Kefir is a special type of fermented milk. Only 1 Tbsp. a day delivers all the good bacteria you need. 5 billion. I’m not sure what the going levels are, but that seems like a lot. And some of these nutrients are not available from any other source, and will disappear without a daily top-up.

I once thought Kefir was the next level of buttermilk, just a yogurt-like fermented milk product. It is actually far more than that, in its history, production, and nutrition. The difference between Kefir and yogurt is well-described here, at Body Ecology.

Does anyone remember reading about those communities in Russia where people live to be 110? In the news articles, drinking Kefir each day was stated as the reason for this healthy longevity.

Kefir begins as fermented milk but once combined with particular bacteria and yeast, it becomes a living, dividing entity known as kefir grains. The history of this fascinating food is here. Sure enough, my container says “probiotic fermented milk made from authentic kefir grains from the Caucasus in Russia”. Of course, you probably only go to Russia the one time. After that, it’s self-perpetuating like sourdough.

I buy the organic version. It was explained to me that in regular milk products, cows are fed antibiotics. These make their way into the milk and kill enough good bacteria that the yogurt won’t set. This is why they add gelatin. Organic dairy products would have no antibiotic exposure so the good bacteria levels are kept at a maximum.

I love all the yogurts made by the Liberte company in Quebec. It really is hard to stop eating them till the tub is empty. Their Kefir is equally great, though it is a learned taste.  At the bottom of the home page is a link to USA products, or  here.

The US page is very comprehensive, but doesn’t appear to include Kefir. If you ask, it will happen. The link to the US site is here.

I don’t for a moment buy into the marketing concept that younger is better, or that aging is bad. I most definitely do line up with the belief that healthier is better. Not the same thing. I think this is something we should be doing, with a big long-term health payoff.

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© 2007–2010, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Rosalie is the mango queen.  A Florida resident, she won a prize at Fairchild Tropical Gardens big Mango Day for her Mango Chutney with Coconut Rum.

Rosalie was one of the first women to communicate with me regularly on this website. I’ve been grateful for the many virtual friends I’ve found, and to Rosalie for showing me how easily and comfortably it was possible.

I’m also grateful to anyone who reduces my workload. First, she sent me this fabulous recipe in a format that I don’t have to recopy. It would take away its obvious standing as a favorite if I retyped it. Who can recall where this well-used recipe originated?  It may have been snipped from the Miami Herald years ago.

Every day this week, as I’ve dragged myself through the door, with a long list still to get done that day, the reality of our entire month, I’ve been thinking about the hot bowl of Chicken Chowder I’d be eating very soon. It’s substantial and filling but not heavy. I love the visual simplicity, the digestive simplicity, the time and money ease.

For once, I barely altered a recipe. I chopped in a bunch of chives because I forgot to buy parsley, and some yellow pepper. I added a can of Romano beans.

It is simple and fabulous. In a month of heavy, complicated, demanding, salty, expensive, calorie-burdened food, this is a blessing of a different kind.

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© 2007–2009, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

I bought a cabbage the size of a pumpkin for 99 cents and made cabbage soup. The house is fragrant with baked squash and apple pie. Truly, I could sometimes fall on my knees in gratitude to have been so blessed.

On Sunday, the oven goes on at noon, after workout and lunch. It sees a steady stream of food go in and out of its front door all afternoon. It warms the house and I don’t have to cook for days. If I’m going to peel one onion, I may as well peel 6. The kitchen counter is a balancing act of roasted and baked food. In the tin foil is a pan of beets. I can never understand boiling a root vegetable when roasting is so fantastic and easy. Wrap a bunch of them, unpeeled, in foil. In the oven for 1-2 hours, cool them, peel them, taste so much richer and sweeter. Throw in a medley of different ones, even better.

I’m on a pumpkin kick. Not Pumpkin Pie Filling, oh never. Just E.D. Smith Pure Pumpkin in cans. At our stores, it’s on the shelf beside the pie filling. Maybe your store has the squash/pumpkin combo, and it would work just as well.

Yellow vegetables take a little more work to figure in to every day. I put a plop in lentil or bean soup.

But my favorite thing is this bread . I make it 2 loaves at a time so I can just use 1 whole can of pumpkin. I added  millet and wheat bran to this one. Every loaf’s a new adventure.

Ingredients

• 5 small or 4 larger bananas, mashed
• 1 can pure pumpkin, the big can, 796ml/28oz
• 3/4 c brown sugar
• 1/2c honey (I often leave this out if it’s for the family; they won’t know if you don’t tell them, my whole philosophy to cooking, and perhaps a good title for that cookbook we’re all going to collaborate on)
• 1/2 c oil, I use a canola/olive blend
• 4 eggs
• 5 c spelt flour (or whatever flour)
• 2 t b pdr
• 2 t b soda
• salt if you want to; I don’t cook with it myself
• 4 t pumpkin pie spice
• 2 t cinnamon
• anything you’re trying to use up; flax, wheat germ, the cereal your kids forced you to buy and wouldn’t eat (I’m presently adding 3c of Bran Flakes to this recipe and you can’t taste it; I would not add Honeycomb or Count Chocula, but it’s quite forgiving)

Method

You know already. Fling it all in a bowl, stir till you figure it’s stirred enough or somebody needs you for something. I make a child stand there and stir while I add ingredients over their shoulder. When they whine that it’s too hard to stir, you’re pretty well done. 325, 1 hour.

Pour into 2 waxed-paper lined (if you want to ) loaf pans.

My friend makes quick breads by brushing butter on the inside of the pan and sprinkling/coating with flax seed. It’s really good.

I love it with honey.

Love it with soup.

Love it with this ED Smith More Fruit Cherry Blueberry Jam, which I can no longer buy because I have a little problem with it.

Since no visit with me is complete without some talk of colour, visit 12 Blueprints and see what happens to the True Summer base when you blend in a touch of Spring, in Sonja Is A Light Summer. Colour is so deeply embedded in human psychology that we feel it more than we see it. Nobody is impervious to it but not everyone can explain their reactions. Watch what happens when you  take a woman who hasn’t been a student for several years and has decided to understand how to buy clothes and makeup that let her feel like her best self, in Pam Is A Dark Winter.

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© 2007–2009, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Not only do I look for recipes that take me less than 15 minutes, and preferably that a child can learn to make with ease, but food that’s cheap gets higher on the list.

As always, it has to be spectacularly, magnificently healthy. I’m not looking for mere survival here. I want supreme and excellent health. This is anti-aging from the inside. Anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, you name it. This is escape velocity in a bowl.

The pictures are so pretty that I’m showing you all 3. I’m trying to emulate Heidi at 101 Cookbooks whose food photography is something to behold.

Try this.

Ingredients

• 1 bag frozen green beans ; thawed, not thawed, makes no difference. If they’re thawed, you can drain off the water if you think of it. I’m too lazy.
• 1 can each red kidney beans, chick peas, black beans, or whatever you have, it will all be fine, even lentils which my husband keeps buying though I tell him that I cook them from dried. Rinse well, canned beans are loaded with salt, sadly-could that be the secret of why people like this recipe?
• 1 bunch parsley, rinsed and chopped. Do you know how healthy parsley is? Some people say flat-leaf has more taste, but I think it’s the curled that’s more flavorful. I put in 2 bunches now that the family is used to it.
• 1 oniony thing. A bunch of green onions, a sweet onion, a red, even chives, it all works.
• Anything else you want to use – tomato is good, so is celery. Chop it up, toss it in.

The technique is tricky so you’ll want to be paying attention. Here goes : Dump it all into a big bowl. This is usually the part where I realize I’ve made a huge amount and have to divide it between 2 bowls.

Dressing

• ¼ c each balsamic and rice wine vinegar, or like, you know, eyeball even amounts
• 1/4 c olive oil
• many grinds of fresh pepper
• 3 minced garlic cloves

Shake it in a container and pour it on.

