 I'm Chef Robin. Welcome to Hands in the Kitchen Workshop. Today we're going to be talking about seniors and superfoods. We're going to discuss what is a superfood, how to get that label, why we might want to include superfoods in our diet, superfoods, superstars from the food groups, and then placing those superfoods into four menus that are easily executed, tasty and fun to make and healthy for us. So what actually is a superfood? It seems like every year there's a focus on a food that may be familiar to us or new to us, whether it's turmeric, whether it's salmon, whether it's Greek yogurt, somehow or other there's this hyper focus that this is the BN and end-all healthy food that we almost consume and it's being marketed in that way. So are there actual superfoods out there for us to enjoy today? We're going to find out about that and I would like to tell you that the research that I use is from the Harvard School of Medicine, also foods that have been designated by the American Cancer Association, the American Heart Association, and the Food and Drug Administration. So according to Websters, a superfood is a nutrient-rich food considered to be especially beneficial for health and well-being. So nutrient-rich, if we want to break it down, nutrient dense means that calorie for calorie certain foods are healthier for you than other foods. So superfoods are nutrient dense, vitamin packed, minimal rich, and because most superfoods are plant-based, there are some animal product superfoods, but most being plant-based means that they're already low in calories. So they're also antioxidant-full. Antioxidants are a strange and mysterious thing that some foods have. Why we want to understand them is because antioxidants, full foods are foods that help protect our cells, keep healthy status. So in other words, they help to keep your cells safe so they're not preconditioned to heart disease or to cancer or other chronic diseases. So antioxidant-rich is a positive thing. If you see a food labeled antioxidant-rich, you know that that is healthy for you. So superfoods are all of these various characteristics. Now it seems fairly reasonable that we would want to include them in our diet, but we're going to break it down just a little bit more. So the reason you would want to include superfoods in your diet is because they do promote that heart health. They do help to keep your heart healthy. They also improve your energy levels. So if you have a healthy heart, that's one good plus for your energy levels. Also, plant-based foods are most easily digested foods. When you eat a 12-ounce steak or an 8-ounce hamburger, your body really has to work hard to digest that meat protein. It makes you more tired. It gives you lack of energy, whereas eating superfoods that are plant-based will boost that energy. Also, superfoods help with weight loss. Understanding that is understanding that superfoods are dense. Superfoods are nutrient-rich, so you get satiated quicker. You are able to eat less food and feel filled up sooner, and eat less food that's healthier for you, whereas you can plow through that bag of laced potato chips and not even feel like you had anything to eat. So we're talking about foods that fill you up, fill you up with healthy good stuff, and help you stay at the weight that's manageable for you. Also, superfoods, we spoke about warding off chronic diseases with the antioxidants. It's definitely a good thing, positive things. Also, superfoods are thought to be braniac foods. So as we get older and we tackle that Sunday crossword, we want those braniac foods in our diet, so superfoods reducing the effects of aging. That's it. We don't just want to zero in on any particular superfood. We want to actually eat a wide variety of food. I really don't consider any food as being a bad food, but some foods are definitely better for us than other foods, and eating a wide variety of superfoods helps us to gain the benefit of many more minerals and vitamins. When they told us at 7 to eat a rainbow, at 70 it is just as important to eat a rainbow. Our body has a wide array of different things that it's responsible for, and we need a wide array of different nutrients, minerals, and vitamins to keep it functioning at the best. So you gain benefit by eating a variety of superfoods. It also helps to prevent from eating too much of a particular nutrient, which you can, or too little of a particular nutrient. So you kind of want to be adventurous and eat across all of the food groups, and if you're going to eat superstars, why not? They're out there, they're easily available, they're easily managed in the kitchen, and we're going to have some fun keeping it flavorful and interesting to do. So let's talk about, excuse me, let's talk about those superstars in the different food groups when we were in grade school. We all had the little food pyramid. These are superstars taken from those food groups. Nothing exotic is on here except possibly a few whole grains that you might not be familiar with, which I brought examples of. I'm going to talk about otherwise all of these food items should be something that you see on a regular basis, and maybe you pass right by them, but because they're not labeled as a superfood in our produce department or in our meat department, we're going to give them that status today, relegate them to top of the class, and use them in some menus. If we talk about proteins, oily fish is a great superfood, like we mentioned salmon before, but also tuna, also sardines, if you can handle sardines, also bluefish. Mackerel is a strong tasting fish, but it is a very healthy fish for you with those omega-3 fats. Eggs. Now doctors say an egg a day is a healthy complete protein. By saying it's a complete protein, the body can adapt and use all of the protein in that egg without help from anything else. It's immediately accessible for your cells to take that protein and put it to good use. And eggs are very versatile, and before COVID, eggs were actually pretty darn cheap. They've become a little bit more expensive, but still if you break down the cost for protein for eggs in your diet, it's still manageable in most food budgets. Legumes and beans, two inexpensive very easily acquired products