The Green Bowl Files
An Over-Weight Culture
What is “Over-weight”? We've always thought of “over-weight” as a vaguely subjective concept. For example, a moderately active man who is about 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs about 170 lbs, that man for what he does may be at a perfectly acceptable weight for optimal health, etc. However, if that man decides that he wants to run a marathon, he'll be about 35 lbs over-weight. For every day living, he was fine, but for distance running, not so much.
However, while the concept of “over-weight” is somewhat dependent on the factors of the individual as illustrated by the example above, the concept of “obese” is not. The medical profession has established guideline that if the human body is made up of more than 30% fatty tissue that the person is considered “obese”. Obesity is a growing problem in many developed countries, particularly the United States. There are many theories as to why obesity is so common nowadays, for our part; we believe that obesity occurs from malnutrition, not famine-induced malnutrition as many people think of malnutrition, but of the malnutrition of plenty. Huge amounts of calorically dense but nutritionally poor foods available to the masses for minimal cost combined with a society that does not perform large amounts of physical labor is the perfect recipe for an Over-Weight/Obese population. People are driven to consume more and more “food” in an endless quest for nutritional value and consequently becoming more and more over-weight and obese in the process.
Ideally, we do not want to carry any more adipose(fatty) tissue than is absolutely necessary. In the modern world, with a modern food supply, it simply isn't necessary for the body to need to carry any additional tissue to sustain itself through a “famine” period. The reasoning being, for every extra pound of fatty tissue a person carries they are adding about 4 miles of venous structure to maintain that tissue, which raises the strain on their heart, changes their blood pressure/viscosity, leading to higher probabilities of cardiac infarction/arrest(heart attacks), blood clots, strokes, aneurysms, hypertension, etc. It isn't just your heart that feels the strain when there is excessive fatty tissue on your frame; here are some of the other problems that carrying excessive fatty tissue brings.
- Skeletal Problems: injuries to bones and joints(particularly in younger people and children.
- Both types of Diabetes brought on by insulin resistance and excessive wear on the pancreas.
- Liver problems: when a person carries too much fat on their body their liver turns to fat as well and that can damage/scar the organ, as well as impede its function.
- Kidney problems: if you become very obese by eating large amounts of processed foods and drinking large amounts of carbonated highly sweetened drinks you are subjecting your kidneys to huge amounts of sodium and other chemicals that they have to process while being chronically dehydrated, this is asking for kidney damage and potentially kidney failure.
- Auto-Immune Disease: There has been research that states being obese and over-weight in general contributes to the risk of presenting with an auto-immune disease in both adults and children.
- Pulmonary Problems: if you carry a lot of extra tissue on your body you are typically unable to exercise in a way that oxygenates your tissue properly, which leads to circulatory and other issues.
Some people say it is as simple as just eating less, others say just exercise more, and some say that supplements are where the answer lies.
For our part, we believe that the key to optimum health, longevity, and quality of life is a combination of a high quality “clean” diet free of processed foods, sugar and sugar substitutes, excessive fat, and poor quality animal products, mixed with large amounts of clean non-chlorinated water and sufficient vigorous physical exercise to oxygenate the body. None of those things are difficult, costly, or even particularly unpleasant to do, and if you do them you'll see some amazing results.
However, we are not saying anything new, anything we haven't said before, all of this information has been commonly available for quite a long time, and people have not done it. We believe that without large changes in attitude among the general population, the vast majority of people will not undertake this way of life, and will likely ridicule those who do. However, if you are one of the ones who decides to take the steps necessary to rid yourself of the fear of obesity and all the problems that come with it, we salute you and support your decision. Good luck!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on dysfunctional eating habits.
Published 10-28-2013
“Healthy” Processed Foods
Is such a thing possible? Or is it just Marketing Cobblers?
This week we would like to broach the subject of Processed Foods. We are generally opposed to processed foods on principles of taste and excessive calories alone, but we got to thinking there are a lot of things out there that are marketed as “healthy” alternatives to conventional processed foods, etc, are those things really healthy?
In order to answer questions like these, we first have to examine what makes a particular food, or type of food, nutritious and health-promoting, and what doesn't?
The easiest way to measure nutrient content, as we know, is to write a very simple equation that looks like this:
Micro-nutrients/fiber/phytochemicals - vrs - Calories
Nutritionally dense foods have very little calories for the amount of nutrition they provide, things like dark green leafy vegetables, fresh non-starchy vegetables, fresh fruits, etc. All of those things are highly nutritious because they provide large amounts of vitamins, minerals, phyto-chemicals, and fiber while bringing minimal calories along for the ride. Less nutritious or unhealthful “junk” foods carry high caloric loads in comparison the amount of nutritional value they bring with them. The means it is very easy to get a lot more calories than you need, with a lot less actual nutrients than you need. To make matters worse, many of these “foods” are produced in such a way to encourage over-eating of them, and to corrupt the human body's delicately balanced metabolic and food regulation systems.
The human body when properly “calibrated” will regulate its caloric intake very nicely as long as it is bring presented with sufficient amounts of micro-nutrients and phyto-chemicals, thereby regulating it's weight to an appropriate and healthful level, I.e. Without carrying around excessive fatty tissue, but still maintaining a strong, sturdy physiology(tough ropey muscles, dense heavy bones, elastic tendons/ligaments/healthy skin tissue, etc). However, a great many people are walking around with severely out-of-whack regulation systems, and they are driven to over-consume calories looking for pure nutrition.
Now that we have answered the first question of what makes food nutritious, our next question is, are there any processed foods that fit the more nutrition than calories equation, WITHOUT using artificial junk and chemicals(which aren't really food) to achieve that goal?
We went to the grocery store and poked around in the health food section and what we concluded is, No, there aren't. The processed foods we found were either made up of things that aren't food(even in the “natural” section we found things that are essentially wood pulp, machine lubricant, artificial sweeteners, etc), or were extremely high in calories(lots of nuts, oils, honey, maltose, glucose, excessive starch/grains, etc) for the amount of nutrition they provided. Were the health-food section processed foods any better than their conventional processed counter-parts? Yes, somewhat. Not in terms of calories, sodium, or fat content they weren't, but they typically didn't contain high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats, or as noxious of preservatives/dyes/additives, etc like the conventional items did. However, we did find that most of the health market processed foods did contain similar amounts of MSG-like compounds(hydrolized whey and vegetables proteins, L-cystine, glutemic acids, etc) to their conventional counterparts.
The other thing we noticed about “healthy” processed foods is they tend to be about triple the price as their conventional analogs, for basically NO BETTER nutritional content. Is the ingredient quality better? Yes, is it 2-3 times better? No. We calculated what a consumer might purchase in processed foods for a week on an average based on what we saw in shopper's carts, and we estimate that if you switched from conventional processed foods to “healthy” ones you would spend between $150 and $300 more per month for a family of four, and the nutritional value you would get for that money would only be about 10% to 20% improvement on the conventional items.
So, in conclusion, from what we've found reading labels, poking around the grocery store and doing a little bit of simple mathematics, “Healthful” processed foods are not measurably more health promoting than their conventional counterparts, except as a way to remove certain types of fats, corn syrup, etc from your diet. So, processed foods of either type are not what could be called “healthful” by comparison to a whole, unprocessed, plant-based diet. Also, by comparison to a whole, unprocessed, plant-based diet, a “healthy” processed food-rich diet is about 250% to 400% MORE expensive than either a conventional diet, or a whole, unprocessed, plant-based diet.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Concept of "Over-Weight".
Published 10-21-2013
Cleansing 101
Thoughts on Giving Your Body a Cleaning During the Holiday Season
Holiday season is coming up, and with Holiday season comes a more than is strictly healthful abundance of rich foods, for most people. Even if you are fortunate in having a metabolic rate will allow you to indulge a bit without gaining weight, as we have discussed in prior articles, slimness is not necessarily a valid indicator of good health. If you consume large amounts of sugar and saturated fats as are typically included in many holiday dishes, even if you are moderate in your consumption, your body is going to react to those compounds being introduced to it that it is not used to, and has a bit of trouble dealing with.
We are not going to tell you not to eat Aunt Greta's Cheesy Potato Casserole. We are not going to tell you how to improve said example of holiday cookery. What we ARE going to talk about this week, is how to use cleanses, before, during, and after the holiday season to mitigate and damage that gets done by those holiday extravagances.
We are big fans of the dietary cleanse. Before you ask, No, they aren't just rubbish that hippies and bony health-club fanatics hype up. If done properly they can have some great benefits, such as helping your body scrub excess lipids(fat molecules) out of your blood stream, take some of the burden off your liver/kidneys/lymph system for a period of time, help jump-start a weight-loss, or management plan.
Cleanses can work on basically two different methods, though most cleanses are a combination of the two. Option One: flood the system with high-nutrient foods remove all nutritional contaminants for X amount of time but still eat on a regular basis, exercise, and go about your normal business. Option Two: deprive the system of caloric sustenance for a period of time, and flood it with water to flush out all the junk that might be stuck in the nooks and crannies.
Both cleansing styles work, and both have their pros and cons. However, there are several things that you need in order to have a successful cleanse and get the most benefits out of it, regardless of what style, or mixture of style, you choose to use.
- Realistic Goals: Don't pick something that is not do-able. If you don't have reasonable amount of confidence that you can complete the goal you set in your cleanse, you are basically giving yourself a reason to cheat/fail. Never set yourself up to fail if you can possibly avoid it. Think about your goals carefully, what you're trying to accomplish in the cleanse, etc.
- Proper Planning and Organization: If you're going on vacation, don't start a cleanse(unless it's a spa vacation kind of thing). If you're going to be traveling for work, your normal schedule is messed up for some reason, you're going to be under a lot of stress for a period of time, etc. Starting cleanses when you're out of your normal groove, or really stressed out is usually a bad idea. Your body is already under a strain and if you put one more thing on it, it may not able to handle it if you're not in excellent health mentally and physically, and you'll either have a nervous break-down or make yourself ill. Don't do that. Also, you are going to want to plan your grocery shopping, cooking, etc accordingly while you are cleansing. If you are having a dinner party, or a special event, etc you may not want to start a cleanse until after that, or more than 10 days before(depending on how long you're going to go), because it will be extremely difficult to do a proper cleanse if you have to cook and taste what you make, etc. Also, we have found it to be a good idea if you are doing more of a deprivation-style cleanse , to make sure the fridge and pantry are fairly empty when you start to avoid temptation to cheat, etc.
- Self Discipline: This is the most important one of all the things you need when you start a cleanse. At some point in your cleanse you will be uncomfortable, you will be hungry, you will just want to say “to heck with this junk!” and make yourself a sandwich. You have to be able to say, “No.” to yourself to meet your goal, and that isn't always easy to do.
We like “Green” Cleanses a lot, our typical diet for this type of cleanse is, 1 ½ to 2 lbs of Fresh Greens per day, about ¾ kale/collards/etc, and ¼ spinach mixed with ½ lb of citrus fruits, and ½ lb of onions or mushrooms per day for 3 to 14 days. We eat half of our greens raw usually blended with the citrus, and the remaining greens plus the onions, or mushrooms cooked. This works out being about 500 calories per day(provided you don't cook with any fat) and if you have more than 10 lbs to lose this cleanse can be used without fear of unpleasant consequences for up to 2 weeks.
We also like Raw cleanses, which are not particularly unpleasant to do, they are easier to do in late Spring all through the Summer, but they can be done in the winter. We usually use the same amount of greens as in our Green cleanse(1 1/2 to 2 lbs), combined with ½ lb fresh Raw Root Vegetables(carrots, beets, radish, etc), and ½ lb of Fresh Raw Fruit(any except bananas). Everything is eaten raw, we like smoothies and chopped salads. If you are very active add ½ lb of additional fresh vegetables such as peppers, cucumbers, or tomatoes if you wish. You can use a raw cleanse for 3 to 21 days.
If you are having trouble getting a weight-loss plan going, or you have a great deal of weight to lose(more than 100 lbs), you may want to choose a deprivation cleanse for several days to flush out your system thoroughly, stabilize your body chemistry, and get your metabolic rate ready to burn fat. Be careful with deprivation cleanses, particularly if you have a metabolic disorder, are diabetic, or taking medications.
Our deprivation cleanse of choice, is a Liquid Cleanse, we generally do this one for between 2 and 5 days. We eat NO solid foods during this period, but we drink between ¾ and 1 ½ gallons of water, 1 quart of Green Tea, and 1-2 Spinach-Citrus Smoothies per day. We do not recommend substituting coffee, or other caffeinated beverages for the green tea. Also, carbonated sweetened soft drinks DO NOT count as “water”, and should not be consumed during a liquid cleanse. You will be hungry, and you will also be uncomfortable for the first couple of days. If you become light-headed, or have symptoms of low blood-sugar, you may need to drink an additional smoothie during the cleanse period. It is better to do a cleanse like this when you can curtail your physical activity somewhat during the cleansing period. [Don't go dig a bunch of ditches when you're on a deprivation cleanse, it won't go well.] Also, we recommend consuming 1 pint of Vegan Probiotic Beverage during your cleanse period, kombucha is our probiotic of choice.
We also do periodic fasts, which can act as cleanses. Do Not fast for more than 3 days at a stretch, there are no health benefits after a 72 hour period because your body does not have sufficient glucose in it's blood stream to continue glyco-genesis and you'll start eating your own muscle tissue. Also, if you fast for more than 12-16 hours; drink water(about a gallon per day). If you're fasting in the winter, warm-to-hot water will help you keep warm and improve your metabolic rate somewhat. You can also drink some herbal or green tea if you wish.
We hope we have given you some ideas about why, and how to use a cleanse to keep you feeling fit and healthy throughout the holiday season. If you've never cleansed before, choose a fairly minimal amount of time. Your body won't be used to it and it's not too pleasant the first time around, generally speaking. However, you do need to do it for at least 72 hours, 5 to 7 days is usually good for most people, but if you're really in need of a jump-start then you may want to go for 2 to 3 weeks. If you choose to do an extended cleanse, we typically start out with 5 days of deprivation cleanse, and then finish with a 2-3 week nutritional cleanse. It is not healthy to decrease caloric intake below 500 calories per day for more than about 5 days, your body will back-lash and it will be unpleasant and unhealthy.
As always if you have any preexisting health concerns speak with your health-care provider before beginning any type of cleansing or fasting regimen, particularly if you take blood thinners, or are diabetic. Safety first!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on "Healthy" Processed Foods.
Published 10-14-2013
Thoughts on Doctors
Most adults tell their children that doctors are there to keep them healthy, and indeed many adults believe that themselves. However, in the spirit of asking the hard questions, we would like to pose the questions; “What are doctors really for? What is their goal, or do they have one?”
We've talked to quite a few doctors at various points, for various reasons, though rarely for our own treatment. While we do believe that most doctors do sincerely want to help their patients, we also firmly believe that there are other factors in play.
Western doctors are trained in a certain way, and while that training is very good for some things, a lot of things, but there are some areas where it does fall down. As a whole Western medicine does not like to admit to having gaps in knowledge of the way the human body works, this does not always bode well for the patient. Western medicine also is extremely quick to reach for chemically synthesized medications, many of which have unpleasant and dangerous side-effects. We are not saying that these medications do not have their place, but we do think they are in much wider use than is strictly necessary, and a lot of the emphasis that should be placed on preventative care from a high-quality diet, proper exercise, hydration, etc is placed on medications, with a “take this pill” attitude prevailing over the much safer and cheaper options of just eating properly, exercising vigorously, and drinking lots of water. Those things take work and discipline from the individual and as a group, that is not something that people want to hear in our experience.
Western doctors are very good in some areas, mechanical problems such as broken fingers, etc. However, when the diagnosis gets more complex gaps in understanding begin to appear and often the treatment proscribed proves to be just as unpleasant and/or more life-threatening than the symptoms of the disease without even the hope of a complete remedy of the condition to justify itself.
In our own minds, we believe that the purpose of doctors is not to make people well when they get sick, but to keep them from getting sick in the first place. This is not the same thing. For one thing, preventative medicine is a lot cheaper and safer, than “a pound of cure”, but it's also a lot more work. We also firmly believe that patients have a share in their own healthcare. Doctors have said that it is difficult for them to implement the preventative care they would like to see in their patients because the patients will not follow through on the routines, habits proscribed, or they become annoyed with the physician when the doctor doesn't say “Just take this magic pill and everything will be fine.” The human body is too complex for solutions like that, and people do not want to hear that.
We believe that going to doctor to keep yourself healthy is a bit like hiring a marketing consultant for your business. You find one who knows what they're doing as much as possible, you listen to what they have to say and their analysis of the situation, however at the end of the day it's your body, and your call. Remember, the “best” treatment isn't always the “easiest” one.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Giving Your Body a Seasonal Cleanse
Published 10-07-2013
Most adults tell their children that doctors are there to keep them healthy, and indeed many adults believe that themselves. However, in the spirit of asking the hard questions, we would like to pose the questions; “What are doctors really for? What is their goal, or do they have one?”
We've talked to quite a few doctors at various points, for various reasons, though rarely for our own treatment. While we do believe that most doctors do sincerely want to help their patients, we also firmly believe that there are other factors in play.
Western doctors are trained in a certain way, and while that training is very good for some things, a lot of things, but there are some areas where it does fall down. As a whole Western medicine does not like to admit to having gaps in knowledge of the way the human body works, this does not always bode well for the patient. Western medicine also is extremely quick to reach for chemically synthesized medications, many of which have unpleasant and dangerous side-effects. We are not saying that these medications do not have their place, but we do think they are in much wider use than is strictly necessary, and a lot of the emphasis that should be placed on preventative care from a high-quality diet, proper exercise, hydration, etc is placed on medications, with a “take this pill” attitude prevailing over the much safer and cheaper options of just eating properly, exercising vigorously, and drinking lots of water. Those things take work and discipline from the individual and as a group, that is not something that people want to hear in our experience.
Western doctors are very good in some areas, mechanical problems such as broken fingers, etc. However, when the diagnosis gets more complex gaps in understanding begin to appear and often the treatment proscribed proves to be just as unpleasant and/or more life-threatening than the symptoms of the disease without even the hope of a complete remedy of the condition to justify itself.
In our own minds, we believe that the purpose of doctors is not to make people well when they get sick, but to keep them from getting sick in the first place. This is not the same thing. For one thing, preventative medicine is a lot cheaper and safer, than “a pound of cure”, but it's also a lot more work. We also firmly believe that patients have a share in their own healthcare. Doctors have said that it is difficult for them to implement the preventative care they would like to see in their patients because the patients will not follow through on the routines, habits proscribed, or they become annoyed with the physician when the doctor doesn't say “Just take this magic pill and everything will be fine.” The human body is too complex for solutions like that, and people do not want to hear that.
We believe that going to doctor to keep yourself healthy is a bit like hiring a marketing consultant for your business. You find one who knows what they're doing as much as possible, you listen to what they have to say and their analysis of the situation, however at the end of the day it's your body, and your call. Remember, the “best” treatment isn't always the “easiest” one.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Giving Your Body a Seasonal Cleanse
Published 10-07-2013
Thoughts on The Appearance of Health
People place great stock on looking “healthy”, and spend a lot of money on tanning booths, "health" club memberships, plastic surgery, and a great many other things to give themselves the appearance of health. We're here to say that a lot of the things people think are indications of “good health” may not be. Don't assume just because a person is thin that they're in good health. Don't assume that a person is in good health because they are young. Don't assume they are in good health because they're tanned. Conversely, don't assume just because a person is carrying a little extra weight, or because they are very slim, they are not in good general health. Don't assume they are sickly because they are very pale.
There are quite a few physical indicators of good health, but they are not things that people generally think to look for, either in themselves, or in other people. Here are some of the best outwardly obvious indicators of health, or lack thereof.
- Skin Texture and Complexion: When a person is in good health, eating a clean diet with minimal toxins, their excretory systems are working well, and they are properly hydrated; their skin has a very elastic appearance. They have no visible acne(red pimples, blisters, boils, etc). Their skin is smooth and they have a healthy concentration of body hair on their forearms, legs, and in some cases their chests, armpits, fingers, toes, and feet. Body hair is not a bad thing, in fact it means you have good surface circulation because the follicles are receiving proper amounts of nourishment and oxygenation.
- Muscle Tone and Elasticity: People who are in good health and physical condition possess moderate to large amounts of tightly-packed ropey muscles. We're not talking big over-blown "Terminator" muscles here, just the general muscle development you get from requiring moderate to large amounts of physical activity from your body. Good muscle development has a firm-to-hard springy texture, it isn't spongy, doesn't hold water, and moves/flexes easily and smoothly.
- Flow of Movement: People who are in good health do not lumber along, they do not drop their weight into every step as though they weight 12,000 lbs. Their muscles hold them up and carries them along, not their skeleton. They stride loosely and fluidly. They move with spring in their step and a very even, regular type of movement. Their balance is excellent, they tend to keep their weight on the balls of their feet, and they move quite lightly. They do not carry themselves with unnatural curvature of the spine either pushed forwards at the hip, or arched backwards from their chest. Their shoulders are level and generally quite straight.
- Texture and Color of Hair: People who are in good health have crisp textured hair that is shiny/glossy. Their hair isn't lank, greasy looking, dull, lifeless, or limp. Even people who's hair has gone gray, if they are in good health, it will be apparent in the texture and gloss of the hair.
- Circulation Indications of Health: People who are in good health have a high quality circulatory system. This is visible in the fact they have no spider/varicose veins. They have healthy concentrations of thick/springy body hair, they don't flush except under conditions of extreme agitation, exertion, or exposure to high heat levels(90+ degrees F). They do not suffer from bloating, or edema(water retention) in their extremities and lower limbs. They maintain moderate blood pressure levels without spikes or dips, they do not have tingling, numbness, or pricking sensations in their extremities/limbs.
- Respiratory Indications of Health: People are in good health have easy, regular breathing. They do not huff, puff, gasp or wheeze at minor exertion. They don't cough without outside stimulus(inhaling dust or particulate matter), or an internal irritant(rhino-virus, influenza, etc). They can exert themselves for some duration(climbing several flights of stairs at speed, walk or jog briskly for several miles, etc) without becoming winded. Their normal breathing is from their stomachs, and it expands their ribs fully. They do not breathe with short, shallow, gasping breaths in tops of their chests.
We think it is very important to be honest with ourselves about our own levels of health. We regularly check ourselves, and we would encourage you, to look for these signs of health in yourself. If you do not find as many as you would like, perhaps you may want to consider making some changes. If nothing else, we hope we have given you food for thought and discussion among your colleagues, friends, and family. Have a wonderful day and may you all be in the pink of health shortly, if you are not already.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on doctors and Western medicine.
Published 09-30-2013
Thoughts on Menu Planning
We've all been there, walk into the kitchen after work, open the fridge and think “What in the heck am I going to do with this lot?” There are lots of different ways to organize the logistics of the kitchen, from shopping, menus, recipes, etc and there are a million and one books, websites, and resources that are all full of good ideas, tips, tricks, and suggestions. However, in our opinion they pretty much all have a combination of 2 problems. The first problem is, they tend to run towards a very unhealthful reliance on processed foods, the boxed, the canned, the frozen, and the generally unhealthful/unwholesome ingredients. The second problem is, setting up their program and following it requires much more time than is practical which negates the purpose of being organized in our mind. Being Organized and Having A Plan should take LESS time than Barely-Controlled-Chaos, not MORE.
We're not sure we can solve your problem in one fell swoop, but we might be able to give you a very good jump-start on the path to delicious, healthful, home-cooked meals on a very regular basis.
The first step is to take a step back and take a big breath. Now let it out. Good. With almost everyone we talk to about this subject; the first thing that comes out of their mouth is, “I'm just overwhelmed. I don't know where to start.” First step is, Calm Down. It's food, dinner, edibles, comestibles. No one is going to die, there is no loaded weapon pointed at any valued portion of your anatomy. Food should be Fun, a method to make yourself and your family feel great and be healthy, not something to get all stressed out and wound up about.
Now that you are in a calmer state of mind, the second step is to Take Stock of Your Working Environment, and also the Contents of your Larder, Refrigerator, and general Pantry.
What do you have to work with? Is your fridge full of fresh fruits, vegetables, and organic condiments? If so, great. If not, not worries. What is your larder full of? Boxed, processed, sugar-an-fat-laiden (in)Edibles? Is it empty of anything? Or is it nicely stocked with dried legumes, grains, fresh whole spices, canned tomatoes, and some raw nuts, seeds, and dried fruits? Wherever you're at, no worries, we'll work with it. However, being organized and logical in your menus requires that you be honest with yourself and if you've got things in your kitchen you don't want to eat/feed your family, than you need to take yourself to task in whatever areas may be necessary.
Now you know what you have to work with, you have to decide what your goal is. Do you want to feel better and improve your health? Do you want to lose weight? Do you have dietary restrictions, or a health condition that has just arisen? Do you have fitness goals? Do you want to save some money on your food budget? Are you just plain interested in food and want to learn to cook well?
All of those things are slightly different goals and will affect the course of action that you choose. Don't worry, you can work towards more than one of them if you want, you don't have to pick just one.
Now that you have your goal in mind, you're ready to get started. Here is the crash-course basics of how to set your kitchen up, along with our way of planning menus. If you need to change something, change it. You have to do what is practical for you, anyway, it's your kitchen and your grub. This is just what we've found to be useful and practical for us, you may have to adjust according to your likes, dislikes, work schedule, budget, etc.
- If You Don't Want to Eat It; Don't Have It In Your Kitchen. Period: If you don't want to eat certain items, or you can't eat certain things, GET RID OF THEM and DON'T BUY MORE. If you're changing your diet and your eating habits, clean the junk out of your pantry/fridge. Donate it to the food pantry if you don't want to throw things away. Roommates/Children/Spouses may complain a bit, they'll come 'round. If they insist, give them their own cupboard/shelf and have done with it. One of the best ways to not have to test your will-power is, don't put yourself in that situation.
- Shop Little, Shop Often: We say this all the time, but it's true. Shop 3 to 5 times per week. That's how you eat fresh, buy buying/growing fresh. You do not have to spend much money when you shop, put yourself on a $20 per trip limit for a group of 4 people and see how you do. Buy only what you will use in 2-3 days, no more. If you run out of something, great. That's the point. The point is NOT to have a constantly stocked pantry/fridge. The goal is to have a constantly emptying/rotating stock of extremely fresh things in your kitchen.
- "Tasty" does NOT mean "Complicated": We can make you a very good lunch with about 4 ingredients. You can too. Even if you're a very experienced cook, challenge yourself to make the simplest, but still delicious, dishes you can. People use a lot of ingredients in their recipes to cover up the fact they don't understand how to manipulate the ingredients. Don't be that cook. You're better than that. Simple is better, and less is (almost) always more.
- "It's less of a code, more of a guideline." - You Can Change Plans as You Go: Menus are not set in stone. You didn't go up on the mountain and have this week's suppers given to you by the Deity of Kitchen Logistics, it's fine to make adjustments as you go through your week. If your work schedule changes, you catch a bit of a cold, a friend comes to town unexpectedly, things happen. Menus need to be adjusted, also you want to be flexible in your plans so you can take advantage of "finds" in the grocery store/green market. Menus and shopping lists are to give you a framework, a place to start. They are not the be-all-end-all of your weekly grub.
- Do Not Be Governed By Shelf-Life: This drives us CRAZY. People are obsessed with shelf life, don't be that person that won't buy fresh foods because "they don't store well". The point is not to STORE food, the point is to EAT FRESH FOOD because that is where the taste and nutrition is. People say to us "such-an-such goes bad", well, of course it does. That means it has nutrition, buy smaller amounts, more often, and eat what you buy. Then it doesn't go bad because you've eaten it before that is even an issue.
- Don't Be Afraid to Make Stuff Up: We make stuff up all the time, if you're a recipe cook; that's not a bad thing. Don't feel guilty, or like we're belittling you because we're not. Everyone starts out as a recipe cook; but you have way more fun in the kitchen, produce better food(after some practice), and have a lot more flexibility in the green market and grocery store, if you can make up your own dishes on the fly. When you're first learning what you're doing, designate 1 night a week, or a couple nights a month to be "Random Made-Up Dinner Night" and then just open the fridge and cook. Read cookbooks for ideas, but don't follow any recipes. Write down whatever it is you make up, take a picture if you think of it. This way you know what you're doing right, and what maybe wasn't quite so nice. Are you going to mess up now and then, yeah. So what? It's dinner, not building an A-Bomb. It'll be fine, and you'll get more confidence and create things you didn't know you could if you get in there and just make things. It all starts with a knife and veg, if you start there you won't go too far wrong. Also, remember you can always add, but you can't take out. Besides, making stuff up is FUN.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Appearance of Health verses Actual Health
Published 09-23-2013
Thoughts on How to Start a Plant-Based Diet
Food for thought for both the new-comer and the long-time "Veggie"
We talk to a lot of people on the subject of making a life-style change, switching over to an entirely plant-based diet, or improving the one they may have already adopted, and one of the big questions we get asked is; Where do I start? Usually followed by; How do I maintain this once I get going?
We agree that if you've never really researched, or tried becoming a “Veggie” before, the prospect of cutting out all of the animal products that are so pervasive in the American diet can be something of a daunting prospect. There is a ton of information out there as well, however that can be more overwhelming than helpful if you don't know where to start, or don't have enough background knowledge to evaluate the quality/utility of the information. We feel your pain, but don't get discouraged, there is hope.
We're going to start out by saying, if you're new to this, You Are Going to Make Mistakes. You Are Going to Fall Off The Wagon. Don't worry, it's okay. Making mistakes, making yourself feel like crap, and falling off the wagon are all part of how you learn. As long as you learn from the mistakes, learn what makes you feel like crap, and get back on the wagon, it's fine. It's good actually, nothing teaches you the practicalities and brings you to an intimate acquaintance with your body like the School of Hard Knocks.
However, we know you're saying, “That's all well and good, but where the heck am I supposed to start? Give me some concrete specifics, here!” We were just getting to that, here are a few of our basic guidelines to get you started.
- Remove Yourself From Temptation: If you don't want to eat it, don't be around it, and don't purchase it.
- Eat a Wide Variety of Plants: Try eat between 20 and 30 different whole plants per week. Seriously, it isn't that hard.
- Try Everything: When you go to a plant-based diet, do not turn your nose up at anything. Try all the fruits and vegetables you can find, doesn't matter if you've never eaten it before, have no idea what to do with it, etc. You can find out how to cook/prepare anything on the internet. Try it all, seriously, we're not kidding.
- Keep A Food Diary: This sounds a little obsessive, but what we have found it is easier to objectively evaluate how you feel, any weight loss you experience, and get a feel for how your body responds to different types of foods, etc over a period of time if you write down what you eat, how much, at what time, and keep track of how much water/liquid you drink, and your exercise patterns. Trust us, it will make your life easier in the long term. It also helps keep some people honest, and helps them realize what they are really eating. It is easy to think you're doing good when there's no record, but seeing it all in black-an-white can help bring things into focus real quick.
- Drink Water and Eat LOTS of Fiber: Shoot for a gallon a day minimum, particularly when you first start, and 30 grams of soluble fiber per day. We've found a good way to hit these two birds with one stone is to drink 2 to 4 16-20 ounce green smoothies per day. Ideally, make 2 with kale, and 2 with spinach. Add fruit to the kale ones, and vegetables to the spinach ones.
If you've been a “Veggie” for a while now and you're looking to clean up that last 20-40%, or if you've had some health issues that you want/need to treat with diet, or if you just plain want to see how good you can do and how good you can feel, here are some things for you.
- Limit Your Starch Intake: Starch turns into sugar, if you're not exercising very vigorously limiting your starch intake will help to keep you to your optimal weight, and keep your blood sugar stable. For us, we shoot for about 30% of our daily calories from starchy vegetables/legumes. We avoid grain as a general rule just because there are better things that we can eat, nutritionally speaking.
- Eliminate Your Pure Sugar Intake: This means honey, molasses, dried fruits of all kinds(including dates), rice syrup, sugar, sucanut, evaporated cane sugar, coconut sugar, corn syrup, stevia(eating sweeteners makes you crave sweet things, better to just go cold-tofu). Stop eating these things. Ideally, the only sugars you consume should be in the form of whole fruits and vegetables. Honestly, it's easier than you think.
- Remove Stimulants From Your Diet: Coffee, black tea, and chocolate are the big edible ones for most people, if you smoke Nicotine will also be a factor for you, that you should consider removing. Alcohol is a depressant, but it can also act as a stimulant in some people. We avoid these for the most part. Green tea is a stimulant as well, but high quality green tea does have enough beneficial results that we believe it counters the caffeination.
- Remove MSG From Your Diet: This is a compound we believe that ANY is bad. It has many guises, be alert. However, if you don't buy boxed/bagged/processed foods, or commercially made condiments you're pretty much as MSG/Glutamate free as you can get. Read up a little bit on some of the sneaky ways MSG and Glutamate is worked into the food supply, as well as some of the effects it has on the human physiology, if you don't believe us. It makes for interesting reading.
- Remove GMO's From Your Diet: We're not fans of GMO's, if for no other reason than they don't have the flavor/texture that non-GMO's have. Also, they are banned by most of Europe, Australia, Japan, and quite a few other major world powers. Call us crazy, but if there is that big of a consensus we think there's probably something to be concerned about. Heirlooms and Organics for us, please.
- Increase Your Hydration: If you're a regular vigorous exerciser than you understand the need for plenty of hydration. However, even if you're not a vigorous exerciser, you might be surprised at how good drinking a gallon-plus of water a day makes you feel. Get yourself a couple of ½ gallon jugs and fill 'em up every morning, try to drink them dry by the end of your work day. It's easier than you think. We tell new Veggies to do this, and they usually can't quite get there, however if you've been doing the plant-based thing for awhile, this is a simple thing that does make a big difference.
- Eat Greens At Every Meal: Yes, every meal. This is one that we highly recommend and it's not hard to do. Green smoothie for breakfast, salad and sauteed greens for lunch, and salad/green smoothie at dinner. Easy, peasy.
When it comes to maintaining a plant-based life-style there are a lot of gimmicky stuff that you'll see in magazines, through the media, and other outlets, however we're not going to tell you any of that stuff. You don't need tricks, or fancy eating/training plans to eat well and feel as good as you physically can. You mainly just have to decide you want to, and that being healthy, feeling great, and eating well is more important to you than fitting into the standard American diet, conventional methods of maintaining the body, or eating the things you used to eat. That's it, nothing fancy, nothing crazy, nothing complicated; but despite its simplicity, it is not necessarily Easy. However, it is under YOUR control, and within YOUR power to make that decision and take the steps necessary. The beauty of it is, you can make it happen on your own, you don't need anyone else's say-so, or approval, you do the work; you get the results. No one can do it for you, but no one can take it away from you. It really is that simple.
If you want assistance in starting, or continuing your journey please feel free to get in contact with us. Good Luck!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Menu Planning
Published 09-16-2013
Starch: Good Fuel, or Bad News?
We hear the term “Carbs” bandied around a lot, and we would like to hopefully help clear up some of the misconceptions that come with that term. We will start with the question, “What are Carbs?” and finish off with “What does that mean in practical terms?”
When something says that an item is high in “carbs”, what that means is that the item has a lot of Starch and/or Sugar in it. Starch is about one step up in moleculer complexity from sugar, and as such that makes it an excellent fuel source for the human body, but like sugar it doesn't provide much more nutritionally than simple fuel.
Starches come in two forms, “refined” and “complex”. We define Refined Starch/Carbohydrates(carbs) as being items that are 50% or more pure starch or sugars either through processing, or their naturally occurring state. These items include: All-Purpose Flour, White Rice, Pearled Barley, Corn Products, Bananas, Cornstarch, Sugar, Honey, Molasses, Quick Oats, White Potatoes, etc.
We define Complex Carbohydrates as items that contain 50% or more of Things Other Than Starch/Sugar, this means starches mixed with a combination of of amino acids(proteins), fatty acids(fats), and dietary fiber(soluble, or non-soluble) as part of their natural composition. This equals, Winter Squash, Sweet Potatoes, Rye, Whole Barley, Whole or Steel-Cut Oats, or Buckwheat, Brown Rice, Wild Rice, Quinoa, Beans, Legumes, Peas, Lentils, and similar.
Refined Carbohydrates are higher in "carbs", generally not because they have more starch/sugars than complex carbohydrates, but because they have less of the Other Materials(mainly fiber), that make up some of the bulk, weight, and composition of the the Complex Carbohydrate material.
Refined Starches break-down easily and enter the blood stream rapidly after consumption which makes your blood-sugar levels rise very quickly. Which is fine if you're going out to dig ditches, or haul coal after lunch, but if you are doing something only lightly physically taxing; it means that your blood-sugar will rise quickly to moderately-to-very high levels depending on what you ate and how much. Your body deals with that sugar spike by secreting insulin in some amount, which lowers your blood-sugar to keep you from going into a coma while your liver processes the excess glucose in your blood stream into fat and stores it in your body for later use This is the normal process for dealing with the situation, and shouldn't cause any problem if it only happens on rare occasions, like a few times a year. Where the problem comes from is, if you do that often enough you will gain weight, and your body will become insulin-resistant to some degree, and eventually diabetic because of your body's insulin resistance, or because your pancreas will wear itself out trying to keep up with the sugar spikes. These are bad things, and are reason enough for us to avoid refined starches and sugars.
The next question is, If Refined Carbohydrates Are Bad, Are Complex Carbohydrates Any Better?
Like so many things the short answer is, “Sometimes,” which we admit isn't very useful. Here's why we say “sometimes.”
Complex Carbohydrates make excellent fuels for the body, if you are involved in vigorous physical activity on a regular basis, for example if you have a heavy physical job like a landscaper, construction worker, or you are an amateur or professional athlete, then you will want to have a portion of your diet made up of this type of fuel-based component because you will need the calories to feel good and do your job. Meaning, eat the baked sweet potato for lunch along with your pound of salad.
Likewise, young children need the caloric loads that these items carry because they are building body tissue and their metabolic rates run higher than adults. Active teenagers who are at an appropriate weight also need to eat complex carbohydrates for the same reason. However, if you struggle to maintain a healthful weight, are diabetic, have a sedentary job/life-style, or are of a more advanced age(over 60 and not vigorously active) then you will want to limit your consumption of complex carbohydrates because they will provide you with more calories than you need for the nutritional value they provide. Which isn't to say you can't eat Any of them periodically(2-4 ounces once or twice a month), but they should not be a regular part, or make up more than about 15% of your total food intake.
What this all means in a practical sense is, Complex Carbohydrates aren't bad if you're physically active and not trying to lose weight. Refined Carbohydrates aren't good for you in pretty much any amount because they carry no nutrients in relation to the amount of calories(and other things) they bring with them. So, get rid of the white flour, sugar of pretty much any kind, and ditch the instant oat-meal and whole grain cereal bars(they're all sugar anyway). If you're going to eat Complex Carbs; eat Beans, Legumes, Lentils, Winter Squash, and Sweet Potatoes and try to make sure they don't provide more than about 30% of your total calories. Go easy on the grains of any kind, avoid white rice, pearled barley, and similar.
We hope we've helped clear up the issue of Carbohydrate in your mind. What we've shared with you is what we wish someone would have told us back when we first started this whole crazy thing. Do you have to be perfect? Most people, no, but you do need to at least try. If you have a health condition you're trying to correct then Yes you need to be quite strict, because you need nutrients, not calories(in most cases). However, it's not impossible by any means.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Starting a Plant-Based Diet.
Published 09-09-2013
Any Is Bad
3 Things We Think Should Be Avoided in Any Amount
There is a school of thought when it comes to nutrition, diet, and food in general that a person can eat anything they want as long as they eat it in moderation. We wondered, is that really so, or not? Are there some things that are marketed as “food” that really are harmful in any amount? We did some research, and some experiments on ourselves, and what we have come to believe is that the answer is, Yes: emphatically, Yes. Here are our thoughts on the 3 things that are extremely prevalent in the food industry that human beings that want to live a healthful life should avoid consuming in any amount.
While the media has moved on to other nutrition/food topics, we would like to mention our old enemy Trans-fatty Acids. While they have been sort of passed by in the current food warning fads, though they did get quite a bit of attention there for a while. It seems to us that many people still believe that these fats are okay to consume in small-to-moderate amounts, or that these chemically altered fats are preferable to consume than their naturally saturated counter-parts of butter, lard, and coconut oil. While those fats are not what you'd call “healthful”, or “health-promoting”, they are at least digestible by the human body's processes of ingestion. Trans-fats are not, names for these compounds include Crisco, Vegetable Shortening of any kind, Margarine, Oleo, Butter-Substitute Spreads(Smart Beat, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, etc), and similar. We recommend that you avoid these products in any guise and any amount, because they have been proven to contribute to hardening of the arteries, arterial and vascular plaque, hypertension/high blood pressure, increased risk of cardiac disease/stroke/blood clots/embolism, and some neurological conditions such as Alzheimers Disease. Also, it takes approximately 2 years for your body to rid itself of these fats in their entirety that it ingests from the time of consumption, sometimes longer if you've been eating them for a period of time, so if you're eating them now: we recommend that you stop.
Another big no-no for us, is MSG and MSG-like compounds. We truly believe that consumption of these chemicals are bad in ANY amount. These chemicals are highly volatile, cause you to over-eat and feel sluggish so you want to exercise/move around less. This is a bad thing if you're looking to lose weight, or maintain the weight you already are. Other side effects of consuming these compounds are, Mood-swings, Irritability, Lack of Concentration, Depression and exacerbation of the same if you are prone to that condition, Migraine and garden-variety Headaches, Increased Blood Pressure, Exacerbation of Hypertension and Cardiac conditions such as arrhythmia, increased risk of Stroke, Uncontrolled Flushing, Sweating, and Tingling Sensation in limbs in some people due to excessive nerve stimulus, and an increase in Neurological Conditions(seizures, autism, mental conditions, etc). None of those things are really desirable states from our point of view. Yes, some people are definitely more sensitive to the stuff than others, however the average person is approximately 5 times as sensitive to these chemicals as mice are, and some people can be up to 50 times as sensitive as a mouse. [Mice are used to test the chemicals before added to food to see what “safe” levels for human consumption.] MSG and MSG-like compounds are found in 90+ percent of processed foods, and a few foods have free glutemic acid in them naturally, or it is freed from the way they are produced(soy sauce, brown rice syrup, etc). Most people don't have a problem with the small levels of free glutemic acid if eaten in very small amounts, however if you're very sensitive to MSG, or think you might be very sensitive, those are probably no-no's for you as well as the usual suspects in the processed foods category. If you're looking to balance your body chemistry and get your system re-organized and energized MSG in all it's guises is something you should definitely avoid in any amount. For more information on the subject by a very qualified individual: http://www.msgtruth.org/
The other item on our trifecta of Avoid; is High-Fructose Corn Syrup which has somehow become a staple ingredient in the world of Processed Foods since its discovery and mass production by Japanese chemists in the 1970's. This substance is incredibly hard on the human body, particularly the pancreas, liver, and kidneys, and has been linked to high obesity rates with all the complications that come with that condition, as well as Type II Diabetes in adults and children and all the complications that come with that disease as well. The reason we believe any is bad of this compound is because it creates an abnormal digestion and blood sugar cycle in your body chemistry, and also creates an addict-like cycle of behavior, and encourages abnormal eating patterns by causing nutritional deficits among other things.
These are the Big 3 Offenders in our book, while you may have others that cause problems for you, these are the ones we believe most strongly are at the root of a great deal of the suffering people experience because of the modern diet and life-style. We suggest you do your own research and draw your own conclusions. As for us, we're sticking with as much of a raw, organic, local, vegan diet as we can manage.
Join Us Next Week For: Thoughts on Starch: Is it good fuel, or bad news?
Published 08-26-2013
Fruit and Vegetables
Eating The Same Old Thing, or Are You?
A lot of people ask us if we get bored eating the same old thing, the short answer is “No”, however that isn't very useful. A while back we wrote an article on the massive variety and myriad variations of the plant-based diet, however we want to take a slightly different tack on that same topic this week.
It is all very well to describe how many different plants are available for the Vegetable Enthusiast to work with, however a lot of people find that either impractical, or over-whelming for novice cooks. We would like to talk a little bit about how we view what we eat, keeping things interesting, and what we think is most healthful for us.
When we think about Food, we think of something that is pleasantly flavored, looks and smells appetizing, something that provides the appropriate raw materials(vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, etc) for the body to keep mending itself from all the perpetual knocking about it receives during the course of any given day, and of course something that provides fuel for all the various processes, tasks, and activities the body is expected to perform during its lifespan. That is Food, in our minds.
Real Food does not harm the body in any measurable way when consumed. It does not create a heavy strain on the body's natural digestive systems. It does not make one gain weight under normal circumstances. It does not contribute to ill-health, disruption or disquieting of the mind. It is ideally, wholly and completely beneficial to the body.
In the modern world, however, that's a bit of a tall order to fill when striding into the local market. Which is a shame, however it does mean that the old cliché of “going back to basics” is in fact, correct. When we purchase or produce edibles, the least amount of processing we can do to those items before consuming them, the better off we are going to be in fulfilling our rather stringent requirements. This is how we think about Food and what we think is most Healthful for Us.
When it comes to what we eat to fulfill our ideals as close as we can, we mainly eat about 20 different things. Greens(kale, spinach, lettuce, chard, etc), Non-Starchy Vegetables(carrots, beets, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, radishes, bell peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, etc), Mushrooms, Fresh Fruits(peaches, apples, plums, pears, berries, etc), and a modest amount of Legumes. That's not a lot of things, and you might think that it would get very dull quite quickly. However, while our ingredients are limited in some ways, our imagination and cooking techniques are not. We can cook in whatever manner that we wish as long as we don't harm the nutritional profile of the ingredients by our techniques(no frying, no breading, etc). This means that we have roughly 15 cooking techniques, about 40 general seasonings(spices, herbs, etc), acid in the forms of vinegar/citrus juice/wine, and all the variations of temperature and combination of ingredients to vary our palate. That's a LOT of different stuff to do, make, and try. Pretty hard to get bored with that.
Also, when we eat in-season ingredients we are getting flavors at their peak. In-season fresh cherries are pretty hard to beat just by themselves. Ripe off the vine tomatoes are also high on our list of “eat unadorned” foods. The real beauty of eating the same thing, is not that you eat the same dish, it's that you eat the same Ingredient and you learn all of it's flavors, nuances, and textures. You never get everything about anything on the first pass. What makes you think that food would be any different? Embrace eating the same ingredients, it's not boring, it's awesome because every time you eat that fresh tomato, that right-off-the-vine cucumber, those fresh ripe plums it's going to be a little bit different, maybe a little bit tangy-er one day, a little bit sweeter another day, or a little more mineral-y. If you are obsessed with eating different things all the time, you never get the chance to really learn the things you do eat. Nor do you give yourself the chance to become a really proficient cook within the techniques. It's easy to learn a new dish when you've learned good technique, but learning those techniques may take you years to really master and perfect.
Those are our thoughts on the subject, we hope we've given you a little food for thought, a little place to start thinking about what you eat, how you eat it, and what your definition of “Food” really is. All of those things are things we think are really important to getting in good health through diet, and creating the habits and skills you need to stay there. Happy Cooking and Bon Appetit!
Join us next week for: Our thoughts on Any is Bad, things we think are to be avoided in any amount.
Published 08-19-2013
Small Things Add Up
It is a very disturbing thing for us to see the general mindset of this country. We seem to have become a nation of people who do not realize that it is within our power to change our circumstances, that we don't have to feel terrible, be unhealthy, or hugely unhealthily over-weight much to our own chagrin. We have collectively forgotten that we have to power to make changes over our health, bodies, and minds, that we don't have anything to scared of when it comes to making changes that will have long-term benefits to our quality of life. Sure, it's not going to be easy, in the beginning it's going to be unpleasant, difficult, and we're going to wonder if it's worth it, but from our personal experiences we would say that it definitely IS worth it.
People talk to us and say things like they want to take change of their health, but they don't know where to start; that they get overwhelmed by all the information out there, that they don't want to make mistakes. Well, we're here to tell you, you're going to make mistakes so get the idea that it's all going to be smooth sailing once you hit on the perfect formula, the perfect plan. There isn't a perfect formula, and there isn't a perfect plan, there are always things that can be done better, things that need adjustment, etc. There are things that work for you, things that don't, and things that work to a greater or lesser degree depending on the circumstances they are implemented under. It is up to you to find those things by trial and error.
The only way to really get yourself under control, and on your way to feeling your best and being in your best health is to Just Start. Don't be scared, don't be overwhelmed, just dive right in. Read some books, try some things. Pick things that aren't going to do you any harm. No one ever caused themselves any damage by eating 2 meals a day vegetarian, or making sure they ate fresh greens at least twice a day. No one ever got sick from drinking a gallon of purified water a day. Those things are the first small steps that you can take to take control of your health and improve your life.
Life-style changes and long-term results are not necessarily made up of big things. In our experience it's the small things, little ordinary things done during the course of one's day that add up to a big result. Things like taking 3 15 minute walks a day. Things like not buying, or eating, processed food. Things like making a point to be honest with ourselves about what we're eating, drinking, and how we're treating our body in general. None of those things are big scary things, they're all easy enough to do if you commit to doing them, and they don't cost you any more money or resources than you're already expending.
Improving your health, and by extension your life, is only as scary or overwhelming as you let it seem to you. If you need to find a hand to hold, talk with a friend or your spouse, and make your changes together. Commit to what you decide and then do it. We are almost completely sure that you won't find those small things and even the big changes as scary as you think they are. Remember, you go at your own pace. It's not a competition, and the only pressure is the pressure you place on yourself. If you need to big results fast, then you may have to do big things fast. However, in most cases if you want to work up to big results, you can do a lot of small things, gradually. However, remember for optimal results you have to put in optimal effort. If you put in half-baked effort, you're going to get half-baked results. It's all up to you. Good luck and please feel free to get in touch with us if you'd like some help getting started on the right foot, or want to be pointed in a do-able, practical direction right from the get-go. Good luck!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on keeping healthy habits fresh and interesting.
Published 08-05-2013
What is Natural Food?
We would like to weigh in on the topic of “Natural Food” this week and give you our view on the subject. The phrase “natural food” is being tossed around a lot these days, and when combined with the words “organic”, “whole”, “living”, “health” food is causing a great deal of confusion and ambiguity among the wellness and health concerned diner.
We'd like to start off by saying that “natural” doesn't mean “healthful”. The example we use in our classes is, Arsenic is a natural substance and you wouldn't want to eat that, would you? While naturally occurring substances used in foods are generally better for the body than man-made ones, that isn't necessarily the case. No matter what marketing people would like you to believe, it really is not all that difficult to still end up eating junk if you don't take the trouble to educate yourself on the art and science of reading labels, and taking control of what you put in your body.
In our opinion the only really natural foods are the ones that are purchased, or utilized in their raw-from-the-fields state. We're not saying you have to eat them raw, we are saying that if you go to your local green market and buy a bunch of carrots that are fresh out of the field with dirt and tops still on them, those are what we would call “natural” foods. However, frozen carrot rounds from the local super market, may not qualify. Yes, the frozen carrot rounds are still carrots in their majority constituent, but you have no real idea what those carrots have had done to them, or what they've been exposed to in terms of chemical or bacterial contaminants, or additives. This makes them potentially not “natural” foods. The carrots are just an example, and we're not saying that they've necessarily had things done to them, or that you should never eat any frozen vegetables, but we are trying to illustrate the fact that you can't really ever know what is being done to foods that have been subjected to more than the most minimal of processing(washing, etc). If you really want to eat natural foods, you have to get foods that are (A) actually food, not things that just look like food, and (B) foods that are in as close to their out-of-the-ground/straight-off-the-tree/vine/bush state as possible. Those are natural foods in our minds.
When it comes to “natural” processed foods, it is our belief that the more processing a food item has been subjected to the less “natural” it becomes. For example, raw sprouted rye is a pretty natural food. The grain hasn't had anything done to it that it wouldn't do on it's own in the botanical world before it is consumed. To get it to sprout it was soaked in water, drained and put in a warm place. As processing goes, that's pretty negligible. The next step level of processing would be to boil the whole rye grains in liquid and eat them. That would be a process that they would not experience in nature, but if all you're doing is putting them in boiling water for X amount of time, it's still a pretty minimal moderate type of processing. The next level of processing would be to take the rye grains, grind them into flour, mix the flour with liquid, yeast, salt, and sugar and bake it into bread. As a result of this, the rye grains have been through approximately 6 steps of processing on its way to becoming bread. First drying, then grinding/milling, then hydration and adulteration by the addition of other ingredients, salinization(addition of salt) and fermentation(exposure to yeast/enzymes), then finally exposed to extreme heat(400-500 degrees F) during baking. Of those processes, about half of them are not ones that would occur on their own in nature.
The question now is, Does that make rye bread a “natural” or an “unnatural” food? It certainly makes it a “processed” food(even if you did all that yourself), but where do you draw the line, that is not for us to say. As we have said so many times before, it is not for us to tell you how, or what, to eat. We are just here to draw your attention to some things you may not have considered before, and give you more information to make your own decisions on what is best, in terms of nutrition and practicality for you, and those in your care.
In our own minds, we believe for optimal health and to feel the absolute best that a human body feel that it is necessary to consume a very high ratio of unprocessed foods, to processed ones. We believe 80% or more of the optimal diet to be made up of unprocessed and minimally processed foods.
Our definition of processed foods is as you can see a little different from the standard definition of processed foods, case in point the home-made rye bread. We don't necessarily mean foods that have been processed by a company, or that come in a box, though those definitely qualify. Processed foods can, and do, come out of our own kitchens as well as the grocery store. We're not saying don't cook anything, don't season anything, eat horrible, bland, rocks-an-twigs food. We're saying, Be Aware of what you do to your food. Pay Attention to how you cook and what it does to affect the nutrition and flavor of the food you eat. You go to a lot of trouble to get the best ingredients you can, with the most nutritional value, and flavor. Don't ruin that by subjecting your ingredients to treatment that will negate, or remove, all that nutritional value and flavor. We're also saying that "natural food" is kind of a subjective concept and those words shouldn't be the deciding factor of whether or not you purchase something from the store. Yes, "all natural" is generally a good thing, but the question to ask is, "Is it REALLY Natural?" For example, bread doesn't occur in nature, so technically there is really no such thing as "natural bread".
We hope we've given you some things to think about this week, and as always feel free to get in touch with us if you have questions.
E-mail us at [email protected]
Join us next week for: Thoughts on how small changes add up to big results.
Published 07-29-2013
"How Long Does It Keep?"
Thoughts on Shelf Life
One of the questions we hear asked a lot when we visit green markets or grocery stores is “How long will this keep?”. At first we thought it was a rather amusing and odd question to ask, however after a little while we noticed that this seems to be a big factor in how a lot of people purchase their groceries. We would like to take a few minutes and explain why in our minds, “How long will it keep?” is just about the last question you should be asking when you visit your local green market, or grocery store.
Firstly, if you're a regular reader on our website, or you searched us out in the first place, you can probably agree with the idea that the fresher your food is, the better it is going to taste and the more highly nutritious it is going to be, correct?
Secondly, if you agree with that first idea, perhaps you will also agree that the idea of shelf life being a deciding factor in how you purchase your groceries is rather a redundant one because it defeats the purpose of trying to only buy very fresh items, correct?
If you go back in time about 80 years before the advent of large scale practical refrigeration, and before the urbanization of America, shelf-life was the important concern then, the way we think about nutrition now. In 1930 most people grew the majority of their own food, they also didn't have access to about 80% of the foods we do now. It was a major priority to make one's food supply last through the winter.
Also in 1930 the United States was in the throws of the Great Depression and food was scarce anyway, so what you had you needed to stretch and make last as long as possible. There were very few commercially processed foods available, and what was there was prohibitively expensive for all but a very few percent of the population. People preserved, canned, fermented, pickled, and dried their home-grown crops. They salted, cured, smoked, and potted whatever meat they could get their hands on, and they grew as much bulk crops as they could, beans, grains, potatoes, and root vegetables. Things that provided a lot of fuel for the amount of space and work required to produce them. Shelf-life was very important then because food had to last the winter, and if you didn't have enough for the winter you couldn't just go down to the corner shop and pick up what you wanted for several reasons, (a) you probably didn't have any money, and (b) there might not be anything to be had even if you did have money.
Fast forward 80-odd years to the present day. Since the Great Depression we have seen the spread of modern refrigeration and transportation methods in terms of our food supply, it is now possible to purchase reasonably priced, high quality fresh fruits and vegetables all year around to augment one's own garden, or green market finds. Since this is now the case, it is easy and indeed desirable to take the concept of shelf-life as a deciding factor and throw it completely out the window. As cooks and diners we should be dancing in the metaphoric streets because we no longer have to worry about trying to stretch highly perishable items such as fresh fruits and vegetables out over the course of a season they are not meant to last through. We have the liberty to purchase only what we are able to eat over 1 or 2 days and to shop as our European cousins do, 3-5 times per week, rather than having to make do with a once-a-month trip to town as our rural forebears had to(in most cases).
Ignore the idea of shelf-life when you buy your groceries. Real food is supposed to go bad, that's the point. A good rule of thumb when it comes to nutrition is, If it doesn't rot; you don't want to eat it. If natural exposure to heat, light, and oxygen doesn't degrade an item, what makes you think your body is going to be able to break it down? Also what makes you think that item is going to have anything worth extracting from the amount of break down your body will be able to do?
Fresh food goes bad. It's supposed to go bad, that's how you know it's food. The idea is not to buy things that don't go bad, but it is to buy less and eat it well before it does. If you want to get the most nutritional value out of what you eat, as well as the most flavor out of it, you don't want to eat it after it's a month old and been sitting in cold storage. You want to eat the same day it came out of the field and still has all it's flavor and nutrition. You don't need to preserve things, nor do you want to. The less you do to what you eat, the better that stuff is for you. In the modern world, we no longer need to preserve our food to make it last, and a lot of the preservation techniques that were used in the past work because they they remove the stuff that makes food, Food. Modern convenience food, isn't really food because it doesn't go bad. It is just a case of clever marketing and gullibility on the part of the consumer. Don't be fooled.
What we're trying to say is, buy it fresh and eat it fresh. Shop lightly and frequently. You do not need to have your refrigerator completely packed full at all times, and in fact it is desirable to keep it fairly empty, buy what you'll eat in a day or two, don't keep a bunch of stuff on hand. That way nothing goes to waste, and you save a lot of money by shopping 3-4 times a week and spending $20 each time, rather than shopping once every 2 weeks and spending $300. Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking! Long live REAL FOOD!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on What is Natural Food
Published 07-22-2013
Thoughts on Artificial Sweeteners
Artificial sweeteners are big business in this country and have been for many years. Human beings have always been drawn to sweetness, and concern for physical appearance(not gaining weight, etc), dietary restrictions, and health concerns have sent chemists and cooks alike looking for ways to get that sweet taste without consequences.
This search for what could be termed the culinary holy grail, sweetness without consequences, has lead to the American food supply being laced with a lot of different chemicals that produce what is marketed as being exactly that, though the reality of the situation may be rather different.
Some of the most common artificial sweeteners seen on the market are, Aspertame(nutrasweet), Saccharin, Xylitol, Sucralose(splenda), and Stevia. Of all of them, Xylitol and Stevia are both found in Nature, though Xylitol is only found in very small concentrations, the commercially made stuff is synthesized from corncobs and hardwoods. Aspertame is basically a type of alcohol molecule that's derived from a couple of amino acids that tastes sweet when processed in a certain way, it breaks down to formaldehyde, and a few other compounds in the body. Saccharin is synthesized out of several different acids and then treated with ammonia to produce free saccharides. Sucralose is basically sucrose molecules treated with chlorine gas.
While all the compounds themselves have been found to be safe for human consumption, our personal opinion is that they are to be avoided for 2 reasons. The first reason is, while the compounds may be “safe” for consumption, the chemical processes using to produce the compounds are very harsh chemically speaking and the chemical formulas of the items themselves(excepting stevia) are not very easy on the body to deal with, excrete, etc. Your body has a tough enough job dealing with environmental factors, etc, why make it work harder than it needs to? The second reason is, if you are wanting to control your weight and ween yourself off a craving for sugar, the last thing in the world you logically want to do is feed that craving something that gives it the sweet taste? Human bodies that are addicted to a particular substance are just going to want more of that substance, regardless of the caloric density of the item. Also, while artificial sweeteners have been deemed safe by regulatory agencies, that doesn't mean that there might not have been other forces at work besides science.
For our part, any compound that breaks down into Methanol, Formaldehyde, Benzoate derivatives, and similar toxic compounds has no place in our pantry or on our dinner table. We would encourage you to do your own research into the subject and make your own decision. If you choose to avoid artificial sweeteners while you are researching your main sources of them are going to be soft drinks, commercially made condiments(ketchups, etc), fast food, and processed baked goods. As always, do your research! Be an informed consumer! Don't take anybody's word for it! Go look for yourself!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Concept of Shelf Life
Published 07-15-2013
An Ode to Oxygen
Oxygen: without it we would cease to be. One of the most important elements on the planet we literally cannot live without it. Part of what makes oxygen so important from a chemical standpoint is it is what is known as a highly reactive element, it wants to bond with both other atoms of itself(O2 dioxide, or O3 ozone), and other types of atoms to to create other compounds, mainly oxides, but it is a main component in all types of organic and inorganic substances.
Oxygen exists in multiple forms in the human body, the first main form is it's H20 form, Water. It's second main form is it's gaseous form that is used in cellular respiration. Oxygen is also a main atomic component of assorted acids, enzymes, and other organic compounds found in the human body.
Human beings consume water to replenish our bodily fluids which are required to sustain our lives, blood, interstitial fluid, mucus, synovial fluid, cerebro-spinal fluid, stomach acid, and all the other fluids that make up our bodies are all water, and therefore Oxygen, based. In it's gaseous form Oxygen is required to move various compounds around in our blood stream. We scavenge it from the air that we breathe(which is made up mostly from Helium, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen), the alveolar sacks in the bottoms of our lungs are made up of fine membranes that allow a gas exchange to take place when we inhale and exhale which transfers spent gases of carbon dioxide/nitrogen/hydrogen/helium out of our bodies, and draws a fresh batch of nitrogen/hydrogen/helium/oxygen gases in to our blood stream which our bodies transport via hemoglobin cells and use to fuel themselves.
Proper tissue oxygenation through respiration is very important to good health. Tissues starved of oxygen die, and carrying large amounts of dead, or dying cellular matter around in our bodies makes for poor health. Not to mention the fact that oxygen molecules bind with free-floating toxins in our bodies and help to carry them out of our bodies through our various excretory systems(skin, kidneys, liver, lymphatic, etc).
Proper tissue oxygenation also comes from proper hydration, meaning consuming sufficient amounts of clean water. If your tissues are well hydrated it is much easier for your body to perform the automatic reactions that are responsible for your general health and well-being. Nerve impulses flow more smoothly, electrolytes stay in balance more easily, pH balance tends to stay more to the alkaline-neutral side of the scale which is optimal for human health, stomach acids maintain their appropriate levels and the digestive tract works more efficiently, the kidneys, liver, spleen, pancreas, all function more easily and efficiently. Toxins don't build up as easily in the body, muscles work longer and more efficiently when taxed. The brain fires more efficiently, CSF pressures stay more consistent and fuel travels more easily around in the brain tissues. All of those things, plus more, come from proper hydration and oxygenation of tissues.
The obvious question is, “How do we produce this optimal environment for our bodies to work in?”. The answer is quite simple actually, Drink Water, Exercise, and Breathe.
The average human being needs to consume between 3 and 6 liters of pure water per day to stay properly hydrated.
An hour of vigorous cardiovascular exercise per day will force your heart to pump blood swiftly around your body to fuel your muscles, your respiration rate will increase between 1.5 and 3 times above its resting rate(about 130 to 200 bpm depending on your age, weight, gender, and how good hard your pushing yourself) and you will consume 2 to 5 times as much gaseous oxygen as you do during your resting state. That oxygen will be forced into all of your tissues and saturate them thoroughly, you will also sweat out surface toxins in your body, meaning you will clear, and saturate your tissues with oxygen at the same time.
If you take 10-15 minutes per day to simply Breathe Deeply and Slowly you will inhale between 2 and 4 times as much oxygen as you do during your normal breathing patterns. Human beings do not use their entire lung capacity when they breathe during most of the time, mainly because they are tense, breathe too quickly, and their lungs do not inflate fully on each inhalation. However if you take the time to make yourself breathe fully you will force large amounts of oxygen into your body which will help to improve your resting oxygenation levels. This clears your head, allows you to focus, and gives your body more fuel to work with during it's resting/repair periods. All good things.
Oxygenation: not complex, not difficult. We have to do it anyway, or we die. Why not help your body with its natural processes, particularly when it costs nothing, takes very little effort, and will likely improve your quality of life a great deal? No reason not to. Drink water. Go walk, run, swim, bike, or take up martial arts. Breathe. That's it, all there is to it.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Artificial Sweeteners
Published 07-08-2013
Sugar Addiction
We hear lots of people say how they are “addicted” to a certain type of food, or beverage. We found this concept intriguing so we began to examine our own food choices and our reactions to them. We purposely ate certain things we do not regard as items that should be a part of our regular diet, things that we used to eat on a regular basis to see what would happen, and how we would feel. We also did a little poking around to see what we could find on the scientifically documented front, in terms of what happens to a human body when it consumes sugar, fats, and other common items used in food production and home-cooking.
In our experiments we discovered that certain foods do seem to have literally “addicting/addictive” properties. Items that when we ate them, not only did we not feel sated, but we actually felt driven to consume more and more of that item and other things until we felt physically ill. We also gained weight very quickly(2-3 lbs in a day, as much as 10 lbs in a week) We noted psychological effects of mood-swings and impairment of mental speed, slothfulness of body and mind, depression and irrational negativity of mood and attitude, a greater drive/need for sleep than usual. We also noted that when we ate some of these items while in the grip of negative feelings, depression, etc our mood was briefly lifted and the discomfort was alleviated. Though we want to stress that it was a very brief alleviation. We discovered the more water we drank while consuming these items the less the potency of their effect, and the more physical activity we engaged in the more moderate the effect as well.
We conclude from these experiments that we conducted over the last couple of months that yes, for us at least, certain foods containing wheat, grain, high-concentrations of sugar, saturated fats, some soy products, and common preservatives, all seem to have noticeable and obvious physical and psychological effects on our bodies. Effects that we don't like. Effects that are incredibly difficult to reverse. It also seems that the drive to consume the items that cause those detrimental effects is incredibly difficult to halt.
We would pose the theory that we are not the only people who have noticed these kind of symptoms, and would notice them even more if they went looking for them. We would like to offer what we are doing to solve the problem.
While addict-like and compulsive behaviors are quite common among humans and animals, however knowing that does not make halting a problem behavior any simpler, easier, or less unpleasant. We have discovered that with ourselves at least, cold turkey is the way to go to kick the sugar, wheat, processed foods habit. However, we have also discovered that we at least are not able to go that route unless we have decided quite firmly that we don't want to feel that compulsion to eat, that desire for items that we know will make us feel bad, items that we know logically will cause us to gain weight, be sluggish in mind and body, cause us to have poor reactions to stress, and poor control of our negative or primal emotions. Unless that state of mind is achieved you will always be able to rationalize to yourself by saying, “It's okay, once in awhile won't hurt me.”, and because of the addictive nature of those substances that “once in awhile” will quickly turn into “all the time”, and you'll be back wherever you started, or further back very quickly.
From our point of view, we believe that “once in a while” will hurt you. It isn't okay. It will make you drop back into old habits quicker than you can blink. These addictive reactions are very strong, and cheating even in a small way will make it very easy for you to fall off the wagon, at least in our experience. Not that you shouldn't try to get back on when you do make a mistake, because you will make mistakes here and there. We do, quite a bit more than we'd like actually. However we ask ourselves; is it really worth clawing our way back from wherever we fell to for those 2 seconds of false pleasure? We don't think so.
In conclusion, we would like to encourage you to do your own experiments. Remove various items from your diet, see what happens. Take notes. Do some research. Talk to people who have understanding of organic chemistry, human biology/physiology, the nature of addictive substances, neural-chemistry and neural-biology, and even psychologists who specialize in treating and researching addictive behaviors. All of this information is available to help you understand what happens to you and help you make informed decisions in how you govern your own body. Not that you necessarily have to tackle all these heavy topics, but if you don't want to go by our anecdotal evidence, please do your own research. However, we would definitely say that food addictions are real, and difficult to kick. But very far from impossible, if you really want to and are willing to do what is necessary to flush out your system and make the necessary adjustments to how you view food, shop, cook, and eat. Good luck!
Join us next time for: The Importance of Optimal Oxygenation
Published 07-01-2013
We hear lots of people say how they are “addicted” to a certain type of food, or beverage. We found this concept intriguing so we began to examine our own food choices and our reactions to them. We purposely ate certain things we do not regard as items that should be a part of our regular diet, things that we used to eat on a regular basis to see what would happen, and how we would feel. We also did a little poking around to see what we could find on the scientifically documented front, in terms of what happens to a human body when it consumes sugar, fats, and other common items used in food production and home-cooking.
In our experiments we discovered that certain foods do seem to have literally “addicting/addictive” properties. Items that when we ate them, not only did we not feel sated, but we actually felt driven to consume more and more of that item and other things until we felt physically ill. We also gained weight very quickly(2-3 lbs in a day, as much as 10 lbs in a week) We noted psychological effects of mood-swings and impairment of mental speed, slothfulness of body and mind, depression and irrational negativity of mood and attitude, a greater drive/need for sleep than usual. We also noted that when we ate some of these items while in the grip of negative feelings, depression, etc our mood was briefly lifted and the discomfort was alleviated. Though we want to stress that it was a very brief alleviation. We discovered the more water we drank while consuming these items the less the potency of their effect, and the more physical activity we engaged in the more moderate the effect as well.
We conclude from these experiments that we conducted over the last couple of months that yes, for us at least, certain foods containing wheat, grain, high-concentrations of sugar, saturated fats, some soy products, and common preservatives, all seem to have noticeable and obvious physical and psychological effects on our bodies. Effects that we don't like. Effects that are incredibly difficult to reverse. It also seems that the drive to consume the items that cause those detrimental effects is incredibly difficult to halt.
