Funniest thing I've seen in months:
Went to a friend's place for a chat and a cuppa, they berated me for letting the water boil in the kettle because "it de-oxygenates the water and makes the tea taste off" then they emptied the jug and refilled it from the tap before bringing that lot of water carefully to just below boiling point and making the tea with that...
Showing posts with label notarecipe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label notarecipe. Show all posts
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Monday, 18 January 2010
AgBASE Directory of Zen
Would you like to order quite a wide range of foods online? For instance, buy california wine online or pretty much any of a wide range of produce - direct from the place that makes it. Those of you who regularly follow my other blogs TEdALOG Lite II and The Zen Cookbook Blog would already know that I'm all for anything that makes food more accountable and sustainable.
Something about AgBASE makes me happy. Maybe it's the way they use only one lowercase letter, the same as I do. But I also think that the site, which amounts to being a huge directory of food and garden greening, may be onto something, when it covers headings such as Biofuel and Biolubricant, Garden Supplies, Kosher Food, Fish and Seafood, Specialty Foods, Organic Vegetables, Berries, and so much more. The Internet needs more sites like AgBASE. The nearest thing we have in Australia is Aussieweb, but it just opens its doors to any commercial entity rather than focusing on greener and more sustainable businesses.
Something about AgBASE makes me happy. Maybe it's the way they use only one lowercase letter, the same as I do. But I also think that the site, which amounts to being a huge directory of food and garden greening, may be onto something, when it covers headings such as Biofuel and Biolubricant, Garden Supplies, Kosher Food, Fish and Seafood, Specialty Foods, Organic Vegetables, Berries, and so much more. The Internet needs more sites like AgBASE. The nearest thing we have in Australia is Aussieweb, but it just opens its doors to any commercial entity rather than focusing on greener and more sustainable businesses.
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
Slime And You
This is an excellent source for information on mold and your food - how to deal with that furry mess in the fridge? Read this information factsheet and find out. I just thought the amount of info is useful and impressive.
I still prefer my mold to be in a nice blue cheese.
Visit The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook and help support my work!
I still prefer my mold to be in a nice blue cheese.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Drag The Food Chain
Are you eating seasonal enough? What IS "seasonal enough?" It's been a question I've been trying to answer since I wrote The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook, and a recent article I found and wrote up has made me think about this even more.
I recommend you to look at any species in the world, and how tied they are to their specific foodstuffs. Change the temperature of part of the ocean (as we're finding) by a degree and the plankton and krill change, then the balance of different species shifts as species populations change in size. It's why and how evolution works. And yet we think we occupy a privileged place in this schema, we are exempt from ill effects caused by rapidly changing (and generally poorer) dietary habits...
No single member of a species "gets used to" a change in the foodstock. Some individuals may be marginally more tolerant or intolerant of a particular change, but the species as a whole won't be adapted to the change in foodstock for many generations, if at all. It happens faster for krill since their generations are shorter, but it does slowly happen.
The speed a species evolves in response to a stimulus seems to depend on what the stimulus is. Some things like intelligence seem to have taken a very very long time generationally, while our adaptation to food sources changing seems to take only (!!!) several hundred generations. What I think this means for us is that if people were eating certain foods or preparing them certain ways 5,000 to 10,000 years ago and we're still doing so to this day, then that has probably been assimilated into our food regime by now.
So eating foods out of season is generally not something our bodies are well adapted to yet, as we didn't have means of preserving or storing many foods 5,000 years ago. Exceptions are salting, drying, fermenting, and smoking, provided that's also done to the same kinds of foods and used in much the same way.
In a lot of ways, we are a very experimental generation, our diet has had so many factors added to it in a very short time, and we're still not close to finding all the effects that this will cause. Some effects seem pretty clear-cut to me, the scientific community may argue back and forwards that it's cellphone radiation or exhaust smoke or pollution in groundwater or additives in food but I'm pretty convinced - we started processing our food differently only in the last few hundred years, and in that time we've seen a surge in a range of illnesses which were never common before.
Hundreds of years ago the noble folk suffered an increase in the incidence of many and painful kidney stones. Why? They were living in the same air and water as the less fortunate, under the same sun, among the same animals and plants. Why did they have this odd disease?
Turns out, the stones were caused by excessive consumption of bicarb and milk of magnesia and other acid suppressing products, most of which have a tendency to build up mineral deposits. And when you begin to wonder why such affluent people might have needed to take so many products to soothe an irritated digestive system, you don't really need to look far, do you? This was happening as the wealthiest people found newer and more imaginative ways process foods and preserve them beyond their seasons, were exploring the world and bringing home new foods that had never been part of the diet, and consuming a far richer diet than people had ever had.
I'm not saying that you need to bury your head in the compost heap and only eat what grows in your own garden in the windowbox. Far from it, I believe that humans came to be where we are because we did adapt to a range of foods and preparation methods. Don't forget that preparation and preservation methods were originally survival mechanisms, they enabled us to live where other species starved. But it's always a trade-off, until the species as a whole adapts.
I like being able to grow some vegetables all year around thanks to knowing how and when to plant them, I like having flour and cereals and grains available all year around, and I like having a wide range of meats available pretty much all year around. I believe that by having small quantities of many foods around all year around, we may have become better adapted to the omnivorous, out-of-sync diet we now have. I also believe that as soon as the first hunters figured out how to dry meat and smoke and salt it to preserve some for future use, we we began to adapt towards our synergy with a wide range of foodstuff.
But what we're not used to as a species yet, having had only two or three generations to begin changing towards it, is the never-ending list of preservatives and bleaches and additives in our food. Consider it - we are destroying an ever larger portion of the Earth's resources in order to add "value" to our food chain. Much of what we dig up and smelt into transportation and refine into fuel is used to ship foods that we're still not used to eating, to places where they'e never been seen before this last few centuries, and we're using up even more chemicals and making even more pollution to make those foods grow where they never would have before, using more chemicals to promote their growth and inhibit local insects and pests, and then adding some more of those chemicals and additives to the food so that we can store them longer to spread them around the world farther...
Maybe the improvement of the species, to the point where we will be able to eat pure chemicals, is a noble pursuit for some. But it won't help us, our children, their children, or indeed a lot of generations to follow. maybe we shouldn't, anyway...
