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Green Beans

grrenbean1
photo belongs to www.ShelleyGoldbeck.com

The lowly green bean, as a rule, is not a vegetable that inspires poetry. But it has many virtues that are virtually unknown or certainly unsung.

You can buy green beans but there is nothing compares to them just-picked from the garden! Green beans are easy to grow. After the last frost in the spring, simply sow them ½ inch deep and one to two inches apart. With water and warmth tiny plants appear within days. Magpies like just-sprouted bean seedlings so beware.

Within six weeks the plants are covered with tiny blossoms and bean pods appear a week or so later. The pods hide easily in the foliage so hunt carefully!

Green beans are best eaten when they are not too big, when the seeds are still small and the pod is tender. They are good raw, something I learned from my Grandtoys.

I like them steamed until tender and green, not too soft or cooked until they’re brown. They are best served with a tiny bit of oil: butter, olive oil, coconut oil or any nut oils are good choices. Many of the vitamins in green beans are fat-soluble. By eating them with healthy fats, you make it easier for your body to utilize those nutrients.

A friend of mine told me recently that they are really delicious roasted in a bit of oil and salted. I imagine them to be like edamame, only you can eat the pods! I will try them.

Green beans are also easily pickled. Choose long, mature pods. Stand them up in the jars, pour your pickling solution over them and process. In a few weeks you have crispy pickled beans.

I became attracted to green beans as a young adult riding the diet roller coaster. Calorie counting was an integral part of my early efforts to manage my weight. As it happens, green beans are very low in calories, with just 31 calories per 100 grams or about 44 per cup.

grrenbean2
photo belongs to www.ShelleyGoldbeck.com

Green beans contain substantial amounts of Vitamins A, B-6, C and K and minerals, including calcium, iron, potassium, silicon, and magnesium. They are a good source of fibre and contain healthy plant-based protein. Recent studies highlight the antioxidant capacity of green beans.

Eating green beans, preferably fresh, but as an alternative, frozen, can enhance your cardiovascular health, help keep your weight down, and help you manage blood sugar.

To me, they taste like summer.

 

 

If you want to learn more about all the nutrients found in green beans check out this site:

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=134

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Seasonal Eating

summereating
Photo owned by www.shelleygoldbeck.com

A healthy way to live is to eat “in season”.

That means eating foods that are at their peak of flavour and nutrients. This often happens only once per year, for a very short time, especially if eating locally is the goal.

Eating in season is also economical. Whatever is in season is usually cheaper than it will be any other time of the year.

In my opinion, food eaten in season tastes better. It’s usually fresher and more nutritious.

The best season of our food year is imminent. It starts with spring baby lettuce, baby spinach leaves, green onions and crisp, tangy radishes. All these are easy to grow at home. They like cool weather and can be seeded in Calgary anytime after mid-April.

If you’re really lucky, you have an asparagus patch. Their tender shoots magically appear overnight. Raw, they remind me of fresh raw peas. Lightly steamed until al dente and brushed with a teaspoon of butter or olive oil, they have their own unique flavour. Very yummy!

I get really excited about spring fruits. Early rhubarb always reminds me of my grandma, who made rhubarb “pudding”, a yellow cake batter poured over a pan of chopped rhubarb, baked and served warm with ice-cream.

Strawberries in June embody the spirit of summer! A touch of honey. A bit of cream. Fit for a queen!

The first cherries arrive in June. When their skins are crunchy and their flesh, sweet and juicy, I can eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I often do!

Picking berries was an integral part of my childhood summers. My siblings and I would mount our bikes or horses with our ice-cream pails and larger buckets. We headed home when the buckets were full. It could take all day: we spent more than half our time cramming berries into our mouths!

When the first peas are ready, I am at peace in the garden, splitting the warm pods to discover the sweet treasures inside. The best carrots are the true babies, (not the peeled to shape varieties) pulled, wiped on my pants, and crunched, soil granules and all, right there in the garden.

And potatoes! New potatoes stolen from the periphery of the plant are creamy and sweet. If I never ate another mature potato I wouldn’t care but new potatoes are a completely different animal!

