Scallions and chives both pack nutritional punches, especially garlic chives. Put them into everything right at the end, just before serving, or mix them into burgers, throw them on soups and salads and into sandwiches. They are easy to grow in pots in your kitchen or close by in your garden. I have tons of organic onion chives (the tubular kind) so I suggest a chive exchange once they start growing in the spring.
Eat onions that make you cry
The chemicals that give strong onions their bite and fire are the most beneficial to our health. No wishywashywallawallas or vapidvidalias for us. So put on the goggles and attack! You can also cut the onions underwater or put some vinegar on your chopping board to reduce the fumes. Luckily, they are removed once you start to cook the onions, and cooked onions are just as healthy as raw, so make up batch of caramelized onions, put them on cookie trays in a thin layer, then break them into chunks and keep them frozen until you wish to thaw them for omelets or throw them into soups/stews.
Onion and garlic skins – really?
Turns out that the outsides of fruits and vegetables are pretty nutritious. Anti-oxidant phytochemicals concentrate at the surface to repel would-be attackers. This can be to a consumer’s benefit if we actually consume the skins and peels of said veggies. (It goes without saying that I recommend ORGANIC produce ONLY, and wash it well.) So onion and garlic skins are quite nutritious – this was news to me – but they are a bit weird and unpleasant to eat. You can simply toss them into your veggie stock pot to add their antioxidants to your soup stock, or crush them into a big tea ball/tie them in some muslin and throw them into soups or stews for easy retrieval. Since I use red onions mostly, this makes for quite a vibrantly colored stock. Woo hoo!
I keep a ziplock in my freezer where I toss all my veggie ends and once it is full, throw the whole thing into my crock pot for a while to make veggie stock. Throwing onion and garlic skins in there instead of the compost is simple. once the stock is made, then everything goes in to the compost anyway, but I get to consume the bionutrients in the stock.
Two food rules by Michael Pollan
# 13 Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle
# 14 Eat only foods that eventually rot.
Portland Water; Chlorine and Chloramination
From the Portland Water District: “This facility began treating water in February 1994 using ozone. Ozone is a powerful disinfectant that kills potentially harmful microorganisms and is 99.99% effective against viruses and Giardia. Treatment includes screening, ozonation, UV light treatment, chloramination, and corrosion control. Also as a result of a citizen referendum, fluoride is added to the water at the plant to promote dental health.”
So, the difference between chlorination (Cl) and chloramination (Cl-Am – my shorthand), is that Cl will dissipate from water left overnight on the counter, and that Cl-Am will not. At the levels used for disinfection of public water, the Cl-Am is not dangerous to humans, but apparently will kill fish in your aquarium. How comforting. Best way to remove it if you want: a water filter. Which then go into landfills. sigh.
Three food rules by Michael Pollan
#2: Don’t eat anything your (great)grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food (feel free to borrow a Mediterranean Grandmother)
#5: Avoid foods that have some sort of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients.
#9: Avoid food products with the word “Lite” or the terms “Low-fat” or “Non-fat” in their names (usually hugely over-processed)
Green tea with lemon
Green tea has a lot of antioxidants, but adding a squeeze of lemon to your tea will boost the bioavailability of the catechins even more. From Dr. Andrew Weil.
Black- Blue- and Raspberries – fresh vs cooked vs frozen.
All berries are wonderful raw. Interestingly (and thank goodness), Blueberries don’t lose too much of their antioxidant activity when they are cooked. Well, actually, some is lost, such as Vit C, but others such as quercitin increase in bioavailability after cooking – yay pies! Raspberries and blackberries however, retain more antioxidants when they are eaten fresh. Luckily, freezing all 3 types of berries don’t cause appreciable decline in antiox activity. Freeze them after picking on cookies sheets, then tumble them all into little ziplock bags. You just have to thaw them quickly. Toss the blueberries directly into something you are cooking, or quickly toss the rasp/blackberrybaggie into some warm water until they are thawed. Don’t let them sit around in the fridge to thaw. To cook or not to cook is of course dependent on the type of fruit/veggie and the cooking method. Some more berry lore.
Turmeric, Black pepper
So turmeric (that fabulously golden powder used in many East Indian dishes) has been touted as an excellent anti-inflammatory and has been implicated in decreasing risk for all sorts of things including arthritis, cancer and Alzheimers. However, what doesn’t seem to be common knowledge is that if it is mixed with a small amount of ground black pepper, it become about 2000X more bioavailable. The piperin in the black pepper inhibits the metabolization of the curcumin in the turmeric and allows it to get on with it’s anti-inflammatory activity. More info here: Article of interest. Most curry powders already have the pepper mixed with the turmeric. Also, curcumin is fat-soluble, so taking your turmeric with coconut oil or ghee, or another fat as well as black pepper is a winning combo. (Like making a curry: Ta Dah – food as medicine). Just turmeric capsules may not have any pepper, and likely no fat either, so you’d have to add some if you are taking just the capsules. Not much pepper is needed, less than a 1/4 t.
I have been experimenting with a delicious Golden Tea or Milk. Whole milk will provide the fat-solubization of the curcumin. recipe HERE. And a simple chicken curry HERE. (I’d add 2 teaspoons more turmeric, and use brown rice instead of white).
Resistant Starch (RS), and cooked n cooled potatoes and pasta
Starchy foods like pasta and potatoes contain a linear type of starch that we digest easily, causing a high glucose load and insulin response after a meal (high GI). When these two foods (rice and lentils too) are cooked then cooled, the starch reconfigures (a process called retrogradation) into a less digestible crystalline form called ‘resistant starch’ (RS) with a lower GI. RS passes through our small intestine, into the large, and feeds our gut bacteria which makes them happy. We absorb fewer glucose molecules at a time and thus have a lower insulin spike. Raw oats and (cooked) cannellini beans also contain a lot of RS. Here is a well researched webpage with deeper detail.
I have included recipes for a yummy potato/pasta/rice/lentil salad, a bean salad HERE and a very quick no-cook Oatmeal-nut-dried fruit-chocolate cookie bite HERE. (these are darn good, if I must say so say myself.)
Tomatoes – We like lycopene
Raw tomatoes are good for you (lotsa vit C), but cooked tomatoes are even more nutritious. After 30 minutes of simmering, the molecular trans- form of lycopene changes to cis-, a more more absorbable form. Lycopene is an even more potent antioxidant than vit C. This is why canned (picked at peak freshness and immediately cooked) tomato products are better for you than fresh, especially when they are not in season locally. Tomato paste is even more concentrated in lycopene. Cornell University research.