The Healthy Cooking Coach

Chicken in Spicy Asian Sauce (Nuoc Cham)

I love trying new products and new recipes. Different herbs, spices, rubs, marinades, sauces, relishes, and cooking techniques add a change of taste to so many foods. Recently I received samples of coconut vinegar, coconut nectar, coconut crystals, coconut aminos, and coconut flour from Coconut Secret. I’ve been trying them in different recipes and enjoying the results. Last week I made a marinade for chicken drumettes using several of the products. I liked the way the recipe came out. I like the products and I’ll post some of the other recipes I’ve made in the coming weeks.

About coconut vinegar
The flavor and color of coconut vinegar can vary widely depending upon whether the vinegar was made from coconut water (very common) or from coconut nectar. To read more about coconut vinegar on the Coconut Secret website.

About coconut nectar
To read about coconut nectar, how it’s made and what makes it different from other sweeteners.

About coconut aminos
If you’re looking for a soy sauce flavored alternative that doesn’t contain soy or bean lectins, coconut aminos may be just what you’ve been waiting for. It has a rich, savory, slightly meaty flavor that’s more mild and far lower in sodium than soy sauce, shoyu, or tamari. If you like the flavor but miss the salty taste, you can use more of it or add a little unrefined, mineral-rich sea salt (e.g., Redmond Real Salt or Celtic Sea Salt) to whatever you make with it. I’ve used it in cooking, marinating, and as a dipping sauce for sushi.

 If you don’t find these new coconut products in your local natural foods stores, contact the company, Coconut Secret. They can tell you which chain stores will be carrying them and when. They may also have them available for mail order. In the meantime, make substitutions if you must. Here's what the recipe looks like on the right, served with an Everlasting Salad and (baked, then) Mashed Sweet Potato with butter and ginger.

In praise of dark meat
Although many people eat only chicken breast meat but I prefer to have a mix of white meat and dark meat in my diet. Dark meat chicken is more moist and a great source of iron and zinc, nutrients that are poorly supplied by breast meat. I also like to leave the skin on sometimes. It’s a great source of fat on a protein and produce rich diet. If you’re eating a paleo, primal, or low-carb, or low-starch diet, it’s particularly important to eat enough fat to provide a feeling of satiety at meal, to stabilize your blood sugar and energy levels, and ward off a rapid return of hunger.

Photo credit: Rachel Albert, Copyright 2010©

Save that marinade
Although many people discard marinades after they’ve done the initial job of flavoring meat, I sometimes cook the meat in the pan juices or broil or grill the meat and boil down the juices to make a reduction, a thick syrup, and spoon them over the meat after cooking. Sometimes the meat pan juices make a great hot dressing for a salad served with leftover sliced meat. By reducing the juices I concentrate the flavors that would otherwise be lost. The recipe that follows (the meat marinated in the sauce), freezes well so consider making a full batch even if you’re cooking for one person. You can freeze the meat in single or double portions for future fast food.

 Chicken Wings, Thighs, or Drumettes in Spicy Asian Marinade

Prep: 15 minutes        Yield: 2/3 cup sauce

I found this recipe on the Coconut Secret website. It’s a traditional Vietnamese sauce called Nuoc Cham. You can use it as a marinade for shrimp, chicken, pork or beef prior to grilling or broiling, as a dipping sauce, or as a salad dressing when combined with olive or avocado oil. Coconut Aminos are less salty than tamari soy sauce so I doubled the amount I used and added some unrefined sea salt.

Notes: If you want to use the sauce as a salad dressing, rather than a marinade, reduce or omit the salt and leave out the chicken. If you don’t like spicy foods or you’re allergic to red pepper, you can reduce or omit the red pepper, substitute black pepper, or leave pepper out altogether. If you leave the pepper out, double or triple the garlic.

Sauce/marinade:
1/4 cup Coconut Vinegar or brown rice vinegar or raw apple cider vinegar
2 Tablespoons filtered water
1 2/3 to 2 tablespoons Coconut Nectar or Honey
2 teaspoons Fish Sauce (look for a gluten free brand in Asian markets)
1 teaspoon Coconut Aminos (double if desired) or wheat-free tamari soy sauce
1 teaspoon finely grated Lime Zest (outer peel, colored part)
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 minced or pressed garlic cloves
1 to 1 ½ minced chili pepper (Serrano, Jalapeno, Bird's Beak, depending on desired heat), reduce or omit if you don’t like hot food or substitute about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon ground red pepper (start with less, add more only if desired)
1/2 to 1 teaspoon finely ground unrefined sea salt, optional (my addition!)

