February 4th, 2021 
Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Drinks, Drinks (no alcohol), Fitness Food, How To & Tips 
Comments Off on Warm Antidote to Bitter Cold: Ginger Mint Tea with Picture Book Directions Man, it’s been and is brutally cold across much of the US. So, how ’bout we turn this…
…into this…
…all in a cup. Ginger mint tea is something I make and drink everyday – warm, fully flavorful and all anti-inflammatory.
Just click this link or any picture above for Ginger Mint Tea picture book directions. Then, enjoy – and stay warm!
May 12th, 2019 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Cycling Food, Dessert, Fitness Food, How To & Tips, Nuts Comments Off on Easy Chopped Nuts Picture Directions 
Last post mentioned that I’d next show how to make a mix of chopped nuts and ground flaxseed that I use with much more than the Bell Pepper with Cilantro Pesto-Hummus and Cheese I showed how to make. As a first step, though, I thought I’d show here how to chop nuts as quickly and easily as possible.
Nuts are a fantastic source of plant-based protein and healthy fats. I put them in cereal, with fruit and yogurt, in salads, with pasta or grains, and much more. The only thing to watch for with nuts is that they are packed with calories. Moderation is key.
And, that’s why I find it best to use chopped nuts exactly as needed instead of having a bag of those same nuts at my side to feed from, which I certainly have done – and paid for dearly.
There are two ways I chop nuts: with a food processor (preferred) or with a coffee grinder (fine for small amount but takes a bit of care).
Here’s how to chop nuts with a food processor. Use the S-shaped processor blade as shown in the top picture below and add as many nuts as needed to the food processor.
Close the processor top and turn on the processor for about 10 seconds until the nuts look about as shown in the bottom left picture.
To chop nuts in a coffee grinder, which works fine for small amounts, add nuts to the coffee grinder,…
…close the top, keep the top held firmly in place, and shake the grinder while keeping the grinder on for 5 or so seconds.
Make sure to unplug the grinder from the outlet, and then scoop out the chopped nuts as well as possible – without making yourself, well, nuts. Grinding your next batch of coffee with do a great job cleaning the grinder.
Store the chopped nuts in the refrigerator, where they will keep fresh for at least a few weeks – as long as the nuts you used were fresh when you chopped them.
April 23rd, 2019 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Beans, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Vegetables Comments Off on Quick Bell Pepper, Cilantro Pesto-Hummus, and Cheese – All in Pictures
Last post showed how to make fresh Cilantro Pesto-Hummus, a combination of cilantro pesto and hummus. Great stuff to lay on bread, toss with pasta or grains, mix with cooked vegetables, top on salads, and much more. Imagination is your only limit. Here’s a link to that recipe.
What you see above is a quick fresh meal I put together last night: bell pepper, “pummus”, and cheese. I started with 1/3 fresh orange bell pepper that I sliced into thick strips just so the pepper would spread out mostly flat on a plate. I then laid on a good spread of pummus and topped that with some leftover cooked grains (pearl barley, stone cut oats, and quinoa). For sure, what made this dish so quick for me to put together was having most of the ingredients already pre-made. Please use what you see below as a guide. That’s exactly what I do with just about every recipe I come across.
Next, I spread out a good layer of shredded mozzarella and provolone cheese and put the plate in the microwave oven for 1 minute at 100% power – just long enough to start melting the cheese.
After that quick warm in the microwave, I topped the pepper, cilantro pesto-hummus, and cheese with a good pour of fresh ginger cilantro kefir salad dressing, which you can either see how to make by clicking either this link or the picture below or just use your own favorite salad dressing.
I finished by adding a good blast of chopped hot peppers (jalapeños shown here), chopped fresh cilantro,…
…chopped sun-dried tomatoes, a good shot of kefir, and a mix of chopped nuts and ground flaxseed (I make a jar of nuts and flax every week – very easy & versatile – I’ll show how to do that next time I make it.)
Now make it yours & enjoy!
April 3rd, 2019 Blog, Cooking Technique, Fitness Food, Grains, How To & Tips Comments Off on Microwave Cooked Quinoa Alfredo – Fast and Flavorful 
Last post showed how to microwave oven cook quinoa. Like rice and pasta, quinoa, with it’s nutty flavor and snap-and-pop texture is incredibly versatile
Here’s one of my favorite fast and flavorful quinoa meals: microwave cooked quinoa Alfredo, Read more »
March 17th, 2019 Blog, Breakfast, Cycling, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Fitness/Health, Food & Health, Grains, How To & Tips, Nutrition Comments Off on How to Cook Quinoa on the Stove Picture Book Directions 
Quinoa (pronounced “keen-wah”) is one of my favorite…seeds. Yah, right away, that’s one of the things that makes it stand out. Quinoa is not a member of the true grain family, like wheat, barley, rye and other “grass grains”. Instead, quinoa, which comes in white, red, and black color variations, is really a seed, and, specifically, it’s the seed of the goosefoot plant shown below.