Et voila. They can serve themselves all week.

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© 2007–2009, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

It was so pretty, like a mound of shining colored stones. People began putting it on their little lime tortilla scoops. Next thing you know, the chips have been dispensed with. Men are shoveling it into their mouth with spoons.

This one is fabulous.

Cathy’s Too-Pretty-To-Eat Salsa

• 4 seeded diced plum tomatoes
• 1  mango, diced
• 2  avocados, diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 2 shots Worc sauce
• 1-2 shots hot sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

Bring the ingredients with you and chat while you chop the first 5 ingredients and put them in the serving dish. Use your prettiest wide, shallow dish to show off this very beautiful salsa.

Make the dressing right on the salad using the last 5 ingredients. Mix just a little to not handle the avocado too much.

Oh, and put out spoons.

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© 2007–2009, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

My year begins and ends in summer. It’s when I decide how far I’ve come in the past year and where I hope to go in the next. The month of July is the pivot. We go to PEI, Canada’s smallest province. It’s a month-long family reunion.

As do many of us from the Maritime provinces, maybe PEI in particular, we are drawn back there like robots with a homing device installed in our temples. Some have moved back permanently, many more would like to, and the rest of us get as close as we can.

We leave more behind every year, both figuratively and literally. Friends and family basements are storing more beach bags full of gear. We’re secretly trying to transfer our lives and hoping nobody will notice.

We cry on the plane all the way home. We can be found wandering our cities, an army of forlorn women. You’ll know it’s us because we’re in flip-flops and sundresses, refusing to take them off. You will find a piece of beach glass clutched in our sweaty palms. We’ll deliver a swift roundhouse to anyone who tries to touch our starfish necklace. All that kickboxing wasn’t for nothing.

My brother-in-law is a chef. He can prepare 5-Star menus that seem more art than food. He can also make shockingly good-tasting food from the simplest ingredients. And he’s fast. Simple and fast in the kitchen? My kind of guy.

Xavier made this gazpacho in 12 minutes in a cottage. It was on the table in a huge plastic bowl. I had 6 cups and I kept sneaking looks back at the bowl to see if I could get the last cup without being piggy.

Xavier’s PEI Cottage Gazpacho

Ingredients

• 1 cup celery diced (no measuring cups in a cottage, just toss in whatever)
• 2 English cucumbers, diced
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1 yellow pepper, diced
• other crunchy veg (so like what? radish, green onion for sure, red onion, nectarine comes to mind for some reason; carrot is too crunchy and hard to get into 1cm cubes; broccoli and cauliflower would get too shredded; avocado could be great though the broth would look more opaque; watermelon; seeded Roma tomatoes)
• 1\2 bunch basil, snipped into little pieces with scissors or a knife (fresh thyme? a little parsley? sure, toss them in)
• Clamato, 1 bottle (extra spicy is an option), or whatever will cover the amount of vegetables you used
• salt and pepper to taste
• tabasco to taste – let people add this at the end if you like
• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil
• L&P sauce (Worcest. sauce)

Method

Just cutting and pasting from all the other recipes on this site : throw it all into a bowl.

Any ingredients without quantities are:  a few drops, more to taste.

This wasn’t pureed in any way, which I much prefer. It’s a gazpacho, so it’s served cold.

You could serve it in a punch bowl, with cups. Or just sit in the corner with your own bowl and drink it all by yourself.

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© 2007–2009, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

What was the last non-fiction book that I could call un-put-down-able? That’s easy. There has never been another one.

I was speechless and spellbound.

Among its numerous awards, Michael Pollan’s book was named by the NYT Book Review as One of the 10 Best of 2006. I would say One Of The 10 Best, period.

You can read the first chapter and read what others have said on the book’s web page.

If you eat, if you talk about food, if you buy or prepare food, if you think you know what you’re getting or you think you know where it comes from, you’re about to be politely but definitely awakened. You might wish you could continue living in your old world of un-knowing.

The book is divided into thirds. The first section takes us through the depressing and horrifying labyrinth of corn production and usage.

The farm ain’t what it used to be and is only barely where food begins. A netherworld has grown between farm and food store, a dense and solid wall of chemistry and creative marketing. After all, there’s a limit to how much food we can consume. Or is there? The food bureaucracies keep finding new ways of making us pack away more and filling their pockets while they watch.

Meanwhile, the farmer is caught in a game that he can only lose. I wish he’s talked more about the psychology of the farmer. A more stubborn and independent group you will never find. They cannot come to an agreement about anything. Their collective character is part of the problem.

Section 2 takes us to an “organic” farm, though he explains that the “organic” label is so disputed as to be rendered almost meaningless. Salatin’s farm is what we want to believe we’re getting if we buy organic. Before anyone spouts another opinion about the Farmer’s Market, before you resist when your teenagers announce that they’re going vegan, before you decide if your organic strawberries are worth the cost, arm yourself with some facts.

I think most people who buy organic (I don’t, by the way) realize that it’s not what we hope for. Just as in buying Green cleaning products and non-animal-tested cosmetics (and I do), we are all trying to cast a vote for chemical-free cruelty-free world and saying we’ll pay more for it.

In the description of this farm is a prayer for our future that will never be answered. I felt almost overjoyed to read about Joel Salatin’s farm. This farmer’s understanding of natural process and his methods of miniaturizing them to suit his 500 acres are astounding. The workings of this incredible place in Virginia are so beautifully orchestrated to achieve cycles within cycles that it seems to be the only and obvious answer to the industrial mess that corn has become.

Except for one problem – it utilizes, even exploits, the inherent randomness of nature. The industrial revolution came about when business realized it was cheaper to product 1000 identical units than 10 different ones. They went on to notice that the numbers worked the same way for the productivity of human beings, meaning that 1000 people doing the same thing were cheaper to pay and easier to control than 10 people doing different things.

I wish he’d outlined the finances of Salatin’s farm better. Does his wife work? Yes, he has no inputs or loss to disease, but he needs buildings and machines. What does he clear in a year? The size of his animal and plant harvest are given and they are impressive but I’d have loved to see a balance sheet. For Salatin, it probably doesn’t matter because he’s living a life he loves and believes in and there’s no dollar sign on that. For farmers interested in trying to transition from industrial corn and soybean production to a model that allows them to  truly be the stewards of the land that they pride themselves in being, more dollar talk would have been interesting.

The final example is an illustration of what a complete thinker Pollan is as he looks at a topic from every angle. We accompany him on a mission to prepare a meal that he has gathered and prepared at every stage. He forages for mushrooms and fruit. He decides that if he’s going to eat meat, he needs to experience the act of killing to defend his action of eating it.

Every spring, as I prepare to make the annual Tabbouleh, I look at the oregano and mint in my garden, and think “how sure are you?” I feel surging trepidation as I wonder if it’s mutated somehow. I worry that we’ll all have awful cramps later on. Who discovered that it was the rhubarb stems you could eat? and if it took awhile for the leaves to kill you, how did they trace it back? Pollan recreates for us the entire history of humans learning through trial and serious error what is safe for them to eat.

This section contains some of the most fascinating discussions in the book and raises some disturbing points. For instance, we might deplore hunting but eat meat. Regardless of how we feel about the moral decency of taking life or enjoying killing, our position may be untenable since the wild animal has had an overall better life and death than the farmed animal, most especially the factory-farmed animal.

If McDonalds’s has a failure rate of 5% at the abattoir, does this mean it’s acceptable if only 5 cows per 100 are skinned alive? Jesus. And apparently the situation at the slaughterhouse improved when McDonald’s came along and set some standards. As the WalMart of the food industry, McDonalds, and indeed the whole fast food machine, has to appear beyond reproach at every level, but even 1 in 100 seems to me too many. Fast food walks a fine line, as does the cigarette industry, because they are selling us something that may be bad for us. We don’t have to choose to buy, but the argument is not that different. The less public inquisition, the better for them.