Chicken:
2 1/2 to 3 pound chicken drummettes, wingettes, wings, or drumsticks, skin on


1. Combine vinegar, water, coconut nectar or honey, fish sauce, and coconut aminos or tamari soy sauce     in a glass jar. Grate lime peel using a microplane grater or fine holes on a metal box grater and add         along with 2 tablespoons lime juice. Peel and finely mince or press the garlic and mince the chili and     add. Whisk together or cover and shake. Taste, and adjust with sea salt if desired. 

2. Place chicken in a non-reactive bowl or baking pan. Pour on the sauce, cover and refrigerate for 6 to     12 hours. Before cooking, drain marinade and pour it into a small saucepan. Bring to a low boil,             reduce heat and cook until reduced to about 2 tablespoons.

3. Choose one of the following cooking methods:
    To broil: Place chicken on a broiler rack and cook on LOW or High broil for about 15 to 35 minutes,         or until pieces test done, turning them over after about 10 minutes or when the tops start to brown.     Exact time will depend on size of pieces and proximity to the broiler element.

    To grill: Preheat a grill on high. Place chicken pieces on the racks, cover the grill and reduce heat to     medium low. Cook until the juices run clear when pierced with a knife near the bone, turning pieces     over as they brown, after about 10 minutes.

    To bake: Place chicken and marinade juices in an oblong pan. Cover and bake in a preheated 350˚F or     400˚F oven until the chicken juices run clear when pierced with a knife near the bone or the meat         reaches an internal temperature of 170 to 175˚F. Exact time will vary with the size if the pieces and     temperature.

4. After cooking, spoon reduced pan juices over chicken and serve. Refrigerate leftovers and serve cold     or warm briefly in an ovenproof baking dish for about 15 minutes in a toaster oven at 300˚ to 350˚F.     Once cool, freeze what you don’t plan to consume within 3 days. (I use heatproof Pyrex or                     CorningWare containers with lids.)

Mary’s Marvelous Air Chilled Chicken

A chicken is not just a chicken. How the meat looks and tastes depends on the breed, how the bird was raised, what it was fed, and how it was handled after it was butchered. Factory farmed chickens are debeaked, given an artificial diet, and denied fresh air, sunlight, and the opportunity to roam around, pecking at and eating bugs, worms, and grubs (not my favorite food, but one of theirs!). These chickens have flabbier flesh, higher bacteria counts, and less flavor than truly free range or pasture-raised birds. PHOTO RIGHT: Mary's Air Chilled Chicken

One of my associates recently raved about Mary’s Air Chilled Chicken. She gave me a link to their web site and encouraged me to try it. Turns out Whole Foods Markets sell her chicken, so I picked up a chicken the week before Thanksgiving. I also picked up a duck and a turkey, which I’ll tell you about in a couple of upcoming posts.

What’s different about Mary’s farm?
Mary's Free-Range Chickens are produced by Pitman Farms a family owned business outside of Fresno, CA, that has been raising poultry for three generations. Don Pitman began raising free-range turkeys and chickens in 1954.  His son, Rick, continued to raise turkeys and named them after his wife, Mary. Their son, David, continued the family tradition of raising chickens. Our turkeys and chickens are named after Mary because she ahs studied nutrition and read labels for 25 years, looking for pure products in an effort to regain her health. Mary's Chickens are chickens that Mary would buy for her family. PHOTO RIGHT: Mary's Air Chilled Chicken

 What’s different about Mary’s poultry?
Her name is on every package of poultry that leaves the farm. You don’t see that with commercial factory farmed chicken raised by anonymous people who have no vested interest in the health of the chickens or their consumers. Their chickens, turkeys and ducks are named after Mary because she’s been studying nutrition and reading labels for 25 years, looking for pure products in an effort to regain her health. Mary's Chickens are chickens that Mary would buy for her family.

