MUFA's

Monounsaturated fatty acids, or MUFA's for short, sound like they belong in a chemistry class, not on a blog about art and food. Yet it makes perfect sense to include consideration of fats in any discussion of food, and it makes even more sense to include MUFA's in the discussion of beautiful food.

For quite some time now, we have been aware of the dangers to our hearts of saturated fats. These are the kind of fats that come primarily from animal sources. (Think bacon, butter, lard, and cream) They are generally solid at room temperature. The problem with including too much of them in the diet is that they contribute to health issues such as high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, risk of stroke, and hypertension.

MUFA's on the other hand, while still fats and still high in calories, show evidence of having a beneficial effect on health provided we don't overindulge and remember that we shouldn't have more than about 20-35 percent of our daily calories from ANY kind of fat.

Here's what the Mayo Clinic has recently said about these friendly fats:
"Consuming monounsaturated fatty acids may help lower your risk of heart disease by improving associated risk factors. For instance, MUFAs may lower your total blood cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. MUFAs may also help normalize blood clotting. And some research shows that MUFAs may also benefit insulin levels and blood sugar control, which can be especially helpful if you have type 2 diabetes."

And here's why they have a place in any discussion of beautiful food: Not only do they help do good things for our health and energy when added to the diet in place of saturated fats or trans-fats, they're beautiful to look at, to cook with, to taste, to crunch, and they improve the "satisfaction" quality of even the most calorie-conscious meal. That's because they are found in:

• Avocadoes


• Canola oil


• Nuts (Almonds, cashews, pecans, macadamias)


• Nut butters


• Olive oil


• Olives


• Peanut oil


• Sesame seeds


• Dark chocolate

Now if you have always thought these products were on the taboo list for dieters, let me assure you, your diet just got more beautiful. Here are some ideas:

Chop up 4 pecan halves and sprinkle on top of a salad instead of cheese or crumbled bacon.
Dress up a grilled filet of chicken or white fish (snapper, cod, halibut, tilapia, etc.) with a spoonful of olive tapenade during the last minute or so of grilling.
Experiment with different dark chocolates and find one that you really enjoy. When a sweet tooth attack strikes, have an ounce and really enjoy it.
Stir fry using only MUFA oils like canola or peanut. They're stable at high heat, and you can add a tablespoon of sesame oil to the pan. Then sprinkle sesame seeds on top before serving.
Substitute olive oil for butter when making a sautee. Keep a few different kinds of oils on hand and get to know their flavors.
Cut an avocado into chunks and add a couple of tablespoons to a fruit smoothie or mix them into a fruit salad. They add beautiful color to a salad and velvety "mouth-feel" to smoothies.
Dip fresh, washed, and dried strawberries into melted dark chocolate and let cool. Great dessert!
And, lastly, a tip from my friend Gary, who suggests making guacamole (good use of avocados) with part mashed peas, to raise the amount of fiber and reduce the calorie count!

So, before plopping that spoonful of butter into a hot saute pan, think about how MUFA's beautify us froom the inside out, and reach for the olive oil instead! (Or the peanut, or the canola....)

Beauty is in the Bowl of the Beholder

Welcome to the first installment of "The HeART of Food", a daily exploration of our relationship with food and, particularly, how healthy food brings real beauty into our lives. When I first conceived this train of art and writing, I had just completed last year's series of painting or drawing my dinner each night as an artistic and dietary discipline. I thought it would help me stay accountable to good food as well as the discipline of creating art, even if it were a tiny piece, every day.

That series got me seriously interested in the beauty that is inherent in food carefully grown, mindfully prepared, artfully presented, and joyfully consumed.

It prompted me to pay closer attention to avoiding food that contained unpronounceable ingredients, refined sugar, emasculated grain, or trans-anything.

I also have done some delving into the images or objects connected with food which artists throughout time have shared with the world, and concluded that some of the most beautiful images speak to us of abundance and blessing. Think, for example, of ancient libation cups and bowls created to offer sustenance to gods of earth, sea, and sky.

The marble (marble!) bowl shown above was made by the Cycladic people, ca. 2800 B.C.E., is of a size easily held in the hand, and is carved as thin as a porcelain cup. We know nearly nothing of their civilization, except that they chose to exercise their remarkable skill with marble on very few objects: images of goddesses and these amazing bowls.

How can human beings who would create something so delicate to hold their nourishment degrade to the level of synthesizing food that deserves nothing better than Styrofoam packaging? How did real food lose its beauty?

