I read an article recently about calcium and magnesium uptake from bottled water. Got me thinking that maybe this is one aspect of the “French paradox” – they may have better mineral uptake than Americans. They certainly drink mineral water, as opposed to bottled water, much more regularly than Americans. True mineral water looks like it is worth seeking out, per this recent Washington Post article:
Depending on the brand, one liter a day can cover you for 20 to 58 percent of calcium and 16 to 41 percent of magnesium needs. On the flip side, it can also contribute a significant amount of sodium, so read the label carefully to decide what is right for you.
A favorite water in Europe is Badoit (Bad-wah)- touted on many water websites as one of the better mineralized mineral waters. In my travels, it was common to see French families with a large bottle of Badoit – still or sparkling – in fact I once watched a cute french baby bashing its stroller with an empty bottle while yelling “Badoit, Badoit, Badiot” incessantly the way an American child might yell for candy or ice cream. Badoit can be found on Amazon, although you’ll pay a significant shipping price. It ranks very favorably in terms of calcium, magnesium and bicarbonate (many people seek out bicarbonate because of its alkaline nature, which helps counter Americans’ acidic diets). I was pleased to see in another article that a German water that is readily available at my 2 nearby grocery stores — Gerolsteiner – has an equally good mineral profile. It is quite salty tasting, compared to a Perrier sparkling or a Fiji “still” style water – but then again that is the point – that taste is from the health-producing minerals.
I have been resisting all bottled waters because of the polluting aspect of the bottles themselves – not to mention the inconvenience of the recycling (we do our own recycling at a recycling center in our town). That being said, if I can get many of my minerals from water rather than more caloric sources such as milk (which I don’t even like to drink), I am just substituting one recyclable for another with added benefit. As a thirst quencher, I do find myself buying frequent Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts coffees in their plastic cups in the summer. A further impetus to stick to mineral water. In the case of Gerolsteiner, this water has the advantage of coming in a glass bottle. In the world of recycling, glass always earns a recycling facility more money and therefore more of the glass is actually recycled. So, if you have a choice between glass and plastic packaging, always choose glass. From the health standpoint, glass is preferable because it does not leach chemicals into water (or food) the way plastic does.
The other day I was at a restaurant that featured a delicious soda water drink that is perfectly adapted for mineral water. I have reverse engineered it below – think of it as a non-alcoholic version of a Pimm’s Cup – and enjoy – à votre santé!
Blend the following and then place in a glass pitcher: juice of 1/2 lemon, juice of 1 lime, 1 cup fresh mint leaves- mashed, 1/2 medium roughly chopped cucumber, (peel and de-seed first). Pour a 750 ml bottle Gerolsteiner or other high mineral content sparkling water over the juice mixture, blend with a long handled spoon. Pour over ice – serve promptly to preserve fizz. Serves 5. You can also add Truvia (the stevia brand I love) to make a slightly sweeter drink.
This image cracked me up the day I found it on some page about blue and white china patterns. Imagine the horror of an uptight British matron if she were to find out that I was using a proper bone china tea cup to lead off an article on the most American of concepts – iced tea. First, the British take their tea HOT – always, even in August, even after playing multiple sets at Wimbledon. Second, they don’t even like ice in drinks that are supposed to be cold, like ice water or a Coke.
Well, I’m here to get you started on making a GREAT pitcher of iced tea so you don’t feel the need to buy (and then recycle) plastic bottles or plastic to go cups of the stuff.
Here’s what you need – good, cheap, quality black tea – my favorite is the store organic brand from Whole Foods (they use a LOT of pesticides on tea bushes, so if you drink tea regularly, organic is definitely preferable).
Whole Foods black organic tea
For this brand, the ratio I use is 4 bags to 1 quart of boiling water. The secret is mint – preferably from your garden (it grows like a weed – it’s advisable to grow it in a planter – ask a friend, if they have some they usually are more than happy to give you some). Otherwise, use 3 bags black tea and 2 bags of mint tea which is easy to find at the grocery store. Wash a handful of fresh mint and place it in with the tea bags – crush the mint a bit before you drop it in and then pour the boiling water over both bag and mint. Let it steep no more than 8 or 9 minutes max or it gets bitter – remove the tea bags, fresh mint can stay in for 72 hours but the leaves get black after that and should be discarded. ( My kids enjoy putting the used bags in another clear quart container – glass not plastic – just add tap water and place the container in the sun all day – it will make a refreshing lighter “sun” tea that’s naturally decaffeinated just from the heat of the sun. )
If you can wait, chill the tea overnight – don’t add ice cubes till you want a glass – this way you won’t dilute your tea. Next secret – add lemon juice fresh squeezed once the tea has cooled to room temp – I usually use about 1/2 a small lemon’s juice – do not drop in pieces of lemon – the skins make the iced tea bitter. Lastly, if you like sweet tea- stevia has no calories -the only brand that I’ve found that isn’t bitter is Truvia – 2 TBS is perfect for a quart for my taste.
