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.

Chickpeas: Many reasons to include these little legumes in your diet

chickpeasCultivated for as many as 7500 years, chickpeas or garbanzo beans are a staple in Mediterranean diets. In the past few decades they have become widely known in North Americans’ diets, invading 17% of kitchens.

Chickpeas are prized for their high protein content, having nearly 9% protein. They are good sources of calcium, zinc, magnesium, and several B vitamins. In fact a 100 gram serving contains 43% of the RDA of folate, a precursor to folic acid, vital for many functions, including fetal development.

Chickpeas can be cooked and eaten cold in salads, ground into flour, cooked in stews, ground, formed into balls and deep fried as falafel. Chickpeas are prevalent in Indian cuisine where the leaves are also eaten as green salads.

Hummus is the Arabic word for chickpeas, which are cooked, ground and mixed with tahini (ground sesame seeds) to form hummus, the dip/spread. Chickpeas are also roasted, spiced and eaten as snacks. Some varieties can even be popped like popcorn.

Chickpeas are high in fibre, low in fat and have very little taste of their own, making them ideal for “carrying” other flavours. Their high protein content makes them ideal for vegans, vegetarians, and even omnivores.

Recent studies have shown that garbanzo bean fiber can be metabolized by bacteria in the colon to produce relatively large amounts of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which provide fuel to the cells that line the intestinal wall.

Chickpeas contain antioxidants and are known to support the digestive system, reduce cardiovascular risks, regulate blood sugar, (preventing diabetes), and increase satiety and reduce overeating.

In short, finding ways to incorporate chickpeas into your diet is a smart way to bolster your health.

 

Here is my recipe for Hummus

Here is a recipe for Roasted Chickpeas: http://www.steamykitchen.com/10725-crispy-roasted-chickpeas-garbanzo-beans.html

Other chickpea recipes:

http://www.canadianliving.com/recipe-directory/main_ingredient/chickpeas.php

 

Sources for this article include:

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=58

Wikipedia

Natural News