I recommend you to look at any species in the world, and how tied they are to their specific foodstuffs. Change the temperature of part of the ocean (as we're finding) by a degree and the plankton and krill change, then the balance of different species shifts as species populations change in size. It's why and how evolution works. And yet we think we occupy a privileged place in this schema, we are exempt from ill effects caused by rapidly changing (and generally poorer) dietary habits...
No single member of a species "gets used to" a change in the foodstock. Some individuals may be marginally more tolerant or intolerant of a particular change, but the species as a whole won't be adapted to the change in foodstock for many generations, if at all. It happens faster for krill since their generations are shorter, but it does slowly happen.
The speed a species evolves in response to a stimulus seems to depend on what the stimulus is. Some things like intelligence seem to have taken a very very long time generationally, while our adaptation to food sources changing seems to take only (!!!) several hundred generations. What I think this means for us is that if people were eating certain foods or preparing them certain ways 5,000 to 10,000 years ago and we're still doing so to this day, then that has probably been assimilated into our food regime by now.
So eating foods out of season is generally not something our bodies are well adapted to yet, as we didn't have means of preserving or storing many foods 5,000 years ago. Exceptions are salting, drying, fermenting, and smoking, provided that's also done to the same kinds of foods and used in much the same way.
In a lot of ways, we are a very experimental generation, our diet has had so many factors added to it in a very short time, and we're still not close to finding all the effects that this will cause. Some effects seem pretty clear-cut to me, the scientific community may argue back and forwards that it's cellphone radiation or exhaust smoke or pollution in groundwater or additives in food but I'm pretty convinced - we started processing our food differently only in the last few hundred years, and in that time we've seen a surge in a range of illnesses which were never common before.
Hundreds of years ago the noble folk suffered an increase in the incidence of many and painful kidney stones. Why? They were living in the same air and water as the less fortunate, under the same sun, among the same animals and plants. Why did they have this odd disease?
Turns out, the stones were caused by excessive consumption of bicarb and milk of magnesia and other acid suppressing products, most of which have a tendency to build up mineral deposits. And when you begin to wonder why such affluent people might have needed to take so many products to soothe an irritated digestive system, you don't really need to look far, do you? This was happening as the wealthiest people found newer and more imaginative ways process foods and preserve them beyond their seasons, were exploring the world and bringing home new foods that had never been part of the diet, and consuming a far richer diet than people had ever had.
I'm not saying that you need to bury your head in the compost heap and only eat what grows in your own garden in the windowbox. Far from it, I believe that humans came to be where we are because we did adapt to a range of foods and preparation methods. Don't forget that preparation and preservation methods were originally survival mechanisms, they enabled us to live where other species starved. But it's always a trade-off, until the species as a whole adapts.
I like being able to grow some vegetables all year around thanks to knowing how and when to plant them, I like having flour and cereals and grains available all year around, and I like having a wide range of meats available pretty much all year around. I believe that by having small quantities of many foods around all year around, we may have become better adapted to the omnivorous, out-of-sync diet we now have. I also believe that as soon as the first hunters figured out how to dry meat and smoke and salt it to preserve some for future use, we we began to adapt towards our synergy with a wide range of foodstuff.
But what we're not used to as a species yet, having had only two or three generations to begin changing towards it, is the never-ending list of preservatives and bleaches and additives in our food. Consider it - we are destroying an ever larger portion of the Earth's resources in order to add "value" to our food chain. Much of what we dig up and smelt into transportation and refine into fuel is used to ship foods that we're still not used to eating, to places where they'e never been seen before this last few centuries, and we're using up even more chemicals and making even more pollution to make those foods grow where they never would have before, using more chemicals to promote their growth and inhibit local insects and pests, and then adding some more of those chemicals and additives to the food so that we can store them longer to spread them around the world farther...
Maybe the improvement of the species, to the point where we will be able to eat pure chemicals, is a noble pursuit for some. But it won't help us, our children, their children, or indeed a lot of generations to follow. maybe we shouldn't, anyway...
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Cheap Tricks
Here's a somewhat startling statistic in this article, although A) it's slightly dated (2007) and B) American not Australian.
$3,300.00USD annually is the grocery bill for the average household.
I tried to think back to 2007, and what our household was spending then - $7,000.00AUD is roughly what I came up with. Given that in that year I think the Aussie dollar was quite up there with the US dollar, that means either that the cost of groceries in Australia was almost double that of the US at the time, or else that we were buying almost twice what the average US household was.
And we were back then not exactly wasteful, in fact I'd say we were downright frugal about our shopping. Most of those tricks mentioned in the article, we'd been using for years already. In addition to counting additives and sugar and fats, since T was/is a type 2 diabetic.
In today's inflated and battered economy, I'm spending almost $3,000AUD just for myself, and can assure you that there is very little ever wasted or thrown out. And I also have a home garden for some of my supplies. A typical household in Australia today must be spending close to triple that. I seem to recall that average grocery bills are around $175/week now, can't remember where I saw that but it's recent.
Two things seem to come from that. One, our prices in Australia must be quite high compared to the US. And two, growing stuff takes you out of the loop of paying for processing and pesticides. Healthier and cheaper. (And yes, I include the cost of the seedlings/seeds in my grocery prices - because I only have to buy seedlings about every month or so)
Also, I think, growing some of my own vegetables gives me the feeling of having some control over my food intake. It's a growing trend, with people once again getting back to growing preserving and processing their own foods.
Visit The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook and help support my work!
$3,300.00USD annually is the grocery bill for the average household.
I tried to think back to 2007, and what our household was spending then - $7,000.00AUD is roughly what I came up with. Given that in that year I think the Aussie dollar was quite up there with the US dollar, that means either that the cost of groceries in Australia was almost double that of the US at the time, or else that we were buying almost twice what the average US household was.
And we were back then not exactly wasteful, in fact I'd say we were downright frugal about our shopping. Most of those tricks mentioned in the article, we'd been using for years already. In addition to counting additives and sugar and fats, since T was/is a type 2 diabetic.
In today's inflated and battered economy, I'm spending almost $3,000AUD just for myself, and can assure you that there is very little ever wasted or thrown out. And I also have a home garden for some of my supplies. A typical household in Australia today must be spending close to triple that. I seem to recall that average grocery bills are around $175/week now, can't remember where I saw that but it's recent.
