Defining the role of the dietitian [in normal nutrition]

I find myself consistently running into successful nutrition businesses helmed by people who are not RDs. I was just at the dentist when I read a profile of Mrs. Canada 2008, who runs a nutrition and fitness consulting firm with an accreditation from the American Fitness Professionals Association, a weight management certificate from CanFitPro and a certification as an emotional fitness coach from the Emotional Fitness Institute. I also recently got hired at a health club where none of the existing nutritionists or new hires are RDs.

Even my nutrition heroes, like Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan and Brian Wansink are not RDs. (Although Nestle has a ridiculously impressive nutrition research background and Pollan is always saying, "I'm a journalist, I shouldn't be telling you what to eat," so I guess it's ok.)

So what am I doing spending four-and-a-half years in school plus writing a national exam to become an RD?

Registered Dietitians certainly have the edge when it comes to clinical nutrition. Whether its our course work, our internships or our professional standards (the Ordre professionnel des diététistes du Québec have their own set just for clinical dietitians), our background is really slanted in clinical nutrition, which is the "[identification of] nutrition problems and [assessment of] the nutritional status of patients; [development of] care plans and [monitoring of] the effectiveness of nutrition interventions; and [consultation of] patients on special diet modifications," according to Dietitians of Canada (DC). But after having a few too many preceptors take year-long breaks or switch jobs near the end of my internship rotations (not my fault, honest!) and my deep desire to get into public health in some way because I believe that everyone (not just those with the highest nutritional risk) has the right to make good food choices, my chances of having/wanting a career in a hospital are relatively slim.

So what else can I do? The DC website lists a bunch of career paths, including that of a consulting dietitian, who "provide expertise in nutrition, diet therapy and food service to individuals, institutions, business and the media. They operate their own private consulting practices or businesses." But again, if so many people can do it without a bachelor's degree in nutrition, without doing an internship, without writing the CDRE, then what's the point?

Point 1: Not surprisingly enough, our edge comes from what we're mostly trained for—clinical nutrition.

Most (if not all) of the other nutrition companies focus on weight loss and tout general effects of "Feeling better!", "Having more energy!" or "Finally fitting into that wedding dress!" While it is highly likely that some of their clients will come in with comorbidities like dyslipidemia, hypertension or type 2 diabetes, the approach to this will likely be, "Here's how to eat healthfully and exercise to lose weight and hopefully the problems will fix themselves with the weight loss and healthier lifestyle." On the other hand, dietitians have the knowledge to specifically deal with those problems, in addition to nutritional issues that don't have to do with encouraging weight loss, such as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, eating disorders and allergies.

Point 2: Dietitians have the critical thinking skills to use the newest scientific knowledge in evidence-based practice and are required to engage in continuing education to maintain their accreditation.

I can't say anything about the other nutrition programs that are out there because I haven't been in them, but I can say that so far in my path toward getting my B.Sc, I have done a fair amount of coursework that involves reading and analyzing scientific articles. Even the introductory psychology textbook I'm reading right now from my correspondence course has some thoughtful gems.

[On the 1994 bestseller The Bell Curve:] "Herrnstein and Murray avoided having their data analyses subjected to the critical scrutiny that scientific data must withstand. It is not unusual for scientists to describe their work in a popular book, but doing so normally occurs after the scientists have published many technical articles on a topic, which they then attempt to summarize for the layperson."

At the end of every chapter, there's a "critical thinking" section which teaches the critical thinking skills that are useful for analyzing psychological issues, or any scientific issue for that matter. One of them talked about common fallacies in arguments (irrelevant reasons, circular reasoning, slippery slope arguments, weak analogies and false dichotomies) while another mentioned appeals to ignorance, which is misusing the general lack of knowledge or information on an issue (i.e. no proof of harm, but no proof of benefit either) to support an argument. Ha! How many times has big food tried to pull that one?

Having a service like PEN saves a lot of the legwork, but even then you need to critically read the studies they cite just to be sure everything makes sense. While I'm not ignoring the fact that there are nutritionists out there who do look at the science, there are also some that are out there who get their info from traditional media, which tends to sensationalize, exaggerate and oversimplify study results.

In terms of continuing education, non-registered nutritionists are not held accountable for doing so. The worst case scenario is you might have someone preaching nutritional advice that has already been disproved!

