Menu "No" Plan Monday: Leftovers Edition

I will be honest: I have not been great at planning menus lately. However, this weekend we made some great dishes that will certainly make a reappearance this week and I wanted to share them with you.

In 2004 my husband bought me a subscription to Cooking Light. It was wonderful, but ultimately too many recipes to make in one month! We canceled the subscription at the end of the year but I held on to the magazines as part of my cookbook collection. Every so often I look through the corresponding month's magazine to get some recipe ideas. This weekend I re-discovered the Jan/Feb 2004 issue and made three of the recipes. I found the links online and I would like to share them for 3 reasons reasons:

1. The soup was easy, delicious, and hearty! (I used the Eden Organics Black Beans and Rice instead of just black beans and strained Pomi tomatoes instead of canned tomatoes)

2. I used collards instead of kale in the kale recipe and I have never had such yummy greens. (I also used hot dogs instead of bacon)

3. The tofu recipe was the best I had ever made. My husband usually hates eating tofu, but I keep trying to come up with new recipes since tofu is a cheap alternative to animal products. This recipe is truly different than any other and even my husband said it tastes great, although he insisted that we call it the "mushrooms" dish instead of the "tofu" dish. (I used regular mushrooms, not shiitake, and I left out the chile paste)

A note about the preparation: I decided these recipes called for the food processor, making the preparations that much easier. The onions and mushrooms looked so professional! And, as you can see, I make lots of substitutions as I cook. I hope I mentioned them all.

The Recipes:

The Mexican Corn and Bean soup
Braised Kale and Bacon with Cider
Tofu and Mushroom Recipe

I hope you enjoy them too!

For more menu plan ideas, check out www.OrgJunkie.com

Beyond the Table #1: The New Salad Spinning Popper!

The "inaugural" post for the Beyond the Table series brings back memories! Remember playing with the Playskool Spinning Popper? A great toy but increasingly difficult to find, unless you inherited one from your parents like us. I was spinning salad one day when my (then) one year old wanted a turn. I knew he was good at the Spinning Popper so I let him try a hand at the salad spinner. Wow- I gained an extra 20 minutes in the kitchen! He was having a blast and I was preparing food right along side of him. These pictures are actually recent; since then he loves to open the top while it is spinning (not so great) or sneak a piece of spinach (great!).

Spinning salad is a good simple lesson for kids:
Leaves grow in soil, they need to be cleaned.
Lest they think they grow on the supermarket shelves...

Beyond the Table will be a new series on this blog that will showcase the many ways in which kids of all ages can hang out and help out in the kitchen. Going Beyond Prenatals is not just about eating healthy during pregnancy, but about going beyond pregnancy to think about pediatric nutrition as well. Creating positive kitchen interactions beyond the table encourages healthy eating and good memories. You benefit too, by always having an activity on hand! To read more, click here.

New Series: Beyond the Table

I know what you are thinking: "First she asks us to go Beyond Prenatals and to actually eat healthy food instead of relying on supplements, and now she is asking us to go Beyond the Table? What does that even mean?" Read on...

There is a plethora of parenting information attempting to teach parents how to get their kids to eat healthy food. To summarize briefly, according to most websites and magazines, you need to create funky sauces, cut out cute shapes from bread and vegetables, sneak vegetable puree into their muffins, and continue to introduce food at least 15 times before agreeing that the kid just doesn't like it.

Those ideas may work, but I am proposing another idea that will: A) Try to prevent the problem in the first place, and B) Accelerate any of the above attempts to cajole your adorable children into healthier food.

If you have been following the foodie world lately, you may have noticed a trend to get kids into the kitchen. Specifically, I am thinking of three New York Times articles promoting this concept. You can read them here, here, and here.

These articles are really great but they focus on preschool and kindergarten children learning their way around the kitchen. I would like to see kids in the kitchen at an even younger age! The younger, the better. Kids who spend time in the kitchen learn about food, science, nutrition, colors, smell, counting, measuring, and texture. Assisting in creating something from nothing also builds the confidence kids need and the independence they crave. Plus, they are much more likely to eat food that they themselves helped to prepare.