Two things seem to come from that. One, our prices in Australia must be quite high compared to the US. And two, growing stuff takes you out of the loop of paying for processing and pesticides. Healthier and cheaper. (And yes, I include the cost of the seedlings/seeds in my grocery prices - because I only have to buy seedlings about every month or so)
Also, I think, growing some of my own vegetables gives me the feeling of having some control over my food intake. It's a growing trend, with people once again getting back to growing preserving and processing their own foods.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Simon's Seafood Restaurant Has "Unqualified" Diners
I'll make my comment on Simon's Seafood Restaurant treatment of diner complaints and say that I will not be dining there now, either. Word of mouth has removed any desire on my part to see the inside of Simon's.
I say of Mr Ferrante that his actions in abusing a diner have not endeared him to myself - nor probably to anyone else reading that article. Mr Ferrante, I may not be a "qualified" person in your eyes but I bet I've dined at more places than you've personally served meals at, and I will now not be dining at yours because I'm afraid that I won't measure up to your exacting standards of a "qualified" diner.
Quite frankly, your extremely vain and quite rude display of poor manners has not stood you well in my opinion. And while I may not be "qualified" as you so smugly put it, I'm now one of the people that in future WON'T be putting $100 in your pocket for a seafood platter nor indeed for any other meal. Along with everyone reading that news article, that's a sizeable chunk of Perth's loose pocket change you've just alienated.
I will also add that only twice in over 25 years living in Perth have I ever had experiences similar to that described in that article, and both of those places went out of business in under four months - not from my words or actions, but from the poor word of mouth they received generally - because obviously my dining companions and I weren't the only ones abused and/or dismayed. You still have time to make good Mr Ferrante, but once you start something like this you'll find it difficult to repair. It's a slippery slope you have started down...
Visit The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook and help support my work!
I say of Mr Ferrante that his actions in abusing a diner have not endeared him to myself - nor probably to anyone else reading that article. Mr Ferrante, I may not be a "qualified" person in your eyes but I bet I've dined at more places than you've personally served meals at, and I will now not be dining at yours because I'm afraid that I won't measure up to your exacting standards of a "qualified" diner.
Quite frankly, your extremely vain and quite rude display of poor manners has not stood you well in my opinion. And while I may not be "qualified" as you so smugly put it, I'm now one of the people that in future WON'T be putting $100 in your pocket for a seafood platter nor indeed for any other meal. Along with everyone reading that news article, that's a sizeable chunk of Perth's loose pocket change you've just alienated.
I will also add that only twice in over 25 years living in Perth have I ever had experiences similar to that described in that article, and both of those places went out of business in under four months - not from my words or actions, but from the poor word of mouth they received generally - because obviously my dining companions and I weren't the only ones abused and/or dismayed. You still have time to make good Mr Ferrante, but once you start something like this you'll find it difficult to repair. It's a slippery slope you have started down...
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Squirrel In Your Pie?
How times and tastes have changed! I kind of like this recipe, and yet some of it makes me wonder - would I eat squirrels if the recipe called for it? I think I would, if there were a need to. And this recipe from 1867 will give me at least one recipe for the little rodents:
"Boil two calf's feet; take the feet out when done; reduce the broth to a quart. The feet may be fried and used, first removing the bones. Let the broth become cold in an earthen vessel; scrape off all the grease; wipe the top of the jelly with a coarse towel; put the cake of jelly into a kettle lined with tin or porcelain; season it with two lemons cut up (removing the seed), fine blades of mace, a stick of cinnamon, pepper (white pepper is best), and salt to taste. Beat to a froth the whites of six eggs; stir these to the jelly just as it melts; it must then be left to clarify and not stirred again. When it simmers long enough to look clear at the sides, strain it through a flannel bag before the fire; do not squeeze the bag. Suspend it by running a stick through a loop made by tying the bag; rest each end of the stick upon a chair, and throw a table-cloth over all to keep out the dust. If the jelly does not run through clear the first time, pour it through the jelly-bag again. Set this aside. "Prepare the meat and seasoning for the pie. Put into a stew-pan slices of pickled pork, using a piece of pork four inches square; if it is very salt[y] lay it an hour in tepid water. Cut up two young, tender chickens--a terrapin, if it is convenient--two or three young squirrels, half a dozen birds or squabs. Stew them gently, cutting up and adding a few sprigs of parsley. Roll into half a pound of butter two tablespoonfuls of flour; add this to the stew until the meat is nearly done. Line a fire-proof dish, or two fire-proof dishes (this quantity of stew will fill two common-sized or quart dishes;) with good pastry; mix the different kinds of meats; put in Irish potato dumplings; season to taste; pour in the gravy and bake. When done, remove the upper crust when the pie is cold and pack in the jelly, heaping the jelly in the middle. Return the crust and serve cold or hot. The jelly will prevent them become too dry. They are good Christmas pies and will keep several days. Very little gravy should be used, and that rich. Should there be too much, leave the stew-pan open until reduced sufficiently. This kind of pie keeps well if made in deep plates, and by some is preferred to those baked in deep moulds."
One day I may let you know how this turns out... Who knows...
Visit The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook and help support my work!
"Boil two calf's feet; take the feet out when done; reduce the broth to a quart. The feet may be fried and used, first removing the bones. Let the broth become cold in an earthen vessel; scrape off all the grease; wipe the top of the jelly with a coarse towel; put the cake of jelly into a kettle lined with tin or porcelain; season it with two lemons cut up (removing the seed), fine blades of mace, a stick of cinnamon, pepper (white pepper is best), and salt to taste. Beat to a froth the whites of six eggs; stir these to the jelly just as it melts; it must then be left to clarify and not stirred again. When it simmers long enough to look clear at the sides, strain it through a flannel bag before the fire; do not squeeze the bag. Suspend it by running a stick through a loop made by tying the bag; rest each end of the stick upon a chair, and throw a table-cloth over all to keep out the dust. If the jelly does not run through clear the first time, pour it through the jelly-bag again. Set this aside. "Prepare the meat and seasoning for the pie. Put into a stew-pan slices of pickled pork, using a piece of pork four inches square; if it is very salt[y] lay it an hour in tepid water. Cut up two young, tender chickens--a terrapin, if it is convenient--two or three young squirrels, half a dozen birds or squabs. Stew them gently, cutting up and adding a few sprigs of parsley. Roll into half a pound of butter two tablespoonfuls of flour; add this to the stew until the meat is nearly done. Line a fire-proof dish, or two fire-proof dishes (this quantity of stew will fill two common-sized or quart dishes;) with good pastry; mix the different kinds of meats; put in Irish potato dumplings; season to taste; pour in the gravy and bake. When done, remove the upper crust when the pie is cold and pack in the jelly, heaping the jelly in the middle. Return the crust and serve cold or hot. The jelly will prevent them become too dry. They are good Christmas pies and will keep several days. Very little gravy should be used, and that rich. Should there be too much, leave the stew-pan open until reduced sufficiently. This kind of pie keeps well if made in deep plates, and by some is preferred to those baked in deep moulds."