So why aren't more people choosing dietitians, despite surveys that cite that they're the "most trusted source of nutrition information"? Perhaps nutrition and fitness consultants don't cost as much and/or are easier to find, but I personally think the general public does not know the difference. I mean, it took me actually deciding to become a dietitian before I figured out the difference between a dietitian and a nutritionist and the existence of DC, let alone the existence of the Alliance of Canadian Dietetic Regulatory Bodies or the College of Dietitians of Alberta!

DC, all the Dietetic Regulatory Bodies and each and every dietitian out there needs to put in the extra effort to get people to know about our profession and more importantly, what sets us apart from the pedestrian nutritionist. Our current partnerships with the food industry aren't working. Perhaps we need to partner up with other lesser known health professional regulatory bodies, such as the the Canadian Medical Association, the various Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, or even the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists, to name a few. This could help increase our credibility, while giving other important healthcare professions their time to shine. We need to get doctors to say, "You have type 2 diabetes. Here's a prescription for Metformin and a referral to a dietitian." (OK, maybe that's not what the clinical practice guidelines say, but you get my drift.) It may have saved my dad from an angioplasty... and it's covered by most many(?) private insurance plans.

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The Omnivore's Dilemma

I finally finished Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma Tuesday night, after starting it after Christmas break and getting through the first section before my internship took over. Seriously, what an amazing book. I would honestly recommend it to anyone who eats.

In the book, Pollan follows four meals from start to finish: one that takes the typical, industrial path (beginning in an Iowan corn field and ending in the form of a fast food meal eaten at 65 mph in his car), one that comes from the rapidly growing "supermarket organic" industry, one that is mostly sourced from the now-legendary Polyface Farm and one that he mostly hunted and foraged himself in the forests of California.

The take-home message I got from reading this book is that our current approach to food, diet and nutrition is pretty selfish. The industrial agricultural system has caused our view of food to become one that expects a consistent, year-round supply of product, and one that negotiates mainly on one level: price. That's why we super-size, buy food that's stuffed with cheap corn and corn by-products and feel socially pressured to lick everything off of our plates. Additionally, while some people are beginning to eat with the environment in mind, many are still fixated on the idea of what is good for us and what is tasty to us.

By juxtaposing the mini-ecosystems created by Joel Salatin on Polyface farm and the actual ecosystem that he observes while he hunts wild boar or forages for mushrooms against the methods we currently use to grow our food, organic or not, Pollan discreetly argues that we are unhealthy because we are not eating what nature intended us to be eating. Not only that, what we eat should also be eating what nature intended it to be eating, and doing what nature intended it to be doing.

This kind of parallels a nutrition theory called paleolithic nutrition, which posits that humans evolved to eat what our ancestors ate and therefore for optimal health, we should eat similar diets to our ancestors. This would mean changing the composition of our diet (i.e. less processed/refined foods), changing how we raise our animals (i.e. wild, grazing animals had a different fat distribution than our current domesticated, grain-fed animals) and learning to eat with the seasons.

While most of the book consists of Pollan's thoughts and observations as he travels around, researching and preparing these meals, he segues into actual statements/thoughts about the current Omnivore's Dilemma as well as his argument against vegetarianism in the section just before the big boar hunt.

Pollan argues that part of the reason why Americans (and I guess this probably applies to Canadians too) eat the way they/we do is because there is no clearly defined American cuisine, which would give us set rules and rituals to help dictate our relationship to food. Because our relationship to food is so weak, it has made it easy for food fads and diets to take over how we eat. Pollan quotes Harvey Levenstein, a Canadian historian, in summing up how he thinks Americans eat:

...taste is not a true guide to what should be eaten; that one should not simply eat what one enjoys; that the important components of food cannot be seen or tasted, but are discernible only in scientific laboratories; and that experimental science has produced rules of nutrition that will prevent illness and encourage longevity.

In other words, we let science dictate how they eat even though the science of nutrition is a fairly new branch of research. Pollan goes on to say that people are always flipping out over the French Paradox because it contradicts with our rules over how to eat (i.e. low in this nutrient, high in that nutrient, etc.), despite the fact that they have their own set of rules, like eating small portions and making meals a family/communal affair, which may contribute to the fact that they don't have the same obesity problem that exists in America. I'm sure the "rules concept" could applied to the long-living Asian populations, who generally eat white rice. And lots of it.