Beyond the Table will be a new series on this blog that will showcase the many ways in which kids of all ages can hang out and help out in the kitchen. Going Beyond Prenatals is not just about eating healthy during pregnancy, but encouraging parents to create positive kitchen interactions in childhood to encourage healthy eating and good memories. You benefit too, by always having an activity on hand! Many of the Beyond the Table posts will be about my family and my friend's family kitchen and food adventures. Some posts will discuss current news and research on this subject. If you are interested in a guest post for this series, e-mail debra@beyondprenatals.com

Check back tomorrow for the first series (don't worry, it will be an easy one!)

Related post: Six Food Mistakes Turned Lessons

Breast Cancer Part II: Breastfeeding after Breast Cancer

A "Before and After" theme: Breast Cancer Part I discussed how breastfeeding and other lifestyle changes may help protect women from breast cancer. Part II will discuss breastfeeding after breast cancer.

The idea for this post came from an interesting thread on one my nutrition listservs regarding cancer diagnosis and later breastfeeding. Can and should a woman breastfeed if she previously had breast cancer? Would it be protective, harmful, or neutral? This is an important question considering that 3% of all diagnosed breast cancers occur in pregnant or lactating women.

I remembered this article about pregnancy and cancer in the NYT.

I will quote the relevant text:

"Can hormonal changes during pregnancy cause cancer? Evidence suggests that, at the very least, pregnancy hormones can cause pre-existing abnormal breast cells or growths to develop quickly and aggressively. In addition, pregnancy, it seems, changes the way the body handles the threat of cancer: During a healthy person’s lifetime, cells undergo changes that may or may not turn them into cancer. “Cells may be on the verge of becoming evil cells, then typically go back to being normal,” says Dr. V. K. Gadi, an oncologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “But during pregnancy, there’s a surge of hormones that help promote certain types of breast cancer. It’s a highly estrogenic environment.” Meanwhile, the woman’s immune system is learning to tolerate the fetus, which is in many ways like a transplanted organ. “Essentially, the immune system is dampened to protect the fetus,” Gadi says. “Cancer cells take advantage of this opportunity where the immune system is backing off from its normal processes. They’re emboldened. And that’s the perfect storm.” The effects of this “perfect storm” appear to linger during the postpartum period. While pregnancy lowers a woman’s lifetime chances of developing breast cancer, her risk is actually heightened in the 2 to 10 years following childbirth. Moreover, if a woman has been pregnant within the last two years and develops breast cancer, she is twice as likely to die from the disease."

Although this is a controversial topic that is seemingly simplified in this quote, I was left wondering if this lingering postpartum "perfect storm" would be diminished by the additional hormones from breastfeeding. Breastfeeding would thus reduce the risk of breast cancer during the postpartum period. I propose my theory below and I would love to hear your comments!

A little Biology 101
After the placenta is delivered, progesterone and estrogen decrease dramatically. The receptor sites on the cells of the milk ducts are then open to receive prolactin. Prolactin increases each time breastfeeding occurs and ensures an adequate milk supply. However, if breastfeeding does not occur frequently enough, or a piece of placenta remains, or birth control pills containing progesterone are introduced prior to 6 weeks postpartum, then prolactin levels will not increase. This is because the cells will always prefer and accept the progesterone. Low prolactin levels and high progesterone levels lead to a decreased milk supply.

What does this have to do with breast cancer?
In hormone-receptive breast cancer, more cancers are progesterone-receptor positive, rather than progesterone-receptor negative. So getting rid of the progesterone and replacing it with prolactin would seem to be protective against breast cancer. However, this theory is complicated by the fact that prolactin receptor sites are also found on a majority breast cancers and that prolactin is shown to promote cancer growth.

Let us review what we know:
We know that breastfeeding protects against breast cancer (see Part I). We also know that there is no evidence that breastfeeding increases breast cancer recurrence. We know that breast cancer can have receptor sites for progesterone and prolactin. And we know that progesterone receptors can be involved in turning on breast cancer cell growth, while prolactin promotes breast cancer cell growth.