One day I may let you know how this turns out... Who knows...
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Basic Engagement Survey
Quick - survey! Please pop over to SurveyMonkey and take the three minutes to let me know what you think!
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Some Things I Take For Granted, That You May Not.
Some things I take for granted, that you may not take for granted or know about:
To me, "rice" means basmati, arborio, or very occasionally, jasmine rice. Basmati is one of the breeds of rice that is better for nutrition, and I tend to use it for most things except some fine flavoured Asian dishes, where jasmine rice is just a smidgen nicer. And arborio is great for rice/meat stuffings, and of course desserts. Brown rice is also nice but takes ages to boil, and sometimes, barley is nice to use instead of rice in some dishes, but also takes ages to prepare.
Rice is generally easiest cooked in a pot (or a microwave rice cooker) at the ratio of one cup uncooked rice to two cups of water, plus a sparing teaspooon of salt if cookign for a savoury dish. Wash the rice first (I use a strainer) and then put the rice and water and salt in a pot and start it boiling, as soon as boiling starts reduce the heat to a fast simmer, then slowly reduce the heat as the water is absorbed. It's gonna take 15 minutes, get used to it.
"Oil," to me, means extra virgin olive oil. Often, I use a mixture of 1/2 EVOO and 1/2 grapeseed oil. As a good rule of thumb, anywhere I am asked to use ( for example) beef dripping or other form of fat, I use 2/3 olive oil and 1/3 required fat. Keeps the flavour but makes it a lot healthier. Also, if there's a recipe which has good antioxidant ingredients or vitamins (anything with tomato paste, or the livers in the previous recipe) I use 1/2 and 1/2 because grapeseed oil is a good source of oily vitamin E, and that assists the body to absorb the antioxidants and vitamins much more effectively.
When I say "vinegar," I do NOT - ever! - mean plain old white vinegar. White vinegar is made from fermented wood pulp, not grapes. Sorry, white vinegar industry - but screw that. My body deserves something other than rotten wood. Use white vinegar for cleaning, or to add a bite to pickles made with other, more nutritious vinegars. Good vinegars to have in your arsenal are rice vinegar, palm or date vinegar, malt vinegar, red and white wine vinegars, and the old standby, balsamic. Take a good look at what your vinegar is made of, because nowadays the name is no guarantee. Vinegar manufacturers are labelling it white wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar or whatever - but if you read "acetic acid" as one of the major ingredients they are flavouring and colouring woodpulp vinegar.
I also heartily recommend using red wine, white wine, honey mead, apple cider (same thing - check that it really IS apple cider, honey mead, etc) and good beers in cooking. By good beers I mean a beer that came from a brewery that doesn't use preservatives or chemicals, or which at least uses very little of them.
When a recipe calls for flour and is not a baking/pasta recipe, I look for ways to get buckwheat flour, or spelt flour, (or anything other than white overprocessed flour,) into the recipe. Also, think about adding a touch of psyllum husk - a half teaspoon can make a gravy glossy smooth and beautiful. Plain white flour is bleached to within an inch of its life and is not very good for you.
On that subject - ANYTHING is better than white sugar in recipes! White sugar also is bleached, and a good friend's doctor father made the observation, almost a century ago now, that wherever he went in Africa and India, there was no major incidence of cancer until a few years after white sugar and white flour arrived.
To anyone that says that's bullshit, I urge you to go to the supermarket and get a bottle of bleach, pour some into a cup, and ask yourself if you'd really drink that. Because why shouldn't you, it's just white sugar with the sugar taken out... (By the way - DO NOT DO THIS, IT WILL KILL YOU! I am making an extreme example here, not to be taken as a literal invitation.) But you do see my point - anything that is bleached is no longer alive or conducive to life.
So those are simple rules of the kitchen that I live by and encourage - and I encourage you to do the same, it may be the difference between a long healthy life and a life with diabetes, cancers, and digestive illnesses and cancers. And it certainly won't hurt to think about healthier choices.
To me, "rice" means basmati, arborio, or very occasionally, jasmine rice. Basmati is one of the breeds of rice that is better for nutrition, and I tend to use it for most things except some fine flavoured Asian dishes, where jasmine rice is just a smidgen nicer. And arborio is great for rice/meat stuffings, and of course desserts. Brown rice is also nice but takes ages to boil, and sometimes, barley is nice to use instead of rice in some dishes, but also takes ages to prepare.
Rice is generally easiest cooked in a pot (or a microwave rice cooker) at the ratio of one cup uncooked rice to two cups of water, plus a sparing teaspooon of salt if cookign for a savoury dish. Wash the rice first (I use a strainer) and then put the rice and water and salt in a pot and start it boiling, as soon as boiling starts reduce the heat to a fast simmer, then slowly reduce the heat as the water is absorbed. It's gonna take 15 minutes, get used to it.
"Oil," to me, means extra virgin olive oil. Often, I use a mixture of 1/2 EVOO and 1/2 grapeseed oil. As a good rule of thumb, anywhere I am asked to use ( for example) beef dripping or other form of fat, I use 2/3 olive oil and 1/3 required fat. Keeps the flavour but makes it a lot healthier. Also, if there's a recipe which has good antioxidant ingredients or vitamins (anything with tomato paste, or the livers in the previous recipe) I use 1/2 and 1/2 because grapeseed oil is a good source of oily vitamin E, and that assists the body to absorb the antioxidants and vitamins much more effectively.