We would pose the theory that we are not the only people who have noticed these kind of symptoms, and would notice them even more if they went looking for them. We would like to offer what we are doing to solve the problem.
While addict-like and compulsive behaviors are quite common among humans and animals, however knowing that does not make halting a problem behavior any simpler, easier, or less unpleasant. We have discovered that with ourselves at least, cold turkey is the way to go to kick the sugar, wheat, processed foods habit. However, we have also discovered that we at least are not able to go that route unless we have decided quite firmly that we don't want to feel that compulsion to eat, that desire for items that we know will make us feel bad, items that we know logically will cause us to gain weight, be sluggish in mind and body, cause us to have poor reactions to stress, and poor control of our negative or primal emotions. Unless that state of mind is achieved you will always be able to rationalize to yourself by saying, “It's okay, once in awhile won't hurt me.”, and because of the addictive nature of those substances that “once in awhile” will quickly turn into “all the time”, and you'll be back wherever you started, or further back very quickly.
From our point of view, we believe that “once in a while” will hurt you. It isn't okay. It will make you drop back into old habits quicker than you can blink. These addictive reactions are very strong, and cheating even in a small way will make it very easy for you to fall off the wagon, at least in our experience. Not that you shouldn't try to get back on when you do make a mistake, because you will make mistakes here and there. We do, quite a bit more than we'd like actually. However we ask ourselves; is it really worth clawing our way back from wherever we fell to for those 2 seconds of false pleasure? We don't think so.
In conclusion, we would like to encourage you to do your own experiments. Remove various items from your diet, see what happens. Take notes. Do some research. Talk to people who have understanding of organic chemistry, human biology/physiology, the nature of addictive substances, neural-chemistry and neural-biology, and even psychologists who specialize in treating and researching addictive behaviors. All of this information is available to help you understand what happens to you and help you make informed decisions in how you govern your own body. Not that you necessarily have to tackle all these heavy topics, but if you don't want to go by our anecdotal evidence, please do your own research. However, we would definitely say that food addictions are real, and difficult to kick. But very far from impossible, if you really want to and are willing to do what is necessary to flush out your system and make the necessary adjustments to how you view food, shop, cook, and eat. Good luck!
Join us next time for: The Importance of Optimal Oxygenation
Published 07-01-2013
The Elements of Great Food
It's one of those weird subjective concepts, the difference between “good” and “great”. However, there are some things that hold true across the spectrum of what needs to be done to turn merely “good” food, into Awesome Spectacular “Great” food.
The first and most important Element of Great Food is of course, Great Ingredients. Fresh ingredients, things that contain as much of their volatiles and nutritional value as possible, and are at the peak of their appearance(color, texture, etc).
The next element that makes Great Food great is, Great Technique. Not “complicated” or “difficult” technique, just “great” technique. This can mean something as simple as knowing when your items are ripe and how to cut them up to showcase their flavors in whatever dish that you want to make. That is the essence of great technique, knowing how to use the techniques you do know skillfully in the appropriate context; that's great technique. Nothing complicated, nothing arcane, or bizarre; just a few properly executed techniques in the right context. That's what makes technique great.
Appearance also plays a part in Great food. Bright colors, a nice mixture of colors, textures, and contrasting elements attractively presented on the best canvas(serving dish) that you have, all of that is part of what makes Great Food. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, the eye appreciates simple, clean and minimalist as much as the fussiest, fiddliest presentation. All you really need for great looking dishes are consistent and accurate knife skills, used on ingredients that are at their peak ripeness, on a plain white plate. That is enough, sure you can do more, but you definitely don't Have to to make a dish “great”.
Aroma is one of the most important parts of Great Food, and one of the least acknowledged. A great dish has a distinctive, pleasant and appropriately powerful aroma. This should be true regardless of whether or not it is a hot, or cold dish, or whether or not it is savory, sweet, etc. The aroma of the dish is a huge part of how its flavor will be perceived as well as hugely indicative of how high quality the ingredients were, and how skilled the cook was who prepared the dish. The better it smells, the better the ingredients, and the more skilled the cook, most of the time.
Finally, Balance is the remaining element of Great Food. A Great dish is balanced in all its flavors, elements, and aromas. Nothing overwhelms anything else, everything puts it's best foot forward and works together to create the best final result possible. The cook has blended the flavors seamlessly, the final dish is neither too salty, sweet, sour, or bitter. It has a good play and textural balance of crisp, crunchy, soft, smooth,pebbled/rough, etc. It has enough colors(monochrome can work, but it's tough to pull off without a good deal of thought/planning) to invite the eye, and the aroma is enticing. Every element works together to highlight every other element of the dish.
Those are the elements of great food, in our opinion. If you feel like your food is good, but lacking something, consider the five areas we outlined and see if you can pinpoint what isn't quite working for you. May all your food be Great. Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Sugar Addiction
Published 06-24-2013
It's one of those weird subjective concepts, the difference between “good” and “great”. However, there are some things that hold true across the spectrum of what needs to be done to turn merely “good” food, into Awesome Spectacular “Great” food.
The first and most important Element of Great Food is of course, Great Ingredients. Fresh ingredients, things that contain as much of their volatiles and nutritional value as possible, and are at the peak of their appearance(color, texture, etc).
The next element that makes Great Food great is, Great Technique. Not “complicated” or “difficult” technique, just “great” technique. This can mean something as simple as knowing when your items are ripe and how to cut them up to showcase their flavors in whatever dish that you want to make. That is the essence of great technique, knowing how to use the techniques you do know skillfully in the appropriate context; that's great technique. Nothing complicated, nothing arcane, or bizarre; just a few properly executed techniques in the right context. That's what makes technique great.
Appearance also plays a part in Great food. Bright colors, a nice mixture of colors, textures, and contrasting elements attractively presented on the best canvas(serving dish) that you have, all of that is part of what makes Great Food. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, the eye appreciates simple, clean and minimalist as much as the fussiest, fiddliest presentation. All you really need for great looking dishes are consistent and accurate knife skills, used on ingredients that are at their peak ripeness, on a plain white plate. That is enough, sure you can do more, but you definitely don't Have to to make a dish “great”.
Aroma is one of the most important parts of Great Food, and one of the least acknowledged. A great dish has a distinctive, pleasant and appropriately powerful aroma. This should be true regardless of whether or not it is a hot, or cold dish, or whether or not it is savory, sweet, etc. The aroma of the dish is a huge part of how its flavor will be perceived as well as hugely indicative of how high quality the ingredients were, and how skilled the cook was who prepared the dish. The better it smells, the better the ingredients, and the more skilled the cook, most of the time.
Finally, Balance is the remaining element of Great Food. A Great dish is balanced in all its flavors, elements, and aromas. Nothing overwhelms anything else, everything puts it's best foot forward and works together to create the best final result possible. The cook has blended the flavors seamlessly, the final dish is neither too salty, sweet, sour, or bitter. It has a good play and textural balance of crisp, crunchy, soft, smooth,pebbled/rough, etc. It has enough colors(monochrome can work, but it's tough to pull off without a good deal of thought/planning) to invite the eye, and the aroma is enticing. Every element works together to highlight every other element of the dish.
Those are the elements of great food, in our opinion. If you feel like your food is good, but lacking something, consider the five areas we outlined and see if you can pinpoint what isn't quite working for you. May all your food be Great. Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Sugar Addiction
Published 06-24-2013
The Importance of Research
The word the college students hate to hear, Research. When it comes to making changes in one's life, dietary habits, general health, etc there isn't much that is more important than finding out the real deal. Granted, you don't need to have a degree in organic chemistry, molecular biology, or particle physics to eat well, feel better, or get one's weight under control. However, a solid understanding of the basic inter-workings of the human physiology is a very handy thing, a basic understanding of organic chemistry and the composition of food, are also good places to start.
It is important to know however, that not all information/research is created equal. There is a lot of rubbish, nonsense, and half-truths floating around out there. Not, perhaps that the distributors of such information are deliberately trying to deceive people, but an incomplete understanding, lack of detailed knowledge, or a unskilled approach to communication of information can lead to problems. We would like to share our process for researching a new topic, or fleshing out our understanding of an area we feel we are lacking. We hope that you will find the information useful in your own education process.
When you're first starting to research a given topic, it is generally best to first find out what kind of vocabulary is used in that particular subject. The idea being, if you don't understand the terminology it is difficult to know what sort of questions to ask, how to ask them, or to understand the answers that you might find/be given. Also, if you are fortunate enough to learn from an expert in the subject, it makes it much easier for them to teach you if you understand how to talk the talk a little bit(and they know you're serious about learning since you took the time to "learn their language" so to speak).
Secondly, when it comes to modern scientific information you want to look for peer accredited, double-blind studies, particularly ones that have been funded by independent interests, charitable organizations, etc. Statistically the “magic” number for truth in studies is 7. If you can find 7 double-blind studies that all state the same information, it's almost certainly true as far as the subject has been studied. When it comes to the human body there is always more to learn, and the medical and scientific community has only recently begun to study the mechanisms and properties of a lot of the different organs, blood chemistry, and other more delicate areas of the body itself.
Sometimes, a lot of the time in fact, you will not be able to find 7 peer accredited, double-blind studies, this does not mean that anything that doesn't fall into that category isn't correct, close, or heading the right general direction. However, you need to be aware that the further away from that statistical standard you travel the larger the grain of salt you are going to want to take the information with. Also, consider any information carefully. Ask yourself firstly, if the question being asked is a logical question to ask in the first place? Then ask yourself, if the question is logical, is the answer logical? If the answer to either of those questions is “No” then you are probably dealing with highly suspect information. Not that there might not be a grain of truth in there somewhere, but it's probably going to be quite a small one.
Also, while the internet is a wonderful tool for finding things out, there is also a lot to be said for the old-fashioned methods of reading books, going to your local library, and talking to experts. In many cases, a lot of the basic information is going to be quite old and in the public domain which means it is very easy to find out at your local public, or university library. The basic principles of chemistry, the scientific method, anatomy and physiology have all been worked out for the last 100-500 years, so there's really nothing new in that area. Generally speaking, cutting edge information isn't that useful to a beginning researcher anyway because it's usually written up in such a way that the only people that can understand it are people who have a high level of understanding of the subject in question. For example, if you don't understand what arteries are, a paper on the dangers of arterial plaque isn't going to make that much sense to you. No matter what you're learning about, begin at the beginning. Take no short-cuts.
We believe in thorough research before we begin a new change, or test a new theory of our own. We advise you to do the same, consult with experts, learn as much as you can. Not only is it good for your brain to learn new things, but it may end up being very good for your body as well.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on what makes good food into "great" food.
Published 06-17-2013
Making Changes That Stick
There is very little that is more difficult to do than make a long-lasting life-style change because you know you need to, or just because you want to. There are a great many factors that stack themselves against you, including your own mind sometimes. Today we would like to talk a little bit about making changes, our process for deciding what we want to change, the results we want to get, and finally making the change(s) themselves.
Firstly, we would like to say that we are definitely not trying to tell you what you should, or should not be doing with your own dietary/exercise habits, etc. It is your life, your health, and your prerogative to do as you wish and run your affairs as you feel is appropriate. However, we know that there are great many people out there who want to make changes, feel better, live longer, and enjoy greater levels of health and fitness. We've spent a lot of time experimenting on ourselves, trying different things, and working on our own health and fitness and we have a desire to share what works for us, in the hopes that you might be inspired, or helped through your own changes.
The first thing we discovered is that the old adage about leading a horse to water, is absolutely true when it comes to making life-style changes. A person can know something is beneficial to them, cheaper, easier, and generally better for their life, and they still won't do it if they aren't good and ready to do so. Irrational stubbornness is trait of the human species and not one of our better ones, so our advice would be if you're going to make a change, you better make sure that you are READY to make that change and all that it entails without giving yourself a loop-hole or cop-out. If you are forever making excuses for your lack of discipline, or saying how it's okay for you to just eat those potato chips, or that ice cream sundae, you'll never get anywhere.
The second thing we discovered is, it is impossible to make progress towards a goal if you don't know what the goal is. A lot of people say to us, “I want to get healthier.” or “I want to get in shape”. Those are vague concepts, not definite goals. “Healthier” and “Fitter” is relative and highly subjective, for you “healthier” might mean you want to drop 50 lbs and have your cholesterol go down 100 points, or it might mean you want to gain 30 lbs of muscle and be able to bench-press a small refrigerator, or maybe it just means you want to get out of bed and not have every part of your body hurt. We don't know, and we can't know, what your goal is. Only YOU can decide what goal you want to work towards.
The next area where people have a lot of problems when they decide to make changes is they pick things that aren't sustainable. They choose a diet plan that they only eat 4 things on; then a week into it they get bored and go to a drive-in, feel guilty about it, and drown that guilt in more bad nutrition, etc. They also do things like try to adopt a massively complex and strenuous exercise regimen when they've never exercised a day in their life, get injured and then can't exercise at all for X amount of time, and everything just takes a dive from there.
In some areas, yes, you have to just dive right in. Go cold-turkey, and tough it out. Exercise is not one of those areas. Hugh Jackman didn't get ripped in 2 weeks, even with the advantages of great genes, optimum nutrition, a very good personal trainer, and a half-way decent starting place, you're still not going to look like Wolverine after 2 weeks. If you're starting from a less than ideal base physique, a variety of physical limitations, etc it's going to take you quite a while to go from 0 to 60. We're not saying you can't do it; actually very far from that, but we want you to be aware it is going to take a lot of consistent, hard work to get in good shape. There is no short cut, no quick fix, if you're over-weight and out of shape, it's going to take a while, and no one can do it for you. However the good news is, once you get where you want to be, no one can take it away from you either.
While exercise isn't an area that you want to try to do more than you are safely physically capable of, there is an area where going hard-core right away is actually the way to go, that area is Poor Nutritional Choices.
Get rid of Junk Food, don't have it in your house, don't go near it.
Stop Eating Out. Period. If there is something in your cupboard that doesn't fit with the changes you're making, Get It Gone.
Don't tempt yourself, it takes 30 days or so to break a craving cycle, any time you “cheat” you start that cycle over again, that is tiresome, annoying and disheartening. Your body isn't in charge, your brain is. Why set yourself up to make the task of breaking cravings any harder than it already is? Eat as much raw green vegetables, as you reasonably can(2-3 lbs per day for the average adult), as well as drinking as much water as you reasonably can(3/4 to 1 ½ gallons per day for the average adult) for that 30 day period. The nutrients and fiber in the greens help to clean and flush your system out, and the water makes it easier for your excretory systems to do their jobs efficiently without making you tired, or excessively uncomfortable.
We don't want to talk at you all day, so to sum up our thoughts on making successful changes.
- Be Ready To Hold Yourself To Your Goal: If you're not ready and willing to adhere to a standard of behavior(not eating processed food, taking a 2 mile walk every day, eating green vegetables at every meal) without exception or excuses, you are not going to be able to maintain your changes for very long, and any progress you do make will be slow, sporadic, and unpredictable. Don't rationalize or justify behavior that is at odds with the goal you say you want to reach, if you do that, you don't want to reach your goal that bad. That's where the next step comes in.
- Decide What Goal You Are Working Towards: (losing 20 lbs, gaining physical strength, etc What the goal is doesn't really matter, as long as it's something that is possible, and practical in it's essentials.) Be sure you pick a goal that you feel like you can hold yourself to, or you'll never get anywhere.
- Remove Yourself From Temptation: If you're going to avoid certain edibles, or stop drinking alcohol, don't go to restaurants and don't go to bars. That's perhaps a bit over-simplified, but you get the idea. Every time you place yourself in a situation where your primitive brain can take over without you having time to assert your rational mind, is a place where you are setting yourself up to cheat, or fail. Honestly, you probably are going to fail at some point, somewhere, however that doesn't mean you're a bad person, or that you can't reach your goal. What it does mean is, since you're going to have failures, and you know it, take steps to minimize the size and frequency of those failures. Small failures are easier to recover from, and once recovered from are actually confidence boosters because you asserted yourself, you made your body do what you wanted it to, not let your body/primitive urges run roughshod over what you know is the proper course.
- Exercise With Common Sense: You know what you can do, and what you can't do(yet). Don't let trainers push you beyond what is physically possible. Yes, it is their job to push you somewhat, but it is not their job to take you past what you can safely do, or to make you feel bad for not doing one exercise or another. Good work-outs make you sore, but they don't injure you. Also, don't set yourself fitness goals you can't meet within the time-frame you set yourself. If you can't do 1 push-up setting the goal of doing 100 push-ups in 6 weeks is probably not a very rational goal. Find your base, and set your increases accordingly. It's okay to go slow. Don't get hurt. It's not a race, and you'll be just as fit going slow and working up to where you want to be, rather than trying to rush, getting injured and not being able to work-out period for however long. Slow and steady really does win the race.
We hope that you found something that inspires and/or makes sense to you in our words today. We didn't mean to go on for so long, and granted none of what we've talked about today is really anything new. However, we've gained some new perspectives lately, and also tried to put the information down in the most sensible, rational way we know how. We wish all of our readers the absolute best of luck with any changes they might choose to make, and if there is any way we can help you with setting your goals, and reaching them; please don't hesitate to send us an e-mail. Thank you for dropping by the site and have a wonderful rest of your day!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on The Importance of Research
Published 06-10-2013
Kitchen Logistics
Question and Answers from Chef Jillian
When our chef teaches classes some of the more common questions she gets asked are about how to plan healthful menus, making sure that whatever gets planned fits the amount of labor, skill, time, and monetary resources available for an individual's household, as well as questions pertaining to seasonal menus, shopping, etc.
This week she would like to share some of her responses to these questions with you, and give you some ideas to streamline your menu planning approach. Remember, there are many roads to Oz, these are things that work for her and us, and things we have found to be practical for quite a few other people, but if something doesn't fit into your schedule, tastes, budget, etc, change it. Not everything works for every household, adjustment and alteration is sometimes necessary to make things run smoothly and we would encourage you to do that as you feel is appropriate. Happy Cooking!
- Q: How do you keep from making the same old things all the time?
A: If you always end up making the save 5 or 10 dishes when you plan your menus, what that generally means is you need to broaden the repertoire of dishes that you feel comfortable making, and have make them enough times to be efficient while you're working. The best way to that is generally to designate one night a week, typically the night you have the most time available, to cook a new dish. Then you are going to want to pick up a different cookbook from the library and photo-copy a couple of recipes out of it that you want to try. Alternatively, you could purchase a cookbook you like the look of from your local bookshop and cook your way through that book. If you are interested in a specific type of ethnic cuisine that is generally a very good way to acquaint yourself with the techniques and flavors of a specific style. If you're not a cookbook cook, and prefer to just make things up as you go along, that is fine. The reason you're making the same thing all the time, is you're buying the same ingredients all the time. Buy 2-3 new produce items a week, pick up a new herb/spice, or seasoning and try using that on your designated "Experiment" night. If you do those things, you'll be cooking a wide variety of dishes in no time. If you're really interested in having a wide range of dishes in your culinary arsenal you are also going to want to read cookbooks in your spare time, all kinds of cookbooks. Read books about ingredients, techniques, food culture, etc. Read everything, look a pictures, make some notes of things you want to learn about, try, and experiment with. You'll be making everything under the sun in no time.
- Q: We have a lot of wastage in our kitchen, how do you avoid having things go bad?
A: This generally means one of two things, you're shopping too infrequently and half of what you bought is spoiling before you get it cooked/eaten. Or you're shopping frequently enough and over-buying when you do. There is a bit of over-lap between the two problems, but both are easily solved. If you shop once a week or less, you will want to increase how often you shop to 2-4 times per week, and set yourself a strict limit of $15 to $50 per trip depending upon your dietary habits, and the number of people you are feeding. The answer to kitchen wastage is not to buy things that don't go bad, the answer is to shop more frequently, and buy smaller quantities. Also, when you go to the grocery store, pick up a carry shopping basket rather than a large grocery cart. If you are carrying your purchases around with you, it will make you more aware of how much you are buying, as well as give you a bit of exercise during the process.
- Q: My kids/spouse/room-mates are picky, how do I give them things that are good for them but that they'll eat?
A: This issue is usually caused by two main issues. Firstly, it could be caused by poor cooking technique rendering certain healthful(and delicious when cooked properly) items less than pleasant to consume. The second issue is usually a rigidity of mind among the people that are eating your cooking. If they are reluctant to try new things, then you may have to come at the issue with a bit of cunning. Casseroles are a good place to start, purees, braises, and ethnic dishes are excellent follow ups. In the case of small children, they will follow your lead, particularly if you don't give them any other options. When they are hungry they will eat what you eat, particularly if they see you, and any other adults they are around a lot, enjoying their food. Older children and teenagers are generally amenable to trying things if couched as a sort of science experiment "Let's eat all vegetables for a week and see what happens to us", sort of thing. Teenagers who are interested in chemistry, environmental issues, and human physiology can generally be prevailed upon with rational arguments for eating certain things, and not eating other things, if they understand why. Adults can actually be the most difficult to convince to try things, but if your cooking technique is good and things are nicely cooked, seasoned properly, and look appetizing they will generally go for it, the first few times from a sense of politeness and then stick with it because the stuff is delicious. Remember, the better your food looks and smells; the easier it is to get people to dig in.
- Q: I'm on a tight grocery budget, how do I stay within my budget but still eat healthfully?
A: The short answer is; "go vegan". However, that isn't very useful on the particulars. Vegetables are cheap, particularly during green market season. Do the majority of your shopping in the produce department and at your local farmer's market. Buy what's in season, whatever the market is flooded with, and whatever is on sale.(Pick through the on sale stuff carefully, particularly in the winter, a lot of time there is a very good reason why the stuff is on sale.) Get additional protein and calories as needed by purchasing organic and non-GMO legumes, grains, and soy products. Those are all cheap and delicious sources of high quality calories. If fat is needed, avocados, organic nut and seed products are the way to go, as are farm fresh eggs if you choose to consume those as well. If you want to save money in the grocery store the least processed foods you can buy, the better off you are. The less animal products you purchase the lower your grocery bills will be. On average, even cheap animal products are 2-3 times as expensive as their plant-derived counterparts. If you purchase high quality organic animal products we're looking a 5 to 10 times more expensive than produce. That's a lot of cash, for actually very minimal nutritional benefits, as well as high caloric loads. Bad for the bank account and bad for the waistline as well.
- Q: I/my kids/spouse/room-mates have food allergies/sensitivities/restrictions, how do I keep to reasonable budget/cooking time while avoiding problem foods?
A: Depending upon what types of dietary restrictions are necessary, sometimes it can be cheaper than "conventional" diets. If dairy/wheat/gluten/soy products are the issue, that's fine. Don't buy processed foods, that nixes about 90% of your problem foods right there, specialty processed foods are expensive, not saying they aren't better for you than their conventional counterparts, but they aren't as good as raw, whole, fresh, unprocessed foods, and since those foods are generally 3 to 10 times cheaper than specialty processed items, it's pretty much a no-brainer which direction you'll probably want to go in. Gluten-free flours and so on are generally rather costly, however they are essentially pure starch with some gums/binders added, so it is a good idea to limit your consumption of items made with it anyway.
- Q: I want to cook seasonally but I don't know how/where to start?
A: The best place to start learning about seasonal foods is at your local garden center, extension office, or with a copy of Fine Vegetable Gardening, Organic Gardening magazines, or Old Farmer's Almanac. Those resources can tell you what grows in your area and roughly what time it will be ready. Go to your local green market, talk to farmers and gardeners. They can tell you a lot about the true nature of seasonal food, which is honestly quite a vast subject. The next resource you will want to check out is, your local library for some light reading. Start with searching for some seasonal cookery books, failing that, find books on regional French, Spanish, and Italian cooking. Europeans have a great love for local and seasonal food, reading about the way they eat, will give you a rough idea of how the concept works.
- Q: Do I really need to spend the money for organic ingredients?
A: The short answer is: Sometimes. Organic commercial produce has better flavor and more nutrition than conventional produce in most cases, particularly when the item in question is something that is grown in a highly chemical environment(pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc), however in the case of locally grown seasonal produce, like what you'd find in your local green market, a talk with the grower will generally tell you how close to organic the grower actually is, and if the product is extremely fresh, the quality may be high enough that the fact it isn't certified organic isn't an issue. Weigh quality/freshness/lag-time between picking and purchasing in your purchase equation. Ideally, everything would be organic and we wouldn't have to make that call, however we are not to that point yet. We would definitely advise going with as much organic produce as you possibly can afford and have access to. We would also recommend growing your own as much as you possibly can. If you eat animal products, you will definitely want to buy organic in that case; even if it means reducing your consumption to once or twice a month. Conventional practices for raising meat, poultry, and dairy products are genuinely appalling in many cases, not to mention unsanitary. The products are of very low quality nutritionally, and they also pale in comparison to their organic counterparts. In the case of animal products, you definitely get what you pay for.
- Q: I don't have a lot of cooking time, but I still want to eat well and feed my household well. How do I do that?
A: If you choose to implement a plant-based diet you will find your cooking time goes down considerably because vegetables/fruits all cook a good deal more quickly than animal products. Pre-planning will help you keep your cooking time down to a minimum. Set legumes to soak the night before cooking, re-hydrated items cook much more quickly. Choose dishes that don't require lots of chopping time on days/evenings when you're busiest. Keep your pantry stocked with the basic staples of canned beans, canned tomatoes, vinegars, olive oil, herbs/spices, white cooking wine(cheap, moderate acid, no oak), onions, garlic, ginger, and soy sauce(if you like Asian food). These items will allow you to create 15 minute suppers, and fast lunches. Salads can be created quickly and made beautiful with no extra time. Get the kids, or any other people you live with to give you a hand with prep. Roast vegetables, braise beans, and grains in the evening when you're home doing other things. The pots can go into the oven and you don't have to do anything to them, just let them cook and take them out when they're done. Make salad dressings, sauces, and condiments in half pints, and pints and keep them in your refrigerator. Pestos, wine, and red sauces can all be made when you have time and frozen until needed. Make a pot of vegetable stock when you have time and freeze it so you have it when you want it. Remember, eating well is the foundation of having lots of energy and staying in good health. If you don't take the time to cook well, then that time you saved by opening a box instead of cooking, is likely going to be spent in the doctor's office, going to the pharmacy, or feeling too lethargic to do anything with the time you have.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Making Dietary Changes
Published 06-03-2013
A Short History of Spices
Spices! Just the word conjures many visions, ideas, and olfactory memories in our minds. We would like to share a little bit of the history behind some of the most common items in our kitchens today in the hope that it will give you a new appreciation for them. Grab your passports and away we go!
Historically, spices have had value beyond gold. At one time black peppercorns were worth more than 8 times their weight in gold. In the times of Ancient Rome; soldiers were paid in Salt, as were sailors for the East India Company, and some soldiers in the Civil War. Spices have been used in the Far and Middle Eastern lands for many thousands of years, things like Nutmeg, Mace, Cloves, Cinnamon, Ginger, Black Peppercorns, a few varieties of Capsicum(chile peppers), Fennel Seed, Fenugreek, Lemongrass, and a few other odds and ends have been used in China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Korea for a very, very long time. Though we think of those items as quite commonplace now, that was very far from the case as few as 70 or 100 years ago.
Spices were virtually unknown in the cooking of European commoners until the late Renaissance and early Colonial times as risky trade routes made them extraordinarily expensive to purchase with none but lords and kings able afford them. Common folk seasoned their food with salt, garlic, onions, and local herbs/plants. We can still see that economic influence in the peasant and every day cuisines of Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany where spices are used only in holiday dishes, and festival foods for the most part, as well as some specialty recipes that were made once a year, sausages, cakes, breads, and sauces for example.
Though you may find it difficult to believe a trip to India from a European trade city could take as long as 5-8 years in the 1400's, if you made it back at all, though 2 to 3 was more average.
If you went by sea first thing you would have to do is get ahold of a ship large enough to sail down the coast from a large European port city such as Lisbon, or Florence. You would have to provision and crew the ship, then wait on the weather to be favorable, you would then sail from wherever you were down the coast of Europe keeping within sight of land to avoid getting lost(Navigation on the open ocean was not that great a bet until the late 1500's early 1600's with the invention of the sextant and the advent of the mathematics necessary to use it.) Then if you didn't get shipwrecked, attacked by pirates, have your ship get the crap beat out of it by a storm, get blown off course, have your crew get sick and die from any number of diseases/malnutrition, or mutiny on you, you would land in either Jerusalem, Baghdad, Constantinople, Tripoli, or Lebanon. From there you had two options, if you were totally crazy, you would re-provision your ship and take a stab at sailing down the coast of Africa, rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of South Africa and then sailing up through the West Indies. No one really did that successfully until Vasco de Gama in the late-1400's, though people did try.
What most people did who were only marginally crazy, was to land somewhere in the middle-east and either join, or set themselves up with, a caravan heading east on the Silk Road through Asia Minor, Pakistan, Bhurma, and either South into Northern India, or further east on the Northern route to Western China. Traders would travel on foot, by camel, or sometimes on horse-back, with wagons pulled by camels, horses, mules, or oxen along the trade route through the desert paying tolls here and there at various waterholes and oasis, fighting off brigands and bandits, trying to avoid killing sandstorms that would strip the flesh from man and beast at worst, or at best leave you lost and disoriented in the desert to wander until you either stumbled back onto the road by sheer luck, or died from dehydration/starvation in the desert.
If you were very tough, very smart, very lucky, and had plenty of money and trade goods to get you along the route; you would find yourself in India or at a Western China trade city. When you were there, you would trade and buy what you came for, spices, tea, silk, pottery, metal-work, glass, rare fruits, nuts, incense, rare woods, perfumes. All of those things and more could be found in abundance as well as just about every other exotic trade good you could think of could be found for sale in those markets. Merchants would load their caravans up with all these exotic goods, re-provision their parties, and rest their men and beasts such as they could, then they'd set off back from whence they came braving everything they had the first time, only this time it was worse because instead of lightening their loads as they had on the way there, they were fully loaded, moving slowly, and ripe for targeting by bandits and hostiles. If they were once again very lucky they would make it to Baghdad, or another similar trade city and sell some of their goods there to lighten their loads a bit. That would provide enough money to pay off whoever needed to be paid, as well as get a ship to get back to Europe.
Then they would get a ship, load up their cargo and head back to continental Europe, or perhaps they might continue with their caravan around the Mediterranean Sea through Turkey and into Europe overland from the East trading and selling as they went. The further they got from the middle-east the more they could, and did, charge for their wares in the markets of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Austrio-Hungary, Flanders, German, and British trade cities. If a man had money and guts enough, he could make his fortune in one or two trips to the Orient, though the risks were very high. However people did do it, and even got rich at it. All that for a pound of peppercorns, or a few roots of ginger.
Next time you're in the grocery store and you go to buy spices, remember, it didn't used to be as easy as picking up a bottle of this, or a packet of that. A pound of peppercorns used to be bought with literal blood, sweat, and tears. Nutmegs and cloves were more precious than some jewels or gold. The average person might never see a fresh orange in their entire life.
Think of the heat, the dust, the sand on the road across Pakistan. Think of the hunger, thirst, and fear that people felt as they drove their wagons through the shifting sands of the desert. Think of the danger of sailing down the coast of Africa in wooden ship, with no navigational equipment to speak of, being careful to keep in sight of land otherwise you'd be lost at sea, hearing the stories of "Here There Be Monsters" from the crewmen, drinking brackish briny water and bad beer, eating nothing but hard-tack and whatever fish could be caught off the side of the ship. Seeing your crew or caravan-mates sicken and die of scurvy, dysentery, and cholera, see them driven mad from heat, exposure, and dietary deficiencies. Being attacked by pirates, brigands, and bandits.
It wasn't all bad though. Think of the wonders of the bazaars of Baghdad, Algiers, Constantinople, Tripoli, Lebanon, Alexandria, Thebes, and the Holy City of Jerusalem. Spice markets that could be smelled from miles away, the call to prayer from the Mosques, the wonders of silk, colors and dyes not found anywhere else in the world. Foods you've never seen or eaten before. Smells you've never smelled before. Buildings that are completely different from what you're used to. Being surrounded by people who don't speak a language like anything you've ever heard. People of all colors from the blackest black of the Ethiopian tribes to the whitest white of Nordic traders and sailors gone a-viking. This is where spices used to come from. So next time you add cinnamon to your oatmeal, or cardamom pods to your curry, inhale the sweet fragrance of spice and let yourself be transported to a land of sand, and a time of dust, sweat, tears and blood, all for just a few pods of cardamom, or a bag of cassia bark.
Join us next week for: Tips and Tricks for Menu Planning
Published 05-27-2013
Spices! Just the word conjures many visions, ideas, and olfactory memories in our minds. We would like to share a little bit of the history behind some of the most common items in our kitchens today in the hope that it will give you a new appreciation for them. Grab your passports and away we go!
Historically, spices have had value beyond gold. At one time black peppercorns were worth more than 8 times their weight in gold. In the times of Ancient Rome; soldiers were paid in Salt, as were sailors for the East India Company, and some soldiers in the Civil War. Spices have been used in the Far and Middle Eastern lands for many thousands of years, things like Nutmeg, Mace, Cloves, Cinnamon, Ginger, Black Peppercorns, a few varieties of Capsicum(chile peppers), Fennel Seed, Fenugreek, Lemongrass, and a few other odds and ends have been used in China, India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Korea for a very, very long time. Though we think of those items as quite commonplace now, that was very far from the case as few as 70 or 100 years ago.
Spices were virtually unknown in the cooking of European commoners until the late Renaissance and early Colonial times as risky trade routes made them extraordinarily expensive to purchase with none but lords and kings able afford them. Common folk seasoned their food with salt, garlic, onions, and local herbs/plants. We can still see that economic influence in the peasant and every day cuisines of Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany where spices are used only in holiday dishes, and festival foods for the most part, as well as some specialty recipes that were made once a year, sausages, cakes, breads, and sauces for example.
Though you may find it difficult to believe a trip to India from a European trade city could take as long as 5-8 years in the 1400's, if you made it back at all, though 2 to 3 was more average.
If you went by sea first thing you would have to do is get ahold of a ship large enough to sail down the coast from a large European port city such as Lisbon, or Florence. You would have to provision and crew the ship, then wait on the weather to be favorable, you would then sail from wherever you were down the coast of Europe keeping within sight of land to avoid getting lost(Navigation on the open ocean was not that great a bet until the late 1500's early 1600's with the invention of the sextant and the advent of the mathematics necessary to use it.) Then if you didn't get shipwrecked, attacked by pirates, have your ship get the crap beat out of it by a storm, get blown off course, have your crew get sick and die from any number of diseases/malnutrition, or mutiny on you, you would land in either Jerusalem, Baghdad, Constantinople, Tripoli, or Lebanon. From there you had two options, if you were totally crazy, you would re-provision your ship and take a stab at sailing down the coast of Africa, rounding the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of South Africa and then sailing up through the West Indies. No one really did that successfully until Vasco de Gama in the late-1400's, though people did try.
What most people did who were only marginally crazy, was to land somewhere in the middle-east and either join, or set themselves up with, a caravan heading east on the Silk Road through Asia Minor, Pakistan, Bhurma, and either South into Northern India, or further east on the Northern route to Western China. Traders would travel on foot, by camel, or sometimes on horse-back, with wagons pulled by camels, horses, mules, or oxen along the trade route through the desert paying tolls here and there at various waterholes and oasis, fighting off brigands and bandits, trying to avoid killing sandstorms that would strip the flesh from man and beast at worst, or at best leave you lost and disoriented in the desert to wander until you either stumbled back onto the road by sheer luck, or died from dehydration/starvation in the desert.
If you were very tough, very smart, very lucky, and had plenty of money and trade goods to get you along the route; you would find yourself in India or at a Western China trade city. When you were there, you would trade and buy what you came for, spices, tea, silk, pottery, metal-work, glass, rare fruits, nuts, incense, rare woods, perfumes. All of those things and more could be found in abundance as well as just about every other exotic trade good you could think of could be found for sale in those markets. Merchants would load their caravans up with all these exotic goods, re-provision their parties, and rest their men and beasts such as they could, then they'd set off back from whence they came braving everything they had the first time, only this time it was worse because instead of lightening their loads as they had on the way there, they were fully loaded, moving slowly, and ripe for targeting by bandits and hostiles. If they were once again very lucky they would make it to Baghdad, or another similar trade city and sell some of their goods there to lighten their loads a bit. That would provide enough money to pay off whoever needed to be paid, as well as get a ship to get back to Europe.
Then they would get a ship, load up their cargo and head back to continental Europe, or perhaps they might continue with their caravan around the Mediterranean Sea through Turkey and into Europe overland from the East trading and selling as they went. The further they got from the middle-east the more they could, and did, charge for their wares in the markets of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Austrio-Hungary, Flanders, German, and British trade cities. If a man had money and guts enough, he could make his fortune in one or two trips to the Orient, though the risks were very high. However people did do it, and even got rich at it. All that for a pound of peppercorns, or a few roots of ginger.
Next time you're in the grocery store and you go to buy spices, remember, it didn't used to be as easy as picking up a bottle of this, or a packet of that. A pound of peppercorns used to be bought with literal blood, sweat, and tears. Nutmegs and cloves were more precious than some jewels or gold. The average person might never see a fresh orange in their entire life.
Think of the heat, the dust, the sand on the road across Pakistan. Think of the hunger, thirst, and fear that people felt as they drove their wagons through the shifting sands of the desert. Think of the danger of sailing down the coast of Africa in wooden ship, with no navigational equipment to speak of, being careful to keep in sight of land otherwise you'd be lost at sea, hearing the stories of "Here There Be Monsters" from the crewmen, drinking brackish briny water and bad beer, eating nothing but hard-tack and whatever fish could be caught off the side of the ship. Seeing your crew or caravan-mates sicken and die of scurvy, dysentery, and cholera, see them driven mad from heat, exposure, and dietary deficiencies. Being attacked by pirates, brigands, and bandits.
It wasn't all bad though. Think of the wonders of the bazaars of Baghdad, Algiers, Constantinople, Tripoli, Lebanon, Alexandria, Thebes, and the Holy City of Jerusalem. Spice markets that could be smelled from miles away, the call to prayer from the Mosques, the wonders of silk, colors and dyes not found anywhere else in the world. Foods you've never seen or eaten before. Smells you've never smelled before. Buildings that are completely different from what you're used to. Being surrounded by people who don't speak a language like anything you've ever heard. People of all colors from the blackest black of the Ethiopian tribes to the whitest white of Nordic traders and sailors gone a-viking. This is where spices used to come from. So next time you add cinnamon to your oatmeal, or cardamom pods to your curry, inhale the sweet fragrance of spice and let yourself be transported to a land of sand, and a time of dust, sweat, tears and blood, all for just a few pods of cardamom, or a bag of cassia bark.
Join us next week for: Tips and Tricks for Menu Planning
Published 05-27-2013
Thoughts on Variety
How to Avoid “boredom” With a Plant-Based Life-Style
People ask us sometimes if we ever get bored with vegetarian cuisine, the short answer to that question is “No.”, however that would make for a pretty short article. This week we would like to address the issue of “eating the same old stuff”, along with a few ideas for avoiding ruts in your cooking and eating.
Let us begin by saying there are over 3000 edible plants(not counting all the different cultivars of an individual type of plant. For example, there are about 7500 different apple varieties, but they are all still apples.) in the world, and as Americans we are fortunate enough to have access to around 300 of those items on a regular basis even in the most meagerly stocked grocery store. If you live in a larger city with a decent sized ethnic/immigrant population, you probably have access to around 500-700 edible plants if you choose to go looking for them.
What that means is there is no possible way you could exhaust all the possibilities that number of ingredients could generate within any rational amount of time. For example, say you normally eat about 30 different plants a week, you could try 5 different things a week for an entire YEAR plus 2 weeks before you'd tried 300 different plants. If you took it slower and tried 1 different thing a week; it would take you over 4 YEARS to try 300 different plants.
If we just confused you; discard the math. For all practical purposes the combinations that can be generated from 300 different ingredients(excluding herbs, spices, etc) are for all practical purposes, endless. You are limited only by your imagination and the technical foundation you have to work with. If you think of it in those terms, it is very difficult to become bored, or dissatisfied with one's Plant-Based Lot.(Or “plot” as the case may be. sorry, we couldn't resist throwing in a bad pun.)
As seasonal cooks we also heed the prompting of Nature to help us enjoy items at their peak. It is impossible to become bored when you present yourself with only the premium produce of the season, granted that can make January and February a tad sparse, but hey, that's what cold-frames, green houses, and deep-freezers are for. We think it makes us appreciate the fresh fruits of Summer, gorgeous Spring lettuce, and delicious Summer and Fall vegetables all the more.
Here are some of our favorite tips and tricks to keep yourself enthusiastic about a plant-based table, and also to avoid getting into the habit of same-old, same-old when it comes to cooking techniques and making the same three dishes out of whatever you have on hand.
- Source Different Types of Ingredients: What we mean by this is, don't just get all the same kind of produce all the time. If you normally have mostly green vegetables, then the next time you go get ingredients; get root vegetables. If you normally just get citrus fruits and grapes, the next time get only tropicals and exotics. It really isn't going to mess with your budget that much, trust us, and the different structured, textured, flavored items will all give your palate something to get excited about.
- Change the Temperature: If you normally serve all of your dishes hot, except your green salad; reverse it. Serve all your other dishes cold, and make a warm green salad. That's kind of an extreme example, and sometimes you have to make more adjustments to the dish than just serving it cold, rather than hot, but you get the idea. Changing the serving temperature of an item can give it a complete 180 in terms of flavor, texture, and interest level. Those kinds of changes are what keep you(and your diners) from getting bored.
- Ethnic Night!: Most people only ever cook one or two different ethnicity of cuisines, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. Set yourself one or two nights a month to venture into other ethnic cuisines, maybe something you've had in a restaurant, maybe something you've never tried before. It doesn't matter, pick something that is interesting to you, find a book that has some useful recipes, or poke around on the internet and make some things. Try stuff, it's fun. Good places to start are countries where vegetarian/veganism is the norm whether for religious reasons, or economical restrictions. Places like India, South-East Asia, Japan, and indigenous South American cuisines are all good places to start.
- Raw Night!: Just like with ethnic cooking, most people never really experiment much with raw cuisine. Raw food is a wonderful way to switch up your normal cooking, it's easy, healthful, and inexpensive to do, and not difficult to get the hang of the basic techniques(particularly if you want to improve your knife skills). Make one night a month a "Raw Night" for most of the year. However, in the Summer you may want to make one night a week "Raw Night", invite your friends over and make an occasion of it. Get the kids involved, even the littlest munchkin can wash berries and pull grapes off their stems for a dessert fruit salad.
We hope that you've gotten inspired out of your rut with some of these ideas, or that they have allayed any concerns you may have had about making yourself healthy at the expense of removing all interest and excitement from your dining experiences. We are here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth, in our experience. Plant-based Diets are what you make them, and if you want interesting, exciting and creative dining experiences in the comfort of your own home, for very little money and minimal effort, you could not choose a better resource palate to work with than plant-based ingredients. Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!
Join us next week for: A Short History of Spices(you'll never look at black pepper the same way again.)
Published 05-20-2013
The Quest for Speed
How our drive for “fast” food, cooking, and eating have changed our culture's views on food.
About 50 years ago it was normal for families to all sit down for dinner pretty much every night. It was highly unusual to go through a drive-through, and eating out was reserved for very special occasions, non-cooking bachelors, and the very well off. Folks that lived in urban areas might eat lunch at their local diner or lunch-counter, but it was considered quite unusual to eat dinner outside of one's home. However, as our living pace increased, the societal norms changed and women began to work more and more outside of the home which meant that the skills of home-cooking and general house-keeping fell more and more to the wayside.
As the culture's demand for convenience food increased, Americans began to depend more and more heavily on processed food, fast food, and pre-packaged items and slowly the weight of the average American began to increase, and their level of health began to decrease until we reach the present day in which Americans are the fattest people in the world, and some of the unhealthiest of the developed nations. We also spend more money per person on healthcare per year than any other country in the world.
As we ate less whole unprocessed foods, and cooked at home less, our appreciation and the way we thought about food changed. We no longer seem to appreciate the work and effort that goes into producing real food. We have become isolated from our food. Food companies seem to care more about making sure the raw materials would work consistently in the processing machines and their profit margins, and less and less about whether or not the food produced is wholesome, nutritious, or flavorful. Lobbyists have gone to work to garner government support for their products, and to change the way we collectively view food regardless of how that affects our health as a nation.
Our attitudes on portion sizes, composition of meals(starch, protein, vegetables, etc) have changed over the years. We have became gluttonous; forever hungry, and forever starved like some demon of the ancient world sent to consume the earth whole like so many locusts. We became addicted to food, driven and goaded to consume ever increasing amounts of empty unhealthful calories, while machines removed the labor from our lives and made us soft, fat, and lazy. We use food less as a fuel source, and more as a way to salve emotional and mental problems, a way to distract ourselves from everyday worries and concerns. We developed an unhealthy dependance on things that make us "feel good", and choose to ignore, or allow ourselves to be blinded, to the physical toll consumption of those substances has on our bodies.
However, there is still hope. With every day, week, month, and year that passes more people become more concerned about their health, and the health of their children and loved ones. They begin to see the devastation that our collective lack of attention has caused to our food supply, our general knowledge about the way our food is produced, and the correlation between diet and physical/mental well-being. We did not end up the way we are over-night, we have the power to reverse this trend if we choose to. However, the sheer mass of the problem means that it is going to be slow to halt, and slow to turn/reverse, but it is definitely possible. We would like to urge you to do your own research, find out how your food is made, learn about cooking, farming, and how your body takes what you feed it and uses it to maintain itself. We urge you to evaluate how you personally, view food. Ask yourself what is your relationship with food? What kind of example are you setting for those who depend upon you, your children? We believe that Knowledge is the best defense against things like this, prevent the problem before it starts. Every dollar that you spend at the grocery store, every minute you spend researching, learning and experimenting in your kitchen, and dining with your family and friends adds to the momentum of change. Cast your vote! Make your own personal stand! Each person must stand up to be counted in the way they want to see the country move, where are you going to stand?
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Variety in a Plant-Based Lifestyle
Published 05-06-2013
Growing Your Own Fruit
About 60 years ago most families in American had at least one fruit tree, or bush, on their property, or knew someone who did. Somehow we have gotten away from that, and it's a real shame. No store-bought or commercially grown fruit is going to come within a hairsbreadth of the flavor and quality of home-grown, truly Fresh fruits and berries.
A lot of people think that they don't have enough space, or that the trees, bushes, canes, and vines that produce some of the tastiest things in the plant world are difficult to grown, this is untrue. Fruit producing plants are no more difficult to grown in the majority of cases than any other plant. There are a few exceptions, growing tropical fruits in a temperate climate, citrus and so on, takes a bit of messing about, the plants are bit finicky and the rootstock is a tad expensive, though not prohibitively so. Choosing to grow those items, or not, is more of a question of; do you have the time and space to mess with the plants?
We would like to share with you some of the basics of fruit cultivation, the practicalities of space and variety, as well as some of the more interesting things you can do with these sorts of plants in terms of beautifying your yard and garden, and providing yourself and your family with amazingly delicious fruits.
The first thing to consider when planning any garden, or garden addition is, How Much Space Is There? A simple question, but one that dictates the amount of plants you can put in, and partially what types of plants you will want to choose.
There are basically 2 types of plants that produce fruits and berries. Here's what they are and a little bit of information about the plants themselves.
- Trees: We all know what trees are, however fruit trees are generally some of the smallest tree varieties you can plant, even a full-size mature Apple tree, which is one of the largest fruit trees, will not usually grow much over 20 feet high, with a 20-25 foot umbrella(width of branch span). Pear and Quince trees may grow quite tall, but are usually quite narrow with maybe only a 8 to 10 foot umbrella at maturity. Cherry and Stone Fruit trees are usually quite small, even non-dwarfed varieties, they are around 10 feet high with a 10 foot umbrella at full maturity. What this means is, even if you have quite a small yard you can usually manage 1 fruit tree. If you have no other trees planted already, you may be able to manage as many as 4 even on quite a small lot, if you wish. There are also many fruit trees that have been bred to be dwarfs, and it is quite possible to find dwarf apple, pear, cherry, and peach trees from most mail-order garden catalogs. The trees usually only grow to about 6-7 feet high, with an umbrella of about 5-6 feet. Alternatively, if you prefer heirloom, un-hybridized rootstock(which are generally preferable in terms of flavor) you can plant traditionally sized trees, then train, prune, and shape them as the Europeans do in a variety of espalier shapes.
- Bushes/Canes/Brambles: These plants are excellent for planting as hedges, and botanical screens that produce a tasty crop as well as being useful, they also take up less room in some cases, than trees. The downside to them is, they do have to be pruned, shaped, and often times confined to racks and trellises because they tend to droop over which is annoying, and can be slightly hazardous if you have pets, or young children(lots of thorns on blackberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, and similar). While there are thorn-less berry varieties, currents, a few varieties of raspberries are bred “thorn-less”, blueberries, and a few others, those plants usually are a bit trickier to grow in terms of their soil requirements, or they require staking, training, etc. However, Canes and Brambles do have several things to recommend them over trees, they are self-pollanating so they can be planted in any amount(1 or more, trees you sometimes need 2 or more to produce good yields), they propagate themselves quickly and easily, they are very tough to kill when established, and the rootstock is a fair amount cheaper than trees. They also don't requite a ton of head room, aren't that picky about soil quality, and can manage pretty well in a variety of sun/shade conditions, they set fruits more quickly than trees and will produce good yields within 1-2 years of planting, whereas trees may take as many as 5-8 years to be producing well. Berries are generally also quite tolerant of temperature swings, trees are a little more sensitive to droughts, and hard freezes, particularly when they are very young(less than 15 years old).
It is a good idea to have several different types of fruit producing plants if you can, because different plants bear fruits at different times so you can potentially have fruits coming ripe all through the months of June and October if you plan your plantings properly and the weather cooperates with you.
There are many great resources to learn how to care for fruit producing plants, we would recommend checking out your local extension office for information from their Master Gardeners. Or talking with some local growers in your area. While it isn't difficult to tend the plants themselves, we cannot give you much specific advice because the region the plants are grown in effects how they need to be cared for quite a bit. We can tell you that fruit plants do need a good deal of water, but they don't like to be kept with their roots soggy(the exception being cranberries). They also need quite fertile soil, and benefit from having a good amount of compost worked into the ground before planting, and being mulched with compost once or twice a year. Most of them also need pruned and trimmed at least once a year, if you are training your plants to grow in a certain manner you may need to prune them 3 to 12 times a year depending on the plant and the way you're training it.
There are also a lot of excellent backyard orchard books out there that have very good information on varieties, how to plant, spacing, etc. Also, if you have older relatives; they may also be able to help you as they likely grew up in houses or on farms that grew fruit and they may be able to give you some good ideas on varieties, training, pruning, fertilizing, etc. They will probably be very glad to tell you what they know, or even help you plant.
We hope that our little article here gives you a little inspiration to check out the world of fruit cultivation, even if all you can do is a few strawberries in a window box , do it. Fruit fresh off the plant and still warm from the sun is one of the most amazing experiences the culinary world has to offer, and we want everyone to experience it if they possibly can. Happy Growing!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on "Fast" and Convenience Food.
Published 04-29-2013
A Food Based Society
America is thought of as the land of plenty throughout the world, and even through our own society; and indeed that is no real lie. We are fortunate to live in a land that is rich in the natural resources that allow for bumper crops of many different kinds of edible plants and animals. We produce huge amounts of food every year, and are able to feed not just our own people, but also large amounts of the rest of the world through our efforts.
As a result of this fertility and abundance, food has become something of an obsession in American culture. Since the food revolution of the 1960's when Americans on a wide scale were introduced to European, particularly French, ideas about food, dining, and the pleasures of the table, Americans became more and more enamored with food. It permeates our culture, no gathering is complete without large amounts of food and drink, what used to be simple gatherings of friends and neighbors lubricated with a pot of coffee have become lavish feasts. Guests are offered large amounts of food and drink upon their arrival at our homes in the name of “hospitality”, and we send our children to school with a lunch large enough to feed 3 children.
When we talk about food, far from sounding like we are educated, well-informed, health concerned individuals we use phrases like “those are addicting”, “a huge craving”, and “I was absolutely starved”. Those are not the words of an objective, well-balanced individual to our minds. We have stopped viewing food for what it really is, a fuel source, something that is required in moderate amounts to keep our bodies running, and become obsessed with amping up the level of pleasure it provides. “If a little is good, more must be better”, has become the American mantra when it comes to food.
We eat what used to be our holiday and celebration day foods every day, we rely on the big food companies to supply us with quick-an-convenient meals-in-a-box and sacrificed every part of what the food is meant to provide, except calories. We are big on calories, with the average American consuming 3600 calories per day. To put that in perspective, the average Japanese person eats about 1100 calories per day.
The results of our obsession with food are many, some good, some not so good. The good results of this is the quality of our food has risen immensely over the last 20-30 years and we now have access to very high quality produce, organically produced meats, grains, and dairy products as a matter of course all year around. There is also a wider interest in becoming educated about food, nutrition, cooking, and dining which, in theory, makes for more creative and thrifty cooks, and healthier populace.
The poor result of this obsession is more obvious, we are the fattest nation in the world, we are also one of the unhealthiest. America spends approximately $8200 per person per year on healthcare, yet we have one of the worst ranked medical systems of 17 first world countries.
Very compelling cases have been made by some of the most astute medical and scientific minds for the idea that we are poisoning ourselves with food, or things that masquerade as “food”. We have also allowed ourselves to become indolent with the rise of the industrial and technological ages. We do not have to go out into the fields and labor to support ourselves and our families, we do not go out and sweat like we used to. We do not allow ourselves to feel even the slightest of hunger pangs, and our own bodies, and the bodies of our children and loved ones are paying the penalty. If we want to change our health, pay less for and have better quality healthcare, and enjoy all the benefits that come with a healthful diet, we must stand up and say so.
In a consumer driven market, the consumer has the power. In what way are you going to exercise yours?
Join us next week for: Practical Ideas For Growing Your Own Fruit
Published 04-22-2013
The Processed Food Conundrum
Convenience verses Health and Nutrition
We're not fans of processed foods at Green Bowl, not the conventional ones anyway, however even organic and “all natural” options wouldn't be our first choice of nutrition, or even sustenance. Let us explain a little bit. Yes, we understand that people are busy, that not everyone has a lot of time to spend in the kitchen, and there are demands of children, spouse, guests, etc that demand a decent meal quickly made. However, we also would state that what could be more important in your life than making sure you, your family, and anyone who breaks bread in your home is given a delicious, healthful, and nutritious meal made from real, fresh food?
If we operate under the premise that the human body is made up of the chemical components we ingest deconstructed to their molecular level and reconstructed into our tissues as well as being made up of the fuel necessary to operate our brains and other tissues, that means that in order to keep ourselves fit and healthy we have to eat the things that we can regenerate our physical beings with. Last time we checked human beings are made up of things like; 21 amino acids, 80 assorted elements found in the periodic table, water, and lipids. We are fueled by glucose which is most easily sourced from carbohydrates, and the best sources of that glucose is a fiber-rich starch like sweet potatoes, or beans. We also use insoluble and soluble plant fiber to clean our gut and digestive system, as well as to help with removal of excess fat from the body.
Nowhere in that list of components did we see mentioned Hydrolyzed Whey Protein, Xanthan Gum, Partially-Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, High-Fructose Corn Syrup, or any other 1-molecular-bond-away-from-plastic ingredients that are found in such high concentrations on our grocery store shelves these days. If we were bionic people then those substances might be quality food sources for us, however we are not and we shouldn't expect our bodies to take up the slack trying to break down organic and inorganic chemical substances that are not actually useful to it anyway. You don't expect a gasoline engine to run properly on diesel fuel, do you? Of course not, why would you think that your body was any different?
Our other gripe with conventional processed foods is the fact that because processed foods, when they are made without a lot of things that make them unhealthful, extremely calorically dense, and addictive are basically flavorless, tasteless, and have all the visual and textural appeal of a dead jellyfish. In order to make their products “desirable” to the customer, food manufacturers have loaded their products with sugar, fat, salt, preservatives, binders, MSG and MSG-like substances and spend horrendous amounts of money on marketing, market research, and governmental lobbying to push their products on the general populace.
We don't personally want to eat things that are only calories, and not even useful calories at that. We also don't want to be the mindless victim of some ad campaign, blindly believing whatever information is force fed into us by someone with a vested interest in the type of “food” we consume, or how much time we spend under medical care taking assorted medications to solve problems that are preventable through proper diet and exercise. We just don't think the convenience of a 10 minute dinner is worth that huge price the consumption of processed foods extracts.
What about the “healthful” ones?, you ask. Well, we hate to burst your bubble but a lot of the so-called nutritious, healthful, or at least less harmful, processed foods really aren't that much better than their conventional counterparts. They are still loaded with sugars, fat, and salt compared to their whole, unprocessed brethren. The processed versions also have the downside of costing 2 to 5 times as much as raw ingredients, as well as losing up to 80% of their actual nutritional value. Paying more and getting less, not the way we like that equation to work, particularly these days.
In conclusion we would like to say, while we would certainly not presume to tell you what you should, or should not be eating, that is a very personal choice that is the right of every individual. We are also not doctors, or medical personnel, however we do know a little bit about chemistry, and we know something about good food. We would like to urge you to think twice about the types of foods you eat, the results you get from eating them, how you feel, how you look, how much energy you have, and your general state of health. Are you happy where you are? Do you feel like there is more for you out there? Do you think you could do better? If nothing else abstaining from processed foods will do two things, it will save you money(perhaps quite a lot of money) on your grocery budget, and you will likely also lose some weight. Neither of those things are generally seen as being drawbacks. All we suggest is that you Consider what you are eating and the impact it is having on your life, your mind, and your body. You may be surprised at what you discover when you think about it.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Societal Views on Food
Published 04-15-2013
Authenticity in Ethnic Cuisine
There are a great many cookbooks available that describe themselves as “authentic” versions of whatever ethnicity of cuisine they illustrate. However, the concept of “Authenticity” is one that we think is somewhat subjective, particularly as the cuisines of the modern world have become greatly mingled, not from so much from the historical method of conquest or dynastic change among the ruling class, but from the marvels of modern shipping, farming methods, and wider availability of what were once luxury and delicacy food items. We are also living in the age of communication and the sharing of thoughts and ideas happens faster now than it ever has before in the whole of human history. All of these factors coincide to produce both diluting and enriching effects in the world's cuisines.
That being said, if accurate information can be found, there is a great deal the modern health-conscious cook can learn from the original traditional ethnic cuisines, both in terms of flavor and nutritional value. Ancient Japanese, Korean, and Indian cuisines, particularly those of the religious and monastic sects, have a great deal to offer in terms of a model eating plan for maintaining a healthful condition of being. Aztec cuisine also has a good deal to recommend it, as do a ancient Greek and Italian peasant diet, particularly when coupled with modern medical knowledge of nutrition and the workings of the human body.
There are other reasons apart from general healthfulness to study authentic ethnic foods the main reason of course being, Flavor. Some people are put off of the idea of learning about ethnic cuisine thinking that they will have no touchstone in modern, or conventional cooking vernacular. Fortunately in some ways, the cook's repertoire really has very little technical variation no matter what age of time, or what part of the world, the cook is/was from. Baking, sauteing, roasting, frying, stewing, braising, boiling, and steaming, those are the cooking methods humans have prepared their meals with throughout the ages and require little adjustment between style, region, or age of the recipe. If you have a solid basis of technique, it should not matter what you have available to work with for ingredients, recipe, or equipment, you should still be able to produce a tasty, healthful meal for yourself and whomever may join you.
As mentioned above some ethnic cuisines are quite healthful, even by modern standards, however some of them are not, For example, Eastern European cuisine, classical French cuisine, British fare, northern Mexican food, some styles of Chinese cuisine. None of those styles particularly lend themselves to ultimate health and wellness, though through some careful adjustments of ingredients and technique there is no reason why that style of flavor cannot be enjoyed by even the most health conscious diner.
That being said, when you take a traditional cuisine and start tinkering with it, the question becomes is it still traditional cuisine? In our minds, you should not sacrifice nutritional content and healthfulness of food for the sake of authenticity. Our reasoning being, a lot of what we think of as “original” and “traditional” ethnic dishes evolved out of the necessity of using whatever was in the larder at the time. Therefore our forebears would have no quarrel with the process of adaptation and making necessary changes to suit modern circumstances.
The other reason we are all for adaptations is that the concept of authenticity, at least in terms of ancient, or old-time foods, is something of a misnomer. The plants and animals that humans eat have evolved since Roman times, since Aztec times, since the days of Ancient China. In some cases that change is through the meddling of humans, and in some cases simply through adaptation and natural selection. The genetic make-up, growing conditions, pollution factors, and propagation methods of crops and domestic animals are not all that close to what they were 2000 years ago, or even as few as 70 years ago. Those factors influence the “authenticity” of the final dish. This means that try as you might, you will never really get an exact copy of what a Roman slave(Chinese Mandarin, Greek peasant, or Aztec warrior) would have eaten anyway. This means to us that we have license to alter dishes as we think fit, however it also means that as cooks we should still give credit where it is due in terms of the inspiration for our dish.
In closing, we would like to say that while authenticity in cookbooks is indicative of good research on the part of the writer of the cookbook, as well as a fairly intimate knowledge of the people who create the cuisine, which is interesting in an of itself; it should not necessarily be the final word on whether or not the books you read, or the foods you create, are good or not. What is most important to us is firstly, whether or not the food described is even possible to make, some books do not take that seemingly simple idea into account. Secondly, is the food healthful, or can it be made that way? Thirdly, is it tasty? Finally, in a distant fourth, how authentic to what you would get in the actual country are the recipes?
Authenticity is a great idea, however we think there are other factors to consider when trying new cuisines.
Happy cooking and Bon Appetit!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Processed Foods
Published 04-08-2013
A Personal Word from Chef Jillian
My Journey So Far
Hello Everyone,
I am Jillian Mahl, owner, chef, and generally dogsbody for The Green Bowl Project. I write most of the articles and all of the recipes you see every week here. However, most of the time I am writing as the business, but occasionally I like to take a little of your time and speak to you as myself. I believe that people like to know the folks they learn from, and do business with. “Treat your clients as your friend” is sort of the motto I like to keep in my business and by writing to you in this way, I hope to do that.
As many of you may know I did not grow up eating vegetarian, vegan, or even anything remotely close to that. I turned down the plant-based road around age 21 and have had quite a few mis-steps and mistakes along the way. However, I am nothing if not stubborn and as I noticed more and more positive changes in my health, body, and mind I became stricter, and stricter in what I ate and how I ate it. I am 99% vegan now. I rarely cheat and I rarely have any desire to cheat. Once in a great while I will eat a small piece of fish, or a French Scrambled egg and enjoy it immensely at the time. However, I will be the first person to tell you that the longer you follow a strict plant-based diet the less you want to cheat and the less you can get away with when you do.
This journey has been a wonderful and eye-opening experience for me in a lot of ways. I was a very experienced cook when I started experimenting with strictly plant-based dishes, but I got surprised a lot(and still do) by the different things that I created, and had the palate to create, within the limitations and structure I placed upon my cooking.
I admit, at first I did find the “no dairy products”, “no eggs” rules to be somewhat limiting, but I liked how it forced me to really think about what I was doing. People that know me well know that I like to think, so the fact that I liked being forced into that situation will not surprise them in the slightest. I discovered as I cooked and ate what I cooked, that my palate became more and more sensitized. I could detect nuances in my food that I had never been able to, flavors became magnified, aromas enthralling. I became (more?) obsessed with ripeness, seasonality, organics, and quality. I became mesmerized by the world of seasonings, the tingle on the tongue of acid, the piquancy of spices, the incredible bouquet of herbs. All of these things occupied my mind and I began to stretch and hone my craft at manipulating my palate of ingredients, lead by my classical training and my highly sensitized palate.
Last fall I caught a nasty cold and I gained back some of the 40-odd pounds I had lost over the Spring/Summer. Initially I was not worried by this, but I eventually became a little depressed by my seeming inability to re-shed this unwanted weight. So I decided to go back to the drawing board and examine my diet very carefully and research what I was actually eating.
Over the course of my research I found out some things about my body and it's chemical individuality, and I also discovered certain things that I can no longer do if I want to get down to my ideal weight of approximately 145 lbs.
I discovered that I am extremely sensitive to chemicals in my food, i.e. food additives. I discovered that my body treats sugar and to some extent wheat, starch, and fat like chemicals, not like food. I have responded to these findings by removing things from my diet that seem to cause my appetite to spike without reason. Approximately, 5 months ago I went for all intents and purposes wheat-free, and about a month ago I went sugar-free. I look forward to recording my findings of this experiment and sharing some of them with you. I sincerely wish you the best in your own nutritional journeys. Have a wonderful day and don't forget, Food is Fun!
Join us next week for: Authenticity in Ethnic Cooking
Published 04-01-2013
Gardening Efficiency
If you are fortunate enough to live in a house with a yard, or to have growing access to someone else's yard; this is article is aimed at you. In the US when you buy a house usually if it's in an urban, or suburban area the yard is all nicely manicured. There's grass and maybe a decorative bush, shrub, etc strategically placed in front of the gas meter, or drier vent, etc, however, that is usually about the long and short of it when it comes to “garden”. This is unfortunate for several reasons. Reason #1 is, Humans Cannot EAT Grass. Reason #2 is, Turf is expensive(we're not just saying that, get a quote from a landscaper). Reason #3, Lawns are not really all that ecologically sound because usually they aren't native plants, and they use tons more of water/nutrient resources than native plants do in a given area, with some exceptions.
However, if you live in an area that isn't totally pedantic and obnoxious about their “housing covenant”, than you have Options. While we're a fan of flower gardening on an intellectual and aesthetic level, on a practical level we think it's kind of a waste of time/space, unless you're using it in kind of sneaky way to distract your neighbors from the fact you're growing fruit and veg in your backyard in contradiction of any neighborhood ordinances prohibiting such practices. Not that we advocate breaking contracts, but some of those rules are absurd. Having a vegetable patch has never hurt anyone or anything, and if you take care of it and lay it out properly, there is no reason a vegetable garden can't be just as attractive as a flower garden; but that's a different rant for a different day. [Note: Definitely check with your home-owners association, if you have one, before you start digging. The last thing we want is for anyone to end up in hot water over a few carrots and a tomato plant. Also, if one person gets on the books as wanting to have a kitchen garden, it makes it easier for the next person who wants to.]
If you are growing in a small space and very little of your own food, increasing the yield you're getting is very simple, plant more things in a larger area. However, if you already have allotted all the space you have resources to take care of for gardening, increasing the yield of your plots is slightly trickier. Here are some of our favorite things for improving one's garden yields that don't really cost any money, and aren't difficult to do. Happy Gardening!
- Increase Soil Fertility with Organic Matter: Make, or buy, roughly a cubic yard of compost per 200 square feet of garden and apply a nice even layer to your garden both in the Spring before planting, and again in the Fall when you put everything to bed for the winter. Almost guaranteed yields will begin to increase by 5 to 50% over the next 3-5 years."
- Space-Saving Plants: Different plants take up different amounts of room, take that into account when you plan your garden. In this context, choose plants that take up minimal room and produce relatively large amounts of produce for the space they do take up. For example, eggplants are a great example of high yield/minimal space. 1 eggplant plant takes up about 4 square feet, however if you take care of that 1 plant you might get 15 to 25 lbs of eggplant off it. Also, if you choose plants that take up relatively small amounts of space you can increase yields by using grid-style spacing/planting and get more plants into the same amount of space increasing yields from both sides of the equation.
- Multiple Planting Cycles: Most vegetable varieties do not take more than 60-75 days to produce a harvest-able crop, start some plants early indoors and set them out are the beginning of the growing season, with a little messing about and a bit of luck it is quite easy to get 2 full harvests of most vegetables and as many as 4 with some things. Research time-to-harvest on your favorite vegetables and plan out a schedule of successive plantings to get the most bang from your gardening space.
- Lengthening the Growing Season: Two words: "Cold" and "Frames". They are cheap to make, easy to use, and can extend your growing season by up to about 8 weeks in either direction. If you do a lot of cold frame plantings be sure to top dress your soil properly to keep the fertility level of the soil high. Also be sure to give your garden at least 4 weeks of fallow/rest time over winter to give it the time it needs to keep it's ph balanced and beneficial soil microbes a little vacation time.
- Proper Irrigation: When food crops don't get the water they need in the amounts they need at the right time they will not yield nearly as well as they might. If the summer temps are high in your area(over high 80's F) and it doesn't rain at least once every 10 days; give your plants a good soak 3-7 times a month. Top dress with a thick layer of untreated wood chips or salt marsh hay to help keep the evaporation rate down. Call the Master Gardener's hotline at your local extension office for specific information on irrigation practices in your area regarding certain crops. Consider putting rain barrels on your house's downspouts to collect the water. It will save you money, and rain water is better for plants than treated city water anyway.
- Turn on a Light!: This is actually part of the whole cold-frame thing, but placing a single 100 watt bulb in your cold frames for an extra 2 hours morning and evening will increase the productivity of your cold-frames in that the plants will have more light to work with, and it will also be warmer in the frame which helps to increase the rate of organic chemical reactions.
Join us next week for: A Personal Note from Chef Jillian
Published 03-25-2013
Thoughts on Gyms and Personal Trainers
A lot of people ask us if we have a gym membership, or use a personal trainer to get in shape. While we have respect for the field of personal trainers in general, and like the idea of gym memberships in a general kind of way. We also feel like the key to getting really good results from either of those methods of getting in shape, or indeed ANY method, is how much effort YOU put in, and how high of quality that effort is. Half-baked effort even if there's quite a bit of it isn't going to get you the same results as a lot of really focused effort, and sometimes even moderate to small amounts of highly focused effort will get just as good of a result.
That being said, while we like the ideas of both things in general we would to share some of the things we've found to be true for us about joining a gym or utilizing a professional trainer.
The first thing you need to know about personal trainers is kind of obvious but, Not All Trainers Are Created Equal. Every trainer has a different skill level, knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and greater or lesser degrees of training. Yes, in order to be certified as a trainer you do have to go through a basic course and take a test, however that course is generally aimed more towards simple safety, keeping the client from injuring themselves, and different exercises for various muscle groups, nutritional requirements for building muscle, etc. There is a wide gulf between someone who can teach you how to exercise safely for your age, physical ability, and available time resources, and someone who is just able to put muscle on you. What we think of as “adaptive exercise”, taking any person and tailoring a exercise plan specifically to their goals, physical abilities and limitations, etc requires a high level of skill and knowledge of the workings of the human body. However, if you're just looking to add bulk, or tone and you're in relatively good shape already, almost any trainer can do that. Trainers are also good to help with motivation and push you a little bit harder than you might normally go if you're not a great self-motivator.
