Let the Demos Begin!

Until recently, I did not know that Rachel Ray began her career as a culinary star doing cooking demonstrations at a local market.  Although my personal and career objectives are quite different from the "EVOO" and "sammy" queen, these past few weeks have made me begin to feel a bit like a star myself.  More importantly, the need for and utility of effective nutrition interventions has never been clearer.

Two weeks ago, I began my Monday evening cooking demonstrations with the participants in a local clinic's diabetes prevention program.  The overall goal of the program is to provide the participants (and hopefully their family members indirectly) with the knowledge and skills they need to effectively change their lives and inhibit the onset of diabetes.  Through individual and group nutrition courses, exercise classes,  visits with health care providers, and now, healthy cooking demonstrations, the participants are given the opportunity to lose weight and learn how to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

One of the unique facets of this program is the clinic's affiliation with a local bakery and the associated greenhouse garden.  Program participants are given the opportunity to get out into the garden, burn some calories, and work directly for their suppers.  Maybe singing for one's supper sounds like more fun, but I think there is something special about truly experiencing where food comes from and being able to enjoy the fruits--err, veggies--of one's labor.

An additional neat and interesting part for me is utilizing an online calorie assessment tool to analyze my recipes and see how the presumed healthfulness of a dish holds up.  Overall, my dishes have been healthy and meeting all of the ideal criteria for vitamins, minerals, and fiber.  Nevertheless, despite the fact that I know *very well* what extra virgin olive oil is, where it comes from, and how it is made, I was actually quite surprised at the number of calories in each tablespoon (~120 calories, depending on the brand).  Since most of my cooking with olive oil is already on the moderate side, I certainly did not panic and at the triple digits; however, I will admit that cutting back on the amount of oil one cooks with (and perhaps replacing it with stock) is clearly an excellent way to cut calories out of one's diet without doing damage to flavor.

With the opportunity that the garden provides to participants, I try and plan recipes each week that incorporate both vegetables from the garden as well as the previous week's nutrition lesson.  Currently the garden is full of greens, herbs, and radishes.  I actually love radishes and find they are a widely under-utilized vegetable.  Given the challenge for this coming Monday of developing a recipe that demonstrates the value a low fat (last week's lesson), high vegetable diet, I came up with a recipe for vegetable quesadillas with a new fresh version of guacamole.  I must say, this dish was **incredibly** delicious, less than 400 calories each, and believe it or not, extremely filling.

Vegetable Quesadilla with Guacamole

Time to Prepare: 20 minutes

Time to Cook: 15 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Serves: 4 as a main dish (1 quesadilla each with a 1/4 of the total guacamole)

Ingredients:

Quesadilla:                                                                               Guacamole:            

4 corn tortillas (1 per person)                                                      1 ripe avocado

1 large (or 2 medium) zucchini (or 1 yellow and 1 green squash)  1 medium jalapeno

¾ large yellow onion                                                                   3 medium radishes

12 white or brown mushrooms (about 8 oz)                                1 medium carrot

2 cloves garlic                                                                            1 clove garlic

4 Tsp olive oil                                                                            ¼ large yellow onion

½ Tsp salt                                                                                  1 large handful cilantro (about ¾ cup)

½ Tsp pepper                                                                            1 large lime

¾ Cup non-fat cheddar cheese                                                   ¼ Tsp salt

1.   Scrub the zucchini well under running water and wipe the mushrooms clean with a damp towel (do not run under water or they will become chewy).

2.   Slice the onions thin; slice the zucchini into thin half-moons; cut the mushrooms into medium slices; and chop the garlic very small.

3.   For the guacamole, peel the carrot and cut the ends of the radish and carrot, and then grate (or chop very small) them.  Cut open the jalapeno, remove the seeds, and chop very small.  Chop the garlic and the onion very small.  Wash and dry the cilantro, and chop it roughly.  Mix everything together in a bowl.  Cut the avocado in half and remove the pit; slice the avocado into small pieces in the skin, and then turn it inside out so the pieces fall into the bowl.  Add the juice from the lime and salt.  Use a fork to smash the avocado and mix all of the ingredients together.  Taste and add more lime, chili, or cilantro to your taste.

4.   Add the olive oil to a large pan and heat over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook until golden and a little soft (about 4 minutes).  Add the garlic, zucchini, salt and pepper, and cook for 2 minutes.  Add the mushrooms, and continue to cook everything until the mushrooms are just starting to soften.

5.   Place a corn tortilla in a warm pan, sprinkle with a palm full of cheese evenly over the tortilla.  Then add a large scoop of the hot vegetables on top of the cheese on one half of the tortilla only.  Spread the vegetables evenly on the one half and then fold the tortilla in half.  Press the tortilla flat with a spatula, fork, or spoon for 30 seconds, and then flip it over and press the other side for 30 seconds.  Take the quesadilla out of the pan, cut into 3 slices, and serve with one scoop of the guacamole.  Repeat the directions for the other quesadillas.

Beyond sharing my passion for cooking and great meals, I am thrilled to have an opportunity to experience a different perspective on food.  In the development of a health intervention, a lot of assumptions are made.  Many of them are extremely valid; others however, are not only invalid, but they often are the only thing that stands between the success or failure of an otherwise great program idea.  Each week, I could go into the demonstration with another awesome recipe, the participants will love it (of course, right!?!), and yet it is quite possible that no one will make the recipe at home, and accordingly, besides the little taste they got when I prepared it, no additional vegetables will be added to their diets.

"But what happened?", I would later ask; "I thought they liked it."  "Well, yes, they did;" would be part of the answer, "but they could not afford such and such ingredient."

It is a humbling experience when one begins to truly understand the value of what one has; it makes you wonder at how long you have taken it for granted.  For me, a pile of tomatoes on my counter is commonplace; for someone else, a tomato could be a luxury.  The same goes for hundreds of other examples.

My main point is that I have come to realize that we each live in a different reality.  Undoubtedly, the reasons for those differences go well beyond the confines of a discussion about finances.  Still, I hope that you all take a moment at the dinner table tonight (perhaps while trying my guacamole and quesadillas) and think about what an awesome thing it is to be able to eat healthy and fresh.