Ham and Cheese Pizza Stacks

Mmm! So tasty and quite healthy too!

Use flour tortillas for the base for this pesto-ham-and mozzarella stack.

Ingredients

1/4 cup purchased pesto
12 7- to 8-inch flour tortillas
1/2 pound finely chopped cooked ham (1-1/2 cups)
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (8 ounces)
1 8-ounce can pizza sauce or 1/2 cup Alfredo pasta sauce

Preparation Bake:12 min.Prep:15 min.
1 Spread the pesto on one side of four tortillas. Top each with a second tortilla to make four separate stacks. Stir together the ham and half of the cheese. Sprinkle ham mixture over second layer of each tortilla stack. Top with the remaining tortillas. Spread top layer with pizza sauce or Alfredo sauce; sprinkle with remaining cheese.
2 Place the tortilla stacks on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake in a 425 degrees F oven for 12 to 15 minutes or until cheese is melted. To serve, cut each stack into wedges. Makes 4 stacks (8 servings).
3 Dietary Exchanges: 2 starch, 1 vegetable, 1-1/2 lean meat, 2 fat.
4 Test Kitchen Tip: Personalize these stacks as you please — substitute pepperoni for the ham and add chopped mushrooms or other chopped veggies.

Nutritional Analysis
Per Serving
calories 354
total fat 15g
saturated fat 4g
cholesterol 32mg
sodium 946mg
carbohydrate 34g
fiber 0g
protein 19g

Recipe: Sautéed Cauliflower With Apples and Sherry

Time: 25 minutes

1 medium head cauliflower
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons shallots, minced
2/3 cup Braeburn or other apple in ¼-inch dice
1 tablespoon amontillado sherry
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Grated nutmeg.

1. Pull off leaves from cauliflower, and trim tough stem end away. With sharp paring knife separate cauliflower into florets, leaving 1-inch stem at base of each floret. Cut pieces in two lengthwise and lay flat side down. Cut each piece lengthwise in two, and repeat until you have 2-inch-long carved floret and stem pieces of approximately equal thickness (about ½-inch) top to bottom. There should be 16 ounces, about 7 cups of cauliflower. Set aside.

2. Melt butter over medium-low heat in large skillet until brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer to small bowl and set aside.

3. Toss cauliflower, salt and 5 tablespoons water in empty skillet, cover, and set over high heat. Cook until cauliflower is tender, shaking pan and stirring once, 5 minutes. Uncover skillet (water should be gone), and toss. Drizzle with reserved butter. Stir in shallots and apples, and cook, stirring until tender, about 2 minutes. Add sherry and pepper, and toss to combine. Transfer to warm serving platter and sprinkle nutmeg over top.

Yield: 4 to 6 side dish servings.

Recipe: Sautéed Broccoli With Toasted Garlic, Orange and Sesame

Time: 25 minutes

1 medium head broccoli
2 teaspoons sesame seeds
2 tablespoons olive oil
2½ tablespoons thinly sliced garlic cloves
¼ to ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
½ teaspoon finely grated orange peel.

1. Rinse broccoli. Cut off thick stem where it meets slender stalks, and reserve. With sharp paring knife separate stalks into florets, leaving stems about 1½ inches long on each. Cut pieces in two lengthwise and lay flat-side down. Cut each piece lengthwise in two and repeat until you have 3-inch-long carved floret and stem pieces of approximately equal thickness (about ½-inch) top to bottom. Peel tough skin from stems, and cut crosswise into ¼-inch medallions. There should be 12 ounces of broccoli, about 7 cups. Set aside.

2. Toast sesame seeds in large nonstick skillet over low heat until golden, about 5 minutes. Transfer to small bowl, and set aside.

3. Place olive oil and garlic in skillet over low heat. Toast garlic, stirring frequently, until garlic is deep golden brown, about 6 minutes. Add pepper flakes to hot oil, and stir. Transfer to small bowl, and set aside. Toss broccoli, salt and ¼ cup water in same skillet, cover and set over high heat. Cook until broccoli is tender, shaking pan and stirring once, 4 minutes. Uncover skillet (water should be gone), and toss. Stir in garlic and oil, oyster sauce and orange peel. Transfer to warm serving platter, and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Yield: 4 to 6 side dish servings.