The second thing you need to know about trainers is, They Are Not Nutrition Authorities. While they do generally understand something about macro-nutrients, hydration, and basic fueling of the body the information they have on micro-nutrients, phyto-chemicals, and similar is generally old, incomplete, inconsistent, or badly articulated. Not always, however you would be doing yourself a disservice not to do a little further digging on any assertions made. Though we would say to do that with any nutritional information you come across, including ours. Never just take anyone's word on something as important as you health. Question everything, look it up, do your research.
Most importantly, when it comes to using a physical trainer is to know that while they may be in very good shape themselves, and able to judge fairly accurately how good of shape you are in, they are NOT connected up to your body. They cannot feel what you feel, and if something hurts you, you should not do it, no matter what the trainer says. They are not the ones who have to deal with a torn muscle, tendon, or ligament, YOU are the one who does. It is far better to ignore your trainer's encouragement and not injure yourself, than it is to follow their instruction to the letter and end up blowing out a knee, pulling your back, or tearing something up. That being said, most experienced trainers know about how hard they can push you because they've worked with a lot of people, and hopefully they've asked you what sorts of physical limitations you might have before they designed whatever exercise program they've recommended.
Here is an overview of a few things to be wary of when selecting a personal trainer. You should perhaps reconsidering signing up to train with someone who exhibits one, or more, of the following qualities.
- They are in worse shape than you are: This isn't always a deal-breaker as there may be extenuating circumstances(recent pregnancy, etc), however consider it very carefully.
- They don't ask you anything about if you have any preexisting conditions that may limit some of the things you can safely do: Those things include, a torn rotator cuff, bad back, pregnant or recently gave birth, recent surgery, cardiac or pulmonary conditions, bad knees, hips, ankles, etc: That generally indicates a very inexperienced, or careless trainer. They should always ask you about your general health and what type of prior exercise experience you have before beginning any form of training. Questionnaire sheets don't count, good trainers will have you fill out a questionnaire AND they'll ask you verbally as well.
- They downplay stretching, warm-up, cardio,etc: Trainers that don't show a solid level of comfort in all areas of exercise(stretching, cardio, resistance/strength training), or ignore warm-up/cool-down protocols might be worth thinking twice about. Personal training isn't about what THEY do to keep themselves in shape, its what they have YOU do to get in shape. Any abuse they subject themselves to is their affair, but you should not allow them to inflict any of their unsafe habits on you, nor should they ever attempt to do so. It should always be safety first.
Note for Ladies: If you select a 24 hour gym, choose a place that has tightly controlled access, a well-lit parking area, and preferably a 24 hour attendant. If you see anything unusual in terms of an unauthorized access, or feel threatened by anyone coming into the building late at night, remove yourself from the situation as quickly as you possibly can and call the authorities. If you prefer to exercise very late at night, or early in the morning due to your schedule, etc, see if you can get a gentleman friend or your spouse to go with you. Your personal safety comes first, doesn't matter how good a deal the membership might be.
Things to look for in a good gym are
- Clean and well-lit facilities.
- Well maintained equipment: Doesn't have to be the newest equipment out there, but it should all be in good repair, clean, and arranged in a practical and safe manner.
- A fairly large current clientele: If a lot of other people go there, and have been there for some time, it's probably a pretty good gym.
- Well ventilated locker rooms: No one wants to shower off in a skunky, smelly locker room. Also, fungus, mold and mildew are hazardous to your health and wet, poorly ventilated locker and shower rooms are the perfect breeding grounds for those particular pathogens.
- Knowledgeable, competent staff: They don't have to be the friendliest staff in the world, but they should all be in fairly decent physical shape, able to answer questions in an articulate and professional manner, and be conversant with the gym's operating policies.
Join us next week for: Ideas for Modifying Your existing Yard and Garden to improve yield, efficiency, practicality, and aesthetics.
Published 03-18-2013
Modern Cooking Techniques
In some ways we harbor a faint mistrust of anything labeled “modern” because in our experience a lot of the time sticking the word “modern” on anything is just a way of saying it's a tad worse than the old version because we're not quite sure how the new version works yet. Not always, obviously, but in a great many areas “modern”-ness is not an improvement, particularly when it is embraced just for its own sake.
However, because there are modern additions to the concepts of cooking that will probably become more and more mainstream over the next 20 years we feel we would be remiss not to bring up some of these new methods of applying heat to ingredients, manipulating texture and flavor, etc.
While there is very little that's new under the sun, every once in a while human beings will come up with an original idea. About 65 years ago, a Frenchman devised a way of cooking meals in sterile sealed vacuum bags for use on public transportation to improve the quality of the meals served on trains, airplanes, etc. This method ended up being called “sous-vide” and didn't make it over to the US and into commercial kitchens until about 15-20 years ago under the watchful eye of advant garde, European trained chefs like Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter, etc. These chefs met with considerable resistance to their "new" techniques by health and safety departments; despite the French having considerable experience preparing commercial meals with it over the prior two and half decades, and refining the safety protocols that go with it. However, the chefs soldiered on with this technique and it led to much creativity, tinkering, and ingenious creations by the chefs. Gradually the techniques are filtering into home cuisine in America, much as classical French and European techniques did 60 some years ago.
The technique works basically like this; ingredients are placed in a plastic bag with flavoring ingredients, the bag is sealed and a mild to heavy vacuum is pulled inside the bag, the bag is then placed into a water bath that is heated and controlled with an immersion heater/circulator. This method of cooking allows for completely even heating of the items and manipulation of texture due to the high amount of control that the ability to adjust temperature by as little as 1 degree allows. Because the items cannot exceed the temperature of the water bath they are cooked in it is possible to cook a piece of meat to say, medium rare through its entire thickness, or to poach an egg to a certain level of "cooked" and then manipulate it from there, or serve it with a very specific texture.
The other technique that stems from sous vide cooking is Flash Pickling and texture modification by use of the concept of vacuum. When you place a porous item in a bag and then pull a heavy vacuum on it all the of the cell walls of that item are going to collapse, expelling excess water and firming the texture considerably. If you take a slightly less porous item and put it in a bag, add some complementary flavorful liquid and then pull a heavy vacuum on the contents then release it, the liquid you added gets sucked into the items you placed in the bag created "instant" or "flash" pickles. These are fun and interesting and allow flavors to be created that would not be possible to do with other methods.
Other techniques that are being experimented with in modern cuisine are the use of rotary evaporation to create essences of fruits and vegetables, by drawing off the water without using heat the delicate volatiles that makes the ingredients taste the way they do are preserved and concentrated giving a huge burst of flavor to the final product. A centrifuge is also becoming a somewhat common tool in kitchens as well, used for separating nut purees, sauces, and clarifying pulp-laden juices.
The only thing that makes these techniques somewhat prohibitive for the home cook is the cost of the specialized equipment needed to produce the results. Vacuum sealers with sufficient strength and integrity of capability cost in the neighborhood of $4000, a decent immersion heater will run around $1000, and centrifuges and rotary evaporators cost around $500-$1500. That's a lot of dough to shell out in a home kitchen, however we believe that as more people become aware of the techniques and the quality results they can produce the cost of the equipment will come down somewhat.
If you are interested in learning more about these techniques there are a few books out there on the subject, however most of them are written in French, Spanish, or one of the Scandinavian languages. However, there are a few books written in English that will provide you with a good basic understanding of the theory behind sous vide and modern cooking methods.
- The Fat Duck Cookbook by Heston Blumenthal
- Sous Vide by Thomas Keller
Explore the world of modern cooking, while there is much to be learned from tradition and the history of food and the dishes of the past, there is also still much to be explored in the present and the future. Happy Cooking! [Note: Home vacuum sealers do not have the horsepower to pull enough vacuum to flash pickle, or be of much use for some kinds of texture modifications, however they will work for immersion cooking in many cases where strong vacuum is not required. For safety's sake do not reuse vacuum bags that have been used to cook animal or dairy products in, and wash vegetable cooking bags thoroughly in hot soapy water before re-using.]
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Gyms and Personal Training
Published 03-12-2013
Thoughts on Caloric Requirements
There's a lot of information floating around on the subject of how many calories per day a person should consume to maintain a healthy weight, though there is very little information on how many calories per day a person should consume in order to remove extra weight if they are over-weight, or add appropriate body mass if they are under-weight.
This topic is one of those things that sounds like it would be fairly simple to work out, but really isn't when you understand all the factors that go into regulating how many calories a person really needs to get through their day without disturbing their weight, or how many calories they need to keep their metabolic rate high, but not so many that they do not burn up the calories they have stored as fat. To give you some idea of the complexity of the problem, Here is a list of some of the factors that contribute to it.
As you can see there are a lot of different variables that go into calculating caloric intake, and the biggest thing that people need to understand is that it is very individualized thing. Everyone's body chemistry is different, and while a healthcare, diet, or exercise professional may be able to get within 500 calories either way with “average calorie” charts to what you actually “need”, that really isn't a close enough window to ensure that you get the results you want in roughly the time frame you want, if you are trying to lose a little weight, build some muscle mass, or simply maintain the optimum weight you've already achieved.
That being said, you can still take a decent guess at how many calories you require by doing your own experiments. Here is how we determine our own caloric requirements, we recommend that you perform your own experiments, and we also would like to state that caloric requirements fluctuate as your weight and body composition(muscle, bone, fat ratios) changes, and you will need to make adjustments accordingly. [Note: If you have metabolic disorders(diabetes, etc), issues with blood chemistry, or are taking medications it is a good idea to consult your doctor before you experiment on yourself. Safety First!]
The first thing to do is to determine how much you are eating to maintain your current weight. You do this by keeping a food/exercise diary for 1 week and weighing yourself every morning before you eat breakfast. Do not be discouraged or embarrassed by this, you are simply establishing a baseline measurement to work from, not judging, or condemning yourself.
After your week of logging, add up the calories in the food you consumed per day. Take the average of those 7 numbers as your current caloric intake to maintain your current weight when combined with the amount of physical activity engaged in. (Statistically, the average American consumes roughly 2500 to 3000 calories per day, if you don't eat a plant-based or non-conventional diet you will probably be somewhere in this area.)
The next step if you wish to lose weight, is to reduce your caloric intake by roughly half to two thirds for the next 2 weeks, by altering the caloric composition of the amount of food you consume. For example, if you consumed 1 lb of food per day normally made up of starches and fats, you still consume 1 lb of food, but instead you eat foods that are mostly composed of fiber and water, with a few trace sugars/starches. Continue to log your food and activity, and weigh yourself each morning before you eat anything, making notes of how you feel physically and mentally. (This should put you in the ballpark of 850 to 1500 calories per day.)
If you cut your calories, and up the nutritional density of the foods you consume you will likely find that you lose between 1 and 3 lbs per day for the first week, depending upon your hydration and activity levels, as well as how much extra fat you have stored. The second week you will probably lose another 0.5 to 2 lbs per day depending upon the above factors. After 2 weeks factor how many calories you have been consuming on average per day, take the mid-way point between your first week's number and your 2-3rd week numbers. For example if you consumed 3000 calories per day on average the first week, and then cut it down to 1000 calories per day average for the second and third weeks you will want to put your average daily caloric requirements for moderate weight-loss at 2000 calories at your current activity level.
Remember, while calories are important, nutritional content of calories consumed is more important. If you are eating a very low calorie diet but it is very high in nutrition, it is very easy to get additional calories. However, if you are eating a high calorie diet that is relatively low in nutrition(typical American diet), that will cause you problems in that you will forever be fighting to maintain an optimal weight and healthy blood chemistry.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Modern Cooking Techniques
Published 02-25-2013
There's a lot of information floating around on the subject of how many calories per day a person should consume to maintain a healthy weight, though there is very little information on how many calories per day a person should consume in order to remove extra weight if they are over-weight, or add appropriate body mass if they are under-weight.
This topic is one of those things that sounds like it would be fairly simple to work out, but really isn't when you understand all the factors that go into regulating how many calories a person really needs to get through their day without disturbing their weight, or how many calories they need to keep their metabolic rate high, but not so many that they do not burn up the calories they have stored as fat. To give you some idea of the complexity of the problem, Here is a list of some of the factors that contribute to it.
- Current Weight and Physical Construction Ratio(muscle, bone, fat, etc)
- Exercise and Activity Level, along with the Type and Intensity of the activities.
- Current Level of Muscle Mass and Muscle Construction(fast twitch, slow twitch, muscle efficiency and tightness)
- Oxygenation Efficiency
- Hydration
- Age
- Caloric Composition(what kind of foods the person eats that provides the calories they consume)
- Fiber, Vitamin, Mineral, Phyto-nutrient Consumption
As you can see there are a lot of different variables that go into calculating caloric intake, and the biggest thing that people need to understand is that it is very individualized thing. Everyone's body chemistry is different, and while a healthcare, diet, or exercise professional may be able to get within 500 calories either way with “average calorie” charts to what you actually “need”, that really isn't a close enough window to ensure that you get the results you want in roughly the time frame you want, if you are trying to lose a little weight, build some muscle mass, or simply maintain the optimum weight you've already achieved.
That being said, you can still take a decent guess at how many calories you require by doing your own experiments. Here is how we determine our own caloric requirements, we recommend that you perform your own experiments, and we also would like to state that caloric requirements fluctuate as your weight and body composition(muscle, bone, fat ratios) changes, and you will need to make adjustments accordingly. [Note: If you have metabolic disorders(diabetes, etc), issues with blood chemistry, or are taking medications it is a good idea to consult your doctor before you experiment on yourself. Safety First!]
The first thing to do is to determine how much you are eating to maintain your current weight. You do this by keeping a food/exercise diary for 1 week and weighing yourself every morning before you eat breakfast. Do not be discouraged or embarrassed by this, you are simply establishing a baseline measurement to work from, not judging, or condemning yourself.
After your week of logging, add up the calories in the food you consumed per day. Take the average of those 7 numbers as your current caloric intake to maintain your current weight when combined with the amount of physical activity engaged in. (Statistically, the average American consumes roughly 2500 to 3000 calories per day, if you don't eat a plant-based or non-conventional diet you will probably be somewhere in this area.)
The next step if you wish to lose weight, is to reduce your caloric intake by roughly half to two thirds for the next 2 weeks, by altering the caloric composition of the amount of food you consume. For example, if you consumed 1 lb of food per day normally made up of starches and fats, you still consume 1 lb of food, but instead you eat foods that are mostly composed of fiber and water, with a few trace sugars/starches. Continue to log your food and activity, and weigh yourself each morning before you eat anything, making notes of how you feel physically and mentally. (This should put you in the ballpark of 850 to 1500 calories per day.)
If you cut your calories, and up the nutritional density of the foods you consume you will likely find that you lose between 1 and 3 lbs per day for the first week, depending upon your hydration and activity levels, as well as how much extra fat you have stored. The second week you will probably lose another 0.5 to 2 lbs per day depending upon the above factors. After 2 weeks factor how many calories you have been consuming on average per day, take the mid-way point between your first week's number and your 2-3rd week numbers. For example if you consumed 3000 calories per day on average the first week, and then cut it down to 1000 calories per day average for the second and third weeks you will want to put your average daily caloric requirements for moderate weight-loss at 2000 calories at your current activity level.
Remember, while calories are important, nutritional content of calories consumed is more important. If you are eating a very low calorie diet but it is very high in nutrition, it is very easy to get additional calories. However, if you are eating a high calorie diet that is relatively low in nutrition(typical American diet), that will cause you problems in that you will forever be fighting to maintain an optimal weight and healthy blood chemistry.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Modern Cooking Techniques
Published 02-25-2013
Thoughts on Dairy Products
For the 25 to 50 years dairy products have been lobbied by the nutritional authorities as being beneficial to the human body, particularly to growing children. However, not all of the facts of the matter have been presented to the public in an equal and bipartisan manner laying out all of the results of dairy product consumption in the human body.
While dairy products do contain calcium and assorted proteins(amino acids), they also contain large amounts of fat and a heavy caloric load for the nutrition they do carry. For example, 1 cup of 2% milk contains 125 calories, 314 mg of calcium, and 8.53 g of protein. 125 calories worth of Spinach contains 536 mg of calcium, and 15.36 g of protein, not to mention all the dietary fiber, vitamin C, K, and A the spinach contains, which the milk is almost completely lacking. In the days of heavy manual labor this caloric loading issue was less of a problem, however with modern sedentary life-styles this can have grave consequences for the average individual.
Dairy products have another strike in their “con” column in that they have a property that has been a well documented cause of thickening of all types of mucus secretions in the body from synovial fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, to esophageal, sinus, bronchial(lung), and stomach mucus. When the viscosity of these secretions are altered from their intended specifications it can cause a great many side-effects from increased sinus infections and respiratory infections, joint and back pain, to fluid imbalances and retention in various areas of the body. While these phenomena are well documented among the scientific community, and have been for quite some time, they are not widely known among the general public.
In defense of dairy products a lot of people say what about reduced-fat versions of cheese, yogurts, etc as a more healthful option? However, while the skimming method does lower the caloric load somewhat, the manufacturers of such products remove the fat with one hand and replace it with sugar, binders, and other generally unhealthful, and sometimes mildly toxic compounds which really do not offer much improvement over the original substance, particularly given that reduced calorie versions still have the viscosity altering properties of their full-fat counterparts. Not to mention conventionally produced dairy products(excluding certified organic products) are generally chock full of hormones, antibiotics, and whatever other by-products the cow passes on from her diet, which if that diet is poor; could be considerable. As well as all the other potential for contamination of the product en route from animal to table; despite the precautions taken to reduce the risk factors by the producers, these facts do not make a very good case for consumption of dairy products on more than an extremely limited scale(less than 10% of total dietary calories, i.e. 150 calories in a 1500 calorie per day diet).
From our research and personal experience we believe that one of the best things a person can do for their health, to balance their body chemistry and promote a healthful weight is to eliminate dairy products from their diet. There are many non-dairy options that while not perhaps the most healthful things you could consume, in moderate consumption will not do you any harm, and are a darn sight better in terms of caloric load, sugar/fat/chemical content. Also, these items will not alter secretion viscosity in your body chemistry the way that dairy products will when you consume them.
However, it is not our place to tell you what to consume, our motivation is strictly to make you aware of the facts of the matter to allow you to make appropriate decisions about what you do choose to consume, and the chemical/physiological consequences of putting those substances into your body.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Caloric Requirements
Published 02-18-2013
Thoughts on Heirloom Foods
There is a lot of buzz, marketing, and confusion in the world today about the concept of “heirloom” food. There is also a lot of questioning by the public on what is an “heirloom” exactly, why should we grow, purchase, and eat them, are they really “better” and if so, in what ways? We would like to answer those few questions in our article today, and stick our oar in the water on the issue as well. The choice to buy/grow, or not, is yours to make, but we want you to be informed when you are making it.
What is an Heirloom? “Heirloom” foods are defined as being older/traditional “non-hybridized” or cross-bred varieties/strains/breeds for the purposes of making the foods sturdier for shipping, disease resistant, or more uniform in appearance at the expense of flavor, aroma, and nutrition. The term “heirloom” applies to produce, grains, and also domesticated animals(chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, etc).
Why should a person choose heirlooms? Heirlooms are from the days before genetic meddling with food crops and their more intense flavors, colors, and higher nutrient levels all make them better sources of food for human beings. In terms of gardening, many heirlooms are easier to grow than hybrids and require less water and fertilizers to be productive than conventional modern hybrids.
Are Heirloom crops/animals really “better”? That is kind of a tricky question, in terms of nutrition, flavor, texture, aroma, and the environment, yes; heirlooms are better. In terms of shelf stability, uniformity, disease resistance, ship-ability, and process-ability, they are much more volatile and have a shorter shelf-life, they are not uniform in appearance or size which means they do not lend themselves well to mechanized growing and harvesting methods, or to food processing particularly. They tend to have much higher water and sugar contents, softer or more delicate flesh, and thinner skins/peels/rinds, none of those qualities give an item a very good chance at arriving in one piece and undamaged after spending 2 weeks in a freight container, those physical characteristics also increase the likelihood of the item's being damaged either externally through physical force, or internally by botanical disease, while still on the mother plant. Heirloom animal breeds present their own set of problems verses the conventional, lower yields from each carcass, each animal requiring more space, food, care from the farmer, as well as a longer time to slaughter maturity, etc. So from “agri-business's” standpoint heirlooms are not good things at all.
For what our two cents is worth, we like Heirloom Food at Green Bowl, we like it a lot. Heirloom food represents to us, an area in the food world that has been cordoned off by the boundaries of quality, purity, flavor, and seasonality, all of which indicate high levels of nutrition, aroma, and flavor; those things are important to us. We would encourage anyone, without reservation, or hesitation, to grow and buy heirloom food as much as they are able to do so.
It is by the power of the consumer that we get high quality, nutritious, unadulterated food in our markets, restaurants, and gardens. If we do not exercise our spending power to get the best that our growers have to offer, than we allow ourselves to be led around by the nose of big corporate conglomerations who's only sense of loyalty and honor is to the almighty dollar. Their agenda is not what is good for the people, the environment, or even their own long-term survival(even corporate people have to live on this planet after all), so it is up to us, to show them what we really care about our health, our families, our environment, and the survival of our planet as we know and love it.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Dairy Products
Published 02-11-2013
Starting Early
Tips and Tricks for Getting the Garden Started
Despite it only being the first week of February, every gardener knows that Spring will be here before we know it; and the only way to start getting greens, peas, beans, and root vegetables on the table by June is to start getting things in order now. We would like to share with you some of our garden planning tips and a few ideas for staying organized during the hectic times of seed starting and planting season. The shift of the seasons waits for no man, and the gardener has no choice but to be prepared and ready to go, or be left behind.
When planning your garden the first thing to do is to decide how much space you have to plant and how much of it you want to plant. If you are container gardening this is fairly simple, however if you have a yard this could take a little bit more thought owing to the considerations of shade, soil composition, drainage, how much time you have to maintain the garden, etc. A good rule of thumb is if you think you can take care of 500 square feet, plan your garden for 300 square feet. By planning smaller than you think you can take care of you will leave yourself a margin for looking after things that are more time consuming than you though, etc, rather than getting halfway into the season, not being able to handle it all and having the whole thing go to wrack and ruin.
The next thing to consider is what you would like to grow. Edible plants all grow at different rates and need to be planted, started, at different times to make the most of their growing season. If you plan on starting your plants from seed and setting them out yourself, as well as sowing directly into the ground you will need to start earlier than if you are just sowing directly. Since we live in Iowa and start most of our own seeds, we usually like to have our seed order in the mail by the second week of February at the latest. If you live somewhat further South you can start several weeks either earlier, or later depending on if you want a single crop, or if you want to use your extended growing season to try for a double crop. If you live further North you will likely not be able to set your plants out until several weeks after we do, so you can start a bit later if you wish, or if you want to really get your seedlings to a very vigorous and hardy state(be careful they don't get 'leggy') by set-out time you should start about the same time as we do.
Finally, when it comes to selecting your crops; you will want to read the plant's requirements(soil, light, temperature, etc) carefully before selecting your seeds, as well as noting the length of growing season necessary for the plants to yield. If you want to experiment with new crops we would recommend that you contact your local university extension office to make inquiries about whatever you are contemplating growing. The master gardeners there are always very knowledgeable, and generally very happy to answer questions about what will, and will not, grow well in your area.
Now that you have your logistics sorted out for the garden and crops, here are some of our tips and tricks for successful gardening year after year.
- Make Drawings: This might sound silly, but we do it and it works well for us. Draw out your garden on graph paper, decide where everything is going to go, make labels. If you will need staking/trellising design custom ones that will do the job and make drawings/plans of those too. Make lists and get everything organized and planned out before you even think about putting spade to earth. You can always change the plan as you go along, but if you have no plan you will be inefficient at best, and you may end up getting overwhelmed, or frustrated if you try to garden without a clear sense of direction.
- Spacial Economy: If your space is like our space; it is probably pretty limited in terms of actual geographic area. However, there are ways to get around this. Method #1 is to only plant crops that give relatively high yields for relatively small amounts of space. Method #2 is to Think Vertical. Many plants, particularly vine, runner, and some bush crops can be staked, trellised, and trained to grow vertically in a fairly small space, instead of letting them trail on the ground cluttering up the place. If you like squashes, cucumbers, melons, pole beans, eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers, all of those crops can be trained to grow vertically, particularly if given properly strong supports. A Word of Warning: trained/trellised crops will require a bit more maintenance than their undisciplined counterparts.
- Prepare Your Ground: This step is very important, you must add compost and organic matter to your garden to keep it fertile and producing. Different methods for this include double-digging in compost in the Fall, sowing a cover crop in the fall and tilling it in the very early Spring, and using large amounts of untreated wood chips and hay to mulch during the previous growing season, spreading compost and then digging the whole business in in the early Spring. Choose the method that works the best for you, fortunately if you use the following tip to its full extent you only really have to double-dig or cover crop for the first 2-4 years you grow in your soil to get the soil organisms and nematodes well established.
- Mulch is Your Friend: We hate to weed, and last year we discovered that if you cover the garden with an inch of compost and 4-6 inches of untreated wood chips; you don't hardly have to weed at all and you're constantly enriching your soil with organic matter as the wood chips rot. For more detailed and complete information on this technique visit http://backtoedenfilm.com/ or read The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book: Secrets of the year-round mulch method by Ruth Stout.
We hope that you will be inspired to get out and grow some of your own food this year, and that after reading this you are ready to get your seed order placed and get your garden started. Please feel free to contact us with gardening questions, etc. We will be posting some photos of our seedlings and garden as we get them going. Happy Growing!
[Note: We only grow heirloom variety seeds, and we recommend Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Seed Savers Exchange as great places to get wonderful heirloom and rare produce seeds. Once you go heirloom, you never go back.]
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Heirloom Foods
Published 02-04-2013
The Art of Physical Balance
Like so many things in life that we just do and don't really think about, Balance is something that is so important, but not usually something we think about until we don't have enough of it for whatever tasks we are involved in.
Being “balanced” physically means that you are able to maintain your center of gravity(lower torso) over your support base(usually legs, but can be any limb, head, or shoulders) in a steady/stable manner without having to consciously think about what you are doing. The act of balancing requires an enormous amount of neural coordination and control between your musculo- skeletal system, equilibrium sensing organs, and your vision(spacial relations, etc).
In some ways good balance is dependent upon having good communication pathways(i.e. Healthy nerves and neural pathways) between your brain and your body, and having systems that are in good working order physically. However, balance is also a partially learned skill, even if you suffer some form of injury to your nerves, muscles, organs, or bones it is still possible to re-learn balance to a degree that will allow you good to high quality of life in most cases given enough time and exercise.
If you think about it, no baby is really born with balance. It is something they have to learn. As adults, it is very important that we gain and maintain a good to excellent sense of balance because as our bodies age our nerves do lose some of their sensitivity and our bodies do not necessarily react in the ways they did when we were adolescents and younger adults. The heavy impacts that a human body is subjected to in a fall can be very bad for an older person if their bones are not perhaps as dense/elastic as they used to be, or if they strike at a certain angle it is very easy to break a bone or joint, which in some cases can be fatal.
Learning balance is a painstaking skill that cannot be rushed. In fact a big part of becoming a physically well-balanced person is developing an efficient and sturdy musculature. Strong lean muscles react more quickly to sudden weight shifts and can adapt to them more quickly to keep a person on their feet, or at worst control their fall, if they should step onto an uneven, or slippery surface. Being densely muscled will also protect your bones/joints from impacts better than just about anything else if you should take a fall. Consider starting a basic calisthenic fitness routine to strengthen your muscles, and render them of excess fat.
Other exercises that a person can do to improve their balance are quite simple to do, and require no equipment. Isometric balance exercises like simply standing on one leg for 1 to 5 minutes, or longer, at a time will develop very strong leg muscles and accustom you to minutely correcting what is known as “lateral-medial sway” and “anterior-posterior sway” in a very smooth, rapid manner. It will also teach you to stand with your leg joints slightly bent(instead of locked), and your muscles taking the entirety of your weight, not your bones. This is easier on your joints, and in the long term will reduce the likelihood of you developing joint problems. Become aware of how you stand and move, learn to keep micro-bends in all of your joints as you move around, and train your muscles to actually hold you up instead of relying on your skeleton to bear the bulk of the load.
The concept of balance is not limited to standing on your feet, but learning to balance on other parts of your body can be very beneficial to both developing pure physical strength, and also maintaining a high level of neural-physical communication and coordination. Holding a push-up or “plank” position, or balancing on your toes and fore-arms is a good place to start. Balancing "tripod style" on 1 hand and both sets of toes, or both hands and 1 set of toes is another good one if you have a moderate amount of upper body strength. As you progress; learn to balance on one side of your body, then the other, using only your hand and side of one foot. Learn to balance on your shoulders in the classic shoulder-stand, if you have someone to help you, or you have gymnastic training, spending a minute or two every day in a head-stand can also be a good one. [Note: If you are over-weight, or do not have experience with this particular exercise DO NOT attempt head-neck-shoulder stands without professional supervision. It is very easy to injure your neck/back and spinal column if you don't know what you're doing, or have anyone to help you getting in and out of the pose.]
If you prefer to learn other skills while improving your balance, dancing, martial arts, horseback-riding, yoga, pilates, and ice or roller skating will also do wonders for your sense of balance and your physical fitness. The most important part of becoming well-balanced is Consistent Practice. 5 minutes a day, every day, is the best way to see rapid improvement. Even 3 minutes a day is enough to show some improvement, particularly if you are practicing becoming conscious about how your muscles move, flex, and bear loads, when you are going about your daily routine. Good luck, and here's to Being Balanced!
Join us next week for: Thoughts and Ideas for Garden Planning
Published 01-28-2013
Keeping It Fresh
It can be a real challenge to get into new healthier habits, but what is sometimes harder, is to keep your enthusiasm for those habits once you're set in them. Yes, you do them, but less because you actually WANT to and more because you know you'll feel bad if you don't, or it's just easier to keep doing it than not; a health-rut, if you will.
Granted, it isn't necessarily a bad problem to have, however it can mean that you are leaving yourself out in the cold when it comes to enjoying some of the great pleasures of life in terms of enjoying one's food, and taking pleasure in health of the body. “Healthy” need not mean boring, or monotonous. It can, don't get us wrong, you can make just about anything dull if you allow yourself to do so. This week we want to share some of our ideas for enjoying life, while keeping to your good habits, and some things that you can use to help you get through the rough few months of building those habits if you're just starting out.
Fresh Suggestions
- Live In The Moment: Yes, it is a slightly metaphysical and hippie thing to say, but as human beings in this day and age, it is so easy for us to get to thinking so far into the potential future that we miss out on all the enjoyment that is right in front of our face. Calm down, take a breath, and just enjoy whatever situation or experience yourself in.
- Don't Be Cheap With Your Fuel: What we mean by this is, people are tempted to be always trying to save money when it comes to their food budgets. What we say is, what could be more important to buy the best of than the substances you use to fuel yourself? If you have a performance car, do you put the cheap fuel in it? No, you put in the high octane stuff to get the best out of that performance engine. Your body should be no different; you can't fuel a rocket-ship with diesel fuel. Don't be cheap when it comes to the quality of the food you eat. If you want to save money, change the TYPES of food you buy, not lower the quality of it. Instead of eating meat twice a week and buying a gallon of organic milk and half a lb of organic cheese every week, switch to soy-milk, drop the cheese, and eat a small amount of organic meat once a month. We guarantee that your grocery bills will drop considerably, even if you are buying the absolute best quality fruit and veg you can get.
- Embrace the Unusual: When it comes to food, variety is the spice of life. If you eat like we eat, pretty much salad, green smoothies, oatmeal and beans, you're going to think “Man, what a boring way to eat”, and you'd be right if we only ever made things one way. However, we never said how many different ways we cook our beans, or how many different types of fruit and veg we buy and eat in our salads, smoothies, and oatmeal. There are literally hundreds of edible plants out there, how many do you eat? Make a goal to eat at least one weird, unusual, or outlandish fruit or vegetable a week until you've tried everything in your local market's produce department. Then start in at the ethnic markets. Embrace the unusual.
- Vary Your Activities: When it comes to exercise, the same old thing all the time is bad for the brain, and bad for the body. The human body seems to respond best to physical training that mimics physical labor, meaning a variety of different tasks spread out over a period of several months. Alternate around between swimming, running, cycling, yoga, elliptical training, pilates, martial arts training, free weights, calisthenics, isometrics, and whatever else you fancy. In fine weather, use yard work, gardening, and home-improvements to supplement visits to the gym. Learn physical skills to supplement your exercise routine. Dancing, fencing, horseback-riding, etc all require high outputs of energy to perform, also you'll have a new skill to use and enjoy after some practice.
- Try New Things: A brain that isn't pushed to learn ages more quickly, the human brain is designed to always be learning new things. If you remove that avenue of stimuli from the organ it atrophies, and that can lead to all kinds of problems, dementia, Alzheimer's, and other bad things. Make it a habit to try at least one new thing a month, even something small like reading a book on a new topic, or making a new recipe for dinner. Keep trying things, keep experiencing things. Those new things will make your life more interesting and exciting, and help you to appreciate the stability of having good habits more. Contrast is good.
- Take Trips: This one may not be for everyone, but if you have the resources to give yourself a change of scene a couple times a year, that can be the best thing in the world you can do for yourself. A new place is full of sensory stimulus that you would not get at home, learning how to maintain healthful habits in a new environment can be a great challenge, and may also help you to pinpoint any areas that you might need to improve, even at home. Also, you'll make some new memories, and get some good stories(even if they aren't so great at the time, stuck in customs, car broke down, whatever,). Also, new places have new bacteria and bugs you're not used to; traveling is a great way to test out your immune system, and give it a bit of a stretch.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Balance
Published 01-21-2013
Old Traditions and New Methods
We have food for thought this week. We were thinking about Old Verses New: t is an age old debate; while Progress would suggest strongly that we toss the old ways in the bin and embrace “new” and “modern” without question, Caution and Common Sense suggest a healthy degree of research beforehand.
We are traditionalists in lots of ways, we believe that local, seasonal, “slow” food produced with traditional, organic farming methods is infinitely preferable in terms of flavor, nutrition, and ethical environmentalism than modern conventional growing and animal husbandry methods. We believe that as one of the great pleasures of life, as well as being necessary to sustain life, Food should be savored and enjoyed; not rushed through. No one remembers hastily bolted take-out meals in our cars on our way to, or from, appointments. We remember Sunday dinners with family, laughing, talking, and sharing Mom, or Grandma's home cooking, we remember those long lingered-over dinners with someone special, old traditions are what make those types of memories possible.
The old ways have also given us, the people of the current age, a wealth of culinary traditions to draw upon, and a huge amount of folk wisdom grounded in some fairly solid anecdotal evidence as a guide our health and wellness, things that even if they don't work; will not generally cause harm. What the old ways often do not often tell us is WHY these methods may work the way that they do. If we want to know why, we must generally look to the new ways; modern scientific testing and protocols, studies and the scientific method and deductions that can produce answers and a better understanding of the age old questions of "why?" and "how?" which are so crucial to human advancement. New methods can also provide things that are very useful for quick results that may be necessary for emergency situations, etc.
We believe that neither set of methods is really “better” than the other. We also believe that to have the idea of a "better" method in one's mind is to do both methods, and ourselves, a grave disservice. We would encourage you in this new year of 2013 to embrace open-mindedness. We would encourage you to ask questions, be curious, become a student even if you have mastery. We believe that the mark of the true master of any discipline is that they are willing to admit what they DON'T know. We don't know lots of things, but we always want to learn more.
In order for there to be more new ways we must keep asking questions, and we should encourage our children, young people, and ourselves to always ask questions. Modern society has gotten away from the habit of questioning things, methods, other people, and we do not believe this is a good thing. The human race would not have gotten very far if we never asked any questions.
What all of this means to us in a practical sense, is we feel like in order to make progress in our lives we have to know where we've been, even if we don't know where we're going exactly. Things like yo-yo dieting, inconsistency in exercise, poor interactions and relationships with the people in our lives are usually a manifestation of some kind of going in circles. If you don't know where you started, it is nigh impossible to tell if you are coming back to that spot.
We would like to encourage you to take a minute, mark your spot and acquaint yourself with where you've been before and where you're at now. Take a picture of that place in your mind, that is your “old traditions” place. Make a plan and start towards it, work for awhile and then stop and look back; this is your “new ways” point. Evaluate what's working for you, what isn't, and adjust. A wise man once told us, “We don't change anything, we just adjust.” That's a big part of what our lives as growing, evolving human beings are, a huge series of adjustments; merging the old traditions and the new ways. Sometimes the old ways are best, and sometimes the new and the modern are more practical, efficient, and relevant to the individual. That is for You to decide.
Join us next week for: Ideas for Keeping Healthful Habits Fresh
Published 01-14-2013
Welcome New Year!
Greetings from all of us at The Green Bowl! We hope you enjoyed your holiday season as much as we did, though we are rather glad to return to our regularly scheduled programing. We're going to start out by easing into the New Year, today we'd like to talk a little bit about sticking to any resolutions you might have made this year in terms of your general health and wellness.
We firmly believe that New Year's Resolutions can be a very effective tool for starting new habits, and improving areas of your life that you are unhappy with. However, if you want to use them in that way, you have to really commit to whatever you resolve.
If you look up the word “Resolution” in the dictionary you will find about 6 different definitions, depending upon its contextual use. However, the one that we think applies best to this context is “The act or process of resolving as a : the act of analyzing a complex notion into simpler ones b : the act of answering : solving c : the act of determining.”
By making a resolution you are determining in your own mind to follow a certain course of action pertaining to an area you feel needs improvement in your own character, life, etc. The only way you are going to really make the resolution happen is if you set it down in your MIND that you are going to do whatever it is, no if's, and's, or but's. If you allow yourself mental wiggle-room, like self-justification for doing something that is contrary to whatever your resolution was, it wasn't really a resolution because you were not set in your decision. We are not saying beat yourself up for making a mistake, or a brief aberration, because that's unhelpful. We're not big on guilt-trips, self induced or otherwise. You are going to make mistakes, you are going to fall off the wagon, things are going happen, and that's okay. However, it isn't okay to use those things as excuses to not persevere through them and stick to your resolution to the best of your ability.
We also firmly believe that for a resolution to really work, you have to have your Mind in order. The body will follow along as long as the mind is made up. What we are saying in kind of a round-about way is, Decide and Commit. You have to decide and commit for resolutions to work, if you don't, or you do it in half-measures, you'll never get any lasting results, and all you'll end up with is a pile of disused free-weights in the corner of your basement and a vague feeling of guilt that you didn't follow through yet again.
We would like to encourage you with the simple words that You Can Do It! You can take control of what happens to you. YOU are in charge of your body, it isn't in charge of you. We did it. You can too, but you have to decide that you are in charge, and that you can make it do what you want, not what it wants. Good luck and a Happy, Prosperous, and Firmly Resolved New Year to you!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Merging the Old and Using the New.
Published 01-07-2013
Year End Reflections
While it isn't strictly the end of the year, we will be taking the last 2 weeks of the year off from the website to spend some quality time with our friends and loved ones, and we are sure that you, our most honored readers, will also be engaged in similar pursuits.
We would like to spend this last article of 2012 looking back over some of the knowledge we have gained ourselves, and some of the things we have shared with you. We hope you've found our articles informative and as useful to your daily life as we have found them in our lives.
This year we discovered to our own satisfaction that the phrase “Moderation In All Things” in the context of diet is something of a falsehood. Some substances are to be avoided in any circumstances, Trans-Fatty Acids, High Fructose Corn Syrup, White and Conventional Whole Wheat Flour, White Sugar, White Rice, Russet Potatoes, etc. Those things have no place in our lives and kitchens. We would encourage you to remove them from your lives, and kitchens as well for the sake your health and well-being, if you haven't already done so.
We created some Exercise Habits for ourselves that we are rather pleased with this year. We hope that you were able to do the same. We cannot repeat ourselves enough when we say, pick something you Like for exercise! Otherwise, you will not do it and it will never become a pleasurable habit, merely a forced drudgery if you manage to make yourself keep at it.
Some of the fun things we have done over the past year have been our Farm Tour event with the Good Folks at Rhizosphere Farms in August. We hope to do more of those types of events in the future
Our events at Tomato Tomato: Indoor Farmer's market have also been vastly enjoyable, and such a pleasure to work with the proprietors. Our work with the most excellent owners of Squeaky Green Organics has been one of the big pleasures of the year as well, and we hope to continue our work with them on into the future.
We hope that you have many such memories from your own lives that you have created over the past year that will allow to you to reflect with satisfaction on a year well passed without too many unpleasantness’s, or mishaps. However, we do not believe that there is nothing to be gained from sorrows, or failures.; those experiences are there to be learned from.
In conclusion; is has been a very good year for us at The Green Bowl Project and we are grateful to all of you, our readers, patrons, and students for making it possible for us to do what we do. We hope that each and every one of you all have a wonderful and joyous Holiday Season and we wish you the very best of New Year's as well. Drop us a line, send us a question, book a lesson or event, or come out and see us some time at one of our events. We would love to meet each and every one of you who stop by our little green(ish) patch of the Internet.
Happy Holidays from The Green Bowl Team!
Your regularly scheduled updates will begin again January 7th, 2013.
See You Then!
Ideas For Winter Exercise
It's winter, it's cold outside, at least if you live North of Oklahoma it probably is. This leads to the problem of, how to get one's daily exercise? If you're like us and you're a walk-er, runner, biker, work-out-outside-er, then the advent of lower than 35(0 to 5 degree C) degree F temperatures are definite cause for some trepidation.
This week we would like to share some of our methods for exercising even when the snow is flying, and temperatures are less than entirely clement. Yes, you could just join a gym, however what if you're not blessed with a particularly flush bank account, or just hate going to the gym? We are here to tell you that gym memberships, and expensive health clubs are by no means necessary to getting into, and just staying, in shape during the times of the year where outdoor physical activity is less than pleasant, or practical.
While gym memberships are not required, a couple things that are. The first thing you need if you're going to get, or stay, in shape over the winter is, A Good Attitude. If you are begrudging the time and effort to the project, you'll never get anywhere and you'll hate the entire experience.
The next thing you need are, Good Habits. Fortunately, good habits are built, and don't just spring from the ground fully formed. We can create any habits we wish in terms of our strength, flexibility, and consistency of work-outs. Remember, exercise habits come with time and the first month of getting the habit of exercise set, is going to be the most difficult. Stick with it.
The last thing needed is, a little bit of space to exercise in. The amount of open space required is quite variable, it sort of depends on what type of exercise you wish to engage in. Older, or more fragile/out-of-shape individuals may find such gentle pursuits as chair yoga, seated weight-training, or yoga-ball exercises very much to their liking and these activities require very little space for the most part. Persons in decent physical condition, or those looking to simply maintain their current physical fitness levels, may find they require a bit more space to allow for deeper stretching, more intense calisthenic exercises, or some indoor cardiovascular exertions(jump-rope, treadmill, exercise bike, etc). Those in very good shape, or looking to train themselves very vigorously may require a good deal of space, dancers, martial artists, etc may need to make some adjustments to their living quarters, or find themselves a nice open space that is available to them multiple times per week to train in.
Here are some of our favorite indoor activities that we use to stay in shape over the winter. Remember, these activities can be adjusted for strenuousness according to your own abilities and goals. You may wish to pay for one or two sessions with a certified personal trainer to set you on the right track, and help you develop a plan, if you're feeling a little at sea. Check out your local YMCA, Community Center, or even Chiropractic/Osteopathy clinic for good rates, or referrals to high quality professional guidance if you feel you need it. As always, check with your physician before you start anything new if you've recently had an illness, serious injury, or surgery. Safety First!
- Yoga: If you want to experiment with something new for mental, physical, and spiritual exercise, yoga might be right up your street. Many traditional yoga studios offer community, by-donation, or trial classes 1 or 2 days/evenings a week if you want to try-before-you-buy. It's a great form of exercise for the entire mental and physical being, it has the added bonus of requiring very little space, and no equipment to speak of.
- Pilates: Similar to yoga, but slightly more intense physically and a bit less emphasis placed on the psychological exercise aspects; Pilates is a great indoor exercise form. In its purest form it requires no equipment and little space, though there are variations using balls, straps, etc and those forms may be better for persons requiring physical rehabilitation, or very gradual physical training to begin with.
- Stretching: Everyone can stretch, and everyone should. If you are very out of shape, or recovering from an illness, childbirth, serious injury, etc; gentle stretching on a daily basis may be the best thing for you. Speak with your physician, or physical therapist about what types of stretching would be best for you before beginning anything too strenuous, or doing any deep stretching, particularly if you've sustained broken bones, torn ligaments/tendons, or had surgery of any kind.
- Floor Calisthenics: Anyone can do these types of exercises. There are also modifications for almost every exercise to make them suit your physical abilities. Even if you don't have much time, if you're in good shape already 15 minutes of abdominal and upper body calisthenics combined with a few short daily walks will keep you fit enough until you can find the resources you need to really train. If you're out of shape, floor exercises are a very good place to start fixing that.
- Isometric Stance/Pose Exercises: For sheer time efficiency, nothing beats isometric exercises. If you want to take your exercising to the next level; consider adding some of these in. Or if you want to get in good shape fast, this is the way to go. Be advised: this type of exercise is not pleasant to perform, you will be sore, and great care needs to be taken about proper form, because it is relatively easy to cause injury if the exercises are not performed properly.
- Light(25 lbs or less) Free Weight Training: If you have some small free-weights floating around your house, free weight training is great indoor exercise. They don't require much space to use, and if you already have them it's better than just having them cluttering up the place.
- Dancing: It's fun, and if you dance solo, it need not require much space. Improve your balance, keep up your cardiovascular endurance, gain coordination and rhythm. Guys(and girls), dancing is a good way to improve your social life. Also, anyone can dance and you don't need anything special to do it, except music.
- DIY Home Improvements and Old-Fashioned House Cleaning: This might sound silly, but if you're waxing floors, or beating carpets, you are getting a work out. Got some projects around the house you've been putting off? Spend that time during the winter that you would have thought about spending at the gym, framing in those closets you've been meaning to put in, or painting the back bedroom. Re-do your floors, spend a couple hours a week deep cleaning your house. It counts as exercise, and you have a nice clean house to show for your “work-out”. (FYI, if you're going to clean for exercise you have to actually get down and scrub, no short-cuts to make things easier. It has to be actual work, or it doesn't count; sorry.)
We hope we've given you some ideas for things to do, or try, to help you get, or keep, in shape over the winter. Remember, Spring is on its way, and every little bit of physical activity you can do counts. If you can break a sweat a few times a day you're doing good. The best work-out advice we've ever gotten is; 10 minutes a day every day will give better, faster results, than 4 hours once a week. Short, but consistent, daily work-outs are the best thing you can do for yourself. If you have time to really do good 40 minute work-outs every day, do it and more power to you. However, if you can't do that, don't fall into the trap of thinking that 10 minutes isn't enough to give you any results. As long as you're working hard enough to break a sweat, even 10 minutes a day, every day, will pay dividends. Good luck, now go exercise!
Join us next week for: Year-End Reflections
Published 12-10-2012
Thoughts on Gratitude
We all hear a great deal of talk at this time of year about how much we all have to be grateful for, particularly during the holiday season, and while that is likely true in somewhat anemic general sense, none of that talk really gets into what being “Grateful” is, or how to show one's gratitude to our loved ones, or even just other people in general.
Sometimes being grateful is a hard thing. It's easy to be grateful for things like good health, having a good job, or good relationships with our family, friends, or spouse. It is obvious to be grateful for those things, however things like having a flat tire, getting a cold, or having a loved one pass away are much more difficult to be grateful for.
We think it takes wisdom, integrity, and discipline to acknowledge that even in those things there is something to be grateful for. It takes taking a step back and thinking; maybe by having the flat tire you weren't somewhere where you would have been involved in a serious car accident. That cold you caught stinks, but your body was able to fight it off and you didn't get pneumonia, or something really serious. Someone you loved has left the planet a little colder for their absence, but if they were suffering, had no quality of life, or weren't in their right mind, sometimes the passing of a life is something to be grateful for even as the loss is mourned.
Those are things we, as human beings, would not normally associate with being things to show gratitude for, but we believe that even the more rotten parts of our lives are there to teach us things that make us better human beings. Also, if you never hurt or suffer a little bit, you have no way to recognize when really wonderful things do happen to you. Those are our thoughts on the topic.
We would also like to share with you some of the things we are grateful for, and how we show our gratitude for them.
- Green Growing Things – Without green growing things none of us would exist, and we are grateful for not only the physical things of oxygen, food, and medicine plants provide, but also for the serenity, mental/emotional/physical pleasure to be found from being surrounded by plants, tending a garden and caring for plants. Even the nastier and dirtier tasks of weeding, pruning, etc, bring their own type of joy and satisfaction. We show our gratitude by keeping house-plants, a large garden, and trying to do our part to be a good care-taker of our bit of Earth.
- Changing Seasons and the Flavors of Each Season – How dull would our pantry and table be without the seasons and the different edibles found in each one? We are grateful for the connection to the earth and the botanical world that eating seasonally gives us. The wonderful experience that it is to bite into the first tomato of Summer, feel the crunch in our mouths of early Spring lettuces and the bite-y flavor of fresh radishes, breathing in the rich sweet smell of roasting winter squash and sweet potatoes in Autumn. All heavenly experiences indeed, and we are grateful for each and every unique one. We show our gratitude by sharing our culinary knowledge with others, and cooking for each other, our friends and family.
- Being Able to Exercise Vigorously – So many people are not able to exercise vigorously for various reasons; we are grateful to be able to get out of the house and run until our skin gleams with sweat, and we feel our muscles flexing and contracting as our feet push off from the ground. We are grateful for the awareness of our bodies, for being able to feel our muscles labor, flex, bunch, stretch, and feel the power rush through our bodies as we land a solid kick to a heavy bag. We are also grateful for the feeling of knowing we worked ourselves hard and persevered when we wanted to give up. We are even grateful for being sore. We show our gratitude for this privilege by exercising and training consistently, fair weather, or foul, even when we don't really want to.
- A Sharp Knife and a Good Saute Pan – We never like to take the blessing of having good equipment, and the right tools to get the job done, for granted. We are grateful for having the things we need to do our jobs well, and also for the pleasure that using high-quality, well-maintained tools brings. We show our gratitude by taking good care of our equipment, not abusing, or neglecting it, and taking a breath to just enjoy the tasks we are performing, whether we're cooking a meal, mending our old car, or typing these articles.
- The Knowledge of Breath – Without our breath we wouldn't exist, we try to not to take that knowledge for granted since breath is such an intrinsic part of us, as humans, it is easy to forget how important it really is and we are grateful for it. We show our gratitude by trying to take a few minutes every day to just breathe, to feel air enter our bodies and leave it again, to feel our ribs and diaphragm expand and contract, feel the tension that holding our breath leave us as we allow ourselves to breathe as we did as babies. We also show our gratitude by using our breath to perform an activity we enjoy, such as singing a joyful song, running a mile or two, or practicing yoga or martial arts, none of those things we love are possible without an intimate knowledge of breath, and an abiding respect for it.
Lastly in our thoughts of gratitude, we are grateful to YOU, our internet visitors and guests. Thank You for visiting us, whether you are a regular or just passing through, we are grateful for you taking the time to drop in and look around. Please feel free to e-mail us at any time if you have questions on who we are, what we do, or the way we live. Have a wonderful day, and thank you again for stopping in.
Join us next week for: Ideas on Winter Exercise
Published 12-03-2012
Thoughts on Organized Medicine
In some ways modern medicine is quite an amazing thing. Procedures that we think of as relatively simple now; would be considered nothing short of miraculous even as short a time as 25 years ago. Doctors have become very good at repairing such mechanical things as broken bones, healing wounds that would have simply festered and resulted in either amputation and/or death, and repairing life-threatening structural issues(cardiac valve defects, re-routing veins, necrotic bowel removal, etc.)
However, medical science does have its limits and doctors run up against them every day in their practices. We firmly believe that the majority of doctors want to help their patients, and do the best they can with the resources they believe they have to work with. That being said, we also believe that often times a doctor's desire to help their patients may be tainted by other factors; hospital policies and bureaucracy, the tedium of insurance companies, their own training and education, fatigue, simple human error, or a personal prejudice for one method over another regardless of final results. What all of this tells us is that we must watch out for ourselves when dealing with the medical establishment as their agenda may not always mesh with our agenda.
As we have mentioned before, we are not doctors, and we are certainly not suggesting that anyone remove themselves from the care they are currently receiving if they are completely satisfied with how they are feeling, and the way they are being treated by their physician. However, we are suggesting that if you feel there is room for improvement in how you feel, how you are being treated by your physician, or the procedures/medication that is being proscribed you, that you take the time and responsibility to educate yourself about both your condition of health, and about what the treatments themselves actually do. A great many conditions are treatable by methods other than the "normal" proscribed ones, while those treatments may not work perfectly(though the normal protocols rarely work perfectly either), a great many of the alternative methods do have other things to recommend them; such as less or no side-effects, being more economical, simpler, safer, etc.
We would also recommend that you not limit yourself to simply doing whatever your doctor tells you to without question. Doctors are human too and subject to human weakness and errors the same as everyone else. While they do generally have more specialized knowledge and access to data collection methods on specific functions of the body that the average person does not, remember it is still YOUR HEALTH and YOUR BODY and you need to take charge of it. It costs nothing but a bit of time to get second, or even third or fourth opinions when it comes to something serious, or even not so serious, if you feel there is enough ambiguity in the information you are getting from your physician to denote undesirable risk to you. You are the one that has to live with the consequences of whatever treatment you are subjected to. Be sure that that treatment is not going to do you more harm than good as much as possible.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Gratitude
Published 11-26-2012
Going Against the Grain
It can be difficult and unpleasant to make decisions that we know are right for ourselves as individuals, when they may be contrary to what our friends, relatives, and society in general view as “normal” or “acceptable” behavior. We are not talking about doing serial killings, or other immoral, amoral, or harmful behavior that is rationalized by the damaged, or unwell mind. We are talking about acknowledging we eat too much of one thing or another that is harmful to our health, even though our overindulgence is acceptable in general society, or admitting that we don't exercise sufficiently for our own health and well-being, etc then taking steps to modify those behavior patterns in ourselves.
We have found in our own experience that while society, and our friends, family, and general acquaintance may express a symbolic approval, or support, of our decisions, plans, and change of actions, it is generally only a lip-service, or the assistance that causes them no inconvenience, or doesn't require them to modify their behavior on our account. However, the moment that one person's choice forces their circle of influence to adjust, adapt, or modify, fangs and claws tend to come out in those closest to us, not always of course, but fear of those fangs and claws should not be allowed to govern whether or not we allow ourselves to suffer for someone else's hang up.
We would like to say that for our part we believe that we cannot change anyone, but ourselves. If we want society to adapt to a more moderate, healthful, forgiving place we have to first change our own behavior to reflect the characteristics we desire to see.
We also believe in the virtue of Being Different. For every change, or discovery, that has since become mainstream, or general knowledge, it was first ridiculed, put-down, or poo-pooed by society, and the scientific/philosophic/academic community for a greater, or lesser period of time. For example;
The Green Berets have a saying, “He who dares, wins.” and what they mean by that is, if you never dare to reach for a goal by changing your behavior despite what everyone else is telling you, you'll never get your goal.
If you're okay with being in a rut for your life, then stay there and ignore us; but if you feel like there is something better for you out there than where you are now one of the first steps to getting to that point is great health, huge amounts of energy, and a great mental outlook. We would like to invite you to join us to take whatever necessary steps to make that happen in your own life, the way we have in ours.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Organized Medicine
Published 11-19-2012
It can be difficult and unpleasant to make decisions that we know are right for ourselves as individuals, when they may be contrary to what our friends, relatives, and society in general view as “normal” or “acceptable” behavior. We are not talking about doing serial killings, or other immoral, amoral, or harmful behavior that is rationalized by the damaged, or unwell mind. We are talking about acknowledging we eat too much of one thing or another that is harmful to our health, even though our overindulgence is acceptable in general society, or admitting that we don't exercise sufficiently for our own health and well-being, etc then taking steps to modify those behavior patterns in ourselves.
We have found in our own experience that while society, and our friends, family, and general acquaintance may express a symbolic approval, or support, of our decisions, plans, and change of actions, it is generally only a lip-service, or the assistance that causes them no inconvenience, or doesn't require them to modify their behavior on our account. However, the moment that one person's choice forces their circle of influence to adjust, adapt, or modify, fangs and claws tend to come out in those closest to us, not always of course, but fear of those fangs and claws should not be allowed to govern whether or not we allow ourselves to suffer for someone else's hang up.
We would like to say that for our part we believe that we cannot change anyone, but ourselves. If we want society to adapt to a more moderate, healthful, forgiving place we have to first change our own behavior to reflect the characteristics we desire to see.
We also believe in the virtue of Being Different. For every change, or discovery, that has since become mainstream, or general knowledge, it was first ridiculed, put-down, or poo-pooed by society, and the scientific/philosophic/academic community for a greater, or lesser period of time. For example;
- Modern Germ Theory
- Vitamins and Deficiency Diseases(scurvy, beri-beri, pellagra, etc)
- The Organic Farming/Growing Movement
- Voter Equality
The Green Berets have a saying, “He who dares, wins.” and what they mean by that is, if you never dare to reach for a goal by changing your behavior despite what everyone else is telling you, you'll never get your goal.
If you're okay with being in a rut for your life, then stay there and ignore us; but if you feel like there is something better for you out there than where you are now one of the first steps to getting to that point is great health, huge amounts of energy, and a great mental outlook. We would like to invite you to join us to take whatever necessary steps to make that happen in your own life, the way we have in ours.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Organized Medicine
Published 11-19-2012
Writing It Down
Thoughts on Keeping Food/Exercise Journals
Our thoughts on food/exercise diaries are somewhat mixed. In a way they are great because they do sort of help to keep you honest, and get a good bead on what you actually are, or are not, doing with your diet and exercise habits. However, we also believe that this tool, while useful, can be something of a two-edged sword and can actually promote unhealthy mental obsession and/or lead to beating yourself up unnecessarily if you become too wrapped up in them.
That being said, we have used them ourselves and do find them useful, particularly when we are trying something new, making adjustments to our existing dietary/activity habits, etc. One area that a food diary is particularly useful in, is establishing a baseline reading of what your “normal” is. Everyone's normal is a little bit different, and we recommend that anyone who is getting ready to make life-style changes if they have the luxury of a few extra weeks, that they start a food diary, make no changes and just track what they eat, how much of different things, and even why they eat what they eat. That information can be very valuable when you start to make your changes, if for no other reason than it can help you to pinpoint where changes need to be made.
Other areas it can be useful is to track mental function and cognition. Sometimes we find ourselves becoming depressed, experiencing mood swings, altered mental status, or other mental issues that we might not otherwise be aware of if we kept no record. If you are concerned about something like that slipping through your rational judgment, write things down and give them a weekly review. This can be particularly helpful for persons with a history of depression, etc as dietary changes alter body chemistry in ways that can sometimes cause moods to get worse before they get better. Keeping a diary can help you to know there is a problem before it gets out of hand, or to adjust your course of action in small ways which is a lot easier than to have to make big changes after there has been a big problem.
On the downside, becoming obsessed with tracking your caloric intake, how many feet you walk per day, the number of sit-ups you do, or your daily weight fluctuations will not make you healthier, in fact it may make you more unhealthy. Obsession is pretty much always bad for the human mind and by extension the human body. As you adjust your diet and exercise habits your weight is going to fluctuate around, your measurements are going to change, your exercise/activity habits will sometimes be better, sometimes be worse depending upon your capacity for self-discipline and motivation, your stress levels, and whatever is happening in your life that is placing demands upon your time, and all of that is okay.
Remember, data collection is fine, even good. However, obsession is bad, unfortunately there is a fairly fine line between being conscientious and being over-the-top. Our rule of thumb is, if we are remembering to ask ourselves the question of "is this within the realm of "normal" healthy behavior?", we're probably doing okay. If you stop asking yourself that question, then you may have a problem. If you're concerned about this, ask someone to keep a journal alongside you, that way you can help each other stay on the acceptable side of data collection.
If you are unsure about what data to collect, here are a few things we have found the most useful to track when keeping a food/exercise journal.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on bucking the norm in terms of diet, exercise, and health.
Published 11-12-2012
Thoughts on Keeping Food/Exercise Journals
Our thoughts on food/exercise diaries are somewhat mixed. In a way they are great because they do sort of help to keep you honest, and get a good bead on what you actually are, or are not, doing with your diet and exercise habits. However, we also believe that this tool, while useful, can be something of a two-edged sword and can actually promote unhealthy mental obsession and/or lead to beating yourself up unnecessarily if you become too wrapped up in them.
That being said, we have used them ourselves and do find them useful, particularly when we are trying something new, making adjustments to our existing dietary/activity habits, etc. One area that a food diary is particularly useful in, is establishing a baseline reading of what your “normal” is. Everyone's normal is a little bit different, and we recommend that anyone who is getting ready to make life-style changes if they have the luxury of a few extra weeks, that they start a food diary, make no changes and just track what they eat, how much of different things, and even why they eat what they eat. That information can be very valuable when you start to make your changes, if for no other reason than it can help you to pinpoint where changes need to be made.
Other areas it can be useful is to track mental function and cognition. Sometimes we find ourselves becoming depressed, experiencing mood swings, altered mental status, or other mental issues that we might not otherwise be aware of if we kept no record. If you are concerned about something like that slipping through your rational judgment, write things down and give them a weekly review. This can be particularly helpful for persons with a history of depression, etc as dietary changes alter body chemistry in ways that can sometimes cause moods to get worse before they get better. Keeping a diary can help you to know there is a problem before it gets out of hand, or to adjust your course of action in small ways which is a lot easier than to have to make big changes after there has been a big problem.
On the downside, becoming obsessed with tracking your caloric intake, how many feet you walk per day, the number of sit-ups you do, or your daily weight fluctuations will not make you healthier, in fact it may make you more unhealthy. Obsession is pretty much always bad for the human mind and by extension the human body. As you adjust your diet and exercise habits your weight is going to fluctuate around, your measurements are going to change, your exercise/activity habits will sometimes be better, sometimes be worse depending upon your capacity for self-discipline and motivation, your stress levels, and whatever is happening in your life that is placing demands upon your time, and all of that is okay.
Remember, data collection is fine, even good. However, obsession is bad, unfortunately there is a fairly fine line between being conscientious and being over-the-top. Our rule of thumb is, if we are remembering to ask ourselves the question of "is this within the realm of "normal" healthy behavior?", we're probably doing okay. If you stop asking yourself that question, then you may have a problem. If you're concerned about this, ask someone to keep a journal alongside you, that way you can help each other stay on the acceptable side of data collection.
If you are unsure about what data to collect, here are a few things we have found the most useful to track when keeping a food/exercise journal.
- What you eat
- When/how often you eat
- How much you eat
- Daily exercise routine
- How you feel over-all mentally/physically
- Any changes or adjustments you make to your “normal” baseline routine
- Blood Pressure
- Blood Sugar(if you're diabetic/hypoglycemic)
- Weight/BMI
Join us next week for: Thoughts on bucking the norm in terms of diet, exercise, and health.
Published 11-12-2012
The Merits of Fasting
Many people are absolutely terrified of the feeling of being hungry, despite the fact that a great many people throughout the world experience that feeling on a regular, and sometimes continuous basis, many Americans are conditioned to fear that state, and do everything in their power to prevent the feeling of true hunger.
In the past mothers would tell their children to relish the feeling of being hungry since it would make their dinner taste better, and that they shouldn't ruin their appetite by snacking in between meals. Though perhaps they didn't know it, that motherly advice was actually one of the best things they could tell their children. By allowing, or forcing, the body to feel true hunger it helps to do several different things; if the person has fat stores it will encourage that fat to be “eaten” as fuel thereby removing the extra fat from the person's physiology which is a good thing. It also gives the organs that deal with the digestion of food a brief respite from their duties,(stomach, intestines, pancreas, liver, endocrine system, etc), it also can be beneficial to the mind by requiring self-discipline to accomplish tasks and not become distracted from a few mild pangs of hunger.
We believe in regular fasting for ourselves, both for the benefits to our body and mind, and also the spiritual benefits we believe come from abstaining from food for a period of time and turning one's mind over to the influence of Higher Powers, though that aspect of fasting is purely a matter of personal choice and preference.
There are a great many useful materials available containing information about fasting, whether simply for your physical health, or for your mental/spiritual health and growth, there is some great information out there. One of our favorite books on the medical aspects of the subject is, Fasting and Eating for Health by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. His no-nonsense, sensible approach and information is very welcome after so much flim-flam information that is floating around on the topic.
In our own experience, we found that starting small is the best way to begin fasting for your health. We find that we enjoy the lightness of being that comes with a prolonged fast(12 to 24 hours), due to the fact that the body will burn and dispose of all outside fuel and by-products within that time and as long as care is taken to keep properly hydrated, and attention is paid to blood sugar levels, there need be no unpleasant side-effects even in the beginning.
We like to start our fasts in the evening, usually 3 to 5 hours before we go to bed, fast over night, and most of the next day, usually for a 18 to 24 hour period. If you fast regularly, take the time and trouble to accustom your body to going without food for longer and longer periods you may find yourself able to go for up to 3 days without food with no side-effects.
We recommend drinking a great deal of water while fasting, up to 3 times what you normally would consume during the day(between 1.24 and 2.5 gallons), and we also typically consume about 1/3 of our liquids in the form of unsweetened herbal, or green, teas as they help to cleanse the body, particularly the intestines, kidneys, and liver.
Things to remember when you have finished fasting is to not just eat anything and everything when you do allow yourself to consume food again. Avoid foods that contain large amounts of fat or protein, as they may make you feel quite ill. We also recommend avoiding consuming anything overly starchy, salty, or sweet. Our favorite fast breaking foods include: raw fresh fruits such as apples or bananas(avoid overly acidic or enzymatic fruits as they may make you nauseated), fresh raw vegetables such as carrots, bell peppers, or cucumbers, cooked green vegetables, or simply prepared legumes, particularly lentils.
We would also advise that you consume about 1/3 of what you think you need to consume when you break your fast, then wait 15 to 20 minutes before eating anything else. This allows your stomach time to adjust and will avoid the possibility of you making yourself nauseous, or over-eating due to being hungrier than normal.
We like to set one day per week for fasting, our time frame of choice is roughly 20-24 hours. This seems to be a very useful tool in maintaining one's ideal weight, and can also be used as a tool to jump-start additional weight loss if necessary. We would recommend that you do your research on the topic, perhaps discuss the idea with your physician if you have any disorders of the blood sugar, digestion organs, etc to ensure that it is safe for you to fast for more than 8 to 12 hours before you begin, though for healthy persons not taking any medications, there is usually no problem to fast without medical supervision. Listen to what your body is telling you during your fasting period, and be aware of anything that feels "abnormal". Remember, Safety First. Good Luck and Happy Fasting!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on keeping a food, or exercise, diary.
Published 11-05-2012
Cooking Ahead
One of the questions that our chef gets asked the most is, “How long will this keep?”, or alternatively “Can I make this ahead of time?” We would like to talk this week a little bit about this obsession that Americans have with food storage and cooking things ahead of time, and how that effects our food itself.
A lot of Americans shy away from fresh foods because they go bad, or have a perceived short shelf life. We are here to tell you that that short shelf life is only a detriment to the supplier. We, as human beings, are organic organisms. We take our fuel from substances we consume that our bodies break down into their base constituents, and then use those constituents to rebuild our own physiology. If a fuel substance cannot be broken down organically through the processes that our bodies have at their disposal, than that substance cannot rationally be called “food”, at best it is a non-toxic compound that is simply excreted, at worst it is a low grade poison that will have considerable, and eventually fatal effects on the human anatomy.
Food companies go to great lengths to make their products have as long a shelf life as possible, and have conditioned the American purchasing public to expect extraordinarily long shelf lives from every product in their local market, all in the name of “convenience”. We will likely annoy people when we say that the words “good nutrition” and “convenience” are really two separate concepts. Yes, we are all busy people, but what could be more important to make time for than preparing foods that are useful to our bodies, contain nutritional merit, and taste delicious? If we poison ourselves in the name of “convenience” the time we save cooking our meals, tending our gardens, and shopping multiple times per week we will end up spending waiting to see our local MD, in line at the pharmacy, hospital stays, and sickening in our beds.
What this can be boiled down to is a cardinal criteria for grocery shopping is if a food item doesn't rot when placed out at room temperature within a reasonable amount of time depending upon the item's sugar and water content, it's probably not a good thing to consume in any quantity.
When it comes to the idea of cooking a week's worth of dinners at one go, or making a big batch and having leftovers for a few days, we really don't have a big problem with that. However, as diners and cooks we need to be aware that the longer an item spends in transit between field and stomach the less nutritional content it has, and the more its flavors will deteriorate after a certain point.
In an ideal world we would all pick everything we eat fresh from our garden, knock the dirt off it, cook it, and eat it within minutes for every meal every day of the week. However, we know that isn't always possible or practical, but it is something that we can all strive for. For ourselves, and for most people, we believe the best balance between nutrition, taste, and convenience is to shop 3 to 4 times a week in very small quantities, and to cook 4 or 5 times per week. However, our everyday cooking is just that, every day. Simple dishes that are quick to prepare, quick to cook, tasty and nutritious. Cooking dinner doesn't have to involve 4 hours of prep and every pot and dish you own. Make a salad, roast some vegetables and tempeh, throw some barley, brown rice, or lentils in pot and cook 'em. Make a quick salad dressing with some wine vinegar and fresh garlic, throw some dried herbs in your cooking grain/lentils, and bing-bang-boom! You went from "zero" to "hero" in less than 40 minutes, including clean up.
While it is okay to cook ahead once in a while, and some things aren't really hurt by being made a day ahead, just remember the most delicious and healthful food is always going to be the freshest prepared items.
