Home-Grown Tomatoes

photo belongs to www.ShelleyGoldbeck.com
photo belongs to www.ShelleyGoldbeck.com

“The only things that money can’t buy are love and home-grown tomatoes.”

I heard this in a song last week and I believe it to be true.

There is nothing like the taste of home-grown tomatoes. The tomatoes we get in the stores are mere thick-skinned, tasteless, mealy, red orbs, even when we pay $4 per pound for the privilege of buying them “on the vine”. They’re designed to look pretty in the supermarket, all the same size and shape, and thick-skinned to survive travelling the globe.

Many Calgary gardeners picked bushels of green tomatoes off their plants prior to the first snow of the season, the summer season! We got several inches from September 8 to 11,

photo courtesy of Joyce Smith
photo courtesy of Joyce Smith

devastating our city’s mature deciduous trees.

I simply covered my tomatoes and prayed. They were late starting and had just begun looking promising after six weeks of decent summer weather. I thought we’d get a skiff of snow, some frost and then I’d uncover them and they would flourish in our two additional months of summer. Dreamer!

Almost a week later I have yet to uncover them. The snow was followed by several nights of serious frost. I’m frankly, scared to look.

For those who picked them all, here are some tips for getting the most out of your home-grown tomatoes.

  • Sort them. I put them one layer deep, not touching each other, in stackable boxes in a cool dark place. I tend to put the larger tomatoes together and the cherries, grapes and other minis together.
  • Check often. Tomatoes can ripen overnight, it seems. One day there are none. The next, there are too many to reasonably consume.
  • Eat them. In tomato season, I serve sliced tomatoes at almost every meal. They provide enzymes, vitamin C, lycopene, and taste so wonderful! A fabulous dish is tomato soup (see recipe) made with home-grown tomatoes. You’ll never go back to the canned stuff.
  • Freeze them. When the ripening tomatoes exceed our ability to consume them, I wash and dry the excess, pop them whole into freezer bags and freeze. Then when I need canned tomatoes for a soup, stew, or other dish, I simply run the frozen tomatoes under hot water. The skins peel right off and I throw the tomatoes into the pot, chopped or not. As canned tomatoes are quite salty, I usually add salt to the dish. Freezing is so much easier than canning tomatoes, less labour, heat, and electricity. I can use just one tomato or a number. (When I open a can, I have to use them all!) I rarely buy canned tomatoes: even the organic ones come in plastic lined tins, a source of toxins.
  • Share them! Non-gardeners have no idea how wonderful home-grown tomatoes taste. If you share this “candy*” with them, you might motivate them grow their own tomatoes.
photo belongs to www.ShelleyGoldbeck.com
photo belongs to www.ShelleyGoldbeck.com

It seems to me there would be more of the other thing money can’t buy, love, if more people knew the joy of home-grown tomatoes.

*That’s what my friend called them to get her reluctant Grandtoy to try her home-grown tomatoes. Grandtoy agreed and ate more!

Pantry Basics: Real Ingredients for cooking success

pantryIf diets don’t work, what ARE we supposed to eat?

The answer is simple.

Whole. Real. Food.

Prepared with human hands.

With the intent to nourish.

If you’re accustomed to eating out of a box, preparing food can be daunting. I suggest cooking classes, tutoring from a chef or a good cook you know or even watching people cook on TV or You Tube.

Cooking isn’t even the best description of the process. Ideally half your diet comes from raw foods. I generally begin my day with fruit. I picked that up from the Diamonds, authors of Fit for Life. It works for me.

Fruit is simple to prepare. It often comes with its own package/protection so it’s easy to carry. Most fruit can be eaten out of hand, with no cutting. Even though some fruit requires cutting, that’s usually the end of the preparation.

Vegetables are also an important part of your raw food intake. That’s easy too. Salads are easy to make. Wash veggies; chop veggies; toss veggies.  To save time and effort tossing, you can make platters of veggies for dipping. Making fresh dips is easy. Throw stuff in blender; blend; dip veggies in dip. All easy.

If you decide you want cooked veggies, there is another step: put in pot; steam. None of this is hard.

Of course you can juice all these fruits and veggies, but I’m pretty lazy about cleaning the juicer so I just eat the whole fruit and the whole vegetables. Also easy.

