MG Data

1/2 cup quick oats

1/2 cup oat bran

1/2 cup wheat flour

1/2 cup buckwheat flour

1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

—

2 cups fat free milk

2 whole eggs + 1 more egg white

2 tablespoons honey

1 heaping teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

mix the dry, in a separate bowl beat eggs with a wisk until a little bubbly, add the wet stuff into the eggs and mix very well with wisk until arm is tired and there is full layer of froth on top and honey is completly mixed in, batter should be pretty thin and airy (bubbly), add wet to dry & mix just enough to wet the dry stuff, don’t overmix, and cook em up. Do not press down, flip only once. makes about 12 - 5″ pancakes

My sister came over and left some yogurt behind….. had to do something with it. These taste like the lazy mans sourdough pancakes.

1 cup wheat flour

1/4 cup oat bran

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

mix together

separate bowl

1 egg, beat with wisk

1 cup whole milk yogurt (used straus organic vanilla flavor, european style)

1 cup skim milk

mix together very well until frothy.

Add wet to dry and fold together, don’t overmix. Makes about 6-8 4″ hearty pancakes.

From what I can tell, here’s the best things to eat when out on the road, widely available, easy access, quick, and affordable, and about as healthy as fast food can get (I guess):

Wendy’s:

Ultimate chicken Grill sandwich

Crispy Chicken sandwich

plain baked potato

cesar side salad

mandarin chicken salad

cesar chicken salad

I wanted to reduce the sodium content. A little more bland but still decent. 

1 cup oat flour

1 cup wheat flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder (adds about 480 mg sodium)

—

2 cups milk

2 egg whites

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

mix the dry, mix the wet, mix em together and cook em up. makes about 8-12 6″ pancakes

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For a better tasting, less bland pancake, add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 3-4 shakes of salt.

I was fooling around in the the kitchen today trying to come up with some descent healthy pancakes. Here’s what I came up with, measurements are estimates of what I remember, a lot of times I just added it by sight/texture.

1 cup whole grain wheat flour

Dry oats that I ground in a sifter to a coarse flour, 3/4 cup of this flour, this took a ridiculous amount of time

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/8-1/4 tsp salt ( I used an 1/8 but probably would taste better with 1/4, and still be relatively low in sodium)

MIX THESE DRY INGREDIENTS IN A BOWL.

IN ANOTHER BOWL COMBINE:

1 1/2 cup milk (approximate, I used 1 cup and had to keep adding more to make it thin enough, I used 1% milk)

2 egg whites

1tbsp honey ( I just squirted an amount that looked good in)

1 tsp vanilla extract

MIX WELL.

ADD WET INGREDIENTS TO DRY AND MIX A MINIMUM AMOUNT. I overmixed because I kept adding more milk to get the batter thin enough.

COOK & ENJOY… makes quite a few pancakes, golden to deep brown.

NEED TO IMPROVE:

RISING, LIGHTNESS, QUICK COOKING THROUGHOUT WITHOUT BROWNING TOO MUCH. TASTE IS GOOD, A LITTLE BLAND DUE TO LOW SALT. A BETTER WAY TO MAKE OAT FLOUR.

How do you find a simple, easy, quick healthy meal when travelling that will actually fill you up?

When I’m on the road I usually have a loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, and a bunch of clif bars, and maybe some apples or oranges, and maybe some chips, and usually some candy or chocolate bar of some kind. This is fine for a day or two or three but after that it gets pretty old and I start to get pretty hungry from lack of getting a larger size meal or one with just more palatable calories.

Usually around day 3 I break down and find myself pigging out at a fast food joint with a cold drink. Warm water and peanut butter sandwiches on old smashed bread just looses it’s appeal after a few days.

Here’s the problem though: I can go to Taco Bell and get a couple bean burritos. In that I get about 2400 mg of sodium which is outrageous and don’t even get full from it. I can go to Subway and get a turkey & cheese sub sandwich which is more like bread, lettuce and a hint of meat, leaving me hungy shortly after eating a 12″ sandwich and also containing far too much sodium. Blimpee puts more meat in their turkey sandwiches than Subway but accordingly also contain more sodium. So then I really break down and end up in Burger King getting a whopper, fries, soda, and maybe a chicken sandwich too. Now I’m getting even more sodium, tons of saturated fat, tons of trans fat, tons of cholesterol, but bottom line, after I eat that, I feel full and don’t have to slop together another peanut butter sandwich in an hour.