in your kitchen, and nuts and seeds, another great go-to superfood protein for garnishing, for snacking, for enjoying, just as a superfood. In the fruit department, we know that kiwis are a superfood. Blueberries, which are so close to us from Maine, there's not a lot of carbon footprint for blueberries, they bring a bunch of vitamin C, they help us ward off bolts and flus, and apple a day is still just as relevant in this present time as it was back in Thomas Jefferson's time when he said that. The avocado and tomatoes kind of straddle the line of vegetable and fruit. Some people consider them a fruit, some people consider them a vegetable, but they're both considered a superfood because they have all those qualities that we just spoke about a superfood having. They're vital and rich, nutrient packed, fiber, minerals, citrus. We all know that citrus is good for us. Vitamin C was used on ships many, many years ago, they discovered that scurvy could be tackled with vitamin C and limits. So fruits are superfoods, are vegetable superfoods. We're going to start with garlic and ginger, which are so important in just cooking for flavor and taste, but also in warding off illness and infection. They're like a natural antibiotic in your system. Root vegetables, beets and carrots and the sweet potato, parsnips and onions, strong vegetables, they send a shoot down that is edible for us. A lot of them have greens that are very also healthy for us and beneficial, but they just, when you cut them, you can see the density in that food. You know that it's super packed. It's not just weeping moisture out that's lost and not accessible for eating and getting that health quality. Also cruciferous vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables are the kale family and the broccoli family. So all of the kales, all of the cabbages, Brussels sprouts, all bring superfood advantages to your plate. They're all easily found in the grocery store and they're also all easily managed in the kitchen. So our body does require some fats and oils and we do like some sweetness once in a while. If you're going to use a fat and olive oil is the superfood of oils or a seed or nut oil, sesame oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil. Dark chocolate is a sweet that is considered a superfood over and above milk chocolate and honey is a sweetener that has trace elements in it that make it healthier for us than just white sugar. In the dairy department, acidated or fermented products such as yogurt or kefir are easily digested. They're low in calories. They bring a bunch of protein to your diet. They're easily used in a lot of different ways in the kitchen and then 2% milk which is low in fat that gives you lots of vitamin D and lots of calcium are the superfoods in the dairy. In grains, one of the superest foods and I think that most Vermonters must know this from winter times. But anyway, oatmeal, we can't consume whole oats like horses. But oatmeal, which is minimally processed, has great natural fats for us and great fiber for us and great vitamins and minerals for us. And it's also a very easy way to start our day or you can make it savory and have it in the evening or put it into baked goods and just add more flavor and fiber to them. Quinoa is one of those grains that we were speaking about. If you're not familiar with quinoa, it is a little tiny granular grain. You just cook it with boiling water and seasoning. Oftentimes when I'm thinking about my menu ahead, the night before I will measure out a certain amount of grains. A lot of the ratio of grain volume is one cup of grain is going to cook to four cups. So if you bear that in mind and you want to make a head, measure out a cup, measure out a half a cup or boiling water over it, set it on your kitchen counter overnight. The next day when you go to prepare your meal, your cook time is cut virtually in half. So if you really don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, set your tea kettle on before you go to bed, take care of that. You could even do that for your oatmeal instead of buying instant oatmeal, which is not quite as healthy for you as the whole grain. So other grains that are healthy are farro, which is a wheat grain, but a whole grain, and then barley. Barley has a really luxurious velvety texture to it. These are both cooked just as you would cook pasta and the water that you do not use from cooking can be put into soups or sourdough starters or pancake mix or any number of things to extend that nutritional value of that product. So we've talked about the superstars, superfoods of the moving food groups. Now we're just going to put them together in four easy plates that I'm going to walk you through. And hopefully you'll challenge yourself to maybe think about looking at foods and superfoods in a different way and putting together a very lovely and flavorful healthy meal. So the first superfood plate that we're going to put together, our protein is going to be salmon. I'm going to turn on the oven and I'm going to chunk up some roasted sweet potatoes for roasting. Very quickly, I'm also going to probably put two or three carrots on that tray and onion on that tray, parsnips if I have a parsnip in the house, any root vegetable that I feel like later on in the week I may be needing or wanting to have on hand. I'm going to go ahead and roast them off while that is in the oven. The last seven to ten minutes of that roasting time when my vegetables are getting soft enough for a fork to be inserted into them, that's when I'm going to slide the salmon into the oven. It's going to have a little lemon on it. It's going to have a little drizzle of olive oil, some seasoning, whatever you like. Maybe capers to add to flavor and that will cook while these are finishing up. The farrow, you put a pot of water on the oven, on the stove top, cook it like pasta, drain off that water while your farrow is still hot, return it back into the pot and just have ribboned or torn pieces of kale or whatever leafy green that you like, kale, mustard, collards, shard, tear it, ribbon it, fold it into that hot farrow, put the top back on by the time you plate dinner, which means just the time that you're going to take the salmon out