In the old neighbourhood where I live many yards have raspberry patches. Kids love to stick a berry on each of their ten little fingers, wiggle them around, and then devour them one by one.

As summer wanes plums and peaches come into season. More feasting on fruit. And what to do with all that zucchini? (I like them baby so I don’t have that problem).

Alas! Our season is short! By fall, some vegetables are just coming into their prime. The brassicas like cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, all like cool weather. Turnips and parsnips are sweeter if they’ve experienced frost.

Eating in season will bolster the total nutrients you take in, reduce your carbon footprint since it’s easier to eat locally, and likely give your pocketbook a break. I highly recommend it.

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Green

GreenMarch 17, 2014

On the one day of the year that we all claim to have a little Irish in us, I urge you to look at “Green” differently.

Turn away from green beer or cupcakes adorned with great gobs of greasy green icing.

Turn instead to spring greens, perhaps blended into a smoothie or sprinkled with lemon juice and olive oil and eaten with a fork.

Infusing food with green dye may seem like fun, but the truth is most food colouring is toxic, especially blue and yellow food dyes. Green, being a combination of these two, could be the most toxic.

What do food dyes do to the human body? Nobody knows for sure.

That’s right! Most food colouring is considered GRAS, Generally Recognized as Safe, and therefore has not been extensively tested, along with the other tens of thousands of chemicals lurking in our food supply.

Basically this means that until a problem is demonstrated, such substances remain in our food, causing unknown effects and contraindications with all the other foreign compounds in our bodies.

Because of the dearth of testing, our clues are mostly anecdotal. There is evidence that food colouring and other chemicals added to food contribute to cancer and can adversely affect children with ADHD tendencies.

My first daughter exhibited signs of ADHD as a toddler so I educated myself on the possible causes. I began a habit of preparing most of our food so I could control these poisons.

Of course it’s impossible to know if that made any difference but my daughter managed to survive without taking brain-numbing ADHD medications.

Is one glass of green beer or one green cupcake going to kill you? Probably not.

But our bodies are so bombarded with toxic chemicals that any tiny steps we can take to support them are worth it.

Substituting a green smoothie for a green beer is (at least) two steps: “not ingesting” the food dye is one step (or the alcohol, another step?) and “ingesting the whole real food” in your green smoothie is the other.

I urge you not to leave your health to the “Luck o’ the Irish” but take control by choosing the right green, not just on St. Patrick’s Day, but every day.

Smoothie resource:

http://www.thevegansorceress.com/smoothies1/01slfjphrkhdxm1hpzpdxyyixd4r00

Make your own food colouring:

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/8-ways-to-make-organic-diy-food-coloring.html

Mana Boosting Green Smoothie Recipe

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The Last Soup Recipe You’ll Ever Need

 

soupLearning to make homemade soups is one of the best investments in your healthy eating strategy. Soup making is more of an art than a science: there is no one right way to make a good soup. Yet many people are afraid to even try to make it.

 

Soup is comfort food. Chicken noodle soup alone is famous for its ability to soothe the sick.

 

Soup is filling. In fact, soup can be an effective weight loss tool as long as it’s made with whole real ingredients and not popping out of a can.

 

Soup starts with broth. Broth should be homemade because of the unnecessary chemicals and lack of real nutrients in packaged or canned broth.

 

Broth is easy to make. Simply submerge bones (beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, (I’ve even used ham bone)) in water, add sea salt, two TBSP vinegar (to leach the calcium from the bones into the broth) and boil for several hours.

 

You can add vegetable scraps and water from cooking vegetables. (Caution: Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts contain sulphur, which can make your broth bitter. But if I’m making cauliflower soup or broccoli soup, I use them). Leftover gravy goes into the broth pot and I usually add a couple bay leaves. I have also tossed in leftover mashed potatoes.

 

I freeze my broth in two-cup containers so I am always ready to make a soup. Sometimes I boil the bones again, especially a big turkey carcass. The second batch is not as strong but still tasty.

 

A good friend told me the one ingredient required for good soup is butter. I agree butter is nice but with dairy-free individuals in my family, I’ve had to try other oils. I have found equal success with coconut oil and olive oil.