The scariest part of this is that American culture, thought and cuisine is becoming increasingly dominant in the world, possibly eroding the traditional cultures of healthy populations and exacerbating the obesity crisis.

The most interesting part of the book for me, I think, was his argument against vegetarianism. Pollan read Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, which is supposedly so well-argued and descriptive that it makes many people become vegetarian. Pollan does a good job presenting the stereotypical arguments against the book and how the book refutes it, such as the issue of why it's not right to exploit a human who has a lesser degree of intelligence (i.e. someone who is mentally retarded) but it's acceptable for us to exploit non-humans. He also goes on to explore the issues of animal suffering (do they actually feel pain/suffering when they are slaughtered (most likely not) or in their living conditions (more likely so)?) and animal happiness.

Pollan's strongest argument against vegetarianism, I think, goes back to nature. Some animal rights activists claim that for all animals, "the life of freedom is to be preferred", but he says that "domestication is an evolutionary, rather than a political development... Humans provided the animals with food and protection in exchange for which the animals provided the humans their milk, eggs and—yes—their flesh." This means that your average domesticated cow or chicken would probably die if it were liberated. Humans also evolved in response to domestication, in that many human adults can digest lactose.

Pollan extends his argument into the wild; predation, like domestication, is a part of the natural way, not because animals have no morality. (Did you know some vegetarians/vegans make their naturally carnivorous cats/dogs vegetarians?!) If wolves didn't hunt deer, then they would overrun their habitat, overgrazing the plants that they eat and eventually all of them will starve. Pollan concludes that the problem with animal rights activists is that they think of the individual animal as opposed to the animal as a species. By focusing on the brutality of a wolf killing a deer as opposed to the havoc it would wreak on the ecosystem if wolf didn't hunt deer, they are missing the point of the natural world.

Singer writes, "In our normal life, there is no serious clash of interests between human and nonhuman animals," which in Pollan's mind points out just how urban of a development animal rights activism is. He says that even a vegan would have a "serious clash of interests" with other animals, as "The grain that the vegan eats is harvested with a combine that shreds field mice, while the farmer's tractor wheel crushes woodchucks in their burrows and his pesticides drop songbirds from the sky..." And if everyone in the world decided to become vegetarian, it would force certain parts of the world to import all of their food just because it's unfit for growing crops.

Despite this, I should remind you once again that industrial agriculture is not sustainable, and even the booming industrial organic farms are really like conventional farms, but trading off the various inputs; manure instead of fertilizer, organic-approved methods of pest control instead of pesticides, etc. Polyface farm was a great example of a farm who is trying to go back to letting nature help raise its animals and I'm wondering if any other farms like this exist. Sunworks Farm, which sells its products at the Calgary Farmers' Market seems pretty close, but they feed their cattle a grain supplement in the winter, which I'm not sure how I feel about. Speaking of Albertan products, I noticed that the yolks of the eggs that my mom buys here in Calgary are a lot lighter than the eggs I buy in Montreal—and these are conventionally-grown eggs! I just remember the vivid description of the orange, beta-carotene-filled yolk of the Polyface farm egg and I think I want some of that.

Pollan's newest, In Defense of Food, promises to be "an eater's manifesto", offering "solutions" to the questions that he raised in The Omnivore's Dilemma. He touts the phrase "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants," and sets out twelve eating commandments that centre around eating real, unprocessed organic food and not worrying so much about whether you're getting enough of this nutrient or too much of that nutrient.

I definitely hope to getting around to reading it this summer (and forming a position on his dis of nutrition experts), but I have three other books and a course to get through too.

In the meantime, I'd highly recommend watching the following two videos: the first is a short one where he briefly explains the main points of his book on Nightline, while the second is an hour-long speech plus Q+A that I have yet to finish.

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A little grocery trip

Today I went to Safeway to try my luck at finding some of the Nuts to You pumpkin seed butter I like so much (they only carry the big jars of the brand at the not-so-super Superstore, where we usually shop) and to also pick up some plain yogurt along the way.

I was upset to find that they also didn't carry the pumpkin seed butter I wanted. Since I wasn't about to drive downtown to a natural foods store to try my luck, I decided to just settle on some almond cashew butter. Sure it's probably higher in fat than the pumpkin seed butter would've been, but it's much lower in sodium, sugar and trans fats than the Skippy I've been eating since I've been home.