Maybe the level of complexity that we’ve allowed to overtake the food industry has been a way of protecting ourselves from the debasing ,ugly, cruel reality and allows us to blame someone else for the destruction.

You’ll also find the most intelligent discussion of vegetarianism in these pages. No single outcome is revealed to be the right one and no opinion is criticized or accused. Pollan doesn’t propose the right path or a new path. His goal seems to be to force us to question at the deepest level our feelings about food and recognize the level of complexity and near-impossibility of finding the solution.

I wish he’d contrasted European and Canadian farm policies with those in the US but I expect that’s the topic of another book and some distance from Pollan’s real interests. Canada doesn’t deserve to have farmers. The bureaucracy forces them to compete on a global playing field with a huge handicap. Perhaps cynical of me, but until we know what it means to line up for 5 hours to get bread or what empty shelves look like in the supermarket, nothing will change. Europeans know all too well what that looks like and treat their farmers more carefully.

For me, cooking is just another chore, a job that I can never cross off. Through his eyes and experience, I see that preparation, sharing, even the saying of a grace is the human tradition of gratitude for the sacrifice that an animal, plant, and place must make to feed us.

My brother-in-law, Xavier, is the only bred-in-the-bone forager I know. It always seems so odd to me that he thinks about food so much. I now understand that he is not perpetually hungry but simply showing the deepest respect for the true source of food. The skill of foraging, that most of us have long lost, takes enormous time as Pollan learned.

Once we sit at his table, sharing the final meal, we have covered a lot of territory.

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© 2007–2009, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

A child can assemble this if you do the slicing.

I make everything in huge amounts, but you can adjust accordingly. We seem to eat more than other families.

Ingredients

• 2 heads Romaine lettuce, torn – place in bottom of large bowl
• 4 tomatoes, cut in chunks – plop on the lettuce
• 2  English cucumbers (or field cucumbers in summer when they’re good) – on the tomatoes
• 1 500g tub Feta cheese ( this is one place where I don’t use low fat, it seems tasteless and waxy) – crumbled on the cukes
• 1 red onion, thin slices – on the cheese
• black olives – what, about 1 c., on the top, if you like them.

Dressing

• juice of 2 lemons
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 1 package fresh oregano – soak the leaves in water, squeeze the clump of leaves out like a rag to get rid of most of the water, give a child a bowl and some kitchen shears and have them start snipping
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• salt, pepper to taste

 Usually, I make the Romaine bed ahead of time. I have the dressing ready in a glass jar. I add the rest of the ingredients at the last minute and pour the dressing on then. I don’t even toss it before serving. Perfect for the buffet table.

Did you know that our Greek Salad is far from the authentic Greek Village Salad? As Lina and Susie  explain, in the original, there is no lemon, garlic, or lettuce. So that leaves tomato, cucumber, feta cheese, onion, olives, and oil.

You’re using fresh oregano everywhere, right? Oregano has higher antioxidant activity than blueberries! than garlic! 

Fresh herbs are cheap as chips and easy to work with. Dump tons of them in pasta sauces (kids will not detect basil or oregano in spaghetti sauce), lasagna, stir fries, stews.

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© 2007–2009, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

The world already has too many Banana Bread recipes. This one is as healthy and low fat as it gets. So many foods have become nutritional and weight control booby traps. The assumptions we make about bran muffins, fruit smoothies, yogurt, or oatmeal cookies might be far off the mark in terms of their healthiness. Too often, they’re just diet ambushes waiting to strike.

Eat This, Not That

 Have you seen the articles and features from the book Eat This, Not That ?The book is by David Zinczenko, editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine. The 3 books are about learning to make simple, leaner, healthier food substitutions at home and in restaurants. Weight loss foods, best drinks and restaurants for kids, supermarket selections … specific foods and menu items are identified. It’s not only about calories. I like this question that asks “Is this the worst drink on the planet?” 

This banner is linked to the book site (not certain how long this offer is valid, and remember there is a third book on Supermarket Survival),

 Avoiding prepared foods works better than anything. If I can make my own soups, salad dressings, and baked goods, I can control what’s in them. You can experiment by changing any recipe to contain less fat, less sugar, more fiber. Almost always, it still tastes fine.

 The original version of this recipe appeared in Bonnie Sterns’ More Heartsmart Cooking but it’s been altered.

Stern’s simply fabulous Simply HeartSmart Cooking  has the honor of being the cookbook from which I’ve made the most recipes, just about all of them in fact.

 Only the die-hard junk-food-and-candy gang won’t eat this banana bread. Or those extremely suspicious and selective little souls out there, who will eat peanut butter, prawns, and not much else.  I know two of these and love them dearly, but they wouldn’t find anything they could eat in my house. It would be stress city.

You can always mix in chocolate chips, nuts, or put honey, icing sugar, or jam on it. Let them choose a special jam (it would be Strawberry from the grocery store chez nous) and make sure this is the only thawed bread in the house they could put their special jam on. This is the bare bones recipe. In my house, if I add anything, I start registering complaints. If I try to make them eat the polluted version, I can expect notes like this.

Between my friend, Jan, and I, we’ve devised the lowest fat, lowest sugar, highest fiber, best tasting Banana Bread out there. Nutrition-packed. Takes 15 minutes to make if you try to go as slowly as possible. This is a great place to begin family food and lifestyle changes without rocking the boat so much that people fall out on the first trip.

Ingredients

• 3 bananas, mashed
• ½ c. buttermilk or plain yogurt
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 Tbsp. oil ( I use a canola/olive blend)
• 1/2 c. dark brown sugar
• 1 ½ c. whole wheat flour (I use organic Spelt flour from the Bulk Barn for any baking that calls for whole wheat, and much that doesn’t)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• ¼ c. freshly ground flax seed (buzz it in your coffee grinder ; you can see it at The Healthiest Smoothie )
• ¼ c. wheat germ
• ¼ c. wheat bran

Technique

 Same as every recipe on this site, I believe : Fling it all in one bowl in approximately the order above. Mix it all up.

Pour it into loaf pans.  I line the loaf pans with wax paper because it’s fastest.

Jan adds a delicious texture bonus. She greases the loaf pans (instead of using wax paper) and sprinkles the inside with whole flax seeds. That way, the crust of the bread is a little crunchy. It’s very good and the flax seeds are invisible against the color of the crust, in case the skeptical souls are looking for something to distrust.

 Bake it for 50 min – 1 hour at 350 degrees.

 Stock your freezer. The loaves are great to take to the beach or on family trips, and can be thawed quickly if people come over to visit. Got a houseful of kids? Slice a loaf, put it out on a plate so they can help themselves. Add a few slices of apple so it looks pretty. You’ll be cleaning crumbs. Even the white-bread disciples will eat it.

Banana Pumpkin Bread

I found this great recipe at allrecipes.com . I’m always looking for ways to get yellow vegetables into everyone. I made it just as it says, dumped in about 1/4 c. of wheat germ and wheat bran,  and called it Pumpkin Pie Cake. Went over big. It looks like this:

 Firecracker Cornbread

This recipe for cornbread comes from 101 Cookbooks. It is outstanding. The next time I make it, I’ll double the red pepper flakes so it has a real snap.

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© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

 Meet Chef Ann Cooper. She’s changing the way we feed children.

I LOVE THIS WOMAN.

Chef Ann Cooper

I love her message.

I love her topic.

I love her passion. She has a fire in her blood that sparks out her brown eyes.

I love her devotion to children that are not even hers.

If I got a closer look at her boots, I think I’d love them too.

Chef Ann takes on the lunch bureaucracy at TED.

This is the right woman for this job.

Who’s the grownup here?

 Don’t explain to kids why they need to eat green food. You don’t negotiate toothbrushing, do you? Give them the choice of this green food or that green food, but one of them is going in. This is what “freedom of choice” looks like, and not “Do you want green food today?”.

