Did you know you can freeze cornbread?  If you bake your cornbread now and freeze it, you’ll have less to do when preparing your Thanksgiving celebration side dishes.

Whether you call it stuffing, or as we in the South call it, dressing, a cornbread-based side dish is probably going to find it’s way to your holiday table. It’s almost as traditional as the Thanksgiving turkey itself, no matter what you call it!

Your family’s favorite dressing might be a dish made with giblets and veggies or maybe laden with dried fruit and nuts.  It might contain fresh herbs and venison sausage.  Or it might appear table side with oysters and cajun seasonings — there are as many ways to create a stuffing as there are cooks who make it!  But one thing’s for sure, first you have to bake that pan of cornbread.  And if you plan to make your dressing on Thanksgiving Day, you’ll need to get up pretty early to get your cornbread made in time for your stuffing to make it to the dinner table on time

So why not make your cornbread now.  I mean, really, why make yourself crazy?  Any crazier, that is, than you’d normally be when 20 people show up to your house for a meal —ravenous, wearing weird sweaters that say things like gobble me up, and ready to hit the mulled wine with the gusto of pirates.

Do yourself a favor and bake your cornbread today.  When cooled, wrap tightly in foil and put in a plastic freezer bag, then store in the freezer for up to 3 months.  Thaw in the fridge overnight before using.  No need to reheat, just proceed as usual in your favorite dressing or stuffing recipe.

If you want to be even further ahead of the game, you can also chop any veggies, nuts or dried fruit you will use for your dish and store in the freezer with your cornbread.  Pre-cook any meat like bacon or sausage and store it in the freezer as well.  And oh yea, if you use any other type of bread like sour dough or french bread along with your cornbread, now is also the time to cut it into cubes and store it in the freezer, too.  Thaw overnight, as with your cornbread, and proceed as your recipe directs.

Doing just a bit of prep-work will make your Thanksgiving feast come together in a snap.  And that will save you a lot of hassle and anxiety.  Which will leave you more time to enjoy ball games and parades.  And maybe the mulled wine, too.

No, there isn’t any such thing as the “muffin diet” to lower cholesterol.  Oh darn!  Actually, the topic today is more about the type of oil used in making your muffins and less about the actual muffins.  Let me explain –

Swedish researchers did a study published this month in the Journal of the American Heart Association.  For the study 39 adults were selected who were lean and healthy, averaged 27 years old and had normal, healthy cholesterol levels.  The study lasted 7 weeks and the goal was to have the participants gain weight during that period by eating muffins (240 calories each) in addition to their regular diet. The muffins had identical content EXCEPT for the type of oil (fat) that was used in making the muffins.  One group got muffins made with Sunflower Oil and the other group got muffins made with Palm Oil.  Both of these oils are from vegetable sources.  The major difference is that Sunflower Oil is an unsaturated fat and Palm Oil is a saturated fat.  In the study, they wanted the participants to gain about 3% of their body weight from the extra “muffin” calories.  Now, you are seeing the real reason for the study … to see if eating unsaturated fat is as healthy as or more healthy than eating saturated fat in a situation of modest but rapid weight gain.  Remember, both of the oils come from a vegetable source.

The findings of the study showed:

• Both groups gained about 3.5 lbs during the seven weeks.
• Both groups ate 3 muffins each day on average.
• At the end of the 7 weeks, the Sunflower Oil group showed decreased total cholesterol, decreased  LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, increased HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and decreased HDL/Total Cholesterol Ratio …..  these are all good and desirable results.
• At the end of the 7 weeks, the Palm Oil group showed increased total cholesterol, increased  LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, decreased HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and increased  HDL/Total Cholesterol Ratio …..  these are all NOT good or desirable results.

Wow, those are pretty shocking results:  a group of healthy young adults ate excessive calories gaining 3.5 lbs over a 7 week period and even with that, the unsaturated oil (sunflower) group improved all of the cholesterol values and the saturated oil (palm) group developed worsened cholesterol values.  Folks, that is a pretty straight-forward study … the unsaturated oil was healthier when it comes to healthy cholesterol levels.

So, what should you do?  Well, if you are making muffins and you are concerned about your cholesterol, pick an unsaturated oil.  Unsaturated oils come as monounsaturated or polyunsaturated.  Look in the additional resources section for lists of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated and saturated fats, as well as the American Heart Association’s recommendations of how much fat you should get, and how much of that fat should come from saturated fats.

Oh, and don’t be a purist about avoiding saturated fats.  There is good scientific data being generated that document excellent health benefits of saturated fats. There is something to be said for healthful moderation. OK, gotta run …. My pumpkin spice muffins are ready to come out of the oven!!

