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 By
Elizabeth Yarnell
www.GloriousOnePotMeals.com
The other day I went to buy some of the individual bags of
flavored waters for my kids. I was thinking that they would be preferable to
the no-sugar-added juice boxes I normally offer to hydrate them in the car.
Water, I reasoned, is always a healthier choice than juice.
What a
surprise, then, to see that one of the most popular brands of these water bags
listed high fructose corn syrup as the second ingredient and sucralose as the
fourth!
Some
believe our current epidemic of obesity and skyrocketing health problems
including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer can be directly traced to the
abundance of high fructose corn syrup in our packaged foods. It is a highly
processed sweetener, one of the many synthetic sweeteners available that fool
the body into secreting extra hormones and packing on the pounds.
Results
from an 8-year study of more than 1,500 people by the University
of Texas Health Science Center at San
Antonio, suggest that those who drank diet
sodas gained more weight than those who didn’t. Organic,
unrefined, unbleached sugar from sugar cane is always a more health-conscious
choice over high fructose corn syrup or other artificial sweeteners such as
saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame-k and sucralose.
Additional
healthy options to satisfy a sweet tooth might include locally-collected honey,
real maple syrup, nothing-added fruit juices and brands of chocolate syrup that
don’t contain trans-fats or high fructose corn syrup.
Here’s
a tangy recipe that uses citrus and honey to be sweet and healthy without
resorting to synthetic ingredients to cut calories.
Citrus-Ginger Chicken with Root Vegetables
Servings : 4
Ingredients
2 oranges
2 lemons
4 Tbsp. ginger, freshly grated or 1 tsp. dried
4 Tbsp. honey
4 pieces chicken, fresh or frozen
1 sweet potato, cut in 1/2 " chunks
1 parsnip, 1/4" slices
1 turnip, 1/4" slices
1 cup broccoli florets
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Spray inside of 3 1/2- or 4-quart
cast iron Dutch oven and lid with olive oil or vegetable oil.
Wash the orange and lemon carefully and grate the zest from 1 of
each into a small mixing bowl. Add the dry or grated ginger to the bowl and the
honey. Slice the fruit in half and squeeze the juice from the scraped lemon and
orange into the bowl and stir well until honey dissolves. Slice the remaining
fruits into thin rounds and arrange in the bottom of pot in alternating order
(orange, lemon, orange, lemon, etc.) to cover in a single layer.
Arrange chicken pieces on top of the citrus rounds and pour 1/2 of
juice mixture over chicken, spreading to cover. Layer with sweet potatoes,
parsnips, and turnips and cover with remainder of juice mixture, making sure to
include the chunks of zest and ginger. Top with a final layer of broccoli
florets.
Cover and bake for about 53 minutes, or until 3 minutes after the
aroma of a fully-cooked meal wafts from the oven.
Notes:
This is a tangy dish with an unexpectedly sweet, zesty flavor that
is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. I enjoy serving this to company and seeing their
surprise when they discover that they've been enjoying turnips and
parsnips—vegetables with undeserved negative reputations.
I prefer to leave the skins of potatoes, parsnips, and turnips on
and simply scrub them well and remove any eyes or bad spots. Peeling is always
optional in a Glorious Pot Meal and vegetable skins add many vital nutrients
while aiding digestion. Once you peel a vegetable it is no longer a “whole
food.” On the other hand, I can live
without chicken skin.
Nutritional
Analysis per Serving:
Cal 320
Prot
31g
Carb
51g
Fat
3.9g
Chol
75mg
Sod
96mg
Fiber
8g
Elizabeth Yarnell is a Certified Nutritional Consultant,
inventor, and author of Glorious One-Pot
Meals: A new quick & healthy approach to Dutch oven cooking. Surprisingly,
Elizabeth didn’t
discover parsnips or turnips until she was in her 30s. Visit her online to
subscribe to her free newsletter at www.GloriousOnePotMeals.com.
Her unique cooking technique holds US patent 6,846,504.
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