You don’t ask your kids what lane of traffic to choose or how to spend investment money because they are incapable of knowing. You wouldn’t take a 15 year old’s advice, much less a 6 year old’s. Giving choices to those who cannot make them is just plain dangerous.

You are the grownup. You, and only you, have a responsibility to decide which foods are right. When you became a parent, it was in the job description. You also took on the role of teacher. You are teaching them to make the right choices for themselves for the rest of their lives, about everything. Food just happens to be the most important one.

I know it’s a daily fight. I know if you make a deal out of it, life escalates into a stress feast for everyone. But if there are chips, cookies, and ice cream in your house, none of your efforts will work. They can hold out longer than you because they’re the ones with the energy.

Does your dog play the food game?

I meet many folks who tell me their dog can choose what food its body needs. Hogwash. Does your body tell you what foods it needs? The last time you were stressed, did you reach for lentil casserole or that bag of Dill Pickle chips?

Dogs are as equipped to make decisions about nutrition as kids are, and they will make the same mistakes.

Don’t agonize over whether it’s fair or right or respectful of their rights, or if it’s natural. Dogs quickly learn to play the game of needing a new taste sensation every 4 days if you enlist in that program. Masters of extortion, they learn that if they don’t eat supper for a day or two, the selection only gets better. Small breed dogs, especially the white ones, drop into this world having mastered this beyond any level you can hope to achieve. Don’t bother engaging because you will lose.

  Dogs and kids do what works. Stop letting it work and they’ll stop doing it almost immediately. They may move on to something new to annoy you, but look at each situation and think about what you’re doing to let it work. With children, as with dogs, food is entirely a control issue. It is not a taste issue.

Why your dog ate your couch

Kids and dogs also do what they’re used to. Being destabilized causes them anxiety so they’ll expend energy to keep the status quo. If, for some unfathomable reason, you want a dog (or a kid) that needs a new kind of food every three days, then start feeding him that way. If you want a dog that needs constant acknowledgment and reassurance all her life, then start off by paying her constant attention, especially when she demands it.

Then, you’ll doom yourself to dreaming up fancy dog food options, when you’re not cleaning up the couch the dog chewed because it loses its mind if it’s being ignored. Once you’re done cleaning, you’ll need to run to the vet to pick up the dog who had the couch buttons cut out of its stomach yesterday. Have you any idea how many people choose to do this?

 If you have a few other things to do that sound more fun, let the dog learn that the food stays the same and they can learn to be ignored without harm.  The decision lies entirely with you. Start them off the way you want them to end up.

Good Habits are hard to break too

Once they’re in their teens, children get ideas that they’re suddenly controlling us. The underlying psychology of Grade 8 seems to me to be that they have the adult world where they want it. If I remember myself correctly, that belief remains in place till one’s early 20s.

That’s why you have to start ASAP, so good choices aren’t choices at all, just habits. I think they like having a solid sense of “how things are in our family”. They can feel that they stand for something.

Think of how we would look if we’d started wearing sunscreen when we were 2!! The skin on our face would look like the skin on our other cheeks. And to think that that is a very real option that was squandered. Let’s at least give it to our children.

Now that mine are over 12, I encounter more resistance about everything, but I persevere. They’re just making the point that I can’t control them and I am not the boss of them. They’ll avoid anything they perceive as parental guidance.

They care more about how they look. I’ve talked to them a lot about long term investment and the payoffs at the other end. We talk to them about smoking. They see the long term effect. We teach them to respect their bodies. They see women who are capable and strong. We teach them about savings and investment. They see restraint in the present for reward in the future.

Can every one of us be our kids’ food advocate, like Chef Ann Cooper?  Or are we, as parents, just too damn tired to fight with kids and with a destructive bureaucracy all the time?

Should we bypass the grownups entirely and teach the kids? Is this generation smarter about sex, seat belts, driving drunk, and smoking? Sadly, I don’t think they are. Our species is hell-bent on destroying itself. Then we turn 40 and finally think …

Chef Ann’s other books

Within 10 seconds of landing on a new website, I’m at the About page. The snaking path that throws choices our way reassures me that everyone’s life can be varied and rich. You don’t have to be stuck at the same desk for 30 years. Chef Ann’s About page is a great one. Don’t miss the books she’s written, at the bottom of the About page.

Lunch Lessons by Ann Cooper and Lisa M. Holmes

Have a look at some of the recipes this cookbook contains.

Do you agree that Mother’s Kitchen  (shown below) looks beautiful as well? Don’t we all remember the foods our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts were renowned for, that we loved (or dreaded)? Cooking with a child nourishes their body as well as their spirit, teaches them pride in their contribution to the family, creates memories that last their lifetime, and forges traditions that they will teach their own children.

Kids LOVE learning and they LOVE knowing that you want to spend time showing them what you know. More than that, they NEED it to survive.

In Mother's Kitchen by Ann Cooper and Lisa M. Holmes

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© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

My children are on a smoothie craze. The blender never stops. Lying in bed at night reading, I hear the BZZZZZZ, at 8.45PM! What are they doing down there?

  I don’t want to know. I don’t care what I’ll find in the morning. Stay in bed.  My favorite is to be woken up at 10.30pm to be asked if it matters that the blender is smoking but I shouldn’t worry, it was probably just left on too long.

 So I bought them an $8 hand mixer. How much harm could they really do with one of those? Since children have the innate ability to smell Bandaids, tape (with an especial sensitivity to duct tape), and Kleenex, I figured they could deal with whatever might happen.

 My 13 year old adores Caesar salad. She eats it in dangerous quantities. Homemade Caesar Salad is incredibly easy to make, not a big production at all, and quite healthy. I showed her how to make it herself, using the hand blender. It’s fast, easy, and she’s adapted it to be perfect.

 It’s tangy, not sweet. You can control this by varying the amount of lemon juice and grated cheese. I know folks who add maple syrup, but I don’t care for the sweet taste.

You’ll need 2 huge bowls, one for washing the lettuce and one for the salad itself. The one for the salad should be made of metal or glass because the salad dressing is oily and acidic and the plastic may be hard to clean afterwards.

Here’s what you do :

• Tear 2 large heads of Romaine lettuce into the plastic bowl. Cover with water. Swish it around like a washing machine for 15 seconds or so. Let soak while you start the dressing.

Put the following into a deep glass or jar that your hand blender can get to the bottom of:

• ¼ of a 300g block of silken or soft tofu (a great emulsifier, I thought of it myself when I didn’t have an egg!)
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 2”  (1 Tbsp.) anchovy paste from the tube
• 2 Tbsp Worc sauce
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• ½ c  less 2 Tbsp. of extra-virgin cold-pressed olive oil
• ¼ c grated fresh Parmesan and some extra to sprinkle on top 

Dump the water out of the plastic washing bowl. Refill with water to cover the lettuce and swish it around again. Let sit.

Think about what else goes in the dressing that you forgot. Obviously, there’s no order for adding ingredients.

• ¼ t salt
• ½ t fresh ground pepper
• juice of 1 lemon (this is pretty lemony and allows you to use less oil; you could use 1/2 lemon if you like and the full 1/2c. oil)

Spin dry the lettuce.  Put it in the glass or metal bowl.

Buzz the dressing with a hand blender, moving the blender up and down in the glass, till well blended. It takes about a full minute. It will appear chunky at the beginning and more liquid after a short while.

Sprinkle the remaining Parmesan on the salad.

You are now done. The kids made supper!

Sadly, they’re still making smoothies in the blender.

 PS: We don’t usually add croutons because the ones in the box are rather awful and I’ve burned the homemade delicious ones so many times that we’ve gotten used to the salad without them. I’ve burned so much food, you have no idea. There are oven timers all over the house and I still forget about the food in/on the oven.