We would like to challenge you to try our way for a week and see how it goes. Shop in small amounts every other day, cook in small amounts every night. We would be betting that you'll be converted by your taste-buds, your bank balance(much cheaper to shop small 3-4 times a week, than big once a week; also no wastage), and how your body feels when it's fueled with the freshest. Good luck, and Happy Cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Fasting
Published 10-29-2012
The Properties of Nuts and Seeds
There has been a good deal of research over the past twenty years into the beneficial effects on human health that comes from consuming raw nuts and seeds. Consumption of nuts and seeds has been linked to reduction of coronary heart disease, additionally nuts have a very low glycemic index, and contain high concentrations of healthful fats, omega-3 fatty acids, etc.
However, though nuts and seeds do have desirable nutritional properties, particularly as a healthful fat source, there are a few things that the plant-based diet enthusiast should know about their nut and seed consumption.
Compared to many other plant derived foods; nuts are not what one would call a “diet” or “health” food. Because of their high fat content they have a very high calorie to nutrition ratio which makes them suitable for consumption only in very small quantities, particularly by persons who need, or wish to lose fat mass.
Many people have a mistaken assumption that you must consume “X” percentage of calories from fat every day to maintain proper biological function. This is only true if you have little to no excess stored fatty tissue. For the vast majority of Americans, any fat consumption period per day would be unnecessary for a period of some time. As long as the body has a source of fatty acids for tissue repair, it doesn't matter if the fatty acids come from internal, or external sources. Indeed, in some ways it is better to force the body to turn to its stored fatty acid resources because that requires that those resources be liquidated, and used for both fuel and repairs, though this is not always advisable depending upon other factors of the person's body chemistry, any toxins they might have stored in fat tissue, and the condition of their over-all health.
Our own research and experience dictates that consumption of more than 1 ounce of raw nuts and seeds per day is inadvisable for weight-loss. Though we do recommend the consumption of 1/2 to 1 ounce of nuts and seeds consumed per day, at breakfast ideally, for the reason that the fat calories help to increase the sensation of satiation, limiting cravings, helping to keep blood sugar levels stable, and generally making it easier to stick to a given caloric limit, etc.
We would also like to point out that many nuts and seeds are branded as “high fiber” foods by their producers, and also to some extent; the USDA, American Heart Association, etc. This isn't completely untrue, but it doesn't really tell the entire story. In the plant-derived food spectrum; nuts are some of the lowest Fiber to Calorie items you can consume in a plant-based diet with the average fiber content of most tree nuts being approximately 1/14th of the total serving weight, kale for example has a similar fiber percentage per serving, however 100 grams of kale has 28 calories and a 100 grams of tree nuts has 30 to 40 times that many calories(650 to 900), with seeds not far behind. However, despite the relatively high fiber weight, we would not say that tree and ground nuts are a good source of fiber. In order to consume enough of that fiber to make everything work properly you would also consume truly huge amounts of calories along with it, making it impractical to list nuts and seeds as "high fiber" foods. Kale, spinach, broccoli, and collard greens are good sources of fiber. Nuts and seeds are good sources of calories and fats.
We would also like to mention a few nut and seed substitutions for those who are at their ideal weight, want to eat a plant-based diet, but have nut/seed allergies. Obviously, if you are not carrying any more internal sources of fatty acids your body is going to require you to consume them from an outside source, if you can't eat nuts/seeds for whatever reason you still require a fat source. Here's a few alternative options.
- Avocado: A good source of monounsaturated fats.
- Coconut: Contains mostly saturated fat so consume coconut products in moderation, however if your other fat consumption is limited to nonexistent there should not be an issue.
- Cacao (nibs, 75% to 85% dark chocolate, cocoa butter): Chocolate/Cacao products do contain more saturated than unsaturated fats, however they contain sufficient monounsaturated fats to make them worth a mention. Again, moderate consumption is the key along with choosing products that contain little, to no, additional sugars.
- Quinoa: This grain has many things to recommend it, from being a complete protein, to being very hypoallergenic. It also contains a relatively large quantity of healthful fats. Consider making it your go-to source for external fatty acids, though of course as with nut/seed consumption moderation should be used to promote optimum weight, etc.
As a side note, quite often people who cannot eat tree or ground nuts, CAN tolerate seeds of many kinds. Flax and pumpkin seeds are usually quite hypoallergenic, however double check packaging/processing information because sometimes they are sorted, packed, and handled on the same equipment as tree and ground nuts which could be a problem depending upon your sensitivity level.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Cooking Ahead
Published 10-22-2012
Reading Up: Thoughts on "Healthful" Cookbooks
There have been a lot of Vegetarian, Vegan, Raw, and “healthy” cookbooks published in the last few years, however we think that while a great many of those cookbooks have the right idea, they go about it in a more or less flawed manner. They try to re-make conventional dishes in a way that keeps the same flavors of the classics, but without as many calories by lowering the fat content, or bulking out the recipe with something else, etc. Our philosophy is derived from the idea of not re-making all the old standard dishes over in a way that makes them slightly more healthful, but can never truly recreate their flavor which is derived from the use of meats, dairy products, other fats, sugar, and refined flour, which leaves the diner with a dish that will inevitably disappoint because it isn't the real McCoy. Our philosophy is to take the highest quality, most delicious, health-promoting ingredients and prepare them in a manner that provides the best, most mouth-watering flavor, along with creating something thought provoking and interesting to eat, while maintaining the highest nutritional standards. Sometimes this is a very tall order indeed, but we know it is possible, and we think it is the best way to cook, and eat, for maximum health and sustainability.
In our experience we have found that there are two types of plant-based cookbooks, the first type contains so much fat, dairy products, eggs, sugar, salt, and refined/processed ingredients that we don't want to eat any of the dishes they describe without first doing such extensive overhauls to the dish that it is rendered unrecognizable from its original incarnation, not very useful for the less experienced cook, or one that just wants to flip open the book and have dinner on the table in half an hour. The second type of cookbook has dishes that fit our nutritional standards, but the dishes are executed in ways that render them unappealing in terms of flavor, i.e. rocks-an-twigs kind of thing, or bland, lifeless and unappetizing in general. While these categories aren't every plant-based cookbook, it is a great many of them.
Here is what we recommend to our readers and our students, while there are many roads to Oz, we say take nobody's word as gospel, even ours. If you read something in a cookbook, or recipe, that doesn't make sense, or fit into your knowledge of nutritional science and fact, research it a little bit before you believe what you're reading. There is a lot of rubbish floating around in books, publications, and on the internet, confirm your information from several sources, do some fact-checking. Remember, it is your HEALTH and your BODY, you are the one who has the ultimate control over what and how you treat it, not someone who is trying to make a buck by selling you a book, or the latest greatest “Superfood”, cookbook, diet-fad, etc.
Secondly, while there are many roads to Oz on the side of Good Health, there are also many roads to Oz on the side of advocates of less than healthful recipes, practices, etc. What we mean by that is, there is a lot of different names for undesirable added fats, sugar, salt, and other things that you may not wish to consume if you are watching your waistline and your overall health. Learn what those names are, fill in your ingredient/food vocabulary and don't be afraid to call “BS!” on different cookbook authors, food presenters, and celebrity chefs who can put a lot of spin onto a lot of stuff. As one of our Chef's culinary school instructors was known to say “Polish a turd, it's still a turd.” For example, a classic quiche recipe may call itself "vegetarian" yet still contain 2 cups of grated cheese, 6 eggs, half a pint of cream, a quart of milk, and a stick of butter in the crust, yes it probably does have some vegetables in the filling, but that 9 inch quiche still contains at minimum 3589 calories and 315.05 grams of fat. Even if you divide that among 8 people that is still roughly 450 calories and 35 grams if fat per person. Not very healthful whichever way you look at it.
While we would never try to dissuade anyone from reading cookery books and educating themselves about food, we would counsel you to have a care and not fool yourself when it comes to recipes. Calories come in many forms, and it is very easy to think you are eating well nutritionally, but really you're not. However, just because a recipe is written one way, that does not mean it can't be adjusted. If you like a flavor combination, take that combination of fruits, vegetables, legumes, etc and make up your own recipe. We take a somewhat piratical view towards recipes, they are less of a strict code and more just sort of guidelines. Happy Reading and Bon Appetit!
Join us next week for: The Properties of Nuts and Seeds
Published 10-15-2012
Nutritional Integrity
The idea of integrity of any kind seems to something that is in relatively short supply in the modern world, people are placed in positions by their own motives, circumstances, and other forces that make the ability to stick one's principles and personal beliefs in many cases a luxury that can be ill-afforded by most of world. However, while we may be forced to perform tasks by our employers, society, or circumstances that we personally consider distasteful, and perhaps less than strictly honorable behavior than we would engage in given a choice, there is one area where we do have the power to chose, and the control to exercise our principles and our personal standards of integrity; that area is Our Nutritional Choices.(what we choose to eat)
We would not dream to say that there is only one standard, one way of eating that is healthful and honorable and anyone who doesn't conform to this idea is a culinary cad and a bounder. We strongly believe that each person must decide where they are going to draw the lines in terms of what they will and will not consume, how much, and under what circumstances.
Human beings literally Are What We Eat. For example, if you choose to eat very moderate amounts of highly nutritious, low calorie, health-promoting foods, drink large amounts of pure water, and engage in vigorous physical exertion it is a good expectation that you will live quite a long time and be in generally excellent health during your entire period of life.
However, on the other side of the equation: if you choose to consume large amounts of highly fatted, sugared, salted, processed foods, eat little to no vegetation, fresh fruits, whole grains, and take little to no physical exercise; you can expect to have a rather poor immune function, carry excess body-fat, have high blood pressure, high(er) risks of heart disease and cardiac problems, cancer, diabetes, stroke, metabolic and hormonal disorders, and a higher risk of early death.
These are somewhat extreme examples, however the analogy still holds water. What we mean by Nutritional Integrity is that as humans we have the power to choose what we eat, and because what we eat is so intimately linked with our physiology thereby we have the ultimate control over our health, and physical wellness. Our nutritional integrity is the quality that regulates our choices in the matters that pertain to our nutrition and physical activity levels. We would like to encourage everyone who we come in contact with, whether through our website, or any other avenue of contact to take a good look at themselves and the way the conduct their affairs, and ask the questions that we all need to ask ourselves and answer them with absolute honesty. Questions like:
- Am I happy with my health, physical fitness and appearance?
If the answer to that question is honestly "yes" than you don't really need to go any further, however if there is something that you feel like could use some improvement, or something that you are unhappy with, than you must needs ask on. Further inquiries might include the following questions in one variation, or another.
- Is it possible for me to use my diet and exercise levels to make myself feel/think/look better?
- Do I really want to do better, feel better?
- What do I need to change?
Only YOU know the answers to these questions, and only YOU can say what you are, and are not, willing to do to reach whatever goals you may set for yourself. Your levels of integrity to yourself, your nutritional and exercise edicts, and to the goals you set yourself will determine how successful you are with your plans.
Ask, seek, question everything and everyone(including yourself). Don't be afraid to be completely honest with yourself in the answers that you give, and find for yourself. The only person you harm by avoiding the truth of the matter, regarding your diet, health, and wellness, is yourself because you are the one who lives, or dies, in your body. No one else. You are responsible for it, and if you choose to make decisions that give you great health, fitness, and wellness than you are the one who gets all the benefits of those things; and of course the opposite is also true. If you want to feel great, YOU have got to make that decision and then take the steps necessary to actually feel GREAT. Best of luck, and please contact us with any further questions, or to take advantage of nutritional and activity consultation services.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Vegan and Plant-Based Cookbooks
Published 10-08-2012
Thoughts on How Much to Eat
As everyone knows; the key to managing one's weight is to control the simple equation of CALORIES CONSUMED minus CALORIES BURNED. As long as those two factors stay in a state of balance, equaling roughly the number of zero than you will neither gain, nor lose weight(providing you are in otherwise good health, some hormonal conditions and other ailments that will cause weight gain even if your caloric equation is in balance). If you wish to gain weight all you need do is consume more calories than you burn and your body will store the extra as fat equally weight gain. Conversely, if you wish to lose weight you must do the opposite. All quite straight forward on the surface.
Which brings us to the big question, How Much Food Do I Need to Eat? This is not a question that Anyone, other than yourself, even a highly trained professional, can really answer. However, there are certain things that a professional can tell you that will get you on the right target while you conduct your own research and experiments. We will honestly say from our own experience that you should take no one's word as gospel on this topic, including ours. You are the one inhabiting your body, ergo you are the only one with access to completely accurate data to your own satiation and thirst levels, blood sugar levels, heart and respiration rates, etc. All of those things are important to telling you whether or not you are consuming sufficient, more than sufficient, or less than sufficient calories and nutrition.
In this day and age, calories are incredibly easy to come by, but actual nutrition can require a bit more effort. Cravings are generally your body's way of communicating something to you, either a deficiency of a substance(s) that is required by the body to perform some function. However, more commonly; the body is detoxifying itself and in order to defray the withdrawal symptoms the body sends out signals that intensify the desire for whatever substance it happens to be. The real trick of cravings is sometimes they are legitimate, and sometimes they are just the physiological equivalent of a temper-tantrum, “I want what I want, because I want it” sort of thing.
Here are some general rules of thumb for determining how many calories are required by your body as well as a few ways to narrow down the error margins on your own. For the sake of safety, if you have any disorders relating to blood sugar(diabetes, hypoglycemia, etc), perform your tests gradually and with appropriate precautions, in as controlled an environment as possible.
- The average healthy woman, depending upon her activity level, requires between 1200 and 1500 calories per day to maintain her body weight. To lose weight, subtract 500 calories per day. To gain weight, add 300 calories.
- The average healthy man, depending upon his activity level, requires between 1400 and 2200 calories per day to maintain his weight. To lose weight, subtract 400 calories per day. To gain weight, add 500 calories.
- To find out how many calories you really need you first have to establish a base-line level of hunger: this is done by controlled fasting to burn up all the externally added calories you have in your system as well as all the readily accessible ones to your body. Generally speaking, 18 hours to 36 hours without any outside calories will render you sufficiently hungry to register the sensation of true hunger. When you break your fasting period do so gradually and eat only enough to begin to register the sensation of satiation, not “full”, just “enough”. Count up how many calories that takes, wait approximately 8 hours before eating again, count those calories, add them to the previous count plus another 300 calories. That is approximately how many calories you require per day to maintain your weight.
- To remove false cravings it is important to provide yourself with the highest levels of nutrients available for the body to use to repair, sustain, and assist it in ridding itself of any excess weight, toxins, etc. This means that 80 percent(minimum) of your daily calories should be derived from Fresh Vegetables and Fruits eaten in as close to their raw state as possible, the remaining 20%(maximum) of your daily calories will ideally come from whole grains, vegetarian sources of high quality complete proteins, and healthful fats. However, if you are very over-weight you may wish to remove ALL fats other than trace fats found in fresh vegetables and fruits(excluding avocado, nuts, etc which are composed mainly of fats). It is only necessary to consume outside fats when there are no free fatty acids available for your body to use already stored. All refined calories should be avoided(white flour, white and refined sugars, etc), as well as concentrated sources of sugars(honey, maple syrup, dried fruits, etc), as well as easily accessed starch calories coming from grains, starchy vegetables, etc, when first beginning.
For more detailed information on this subject our suggested reading is, "Eat to Live" and "Super Immunity: Disease Proof Your Life" both books written by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Good luck and happy reading!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Nutritional Integrity
Published 10-01-2012
Thoughts on the Last of the Season
Summer is winding down in the Mid-West and Autumn is starting to make her presence known, both in the feel of the air and the reduction of garden productivity. Such is the way of things in a temperate climate, but no matter. As the weather changes so does the foods that the body desires.
Many people think that it is only possible to eat a plant-based diet during the Spring and Summer months, fortunately this is untrue. Celeriac, parsnips, fall beets and carrots, turnips, rutabagas, sweet potatoes, onions, shallots, and potatoes, along with the late maturing crops of brussels sprouts, eggplants, assorted legumes, and hard winter squashes, all of those fill Autumn's pantry. There will also be cold weather greens, both for cooking and eating raw, as well as herbs, fall fruits such as apples, pears, quinces, grapes, cranberries, and citrus fruits, and of course, tree nuts(pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts, black walnuts, and chestnuts).
Though the glories of Summer may fade for a time, as one can see the bounties of Autumn are more than ready to fill the breach. As cooks and diners, we have all these amazing choices to fill our cooking pots and adorn our tables with. Never be afraid of the changing seasons, there is always something edible and seasonal from the botanical kingdom, if only you look hard enough.
Roasted root vegetables, braised legumes, onions, and mushrooms, winter greens sauteed with garlic or au gratin style, spiced winter squash purees, poached pears, roasted quinces, roasted chestnuts, candied hazelnuts, spiced walnuts. All of those dishes are made from Autumnal ingredients, and all of them taste best during the Autumn and Winter months.
We would like to encourage all of our readers to seek out the bounty of all of the seasons, not just Spring and Summer. Try things. Experiment. Though you may already use all of Autumn's offerings, try cooking them with different techniques, or even preparing them raw. Play, adjust, create. Enjoy yourself. Think of the flavors, scents, textures, and appearances that you and your family enjoy the most, then decide how to create those things with the items you have available. Happy Cooking and Bon Appetit!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Amounts
Published 09-24-2012
Truly Fresh
One of the most over-looked and under-valued qualities of ingredients by the average consumer/cook is the Freshness of those ingredients. Freshness not only dictates taste which is a hugely important part of the equation of eating, but also determines a great deal of the nutritional quality of the item.
What people need to understand is fresh fruits and vegetables are not simply lumps of inert matter, they are alive and responding to the conditions under which they are handled and stored. Let's take lettuce for an example. The lifespan of a head of lettuce is basically this: the lettuce seed is planted, it sprouts/germinates, pushes up through the soil as a seedling, it sprouts 2 leaves, than 4, than more, the plant grows and matures to the desired harvest size, the head is then cut from its roots. Now, it gets interesting.
Just because the plant is removed from the root system that does not mean that it dies immediately, The leaves of the plant contain sufficient water and stored nutrients to keep the plant going for a finite amount, the theory being that if the base of the plant is stuck back into a growing environment it could re-sprout roots and keep growing to full maturity, produce seeds, and therefore continue the existence of the species.
As the fuel of the plant is expended, the plant itself begins to decay. Generally, the decay begins to be evident in the item losing water which makes it shrivel, dry, and also alters its texture. The next area decay becomes evident is, oxidation. Cut edges will first whiten, then darken/rust/blacken, then as the cellular walls of the plant begin to collapse the plant will become inoculated with yeasts and bacterium from the air and colonies of those bacteria will begin to grow, finally the plant will begin to literally rot to pieces as its cellular structure continues to weaken and become inundated with bacteria, yeasts, fungi spore, and whatever else happens to be floating around in the general area on a microbial level.
With some items this happens very quickly, and it some it can take a very long time depending upon the chemical/structural make-up of the plant, however there is no denying that no matter what sort of plant it is, the closer to absolute ripeness it is picked and the quicker it can be consumed after that point, the more nutritious the item is going to be; end of story.
What makes this important to know as an eater and a cook is, when you eat the plant you are eating the nutrition of the plant that fueled it. Literally, “You Are What You Eat”. What makes foods nutritious for the human body is that they contain large amounts of the compounds that fueled the initial source of the item, meaning the mother plant in some cases, or the entire plant itself in others. However, the longer the time between when the item was removed from either its nutrient source and the time it is eaten; the more its residual fuel is used up, or degrades due to oxidation, contamination, etc, and it becomes less and less nutritious to the human body.
Though none of what we are saying here is particularly arcane, wondrous, or outside the sphere of what should be common knowledge, we find that the vast majority of people seem to have a slight obsession with the idea of purchasing things ahead and then storing them until they are ready to consume them. This is frankly, poor practice if you want to consume the most health-promoting, delicious foods possible.
In terms of flavor, the compounds that create flavor in our foods are delicate, they are prone to oxidation, they are by their very nature complex, volatile, reactive compounds. This means the longer they are away from the source of their replenishment, the more they are going to degrade. If you want a practical example of this buy a regular old onion from your local farmer's market, then buy another onion from your local supermarket. Peel and cut a slice from each onion and taste them side-by-side. The fresh farmer's market onion will be sweeter, crisper, and less “hot”, the supermarket onion will be more pungent, sulfuric, and “hotter” because most of the delicate compounds that made the onion sweet and nuanced in flavor will have degraded in its time of storage.
If you want to taste the full range of the flavors of your fresh fruits and vegetables, you need to make sure that those fruits and vegetables really are FRESH. Supermarket produce might look fresh, but a great deal of it is not. Fruits are picked green, placed in chambers of nitrous gas to give them the appearance of ripeness, but none of the flavor/scent of ripeness. Vegetables are picked by when they are the most robust for shipping, not when they are at their peak of flavor and nutrition. Items that by some miracle are picked at their correct ripeness(root vegetables, cabbages, etc) generally sit between 5 days and 2 months before ending up on your table. Not visibly rotten, is the best that can be said about a lot of the allegedly “Fresh” produce in our markets, and their flavors and textures reveal that fact most emphatically.
If we want to change this it is up to us as consumers. The farmers and producers will grow what the consumers will pay for; we just have to start saying “We don't care what it looks like, we want it to go from the field to the table as quickly as we possibly can get it.” “We want varieties grown that have huge amounts of flavor, and to the devil with ship-ability and storage capacity.” We have to show our growers, producers, and suppliers that what we, the consumers, really want is the TRULY FRESH produce. We are sick of being fobbed off with cardboard-flavored, mealy-textured apples, bitter woody carrots, rusty oxidized greens, and dry, shriveling root vegetables that have all the flavor and nutrition of an old 2X4.
Things you can do to help change things include:
Patronizing local farmer's markets and growers.
Joining a local CSA program (community supported agriculture).
Writing letters to your congress-person to show your support for the concept of Produce Farmer Subsidies.
Plant a garden of your own.
We would like to encourage each and every one of our visitors to eat their foods as fresh and as close to absolute ripeness/readiness as they possibly can, your tastebuds and your body will thank you. Bon Appetit!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the changing of the season and the last of Summer's bounty.
Published 09-17-2012
The Most Important Meal of the Day
Thoughts and Ideas on Breakfast
If you log onto the internet and type in "breakfast" you will end up with a lot of different results, everything from IHOP style restaurants, to diet/nutritional information, to companies advertising their breakfast suitable products. This week we would like to talk a little bit about the history of breakfast, the pros and cons of eating it, and some different ideas for highly nutritious breakfasts that don't take a lot of time, or effort.
In ancient times, and even in some countries now, people didn't eat breakfast, they just got up and went about their day. The Romans were among the first civilizations to introduce a common morning meal, though it was towards the later half of the republic and a lot of people weren't for it. One Roman centurion was known to have written that in his opinion breakfast made a man soft, and the best thing to begin a new day with was a glass of boiled water and vinegar. One theory about modern breakfasting habits(or lack thereof) is that a country's collective sleeping habits influence the need for a morning meal. For example, if you eat dinner very late in the evening 10 PM or later, when you get up at say 8 AM the next day you're not going to be hungry so there is no need to eat. If you go the other way, and you eat dinner very early in the evening say 5 PM, and go to bed at 8, when you get up at 5:00AM the next morning you are going to be hungry, hence the term "breakfast" coming from the phrase "to break one's fast".
Breakfast food customs vary around the world from noodles in broth, or steamed dumplings eaten in Hong Kong, the fried dough sticks known as "churros" dipped in hot chocolate or coffee in Spain, to the classic British "fry-up"(eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomato, friend bread or toast), fresh fruit mixed with yogurt and museli in Switzerland, and just about everything in between.
However, while the classic breakfasts are tasty and certainly have their place, most of them are not particularly healthful or nutritious and provide little more than a large lump of fatty, starchy, or sugary carbohydrates that lay in a person's gut weighing them down for most of their working day. If you do extremely heavy, arduous physical work all day then you may need the 2000 calories a classic English Breakfast provides, however the vast majority of us; do not. That being said, research has shown the skipping breakfast is not necessarily a good idea either, particularly if you are trying to control, or reduce your weight, as skipping meals can lead to binge eating, blood sugar swings with all their complications, and a few other undesirables.
Our personal experience has shown that the optimal breakfast for us contains 200 to 350 calories, and is made up predominately of fibrous, not starchy or sugary, items. Here are some of the things we like for breakfast.
- Green Smoothies
- Breakfast Green Salads
- Raw Oatmeal
- Fresh Fruit and Non-Dairy Yogurt sprinkled with Raw Nuts
- Unsweetened Puffed Grain Cereals with Non-Dairy Milk or Yogurt
Those are our main go-to breakfast options, however if we have time, or guests, we might prefer to occasionally push the boat out with one of these options.
- Whole Grain Crepes with Banana and Home-Made Nutella
- Oat Scones with Spiced Apples
- Vegetarian Quiche
- Spinach, Mushroom, and Tomato Confit Scramble
- Coconut-Ginger Brown Rice Pudding
If you're not a regular breakfast eater we would like to encourage you to experiment with a morning meal, and perhaps a reduction in the amount and contents of your noon, or evening meal. While perhaps breakfast does not deserve all the hype it receives it is certainly worthy of some attention, particularly in the case of children, persons with diabetes, disorders of blood sugar levels, and those looking to control their weight. Do some research, try some things, breakfast may be part of the solution to some of the problems you may be experiencing. Good luck, and happy cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Freshness
Published 09-10-2012
Right From the Start
Setting Good Nutritional Standards and Eating Habits for Children
Everyone wants their children to be healthy, and successful in everything they turn their hands to. However, while we do not doubt parents sincerity in their desire, we do think it a very sad thing to see children not being fed good diets that will help their brains and bodies develop properly. The standard American diet, is not a good and nourishing diet for anyone, particularly a growing child. When a child is malnourished(not “starved”, “malnourished” it isn’t the same thing) it affects their mental and physiological development in myriad ways from weakened immune system, compromised bone and muscular development, poor mental focus and concentration, mood swings and behavioral problems; all of those issues can be linked directly to diet and exercise.
Part of being a parent is to provide the children under your care with an appropriately nourishing diet. The first step in doing that, is to identify what exactly that consists of. While children do have certain different nutritional requirements than adults, those differences are quite slight. Children require a slightly larger percentage of their diet to be composed of high quality fats, they require relatively large amounts of B, C, calcium, and trace minerals compared to adults, they also require considerable amounts of water given that their metabolic rate is higher than adults, and they are building and repairing body tissues at a more accelerated pace than adults do, but most everything else is the same.
In terms of calories, children can, and will, regulate their own caloric needs if their metabolism is not de-calibrated by the consumption of large amounts of fat and refined sugars in their very formative years. This means that if we want to allow their physiology to grow and develop the way it was intended to do, we must feed it the fuel it is set up for. Just like you wouldn’t put diesel fuel in your Honda Civic, feeding yourself and your children processed food, refined sugars and starches, highly fatty and salty foods is the human biological equivalent of doing exactly that. The human body is designed to run optimally under a certain type of fuel and nutrition, while it can run on just about any type of fuel, it will never run exactly the way it is supposed, or be able to reach its full potential if forced to run on a fuel that was not part of the original specification.
A lot of parents say “I can’t get my kids to eat vegetables.” or “My kids won’t try things.”, we do not believe that this is the fault of the child, at least in the case of young children. The first step in getting kids to eat, and like, nutritious foods is to eat, and like, them yourself. Your children watch what you do in every situation, eating habits are no different. Your children will follow your example when it comes to food. If you eat healthily, your children will eat healthily; provided you do not subscribe to the false assumption that children are fundamentally unable to eat the same foods as adults and that giving children anything other than chicken fingers, fried potatoes, and mac ‘n cheese will be doomed to failure. This is completely untrue, ask the Italians and the French; they have been feeding their toddlers asparagus dipped in balsamic vinegar, artichokes cooked dan un blanc with lemon juice, etc for ages. If you want your children to have varied and developed palates you must provide them with things to vary and develop their palates with. Just like you would send them to school to learn the 3 R’s, you have to send their taste-buds to school as well.
You must lead by example, and that can be a hard thing sometimes. We are all human, with human weaknesses and inconsistencies, but we are able overcome those things enough to lay a good foundation for those under our care and influence, if we choose to apply ourselves to the task.
Here are some things you can do to improve your, and by extension your children's, nutrition.
We believe very strongly in teaching kids about nutrition and great food, and we hope that we were able to give you some ideas on things to do with your kids to help them learn, and perhaps to learn yourself. We would also recommend "Disease Proof Your Child" by Dr. Joel Furhman as a great book for information on proper nutrition for raising healthy, happy, and successful human beings.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Breakfast
Published 09-03-2012
Setting Good Nutritional Standards and Eating Habits for Children
Everyone wants their children to be healthy, and successful in everything they turn their hands to. However, while we do not doubt parents sincerity in their desire, we do think it a very sad thing to see children not being fed good diets that will help their brains and bodies develop properly. The standard American diet, is not a good and nourishing diet for anyone, particularly a growing child. When a child is malnourished(not “starved”, “malnourished” it isn’t the same thing) it affects their mental and physiological development in myriad ways from weakened immune system, compromised bone and muscular development, poor mental focus and concentration, mood swings and behavioral problems; all of those issues can be linked directly to diet and exercise.
Part of being a parent is to provide the children under your care with an appropriately nourishing diet. The first step in doing that, is to identify what exactly that consists of. While children do have certain different nutritional requirements than adults, those differences are quite slight. Children require a slightly larger percentage of their diet to be composed of high quality fats, they require relatively large amounts of B, C, calcium, and trace minerals compared to adults, they also require considerable amounts of water given that their metabolic rate is higher than adults, and they are building and repairing body tissues at a more accelerated pace than adults do, but most everything else is the same.
In terms of calories, children can, and will, regulate their own caloric needs if their metabolism is not de-calibrated by the consumption of large amounts of fat and refined sugars in their very formative years. This means that if we want to allow their physiology to grow and develop the way it was intended to do, we must feed it the fuel it is set up for. Just like you wouldn’t put diesel fuel in your Honda Civic, feeding yourself and your children processed food, refined sugars and starches, highly fatty and salty foods is the human biological equivalent of doing exactly that. The human body is designed to run optimally under a certain type of fuel and nutrition, while it can run on just about any type of fuel, it will never run exactly the way it is supposed, or be able to reach its full potential if forced to run on a fuel that was not part of the original specification.
A lot of parents say “I can’t get my kids to eat vegetables.” or “My kids won’t try things.”, we do not believe that this is the fault of the child, at least in the case of young children. The first step in getting kids to eat, and like, nutritious foods is to eat, and like, them yourself. Your children watch what you do in every situation, eating habits are no different. Your children will follow your example when it comes to food. If you eat healthily, your children will eat healthily; provided you do not subscribe to the false assumption that children are fundamentally unable to eat the same foods as adults and that giving children anything other than chicken fingers, fried potatoes, and mac ‘n cheese will be doomed to failure. This is completely untrue, ask the Italians and the French; they have been feeding their toddlers asparagus dipped in balsamic vinegar, artichokes cooked dan un blanc with lemon juice, etc for ages. If you want your children to have varied and developed palates you must provide them with things to vary and develop their palates with. Just like you would send them to school to learn the 3 R’s, you have to send their taste-buds to school as well.
You must lead by example, and that can be a hard thing sometimes. We are all human, with human weaknesses and inconsistencies, but we are able overcome those things enough to lay a good foundation for those under our care and influence, if we choose to apply ourselves to the task.
Here are some things you can do to improve your, and by extension your children's, nutrition.
- Find Out What Healthful Foods Your Kids Do Like: Ask your kids what kinds of fruits and vegetable are their favorites and make sure that those things are always around. If your kids like pears, or carrots, or spinach, give them access to those foods. Get them in the habit of eating the fruits and vegetables they like regularly, and then introduce them to new things that either complement, or are similar, to whatever they happen to like already. In other words, don't fight against what your kids already like by trying to force a ton of new things on them right off that bat. Go with the flow as much as possible, it's easier for everybody.
- Don't Buy What You Don't Want Your Kids To Eat: If you don't want your kids eating candy bars, chips, and drinking pop; then don't buy it. Simple as that. However, if you don't want them eating/drinking it; then you can't eat or drink it either. Kids can sense hypocrisy and nothing breeds resentment and rebellion quicker than that, particularly in older kids and adolescents. Set a good example.
- Learn Together and From Each Other: If your kids are interested in food and cooking let them cook a couple times a week. Pick out a cookbook at a used book sale, or off Amazon.com that fits the type of nutrition and food your family likes and let them experiment. If you're a cook yourself, encourage your kids to come in and help you with dinner, shopping, kitchen maintenance, etc. They might come up with some new ways of doing things that work better than the ways you use, and you can also pass down things you've learned to them. Make good memories, and inspire healthy eating habits in your kids at the same time. Just remember, it should never become a fight, a chore, or something you're forcing on them. They should always come to the kitchen because they WANT to be there. If they feel forced, they'll rebel against whatever you try to teach them as quickly as the possibly can; it has to be a positive experience for all parties involved.
- Make Food Fun and Interesting: Little kids(age 3 to 8) are almost always interested in the natural world, food and where it comes from is an extension of that curiosity. Take advantage of that and take your kids to the farmer's market, the grocery store, or out to a farm or orchard. Read age appropriate books about the origins of fruit, vegetables, grains, and other foods, then take your kids in the kitchen and explore all the tasty options that exist from whatever foods you learned about. Let the kids ask all the questions they want, let them handle, feel, smell, taste, and examine different ingredients, the 5 senses approach is one of the most effective ways to teach and imprint new concepts on young kids.
- Grow a Garden: Kids are usually fascinated by growing things, and growing things that can be eaten are just the next level of coolness for a 5 to 10 year old. After all, playing in dirt is always awesome particularly when it's been sanctioned by adults. Even if you don't have yard, or any real "Growing space" you probably have room for a flower pot, and if you can't manage that, you can still grow sprouted legumes, grains, and seeds; or micro-greens on a piece of old towel or cheese cloth in your kitchen. Learning how things grow, and how to take care of something relatively simple that won't suffer if it is neglected for a day, is a great skill for kids to learn. It will also help to build a sense of responsibility, and give them something to make them feel like they are contributing to the family table. Kids need to feel important to the family group, and being in charge of the weekly sprout production, growing some of the family salad, or cooking herbs can be a great and inexpensive way to do that.
We believe very strongly in teaching kids about nutrition and great food, and we hope that we were able to give you some ideas on things to do with your kids to help them learn, and perhaps to learn yourself. We would also recommend "Disease Proof Your Child" by Dr. Joel Furhman as a great book for information on proper nutrition for raising healthy, happy, and successful human beings.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Breakfast
Published 09-03-2012
A Personal Note from Chef Jillian
Hello Everyone,
My name is Jillian Mahl, and I am the Executive Chef, chief-cook-an-bottle-washer for The Green Bowl Project. A lot of you know me already if this isn't your first visit to the site, I develop all the recipes, teach, and work all our events, and I also write the majority of this site's content. While I do have a little biography on the site, I thought it might be interesting for you to get to know me through my culinary life so far.
I decided I wanted to be a chef when I was 12 years old. I originally wanted to be a veterinarian, then I found out that it's harder to be a vet than it is to be a human doctor. I knew my family was pretty poor, and I didn't want to go to school for 8 years so I decided cooking and feeding people was probably my best option.
I threw myself into learning everything I could about food. I read stacks of cookbooks, watched Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, and The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter religiously on Saturday mornings like other kids watched cartoons. I learned about food. As I learned about food it opened a lot of doors for me into other subjects such as organic and inorganic chemistry, historic and modern agriculture techniques, world history from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, the ancient and more modern world. I learned about how famines and abundances of food shaped cultures, built and toppled nations, how art flourished or withered, and how people's attitudes and awareness about the food they consume and they way they consume it has changed over time. I studied anatomy and physiology, I wanted to know about how the human body worked, how it processed it's food/fuel, how it registered pleasure and satisfaction with the food it consumed, in short I wanted to learn everything I could.
Through the time of all of this reading, studying, and learning; I cooked. I cooked everything, we didn't have much money for ingredients, but my folks always made sure I had good quality ingredients to work with, a garden, and enough jingle in my pocket to experiment on occasion. At first I cooked classic dishes, coq au vin, braised beef chuck, etc. I learned to break down my own meat and poultry, partly because I wanted to know how the animals were put together, partly because I was cheap. I knew that the less processed the final proteins were, the cheaper they were. I made stocks. Learned to braise, and saute I baked bread, perfected my chocolate chip cookie recipe, and ruined a few batches of stirred egg custards. I made salads, and tinkered with vegetables and fruits, but I hadn't realized at that point that plants were more interesting and challenging to cook than animal products so my explorations of that part of cuisine were dabbles at best. I learned about spices and herbs, mixed my own spice blends, seasoned and tasted, and re-seasoned.
Finally, I got my first restaurant job at the age of 15. I applied at a local fine dining restaurant and managed to wangle my way into a menial kitchen position, then as luck would have it I caught the eye of the general manager and wound up working for her and being trained by her as the Matri'D; a job I was not qualified for, and really didn't have a great idea of how it worked at least at first. However, I caught on quickly, worked hard, and did the best that I could. I worked lunch and brunch shift as Matri'D, and then dinner shift as a head waitress at the same restaurant for 3 years and 2 months when I finally had enough money saved up to go to the culinary school I had picked out, The French Culinary Institute, now known as The International Culinary Center.
I left Omaha and moved to New York City sight unseen. I had never been to The Big Apple before I moved there and I'll never forget my first view of the city through the window of that airplane on that cold and snowy January evening as I flew into LaGuardia Airport. I was met there by a family friend and a couple days later I was ensconced in a cozy Brooklyn dorm-room in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. A few days after that I started culinary school and I could scarcely believe my good fortune. I was surrounded by other people just like me who loved great food. I had experts in the field showing me exactly how to cook the classics properly, why the dishes were created the way they were, and how to manipulate ingredients to create results that I had never even imagined. It was heaven.
Several months into the program we were encouraged to apply for internships at Manhattan restaurants to build our experience and job qualifications. I was fortunate enough to land an internship at Restaurant Allegretti, owned and run by Chef Alain Allegretti, a well known and highly respected veteran of the Manhattan culinary scene. He had been executive chef at Le Cirque and brought his training from Alain Ducasse's Louis XV restaurant along with the flavors of his native Nice to his kitchen. He was an excellent chef and teacher, a great boss, and showed a good deal of kindness to me while I worked for him and I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to work for such an excellent professional.
I ended my internship a few weeks before graduation and I took full advantage of my last couple weeks in school without working every night after school to catch up on lost sleep, and fill out a lot of job applications. I lined up a stage(working job interview) while I was still in school, and after finals I got another one lined up with one of the judges from my panel of examiners after he ate my food. As final icing on my culinary school cake I graduated at the top of my class with a 97% GPA, and very high commendations from my instructors.
A week after I left culinary school I was working at Bar Boulud, a popular(and very busy) Manhattan bistro. I worked there for a time, watching, learning, and attempting to keep my nose(and my station) as clean as I could. Then an opportunity was presented to me to climb the kitchen hierarchy and escape some of the kitchen politics, I left Bar Boulud and went to work at Restaurant BG in the Bergdorf Goodman department store as Chef di Partie.
At Bergdorf Goodman, I learned about organizing, running a crew, menu planning, ordering, and a lot of what not to do as well. I worked there for a good while.
During my time at BG I started practicing Taekwon Do and realized that I really needed to lose some weight and get in shape. I had had some weight management issues through most of my life, and though it was never really made much of an issue of by my parents for which I am grateful, I knew that if I wanted to make it to my later years in good health and I needed to make some changes. However, I didn't want to give up great food. This was a problem, so I did was I always do when I have a problem. Made a cup of tea and sat down for a good hard think.
I started writing and brainstorming, I knew that the basis of all truly healthful cuisine was fresh vegetables and fruits but a lot of the fruit and vegetable dishes and recipes that I had tried were either of poor quality in my estimation, or loaded up with so much extra unnecessary junk(fat, sugar, salt, etc) that any nutritional value they had was pretty much destroyed. I knew I could do better.
In November of 2010 I moved back to Omaha, NE. Armed with a notebook of ideas, and a box full of recipe cards; The Green Bowl Project was born. In February of 2011 we started this website and as they say; the rest is history. Thank you to everyone who enjoys the site, makes a recipe or two, or attends a class or event. Without the foodies, and the people who want to make changes in their lives, I don't have a job, so Thank You.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Cooking with Kids
Published 08-27-2012
The Economy of Farming
There is a bit of a controversy among producers when it comes to organic farms and organic farming, it's not that people say that organic farming isn't better for the environment, better quality, higher nutrition, and better tasting, quite the contrary in fact. The gripe producers have with organic farming seems mostly to be about 3 things, cost, yields, and transportation of goods.
Organic farms are in many ways is cheaper to run than conventional farms because the overhead in terms of chemicals, antibiotics, and synthetic/modified seeds is so expensive; combined with the high cost of the diesel fuel required to run the enormous heavy equipment used to farm the vast amounts of land that make up conventional farms. Add all that together and you have to produce a truly enormous amount of goods to even keep your head above water, hence the rise of the looming specter of Agri-Business.
The areas where organic farms get expensive are, initial set-up cost, labor, and wastage/spoilage. It is a rather daunting and expensive prospect to take conventional farm land and amend and top-dress the existing soil with enough organic material to replenish depleted top soil to get decent yields out of the ground the for the first few years required to allow the micro-organisms and the natural soil ecosystem/mechanics to work their magic. Here's an example just how much organic material is potentially required, if you need to spread a 2 inch thick layer of organic compost over 6 fields that are approximately 20 square acres each that works out to be 18,000 TONS of compost, or 43,560 cubic feet.
That's a LOT of compost, and a lot of fuel to move it to where it needs to be, spread the stuff out, etc. One solution to defray these costs for the farmers is to start with smaller amounts of land, which does work to a point. When an organic farm is properly run and stewarded the yields after the soil is restored can be truly staggering, from 3 to 18 TIMES the amount of conventional yields on the same crops, though it does often take some years of careful stewardship and husbanding to get your plot worked up to that level of productivity, along with cooperative weather conditions.
However, discounting the start-up expense, there is no getting around that organic farms do require more labor to operate because when you stop using chemicals to counter pests, or other problems, you must return to the old-fashioned hand methods of dealing with these problems, and that requires more people, which requires more wages, etc. Though given the unemployment rates in this country more jobs aren't necessarily a bad thing. Despite the poor image that farming/blue color work has in our society; what job is more important to the very fabric of that society than producing highly nutritious and incredibly delicious food to fuel the nation? How did we get to the state where we revere the white collar "professionals" and celebrities? While those people do provide some useful services to their country, they do not generally contribute to the truly necessary things that every human being requires to sustain a healthful, productive, life in the way that farmers do. Something seems wrong with that picture to us. In our opinion, far from making our farmers and producers lives harder, we should be doing everything that we can to encourage and support them in their chosen profession.
Finally, the wastage/spoilage rates on organic farms are higher than on conventional farms partially because the crops themselves are more fragile due to their higher sugar contents, more physically fragile cellular structures, and because of this they tend to rot/ferment/degrade more quickly than highly hybridized varieties, which are bred for looks and stability rather than taste. Those highly stable hybrid varieties are then combined with green-picking practices, forced gas-ripening techniques, etc, to produce a product that though it will keep for an incredibly long period has relatively low nutritional properties despite its great potential, and its flavor will be lack luster at best when compared with organic counterparts.
Because of these issues farmers themselves are often reluctant to switch from conventional farming techniques to organic ones, and understandably so. Because of this reluctance and also because the factors previously outlined, the price of these organically produced goods is somewhat higher than conventional goods and likely to remain so for some time still.
That being said, organic produce, grains, legumes, and other organic goods do have a great deal of value. If we, as a society, wish to encourage our esteemed growers to switch over to more environmentally sound, better flavored, more nutritious seasonal produce and products we must purchase as many organic products as our budgets will allow to increase demand. Because farmers are practical people, they will grow whatever there is consistent demand for. Let the people speak on the type of items they want to eat.
If we want to be healthy, productive, long-lived people then we must eat healthful, highly nutritious foods that keep our bodies running at a high level of efficiency. Patronize local growers and organic products and stores as much as you can. We have seen a great rise in organic products availability in the last 20 years but there is still lots of room for improvement in that market. We would like to encourage everyone to each do what they are able to improve our nutrition, our health, and the state of our planet by putting our money where our mouths are with our purchases and our attitudes towards our food and its production.
Join us next week for: A Personal Post from Our Chef
Published 08-20-2012
A Cook's Garden
Part III
Since this is the last article in the culinary garden series we thought it would be a good idea to finish up with some different ideas to use the fruits(and vegetables) of your labors.
The most important part of garden planned cuisine is that you allow the garden to guide your cooking, not the other way around. Let the items that are at their peak decide how they should be cooked, presented, and served. Let the ingredients select the techniques, seasonings, flavors, and presentations. When fruits and vegetables are at their peak there is nothing you can do as a cook to really "improve" them, what you can do is highlight the aspects of their flavors and textures that you find most enjoyable, prepare and serve them in ways that do not Detract from the merits of the produce in any way. That is a lot tougher thing to do at times than you might think.
Here are some of our favorite garden-inspired dishes that we hope will give you some ideas on what to plant in your own garden, or inspire your trips to your local farmer's market. Bon Appetit!
As you can see there are plenty of different flavors and dishes that can be created from your garden's produce. Also, these ideas listed here use what can be found during this season coming from gardens and farmer's markets, earlier and later in the season the dishes created would be entirely different.
In Spring we have the light, crisp flavors of fresh peas, crisp lightly spicy radishes, bitter-sweet turnips, early lettuces, and tender spinach. Pair those flavors up with robust ramps, early onions, and green garlic; add in some earthy mushrooms, and new potatoes, and you have meals fit for royalty.
In early Summer you have the options of early beets, carrots, kohlrabi, summer greens(kale, mustards, swiss chard, etc), onions, mature garlic, early beans, cucumbers, cauliflower, cabbages, broccoli/broccolette, and summer squash.
At the height of Summer heading towards Fall there will be tomatoes, peppers, late crop beets, corn, eggplant, onions, lima beans, summer greens, late summer squashes and early winter squash, melons, cowpeas, cranberry, fava, and broad beans, leeks, potatoes, and early parsnips.
By Fall the tomatoes and peppers will be waning, there will be root vegetables, brussels sprouts, cabbages, legumes, leeks, last crop onions, mature garlic, hardy greens, winter squash, pumpkins, and late eggplant.
We hope to have inspired you with a few ideas for dishes, flavors, and combinations that you may not have thought of, along with some different ways to take your garden's bounty and turn it into delicious and nutritious meals for your family and friends. Happy cooking, and Bon Appetit!
If you would like more information about any of the recipe ideas listed in this article please don't hesitate to contact us
at
[email protected]
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Organic Foods
Published 08-13-2012
Part III
Since this is the last article in the culinary garden series we thought it would be a good idea to finish up with some different ideas to use the fruits(and vegetables) of your labors.
The most important part of garden planned cuisine is that you allow the garden to guide your cooking, not the other way around. Let the items that are at their peak decide how they should be cooked, presented, and served. Let the ingredients select the techniques, seasonings, flavors, and presentations. When fruits and vegetables are at their peak there is nothing you can do as a cook to really "improve" them, what you can do is highlight the aspects of their flavors and textures that you find most enjoyable, prepare and serve them in ways that do not Detract from the merits of the produce in any way. That is a lot tougher thing to do at times than you might think.
Here are some of our favorite garden-inspired dishes that we hope will give you some ideas on what to plant in your own garden, or inspire your trips to your local farmer's market. Bon Appetit!
- Roasted Tomato & Butternut Squash with Fresh Herbs served over Whole Wheat Fettuccine
- Braised Swiss Chard and Onions
- Wilted Chicory Salad with Sauteed Mushrooms and Garlic
- Carrot Slaw with Raisins, Shallots
- Marinated Green Bean Salad
- Herbed Cucumbers with Lemon
- Bell Pepper Salad with Capers and White Wine Vinegar
- "Creamed" Roasted Corn and Lima Beans
- Swiss Chard and Eggplant Au Gratin
As you can see there are plenty of different flavors and dishes that can be created from your garden's produce. Also, these ideas listed here use what can be found during this season coming from gardens and farmer's markets, earlier and later in the season the dishes created would be entirely different.
In Spring we have the light, crisp flavors of fresh peas, crisp lightly spicy radishes, bitter-sweet turnips, early lettuces, and tender spinach. Pair those flavors up with robust ramps, early onions, and green garlic; add in some earthy mushrooms, and new potatoes, and you have meals fit for royalty.
In early Summer you have the options of early beets, carrots, kohlrabi, summer greens(kale, mustards, swiss chard, etc), onions, mature garlic, early beans, cucumbers, cauliflower, cabbages, broccoli/broccolette, and summer squash.
At the height of Summer heading towards Fall there will be tomatoes, peppers, late crop beets, corn, eggplant, onions, lima beans, summer greens, late summer squashes and early winter squash, melons, cowpeas, cranberry, fava, and broad beans, leeks, potatoes, and early parsnips.
By Fall the tomatoes and peppers will be waning, there will be root vegetables, brussels sprouts, cabbages, legumes, leeks, last crop onions, mature garlic, hardy greens, winter squash, pumpkins, and late eggplant.
We hope to have inspired you with a few ideas for dishes, flavors, and combinations that you may not have thought of, along with some different ways to take your garden's bounty and turn it into delicious and nutritious meals for your family and friends. Happy cooking, and Bon Appetit!
If you would like more information about any of the recipe ideas listed in this article please don't hesitate to contact us
at
[email protected]
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Organic Foods
Published 08-13-2012
A Cook's Garden
Part II
Last week we took a little historical ramble through culinary gardens in some of their different incarnations and styles in various cultures. In this week's article we are going to discuss the logistics of planning and implementing a culinary garden of your own.
When you start out with the desire and inspiration to create a culinary garden of your own the nuts and bolts of proper planning are key to how successful your garden will be in meeting your needs. Proper planning will show you roughly how much time and effort you will have to expend to get the results you want, and also how much pleasure and satisfaction you will get from working in your garden. A poorly planned garden is like a poorly organized kitchen, more of an eye-sore and an irritant, than a source of beauty and sustenance.
Here is a list of things that you must consider as a prospective culinary gardener
- How much time do you want/have to put into the garden?
- What is your climate?
- How much space do you have?
- What types of things do you like to cook and eat?
- How long do you want to wait for harvest?
- What is your soil composition?
- How much water do you have at your disposal?
- How much sun/shade area is your garden space composed of?
- How much of your fruit/vegetable consumption are you looking to grow yourself?
- Do you want to grow only in-season, or do you want to grow off-season as well?
The first 8 questions on the list are very important to the planning of a successful garden. The last two questions are more advanced questions that are mainly for those who have had some experience with culinary gardens, and know what is involved with having and maintaining one.
When you plan your garden choose crops that fit your tastes, but also those that will suit the amount and type of space in terms of water, sunlight, climate, and soil composition you have available. The topic of what plants to grow is something of a complicated one and lots of excellent books have been written on the subject. We would recommend Rodale's Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening for detailed information on selecting crops, general garden keeping and pest control information. It is an excellent book and very informative for the novice gardener.
We have a method of gardening that we began recently in our own garden that we are completely converted to. It is very simple to do, reduces labor and the need for irrigation immensely, reduces pests, and improves soil composition, micro-organisms, and provides a great habitat for soil dwellers that improve the nature of the soil itself. What is this marvelous technique, you ask.
When you prepare your garden spread 1-2 inches of organic compost over the top, then cover it with 6 inches of untreated wood chips. Plant your crops in the chips, water, and then as the plants grow mulch them well with more chips. Recover garden ground with chips as needed when the decompose and pack down into the soil attempting to keep the layer about 6 inches deep. The first year, double dig the garden at the end of the growing season, top dress again with compost and chips. After that re-chip as necessary before planting, during and after the growing season, but do not till the ground. The soil will improve with each successive year.
To learn about more details about this method of gardening visit www.backtoedenfilm.com .
We hope to have provided you with a good planning guide and enough outside information sources to start planning your own culinary garden and that we have also inspired you to make an attempt. Growing your own produce is a wonderful thing, both in terms of your health nutritionally and the extra exercise you will get tending the garden. It is also a good thing to do for the environment, as well as a way to create a beautiful and useful space around your home. Happy Gardening!
Join us next week for: Culinary Gardens - Part III
Published 08-06-2012
A Cook's Garden
Part I
Ever since human beings started living in groups and staying in essentially the same geographical area for their lifespan there has been a nigh unbreakable link between cooking and gardening. Whether the garden is as simple as ancient humans throwing the seeds scraped from whatever plants were being boiled for the evening meal out of the back of the cave and letting nature take its course, to the hugely elaborate kitchen gardens of the 17th and 18th century French royalty that were stuffed with the finest, most exotic produce known and grown; cooks have always had gardens in one form or another.
In our Cook's Gardening article series we are going to take a little trip into historical gardens and introduce you to some of the practical, beautiful, gardens that were created to supply the needs of those times. We are also going to talk about some options we have as modern gardeners to create our own culinary garden, and the logistics of doing so. In our final article we are going to talk about some things to do with the harvest's bounty, some great ideas for taking advantage of the freshest flavors that nature has to offer which would also be appropriate to use with farmer's market produce, or similarly high quality fruits and vegetables. Though in our opinion, nothing beats vegetables that come out of the ground, get the dirt knocked off them, and are on the table in 10 minutes, not in terms of nutrition or flavor.
With the introductions out of the way, let's be off on our little trip through time and space.
Imagine yourself in a province of ancient Rome. You are not in Rome itself, but you are not out of the country of Italy. You are standing in a large garden, there is a hill behind you that has been terraced and planted with olive trees on one side, and grapes on the other. To the west on the flat land there is a planting of golden wheat shimmering in the afternoon sunlight. All around you are growing plants. There are the wavy celery-like leaves of parsnips, along with actual celery, tall cylindrical stalks of onions, and leeks. You also see the red veined broad leaves of beets, hills of cucumbers and gourds with their flowing vines and big lily-pad-like leaves. Along one edge of the garden are tall rows of artichoke plants, and on another edge a sea of fennel fronds waving in the breeze. To one side of the garden there is a path, and it leads to a small herb garden containing mint, dill, rue, coriander(cilantro), mustard, chives, a caper bush, basil, cumin, marjoram, parsley, and garlic. On the path up the villa there are lemon trees, and orchard grove of fig, apricot, peach, mulberry, and plum trees. This is an idea based off of historical records of what a prosperous Roman estate might have grown both for its own table, and for sale.
Now, imagine yourself in Europe in the high Middle ages(circa 1250 A.D.), it is late Spring and you are standing on the edge of a field of young barley. To one side of you is another field of growing oats, and behind you is a field of beans, their long vines curling and stretching out across the ground. On the remaining side of you is a small thatched roof house, with a large vegetable garden. In the garden you can see the tender vines of Spring peas, beautiful gleaming green lettuces and deep green leaves of spinach and kale. There are red veined beet tops, curly parsnip leaves, and the rough prickly leaves of turnips. Marching like soldiers along one side of the garden are rows of leeks and onions. Around one side of the house there are several gnarled apple trees and a row of proudly straight pear trees in bloom. Away into the distance you can see the rows of a vineyard on the side of a hill, the deep green leaves and brown stalks of the grape vines visible against the lighter green of the grasses. These crops are a mixture of what would have been grown by a relatively prosperous peasant, both for his own table and that of his feudal lord, as well as crops to be sold, or bartered for other goods.
Next, imagine yourself on the eastern coast of America in Colonial times(circa 1780), it is mid-summer and you are standing behind a large brick house looking across a walled garden full of riotously growing produce and herbs. Huge trailing plants of summer squash, and pumpkins. Stands of pole beans, kidney, fava, lima, and white beans. Green and red leaf lettuces grow along the shaded wall space. Cauliflower and cabbages, grow in orderly grids, and long vines of cucumbers heavy with fruit twine up the garden wall. Against one wall grow herbs of all types. Outside the walls of the near garden stretch plots of potatoes, corn, and assorted root vegetables that will be needed to get the family through the long winter months. A long bed of strawberries stretches out along the yard opposite where an orchard grows. The cherry trees are bearing small bright red fruits that glisten in the sunshine, while the white peach, plum, damson, apple, pear, and quince trees all stand proudly with their limbs bearing the beginnings of what will prove to be a good crop of fruit.
Finally, imagine yourself in a modern American town. It is summer and you are standing in a small back yard. On one side of the yard is a garage that could use a little work, towards the back fence stretches a well-mulched vegetable patch flowing over with stocky pepper plants, pole beans, tomato plants draped over their cages, cucumbers stretching out tendrils into the lawn, purple tinged eggplant plants, and rows of feathery topped carrots, red veined beets, and heat-tolerant greens. Strawberry plants cascade out of a series of box planters, a grape vine grows around the corner-post of the fence like a decoration, and a row of red raspberry bushes march single file along the side of the garage. Terra cotta pots filled with herbs are scattered here and there, lending a gently perfume to the late afternoon heat. This is just one of the many possibilities for the modern kitchen garden.
We hope you enjoyed our little trip to some kitchen gardens through the ages. Next week we will be talking about ways to create our own little kitchen garden paradise with modern space and time constraints. See you next time.
Join us next week for: A Cook's Garden - part II -
Published 07-30-2012
A Tropical Heat Wave
As the scorching heat persists in the Midwest we got to thinking that perhaps we should offer up a few of our favorite ways to beat the heat while still maintaining healthful choices. After all, ice cream is a great way to cool off, but not such a great idea for one's waistline, or body chemistry.
One of the main things we have noticed since we lost our extra weight is higher temperatures don't bother us nearly as much as they used to. We keep our house at roughly 85 degrees when the outdoor temperature is over 95 degree with central air, but if it's less than 95 out we don't even turn it on. Our point being, if you maintain your proper weight/body mass combined with a high level of cardiovascular fitness you will likely find your physiology to be much more tolerant of summer heat, also you'll save money on your electric bill.
Other options we have at our fingertips for keeping cool are, cooling summer foods, delicious ways to stay hydrated, and the old stand-by of Perspiration + Ventilation = Temperature Regulation.(We like rhymes.)
Summer foods are one of our favorite topics and stand-bys for keeping cool, and we're not talking about unhealthful frozen desserts that are loaded with fat, sugar, and artificial chemicals. What we think of when we think of summer foods are things like Gazpacho, the Spanish classic chilled tomato soup, bowls of chilled honeydew, watermelon and musk melon, fresh peaches right off the tree, grilled summer squash, eggplant, and bell pepper salad served cold with balsamic vinegar and crusty sourdough bread, and of course all the variations of coleslaw that can be made with fresh swiss chard, mustard greens, kale, fresh cabbage, and collard greens. All of those items have good to great nutritional value, along with low to very low caloric density. Which means from the diner's stand-point you can eat very well, stay cool, and slim down, or maintain your weight very easily while you are enjoying all those great flavors.
Hydration is something that cannot be stressed enough when the temperature is breaking 100 degrees F. However, sometimes water necessary as it is, loses its appeal. Some of our favorite options are iced green tea, iced fruit teas or tisanes, or simple lemon water with berry ice cubes.(Make ice cubes and put a few fresh berries, or a teaspoon of berry puree in each cube, when the ice melts it cools and flavors your drink. Mint and other herbs work well for this too.) Other fun options are to freeze brewed coffee as ice cubes and then blending it with your non-dairy milk of choice for a sort of frappe/latte. Squeeze a lime and an orange, mix the juice together and mix with 2 quarts of ice water for a deliciously refreshing beverage.
As for our old equation of Perspiration + Ventilation we have found that moderate exercise even in very hot weather can be quite beneficial as it encourages the body to sweat, when air moves over your damp skin it wicks away some of your excess body heat and cools you off. Be sure if you use this practice to cool off that you drink large amounts of water(1 to 2 liters) before and after to avoid heat exhaustion. Also, if you walk outside be sure to use proper sun protection. Wear sunscreen and light weight, light colored protective clothing. Safety first.
We would like to wish everyone the best of luck coping with the summer's heat. We hope you find our tips useful, and perhaps a few things that you might not have thought of in this way before. Stay cool, and remember winter will be here before we know it.
Join us next week for: The first in a series of columns on culinary and kitchen gardens.
Published 07-23-2012
It's All in the Details
The Importance and Pleasure in the Little Things
Everyone has likely heard the old saying "Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves", or something similar at one time or another. We think that sentiment, though somewhat trite, holds more than a grain of truth. How often do we find ourselves in a big problem, that started out as a very small problem. Take weight for example, it is highly unlikely that a human being would gain 50 lbs over the course of a week or two. That small problem of those 5 lbs gained over a vacation, turned into the much bigger problem of a 50 lb weight gain and all the health issues that often come along for the ride. If the issue had been addressed when it was small, it likely would never have reached the "big stage".
Details and little things come into play in many other circumstances as well, from driving a car to cooking a meal. There are a great many small details in the task that might seem insignificant, but in reality could cause you to have a crash, or ruin your meal.
When you decide to make changes in your life to improve your mind, body, or spirit, there are often many small things that you find out along the way. If you are in a situation where you must have rapid results or face severe consequences, paying close attention to the little things right from the start will speed up your learning curve considerably and possibly help you to avoid pitfalls and discouragements.
There is also a great deal of satisfaction to be found in details. In cooking for example, there are hundreds of small pleasures to be gained from very small things. The detail of squeezing a peach or apricot to discover its ripeness, for example. That is a small thing, but it is an important one and you gain both the satisfaction of knowing your fruits are ripe and will taste excellent, and also the thrill of the hunt and discovery. Even if what you're hunting is in the middle of a brightly lit grocery store instead of the middle of the woods, the satisfaction and excitement can still exist.
We would like to share some of our favorite "Little Things" with you. Small pleasures that can be experienced by any one, of any age. We would also like to share a few details from our way of living that make our lives easier, or better in some way.
Practical Details for Better Living
Pleasurable Details for a Satisfying Existence
Join us next week for: Thoughts and ideas for Dealing with Summer Heat Waves
+ Published 07-16-2012
The Importance and Pleasure in the Little Things
Everyone has likely heard the old saying "Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves", or something similar at one time or another. We think that sentiment, though somewhat trite, holds more than a grain of truth. How often do we find ourselves in a big problem, that started out as a very small problem. Take weight for example, it is highly unlikely that a human being would gain 50 lbs over the course of a week or two. That small problem of those 5 lbs gained over a vacation, turned into the much bigger problem of a 50 lb weight gain and all the health issues that often come along for the ride. If the issue had been addressed when it was small, it likely would never have reached the "big stage".
Details and little things come into play in many other circumstances as well, from driving a car to cooking a meal. There are a great many small details in the task that might seem insignificant, but in reality could cause you to have a crash, or ruin your meal.
When you decide to make changes in your life to improve your mind, body, or spirit, there are often many small things that you find out along the way. If you are in a situation where you must have rapid results or face severe consequences, paying close attention to the little things right from the start will speed up your learning curve considerably and possibly help you to avoid pitfalls and discouragements.
There is also a great deal of satisfaction to be found in details. In cooking for example, there are hundreds of small pleasures to be gained from very small things. The detail of squeezing a peach or apricot to discover its ripeness, for example. That is a small thing, but it is an important one and you gain both the satisfaction of knowing your fruits are ripe and will taste excellent, and also the thrill of the hunt and discovery. Even if what you're hunting is in the middle of a brightly lit grocery store instead of the middle of the woods, the satisfaction and excitement can still exist.
We would like to share some of our favorite "Little Things" with you. Small pleasures that can be experienced by any one, of any age. We would also like to share a few details from our way of living that make our lives easier, or better in some way.
Practical Details for Better Living
- Positive Motivation is Always More Sustainable Than Negative Motivation: Everybody's probably heard this said one way or another at some point. We're saying it again because it's true. You can select a course of action out of fear of the consequences if you don't, but you will only continue that course as long as your fear of the consequences is sustained. If you want to make lasting changes in your life and habits, but can never seem to really get it together: Examine your motivations, that is likely where the problem lies.
- Sometimes One is Enough, and Alone is Okay: People seem to be afraid to have to do anything on their own, or to be alone in their own heads nowadays. We don't think that it's bad to work alone, or to be alone either. Everything has its time, and learning to work well and be happy on one's own makes a person more appreciative of quality help and companionship when it does present itself. It is also a good skill set to learn voluntarily in case of emergency at a later date.
- Salad is Vegetables and Fruit Cut Up: Salad is easy, no matter what anybody says, or any fripperies they throw on it; it's fruit and veg cut up with some kind of acid on it. You can make it more complicated if you want to, but why make life harder than it has to be? Enjoy your salads. Make them to your taste, at your skill and imagination level, using the best ingredients you can find and afford. Your palate, stomach, and body will thank you.
- Knives Are to be Viewed as "Sharp" Until Proven Otherwise: It sounds like dumb advice, but people get lackadaisical about something they use all the time. If you cook plant-based food you do a lot of chopping and become very comfortable with your knives. Never be cavalier about them, when you're not expecting to have any problems is when you'll have problems. Always handle knives and other semi-dangerous cooking equipment with care and respect.
- Never Fight With Your Food, You Won't Win: Viewing food with fear or disdain isn't a good option for living a long, happy, and healthy life, you might get 1 or 2 of those, but not all three if you have a running feud with food. We as a species are forced to partake of physical nourishment on a regular basis to keep our cells working, don't fight it; work with it. Food is something we can get a great deal of enjoyment, pleasure, and entertainment out of if we view it in that light. Instead of thinking about things you can't eat, or shouldn't eat; think about all the amazing flavors there are to experience that are on your "green light" list. Ripe juicy fruits, fresh flavor-filled vegetables, crunchy roasted tempeh, savory earthy braised beans, fragrant steamed grains, fresh whole grain bread, the list goes on, and you should too. Try everything you've never tried, but always wanted to. If you don't like it, no harm; no foul. You stopped unproductive fighting, and you tried something new; that counts for a lot.
Pleasurable Details for a Satisfying Existence
- Take Time to TOUCH Things: Tactile sensation is something that we are forever warned away from as children by parents, or well-meaning adults which is a pity because human beings have a great capacity for the physical sensations of touch. Touching and handling things, in the kitchen at any rate, is one of the best ways to see if produce is ripe and fresh, and also if many dishes have finished cooking. Toss that "don't touch" scold out of your head and handle, feel, and touch.
- Tea is Good at Any Time, With Any Company or No Company: We like tea and we believe it is a very pleasant detail scattered throughout our existence. Drink tea. With people. Or on your own.
- If It Doesn't Smell, It Won't Taste: Whether it's produce, or a new recipe, if it doesn't have a distinct pleasant aroma it will likely not have much of a pleasant flavor either. Buy produce that smells like what it is, cook meals that smell like food. Add herbs, onions, garlic, and wine for savor. Add spices, fruits, and nuts for a taste of the exotic. Let your nose be your guide, that's part of what it's there for.
- Think Thoughts For The Thoughts Alone: It is very easy in this fast paced world to just get caught up in things and never just think thoughts for their own sake. To never indulge one's mind in a flight fancy, even a brief one, or slip off into a day-dream. This is a pity, human beings were given imagination as a gift. However, like any other part of our mind or physical being, if we never use our imagination it becomes weak and flabby. Take 5 minutes a day to just sit and think about nothing in particular, let your mind wander down a long disused pathway littered with brambles and fallen leaves, or let it travel down a dusty corridor past dead flies and bits of fluff, see where those roads take you. You might find a pleasant surprise under the dust-covers of your imagination.
- Flowers Really Do Make Things Better: Treat yourself and your household to a bunch of flowers once a week. They are 5 bucks at the corner shop, and we would bet that you spend 5 bucks a week on several things that won't brighten your mood as much as flowers well. Try it if you don't believe us, we would almost guarantee you that things will seem better with a nice bright vase on the table, or even just one scraggly daisy in a mason jar. Also, don't be embarrassed to buy flowers for yourself, there is nothing wrong with buying flowers for yourself. It means you care about your own mental well-being to do something nice for yourself on a semi-regular basis as your budget allows. Flowers = Better .
Join us next week for: Thoughts and ideas for Dealing with Summer Heat Waves
+ Published 07-16-2012
Hanging in the Balance
Ph: Its importance in the Human Body
Ph. The term used for measuring the levels(ratio) of acidity and alkalinity in different substances. Ph is all around us in the natural world, and in the man-made world as well. Ph is one of the determining factors of how bread rises, if beer will brew or not, if our gardens will produce good crops, or simply wither, yellow, and die. Ph is also a very important factor in our bodies, whether we know it or not.
Human blood/tissue has a specific ph range, and quite a narrow one at that. If our blood becomes too acidic we will sicken, and if the acid levels keep raising and we cannot correct it quickly enough we will die, also if our blood becomes too alkaline without rapid correction we will also die. Because our bodies are so sensitive to ph there are quite a lot of natural safeguards within our physiology to keep our blood chemistry within the necessary range.
Some of the ways our bodies compensate for ph is to increase or decrease our breathing. Expelling carbon dioxide gas more quickly removes acid factors from our blood gases and raises the ph balance, or if our breathing slows we retain more of the acid factors which lowers the ph. Other things our bodies may do to correct ph balance are, increase our kidney function to filter/clean our blood more quickly, release base minerals(calcium) from our bones to raise ph, and send out “thirst” signals to dilute our blood/bodily fluids and give our excretory systems more time to correct the issue.
As you can see, maintaining proper ph in our blood chemistry is extremely important to simply maintaining life, quite apart from feeling our best. Some long term side-effects/diseases that have been linked ph imbalances are.
- Loss of Bone Mass
- Higher risks of Cancer
- Chest Pains/Cardiac Problems
- Kidney Damage
- Kidney Stones
- Higher Risks of General and Infectious Disease
- Dental Problems and Decay
Our first level of defense against poor ph levels is, our diet. We don't mean don't eat vinegar or lemon juice on your salads, or drink orange juice. What we do mean is, a great many of the modern foods that are prevalent in the American diet promote acidity in the body, either the foods themselves release compounds that acidify blood/tissues, or the method by which those foods are broken down releases acidic by-products into our blood chemistry.
If you wish to help your body out in its constant ph balancing act here are a few foods you should consume regularly.
