Does Eating Spicy Food Burn Additional Calories?

You’re eating a hot chicken Vindaloo at your fave Indian restaurant. Your tongue is on fire and you’re sweating buckets. You wonder: isn’t sweating a sign that my metabolism is speeding up and burning calories?
Well, you’re not far from the truth. There is indeed evidence that spices can increase the metabolic rate, up to three hours after finishing the meal. However, it’s not as clear-cut as it seems...

What Is A Heirloom Food?

I bet you have encountered oddly shaped black carrots in the produce section of your supermarket before, and wondered why anyone would buy those instead of the regular, tubular, orange variety.
Heirloom foods, such as black carrots, can look dramatically different from the “regular” ones you’re used to. Different to the point that sometimes it might get “scary”.
What you shouldn’t do, however, is to look away.
Heirloom foods are a rather flavorful, colorful, and tasty version of foods you already enjoy. Chances are you’re going to like the heirloom version just as much the “regular” one, maybe even more. If that isn’t enough, heirloom foods bring diverse and precious nutrients to your table.
So you definitely shouldn’t look away; reach for them instead.

Pumpkin And Potato Masala Curry (Vegan)

I have a favorite Indian cookbook. It’s “Step-By-Step Indian Cooking” by Sharda Gopal. A great cookbook if you want to master your cooking skills with Indian cuisine.
She keeps recipes short and simple. Just what any westerner trying to bring Indian flavors to the kitchen needs.
Over the years I became enamoured with one recipe in particular: Aloo Masala (also called Dry Spiced Potato).
It’s a popular south Indian vegetarian spicy dish. Made with a good amount of spices, fresh tomatoes, and potatoes.
As I prefer not to overstuff myself with starches, I tweaked the original recipe and tried several combination of vegetables over the years to replace the potatoes.
After many attempts I decided that my fave combo is pumpkin with one small potato (I didn’t dare to completely depart from the original recipe). Also, I used olive oil instead of ghee (or butter) to make it completely vegan and lighter.

How To Make A Perfect Flax Egg (For Vegan Baking)

Vegan baking can be intimidating. I know better. At the beginning of my healthy cooking journey I didn’t even care for vegan baking. In my mind baking involved eggs, butter, milk and cream. Considering that these ingredients are off-limits for vegans I thought: why even bother baking? If you can’t use proper ingredients just don’t bake, do something else instead.
I was mistaken all along. There’s nothing wrong with vegan baking. To the contrary, it's awesome. To non-vegans (like myself) it represents a further option to bring different flavors, textures, and nutrients to “regular” baking.
For the most part vegan baking entails just a simple 1:1 substitution on specific ingredients. Plant milk for dairy milk and plant fat for butter. With eggs, however, it gets a bit more tricky.
If you’ve encountered vegan recipes before, you’ll know that, most of times, they call for “flax eggs”.
The majority would think that it’s some expensive product you can buy at specialty shops. It’s really not. Making flax eggs is “easy peasy”. All you need is some flax seeds and water. In a matter of minutes you’ll have vegan egg substitutes that will “act” as a binder in your recipes, just as regular eggs.

How Veggies Make The Meal (Their Hedonic And Heroic Impact)

Even though vegetables are known to be healthful, they are served at only 23% of American dinners. Chicken, steak, pasta, pizza, these classic dishes make the core of family meals.
Provided that better nutrition value alone doesn’t seem enough of an incentive to consume more veggies; are there other ways to promote the consumption of vegetables besides the “better for you” claim? What psychological motivation to include vegetables in meals exist?
A team of researchers at Cornell University Food and Brand Lab explored the topic; investigating whether serving vegetables changes the perception of an entrée’s taste as well as the perception of the cook.
To their own surprise, they discovered that serving vegetables improved taste expectations not only for the entrées, but for the whole meal as well.
Furthermore, serving a vegetable with a meal also enhanced perceptions of the cook. They were evaluated as being more thoughtful and attentive as well as less lazy, boring, and self-absorbed.
In other words, vegetables positively influenced the hedonic expectations of the meal and the heroic impact of the cook.

Turmeric Cauliflower With Lemon Pepper Dressing

Not everyone is a fan of cauliflower. I know this for a fact. It’s a non pretentious vegetable, that deserves much more attention it’s actually getting.
Cauliflower is cheap, versatile, and features a high concentration of nutrients for the calories contained.
The bad rep has something to do with the fact that it stinks badly when it cooks. The taste can also be a bit off-putting. I get that.
Nevertheless you should give this recipe a try, even if you don’t think you’re much of a cauliflower person.
It’s that good, that easy-to-prepare, and that healthy. Plus it’s vegan and gluten-free. It really accommodates everybody.

Is It Possible To Spot Reduce A Body Part Fat Content?

Spot reduction is the idea that if you work a specific muscle group you’ll be able to decrease the amount of fat in that area. As if there is a way to target one specific area of your body, such as your abs, your thighs, or even your bum and make all the fat disappear in that area just by doing one exercise.
As appealing as it sounds (and as much we would love for this to be true) spot reduction is, however, a misguided notion.

The Eat Right Rule

All around us, everyone (including myself) is yelling about eat this, don’t eat that, this is good for you, this is bad for you.
With so much rambling, feeling overwhelmed is most common. That’s why it’s important to have some simple rules to hang on to.
A smart one that I really like it’s the so-called “Eat Right Rule”.
It postulates that you should always prefer food that potentially can go bad, over food that rarely spoils. In other words, fresh food is considered to be an healthier choice than food that has an "unlimited" shelf life.

High-Protein Apple Oatmeal Bake (Vegan and Gluten-Free)

I’m currently going through a wintertime crisis. It happens every year. It has nothing to do with the cold temperatures or the darker days.
The issue is with my breakfast. When summer is over, my morning smoothies all of a sudden become much less appealing.
It’s freezing outside, and my body needs something warm in the morning. A cold ice smoothie just won’t make it.
I do like a bowl of oatmeal with apples and cinnamon. I get lazy though, and never feel like peeling and cutting apples. On top of that, I don’t like instant oatmeal, it tastes gross.
It seems like I’ve reached an impasse.
There’s an easy way out though. It’s called baked oatmeal.
You make a good amount of it one night, and it lasts for a whole week.
Winter breakfast issue solved!

Protein Cheesecake Swirl Brownies

Do you have a favorite mug? I do. It’s the one from Law School. I have 20 mugs or so in my cupboard, but I always use the same one. Green tea just tastes better in that one.
It’s not that I have an emotional attachment to it. My years at Columbia Law were ok, for the most part, even if they involved countless hours in class, studying in the library, drafting outlines, and way too many dreadful finals (bleah!).
Law School or not, green tea just tastes better if served in my CLS mug. My attachment to it got to the point where no one, and I mean no one, can use it besides me. My roomies know this, and respect it (although few “altercations” were necessary to get that message properly across).
I wonder what a shrink would say about this. Probably it’s wise not to ask, and just enjoy the green tea. Better if paired with a good treat, such as these protein cheesecake swirl brownies.