Recipe: Green Beans and Portobello Mushroom Saute

Recipe Summary
Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes
Yield: 4 servings

1 1/4 pounds green beans, trimmed and cut in half
Coarse salt
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, 2 turns of the pan
1 tablespoon butter
1 onion, chopped
2 portobello mushroom caps, halved and thinly sliced
1/2 cup dry sherry

Simmer green beans in salted boiling water 5 minutes. Drain green beans and return skillet to moderate heat. Add oil and butter to the pan. Add onions and saute 2 to 3 minutes. Add mushrooms and season with salt and pepper. Saute mushrooms 3 to 5 minutes with onions, add green beans back to the pan. Heat green beans through and add sherry. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer green beans and mushrooms to a serving plate.

The Top 10 “Trans Fat” Foods

1. Spreads. Margarine is a twisted sister — it’s loaded with trans fats and saturated fats, both of which can lead to heart disease. Other non-butter spreads and shortening also contain large amounts of trans fat and saturated fat:

* Stick margarine has 2.8 grams of trans fat per tablespoon, and 2.1 grams of saturated fat.
* Tub margarine has 0.6 grams of trans fat per tablespoon, and 1.2 grams of saturated fat.
* Shortening has 4.2 grams of trans fat per tablespoon, and 3.4 grams of saturated fat.
* Butter has 0.3 grams of trans fat per tablespoon, and 7.2 grams of saturated fat.

Tip: Look for soft-tub margarine, because it is less likely to have trans fat. Some margarines already say that on the packaging.

[Important note: When you cook with margarine or shortening, you will not increase the amount of trans fat in food, says Cindy Moore, MS, RD, director of nutrition therapy at The Cleveland Clinic. Cooking is not the same as the hydrogenation process. "Margarine and shortening are already bad, but you won't make them any worse."]

2. Packaged foods. Cake mixes, Bisquick, and other mixes all have several grams of trans fat per serving.

Tip: Add flour and baking powder to your grocery list; do-it-yourself baking is about your only option right now, says Moore. Or watch for reduced-fat mixes.
3. Soups. Ramen noodles and soup cups contain very high levels of trans fat.

Tip: Get out the crock-pot and recipe book. Or try the fat-free and reduced-fat canned soups.

4. Fast Food. Bad news here: Fries, chicken, and other foods are deep-fried in partially hydrogenated oil. Even if the chains use liquid oil, fries are sometimes partially fried in trans fat before they’re shipped to the restaurant. Pancakes and grilled sandwiches also have some trans fat, from margarine slathered on the grill.

Examples:

* Fries (a medium order) contain 14.5 grams.
* A KFC Original Recipe chicken dinner has 7 grams, mostly from the chicken and biscuit.
* Burger King Dutch Apple Pie has 2 grams.

Tip: Order your meat broiled or baked. Skip the pie. Forget the biscuit. Skip the fries — or share them with many friends.

5. Frozen Food. Those yummy frozen pies, pot pies, waffles, pizzas, even breaded fish sticks contain trans fat. Even if the label says it’s low-fat, it still has trans fat.

* Mrs. Smith’s Apple Pie has 4 grams trans fat in every delicious slice.
* Swanson Potato Topped Chicken Pot Pie has 1 gram trans fat.
* Banquet Chicken Pot Pie has no trans fat.

Tip: In frozen foods, baked is always heart-healthier than breaded. Even vegetable pizzas aren’t flawless; they likely have trans fat in the dough. Pot pies are often loaded with too much saturated fat, even if they have no trans fat, so forget about it.

6. Baked Goods. Even worse news — more trans fats are used in commercially baked products than any other foods. Doughnuts contain shortening in the dough and are cooked in trans fat.

Cookies and cakes (with shortening-based frostings) from supermarket bakeries have plenty of trans fat. Some higher-quality baked goods use butter instead of margarine, so they contain less trans fat, but more saturated fat.

