Creamy Crab and Corn Chowder Recipe with Sherry Vinegar, Spotlight on Spatulas, Positivity for Longevity, and Stepping for Heart Health

Soup’s on! Crisp nights (and days) call for heartwarming dishes. I’m sharing one of my favorite chowder recipes, full of flavor with a minimum of cooking time. It features an exquisite sherry vinegar from Spain, the country that put sherry vinegar on the culinary map.

I also want to share findings from two recent studies, both good for body and soul. One is on the importance of positivity and the other, a fresh look at the value of walking for a longer, healthier life—you’ll be surprised by how few steps it takes to start making an impact.

Creamy Crab & Corn Chowder

• Creamy Crab & Corn Chowder

  Shelled crabmeat is readily available at many markets, and this recipe is delicious whether you use claw meat or the more expensive lump crabmeat. Grating the onion on a box grater will separate out most of its liquid, making for a faster sauté.

  Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 cup grated yellow onion
  • 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 cup half-and-half
  • 8 ounces cooked crabmeat
  • 1 cup corn kernels, fresh, canned, or frozen
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt, plus more to taste
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste

  Directions

  Heat a medium saucepan. When hot, add the olive oil and onions. Sauté over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the onions are soft and any liquid has evaporated, about 5 minutes. Add the sherry vinegar to the pan. When it starts to boil, sprinkle on the flour and whisk vigorously until you get a thick paste, about 3 minutes, allowing the flour to cook. Add the milk, 1/2 cup at a time, and continue to whisk vigorously, letting the mixture thicken before adding the next 1/2 cup. Add the half-and-half in the same way. Lower the heat to a simmer and fold in the crabmeat, corn kernels, thyme, salt, and pepper. Heat through, about 3 minutes. Adjust the seasonings to taste and serve.

  Yields 4-6 servings

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Sherry Vinegar

Spain is legendary for its sherry, which can only be produced inside a small area within the province of Cádiz in the southwestern part of Andalusia, a romantic region also known for flamenco and majestic horses. I remember my first visit—now more than 20 years ago—to the famous “sherry triangle” that connects the three cities of El Puerto, Sanlucar, and Jerez. Jerez is home to Bodegas Páez Morilla, and thanks to the efforts of four generations of the Páez family, the region is now also known for its delectable sherry vinegar. 

Only certain grapes can be used to make sherry vinegar that meets the standards for DOP (Denominación de Origen Protegida, or Protected Designation of Origin), such as palomino, which is most commonly used, and the sweeter muscatel. The Pedro Ximénez Reserve Sherry Vinegar that I’ve just made available through my latest Curated Culinary Selections is a special reserva of Pedro Ximenez or “PX” grapes, a white grape variety left in the sun longer than usual to concentrate its sugars and give the taste and deep color of raisins. And it’s a customized blend of PX vinegars from the two of Bodegas Páez Morilla’s smallest-sized barrels for a sweeter rather than drier taste.

Why you should have this vinegar in your kitchen: Beyond my Creamy Crab & Corn Chowder, sherry vinegar is essential for classic gazpacho and for so many Mediterranean dishes that use olive oil, from salads and lentils to lamb and duck. You’ll want to drizzle it over sliced tomatoes with extra virgin olive oil, salt, and fresh oregano; grilled or roasted vegetables, vegetable stir-fries, and boiled potatoes or carrots; reduction sauces, marinades, and pickling liquid; tuna salad and other fish dishes; sweet sauces like fruit coulis and caramel sauce; and citrus or high-acid fruits like strawberries.

Quick Kitchen Nugget

Spatula Savvy

When it comes to inexpensive but efficient kitchen tools, spatulas top the list. They can help you with so many kitchen tasks, from easily flipping pancakes to scraping every last bit of batter from your mixing bowl. The only trick is using the right spatula for the task at hand. Here are some of the designs to consider adding to your kitchen utensil crock or drawer. 

The classic flipper spatula has a wide-angled blade and a long handle to protect your hands from getting too close to a hot pan. The blade might be solid, slotted, or perforated, which allows liquid or fat to drain away when you lift cooked food, like a burger, from your pan or griddle. A very versatile version is a slotted fish spatula with a very long blade with slits; it’s shaped to get under a good sized filet and lift it. When shopping for these spatulas, look for stainless steel or aluminum for durability. They’re also strong enough to use one side as a knife to cut and then lift cooked foods from baking dishes and the like. Though more expensive than other spatulas, they should last forever and are easy to clean. One caution: Don’t use them on non-stick pans because they can scratch the surface.