If you are like me, gremlins put all kinds of food in your fridge that you didn’t even know about until it’s too late. Ever found a cucumber that’s devolved into a puddle of oozing goo? How about the jar of olives that may be from last week – but then again it may be from last year and it will KILL you? If you want to save time and money, try to go through the contents of your fridge before you go grocery shopping, be it on Saturdays or whenever. With the steps below, you may not even have to shop for a few more days.
The first thing you are going to do is get a Sharpie and put it in the flip top butter area of your fridge. You will see it every time you open the fridge, and from now on you will be way more likely to use it to mark dates on any half-opened food.
Crock Pot
Next, pull out your crock pot. And, if you don’t own one, order one right now on Ebay or Amazon. It truly does NOT matter what kind. Place the crock pot next to your sink because you are about to re-coup between $10-$50 every week and get healthier in the process. Now, gather ALL of the vegetables that are lingering in your fridge and pantry. You are about to start a meditative soup practice that will change your life. The easiest way to accomplish the making of a soup every 7-10 days is by buying either a pre-cooked chicken from the grocery store – eat it up and save the skin, bones, scraps and congealed juices in the bottom of the container – you can just throw the container in the freezer till Saturday. You can also always have a couple pounds of cheap chicken in your freezer for your soup (usually I buy organic legs, very reasonable at Trader Joe’s – you also often get a discount when you buy 2 chickens at Whole Foods and one of them can be frozen whole – even though it is cooked, it will thaw out just fine-remove most of the meat – recipes below for that- and use the skin and bones for your soup). I know it’s summer, but crock pots don’t generate much heat and if you start now, you’ll have 10+ quarts by the end of summer – plus, they make really nice gifts for people. Seriously, people LOVE homemade chicken stock.
Start by throwing the frozen chicken into the bottom of the crock pot, add any partially used up bottle of wine (red or white is fine) you may have PLUS 1/3 of a cup of cider vinegar – the vinegar leaches the minerals out of the bones and makes the soup more nutritious and flavorful; a TBS of salt or a couple packets of soy sauce also add flavor.
Now retrieve all the veggies you have NOT eaten this week – despite your best intentions. This prep step will go quickly – no agonizing – unless it is gross to touch or smell, just use it! Place all the veggies and the bags of veggies and the cans of half used veggies out on your counter and have at it! The following items are great for making soup stock-here’s how to prep them for your pot:
For the following, wash, scrub and quarter WITH the skins on – the skins have excellent nutrients: potatoes, yams, onions, garlic.
For green/white/yellow/red veggies, rinse well, throw out the really yucky parts (wilted is fine) and chop roughly: cabbage, parsnips, carrots, parsley, turnips, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, fresh herbs, leeks, peas, beans/legumes, mushrooms and celery (these two veggies are particularly good for extra flavor, always try to have them on hand).
Other items that add flavor: hummus, lemon (not too much, makes soup acrid), canned tomatoes, canned corn, canned artichokes etc.
DON’T add: in my experience green/red/orange/yellow peppers make a strange flavor as do avocados and olives. I love beets in a soup, but they add significant sweetness and a red that stains.
DO add: Water, to cover the carcass/veggies – then start to cook. Crockpots vary in terms of how hot they get and cooking time – I usually cook my soup for 6 hours on high. You can experiment, there’s no wrong answer, but I wouldn’t go longer than 8 hours because the stock starts to taste stale.
If I used legs rather than a precooked carcass, then at the end of 3 hours, I remove the cooked chicken from the bone, throw the bones and skin back into the pot and freeze the meat (I chop it before freezing so it can go in the soup or it makes great tacos or pulled chicken –shred it, then microwave it w/1/3 to 1/2 a bottle of your favorite bbq sauce – or make it into a chicken salad – more next Friday on chicken salad).
At the end of 6 hours, turn off the crock pot (most stay on on warm so you have to actually unplug it) to cool the stock – cooling often takes 90 minutes, then get a big bowl, put a colander in it, dump out the ingredients into the colander and strain the soup. You can freeze the stock in quart containers – I skim the fat afterwards, when I thaw it – scrape the fat off just as it is starting to get soft – much easier. Take the solid contents of the colander and throw the whole mess out into doubled up plastic bags-discard where dogs and other animals won’t get it. OR, you can compost everything but the bones.