* Donuts have about 5 grams of trans fat apiece, and nearly 5 grams of saturated fat.
* Cream-filled cookies have 1.9 grams of trans fat, and 1.2 grams of saturated fat.
* Pound cake has 4.3 grams of trans fat per slice, and 3.4 grams of saturated fat.

Tip: Get back to old-fashioned home cooking again. If you bake, use fat-substitute baking products, or just cut back on the bad ingredients, says Moore. Don’t use the two sticks of butter or margarine the recipe calls for two. Try using one stick and a fat-free baking product.
7. Chips and Crackers. Shortening provides crispy texture. Even “reduced fat” brands can still have trans fat. Anything fried (like potato chips and corn chips) or buttery crackers have trans fat.

* A small bag of potato chips has 3.2 grams of trans fat.
* Nabisco Original Wheat Thins Baked Crackers have 2 grams in a 16-cracker serving.
* Sunshine Cheez-It Baked Snack Crackers have 1.5 grams per 27 crackers.

Tip: Think pretzels, toast, pita bread. Actually, pita bread with a little tomato sauce and low-fat cheese tastes pretty good after a few minutes in the toaster oven.

8. Breakfast food. Breakfast cereal and energy bars are quick-fix, highly processed products that contain trans fats, even those that claim to be “healthy.”

* Kellogg’s Cracklin’ Oat Bran Cereal has 1.5 grams per 3/4 cup serving.
* Post Selects Great Grains has 1 gram trans fat per 1/2 cup serving.
* General Mills Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal has .5 grams per 3/4 cup serving.
* Quaker Chewy Low Fat Granola Bars Chocolate Chunk has .5 grams trans fat.

Tip: Whole-wheat toast, bagels, and many cereals don’t have much fat. Cereals with nuts do contain fat, but it’s healthy fat.

9. Cookies and Candy. Look at the labels; some have higher fat content than others. A chocolate bar with nuts — or a cookie — is likely to have more trans fat than gummy bears.

* Nabisco Chips Ahoy! Real Chocolate Chip Cookies have 1.5 grams per 3 cookies. If you plow through a few handfuls of those, you’ve put away a good amount of trans fat.

Tip: Gummy bears or jelly beans win, hands down. If you must have chocolate, get dark chocolate — since it’s been shown to have redeeming heart-healthy virtues.

10. Toppings and Dips. Nondairy creamers and flavored coffees, whipped toppings, bean dips, gravy mixes, and salad dressings contain lots of trans fat.

Tip: Use skim milk or powdered nonfat dry milk in coffee. Keep an eye out for fat-free products of all types. As for salad dressings, choose fat-free there, too — or opt for old-fashioned oil-and-vinegar dressing. Natural oils such as olive oil and canola oil don’t contain trans fat.

Can you eliminate trans fats entirely your diet? Probably not. Even the esteemed National Academy of Sciences stated last year that such a laudable goal is not possible or realistic.

Instead, take this suggestion from Moore: “The goal is to have as little trans fat in your diet as possible. “You’re not eliminating trans fats entirely, but you’re certainly cutting back.”

A Runner’s Quest for the Ache of Life

As a high school and college cross country runner, I would just like to say that Karnazes rules! Read this, be inspired, and get outside!

March 16, 2005
ON THE RUN WITH DEAN KARNAZES
A Runner’s Quest for the Ache of Life
By KIRK JOHNSON

GOLDEN, Colo., March 15 - Dean Karnazes thinks that comfort, convenience and quick gratification - the Big Three of the middle-class American lifestyle - are not making us happy and that we should seek out more suffering.

“Dostoyevsky had it right: ‘Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness,’ ” he writes in his new book, “Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner” (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin).

If that kind of talk sounds alien in the age of instant everything - a sort of Klingon-style philosophy that Mr. Worf from “Star Trek” might spout before hitting himself with a pain stick - well, it probably is. But in Mr. Karnazes’ world of super-distance ultramarathon running, many of the conventions of ordinary life do not apply.

