Lemon-Lime Snowball Truffles

Christmas recipe alert! It's been a while since the last time, as per usual. But hey, no sad faces. Christmas is just around the corner and if you haven't made my Rocky Road Fudge yet then it's definitely time to warm up (chill down?) with these über cute snowballs. Aww. I was actually tempted to build a tiny little truffle snowman out of these but we had a plumber working in the kitchen so... Yeah. One has to know when such weirdness needs to be constrained. But once you've had your first taste I promise you'll be just as obsessed as I am!

The citrus notes in these marry perfectly with the mellow coconutty taste and make one hell of a flavour combination if I may say so myself. It's just one of those meant-to-be combos, like banana and peanut butter, strawberries and cream, chocolate and anything...

Lemon-Lime Snowball Truffles

Yields: 12 bite-sized truffles

Filling:

3/4 cup oats/oat flour (75g)

6 pitted dates (85g)

2 tbsp desiccated coconut (15g)

1 1/2 tbsp coconut oil (21g)

2 tbsp plant based yoghurt (40g)

Zest of 1/2 lemon

White Chocolate Shell:

2 tbsp cacao butter (could sub for coconut oil but not recommended)

2 tbsp coconut cream (the thick layer on top of a can of coconut milk that has been chilled overnight in the fridge)

1 tbsp lucuma powder (Or coconut sugar if you want it sweeter)

Desiccated coconut (as much as you like) and the zest of one lime

How to:

1. Put oats, lemon zest and desiccated coconut in a food processor and blend until a fine flour forms.
2. Place the remaining ingredients for the filling into the food processor and blend again until smooth. (Skip the first step if you already have your oat flour ready)
3. Roll the dough into approximately 12 small balls and place in an airtight container in the freezer for a least an hour to firm up.
4. When the truffles are (freezing) cold, prepare the 'white chocolate' by melting the cacao butter over a hot-water bath and stirring in the lucuma powder and coconut cream. You could adjust the ratios to your own preferences here, feel free to play around!
6. In another bowl, mix the desiccated coconut with the lime zest. This will go onto the truffles once they have been coated with chocolate.
7. Keep the white chocolate in a warm bowl to stop it from setting, then take one truffle and pierce it halfway through with a wooden skewer. Dip the truffle into the chocolate and make sure it gets an even layer all the way around.
8. Sprinkle with as much of the desiccated coconut-lime zest topping as you want.
9. Secure the skewer in an upright position. This can be a bit tricky but a styrofoam board will work amazingly! I usually balance mine in the toaster (truffle-side up!) but be creative... Repeat this process with all the balls.
10. Once the coating has set enough to allow for the truffles to be removed from the skewers, place them in an airtight container and store in the freezer.

Enjoy!

Food Reward Friday

This week's lucky "winner"... Pumpkin pie!!

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Food Reward Friday

This week's lucky "winner"... Pizza Hut Doritos Crunchy Crust Pizza!

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Is Meat Unhealthy? Part IV

In this post, I'll address the question: does eating meat contribute to weight gain?

Non-industrial cultures

I'll get right to the point: humans living in a non-industrialized setting tend to be lean, regardless of how much meat they eat.  This applies equally to hunter-gatherers, herders, and farmers.

One of the leanest populations I've encountered in my reading is the 1960s Papua New Guinea highland farmers of Tukisenta.  They ate a nearly vegan diet composed almost exclusively of sweet potatoes, occasionally punctuated by feasts including large amounts of pork.  On average, they ate very little animal food.  Visiting researchers noted that the residents of Tukisenta were "muscular and mostly very lean", and did not gain fat with age (1, Western Diseases, Trowell and Burkitt, 1981).

!Kung man gathering mongongo fruit/nuts.
From The !Kung San, by Richard B. Lee.

Another remarkably lean hunter-gatherer population is the !Kung San foragers of the Kalahari desert.  The !Kung San are so lean that many of them would be considered underweight on the standard body mass index scale (BMI less than 18.5).  Average BMI doesn't exceed 20 in any age category (The !Kung San, Richard Lee, 1979).  Is this simply because they're starving?  It is true that they don't always get as much food as they'd like, but on most days, they have the ability to gather more food than they need.  The fact that they are able to reproduce normally suggests that they aren't starving.  Richard Lee's detailed work with the !Kung San indicates that approximately 40 percent of their calories came from animal foods during his study period in the 1960s.  This was mostly meat, with occasional eggs when available.

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Recent Interviews

For those who don't follow my Twitter account (@whsource), here are links to my two most recent interviews.

