Claire Fitts offers personalized cooking and baking classes with a specialty in customizing recipes for restricted diets. For more recipes, see her blog at goodgrub.butterflybakeryvt.com.
Carrot Ginger Soup
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large yellow onion, sliced
1 pound (about 5 medium) carrots, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt, plus more to taste
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 and one-half tablespoons freshly grated ginger (more if you really like ginger)
two-thirds cups whole milk
pepper to taste
feta cheese (optional)
Set a medium saucepan over medium-high heat with olive oil. Add onion and carrots and 1 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are soft, about 10 minutes. Add broth and ginger and increase heat to high to bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium, cover pot and simmer until carrots are soft, about 10 to 15 minutes. Remove pot from heat and, with an immersion blender, puree soup until smooth. (Alternately: Pour soup into a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Use great care blending hot liquids. Leave the center of the blender lid off or the feed tube of the food processor open, and cover the opening with a wadded kitchen towel. Start blending slowly and don?t overfill the machine.)
Return soup to stove over medium-high heat, cover and bring back just to a boil. Remove soup from stove and stir in milk. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired. Sprinkle each serving with crumbled feta cheese. Makes about 5 to 6 cups of soup.
Free Press testing note: You can prepare this soup ahead, up to the point of adding the milk. If you do reheat the soup after adding the milk, do so gently to avoid curdling. The feta cheese adds a great tang of flavor to this sweet soup.
Raspberry-Almond Thumbprint Cookies
2 cups natural whole almonds
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups whole spelt flour, or 1 cup whole wheat flour and 1 cup all-purpose flour
one-fourth teaspoon salt
1 cup pure maple syrup, grade B is fine
1 cup sunflower oil or canola oil
1 (10-ounce) jar naturally sweetened raspberry jam
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or nonstick baking mats. In a food processor, grind almonds until fine crumbs start to clump but don?t turn to almond butter. Transfer to a large bowl. Pulse oats in food processor to fine crumbs, but not flour. Add to bowl of ground almonds. Add spelt flour and salt and whisk to combine well.
Make a well in the center of dry ingredients and pour maple syrup and oil into the well. Use a wooden spoon or sturdy spatula to mix wet ingredients into dry until a cohesive dough forms. Roll dough into 1 and one-half inch balls and place them about 1 inch apart on prepared baking sheets. Press your thumb into each to make a good-size indentation. Fill each indentation with a good teaspoon of jam.
Bake cookies for 15 to 20 minutes, until cookies can be lifted off baking sheets with a spatula without bending or crumbling. Remove from sheet and cool. Makes about 30 cookies.
Free Press testing note: To avoid leaking jam, press together any cracks in the cookies after you?ve made the thumbprints (if dough is really crumbly, add a little more oil to batter) and use a fairly thick jam such as Smucker?s Simply Fruit.
A version of Butterfly Bakery?s Raspberry Almond Thumbprint cookie recipe was previously published in ?Dishing up Vermont? by Tracey Medeiros (Storey Publishing, 2008). Recipes tested by Melissa Pasanen, Free Press correspondent.
MONTPELIER ? Diets are inherently a challenge, but some people have it harder than others.
Claire Fitts, 30, of Montpelier weighed 160 pounds by the time she was 11 and topped out last March at just over 270 pounds.
?I?ve been fat my whole life,? she said last week in the warm, ginger-scented interior of her bakery. ?My entire life I?ve been trying-ish to lose weight, like most women do.?
Fitts also happens to be a professional baker, who is surrounded daily by the temptation of her own chocolate chip cookies, raspberry-apricot scones and crisp maple gingersnaps, which she was scooping by the dozens onto baking sheets in Butterfly Bakery?s small commercial kitchen.
Her own sweet creations were the least of her fears, she said, when she finally resolved to take control of her health a year ago this month, prompted by a medical scare unrelated to her weight.
?I identified as a fat person. I had to convince myself that it?s OK to be a healthy body weight,? Fitts said. ?It?s safe to be a plus-size; you can blame things on it? such as people not liking you, or any kind of failure, she added. ?This whole process has made me realize that weight loss is way more difficult psychologically than physically.?
For the first two and a half months, Fitts focused on stepping up her activity level, literally counting every step she took with a pedometer, increasing her average daily steps from between 1,000 and 3,000, to 10,000. ?I decided to start walking on Jan. 14, just for my health. I told myself, ?This is just health-related, not weight-related,?? she said.
But exercise alone was not enough, so March 1, she also changed her diet. ?I?ve discovered that it?s all about the calories. Calories in and calories out,? Fitts said. ?It?s hard to burn 500 calories, and it?s really easy to eat 500 calories.?
A year since her first pedometered-steps, following a simple regimen of 10,000 steps daily and ?eating the good food I already ate, but less of it,? Fitts has lost 80 pounds and wears size 12 pants instead of a size 22.
?The most amazing thing is that it?s not complicated,? Fitts said. ?There?s a lot of food ridiculousness out there. I was worried I would put all this time into it and I would be doing it wrong, but it?s just not that complicated. Move more, eat less and, like Michael Pollan says, ?Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.??
Smoothly juggling bowls and baking times with conversation last week as she made 500 cookies, the 5-foot-11-inch baker wore a blue ruffled apron tied around her trim waist. A kerchief held back her red curls to reveal fine cheek bones in a healthy, happy and relaxed face.