Jam Jar Vinaigrette
Next, find all the jam jars with most of the jam gone – use them to make great sweetened vinaigrette for your upcoming week’s salads (classic vinaigrette ratio is 2/3 oil, 1/3 vinegar plus some dijon – about 1 to 2 tsp – to bind the dressing together and give flavor – shake vigorously to emulsify.) Ditto with almost gone mayo, hummus, peanut butter and tahini jars, even unsweetened yogurt or the last bits of a commercial salad dressing you love can become a homemade salad dressing.
Eggs
Eggs – I hard boil any that I haven’t used that week – my kids like deviled eggs – I often substitute avocado for half the mayo. We can use up a lot of leftover eggs quite quickly by making up a batch. I also make frozen breakfast sandwiches – easiest way to cook the eggs is baking them – just drop each egg into the individual compartments of a well-greased, non-stick muffin tin – I often place on top of each egg a mix of the following: any leftover ham and cheese or salsa, or frozen spinach that I’ve thawed and squeezed to get rid of wateriness. I then bake the whole thing till the eggs are quite firm, pop them out and place them on toasted english muffins. I freeze them individually wrapped in wax paper so they can be thawed/heated by microwave – voila, great breakfasts and/or snacks for the following week.
As mentioned before, half a bottle of bbq sauce over leftover shredded chicken makes a perfectly decent fake pulled chicken. Salsa over cooked ground beef or shredded chicken makes for great easy tacos.
Chop old bread up into croutons and bake them or fry them – nice on top of salads and soups or as the basis for a panzanella salad, bread pudding or egg and bread frittata. Turn any leftover pasta or rice or potatoes into salads with cut up peppers, onions, celery, herbs and salad dressing- if you like an old fashioned taste, your jam vinaigrette can be made thicker with yogurt, mayo or a pureed avocado and used for these salads- add tuna or chopped chicken for a complete meal.
Science Technology Engineering Art and Math – I’ve lucked out – my eldest, who wrapped up school yesterday, loves to cook. Day 1 of No camp summer he has established as Pork Products Day and is busy crafting ribs, chops and tenderloin with a Gordon Ramsay Pork Ribs Recipe. With Ramsay being British, the recipe was all in metric adding an extra math challenge with the conversions.
Prep (tech and math)
I began my cooking career at about this age – I remember making the Blue New York Times Cookbook graham cracker hazelnut chocolate cake over and over till I perfected it. Somehow I wanted to whip out a one draft wonder for most of my academic assignments, but I was willing to spend hours remaking a cake till it was absolutely perfect – same is true with my son’s rib-prep.
Cooking Phase – art, engineering, tech
And finally, finished product – with YouTube and the Food Channel, presentation has become a much bigger thing than it was when I was starting out as a food hobbyist. A long time was spent plating this dish – definitely heavy on the art and engineering. Voila and Bon Appetite!
You know THAT person…the LocaBore – the one who picks through the scraps from the plates during a dinner party? The one who spend hours prepping their waste – sorting the vegetable matter for composting and then taking bones and meat fat out back to BURY in self-dug micro-pits that dot the backyard landscape — the pits that might break your ankle if you aren’t careful. Some of these extreme enviro-weenies are still enough in touch with the litigious reality of the suburbs that they have at least covered their meat holes with board and heavy rock – a strategy that also discourages fox and dog and possibly coyote from foraging on the tender morsels before the requisite 30 years of aging returns the meager nutrients back to the soil. You know this type, right? These are the friends that Nick and I like to call the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” locavores – those few radical “ultra-local” eaters whose hallmark is often prominent ownership of the cult back-to-the lander classic, the Humanure book (if you don’t know this one already, you may not have the stomach to learn…research at your own peril.) If you haven’t met someone like this, you obviously have not spent nearly enough time in Lincoln or Lexington or Marin.
It can be quite intimidating to make these folks’ acquaintance and even harder to maintain a friendship. No matter what small victory you may have in your quest for local healthy eating, they have done it all already — more AND better. You buy leeks at the farmers market, they already have them in their very own garden. You eat raw honey WITH the comb, they have an entire beekeeper’s outfit in the back of their shed and bee boxes generating artisanal honey in their clearing. (You must resist the temptation of asking whether you can borrow the LocaBore’s bee keeping outfit for Halloween next year – that request will trigger a whole LONG conversation about bee diseases and hive collapse – as if someone else, from some neighboring hive-owning home, might bump HIS bee suit into YOUR bee suit while out trick-or-treating and thereby cause an inadvertent but deadly cross-contamination bee suit disaster …. trust me on this one!)
