Get your beauty sleep

No, seriously. I mean it.

Research has suggested that getting <7-8 hrs of sleep or >7-8 hrs of sleep per night could be detrimental to your health. 

[This = last year at Christmas. All those papers I fell asleep with? My dietetic internship application]

Skimping on sleep or getting too much sleep may lead to*:

*Alvarez GG, Ayas NT.Prog Cardiovasc Nurs. 2004 Spring;19(2):56-9. Review.

Plus, sleep is important for immune health. I know I haven?t been doing the best job at getting maximum sleep at night. I?ve been spending too much time figuring out what I?m going to do post internship {yet, I?m still not sure..hmm}.

This savory roasted red pepper soup will rock your world [and it?s vegan]. There are some complex flavors going on, and it?s blended, which automatically makes it amazing. As a spice wimp, I left out the cayenne, but it was still pretty hot with the addition of an entire jalapeno.

What goes pretty well with soup? Kale bagels, of course. Many of you said you were inspired by my bagel-making efforts {why thanks, you flatter}. Others were not so sure about the color slash flavor.

I did get a question regarding the nutrients lost when cooking kale.

Most carotenoids and many vitamins are heat stable.  In fact, some are even made more bioavailable through heating, which helps release them from the food matrix. One exception is vitamin C, which is heat sensitive and easily oxidized. The kale was sautéed, boiled, and baked in the bagel-making process, so the losses from these combined processes may be significant (I don?t know that anyone has ever measured this). If you compare raw and cooked kale, you can see a difference, but cooked kale is still packed with good nutrition.

1 c. raw kale

1 c. boiled kale

So, maybe I shouldn?t have said you lose considerable nutritional benefits by cooking kale, but you do lose some nutrition {thanks Lynn, for the pointing this out}.

Just a quick note: my ASN post on the 24^3 event is up. Any comment love is much appreciated! I think it?s pretty neat that a pro-sustainability post can be featured on such a visible venue, and I hope that many of the nutrition scientists will read it. I know many of you have already read about the 24^3 event, but stop by the ASN page if you can! :-)

The weekend is almost here! I see yoga, Soulard, a blogger meet-up, and some running in the works. What are your plans?