When I say "vinegar," I do NOT - ever! - mean plain old white vinegar. White vinegar is made from fermented wood pulp, not grapes. Sorry, white vinegar industry - but screw that. My body deserves something other than rotten wood. Use white vinegar for cleaning, or to add a bite to pickles made with other, more nutritious vinegars. Good vinegars to have in your arsenal are rice vinegar, palm or date vinegar, malt vinegar, red and white wine vinegars, and the old standby, balsamic. Take a good look at what your vinegar is made of, because nowadays the name is no guarantee. Vinegar manufacturers are labelling it white wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar or whatever - but if you read "acetic acid" as one of the major ingredients they are flavouring and colouring woodpulp vinegar.
I also heartily recommend using red wine, white wine, honey mead, apple cider (same thing - check that it really IS apple cider, honey mead, etc) and good beers in cooking. By good beers I mean a beer that came from a brewery that doesn't use preservatives or chemicals, or which at least uses very little of them.
When a recipe calls for flour and is not a baking/pasta recipe, I look for ways to get buckwheat flour, or spelt flour, (or anything other than white overprocessed flour,) into the recipe. Also, think about adding a touch of psyllum husk - a half teaspoon can make a gravy glossy smooth and beautiful. Plain white flour is bleached to within an inch of its life and is not very good for you.
On that subject - ANYTHING is better than white sugar in recipes! White sugar also is bleached, and a good friend's doctor father made the observation, almost a century ago now, that wherever he went in Africa and India, there was no major incidence of cancer until a few years after white sugar and white flour arrived.
To anyone that says that's bullshit, I urge you to go to the supermarket and get a bottle of bleach, pour some into a cup, and ask yourself if you'd really drink that. Because why shouldn't you, it's just white sugar with the sugar taken out... (By the way - DO NOT DO THIS, IT WILL KILL YOU! I am making an extreme example here, not to be taken as a literal invitation.) But you do see my point - anything that is bleached is no longer alive or conducive to life.
So those are simple rules of the kitchen that I live by and encourage - and I encourage you to do the same, it may be the difference between a long healthy life and a life with diabetes, cancers, and digestive illnesses and cancers. And it certainly won't hurt to think about healthier choices.
Monday, 19 May 2008
Australia's New Kitchen Nightmare
WARNING *** BAD WORDS BELOW
Hmmm The report on Seven about Ramsay is scary and also amusing. Half a dozen of his restaurants have health code violations, he's proving himself to not only be a rude ****er, but a dirty rude ****er at that.
And now he wants to open a restaurant in Australia, heaven ****ing help us another opinionated ****head Pom that thinks he can cook, tips hat at one Jamie somethingorother that's similarly better off in greasepaint than the cooking grease.
I do have one nit to pick with Seven - they repeatedly refer to Ramsay as a "chef" when in fact I believe he falls squarely under my definition of "cook" - because chefs know how to use more than just one swear word, and codron bleu chefs can also swear in several languages... Sorry Gordon but being fluent in **** is not really enough.
Hmmm The report on Seven about Ramsay is scary and also amusing. Half a dozen of his restaurants have health code violations, he's proving himself to not only be a rude ****er, but a dirty rude ****er at that.
And now he wants to open a restaurant in Australia, heaven ****ing help us another opinionated ****head Pom that thinks he can cook, tips hat at one Jamie somethingorother that's similarly better off in greasepaint than the cooking grease.
I do have one nit to pick with Seven - they repeatedly refer to Ramsay as a "chef" when in fact I believe he falls squarely under my definition of "cook" - because chefs know how to use more than just one swear word, and codron bleu chefs can also swear in several languages... Sorry Gordon but being fluent in **** is not really enough.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
Sometimes, No Recipe, Just a Joke
But it does involve condiments....
A few years ago, there was a Mensa convention in San Francisco, and several members lunched at a local cafe.
While dining, they discovered that their salt shaker contained pepper and their pepper shaker was full of salt.
How could they swap the contents of the bottles without spilling, and using only the implements at hand? Clearly this was a job for Mensa!
The group debated and presented ideas, and finally came up with a brilliant solution involving a napkin, a straw and an empty saucer. They called the waitress over to dazzle her with their solution.
"Ma'am," they said, "we couldn't help but notice that the pepper shaker contains salt and the salt shaker ... "
"Oh," the waitress interrupted. "Sorry about that." She unscrewed the caps of both bottles and switched them.
A few years ago, there was a Mensa convention in San Francisco, and several members lunched at a local cafe.
While dining, they discovered that their salt shaker contained pepper and their pepper shaker was full of salt.
How could they swap the contents of the bottles without spilling, and using only the implements at hand? Clearly this was a job for Mensa!
The group debated and presented ideas, and finally came up with a brilliant solution involving a napkin, a straw and an empty saucer. They called the waitress over to dazzle her with their solution.
"Ma'am," they said, "we couldn't help but notice that the pepper shaker contains salt and the salt shaker ... "
"Oh," the waitress interrupted. "Sorry about that." She unscrewed the caps of both bottles and switched them.
Monday, 27 August 2007
Cute New Vegetables
Okay a quick post on nutritive and local. I posted a bit here on the subject but there's a few things that aren't covered by that brief post nor the article I linked to.
I've been buying local and to me that means within a few kilometres of Perth (and specifically me!) where possible. Things that are cool at the moment are kohlrabi, a turnip-like vegetable that's currently in season, and some cool black potatoes you can see in this picture, which are purple inside. Only place I've found those potatoes to date is at the Magic Apple continental supermarket on the corner of Nicholson Rd and Albany Highway, who aren't always local produce but at least they are always fresh and of reasonable value.
The more observant among you might recognise the shopping bag in the background as coming from the Yuang Chan Vegetable Market at Canning Vale Market City, it's another place that has veges that just rule. What they sell is always fresh and crisp.
Now to those black potatoes: I have no idea what they are (I found them next to the kipflers but the two are not alike at all) and due to the beautiful plum purple colour of the flesh I am concluding that these are potatoes that have antioxidant properties. Due to the soft nature of the flesh I am also concluding that these are actually a variant of sweet potato, which is fine with me to because the are beautiful drizzled with melted butter and sprinkled which chopped chives. No I didn't peel them, the skins are washed and fine, and it hasn't killed us...