If you are tired of being tweaked by the pontifications of your favorite LocaBore, there is a simple solution. And that, my friend, is a $2 basil plant from your local grocery store. You may notice a current that runs through every post in this blog: my caution precedes me and my impulse is to share each thought and idea with the admonition to START SLOWLY… merely dip your toe in to new experiences. EMBRACE your inner hesitancy. DO NOT tax yourself by jumping in whole hog. With irrational exuberance comes some very time consuming and costly mistakes. Remember: tentative hesitancy is what has kept your bloodline alive through famine, war, pestilence and wild bear attacks.
So, just get the 1 potted plant for your windowsill or counter top. The nice thing about a $2 basil plant is that it is meant to be used up – my polite way of saying that the intention is to KILL the basil plant over time – in fact I encourage you to kill it just BEFORE the moment that your lack of watering will have killed the plant anyway (N.B. I have been known to use a few “artisanally dried” i.e. DEAD basil leaves in a pinch.) Over time, use the delicious leaves whole in salads, chopped in salad dressings, ground into pesto, placed under the skin of a baking chicken, or shredded into a chiffonade and sprinkled over tomatoes and mozarella or in a tomato, goat cheese and basil panzanella salad – so easy! Then, when you’ve polished off the leaves, you can either use the stems to flavor a soup stock, or declare yourself complete and pitch the remnant into your compost or even into the farthest back garden where no one ever looks, if you don’t yet have a compost pile.* Then, when the resident LocaBore talks about his leeks, which are probably growing at least 20 FEET from his house, minimum, you can share that your garden is only 18 INCHES from your saucepan.
* PS: DO NOT …and I mean DO NOT EVER … ask your LocaBore friends about compost piles either. That is unless you want a dissertation-length lecture about dry and wet and layering and rain and sun and turning vs. not turning the compostable matter with a pitchfork. You will thank me for this advice … I promise…)
A friend who is studying to be a nutritionist and had been at JP+ (aka JuicePlus-a vitamin brand) advocate recently wrote to say that there is more to the story behind vitamin therapy when you consider what goes on with vitamin uptake at the celular level. I haven’t taken any nutrition classes, so I won’t make any comments other than to say you have to be careful not to overdo it or you may have reactions, particularly with other meds you may be taking, so keep your doctor informed. However, it is always amazing to me how frequently the vitamin fad of the month gets countered by further research – Vitamin E was all the rage a while back as was red wine and yet the medical community has backed off from each of these recommendations with caveats in recent years. Personally, I worry about mercury and heavy metals in fish oil – how do we KNOW that our fish oil pills are being tested appropriately for toxicity? What I do find when I read about vitamins is that it is fun and stimulating to learn more about the best food sources for the vitamins that are being touted. Face it, there are only so many yams you can eat on a busy day – waaaay harder to get beta carotene poisoning from a handful of yams. Plus, I’m no expert on what else is in a yam, but it is likely that you’ll ingest other unidentified chemical compounds that are also beneficial and possibly work synergystically with the beta-carotene. As I age and get more worried about the impact of diet on both myself and my family, I tend to look to vitamins in pill form as a kind of dictionary of compounds that I should be trying to get from my foods. I then try to work back to the easiest food source for that vitamin and eat more of the food than I may have been before. For instance – sweet potatoes for beta carotene – or carrots – sardines or low mercury tuna-usually that’s tuna fished from the Mediterranean, in glass jars if possible, for the benefits of fish oil – etc. My goal is to try to eat “medicinally” 2 meals per day, eating whatever I want the other meal and trying not to snack, which is my downfall. (RE: Snacks, did you know we are conditioned to snack before bed? Great WSJ article today on your bio clock: http://www.wsj.com/articles/your-bodys-witching-hours-1433198297)
This mode of thinking – where I “owe” my body 2 meals a day that are about health – is a tip of the hat to Mark Bittman’s idea of eat vegan till dinner, aka his VB6 program (read here for more info: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/vegan-before-dinnertime/). Not being vegan or even a vegetarian – I like protein sources like eggs and steak – I found his daytime choices not filling enough, but I did like his sentiment. What I took out of his writings was that we would be far healthier if we viewed food as both a nutritional fuel AND a pleasure source. The big issue I faced was that while Bittman, a restaurant reviewer and NYT reporter, needs to leave his dinnertime free to go to Spago or Nobu, I as a mom of 3 and part time worker needed to be more flexible with the timing of my pleasure to fuel ratio-based diet.