I was also upset to find they had very slim pickings when it came to yogurt, let alone carrying my usual brand of choice. I guess my brain must've shut off right then and there because I just went down to check the ingredients and the container I bought has gelatin AND cornstarch AND carrageenan (Grrrrr.)

But the worst of it all is, as I was leaving, I cut through the coffee/baking aisle and realized that they "helpfully" put signs up around products that are of the greatest need in food banks. In other words, encouraging people to buy these products and donate them. And guess where the signs were placed beside? Ground coffee... sugar... are you kidding me?

I would've taken a photo, but wasn't sure if that's allowed in grocery stores and since it was 10% Tuesday it was hard to be sneaky.

Grocery shopping is so much more pleasant in Montreal!

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To market, to market

With my boyfriend on the way to Shanghai (I just learned via FlightStats that his Toronto-Vancouver flight was delayed an hour and a half but fortunately he didn't miss his flight to Shanghai because it was delayed by FOUR HOURS geeez), I decided to drown my sorrows with some retail therapy.

Oh, did I mention that I've been home in Calgary for a week?


Although the Calgary Farmers' Market has been around for four years, I had never gone before today. I had planned to go alone so I could linger as long as wanted and taken as many pictures as my camera-shy self pleased. Unfortunately(?), when I announced my plans for the day to the family during breakfast, my mother and sister decided that they would tag along. I was immediately teased for snapping that shot in the parking lot (not to mention for the other shots that were on my camera, like the ones of EatingWell magazine or my multiple heirloom tomato shots), so my camera was tucked away for most of the trip. Nonetheless, I made the most of it and tried not to roll my eyes when my mom and sister bought 20 honey sticks between the two of them before going on to share an iced cappuccino with whipped cream.

The market, which is only open from Fridays to Sundays, was bustling with activity. Some young bagpipers were entertaining people at the entrance and many vendors offered samples in an attempt to sell their wares. Aside from the aforementioned honey stall, there were tons of produce stalls (all of which helpfully labelled where the food was coming from; unfortunately most of the food is still coming from the states and BC) and meat stalls (so many sausage samples...), including ones selling wapiti, bison and ostrich. There was also a fairly extensive "food court" with a bunch of ethnic foods, like Thai, Greek, Cuban and Mexican, plus many other stalls that specialized in sweets, like saskatoon berry pies and various jams and jellies, including a branch of Buttercream Bake Shoppe (unfortunately the cupcakes didn't look too appetizing today...) We also lingered a bit at the various artisan shops, and picked up a belated birthday present for my cousin's dog at Bon A-Pet-Treat!

The lack of photos and time for lingering, sampling and purchasing aside, I definitely see myself going back there multiple times this summer, especially when it warms up and there's a bit more local food. Additionally, J Webb Market Wines and Wild Rose Brewery are just outside! I'm excited.

Calgary Farmers' Market
H6, 4421 Quesnay Wood Drive SW, Calgary AB T3E 7K4
403-244-4548

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On Eating Well

A couple weeks ago, my boyfriend and I went to the Westmount Public Library, which is right across the street from where he lives/lived (he is leaving for a 3-month internship in Shanghai tomorrow morning!) I was finishing up some assignments for my internship, while he was doing some reading for his exams. We were sitting right by the magazines, so after I was finished with my work and he still had a few pages to read, I decided to browse the shelves.


I knew EatingWell would be a great magazine as soon as I saw that they had a Health & Nutrition advisory board that included Marion Nestle and Brian Wansink. So despite how expensive it is (I dropped ~$7 for an issue of this bimonthly), it didn't take much deliberation for me to decide to grab a copy of my own.

EatingWell certainly caters to a specific audience (which might just be someone like me). While Canadian Living, my current magazine of choice, just lists the nutritional info of their recipes and leaves them up to you to interpret, EatingWell has a table on the front of each magazine, which marks whether a dish is "High Fibre" or "Heart Healthy" based on criteria listed as a legend beside the table (so it's up to you to say for yourself whether you think it's High Fibre or Heart Healthy, really) and in addition to just being a food magazine, like Gourmet or Bon Appétit (although how can you hate on a magazine that Molly of Orangette writes for?) there is a focus on food that tastes good AND is good for you in addition to broader issues that are on everyone's mind like organics, sustainability and the environment.