Mary’s chicken, turkeys, and ducks run around outdoors. They’re grown naturally with plenty of open space on a ranch in sunny California. These chickens are raised in a humane manner by allowing them to roam in a stress-free environment that is four times the size of the average commercial ranch. Because of cleaner living quarters, a healthier and happier turkey is produced having a better taste.

 Mary’s chickens are fed a vegetarian diet consisting of grains and vegetable proteins, plus the bugs, worms, and grubs the chickens forage for. They never receive animal by-products or hormones and they meat is never treated with any preservatives or additives. PHOTO BELOW: Mary's Air Chilled Chicken

Mary’s ranches have three varieties of chicken: natural, organic, and pasture raised.The difference between the natural and the organic is the feed. The organic birds get USDA certified organic feed. Their  pasture-raised chickens, which they sell as Heritage Bronze Chickens, are a slow growing breed from France known as Rhode Island Red. They're outside all the time with a movable open trailer with an awning that's moved every three days to give them new grass and ground to roam and feed on. If you're familiar with the pioneering work of farmer Joel Saliton, you've probably read about these movable chicken roosts.

Mary's Air Chilled Chickens are never debeaked. Debeaking is a standard process in factory farming operations, where distorted behavior patterns such as cannibalism, vent picking, feather pulling, toe picking, and head picking arise because chickens are overcrowded, packed indoors, and denied the opportunity to peck and forage the way they would on traditional, sustainable, and humane farms.

Air chilling makes the difference
Mary’s Chickens are air chilled, a process that inhibit the spread of bacteria by keeping all of the chickens independent. This process also saves 30,000 gallons of chlorinated water every day, making these chickens more eco friendly than the chickens sold in the majority of markets. The folks at Mary’s farm explain,  “The air chilled method produces a better tasting chicken. With no water added, the air chilled method keeps the real chicken flavor and juices. No water is absorbed, so you get the natural flavor of chicken.” PHOTO RIGHT: Mary's Air Chilled Chicken

Chlorine in your chicken?
According to an article in the Los Angeles, “Air-chilling is fairly new in the United States and is used by a limited number of producers, though it has been fairly common in Western Europe for almost 50 years.

Most American chickens are water-chilled, meaning a slaughtered chicken is cooled in a large, cold communal bath shared with (usually a large number of) other chickens. The baths are heavily chlorinated, as required by the USDA, and each bird can absorb 2% to 12% of its weight in this water as it cools. The liquid you see as you open the package of a conventionally processed chicken is often drainage from the water bath.

In contrast, air-chilled chickens are chilled on racks in a room using cold air. Each chicken is still sprayed inside and out with a chlorine rinse as required by the USDA, but air-chilled chickens do not absorb water as water-chilled chickens do, and when packaged can be labeled with the statement, ‘No water added.’” To watch a video about life on Mary’s farm, click here

My verdict?
Yummy! I’m impressed. From the moment I opened the package, I knew I had a good chicken. Conventional chicken from supermarkets and natural foods stores often look wet, feel flabby and slightly slimy, and have liquid in the package. I purchased one of Mary’s Air Chilled Chickens from my local Whole Foods Market. I bought a whole bird. When I opened the package, I noticed that the skin was firm, dry, and smooth. It looked healthy like the pasture-raised chickens I’ve gotten from a farmers in San Simone, Arizona, and in Toledo, Ohio. The liver and kidneys inside looked healthy. I chopped them up and gave them (raw) to my cats. My youngest (8 months old) devoured them, a good sign.

To cook the chicken I used a recipe I’ve prepared several times before, Jody Adams's Balsamic-Marinated Chicken Stuffed With Green Olives (a.k.a. Roxanne's Roast Chicken) from an article dated December 13, 2007 in the Digital Journal, about Umami, (pronounced "oo-MA-mee"), a term coined in 1908 by Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University. Umami means "savory" or "meaty," but it’s more that that. The term define the taste of glutamates found in meat, cheese, and protein heavy foods. Umami has been added to the list of the four most common taste sensations: salty, sour, sweet, and bitter. Those familiar with Chinese medicine have seen the tastes defined as sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and pungent. In this case, Umami would be the sixth taste. PHOTO RIGHT: Rachel Albert Matesz, 2009

What is Umami? For a visual of the taste buds and flavors click here

I’ve made this recipe with other chickens from natural foods stores, with a 100% pasture raised chicken, and a few weeks ago with a Mary’s Air Chilled Chicken. Incidentally, Mary’s also sells pasture raised chickens. My friend Don concurred with me that this was a great chicken. He thought it far surpassed the highly touted Rocky the Range Chickens. When I pulled leftovers out of the fridge this week I was still impressed. Really delicious chicken. I will buy this again. Mary’s Air Chilled Chicken is also available in cut up fryer parts and boneless pieces. If your local natural foods store doesn’t carry this chicken, you can have them contact Mary’s farm to order.