The Theory
There are many theories on why breastfeeding protects against breast cancer: it reduces the number of menses cycles and ovulation, physical changes in the breast during breastfeeding, low DNA synthesis during breastfeeding, or elimination of carcinogens through milk ducts.

I understand I am venturing outside of my expertise, but here is what I am thinking: The longer you breastfeed for, the longer your body remains in a state of elevated prolactin and decreased progesterone. This prevents breast cancer cells from turning on, negating the fact that prolactin can cause cancer growth because there are no cancer cells (hopefully). This idea is supported by the fact that the research shows greater protection from breast cancer with longer periods of breastfeeding (12 months and on). And it would also make sense that women who have previously had breast cancer would benefit from breastfeeding due to this progesterone suppression.

To bring Part I and Part II together:

Breastfeed to protect against breast cancer and breastfeed after you recover from breast cancer, but maybe not while you have breast cancer.

These guidelines are actually easy to follow since most women will not be allowed to breastfeed during cancer due to toxic levels of chemotherapeutic drugs and radiation. Traditionaly women were told to"pump and dump" their milk to maintain their supply and then continue breastfeeding after treatment. However, I am not sure how wise that advise is based on the aforementioned theory.

If you are a breast cancer survivor who became pregnant and you would like to breastfeed, please make sure to find youself a good lactation consultant. If you had breast surgery or radiation, there may be damage to the affected breast resulting in low milk supply to the affected breast depending on the extent of treatment. But you won't know until you try. Many breast cancer survivors have gone on to breastfeed from both breasts very succesfully and this has been documented in the literature. I would love to hear your stories!

For everyone reading this post who has healthy breasts, realize the gifts that you were given and put them to good breastfeeding use (besides the good uses they have served you until now). And please become familar with how your breasts look and feel so you can detect cancer early, before you get pregnant.

Related post: Breast Cancer Part I: Breast Cancer Prevention

Breast Cancer Part I: Breast Cancer Prevention

I have spent a lot of time thinking about breast cancer lately. This is partly because cancer has affected many people I know, and partly because the news is always a flurry with breast cancer stories.

In an amazing recent article in the New York Times, Gina Kolata reports on a 6-year study conducted in Norway that suggests that some breast cancers may go away on their own. This article also taught readers that most breast cancers begin in milk ducts and can either stay in the milk duct or break through to the rest of the breast.

If breast cancer often originates in milk ducts, we should not be surprised that breastfeeding has been proven to prevent breast cancer. In a well respected review, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) found that a history of breastfeeding was associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer. One of the research studies included in their review was a well-conducted meta-analysis consisting of 47 studies in 30 countries. The meta-analysis found that the relative risk of breast cancer decreased by 4.3% for every 12 months of breastfeeding- regardless of age, family history, and menopausal status. These 12 months of breastfeeding can be for one child or they can be a cumulative total of 12 months for 2 or more children (i.e breastfeeding 3 children for 4 months each). They also found that breast cancer decreased by 7% for each pregnancy. That means that if you follow the AAP guidelines, which recommends breastfeeding each child for at least one year, you will have a total breast cancer risk reduction of 11.3% with EACH child to whom you give birth and breastfeed. Pretty cool.

Although breast cancer is largely determined by genetics,

there are some other lifestyle factors that may help prevent breast cancer:

• Postmenopausal women should exercise for 30-60 minutes each day
• Maintain a healthy weight throughout adulthood to prevent excess estrogen in the body
• Avoid excess alcohol
• Eat a diet full of fruits, vegetables, whole grains (barley, oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat bread), beans/legumes, olive and canola oils, nuts, and safe fatty fish. Also include some soy products in your diet (e.g. tofu, soynuts, tempeh, edamame).
  

Look out for my upcoming post Breast Cancer Part II, in which I will discuss breastfeeding after breast cancer.


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