 It’s dead easy to make your own croutons. Cut some bread in cubes, toss in a little olive oil, and put them in a frying pan/skillet on low and mix them around now and again. Takes about 20 minutes. Don’t leave the room or begin another project till they’re done. Carrying egg timers on your person might solve it for you but it doesn’t work for me.

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© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

300 days of the year, this is lunch, with a plate of steamed green vegetables. The other 65 days are a bit of a letdown, but you can’t be near a blender with your well-stocked kitchen all the time.

 Sometimes, I see the food I eat through the eyes of my white-bread-and-Cheez-Whiz husband and I realize it’s funny. It looks like a chemistry experiment.

 Oh well. I learned 10 years ago that I cannot eat what my family eats and look, feel, or think the way I want to. For some, that will just sound like too much extra cooking.

 But that’s not the case. Mostly, it’s just more stuff in the fridge. Like everything else you set your mind to, everyone else will get used to it. Give them, and yourself, time to learn.

 Ingredients Every Day

 -1 banana, not too ripe (unless you love ripeness;  I find them mushy, sweet, and have a higher glycemic load)

 - 1/2c berries (straw, rasp, blue, mixed) (I buy the 2kg bags of frozen mixed berries, keep them in the freezer, and scoop the amount I want each day)

 - ½ scoop natural protein powder (I use unflavored whey powder ; you could use soy protein powder too ; if you like the flavored ones, try to avoid real or fake sugar just because we don’t need more of either one)

 - ½ tsp cinnamon

 - 1-2 Tbsp psyllium fiber

 - 2 Tbsp raw wheat germ

 - 1 Tbsp fresh ground flax seed

 - a few scrapes of lemon zest, maybe ¼-1/2 teaspoon

 - 1c O.J. Not From Concentrate Extra Pulp (want to use milk? works fine) (use less if you like it thicker)

 - 1/2c Pomegranate juice (I like the POM brand)

 Ingredients Even Days

 - 1 c. (or what looks like 1c.) chunks raw fresh pineapple

 - 125g silken or soft plain tofu

Ingredients Odd Days

 - 1 small (or half a large) mango, peeled and chunked (a steak knife will slice it off right to the stone)

 - 1c plain 2%  organic yogurt ( I like the taste of organic yogurt; it’s less watery, tastes more like a cream cheese/sour cream blend; I’ve also read that the live bacterial cultures are preserved better)

Ingredients When I Have Them

 - ¼ c. fresh or frozen cranberries (buy the bags of fresh berries at Thanksgiving or Christmas for about $1.50 each; fire them into the freezer as is; use them all year)

 - 1 Tbsp. extra virgin organic coconut oil (twice a week) ( set it in a warm place to liquefy and pour it into the blender while it’s running; otherwise, you’ll have little flakes of solid oil which will be esthetically not ideal)

Technique

 Toss in blender. Buzz. Thank you very much, it was nothing. 

 An anti-oxidant bonanza, an anti-cancer festival, an anti-aging free-for-all.

 Why Psyllium? 

 This powdery stuff comes from the husk of a seed. It contains both soluble fiber (like oat bran and legumes) to slow the rate at which sugar leaks into the bloodstream and so stabilizing insulin levels which is important for weight control and to lower cholesterol , and insoluble fiber (like AllBran) to promote regularity.

There’s some good info about it here.

  You won’t even know it’s there.

 Why freshly ground flax?

 The excellent and important book, Cooking With Foods That Fight Cancer  ( reviewed in the articles Book Review : Foods That Fight Cancer – One Book Everyone Must Read  and Book Review : Cooking With Foods That Fight Cancer)  contains an entire chapter on the wonders of flax seeds. They fight the types of cancers that are influenced by too much estrogen, breast cancer being the most familiar. Because they reduce inflammation, they have a general protective activity against many other cancers too.

 It has to be ground flax seed to work its magic, and ground less than 2 weeks ago, and stored airtight in the fridge. I just grind a tablespoon as I need it. It’s much easier. My fridge is full of kale and Cheez Whiz.

 I grind the flax seed in a Braun coffee grinder that is used only for that purpose. It works perfectly. It’s a little loud but you could pre-grind a week’s supply and keep it in the fridge. The coffee grinder comes in black also and costs about $20. You won’t be able to taste it. It adds a little grainy texture, as does the wheat germ but it’s a minor thing.

 Your body is going to be so happy. 

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© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Since finding Dr. LaPuma through Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks site (see the article Sites To Know : 101 Cookbooks), I find myself visiting ChefMD often. I get the weekly recipes in my Inbox. I’ve looked at all the video clips and searched inside his latest book, The Big Book Of Culinary Medicine. 

This book is now on my Christmas list.  The Table of Contents knocked my socks off. If there’s a healthy food you’ve wondered about, it’s in here. Now, learn the best way to use it to reap its fullest benefit.

Dr. John LaPuma, M.D.

Rebecca Powell Marx

Dr. John LaPuma and Rebecca Powell Marx

I place more faith in his advice because he has such impressive medical credentials. He understands the implications of your medical test results or condition in ways that someone without the M.D. training, let alone a boarded internist, just can’t.

I’m not saying that a nutritionist needs an M.D. to be effective. But, perhaps because I’m also a product of North American medical training, I don’t believe that the scope and depth of comprehension about health and disease that an M.D. provides can be replaced by any other teachings. An internist takes it many levels beyond that, with a truly staggering understanding of the human body. (In Canada or the U.K., his designation would be M.D., F.R.C.P. (Internist).)

Since he’s also a professionally trained chef, and not some guy who taught himself to cook on Sunday afternoons, he can provide recipes and cooking tips to create truly delicious dishes.

You can read about Dr. LaPuma’s medical and culinary training and accomplishments on his About page .  You’ll also meet Rebecca Powell Marx, the co-founder of Chef MD. She is a writer, TV producer, and marketing executive. Together, they bring you the art and the science of foods that can heal.

Food as pharmacy

Pills certainly have their place. So do acupuncture, SOME supplements, and many other conventional and less traditional treatments. However, we look to them all too quickly and bypass the power of food as medicine in the process.  For many conditions, especially common ones like joint pain and depression, your medicine cabinet begins in your refrigerator.

Just generally feeling great is hard to measure, except by comparison to when you’re feeling rotten. Immunity is hard to see; it’s not like a broken bone or a rash. It doesn’t actually hurt in the moment when it’s not working well, like cramps or headaches. So we forget how much it matters, but it’s the cornerstone to health, present and future. By being satisfied with it working at half-strength, you’re using yourself  as the gambling chips.

Overboard on pills and supplements

Why don’t we exploit the capacity of food for fighting disease all the time? There are no side-effects to diet and there’ s not a pill out there that you can say that about. It’s money you’re spending anyhow and it’s not more costly to eat this way. I’ve decided the problem is four-fold :

1.     Not believing how much food can actually do to improve how you feel next week. Either you don’t believe food alone can do that OR the payoff doesn’t outweigh the effort (or it’s more fun to complain). And, after all, you don’t feel that rotten.

2.     Feeling you just don’t have time to learn a new way of cooking. Life is too busy as it is. And cancer in 20 years is just too far away to take seriously.

3.     You might be like my husband who combines the philosophies of “Nobody’s going to tell me what I can and can’t do” and “I might die tomorrow so I plan to enjoy every minute”.  He would prefer not to live with back pain, but he’s not willing to do a thing to prevent it. He’d be anti-cancer if you give him a choice, but he doesn’t really believe the choice is his to make. I tell him he’s 70% wrong but he doesn’t want to hear it.

4.     You have to take a little responsibility. That implies that some of this not feeling so good is your fault. And if the diet change doesn’t work, will that be your fault too? so maybe it’s easier to not play the game at all than risk defeat? Pills and supplements… if they don’t work, can you blame the pill?

The thing is, food change works for everybody. Is it going to happen in a week? No way. Pills are what works in a week.

