hold-onto-summer salmon & fruit salsa

trainer-approved recipes

- Beth Beauchemin (Read About Beth)

scenery, prairie-style

I’m just back from a visit out to the family farm in Alberta… how wonderful are 2 week holidays!!!  Travelling with 1 kid (2 if you count my husband!), I needed those 14 days to fully recover from the trip out, relax, and then prep for the return trip!  I won’t bore you with what we did (suffice it to say that with a toddler son “t-r-a-c-t-o-r”  time filled up MANY hours!), but I did spend some time with my mom making healthy – and flavourful – family meals.

It is CONFUSING out there in the supermarkets!  Between fat free, low fat, sugar free, low in sodium, cholesterol free, low cholesterol, organic (and the list goes on and on and on!!!), what is a gal to do?  I consider myself quite educated in nutrition and even I get overwhelmed by the variety of choices and labels out there.  Your best bet? Learn how to cook (if you don’t already)!  Generally speaking, when you make your own meals and snacks food will be fresher, have higher nutrient values, be lower in fat and salt, and taste exactly the way you like it (once you get the hang of it!).  There are tons are great cookbooks out there that can help you on your way to gastronomic greatness; in the meantime, here is one of my favourite family meals.  Fruit salsa is so ridiculously easy and so amazingly delicious.  I bought a mini chop just to make this!  It goes with fish, chicken, and of course, tortilla chips!   We serve it with brown rice and some raw veggies.  You can prepare your salsa up to a day in advance and refrigerate.

Yields 4-6 servings.

Fruit Salsa

• 2 cups diced sweet fruit (nectarine, peach, pineapple, strawberry, kiwi, mango, or a combo)
• 1/2 cup red pepper, diced
• 1/4 cup red onion, diced
• 1/4 cup fresh (2 tbsp dried) chervil or cilantro
  

  wild is best, but farmed salmon is better than no salmon at all...

• 1 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded & chopped
• 1 tbsp honey (or 2 tsp agave nectar)
• 1 tbsp lime juice

Salmon

• 2-3 salmon fillets, skin on
• sea salt & fresh ground pepper
• crushed red pepper flakes to taste
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• lime juice

1. Stir all the ingredients together in a bowl.  To save time, you can put everything in the mini-chop (washed and cut into big chunks) and whirl away! 2. Grease grill, then heat BBQ to high.  3. Season both sides of salmon with spices, and lightly drizzle with lime juice and olive oil.  4. Place salmon flesh-side down on  grill.  5. Cook, mostly covered, about 8 minutes (salmon should lift easily from grill), then another 2-4 minutes on skin side.  Skin will probably stay on the grill.  6. Slice fillets lengthwise to create 6 portions and serve with a spoonful (or 2 or 3!) of fruit salsa.

Nutrition Information (6 svgs): (per serving; varies slightly depending on fruit) 451 calories; 26 g fat (of which 22 g are unsaturated) ; 39.8 g protein; 11.7 g carbohydrate; 0.7 g fiber

Safe from SIGG

what’s in the news

BPA, the chemical you love to hate...

5 years ago most of us wouldn’t even have known what BPA was.  Bisphenol A is a compound found in polycarbonate plastics such as those commonly used in hard, reusable water bottles (NOT the disposable bottles you purchase at the grocery or convenience store – those are safe!) and baby bottles, and epoxy resins which are normally used to line metal containers to provide a layer between the food being contained and the steel or aluminum of the can or container.  BPA can be transferred from the epoxy or plastic into your foods and beverages, particularly at high heats.  So, for example, leaving a plastic water bottle in the car all day in the sunshine and then gulping it on your drive home (gross – warm water…)?  Not such a good idea.  How about heating up a tin of beans over the campfire?  Yum!  Cancer!  Well, not exactly…

Health Canada issued a release in 2008 (supported by other governments’ examining bodies) stating that: The current dietary exposure to

Reusable hard plastic bottles like these from Nalgene are now BPA-free...

BPA through food packaging is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and young children.

But this doesn’t mean you don’t want to limit your exposure to the stuff.  Plastics are associated with a higher incidence of hormone-related cancers like those of the breast and prostate.  And we love a health advisory, now don’t we?  BPA has been in the news more than that other nasty acronym, DDT.  As an aside, I’ll take a helping of BPA anyday over DDT… When news about BPA got big in 2008, manufacturers like SIGG and Klean Kanteen cashed in on the new consumer awareness by offering a safer alternative to the hard, reusable plastic bottles that were previously popular.

Here’s why SIGG is in trouble.  While they never actually stated that their water bottles were free of BPA, they did imply it.  Many of my clients use SIGG bottles and chose them, along with competing products like Klean Kanteen, specifically because they believed they were purchasing a product that was free of Bisphenol A and the associated health risks.  Here’s what SIGG originally stated with regard to BPA (or an implied lack thereof) in their bottles:

The proprietary SIGG bottle lining is a water-based, non-toxic coating that is baked into the interior walls and remains flexible and crack resistant for the life of the bottle. This special SIGG lining is not plastic – it is a micro-thin epoxy…Unlike common Lexan plastic water bottles (polycarbonate #7), which studies have shown over time may leach harmful chemicals like bisphenol – A (BPA), SIGGs have been thoroughly tested to ensure they are 100% leach-free and 100% safe! (SIGG 2007 Product Catalog)

And what does SIGG have to say now that the truth has come out about their bottle liner?  SIGG CEO Steve Wasik published a letter of apology earlier this week, claiming:

I learned that many of you purchased SIGG bottles – not just because they were free from leaching and safe – but because you believed that SIGGs contained no BPA. I learned that, although SIGG never marketed the former liner as “BPA Free” we should have done a better job of both clearly communicating about our liner as well as policing others who may have misunderstood the SIGG message.

So they don’t leach BPA.  But that doesn’t mean they don’t contain BPA.  And they do – in trace amounts.  This doesn’t mean your SIGG bottle is giving you cancer.  But it does mean you can do better.  If you use a stainless steel bottle not just for the convenience, cost savings and environmentally friendliness BUT to protect you from the harmless chemicals found in plastic and other bottles, you might be just a little bit annoyed.

Do you have a SIGG water bottle? The company is offering a replacement program so you can trade in your old bottle for a new SIGG bottle with a lining that is 100% free of BPA.  Visit the SIGG website to download the necessary shipping label and form.