He has run 75 hours straight, 262 miles down the coast of California. He regularly runs all night, 70 miles or more, and in fact dictated much of his book into a tape recorder that he carried while he ran. He has completed many of the nation’s toughest 100-mile trail races in under 24 hours. He once ran a marathon at the South Pole, in running shoes.

The gimmick of the promotional tour for “Ultramarathon Man,” which is Mr. Karnazes’ first book, is that he has offered to run with any reporter or editor loopy enough to accompany him. Few have taken him up on it. This reporter said yes.

“In an ordinary race, a 10K or something, you’re just running to race or to check your time,” said Mr. Karnazes, 42, a married father of two and the president of a San Francisco health food company, as we ran on a trail west of Denver one recent morning.

But an ultramarathon - technically any distance longer than a 26.2-mile traditional marathon - is not really a race at all in the ordinary sense, Mr. Karnazes said. A day and a night of running, he said, is more like a melodrama than an athletic contest - full of euphoric highs and gloomy, dispiriting lows. The emotional climax - the Dostoyevskian moment of suffering - comes when exhaustion and despair loom up and smack you in the face and the finish line seems unattainable.

“That’s exactly the moment I seek,” he said. “To me, life is in the struggle, and I never feel more alive than when I’m struggling.”

Most ultramarathoners struggle privately, of course. Mr. Karnazes is doing so on the national stage. From the cover of Runner’s World magazine to a spread in Time and a scheduled appearance Wednesday night on “Late Show With David Letterman,” ultramarathoning has probably never had such exposure.

And while reception to the book among other runners has been mostly positive, Mr. Karnazes said, there has also been what he called a “darker backlash” that is perhaps even more revealing of how super-distance athletes think.

Some have accused him of “giving away the sport,” he said, by shedding so much light into a secret garden of American culture that could be destroyed by the attention. Others, in e-mail messages or in person, have suggested that Mr. Karnazes, who was named one of the Sexiest Men in Sports by Sports Illustrated Women, is a media creation - or “just a magazine figure,” as he put it.

For this reporter, running 10 miles or so with Mr. Karnazes was plenty to establish his bona fides - though just looking at his tree-trunk quadriceps would probably do that. Even though he was gracious and willing to run slowly, it was rather like setting up one’s easel next to Monet or Picasso, and excellent for keeping a journeyman runner’s ego in check.

The tape recorder that we ran with captured the cruel disparities of physical attainment: The reporter’s questions were punctuated by labored breathing that … sounded … like … this. Mr. Karnazes answered as though he was sitting on the couch. Hills were irrelevant, sweat apparently optional.

In his book, Mr. Karnazes describes a journey into distance running that is also much less about sweat than about the emotional terrain that unfolds at the frontier of endurance. Ultramarathons are not completed, he writes, simply by being in shape to do them or being obsessive enough to train for them, but rather by digging deeply into one’s heart and tapping the reservoirs of will and determination that he thinks exist in all of us.

He said he hoped that people who read his book, especially nonrunners, will find inspiration to push themselves beyond their comfort zones in whatever their passion. They will come back better, stronger, wiser people, he said, even if they fall short.

“Covering 100 miles on foot was more than a lesson in survival, it was an education on the grace of living,” he writes in describing his first 100-mile trail race, called the Western States, in the Sierra Nevada of California in 1994. “I became almost irrelevant,” he goes on. “My struggles were not about a single runner trying to finish this unfathomable challenge but about the greater ability of a human being to persevere against insurmountable odds.”

Like so many other things in the ultramarathon world, the idea of “winning,” Mr. Karnazes said, is also contrary to the competitive lust for place and position that grips ordinary life. Last year, he won one of the toughest ultramarathons of all, the 135-mile Badwater race across Death Valley, held in July, when the temperature can easily break 125 degrees. He does not gloat, and cannot even bring himself to say the words, “I won.”

“I prefer to say I survived the fastest,” he said in the interview. “For so many other people out there, winning - to them - is just crossing the finish line.”