To eat healthy, it helps to start with a pantry of essentials. Over the years my pantry has changed considerably. I gradually shed the processed unfoods and replaced them with real ingredients that show themselves useful in many recipes.

Here are some of my pantry essentials and what I do with them:

  1. Lemons: I drink lemon water in the mornings to prime my digestive system. Lemon is an ingredient in my favourite salad dressings and veggie dips: hummus, babaganouj, and guacamole. Lemon complements lamb and fish.
  2. Garlic: in salad dressings, soups, stews, main dishes, spaghetti sauce; roasted with crackers and veggies; raw, sliced as medicine for warding off colds or poultice for healing wounds.
  3. Onions: in some form in almost all salads and main dishes. Green, red, white and yellow onions. Easy to grow.
  4. Olive oil, extra virgin: for salad dressings, dips, sautéing (at low temps). Buy from reputable company as olive oil is often diluted with cheaper oils. It should harden when refrigerated.
  5. Coconut oil, extra virgin: use for frying, baking oven fries, in place of butter or shortening in any recipe. Also use it for skin/hair, and teeth (oil pulling).
  6. Greens and Herbs, variety: spinach, arugula, mesclun (mixed greens), kale, baby lettuces, red leaf, green leaf, butter and romaine lettuces, fresh parsley, basil, oregano, mint. They all add crunch, enzymes and vital nutrients to any dish.
  7. Other fresh veggies: mushrooms, celery, carrots, with garlic and onion form the base of many soups, stews and main dishes. Broccoli, turnip, tomato, cauliflower, asparagus, cabbage are other favourites. I especially seek out local seasonal vegetables.
  8. Fruit, variety. Bananas are the perfect fast food. “An apple a day…” is proven to be more than just a nice quote. Organic berries are some of the world’s most nutritious foods and can be incorporated into any meal in any course.
  9. Avocado: great source of healthy fat. I use in guacamole, salads and desserts like “chocomole” See link.
  10.  Nuts and nut milk. Use raw cashews to thicken salad dressings, desserts and non-  dairy sauces. Nuts transform gluten-free desserts. Nut milk is a great dairy substitute that serves well in most recipes that call for milk.

By no means is this list exhaustive but most of these ingredients are valuable in my kitchen because they serve many purposes. I don’t have room in my small kitchen for too many one trick ponies.

I also must have in my kitchen at least one Aloe Vera plant, vital for treating burns. I must have baking soda, which I use to clean pots and pans and sinks, to prevent boiling eggs from cracking, and to brush my teeth. Vinegar is another multi purpose item in my pantry, mostly for cleaning inexpensively and safely.

Banishing all packaged food from your pantry might be too big a step for you. I certainly didn’t purge my pantry overnight. After decades of conscious purging, there are still a few items that are yet to be banished.

I suggest working on one thing at a time. When you run out of something, replace it with something from this list. For example when your cooking oil runs out, replace it with olive and/or coconut oil. When your salad dressings are gone, start making your own.

By taking these small steps eventually your pantry will serve your goal of eating for optimum health.

Rah! Rah! RAW! Updated July 2013

rawfoodRaw Food, that is.

Incorporating more raw food into your diet is one of the best moves you can make towards optimum health. It’s not necessary to toss out your stove to enjoy the benefits of eating raw foods, simply add more of them to each meal.

Why raw?

Raw food is “living food”. As opposed to dead foods, (anything that is processed and/or cooked), living foods still have their enzymes intact. Enzymes are catalysts for every function of the body from blinking to breathing.

Cooking also destroys food’s naturally occurring vitamins and strips away most antioxidants. (One exception is that cooked tomatoes have more lycopene, a nutrient known to prevent prostate cancer, than raw tomatoes). Our bodies were designed to eat primarily raw foods and many of our modern diseases can be controlled or eliminated with a raw food diet.

I first became aware of the benefits of eating living foods about 30 years ago. When planning the “real estate” of my plate, I strive to ensure at least 2/3 is plant based and of that, at least half is raw. Lately I’ve worked at increasing the ratio of raw to cooked foods based on the miracles eating raw has brought to others.

