunately, he doesn’t give the whole recipe. So I’ve scoured the web for protein muffin recipes, most of which can be found on weight lifting websites and discussion boards. I’ve tried a number of these muffins, and while I’m sure they are healthy and making big men even bigger, they taste like cardboard.

So I’ve made it my mission to create a protein muffin that is worth the trouble of baking. It has to be healthy and fit the protein, fat and carb targets of a Zone diet (that’s the diet I am on.) And it has to be tender and taste GREAT.

A Basic Muffin Recipe

Our quest for an amazing protein muffin starts with a basic muffin recipe. It has to be a really good basic recipe. For that, we turn to our bible, the Joy of Cooking (1975 edition).

Sift together into a large bowl:
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp double acting baking powder

In a medium bowl, beat
2 eggs
Add to the eggs
2-4 tbsp melted butter
3/4 cup mik

Combine the liquid and dry ingredients with a few swift strokes. Fill well-greased muffin tins two-thirds full and bake 20-25 mins at 400 degrees fahrenheit.

A Little Muffin Chemistry

Before we make any changes to the ingredients of this recipe, we’d better know a bit about them.
Basically, muffin ingredients fall into one of several categories:

1. Leavening agent – That’s easy. Baking powder (and less so, eggs)
2. Gluten formers – flour, egg whites, liquid
3. Gluten preventers (tenderizers) – egg yolks, sugar, butter
4. Flavor additions – salt, blueberries or chocolate chips or whatever you’re using to flavor your muffins.

Adding liquid to flour leads to the formation of gluten. Gluten forms the latticework that holds the air, allowing baked goods to stay risen once they rise. But too much gluten formation leads to a very tough final product. In muffins, this looks like this (lots of big air pockets) –

To prevent over-glutenizing your muffins, it’s critical NOT to beat the batter much. Beating combines causes more and more of the flour to come into contact with the liquid,leading to more and more gluten formation. So 5-10 strokes at most, and don’t worry about the small lumps of flour.
Because fat and sugar in muffins prevent gluten formation, the price you can pay for lowering the fat and sugar content is a dry and tough muffin. We want to avoid that – because let’s face it – if you have to slabber your muffin with butter to make it edible, you’ve just lost the benefit of lowering the fat.

Of course, we will need a leavening agent for out muffins. We’ll be using baking powder in our muffins. (You can use baking soda if you are adding acidic ingredients like buttermilk or lemon to you muffins.) Keep in mind that if any of the changes we make lead to a heavier muffin we might want to increase the leavening a bit to make sure we get a good rise. But too much leavening and you get an overly exuberant but unstable rise that is destined to fall once it leaves the oven. 1-2 tsp baking powder per cup of flour is about right.

Finally, there’s temperature. It seems to range from 350-425 degrees fahrenheit, with most recipes using 350 degrees. Higher temperaturs lead to a quicker rise, but risk overcooking the outside and undercooking the inside.

Now that we are experts in the chemistry of muffin making, it’s time to see if it’s really possible to make a healthier muffin that is actually edible. But first, a little muffin video break –

You’ll eat a healthy muffin and you’ll like it!!!
Making a Healthier Muffin

Okay, let’s see what we can do to the original recipe to make it better for us.

Protein

We clearly have to have a higher protein content for our healthy muffins. In this case, we will use protein powder, and add it to the milk. Be careful – some protein powders have significant fat content. I found one with no fat, and that’s what I’m using. We’ll also use egg whites instead of whole eggs, matching volume for volume, which will boost the protein content and lower the fat at the same time.

Fat

We’ve already lost fat by substituting egg whites for whole eggs. We’re also going to use skim milk and remove the butter from our original muffin recipe. This is risking a very tough final product. So we’ll try some other tricks for getting the fat back in a more healthy way. (See Flour, below.) If this does not work, in the future we can consider keeping the fat, but substituting a healthy fat like canola or olive oil for the melted butter.

Flour

Here’s where the going gets tough, and the muffins get tougher.

The first thing you think of when you think of healthy baked goods is whole wheat flour, right? That was my first thought, too, and so the first healthy muffins I tried to make used half whole wheat and half regular flour. Disaster. Why? High gluten combined with low fat = cardboard. If you’re going to use whole wheat flour, you’ll need to increase either the fat or the sugar content to limit the gluten formation. Sorry. I”m not sure. (Turns out whole wheat flour does not have higher gluten than regular flour. It is heavier, though…

Since low fat is more important to me right now, I’m going to have to sacrifice the high fiber. In the future, we could consider an alternate healthy muffin with high fiber and good fats like canola or olive oil. But for now, let’s stay on the low-fat track.

If we’re going to lower the fat, we’d better lower the gluten content of our flour. One simple way is to use cake flour (6-8% gluten forming protein) instead of regular flour (8-10% protein). We can also subtsitute rice flour for part of the flour. Rice flour is gluten-free. The problem with it is that it does not hold up as well, so you can’t use it exclusively unless you are willing to add a stabilizing agent such as guar gum to maintain the rise. Luckily, we won’t need to go that far. We’ll keep the rice flour to 50% of our flour mixture and get our gluten from cake flour.