Jody Adams's Balsamic-Marinated Chicken Stuffed With Green Olives ( Roxanne's Roast Chicken)
Yield: Serves 4
Prep time: 10 minutes +  the time to bring chicken to room temp
Cooking time: about 1 1⁄2 hours (mostly inactive aside from turning the chicken)
Resting time: 10 minutes

Chef Jody Adams has served a duck dish using the same marinade and technique at Rialto in Boston for about 20 years, she says. Five years ago, while attending a culinary lecture about umami, she realized why this dish is a customer favorite: The soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, olives and poultry are all rich in umami compounds. A long marinade and slow roasting magnifies those flavors.
[roast chicken]

Ingredients
1⁄2 cup balsamic vinegar
1⁄4 cup soy sauce
1⁄4 cup Dijon mustard
1 1⁄2 teaspoons mustard seeds
1 1⁄2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1 1⁄2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1⁄2 small white onion, chopped into 1⁄4 inch dice
1 (4-pound) roasting chicken
12 large pitted Sicilian green olives

1. Mix the vinegar, soy sauce, mustard, mustard seeds, rosemary, pepper and onion together in a bowl large enough to hold the chicken, and set aside.
2. Remove the package from the cavity of the chicken; reserve for another use or discard it. Taking care to work directly over a sink, and not spray chicken juices around the kitchen, rinse the chicken inside and out and then dry thoroughly with paper towels. Roll the chicken all around in the marinade, making sure plenty of marinade flows inside the cavity. Cover and marinate 8 hours to overnight in the fridge. Alternatively, put the chicken into a large resealable plastic bag, pour the marinade over the chicken and into the cavity, seal, and refrigerate.
3.  Prior to cooking, bring the chicken to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
4. Remove the chicken from the marinade, allowing any that clings to the chicken to remain. Save the marinade in the bowl. Put the olives in the cavity of the chicken. Set the chicken, breast side down, on a non-stick rack, or a rack sprayed with cooking oil, in a roasting pan. Add 1⁄2 inch water to the roasting pan to prevent the juices from burning. Roast for 50 minutes. Flip the bird, taking care not to lose the olives; pour the reserved marinade over the bird; tuck the wingtips underneath and continue roasting for 40 minutes or until the chicken is done. If the skin begins to get too brown, tent the breast with a piece of foil and continue roasting until the bird is done. The chicken is done when the leg bones have a little play in the socket when you try to wiggle them. A thermometer inserted into the thicket part of the thigh should read 170 degrees.
5. Transfer the chicken to a cutting board or serving platter and let the chicken rest 10 minutes before carving.
6. My Note: Cover and refrigerate leftovers. Once chilled freeze what you don't plant to use within 3 days. Reheat leftovers in a heatproof dish in a toaster oven at 250 to 300 degrees F.

More recipies and information about Umami can be found at the Umami Information Center.

My thanks to Mary Budinger for sharing her favorite brand of chicken with me. I’ll blog about Mary’s Air Chilled Turkey and Duck later this month and share more recipes. I'm having some of the leftover turkey for dinner tonight and plan to defrost and cook the duck before Christmas. I hope you try this amazing chicken.

What do you think? Have you tried this chicken? This recipe? Let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

Money Saving Tips for Your Food Budget

When it comes to buying and cooking chicken, there are so many ways to save money.

Good, better, and best
Although pasture-raised chickens are the best bet nutritionally and ecologically, not everyone can afford to buy it or to eat this kind of poultry exclusively. I consider certified organic or local, antibiotic-free, free range the next best bet in my book (The Garden of Eating), but again, this may not be in your budget now or as a weekly expenditure.

That's dark meat chicken there: a meaty chicken back and a small thigh. The back from a cut up fryer has a fair amount of meat on it. It's not to be wasted.