But he also writes about the earthier side of ultramarathons, like the giddy joys of food when the body - he says his own has less than 5 percent body fat, about one-fourth the average American’s - has become a raging furnace for the burning of calories. By his own estimate, he consumed nearly 28,000 calories while running for 46 straight hours in a race in California in 2000. The book even includes an appendix of what he gobbled, from a whole cheesecake to three large beef burritos.

Other sorts of fuel are where you find them. In the deep places of the soul that ultramarathoners mine for the stuff of will power, a little rebuke, like the ultramarathoner backlash to his book, can be a good thing, Mr. Karnazes said. It has given him even a bit more to burn and to dig for next time he is out there, facing the darkness and the voices of doubt that say the finish line cannot be reached.

“I have to continue to prove I’m a real athlete,” he said.

A Few Tips to Cope With Life’s Annoyances

Check out this awesome article. A sense of humor and a good perspective goes a long way in this wacky world.

March 15, 2005
A Few Tips to Cope With Life’s Annoyances
By IAN URBINA

When Seth Shepsle goes to Starbucks, he orders a “medium” because “grande” - as the coffee company calls the size, the one between big and small - annoys him.

Meg Daniel presses zero whenever she hears a computerized operator on the telephone so that she can talk to a real person. “Just because they want a computer to handle me doesn’t mean I have to play along,” she said.

When subscription cards fall from magazines Andrew Kirk is reading, he stacks them in a pile at the corner of his desk. At the end of each month, he puts them in the mail but leaves them blank so that the advertiser is forced to pay the business reply postage without gaining a new subscriber.

Life can involve big hardships, like being fired or smashing up your car. There is only so much you can do about them. But far more prevalent - and perhaps in the long run just as insidious - are life’s many little annoyances.

These, you can do something about.

To examine the little weapons people use for everyday survival is to be given a free guidebook on getting by, created by the millions who feel that they must. It is a case study in human inventiveness, with occasional juvenile and petty passages, and the originators of these tips are happy to share them.

“They’re an integral part of how people cope,” said Prof. James C. Scott, who teaches anthropology and political science at Yale University, and the author of “Weapons of the Weak,” about the feigned ignorance, foot-dragging and other techniques Malaysian peasants used to avoid cooperating with the arrival of new technology in the 1970’s. “All societies have them, but they’re successful only to the extent that they avoid open confrontation.”

The slow driver in fast traffic, the shopper with 50 coupons at the front of the checkout line and the telemarketer calling at dinner all inflict life’s thousand little lashes. But some see these infractions as precious opportunities, rare chances for retribution in the face of forces beyond our control.

Wesley A. Williams spent more than a year exacting his revenge against junk mailers. When signing up for a no-junk-mail list failed to stem the flow, he resorted to writing at the top of each unwanted item: “Not at this address. Return to sender.” But the mail kept coming because the envelopes had “or current resident” on them, obligating mail carriers to deliver it, he said.

Next, he began stuffing the mail back into the “business reply” envelope and sending it back so that the mailer would have to pay the postage. “That wasn’t exacting a heavy enough cost from them for bothering me,” said Mr. Williams, 35, a middle school science teacher who lives in Melrose, N.Y., near Albany.

After checking with a postal clerk about the legality of stepping up his efforts, he began cutting up magazines, heavy bond paper, and small strips of sheet metal and stuffing them into the business reply envelopes that came with the junk packages.

“You wouldn’t believe how heavy I got some of these envelopes to weigh,” said Mr. Williams, who added that he saw an immediate drop in the amount of arriving junk mail. A spokesman for the United States Postal Service, Gerald McKiernan, said that Mr. Williams’s actions sounded legal, as long as the envelope was properly sealed.

Sometimes, small acts of rebellion offer big doses of relief.

“I’ve come to realize that I’m almost addicted to the sick little pleasure I get from lashing out at these things,” said Mr. Kirk, 24, a freelance writer from Brooklyn who collects and returns magazine inserts.

When ordering a pizza from Domino’s, Mr. Kirk says he always requests a “small,” knowing that he will be corrected and told that medium is the smallest available size. “It makes me feel better to point out that their word games aren’t fooling anyone,” he said.