- Dark Green Leafy Vegetables
- Fresh Fruits
- Solid Green Vegetables
- Water
- Whole Grains
- Beans, Legumes, and Pulses
If there are things that we can do to help our body, it would stand to reason that there are also things that will hinder our body. Here are a list of things to avoid eating because of their stressing effects on the body.
- Carbonated Beverages
- Meats of all kinds, particularly cured/salted/smoked meats.
- Refined Sugars of any kind (white and brown sugars, corn syrup, etc)
- Refined Starches (white flour, white starchy potatoes, white rice, etc)
- Large amounts of Fat (particularly saturated fats)
- More than 1 gram of Sodium per day
The other defenses we have at our command are, Regular Exercise and Proper Hydration.
Regular exercise not only has the benefits of making our muscles stronger, our bones denser and tougher, and improving our general appearance, but it also improves our cardiovascular, and pulmonary system efficiency which in turn oxygenates our tissues/blood more thoroughly and effectively which helps to keep our blood gases(ph) in their optimum range. Also, maintaining low body fat mass and good circulation lowers the risk for a range of ailments that could cause problems that go from merely annoying, to downright life-threateningly dangerous.
Finally, proper hydration. We forever hear “drink water”, but it is true drinking a liter, or two, of water a day will improve your general health, particularly if you are replacing sodas, coffee, or other sugary/carbonated/stimulant-based beverages with water.
Water dilutes our blood and gives our kidneys and liver more of a buffer range to work in as they filter poisons/toxins/by-products from our bodies. Those toxins and by-products tend to be acidic in nature which lower our ph and have a weakening effect on our physiology.
We hope that we have provided you some basic understanding on the subject of ph in the human body, and some idea of how important maintaining that balance is, not only for sustaining health, but also even sustaining life. We would invite you to do your own research into this vast and fascinating subject. We believe that the more detailed understanding we have of our bodies and how they work, the easier it is for us to be good stewards and keepers of those bodies, which allows us as humans to be of better service to others, and even to treat ourselves more respectfully over the course of our lives.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Importance of Details
Published 07-09-2012
“Eat Food, Not Too Much; Mostly Plants.”
What This Means for the Modern Person
As the esteemed author and food authority Michael Pollan concluded in his highly acclaimed book “The Omnivore's Dilemma” the ideal diet for optimum health and fitness in human beings can be summed up in seven simple words.
“Eat Food, Not Too Much; Mostly Plants.”
We agree with that statement, though we do think that for all of its beautiful simplicity it could stand a bit more clarification.
In his other works Mr. Pollan describes his food philosophy in more detail, we would like to share our take on his excellent view of the proper use of the modern abundance of sustenance.
“Eat Food.” A simple enough statement in itself, however there are plenty of items that are categorized as “food” that do a human body no good whatsoever, and can cause a good deal of harm if ingested in any amount over a period of time. Junk foods, soda pop, poor-quality-high fat-antibiotic-bacteria-laden meats, candy, mucus-thickening-fat-sugar-chemical-laden dairy products, and the list goes on; to the point where much of what we find in our local markets when broken down to its actual constituents isn't really food, and in fact could be labeled low grade poisons.
All of that is contained in those two simple words; “Eat Food.” What that means in practical terms is when you shop the items you select should ideally be in the same form they came out of the ground, off the tree, or on the hoof in. At times that is impractical for reasons of modern living conditions and also sanitation, however in terms of produce, grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, etc all of those items can be purchased in basically their state of origin. That's what “Eat Food.” really means. Raw, living ingredients that are as close to the original state of existence as possible.
The next part of the phrase is equally simple in its wording, but possibly more complex in its meaning. “Not Too Much.” What constitutes as “too much”? How do we know what is too much, what is not enough, or if we even need much of what we consume?
It is fortunate that our bodies are built to tell us when enough is enough, however this beautiful system of satiation only works when the system is operating in its optimally sensitized state. If our hunger impulse has been dulled, warped, or abused over the years by chronically poor nutrition it is very possible to be very over-weight, yet starving to death. Fortunately, there is a way to re-acclimatize our body's hunger/satiation impulse. That way is to remove all low-nutrient dense foods from one's diet, all refined food stuffs, highly salted foods, meats, dairy, and high fat items for at least 6 weeks, it may take longer depending upon the person. Replace all of those low nutrient foods with large amounts of nutrient rich/low calorie items as a sort of system re-boot. Drink large amounts of water during this period to help your body flush out toxins. After 6 weeks you should notice yourself being able to feel the differences between actually NEEDING food, and false hunger/psychological "hunger". This process, while being quite a simple one to implement, is not necessarily a pleasant one. However, there is nothing to fear in feeling actual, true hunger. After a time you may find it actually quite a comforting feeling because it tells you that your body is working properly, in the manner that it was designed to. Also, after you have re-sensitized your system you will find that if you do over-do it on something at some point, which you will do, your body's reaction to this will be quite a swift one. Your body will teach you what it needs if you care to listen to it.
Finally we come to the last part of the sentence, "Mostly Plants." This is actually the simplest part of the statement, the majority of the food you eat should come from plants in their unprocessed form. Either leafy vegetables, solid vegetables, fruits, etc. Grains, legumes, pulses, should be consumed i their whole forms as they were collected from the plant. Our research and experience has shown us that a small amount of animal products can be consumed without causing discomfort/harm, but not more than 10% of your dietary calories should be made up of animal products. (For example, if you eat 1200 calories per day, not more than 120 of those calories should come from animal products.)
We hope that you find our thoughts to be good food for thought, if nothing else. We believe that great nutrition and great food go hand-in-hand completely, that it is not possible to say that they are ever mutually exclusive. If your food is not healthful, than it is not great food, no matter its savor. Likewise, if your food is highly nutritious, but tastes so bad that you never want to eat it, that isn't very useful either. We would not dream of dictating your diet, it is YOUR diet after all, but we do want people to be aware of what they are eating, what effects those items will have on their bodies, and their health. "Eat food; not too much, mostly plants."
Join us next week for: Information on the effects of pH in human body chemistry.
Published 07-02-2012
The Bare Bones Kitchen: What You Really NEED to Cook
A lot of people who cook also seem to think that really superior cooking requires a great deal of complicated and expensive equipment to produce. This is untrue, even the most haute cuisine producing kitchen usually has relatively little in terms of gadgets. Some restaurants that specialize in the types of dishes(molecular gastronomy, etc) do require specialized equipment, but most home cooks have neither the time, nor inclination to pursue the creation of those sorts of dishes in their own homes.
For most people a simple kitchen is all that is necessary, and indeed desirable. It is better to have 3 pieces of quality equipment you use all the time, that do everything you need them to do, than to spend your money on a bunch of gadgets that do little more than take up space. One of the main rules of equipping a kitchen is, if it only does 1 thing it has to do that 1 thing perfectly, otherwise it must fill in several gaps well enough to be useful to earn its place in the kitchen.
We tend to be frugal in the amount and type of cooking equipment that we buy, but let us be the first to state that being cheap on what you do buy is not always a good idea. There are several areas of cooking equipment that you should not be needlessly cheap on, one area is Knives and the other area is Cookware(pots and pans). Yes, there are deals to be had if you choose to go looking for them, but quality is more important. Choose sturdy, well-made things, in durable materials. Items that suit your purposes, generally speaking avoid sets. Though buying a set may save you money in terms of price per piece, having 5 extra knives or 3 pots and a lid that you don't use taking up valuable kitchen real estate is a poor bargain in our book.
In order to give our readers a starting place if they are equipping their kitchen from scratch we would like to provide you a list of what we think is absolutely required equipment for a kitchen. There will be some variations in equipment needs if you cook certain types of ethnic cuisines, but by and large our list will set most kitchens up quite nicely.
- 6 to 8 quart capacity Stock Pot
- 8 by 10 inch or larger polypropylene or wood cutting board
- An 8 to 10 inch Chef's Knife in the style of your choice (Asian or European)
- A 3 to 4 1/2 inch Paring Knife
- Vegetable Peeler in the style of your choice
- Sharpening Stone or Honing Steel (only for non-serrated knives)
- A Large Metal Work Bowl
- Metal Spoons
- Metal Forks
- A Ceramic or Tempered Glass Baking Vessel (Any dimension or shape that will suit your needs is acceptable, can be metal if you prefer but those are more suitable for baking, rather than roasting or braising and as it is rare to deglaze a pan in plant-based cuisines tolerance of temperature swings is not a requirement.)
- Aluminum Foil
- 2 to 3 Cotton Kitchen Towels
As you can see this is essentially the bare minimum for good basic and general cooking needs. However, there are a few luxuries that are nice to have if you are a more serious cook, or wish to progress further than novice level. Here is what we think is handy to have.
- A high-speed blender
- A French style Rolling Pin
- 3 to 5 small Metal Bowls (approximately 1 quart capacity)
- 1 small Sauce Pan (1 quart capacity)
- 1 8 to 12 inch Saute Pan (clad metal or cast iron, either are acceptable)
- 2 Baking Sheets (steel or aluminum)
- Rubber Spatula
- Metal Spatula
- 12 inch Spring Loaded Tongs
- Wooden Spoons
- Wine Key
- Balloon Whisk (Handy for batters, and occasionally for sauces, but a fork will substitute nicely in almost all instances.)
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Real, Life and Health-Promoting Food for the Modern Person
Published 06-25-2012
The Art of Texture
Creating Interesting Food Through Visual and Physical Textures
A huge part of what we eat comes down to the texture of the food itself. The human mouth is incredibly sensitive when it comes to registering variances of texture with the items it comes in contact with. Texture also plays a big role in how we taste what we taste.
For example, if you take a very mild vegetable such as a summer squash, mince very finely and steam it; the end result is mushy and extremely bland/watery tasting. Whereas if you take the same vegetable and slice it thinly into wide ribbons and then blanch them; the end result is pliable, yet still maintains its shape and has a pleasantly delicately sweet flavor. Very different results, with essentially the same vegetable and cooking method, the only thing that changed was the way the item was cut, i.e. the Texture it was given.
Not only does texture affect flavor, but it also has a very obvious effect on appearance. Even the best tasting food will suffer in the diner's estimation if it doesn't at least make a pretense of smartening itself up a bit. (The except is Indian food, that never looks all that great in comparison with other cuisines. However, it makes up for it in the smell/taste department so it can be excused looking like a bit of a dog's dinner a lot of the time.)
In terms of presentation and appearances, Visual Texture is one of the most fascinating things a cook has to play with. We can create a light airy effect using small leaves and things with long stems spun together in a loose pile. We can create solidity and heavy texture using a creamy sauce and large cubes of vegetables.
Visual textures range from light, airy, diaphanous, and delicate, to heavy, solid, compact, silky, grainy, creamy, spongy, springy, crispy, and many more. All of those textures are possible to get out of common and inexpensive ingredients with minimal physical effort. What does require effort is gaining the knowledge required to do so. Here is a list of the things any cook who wishes to master the art of texture needs to learn.
- Knife Skills: If you want to be able to create the textures that different cuts give, you must be able to perform those cuts in a consistent manner. Sharpen your knives and practice when you cook your daily meals. You have to cook anyway, you might as well make double use of the time.
- How to Perform Different Basic Cooking Techniques(roasting, steaming, sauteing, etc): This skill is learned through reading/watching and then doing it yourself. You are going to make mistakes, things will go wrong, but they will also go right. Learn from your mistakes, and your successes. Write things down, what worked and what didn't. Practice, practice, practice.
- When to Apply Different Cooking Techniques: This idea is very similar to the prior one, the main way to get the hang of it is practicing. However, if you are unsure of where to start in terms of being creative on your own, read books about different styles of food and ethnic cuisines, steal other people's ideas, don't try to re-invent the wheel at first. Use ideas that sound good to you, at first just try to replicate what the other person did, after you can do that pretty consistently, then try adjusting and changing things to suit your own ideas and what you have on hand.
- What Items to Use to Create the Desired Effect: Learn about the physical/chemical properties of different ingredients, that information will give you more flexibility when you want to just make something up from scratch.If you don't understand what things are similar in chemical/physical make-up, even if their flavors are totally different, you will have a very hard time substituting one thing for another, or creating dishes spontaneously from what you have in front of you.
- Eye/Appearance Evaluation: This is perhaps the most important skill to have when working with textures. It is not a tangible skill, but rather an intangible one. It is very easy to learn to cut a carrot into shreds or a potato into cubes, but learning when a dish has the "right" amount of lightness, and the "right" amount of solidity, and learning how to blend textures, tastes, and smells on a plate into one harmonious whole is much more complex. Reading books, watching and copying other people are good places to start. Go to restaurant with an open kitchen where you can watch the cooks working, watch a television program of a chef who's skills you admire, look at cookbooks and gastronomic magazines that you would never actually use the recipes from just for their photographs and illustrations. To learn what looks good to you, you have to look at a lot of plates. A lot of the concept of "having good eye" or a knack for appearance is very subjective and relative to the individual. Experience will teach you what you like, and having a good command of basic cooking techniques will give you the confidence to assert your personality and your "eye" through your dishes.
All of that sounds like a lot, and very honestly, it is a lot. However, it is all do-able and if you are passionate about cooking great tasting and great looking food, all of the learning experience is no hardship. If you choose to learn about the vast realm of texture and appearances, even if you never master it entirely it will have made you into a very good cook if nothing else. Have fun with it, create, learn, use the concept for what it is, a very advanced sort of tool for the cook to bring pleasure to the diners. That's all it is, another tool; just like a melon-baller, or a paring knife. Learn how to use it, treat it with respect and care, and it will serve you well in every dish you prepare, and every meal you set on the table. Happy Cooking and Bon Appetit!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on What is Really Necessary to Cook.
Published 06-18-2012
The Skill of Timing
A great chef once said “We cannot be early, and we must not be late. We must always be ready, and on time.” He was referring to timing orders in a busy restaurant kitchen, but the same sentiment applies to the home cook as well.
So many holiday dinners, formal dinner parties, and even week-night family meals are stuttered and stammered through because of poor timing. This is not necessarily the cook's fault as things can happen that are beyond his/her control, however we would like to discuss a few things that cooks can do to help themselves adhere to the “always ready” stricture and mentality.
Timing is very much a function of planning, if you're good at planning you'll probably be good at timing. If you have poor planning, it will be much more difficult to create the timing you want.
What we mean by planning, is knowing to within a 10 minute window how long it is going to take you to make the dishes on your menu. If you don't know how long your dishes take to cook, how long your prep is going to take, or what kind of clean up you're going to have to do in between dishes it is darn near impossible to have dinner on the table at a certain time.
If you cook from recipes, read the recipes thoroughly when you make up your menu plans for the week. Adjust any times given by the author to accommodate any foibles of your stove/oven, or your own level of skill and familiarity with the techniques involved to produce the recipe. If you are more of a "let's-wing-it" cook, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with how long different ingredients take to cook when prepared by the various basic techniques(roasting, braising, sauteing, etc).
When cooking multiple dishes staggering the cooking and preparations is key to making sure that everything is done at the same time, or if you are cooking your dinner in courses, that they are staggered to the desired intervals. Here are a few tips that we have found useful over the years to make sure that our dishes are done when WE want, not when THEY want.
We hope these few tips will help you to be more confident and comfortable in your kitchen, will help you with your meal planning and cooking, and generally make you want to cook more often, for yourself and your family. Good, controlled timing in the kitchen will actually decrease the stress of cooking after you become accustomed to it. Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on creating and using texture in cooking.
Published 06-11-2012
A great chef once said “We cannot be early, and we must not be late. We must always be ready, and on time.” He was referring to timing orders in a busy restaurant kitchen, but the same sentiment applies to the home cook as well.
So many holiday dinners, formal dinner parties, and even week-night family meals are stuttered and stammered through because of poor timing. This is not necessarily the cook's fault as things can happen that are beyond his/her control, however we would like to discuss a few things that cooks can do to help themselves adhere to the “always ready” stricture and mentality.
Timing is very much a function of planning, if you're good at planning you'll probably be good at timing. If you have poor planning, it will be much more difficult to create the timing you want.
What we mean by planning, is knowing to within a 10 minute window how long it is going to take you to make the dishes on your menu. If you don't know how long your dishes take to cook, how long your prep is going to take, or what kind of clean up you're going to have to do in between dishes it is darn near impossible to have dinner on the table at a certain time.
If you cook from recipes, read the recipes thoroughly when you make up your menu plans for the week. Adjust any times given by the author to accommodate any foibles of your stove/oven, or your own level of skill and familiarity with the techniques involved to produce the recipe. If you are more of a "let's-wing-it" cook, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with how long different ingredients take to cook when prepared by the various basic techniques(roasting, braising, sauteing, etc).
When cooking multiple dishes staggering the cooking and preparations is key to making sure that everything is done at the same time, or if you are cooking your dinner in courses, that they are staggered to the desired intervals. Here are a few tips that we have found useful over the years to make sure that our dishes are done when WE want, not when THEY want.
- Order of Operations: This sounds obvious on the face of it, but if you didn't think of it you mightn't know it was important. Every recipe has its first, second, third steps, and so on. Sometimes those steps can be combined when preparing multiple recipes, and sometimes they can't. Familiarizing yourself with your recipes thoroughly before beginning to cook, and making yourself a written list of preparations/steps to follow will help keep you on track, un-stressed, and everything finished in the time allotted. Professional cooks do that all the time.
- Organization/Mise en Place: It is difficult to stay focused and on-time when you're in a mess/clutter. Place prepared ingredients in small bowls, or on plates. Keep your cutting board as empty as possible. This keeps things out of your way, stops them from getting messed up while you're preparing other things, and also helps you to keep track of what you've finished and what you need to do next.
- Space and Equipment Considerations: If your menu will require the use of 3 saute pans and you only have 1 saute pan, it is necessary to stagger the cooking times so that everything gets prepared with the necessary equipment, in the proper manner. Again, familiarizing yourself with the recipes in advance will help you plan out which dishes need which pieces of equipment, the usage of burners and ovens, etc. If you are lacking pieces of equipment you can still usually make the dish work, you just may have to be more creative in working with what you do have which generally requires additional preparation time. Plan accordingly.
- When in Doubt; Start Early: If you have never made a dish before, or there is a technique involved that you are unsure about, or unfamiliar with, allow yourself an extra 15 to 60 minutes depending upon the complexity of the technique. 9 times out of 10 you can halt the dish midway and then finish it up right before it is needed if you need to slow things down, however if you get low on time and then try to rush whatever it is, you will likely make mistakes, or possibly even ruin the dish. At best you will have caused yourself needless stress and worry.
- Clean as You Go: This is another one of those obvious things, however few home-cooks are either aware, or have cultivated, the skill of cleaning up as they cook. While cleaning up as you prepare your meals may not save you much in terms of preparation time, it will save you a great deal of time on the post-meal tidying up. Wash any dishes, clear, and wipe your counters before you even begin to cook. Rinse prep bowls, wipe counters and stove down as you go. Put things away when pan are preheating, or pots are simmering. There is always a few minutes to be found here and there in the cooking process that can be used for cleaning up around/after yourself if you'll only make the effort to look for them.
We hope these few tips will help you to be more confident and comfortable in your kitchen, will help you with your meal planning and cooking, and generally make you want to cook more often, for yourself and your family. Good, controlled timing in the kitchen will actually decrease the stress of cooking after you become accustomed to it. Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on creating and using texture in cooking.
Published 06-11-2012
Edible Theme
Creating Dishes and Menus That Make Sense
Most people are familiar, at least in passing, with the concept of Theme. However, very few people equate theme with food. For example, everyone's probably been to one of those themed-parties Halloween parties complete with a jell-o brain and “eye-ball” salad; the “eye-balls” being either peeled grapes, or tapioca balls, depending on the version. This is a very simplified version of what we mean by edible theme.
When you work with seasonal food it is fairly easy to learn about theme as the two are subtly entwined, so subtly in fact most people don't even realize that they are.
When we talk about theme we are referring to using dishes to create a certain range of flavors, to highlight a certain ingredient or season, or even to evoke a range of thoughts/memories in the diners. All of this is made possible through proper use of theme.
Here are a few examples of well-themed menus in order of the examples listed above.
- Spring Theme: Chilled Spring Pea Soup, Early Radish Salad with Radish Micro-Greens and Malt Vinegar Gastrique, Whole Wheat Tagliatelle with Spring Mushroom Ragout and Roasted Onions, Mint Sorbet with Chocolate Tuilles
- Carrots: Roasted Carrot and Coriander Terrine, 3 Carrot Slaw with Orange and Mint, Spiced Crispy Tofu with Braised Carrots and Gingered Edamame, Vegan Carrot Trifle.
- Vacation in Provence: Tomato and Herb Towers, Green Salad a`la Provence, Roasted Eggplant with Tomato Confit, Thyme Coulis, and Panisse Nicoise, Apricot Tart.
As you can see from the menus above a theme was selected and then carried out through the entire menu/meal. We're not saying that you have to do this consciously with every meal you prepare, however we think it is a good idea for everyone who wishes to become a well-rounded to cook to familiarize themselves with the idea and have at least a vague idea of how to carry it out.
The examples above, while they illustrate the types of themes you may select, don't really tell you much about how to select, or create dishes to match your chosen theme. We have a few suggestions for you in that area, these are things we use both for ideas when we are creating a theme for a special occasion, or simply for the pleasure of the undertaking itself.
- Start Simple: Choose a theme that isn't too complex when you're first beginning to mess with the theme concept. For example, if you are a novice cook with a fairly minimal of kitchen skill and equipment, you are going to want to select a theme that plays to your strengths.
- Cook in Your Comfort Zone: In the beginning of learning about themes, choose a cuisine, ingredient, or season, that you know something about; and then translate your idea about that theme through your cooking. The Spring Themed menu above, that is an example of some of the flavors, textures, and seasonings we associate with Spring, it is our idea of what Spring tastes like. If you were going to make a Spring themed menu it would, and indeed should, be quite different from ours even if it used many of the same ingredients.
- Express Yourself: It is YOUR theme, while the theme itself needs to make sense(i.e. if your theme is tomatoes, all the dishes should have tomatoes of one kind or another in them), however, you are the one preparing the dishes so let them be both an expression of your personality and tastes, as well as the theme itself. Mix and match, try new things, experiment, play, and have fun with it.
Ultimately, we want you to see that themes are there to help you have more fun when you cook, not less. Theme is the structure of the meal, like having 4 acts in a play. The acts are there to make the actions of the characters make sense and be more enjoyable to follow for the audience, as is theme with food. The theme is there to allow the diners a better view, and easier access into the mind, emotions, and skill of the cook; that's all. We hope that you will ponder the idea of theme, experiment with it, and find out how to use the ideas we've presented to you in your ordinary, and extraordinary cooking.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on The Importance of Culinary Timing.
Published 06-04-2012
The Progression of a Cook
Every cook starts out as a novice, whether they want to admit it, or not. Some have more talent, passion, and focus for the art than others, but all start out equal.
The difference between a novice cook and a master chef is quite a wide gulf, encompassing a set of skills pertaining to the manipulation of the ingredients themselves, the selection of ingredients in their raw state, the combination of flavors, textures, color, and seasoning in any given dish, presentation of different dishes in different styles, and of course the economy and mathematics of running the kitchen itself.
While some of this level of competence is made up of physical skill, handling a knife, working with dough, etc. The rest of it is all mental, a little bit of it comes from pure imagination and creativity, some comes from channeled/disciplined imagination and creativity stemming from a high level of automatic craftsmanship, and some of it comes from being taught, either through your own experiences or someone else's. When all of this comes together in a talented and passionate individual the result is dynamite, even in a less talented individual it's usually pretty darn good.
However, if you're just starting out in the world of cooking, or even you've been cooking for awhile at a basic level that can be a pretty daunting hill of knowledge to climb. Not too worry though, it takes years of practice and experience even for the most talented, or extraordinary individual.
We would like to share with you a few things and ideas that have helped us over the years improve our cooking skills themselves, and keep our passion for the art going even through the most mundanely tedious tasks such as peeling a mountain of apples, husking corn, or chopping onions.
If the joy of anything is in the simple parts of the task, then there is much joy to be had in the kitchen as the majority of the tasks found there are simple. However, “simple” does not necessarily mean “easy” and we think that's where a lot of novice cooks (and their teachers) fall flat.
We believe the best way to progress is to find clear instructions that express the information necessary in a way that makes sense TO YOU for the task you wish to perform and then just do it. Practice and repetition over time will teach you more, better and faster, than any other way. We also believe that the following items are the best things you can do to make yourself a better cook. Some people find television programs useful as well, but we tend to avoid those as they seem to be mostly gimmicks and little useful information. By all means, scalp them for ideas though, or if you need a visual for a certain technique. ( Youtube works well for specific technique demonstrations)
- Read books
- Researching and learning about ingredients and their basic properties
- Keeping an open mind
- Be honest with yourself about your own skill set
Whether you wish to believe us, or not, there is always something new to learn about cuisines and cooking. The world of food is ever evolving and we learn new things all the time. Ways to make our dishes taste better, look prettier, be more nutrient dense and health promoting, there is always something new and interesting to be found. When you stagnate as a cook, it's probably because you think you know everything there is to know and you can't be bothered to keep reading, searching out new knowledge, and practicing your current skills. Nobody knows everything, no matter what they think.
Humble cooks, are better cooks.
We hope you find this article inspiring, writing it brought back memories for us from when we were starting out on our culinary journeys. Just remember, everyone starts out equal. No one is instantly a fabulous cook. Also, even more importantly than that is; Food is supposed to be FUN. Don't be stressed out about it, it's just salad. It's just a few fruit and veg, not the space shuttle. No one's asking you to differential equations, or anything. Enjoy yourself when you cook, find the all the joy there is to be had, and wring every last drop of pleasure from every task you undertake. Good luck, and happy cooking!
Join us next week for:Thoughts on Theme in Day-to-Day Cuisine
Published 05-21-2012
"Foreign Foods"
Exotic Ingredients We Like and Some Things To Do With Them
Over the last 60-70 years we in the United States have become inundated with new and exotic ingredients to cook with. Partially this is due to immigration, partially the more global economy, and partially simple human curiosity and delight in the unusual.
Foreign ingredients have a unique set of pleasures to them for the enthusiastic and inquisitive cook. They give the cook the ability to create authentic dishes from other countries and cultures which for the diners is sort of like taking a trip without leaving your house. We think that's fun. Exotic ingredients also give a greater range of dishes, flavors, and textures to experiment with, and experience for the simple pleasure of the unique or unusual. Also, if you like to learn about new cultures and the ways that other people do things, what better way to explore our global neighbor's viewpoints than through their food and dining customs.
The place where exotic ingredients can become problematic is a lot of the time the access we get to them, while better than nothing, is not going to be ideal, optimal, or even close to peak. There isn't a lot that can be done about this, for example pineapple fresh off the plant in Hawaii is ALWAYS going to be better than one picked green, bumped and banged around, then shipped halfway across creation. There is no way, it is going to be as good. However, if you familiarize yourself as a cook with what a good specimen(in terms of produce) looks, smells, feels, and tastes like you will have done the best you can to end up with the best possible raw materials available to you.
Though the subject of exotic produce can be tricky, we are fortunate that a lot of unusual ingredients ship very well and can be found in good condition with minimal cost and effort.
Here is a list of some of our favorite “exotic”,or ethnic ingredients that find their way to our table on a fairly routine basis; along with their cuisines of origin, and a few of the dishes we make with them.
- Sea Vegetables (wakame, hajiki, kombu, laver and nori) (Japan, Korea, China, Northern Europe) [Seaweed salads, miso and mushroom soups, Asian noodle dishes, vegetable hand-rolls, and some root vegetable or bean braises.]
- Miso (Japan) [Miso soup, salad dressings, marinades for tofu, vegetables, and pickles, crusts for roasted tempeh, braised eggplants with miso and ginger.]
- Tempeh (Malaysia/Java) [Tempeh cutlets, crisp tempeh crumbles top vegan lasagnas, roasted tempeh crusted with miso and green onions, Asian noodle dishes, and some Italian style pasta dishes as well.]
- Champagne or Ataulfo Mangoes (Mexico/Philippines) [Eat alone, in fruit salads, chop and season with chile pepper and mix with chopped bell peppers and jicama for a great salad, chop and mix with chopped tomatoes, red onion, green chile, lime, cilantro, and garlic for awesome salsa. Large slices can also be grilled for a great dessert item serve with a little coconut cream, or puree with a little water and vodka and churn in an ice cream maker for delicious sorbet.
- Korean Red Pepper (Korea) [ Make your own kim-chee, add to pasta sauces, braises, soups, stews, and salad dressings for a mellow slightly spicy paprika flavor without the tongue-searing heat. Toss raw vegetables with a little bit before roasting for a great slightly smoky finished flavor. Even works well with some fruits if you plan on grilling or roasting them, such as mangoes, peaches, or pineapple.]
- Plantains (Carribean/Latin America) [Peel, slice, and squash green ones and bake for a slightly bland crispy plantain fritter/chip, green ones can also be boiled with cumin seed, onion, and lime juice and served whole or mashed for a latin alternative to potatoes. Peel and slice yellow/black skinned ones 1/2 inch thick on the bias and pan-fry for sweet delicious plantains. Serve with spicy black beans, yellow rice, and a green salad for a great Caribbean style meal.]
- Dried Porcini Mushrooms (Italy/France) [Add a few to braises, soups, stews, or sauces for a rich "meaty" flavor. Seriously, they make stuff taste like you put beef broth in it.]
- Aged Sherry Vinegar (Spain/Portugal) [Great on roasted vegetables of any kind, particularly beets and carrots. Add to lentils, braised lima beans, fava bean puree or soup. Add to mushroom dishes when a little acidity is desired. Long-aged sherry vinegar can be excellent with fruits, vanilla, and fresh raw tomato preparations. ]
We hope that you see something you like the sound of in our list of favorites, and if you don't; we would encourage you to find some favorite exotics of your own. Don't be afraid to experiment, however do buy whatever you choose in a small amount that way it's no big deal to get rid of it if it doesn't turn out to be as nice as you were hoping. Happy experimenting!
Join us next week for:Thoughts on learning the art of cooking.
Published 05-14-2012
Gluten-Free: Life Without Wheat
While we do not have intolerance to gluten ourselves, we know plenty of people who do. We also recognize what a large issue wheat and gluten allergies are to ever-growing numbers of the population.
When most people begin a plant-based diet they typically get a large amount of their daily calories from sources of starch, and that starch typically comes from some sort of wheat based product, bread, pasta, crackers, etc. However, we believe that this is a generally unimaginative, and indeed somewhat poor idea nutritionally speaking. It is actually much easier to transition from a plant-based diet to a gluten-free plant-based diet, than it is to transition from a conventional diet to a standard gluten-free diet.
The main reason for this being if you eat a plant-based diet you have cut out enormous amounts of processed foods from your diet, and most of the gluten that people consume comes from the copious amounts of modified and pure wheat starches and flours that food manufacturers incorporate into their products. If you are already not eating processed foods, all you have to do is cut out the obvious sources of gluten and you're good to go.
However, that does beg the question what if you're already on a gluten-free plant-based diet, but you miss certain foods like pasta once in a while, or a nice crusty slice of toast on occasion. What are you supposed to do?
While there are quite a few gluten-free food makers out there, there are very few gluten-free VEGAN food products on the market and the few that are there are prohibitively expensive. This means that your options are narrowed very swiftly to (a) Make It Yourself, and (b) Learn to Do Without It.
For us, we try not to do without anything in terms of food that we like, as long as we know it won't make us sick, feel bad, or gain weight. In a lot of cases we prefer option (A), over option (B) and we've found ways to make things work. Here are a few suggestions for you if you find yourself wishing you could have a few of the wheat-based items that you used to eat, but you're not wanting to go off your plant-based diet for conventional gluten-free substitutes. (Which a lot of them are, honestly not all the great of substitutes anyway.)
If you are new to gluten-free, or are curious about exploring that type of cookery we hope we have given you a few ideas and directions to travel. There is a lot of information out there on the subject if you care to search for it, though as with everything else on the internet there is also a lot of poppycock and hokum out there as well. We always recommend finding multiple sources with the same information before taking anything as "fact", particularly if your health depends upon the information in question being correct.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Foreign and Exotic Foodstuffs
Published 05-07-2012
While we do not have intolerance to gluten ourselves, we know plenty of people who do. We also recognize what a large issue wheat and gluten allergies are to ever-growing numbers of the population.
When most people begin a plant-based diet they typically get a large amount of their daily calories from sources of starch, and that starch typically comes from some sort of wheat based product, bread, pasta, crackers, etc. However, we believe that this is a generally unimaginative, and indeed somewhat poor idea nutritionally speaking. It is actually much easier to transition from a plant-based diet to a gluten-free plant-based diet, than it is to transition from a conventional diet to a standard gluten-free diet.
The main reason for this being if you eat a plant-based diet you have cut out enormous amounts of processed foods from your diet, and most of the gluten that people consume comes from the copious amounts of modified and pure wheat starches and flours that food manufacturers incorporate into their products. If you are already not eating processed foods, all you have to do is cut out the obvious sources of gluten and you're good to go.
However, that does beg the question what if you're already on a gluten-free plant-based diet, but you miss certain foods like pasta once in a while, or a nice crusty slice of toast on occasion. What are you supposed to do?
While there are quite a few gluten-free food makers out there, there are very few gluten-free VEGAN food products on the market and the few that are there are prohibitively expensive. This means that your options are narrowed very swiftly to (a) Make It Yourself, and (b) Learn to Do Without It.
For us, we try not to do without anything in terms of food that we like, as long as we know it won't make us sick, feel bad, or gain weight. In a lot of cases we prefer option (A), over option (B) and we've found ways to make things work. Here are a few suggestions for you if you find yourself wishing you could have a few of the wheat-based items that you used to eat, but you're not wanting to go off your plant-based diet for conventional gluten-free substitutes. (Which a lot of them are, honestly not all the great of substitutes anyway.)
- If you are missing the texture and flavor of Pasta take a little culinary trip into Asian food. Rice noodles from Thailand, Vietnam, and China can all be prepared with light plant-based sauces for delicious results. If you want something a little more substantial and more like Italian pasta search out 100% buckwheat Soba, Ramen, or Somen noodles from Japan, or try out some of the bean flour pastas now available at high quality Asian markets, some health food stores, and of course, online. Brown rice pasta is also an option, but we find that particular product can be over-bearingly “rice-y” it also can have quite a gummy texture if not cooked exactly right. Quinoa pasta is also an option, but those pastas are actually mostly made of corn we don't think they are really worth the money.
- Substitutions for traditional raviolis and dumplings are easily created through the use of Asian rice paper wrappers, and home-made sticky, or glutenous(refers to texture not that it contains actual gluten) rice flour doughs filled as you so desire.
- Traditional Bread substitutes are a bit trickier, mainly because no matter how you blend flours and starches to act like gluten, nothing really acts like gluten except gluten. However, there are still a few options open to you. Quick breads and flat-breads are actually easier to make when using non-gluten flours as it is much more difficult to make them tough, or dry. Yeast breads can be a bit of a problem, Teff flour can generally be tolerated by persons with ceiliac disease and substituted for whole wheat, but if you have an actual gluten allergy it could be problematic. Buckwheat and Millet flours are gluten free and can be combined with masa harina, and potato starch to produce decent quality yeast breads. That being said, it is a bit of a pain to produce true gluten-free yeast breads, it is certainly worth trying if you think you might be interested in learning the skill but be prepared for a certain amount of trial and error during the learning process.
- Traditional Baked goods can be made gluten-free easily enough, simply by trading out the wheat flour for another grain flour. In recipes where formation of a bake-able dough or batter is all that is required of the flour added you will not find the texture or structure to alter overmuch. However in something where a high-rising, light, crisp texture is what you are aiming for choose your substitute carefully. Rice flour will produce crispiness, but no structure. Buckwheat flour if stirred enough, will provide structure, but not crispness or lightness. Quinoa flour is probably the best all-rounder, but be sure to decrease the fat in the recipe by 1 tbs per cup of quinoa flour added; or your finished item may be slightly greasy, leaden, or lumpen.
If you are new to gluten-free, or are curious about exploring that type of cookery we hope we have given you a few ideas and directions to travel. There is a lot of information out there on the subject if you care to search for it, though as with everything else on the internet there is also a lot of poppycock and hokum out there as well. We always recommend finding multiple sources with the same information before taking anything as "fact", particularly if your health depends upon the information in question being correct.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Foreign and Exotic Foodstuffs
Published 05-07-2012
The Fine Art of Communication
Learning to Listen to What Your Body Has to Say
Learning to listen is one of the hardest things that we as human beings learn to do. Most of the listening we do may be outward, but listening inwardly can be just as useful and rewarding, and at times perhaps even more so than outward listening.
Our bodies can tell us many interesting and useful things about our actual state of health if we choose to listen, and are able to accurately interpret what they are trying to tell us. The body can tell us on its own if it is being properly hydrated, receiving optimum amounts of vitamins or fiber, how good of shape its plumbing is in(the circulatory system), how good its kidney and liver function is, how well we are actually eating, whether or not it is getting sufficient exercise, how well oxygenated its tissues are, and the list goes on and on.
In order to listen to your body and understand what it is telling you it is important to have basic understanding of how your body works. Of course this is a vast, complex, and involved topic, one that a great many learned people have spent their entire lives studying. However, this should not put you off from trotting down to your local library and picking up a general anatomy/physiology book, even something from the children's section will be enough to get you started. Or just log onto Wikipedia and read a few articles on the different systems of the body, and how things work in a general sort of way. You don't need to know everything a doctor knows, you're not trying to become a physician. What you are trying to do is, find out how everything should function in a healthy adult human body, that way if something doesn't behave in the way that you think it should from your research, and understanding level, you know to when, and perhaps how, to investigate further.
Also, to be a good physical listener you must know what “normal” for your body is. You must be paying attention to the day-to-day feelings and sensations that make up living in your body, to know when something happens that feels unusual. In a nutshell, you must know what “normal” is to register when something is “abnormal”.
We would also recommend trying to create a good relationship with your doctor, or healthcare provider that enables you to ask questions, and find out how things actually work. If your doctor does not want to listen to what you have to say, as the owner and operator so to speak, when you tell them about any phenomenons, or symptoms you have experienced, you are well within your rights to take your custom elsewhere. That being said, try very hard not to cry "wolf!", your doctor is probably a very busy person and if you are that patient that comes running with something that is patently absurd; your doctor will be hard pressed to take you seriously if you do have a serious concern. Respect goes both ways after all.
We hope that perhaps you have been given a few ideas for how you can become a better steward of your body. The human body is a delicate and complex creation in a lot of ways, but it is also extraordinarily tough. However, just because it can take a world of abuse and neglect that does not mean it should have to.
Join us next week for: Ideas for Gluten-Free Living
Published 04-30-2012
Mental Clarity: How Our Diet Can Affect Our Minds
“You are what you eat”. Such a simple phrase passed down through the years, however what no one seems to say is that such a phrase is absolutely true and can be taken quite literally. We are what we eat.
What, how, when, and the amounts of food we eat have a profound effect, not only on the physical structure of our bodies, but also on the quality of our minds. The properties of the foods we eat have enormous sway on the delicate properties of our body chemistry. Often unknowingly, we force a lot of wild swings of physical and mental moods on ourselves that we would not otherwise experience simply by not maintaining optimum eating habits. One analogy is, you wouldn't put diesel fuel in gasoline engine, would you? Same idea for human bodies, if a little over-simplified.
With so many people in the United States taking medication for psychiatric conditions, it does rather make us wonder how we went from a relatively small percentage of the population having unbalanced minds, to most people being medicated for some type of mental condition. It also makes us wonder how many of those people really need the medications? Are they are just blindly following their health-care provider's instructions? Do they really have anything truly wrong with them at all, and if they do is there a better way to fix the problem?
Obviously, some people do require medication to mitigate an immediate threat to their continued existence(suicidal tendencies, etc). However, mild depression, physical and psychological malaise, or other more minor conditions could potentially be solved through a simple change of diet and increased exercise to stimulate beneficial brain activity and hormone production.
We are not suggesting that all psychological complaints can be completely cured by diet and exercise, but from our personal experience minor ones certainly can be. Situations change, and sometimes not into very desirable ones. However we believe that maintaining a high level of nutrient density in our diets makes us better able to cope with those situations when they do arise by ensuring that our brains are functioning at the highest possible level, our judgement is at its best, most rational, and we are able to think things through better than we would be able to if we were not doing everything in our power to keep ourselves mentally and physically fit.
We would like to offer this idea up as food for thought, and we hope you will be inspired to do some research into any conditions you have, and speak with your healthcare practitioner about making adjustments to any medications you may be taking with the idea of getting rid of them entirely and switching over to diet/exercise based treatments. Obviously, we would not advise you to do anything that may be immediately detrimental to your mental or physical well-being and that any radical changes should be discussed thoroughly with your doctor to avoid causing any long-term consequences.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Communicating With, and Listening To, Our Bodies.
Published 04-23-2012
“You are what you eat”. Such a simple phrase passed down through the years, however what no one seems to say is that such a phrase is absolutely true and can be taken quite literally. We are what we eat.
What, how, when, and the amounts of food we eat have a profound effect, not only on the physical structure of our bodies, but also on the quality of our minds. The properties of the foods we eat have enormous sway on the delicate properties of our body chemistry. Often unknowingly, we force a lot of wild swings of physical and mental moods on ourselves that we would not otherwise experience simply by not maintaining optimum eating habits. One analogy is, you wouldn't put diesel fuel in gasoline engine, would you? Same idea for human bodies, if a little over-simplified.
With so many people in the United States taking medication for psychiatric conditions, it does rather make us wonder how we went from a relatively small percentage of the population having unbalanced minds, to most people being medicated for some type of mental condition. It also makes us wonder how many of those people really need the medications? Are they are just blindly following their health-care provider's instructions? Do they really have anything truly wrong with them at all, and if they do is there a better way to fix the problem?
Obviously, some people do require medication to mitigate an immediate threat to their continued existence(suicidal tendencies, etc). However, mild depression, physical and psychological malaise, or other more minor conditions could potentially be solved through a simple change of diet and increased exercise to stimulate beneficial brain activity and hormone production.
We are not suggesting that all psychological complaints can be completely cured by diet and exercise, but from our personal experience minor ones certainly can be. Situations change, and sometimes not into very desirable ones. However we believe that maintaining a high level of nutrient density in our diets makes us better able to cope with those situations when they do arise by ensuring that our brains are functioning at the highest possible level, our judgement is at its best, most rational, and we are able to think things through better than we would be able to if we were not doing everything in our power to keep ourselves mentally and physically fit.
We would like to offer this idea up as food for thought, and we hope you will be inspired to do some research into any conditions you have, and speak with your healthcare practitioner about making adjustments to any medications you may be taking with the idea of getting rid of them entirely and switching over to diet/exercise based treatments. Obviously, we would not advise you to do anything that may be immediately detrimental to your mental or physical well-being and that any radical changes should be discussed thoroughly with your doctor to avoid causing any long-term consequences.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Communicating With, and Listening To, Our Bodies.
Published 04-23-2012
Never Mutually Exclusive
The Concept of Food and Society
Ever since the dawn of man, human society has mingled the pleasures of food and companionship. It is rare to find any examples throughout recorded history where groups of people would gather together and there wasn't a mention of the foods prepared and consumed. The exceptions perhaps being in times of famine, war, and certain types of religious gatherings; meditations, fastings, and pilgrimages.
Religious festivals, weddings, treaties, pledges, harvests, and funerals throughout time were marked with feasts(relative or not), and almost every tribe, people, and culture throughout the world even in modern times has a custom of offering guests beverages and/or sustenance upon their arrival.
As human beings we cannot exist without an outside source of fuel for our physical structures, however we as a species; have also found the enormous sensory pleasures to be found in the consumption of a delicious repast in the midst of convivial companions.
However, in modern society with all the conveniences of pre-packaged foods and the speed at which we seem to think we must hurtle through our lives; it would appear we have rather lost the respect for food that as a species we once had. Ancient, and even Not-So-Ancient man labored mightily for what ended up on his table and was grateful for it. With all our modern ways, have we lost sight of the eternal intermingling of food and the society it brings with it.
In ancient times, and in some cultures still, women gather together each day to grind the day's grains or legumes, prepare vegetables and fruits, bake the day's breads, etc. In that time spent in the worthy tasks of feeding their families and themselves, they are brought together and given the pleasure of one another's company, the problems of one become the problems of all. They start out bonded together through the tasks they undertake, and they end up as a sort of jumbled family, each looking out for the other, talking and laughing together.
Another example of this relationship of food and companionship is harvest/threshing time. When farms were small and not necessarily all that prosperous, there would be a few men who owned threshing equipment and as each farmer had cut, stacked, and dried his crop the threshers would come with their machine and thresh the farmer's grain for a reasonable fee, or a straight barter and a good meal if the farmer was poor.
The men of the area would gather at harvest time to help one another cut and stack their fields of grain, and gather again when the threshers came to help carry, thresh, and sack the harvested grain. Their wives and daughters would cook a good meal for the workers, and set it out. There would be conversation, good farmer's food, and plenty of coffee and cold water to off-set the hard work in the late summer's heat.
What tasks do we undertake in modern life that have the power to bring a community together in such a way? What tasks do we all perform that allow us to get to know our neighbors so closely? Have we lost sight of the power that cooking and eating has to bring us together, to commune with and learn about each other? These are big questions with different answers for different individuals. We hope you enjoy this as a little food for thought and are perhaps inspired to incorporate more community into your physical sustenance. After all, Man does not live by Bread alone.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on how diet affects mental clarity and function.
Published 04-16-2012
The Concept of Food and Society
Ever since the dawn of man, human society has mingled the pleasures of food and companionship. It is rare to find any examples throughout recorded history where groups of people would gather together and there wasn't a mention of the foods prepared and consumed. The exceptions perhaps being in times of famine, war, and certain types of religious gatherings; meditations, fastings, and pilgrimages.
Religious festivals, weddings, treaties, pledges, harvests, and funerals throughout time were marked with feasts(relative or not), and almost every tribe, people, and culture throughout the world even in modern times has a custom of offering guests beverages and/or sustenance upon their arrival.
As human beings we cannot exist without an outside source of fuel for our physical structures, however we as a species; have also found the enormous sensory pleasures to be found in the consumption of a delicious repast in the midst of convivial companions.
However, in modern society with all the conveniences of pre-packaged foods and the speed at which we seem to think we must hurtle through our lives; it would appear we have rather lost the respect for food that as a species we once had. Ancient, and even Not-So-Ancient man labored mightily for what ended up on his table and was grateful for it. With all our modern ways, have we lost sight of the eternal intermingling of food and the society it brings with it.
In ancient times, and in some cultures still, women gather together each day to grind the day's grains or legumes, prepare vegetables and fruits, bake the day's breads, etc. In that time spent in the worthy tasks of feeding their families and themselves, they are brought together and given the pleasure of one another's company, the problems of one become the problems of all. They start out bonded together through the tasks they undertake, and they end up as a sort of jumbled family, each looking out for the other, talking and laughing together.
Another example of this relationship of food and companionship is harvest/threshing time. When farms were small and not necessarily all that prosperous, there would be a few men who owned threshing equipment and as each farmer had cut, stacked, and dried his crop the threshers would come with their machine and thresh the farmer's grain for a reasonable fee, or a straight barter and a good meal if the farmer was poor.
The men of the area would gather at harvest time to help one another cut and stack their fields of grain, and gather again when the threshers came to help carry, thresh, and sack the harvested grain. Their wives and daughters would cook a good meal for the workers, and set it out. There would be conversation, good farmer's food, and plenty of coffee and cold water to off-set the hard work in the late summer's heat.
What tasks do we undertake in modern life that have the power to bring a community together in such a way? What tasks do we all perform that allow us to get to know our neighbors so closely? Have we lost sight of the power that cooking and eating has to bring us together, to commune with and learn about each other? These are big questions with different answers for different individuals. We hope you enjoy this as a little food for thought and are perhaps inspired to incorporate more community into your physical sustenance. After all, Man does not live by Bread alone.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on how diet affects mental clarity and function.
Published 04-16-2012
Attention Must Be Paid: Taking Enjoyment from Life Changes
A lot of people talk about changing their lives, making permanent, lasting changes but very few people actually do it. Change is difficult, time-consuming, and takes resources and a level of readiness to undertake the challenge. All of that can be a very daunting prospect if you don't have a solid motivator behind you.
We've known people who have been forced into life changes by circumstances, or threats of fatal consequences, people who made changes simply because they were bored or unhappy, or people who found themselves in a place they never thought they'd be in and sincerely wanted to get out of the hole they found themselves in.
Of everyone we've known, and watched, attempt lasting life changes, the ones who seem to stick with their changes and enjoy their lives the most in the process are the ones who have the most positive and realistic attitude when they start.
Just because changes require self-discipline and consistency that does not mean that there is no pleasure to be had in the changes themselves. When we made our changes it was very difficult at first to stick to our plan. It was very tempting to back-slide and then justify it in our own minds. However, by finding the enjoyment in the change itself and keeping our eyes on the results we knew were necessary to our improved health and wellness, we were able to persevere. We know if we can do it, you can too.
When we talk about finding enjoyment in change we believe that is only possible if your mind is in the appropriate channel for doing so. If you are continually viewing what you are undertaking in the negative, how difficult, how unpleasant, how tiresome, how unhappy you are with the circumstances that forced you to do this, the changes made will be tainted by those thoughts. You will likely only stick with your changes as long as your will-power holds out; which will probably not be all that long and then you will have even more ammunition to beat yourself up with because you couldn't do whatever the task was. When in truth you set yourself up to fail to make changes because of how you viewed your undertaking.
If you want to be successful in your changes you must come into the task with the idea that you are going to find the good in what you are doing whenever you start to feel discouraged. Whether it's enjoying the sun on your face when you haul yourself around the block for your daily exercise, or taking the few extra minutes to really and truly enjoy the flavors of your evening salad, or even treating yourself to a beautiful teacup to drink your tea from when you gave up soda pop.
It doesn't matter what you find that is positive, enjoyable, and pleasurable in what you are doing, but you must find SOMETHING that makes the changes worthwhile in your mind while you are working towards your end result. If the final result is just a far-off dangling carrot, you will find that it will soon lose its attraction with other more currently tangible “rewards”.
Be positive and best of luck!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Idea of Food and Company
Published 04-09-2012
Fighting Fat: Thoughts on Breaking the Cycle of Dieting
In our column last week we discussed the importance of a good relationship with food itself. This week we would like to talk about a topic that seems to come up quite a bit, breaking the cycle of dieting. So many folks lose their excess weight, stop the weight-loss plan, or switch to a "maintenance plan", and (almost)immediately gain it all back plus more.
A lot of people say “Our diet is completely maintainable once you lose the weight you want just do (A) and (B) and everything will be fine. Nothing but good times ahead.” However, this almost always turns out to be complete nonsense. If you do manage to lose the amount of weight you want in a reasonable time frame with a conventional diet, you go back to eating basically what you did before and you blow up like a balloon, the cravings come back, the fat comes back, and you are left sobbing in the wreckage of the situation wondering where it all went so horribly wrong.
We say it doesn't have to be like that, and we're not just saying that either, from our own experience we KNOW it doesn't have to be like that. It is possible to lose a good amount of weight in a very reasonable amount of time, safely, and permanently, however in order to do so you don't just go on a diet, you have to change your life and make those changes stick in order to keep the weight gone.
The modern American life-style is essentially geared towards promoting an over-weight, unhealthy, sluggish populace, and it does. However, just because it is the norm, that does not mean that it is the absolute rule. It is possible through great initial care to break the unhealthful habits enabled by modern food supplies and societal pressures and mores, and create new habits that promote your body's maximum health and well-being. We did it, you can too.
To make things easy we would like to share with you two quick lists, the first one is of the habits you will need to break, and the second is the habits you want to form.
These new habits are the things we've found to be the most important for us in maintaining our weight loss, and improving our over-all health and wellness. Granted, you don't have to do everything at once, but we recommend that you do. We think it's easier to make one big change and go a little bonkers for a short time, than to drag it out over a period of 6-8 months and give yourself time to come up with excuses and justifications about why you can't do it. Why set yourself up psychologically to fail? Better to just jump in, flail around a bit, and start swimming.
We wish you all the absolute best of luck and hope that perhaps you've been inspired to try some of our ideas. Please let us know how they worked for you, or contact us if you have any questions.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on taking enjoyment from change and the unfamiliar.
Published 04-02-2012
In our column last week we discussed the importance of a good relationship with food itself. This week we would like to talk about a topic that seems to come up quite a bit, breaking the cycle of dieting. So many folks lose their excess weight, stop the weight-loss plan, or switch to a "maintenance plan", and (almost)immediately gain it all back plus more.
A lot of people say “Our diet is completely maintainable once you lose the weight you want just do (A) and (B) and everything will be fine. Nothing but good times ahead.” However, this almost always turns out to be complete nonsense. If you do manage to lose the amount of weight you want in a reasonable time frame with a conventional diet, you go back to eating basically what you did before and you blow up like a balloon, the cravings come back, the fat comes back, and you are left sobbing in the wreckage of the situation wondering where it all went so horribly wrong.
We say it doesn't have to be like that, and we're not just saying that either, from our own experience we KNOW it doesn't have to be like that. It is possible to lose a good amount of weight in a very reasonable amount of time, safely, and permanently, however in order to do so you don't just go on a diet, you have to change your life and make those changes stick in order to keep the weight gone.
The modern American life-style is essentially geared towards promoting an over-weight, unhealthy, sluggish populace, and it does. However, just because it is the norm, that does not mean that it is the absolute rule. It is possible through great initial care to break the unhealthful habits enabled by modern food supplies and societal pressures and mores, and create new habits that promote your body's maximum health and well-being. We did it, you can too.
To make things easy we would like to share with you two quick lists, the first one is of the habits you will need to break, and the second is the habits you want to form.
- Dependance on pure fats, high-fat food items, refined starches, sugars, and solid protein sources.
- Consumption of any of the following substances in any amount: Trans Fatty Acids, White Flour, White or Refined Sugars, High Fructose Corn Syrup, regular Corn Syrup.
- Chronic Inactivity
- Consumption of Soda Pop (diet or regular)
You stop all of the above habits and even if you don't form any of the new ones you will still end up healthier than you were before.
- Daily consumption of approximately 2 lbs(for the average adult) of edible plant material as close to its naturally occurring state as possible.
- Consumption of 50 to 100 grams of dietary fiber per day. (Not in the form of supplements)
- 1 to 3 liters consumption of water or unsweetened, non-carbonated, decaffeinated beverages daily.
- Keeping a food journal with a record of amount and type of foods and beverages consumed and activities undertaken throughout the day.
- 5 Minutes Peace daily.
These new habits are the things we've found to be the most important for us in maintaining our weight loss, and improving our over-all health and wellness. Granted, you don't have to do everything at once, but we recommend that you do. We think it's easier to make one big change and go a little bonkers for a short time, than to drag it out over a period of 6-8 months and give yourself time to come up with excuses and justifications about why you can't do it. Why set yourself up psychologically to fail? Better to just jump in, flail around a bit, and start swimming.
We wish you all the absolute best of luck and hope that perhaps you've been inspired to try some of our ideas. Please let us know how they worked for you, or contact us if you have any questions.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on taking enjoyment from change and the unfamiliar.
Published 04-02-2012
Food for Life: Thoughts on Maintaining a Good Relationship with Food
Because of the way we are made human beings have an inextricable relationship with food. It is our fuel, and it becomes part of our physical being. We literally are what we eat. With that in mind, we must understand exactly how intimate our relationship with what we eat really is, whether we would admit it, or not.
In many respects our relationship with what we eat is very much a mirror for the way we interact with other members of our species. A person who is careful and conscious about how, what, when, and the amount of food they eat is probably going to be fairly careful and conscious of other aspects their life. A person who gorges, purges, binges, or engages in other similarly erratic and unhealthful food-related behavior is probably going to act in an erratic and unpredictable fashion in the rest of their life.
If we are what we eat, we are likely also how we eat as well. Do we treat food callously, as simply a means to keep our cells from dying? Do we use food as a crutch to prop up damaged ego, or unstable emotions? Do we fear food and the hold it exerts upon us? Or do we gain genuine pleasure from the sensory stimulation food can provide, both through taste and its visual appeal?
Those are questions no one can answer, but yourself. Another question you might want to ask yourself while you're asking is, “Am I happy with my relationship with food?”.
A good relationship with food negates the need to diet, it removes the issue of undesirable weight gain, it may even save you quite a lot of money short-term at the grocery store , and long-term at the doctor's office and pharmacy.
We believe that one's relationship with food, like any other relationship is defined by the amount of respect you have for the other party(ies) involved. We do not mean respect derived out of fear, similar to the deference one would show to a live power cable, or a rabid dog, but a respect born out of genuine interest for, and a mutual understanding of, the properties of the other.
If you have that respect for yourself, and for the food you eat, you understand already that food as a whole has its good and bad points, even foods that are basically unwholesome for human consumption do have a good point about them somewhere in their chemical make-up if you know where to look.
If you have respect and understanding for food you are not afraid of it, you understand what gluttony, and other erratic food-related behaviors can do to your own physiology over time, and you are able to govern your behavior sensibly without having to take draconian measures to control your weight and health, or how those things affect your feelings about yourself.
However, we have discovered that people who have this level of understanding and self-assurance in their current nutritional path are few and far between, and we think this is very sad. We would love nothing more than to see everyone with a healthful and pleasurable relationship with food, but there seem to be many places that people seem to stumble and fall.
In conclusion, we would like to share with you some of the things we have found helpful in our journeys towards healthful, workable, and pleasurable relationships with food in the hope that you may find them useful tools on your own journey as well.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on breaking the cycle of dieting
Published 03-26-2012
Because of the way we are made human beings have an inextricable relationship with food. It is our fuel, and it becomes part of our physical being. We literally are what we eat. With that in mind, we must understand exactly how intimate our relationship with what we eat really is, whether we would admit it, or not.
In many respects our relationship with what we eat is very much a mirror for the way we interact with other members of our species. A person who is careful and conscious about how, what, when, and the amount of food they eat is probably going to be fairly careful and conscious of other aspects their life. A person who gorges, purges, binges, or engages in other similarly erratic and unhealthful food-related behavior is probably going to act in an erratic and unpredictable fashion in the rest of their life.
If we are what we eat, we are likely also how we eat as well. Do we treat food callously, as simply a means to keep our cells from dying? Do we use food as a crutch to prop up damaged ego, or unstable emotions? Do we fear food and the hold it exerts upon us? Or do we gain genuine pleasure from the sensory stimulation food can provide, both through taste and its visual appeal?
Those are questions no one can answer, but yourself. Another question you might want to ask yourself while you're asking is, “Am I happy with my relationship with food?”.
A good relationship with food negates the need to diet, it removes the issue of undesirable weight gain, it may even save you quite a lot of money short-term at the grocery store , and long-term at the doctor's office and pharmacy.
We believe that one's relationship with food, like any other relationship is defined by the amount of respect you have for the other party(ies) involved. We do not mean respect derived out of fear, similar to the deference one would show to a live power cable, or a rabid dog, but a respect born out of genuine interest for, and a mutual understanding of, the properties of the other.
If you have that respect for yourself, and for the food you eat, you understand already that food as a whole has its good and bad points, even foods that are basically unwholesome for human consumption do have a good point about them somewhere in their chemical make-up if you know where to look.
If you have respect and understanding for food you are not afraid of it, you understand what gluttony, and other erratic food-related behaviors can do to your own physiology over time, and you are able to govern your behavior sensibly without having to take draconian measures to control your weight and health, or how those things affect your feelings about yourself.
However, we have discovered that people who have this level of understanding and self-assurance in their current nutritional path are few and far between, and we think this is very sad. We would love nothing more than to see everyone with a healthful and pleasurable relationship with food, but there seem to be many places that people seem to stumble and fall.
In conclusion, we would like to share with you some of the things we have found helpful in our journeys towards healthful, workable, and pleasurable relationships with food in the hope that you may find them useful tools on your own journey as well.
- Discover What You Find Interesting About Food: If respect is built upon interest you must find out what is interesting TO YOU about food. Maybe you are interested in the chemistry of it, how it interacts with the human body. Maybe you are fascinated by flavors and the sense of taste. Maybe you are an artist and beautiful presentations are what draw you in. It doesn't matter, find whatever gets you interested in learning about food and go with it.
- Educate Yourself: Solid understanding is crucial to a good relationship with food. Not hearsay, not he-said-she-said, not conjecture, real solid understanding of the properties of food. How food is grown and produced, in what manner it is prepared(cooking methods), and all the other little things that go into making and enjoying a really great meal.
- Be Open To New Ideas: Different cultures and different people have all kinds of ideas about food, some of them may make a great deal of sense to you, some may not. However, if you don't take the little bit of time it takes to discover some of these ideas you will never know. Take an ethnic cooking class, read books, talk to people who are from different countries about their dining customs, talk with local merchants in ethnic markets these are typically very knowledgeable people who can tell you a great deal about different kinds of foods. If you go looking for new ideas in new places, you will soon find yourself with more ideas than you know what to do with.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on breaking the cycle of dieting
Published 03-26-2012
Waste Not: What to do with Leftovers
Leftovers, the bane of small children and finicky eaters everywhere. In truth, leftovers can be either a pain, or a blessing, depending on how you wish to approach them. Yes, in an ideal world there would be no leftovers, every cook would be able to produce exactly the correct amount of food for their diners and the dishes would do themselves, however that is rarely the case and wishful thinking never got anyone anywhere.
If you have a habit of cooking a bit more for meals than you maybe require, that's okay there are ways to turn those odd-an-ends into delicious meals so you waste nothing, and no one can tell that you were just re-cooking things.
The first rule to repackaging leftovers is to start with leftovers that aren't too different from what you are going to turn them into. This means don't try to turn classic French leftovers into Ethiopian food because it won't go well. Here's a few transfers that work well in most circumstances, however common sense is to used above all.
As you can see, there plenty of options available. The other main key to successful re-cooking, is to not over-cook things. Remember, unless it was a raw salad or a cold soup before, it's already been cooked once, you just need to give it enough cooking to mingle the flavors and heat it through properly.
Good places to start re-cooking is soup and stew, a lot of our soups and stews start out as the previous night's steamed or roasted vegetables, or a third of a pan of last night's casserole. Make a flavorful base, add a can of beans and a few vegetables and simmer gently, add your leftovers, season, cook until done, and "bon appetit", quick and easy dinner.
We hope you are inspired to take this idea of re-cooking to heart and that it will enable you to avoid any waste you may have been incurring, and also help you to be creative and constructive in how you think about left-overs and what to do with them. We think wasting anything is a very poor habit to get into, and a fairly easy one to prevent with minimal thought and effort. Here's to not wasting anything, but still having great tasting meals. Your pocketbook and your stomach will thank you for going that little bit extra. Happy cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on having and maintaining a good long-term relationship with food.
Published 03-19-2012
Leftovers, the bane of small children and finicky eaters everywhere. In truth, leftovers can be either a pain, or a blessing, depending on how you wish to approach them. Yes, in an ideal world there would be no leftovers, every cook would be able to produce exactly the correct amount of food for their diners and the dishes would do themselves, however that is rarely the case and wishful thinking never got anyone anywhere.
If you have a habit of cooking a bit more for meals than you maybe require, that's okay there are ways to turn those odd-an-ends into delicious meals so you waste nothing, and no one can tell that you were just re-cooking things.
The first rule to repackaging leftovers is to start with leftovers that aren't too different from what you are going to turn them into. This means don't try to turn classic French leftovers into Ethiopian food because it won't go well. Here's a few transfers that work well in most circumstances, however common sense is to used above all.
- Mexican to Indian
- Greek to Italian and sometimes Spanish
- Japanese to Vietnamese
- Thai to Indian
- Middle-Eastern to Indian
- Indian to Middle-Eastern
- Chinese to Thai
- Korean to Chinese
- French to Italian and sometimes Spanish
As you can see, there plenty of options available. The other main key to successful re-cooking, is to not over-cook things. Remember, unless it was a raw salad or a cold soup before, it's already been cooked once, you just need to give it enough cooking to mingle the flavors and heat it through properly.
Good places to start re-cooking is soup and stew, a lot of our soups and stews start out as the previous night's steamed or roasted vegetables, or a third of a pan of last night's casserole. Make a flavorful base, add a can of beans and a few vegetables and simmer gently, add your leftovers, season, cook until done, and "bon appetit", quick and easy dinner.
We hope you are inspired to take this idea of re-cooking to heart and that it will enable you to avoid any waste you may have been incurring, and also help you to be creative and constructive in how you think about left-overs and what to do with them. We think wasting anything is a very poor habit to get into, and a fairly easy one to prevent with minimal thought and effort. Here's to not wasting anything, but still having great tasting meals. Your pocketbook and your stomach will thank you for going that little bit extra. Happy cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on having and maintaining a good long-term relationship with food.
Published 03-19-2012
Food Safety Facts
Over the last few years there have been a great many mentions in the news media about tainted produce, compromised meat and dairy products, and food-borne illnesses. Many people wonder about how safe the American food supply really is, and is it safer to eat only plant-derived foods.
The answers to these questions are complex, but we will shed what light we can on the subject.
The typical American diet is not really all that safe, despite all the safety measures in place for the production of the processed foods that make up the bulk of that diet. The reason processed foods don't cause as many immediate illnesses is not because these foods are “safer”, they are just treated with more chemicals, heat, and bacteria-killing product to inhibit their spoilage and their cause of immediate human illness. However, when a processed food product does cause illness it is usually wide spread, and quite serious.
When a food-borne illness is caused by a whole plant, or a plant derived product such as a whole grain, a nut product, etc it is usually caused by the plant absorbing something through its growing conditions that is toxic to humans, such as treating the growth medium with raw sewage as a fertilizer, or growing the plants in an area that was once a dumping ground for heavy metals. Occasionally, poor hygiene practices in the processing facilities for raw fruits or vegetable will result in the transference of salmonella or e.coli bacteria to the raw items which if then consumed raw resulting “poisoning” of the consumer. The producers of pre-cut fruits and vegetables say that washing the items before consumption makes them safer, but it honestly will not do more than remove or displace some of the surface growing bacteria. The bacteria and viruses don't just live on the surface of the tainted item, they can, and do, pass through the cell-walls of the plant's structure easily. If the item is tainted on the surface, it is almost certainly tainted on at least some level throughout its entire structure; particularly if the pathogen was introduced to the item more than 24 before consumption.
Plants/Plant Products also become tainted with pathogens through improper storage. While this is more of an issue with animal products because their chemical make-up makes them ideal growth mediums for bacteria, it can still cause problems with certain types of plant derived items. Items with large amounts of natural sugars, thin skins/rinds, and items that are shipped from bacteria-loving tropical climates in less than truly sanitary conditions can be prone to contamination by listeria, shigella, etc.
However, with all that being said there are plenty of things we can do to protect ourselves from food-borne illness, and also despite all these areas where things can go horribly wrong from farm-to-table by and large the US does a fairly good job in providing consistently edible foodstuffs for its populace.
If we want to protect ourselves from things like salmonella and e.coli in our raw produce purchase things in their natural state as Nature intended. It is very difficult for bacteria to survive the long haul to market and all the bashing around those items get on the way to your table on unprocessed items with thicker skins or rinds, or those items with hard, dry, inhospitable textures. The textural difference between a cucumber and a beet for example, one is a cushy bed and breakfast to a virus or bacteria, the other is cell-block H.
Also, by purchasing locally grown items, or at least items grown in the United States, you can easily get some idea of the type of growing conditions involved, the fertilizers, chemicals, or soil additives present in the items and as those conditions are somewhat regulated and tested you can have some confidence in their wholesomeness; this counts double for certified organic products.
Purchasing out of season produce from third-world countries may prove to be a very bad idea if the items are being produced in unscrupulous ways, or processed in unsanitary conditions. Because of the lack of documentation and the great distance those items are shipped it is nearly impossible to find out under what conditions the items are grown, by US law stores must say where their products comes from but unfortunately that is not a very good indicator of quality, or lack thereof. You can educate yourself on what growing conditions are like on average by researching production practices, but that is only an indicator of general, not specific quality. If you are unsure about any given product, don't purchase those items.
We hope that we have perhaps given you some food for thought on this topic, ad given you a good foundation of information for seeking further knowledge if you desire to do so. More information on the subject can be found through the USDA website, and the Center for Disease Control, along with local resources of extension offices, and universities in your area.
Join us next week for:Ideas for Make-Ahead Meals and Re-Doing Left-Overs
Published 03-12-2012
The Cooking Environment: How your kitchen effects your food
As every artist, or craftsman, knows the environment in which you work can have a profound effect on the type and quality of goods you produce whether you are aware of it or not. With some people this environmental influence is a profound one, and with others it is more of a vague distant stimulus that only asserts itself if there is no stronger one overwhelming it.
This environment factor, as it were, can be as simple as having a clean place to work, having your tools organized in the way that is the most convenient for your use, etc. If we want to be successful in our work, whatever that work may be, writing a book, playing a musical instrument, doing our taxes, or cooking a delicious meal, it is important that we isolate the environment we feel the most comfortable and relaxed in, and then bend every effort into making sure we have that environment when it really counts.
While we all have environments that foster our creativity and fuel our passions for the work we are involved in, it is also important to be able to perform in a variety of environments for that sake of being a well-rounded craftsman, but if you want to experiment, be creative, exercise and build on your skills you don't want your concentration to be interrupted by something that is so preventable.
Here are a few things that we feel are important for being creative in the kitchen, things that we have found help us to be focused, open to improvisation, and imaginative in our own cooking lives.
As every artist, or craftsman, knows the environment in which you work can have a profound effect on the type and quality of goods you produce whether you are aware of it or not. With some people this environmental influence is a profound one, and with others it is more of a vague distant stimulus that only asserts itself if there is no stronger one overwhelming it.
This environment factor, as it were, can be as simple as having a clean place to work, having your tools organized in the way that is the most convenient for your use, etc. If we want to be successful in our work, whatever that work may be, writing a book, playing a musical instrument, doing our taxes, or cooking a delicious meal, it is important that we isolate the environment we feel the most comfortable and relaxed in, and then bend every effort into making sure we have that environment when it really counts.
While we all have environments that foster our creativity and fuel our passions for the work we are involved in, it is also important to be able to perform in a variety of environments for that sake of being a well-rounded craftsman, but if you want to experiment, be creative, exercise and build on your skills you don't want your concentration to be interrupted by something that is so preventable.