I’m all for local, organic, and grass-fed and I’m also practical. If you don’t have the income to eat that way or do it it 100%, then you make the best choices within the confines of your current economical situation. I think it’s more important to eat a protein- and produce-rich diet, even if it’s not 50% or even 100% organic, local, or pasture-raised. So, with that in mind, check out the tips below. If you have tips I haven’t thought of, let me know by posting your comments below.

1) Stock up on your favorite cuts or parts when they go on sale
Check out the weekly ad specials that show up in your mail box. Here in Phoenix, AZ, Sprouts Market, Sunflower Market, Frys, Safeway, and Food City offer weekly specials on so many food. You can find poultry, meat, fresh vegetables, and fruits at prices even people on very limited budgets can afford.

2) Buy more dark meat poultry
For the cost of boneless skinless chicken breasts, you can usually buy two to four times as much dark meat chicken. Yes, it’s higher in fat, but fat’s not bad. We need fat in our diets. It increases satiety at meals, makes the meat more moist, and means you don’t have to add oil to it in cooking. Besides, dark meat poultry (thighs and drumsticks) contains more iron and zinc than breast meat so it gives you a nutritional boost for your buck that you don’t get from white meat chicken.

3) Buy more bone-in poultry
I know a lot of people like buying boneless, skinless chicken. I’ll admit that I buy it sometimes (usually when it’s on a sale or I need it for a particular recipe), but I don’t buy it all the time. Bone in poultry costs less than boneless. Sure the boneless breast halves and strips are easy to handle, but it’s not that much harder or more time consuming to cook bone pieces. Baked, roasted, or grilled chicken thighs or drumsticks take very little hands-on prep and yield delicious meals.

4) Make bone broth
Buying chicken on the bone provides the main ingredient you need for making Bone Building Broth (recipe below), a more nutritious alternative to those cartons of preservative-free chicken broth sold in natural foods stores and the health food aisle of supermarkets. You can cook the bones all day or overnight in a slow cooker (aka Crock Pot®) Strain it, cool it, bottle it (I use wide mouth quart and pint canning jars), label it, refrigerate it, then freeze it once it’s cold. If you go through a quart of this broth (technically stock) every week and use home made, you can save $150 to $200 a year.

To learn about the Benefits of homemade Bone Broth click here and here.

You don’t have to make bone broth every week. I make it about once a month. In the meantime, you can stash the bones in bags in the freezer (I use leftover, meaning previously used and rinsed, zip-top bags for this). Take the bones out and cook them when you want, when it fits your schedule. It takes less than 10 minutes to assemble and get the pot cooking. You can make it big batches in a large stock pot or slow cooker. Figure about 30 minutes total for assembling, straining, pouring into jars, labeling, and sealing the pine and quart jars with screw on lids. I like to vacuum seal the broth in wide mouth canning jars using a Tilia Food Saver, but you don’t absolutely have to vacuum seal. Remember to leave an inch of space below the lip in the jar.

5) Cook a chicken or two
Serve the chicken the first night, as is with whatever seasonings you put on it before cooking whatever or condiments you like. Cook two or three chickens at a time if you have a big family so you’re sure to have leftovers. You can chill then freeze some of the meat after stripping it off the bones.

If you don’t like eating the same meal the next day, transform the chicken into a new dish the next day. After cooking the meat, freeze what you don’t plan to consume within three days. That's curried chicken salad in process>>>

You can turn a single roast chicken into multiple meals with different seasonings and condiments, particularly if you make the chicken fairly plain the first time around. Think curried chicken salad, chicken waldorf, Cobb Salad, chicken over green salad with vinaigrette or avocado and salsa, Shredded chicken in chili, chicken in lettuce wraps with Thai flavored condiments, stir fried veggies with chicken and peanut sauce added at the last minute, chicken, chicken tacos, chicken burritos or enchiladas (if you eat tortillas) and so on. Note: These same strategies apply to cooking chicken breast meat, whether you bake, roast, grill, or poach it.

6) Cook ahead and in quantity
Whatever chicken parts you cook, cook with multiple meals in mind. This is the key to having great food on hand when hunger strikes. Leftover chicken provide the perfect addition to pack lunches, easy to assemble dinners, even breakfast. Serve it as is or slice, dice, shred, or chop it. Dress it up, sauce it, toss it, and season it with different condiments or accentuate it with different side dishes to add variety to your meals.