Goosefoot gets its name from the shape of its leaves and is related to spinach and Swiss chard. Quinoa grows in the South American Andes Mountains, mostly in Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, where it’s been cultivated for over 5000 years. Historical legend has it that Incan armies sustained themselves during long marches on “war balls” made of quinoa mixed with fat. Yes indeed, EMMMMM… Actually, after what I’ve recently learned about fat and how good a lot of it is for us, the idea behind those “war balls” makes good sense.
As you’d probably expect from a relative of spinach and Swiss chard, both exceptionally nutritious leafy greens, quinoa also packs a potent nutritional punch. It has about twice the protein content of barley, corn, and rice. Quinoa is gluten free and easily absorbed by the body. It’s a good source of manganese, magnesium, iron, copper & phosphorous making it particularly noteworthy for people affected by migraine headaches, diabetes, and atherosclerosis. It’s also exceptionally high in dietary fiber and is rich in “good” unsaturated fats like Omega-3. Here are the numbers I got regarding quinoa’s nutrition from a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) table.
My favorite way to prepare quinoa is to make a batch with what you see below that yields about 2 ½ – 3 cups cooked quinoa. I then put the lion’s share of what’s left over in a sealed container either in the fridge for at least a week, or in the freezer where it lasts like any other frozen food.
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Click any picture on this page for a complete, easy to follow step-by-step picture book “How to Cook Quinoa” recipe.
February 18th, 2019 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Breakfast, Cycling Food, Dessert, Fitness Food Comments Off on Warm Fruit Topping to Fuel a Winter Training Ride 
Pre-cold weather ride “goose fat” (homemade oil combo) on face & warm fruit topping for breakfast
Yes, it’s February, but any day cycling the road sure beats a day on the living room trainer, especially when there are sights like those below before the snow blew in last night.
Bottom line: Weather’s a state of mind. Just be prepared.
For me that means, step one, “goose fat” (homemade mix of avocado oil, coconut butter, shea butter, and a shot of honey) on the face and something warm to fuel me up for a good hop in the saddle.
Click this link or the picture above or below for a complete, easy to follow step-by-step picture book recipe that shows how to make a fruit topping that goes great on warm cereal, French toast, pancakes – your imagination is your only limit! As always, a quick nod and smile to Bicycles Battling Cancer and Springfield Police, Fire, and new this year, military vets, Ride to Remember.
January 21st, 2019 Blog, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Poultry, Seasonal/Holiday Recipes Comments Off on Roast Turkey – Warm, Fully Flavorful Feast Any Day 
With all that it has to offer: its signature warm smell while it roasts, terrific comforting flavor fresh out of the oven, incredible leftover versatility, and much more, especially when it’s cold out, why have roasted turkey just on Thanksgiving?
I’ve roasted two turkeys since Thanksgiving: one to have leftovers at home after Thanksgiving, which I’m still enjoying in portions out of the freezer, and another to prepare for a Bicycles Battling Cancer dinner at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge in Boston last week.
If you’ve never roasted a turkey, you might think it’s a real chore.
It isn’t. In fact, it’s stress-free easy.
The keys to roasting a turkey beautifully successfully are roasting the turkey without stuffing (which otherwise will lead you to overcook the bird to cook the stuffing safely), using a meat thermometer, and doing most of the roasting with the turkey’s most delicate meat, the breast meat, cooked out of direct contact with the heat, which means roasting the bird mostly breast side down as shown in the top left picture below.
Click either this link or any picture on this page for complete, easy to follow fully flavorful stress-free roast turkey directions.
June 3rd, 2018 Blog, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Grains Comments Off on Quinoa Power Bar Picture Book Recipe 
Not too long ago, I came upon a recipe for rice cakes (nothing like the puck-shaped, crunchy variety you find on grocery shelves) put together by pro-cycling Team Sky nutritionist Nigel Mitchell to sustain top world-class athletes on long rides. Here’s a shot of Nigel’s rice cake recipe along with…
May 28th, 2018 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Breakfast, Fitness Food, Special Recipes Comments Off on Almond Butter with Dried Cranberries, Flaxseed and Toasted Coconut Picture Recipe Flavor rules – always!
Cool thing about making almond – or any nut – butter on your own is that you can add anything you want to it to make it all yours.
May 27th, 2018 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Breakfast, Cycling, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, How To & Tips, Nutrition, Special Recipes Comments Off on Homemade Almond Butter: Training Food Extraordinaire – All in Pictures 
I’ve always been a big fan of almond butter: great flavor and texture, terrific energy sustainer. Years ago, when my favorite vendor of that almond butter – and many other favorite food products, Trader Joe’s, experienced a recall and then was only able to dole out cases of new almond butter the way Apple doles out new versions of its iPhone, a Trader Joe’s salesman I’d gotten to know asked me quite bluntly, “Do you have a food processor?”