Anyhow - the main thing is that both these places are within a few kilometres of me and both have extremely good fruit and vegetables at the moment - so I'll make an effort to provide a few recipes as I come up with them.
For your part, you have to make the effort and break out of the "ColesWorth Rut" and start buying your fruit and vegetables from markets where the produce is more likely to be fresh and local! And if you don't, I'll send Ghostie after you!
Well, not really, he wouldn't know how to say "ROWR!" but he does get distressed every time the Big Supermarkets take away another choice from us. And you should, too, and remember to ALWAYS BUY LOCAL FIRST...
I've been buying local and to me that means within a few kilometres of Perth (and specifically me!) where possible. Things that are cool at the moment are kohlrabi, a turnip-like vegetable that's currently in season, and some cool black potatoes you can see in this picture, which are purple inside. Only place I've found those potatoes to date is at the Magic Apple continental supermarket on the corner of Nicholson Rd and Albany Highway, who aren't always local produce but at least they are always fresh and of reasonable value.The more observant among you might recognise the shopping bag in the background as coming from the Yuang Chan Vegetable Market at Canning Vale Market City, it's another place that has veges that just rule. What they sell is always fresh and crisp.
Now to those black potatoes: I have no idea what they are (I found them next to the kipflers but the two are not alike at all) and due to the beautiful plum purple colour of the flesh I am concluding that these are potatoes that have antioxidant properties. Due to the soft nature of the flesh I am also concluding that these are actually a variant of sweet potato, which is fine with me to because the are beautiful drizzled with melted butter and sprinkled which chopped chives. No I didn't peel them, the skins are washed and fine, and it hasn't killed us...
Anyhow - the main thing is that both these places are within a few kilometres of me and both have extremely good fruit and vegetables at the moment - so I'll make an effort to provide a few recipes as I come up with them. For your part, you have to make the effort and break out of the "ColesWorth Rut" and start buying your fruit and vegetables from markets where the produce is more likely to be fresh and local! And if you don't, I'll send Ghostie after you!
Well, not really, he wouldn't know how to say "ROWR!" but he does get distressed every time the Big Supermarkets take away another choice from us. And you should, too, and remember to ALWAYS BUY LOCAL FIRST...
Sunday, 20 May 2007
Friday, 4 May 2007
Thermomix Kitchen Appliance
Having just had a demonstration of the Vorwerk Thermomix kitchen appliance, I'm in awe. The agents here in Perth sent Ms Nota to demonstrate the product, and it blew me away.
The machine is just - impressive. We ground wheat to baking flour then mixed it gently into a dough and then kneaded it. All in the same machine. We made a quantity of two cups of sorbet, then a half kilo of shredded salad. Followed by - well, that would give it all away in one, and I have a few more things to tell you about this machine...
One of the reasons I was looking at the Thermomix is the number of machines it replaces. I find that appealing because I intend to go caravanning for a year or two, and in a caravan every appliance you can leave behind is a Good Thing. And the Thermomix certainly replaces a few.
The first thing which I saw immediately, is that bits of the machine that contact the food are stainless steel. No plastics to leach nasty chemicals, no teflon[tm] - and being stainless steel means cleanup is a breeze. We cleaned the bowl by tipping a jug of water into it and running it, then tipping the water back into the jug and wiping the bowl dry. That easy. And I was impressed with using the same water to wash the bowl several times because on the road you're quite often water-limited. And of course saving water is a Good Thing at any time.
To start with, the machine is fast enough to function as a blender. The blades are sharp and solid, and engineered to sharpen themselves rather than blunt over time. And impressively sharp they are too. They are also very solid blades, and the bearings on the latest models are sealed for life.
The machine can blade-grind almost anything. Again, I was impressed with how little fuss it made at grinding a cup of wheat to flour. Set the speed lower and you could have made cracked wheat bourghul. The power in this machine is very controllable and useable.
Now the magic bits. To begin with there was no fussing with measures. Thanks to a clever design, this machine weighs ingredients directly! You press the zero button, drop the food in, stop when it reaches the required weight. Re-zero, add the next ingredient. It doesn't get much simpler than that!
We added the flour, water, yeast, and oil, and setting the machine to a "magic" setting produced a nice pulsed kneading action. Following the surprisingly short recommended time, the bread dough had balled nicely and was just right to leave rising.
At this point we could have made a 12 minute soup (but I'm saving this surprise for a bit further in so keep reading!) like a minestrone or similar but I wanted the quick version of the demonstration so we skipped over an hour of the usual two hour demonstration. I will have one of these really soon so I'll provide some recipes once I get to experiment.
Sorbet? I can honestly say under two minutes from whipping the ingredients out of the pantry to a finished sorbet. Oh and - did I mention that we started with whole brown sugar, milled that to caster sugar consistency, added the ice fruit and egg white and - voila! Instant. No fuss no messing around, this machine just gets on with it.
Salad? Take your ingredients, place in the bowl, put the top on, use a low setting, for a few seconds. Never seen anything like it. The big 500W motor starts almost instantly, and stops as quickly, leading to precise application of that power. The salad (which I'm still munching on as I type) is beautiful.
Two rinses later we added some onion and garlic and olive oil - and then processed and COOKED them! Yes, the machine has a 1000W temperature controlled induction heating system built in as well, enough to bring the bowl full of water to the boil in mere minutes. We added Arborio rice, stock and wine, and put the machine on a slow reverse stir for 16 minutes. Meanwhile, placing the steamer across the top of the machine gives two more dishes that can be steamed and that my friends is a complete meal, from soup to sorbet, and the whole lot would have taken under an hour if we hadn't been talking and sampling more than we were cooking.
The reverse stir is a secret - those same blades that could reduce that rice to fine powder in a few seconds at full speed, work with the butterfly stirrer accessory to keep the rice from clumping and sticking, or to constantly and gently stir anything like a soup or similar - in a word, this machine is brilliant.
And yes, the machine did ALL the work for the risotto, constantly stirring the rice to prevent sticking, and if I'd cared to, I could have added the stock a spoonful at a time but in the interests of demonstration time, we put it all in at once. I've never made risotto more easily.