There are so many ways to make tradeoffs that pay off. Let me know if this posts gives you new ideas to save time and money.

Basic Bone-Building Broth

Total hands-on: 20 to 30 minutes/ Cooking: 10 to 20 hours /Yield: 4 quarts

I save all the bones from boning and cooking chicken, turkey, beef, bison, venison, and pork––even if we’ve  nibbled on them. I separate meat bones from poultry bones in recycled bags in the freezer. When I have enough, I make a thick, milky, gelatinous, mineral-rich broth. I read that a cup of bone stock/broth may contain as much calcium as a glass of milk. Because I make mine so thick, it probably contains more. I use it to make sautéed greens, Better Brussels Sprouts, Better Barbecue Sauce, Lean & Creamy Dressings, stir-fried vegetables, gravy, soup, and stews (see index for recipes).

Note: Sea vegetables add trace minerals, including iodine and chelate heavy metals (including mercury) and radioactive isotopes from your body. I start cooking this in the morning or after lunch or supper, and let it to cook all day or night. If you’re only cooking bones from breast parts, the broth won’t turn milky, but it will still be delicious.

Ingredients (for a large batch):
3 to 4 pounds poultry raw or cooked bones, from whole carcasses, fryer parts, backs, necks, or wings     of chicken, turkey, duck, guinea fowl, game hens, etc.
3 tablespoons lemon juice, organic red wine vinegar or raw apple cider vinegar
2 bay leaves and/or 2 to 3 (5-inch) pieces kelp, kombu or alaria sea vegetable
12 peppercorns, optional
1 teaspoon each dried rosemary and thyme, optional
1 large onion, quartered
1 large carrot, quartered, optional
5 to 6 quarts filtered water, or slightly more as needed to amply cover bones

1. Combine ingredients in 8-quart stockpot. Add water to cover bones. Cover and bring to full rolling boil over medium heat. Reduce to medium-low to keep broth gently bubbling. Skim off foam that rises to surface during first 30 minutes.
2. Simmer 10 to 14 hours, or until broth appears milky. Add more water if needed to keep bones covered. To add more nutrients, mash with potato masher after 8 hours.
3. Uncover and simmer 1 hour longer, or until reduced to 4 quarts. Remove bones with large slotted spoon or pour through colander over extra-large bowl. Return broth to pot and place in sink filled with several inches of ice water. Cool for 30 minutes.
4. Strain and ladle into 1-quart Mason jars or freezer containers allowing 1 inch of head space in each container. Label, date, and refrigerate. Broth will thicken as it cools.
5. Skim off and discard fat layer before using or freezing broth. You can freeze some of the broth in ice cube trays and transfer to larger freezer containers. Use refrigerated broth within 10 days. Use frozen broth within 9 months.

Nutrition breakdown not available

Variations:

*  Slow Cooker Version: Combine all ingredients, except water, in 5- to 6-quart slow cooker. Add water to within 1 inch of top. Cover and cook on HIGH for 2 to 3 hours, if possible, then reduce heat to LOW and continue to cook for 8 to 10 hours.

Source for recipe: The Garden of Eating: A Produce—Dominated Diet & Cookbook
© Copyright 2004, Rachel Albert-Matesz

Trade in Your Tuna for Something Safer

If you’re like me you grew up eating tuna salad sandwiches. Later you graduated to tuna topped green salads, then grilled tuna steaks. If you’re still eating tuna be forewarned! It contains high levels of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that can disrupt the functioning of your brain, eyes, and nervous system leading to impaired vision and learning, personality changes, tremors, deafness, loss of coordination and memory, birth defects, miscarriages, and autism. You can find a longer list of possible side effects on line.   

What is mercury?
Mercury is a widespread environmental contaminant. We’re exposed to through mercury amalgam dental fillings, some prescription drugs, fungicides, pesticides, cosmetics, and through consumption of seafood exposed to industrial waste.

Tuna Warning
The Environmental Working Group (egw.org) recommends that women of childbearing age and children under 5 not eat albacore tuna at all, because a significant portion of albacore tuna has very high mercury levels. People eating this tuna will exceed safe exposure levels by a wide margin.