Here are a few things that we feel are important for being creative in the kitchen, things that we have found help us to be focused, open to improvisation, and imaginative in our own cooking lives.
- Cleanliness is next to Godliness: We have found for ourselves that is impossible to work well(possibly at all) in a dirty kitchen. When we want to create, we make a point to wash any dishes laying around, wipe down the work surfaces and the stove, etc, before we even put knife to board, or pan to heat source.
- Organized for Work: The kitchen masters of France understand this concept beautifully and sum it up in the phrase of “mise en place” which means essentially “a place for everything”. This means prepare and measure out your ingredients for cooking before you start your recipe. Put everything in separate containers, and make sure that you are ready before you begin. This is a great habit for novice cooks to get into. It does take a little more thought and time when you are beginning, but it makes the final execution of your dish so much easier and it leaves you the mental space to worry about your cooking technique, not “Did I forget to measure out the cornstarch?”, etc.
- Room to Breathe: As with cleanliness, clutter is a creativity killer. Anything that is not pertinent to the task at hand should be out and in your way. Yes, this is very difficult to do, particularly if you live with other people or have children, but ideally a distinct lack of clutter is what you are shooting for. Put the stack of bills in your briefcase, and throw out the flowers that have been dead for two days, before you start on your “piece de resistance”, not after you knock the vase over putting down a bowl, and the bills go flying into the dog's water bowl from the stove vent.
- A Focus Point: Having an idea of what you want your end result to be is fairly crucial to productive creativity, but sometimes it can be difficult to see that in your mind, or to know how to get where you want to go. This is where having a picture of what you are trying to achieve, or something that focuses your mind on the design of what you are trying to make comes in quite handy. It's like an artist having a vase of flowers while painting still life, the picture may come out looking quite different from the actual flowers, but the flowers focused the artist's mind to the way he/she wanted to render them.
- Light: A good light source is important for producing good food, not only does it help you know when the food is done cooking by how it looks, but it will also help to visualize the way you wish to present your final dish. Good lighting eliminates shadows on plates, and helps you to see line, shape, shading, and contrast more clearly and that results in better looking plates with less trial and error.
- Good Smells: We're not talking about potpourri or scented candle-type of good smells. Quality cooking gives off distinct smells that stimulate our minds and bodies to remember the items that produced them, we have found that the smell of good cooking helps us to want to be creative and also gives us something of an olfactory target to shoot for.
Hopefully, this article will have opened your mind to something you maybe hadn't considered to be important, or helped you to focus your mind and form a useful opinion of your own on the subject. Bear in mind, this is only what we have found to be true in our own lives and you may find that your mind and cooking are completely different from this, but we hope you can still find something useful to take from it to make your cooking life better/tastier/healthier/easier. Good luck and happy cooking!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on food safety and plant-based diets.
Sweetness: Thoughts on the Consumption of Sugar
We have all been told by our doctors, and assorted other media that sugar is horribly bad for us and we shouldn't eat it. Logically, we all know that, however there is a huge paradox in what a healthcare professional, or chemist, could tell you in regards to this fairly simple substance and what food companies tell you.
Next time you go to the grocery store take a look around, both in your own basket and other people's. Make note of what you see.
Do you see people purchasing mostly fresh vegetables and fruits, with an organic dairy product or two, and a cut of quality meat or fish?
Do you see canned and dried legumes, frozen vegetables, and some fresh fruits?
Or do you see what we usually see, carts piled high with soda pop, regular and “diet”, frozen processed foods loaded with refined carbohydrates, unhealthy fats and enough calories to fuel a Mongol horde, red meat, hugely fatty and salty processed meats, white bread, snack cakes and fatty sugary baked goods, huge amounts of dairy products, ice cream, sour cream, margarine, butter, fatty sugary salad dressings, and a few token fruits or a head of iceberg lettuce?
Out of everyone we see at the grocery store, over 90% of them have some kind of sugary substance in their basket and the ones that don't have sugar, have huge amounts of fat.
The big question is, of course, what is the end result of the consumption of all that sugar? Also, why is sugar so bad for us and what makes us want to eat it even though we all know it's bad for us?
The first question is answered fairly simply. When a human body is presented with a large quantity of relatively pure sugar its first course of action is going to be, does the body require fuel for labor? If the answer is “no”, the pancreas will secrete insulin to lower the body's blood sugar level, and the liver will turn the excess fuel into fat to be stored until needed through a process called “glucogenesis”. Under normal circumstances this process is natural, normal and no big deal, where it becomes a big deal is if the body is required to process huge amounts of sugar, fat, and other highly caloric substances on a routine/constant basis. This causes the body to become resistant to insulin and the other hormones required for the processes to function properly and that requires the pancreas and liver to produce ever greater amounts of those hormones, which in simple terms wears the organs out. They spend so much time secreting these substances that they don't have time to repair themselves sufficiently, and over time they function less and less efficiently and effectively.
The results of these organs wearing out means the body that contains them ends up with a variety of different conditions, anything from Type II Diabetes, to considerably higher risks of liver and kidney problems, along with all the other side effects that come from carrying large amounts of stored fat as part of your “normal” physiology. i.e. stroke, cardiac problems, cancer, pulmonary problems, blood clots and blockages, and the list goes on.
The second question is a bit trickier to answer. Science has revealed that the human species is one of the few species alive that has a "taste" for sweet things. Some scientists and doctors believe that is because we as a species have a larger need for B vitamins than other species and as fruits tend to contain more B vitamins than vegetables, Nature hardwired us to enjoy those types of items to keep us from becoming deficient in those vitamins. Which as a theory of the origin goes, it isn't a bad idea.
However, it doesn't explain why we will still want to eat something that contains sugar, but no other useful nutrition, particularly if we have been told about its detrimental effects. There are a lot of different theories on this both in medical and chemical publications, some people think it's a conspiracy by food conglomerates, the government, etc.
In all honesty, we don't have enough data on the issue ourselves to say concretely what makes us(as a species) want to pursue destructive behavior in the manner that we do. What we do know is that the consumption of refined sugar acts on the pleasure centers of the brain quite similarly to substances such as cocaine and alcohol, both of which are addictive. We're not saying that people need to check themselves into re-hab, but we are saying that if you want to lose weight gained by consuming sugar, control or eliminate a disease caused by the same, you will need to examine your behavior concerning sugar and take measures to break any addictive patterns you may have in place. Will that task be simple, easy, or painless? Probably not. However, that doesn't mean that it is an impossible task, or that you shouldn't research the topic or examine your own life and behavior. If nothing else, it will do you no harm.
We hope that we have provided you with some useful information, along with some food for thought. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the points raised here.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on how your cooking environment effects the sort of food you make.
Published 02-27-2012
We have all been told by our doctors, and assorted other media that sugar is horribly bad for us and we shouldn't eat it. Logically, we all know that, however there is a huge paradox in what a healthcare professional, or chemist, could tell you in regards to this fairly simple substance and what food companies tell you.
Next time you go to the grocery store take a look around, both in your own basket and other people's. Make note of what you see.
Do you see people purchasing mostly fresh vegetables and fruits, with an organic dairy product or two, and a cut of quality meat or fish?
Do you see canned and dried legumes, frozen vegetables, and some fresh fruits?
Or do you see what we usually see, carts piled high with soda pop, regular and “diet”, frozen processed foods loaded with refined carbohydrates, unhealthy fats and enough calories to fuel a Mongol horde, red meat, hugely fatty and salty processed meats, white bread, snack cakes and fatty sugary baked goods, huge amounts of dairy products, ice cream, sour cream, margarine, butter, fatty sugary salad dressings, and a few token fruits or a head of iceberg lettuce?
Out of everyone we see at the grocery store, over 90% of them have some kind of sugary substance in their basket and the ones that don't have sugar, have huge amounts of fat.
The big question is, of course, what is the end result of the consumption of all that sugar? Also, why is sugar so bad for us and what makes us want to eat it even though we all know it's bad for us?
The first question is answered fairly simply. When a human body is presented with a large quantity of relatively pure sugar its first course of action is going to be, does the body require fuel for labor? If the answer is “no”, the pancreas will secrete insulin to lower the body's blood sugar level, and the liver will turn the excess fuel into fat to be stored until needed through a process called “glucogenesis”. Under normal circumstances this process is natural, normal and no big deal, where it becomes a big deal is if the body is required to process huge amounts of sugar, fat, and other highly caloric substances on a routine/constant basis. This causes the body to become resistant to insulin and the other hormones required for the processes to function properly and that requires the pancreas and liver to produce ever greater amounts of those hormones, which in simple terms wears the organs out. They spend so much time secreting these substances that they don't have time to repair themselves sufficiently, and over time they function less and less efficiently and effectively.
The results of these organs wearing out means the body that contains them ends up with a variety of different conditions, anything from Type II Diabetes, to considerably higher risks of liver and kidney problems, along with all the other side effects that come from carrying large amounts of stored fat as part of your “normal” physiology. i.e. stroke, cardiac problems, cancer, pulmonary problems, blood clots and blockages, and the list goes on.
The second question is a bit trickier to answer. Science has revealed that the human species is one of the few species alive that has a "taste" for sweet things. Some scientists and doctors believe that is because we as a species have a larger need for B vitamins than other species and as fruits tend to contain more B vitamins than vegetables, Nature hardwired us to enjoy those types of items to keep us from becoming deficient in those vitamins. Which as a theory of the origin goes, it isn't a bad idea.
However, it doesn't explain why we will still want to eat something that contains sugar, but no other useful nutrition, particularly if we have been told about its detrimental effects. There are a lot of different theories on this both in medical and chemical publications, some people think it's a conspiracy by food conglomerates, the government, etc.
In all honesty, we don't have enough data on the issue ourselves to say concretely what makes us(as a species) want to pursue destructive behavior in the manner that we do. What we do know is that the consumption of refined sugar acts on the pleasure centers of the brain quite similarly to substances such as cocaine and alcohol, both of which are addictive. We're not saying that people need to check themselves into re-hab, but we are saying that if you want to lose weight gained by consuming sugar, control or eliminate a disease caused by the same, you will need to examine your behavior concerning sugar and take measures to break any addictive patterns you may have in place. Will that task be simple, easy, or painless? Probably not. However, that doesn't mean that it is an impossible task, or that you shouldn't research the topic or examine your own life and behavior. If nothing else, it will do you no harm.
We hope that we have provided you with some useful information, along with some food for thought. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the points raised here.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on how your cooking environment effects the sort of food you make.
Published 02-27-2012
Food Literacy
Thoughts on Cooking and Food-related Books
Over the last 20 years the sheer volume of cookbooks being published has gone from a steady trickle to a full-blown deluge. Like everything, this has its pros and cons. The pros being, more people are interested in learning about different kinds of food, preparation techniques, and different culture's foods and their attitudes towards food, eating, and nutrition.
These are all good things, however on the con side this glut of product in the market means that while any topic you could wish for is probably covered, you will likely have to search through a mountain of potential rubbish to find it.
It also means that a great many people are writing cookbooks who may, or may not, be qualified to do so. Almost anyone can write a decent recipe book, but not very many people are able to write a good teaching book. If the author makes no pretensions about their skill level and qualifications there is no problem, but if someone tries to write a teaching book when they do not understand the medium they are working with in sufficient detail themselves that can lead to the potential student getting the thin end of the wedge.
However, this doesn't mean that you should be afraid to read new cookbooks, as a beginning cook it is important to expose yourself to lots of different ideas, techniques, seasonings, and ways of doing things. It is also important to mess things up now and then, that is how you learn. That being said it is also important to be aware of what kind of book you are reading, and how to tell if the author knows what they are talking about, or if they are as full of hot air as your oven so you don't end up wasting your time and money on a snake-oil salesman.
One way to learn to judge quality of cookbooks is to read a lot of them. After awhile you will learn what the common denominators of quality are, certain recipe ratios run true for certain final effects no matter what ethnicity the recipe happens to be. Exposure to lots of material and personal cooking experience will teach you that. Another way to judge is to find someone who is more experienced than you are, who's judgment and cooking style you admire and take a look at their recommendations, also a little time checking out the Amazon.com reviews can be pretty useful in separating the grain from the chaff.
However, there are many other reasons to read cookbooks apart from recipes. At Green Bowl we read cook books for inspiration, somewhat to help us come up with new dishes, but mostly for reasons of aesthetics. We like to see how other people plate their dishes, the way they blend color, texture, line and shape. We find it inspiring, we also like to immerse ourselves in classical techniques and then find ways to achieve similar results without compromising our nutritional values if possible.
As you can see there are plenty of reasons to read about food, edification, inspiration, curiosity, entertainment, and the list goes on. Before we leave you for this week we would like to recommend a few of our favorites that we have found many of those reasons satisfied in over the years. Happy Reading and Bon Appetit!
- The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter by Charlie Trotter
- The Professional Chef by The Culinary Institute of America
- Ani's Raw Food Essentials by Ani Phyo
- I'm Just Here for The Food by Alton Brown
- The New Best Recipe by The Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Properties of Sugar
Published 02-20-2012
So Much to Do!
Getting the Jump on Spring Gardening
It is that time once again for the green-thumbed to attack their collection of seed catalogs in preparation for another growing season.
For all that we look forward to the Spring growing season at Green Bowl we are also very well of the pressure of gardening preparations, both of seeds and of ground. We would like to share with you some of our ideas, methods, and techniques to have everything ready in sync with the season.
The selection of what you intend to grow is probably the most difficult part of planting a garden. Not only must you choose things you enjoy eating, but you must also select things that fit the amount of space you have, the soil profile and the average weather conditions of your area. This can be a daunting task if it is your first attempt, or if you are a little rusty.
We are located in western Iowa which means that we have an excellent soil profile of loam, silt, and some clay to work with, a moderately wet climate with hot, humid summers and typically very cold winters. This means that we pick crops that tolerate temperature swings pretty well, and are not super finicky about having a consistent water supply. We also like to have a pretty good spread in terms of length of growing period so we can get in a few second plantings of some items if we are so inclined. Here are a few of our garden favorites for our area that we are pretty sure would do well in most temperate climates.
Our seed-starting method is a very simple one. We like to use dixie cups, egg cartons, or cut down styrofoam cups for containers, just a standard peat potting mix for growth medium, and a couple of large florescent shop lights for a grow lights. To help our plants along we invested in a heat mat a few years back and it works wonders, particularly the plants that can be more recalcitrant about sprouting and growing under spartan conditions. We don't soak our seeds or anything, just make sure the growth medium is fairly moist, plant the seeds, mist them down well with water, place them on tray on the heat mat, cover with a translucent cover to help keep the containers moist and wait. There's really nothing to it, just don't let the containers dry out, or the micro-plants when they sprout. If you start with seed-plugs you may need to transplant your plugs 1 to 3 times to get the plants up to the size you want to transplant outside. Give your seedlings 3 to 7 days of hardening off before you fully transplant them outside to give them their best chance.
Planning your garden space is very nearly as important as choosing your seeds. If you have a garden already laid out and dug, excellent. If this is your first year, our recommendation is to go quite small to get your hands dirty and see how much work it really is, then if you like how things go and you want to expand next year you know what you are getting into. A 10 foot by 10 foot plot is a good amount of space for a small kitchen garden, and is small enough that it is not likely you will be overwhelmed. Here are some things we've found helpful when organizing our plants.
We hope you find our little tips-and-tricks article useful. We would like to stress that this is just what WE do, and there are many other methods of planting, organizing, and structuring one's garden out there. If you have found method that works for you and that you like, by all means stick with it. For those of you who are just starting out we would like to recommend a couple of sources for you. Visit www.backtoedenfilm.com for a very inspiring and useful story of a man's journey towards being a true husbandman of the land. Also, we recommend The No-Work Garden by Ruth Stout, and Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, excellent books by folks who know their stuff. Good luck and happy gardening!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Food Literature
Published 02-13-2012
Getting the Jump on Spring Gardening
It is that time once again for the green-thumbed to attack their collection of seed catalogs in preparation for another growing season.
For all that we look forward to the Spring growing season at Green Bowl we are also very well of the pressure of gardening preparations, both of seeds and of ground. We would like to share with you some of our ideas, methods, and techniques to have everything ready in sync with the season.
The selection of what you intend to grow is probably the most difficult part of planting a garden. Not only must you choose things you enjoy eating, but you must also select things that fit the amount of space you have, the soil profile and the average weather conditions of your area. This can be a daunting task if it is your first attempt, or if you are a little rusty.
We are located in western Iowa which means that we have an excellent soil profile of loam, silt, and some clay to work with, a moderately wet climate with hot, humid summers and typically very cold winters. This means that we pick crops that tolerate temperature swings pretty well, and are not super finicky about having a consistent water supply. We also like to have a pretty good spread in terms of length of growing period so we can get in a few second plantings of some items if we are so inclined. Here are a few of our garden favorites for our area that we are pretty sure would do well in most temperate climates.
- Beets (white, red, gold, and striped)
- Carrots
- Lettuces
- Spinach
- Kale
- Pak Choy
- Escarole
- Radishes
Our seed-starting method is a very simple one. We like to use dixie cups, egg cartons, or cut down styrofoam cups for containers, just a standard peat potting mix for growth medium, and a couple of large florescent shop lights for a grow lights. To help our plants along we invested in a heat mat a few years back and it works wonders, particularly the plants that can be more recalcitrant about sprouting and growing under spartan conditions. We don't soak our seeds or anything, just make sure the growth medium is fairly moist, plant the seeds, mist them down well with water, place them on tray on the heat mat, cover with a translucent cover to help keep the containers moist and wait. There's really nothing to it, just don't let the containers dry out, or the micro-plants when they sprout. If you start with seed-plugs you may need to transplant your plugs 1 to 3 times to get the plants up to the size you want to transplant outside. Give your seedlings 3 to 7 days of hardening off before you fully transplant them outside to give them their best chance.
Planning your garden space is very nearly as important as choosing your seeds. If you have a garden already laid out and dug, excellent. If this is your first year, our recommendation is to go quite small to get your hands dirty and see how much work it really is, then if you like how things go and you want to expand next year you know what you are getting into. A 10 foot by 10 foot plot is a good amount of space for a small kitchen garden, and is small enough that it is not likely you will be overwhelmed. Here are some things we've found helpful when organizing our plants.
- Plant vine crops on the edges of the garden and train them to spread out into the yard, or up a fence or poles
- Plant greens, broad-leaf, and more succulent plants on whatever part of the garden is shadier/wetter.
- Plant tomatoes so they can be sturdily caged, or staked, and will receive full sunlight; out of direct wind is good if possible but not if it impedes sun exposure.
- Buy enough seeds to stagger your plantings where possible to ensure continual harvest from May until September. Greens, beets, radishes, and similar can be resown several times throughout the season, but be sure to work in some extra organic matter to enrich your soil through the season if you choose to do this.
We hope you find our little tips-and-tricks article useful. We would like to stress that this is just what WE do, and there are many other methods of planting, organizing, and structuring one's garden out there. If you have found method that works for you and that you like, by all means stick with it. For those of you who are just starting out we would like to recommend a couple of sources for you. Visit www.backtoedenfilm.com for a very inspiring and useful story of a man's journey towards being a true husbandman of the land. Also, we recommend The No-Work Garden by Ruth Stout, and Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, excellent books by folks who know their stuff. Good luck and happy gardening!
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Food Literature
Published 02-13-2012
Subtle, or Flavorless?
Thoughts on the Flavor of Botanical Food
Among the many reasons people cite for not adopting a plant-based diet, one of the more common ones is a misconception that botanical foods are bland, flavorless, or unpalatable. The phrases “rabbit food”, “horse feed”, and “hippie twigs and rocks garbage” are a few opinions that spring readily to mind in terms of what people think vegan, or vegetarian food tastes like.
We believe that part of the reason people believe this is several fold. Firstly, most people have never been exposed to high quality botanical food and have no idea how good it really can be. Secondly, people have been told for several generations now that they must eat animal products or they will die a horrific, agonizing death. This idea is very far from true, but that has never stopped anyone believing anything; take that whole “flat-earth” business for example. Thirdly, people who consume a high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt diet such as most Americans do, even the ones who say they eat “healthy” probably consume more fat, sugar, and salt per month than the average vegan does in six months.
What the effects of the consumption of all that fat, salt, and sugar are, are again, several fold. Fat masks flavor that exists in the food you are eating, so you must add large amounts of salt and sugar to make it taste like something. Because of the high salt and sugar intake from consuming the fatty foods the human body becomes accustomed to getting those high levels of salt and sugar, and if it is given something where those levels are not present it registers it as a lack of “flavor”, when it's really just a lack of salt and sugar.
All this being said, we definitely grant that a lot of the foods that are marketed commercially as being “vegan”, “vegetarian”, “plant-based”, or “healthy” are usually not that pleasant to consume in their natural state, plain tofu is an example that springs immediately to mind. However, that doesn't mean that as home-cooks we can't do miles and miles better, because we don't have to worry about things like shelf-stability, shipping, packaging, etc. We are free to choose the best ingredients that we can, cook in small amounts with flavorful seasonings, bring our food to the absolute best that our levels of time and skill allow, eat it, enjoy it, savor the experience, the end.
However, there are certain principles that we believe are of crucial importance to producing high quality botanical foods, and improving our palates to the point that we can appreciate the subtleties, delicacies, and the less brash sensual stimuli that make up that style of food.
Thoughts on the Flavor of Botanical Food
Among the many reasons people cite for not adopting a plant-based diet, one of the more common ones is a misconception that botanical foods are bland, flavorless, or unpalatable. The phrases “rabbit food”, “horse feed”, and “hippie twigs and rocks garbage” are a few opinions that spring readily to mind in terms of what people think vegan, or vegetarian food tastes like.
We believe that part of the reason people believe this is several fold. Firstly, most people have never been exposed to high quality botanical food and have no idea how good it really can be. Secondly, people have been told for several generations now that they must eat animal products or they will die a horrific, agonizing death. This idea is very far from true, but that has never stopped anyone believing anything; take that whole “flat-earth” business for example. Thirdly, people who consume a high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt diet such as most Americans do, even the ones who say they eat “healthy” probably consume more fat, sugar, and salt per month than the average vegan does in six months.
What the effects of the consumption of all that fat, salt, and sugar are, are again, several fold. Fat masks flavor that exists in the food you are eating, so you must add large amounts of salt and sugar to make it taste like something. Because of the high salt and sugar intake from consuming the fatty foods the human body becomes accustomed to getting those high levels of salt and sugar, and if it is given something where those levels are not present it registers it as a lack of “flavor”, when it's really just a lack of salt and sugar.
All this being said, we definitely grant that a lot of the foods that are marketed commercially as being “vegan”, “vegetarian”, “plant-based”, or “healthy” are usually not that pleasant to consume in their natural state, plain tofu is an example that springs immediately to mind. However, that doesn't mean that as home-cooks we can't do miles and miles better, because we don't have to worry about things like shelf-stability, shipping, packaging, etc. We are free to choose the best ingredients that we can, cook in small amounts with flavorful seasonings, bring our food to the absolute best that our levels of time and skill allow, eat it, enjoy it, savor the experience, the end.
However, there are certain principles that we believe are of crucial importance to producing high quality botanical foods, and improving our palates to the point that we can appreciate the subtleties, delicacies, and the less brash sensual stimuli that make up that style of food.
- High quality ingredients: We did not say “expensive” ingredients, we said “high quality” they need not be the same thing. Fresh, locally, grown, seasonal produce, organically produced as much as possible. Sounds expensive, but farmer's markets, growing your own where you can, etc are really some of the cheapest ways to eat well, and the money you save during the Spring, Summer, and Fall will tide you over through the Winter when you must shop in the grocery store.
- Simple Techniques: Avoid cooking techniques that require fat, salt, and sugar. Those techniques while important in the overall evolution of modern food, are considerably less relevant to botanical food. Also, it is asinine to attempt to improve one's palate by cooking at home by using the same techniques that produce the tongue-clogging, flavor-masking food that you were eating before.
- Season with Acid: Acidic foods provide several benefits when you are clearing your palate. They cut through any fat layers that you may have built up in your mouth and on your palate, they also help to break down the food that you eat, making less work for your stomach and your food more easily digestible.
- Don't Flip-Flop Back and Forth: We think this is about the most important rule there is to getting a great palate and re-sensitizing your body to the flavors that are actually present in the food you consume. If you want to really find out what botanical food is all about you must commit to eating only plant-based foods for at least 2 weeks to give your body time to cycle out the other sensory-dulling things you may have been consuming prior to that. If you eat salads and fruit one day, and then pepper steak with sauce bernaise the next, you're never going to get the full effect. Will you have some change, notice some difference? Yes, probably, but it won't be nearly as profound or as rapid as if you took that turn down Hard-Core Street instead of staying on Non-Committal Avenue.
In closing, we would like to encourage you to take a step towards a botanical diet, not only will you save money, feel better, and almost certainly lose some weight and lower your risks of chronic disease, but you will be giving yourself the amazing gift of truly flavorful food at any time or season. Who wouldn't want to experience that?
Join us next week for: Thoughts on starting a productive vegetable garden
Published 02-06-2012
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Wine: Healthful or Harmful?
There has been much talk and study in the past 20 years or so upon the effects of regular wine consumption on the human body. Not a lot of the information that has been collected from all the studying has been conclusive.
However, there are some facts that we can share with you regarding wine, its consumption, and its general effects that you can use to make your own choices regarding its place in your life, whether you follow a plant-based diet or not.
Starting with the vital statistics for an average 7 ounce glass of wine.
It is hard to say what the beneficial effects of regular very moderate wine (not more than 5 ounces of wine consumed per day) consumption are, mainly because there are a lot of other factors(higher levels of activity, higher levels of general nutrition, etc) that could cause the same beneficial results as the wine consumption in the people who take part in the medical studies, which makes most of the beneficial data collected inconclusive. However, there are some things that are known.
As you can see, much of the data that is conclusive about the physical effects of wine consumption isn't particularly conducive to making you want to consume any wine period.
Now that the facts are laid out, here is our opinion on the topic. We don't think there is anything intrinsically harmful about consuming 5-7 ounces of wine with a good meal once every month or two. We typically don't indulge because wine does contain quite a few calories but not very much actual nutrition, also the processing and excreting of the nutrients/toxins it brings with it upon its entrance into our bodies takes up nutrients that we already have that could be better used for other things.
We would certainly say that if you have any kind of pancreatic, liver, kidney, or blood condition you should avoid consuming wine, at least without speaking with your physician beforehand particularly if you take medication for your complaint.
We feel that lower alcohol wines are both more palatable, and less harmful to the body so we would recommend choosing varieties that contain less than 11% alcohol as much as possible. Also, if you have stomach acid complaints such as chronic heartburn, or acid reflux avoid drinking very tannic red wines, highly alcoholic or fortified wines as those will very likely aggravate your condition.
In closing we would say, if you like the taste of a nice glass of wine there is nothing wrong with having one on rare occasion, but making a habit of consuming wine regularly for its “health benefits” is probably more an exercise in self-delusion than anything else as the benefits that wine provides are outweighed by the detriments it brings with it.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Improving Our Food and Our Palates
Published 01-30-2012
Wine: Healthful or Harmful?
There has been much talk and study in the past 20 years or so upon the effects of regular wine consumption on the human body. Not a lot of the information that has been collected from all the studying has been conclusive.
However, there are some facts that we can share with you regarding wine, its consumption, and its general effects that you can use to make your own choices regarding its place in your life, whether you follow a plant-based diet or not.
Starting with the vital statistics for an average 7 ounce glass of wine.
- 7
ounces of wine with a 13% alcohol content contains 170 Calories
- On
average it will contain 5.2 grams of Sugar
- On
average it will also contain 21.2 grams of Alcohol
It is hard to say what the beneficial effects of regular very moderate wine (not more than 5 ounces of wine consumed per day) consumption are, mainly because there are a lot of other factors(higher levels of activity, higher levels of general nutrition, etc) that could cause the same beneficial results as the wine consumption in the people who take part in the medical studies, which makes most of the beneficial data collected inconclusive. However, there are some things that are known.
- Excessive
wine(alcohol) consumption can(and does) cause alcoholism and/or
liver damage over time, particularly if you have a genetic
predisposition to these conditions.
- Consumption
of sulfites can cause moderate to severe allergic reactions to
people with asthma, or certain allergies.
- Excessive
wine consumption damages the hippocampus area of the brain more than
other alcoholic beverages.
- Wine
contains anti-oxidants, flavonoids, and polyphenols that all have
beneficial effects on the human body, however those items might be
better derived from other sources due to the alcohol content of wine
canceling out those beneficial effects.
As you can see, much of the data that is conclusive about the physical effects of wine consumption isn't particularly conducive to making you want to consume any wine period.
Now that the facts are laid out, here is our opinion on the topic. We don't think there is anything intrinsically harmful about consuming 5-7 ounces of wine with a good meal once every month or two. We typically don't indulge because wine does contain quite a few calories but not very much actual nutrition, also the processing and excreting of the nutrients/toxins it brings with it upon its entrance into our bodies takes up nutrients that we already have that could be better used for other things.
We would certainly say that if you have any kind of pancreatic, liver, kidney, or blood condition you should avoid consuming wine, at least without speaking with your physician beforehand particularly if you take medication for your complaint.
We feel that lower alcohol wines are both more palatable, and less harmful to the body so we would recommend choosing varieties that contain less than 11% alcohol as much as possible. Also, if you have stomach acid complaints such as chronic heartburn, or acid reflux avoid drinking very tannic red wines, highly alcoholic or fortified wines as those will very likely aggravate your condition.
In closing we would say, if you like the taste of a nice glass of wine there is nothing wrong with having one on rare occasion, but making a habit of consuming wine regularly for its “health benefits” is probably more an exercise in self-delusion than anything else as the benefits that wine provides are outweighed by the detriments it brings with it.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Improving Our Food and Our Palates
Published 01-30-2012
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Organics for Everyone
The subject of the practicality of producing organic, whole, or living foods at prices that are affordable to everyone is one that tends to cause considerable controversy.
Many people say that the cost of producing these items is prohibitive to making the entire country “organic”, and that there is no way the country would be able to feed all its people adequately with only organic, or old-time, farming practices.
However, despite this common view perpetuated by agribusiness, food corporations, and the general media; Organic products are widely available in local grocery stores, and through local growers and farmer's markets.
We believe that shopping Organic need not be break-the-bank expensive for the average person. In fact, if you shop around a little bit and keep an eye open you will likely find that in-season organic produce is either very comparable in price, or in some cases cheaper, than conventional produce. Organic animal products, be they meat or dairy, will almost always be at least one third more expensive than their conventionally raised counterparts. Partially this has to do with supply and demand, and partially with higher feed costs for the animals and higher labor costs in raising them.
Organic soy products are always a bit more expensive, but they are the way to go in our opinion. Soybeans are some of the most highly chemically saturated products when conventionally grown and we would prefer to avoid eating as much of those chemicals as we possibly can.
If you're on a budget, but you still want to eat organic; Fear Not: there are ways to do it. Here are our tips and tricks for beating the racket so to speak. Also, the more people that purchase organic products exclusively and switch over to an organic life-style the more affordable those items will become due to economies of scale, and supply/demand.
Cheap-an-Cheerful Organic Shopping Tips
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the consumption of Wine
Published 01-23-2012
The subject of the practicality of producing organic, whole, or living foods at prices that are affordable to everyone is one that tends to cause considerable controversy.
Many people say that the cost of producing these items is prohibitive to making the entire country “organic”, and that there is no way the country would be able to feed all its people adequately with only organic, or old-time, farming practices.
However, despite this common view perpetuated by agribusiness, food corporations, and the general media; Organic products are widely available in local grocery stores, and through local growers and farmer's markets.
We believe that shopping Organic need not be break-the-bank expensive for the average person. In fact, if you shop around a little bit and keep an eye open you will likely find that in-season organic produce is either very comparable in price, or in some cases cheaper, than conventional produce. Organic animal products, be they meat or dairy, will almost always be at least one third more expensive than their conventionally raised counterparts. Partially this has to do with supply and demand, and partially with higher feed costs for the animals and higher labor costs in raising them.
Organic soy products are always a bit more expensive, but they are the way to go in our opinion. Soybeans are some of the most highly chemically saturated products when conventionally grown and we would prefer to avoid eating as much of those chemicals as we possibly can.
If you're on a budget, but you still want to eat organic; Fear Not: there are ways to do it. Here are our tips and tricks for beating the racket so to speak. Also, the more people that purchase organic products exclusively and switch over to an organic life-style the more affordable those items will become due to economies of scale, and supply/demand.
Cheap-an-Cheerful Organic Shopping Tips
- The easier an item
is to grow organically, the cheaper it will be.
This means that items that require large amounts of hand-work,
skilled labor, exotic growing conditions, lengthy transport, or
items of low demand, are going to be much more expensive than their
common, easily grown and quickly shipped counterparts. Examples of
the former in a temperate climate are: Avocados, Citrus(sometimes),
Pomegranates, Berries of all types, Bell Peppers(sometimes), Leeks,
Broccoli(sometimes), Eggplant(sometimes). Examples of the latter
also in a temperate climate are: Bananas, Apples, Pears, Green
Onions, Potatoes,Onions, Spinach, Lettuces, Kale, Beets, Carrots,
Radishes, and Celery.
- Organic stock must
be turned over more quickly than conventional stock.
What this means is that organic produce is often on sale in more often and in more
varieties than conventional produce. Watch the sale fliers, shop
often, and keep an eye on how quickly certain items turn over.
Whatever sits in the case for a few days is probably going to be on
special fairly quickly, if you know this you can plan ahead on your
purchasing and menu planning.
- Choose items that
will provide you the most bang for your buck. This
means that while it is perfectly acceptable to purchase for example, a pound of
organic cherries once in a while. Keep in mind that those cherries
may not have as many applications, uses, or over-all nutrition as a
bunch of kale, a pound of onions, and a package of tempeh that you could have purchased for the same money.
- Shop often and
avoid wastage.
When you shop purchase only what you will use within 2-3 days, also
purchase items that have a high yield ratio so that you can maximize
the amount of edible food you get out of each item you purchase.
- Visit or Join an
organic food co-op.
These places can be invaluable resources of not only excellent
quality food, but also information on some of the more outlandish,
or old-fashioned methods of producing certain types of foods, things
like sprouting, culturing, etc. Almost every larger metropolitan
area has one if you don't mind looking around.
- Quality verses Quantity. This mainly applies to the purchasing of organic meat and dairy products. There is no getting around the fact that these items are expensive, however you can still purchase these items just buy less of them, less often. For example, instead of buying 4 lbs of ground beef, 2 packages of chicken breasts, a gallon of milk, 6 yogurts, and a pound of butter when you buy your meat and dairy for the week, buy a lb of organic ground bison, a small organic chicken, a quart of organic milk, and a small tub of organic cottage cheese. We believe it is best to cut out animal products entirely, which will save you a lot of money, but if you don't feel you can do that at this point there are other ways to do it. We would certainly say that if you are going to consume animal products you should consume the absolute best quality, freshest, least adulterated once you can get your hands on. Even if that means cutting your consumption way down due to monetary concerns.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the consumption of Wine
Published 01-23-2012
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The Practicality of the Small Farm
About 100 years ago there were no huge hundred-thousand-acre farms, no agribusiness, no million dollar enterprises, just small farms maybe a hundred acres or so apiece, run by a farmer and his family with maybe a hired-hand or two as the seasons required extra labor. That was it.
No big corporations modifying seed's genetic structure. No huge chemical fertilizers, no nasty killer pesticides, herbicides, etc. Just honest grains, fruits, vegetables, and animals raised with a careful hand and a watchful eye. Real food. Wholesome Food grown each in its time and its season.
That was rural America, with America's cities being provisioned by the strength of the backs of the small farmers.
Nowadays, with our “modern” farming methods and mono-culture crop techniques the professional farmer faces a great many problems that he didn't have to worry about during that time period. The ground goes fallow more easily, toxic run off poisons creeks, lakes, rivers, and ground water, erosion blows away top soil, not to mention the huge expense of modern farming equipment such as tractors, combine harvesters, and the like.
Over the last 50 years with the huge urbanization across America and the wealthier landowners and farmers buying up farmland left and right, most of the small farms that used to be so prevalent and generous in their bounty to the American citizens, have died out, both literally and figuratively.
However, we believe in the ideals of the small farm and we also believe that many American home-owners could put the principles and the ideals of the old-time farmer into practice in their home gardens. Create their own little “farm”, as it were.
Farmers are practical above all things and what makes a farm is, that it produces things that people can eat. If your farm doesn't produce, than you don't have a farm. You just have a patch of dirt with some weeds on it.
Farmers also don't like things that are fussy, things that they have to mess with. On a real farm there is always something that needs doing, so they don't have time to messing around staking up gladiolas, or tying cauliflower leaves together so the heads bleach completely. They pick crops that get put in the ground and grow pretty much unaided, with minimal maintenance.
Farmers are husbandmen and caretakers of the land. They don't just use, abuse, and strip the land of everything they can get and then go find a new plot when the resources are gone. They nourish the land. They tend it. They give it their care, their time, and replenish it as best as they can.
Farmers pay attention. The farmer that doesn't pay attention, doesn't get a good harvest, and if he doesn't get a good harvest he may not be eating in the winter. Wanting to avoid hunger is a good sharpener of wits and attention.
We would like to invite you to put these general principles into practice in your home, your garden, and you general life. They bring much pleasure with them, as well as order and rhythm to your days. Everything has its time and its season, that should be respected in all aspects of our lives.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Organic Food For Everyone
Published 01-16-2012
The Practicality of the Small Farm
About 100 years ago there were no huge hundred-thousand-acre farms, no agribusiness, no million dollar enterprises, just small farms maybe a hundred acres or so apiece, run by a farmer and his family with maybe a hired-hand or two as the seasons required extra labor. That was it.
No big corporations modifying seed's genetic structure. No huge chemical fertilizers, no nasty killer pesticides, herbicides, etc. Just honest grains, fruits, vegetables, and animals raised with a careful hand and a watchful eye. Real food. Wholesome Food grown each in its time and its season.
That was rural America, with America's cities being provisioned by the strength of the backs of the small farmers.
Nowadays, with our “modern” farming methods and mono-culture crop techniques the professional farmer faces a great many problems that he didn't have to worry about during that time period. The ground goes fallow more easily, toxic run off poisons creeks, lakes, rivers, and ground water, erosion blows away top soil, not to mention the huge expense of modern farming equipment such as tractors, combine harvesters, and the like.
Over the last 50 years with the huge urbanization across America and the wealthier landowners and farmers buying up farmland left and right, most of the small farms that used to be so prevalent and generous in their bounty to the American citizens, have died out, both literally and figuratively.
However, we believe in the ideals of the small farm and we also believe that many American home-owners could put the principles and the ideals of the old-time farmer into practice in their home gardens. Create their own little “farm”, as it were.
Farmers are practical above all things and what makes a farm is, that it produces things that people can eat. If your farm doesn't produce, than you don't have a farm. You just have a patch of dirt with some weeds on it.
Farmers also don't like things that are fussy, things that they have to mess with. On a real farm there is always something that needs doing, so they don't have time to messing around staking up gladiolas, or tying cauliflower leaves together so the heads bleach completely. They pick crops that get put in the ground and grow pretty much unaided, with minimal maintenance.
Farmers are husbandmen and caretakers of the land. They don't just use, abuse, and strip the land of everything they can get and then go find a new plot when the resources are gone. They nourish the land. They tend it. They give it their care, their time, and replenish it as best as they can.
Farmers pay attention. The farmer that doesn't pay attention, doesn't get a good harvest, and if he doesn't get a good harvest he may not be eating in the winter. Wanting to avoid hunger is a good sharpener of wits and attention.
We would like to invite you to put these general principles into practice in your home, your garden, and you general life. They bring much pleasure with them, as well as order and rhythm to your days. Everything has its time and its season, that should be respected in all aspects of our lives.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on Organic Food For Everyone
Published 01-16-2012
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New Year: New Start
With a week into the New Year, we like to take a quick step back and evaluate any changes we may have made at the start of the year. Now is kind of the checkpoint to see how sustainable/practical those changes are now that we've given them a bit of a trial run.
Everyone always says they are going to join a gym, lose weight, be healthier, etc in the new year and then often as not, their motivation fizzles out around mid-February. We have a few ideas on how to avoid this late-winter lethargy, motivational crash-point, whatever you'd like to call it.
We believe that the reason a lot of goals go kaput before they are hardly even started, is the goals selected were done so in such a way that they were bound to fail in the first place. How many people have said “I'm going to lose weight this year”, and then fail to do any ground work to make that goal happen. They just keep buying the same groceries they always bought, cooking the same food they always cook, if they cook, etc and then get disenchanted or disappointed when nothing changes. Pre-planning and forethought is key to successful lifestlye changes.
We are sorry to have to tell you this, but if you want whole-life results, whole-life changes/adjustments are almost certainly necessary. You can't start walking ½ a mile a day, still eat crap, and expect to lose 100 pounds. It isn't going to happen. We will certainly say that walking the half a mile a day is certainly better than nothing, but the results you get will not be particularly dramatic from that small change.
Yes, small changes gradually made, are better than no changes made ever, but if you are in a place in your life where you need dramatic results quickly to avoid major medical problems, or other drastic consequences, you need to do better than that.
In our own experience, we have found that life-style changes work best for us to just go hard-core, cold-turkey into whatever changes we want to make. No easing into it, no gradual weaning, just one thing, than BANG! A different thing. Sort of like if you were having your head cut off, which would you prefer, 5 blows of a dull axe, or 1 quick chop with a guillotine? We prefer the guillotine, for our part.
However, this may not be best for everyone. One of the key points of making changes in your life is knowing about yourself. Knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, your limits, and the places you can push yourself to stretch and grow. Stretching and growing is important, no matter what age you are, or what phase of life you are in, there is always something more to learn and do and grow.
The other reason goals fail apart from lack of planning and forethought is, unrealistic expectations.
For example if you are 5 foot 3 it is very unlikely that you would be able to have a career playing professional basketball. That career requires specific genetic characteristics that you are lacking, and no matter how much you wish and aspire to that goal, it is very, very, unlikely that you will ever achieve that goal.
What we are trying to say is, pick goals that are attainable in a reasonable amount of time. Yes, you do need to have long term goals, and yes, you do need to push yourself somewhat. However, in order to keep your self-esteem up and show yourself some progress on the short-term to give you confidence, pick a fairly easily attained goal. If you want to lose a 100 lbs long term, choose 5 lbs, or 10, as your short-term goal. If you want to be able to do 100 military push-ups, set yourself the goal of 5 with perfect form if you can do a few already, if you can't do any, set yourself the goal of just 1 with perfect form. Everything starts with 1, remember that. Big results start as small results.
We would like to wish everyone the absolute best of luck with their New Year goals and resolutions. We know you can do it, and if there is anything we can do to help you with your health and wellness goals we would love to hear from you. Contact us via the site, or directly at our gmail address [ [email protected] ]
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Small Farm
Published 01-09-2012
New Year: New Start
With a week into the New Year, we like to take a quick step back and evaluate any changes we may have made at the start of the year. Now is kind of the checkpoint to see how sustainable/practical those changes are now that we've given them a bit of a trial run.
Everyone always says they are going to join a gym, lose weight, be healthier, etc in the new year and then often as not, their motivation fizzles out around mid-February. We have a few ideas on how to avoid this late-winter lethargy, motivational crash-point, whatever you'd like to call it.
We believe that the reason a lot of goals go kaput before they are hardly even started, is the goals selected were done so in such a way that they were bound to fail in the first place. How many people have said “I'm going to lose weight this year”, and then fail to do any ground work to make that goal happen. They just keep buying the same groceries they always bought, cooking the same food they always cook, if they cook, etc and then get disenchanted or disappointed when nothing changes. Pre-planning and forethought is key to successful lifestlye changes.
We are sorry to have to tell you this, but if you want whole-life results, whole-life changes/adjustments are almost certainly necessary. You can't start walking ½ a mile a day, still eat crap, and expect to lose 100 pounds. It isn't going to happen. We will certainly say that walking the half a mile a day is certainly better than nothing, but the results you get will not be particularly dramatic from that small change.
Yes, small changes gradually made, are better than no changes made ever, but if you are in a place in your life where you need dramatic results quickly to avoid major medical problems, or other drastic consequences, you need to do better than that.
In our own experience, we have found that life-style changes work best for us to just go hard-core, cold-turkey into whatever changes we want to make. No easing into it, no gradual weaning, just one thing, than BANG! A different thing. Sort of like if you were having your head cut off, which would you prefer, 5 blows of a dull axe, or 1 quick chop with a guillotine? We prefer the guillotine, for our part.
However, this may not be best for everyone. One of the key points of making changes in your life is knowing about yourself. Knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, your limits, and the places you can push yourself to stretch and grow. Stretching and growing is important, no matter what age you are, or what phase of life you are in, there is always something more to learn and do and grow.
The other reason goals fail apart from lack of planning and forethought is, unrealistic expectations.
For example if you are 5 foot 3 it is very unlikely that you would be able to have a career playing professional basketball. That career requires specific genetic characteristics that you are lacking, and no matter how much you wish and aspire to that goal, it is very, very, unlikely that you will ever achieve that goal.
What we are trying to say is, pick goals that are attainable in a reasonable amount of time. Yes, you do need to have long term goals, and yes, you do need to push yourself somewhat. However, in order to keep your self-esteem up and show yourself some progress on the short-term to give you confidence, pick a fairly easily attained goal. If you want to lose a 100 lbs long term, choose 5 lbs, or 10, as your short-term goal. If you want to be able to do 100 military push-ups, set yourself the goal of 5 with perfect form if you can do a few already, if you can't do any, set yourself the goal of just 1 with perfect form. Everything starts with 1, remember that. Big results start as small results.
We would like to wish everyone the absolute best of luck with their New Year goals and resolutions. We know you can do it, and if there is anything we can do to help you with your health and wellness goals we would love to hear from you. Contact us via the site, or directly at our gmail address [ [email protected] ]
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Small Farm
Published 01-09-2012
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Thoughts on Cravings and Over-Indulgences
A lot of the people we've talked to say that they have tried and tried over the years to switch to healthier modes of eating, but always seem to fail more or less miserably at some point. Having struggled with this issue ourselves we can certainly relate. While there are lots of folk “cures” and “scientific" suggestions for avoiding cravings and between the members of the team we have probably tried most, if not all of them. The problem is not that there isn't anything you can do, it's that a lot of them aren't very effective. We would like to share with you the ones that we have found to be effective and practical.
Craving Prevention and Remedies 101
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Practicality of Small Farming
Published 01-02-2012
Thoughts on Cravings and Over-Indulgences
A lot of the people we've talked to say that they have tried and tried over the years to switch to healthier modes of eating, but always seem to fail more or less miserably at some point. Having struggled with this issue ourselves we can certainly relate. While there are lots of folk “cures” and “scientific" suggestions for avoiding cravings and between the members of the team we have probably tried most, if not all of them. The problem is not that there isn't anything you can do, it's that a lot of them aren't very effective. We would like to share with you the ones that we have found to be effective and practical.
Craving Prevention and Remedies 101
- An Ounce of
Prevention: Many
people have “trigger” foods or beverages, things they consume
that make them want more food or drink then they actually require.
These items are identifiable and once you have identified them,
avoid them. Some self-knowledge and discipline is required for this
to work, but it is very effective once you have acquired the
knowledge. This tends to work best for people who have been on their
healthful eating plan for a few months and have stabilized their
eating habits, fulfilled their pressing nutritional needs, and are
no longer indiscriminately “hungry”.
- Sugar equals
Sugar: What
this means is calories consumed that are made up of molecules that
are close to basic glucose enter your blood stream so quickly that
your body does not have time to register satiation and thinks that
you haven't actually eaten anything, so it sends out more “hunger”
impulses and so you consume more and more, and the circle continues
endlessly. A way to avoid this craving for sugar if you are very
susceptible to it, is to cut all refined sugars , refined starches,
and items that are high in natural sugar such as honey, dried
fruits, agave nectar, and similar completely from your diet for
approximately 2 weeks. Stabilize your blood sugar by consuming large
amounts of fibrous vegetation and regular exercise after each meal
as much as possible. At the end of 2 weeks you will have most likely
broken the “sugar cycle” and should be able to consume a few
pieces of dried fruit, or similar should you so desire. However,
refined sugars and starches should still be avoided.
- Hunger Lies: Our
bodies do tell lies at times and one of the common fibs, is the
hunger impulse. Real hunger is a gnawing feeling in the pit of your
stomach, a faint tightness in the back of your throat along with an
increase in saliva production. False hunger(cravings) is a warning
sign that something is out of balance in your body chemistry and
nutritional habits and should be heeded as such. False
hunger can be corrected by the consumption of low calorie/high nutrient foods in
medium sized amounts.(1 or 2 cups by volume as false hunger presents
itself.) The high fiber content will help to make you feel “full”
and the vitamins and minerals present in the items themselves will
help to regulate your body chemistry and remove toxins ultimately
solving the entire problem.
- Water Solvers:
Many times when we think we are craving food, what our body is
really telling us is “Need Water!”. If you are experiencing a
headache without light-headedness, or inconsistent false hunger you may
simply be dehydrated. This is particularly true if you consume
alcohol or carbonated beverages on a regular basis, or sweat heavily while exercising/working. Remove 75% or
more of your alternate beverages from your daily intake and replace
them with half again as much, or double the amount, of purified or
spring water. This is particularly helpful during the Summer months.
- The Evils of
Sloth: Consistent
inactivity will mess up a person's metabolic rate very quickly,
particularly if combined with a poor quality diet. Certain kinds of
cravings, particularly sugar cravings, are very responsive to
increases in physical activity level. It doesn't take much, 10 or 15
minutes of sustained physical activity of whatever level of
intensity is moderately strenuous for you is usually enough to do
the trick of telling you whether you are experiencing real, or false
hunger. If you get up and walk around the block when you feel hungry
and then 15 minutes later you have a stronger hunger impulse odds
are you probably really do need a bit of fuel.
Join us next week for: Thoughts on the Practicality of Small Farming
Published 01-02-2012
Holiday Menu Planning
As the prospect of Christmas dinner looms large on the horizon a lot of folks find themselves thinking the same question, “What the heck am I cooking for Christmas dinner?” They may also ask the question of “Why did I volunteer to host this year?”, but that is neither here, nor there.
If you eat a plant-based diet you may find yourself feeling hamstrung by restrictions, or pressured by the preferences, or expectations of your guests, but not to worry. There are plenty of things you can do to give yourself something to enjoy without consequences, and still put smiles on your guest's faces. We have few suggestions for you that we hope you'll find useful.
- Salads are Your
Friend:
The options are basically endless. You are limited only by the
availability of produce in your area, and your own imagination.
There are also plenty of options for making things ahead and
dressing them just before serving, or even making ahead and
marinating in the refrigerator over-night. For making ahead of time,
choose robustly structured and
flavored slaws
of cabbage, broccoli stems, raw cauliflower cut into quite small
pieces, thinly sliced brussels sprouts, carrots, shaved turnips, or
even finely shredded or shaved raw beets. All of these vegetables
are typically quite decent during the winter months, and can be
turned into some amazingly flavorful dishes with minimal effort.
- Limit the Number
of Dishes:
Obviously, you want to have a good spread, but there is no need to
go overboard. If you are serving between 4 and 10 people, 4 dishes
are typically sufficient. 11 to 20 people, 6 dishes is very
adequate. Amount-wise, assume portion sizes of approximately ½ cup
by volume of each dish per person for a 6 dish dinner, and ¾ of cup
for a 4 dish dinner and make accordingly. If you are cooking for
more than 20 persons, 4 “variety” dishes are very sufficient,
with a 5th
large centerpiece dish that can be either braised or roasted. If you
are a carnivore make your roasted bird, ham,etc your centerpiece
dish. If you are vegan, or vegetarian we would suggest a kettle of
cassoulet beans with dried mushrooms and white wine, a large dish of
braised tofu with vegetables and spices, or nice eggplants with rice
or quinoa, onions and tomatoes, or mushrooms and a nice amount of
herbs.
- Make a chart of
Preparation Times and Resources:
Do this a few days before the party, the chart should have a rough
idea of how long each item will take to cook. Allow 15 extra minutes
on each item for a safety margin. Choose your dinner time
accordingly. Then arrange your recipes in order, with the one that
you start first being whatever takes the longest, obviously and work
your way down.
Those tips are thing we use for holidays and events, we hope you find the ideas a helpful addition to your normal modus operandi. Happy Holidays!
Next Week: Thoughts on Cravings and Over-Indulgence
Published 12-19-2011
_ The Servant, or the Master?:Food Technology in the Modern World
Over the last 70 to 120 years food, and food science, has evolved from the early scientist, i.e. a man tinkering about in a shed, to sophisticated laboratories, experiments and equipment to rival NASA. From those studies and experiments quite a lot of processes have been derived that are very beneficial to humans, such as Pasteurization, Aseptic Packaging, Steam Canning Techniques, etc. Along with various methods of creating something edible that will fuel to a human body, out of something that was perhaps not particularly edible in its original state, which somewhat eliminates the fear of a famine.
Without technology those processes would not be possible. However, though the technology may have been developed with good intentions by the person who wanted to do his/her bit to better mankind, human beings have always had a propensity to take a good idea, or technology, and then either take it to an unhealthy extreme, or misuse it to the detriment of many for the sake of profit for a very few.
We see a lot of this happening both in the recent past, and currently, in the way the people of the United States have been encouraged to think about food, nourishment, and health. We have been encouraged to accept speed and calories, not nurishment or flavor, as being the most desireable things in our food chain. That it is better to just open the packet, that we don't have the time to actually learn how to make something delicious and healthful for ourselves and our families. We think that's a very sad thing.
One of the technologies that we see that we don't particularly like is, the concept of making something “shelf stable”. What this means is that an item is constructed largely of material that does not rot, or decay, to any great extent and is then packaged in such a way that it will not oxidize, or become exposed to molds, yeasts, or bacterium that would render it inedible. The materials that are generally chosen are things like White Flour which is chemically stable and provides calories but little by why of health-promoting nutrition. White Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, regular Corn Syrup, Maltose, Dextrose, and Invert Glucose syrup all of which do not rot or decay in the traditional sense, and again provide calories, but no actual nutrients. Other popular choices are chemically stable fats or starches, choices such as partially hydrogenated oils, palm, or palm kernel oil for fats; and corn starch, hydrolized wheat starch, occasionally tapioca, rice, or potato starch are chosen.
What this process does is it extracts everything, or almost everything, in the item that provides more than simply calories to the body. It also means that all of the fragile volatile compounds that provided nuances of taste and flavor are completely destroyed which leaves you with an item that tastes extremely one-dimensional. The item may have an extremely long period of edibility, but at the cost of the majority of its nutrition and 90% of its flavors.
Another process that we don't particularly care for is, artificial emulsions. The process of meshing oil and water, or suspending solids in liquid by adding a lot of gums and starches to whatever the product happens to be. Those emulsions also tend to be loaded with excess sugars and fats that are not required and are strictly there to bulk out the item and give it the appearance of flavor though the actual ingredients that make up the flavor of it are in the bottom 2% of the make up. A great example of this type of thing is bottled conventional salad dressings, and oddly enough conventional yogurts and other dairy products. (Organic product generally contain less of these things, but double-check the label before purchase to be on the safe side.)
Finally we would like to say that while we prefer our foods to be in as close to their original state as possible. The plants from which they are harvested be untampered with in terms of their genetic code, and that the soil they be grown in and the water they are nurtured with be in as pure a form as possible. We also understand that that is not always possible and sometimes it is more important just to have something to eat. Which is where the science of food processing comes in. However, we think that it should be treated very much as the tool that it is, not the master that it has become.
Next Time: Helpful Hints for Holiday Menu Planning
Published 12-12-2011
Over the last 70 to 120 years food, and food science, has evolved from the early scientist, i.e. a man tinkering about in a shed, to sophisticated laboratories, experiments and equipment to rival NASA. From those studies and experiments quite a lot of processes have been derived that are very beneficial to humans, such as Pasteurization, Aseptic Packaging, Steam Canning Techniques, etc. Along with various methods of creating something edible that will fuel to a human body, out of something that was perhaps not particularly edible in its original state, which somewhat eliminates the fear of a famine.
Without technology those processes would not be possible. However, though the technology may have been developed with good intentions by the person who wanted to do his/her bit to better mankind, human beings have always had a propensity to take a good idea, or technology, and then either take it to an unhealthy extreme, or misuse it to the detriment of many for the sake of profit for a very few.
We see a lot of this happening both in the recent past, and currently, in the way the people of the United States have been encouraged to think about food, nourishment, and health. We have been encouraged to accept speed and calories, not nurishment or flavor, as being the most desireable things in our food chain. That it is better to just open the packet, that we don't have the time to actually learn how to make something delicious and healthful for ourselves and our families. We think that's a very sad thing.
One of the technologies that we see that we don't particularly like is, the concept of making something “shelf stable”. What this means is that an item is constructed largely of material that does not rot, or decay, to any great extent and is then packaged in such a way that it will not oxidize, or become exposed to molds, yeasts, or bacterium that would render it inedible. The materials that are generally chosen are things like White Flour which is chemically stable and provides calories but little by why of health-promoting nutrition. White Sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, regular Corn Syrup, Maltose, Dextrose, and Invert Glucose syrup all of which do not rot or decay in the traditional sense, and again provide calories, but no actual nutrients. Other popular choices are chemically stable fats or starches, choices such as partially hydrogenated oils, palm, or palm kernel oil for fats; and corn starch, hydrolized wheat starch, occasionally tapioca, rice, or potato starch are chosen.
What this process does is it extracts everything, or almost everything, in the item that provides more than simply calories to the body. It also means that all of the fragile volatile compounds that provided nuances of taste and flavor are completely destroyed which leaves you with an item that tastes extremely one-dimensional. The item may have an extremely long period of edibility, but at the cost of the majority of its nutrition and 90% of its flavors.
Another process that we don't particularly care for is, artificial emulsions. The process of meshing oil and water, or suspending solids in liquid by adding a lot of gums and starches to whatever the product happens to be. Those emulsions also tend to be loaded with excess sugars and fats that are not required and are strictly there to bulk out the item and give it the appearance of flavor though the actual ingredients that make up the flavor of it are in the bottom 2% of the make up. A great example of this type of thing is bottled conventional salad dressings, and oddly enough conventional yogurts and other dairy products. (Organic product generally contain less of these things, but double-check the label before purchase to be on the safe side.)
Finally we would like to say that while we prefer our foods to be in as close to their original state as possible. The plants from which they are harvested be untampered with in terms of their genetic code, and that the soil they be grown in and the water they are nurtured with be in as pure a form as possible. We also understand that that is not always possible and sometimes it is more important just to have something to eat. Which is where the science of food processing comes in. However, we think that it should be treated very much as the tool that it is, not the master that it has become.
Next Time: Helpful Hints for Holiday Menu Planning
Published 12-12-2011
_
Edible
Efficiency
Organizing Your Eating Habits
We're big fans of efficiency in most things at the Green Bowl. We try to follow “Do it once and do it right” as one of our mottoes. When we were getting our living arrangements sorted out, we got to thinking “is it possible to spread efficiency to one's eating habits?” As we thought about it we decided that, yes, it is possible and indeed even desirable.
Everyone wants to save a little time on tasks that they find monotonous, dull, or just plain never-ending and a lot of people find that food, particularly “healthy” food is boring. While we disagree that food, particularly “healthy” food is boring, we can certainly sympathize with a desire to cut down on food preparation time, shopping time and expenses, and all the little logistical problems that come along with the simple question of “What's for dinner?”
While we certainly don't advocate visiting drive-through windows and bolting our food in the name of efficiency, we have discovered a few little things that can really save a lot of messing around long-term, things that can make us feel better about ourselves, and the ways we think about food and eating.
The place to start we think, when it comes to efficiency is, What can be simplified?
Everyone thinks that processed foods, while not more healthful are so much quicker to put into an edible state that it makes it worth it. We are here to tell you that that is not necessarily so. Simple plant-based recipes are actually very fast, and some of them need no cooking at all. Things like Miso Soup, Sauteed Tofu and Broccoli, Hummus and Vegetables, Fruit Salads, even a more complicated Barley Risotto, or Roasted Winter Squash stuffed with Kale, Dates, and Walnuts do not take very much time. The first four go from raw ingredients to a finished dish in twenty minutes or less, the other two, forty minutes tops. Forty minutes for a really excellent, wholesome, healthy, fabulous tasting meal, you can't beat that no matter what box you rip open, or what packet you cut the top off.
The thing that makes those dishes so fast, and so efficient is they are simple. None of them, including the more complex ones need more than about 6 ingredients, and a couple of them you only need 3 or 4. Streamline your dishes, when you pick up a recipe book, or go looking on epicurious.com , figure out what really is necessary to the dish and what's just frills that the chef threw on there to make him/herself look a bit clever. Cleverness is not required, good, wholesome, simple food is.
Other places you can save some time and effort and make yourself more efficient, is the grocery store. Taking 3 hours to do all your grocery shopping once a week is considerably less time efficient and cost effective than making 3 or 4 short stops on your way home. 20 minutes in and out of the store, and you have spanking fresh ingredients to turn into great meals, your wallet is fuller because you're buying less, you'll also waste less because you'll know all the time what exactly is in your refrigerator, which means next to no spoilage and next to no wastage. It is efficiency, exemplified, actually.
The other place where a lot of time gets wasted while people agonize over what they are going to cook for any given night of the week. We get that schedules are complicated, and time can be very short some evenings, and there will be a few nights when you just don't feel like getting out the pots and pans. We completely understand, you should see our calender, it's just a solid mass of red ink.
However, what we do, and what we recommend you try is find about 6-8 recipes that you and your household like, pick recipes that vary in cook time between 20 and 80 minutes, but all have similar sorts of ingredients in them. Then make yourself a rotating menu, for example Monday you make some sort of stew, Tuesday stir-fry, etc. You can do rotating, or cyclical menus for as few as 7 days or as many as 30. We like 10 to 12 day ones, big enough for some variety, small enough to not be a pain to shop for. Also, don't worry about it getting boring, the reason you pick simple recipes is those are the ones most easily adapted. Change the seasonings, substitute different kinds of beans for the ones suggested, change out the proteins, use different kinds of vegetables of a similar structure. It's not difficult, and it makes everything more interesting, both for the cook and the diners. Give it a try, it will have a lot of side benefits as well such as making you a better more flexible cook, making you better at seasoning things, and also give you a chance to flex your creative muscles.
We hope that you have found some of our ideas helpful, a few of them we've mentioned before in relation to other things. We try to have ideas and suggestions that are applicable to more than one topic. Sometimes you do need specific ways of doing a task, but most of the time one idea can be applied with a broad brush. We try to have as many of those as we can, it makes for less stuff to remember. Efficiency, it's a good thing.
Next Week: Join us for our thoughts on food technology.
Published 11-28-2011
Organizing Your Eating Habits
We're big fans of efficiency in most things at the Green Bowl. We try to follow “Do it once and do it right” as one of our mottoes. When we were getting our living arrangements sorted out, we got to thinking “is it possible to spread efficiency to one's eating habits?” As we thought about it we decided that, yes, it is possible and indeed even desirable.
Everyone wants to save a little time on tasks that they find monotonous, dull, or just plain never-ending and a lot of people find that food, particularly “healthy” food is boring. While we disagree that food, particularly “healthy” food is boring, we can certainly sympathize with a desire to cut down on food preparation time, shopping time and expenses, and all the little logistical problems that come along with the simple question of “What's for dinner?”
While we certainly don't advocate visiting drive-through windows and bolting our food in the name of efficiency, we have discovered a few little things that can really save a lot of messing around long-term, things that can make us feel better about ourselves, and the ways we think about food and eating.
The place to start we think, when it comes to efficiency is, What can be simplified?
Everyone thinks that processed foods, while not more healthful are so much quicker to put into an edible state that it makes it worth it. We are here to tell you that that is not necessarily so. Simple plant-based recipes are actually very fast, and some of them need no cooking at all. Things like Miso Soup, Sauteed Tofu and Broccoli, Hummus and Vegetables, Fruit Salads, even a more complicated Barley Risotto, or Roasted Winter Squash stuffed with Kale, Dates, and Walnuts do not take very much time. The first four go from raw ingredients to a finished dish in twenty minutes or less, the other two, forty minutes tops. Forty minutes for a really excellent, wholesome, healthy, fabulous tasting meal, you can't beat that no matter what box you rip open, or what packet you cut the top off.
The thing that makes those dishes so fast, and so efficient is they are simple. None of them, including the more complex ones need more than about 6 ingredients, and a couple of them you only need 3 or 4. Streamline your dishes, when you pick up a recipe book, or go looking on epicurious.com , figure out what really is necessary to the dish and what's just frills that the chef threw on there to make him/herself look a bit clever. Cleverness is not required, good, wholesome, simple food is.
Other places you can save some time and effort and make yourself more efficient, is the grocery store. Taking 3 hours to do all your grocery shopping once a week is considerably less time efficient and cost effective than making 3 or 4 short stops on your way home. 20 minutes in and out of the store, and you have spanking fresh ingredients to turn into great meals, your wallet is fuller because you're buying less, you'll also waste less because you'll know all the time what exactly is in your refrigerator, which means next to no spoilage and next to no wastage. It is efficiency, exemplified, actually.
The other place where a lot of time gets wasted while people agonize over what they are going to cook for any given night of the week. We get that schedules are complicated, and time can be very short some evenings, and there will be a few nights when you just don't feel like getting out the pots and pans. We completely understand, you should see our calender, it's just a solid mass of red ink.
However, what we do, and what we recommend you try is find about 6-8 recipes that you and your household like, pick recipes that vary in cook time between 20 and 80 minutes, but all have similar sorts of ingredients in them. Then make yourself a rotating menu, for example Monday you make some sort of stew, Tuesday stir-fry, etc. You can do rotating, or cyclical menus for as few as 7 days or as many as 30. We like 10 to 12 day ones, big enough for some variety, small enough to not be a pain to shop for. Also, don't worry about it getting boring, the reason you pick simple recipes is those are the ones most easily adapted. Change the seasonings, substitute different kinds of beans for the ones suggested, change out the proteins, use different kinds of vegetables of a similar structure. It's not difficult, and it makes everything more interesting, both for the cook and the diners. Give it a try, it will have a lot of side benefits as well such as making you a better more flexible cook, making you better at seasoning things, and also give you a chance to flex your creative muscles.
We hope that you have found some of our ideas helpful, a few of them we've mentioned before in relation to other things. We try to have ideas and suggestions that are applicable to more than one topic. Sometimes you do need specific ways of doing a task, but most of the time one idea can be applied with a broad brush. We try to have as many of those as we can, it makes for less stuff to remember. Efficiency, it's a good thing.
Next Week: Join us for our thoughts on food technology.
Published 11-28-2011
_
Healthy Habits for Young People
Healthy eating habits for children and teenagers has always been something of a touchy subject, both with the parents and with the kids themselves. Young children can be very picky at times, and they often go through phases where they show a marked preference for a very small selection of food items. Teenagers may be somewhat more rational than a younger child, but they still may not make the best nutritional choices in their desire to conform to certain societal pressures, fit in with their friends, through their sleep/study/work habits, or they simply may not know.
With childhood and teenage obesity being a very real concern in this country for a lot of people, both parents and the kids themselves; we decided to share a few ideas for things that may be useful for building some new, more healthful, habits.
We believe that the key to good family health and fitness is actually communication and a clear understanding of the goals by all the members of the family. There is no reason why you can't explain to children why you, as the parents, have decided that lifestyle changes need to be made. Obviously, those explanation should be age-appropriate, but if your children are over the age of 8 or 10, there is no reason why they shouldn't be included in the execution of the goals. They will also be less likely to fight you about things if they understand what the changes are and why you're making them.
Here's some of our favorite things that both kids and adults can do to help themselves out at school, work, and at home.
Healthy Habits for Young People
Healthy eating habits for children and teenagers has always been something of a touchy subject, both with the parents and with the kids themselves. Young children can be very picky at times, and they often go through phases where they show a marked preference for a very small selection of food items. Teenagers may be somewhat more rational than a younger child, but they still may not make the best nutritional choices in their desire to conform to certain societal pressures, fit in with their friends, through their sleep/study/work habits, or they simply may not know.
With childhood and teenage obesity being a very real concern in this country for a lot of people, both parents and the kids themselves; we decided to share a few ideas for things that may be useful for building some new, more healthful, habits.
We believe that the key to good family health and fitness is actually communication and a clear understanding of the goals by all the members of the family. There is no reason why you can't explain to children why you, as the parents, have decided that lifestyle changes need to be made. Obviously, those explanation should be age-appropriate, but if your children are over the age of 8 or 10, there is no reason why they shouldn't be included in the execution of the goals. They will also be less likely to fight you about things if they understand what the changes are and why you're making them.
Here's some of our favorite things that both kids and adults can do to help themselves out at school, work, and at home.
- Kids:
Stop drinking soda. Parents: Stop buying soda.
- Kids:
Pack your own school lunches. Parents: Explain what that means if needed and keep appropriate ingredients in the house for said lunches, fresh vegetables,
fruits, whole grain breads, nut butters, etc.
- Kids:
Ask your parents if you can walk or ride your
bicycle home from school. If that is not safe or practical, spend your study-hall period or
any free period you have during school hours walking around the
library or classroom while you study. Parents: Talk to your child's
teachers about getting them into an extra gym or PT class, or them
being allowed to walk in the gym, or on the school grounds during lunch, or during
their free period.
- Kids:
Join a physical after school activity. If you're not in very good
shape pick something that requires you to work and challenge
yourself, but not something that is likely to cause injury to the
out-of-shape, like swimming. Parents: Make time for family
exercise, disguise it as something fun like playing catch, walking
the family pet, or gardening/yard-work.
- Kids:
Learn about food, it is not your enemy and learning more about real
food and cooking will help you to know what is good for you and what
isn't. Parents: Encourage your kids to learn about food and
nutrition, and try to set the best example for them that you can.
- Kids:
Turn off the television, computer, or video games. You can, and
should, set good limits for those types of things. For example, pick one show
per week that you particularly enjoy and limit yourself to just that, or no more
than ½ an hour of video games per day. Parents: Discuss with your
kids the best ways to compromise on the sedentary activities they
may enjoy, and the physical activity they need, and how to manage
their time to make sure everything gets done. Try to
be as patient and rational as you can, shouting, arguments, and
ultimatums are generally very unproductive.