I’m also going to add some soy flour. This will also add protein and a bit of the healthy fat I’m looking for. Joy of Cooking tells me to treat soy flour like fat and add it to the liquid ingredients, so we’ll be dissolving it in the milk along with the protein powder. We’ll also need to lower our baking temp by 25 degrees since soy flour can cause our crust to burn more easily.

Finally, in an attempt to get a little more fiber, I’m going to add some flaxmeal.

Leavening

I’m increasing the baking powder a bit to compensate for an additonal 1/4 cup flour and the slightly heavier flaxmeal.

Sugar

We can’t have none, can we? (And I refuse to use artificial sweeteners in my baking.) So we’ll just change it to brown sugar, okay? Maybe next time we can try some agave nectar instead.

Additions

I’ve added chopped apples to these muffins, but other combos I’d like to try in the near future are coconut-macadamia, banana walnut and carrot-raisin. If course, each of these additions will change the liquid content, and we’ll need to tweak the basic recipe even more. So for now, I’m staying simple additions like apples and blueberries till I get this version down pat.

So with all this in mind, let’s see what I came up with…

Drum Roll, please…

Ladies and gents, without further ado, I present my first fairly-successful attempt at a healthy muffin that ‘s worth eating. If you have one of these muffins for breakfast with 1/4 cup low fat ricotta cheese you’ll be getting about 60% carb, 11% fat and 20% protein. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. Still too heavy on the carbs, although I’ve gotten the fat content down fairly nicely.

Next time I plan to try cutting back on the rice flour (which is very high in carbs) rather than the cake flour. There’s also a little room for some fat, so I’ll try adding some canola oil. I’m going to measure my flour my weight to be sure I’m not using too much. I’ll increase the temp a tad since I didn’t even come close to burning these babies. So stay tuned – this is a work in progress. I’m open to any and all suggestions.

Relatively Healthy Apple Protein Muffins

The recipe that follows is a pretty-good tasting healthy muffin with a not-bad texture. Like all muffins, these are best eaten warm, with a little all fruit jam or some low fat riccotta. I made both regular and mini muffins, and have to say that the mini-muffins almost stole my heart, at least while they were warm.

1/2 cup cake flour
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
1 cup white rice flour
1 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup brown sugar
6 egg whites
3/4 cup skim milk
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
1/4 cup soy flour
1/2 cup finely chopped apple

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Grease muffin tin lightly with canola oil.

Sift dry ingredients together in a marge bowl. Toss in the chopped apple.

Pour milk into a medium bowl and whish in the protein powder and soy flour, being sure to dissolve it well. Beat the egg whites lightly in another bowl and add to the milk mixture.

Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon just enough to combine. (No more than 5-10 strokes). Fill muffin tins 3/4 full. Bake for 20-25 mins. Let sit a few minutes before removing from the muffin tin. Eat warm.

Makes 12 large muffins or a whole lotta’ mini muffins.

Nutritional info per large muffin – Calories 115; 21% protein (7 grams); 11% fat ( about 1.5 grams); 75% carbs (22 grams).
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References

The ABCs of Baking
How Baking Works
The Joy of Baking
The Art of Low Fat Baking

Biking South on the NYC Westside Greenway

Mr TBTAM and I left the girls home studying this past Sunday afternoon and rode our biking season swan song south along the West Side Greenway. A perfect day for a perfect ride along the Hudson to Battery Park and back.

While the ride north on the Greenway is an idyllic park ride, the route south along the Hudson is a fascinating ride along a busy and increasingly beautiful waterfront, encompassing urban gardens, cruise ship and Ferry docks, tourist attractions, museums and skyline views that will satisfy visitors and natives alike.

Here is a list of the sites we passed along our route – The Intrepid, The Circle Line Boat tour, the cruise ship docks, the Heliport, Frank Gehry’s Office Building, Chelsea Pier, Battery Park City, the World Trade Center Site, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island boat rides and The American Indian Museum.


If sports are what you love, you can rent a kayak, take a sailing lesson, practice your skateboard moves, hit a bucket of balls, bike, walk or bowl. The only thing missing from the Greenway as far as I am concerned are great waterfront restaurants.

Much of the Greenway has separate biking and walking paths. This makes for easy riding, although the walking paths tend to go closer to the water and through some lovely gardens along the way. You’ll need to watch out for cars crossing the path near the docks and along Chelsea Pier, but on a weekend this is not a big problem.

My favorite part of the ride is Battery Park City. I remember when this gorgeous garden-living spot was a big old empty landfill, the site of the No Nukes Rally I attended in 1979.

Now it’s filled with beautiful apartment buildings and parks and is a neighborhood that has come back even stronger since it was almost devastated in 9/11.

If you’re visiting NYC and want to ride the Greenway, I’d recommend renting a bike at Pier 84 at 44th Street on the West Side and heading either north or south from there. Bike and Roll has rental locations at several spots along the NYC Greenway, and runs both guided and self-guided bike tours of NYC. You can also rent bikes at one of over a dozen other spots in the city and head into the Greenway anywhere along the route.

Happy Biking!
NYC Biking Links