But what if there was a place with a quick healthy alternative fast food that could really fill one up? I guess these are considered to be places like Subway or Blimpee but, how does one get full off these meals without getting far too much sodium? At home I can load up on chicken, pasta, vegetables, potatoes and only get a few mg of sodium. But try to get this food out and the amount of sodium you get with it, it’s pretty much toxic with sodium.

So what is a healthy alternative when you want a home-cooked healthy meal but are not at home? One that is widely available while travelling and quick and easy and cheap. A healthly meal in my mind should be extremely low in sodium, low in saturated fat, absolutely no hydrogenated oils, low cholesterol, and preferably containing some amount of vitamins and minerals, but at the same time has to be substantial enough and palatable enough in large quantities to have a high fullness factor and allow one to get full from it without much difficulty. If you have any ideas kindly let me know.

In the mean time, I will keep searching and packing the peanut butter and clif bars.

An exercise stress test is performed by qualified medical personnel. The person undergoing the test will run on the treadmill for up to 15 minutes including a warm-up and cool-down period. The test is used to detect heart, coronary artery disease.

The exercise stress test is measure in METs which stands for “metabolic equivalent tasks” and is a measure of the person’s aerobic capacity and an indicator of overall health. Essentially the test will measure a persons peak aerobic capacity.

From reading about the exercise stress test and METs, if the person reaches 13 METs then the exercise stress test is considered adequate. Apparently the test is controlled by the person undergoing the test and can be adjusted accordingly to accomidate the person’s age or fitness level. In some cases the exercise stress test may be performed on an exercise bike rather than a treadmill thus accomidating persons who are incapable of moving on the treadmill.

1 MET = 3.5 mL/kg/min aerobic capacity

Some interesting reading on exercise stress testing

http://health.drgily.com/walking-test-peak-aerobic-capacity.php - This site has an interesting calculator that will tell you your overall fitness level with a 1 mile walking test.

http://www.myfooddiary.com/resources/ask_the_expert/exercise_stress_test.asp - some basic info

http://www.postgradmed.com/issues/1999/05_01_99/driggers.htm - some more in-depth info

Tried something new for breakfast this morning.

Baker Mills Kodiak Cakes, 100% Whole Grains, Frontier Flapjack & Waffle Mix

Whole wheat, oat & honey, add water only, no added fat, no cholesterol, no added sugar

I made some pancakes with this mix, which is a bit expensive, it was $4.99 for a 24 ounce box which makes 17 1/3 cup servings. But the ingredients are all natural, whole grains. It’s nice to see a box mix of pancakes/waffles, just add water that doesn’t have partially hydrogenated oils, tons of sodium, sugars and all the other unhealthy stuff that these box mixes usually contain. I made 1 cup of mix, which means add 1 cup of water and mix just a little. The batter was pretty runny but it turned out to be perfect. Out of it I made 2 medium pancakes (4-5 inches), 2 large pancakes (7-8 inches), 1 small pancake (3-inches). I ended up eating the whole 1 cup of mix and it was a nice size meal but still light.

The result: The thin chunky batter made for a nice pancake maybe about 3/8″ thick. I cooked them on the stove top in a pan. They turned a very nice golden brown color. They came out light and fluffy. The pancakes tasted very good, actually almost unbelievably good for the ingredients listed on the box which is nothing more than whole grain wheat flour, whole grain oat flour, dry milk, honey, leavening, egg whites and salt. I highly recommend. Worth the price compared to what you get for the other box mixes and their unhealthy ingredients, but would be nice if they were a little more affordable. Only 1 gram of total fat per 1/3 cup serving, 130 calories, 216mg sodium, 27 g carbs including 4 g of fiber and 2 g sugar, 7g of protien. Cholesterol free & contain 15% calcium and 8% iron per serving.  In my opinion, the mix doesn’t compare with the big name brand box mixes, tasting much more like a homemade mix and they are healthy but don’t necessarily taste like it. Great product! Try some today!

Check out their website at

http://www.kodiakcakes.com/

The website features online ordering, some recipies, stories of the product, cooking instruction and info which is interesting, for instance don’t flatten a pancake, don’t overmix the batter, don’t flip the pancake more than once, etc…..