According to FDA health standards, an adult can safely eat 10.9 ounces of light tuna per week (assuming every can of tuna has an average amount of mercury). That's one and three-quarters cans of tuna. Bear in mind that we have multiple exposures to mercury so this figure looks at only one of many sources. You’ll want to reduce all exposures and you might want to have your mercury levels tested.

Get tested                
For $25, you can order a find out how much mercury you have in your body. Mercury test kit

How much tuna can you safely eat? Check the tuna calculator 

Okay, so you’re wondering what you can substitute for tuna in recipes. Baked, broiled, grilled, or poached chicken breast. You can slice it, dice it, or put it through your food processor with the metal slicing blade to create a more tuna-like texture. If possible use pasture-raised chicken. Next best: organic, followed by anti-biotic free chicken. Buy locally raised chicken from a farmer in your city, state, or region whenever possible and avoid the chicken from factory farms.

So, here’s my favorite remake of the classic tuna waldorf. My cooking student, Stacy Maxwell created this colorful platter for her final recipe for my 5-week Whole Foods Cuisine II cooking series. I snapped the picture before we all descended on table of food.

Note: Grapeseed Oil Vegenaise  is my favorite commercial mayo. My cooking students and coaching clients concur. It’s vegan, gluten-free, preservative-free, and kosher. Even if you eat eggs, I recommend it. It tastes like real mayo and it contains simple and few ingredients–– no refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils or preservatives. Look for the bottle with the purple top (the other varieties contain soy or canola oil, which I do not recommend). You’ll find it in the refrigerator case in natural foods stores.

Chicken Waldorf Salad   

Prep: 30 minutes/ Serves: 4

More than 25 years ago, my mother ate a tuna-based version of this salad sandwiched served on toasted, sprouted Ezekiel bread in a cafe in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’ve tinkered with her rendition of it more times than I can count. I like to serve this over salad greens with a side of warm brown rice tortillas or lightly oiled and salted (warm) whole corn tortillas. If you tolerate gluten grains you could stuff the chicken salad and greens into whole wheat or spelt pita pockets. For a more substantial meal, I like to serve this with Creamy Carrot Soup (see The Garden of Eating for recipe) or a cornucopia of sliced veggies as you can see in the picture above.

Ingredients:
12-ounces (by weight) baked, grilled, or poached chicken breast, cut into small dice   
1 1/2 large or 2 small tart or tart-sweet apples (about 12 ounces), washed, cored, peeled, and diced: pink lady, braeburn, gala, or Fuji
1/2 cup finely minced sweet white onion: Vidalia, Maui or Walla Walla Sweet
    or scallions/green onions (white part with most of the green part)
1/4 cup unsalted lightly toasted almonds, walnuts or pecans, whole or coarsely chopped
1 cup finely chopped celery stalks or 1 cup fresh fennel bulb, trimmed, cored, and finely chopped
1/4 cup raisins or fruit-sweetened dried cranberries or cherries
1 teaspoon dried or 1 tablespoon minced fresh dill or ¼ cup minced fresh fennel fronds
1/2 cup Grapeseed Oil Vegenaise, Omega-3 Mayo, or homemade mayo (see The Garden of Eating)

8 cups green salad (two or more dark leafy lettuces or a baby greens mix with added vegetables, e.g.,  peeled, grated carrots or beets, minced yellow or red bell pepper, parsley, thinly sliced radishes, peeled, seeded, and sliced cucumber,  edible flowers,  or combination)

4 to 8 warm brown rice tortillas, 12 (6-inch) organic whole corn tortillas, or 4 whole wheat pita pocket breads or 8 slices authentic sourdough whole wheat or spelt bread or Ezekiel bread

1. In a 1-quart mixing bowl, combine the first 8 ingredients (chicken through mayo). Toss to coat. Add more mayo as needed to moisten. 
2. Evenly divide green salad between 4 large plates or Pyrex or stainless steel containers with fitted lids for pack lunches. Top each serving of greens with one-quarter of the chicken salad. Serve with tortillas or bread.
3. Cover and refrigerate leftovers and use within 48 hours.

Variation:
*    Replace apples with 2 cups of halved seedless red grapes, then omit raisins.

Source: Chef Rachel Albert-Matesz, The Healthy Cooking/Healthy Eating Coach
www.TheHealthyCookingCoach.com