You can’t change your weight in a week with diet. You can’t change your cholesterol in a week either with food alone. But you CAN change it appreciably in 4 or 6 weeks. In the long run, it’s the better thing, the cheaper thing, the safer thing.

I love dessert too

Sometimes you just need sugar, right? Believe me, you’re talking to a woman who gets it. I mean, really gets it. But I don’t need it all the time. Dr. LaPuma’s is not just a world of barley casserole here.

The Ginger Snap Apple Crisp with Sweet Cinnamon and Walnuts  : fabulosity.

Warm Spinach Salad with Chicken, Grapes, and Toasted Pecans  : So good , and cool to make; it cooks in white grape juice!

The Food As Medicine News is my favorite. Quick bits of information I can absorb into my life.  I like the “Do this , don’t do that” style. Like “Add fat to your salad to absorb way more nutrients”. Oh, OK. Avocado and olive oil. Easy.

His blog is in Video format. He’s so into it that you can’t help but get a little excited. Like “yeah, yeah, I can do that”. He CARES about food as medicine like I CARE about skin care. I love this guy.

Can you tell I’m a true believer? Instead of salt and pepper shakers on my table, there are turmeric and pepper shakers. I’m finding places for fresh oregano in just about anything. I’m doing salmon twice a week (Pacific only). We all know about my commitment to quinoa. And I believe I make the Healthiest Smoothie out there, so I’m posting the recipe tomorrow. Wait till you see it! It’s not for everyone, but ChefMD’s recipes are.

In every recipe, as you browse the list, he’ll tell you what is special about the ingredients chosen from a health perspective. The same is true of the weekly recipes that can be delivered to you by email. The Health Tip and Cooking Technique Tip are included.

Some of the recipes are a little too fancy to feed the army of 4 that I have to fill up every day. The techniques are simple but the tastes are a little sophisticated. I have had kids for dinner that squeegee the sauce off each individual spaghetti noodle. So, adapt it. Triple the amounts to last the week and leave out the arugula, or substitute it for another food from that family.

The key is always about gaining knowledge to make better decisions in your daily life. It’s what you do every day that adds up to create the biggest impact. The 30 minute workout you get everyday counts; the hour every 3 weeks barely does. The flossing you do each day makes a big difference. Will the hour at the dentist once a year reverse the 340 days you didn’t floss?

All lasting change begins with learning.  It is consummated in baby steps and the awareness that you never have to be perfect.

Make EVERY day count. Time is passing.

Thank you for subscribing to A Greener Tea. If you are subscribing via email, please be aware that in order to comment on this thread, you will need to visit this post on the Web: Sites To Know : ChefMD. Replies via email will be seen only by Christine.

© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Health and time … what woman doesn’t relate? These are two of the biggest concerns and interests in the lives of so many women. What if someone could hand you a list of terrific sites about every aspect of health and well-being over 40? It would save you hours and bring something greatly valuable to your life.

Kelly emailed recently to tell me that AGT had been included in Nursing School Search’s list of Top 100 Women’s Health Blogs.  I’m sincerely honored.

I am also grateful to have that list because it has done the legwork for all of us. I’ve spent a lot of time at Google Blog Search and other blog directories looking for a list like that one, but been discouraged by the sheer number of results and not finding sites that I felt were written with me in mind.

This list is compiled precisely for women over 40. The topics include nutrition with 11 great blogs, exercise with 10, as well as physical and mental well-being, blogs discussing infertility, pregnancy, and child-rearing, and just being fabulous over 40.

On behalf of all of us, thank you, Kelly!

Thank you for subscribing to A Greener Tea. If you are subscribing via email, please be aware that in order to comment on this thread, you will need to visit this post on the Web: Top 100 Women’s Health Blogs. Replies via email will be seen only by Christine.

© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Ingredients and Technique

Mix equal quantities of

• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil
• real maple syrup.

Shake.

That’s it. You’re done.

The maple syrup from the can seems to taste best to me.

Now, when someone at a dinner party says “Can you throw together a vinaigrette?”, you can answer with peace of mind. For extra security, you could bring your own stash of ingredients and leave them in the car, so you can volunteer to make a dressing before someone asks you to compose a broth or something equally unimaginable.

To stretch it out a little, you could take a few minutes to consider their selection of balsamic vinegars or verify that the oil comes from the first press of the olives. But then people will slot you as a master and ask you to flambé the dessert, which may result in a memorable evening, culminating in an unpleasant event involving fire that survivors will discuss for years after.

Thank you for subscribing to A Greener Tea. If you are subscribing via email, please be aware that in order to comment on this thread, you will need to visit this post on the Web: Genius Easy Vinaigrette. Replies via email will be seen only by Christine.

© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Heidi Swanson

Super Natural Cooking

I certainly can. In fact, I have a rule that says No More Cookbooks. But listen to the focus of her book, SuperNatural Cooking : natural oils, natural sweeteners and alternatives, uncommon grains, cooking with color. There’s a chapter called Know Your Superfoods. I’d buy it for that alone. I looked at the recipe index on the Chapters site and it looks amazing. The book is $16. I’m thinking I’m to going to have to break my rule for this one.

Is that not an inspired title for a cookbook? It defines in 3 words, or 2 actually, my whole feeling about what cooking should be. This is the exactly the food I like and the food I eat. This is the food you eat to feel fantastic. Your body feels clean and light and strong. Your mind does too.

101 Cookbooks

I LOVE the recipes on this blog. They are sorted by type (Gluten-Free, High Protein, Appetizer, Soup, Whole Grain) and by ingredient.

The ingredients are generally organic and of highest quality. Since a recipe only turns out as well as your worst ingredient, ingredient quality really matters. I’d have to search for some of these ingredients. I’ve never seen agave nectar in a store and I don’t expect it’s cheap. I’m not really great at buying organic and I substitute ingredients in every recipe I make, but these always taste just perfect.

Every recipe has a great story behind it and incredible photographs. The pictures of the food are fabulous, and well-worth a visit to the site on their own merit. Heidi is a San Fransico-based photoprapher and shows many beautiful examples of her work, food and otherwise, on her site. Many photographs are available for purchase.

Grilled Potato Salad Recipe (linked to 101 Cookbooks)

Favorite Recipes

I love a fruit crisp. My absolute favorite is the Plum and Peach Crisp and I use orange zest instead of the orange blossom water.

Have a look at the chocolate recipes in the blog. If there’s a section like that in the cookbook, I’m going to have to glue the pages together or I’ll be making, and eating, nothing else.

Do find time to watch this beautiful video about making Big Sur Power Bars which I love for having coconut oil. The video is lovely to watch but Heidi’s kitchen is far too clean. I see one of my responsibilities as a parent to keep my childrens’ immune systems aware of what’s out there. This is the only reason my kitchen is just slightly messier than Heidi’s.

I find these bars a great way to use up a cereal my kids made me buy and will no longer will eat. I use sunflower seeds instead of espresso beans, because well, just imagine feeding children espresso. There are plenty of other recipes that span parent-friendly and kid-friendly – the BlackBean Brownies for instance, the most popular recipe on the site !

Black Bean Brownies at 101 Cookbooks

Just to prove I don’t only care about dessert, there are low carb, high protein, vegan, and vegetarian recipe sections, all excellent. I believe Heidi is a vegetarian herself, so the nutritional value of the foods is of personal concern to her as well.

Quinoa Forever!

I’m always looking for Quinoa recipes ( What The Heck Is Quinoa? ) , and look ! You just have to eat this food to be ‘au courant’. Don’t eat it and you’re nowhere.

Below is the fantastically easy and healthy Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa. It takes 20 minutes, 18 of which you’re reading and drinking your green tea while the quinoa is simmering or absorbing liquid ! How I know it’s the weekend is that I eat this for breakfast instead of AllBran. Sometimes I even make it for supper if I don’t have to feed the whole family.  With berries, walnuts, and organic yogurt, it is so good.