So here's a machine that replaces a whole slew of machines for me:
- Blender
- coffee/herb grinder
- flour grinder
- meat mincer
- bread maker (but need an oven then)
- mixer
- food processor
- slow cooker
- rice cooker
- Coffee brewing (in a pinch)
- steamer
- slow crockpot cooker
- scales
And that is a saving of around 40 kilos of appliances and any amount of costs.
I've already got plans for making Middle Eastern kibbeh style meat because the proccessor is so flexible and powerful that it will make a one hour job into just a 5 minute procedure.
THE HEALTH BENEFIT (and why I like this machine)
Also, because it's so easy to use wholefood ingredients rather than processed foods, this machine fits in perfectly with the aims and direction of the Body Friendly Zen Cookbook principles and makes cooking many of the recipes into a trivial task. I therefore have to recommend something like the Thermomix as the appliance of choice for many of my recipes, and will re-write many of them to take account of the machine, but with equivalent procedures for separate machines and hand-processing as well.
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Meat Tricks You Didn't Want To Know
Post on how adulterated your meat can be. Here. In Australia. Worth a read!
Monday, 30 April 2007
Recipes For Disaster
I read a lot about diet and health. Because it's important to eat good foods in order for your body to operate efficiently. And if your body is operating efficiently, then you are less prone to illnesses. I also read about (and develop - after all I needed it - ) diets to deal with illnesses such as cancer. And so I came across this simple and easy to follow explanation of what Type II diabetes is and how to avoid and reduce it. A lot of it is commonsense, some of it is medically sound, and some of it is not quite so easy to reconcile with healthy eating...
Let me start - my partner has Type II and is obese. She eats small portions of her foods but spoils that by eating unallowed foods in between. It's not so much the quantity that is foiling her efforts, it's the types of things she eats. As "localroger" points out, the medication itself sets you up for continued obesity, as does the illness.
I tend to cook Mediterranean and Middle eastern styles of foods, which are healthy and work well for me, but slightly less so for her. If she ate what I eat without the extras she would lose a lot of weight and her Type II would reduce in severity. If we tailor her diet even more, the results would be spectacular. But there is always a deeper reason for obesity, usually an almost addiction to the unhealthy foods...
Our modern diets tend to be filled with sugars and starchy carbohydrates. While "localroger" in his article does away with all carbs, I have to say right away that if a diet absolutely forbids a particular whole food group, I'm against it. The only food group I'd deny is the fast acting toxins and rat poison group. And even there, it's been proven that certain poisons in minute qunatities are beneficial to us, and some are even a requisite.
Let's face it, life is a balancing act all the way. Eat less fats and carbs and you (unless you have a very rare sort of fullness sensing mechanism) will feel hungrier and eat more. And while it may not be fattening food, it is still not a balanced amount for your body. When you eat food, there are byproducts. Eat the right amount of food and you will be excreting the right amount of wastes. Eat too much - even of the healthiest food you can find - and your organs are having to deal with a lot more waste than is good for your body to have to deal with.
My approach is much more balanced. I find that carbs and starches are needed. Our bodies make emergency sugars out of them remember? Fats are the best form of that, and animal fats best of all. On the flipside, fats are easier for our bodies to store, too. In the form of fat. Which becomes sugar only when the cells need it. And if you have Type II then your cells aren't listening to the insulin saying "go ahead and use this sugar" so the body stores it instead. Also as fat.
To get off that particular roundabout you need to add red and white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and malt vinegar to your diet. And red wine, tomato paste, oily vitamin E. These all reduce cell inflammation, which is what creates the "noise" that prevents the cells from seeing the insulin signals. (And yes, cell inflammation also leads to dysplasia of the cells, a form of pre-cancerous malformation of cells which doesn't take a lot to tip you over into cancer. In my case, prostate cancer, which I reversed using only my diet.)
Now - animal fats will convert to sugars and then to fat, in your body. Carb-high foods such as the sweet dough buns used for burgers will provide useful sugars to your body - which it will promptyl turn into fat... The additives that are used to bake modern breads and preserve the pickles and meat in that burger will cause cell inflammation, leading to cells that won't use that sugar, which your body makes from your fat and in fact makes less and less of as it is not being used. So I suggest that if you are having fat-laden meat avoid the highly processed carbs such as bread and pasta, the naturally easily assimilated carbs like potatoes, and stick to greens and beans. For that meal only! Put a reasonable amount of time between meals (an hour or two at least) before having some other meal with other ingredients.
That's the legacy of the burger kingdom - you have a meat patty which contains a fair percentage of animal fats fried in vegetable oils, and both have preservatives and additives which your body has no idea how to cope with and which ends up sometimes excreted as waste but more often than not just contributing to cell inflammation load and chemical "noise" in your system. Have you never wondered why Type II and the "obesity epidemic" seem to be recent phenomena?
Over millenia, our bodies grew to the point where we could make use of our food that was available at the time. Once we it was discovered that another animal's proteins were far more concentrated than eating the vegetables and converting them ourselves, it would have taken several hundred generations (certainly a period of some 10,000 years and possibly even ten times as long) before the mechanisms existed for making successful use of meat as a part of our diet. Okay - juries are out over precisely how long it takes to adapt, as a species, to a new food in our diet, but all agree that it happens in an evoilutionary blink, only a few hundred generations compared to the tens of thousands of generations that other genes take to enter the mainstream.
That means that, once we herded a few animals rather than hunting them, that we developed a tolerance for their milk, as that was a renewable resource from the animals which, if we could only keep our bodies from rejecting it, would allow us to better survive. Somewhere along the line where the Asiatic and European bloodlines split, the Asians never bothered much with milk and to this day are still lactose intolerant. From the timelines involved, scientists have calculated that we gained the lactose tolerance gene some 7,000 to 15,000 years ago.
Similarly, around that same timespan we discovered that fermenting grains and sugars made a very nice drink, which unfortunately left us dizzy and disoriented and easy prey to predators or hunting parties, but which substituted nicely for water, and thus we could avoid several water-borne diseases that would have been deadly back then. And hey - we also developed an "immunity" to alcohol back then, proof that not all evolution has to be boring and tasteless...