This last point really struck a chord with me because while we were trying to think of a theme for our Open House booth (which was kind of a flop anyway, because people were just there to find out about getting a degree in nutrition, not nutrition itself), my suggestion of "local foods" was rejected because "that's probably a topic best left for the environment students." Maybe it is, but as dietitians, shouldn't we be aware of issues like where our food comes from and the impact it has on the environment? I mean, how can we teach people to eat healthily if food shortages mean there isn't any food to begin with? How can we promote a healthy lifestyle if we don't live in a healthy environment?

This issue of EatingWell (the March/April one, which is off of the stands now, unfortunately) was particularly interesting to me because it had an article that reflected a change I'd recently made in my diet—not eating Atlantic salmon if I could help it.

The author, David Dobbs, who is a professional angler, does a really good job depicting the life cycle of a wild salmon versus a farmed salmon and why farmed salmon is so debilitating to the environment (although the methylmercury content is also higher in farmed vs. wild, Dobbs argues that the benefits of the omega-3 outweigh the risks).

In addition to that wonderful article, there were also TONS of recipes (including an entire section devoted to tofu), an article on grass-fed beef (which is something I should really be getting into on the very rare *tehe* occasion that I do buy beef) and a feature on Lundberg Family Farms, which grows organic rice (also something I need to get into--after finishing that big bag of white rice sitting on our kitchen floor!)

Their photo step-by-step feature on stuffed artichoke would have also been helpful that one week I bought artichoke just because it was on sale.

The final reason I love EatingWell is their sweet-ass, clear-cut Writers' Guidelines. Even now, my boyfriend submits stuff to various publications and I would love to write for EatingWell, or any other popular food/nutrition/health magazine.

In my last internship, while I found clinical nutrition very rewarding in the sense that I got to talk to patients, figure out a diet plan that would suit their condition and write chart notes, I still find myself wanting to work in public health or the media in some way just because it seems that the public is more likely to access it. (Also, the high turnover at the hospital didn't help; both of my dietitians left their positions shortly after my rotation—it's not my fault, I swear!—and in a previous internship, my dietitian left for a year-long break after I left) The thing with nutrition in the media, however, is that there's so much pressure to sensationalize study results and it perpetuates the belief that there are "Magic Foods" or one-food answers to any nutritional problems. I hope that if I have the opportunity to work in public health and/or write, I'd be able to drive home the message that the "secret" is simple: Eat a balanced diet in moderation and make regular physical activity (even if it's just walking) a part of your regular lifestyle.

And maybe I'd throw a bit of personal bias in there and encourage real, whole foods... I know the processed stuff is cheaper and may be the only food that's "accessible" to certain parts of the population, but oh, I don't know what's going to happen with this food crisis but I hope one day fresh foods will come out on top again.

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I-Don't-Know-What-to-Call-Them Cookies

I don't know what to call these cookies. The recipe is derived from Heidi of 101 Cookbook's ANZAC cookies, but my variation has gone so far from its theme that another name is surely justified. But what? I wanted to call them "Garbage Cookies" or "Anything but the Kitchen Sink Cookies" to reflect all the different ingredients I threw into them. In my Flickr photostream they're known as "The Cookies That Almost Killed John" because I inadvertently offered them to a friend who has a sensitivity to coconut. I could've called them "Granola Cookies" because of how tempted I was to press them into a pan and cut them into bars while I was making them. Or I could've just called them "Identity Crisis Cookies" just because I don't know what to call them.

But none of those names reflect just how simply good the cookies are, yet calling them "Simply Good Cookies" alone would not reflect all those other things about the cookie I just told you.

It was the Tribune end-of-year party and I wanted to make something with coconut in them because I had a bit too much of it in my pantry. After scouring through a few of my favourite blogs (with the help of my trusty Google Reader), I finally settled on the ANZAC cookies. As I went into the kitchen to gather my ingredients, I noticed a container that had been sitting on the shelf for almost a year.

I had "accidentally" ground these walnuts when my impatient self thought it would be a good idea to put walnut halves into a food processor to cut them into smaller pieces for another baked item (most likely a banana bread). Since then, I have never found a use for them, but my interest was piqued when Deb from Smitten Kitchen said I could swap out flour for ground nuts in a cookie. Feeling adventurous, I decided this was the time to do it.

I also added raisins to the dry ingredients...



...but made sure the cookie still stuck to its ANZAC roots.