Another essential is the scraping spatula with its rectangular blade, excellent for folding ingredients and transferring batters from bowl to cake pan and cold salads to serving dishes. Some are wood-handled with a silicone blade—they come in a variety of colors. One advantage of silicone is that it can withstand high heat, often up to 600°F, so you can use it without it melting when cooking on the stovetop. There are also more heavy-duty one-piece silicone designs. Aways buy certified BPA-free silicone. Most blades are flat, but the curved blade, called a spoonula, is also great to have—its shape makes scooping easy. These spatulas come in a variety of sizes, ensuring that you have the right one for every job.

A great tool for bakers is the offset spatula with a thin metal blade set at an angle to the handle. It’s excellent for smoothing the tops of batter in cake pans, spreading and getting an even surface with frosting, and slipping under cookies when you need to loosen them from a cookie sheet. 

And if you’re a cake baker, a cake spatula, big enough to slide under a cake round, makes easy work of stacking layers and transferring finished cakes to a serving plate.

For Your Best Health

Positivity to Last a Lifetime

For the study “The development of subjective well-being across the life span: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies” published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, researchers from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany looked at how feelings of well-being change over a person’s lifespan. “We focused on changes in three central components of subjective well-being,” explains Professor Susanne Bücker, PhD. “Life satisfaction, positive emotional states, and negative emotional states.”

The findings show that the life satisfaction decreases between the ages of 9 and 16, most likely due to changes to the body and social life that take place during puberty. Then it increases slightly until the age of 70, at which point it decreases once again until the age of 96. 

“Overall, the study indicated a positive trend over a wide period of life, if we look at life satisfaction and negative emotional states,” says Dr. Bücker. After the decline in the preteen and teen years, satisfaction rises again from young adulthood onwards. In very late adulthood, all components of subjective well-being tended to worsen rather than improve. “This could be related to the fact that in very old people, physical performance decreases, health often deteriorates, and social contacts diminish, not least because their peers pass away,” she speculates.

The study highlights the need to promote subjective well-being across our lives. Need a positivity boost right now? Positive thinking is a habit you can develop with practice. Here are ideas from experts at the College of Health Care Professions in Texas:

1. Engage in positive self-talk. Be as accepting, understanding, gentle, and encouraging with yourself as you would be with a loved one. 

2. Practice gratitude. Taking a step back to reflect on things you’re thankful for can help you maintain a positive attitude. Make a habit of reminding yourself why you’re grateful every day. 

3. Challenge negativity. When a negative thought pops into your head, evaluate it from a logical perspective. If you conclude it’s illogical or not serving you and your happiness, try reframing it in a more positive light.

4. Spend time with positive people. Their good attitude can rub off on you. Optimistic people tend to be more fun to be around and can help you enjoy life more and stay motivated when times are tough. 

5. Take care of your physical health. When you feel good physically, you’re more likely to feel good mentally and emotionally, have more energy and stamina, think more clearly, and make better decisions. 

6. Laugh more. When we laugh, our bodies release endorphins, which have natural mood-elevating properties. Laughter also reduces stress and improves immune function.

7. Treat your “self” well. When you make time for self-care, you’re investing in your overall health and well-being. And while it may seem like a luxury, it can promote a positive mindset. 

8. Create morning and evening routines. To set the tone for your day and promote a sense of calm and well-being, when you wake up, take some deep breaths, set your intention for the day, and stretch or do some light exercises to get your body moving. In the evening, wind down with a relaxing activity, write down three things you are grateful for from the day in a journal, and then spend a few minutes visualizing your ideal life and what you want to manifest in the coming days. 

9. Be curious. Curiosity can lead to greater creativity and problem-solving ability, promote a positive mindset, increase knowledge and understanding, and provide a sense of satisfaction. 

10. Seek out new experiences. Take your curiosity further: Experiment with a new recipe, learn a new skill, or explore a different part of your city. When we step out of our comfort zones, we open ourselves up to new possibilities and give ourselves a chance to learn and grow. 

Fitness Flash

Step to It

It’s no secret that a sedentary lifestyle is a heart disease risk factor. You’ve probably also heard that the magic number of daily steps you should take is 10,000. However, according to the study “The Association Between Daily Step Count and All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality: A Meta-Analysis” published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, the optimal number of steps—both the minimum it takes to see health benefits and any upper limit—is unclear. A group of European researchers set out to find some definitive answers.