Smash the Fat with Sam Feltham.  We discuss the eternally controversial question, "is a calorie a calorie"?  Like many other advocates of the low-carbohydrate diet, Feltham believes that the metabolic effects of food (particularly on insulin), rather than calorie intake per se, are the primary determinants of body fatness.  I explain the perspective that my field of research has provided on this question.  We also discussed why some lean people become diabetic.  Feltham was a gracious host.

Nourish, Balance, Thrive with Christopher Kelly.  Kelly is also an advocate of the low-carbohydrate diet for fat loss.  This interview covered a lot of ground, including the insulin-obesity hypothesis, regulation of body fatness by the leptin-brain axis, how food reward works to increase calorie intake, and the impact of the food environment on food intake.  I explain why I think proponents of the insulin-obesity hypothesis have mistaken association for causation, and what I believe the true relationship is between insulin biology and obesity.  Kelly was also a gracious host.  He provides a transcript if you'd rather read the interview in text form.

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Quesadillas

I have had a hard time coming up with savoury recipes that don't include hummus or chickpeas in some form (some people smoke, others abuse chickpea dips, what can I say) but then these utterly delicious and chickpea-free quesadillas came to me in a flash of inspiration. A Pinterest flash that is- always my runner-up source of vegspiration. (Instagram comes first!) They're filled with sweet, spicy, savoury amazingness and topped with a goddamn gorgeous green guacamole. Add the simplicity and I know that this will nick a place as one of my top ten lunch recipes.

Make these for yourself, double the recipe and share with a friend or multiply the ingredients by ten and serve it on the buffet table! You could even prepare these the day before (without grilling them of course) and have them for lunch the next day at work or school! They're best eaten warm so a microwave oven would be a plus but they could absolutely be served cold as well, no problemo.

Hope you enjoy this recipe just as much as I did!

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Quesadillas

Yields: 1 serving

- 1 gluten free brown rice tortilla (or tortilla of your choice, I use BFree wraps)

- 1 small sweet potato (approx. 100 g when peeled)

- 4 tbsp canned black beans, drained and rinsed

- 2 tbsp tomato salsa/sauce

- 1 tbsp vegan sour cream (optional)

- A handful baby spinach leaves

A pinch each of: 

- dried coriander

- cumin

- paprika powder 

- salt

Guacamole:

- 1/2 avocado

- 1/2 tbsp nutritional yeast

- 1 tsp lemon juice

- Salt and pepper to taste

- Dried chili flakes (optional)

How to:

1. Start by making your guacamole: Place all ingredients into a small bowl and blitz with a hand blender a few times. Intuitively, the longer you blend the smoother your guac will be so stop when you've reached the desired consistency. Set aside while you prepare the quesadillas.

2. Peel and slice the sweet potato thinly, then steam or boil the slices until they're soft enough to pierce with a fork. This will take approximately 5-10 minutes.

3. Mash the steamed sweet potato with a fork and spread it out evenly on half of the tortilla.

4. On the layer of sweet potato, divide the black beans evenly and sprinkle with cumin, coriander, salt and paprika powder.

5. Cover the other half of the tortilla with a layer of vegan sour cream mixed with tomato salsa and stick a handful of baby spinach leaves to it. 

6. Fold the tortilla in half and cut in 4 "pizza slices".

7. Grill in a grill pan (or a regular but then it won't be as beautifully charred) for a couple of minutes on each side, top with guacamole and serve!

Is Meat Unhealthy? Part III

When we consider the health impacts of eating meat, cardiovascular disease is the first thing that comes to mind.  Popular diet advocates often hold diametrically opposed views on the role of meat in cardiovascular disease.  Even among researchers and public health officials, opinions vary.  In this post, I'll do my best to sort through the literature and determine what the weight of the evidence suggests.

Ancel Keys and the Seven Countries Study

Ancel Keys was one of the first researchers to contribute substantially to the study of the link between diet and cardiovascular disease.  Sadly, there is a lot of low-quality information circulating about Ancel Keys and his research (1).  The truth is that Keys was a pioneering researcher who conducted some of the most impressive nutritional science of his time.  The military "K ration" was designed by Keys, much of what we know about the physiology of starvation comes from his detailed studies during World War II, and he was the original Mediterranean Diet researcher.  Science marches on, and not all discoveries are buttressed by additional research, but Keys' work was among the best of his day and must be taken seriously.

One of Keys' earliest contributions to the study of diet and cardiovascular disease appeared in an obscure 1953 paper titled "Atherosclerosis: A Problem in Newer Public Health" (2).  This paper is worth reading if you get a chance (freely available online if you poke around a bit).  He presents a number of different arguments and supporting data, most of which are widely accepted today, but one graph in particular has remained controversial.  This graph shows the association between total fat intake and heart disease mortality in six countries.  Keys collected the data from publicly available databases on global health and diet:

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