 

Now for the recipe: Sautee a small chopped onion, two stalks chopped celery, a chopped carrot and a clove of minced garlic in your oil until the onion is translucent and the celery begins to soften. Add salt and pepper.

 

Now comes the fun part. With your broth and this soup starter you can make almost any flavour of soup you want.

 

The other day I had some leftover carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes along with some beef gravy. I began with my soup starter, heated the veggies, then pureed it with my stick blender. Then back into the pot to warm up. Served with popcorn (as crackers), my Root Soup was a hit with my granddaughters.

 

I love to make squash soup with fresh dill or basil, especially if I have turkey broth, my favourite. Sometimes I throw in green beans for colour, crunch and variety.

 

In the fall I make borscht by adding beets, cabbage, potatoes and dill to my basic beef broth soup recipe.

 

I like to make chicken/turkey noodle/vegetable soup, loaded with stuff so it eats like a meal. One day I made oxtail and butternut squash soup. Very yummy.

 

Mushroom soup is easy to make by adding a couple cups of various chopped mushrooms and sautéing before adding broth. Puree, a few spices and finished with cream: gourmet all the way!

 

My favourite soup is one I make by first taking a trip through the garden with my bowl. Baby carrots, fresh zucchini, green beans or summer peas lightly steeped in my soup starter make a lovely summer supper.

 

I make seafood chowder by adding bacon, potatoes, clams, shrimp, and other fish to the pot. Top it off with some red peppers, frozen peas, and cream (or coconut milk) moments before serving and we’ve got a hearty meal.

 

I pour hot leftover soup into jars and refrigerate. They keep for a long time (if they are sealed hot) and make lovely quick lunches and gifts to the sick and shut-in, all without BPA, table salt, and other harmful chemicals. To keep longer, freeze soup. It’s best if used within three months.

 

Warning: once you begin making your own soups you will never again be able to eat soup from a can or eat it in a restaurant. You will be able to smell the chemicals; it will taste too salty yet seem tasteless.

 

Making your own soup means you are in charge of the ingredients. You control the salt and sugar. (Sugar in soup? The canned stuff has it!) You control the kind and amount of fat. You control how long the vegetables cook. (Ideally they are not overcooked).

 

Most importantly, homemade soups have nutrients that canned and packaged soups simply don’t have. We eat to provide our bodies with nourishment so why would we eat soup from a can?

 

If you’re on a budget (and who isn’t?) homemade soup can be a very economical way to feed yourself and your family.

 

I hope you’ll try to make some soup. If you do, be sure to tell me about it.

 

As always I urge you to eat The Food. The Whole Food.  And Nothing but the Food.

 

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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.

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Canola Con: 7 reasons to Avoid Canola Oil

golden-canola-field-with-blue-sky-1245845-mCanola Oil is often touted as a healthy oil. This is one of the great health myths perpetuated by vested interests.

Personally, I avoid canola oil. I don’t cook with it and I don’t buy anything that lists canola as an ingredient. This policy eliminates much processed and restaurant food from my diet. I don’t even give canola to my dog. (She gets olive oil, fish oil and coconut oil.)

Here are seven reasons to avoid canola oil.

1. Canola is a genetically modified organism. Canola is almost always genetically modified. GMO may seem like a smart idea but there is evidence that splicing genes from unrelated species could have disastrous effects on our health.

Little testing has been done. GMO companies’ tests rarely last longer than three months. GMOs and their effects are forever in the system, our bodies, as well as the food system. We’re all supposed to assume that nothing is amiss, that GMOs are no different from other foods. If that’s true why do they grant patents on GMOs?

I know that the government, big agriculture and the big food companies cannot be entrusted with my health. So to be prudent, I avoid GMOs as much as possible.  (This is why I want GMO labeling).

See related article: http://wakeup-world.com/2013/08/28/13-lies-about-gmos-and-gmo-labeling

2. Canola contributes to the poisoning of our environment. Canola is highly engineered so it can withstand repeated dousings of glyphosate (RoundUp), sprayed on canola and other crops to kill weeds.