and the roasted vegetables out, that green will have wilted in that hot farrow and be a lovely colorful addition and also very healthy for you. So that's really a super easy, super quick, super pretty plate actually. All of the colors are very pretty, it's very manageable. You can season it up however you like. If you want to go in a southwestern direction or if you want to go in an oriental direction or whatever kind of flavor profiles you like, you can add in, but this is a very easy way to make a quick healthy dinner. Our next one we're going to either have a lunch, dinner or breakfast. We're going to take some of our roasted vegetables, add some broccoli on top of the stove, crack some whipped eggs into it, start a frittata on top of the stove, slide it in to our oven about seven to 12 minutes later, that frittata will have set up depending on how many eggs you've used. You can make the skinniest frittata ever or you can add up to six eggs if you'd like. It's going to take a little longer to cook, but you could always extend that frittata for another dinner, for another lunch, for another breakfast, but we're going to make use of some broccoli and some roasted vegetables from the day before. So that's going to be our protein along with a little yogurt and blueberries and an English muffin, slide it into the oven when that frittata is finishing up and have some juice. So that's a nice, again, lovely light plate, very easily put together using stuff that we have on hand. Down here we're going to make a quinoa dinner, and quinoa is this grain right here that we looked at before, this little, oh I'm sorry, I didn't show you ferro. This is ferro, the grain that we used just before, cooks just like pasta. If you do the boiling water method the night before, it cooks very quickly, seven to ten minutes at the most. And you can cook it as, where it cooks like pasta, you can actually take it longer, where pasta will get mushy, ferro will still maintain its shape and form, and you can cook it to as soft as you care to eat it. It can be a little nutty and give you resistance to your tooth, or you can make it as soft as you care to have it, even corgi. So in the quinoa dinner, same kind of thing, we're going to cook it in a little bit of water. When it's done at the end, if we have water left, we're going to drain that off, fold in some black beans and seasoning. Our vegetables are going to be in tomato and avocado salad that we're going to kind of like salsa up a little bit, corn on the cob, because it's not necessarily a superfood, but it is in season and it is very tasty, and it's a beautiful golden on our plate, so we love it, and apple slices for dessert. Another very easily put together meal, very healthy meal, very enjoyable. And where I used bought applesauce before, I usually buy canned beans, I know it's a cop out, you could cook beans all day long if you wanted to, and your pressure cooker, but I just buy that canned beans, these beans, ingredients, prepared beans, water, and sea salt. So there's nothing in here. I take the top off, I put them in a colander, I rinse them off because I don't really want the extra sauce or the salt, and then they're available to use in anything, and they're kidney beans, they're garbanzo beans, they're black beans, all kinds, well I said black beans, but pinto beans, so a vast array of various bean product in a can that's pretty straightforward and easily adaptable to folding into different things. So when we have our kiwan black beans together, it's a big protein punch, and that's a lovely meal with this apple slices, some red, some color from the avocado, and corn on the cob, very very nice. So another quick meal to put together is to use some tuna salad, I usually buy the tuna salad that's not packed in oil, but that's packed in water, I just feel like it has a better tuna flavor, and I also know the quality of oil if I want to add oil to it, I'm adding that oil from my kitchen, but I just make a tuna salad with a little bit of chopped olive and caper, I don't usually go the mayonnaise way, but you could if you wanted to, serve that with some nice whole wheat crackers, orange slices for your fruit, and then your barley vegetable soup, it's just a soup that needs to simmer, there's nothing that you need to do, you can buy chopped vegetables from the grocery store, or you can chop them yourself, but you really don't have to give it a lot of attention, just put everything in the pot, cover with stock or water, add a bay leaf, add whatever seasoning you like, and let it just cook for a while, and then when it's done, it's lovely, it does have this like I said, very velvety taste of barley, and it's very healthy for you, and all of these are also accessible at stores, okay, you can buy these in packages at the grocery store, or you can buy them in bulk at cooperative stores, I did want to talk about when you put your healthy plate together, that you want to remember to use half of your plate for vegetables and fruit, only a small four ounce portion for your protein, and a small quarter portion for your grain, so that's a super healthy plate with using a healthy oil, also having water for drinking, you can, like we said, we talked about you can make your water more interesting with cucumbers or lemon or orange, or salsa water, so hopefully I've demystified superfoods a little bit for you, you've probably been eating superfoods for a while now, but combining them together is really going to give you that super punch of heart healthy, more active energy, weight loss, if you're looking for weight loss, all of those reasons that we decided was a good idea to include them in our diet, plus none of the items that I talked about are out of control expensive, they're all relatively inexpensive, and when you move from being reliant on an animal based diet to a plant based diet, you will probably notice that your grocery bill goes down, because even buying more produce will not jack your grocery bill up as much as buying more animal meat protein, so I do encourage you to include superfoods, seafoods in your diet, and also superfoods, vegetables and fruits, grains, fats and oils, and dairy. Thanks for joining us, we'll see you in the kitchen the next one.