Heidi often writes about other fabulous cookbooks, and this recipe is from chef and internal medicine specialist Dr. John LaPuma’s Chef MD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine. It is vital to recognize the power of food to make you feel amazing and to act as medicine.

Food can be used to give you obesity, diabetes, intestinal disease, poor healing, and many other ailments. That’s a choice many people make, but I don’t believe it’s the easier choice. It’s just what’s been learned and made into habit. Food can also be used to strengthen immunity, breathe more easily, ease sore joints, and raise you to a level of feeling well that you’ve never experienced before. This book covers how to eat for specific medical conditions, how to shop, and which foods to eat to sleep better and think better. The 50 amazing foods we should all be eating on a regular basis often find their way into Heidi’s recipes.

Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa (linked to 101 Cookbooks)

Here is a beautiful big bowl Quinoa recipe! It is absolutely gorgeous, very much a buffet salad. Quinoa makes a great conversation piece. I also love the dressing in the Lemon Scented Quinoa. When you read that post, you’ll see that Heidi is working on using quinoa as a base for cookie dough. Well, alright, you go, girl!

Multi-dimensions

This is a multi-faceted woman. In her earlier days, Heidi set up a tech blog called ChickClick.com, a web site for teenagers. I am impressed with her talent for coming up with cool web names. In this day and age, that is a very marketable skill.

With forums, a store ( ) and iphone edition under Mobile Recipes , this is more than a recipe journal. This is the website of an inspired, creative, original woman who clearly loves her topic and loves the process.

Thank you for subscribing to A Greener Tea. If you are subscribing via email, please be aware that in order to comment on this thread, you will need to visit this post on the Web: Sites To Know : 101 Cookbooks. Replies via email will be seen only by Christine.

© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Linked to source

This horror story is real

Not a week goes by that I don’t have to tell an owner that their pet has cancer. Dogs get it a lot, especially the bigger breeds. Seeing the devastation in the family and the deterioration in the animal as this sickness claims its life makes me very aware of the hideous misery of it.

Knowing exactly how it looks to have this out-of-control alien eating your insides and growing off them at the same time, drives the point home. I might still get cancer, but I need to know I did everything I could to prevent it.

Derail the sequence

More important than the ability to cure some cancers is the understanding that it is possible to prevent most cancers. I wrote a review awhile back (Book Review : Foods That Fight Cancer)  about the book by that name. Seldom am I so impressed by a book. There were no miracle cures and crazy formulas or secret supplements. The ability of certain foods to block tumor growth was backed up by excellent research and nothing else.

Much is known about how tumor cells grow. A cancer or tumor starts as a cell that has become abnormal, different from its neighbors. If it keeps growing by means of change in itself, and the support of the cells and environment surrounding it, it will become a cancer. The thing is, it takes a long time for it to change from having cancer-causing potential to becoming an irreversible tumor. During this time, you have the option of stopping the deadly process in its tracks.

Linked to source

Why tissue irritation increases cancer risk

It may be less recognized that cancers often arise when cells are irritated or injured for long enough. If a tissue is hurt, the normal healing process causes redness and pain, but it allows healing and re-growth, and the inflammation will subside. Supposing that within that injured tissue, just by coincidence, there lived a cell with cancer-causing potential. It would have a heyday! Its blood supply would suddenly increase and it would multiply very happily.

The moral is: don’t bug your tissues. Get over your dislike of sunblock. Don’t let children get sunburned.  Don’t let a stomach ulcer fester. Improve the health of your intestinal tract. Don’t scrub your skin. Lose weight; being overweight favours a precancerous state. Type 2 diabetes can be precancerous.

Prevention is the name of this game. 70% of the time, 70%!!, if we get cancer, it was our lifestyle that allowed it to happen. It was because of choices we made, that we were free at anytime not to make. It just feels like such an uphill climb because the world we live in seems, in every way, to support the development of cancer.

The sequel, the cookbook

In response to the phenomenal success of the first book, its sequel was published. Cooking With Foods That Fight Cancer , by Drs. Richard Beliveau and Denis Gingras from the University of Quebec in Montreal, might be the better book to begin with. It is like a very well condensed version of the first book, in its explanation of how cancer happens inside your body. It then moves fairly quickly through the risk factors (smoking, diet, and so on).

13 food families (while 11 are discussed in the first book) are covered in one to three pages each. The crux of the information is very concisely presented. Because the foods are covered in far more detail in the first book, I honestly think you would benefit from reading both.

Simple delicious recipes

The second half of the book is devoted to the recipes. I’ve made the Watercress and Leek Soup 30 times if I’ve made it once. I may never make the Carpaccio of Red Tuna. There are Spaghettis and Shepherd’s Pies, Spring Rolls (fantastic), Dried Fruit and Carrot Cake and much more.

I would guess I’ve tried 25 of the 160 recipes and they’ve all been excellent, some surprisingly so. There are no fussy techniques to master. The ingredients are a little exotic at times, but go with it. Change and learning don’t happen till you shuffle the cards a little.

My friend and colleague, Louise, makes the Green Tea and Soy Milk Truffles and kindly brings me a few. I can’t make them, you see, because I would eat every single one in 2 days. I swear it’s the truth. They are beyond divine, maybe because they’re not excessively sweet so you can taste chocolate more than sugar.

Linked to source

Trying to be the best version of me

These foods and recipes may very well be a deviation from what you’re used to. Your husband and kids may not eat much of it. Empower yourself to move beyond sacrificing your health by eating what they eat just because it’s easier. Meet halfway. My husband eats lentils and makes jokes about turmeric. Whatever.

You may have heard that women and cats do what they want. Men and dogs get used to it.

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© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Need an answer? Ask a woman.

My good friend Gina provided me with bag of loose leaf Gyokuro Tea. Hope resurrected.

Loose leaf Gyokuro tea

The loose leaf version is better at extracting the cancer-fighting catechins anyhow. I really think bagged tea is what’s left after the good stuff is sorted; they just vacuum it up into little bags.

Gina brewed a pot and it was just fine. The prospect of drinking two cups a day did not fill me with dread as it once did. I could even learn to like it.

In the beginning, I just let 1/3 teaspoon of loose leaves float in the water. The odd leaf escaped from the group at the bottom of the cup, which was distracting from the calming tea experience. I was always on the lookout for a leaf getting between my teeth.

Need restraint? Ask a vet.

This renegade leaf problem necessitated some form of mechanical restraint. You’re not supposed to use tea bells because it prevents water from swirling around the leaves and getting out all the good stuff and we do not want that.

Gina has a spanky little teapot that incorporates a central glass cylinder with perforations that allow the water in and out but keeps the tea leaves separate. It works extremely well.

I’d have to go out of town to avail myself of one of these puppies. My fellow cancer-fighter and colleague, Louise, suggested the use of a coffee press and it has proven itself to be fully up to the task. I raced out to WalMart and picked up the non-name-brand version for $20.

It’s pretty. It’s easy to clean. You can push down the plunger and pull it back up to whirl the leaves around in the water a few extra times to get an extra shot of goodness. The leaves can stay in it to make a second infusion later.

What’s not to like?

Where to buy

Sadly, Gina lives far from me. Louise and I found The Tea Haus, an excellent site from which we buy our tea. They have a great selection of teas and tea accessories. The learning pages are interesting and complete, like this page on Gyokuro Tea. These people know their tea!

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© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

It is as tricky as rice, cooks faster, and is great. You know I would never exaggerate how easy something is, since one of my driving forces is to spend the least possible time dealing with food. Do you know that quinoa comes closer than any food, vegetable or animal, in supplying all the necessary nutrients for life?

Ancient grain of the Incas

Quinoa comes from plants of the Chenopodium family.

Pronounced KEEN-wah, this is an interesting grain in a few different ways. Not truly a grain, but the fruit of an annual plant, it was considered sacred and served as a basic element in the diet of the Incas. To the ancient people of Peru, it was “the mother of all grains”. I love to hear the history of food. From Wikipedia, I learned that the Inca emperor would sow the first plants each season using tools made of gold.