Glyphosate is showing up in water supplies at several times the “safe” level. In fact, California recently raised the official “safe” level of glyphosate exposure, from parts per billion to parts per million (a thousand-fold increase!) not because it’s safe but because that’s what’s in the water and they really don’t know what to do about it!

RoundUp, a Monsanto product, is detectable in soil, water and food virtually everywhere on earth. None of us can escape this film of poison draped over the planet.

Glyphosate, in parts per billion (ppb) is known to alter DNA in humans. With RoundUp levels now measured and supposedly regulated in ppm we need to brace ourselves for the mass mutation of the human species. We wonder why cancer rates have burgeoned!

In addition to DNA damage, RoundUp’s ubiquitous reach and overuse has spawned superweeds, organisms that no longer respond to normal applications of RoundUp, requiring ever-increasing doses of this deadly drug.

I prefer not to be responsible for the pollution of our water, air and soil. I prefer not to contribute to cancer via my consumption of products that are known carcinogens. One way is to avoid products that are routinely raised with RoundUp. Canola is one of the biggest offenders.

See related articles: http://www.naturalnews.com/040808_glyphosate_breast_cancer_drinking_water.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/041464_glyphosate_monsanto_toxicity.html

3. Canola is actually inedible. Canola started out as rapeseed. Rapeseed oil was used as fuel in diesel engines. In fact, Rudolph Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine used vegetable oil diesel (often made from rapeseed) long before petroleum-based diesel became commonly used as fuel.

4. Canola is processed with dry-cleaning fluid. Someone got the brilliant idea that with modification, canola could serve a whole new market as a food product. Early canola oil used to stink like rotten fish. I remember my mom trying it once and the smell of it cooking gagged us.

To remove the stench, one of the required processes is “washing” canola oil in hexane, a solvent used in the dry cleaning business. Personally I am suspect of food products that are exposed to solvents and other harsh chemicals. I was taught as a child that solvents are generally unsafe to consume. I can barely stand the smell of freshly dry-cleaned clothes; how could I possibly eat them?

5. Canola oil is not organic! Don’t be fooled by the labels. Canola oil is never organic. It is a genetically modified organism, raised with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and processed with dry cleaning fluid. Every one of those disqualifies it as an organic food.

6. Canola oil tastes terrible. Hexane may remove the stench but the bitter taste remains. I’ve accidently bought hummus made with canola instead of olive oil and it’s bitter and inedible. I turned a friend onto baklava, usually made with butter and/or olive oil.  She bought some that was bitter and disgusting and couldn’t understand why. The label revealed it was made with canola.

7. Canola oil is not as healthy as they claim. The health claims pertaining to canola are based largely on the theory that saturated fats cause heart disease, which we must question. Per capita consumption of saturated fats is down over 30 years yet heart disease ravages our society.

Canola does contain Omega 3 and 6 fats, in a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio, depending on processing method and the source of information. The recommended ratio of omega 3 to 6 fatty acids is one to one.  The average North American has a 1:20 ratio! Too many Omega 6 fatty acids cause inflammation, which is implicated in many modern chronic illnesses. While canola can help balance too many omega 6 fats, I prefer to get my Omega 3’s from other sources.

Canola has a high flash point making it popular for deep-frying, which is dangerous for one’s health. The frying of proteins and carbohydrates in fats creates many carcinogens and contributes to obesity and heart disease.

Admittedly, there is nothing prettier than driving through a patchwork quilt of crops emboldened by brilliant yellow fields of canola. So many farmers grow this crop that canola fields in bloom are almost synonymous with being a farmer on the Canadian prairie. Unfortunately hollow health claims cannot change the fact that canola, far from being a health food, is actually an Unfood.

 

A Google search of Omega Fatty Acids or Omega Oils reveals many interesting and educational sites. Here are a few I found.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratio_of_fatty_acids_in_different_foods

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid

http://omega6.wellwise.org/omega-6-omega-3-ratio

http://chriskresser.com/how-too-much-omega-6-and-not-enough-omega-3-is-making-us-sick