You know what was NOT around, ten thousand years ago? Preservatives, and processed flour that has been bleached to resemble chalk with about as little nutritional value, and E612 and all those other flavourings and modifiers and crap. Give our bodies fresh vegetables with as little chemical contamination as possible, meat that has not been treated with irritants to make it look red, and grains that have only been ground and baked - and they will thrive. You almost can't make a mistake there. Our bodies are survivors!
But put all that chemical in there and watch things go awry. Yes - diabetes was almost unknown when sugar was a brown and relatively unprocessed mass of goo. Even raw sugar today is megaprocessed, and it's one hundredfold better for you than white sugar. Because white sugar is bleached and processed and finally, ends up being nothing like a natural sugar.
So do read that article, but bear in mind that "localroger" is only seeing one side of a much larger picture. Buy a copy of my book, and begin to live healthier starting right now...
Let me start - my partner has Type II and is obese. She eats small portions of her foods but spoils that by eating unallowed foods in between. It's not so much the quantity that is foiling her efforts, it's the types of things she eats. As "localroger" points out, the medication itself sets you up for continued obesity, as does the illness.
I tend to cook Mediterranean and Middle eastern styles of foods, which are healthy and work well for me, but slightly less so for her. If she ate what I eat without the extras she would lose a lot of weight and her Type II would reduce in severity. If we tailor her diet even more, the results would be spectacular. But there is always a deeper reason for obesity, usually an almost addiction to the unhealthy foods...
Our modern diets tend to be filled with sugars and starchy carbohydrates. While "localroger" in his article does away with all carbs, I have to say right away that if a diet absolutely forbids a particular whole food group, I'm against it. The only food group I'd deny is the fast acting toxins and rat poison group. And even there, it's been proven that certain poisons in minute qunatities are beneficial to us, and some are even a requisite.
Let's face it, life is a balancing act all the way. Eat less fats and carbs and you (unless you have a very rare sort of fullness sensing mechanism) will feel hungrier and eat more. And while it may not be fattening food, it is still not a balanced amount for your body. When you eat food, there are byproducts. Eat the right amount of food and you will be excreting the right amount of wastes. Eat too much - even of the healthiest food you can find - and your organs are having to deal with a lot more waste than is good for your body to have to deal with.
My approach is much more balanced. I find that carbs and starches are needed. Our bodies make emergency sugars out of them remember? Fats are the best form of that, and animal fats best of all. On the flipside, fats are easier for our bodies to store, too. In the form of fat. Which becomes sugar only when the cells need it. And if you have Type II then your cells aren't listening to the insulin saying "go ahead and use this sugar" so the body stores it instead. Also as fat.
To get off that particular roundabout you need to add red and white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and malt vinegar to your diet. And red wine, tomato paste, oily vitamin E. These all reduce cell inflammation, which is what creates the "noise" that prevents the cells from seeing the insulin signals. (And yes, cell inflammation also leads to dysplasia of the cells, a form of pre-cancerous malformation of cells which doesn't take a lot to tip you over into cancer. In my case, prostate cancer, which I reversed using only my diet.)
Now - animal fats will convert to sugars and then to fat, in your body. Carb-high foods such as the sweet dough buns used for burgers will provide useful sugars to your body - which it will promptyl turn into fat... The additives that are used to bake modern breads and preserve the pickles and meat in that burger will cause cell inflammation, leading to cells that won't use that sugar, which your body makes from your fat and in fact makes less and less of as it is not being used. So I suggest that if you are having fat-laden meat avoid the highly processed carbs such as bread and pasta, the naturally easily assimilated carbs like potatoes, and stick to greens and beans. For that meal only! Put a reasonable amount of time between meals (an hour or two at least) before having some other meal with other ingredients.
That's the legacy of the burger kingdom - you have a meat patty which contains a fair percentage of animal fats fried in vegetable oils, and both have preservatives and additives which your body has no idea how to cope with and which ends up sometimes excreted as waste but more often than not just contributing to cell inflammation load and chemical "noise" in your system. Have you never wondered why Type II and the "obesity epidemic" seem to be recent phenomena?
Over millenia, our bodies grew to the point where we could make use of our food that was available at the time. Once we it was discovered that another animal's proteins were far more concentrated than eating the vegetables and converting them ourselves, it would have taken several hundred generations (certainly a period of some 10,000 years and possibly even ten times as long) before the mechanisms existed for making successful use of meat as a part of our diet. Okay - juries are out over precisely how long it takes to adapt, as a species, to a new food in our diet, but all agree that it happens in an evoilutionary blink, only a few hundred generations compared to the tens of thousands of generations that other genes take to enter the mainstream.
That means that, once we herded a few animals rather than hunting them, that we developed a tolerance for their milk, as that was a renewable resource from the animals which, if we could only keep our bodies from rejecting it, would allow us to better survive. Somewhere along the line where the Asiatic and European bloodlines split, the Asians never bothered much with milk and to this day are still lactose intolerant. From the timelines involved, scientists have calculated that we gained the lactose tolerance gene some 7,000 to 15,000 years ago.
Similarly, around that same timespan we discovered that fermenting grains and sugars made a very nice drink, which unfortunately left us dizzy and disoriented and easy prey to predators or hunting parties, but which substituted nicely for water, and thus we could avoid several water-borne diseases that would have been deadly back then. And hey - we also developed an "immunity" to alcohol back then, proof that not all evolution has to be boring and tasteless...
You know what was NOT around, ten thousand years ago? Preservatives, and processed flour that has been bleached to resemble chalk with about as little nutritional value, and E612 and all those other flavourings and modifiers and crap. Give our bodies fresh vegetables with as little chemical contamination as possible, meat that has not been treated with irritants to make it look red, and grains that have only been ground and baked - and they will thrive. You almost can't make a mistake there. Our bodies are survivors!
But put all that chemical in there and watch things go awry. Yes - diabetes was almost unknown when sugar was a brown and relatively unprocessed mass of goo. Even raw sugar today is megaprocessed, and it's one hundredfold better for you than white sugar. Because white sugar is bleached and processed and finally, ends up being nothing like a natural sugar.
So do read that article, but bear in mind that "localroger" is only seeing one side of a much larger picture. Buy a copy of my book, and begin to live healthier starting right now...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)