They analyzed 17 studies on the topic involving a total of 226,889 participants and found some surprising and hopeful news, starting with the fact that you will begin to see health benefits by taking even 2,500 to 4,000 steps a day. They also found that people can progressively lower the risk of dying from heart disease and from any cause as they add to those steps: every 1,000-step increment correlated with a significant reduction of all-cause mortality (dying from any cause) of 15% Even a 500-step increment correlated with a reduced risk of CV mortality (dying from heart disease) of 7%.

To put numbers to those percentages, people who exceeded 5,500 steps a day saw their relative risks of all-cause mortality dropping by 48%. Go beyond that and the benefits go even higher: It dropped by 55% with 7,370 daily steps and by 67% with 11,529 steps. Looking at CV mortality in particular, taking about 4,000 steps a day lowered the risk by 16%, 6,661 steps a day by 49% and 10,400 steps a day by 77%.

The researchers hope that these findings will spur taking more steps among people who thought much higher numbers were needed to get results and, as a consequence, didn’t even try. 

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T. J.’s Super Smoothie Recipe, Spotlight on Flaxseeds and Strawberries, The Useful Mini Grinder, and When the Daily Grind Takes a Toll

How can you take a basic smoothie and super-power it? By adding high nutrient ingredients that taste great, too — it doesn’t take any extra time yet can really boost the quality of these oh-so-easy breakfast drinks. Read on and you’ll find out why strawberries should be one of your go-to fruits—fascinating research that could put them on a par with blueberries and raspberries. Plus a reminder of why it’s so vital for body and soul to find satisfaction in your work.

T. J.’s Super Smoothie

• T. J.’s Super Smoothie

  There’s no faster breakfast (or snack) prep than a smoothie. While you might be tempted to pick one up at a drive-thru or favorite coffee haunt, when you make it yourself you can enhance puréed fruits to boost their healthful benefits. My recipe is loaded with protein, thanks to the yogurt, and healthy fats from EVOO of course, but also from fiber-rich flaxseed. I love the frosty taste of a smoothie made with frozen fruit, but you do need some liquid to get it started in a conventional blender — that’s where your milk preference comes in. Drink up!

  Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup dairy or non-dairy milk 
  • 1/2 cup nonfat Greek yogurt 
  • 1 banana or 4 ounces frozen banana slices
  • 1/2 cup frozen strawberries or mixed berries
  • 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 
  • 2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
  • Optional: stevia or your preferred sweetener, to taste

  Directions

  Fill your blender with the ingredients in the order given and process on high until the frozen fruit chunks are almost completely broken down. Taste and add your choice of sweetener if desired.

  Yields 2 small servings

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Flaxseeds

These tiny seeds have been garnering a lot of attention in recent years and for good reason. Derived from the flax plant, they’re loaded with both soluble and insoluble fiber for good digestive health, alpha-linolenic acid or ALA (an omega 3-fatty acid), and phytonutrients called lignans. Lignans are plant-based estrogens that appear to help lower high cholesterol and the risk for heart disease, osteoporosis, breast cancer, and some symptoms of menopause.

Bags of toasted golden or brown flaxseeds are available at many markets and online merchants such as nuts.com and vitacost.com. While ground flaxseed (often called flax meal) is available, whole seeds are likely to retain more nutrients and you can grind them as needed.

Grinding flaxseeds before eating them is essential — when whole, the seeds will pass right out of your body undigested. To best preserve their nutrients, grind only what you need each day, and store any extra in a jar in the fridge. Aim for a tablespoon or two a day: blend it into smoothies and pancake or waffle batter, sprinkle over yogurt or cereal, and add to recipes including baked goods. Ground flaxseeds also make a great swap for breadcrumbs.

Quick Kitchen Nugget

A Great Addition to Your Appliance Garage

An under-appreciated kitchen workhouse is the mini grinder, often called a coffee bean grinder or sometimes a spice grinder. It’s perfect for grinding flaxseeds, whole spices like cumin and black peppercorns, and nuts, turning small amounts into meal. 

For the easiest clean-up, look for a grinder with a removable bowl, like the Cuisinart Electric Spice and Nut Grinder. However, less expensive fixed bowl models, like the one from Krups, can be wiped out with paper towels (first a damp one, then a dry one).  