Additional Resources:

American Heart Association Recommendations

Monounsaturated Fats

Polyunsaturated Fats

Saturated Fats

Ancient diets are really nothing new. But new information about those diets is turning some of our conventional wisdom on its ear.

A couple of months ago, I picked up a copy of Time magazine with the cover emblazoned with “Eat Butter. Scientists’ labeled fat as the enemy. Why they were wrong.”

This isn’t meant as a green light to go order the Super-Sized Meal Deal with extra French fries. But it’s a recognition that good nutrition requires a little historical perspective. Way-back historical perspective.

Our bodies didn’t evolve to eat Cheetos and drink sodas with high fructose corn syrup. For the majority of time in human evolution, our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. Discovering how to cultivate crops, and to start processing items like grain and sugar occurred relatively recently in our evolutionary history.

According to one study, products like cereals, sugars, refined vegetable oils and other items that comprise more than 72% of the calories we consume weren’t even in our diets before farming began. According to that study, as these foods gradually displaced the minimally processed wild plant and animal foods in hunter-gatherer diets, dietary problems began to arise.

This subject became the topic of dinner conversation with some friends and family a few weeks back.

“The diets of cave men couldn’t have been too healthy. After all, they generally didn’t live past 30,” one of my in-laws said.

“That’s true,” I replied. “And a lot of soldiers in World War II died while eating a diet of K-Rations. The K-Rations weren’t the cause of death.  Cave men had a fairly short lifespan because of a number of factors. Dietary health wasn’t one of them.”

We don’t need to grab a club and start chasing wild game through the local park. But adopting a diet of simple foods produced without synthetic pesticides, and meat without hormones and antibiotics, is a good place to start.

Did you know that beyond the Wild Oats Voices Bloggers, there are a number of additional bloggers throughout the US who are talking about Wild Oats and affordable organics at Walmart? Check out some recent blogger posts about Wild Oats! #wildoats4allblogger

My Sweet Savings

Gloriously Green Gal

Ditta’s Gifts and Savings

BB Product Reviews

Sweet Pea Savings

Tammie’s Reviews, Giveaways and More

Confessions of a Frugal Mind

Bless Their Hearts Mom

Mommy’s Memorandum

Heart of a Philanthropist

It’s almost Halloween, a time when not only ghosts and monsters come out, but more artificial colors than you can shake a witch’s broomstick at.

These dreadful dyes can be found in all sorts of foods these days, from mac and cheese to granola bars. But it seems like Halloween is when even the most conscientious of parents let down their guard on bad-ingredient treats.

So here’s why you shouldn’t. And why you need to carefully check products all year round for what should really be called the bad-news hues.

There are just too many kids today who have been labeled with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Think about it. This affliction was practically unheard of just a few decades ago.

One very likely reason could be all the additives kids are ingesting in meals and snacks – and especially artificial colors.

Studies have shown that these cosmetic additives, which are often petroleum-based, can cause the exact symptoms exhibited by children diagnosed with ADHD.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration recently estimated that four of these synthetic dyes in food products are being routinely consumed by at least 96 percent of those from two to five years old.

So, is that anything that should especially concern parents whose kids often pester them for the latest brightly colored “fruit” snack in the supermarket?

Well, consider this: Recently, the American Academy of Pediatricians was forced to acknowledge that there is indeed a link between artificial colors and ADHD and to recommend parents try removing them from the diet of a child who suffers from the condition. That came about as the result of a study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, which concluded that such dyes increased hyperactivity in children.

And even before that, the Yale University Department of Pediatric Neurology, in feeding baby rats amounts of these additives that would be equivalent to what kids get in the “real world,” caused the animals to become hyperactive and exhibit diminished learning ability.

But ADHD isn’t the only potential problem that feeding kids foods laced with these fake coloring agents might lead to. There are other health issues that researchers have associated with those four most common ones cited by the FDA:

• Red dye No. 40 (derived from petroleum) can cause various allergic reactions, such as hives and swelling around the mouth, and is also a suspected carcinogen.
• Yellow No. 5, or tartrazine, and may cause allergic reactions and migraines.
• Yellow No. 6, or sunset yellow, can result in gastrointestinal problems, migraines and nettle rash, and can cause the skin to swell. It is also a suspected carcinogen.
•  Blue No. 1, also known as brilliant blue, has been known to bring on asthma attacks and cause low blood pressure, as well as hives and other allergic reactions.

The dangers of these artificial colors actually give another benefit to organic food – because you won’t find any of these fake colors in them.

Another place they won’t be found is in any Wild Oats products. Artificial colors are also on the list of 125 unwanted ingredients, or “No-No’s.”