The cookies had very questionable structural integrity when I was trying to form them AND when they came out of the oven, leading me to wonder if I'd made a mistake swapping out some much-needed gluten for protein, fat and flavour. Fortunately, the cookies held up once they cooled and you don't understand just how good they are—chewy and just the right sweetness, with a homeliness you can only get when you combine stuff like oats and raisins and coconuts.



Yum.

Its Namelessness-Doesn't-Reflect-its-Deliciousness Cookies
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks
Makes about 2 dozen

• 125 mL (½ cup) whole-wheat flour
• 125 mL (½ cup) ground walnuts*
• 250 mL (1 cup) rolled oats
• 125 mL (½ cup) brown sugar
• 250 mL (1 cup) finely shredded non-sweetened coconut
• 125 mL (½ cup) raisins
  
• scant 2 mL (½ tsp) fine sea salt


• 125 mL (½ cup) butter, cut into little cubes


• 10 mL (2 tbsp) golden syrup or honey


• 15 mL (1 tbsp) boiling water


• 2 mL (½ tsp) baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 165°C (325°F). Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Mix well.
2. In a small saucepan over low heat combine the butter syrup (or honey). Stir until melted and remove from heat. In a small bowl whisk together the boiling water and baking soda. Stir it into the butter.
3. Pour the butter mixture over the big bowl of oats and stir. Hand-mix dough to make sure the butter is evenly distributed and the dough is moist throughout. Drop them by the tablespoonful (you will need to use your hands for this step too) onto parchment lined baking sheets. Make sure they aren't too flat or they will get crispy. Bake for about 12 minutes or until deeply golden.

Nutrition Info (per cookie): 129 calories, 6 g fat (4 g saturated), 10 mg cholesterol, 17 g carbohydrate (1 g fibre, 8 g sugar), 2 g protein, 114 mg sodium. An excellent source of manganese.

*Can be replaced with another nut or more flour.

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Cholent (or "Jew Stew")

When I was younger, I wrote in my journal that the perfect man would be one who knew how to sing and also knew his way around the kitchen. Well, my man doesn't sing and you can count with the fingers on one hand how many times he's been in the kitchen this year (what he considers "grocery shopping" is now a long-running joke amongst my roommates) BUT he plays the accordion—singing along occasionally—and he recently promised (You are now a witness to this, Internet) that if he had his own kitchen, he would make me breakfast every morning.

He also taught me about cholent.

According to Wikipedia/my boyfriend who went to Yeshiva so should really be my authority on all things Jewish, really, cholent is a stew that usually contains meat, beans, potatoes and barley, and is simmered overnight. It is usually prepared the day before the Sabbath so that during Sabbath, when really observant Orthodox Jews aren't allowed to do any work, they can still have a hot meal during lunch. My boyfriend says that every household has it own recipe, but he uses the term recipe loosely; when he was making this cholent, he was really just tossing things haphazardly into the pot, which is what all stews should be about anyway, I think.



So in the pot went three cans of beans, four potatoes, four garlic cloves, a big pack of stewing beef, chopped onions (but not too much because we both don't like them very much), a handful of barley, ketchup, honey and the Colonel's secret blend of seven herbs and spices.



Then you turn the stove on low and you wait.

Initially, the ketchup and honey will act as liquid and the beef and vegetables will release some liquid as it cooks. It's probably advised that you top up some of the liquid by around hour 9, which is when I took the first little bit of cholent out for supper.



I did end up leaving it to simmer overnight and packed it for lunch the next morning (we cheated and made this on a Sunday night--the day of the St. Patrick's day to be exact; I now remember the boy stumbling in drunk and me going in to dish out a bowl of cholent) and took portions out for the rest of the week. Though not the most photogenic dish, it was so good and comforting and hearty, I would totally totally totally sacrifice my hydro bill and make it again.

Cholent

• 3 540 mL (19 oz) cans of beans (two mixed, one kidney), drained and rinsed
• 500 g beef stewing cubes
• 4 potatoes, cubed
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, smashed with the side of a knife because who needs a flippin' garlic press?
• A handful of barley
• Spices and sauces to taste (we used rosemary, garlic salt, cayenne pepper, cumin, chili pepper, paprika, ancho chili pepper, Mrs. Dash Table Blend, black pepper, ketchup and honey

1. Put all ingredients into pot and heat on low, or put all ingredients into slow-cooker and heat on low.
2. Wait, peeking and stirring every few hours,topping up with water as needed.

Next time I'm totally adding carrots; I always seem to have a glut of those!

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