If it helps at all, here are some short cuts that work in my quest for the “nutritional fuel” piece of eating. Note that whenever I write about food, I suggest you try and find organic or locally grown options. HOWEVER, unless I specify organic, which I will do for the particularly “dirty” foods i.e. those where the grower is most likely to use heavy loads of toxic pesticides (NOTE here a great shortcut list for the Dirty 12 and the Clean 15: http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty_dozen_list.php), what I’ve found in my own life is that it is better to eat more vegetables and whole foods that are conventionally grown than to reduce your range of eating if “organic” seems too difficult.
1) Poached Eggs – I make up 10-12 of them at a time (putting a bit of vinegar in the boiling water and having a deep enough pan means they won’t spread as much or stick to the bottom) – remove with slotted spoon and drain them on paper towel. I poach them quite firm and store them in the fridge. Sliced, they can be reheated in the microwave. They will pop a bit so cover them and microwave 15 secs at a time as it doesn’t take much or reheat them in a small pan of boiling water. If cooked firm, they can be used for egg salad for the kids and serve as easy protein for breakfast lunch or dinner over greens or in a spinach and bacon salad or a Cobb salad for all of us. I find they last just fine for 48 hours in the fridge.
-Sweet potatoes/yams. My life changed forever when I started buying the really huge yams/sweet potatoes (note, the orange ones are usually yams, true sweet potatoes are typically cream color inside). You can microwave or bake a few yams easily. The revelation was when I went to a paleo-dieting friend and they’d SLICED their yams, skin and all:
You can slice them raw (harder to slice when raw so have a good knife or cleaver) and bake them – before you cook them add olive oil or butter, salt, pepper, cayenne, or maple syrup etc. Even easier is to bake or microwave them on the potato setting BEFORE slicing, seasoning them once they are cooked. Once in cooked slices, you can also easily dice the yam into cubes and fry them up into hash browns with just some chopped onions, garlic and peppers – delicious with the eggs you’ve made and unlike white potatoes, yams freeze nicely so you can freeze leftovers for future meals of yam hash.
Another way to improve your nutritional eating: any and all cruciferous vegetables – known for their high vitamin A carotenoids, vitamin C, folic acid, and fiber as well as Vitamin K, a potent anti-cancer agent, they are mostly the more bitter greens including: Arugula, Bok choy, Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Collard greens, Kale, Mustard greens, Radish and Watercress. Chopping these in the Cuisinart or with a big knife, solo or in combinations, and turning them into a slaw goes a long way towards upping your vitamin intake. The key is a great dressing that you leave on for 3-4 hours so that the rough texture softens. I recommend a purchased dressing you like – miso based is often nice as is tahini, or a homemade vinaigrette using an organic cider vinegar (cider vinegar may be quite healthy – read here to learn more: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/06/02/apple-cider-vinegar-hype.aspx) or organic lemon or lime takes little time and is tasty. Want to up your probiotic intake? Add yogurt to the dressing OR use just the watery whey that separates off the yogurt for fewer calories and a lighter taste – never throw away the whey – it is great way to get probiotics into kids who won’t eat yogurt as you can add it to most foods and they won’t notice. Like a sweeter taste? Add Craisins, or raisins or grated carrot (the shredder on your Cuisinart grates 5-6 carrots into loads of GORGEOUS shredded carrots) – to the mix. Want more body and chew – add chopped nuts or mushrooms. For a hot meal, I also stir fry the leftover shredded brassicas with sesame oil, red pepper, garlic onion and grated carrot – yum!
Finally, fish instead of fish oil for omegas. How to avoid the heavy metals? First, fish from the Mediterranean seems to be safer. Want to avoid BPA in the cans? I like tuna in a glass jar – often it comes flavored with olive oil, lemon and/or hot sauce. Here’s info on BPA free packaging: (http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/7-companies-you-can-trust-to-use-bpa-free-cans.html) Even lower in heavy metals are sardines and the Crown Prince brand now guarantees their cans are BPA free. While most of us don’t LOVE sardines, remember, you are eating medicinally and a few meals a week with a can of sardines added goes a long way towards upping your omegas in the proper ratio as well as all the calcium and magnesium you will get from those tiny bones. If you are really adventurous, anchovies make a nice salty addition too. Don’t like fish? There is always flax seed as long as you grind it since flax goes rancid quite quickly.
dispatchfromthecave 