A few years ago a friend of mine lost his sister to cancer. A cleaner in the hospital where his sister breathed her last breathe had gotten acquainted with the family over the course of her illness and suggested that her cancer could have been prevented with a raw food diet. My friend was intrigued and bought the book the woman had recommended. He began eating raw and within about two weeks he noticed his asthma was gone. He no longer needed medication that he had taken nearly his entire life, over 50 years.

There are many cases of diabetes retreating from a raw food diet. Drew Carey of the Price is Right has reportedly cured his diabetes and lost significant pounds by eating raw.  Mike Adams, founder of the web site Natural News (which has over 100 raw food articles) cured his pre-diabetic condition by eating a diet that is 60 to 90% raw. Unfortunately, most doctors believe diabetes is incurable and must be treated with expensive medications.

One of my daughters has struggled with her weight since she was a teenager, despite working out religiously and eating “healthy”. When she began eating a primarily raw food diet she miraculously went from a size 12 to a six and for the first time in years, her stomach doesn’t hurt whenever she eats. She reports having more energy and even though it takes some extra effort to seek raw food, she vows she will never go back.

The main benefits of eating raw include:

#1 More energy. The body spends less energy digesting food and the aforementioned enzymes are not destroyed, adding to one’s vitality.

#2 Elimination is drastically improved on a raw diet. A properly functioning digestive system is vital to maintaining optimal health.

#3 More time: it takes less time to prepare raw food (once you know some of the tricks) and people on raw food diets often report that they require less sleep.

#4 Weight loss: 82.5% of people who switched to raw food diets reported losing weight.

#5 Mental Health: 87.5% of raw “foodies” report improved mental health in areas such as optimism, memory, focus, patience, and even creativity, without the dreadful side effects of anti-depressants

#6 Lowered cardiovascular disease, including lowered cholesterol and triglycerides.  C-reactive protein, an inflammatory molecule linked to heart disease, diabetes and other chronic disease is also lowered with raw food.

#7 Improved menstrual cycles; stress reduction, reduced breast and prostate cancers.

Studies show that cooked foods increase our white blood cell activity, essentially meaning our bodies see cooked food as invaders. This explains why many “dis-eases” can be treated by switching to a raw food diet.

It’s not difficult to increase your raw food consumption. An easy way is to eat fruit for breakfast.  My favourite breakfast is a sliced banana or two with some berries and/or a sliced peach with a splash of coconut milk. If you eat enough fruit, it will get you through the morning. Fruit is also a good snack anytime of day.

Another great way to increase your raw food intake is to eat salads. They don’t have to be the standard lettuce and tomato salad. You can literally turn any veggies into a satisfying meal. I invented a salad a couple years ago that is a summer favourite of mine and it has no lettuce in it at all.  See Nasturtium Salad.

Raw foods can also be added to cooked foods. A baked potato can be topped with any number of chopped raw veggies, including cabbage, broccoli, onions, and/or tomatoes.

I have attended a number of raw food workshops given by Afke Zonderland and sponsored by a local health food store, Amaranth Whole Foods Market. Afke is a marvelous woman who showed us how to make Walnut-Zucchini Crackers and some fabulous dairy-free dips.

She made a sweet potato and celery soup with cooked sweet potatoes and served it warm. I liked that she wasn’t a raw food “purist”: she argued that after a day on the ski hill she didn’t want to eat something cold and that the idea is to eat as many raw foods as possible but not be militant about it.

Afke is all about spreading the message of healthy eating. She has dozens of recipes on her website at www.foodsalive.ca. Not all her recipes are completely raw but they all incorporate some raw elements, which is really the point. She also recommended David Wolfe’s book Superfoods. His web site is www.DavidWolfe.com. I have included more resources below.

I encourage you to take small steps towards incorporating more living food into your diet. By eating less dead food, you are sure to enjoy some of the benefits without having to diet (aka, “suffer”!

Rah! Rah! Raw!

Sources:

www.NaturalNews.com has dozens of Articles on raw food including: http://www.NaturalNews.com/z030137_lifestyle_health.html

http://altmedicine.about.com/od/pop…

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content…

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/diabetes/…

http://www.iowasource.com/food/lenk…

http://www.google.com search Raw Food for tons more resources.