Brownbag solution: A sweet dish

If you're trying to keep your bank account from shrinking and your waistline from growing, brownbagging lunch is one thing you can do to reach both goals.

Logical, yes. Easy? Not always.

What if you don't have a refrigerator at work or school to keep cold things cold, and access to a microwave to heat up what should be hot? Or what if you have to eat at your desk and your podmates wrinkle their noses at your latest tuna creation?

Or what if you just can't face another boring turkey sandwich?

Here's a recipe that solves all those problems -- A sweet potato and broccoli salad from the New Moosewood Cookbook. It's easy, delicious cold or at room temperature, and will keep you going all afternoon. It's what I have in my lunchbag today, mixed in with a little grilled chicken. Tomorrow, in solidarity with my newly vegetarian friend Terry Tomalin, I might try it with rinsed, drained black beans.

And if the idea of eating sweet potatoes cold in a salad just seems all wrong to your Thanksgiving marshmallow-casserole-loving self, think again. Sweet potatoes are one of the best veggies you can eat (provided you skip the marshmallows!), chockful of Vitamin A and C, and loaded with fiber. And don't even get me going on the virtues of broccoli.

Sweet Potato and Broccoli Salad

3 medium sweet potatoes (1-1/2-2 lbs)

MARINADE:

1/2 c walnut oil (or if you don't have any, try olive oil)
1 large clove garlic, minced
3 Tbs. lemon juice
2 Tbs. raspberry vinegar (I had a sample of a new product, Pompeian's blueberry pomegranate red wine vinegar, and it was really good. Or try cider vinegar)
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. dry mustard
1 Tbs. honey
freshly ground black pepper

1 large bunch broccoli (1 to 1-1/2 lbs), cut in small spears

Peel potatoes, cut in halves or quarters, then thin slices. Boil or steam until tender. Meanwhile, combine marinade ingredients in medium-large bowl. Drain potatoes and add while hot to marinade. Mix gently. Steam broccoli until bright green and just tender. Rinse under cold water and drain completely. Lay on top of botatoes. cover tightly and refrigerate for several hours. Within 15 minutes of serving, mix broccoli in from on top.

OPTIONAL: Serve garnished with thin slices of green apple and chopped toasted pecans. About 6 servings.

Source: The New Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen

Charlotte Sutton, health and medicine editor

Not Soy Fast

I was crying the blues to one of my meat-eating buddies just four days into my experiment with vegetarianism, when he came up with a novel idea.

"You need to go get yourself some tofu, carve into the shape of a catfish, slap some barbecue sauce on it, and you'll be fine," said Joe Bill Lain, the Surfing Sage from Roger Mills County, Oklahoma. "Ain't nothing to it."

Lain, the Water Safety Supervisor for Clearwater Beach, knows a thing or two about food. A former English teacher turned sailboat bum, Joe Bill jumped ship in St. Thomas, worked as a saucier, then ended up in the U.S. working as an ocean lifeguard, a profession that requires one to be fit and fast.

Now while my friend has been known to eat a big, fat juicy steak now and then (after all, he comes from cowboy country) he usually tries to eat "clean." For lunch, he might have a big beefsteak tomato with a little balsamic vinegar on before heading out into the surf to bust out a pier swim.

But you don't have to eat like a rabbit toget the benefits of a vegetarian diet. I listened to Lain's advice and bought myself some pseudo-chicken strips made from soy. They were pretty good...reminded me a little of rattlesnake.

I'll keep at it...six days down, only 84 to go. Then I'm high-tailing it to the Salt Rock Grill for a New York Strip.

Confessions of a Carnivore

They say you are what you eat. So I guess that makes me, in the words of my spiritual adviser Jimmy Buffet, "a big warm bun and huge hunk of meat."

Yes, for all of my life, I have been an unapologetic carnivore. And in the spirit of full disclosure, being an outdoors kind of guy, I have not only eaten a variety of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles, but I have killed my share as well.

But I have changed my ways. Last week, chaperoning a group of high school juniors on a canoe trip, I had to resort to some drastic measures to get two vegetarians to keep up with the rest of the group. When threats and intimidation did not work, I took a gamble. 

The result: I now have to forsake all meat, poultry and fish for three months. Why 90 days? Well according to Buffet's Cheeseburger in Paradise, he only made it 70, so hopefully, I can do better that than incredibly rich and talented quitter.

I'm about 36 hours into my quest and already I am ready to eat my shoes. Let the carnage begin.

Terry Tomalin, Outdoors-Fitness Editor