For any kids or teenagers that may be reading this we would like to say that if you do feel like you may have weight problem, or you don't feel good about how you physically feel or look, you should talk to your parents, or another trusted adult, who can help you to be objective about the issue. We would hate to have you get yourself into a real problem because the thing you thought was a big issue, wasn't really as big as it seemed at the time. We would also say, Adults: if a young person comes to you with a concern please try to make time for them. Just because they can't vote or sign a lease, does not mean that their concerns or problems are any less important to them then they would be to anyone who was over the age of full legal responsibility. Also, please try to avoid making a visibly huge deal about any problems that may be brought to you, or that you may notice yourself. Certainly speak with the young person about those problems, but tread gently until you know for sure what is really going on to avoid doing unnecessary/unintentional psychological damage.
Next Week: Thoughts on organizing eating and shopping habits to maximize enjoyment and minimize hassle.
Published 11-21-2011
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Finding Time for Health
If you ask someone how they are these days very often the response will be something along the lines of, “Good. Busy.” Everyone seems to be so busy that they have very little time to devote to things that as little as sixty years ago would have been completely a matter of course, such as making a home-cooked meal, or baking bread from scratch.
However, as people's lives have become busier with more modern conveniences, simple things like those along with the skills that accompany them, have become more and more rare.
Now as the nation's general health, fitness, and wellness deteriorates at alarming rates people are coming to the conclusion that maybe it is necessary to spend at least a little of our precious time on maintaining something that isn't at its best when propped up by modern technology, our minds and our bodies.
If you aren't single and childless it can seem like an insurmountable hill when it comes to figuring how you're going to squeeze in daily work-outs, or how to get home-cooked meals on the table on a regular basis, but we are here to tell you that even with lots of time pressures it is still possible to eat healthy and get enough exercise to put you in halfway decent shape.
To start out, here are a few ideas for healthful and efficient eating
Next Week: Thoughts and Ideas for helping teenagers get and stay healthy.
Published 11-14-2011
Finding Time for Health
If you ask someone how they are these days very often the response will be something along the lines of, “Good. Busy.” Everyone seems to be so busy that they have very little time to devote to things that as little as sixty years ago would have been completely a matter of course, such as making a home-cooked meal, or baking bread from scratch.
However, as people's lives have become busier with more modern conveniences, simple things like those along with the skills that accompany them, have become more and more rare.
Now as the nation's general health, fitness, and wellness deteriorates at alarming rates people are coming to the conclusion that maybe it is necessary to spend at least a little of our precious time on maintaining something that isn't at its best when propped up by modern technology, our minds and our bodies.
If you aren't single and childless it can seem like an insurmountable hill when it comes to figuring how you're going to squeeze in daily work-outs, or how to get home-cooked meals on the table on a regular basis, but we are here to tell you that even with lots of time pressures it is still possible to eat healthy and get enough exercise to put you in halfway decent shape.
To start out, here are a few ideas for healthful and efficient eating
- It
all starts in the grocery store, Don't Buy What You Don't Want To
Eat. If you think it's unhealthful or bad for you don't even bring
it into the house. If you give yourself an avenue to routinely cheat
on whatever eating plan you implement for yourself you will never
make much headway.
- When
you cook, Choose Recipes That Cook Themselves, things you don't have
to stand over. Casseroles, braises, stews, soups, and crock-pot
items that fit your chosen eating plan are a great place to start.
Look for recipes that have minimal preparation times, length of
cooking time is typically not an issue, set your oven on time-bake,
your crock-pot on its timer, or call your oldest( or most responsible)
child when they get home from school and tell them to stick
whatever-it-is in the oven, etc.
- Another
good stand-by rule of thumb is, What Can Be Eaten Raw, Should Be
Eaten Raw. i.e. Make Salads! Make Slaws! Eat Fruits and Vegetables Whole! Cut your carrots and celery
into sticks and pack them in your lunch, the kid's lunches, etc.
That's not less cooking time, that is literally no cooking time, and
you cannot get more efficient than that.
- If
you live within 3 miles of your work consider bicycling, walking, or
if you're in decent shape already, running, instead of driving. Even once or twice a week will make a difference.
- If
you must drive to work, or spend a fair amount of time traveling
about in your car choose parking spaces that are at the far end of
the lot as much as you can, even to the point of allowing yourself a
few extra minutes of commuting time to do so, those extra few
hundred yards add up.
- A
common tip is to take the stairs instead of the elevator. We would
say do that plus take it a little further; pack a portable lunch and walk the halls and stairs while on your lunch break instead of
sitting in the cafeteria or break room.
- If
you have the knowledge necessary volunteer to coach one of the local
youth sports leagues. If you're not in super great shape it's not a
huge deal since you're not actually playing, but it will get off
the couch and out in the fresh air.
- If
you have a dog take it for a 15 minute daily walk instead of having
the kids, or your spouse do it. The dog will like you more, and you
get exercise.
- If
you have a yard, even a small one, Plant A Garden. You get yummy
fresh produce, and we are here to tell you that pulling weeds and
breaking sod is quite hard work. If you don't have a yard yourself,
offer to help out an elderly neighbor, family member, or church
friend with their yard/garden work. A good deed and you get
exercise.
- Implement
a 5 minute daily calisthenics routine right when you get up in the
morning. First thing when you roll out of bed, it's very
simple, just 5 minutes of sit-ups one morning and 5 minutes of
push-ups the next morning before you get in the shower. We guarantee
you will see results within 2 weeks of starting that one. If you do
that faithfully for a month, it will be a habit and you just do it
automatically.
Next Week: Thoughts and Ideas for helping teenagers get and stay healthy.
Published 11-14-2011
Plant-Based Holidays and Occasions
Thoughts on Navigating Conventional Celebrations without Causing Offense
The holidays are rapidly approaching and joyous as the season may be, it certainly brings its own set of trials and challenges for those of us who are on the no-animal-products bandwagon. Our friends and family who are not in the same dietary boat as we are may not understand our desire to forgo certain food items, and may even actively discourage, or ridicule us for doing so.
However, we have some ideas that may help to smooth the road through what can be very challenging situations.
A lot of the ridicule and mistrust vegetarians and vegans are subjected to comes mainly from people not understanding what we do and why we do it. Obviously common courtesy would dictate that we not go around shoving our personal beliefs and preferences in other's faces, but we need not cower in our organic cotton t-shirts when someone makes a crack about “bean-eating greenies”, or “those darn hippies”. Short, polite explanations, and firm convictions usually cut more ice than apologetic faces or adamant arguments, no matter how well backed-up, or rational, those arguments may be. Try to avoid getting defensive. Defensiveness will simply make you appear snappish and unhappy, and people will only pester you all the more. Be a trend-setter, not a black sheep.
Actions always speak louder than words. If your family and friends do special occasion dinners, or holiday spreads pot-luck style, bring something vegan and fabulous. Make it simple, colorful, flavorful, and don't tell people what it is.(barring folks with food allergies, of course) If your dining companions have any manners at all they will a least try whatever you bring and probably a few of them will like it, then you can tell them that it's vegan. If they don't like it, it doesn't matter because you'll have brought something you like and there will be more leftovers for you to take home.
A word of caution on pot-luck dishes, choose something that looks like it could be a conventional dish. The less outlandish looking something is, no matter what's in it, the less likely it will be to attract undesirable attention and comment.
We've saved the best piece of advice we can give you for last, Be Flexible. Yes, you will feel the best if you stick to eating what you're used to and don't divert from your normal eating plans to any great degree, however sometimes it is better to avoid causing strife in a family, or giving offense to a friend than it is to adhere strictly to a diet or philosophy. That being said, if you went vegan or vegetarian because of a severe health problem and you know there will be a serious consequence if you do diverge, just be honest with your hosts(or guests). If they really care about your well-being they won't make a big deal about it, and you can do whatever you need to without fear of causing offense.
Next Week: Thoughts on finding time for better health
Published 11-07-2011
Simplify Your Existence
Part III
Simplify Your Environment
So far we have talked about simplifying our minds, and our bodies, but we also think environment plays an enormous part in how well our changes stay changed. For example, a person who swears off chocolate, but still works in a candy store is going to have a very difficult time maintaining their resolution when constantly surrounded by temptations.
By nature, human beings are not very good at denying themselves things; particularly things they are in the habit of, or feel that they “need” in order to survive in their current state of being. However, if a person is attempting to improve, or change their current state of being, it stands to reason that certain things may need to be abstained from, adjusted, or altered to produce different, or more desirable results.
Everyone is affected by their environment, or living conditions, to some extent even if they don't consciously acknowledge it. Though the extent of that affect is varied from person to person, it does exist and it would be foolish to disregard the powerful tool it can be to help us in reaching our goals by cultivating a good environment, or in acknowedging the mental ball-an-chain we place on ourselves by staying in a less than pleasant one.
Sometimes simplifying our environment can be as easy as running a broom and a mop around the floor, and opening a window to let in some fresh air and sunlight. As with every “simplifying” effort you under take a measure of thought is required to decide what is necessary for you to get the best results out of it, with the least upheaval and undesirable consequences from the action taken.
We feel that we do our best work, thinking, meditating, and we feel the best in a tidy, pleasant environment. A place that has sunlight, good air, and a pleasant ambient temperature. Obviously, this can be difficult to achieve if you live in a basement apartment, or a musty old garret, but there are still measures that can be taken to improve one's circumstances that cost little, to no money, and don't take much time.
We recommend having a good clear out once every 3 to 6 months and divesting yourself of any excess possessions. Give clothes you don't wear, dishes you don't use, or items you've never particularly liked to charity, or other persons in need.
Do your best to only have possessions you like, use, and enjoy in your environment. Doing this will give you a more pleasant place to exist, negates the driving force of consumerism, and is better for the health of your wallet, your mind, and the planet itself.
Other things you can do to give yourself a simpler, better environment are:
- Open your windows(Fresh air and sunlight are instant mood lifters)
- Keep a few houseplants(Also growing some edible plants in containers will suppliment your diet and help filter your air.)
- Have a weekly tidy-up
- Re-paint once every few years
- Make some of your own furnishings: (You can learn a new skill, or use one you already have to make your place more your own)
- Remove negative influences in your space(I.e. Get rid of things that have negative connotations to you, don't invite people into your space that inflame negative feelings in your mind if you can avoid it.)
If you can go through your life and make one child smile, lighten one person's load even for a few minutes, bring some light to one person's darkness, then you made a difference even if it was only a very small one, and your life was worth living. You passed along what makes us human, our capacity to bring love, light and joy.
Join us next week: Ideas for healthful holidays and special occasions
Published 10-31-2011
Simplify Your Existence
Part II
Simplify Your Body
Last week we spoke about the idea of your state of mind dictating the circumstances you find yourself in, and how simplifying your thoughts and mental state can be of great help in diluting Life's chaos.
This week we would like to talk about how simplifying your body can be a good next step if you like how you are feeling in your mind. The first question is obviously, what do we mean by the phrase “simplify our body”. We admit it is something of an abstract concept, but we think it's worth the effort to try to get a grasp on it.
What we mean is, to simplify what we put in our bodies, i.e. the foods and beverages we consume. We also mean simplify the way that we view our bodies and the expectations we have of them.
Biblically, the body is viewed as a vessel for the soul, or spirit, of the human being. It is merely rather complicated dirt that moves around and has the capacity for making/doing things. We think that's a very acceptable way to view the human body if you want to break it down to the simplest of terms. The body is a sort of rather complicated clothes for the soul/spirit/consciousness, if you would take your best suit that you wear once a month to the cleaners, how much more would you do for the body that you're wearing 24/7?
A lot of people are motivated to get themselves into shape, or to keep themselves in shape for reasons of vanity, wanting to appear attractive to others, out of fear for the consequences of ill-health, and myriad other complicated personal reasons. Rarely are those reasons the simple ones of liking how they feel when they are in shape, of enjoying the feeling of feeling their muscles work, of the joy to be found in a good sweat. We believe that the simpler a person's rationale behind the idea they are trying to implement the more likely it is that they will stick with it, and make it a life-long habit.
Don't we all want to feel our best? Think our best? Look our best? What better way to do that than simply saying, “I'm going to go for a walk every evening.” or “I'm going to take a salad to work every day.” Those are simple things, that end with the simple results of putting yourself in better health and spirits.
We also would like to mention the idea of simplifying our expectations of our bodies, though we don't want to give the false impression of condoning excuses for not doing whatever it is you decide you need to do, but we do want to stress the idea of not expecting things from our bodies that they are either not ready to currently, or will never be capable of. Physically, our bodies have their limitations. While it is up to each individual to discover what those limitations are, each must recognize and come to their own acceptance of those limits. Each person's genetic make-up means that they will be decent at an array of tasks, quite proficient at a some things, and really excellent at one or two things if they choose to push themselves in those areas.
Part of simplifying your body is to discover what those areas are, in what ways you want to push yourself, and what is feasible and practical for you in your life. After all, it is YOUR life. Get out there and live it.
Next Week: Thoughts on Simplifying Your Environment
Published 10-24-2011
Part II
Simplify Your Body
Last week we spoke about the idea of your state of mind dictating the circumstances you find yourself in, and how simplifying your thoughts and mental state can be of great help in diluting Life's chaos.
This week we would like to talk about how simplifying your body can be a good next step if you like how you are feeling in your mind. The first question is obviously, what do we mean by the phrase “simplify our body”. We admit it is something of an abstract concept, but we think it's worth the effort to try to get a grasp on it.
What we mean is, to simplify what we put in our bodies, i.e. the foods and beverages we consume. We also mean simplify the way that we view our bodies and the expectations we have of them.
Biblically, the body is viewed as a vessel for the soul, or spirit, of the human being. It is merely rather complicated dirt that moves around and has the capacity for making/doing things. We think that's a very acceptable way to view the human body if you want to break it down to the simplest of terms. The body is a sort of rather complicated clothes for the soul/spirit/consciousness, if you would take your best suit that you wear once a month to the cleaners, how much more would you do for the body that you're wearing 24/7?
A lot of people are motivated to get themselves into shape, or to keep themselves in shape for reasons of vanity, wanting to appear attractive to others, out of fear for the consequences of ill-health, and myriad other complicated personal reasons. Rarely are those reasons the simple ones of liking how they feel when they are in shape, of enjoying the feeling of feeling their muscles work, of the joy to be found in a good sweat. We believe that the simpler a person's rationale behind the idea they are trying to implement the more likely it is that they will stick with it, and make it a life-long habit.
Don't we all want to feel our best? Think our best? Look our best? What better way to do that than simply saying, “I'm going to go for a walk every evening.” or “I'm going to take a salad to work every day.” Those are simple things, that end with the simple results of putting yourself in better health and spirits.
We also would like to mention the idea of simplifying our expectations of our bodies, though we don't want to give the false impression of condoning excuses for not doing whatever it is you decide you need to do, but we do want to stress the idea of not expecting things from our bodies that they are either not ready to currently, or will never be capable of. Physically, our bodies have their limitations. While it is up to each individual to discover what those limitations are, each must recognize and come to their own acceptance of those limits. Each person's genetic make-up means that they will be decent at an array of tasks, quite proficient at a some things, and really excellent at one or two things if they choose to push themselves in those areas.
Part of simplifying your body is to discover what those areas are, in what ways you want to push yourself, and what is feasible and practical for you in your life. After all, it is YOUR life. Get out there and live it.
Next Week: Thoughts on Simplifying Your Environment
Published 10-24-2011
Simplify Your Existence
Part I
Simplify Your Mind
The world seems to be twirling on its axis these days rather than simply spinning. We race through our existence in a flurry of activity, though whether or not we produce anything of merit from our efforts seems to be beside the point. In this series we would like to throw some of our views on the this topic out there, along with a few things we try to do to keep ourselves from getting swept up in the chaos.
We think that everything that happens to a person originates in their mind. Any activities that they start, any job that they take, any feeling that they experience, it all starts in their mind. Their mind also provides the fuel and the stimulus to either perpetuate that experience, or put a stop to it.
Which we think is a rather freeing way to view things because it gives us the ultimate control over our own destiny. Granted, there are still a lot of things beyond our control, but we do have control over how we act, or re-act to any and every situation. However, this does mean that since we have the ultimate say in our lives; anything that happens to affect us negatively because we chose not to deal with it directly is our own fault; that can be a hard thing to face sometimes. It is much easier to blame our problems on outside sources than to face up to the idea we may be pulling the metaphoric piano down on ourselves, rather than it just falling randomly from nowhere.
We believe that as human beings we tend to cause a lot of our own stress. If a person wanders out into nature and lives in sort of an a'la Robinson Crusoe fashion the stresses they will experience will be of a limited and direct kind. In our more modern and technological existence stress comes from many different directions and is not always easily traced back to a direct source(s).
However, we believe that it is very possible to live a low-stress, healthful, productive, and happy life in these troublesome times. We think the first thing you have to do to get to that place is to decide that is where you want to go. It sounds silly, but if you never firmly make that choice, you'll never get there. It all starts in your mind, after all.
After you make the decision, a sort of mental Spring Cleaning is required. Sit down with a cup of tea and go through your thoughts and feelings. Find out which ones make you happy and which ones make you unhappy, or cause you stress. Write them all down on two separate lists. One is the “Happy” list, and the other is the “Fix-up-Get-Rid” list.
These lists are tools to help you de-clutter your mind. As you work through the piles of stuff in your head you will find you feel better, think better, have less stress, and work better.
We hope very much that we can help even just one person, if we can do that we will consider these as words well written. We wish you the best of luck.
Next Week: Simplify Your Life: Part II
Published 10-17-2011
Part I
Simplify Your Mind
The world seems to be twirling on its axis these days rather than simply spinning. We race through our existence in a flurry of activity, though whether or not we produce anything of merit from our efforts seems to be beside the point. In this series we would like to throw some of our views on the this topic out there, along with a few things we try to do to keep ourselves from getting swept up in the chaos.
We think that everything that happens to a person originates in their mind. Any activities that they start, any job that they take, any feeling that they experience, it all starts in their mind. Their mind also provides the fuel and the stimulus to either perpetuate that experience, or put a stop to it.
Which we think is a rather freeing way to view things because it gives us the ultimate control over our own destiny. Granted, there are still a lot of things beyond our control, but we do have control over how we act, or re-act to any and every situation. However, this does mean that since we have the ultimate say in our lives; anything that happens to affect us negatively because we chose not to deal with it directly is our own fault; that can be a hard thing to face sometimes. It is much easier to blame our problems on outside sources than to face up to the idea we may be pulling the metaphoric piano down on ourselves, rather than it just falling randomly from nowhere.
We believe that as human beings we tend to cause a lot of our own stress. If a person wanders out into nature and lives in sort of an a'la Robinson Crusoe fashion the stresses they will experience will be of a limited and direct kind. In our more modern and technological existence stress comes from many different directions and is not always easily traced back to a direct source(s).
However, we believe that it is very possible to live a low-stress, healthful, productive, and happy life in these troublesome times. We think the first thing you have to do to get to that place is to decide that is where you want to go. It sounds silly, but if you never firmly make that choice, you'll never get there. It all starts in your mind, after all.
After you make the decision, a sort of mental Spring Cleaning is required. Sit down with a cup of tea and go through your thoughts and feelings. Find out which ones make you happy and which ones make you unhappy, or cause you stress. Write them all down on two separate lists. One is the “Happy” list, and the other is the “Fix-up-Get-Rid” list.
These lists are tools to help you de-clutter your mind. As you work through the piles of stuff in your head you will find you feel better, think better, have less stress, and work better.
We hope very much that we can help even just one person, if we can do that we will consider these as words well written. We wish you the best of luck.
Next Week: Simplify Your Life: Part II
Published 10-17-2011
Herbs for Healing
We like to keep ourselves open to alternative ways of keeping ourselves healthy, and repairing ourselves if we should have a problem. One of the ways we have utilized in the past and continue to use is, herbs.
Herbs and herbal medicine have been used by animals and humans since the dawn of man to treat various ailments, and indeed many modern medicines were originally isolated and extracted from various plants.
We will attempt to provide a balanced view of the use of herbs. In order to do that we must provide a warning of the dangers of herbal medicine. Most herbs are not particularly dangerous when ingested in moderate quantities, though some are highly toxic even in small amounts such as Belladonna, or Monkshood and a great deal of care should always be utilized when practicing herbal medicine.
Herbalism itself is not an exact science, which is in itself part of its appeal; as it can be customized in blend and dosage for the individual, also by varying the method in which a herb is used it can be used to treat different conditions, i.e. topically, internally, etc.
We think the best way to learn about herbalism is to learn it from someone else who is a seasoned practitioner who is willing to teach you. They will be able to steer you away from various pitfalls and also keep you from being overwhelmed. If you don't have access to a veteran herbalist(and they are rare), the next best thing is a good selection of quality reading materials.
Select your herbalism books with some care, look for books that contain corresponding information and lots of detail. If you choose to implement a herbal remedy research it thoroughly, and choose something that even if it doesn't fix the problem, won't do you any harm.
Here are a few of our favorite herbalism books to get you started.
We hope that you will take a little time to look into herbalism, its philosophy and its application. Just remember the following two things as they are very important to the results you will get.
Next Week: First part of the Simplification Series
Published 10-10-2011
We like to keep ourselves open to alternative ways of keeping ourselves healthy, and repairing ourselves if we should have a problem. One of the ways we have utilized in the past and continue to use is, herbs.
Herbs and herbal medicine have been used by animals and humans since the dawn of man to treat various ailments, and indeed many modern medicines were originally isolated and extracted from various plants.
We will attempt to provide a balanced view of the use of herbs. In order to do that we must provide a warning of the dangers of herbal medicine. Most herbs are not particularly dangerous when ingested in moderate quantities, though some are highly toxic even in small amounts such as Belladonna, or Monkshood and a great deal of care should always be utilized when practicing herbal medicine.
Herbalism itself is not an exact science, which is in itself part of its appeal; as it can be customized in blend and dosage for the individual, also by varying the method in which a herb is used it can be used to treat different conditions, i.e. topically, internally, etc.
We think the best way to learn about herbalism is to learn it from someone else who is a seasoned practitioner who is willing to teach you. They will be able to steer you away from various pitfalls and also keep you from being overwhelmed. If you don't have access to a veteran herbalist(and they are rare), the next best thing is a good selection of quality reading materials.
Select your herbalism books with some care, look for books that contain corresponding information and lots of detail. If you choose to implement a herbal remedy research it thoroughly, and choose something that even if it doesn't fix the problem, won't do you any harm.
Here are a few of our favorite herbalism books to get you started.
- Herbal Defense by Robyn Landis (Grand Central Published, 2004)
- The Green Pharmacy by Barbara Griggs (Inner Traditions/Bear and Company)
- The Modern Herbal by Mrs. M. Grieve (Dover Publishing, 1971)
We hope that you will take a little time to look into herbalism, its philosophy and its application. Just remember the following two things as they are very important to the results you will get.
- All medicines are also poisons the only difference is dosage.
- Use only very fresh, high-quality, unadulterated herbs that you either grow yourself, or get from an unimpeachable supplier.
Next Week: First part of the Simplification Series
Published 10-10-2011
Vegetarian? Vegan? Raw?
Thoughts on different plant-based eating styles
It seems like there is a great deal of confusion among the general population regarding the definitions of the terms “Vegetarianism”, “Veganism”, and “Raw Food Practitioners”. In this article we would like to clarify the topics, and provide a little insight on why you might wish to choose one of these life-styles for yourself, and possibly your family as well.
Vegetarianism has been around in different forms for a very long time, is a prevalent(or mandatory) practice among certain religions such as Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, and some Christian monastic sects such as Trappists, Benedictines, etc.
In American society the general definition of the broad term to be a “vegetarian” means one does not consume “Meat”(4 legged animal flesh), Poultry(bird flesh), Fish, or Shellfish. Many vegetarians do consume milk, eggs, and other dairy products, and some find fish/shellfish acceptable. Those persons are specifically termed as being “pescetarians” or “lacto-vegetarians”.
Veganism is the next step in the world of plant-based diets. Veganism is generally embraced for either health, religious, or philosophical(ethical) reasons. Being “Vegan” means that you consume no animal derived food-stuffs of any kind, including all forms of meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, bovine or goat milk, dairy products in any form(cheeses, etc), and some refuse honey as well. Philosophical or Ethical Vegans avoid any type of animal derived products, such as fur or leather goods, woolen clothing, animal fat based soaps, cosmetics, and lubricants, as well as items produced with bone char, lanolin, beeswax, shellack, etc. Dietary vegans limit their animal derived product consumption typically only to food-stuffs.
Raw Food enthusiasts fall into two areas generally, those that still consume animal products though what they consume is un-cooked or unpasteurized, and those that consume a vegetarian or vegan raw diet.
Raw food is typically defined as being any edible item that has not been heated to a temperature over 118 degrees Fahrenheit, though some people say even 118 degrees is too hot and prefer to go with 104 or 108 degrees.
Now that the types of eating styles have been defined we would like to use a few words to describe why you might choose one over another, or over a conventional eating plan.
Vegetarianism is probably the least extreme, least socially awkward, and has the least restrictions. If you are looking to improve your general blood chemistry(lower your cholesterol and triglyceride levels, etc), lose a little weight, and save some money on your food budget going vegetarian is a pretty good way to do it.
Vegetarianism can have several pitfalls however if you are looking to use it to achieve a fairly dramatic weight-loss or as a full-body anti-inflammatory, the first is dairy products are still allowed, and second is if you do not cut drastically or eliminate your consumption of refined carbohydrates and fried items, and limit your consumption of whole grains and starches you will probably not lose much weight. A lot of people think that just because they are not eating meat that they are eating “healthy”, that is not necessarily the case and you must be honest with yourself about what you are eating to get to where you want to go. Remember, the only one who suffers from that sort of dishonesty is you.
Veganism is intrinsically more encouraging to weight-loss and healthy weight maintenance, as well as encouraging anti-inflammatory side-effects, owing to its low calorie-high nutrient ratio. Though many less than healthful prepared foods are vegetarian almost none of them are vegan, which cuts out a lot of the high(er) calorie things you might have been eating before you went vegan. The only places one can go wrong with veganism is to not consume a sufficiently wide variety of plants, or plant-based items. Also, to consume too many plant-based fats(olive, coconut, or vegetable oils, nuts and nut products.) or refined carbohydrates such as All-Purpose Flour.(Refined white sugar is technically not vegan as it is refined with bone char).
A Raw Food diet we believe is one of the healthiest things a person can do for their bodies, however we like cooked foods a lot and we have found a mixture of Vegan Raw and Vegan Cooked to be the best option for us. Some people prefer to be 90 or 100% raw and we find that a little too rigid for us to consistently maintain. We don't advocate a raw diet containing animal products owing to the risks of contamination from the way most of those items are produced. It is technically possible to eat all types of meats and dairy products raw and unpasteurized if they have been produced under proper sanitary conditions, and the animals from which they came have been treated well and fed a high quality diet themselves. However, those types of products are extraordinarily difficult to come by, particularly in any kind of affordable scale, unless you choose to raise your own. We think that the dividend is not worth the risk, also there is no real need by the human body to consume animal products .
We hope that you have found some clarification on the subject of raw and plant-based diets and that it will help you to decide what might work well for you. Just remember in almost all cases extremes are not the way to go for the long run. Whatever you select choose something that you feel you can maintain. Choose something that you are comfortable enough with to give it a fair trial and be rational about the results. If it works for you, and you like it, keep doing it. If something is not working the way you think it should, or is causing you more problems than solutions it may be necessary to re-think and perhaps do some more research into the problem. Please feel free to contact us if you have questions or want more information.
Next Week: Thoughts on Herbs for Healing and Home Remedies
Published 10-03-2011
Winter's Chill: Growing Produce Out of Season
Autumn is beginning to feel quite definite in the Mid-west and for the cooking enthusiast that spells the end of local seasonal produce, or does it?
The idea of “forcing” plants has been around for hundreds of years and has been used with varying levels of success by gardeners in the form that we think of as greenhouses since the 13th century. However, owning and using an actual greenhouse is fairly expensive to set up, requires quite a lot of work, and some specialized knowledge; fortunately there are some other options, such as.
- Container gardening indoors.
- Sprouting and micro-green gardening indoors.
- Cold Frame gardening outside.
Each of those methods have their requirements, pluses, minuses, and each require their own amounts of work, here's a little break-down.
Container gardening indoors can provide very acceptable yields, but does require that you have a fairly warm house(or invest in some heat mats) with a lot of light sources such as windows or lamps. Container gardening also is somewhat limiting on the types of things you can grow in your average house; fibrous and tender leafy greens, baby root vegetables, and some herbs are about the long and short of it. The work required is fairly minimal, but if you have pets or small children it can get messy, it does take a bit of messing about to get set up, and there may be some false starts when you're getting started.
Sprouting and micro-green gardening is relatively fool-proof, does not require much by way of space, or work, and is a great way to put additional nutrients into your diet. The types of things you can sprout and grow are almost any type of dried grain, seed, or legume(except red kidney beans[toxic] or soy beans[unpalatable]) as long as it has not been sprayed with preservatives or desiccants, or heat-treated in any way. All you need for space is a bowl on the counter, or a small tray.(A quarter sheet pan with a small baking rack for drainage works well.) If you intend to sprout until you see actual leaves, a growth medium may be required depending on the types of plants you are working with and a bit of research is typically a good idea before getting started.
Outdoor cold-frame gardening is one of our favorite methods for producing our own winter produce. The frames are cheap and easy to make, plus you can size them however best fits your space. We like frames that are about 4 feet long and 2 feet wide with a domed lid. The depth of the frame depends on what you intend to grow in it, we like the sides to be about 2 feet high and we fill the frame with about 18 inches of organic matter and dirt. Insulation is required for the frames to be productive in colder areas(lower than 40 degree F) flakes of hay seem to work very well, are cheap and easy to come by at your local garden or large animal supply center. If you intend to use your frame all winter some sort of heat source will probably be necessary as well, a single incandescent light bulb on an extension cord, rotting horse manure, or a couple jugs of hot water placed inside the frame will moderate the temperature to varying degrees. Choose your method depending on the weather and the type of plants you are growing. The best types of plants for cold-frame gardening are hardier greens, root vegetables, and some lettuces and spinach should do well. Use seed plugs to help ensure germination and harden the plugs off somewhat before the final transplant if possible.
We hope we have shown that there are still very affordable possibilities for keeping yourself in fresh vegetables all year 'round: without having to pack up and move to Florida. Don't be afraid to experiment with different methods, techniques, and types of seeds to see what works best for you and your area. You may also want to contact your local university Extension Office for more detailed information pertinent to your area of the country. Happy Growing, Cooking, and Eating!
Next Week: Thoughts on the differences in vegetarian, vegan, and raw eating styles
Published 09-26-2011
Dining with the Eye: Achieving Professional Looking Dishes
Part of the fun of dining out, dining with friends, etc is to enjoy the aesthetic appeal of whatever the cook places in front of us. However, since we at Green Bowl rarely eat out we had to learn how to provide that extra little visual appeal at home.
We are hear to tell you that it isn't difficult, it doesn't take that much extra time, and you don't have to have much more than your standard cooking equipment to achieve some really stunning results.
Making your food look the way you want, is very much like making it taste the way you want it to. However instead of balancing flavors and textures, it's about balancing Contrast, Texture, Color, and Ratio. It diverges somewhat in its more advanced and extreme manifestations when appearance branches into Line, Curve, Symmetry and Asymmetry, Theme, and Motif. However, for the purposes of the typical home cook those concepts are more confusing than useful, at least until you really know your way around the basic four ideas.
The Basics of Culinary Design
- Contrast: This is meant to be the idea of two opposite, or semi-opposite visual appearances coming together in the same dish to provide interest. Mono-anything is usually rather dull looking, no matter what the flavor happens to be.
- Texture: Visual texture happily goes hand-in-hand with edible texture. Creating Uniform or Contrasting textures at will is one of the most desirable visual concepts to master. Different items create different textures naturally, but those textures can be manipulated by the cook to great advantage depending on how they are handled and prepared.
- Color: Whatever color your items start out as, that is probably the color they should stay, at least in the terms of vegetarian/vegan cooking. If your broccoli was green when you started, you should aim to make it more green by whatever method of preparation/presentation you select.
- Ratio: There are several mathematical ratios that govern how appealing we find something visually. The simplest one, the “golden” ratio, is defined as 2: 3 has been exhibited throughout history as a visual ratio that human beings find extremely appealing. (Example: Serve 2 new potatoes with 3 roasted carrots in an alternating pattern.)
- Use your ingredients in the shape that they make naturally. For example, if most of your ingredients are small balls don't try to turn them into small-er cubes.
- Combine 2 to 3 colors in each dish, but no more than 5.
- If you are serving several individual items per dish, place them in odd numbers such as groups of 3 or 5 for an individual plate, or 7, 9, or 11 for a serving platter.
- Make things the same shape, but in difference sizes. For example, cut vegetables into several sizes of cube. Fruits into wedges of different sizes.
- Make rings. Cut your ingredients into slices and place the slices in layered concentric rings for a dramatic effect, or have one large item in the center of the serving dish and place the sauce or garnish in a ring around it.
- Clean Your Plates/Platters! Take a few extra seconds to remove any splatters of sauce/dressing on the rim of the plates, any grinds of pepper or spice around the edge. A clean plate means your diners will be looking at your food, not at the big drop of sauce, or the gob of vegetable puree on the side of the plate. If you want to get fancy a paper towel rolled into a tight cylinder and then dipped in hot water mixed with vinegar makes the best plate cleaner, but a clean kitchen towel or dry paper towel will usually do the job just fine.
We hope that you find these little ideas helpful and useful next time you want to create something that is not only healthful and delicious, but beautiful as well. Happy Cooking!
Next Week: Ideas for Growing Your Own Produce in the Off-Season
Published 09-19-2011
Healthful, Not Harmful: Avoiding Extremes
In this age of fad diets, exercise programs, and societal pressure concerning body image, it is very easy (and tempting) to get swept up in this tidal wave of quick fixes with only brief secondary concern for the effects those type of actions may have on our over-all health.
While we at Green Bowl do not advocate moderation in all things, because we do believe some things are inherently harmful to our health, neither do we advocate extremes in the things that remain.
- Extreme caloric restriction( less than 1000 per day for men, and less than 800 per day for women)
- Extreme amounts of exercise(more than 1.5 hours of regimented exercise per day without proper conditioning/training beforehand)
- Nutritional extremes(protein based diets, mono-diets, supplementation over nutritional eating)
The other types of extremes that cause a lot of problems are, mental extremes. People sometimes get ideas in their heads that they think must adhere to a certain eating/exercise/nutritional regimen forever, and ever Amen, unbendingly, or they will suffer unnameable consequences. In the vast majority of cases this is not so. Yes, you must maintain a certain amount of discipline to get good results, but you must also maintain some flexibility in your mind-set in order to maintain a good balance in your life.
We are all for making healthful changes in life, but those changes shouldn't become your life. By choosing certain types of eating and exercise habits, you are attempting to free yourself from the shackles of ill-health, sluggishness, and poor mental clarity; not put yourself into a different set of shackles.
Our best method for combating extreme behaviors is to take a step back before implementing any large change and examining the reasons for making the change, the change itself, and the effects/consequences of carrying out the change. If something strikes doesn't feel quite right, I.e .rational/sustainable/logical/safe then perhaps it isn't and deserves to be reconsidered.
Next Week: Thoughts on maximizing food's aesthetic appeal.
Published 09-12-2011
Edible Education
We are firm believers of continuing education at Green Bowl, not only in the generally accepted terms of earning an advanced degree, but in terms of educating oneself in useful skills and general knowledge to improve one's lot in life. We attempt to apply the same mentality to all aspects of our existence and our approach to food, eating, cooking, and nutrition is no exception. We feel that a lot of the problems and concerns people have, not only in regards to their general health and well-being, but in regards to plant-based diets, non-traditional eating plans, and conventional eating habits would be alleviated, or solved, by a greater education on the subject.
We understand that not everyone has the time, or inclination to acquire a great depth of knowledge in the vast and complex topic of nutrition for health, along with all the myriad subsets of knowledge that go along with that main topic. However, we know that it is not beyond the average person's capabilities to attain a working knowledge of the basic subjects in enough detail to maintain their physical health and mental well-being at a high level of functionality throughout their life.
We have had quite a few people say to us, “ I just want to know how to eat well and be healthy.” However, when it comes to putting that goal into practice people often lose heart when they see how much stuff is actually out there to learn when it comes to the topic itself. We are here to say, it's not as tough as you think!
Eating well and Being Healthy are not mutually exclusive thankfully, but both do require an amount of effort and discipline from the individual. We have laid out a few areas of information that we believe each person, whether just starting on the road, or a few miles down it, should have some knowledge in.
If you have that knowledge you are well on your way to eating well and being healthy. We would also like to recommend a few sources for that knowledge apart from our website.
For Food Chemistry
We would like to wish everyone the absolute best of luck with their own edible education, if you have questions or concerns we will be very glad to assist you to the best of our abilities.
Next Week: Thoughts on the traps of dietary/nutritional extremes.
Published 09-05-2011
We are firm believers of continuing education at Green Bowl, not only in the generally accepted terms of earning an advanced degree, but in terms of educating oneself in useful skills and general knowledge to improve one's lot in life. We attempt to apply the same mentality to all aspects of our existence and our approach to food, eating, cooking, and nutrition is no exception. We feel that a lot of the problems and concerns people have, not only in regards to their general health and well-being, but in regards to plant-based diets, non-traditional eating plans, and conventional eating habits would be alleviated, or solved, by a greater education on the subject.
We understand that not everyone has the time, or inclination to acquire a great depth of knowledge in the vast and complex topic of nutrition for health, along with all the myriad subsets of knowledge that go along with that main topic. However, we know that it is not beyond the average person's capabilities to attain a working knowledge of the basic subjects in enough detail to maintain their physical health and mental well-being at a high level of functionality throughout their life.
We have had quite a few people say to us, “ I just want to know how to eat well and be healthy.” However, when it comes to putting that goal into practice people often lose heart when they see how much stuff is actually out there to learn when it comes to the topic itself. We are here to say, it's not as tough as you think!
Eating well and Being Healthy are not mutually exclusive thankfully, but both do require an amount of effort and discipline from the individual. We have laid out a few areas of information that we believe each person, whether just starting on the road, or a few miles down it, should have some knowledge in.
- Food Composition on a Chemical Level (What molecules make up the foods you eat and what that means as far as flavor, texture, and nutritional content.)
- Basic Anatomy and Physiology (What all the bits in the human body are, where they are, and what they do.)
- Basic Cooking Knowledge (How to work with a knife, work with a good variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, how to handle what meats or fish you choose to consume, how to cook various grains and legumes, and basic baking skills.)
- Understanding of the Basic Principles of Exercise/Physical Activity (Muscle anatomy, basic stretching theory, principles of maintaining bone health and high level cardiovascular function.)
If you have that knowledge you are well on your way to eating well and being healthy. We would also like to recommend a few sources for that knowledge apart from our website.
For Food Chemistry
- On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee
- Cookwise by Shirley O.Corrihor
- www.mayoclinic.com (Excellent source of reliable background information)
- Pilates by Rael Isacowitz (Even if you're not interested in practicing Pilates there are some excellent diagrams of the human spine, and excellent information on alignment and breathing.)
- Any college level anatomy and physiology textbook published after 1990 will provide sufficiently accurate and detailed information for the average person.
- Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques by Jacques Pepin (This book will teach you everything you need to know about handling a knife in a competent manner as long as you practice sufficiently.)
- I'm Just Here For The Food by Alton Brown (An excellent beginning to intermediate cookbook for those who want to know “why” as well as “how”. Also recommend his second book for introductory baking skills as well.)
- Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Furhman (The book that kick started our interest in eating for health, very sound science, good sense, and well written. You should read it.)
We would like to wish everyone the absolute best of luck with their own edible education, if you have questions or concerns we will be very glad to assist you to the best of our abilities.
Next Week: Thoughts on the traps of dietary/nutritional extremes.
Published 09-05-2011
The Battle for Freshness
As dedicated advocates of a plant-based diet we cannot stress enough how important the issue of Freshness is to us. Having access to high quality, extremely fresh ingredients is crucial to receiving optimum nourishment from the items you consume. Not only is it nutritionally crucial it is of key importance to extracting the most intense flavor out of those items.
We have talked about how to select very fresh specimens of specific items in some of our other articles and we hope that perhaps you will take a few minutes to review those items should you be looking for certain information. However, in this article we would like to discuss the reasoning behind our somewhat extreme preference for freshness, the signs of general freshness, and how to shop for maximum freshness.
Our preference for freshness comes from the understanding that the more time plants spend outside of their growing environment(after being picked/harvested) the more the volatile compounds that make up the distinctive smells and flavors of those items oxidizes, evaporates, and generally degrades. Also, plants both collect and manufacture their vitamin and mineral contents from their growing medium and surrounding environment. The longer the plant is out of that environment the more of its stored nutrients it uses up maintaining itself, and the less of those nutrients go into your body upon consumption. In short, for you to get the most out of the plant the less time the plant spends maintaining itself the better it is going to be nutritionally and flavor-wise.
The signs of general freshness are not as easy to spot as one might think. Most whole plants, fruits, and vegetables can maintain themselves in an edible condition for quite some time(between 2 weeks and up to 6 months), depending upon the item and storage conditions. However, just because a plant has not “gone bad”, or started to rot does not mean that plant is remotely “fresh”. The other factor that can make judging freshness difficult is, each item is somewhat unique in its freshness indicators.
To make it simpler we have grouped the freshness indicators by item type, and the indicators themselves are listed in order of importance.
Leafy Plants (lettuces, fibrous greens, etc)
Starchy Root Vegetables and Tubers (Potatoes, yams, Jerusalem artichokes, etc)
We do not agree with this mentality. We think that if you are going to get the maximum nutrition out of your purchases you should get into the habit of shopping 3 to 5 times per week in very small amounts. If you normally spend 150 dollars per week on groceries for a family of four all in one lump, spread your money out and go 3 or 4 times and spend 15 to 25 dollars each time. You will find that not only does your food quality improve, but that you also save anywhere from 20 to 70 dollars per month on groceries since you buy less, store less, and waste less of what you purchase.
Yes, this method does require a little more planning. However in terms of time, if trips to the market are worked into one's evening commute, and since you will be purchasing very little per visit you may actually end up spending less time(and money) at the shops than you did before. Three cheers for freshness!
Next Week: Thoughts on learning about food and nutrition.
Published 08-29-2011
As dedicated advocates of a plant-based diet we cannot stress enough how important the issue of Freshness is to us. Having access to high quality, extremely fresh ingredients is crucial to receiving optimum nourishment from the items you consume. Not only is it nutritionally crucial it is of key importance to extracting the most intense flavor out of those items.
We have talked about how to select very fresh specimens of specific items in some of our other articles and we hope that perhaps you will take a few minutes to review those items should you be looking for certain information. However, in this article we would like to discuss the reasoning behind our somewhat extreme preference for freshness, the signs of general freshness, and how to shop for maximum freshness.
Our preference for freshness comes from the understanding that the more time plants spend outside of their growing environment(after being picked/harvested) the more the volatile compounds that make up the distinctive smells and flavors of those items oxidizes, evaporates, and generally degrades. Also, plants both collect and manufacture their vitamin and mineral contents from their growing medium and surrounding environment. The longer the plant is out of that environment the more of its stored nutrients it uses up maintaining itself, and the less of those nutrients go into your body upon consumption. In short, for you to get the most out of the plant the less time the plant spends maintaining itself the better it is going to be nutritionally and flavor-wise.
The signs of general freshness are not as easy to spot as one might think. Most whole plants, fruits, and vegetables can maintain themselves in an edible condition for quite some time(between 2 weeks and up to 6 months), depending upon the item and storage conditions. However, just because a plant has not “gone bad”, or started to rot does not mean that plant is remotely “fresh”. The other factor that can make judging freshness difficult is, each item is somewhat unique in its freshness indicators.
To make it simpler we have grouped the freshness indicators by item type, and the indicators themselves are listed in order of importance.
Leafy Plants (lettuces, fibrous greens, etc)
- Texture: The fresher the leaf the crisper and more vibrant it will appear and feel under touch.
- Color: The coloring of the leafs will be bright, and distinct. If there is darkening or whitening around the edges of the leaves or any cut/broken edges the plant is not fresh.
- Scent: In dirt grown leafy vegetables if they are very fresh the will still have a distinct odor of soil and chlorophyl(“green” smell) to the leaves or heads. Hydroponic vegetables or packaged/bagged items do not have this indicator.
- Scent: The fruit should have the strong distinct odor associated with that fruit. If it has no scent or smells remotely “off”(fermented, vinegary, or 'beery') that fruit is either unripe or getting ready to rot.
- Texture: Stone fruits(and pears) should yield slightly under finger pressure when at their peak, but they should not squish. Apples, quince, etc, should feel crisp and solid. If they feel at all like styrofoam, or cardboard, they are old and should be skipped.
- Appearance: Very fresh fruits should be free of bruising, black or white powdery residues, and brown spots. The skin should not be wrinkling from dehydration around the stem or flower end.
- Scent: The fruits should have a strong distinct scent. When the skin is scraped with a fingernail the scent should magnify several times and there should be a slight sheen or beading of essential oil on the surface of the fruit.
- Appearance: The rinds should be bright and consistently colored over the entire fruit. They should not be wrinkled, feel spongy under light finger pressure, nor should there be any brown spots present on the rind.
- Weight and Appearance: Vegetables should feel heavy for their size. The skins should be nicely conformed to the shape of the vegetable, not wrinkled or shrunken looking around the crown or at the tap root.
- Texture: Items should feel crisp and firm. They should not have soft spots, feel “woody”, or like cardboard or styrofoam. Items should not be bendy or squishy in any way.
- Scent: Really fresh root vegetables will have both their own odor, along with the scent of soil, and perhaps water, or minerals, depending on the type of vegetable, where, and under what conditions it was grown.
Starchy Root Vegetables and Tubers (Potatoes, yams, Jerusalem artichokes, etc)
- Weight: Items should feel solid in hand and heavy for their size.
- Texture: There should be no soft spots, or blackening, and items should feel crisp and firm.
- Appearance: Skins should be bright in color. There should be no whitening or wrinkling around the blossom or stem ends. Very fresh squash specimens will weep a clear sap from their cut stem ends.
- Scent: Cucumbers give off a faint, pleasant odor when they are very fresh as do some summer squash. Hard squash should smell fairly neutral, but any sour or “off” smells are indicative of the item's fermenting and should be avoided.
- Texture: Cucumbers, summer squashes and eggplants should have have a firm texture, that should not feel spongy, or like a nerf-ball. Hard squashes should be exactly that, hard. There should be no soft spots or sponginess.
- Texture: Crispness is the best sign of freshness in these sorts of items. Leaves should be crisp to the touch, and stems firm to the point of hard.
- Color: Items should be bright in color. There should be no whitening or darkening indicating oxidation on any cut or broken stems. Nor should there be any black speckling, or white powdery residue anywhere on the vegetable.
- Scent: These items should smell faintly of whatever they happen to be, mingled with a slightly papery/dirty odor. There should be no sour or fermented odors of any kind.
- Weight: Items should feel quite heavy for their size, particularly onions.
- Appearance: Any papery outer skins should be tightly adhere to the item. There should be no blackened areas, cuts, brownish/white slimy areas, soft spots, or speckled black residue anywhere on the items.
We do not agree with this mentality. We think that if you are going to get the maximum nutrition out of your purchases you should get into the habit of shopping 3 to 5 times per week in very small amounts. If you normally spend 150 dollars per week on groceries for a family of four all in one lump, spread your money out and go 3 or 4 times and spend 15 to 25 dollars each time. You will find that not only does your food quality improve, but that you also save anywhere from 20 to 70 dollars per month on groceries since you buy less, store less, and waste less of what you purchase.
Yes, this method does require a little more planning. However in terms of time, if trips to the market are worked into one's evening commute, and since you will be purchasing very little per visit you may actually end up spending less time(and money) at the shops than you did before. Three cheers for freshness!
Next Week: Thoughts on learning about food and nutrition.
Published 08-29-2011
Hydration for Health
Water is one of the simpler molecules on Earth, one of the most abundant, and one of the most precious. As every child is taught in elementary school, without water there is no life.
With this simple idea in place, it always amazes us that people do not seek water first as their preferred beverage. In the United States where we have the luxury of clean, safe, drinking water on a incredibly consistent basis unlike a great many countries of the world where many thousands of deaths occur every year due to the consumption of tainted drinking water, it seems foolish to not take advantage of that luxury.
The human body contains approximately 60 percent water, on average about 37 liters per adult human. This water performs the vital functions of hydrating tissues to allow for efficient conduction of nerve impulses and cellular compound transfers, it provides lubrication for joint padding tissues in the form of synovial and cerebrospinal fluid, it also provides digestive, transport, and excretory mediums in the forms of gastric juices, mucus, bile, blood, and assorted bodily fluids.
Obviously all of these fluids are vital to the continued existence of the organism in this case, a human body. Through our breath, sweat, and excretory systems we can lose anywhere from 2 to 6 liters of water per day it is essential that we consume enough water to replace what is lost.
We believe, and there is some medical evidence to support this, that dehydration is a big factor in a lot of the annoying little health problems people experience every day in this country. Problems like, headaches, joint pain, gout, constipation, fluid retention, urinary tract and bladder infections, poor kidney and liver function, and difficulty experiencing/maintaining weight-loss. You wouldn't let your car get down a couple quarts on oil, why would you do that to your body?
A lot of people say that they do consume more than 2 liters of fluid per day, but drink very little actual water. Soda(all carbonated beverages with or without sugar), coffee, milk, fruit juices, and black teas do not provide the same level of hydration as water, they are better than nothing of course, but do not think that you are well hydrated because you are drinking a 2 liter of Pepsi every day.
There are quite a lot of substances that the average American consumes in rather large quantities that actually dehydrate a body as a result of their consumption.
- Caffeine
- Sugar
- Sodium
- Alcohol
We are not saying that you should never drink tea, or coffee, or have a beer with your friends. We are saying that not all fluids are created equal by any means. We are also saying that in order to get and retain well balanced blood chemistry and proper hydration levels within your body the bulk (over 70 percent) of the fluids you consume should be simple H2O, water if you will.
We would like to leave you with the words of one of the most famous divers and world explorers of our world in history.
“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” - Jacques Cousteau
Next Week: Thoughts on the importance of freshness of food.
Published 08-15-2011
Fibrous Thoughts
We have all heard through the media and various health care providers that fiber is an important part of the diet of the human animal, however rarely does anyone explain what fiber actually is or the role it plays upon its ingestion.
In some ways it is fairly obvious what the role of fiber is, it provides a medium for the body to deposit and excrete by-products of the digestive process. However, there are other reasons for consuming a high-fiber diet other than the evasion of constipation.
Firstly, we would like to define what “dietary fiber” actually is. Dietary fiber is made up of two types of plant material, Soluble Fiber and Insoluble Fiber, both types of fiber are made up of various structural compounds of the plant, and a lot of which are not actually “fibers”.
Soluble Fiber is plant material that will absorb and break down in water(think lettuce leaves). As it absorbs that water it turns into a somewhat gelatinous substance that ferments, breaks down and dissolves its structure. In the process of fermenting and breaking down it releases some nutrients that the body would not otherwise be exposed to, and provides a favorable environment for for helpful bacteria to grow and live.
Insoluble Fiber is plant material that will not ferment and dissolve upon prolonged contact with water(wood pulp for example). It maintains its structure throughout the ingestion/digestion process and is passed through the digestive system collecting other particulates along the way, and assisting in the excretion of those particulates. This type of fiber is an excellent thing to ingest if one is attempting to control one's weight. While it does not ferment and dissolve after prolonged contact with water, it does swell and bulk out. This bulk contains little to no calories, but it does take up room in your stomach and small intestines. You body registers this bulk, believes itself to be “full” and refrains from sending out “hunger” impulses for a longer period of time.
The generally accepted medical guideline for daily fiber intake is considered to be approximately 15 to 18 grams. (The typical American consumes less than half of that per day.) It is our belief that while 18 grams is good, 25 to 30 is better. Obviously, in order to consume that much fiber you have to eat quite large amounts of plant material. However the good thing about doing that is, most high-fiber plants are low in calories and high in volume. The point being, if you're consuming enough plants to put that much fiber in your system you will physically not have room for the consumption of any other less healthful food sources, even though you will be eating quite a lot in terms of volume, calorically you are almost certainly eating (considerably) less than you would a conventional eating plan.
In our experience consuming that much fiber has a couple fairly immediate benefits(within 2 weeks).
- Your blood pressure and cholesterol will go down. This is owed to both the scouring effect of the fiber aiding in cleaning your system of excess lipid molecules, and also that you are not consuming nearly as much fat as you were before.
- Your digestion will improve. When the large amounts of soluble fiber you consume ferment and break down in your intestines they help to produce and foster a sympathetic environment for certain benevolent bacterium that assist in a efficient and thorough digestion process. The fermentation process of the soluble fiber and the rapid clearing of your intestines from the insoluble fiber will also build an environment that is inhospitable for unhealthful bacterium and/or parasites attributed to the lowering of mucous pH.
- Your blood sugar will stabalize. Fiber-rich plants typically have a very low glycemic index and the bulk of fiber in your intestines makes the absorbtion rates of the calories you do consume considerably slower which means that your blood sugar will not spike and dip.
Obviously, this is very short article when it comes to the enormous topic of digestion, digestive health and processes, but we hope that if you didn't before, that you now realize the vital role that fiber performs. We also hope that you are encouraged to add more fresh fibrous plants to your diet and cut out some of the less fibrous items you may be consuming for the sake of your digestive health and blood chemistry. Bring on the Fiber!
[Note: When consuming large amounts of dietary fiber it is very important to hydrate properly. We recommend consuming an extra 6 ounce of water for every extra gram of fiber over what you normally consume to avoid any undesirable side-effects.]
Next Week: Thoughts on hydration and its effect on health.
Published 08-08-2011
Nutrition and Calories: Striking a Balance
There is a big difference between an eating plan based around the idea of counting calories, and one based around consuming nutrition. We view restricted-calorie eating plans as possibly effective weight loss solutions for the short term, however they rely more on strength of will, iron self-discipline, and/or fear of severe debilitating/deadly consequences to keep their results. Eventually however, the person's resolve will fade and waver, or circumstances will prevent them from continuing their eating plan, their caloric consumption will increase and they will end up right back where they were, possibly worse than before.
The reason that standard weight loss eating plans end up having this effect on a person's physiology/psychology is they are only concerned with caloric flow. i.e. Calories Consumed verses Calories Burned. In theory this seems like a sensible way to combat a problem of burning up excess fat a body has stored, however it does not take into account the variables of nutrition required by the body of the individual or address the problem of how to heal the body of any of the strains or abuse it make have sustained during its period of less than optimum health.
Our own method of eating does not focus on the idea of caloric limitation through portion control. We control our caloric intake through the food sources themselves.
An example of what we mean by this is, a simple slice of White Bread weighs just under 1 ounce and contains about 75 calories on its own. It has basically zero grams of fiber, and all of its calories break down into pure glucose very quickly based on its highly refined ingredients. Any vitamins or minerals it contains have been added back into the bread dough and would not exist in the product if it hadn't been fortified with them. All in all you would have to say that the slice of white bread is definitely in the calorically dense/ nutritionally deficient column.
Now we will take a look at the same weight of Spinach. 1 ounce of Spinach volume- wise contains about 7 calories, it contains almost a gram of fiber, almost a full gram of iron, about three times the B vitamins, almost 6 times the A vitamins, double the vitamin C and about 125 micrograms of Vitamin K. Also, since spinach is mostly water and cellulose it will release its nutrients easily into your bloodstream without spiking your blood sugar. You will have given your body the nutrients it needs to burn up some of your fat reserves without giving it any more calories. This means you will feel full without actually eating much of anything, which is precisely the effect you want when you're trying to manage your caloric intake.
When you remove the food sources that are contributing to your consumption of excess calories, you will find that the idea of portion control very much takes a backseat in your culinary existence. You can consume pretty much as much as you'd like of the high nutrition/low calorie items which means you can help your body to feel physically full without actually consuming many calories, the processes of your liver releasing stored fat calories into your bloodstream will keep you from feeling real or false hunger, particularly if you can maintain a high level of body hydration.
We would hope that you would contemplate this idea and give it a shot. Even after just 10 days you should feel some changes and if you can do it for 30 days we doubt you will want to go back to the way you used to eat. Go through your food sources, identify the problem items, remove the culprits and replace them with high nutrient/low calorie alternatives. Good luck and please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.
Next Week: Fiber:What it really is and why it is important.
Published 08-01-2011
How Much is Enough?: Thoughts on Protein Consumption
The question and debate of the topic of protein has raged on for a very long time. How much is enough? Is there such a thing as too much? What kind is the best to consume? We are not scientists, however we have done some research on the topic and would like to share what we know about the topic.
First, we would like to talk a little bit about the nature of the substance that is commonly called “protein”. Protein is not a simple, single entity like carbon, or gold. Both of those things are only carbon, and only gold respectively, no matter how hot or cold they get, or how small of pieces they are broken into down to the atomic level, their nature remains the same.
Proteins are not like that. Proteins are huge molecular strands or globules, formed from a variety of 21 much smaller molecules known as “amino acids.”. All animal-based proteins contain all 21 amino acids and are labeled as “complete” proteins. The majority of plant derived proteins do not contain all 21 and are labeled as "incomplete", though there are some exceptions such as soy and quinoa for example.
Proteins are essential to living organisms and are present in some form in all life forms, whether they be plant or animal. Protein molecules in all their various forms hold two main roles in those organisms, Structural (muscle and connective tissue, nerve tissue, hair, skin, nails, fur, etc,) and Enzymatic. Many proteins are also enzymes that serve to assist, catalyze, and initiate necessary chemical reactions throughout the body.
Fortunately, it is extremely difficult give yourself an amino acid deficiency on the vast majority of diet plans, whether they are plant-based or not. However, not having a deficiency does not necessarily mean that you are getting the optimum amount either.
Unfortunately, we cannot tell you exactly how much protein you need to consume per day to meet the dietary needs you have, however neither can your doctor, nutritionist, or dietitian. In according to the research we have done there is insufficient scientific understanding of the mechanism that is the human metabolism to calculate optimum amounts of macro or micro nutrients required by the individual. There are charts that can tell you the averages recommended by the medical profession,(if you get less than this you could have problems, sort of thing), however we feel that those are a trifle vague and the statistical curves do not take into account an individual's fitness level, existing muscle mass or lack of muscle mass, their age, existing metabolic rate, their caloric requirements, etc. Our general rule is approximately 30% to 40% of your daily calories should come from protein, with 5% to 10% coming from fat, and the remaining 40% to 60% coming from complex carbohydrates.
If you choose to consume a plant-based diet the most important rule to adhere to is: VARIETY! If you only eat two or three types of plants and those plants do not contain everything that is required by your body at some point you will end up having a problem of some kind. We consume 20 to 50 different types of plants and plant-derived items in our diet on a regular basis. With the way that the American food supply is set up you should have no problem securing sufficient variety to avoid any type of problems that occur from insufficient consumption of different biological structures.
We hope you find our short treatise on an immensely complex subject helpful in clarifying any questions you may have had on the subject.
Next Week: Thoughts on Nutritional Values and Caloric Density
Published 07-25-2011
Facts and Fiction: Nutrition Myths
There is a lot of fact, fiction, and general information floating around the internet, libraries, schools, etc regarding plant-based diets, their health benefits and “risks”; along with a lot of other information about other diets, general nutrition, and optimum exercise habits of the human animal.
Sadly, we have found that for most people this glut of information, far from being useful, has served more to muddy the waters; and make them more confused about what sort of action they should actually pursue.
Of course, the worst part about sifting through any type of theoretical or study-based information/facts is that at lot of them tout their opinion as “right”, or worse as “fact” without representing sufficient detail on the subject to actually answer the question properly. The other bad thing is everyone who writes one of those type of things, (or one of these type of things) is absolutely convinced they are the leading authority on the subject and that everyone else is an idiot.
We have endeavored to avoid that sort of petty-minded frippery as much as we possibly can and represent only the facts to the most practical and informative degree that we can. Please feel free to not take our word for it and do your own research. Please let us know what you find out, we'd be glad to hear from you.
We would like to answer the 3 most common questions we get asked by people concerning the way we eat.
- Q: How do you get enough protein?
A: The simple answer to that question is, “By eating fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains, etc.”, an admittedly unhelpful reply. The long answer is, every living organism is made up of amino acids A.K.A. Proteins. As we're sure you learned in high school chemistry class there are 21 separate amino acids. Protein molecules in the body are made of up of various combinations of any or all of those 21 amino acids strung together and folded in various ways through chemical reactions precipitated by catalysts of enzymes and acids.
The only difference between how vegan/vegetarians get their amino acids and how carnivores get theirs is, plants do not generally contain all 21 amino acids so fairly wide variety of different plants must be consumed to get all the different amino acids required. Consume the muscle tissue of another creature shortens the precess, all the amino acids were already formed into proteins through that creature's own digestive/conversion system so when you eat that tissue you get complete (21 amino acid) proteins, sort of an evolutionary time-saver, if you will.
However, by eating the large amounts of plant items required to produce sufficient amounts of all 21 amino acids you also pick up a lot of other nutrients vitamins, minerals, fiber that meat is lacking. With the other benefit of all that nutrition is packaged up with much less fat, calories, and other by-products that your body has to wade through, sort, and dispose of during the digestion process so it's a lot easier on your liver, kidneys, stomach, pancreas, and small intestine.
Q:How do you cook/bake without dairy products(butter, sour cream, milk, etc)?
A: The question of cooking/baking without dairy is simple enough. Dairy products provide two things in baked goods, Fat and Water. Fat effects texture in the way of crumb, tenderness, and “moisture”. Water provides binding and also effects texture mainly in the form of varying crispness. If you choose to bake without dairy products all you have to do is calculate approximately how much fat and water those products are adding to your recipe and replace them with other sources of fat and water.
Q:Why do you choose to eat like this?
A: We choose to eat like this because it makes us feel the best out of all the eating plans we've ever tried. It also is one of the cheapest, most practical, healthful, simplest, and most flavorful ways to eat in existence.
Next week: Protein and You: Thoughts on this important Macro-Nutrient
Published 07-11-2011
Thoughts on America's Recent Food History
Until the mid-to-late 1960's the United States did not have a food culture in the way that we think of now. Food was more business than pleasure, a way of keeping body and soul together. Cities with high concentration of Western European or Asian immigrants such as San Francisco and New York City, had their ethnic eateries in various neighborhoods, and the richer areas sported a few restaurants of the classic French variety or even a few swanky Italian spots.
The vast majority of Americans were unsophisticated and uneducated about food. Housewives cooked the way their mothers and grandmothers had cooked, with ingredients they were familiar with. This is not to say that their food wasn't good, it was just very simple and somewhat limited by lack of training and imagination.
From a historical sense, the level of refinement(as a country) our interest and skill with our foodstuffs was similar to Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries. However an exception must be made for of some of the industrial processing that was just starting to be implemented and incorporated into the general food supply(flash freezing, pre-packaged meals, food chemistry advances,etc.)
Gradually the way we look at our food, handle, cook, and eat it in this country started change, in part from the efforts of people like Paul Bocuse and Julia Child. Chefs like Andre Soltner, Jacques Pepin, Graham Kerr and many others started to expose the population to the more regimented classical cuisines from various regions of France. While global transportation improved and the immigrant populations began to bring in more of their own ingredients, fruits, vegetables, spices, and other comestibles. Interest in wine began to spread and so the wave of the food-obsessed culture began.
By the time the mid-70's arrived, France had rejected the idea that most of their classic dishes should be served routinely, shelved their copies of Escoffier, except for once or twice a year when it was pulled out for old times sake. They turned their attention to producing a lighter, more healthful, fare redolent with fresh fruits and vegetables, herbs and light reduction sauces and Cuisine Nouveaux was born.
The wave of Cuisine Nouveaux arrived on American shores in the late 1980's. It made something of a splash in top restaurants through the early 90's and then as the slow food, local, and organic food movements began to gather some speed was pushed from the spotlight in their favor.
We think that the slow food, organic, and local food movements we are currently experiencing are very good thing as they are drawing people's attention to where their food really comes from. How the act of raising sustenance from the land has been corrupted by “agri-business” into processes that are neither healthful, sustainable in the long run, or remotely humane in a lot of cases.
It is our profound hope that organic, sustainable, and healthful foods be made available to the entire populace not just the well-heeled, or those willing to make semi-extreme alterations in their life-style to raise their own. We are attempting to do our part by spreading the knowledge we have attained on how to prepare the most delicious, healthful, nutritiously dense foods possible.
Next Week: Nutritional Myth-Busters!
Published 07-04-2011
Until the mid-to-late 1960's the United States did not have a food culture in the way that we think of now. Food was more business than pleasure, a way of keeping body and soul together. Cities with high concentration of Western European or Asian immigrants such as San Francisco and New York City, had their ethnic eateries in various neighborhoods, and the richer areas sported a few restaurants of the classic French variety or even a few swanky Italian spots.
The vast majority of Americans were unsophisticated and uneducated about food. Housewives cooked the way their mothers and grandmothers had cooked, with ingredients they were familiar with. This is not to say that their food wasn't good, it was just very simple and somewhat limited by lack of training and imagination.
From a historical sense, the level of refinement(as a country) our interest and skill with our foodstuffs was similar to Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries. However an exception must be made for of some of the industrial processing that was just starting to be implemented and incorporated into the general food supply(flash freezing, pre-packaged meals, food chemistry advances,etc.)
Gradually the way we look at our food, handle, cook, and eat it in this country started change, in part from the efforts of people like Paul Bocuse and Julia Child. Chefs like Andre Soltner, Jacques Pepin, Graham Kerr and many others started to expose the population to the more regimented classical cuisines from various regions of France. While global transportation improved and the immigrant populations began to bring in more of their own ingredients, fruits, vegetables, spices, and other comestibles. Interest in wine began to spread and so the wave of the food-obsessed culture began.
By the time the mid-70's arrived, France had rejected the idea that most of their classic dishes should be served routinely, shelved their copies of Escoffier, except for once or twice a year when it was pulled out for old times sake. They turned their attention to producing a lighter, more healthful, fare redolent with fresh fruits and vegetables, herbs and light reduction sauces and Cuisine Nouveaux was born.
The wave of Cuisine Nouveaux arrived on American shores in the late 1980's. It made something of a splash in top restaurants through the early 90's and then as the slow food, local, and organic food movements began to gather some speed was pushed from the spotlight in their favor.
We think that the slow food, organic, and local food movements we are currently experiencing are very good thing as they are drawing people's attention to where their food really comes from. How the act of raising sustenance from the land has been corrupted by “agri-business” into processes that are neither healthful, sustainable in the long run, or remotely humane in a lot of cases.
It is our profound hope that organic, sustainable, and healthful foods be made available to the entire populace not just the well-heeled, or those willing to make semi-extreme alterations in their life-style to raise their own. We are attempting to do our part by spreading the knowledge we have attained on how to prepare the most delicious, healthful, nutritiously dense foods possible.
Next Week: Nutritional Myth-Busters!
Published 07-04-2011
Healthful Eating Habits and Children
It is a horrifying prospect in this so-called "enlightened" age that many children will suffer complications of disease and premature mortality owing to many conditions that modern medicine knows to be entirely preventable through proper diet and exercise.
We at Green Bowl, are greatly saddened by the sight of the way-more-than-puppy-fat we see on very young children, teenagers, and young adults. We cast no blame at the doorsteps of anyone, we just want to be a part of the remedy to the best of our ability. We have spoken to some parents that said they had tried their best to encourage their children into healthier habits, to lead by their own example, and various other tacks with little to no avail.
We faced some similar problems ourselves before we started Green Bowl and we feel sympathy for the predicament that many parents find themselves in with their young children refusing foods that are good for them and reaching instead for fattening, sugary, processed foods that in actuality are killing them. However, we believe the answer lies not in recriminations, guilt, or giving up, those are merely time-wasters or pity-parties.
As the leaders of the familial pack as it were, parents are the ones who are ultimately responsible for what their children consume. If you feel that your children's school, day-care provider, etc knows better than you do about the types of foods your children should be consuming, by all means leave things as they are.
However, if you feel that you should take a more active role in your children's health and nutrition, and ultimately your own, then we would encourage you to:
We have some thoughts on the reasons that older(over the age of 5) children often refuse healthier foods, salad, vegetables, fruits, etc. They, like their adult counter-parts, are not in the habit of consuming them and were never encouraged by familial habits or societal factors to seek out the unprocessed, nutrient-rich foods they really need. Younger children tend more to refuse the unfamiliar, or attempt to copy their older siblings in effort to be like the "big kids".
We have found that younger children(under the age of 5) need only to be introduced to the types of foods that are the most nutrient-dense in ways that taste good with regularity to develop the sensory memories necessary to have “a taste” for those items throughout their lives. If you consistently place high quality foods on the table and leave no other options available, your children will adapt quite readily to what you provide.
Teenager's nutritional habits are already quite ingrained and therefore rather difficult to change through parental force or bans. We do not believe force, or coercion, should even be attempted as they will tend to exacerbate any rational/irrational obstinacy already present in the teenager or child. As always when dealing with people of any age, a new idea works better when the person adapting/changing thinks it's their own idea; whether it was or not, is immaterial, they just have to think it is.
TO our minds; communication, knowledge, and rational conversation are the best tools to be utilized to solve any problems that have arisen from your family's current nutritional state. Older children and teenagers are generally amenable to changes, particularly if the need for those changes is outlined in a rational and sensible way.
If there are any questions or concerns you may have we would love for you to contact us, talk to your health-care provider, or other knowledgeable expert you feel comfortable with.
Best of Luck!
Next Week: Thoughts on America's Culinary History
Published 06-27-2011
It is a horrifying prospect in this so-called "enlightened" age that many children will suffer complications of disease and premature mortality owing to many conditions that modern medicine knows to be entirely preventable through proper diet and exercise.
We at Green Bowl, are greatly saddened by the sight of the way-more-than-puppy-fat we see on very young children, teenagers, and young adults. We cast no blame at the doorsteps of anyone, we just want to be a part of the remedy to the best of our ability. We have spoken to some parents that said they had tried their best to encourage their children into healthier habits, to lead by their own example, and various other tacks with little to no avail.