For Your Best Health

The Power of Strawberries 

According to UNLV School of Integrated Health Sciences associate professor Arpita Basu, PhD, RD/LD, strawberries pack a serious punch when it comes to health benefits. She has been studying their ability to help reduce the risks of diabetes and improve overall metabolic and cardiovascular health for over a decade.

“A key takeaway from our strawberry studies is a marked improvement in blood total and LDL cholesterol among participants. And better numbers in these areas are shown to reduce the possible risk of heart attack and stroke,” she says. “I’m quite passionate about the concept of food as medicine…It’s gratifying when working with patients and research study participants to give them something natural – instead of medication – to lower their risk of diabetes.” Thinking of food as a form of medicine incentivizes people to eat better, she adds.

What makes strawberries so healthy? Any fruits with a deep color are typically good for you, but the darker the color, the greater amount of health benefits. “This is especially true for strawberries because they are all red in color. All that red comes from different plant pigments. Some people use red wine as another common example, but berries have less sugar content than grapes,” Dr. Basu explains. 

She also points out that you don’t need to consume a pound of strawberries each day to see a difference. Her studies of 8-week and 12-week trials with participants who had high LDL cholesterol and features of metabolic syndrome found that two-and-a-half servings of strawberries each day looked to be very beneficial in improving insulin resistance and lowering diabetes risk. Dr. Basu plans on continuing her research with larger groups of adults with pre-diabetes to assess the benefits of strawberries for them. It bears repeating that almost all berries have powerful plant-based nutrients. Her study on the effectiveness of blueberries for women with gestational diabetes also found improvements in their blood glucose levels.

Fitness Flash

When the Daily Grind Takes a Toll

A recent study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, a peer-reviewed American Heart Association journal, found that job strain combined with high effort and low reward doubled men’s heart disease risk. The three psychosocial stressors are each associated with heart disease risk, and the combination is especially dangerous, similar to the magnitude of the impact of obesity. It’s a stark reminder of the importance of having work satisfaction. Results on how work stress affects women’s heart health were inconclusive.

The study included 3,118 male and 3,347 female white-collar workers engaged in a wide range of jobs in Quebec, Canada, including employees working in senior management and in professional, technical, and office workers roles. Education levels ranged from no high school diploma to a university degree. At the start of the study, participants had an average age of about 45 years old and were free of heart disease; they were followed from 2000 to 2018.

“Considering the significant amount of time people spend at work, understanding the relationship between work stressors and cardiovascular health is crucial for public health and workforce well-being,” says lead study author Mathilde Lavigne-Robichaud, RD, MS, doctoral candidate, of the Population Health and Optimal Health Practices Research Unit, CHU de Quebec-University Laval Research Center in Quebec, Canada. “Our study highlights the pressing need to proactively address stressful working conditions, to create healthier work environments that benefit employees and employers.

“Job strain refers to work environments where employees face a combination of high job demands and low control over their work. High demands can include a heavy workload, tight deadlines, and numerous responsibilities, while low control means the employee has little say in decision-making and how they perform their tasks,” Lavigne-Robichaud explains. “Effort-reward imbalance occurs when employees invest high effort into their work, but they perceive the rewards they receive in return — such as salary, recognition, or job security — as insufficient or unequal to the effort. For instance, if you’re always going above and beyond, but you feel like you’re not getting the credit or rewards you deserve, that’s called effort-reward imbalance.

“Our results suggest that interventions aimed at reducing stressors from the work environment could be particularly effective for men and could also have positive implications for women, as these stress factors are associated with other prevalent health issues such as depression,” Lavigne-Robichaud adds. “The study’s inability to establish a direct link between psychosocial job stressors and coronary heart disease in women signals the need for further investigation into the complex interplay of various stressors and women’s heart health.” Positive interventions might include different approaches, such as providing support resources, promoting work-life balance, enhancing communication, and empowering employees to have more control over their work, she says.

Though the research involved Canadians and the results might not fully represent the diversity of the American working population, the study findings may still be relevant to white-collar workers in the United States and other high-income countries with similar job structures, according to Lavigne-Robichaud.

“The U.S. workforce is among the most stressed in the world, and these workplace stressors can be as harmful to health as obesity and secondhand smoke,” commented Eduardo J. Sanchez, MD, MPH, chief medical officer for prevention at the American Heart Association. “This study adds to the growing body of evidence that the workplace should be prioritized as a vehicle for advancing cardiovascular health for all. The American Heart Association remains committed to and engaged in providing employers with the resources and information they need to actively support the health of their employees and communities through science-backed changes to policy and culture.”

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