It is to reclaim the power of food's beauty-its power to sustain the heart literally and figuratively as more than just a package full of calories-that is the object of this series. You are invited to share insights as they occur, or just read along for the ride. From time to time I'll mention resources, post images, and share links you may want to check out. If I assert a fact, I'll quote the source so you can explore further if you like. All art will be either mine or in the public domain or used with permission of its creator. For instance, the marble bowl can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . (If you happen to know the artist please share with the rest of us)

This first week, I want to also think about clean eating and making even seemingly insignificant foods beautiful to the eye. I am of the opinion that one of the reasons we Americans have fallen so far down the slough of bad eating is that there is little to encourage us to linger over and enjoy the interaction with our food. We drive through, get a bag through the car window, and eat from it without even looking at how it's presented. I know. I'm an expert! But I'm also thinking that if we were to consider giving good food the presentation it deserves, we might appreciate it for its aesthetic appeal as much as for its physical nourishment. It would take fewer calories to satisfy us, since our eye and soul would be full.

One thing I don't care to do is to become a recipe site. There are countless excellent recipe sites available, from the Washington Post to Dr. Oz to Martha Stewart. They all do a better job than I could, and they'll give you nutrition values and calorie counts too. If I'm making a point and have a recipe on hand to illustrate it, I'll probably foist it on you. Don't feel that means you have to try it!

So, now that Memorial Day and Taco Night are behind me, it's time to get down to the HeART of the matter.

Expect each day's fresh post by 5:00 am Pacific Daylight time.

Self Portraits, Food, and Spirituality

I had an artist friend who, as she faced her death from cancer, vowed to document her journey toward her unknown destination armed with creativity. She resolved to create a self-portrait each day as her treatments began and the disease ground away at her life. To my amazement, she actually followed through on her resolve. We had a show when she'd finished 30 portraits, some done under the added burden of chemotherapy.

Most were little sketches or watercolors in which her likeness, despite hair loss, bloated face, and yellowed complexion, showed forth plainly. Those were on the good days. One day, it was so bad, the portrait consisted of just a few penstrokes. It was the most poignant of the whole collection, and truly reflected who she was and what her life was like at that particular moment in time.

There are two things for which I am most grateful as I remember this friend, now that she has been gone for some time. One was, of course, the self-portraits that had such an impact on me and the other artists in the show. The other was that, just a few weeks before her death, she attended a show of my work to offer her encouragement and support. Despite her journey she squeezed every moment of creativity out of her hours, days, and weeks.

Something I have realized, lately, is that I seem to be channeling my creativity into some rather bizarre channels as I have not made time to paint or draw over the past several weeks. Since I have lost my job, moved, started planning a wedding, and prepare to start a temporary job, I have not painted a stroke and have put pencil to paper but once. I have not even kept up my journal or my blog.

Instead, one of the really bizarre things I noticed is that the other day I was juicing oranges for breakfast and realized that I was stacking the empty half-shells in the compost pail in a beautiful spiral pattern of shiny orange half-domes. Now, all creativity is fleeting, and many artists intentionally make art that is meant to be transitory. But this was just silly.

Later I realized that my recent obsession with presenting food beautifully seems to be the default outlet for my own need to make art. Unfortunately, it has also gotten enmeshed with an untimely misguided preoccupation with creating luscious, calorie-laden (thanks a lot, 'Julie and Julia')dinners that we probably shouldn't be eating every night of the week. I shudder when I look at the scale.

I am going to try an experiment to change my habits. Since I need to make beautiful, appealing food that is also healthy and delicious, I am going to combine it with the exercise which I learned from my artist friend. I realized that creating the self-portraits was not only an outlet for her creativity, the work gave her some control over her cancer; maybe even over her death. At least it put it on her own terms.

I propose to create a portrait of my dinner every night during April and May, using various media, and making each portrait no larger than 4"x6".

By practicing this discipline, I hope to achieve three goals:
1.) I will force myself to critically examine my main meal for health and design, concentrating on colorful vegetables and fruits
2.) I will provide myself with a framework in which to make art daily
3.) I will discover more about the connection between food artistry, nutrition, self-care, and creativity

I promise myself I will post regularly and put my pictures up on the blog if for no other reason than to be accountable and to derive a sense of accomplishment during this desert time. Here's to creativity! Thanks, Artemis, for being such a courageous role-model! What an artist you were!