It looks like tiny golden-beige spheres, twice the size of couscous, maybe ¼ the size of a beebee. In fact, it could replace bulgur or couscous in any recipe and in my house, it does. It’s at the Bulk Barn or in the rice section of the bigger grocery stores. Though it’s recommended to refrigerate it because it can spoil in a month or so, I store it with my dry goods in plastic containers and have not had a problem.

A true Superfood

The picture above comes from the Living in Peru website, where you’ll find an amazing history of this plant, and a selection of recipes (links at the bottom of the page).

What makes it unusual is that it is a grain that offers a complete protein; unlike most plant-derived protein sources, this one contains all the essential building blocks to make protein in your body. It does not require that you eat it with another, complete protein to provide the amino acid, lysine that most grains lack. It is higher in protein and unsaturated fat, and lower in carbs than other grains. It also offers more iron, potassium, and B vitamins. It is a nutrition powerhouse.

Sites To Know : Cooking with Kurma

Kurma and calf.

I love Cooking With Kurma for vegetarian recipes. Kurma Dasa is an Australian TV show host. He practices a Bhakti-yoga lifestyle and that alone makes his photograph-rich site most interesting. It’s a great resource, though I have yet to find asafetida powder at any store (I am told that it is an Indian spice, available at Indian grocery store).

I am not vegetarian because I feel much stronger when I eat meat occasionally, though I try to eat less red meat. These vegetarian recipes are simply wonderful, a long way from the wet hay field run-off that can come to mind with vegetarian cooking.

The words “stylish” and “sumptuous” are not often associated with pure vegetarian cuisine, but Kurma makes it so. How’s this for a great sounding recipe? Roasted Antipasti Vegetable Platter with Lemony Herb Pesto. With recipes this good, I’ve learned to be thankful that my husband and kids don’t eat what I eat. More for me.

His blog is wonderful. He travels the world, cooking, writing, and discussing tools, techniques, and recipes. You can remember George Harrison, visit India’s holy places, and see the spice markets of Bolivia. I find it a great escape, a visit into a fascinating life.

Kurma playing his mrdanga drum.

Cooking quinoa is easy

It cooks just like any other grain, in a pot of boiling water. The outer coating can be a little bitter. To remove it, pour the quinoa into a dry non-stick fry pan and stir it round over medium heat for 10min or so. It will make a crackling sound but the beads will not pop all over your stove. Some cooks suggest you just rinse it till the water no longer looks cloudy or soapy, but I prefer the stovetop method. For me, it just works very well. Then rinse it, and pour it into a pot with water and cook it. In simmering water, it will cook in 20 min. , 1c quinoa to 2c water.

Since I rarely eat it plain, I often pour the crackled and rinsed beads right into my soup pot and let them simmer in there. I find it has even less taste than rice if you can imagine, but that’s a good thing because it disappears into soups and salads. It’s kind of pretty in a salad, because it has an almost translucent quality when it’s cooked, like delicate beige pearls.

Recipes

If you search FoodNetwork.com , Cooking With Kurma, or even Google, you’ll find many recipes. My recent favorites have come, oddly enough, from the Heath and Fitness pages of MSN.

At MSN Health and Fitness, the article TheTop Secret Superfood
has some great recipes. I loved the Quinoa as Salad, with goat cheese and asparagus. At the end of the article, under Related Recipes, you’ll find a Quinoa, Mango, and Black Bean salad that was also very good. There are 7 good recipes here . I’m doing the Vegetable Quinoa Curry today.

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© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.

Here’s a soup that does the opposite. You can eat a big bowl every day and still lose fat. You will also lose the water that is retained by eating salt and starch, so your face will look less puffy. I, for one, am tired of looking as though I slept on my face.

The recipe is very mix-and-match as you will see. The article entitled Foods That Fight Cancer introduced you to a book that changed my cooking and eating habits in ways that were very easy to incorporate. This recipe reflects the advice in that great book.

Beans, barley, and lentils.

Bean Soup

Ingredients

- 1 Tbsp. olive or canola oil (don’t leave this out; you need it to absorb the lycopene in the tomatoes)

- 1 onion, chopped

- 3 leeks, thinly sliced ( these taste like mild onions; buy leeks with a long white part ; cut off the green part; peel a layer or two off the white part; slice the white part lengthwise and fan it open a little to rinse it; slice it crosswise)

- 5 cloves garlic, minced (I know it looks like a lot, but you won’t even know it’s there) ; under no circumstances can you use garlic powder

- 1 Tbsp. curry powder (big cancer fighter)

- 1 Tbsp. (yes, that does say 1 Tablespoon) turmeric (bigger cancer fighter; won’t change the taste at all; go ahead and try some; it’s a little smokey but that’s it; it will make the whole soup very yellow)

- 1 tsp. cumin

- ¼ tsp salt (if you need it; I don’t add any because the canned tomatoes and beans are salted, and I dislike the taste of salt, and I do not want a puffy face from the water retention)

- ½ tsp fresh ground pepper (puh-lease, do grind peppercorns in a mill; do not use the pre-ground powder stuff; the taste can’t compare) (you need pepper to help the turmeric be absorbed, as per the cancer book, so don’t be shy)

- 1 28oz can tomatoes, diced, crushed, whole, your choice (I use No Salt Added)

- 1 5oz can tomato paste

- 4-6 cups water, depending on how much other stuff you add (depends on how much broth you like and how many grains you will add; you can always add more later)

- 2 Knorr Vegetable bouillon cubes (or not; if you don’t cook with them, just leave them out; you won’t notice their absence)

- 2 peppers chopped, any color is fine (I like red because I have a notion that they contain more antioxidants)

- 2 handfuls of chopped whatever-vegetable-you-have ; carrot, turnip, potato, sweet potato ; here’s a soup that never looks the same way twice!

- 5 stalks (could be 2, could be 7) celery, chopped; throw the leaves in too

- 1c of a grain, uncooked ; brown rice, barley, Kashi, quinoa ; with this much curry and garlic, who will be able to tell the difference??

- 2-3 cups of a cooked bean ; could be lentils (uncooked, in which case you add 1 cup of the dry lentils at the same time as the grains ; or cooked in a can, in which case you add them with the other canned beans) (the red kind is good for soup) ; could be red or white kidney beans, chick peas, black beans, all pre-cooked (canned) and well rinsed to get the salt off ; in this mixture, all these types of beans taste the same, so use whatever you have

- 3 cups of a green ; try kale, watercress, or spinach ; they’re all kind of fussy to get into your life but they’re incredibly healthy in many ways; this is an easy way to sneak them in with minimal work

- plain low fat yogurt – as a topping; optional, but tones it down if you find it spicy

Method

1. Get your biggest pot. I don’t cook in small quantities.
2. Saute the onion in the oil for a few minutes.
3. Add the leeks and garlic, cook 2 minutes.
4. Add the curry, cumin, and turmeric. Cook 2 minutes.
5. Dump in everything else in no particular order, except the cooked beans and the green. So you add the lentils now if you’re using the dried (uncooked version).
6. Simmer till the vegetables and grains (and lentils) are just done, maybe 25 minutes.
7. Add the cooked (canned) beans and the green. If you’re using canned lentils, add them now. Simmer 5 minutes more.

You will know you’re doing something good

Do my kids eat it? Nope.
Well, sometimes. They’ve seen it so much, it’s not very mysterious any more.

Do I care? Nope.

I make a big pot on Sunday and eat from it all week. All those spices discourage bacterial growth in the food.

This soup simply must be supremely healthy. After the Christmas eat-a-thon, this will get you back on track faster than anything else.

If you can make it healthier, I want to hear about it.

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© 2007–2008, Christine Scaman. All rights reserved.