We faced some similar problems ourselves before we started Green Bowl and we feel sympathy for the predicament that many parents find themselves in with their young children refusing foods that are good for them and reaching instead for fattening, sugary, processed foods that in actuality are killing them. However, we believe the answer lies not in recriminations, guilt, or giving up, those are merely time-wasters or pity-parties.
As the leaders of the familial pack as it were, parents are the ones who are ultimately responsible for what their children consume. If you feel that your children's school, day-care provider, etc knows better than you do about the types of foods your children should be consuming, by all means leave things as they are.
However, if you feel that you should take a more active role in your children's health and nutrition, and ultimately your own, then we would encourage you to:
- Find out exactly what you and your children are consuming
- Exactly what effect those items will have on your/their health.
We have some thoughts on the reasons that older(over the age of 5) children often refuse healthier foods, salad, vegetables, fruits, etc. They, like their adult counter-parts, are not in the habit of consuming them and were never encouraged by familial habits or societal factors to seek out the unprocessed, nutrient-rich foods they really need. Younger children tend more to refuse the unfamiliar, or attempt to copy their older siblings in effort to be like the "big kids".
We have found that younger children(under the age of 5) need only to be introduced to the types of foods that are the most nutrient-dense in ways that taste good with regularity to develop the sensory memories necessary to have “a taste” for those items throughout their lives. If you consistently place high quality foods on the table and leave no other options available, your children will adapt quite readily to what you provide.
Teenager's nutritional habits are already quite ingrained and therefore rather difficult to change through parental force or bans. We do not believe force, or coercion, should even be attempted as they will tend to exacerbate any rational/irrational obstinacy already present in the teenager or child. As always when dealing with people of any age, a new idea works better when the person adapting/changing thinks it's their own idea; whether it was or not, is immaterial, they just have to think it is.
TO our minds; communication, knowledge, and rational conversation are the best tools to be utilized to solve any problems that have arisen from your family's current nutritional state. Older children and teenagers are generally amenable to changes, particularly if the need for those changes is outlined in a rational and sensible way.
If there are any questions or concerns you may have we would love for you to contact us, talk to your health-care provider, or other knowledgeable expert you feel comfortable with.
Best of Luck!
Next Week: Thoughts on America's Culinary History
Published 06-27-2011
Vitamins and Supplements for a Plant-based Diet
The topic we would like to discuss today is the importance of vitamins and minerals in the quest for whole-body health and wellness. Since the isolation of vitamins by chemists in the 1930's, and the discovery of their synthetic production in the 1950's, vitamins have been considered by some as a sort of fountain of youth, or general cure-all, and by others as merely a trace substance that we ingest through our food supply.
We believe that vitamins and minerals are more than a trace substance, with the proof that deficiency diseases such as scurvy and pellagra provide. However the topic of optimum dosage/intake/combination is something of a controversy among chemists, nutritionists, physicians, and scientists.
There are two types of vitamins chemically, vitamins that dissolve in fat, (A, D,E, and K,) and vitamins that dissolve in water, (C and most of the B vitamins.)
Certain vitamins can be consumed in very large amounts with little to no disagreeable side-effects, such as vitamin C. While others can cause severe and even life-threatening side-effects if consumed in excess.(vitamin A.)
It is very difficult to consume sufficient vitamins of any kind to cause any type of physical problem when you consume your vitamins only though food. However, if you consume supplements that is another matter. We recommend reading all the labels of any supplements you may be taking, particularly if you take multiple multi-vitamins, you may be ingesting more than you need of various compounds which is expensive, and could be dangerous to your health.
Minerals are not vitamins. Minerals are basically dirt, trace elements of the atoms that form the rocks, metals, and land that makes up the Earth. The human body requires minuscule amounts of copper, magnesium, manganese, etc to perform different tasks throughout the body. We do not necessarily recommend taking mineral supplements since such small amounts are required. If you consume little to no processed foods, and eat large amounts of fresh and raw produce/plant matter than there is no need for mineral supplements, barring some type of medical condition anemia for example.
The only vitamins we do recommend taking, and what we take ourselves; are vitamin C and vitamin B complex, particularly during the winter months when fruits and vegetables are not as nutrient rich.
A particularly controversial topic concerning vitamins in the medical community is the idea of mega-dosing vitamins(mainly vitamin C) to cure various conditions. A noted proponent of this type of treatment was Dr. Linus Pauling, chemist, scientist, and dual Nobel Prize winner.
During the 1970's Dr. Pauling performed a study on the effects of high-dosage vitamin C as treatment for cancer patients. He wrote a book about the findings of his study called Cancer and Vitamin C [by Linus Pauling, Grand Central Publishing, 1981]. If you are interested in knowing the in's and out's of mega-dosing, this is an excellent book to read.
In our personal experience we have used large amounts of vitamin C to boost our immune systems during periods of illness, with absolutely no ill effects. However we would certainly recommend that anyone speak with their health care provider before embarking on a vitamin therapy program of their own, particularly if you take a medication that effects clotting factors of your blood(blood thinners), liver and kidney function, or have any type of ulcerative conditions of the gastric or bowel system.
As a good over-all vitamin book we would recommend for those who are interested in learning more is Earl Mindell's The New Vitamin Bible (by Dr. Earl Mindell, Grand Central Publishing, 2011). Check it out from your local library and get a proper look at the properties, pit-falls, and benefits of vitamin use.
Happy Reading!
Next Week: Thoughts on Developing Healthful Eating Habits in Children
Published 06-20-2011
What to Eat When There's Nothing to Eat:
Food Allergies and a Plant-based Diet
First of all we would like to state that we are not doctors, we are not allergists, immunologists, or anything of the sort. We are people who are interested in food, have a small background in chemistry, and understand a little bit about human anatomy and physiology.
We also have many in our acquaintance, and that we count among our friends, that suffer from some form of food sensitivity. We have noticed a growing trend towards allergic reactions to all sorts of food items and we would like to address the topic that food allergies are a barrier to switching over to plant-based diet.
Obviously, if one is deathly allergic to something, peanuts for example, it would be rather foolish to ingest peanuts. However, some research has shown that plant-based diets can desensitize some people to things that they had reactions to in the past if the diet is fairly strictly adhered to for a period of time(3 months to 1 year). This may not work for everyone and we would certainly recommend consulting with an allergist and/or nutritionist for advice on your specific case before attempting such a plan.
Other courses of treatment, apart from pharmaceutical treatments and immuno-therapies, include outright avoidance of the irritant which is what many people practice. However, if you attempt to adopt a plant-based diet and then have to avoid something like very common like wheat or soy, that brings on its own set of problems. If you've already limited yourself to no meat, no dairy, no processed or refined anything, and then you cut out one or more of the items listed above you're left to wander your local market thinking what in the world CAN you eat?
We would like to offer a list of the most hypo-allergenic foods that we know of. Someone, somewhere, is probably allergic to one or more of them, but such reactions are extremely rare to the best of our knowledge.
- Dark Leafy Greens (Kale, Collards, Lettuce, and Swiss chard.)
- Quinoa
- Brown Rice (Rice allergies are very rare in Western cultures, and more common among Eastern cultures where rice is their version of wheat.)
- Apples
- Pears
- Cauliflower
- Brussels Sprouts
- Celery
- Cucumbers
We hope that you are able to find ways to deal with any food sensitivities you may have, but that you don't allow that to influence you into poor nutritional choices. There are things out there you can eat, things that taste great, won't make you ill, and will allow you to be in the best shape you can be in.
Good Luck!
Next week: Ideas on plant-based diets for children.
Published 06-13-2011
Accept No Substitutes!
Vegan Baking 101
We don't really like vegan cookbooks, particularly baking books, at Green Bowl. They tend to be filled with refined sugar, refined flour, and “non-hydrogenated” margarine. We say don't be fooled, the book might say “vegan” on the cover, but that does not mean the recipes are in any way healthful.
The best plant-based diet friendly baking books we've found, oddly enough are Raw baking books. However that's a somewhat different topic. For us, even though we've dropped eggs, butter, sour cream, and all other assorted dairy products like a hot potato, we have discovered some delicious ways to bake while still maintaining a high standard of nutrition.
Obviously, even though these items are considerably more nutrient dense than their conventional counterparts they are not meant to be consumed every day. If you have reached your ideal weight and fitness level you could probably consume them once or twice a week without any ill effects, but if you're still in your weight loss, or conditioning phase, we would recommend consuming them not more than once a month.
On to the good stuff. There are a few naturally occurring items in the edible plant kingdom that to some extent behave like edible animal products, even though the taste is somewhat different. For example, coconut oil behaves similarly to butter, it remains solid at room temperature, and if chilled will cream like butter and can be used in a similar manner. However, since this oil is solid at room temperature that tells us something about the molecular nature of the fat. It tells us that it is made up of mostly saturated fat which isn't the best kind of fat in the world to consume. Which brings up the point of why you gave up eating butter in the first place. You can see the issue.
To that end, you must change your ideas about what “baking” means and what "dessert" consists of. You cannot make conventional dishes with unconventional ingredients. A lot of people say that you can, but if you truly believe that you are fooling yourself. There is no way to make a cream puff without eggs, butter, cream, sugar, and white flour, and if you by some miracle of chemistry did manage to turn out something that approximated it in looks you would still be disappointed because it would not taste remotely the same.
So scrap your ideas of making all the desserts you used to eat with “healthy” ingredients because you can't. However what you can do is work with the most desirable characteristics you can coax out of the ingredients you choose to work with.
Before you become despondent that it is an impossible task to bake without dairy, eggs, and refined flour and sugar, we are happy to say that you could not be more mistaken.
As vegan bakers we have tons of options for egg and dairy replacers, and we don't mean that tapioca-flour-potato-starch nonsense that gets sold at health food shops.
Examples of egg and dairy replacers
- Bananas
- Soy and Nut Milks
- Silken Tofu
- Flax Seed Meal
- Nut Meals, Nut Butters, and Nut Oils
- Water
- Oat and Wheat Bran “slurry”
- Boiled or Baked Potatoes or Sweet Potatoes
- Cooked or Canned Pumpkin or Hard Squash Flesh
- Cooked Oatmeal
- Cooked Glutinous Rice
- Apple Sauce (no sugar added or homemade)
The other issue tends to be flour and sweeteners. All-Purpose flour produces a specific type of baked good, and whole wheat flour tends to produce a much heavier, coarser product and a lot of people do not find that to be very desirable. However, it's all in the milling. We have found that King Arthur brand Flour mills a very fine whole wheat flour that is not coarse, or overly bran-y, that produces great bread, very decent cookies, scones, quick-breads, and cakes. Anther option is to blend your own flours for different types of applications.
- Oat flour makes a very dense, moist product. Buckwheat flour will make very tender items owing to its very low gluten content, but it makes rotten bread unless blended 1:4 with wheat flour.
- Rye and Millet have very strong flavors and tend to not be very suitable for anything other than certain ethnic applications, such as Jewish Rye, Pumpernickel, or a type of flat bread from Africa made exclusively with millet flour.
- Barley flour is excellent in a variety of baked goods and will produce a pleasant nutty flavor and can be used in either crisp or dense applications.
- Quinoa flour is very expensive and is somewhat high in fat(for flour) and works well in applications where you need a little extra tenderness or richness.
- Nut and bean meals and flours can very useful for different types of flat breads, crackers, and some sweet items as well, such as fritters, or a tart dough.
Because we have decided that traditional fat sources are no longer acceptable which means we must find new ones. It is very difficult to bake completely fat-free.(though not impossible) It is also extremely limiting to attempt to bake “fat-free”, as we are not advocates of the whole “Fat is Evil” mentality we suggest turning your sights to the more healthful fats, such as avocados, nuts in all their various forms(meals, butters, oils), fresh coconut flesh, coconut milk/cream, and to some extent coconut oil, safflower, grapeseed, canola(rape seed), sesame, flax, olive, and peanut oils are all acceptable liquid fat sources and should be chosen for various applications on the basis of how their flavor will add or detract from the finished product, also price and availability.
Sugar has an immovable place in baking, however we feel that things like refined white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, regular corn syrup, and other refined or chemical sweeteners have no place in our personal food chains.
However, when you want to bake you need to have something to perk up your products a little bit. Our favorites are,
- Honey
- Molasses
- Dried fruits such as dates and pineapple for mild neutral sweetening.
- Fresh fruits. either in pieces or pureed.
- Brown Rice Syrup
All that remains to be discussed when it comes to vegan baking ingredients is, leavening. Obviously, yeast is quite acceptable, both commercial dry and wet cake yeast. Also, if you have a little time and want to experiment with the old time method of culturing your own starters there are many books on the subject that can guide you through the fairly simple process.
However, outside of traditional yeasted breads, there aren't very many baked goods that are leavened with yeast, a few types of eastern European pancakes and that's about it. Which leaves us with Baking Powder and Baking Soda. We have found that in cakes, quick-breads, and most cookies, a combination of the two leavenings are required to achieve the best results.
Items made whole grain flours also tend to require a tad more leavening than items made with All-Purpose flour. We can't tell you exactly how much of each leavening you will require for any give recipe particularly if you're using a whole grain flour blend, also humidity, fat type and content, binder type and content, etc, produces tons of variables in the equation. However, what we can tell you is typically a 3:1 ratio of baking powder to baking soda in most types of baked goods will produce satisfactory results, and will give you a place to start with whatever tweaking may be required.
The information contained in this article series is not meant to a collection of recipes, it is meant more as a jumping off point for the more experienced baker to start experimenting. Remember when you're working with Non-Traditional ingredients don't expect Traditional results. That does not mean that your results will be “bad” or that you should be afraid to try things. Experiment! Get messy! Play around with things! The very worst we've ever had is an unexpected result, but never an in-edible one. We hope you have as much fun and flavor as we do finding out all the wonderful textures, flavors, and combinations that Vegan Baking has to offer.
Happy Baking!
Next week: Thoughts on Food Allergies and a Plant Based Diet.
Published 06-06-2011
Beverage Pairings for the Health Conscious
Over the last 15 years or so in the United States, food and beverage pairings have become less the trademark of four star haute cuisine restaurants, and more widely accepted by the general public as the way things should be. Food and drink are meant to go together, can (and should) be used to compliment and flatter each other as much as possible.
At Green Bowl we feel that this aspect of dining should not be over-looked simply because we have structured our eating habits in a specific, and perhaps somewhat unorthodox, way.
Obviously, our avoidance of refined sugars, artificial flavorings, and food adulterants does cut out some of our pairing choices, particularly on the non-alcoholic front, but that does not mean that we are relegating ourselves strictly to still mineral water or chamomile tea when we sit down to enjoy our victuals.
Today, we would attempt to inspire you and perhaps bring to mind a few things you hadn't though of before in terms of beverages and what you might drink with various types of dishes. We will be confining ourselves to non-alcoholic beverages because wine and beer are far too vast a subject to be thoroughly explained in a format such as this. Also, we are not sommeliers and have no desire to represent ourselves as such.
Before we can begin to mix, match, and pair, we must know what our choices are. Since we are confining ourselves to non-alcoholic beverages only that leaves us with the following selections.
Once you have decided on your dish, in your mind recall how that dish tastes and ask yourself the following questions
When making your selections, you will want to balance the flavors of the food with the flavors of the beverage. For example, if your meal is going to have radishes and bitter greens you are going to want either a sweeter tasting fruit tisane or infusion, or an acidic fruit-ade or squash to balance the bitterness. Or if your meal is very spicy, such as an Indian curry, you will want something that you can drink a fairly large amount of with impunity and also something that is slightly bitter/sweet to combat the heat of the spices, such as Darjeeling, Green, or Mint tea.
Fortunately, there is very little in the way of “wrong” when it comes to food and beverage pairing, just degrees of “right”. Plant-based diets are very forgiving when it comes to pairing, the only place where you can get into trouble is choosing something that will over-power the flavors of your food. When in doubt, go lighter and crisper. You can never go wrong with light and crisp.
Have fun with the idea of pairings. The idea isn't something to get stressed over, and it certainly isn't a requirement. Pairing food and beverages is something that should be fun, and should be used to make a semi-interesting meal into a really interesting meal.
Happy Pairing!
Next week: Baking Vegan without Substitutions
Published 05-30-2011
Over the last 15 years or so in the United States, food and beverage pairings have become less the trademark of four star haute cuisine restaurants, and more widely accepted by the general public as the way things should be. Food and drink are meant to go together, can (and should) be used to compliment and flatter each other as much as possible.
At Green Bowl we feel that this aspect of dining should not be over-looked simply because we have structured our eating habits in a specific, and perhaps somewhat unorthodox, way.
Obviously, our avoidance of refined sugars, artificial flavorings, and food adulterants does cut out some of our pairing choices, particularly on the non-alcoholic front, but that does not mean that we are relegating ourselves strictly to still mineral water or chamomile tea when we sit down to enjoy our victuals.
Today, we would attempt to inspire you and perhaps bring to mind a few things you hadn't though of before in terms of beverages and what you might drink with various types of dishes. We will be confining ourselves to non-alcoholic beverages because wine and beer are far too vast a subject to be thoroughly explained in a format such as this. Also, we are not sommeliers and have no desire to represent ourselves as such.
Before we can begin to mix, match, and pair, we must know what our choices are. Since we are confining ourselves to non-alcoholic beverages only that leaves us with the following selections.
- Tea
- Coffee
- Tisanes or Infusions
- Juices
- Squashes, -ades, and blended beverages
Once you have decided on your dish, in your mind recall how that dish tastes and ask yourself the following questions
- Is it served hot or cold?
- What is the dominant flavor? (i.e. Is it salty, sweet, sour, or bitter?)
- Is it spicy?
When making your selections, you will want to balance the flavors of the food with the flavors of the beverage. For example, if your meal is going to have radishes and bitter greens you are going to want either a sweeter tasting fruit tisane or infusion, or an acidic fruit-ade or squash to balance the bitterness. Or if your meal is very spicy, such as an Indian curry, you will want something that you can drink a fairly large amount of with impunity and also something that is slightly bitter/sweet to combat the heat of the spices, such as Darjeeling, Green, or Mint tea.
Fortunately, there is very little in the way of “wrong” when it comes to food and beverage pairing, just degrees of “right”. Plant-based diets are very forgiving when it comes to pairing, the only place where you can get into trouble is choosing something that will over-power the flavors of your food. When in doubt, go lighter and crisper. You can never go wrong with light and crisp.
Have fun with the idea of pairings. The idea isn't something to get stressed over, and it certainly isn't a requirement. Pairing food and beverages is something that should be fun, and should be used to make a semi-interesting meal into a really interesting meal.
Happy Pairing!
Next week: Baking Vegan without Substitutions
Published 05-30-2011
Conditioning Your Mind
In today's article we would like to pose an idea that may seem a trifle absurd to a lot of people, but we think it makes a lot of sense.
The idea is: A person's physical well-being, their physical strength, endurance, flexibility, etc, are largely governed by their mental attitude. Meaning that 90 percent of whether or not a person is in good shape is mental, and only 10 percent of it is the actual work they engage in to get in good shape.
Perhaps the simplest way to put it is, if you will take the trouble to discipline yourself mentally in your eating and activity habits you will find yourself in a different frame of mind than you were in.
The hardest part to implement of that entire explanation is the “disciplining yourself” part. Using this idea as a guide, then a man is only as strong as his mind, and if your mind is weak than it will be very difficult for you to maintain the amount of discipline that is required. Unfortunately, there is really no short-cut, or easy way to do this. You just have to go out and do it. It is going to be hard, it is going to be unpleasant some of the time, but we think the positive results to one's health and well-being are worth the sweat and the unpleasantness required.
The first step to this approach is, to decide that you're going to do it. Seems obvious, but you must decide to take a course of action for you can even begin to complete it.
The second step is, to evaluate where you are in comparison with where you want to be and also what is practical and feasible for you. For example, you want to weight 150 lbs and be able to run a 10 minute mile and You currently weight 220 lbs and can hardly jog at all. This is a considerable gap between where you are and where you want to go, but it is doable with proper conditioning and mental discipline. The idea we're trying to get across is to pick goals that are do-able. If you choose something that is unattainable, or something so difficult and time-consuming as to be completely impractical than you'll never see the results you want and that is very demoralizing.
The third step is, to come up with a workable plan that you can implement immeadiately. Once your decision has been made on the course you want to take the time between making and starting the plan should be as sort as possible. Human nature being what it is, the longer gap of time you allow the more likely it is you will talk yourself out of it.
When you are making your plan there are a lot of things to take into account. The biggest one that seems to get overlooked is that if you want to change the results you are getting from the manner in which you are currently living is you actually have to Change things! Whether that means changing how you eat, what you buy, how much you exercise, who you hang out with, what kind of activities you engage in, or even all of those things, you are goin to have to change something. Remember, you don't have to do it all at once if that seems too scary, or if you'd rather just go cold turkey and get it over with, that's great. Whatever works for you. You are the one who is making the changes and you are the one who is in control. Do what works, that's the important part.
Next Week: Ideas on pairing food and beverages for the health concious.
Published 05-23-2011
Traveling
Several of us at Green Bowl enjoy traveling to more or less exotic climes and all the adventure that entails, however when you eat a plant-based diet as devoid of processed and refined products as possible it can be difficult to find something you want to consume during your excursion.
Different people have different needs and tolerances, and therefore must take different levels of precautions, or preparations when traveling. If your dietary changes were made due to a medical condition then obviously you are going to want to maximize the consistency of your comestibles as much as possible. If your diet is purely a matter of choice, habit, and preference developed over time then you have more latitude to venture out into the local cuisine, try things and adapt.
When traveling in America, restaurants and traditional supermarkets are plentiful. However these places are generally not where you will find the highest quality edibles, particularly if you are traveling on a budget.
If you choose to sample a restaurant's fare, a few good choices can be Mexican, South American, and Japanese restaurants. Sometimes Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese establishments will prove to be very satisfactory though some care should be taken in what you select. European-styled restaurants may provide you with a decent salad, but odds are they will not have much choice, or indeed much in the way of lighter fare.
If you're on a budget and would rather stick to your eating plan more closely, the local market is the place to go.(Ask at your hotel, or accommodations where the best place to go is.) Purchase the best you can afford of fresh fruit and vegetables that require no cooking. Buy a loaf of whole grain bread and a small jar of nut butter. A couple cans of beans, or a can of fish, and you'll be eating good. Avoid the temptations of so-call “convenience foods” it's really not worth it.
Bring a small “eating kit” with you. It should contain, a sharp paring knife(A Swiss army knife is an excellent choice for this because you get a can opener as well) , a couple of small kitchen towels, a very small bar cutting board, and some sort of eating vessel.( If you don't have a Swiss army knife add a can opener to your kit.) These few items don't take up much room in your luggage and will make your life immeasurably easier to have them with you. (If you're traveling by plane allot an extra 10 bucks to buy what you need upon arrival to avoid all those tiresome regulations.)
If you're traveling by car, bus, or train, a few other helpful items to eating on the road can be a few small jars containing sea salt, vinegar, black pepper, hot sauce, and soy sauce for spicing up your meals. Well washed film canisters, or equally well washed travel-sized shampoo bottles make excellent choices for these items.(just make sure they don't have soap, etc in them.) If you're flying you may just have to make do with what you can find upon arrival.
Next Week: Thoughts on the mental aspect of lifestyle changes.
Published 05-16-2011
Several of us at Green Bowl enjoy traveling to more or less exotic climes and all the adventure that entails, however when you eat a plant-based diet as devoid of processed and refined products as possible it can be difficult to find something you want to consume during your excursion.
Different people have different needs and tolerances, and therefore must take different levels of precautions, or preparations when traveling. If your dietary changes were made due to a medical condition then obviously you are going to want to maximize the consistency of your comestibles as much as possible. If your diet is purely a matter of choice, habit, and preference developed over time then you have more latitude to venture out into the local cuisine, try things and adapt.
When traveling in America, restaurants and traditional supermarkets are plentiful. However these places are generally not where you will find the highest quality edibles, particularly if you are traveling on a budget.
If you choose to sample a restaurant's fare, a few good choices can be Mexican, South American, and Japanese restaurants. Sometimes Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese establishments will prove to be very satisfactory though some care should be taken in what you select. European-styled restaurants may provide you with a decent salad, but odds are they will not have much choice, or indeed much in the way of lighter fare.
If you're on a budget and would rather stick to your eating plan more closely, the local market is the place to go.(Ask at your hotel, or accommodations where the best place to go is.) Purchase the best you can afford of fresh fruit and vegetables that require no cooking. Buy a loaf of whole grain bread and a small jar of nut butter. A couple cans of beans, or a can of fish, and you'll be eating good. Avoid the temptations of so-call “convenience foods” it's really not worth it.
Bring a small “eating kit” with you. It should contain, a sharp paring knife(A Swiss army knife is an excellent choice for this because you get a can opener as well) , a couple of small kitchen towels, a very small bar cutting board, and some sort of eating vessel.( If you don't have a Swiss army knife add a can opener to your kit.) These few items don't take up much room in your luggage and will make your life immeasurably easier to have them with you. (If you're traveling by plane allot an extra 10 bucks to buy what you need upon arrival to avoid all those tiresome regulations.)
If you're traveling by car, bus, or train, a few other helpful items to eating on the road can be a few small jars containing sea salt, vinegar, black pepper, hot sauce, and soy sauce for spicing up your meals. Well washed film canisters, or equally well washed travel-sized shampoo bottles make excellent choices for these items.(just make sure they don't have soap, etc in them.) If you're flying you may just have to make do with what you can find upon arrival.
Next Week: Thoughts on the mental aspect of lifestyle changes.
Published 05-16-2011
Eating Away From Home
One of the bigger social awkwardness-es of choosing to completely re-vamp your diet is it can make dinner invitations, or social gatherings involving victuals tricky.
Obviously one does not wish to put one's friends out, or hurt anyone's feelings regarding their cooking since they went to the trouble of preparing it, but you also went to all the trouble of detoxifying your body and you'd hate to end up feeling like a pile of excrement just because you had Sunday lunch at your friend's house.
At Green Bowl we've all been there and here are a few of our tips and tricks for avoiding gaffes and maintaining friendships, while still staying with your eating plan and avoiding the whole feeling-like-a-pile-of-excrement scenario.
Fine Dining Restaurants are usually quite accommodating, particularly if you call more than a day ahead. If they have some notice they will almost certainly be able to accommodate you.
Casual dining places or sit-down fast food joints almost present more of a problem than a fine dining establishment, owing to the fact that you know their ingredient quality is not going to be very high, the prevalence of deep-fried items, and what isn't fried is generally inundated with fat/sugar/refined carbohydrates.
Your best bet will be to stick with some kind of salad, ask them to make it without any meats or cheese and get the dressing on the side or ask for vinegar or lemon. You may get a few weird looks, but it's better than feeling like you swallowed a spare tire. Made of lard. Avoid carbonated soft drinks, lemonade, sweet tea, or any other sugary beverage. Water, unsweetened iced tea, coffee, or hot tea are your best bets for avoiding calories and sugar.
If you want to splurge a bit, beer or wine will probably not cause you much ill-effects in moderation. However be aware: since you haven't coated your stomach with large amounts of fat or starch, you may feel the effects of the alcohol more quickly and more strongly than you might have done otherwise. If you do choose to imbibe, avoid hard liquor. It has no nutritional value whatsoever and the effects can be unpredictable. Obviously avoid operating a motor vehicle after consumption of whatever form of fermented vegetable product you choose.
Hopefully those few hints will help you to avoid some of the more socially awkward moments that a plant-based diet can bring up. The best thing we've found is to communicate with the people you interact with about what you eat, and why you eat the way you do. People tend to disregard, or fear, that which they don't understand. Clear communication will typically alleviate the vast majority of problems you may encounter.
Next week: Ideas for Eating Well While Traveling
Published 05-09-2011
One of the bigger social awkwardness-es of choosing to completely re-vamp your diet is it can make dinner invitations, or social gatherings involving victuals tricky.
Obviously one does not wish to put one's friends out, or hurt anyone's feelings regarding their cooking since they went to the trouble of preparing it, but you also went to all the trouble of detoxifying your body and you'd hate to end up feeling like a pile of excrement just because you had Sunday lunch at your friend's house.
At Green Bowl we've all been there and here are a few of our tips and tricks for avoiding gaffes and maintaining friendships, while still staying with your eating plan and avoiding the whole feeling-like-a-pile-of-excrement scenario.
- Go pot-luck where possible: When it's covered dish or pot-luck, bring something that you can consume as 90 percent of your meal and then supplement with very small amounts of everyone else's contributions to keep everyone happy.
- Take Preventative Measures: Fill up on greens, fruit, and vegetables starting 3 to 7 meals prior to any invitations you may have received, do the same thing again for another 3 to 7 meals afterward, just to be on the safe side.
- Share Recipes and Techniques: Get your friends into cooking health promoting dishes, it's a win-win for everybody.
Fine Dining Restaurants are usually quite accommodating, particularly if you call more than a day ahead. If they have some notice they will almost certainly be able to accommodate you.
Casual dining places or sit-down fast food joints almost present more of a problem than a fine dining establishment, owing to the fact that you know their ingredient quality is not going to be very high, the prevalence of deep-fried items, and what isn't fried is generally inundated with fat/sugar/refined carbohydrates.
Your best bet will be to stick with some kind of salad, ask them to make it without any meats or cheese and get the dressing on the side or ask for vinegar or lemon. You may get a few weird looks, but it's better than feeling like you swallowed a spare tire. Made of lard. Avoid carbonated soft drinks, lemonade, sweet tea, or any other sugary beverage. Water, unsweetened iced tea, coffee, or hot tea are your best bets for avoiding calories and sugar.
If you want to splurge a bit, beer or wine will probably not cause you much ill-effects in moderation. However be aware: since you haven't coated your stomach with large amounts of fat or starch, you may feel the effects of the alcohol more quickly and more strongly than you might have done otherwise. If you do choose to imbibe, avoid hard liquor. It has no nutritional value whatsoever and the effects can be unpredictable. Obviously avoid operating a motor vehicle after consumption of whatever form of fermented vegetable product you choose.
Hopefully those few hints will help you to avoid some of the more socially awkward moments that a plant-based diet can bring up. The best thing we've found is to communicate with the people you interact with about what you eat, and why you eat the way you do. People tend to disregard, or fear, that which they don't understand. Clear communication will typically alleviate the vast majority of problems you may encounter.
Next week: Ideas for Eating Well While Traveling
Published 05-09-2011
Building Habits
Last week we talked about the importance of self-examination in order to make lasting changes in a person's life. Today we're going to talk about the other side of the equation, taking the knowledge you discovered through your self-interrogation and applying it.
In our experience, self-knowledge is only about 10 percent of the package. You can have all the self-knowledge in the world, but if you refuse to do anything with that knowledge it will not be of any use. Self-knowledge is a type of idea, and ideas in and of themselves are neutral. They provide the spark for the product of application or creation, but the idea that was created and then left to molder in the recesses of the mind has no great value of its own.
What all this boils down to is, you sit down and go through all this mental effort to come up with a course of action in regards to your entire health and well-being that's the first 10 percent. The other 90 percent, is the effort you put into breaking the habits that got you where you currently are, and building the habits that will get you where you want to go. The self-examination thing is looking like the easy part now, isn't it?
However, before you get bogged down into the depths of misery because of looking at all the work you've got ahead of you, there is hope and it's not nearly as bad as you might think. Habits are not actually all that difficult to build, studies have shown that habits can be established(but not ingrained) in as short a time as 3 weeks, which breaks down into 21 days, 504 hours, or 3240 minutes if you want to be pedantic.
Breaking habits is another matter, and depends on how deeply the habit is ingrained, the personality of the person who is trying to break it, and various other environmental factors. Here are the biggest helpers we've found in breaking a habit:
- Choose one habit at a time to work on for a period of not less than 30 days.
- Consistency is key! Keep going! You will get there!
- Having a Supporter(s) in your goal. Not everyone needs this, but it sure is nice to have if you have the option. If it's offered, take it. If you need it, make sure you have it.
- Avoid unnecessary temptations. For example; if you're trying to stop smoking, don't go places, or do things, that you associate with smoking.
Next Week: Some ideas on how to eat healthily when traveling!
Published 05-02-2011
The Psychological Element
At Green Bowl we think that in order to be successful in your health and wellness goals it is very important to work with all aspects of the person involved. You can't get entirely caught up in only the physical aspects of nutrition and activity alone, there is a lot of the psychological that goes into implementing a successful nutritional change, or indeed any type of lifestyle change.
We noticed in ourselves, and in a lot of people that we've talked to, the person must be “ready” to do what is necessary to improve their health and well-being. All the well-meaning intentions, or rational arguments in favor of various courses of action aren't worth the time spent outlining them if the recipient is unwilling to hear, or carry out, those actions.
Only you can judge your own readiness for a life-style change. We cannot tell you if you are ready or not, and nor would we be so arrogant to presume the intimate knowledge of your psyche required to do so. That being said there are a few questions you can ask yourself to judge if you will be successful in your quest. These questions are for yourself alone and no one but you need know the answers.
It may seem like a difficult, or unpleasant, thing to force a dash of introspection into your existence, but if you really, sincerely, want to make any kind of changes to your life then it is necessary.
If you need a hand to hold to help you get started, find one. If you'd rather just take the plunge and figure it out on the way down, that's perfectly acceptable as well. The good thing about something like this is, it's all up to you. You have control. However, that's the bad part as well, if you don't do it; it will not get done.
Next week: some thoughts on building new health promoting habits
Published 04-25-2011
At Green Bowl we think that in order to be successful in your health and wellness goals it is very important to work with all aspects of the person involved. You can't get entirely caught up in only the physical aspects of nutrition and activity alone, there is a lot of the psychological that goes into implementing a successful nutritional change, or indeed any type of lifestyle change.
We noticed in ourselves, and in a lot of people that we've talked to, the person must be “ready” to do what is necessary to improve their health and well-being. All the well-meaning intentions, or rational arguments in favor of various courses of action aren't worth the time spent outlining them if the recipient is unwilling to hear, or carry out, those actions.
Only you can judge your own readiness for a life-style change. We cannot tell you if you are ready or not, and nor would we be so arrogant to presume the intimate knowledge of your psyche required to do so. That being said there are a few questions you can ask yourself to judge if you will be successful in your quest. These questions are for yourself alone and no one but you need know the answers.
- What am I willing to give up to get what I need/want?
- How important is my health to me really?
- How much value do I place on having a fully functioning mind and body?
- What do I want to do with my life? (i.e. what activities do I want to pursue and what are their physical and mental requirements?)
It may seem like a difficult, or unpleasant, thing to force a dash of introspection into your existence, but if you really, sincerely, want to make any kind of changes to your life then it is necessary.
If you need a hand to hold to help you get started, find one. If you'd rather just take the plunge and figure it out on the way down, that's perfectly acceptable as well. The good thing about something like this is, it's all up to you. You have control. However, that's the bad part as well, if you don't do it; it will not get done.
Next week: some thoughts on building new health promoting habits
Published 04-25-2011
Gardening Without a Garden
Our title today may seem like a bit of a misnomer, how in the world can you garden without a garden? The ideas of roof-top gardening, container gardening, cold frames, greenhouses, and window boxes have been utilized with various degrees of success by urban dwellers for many hundreds of years dating back to Roman times. During the 1950's and 60's the technique fell out of favor and then revived with the advent of the green moment in the 1970's and has been gaining momentum ever since.
Container gardening is not difficult and we make considerable use of the technique at Green Bowl. The requirements for successful container gardening are few. You will need the following.
- Container(s)
- Growing medium i.e. dirt or potting mixture
- Seeds
- Water
- A
Light Source.
- If
you live in a chillier part of the world a Warming Mat may be needed
to keep the soil cozy enough for germination and proper growth.
Edible Plants With Which We Have Had Success
- Leaf Lettuces and Dwarf Head Lettuces
- Spinach
- Radishes (red globe and some white icicle varieties)
- Fibrous Greens such as Kale and Collard Greens (use large shallow trays and choose more dwarf varieties when possible)
- Globe Root Vegetables (beets, turnips, and some varieties of carrots)
- Tomatoes (Use a five gallon bucket or a similarly large clay pot to allow the plants to develop a sufficient root ball. Use a good amount of potting soil mixed with peat and some sand. Tomatoes also need a good amount of food to produce good fruit so give your plants a good drink of fish emulsion once a week to help them along.)
- Peppers (You may or may not have very good luck with peppers. They require a large amount of light, rich soil, and quite warm weather to do well. Use a larger pot than you think you need to allow the plant's roots to develop well which will help keep the plant from drying out, or scorching in the sun.)
- Herbs
(Broad-leaf, succulent, or woody. Start them from seed or purchase
plants or seedling plugs from your local garden center.)
If you are interested more information on the subject there are lots of great small space gardening books out there, and information to be gathered on the Internet. A couple titles we recommend are: Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, and The No-Work Garden Book, by Ruth Stout.
Happy Growing!
Next week: Some of our observations on the psychological elements of successful lifestyle change.
Published 04-18-2011
Health Meets
Economy
Last week we talked about how to eat organically without emptying your wallet. Today, we're going to talk about how you can still eat with health in mind, even if you can't afford to go fully organic.
Here are a few of the ideas we implemented when we were getting started, hopefully you'll find them as useful as we did, and do.
Next week: ideas for exercising your green thumb with space constraints.
Published 04-11-2011
Last week we talked about how to eat organically without emptying your wallet. Today, we're going to talk about how you can still eat with health in mind, even if you can't afford to go fully organic.
Here are a few of the ideas we implemented when we were getting started, hopefully you'll find them as useful as we did, and do.
- Meat and dairy are expensive; organic meat and dairy even more so. For once health of body, and health of wallet, coincide. Limit your consumption of animal products to maybe three times a month, and both your grocery bills, and your blood pressure and cholesterol levels will go down quite rapidly.
- Comparison
shop. Walk through the whole produce section before making any
selections and weigh quality, freshness, growing method, and price
before choosing anything.
- Avoid processed foods. Organic and processed “health” foods are very expensive. Conventional processed foods are very unhealthy. Avoid both types, you'll save money and eat better.
- Fresh raw organic is cheaper than frozen or canned organic. Frozen or canned conventional is usually not worth the exceptionally cheap price, so don't bother.
- Where and when possible make your own. Doesn't really matter what it is, but it's almost always a lot cheaper to buy ingredients for things like bread, tomato sauce, any type of baked goods, soup, or salad dressing. Working with raw ingredients is fun, it will make you a better cook, and it's a good way to know exactly what's going into your food and therefore your stomach.
- We
mentioned joining a Co-op last week, we're going to mention it again
this week. If there isn't one in your area and you're feeling
ambitious, start one. It's not that difficult and there are lots of
websites and groups out there that will help you out with the
process. Share the savings and the tasty grub.
- Grow
your own herbs. Save lots of money and give your food a huge flavor
boost. Herbs grow great in old coffee cans, window boxes, or milk
cartons. Seeds are cheap, and it's a fun project for the kids. Good
types to grow from seed are basil, parsley, chervil, and dill. Buy
rosemary, thyme, oregano, or mint plants at your garden center for a
few bucks and treat 'em right, you'll have more herbs than you know
what to do with.
We hope you find these tips enlightening and useful, pass them around to your friends and neighbors to share the health and the wealth
Next week: ideas for exercising your green thumb with space constraints.
Published 04-11-2011
Conventional verses
Organic
There has been a slow wave of change sweeping the United States over the last thirty years concerning how we view, and grow, our produce in this country. In the beginning of the organic movement the only people who advocated and grew organically were hippies, bean-eating-greenies, and a few folks who based their views on rational thought and were therefore ridiculed for it. Gradually, eating organically changed from being a point of ridicule to being a point of status, and now we find that organic crops are commanding outrageous prices in our local markets and specialty shops.
At Green Bowl we are for organic. We like organic. We think it tastes better and retains its nutrition better. However, eating organic produce there is one big prohibitive point: the cost. Which is very understandable, when it is this tough to find decent work and the economy is on the compost heap, getting your family fed period tends to be more of a driving factor than whether, or not, to eat organic.
To that end, We would like to offer up a few options to help incorporate organic items into your diet without breaking the bank, or forcing drastic changes to your lifestyle.
Next week: more tips and tricks for health supporting economical eating!
Published 04-04-2011
There has been a slow wave of change sweeping the United States over the last thirty years concerning how we view, and grow, our produce in this country. In the beginning of the organic movement the only people who advocated and grew organically were hippies, bean-eating-greenies, and a few folks who based their views on rational thought and were therefore ridiculed for it. Gradually, eating organically changed from being a point of ridicule to being a point of status, and now we find that organic crops are commanding outrageous prices in our local markets and specialty shops.
At Green Bowl we are for organic. We like organic. We think it tastes better and retains its nutrition better. However, eating organic produce there is one big prohibitive point: the cost. Which is very understandable, when it is this tough to find decent work and the economy is on the compost heap, getting your family fed period tends to be more of a driving factor than whether, or not, to eat organic.
To that end, We would like to offer up a few options to help incorporate organic items into your diet without breaking the bank, or forcing drastic changes to your lifestyle.
- Buy your organic items at a regular market that has an organic section. Markets the specialize in only organic produce tend to charge 20% to 40% more than regular shops.
- Pick
and choose: Sometimes when it comes to staple things like apples, or carrots,
the organic prices are the same(or lower) than their conventional
counterparts. Shop around, it takes five minutes.
- Buy smaller amounts: Organic fruits and vegetables pack a more nutrient dense wallop than their conventional fellows, this means you can buy less and still get the same(or better) nutrient punch.
- Hit up your local farmer's market: A lot of venders at farmer's markets do grow organically whether or not they advertise their goods as such. Talk to the growers and vendors, it's easy enough to find out how their grow their items. If they meet your standards, you may have found a great place to save a few bucks and made a new friend in the process.
- Join
a Co-Op: Co-Ops tend to lean more towards organic products anyway,
and it's a great way to save quite a lot of cash The only downside
to a Co-Op is they usually only sell in fairly large amounts when it
comes to fruit and vegetables.
Next week: more tips and tricks for health supporting economical eating!
Published 04-04-2011
Shopping
for Health, Flavor, and Economy
Here at Green Bowl we attempt to grow as much of our own food as possible. Partially because we like to grow things, partially because it tastes nicer, and partially because it's an easy way to save money. However, we didn't always have this option and we understand how many folks out there may not have the liberty, resources, or desire to do what we do.
We also understand that it can sometimes be daunting to implement new eating habits until you know how to shop for said eating habits. It can also be very easy to fall of the wagon when the habit is still newly established if you go to your local market unprepared. There are lots of tempting things in grocery stores, and it's easy to rationalize an unwise purchase if you don't have a plan going in.
The old rule of never going grocery shopping when you are hungry, is a good one. We like that rule at Green Bowl. If a person feels hungry, or deprived of something, they may not be functioning at their most practical, or rational level during that period of time.
If you have the option of shopping in the morning, right after breakfast, do so. We think that is the best time in the world to shop. There will be no one there, the trucks will have just delivered their goods, and you will be at your most fresh and rested.
If you don't have that option, shopping between work and any evening appointments you may have is also a good time. Even if you're hungry, you won't have that much time to spare, the quicker the trip the better when you're first starting out. Limiting your exposure to things, that in your rational mind, you may not want to purchase is a good idea.
Shopping for flavor is a bit trickier than shopping for either health or economy, since most of the time health and economy are covered by the purchase of the same items or types of items. (i.e. fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, etc.) Shopping for flavor has it's own set of guidelines, but it need not clash with the first two ideals in any way.
When using our eating plan, freshness is the key to getting big flavor. This means, shop small and shop often. We advocate doing three to four small shops per week for a family of four. If you're only shopping for one or two persons, twice a week may be sufficient. We also advocate purchasing the best quality spices, herbs, aromatics, and condiments that you can afford. You will need less for optimum flavor, they will hold their flavor longer and store so much better than their lower quality counterparts that we think it's worth a little extra money.
We also like to advocate shopping seasonally and organically whenever possible. At lot of the time if you watch the specials, pick and choose carefully, it's no more expensive to do so, than it is to shop conventionally.
The best place to shop for flavor will almost certainly be your local farmer's market. Go source out the best stuff and the best stalls. Make friends with your local growers and merchants. Most often if you take care of them, they will be more than happy to take care of you. Often the growers and merchants will be very knowledgeable as well in how to shop seasonally in your area and will be very happy to tell you what they know if you ask them.
Next Week: Conventional Verses Organic!
Published 03-28-2011
Here at Green Bowl we attempt to grow as much of our own food as possible. Partially because we like to grow things, partially because it tastes nicer, and partially because it's an easy way to save money. However, we didn't always have this option and we understand how many folks out there may not have the liberty, resources, or desire to do what we do.
We also understand that it can sometimes be daunting to implement new eating habits until you know how to shop for said eating habits. It can also be very easy to fall of the wagon when the habit is still newly established if you go to your local market unprepared. There are lots of tempting things in grocery stores, and it's easy to rationalize an unwise purchase if you don't have a plan going in.
The old rule of never going grocery shopping when you are hungry, is a good one. We like that rule at Green Bowl. If a person feels hungry, or deprived of something, they may not be functioning at their most practical, or rational level during that period of time.
If you have the option of shopping in the morning, right after breakfast, do so. We think that is the best time in the world to shop. There will be no one there, the trucks will have just delivered their goods, and you will be at your most fresh and rested.
If you don't have that option, shopping between work and any evening appointments you may have is also a good time. Even if you're hungry, you won't have that much time to spare, the quicker the trip the better when you're first starting out. Limiting your exposure to things, that in your rational mind, you may not want to purchase is a good idea.
Shopping for flavor is a bit trickier than shopping for either health or economy, since most of the time health and economy are covered by the purchase of the same items or types of items. (i.e. fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, etc.) Shopping for flavor has it's own set of guidelines, but it need not clash with the first two ideals in any way.
When using our eating plan, freshness is the key to getting big flavor. This means, shop small and shop often. We advocate doing three to four small shops per week for a family of four. If you're only shopping for one or two persons, twice a week may be sufficient. We also advocate purchasing the best quality spices, herbs, aromatics, and condiments that you can afford. You will need less for optimum flavor, they will hold their flavor longer and store so much better than their lower quality counterparts that we think it's worth a little extra money.
We also like to advocate shopping seasonally and organically whenever possible. At lot of the time if you watch the specials, pick and choose carefully, it's no more expensive to do so, than it is to shop conventionally.
The best place to shop for flavor will almost certainly be your local farmer's market. Go source out the best stuff and the best stalls. Make friends with your local growers and merchants. Most often if you take care of them, they will be more than happy to take care of you. Often the growers and merchants will be very knowledgeable as well in how to shop seasonally in your area and will be very happy to tell you what they know if you ask them.
Next Week: Conventional Verses Organic!
Published 03-28-2011
Seasonal Food
One of the main questions we get asked at Green Bowl is “What is seasonal food?” The term gets thrown around a lot along with so much other food poncery and it can make things extremely confusing if you haven't much experience in the kitchen or in the garden. Not to worry, it's really a lot simpler than people make it sound.
A lot of people, particularly chefs, like to make what they're doing sound much more complex than it actually is to give themselves an ego boost, or to enhance their reputation. We think this is silly at Green Bowl, seasonal food is simple food.
All seasonal really means is, “ grown during it's proper time without artificial stimulants and as fresh from the ground as possible”. That's it, no mystery, no arcane formula, just fresh, simple, unadulterated, real food.
Another big question people ask is, “How do I know what's in season?” That is a simple question with a complicated answer. The best way to know what's in season is to plant a garden and grow your own. However, if you don't have that option; there are other ways to tell.
First of all, look at what's plentiful in your local market. Whatever is bountiful and cheap is usually what's in season somewhere.(Seasonal and local is another matter.) Other ways to find out what's in season, are to shop at your local farmer's market, purchase a gardener's guide for your area, and make friends with the folks in the produce departments at your local markets.
Another way to help yourself out is to do what we call “grocery window shopping”. When you have a little extra time, go into the grocery store and walk through the produce department and just smell and feel all the different types of fruits and vegetables. After doing this a few times, in addition to your regular shopping, you will get a feel for degrees of ripeness and freshness, that will make it much easier to tell what's in season.
When preparing seasonal food remember, simpler is better. Don't mess with a lot of fancy preparations or complicated recipes. Eat it raw, or cook it as simply as possible(steam or saute lightly is best). Avoid excess fat, no need for butter or oil, or anything like that. A little salt and a little acid is all that's needed for the vast majority of vegetables. Fruits should not need anything at all. Happy eating!
Next weel: Tips and Tricks for Simple Shopping!
Published 03-21-2011
One of the main questions we get asked at Green Bowl is “What is seasonal food?” The term gets thrown around a lot along with so much other food poncery and it can make things extremely confusing if you haven't much experience in the kitchen or in the garden. Not to worry, it's really a lot simpler than people make it sound.
A lot of people, particularly chefs, like to make what they're doing sound much more complex than it actually is to give themselves an ego boost, or to enhance their reputation. We think this is silly at Green Bowl, seasonal food is simple food.
All seasonal really means is, “ grown during it's proper time without artificial stimulants and as fresh from the ground as possible”. That's it, no mystery, no arcane formula, just fresh, simple, unadulterated, real food.
Another big question people ask is, “How do I know what's in season?” That is a simple question with a complicated answer. The best way to know what's in season is to plant a garden and grow your own. However, if you don't have that option; there are other ways to tell.
First of all, look at what's plentiful in your local market. Whatever is bountiful and cheap is usually what's in season somewhere.(Seasonal and local is another matter.) Other ways to find out what's in season, are to shop at your local farmer's market, purchase a gardener's guide for your area, and make friends with the folks in the produce departments at your local markets.
Another way to help yourself out is to do what we call “grocery window shopping”. When you have a little extra time, go into the grocery store and walk through the produce department and just smell and feel all the different types of fruits and vegetables. After doing this a few times, in addition to your regular shopping, you will get a feel for degrees of ripeness and freshness, that will make it much easier to tell what's in season.
When preparing seasonal food remember, simpler is better. Don't mess with a lot of fancy preparations or complicated recipes. Eat it raw, or cook it as simply as possible(steam or saute lightly is best). Avoid excess fat, no need for butter or oil, or anything like that. A little salt and a little acid is all that's needed for the vast majority of vegetables. Fruits should not need anything at all. Happy eating!
Next weel: Tips and Tricks for Simple Shopping!
Published 03-21-2011
How To Stick With Your
Exercise Plans
As we talked about last week, we're big on exercise here at Green Bowl. One of the biggest problems we've run into personally, and one of the questions most frequently asked is, “How do you stick with exercising?”
The first problem a lot of people have, is they start their exercise plan with unrealistic expectations, or unrealistic ideas, of what they can do in their current physical state. If your goal is to be able to do 50 military push-ups in 30 days and as of Day 1 you can't even do 1 properly, there is almost no way in this world(or out of it), you're going to be able to meet that goal.
The other problem a lot of people have, is they view exercise as a huge chore, as a unending burden. This makes it very difficult to find any enjoyment in the task. Your mental attitude going into an exercise plan makes huge difference in how much you do, how quickly you progress, and how much enjoyment you get out of it. Try to be as positive about it as you can, it really will make everything easier, go faster, and be a lot more fun even when you're sweating gumballs.
Pick something you like. That sounds kind of dumb, but it's true. If you choose an exercise plan that you absolutely loathe you are never going to be able to stick with it long enough to get the results that you want. Human nature being what it is, you will also be much more prone to finding excuses to not do it if you don't like it.
Another question that gets asked a lot is, “How long should I exercise?” That seems like a very simple question, but it is nearly impossible to say exactly how much exercise a person requires since it depends on a great many variables. A good rule of thumb for most people starting out is 20 to 30 minutes per day 4 to 6 days per week. We recommend that consistency of exercise is a more worthy goal than duration of exercise. What we mean by that is, it's better to walk a brisk mile every day of the week, than to run six miles one day of the week. There is also less chance of injury and we have personally seen more rapid results with this method than any other.
Four Rules for Successful Exercising
Be Realistic
Think Positive
Find Something You Enjoy
Consistency is Key for Good Results
Next week: Seasonal Eating for Good Health and Great Taste!
Published 03-14-2011
As we talked about last week, we're big on exercise here at Green Bowl. One of the biggest problems we've run into personally, and one of the questions most frequently asked is, “How do you stick with exercising?”
The first problem a lot of people have, is they start their exercise plan with unrealistic expectations, or unrealistic ideas, of what they can do in their current physical state. If your goal is to be able to do 50 military push-ups in 30 days and as of Day 1 you can't even do 1 properly, there is almost no way in this world(or out of it), you're going to be able to meet that goal.
The other problem a lot of people have, is they view exercise as a huge chore, as a unending burden. This makes it very difficult to find any enjoyment in the task. Your mental attitude going into an exercise plan makes huge difference in how much you do, how quickly you progress, and how much enjoyment you get out of it. Try to be as positive about it as you can, it really will make everything easier, go faster, and be a lot more fun even when you're sweating gumballs.
Pick something you like. That sounds kind of dumb, but it's true. If you choose an exercise plan that you absolutely loathe you are never going to be able to stick with it long enough to get the results that you want. Human nature being what it is, you will also be much more prone to finding excuses to not do it if you don't like it.
Another question that gets asked a lot is, “How long should I exercise?” That seems like a very simple question, but it is nearly impossible to say exactly how much exercise a person requires since it depends on a great many variables. A good rule of thumb for most people starting out is 20 to 30 minutes per day 4 to 6 days per week. We recommend that consistency of exercise is a more worthy goal than duration of exercise. What we mean by that is, it's better to walk a brisk mile every day of the week, than to run six miles one day of the week. There is also less chance of injury and we have personally seen more rapid results with this method than any other.
Four Rules for Successful Exercising
Be Realistic
Think Positive
Find Something You Enjoy
Consistency is Key for Good Results
Next week: Seasonal Eating for Good Health and Great Taste!
Published 03-14-2011
How Important is Exercise?
At Green Bowl we like exercise. We recommend exercise for everybody. It is our view that exercise is a very important part of maintaining not only a healthy body and weight, but a healthy mind as well. We also realize that finding time to exercise can be challenging, and disheartening or depressing when you're starting from zero.
If you're really out of shape, or have never really been in shape, it can be really tough to know what the correct course of action to take is on the exercise issue. Here are a few recommendations that we've found helpful ourselves, that seem to work for other folks as well.
Published 03-07-2011
At Green Bowl we like exercise. We recommend exercise for everybody. It is our view that exercise is a very important part of maintaining not only a healthy body and weight, but a healthy mind as well. We also realize that finding time to exercise can be challenging, and disheartening or depressing when you're starting from zero.
If you're really out of shape, or have never really been in shape, it can be really tough to know what the correct course of action to take is on the exercise issue. Here are a few recommendations that we've found helpful ourselves, that seem to work for other folks as well.
- Pick a physical activity that you like. If you hate to run, don't run. You're not going to stick with it long enough to get any real benefits from it. You will probably also hate every second of it when you do manage to force yourself to go.
- For those just starting out, or the very over-weight or out of shape, start very small. Do enough to make yourself fatigued and even a little sore, but don't push yourself too hard at first, you'll just end up hurting yourself and that is never a good thing.
- If you're really at a loss about what to do and you don't have time, or money, to join a gym or take classes; start with as brisk a ½ to 1 mile walk as you can manage and some light stretching. Start with trying to touch your toes and standing up four or five times to begin with. Gradually increase your pace and your repetitions and variety of stretches as you gain energy and strength.
- Calisthenics are good for everyone and can be adjusted to every strength and fitness level. There are some excellent books on the subject and plenty of information to be gathered on the internet.
- Pilates,
Hatha yoga, and some forms of martial arts are excellent for those
individuals who are not more than 40 or 50 lbs over-weight and with
prolonged practice will show very marked improvements in muscle
tone, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, posture, joint
stability, and core strength.
- Dancing is also an excellent form of exercise, one that we highly recommend. It's also excellent for meeting new people, building self-confidence, and it's also a fun skill to have.
- Taking
exercise classes can be a fun way to learn new routines and to give
yourself some variety. If you find something you really like stick
with it. However, we've found that two to three months of classes is sufficient to learn a few routines and to develop sufficient knowledge
of the techniques to allow home practice without continuing classes.
This varies from person to person.
Published 03-07-2011
The Frugal Green Bowl
In this tough economy a big roadblock for a lot folks in their quest to lose weight is the perceived expense. A great many diet plans offer prepared meals or starter meals that can be purchased for far from inconsequential sums of money. This is a very expensive way to lose weight, particularly if you're on a budget.
Other objections that we at Green Bowl are often confronted with are, “prepackaged foods are cheaper”, “there isn't any waste from already prepared foods”, “organic is too expensive”, “whole grains are so much more expensive than refined”, and the list goes on. All of these objections are really a lot of nonsense. If you really want to eat this way it works out to be 25% to 40% cheaper eating the Green Bowl way than it does eating the conventional American diet and approximately 40% to 70% cheaper than using The Zone Diet, Jenny Craig, or similar prepared meals depending upon what type of meals and service you select. Sounds good, right?
The trick to eating healthy, and eating cheap, is being flexible in your menu planning. Green Bowl eating actually is better if you are flexible, you place parameters on the types of foods you purchase, but within those parameters you are only limited by your own imagination.
For example, you know that to follow your eating plan you must eat approximately 10 salads, 12 pieces of fruit, 3 to 5 pounds of cooked vegetables, and 3.5 lbs of beans a week.
You go to the store, you purchase a head of iceberg lettuce at $1.50 a head, 3 hearts of Romaine for about $3.00, and a pound of organic Spinach for $7.50. Add in another $5.00 for a cucumber, a small red onion, a bell pepper or two, and maybe some mushrooms. This means you get 11 salads for $17.00.
If you buy dried beans and cook them yourself you will get about 4 pounds of beans yielded from 2 lbs of dried beans which run about $1.50 depending on variety. You also buy 3 lbs of bananas at $0.50 a pound, 3 lbs of apples for about $4.00 and a fresh pineapple for $3.00. You buy a head of broccoli and a bag of carrots that's about $4.00, and 3 pounds of onions for about $2.00.
All of this means that you purchased your groceries for a week for a grand total of $32.00. All of these items when combined in various ways can also be stretched to feed two persons very comfortably with very few additional items and to feed four persons for maybe an additional $10.00. I don't know any family of four who is eating conventionally for at, or less, than $40.00 per week.
Tips for Saving Money and Eating Healthy
Published 02-28-2011
In this tough economy a big roadblock for a lot folks in their quest to lose weight is the perceived expense. A great many diet plans offer prepared meals or starter meals that can be purchased for far from inconsequential sums of money. This is a very expensive way to lose weight, particularly if you're on a budget.
Other objections that we at Green Bowl are often confronted with are, “prepackaged foods are cheaper”, “there isn't any waste from already prepared foods”, “organic is too expensive”, “whole grains are so much more expensive than refined”, and the list goes on. All of these objections are really a lot of nonsense. If you really want to eat this way it works out to be 25% to 40% cheaper eating the Green Bowl way than it does eating the conventional American diet and approximately 40% to 70% cheaper than using The Zone Diet, Jenny Craig, or similar prepared meals depending upon what type of meals and service you select. Sounds good, right?
The trick to eating healthy, and eating cheap, is being flexible in your menu planning. Green Bowl eating actually is better if you are flexible, you place parameters on the types of foods you purchase, but within those parameters you are only limited by your own imagination.
For example, you know that to follow your eating plan you must eat approximately 10 salads, 12 pieces of fruit, 3 to 5 pounds of cooked vegetables, and 3.5 lbs of beans a week.
You go to the store, you purchase a head of iceberg lettuce at $1.50 a head, 3 hearts of Romaine for about $3.00, and a pound of organic Spinach for $7.50. Add in another $5.00 for a cucumber, a small red onion, a bell pepper or two, and maybe some mushrooms. This means you get 11 salads for $17.00.
If you buy dried beans and cook them yourself you will get about 4 pounds of beans yielded from 2 lbs of dried beans which run about $1.50 depending on variety. You also buy 3 lbs of bananas at $0.50 a pound, 3 lbs of apples for about $4.00 and a fresh pineapple for $3.00. You buy a head of broccoli and a bag of carrots that's about $4.00, and 3 pounds of onions for about $2.00.
All of this means that you purchased your groceries for a week for a grand total of $32.00. All of these items when combined in various ways can also be stretched to feed two persons very comfortably with very few additional items and to feed four persons for maybe an additional $10.00. I don't know any family of four who is eating conventionally for at, or less, than $40.00 per week.
Tips for Saving Money and Eating Healthy
- Go Vegetarian: Meat equals Money. Cut down your consumption of animal products and your grocery bills may be as much as halved.
- Limit your dairy consumption: Dairy also equals Money. Cheese, butter, milk, and cream are all quite expensive, they are also very high in fat and calories and not very high on nutrition/calorie ratio scale.
- Limit your bread product and cereal consumption: Switch to oatmeal and learn make your own bread(it's fun and easy).
- In
the produce department scout for specials, be flexible, and buy
what's in season.
Published 02-28-2011
Can You Use Our Methods On
Your Own?
Technically the answer to that question is, “yes”. It is possible to turn your eating habits around by yourself with no outside help, but it is much more difficult. In a way it's a bit like attempting to re-invent the wheel and that's always tricky. However, this eating plan turns a lot of what is bandied about in the media, and even what we might hear from our health-care providers, on its ear.
We say for maximum health that your diet should consist of over 80% plant-based foods and not more than 10% animal products. We say that salad IS the main course. We do not think that you can eat anything in moderation, we say that there are quite a few things on the market sold as food products that are actually harmful to ingest and should be avoided entirely.
This is kind of a radical approach to eating. An analogy would be that it's like going from never having driven a car of any kind, to being stuffed into a Formula One racing car and then trying to compete in a Grand Prix. 99.9% of the people that attempt to do that are probably going to end up, metaphorically flying end-over-end into a barrier engulfed in flames.
That being said, ultimately the only person that can really make you lose weight and get in shape is, YOU! No one else can really make you fit, but on the upside, no one else can make you fat and unhealthy either. However, a lot of people do find it very beneficial to have some outside help to keep them going, particularly when they are just starting out.
Here are a few things we recommend at Green Bowl for people who aren't sure they want to commit to working with us and want to see what kind of results they get before they put in the time, money, and effort into working with us.
Published 02-21-2011
Technically the answer to that question is, “yes”. It is possible to turn your eating habits around by yourself with no outside help, but it is much more difficult. In a way it's a bit like attempting to re-invent the wheel and that's always tricky. However, this eating plan turns a lot of what is bandied about in the media, and even what we might hear from our health-care providers, on its ear.
We say for maximum health that your diet should consist of over 80% plant-based foods and not more than 10% animal products. We say that salad IS the main course. We do not think that you can eat anything in moderation, we say that there are quite a few things on the market sold as food products that are actually harmful to ingest and should be avoided entirely.
This is kind of a radical approach to eating. An analogy would be that it's like going from never having driven a car of any kind, to being stuffed into a Formula One racing car and then trying to compete in a Grand Prix. 99.9% of the people that attempt to do that are probably going to end up, metaphorically flying end-over-end into a barrier engulfed in flames.
That being said, ultimately the only person that can really make you lose weight and get in shape is, YOU! No one else can really make you fit, but on the upside, no one else can make you fat and unhealthy either. However, a lot of people do find it very beneficial to have some outside help to keep them going, particularly when they are just starting out.
Here are a few things we recommend at Green Bowl for people who aren't sure they want to commit to working with us and want to see what kind of results they get before they put in the time, money, and effort into working with us.
- Replace 500 to 1000 calories of refined or processed foods in your diet with 100 to 300 calories of fresh vegetables and fruits.
- Take a 1 mile walk every day for a week, no exceptions.
- Read the labels of all the processed foods in your house. Find out what you're really eating.
- If
you drink soda pop or other types of sweetened, carbonated, or
caffeinated drinks, try to replace half of your consumption of those
beverages with the same amount of water.
Published 02-21-2011
Our Method
Weight-loss programs have been devised with various goals in mind and various ideas at their core. The Atkins Diet is based around the idea of weight-loss through prolonged ketosis. Weight Watchers is based around caloric restriction through portion control. These diets, if followed to the letter and never deviated from will work. For a while. These diets are unmaintainable to the extent required to lose your excess weight and then keep it off.
The Green Bowl Method is not. This is a diet that gets easier to maintain the longer you follow it. It is an eating plan that re-trains your body and your mind to want to eat things that are good for you. If you do choose to eat something that isn't very good for you, your body will let you know quite quickly and possibly with a flare for the dramatic depending upon the circumstances.
How it works is a very simple premise. All you have to do is ingest sufficient nutrients to maintain and rebuild your body, while limiting the amount of actual calories you consume with those nutrients. This is a simple idea, but the execution of the idea is where things can get a bit tricky. Which is where we come in.
During our 4 week program we walk you through everything that is involved in attaining that goal. We give you all the information you require to identify and prepare the most nutrient-rich food available.
We also teach navigating real-world issues such as eating out, attending dinner parties or other social functions. You will also receive recipes that have been selected and tailored to your tastes, budget, and skill level along with over 40 hours of hands-on learning and consultation with our classically trained chef, nutrition councilor, and founders.
Join us next week for a few ideas on things you can do on your own to improve your over-all health.
Published 02-14-2011
Weight-loss programs have been devised with various goals in mind and various ideas at their core. The Atkins Diet is based around the idea of weight-loss through prolonged ketosis. Weight Watchers is based around caloric restriction through portion control. These diets, if followed to the letter and never deviated from will work. For a while. These diets are unmaintainable to the extent required to lose your excess weight and then keep it off.
The Green Bowl Method is not. This is a diet that gets easier to maintain the longer you follow it. It is an eating plan that re-trains your body and your mind to want to eat things that are good for you. If you do choose to eat something that isn't very good for you, your body will let you know quite quickly and possibly with a flare for the dramatic depending upon the circumstances.
How it works is a very simple premise. All you have to do is ingest sufficient nutrients to maintain and rebuild your body, while limiting the amount of actual calories you consume with those nutrients. This is a simple idea, but the execution of the idea is where things can get a bit tricky. Which is where we come in.
During our 4 week program we walk you through everything that is involved in attaining that goal. We give you all the information you require to identify and prepare the most nutrient-rich food available.
- How to
know what you need the most of from your food, and how to make sure
you get it.
- How to avoid common physical and psychological issues
that people have.
- Menu planning
- Shopping
- Cooking
- How to plan
and stick with an
exercise routine.
We also teach navigating real-world issues such as eating out, attending dinner parties or other social functions. You will also receive recipes that have been selected and tailored to your tastes, budget, and skill level along with over 40 hours of hands-on learning and consultation with our classically trained chef, nutrition councilor, and founders.
Join us next week for a few ideas on things you can do on your own to improve your over-all health.
Published 02-14-2011
Welcome to
The Green Bowl
The Green Bowl Project is the brain child of Joyce and Robert Mahl and was inspired by the work and books of Dr. Joel Furhman.
Joyce had struggled with her weight for her entire adult life. By her early fifties she found herself in the undesirable boat of being 150 pounds over-weight and highly concerned about the risks to her health that entailed.
Robert had never really worried much about his weight. However, he started putting on weight in his late thirties and by the time he was in his early fifties he was 120 pounds over-weight and feeling some of the side effects of that excess weight.
Joyce stumbled across Dr. Furhman's books in her serious quest to lose the excess weight. She felt like she had tried everything, but was willing to listen to what he had to say. She read his books and decided to try it for two weeks to see what would happen. If nothing else the eating plan was structured so it couldn't hurt anything to try it.
Within those two weeks she lost around 15 pounds, her energy level went up exponentially, and she figured she had found the ANSWER to weight loss. No surgery. No drugs. No being hungry all the time. No cravings. No side effects, only safe and effective results.
After a few months of watching his wife's results and success, Robert decided to try it as well. After a few false starts, he discovered that it worked for him as well and he started to lose weight and feel better. His blood pressure improved by 60 points, and his energy levels and mood improved to levels he hadn't felt since his twenties.
The Green Bowl Project was born! The rising cost ofhealthcare and the rising epidemic of obesity related disease has given rise to a need for a safe, easy, and above all effective method of losing weight. The Green Bowl Project is that method. It is our mission to work with people that want to lose weight. People that have tried everything. People that say nothing works for them. If you follow our plan and work with us, we'll work with you and This Will Work.
To date, Joyce has lost 90 pounds from her initial starting weight of 275 pounds.
To date, Robert has lost 45 pounds from his starting weight of 290 pounds.
Join us next week for an introduction to how we work and what we exactly do at Green Bowl.
Published 02-07-2011
The Green Bowl Project is the brain child of Joyce and Robert Mahl and was inspired by the work and books of Dr. Joel Furhman.
Joyce had struggled with her weight for her entire adult life. By her early fifties she found herself in the undesirable boat of being 150 pounds over-weight and highly concerned about the risks to her health that entailed.
Robert had never really worried much about his weight. However, he started putting on weight in his late thirties and by the time he was in his early fifties he was 120 pounds over-weight and feeling some of the side effects of that excess weight.
Joyce stumbled across Dr. Furhman's books in her serious quest to lose the excess weight. She felt like she had tried everything, but was willing to listen to what he had to say. She read his books and decided to try it for two weeks to see what would happen. If nothing else the eating plan was structured so it couldn't hurt anything to try it.
Within those two weeks she lost around 15 pounds, her energy level went up exponentially, and she figured she had found the ANSWER to weight loss. No surgery. No drugs. No being hungry all the time. No cravings. No side effects, only safe and effective results.
After a few months of watching his wife's results and success, Robert decided to try it as well. After a few false starts, he discovered that it worked for him as well and he started to lose weight and feel better. His blood pressure improved by 60 points, and his energy levels and mood improved to levels he hadn't felt since his twenties.
The Green Bowl Project was born! The rising cost ofhealthcare and the rising epidemic of obesity related disease has given rise to a need for a safe, easy, and above all effective method of losing weight. The Green Bowl Project is that method. It is our mission to work with people that want to lose weight. People that have tried everything. People that say nothing works for them. If you follow our plan and work with us, we'll work with you and This Will Work.
To date, Joyce has lost 90 pounds from her initial starting weight of 275 pounds.
To date, Robert has lost 45 pounds from his starting weight of 290 pounds.
Join us next week for an introduction to how we work and what we exactly do at Green Bowl.
Published 02-07-2011