The Internet offers a booming trade to help with this type of annoyance-fighting behavior. For example, shared passwords to free Web sites are available at www.bugmenot.com to help people avoid dealing with long registration forms. To coexist with loud cellphone talkers, the Web offers hand-held jammers that, although illegal in the United States, can block all signals within a 45-foot radius.

Mitch Altman, a 48-year old inventor living in San Francisco, said that in the last three months he has sold about 30,000 of his key-chain-size zappers called TV-B-Gone, which can be used discreetly to switch off televisions in public places. “When you go to a restaurant to talk with friends, why should you have to deal with the distraction of a ceiling-mounted television?” Mr. Altman said.

Some Web sites specialize in arming people against online annoyances. The site www.slashdot.org posted the name and the mailing address of one of the worst known spammers, encouraging people to sign the spammer up for catalogs and other junk mail to be sent to the spammer’s home. Mr. McKiernan of the Postal Service said that this tactic also appeared to be legal, but might constitute harassment.

Some groups are more frustrated than others. In 2002, Harris Interactive, a market research group based in Rochester, conducted a phone survey called the Daily Hassle Scale that asked 1,010 people to rank the aggravations they faced in a typical day. The survey found that poor people and African-Americans suffer the most stress from the everyday annoyances such as noisy neighbors, telemarketers and pressure at work, but it did not explain why.

Sometimes, the resistance to these frustrations is organized.

Work slowdowns are methods commonly used by labor unions to apply pressure without actually striking. During the Solidarity movement in Poland, people expressed their disapproval of the government-run news media by taking a walk with their hats on backward at exactly 6 p.m. when the state news program started. When the government noticed the trend, it issued curfews, but people then put their televisions in their windows facing outward so that only the police walking the streets would see the broadcasts.

“You have to remember, in Poland during those years showing up drunk at work was seen as a patriotic act because people hated the bosses so much,” Professor Scott said.

But even on less coordinated levels, shared frustration is often the augur of countercultural trends. Mr. Shepsle said he took great solace in discovering his irritations with Starbucks’ lingo summed up on a popular T-shirt in Chicago. The shirt, which mocks the pretentiousness of a certain Chicago neighborhood, features two names. Next to Lincoln Park it says “Tall, Grande, Venti.” Next to Wicker Park it says “Small, Medium, Large.”

“It’s nice to know I’m not alone,” said Mr. Shepsle, 28, who works for a theater company in Manhattan.

Most people participate in this sort of behavior on some level, Professor Scott said, adding that his own habit was to write “England” rather than “United Kingdom” on letters he sends to his British friends. He described this as his way of disregarding British claims to Wales and Scotland.

“As a tactic, it doesn’t amount to much except a way to provide a tiny and private sense of satisfaction,” he said. “But that’s something.”

Scars and Vitamin E

Use Vitamin E gel caplets. You can get them at any pharmacy in the herbal remedies section. Break open the gel cap and apply a generous amount of vitamin E oil on the scar. Takes about one month for a fairly recent scar and if it’s a scar from when you were younger it will take about two months or so.

Pan seared salmon with black bean relish

so healthy and delicious :-)!

Prep Time: 35 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Yield: 6 servings

4 cups cooked black beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups cooked corn kernels, cut from the cob
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced or 1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely minced
1/2 bunch scallions, minced
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 limes, juiced
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
6 (6 ounce) salmon fillet pieces
1 tablespoon Essence, recipe follows
3 tablespoons canola oil

In a large bowl combine first 9 ingredients and stir to mix well. Season the black bean relish with salt and pepper, and set aside at least 1/2 hour before serving with salmon. Finish the black bean relish with the chopped cilantro.

Season salmon steaks with salt and pepper and dust with Essence.

Heat 1 large or 2 small skillets over high heat, add oil and sear salmon 2 to 3 minutes on each side for medium rare. Serve with the black bean relish.

Essence (Emeril’s Creole Seasoning):
2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried leaf oregano
1 tablespoon dried thyme

Combine all ingredients thoroughly and store in an airtight jar or container.

Yield: about 2/3 cup