?I remember the first time my clavicle showed up,? Fitts said. ?I was so excited.?
Like Butterfly Bakery?s line of cookies, scones, granola, granola bars, seasonal chocolate truffles and chocolate-nut spread, her daily diet avoids refined sugars and emphasizes whole grains. Except for the scones her products are also all vegan, which Fitts is not.
She did spend 11 years eating largely vegetarian, including her time as a student at Oberlin College during which she belonged to a mostly vegan dining co-op where she learned many tricks of the alternative baking trade. But, Fitts said, she?s discovered ?that animal proteins make me feel better. Everyone?s different, but I found that when I ate only vegetable protein I had to eat every three to four hours. I only need to eat three to four ounces of animal protein a day, but it helps me stay satisfied.?
Although she earned a degree in computer science and applied math, Fitts moved to Montpelier with plans to build the nascent baking business she had started as a student.
?I had been baking my whole life,? she explained. ?In grade school, I sold baked goods on the corner with my best friend and donated the money to Greenpeace. Very Berkeley,? she chuckled, referring to her hometown. ?I made more money as a summer intern in computer programming than I do now after 10 years into this, but I love what I do.?
Her business is booming, she said, with 20 percent growth vs. a year ago and strong profits that enabled her to recently pay off her business loan. She bakes four days a week and delivers to co-op, specialty and independent food markets from Montpelier to Burlington, and ships nationally.
Although Butterfly Bakery products are on the wholesome side of the indulgent spectrum, most are not low calorie and her work does require regular taste-testing. Still, Fitts thinks that has helped her.
?This removes the taboo of sweets,? she said, pointing to the stacked racks of cookies cooling. ?I can get them any time.?
Her daily diet emphasizes home-cooked whole foods in season with many locally grown ingredients, which she often trades with fellow vendors at the Montpelier farmers market.
?I hate calorie-counting,? she said. ?I basically just notched back my eating.?
Breakfast is her own peanut-maple-vanilla granola with whole milk goat yogurt mixed with fresh fruit. She used to eat about three-fourths cup of granola but has cut back to one-third cup and added more fruit. She believes the whole milk yogurt is important to keep her from snacking between meals. ?I grew up in the ?fat is bad? era, but fat can be quite satiating,? Fitts noted.
Lunch might be carrot-ginger soup with feta (see recipes), salad and smoked fish with local goat cheese on whole grain bread. While working, Fitts chews gum to ?help deal with boredom-prompted eating? and allows herself unlimited veggies, such as carrots and cucumbers, to snack on. Dinners are rarely her main meal and are usually soups and salads, cheese and a little sausage with whole grain crackers or, her latest favorite, smoked sardines.
?Everybody?s faced with temptation every day,? Fitts said, pulling a small loaf of her deliciously moist seasonal pumpkin bread out of the freezer. ?This is one of mine. Good thing I store it in the freezer.?
She also has a weakness for agave nectar-sweetened coconut milk ice cream and, she admitted, ?Every so often I give into my craving for gas station nachos.?
When Fitts does give in, she is likely to make herself walk to the gas station rather than drive in order to hit her now 11,000 daily steps. She has become very dependent on her Yamax Digi-Walker, which is constantly attached to her waistband. She basically does her regular day?s worth of activity and then checks the pedometer and walks down the Montpelier bike path or into the hills to make up the difference, even in cold weather, although she did recently join a gym. ?On average it?s an extra hour of walking,? she estimated.
Sometimes, Fitts said, ?I?ll walk in circles around the bakery while waiting for things to bake and I?ll try to walk instead of drive to the co-op. I?ve also discovered that when a good song comes on the radio and I dance around, it counts those as steps.? The bottom-line, she said, is that, ?You don?t have to be perfect. It?s not one day that affects things. It?s what you do 10 days in a row. Think, ?How can I fit it in today?? Don?t think too far ahead ... . The great thing is that everything counts.?
Fitts also noted that she has received great support from friends and family, including one friend who has also lost a lot of weight and ?understands the little things,? the challenges and the small daily victories. She posts her number of steps every day on Facebook ?to keep myself honest.?
Fitts has about 20 more pounds to lose to achieve her goal of a healthy weight for her height and frame and is a little nervous about the maintenance phase of her diet. ?Will I get the same positive feeling from my weight staying the same as I have from the steady loss?? she asked. She plans to start working with a trainer to build muscle, although she?s become quite attached to the pedometer. ?I?ll probably have it attached to my hip for a very long time.?
Other things have fallen into place, too. ?I was definitely scared of growing my business too fast,? she said as she squeezed dollops of raspberry jam into her almond cookies. ?I?m not afraid of pushing it to grow now. It?s growing simply because I?ve taken down the barriers and I do attribute a lot of that to my weight loss,? she said. ?I always knew what needed to be done in both weight loss and business but fear of success kept me from doing it.?
?A year ago, I made a little list of where I wanted to be,? Fitts said. ?I wrote, ?I am slender, healthy and enjoy eating less and exercising daily.? And a year later, that describes it to a T. I used to have it posted on the wall right over there, but it?s not there anymore. I don?t need it.?
Contact Melissa Pasanen at mpasanen@aol.com
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, and pulse until finely chopped.