A Dose of Health

In today’s day and age with prices rising with no end in sight, people may accidentally start eating healthier. It’s cheaper and healthier to cook from scratch. Every cloud has a silver lining and maybe a healthier society is the silver lining on this cloud of increased cost of living.

Although it is not absolutely necessary to buy all of the latest gadgets to make cooking from scratch easier, there are a couple of gadgets that I’ve found useful over the years. These gadgets have helped me to save money, cook healthier and preserve and store the excess food for a later day. Here’s my current list:

• The Magic Bullet: The Magic Bullet is what I use pretty much every day. It’s great for making a quick batch of peanut butter, small batch of pancake batter, a strawberry and more.

• Food Processor: For the heavy-duty large quantities (too large for the Bullet) I use a food processor. When I need to make large portions of vegetarian burger, homemade chicken nuggets, or if I have to shred cabbage for cold slaw I use a food processor.

• Crockpot: Slow cookers allow busy people to cook meals while they’re not home. Just add the ingredients and turn it on. It’s also a great way to cook a second meal while you’re cooking the first meal. The slow cook method makes even the lesser expensive cuts of meat taste great.

• Vacuum seal: A vacuum seal reduces waste. It preserves food by sucking the air out and creating an airtight package that can be frozen. Additionally, vacuum sealing leftovers in the airtight canisters adds new shelf life to last night’s meal. The vacuum seal also helps to season meats much quicker than the traditional season and wait a day method. The vacuum sealer cuts the seasoning time down to an hour or two.

• Dehydrator: although I don’t use this as much, it is a great gadget to have for making homemade fruit snacks or for drying fruit just before they go bad. You can also make jerky, whether it be chicken or beef. Personally, I’m not a jerky fan, but if you can make your own, why not give it a try?

• Juicer: Nothing tastes better than fresh made juice from organic fruits and vegetables. The juice is a healthy and delicious and it’s a great way to sneak some vegetables into your children without them ever knowing it.

• Blender: Blenders can take the place of a Magic Bullet and food processor (for some tasks). They’re good to have around.

The above gadgets are not necessary for better eating, but they sure make life easier. If I had to choose one or two gadgets that I could not live without, it would be the Magic Bullet and the crockpot.

Here’s an inexpensive tasty healthy sandwich that can serve as an alternative to the usual ham and cheese sandwich. Be forewarned, I’m not one who measures when I cook, so use your own best judgment.

Ingredients

Eggplant
Tomato
Onion
Feta cheese
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder
Whole grain wrap
Organic whole grain flour
Basil
Organic romaine lettuce (or whatever greenery you have)

What to do:

Depending on the size of the eggplant and tomato, you can make several sandwiches. They’re healthy, delicious and much less expensive than buying a pound of cold cuts.

Give it a try.

A couple of variations:
Add sautéed tofu, salmon, or chicken. The possibilities are endless (use your imagination)

The other day my son’s teammate broke two bones on top of his hand when he slipped making a lay-up. It wasn’t an out of the ordinary trip and fall. Back in the day, it would mean a couple of days of ice and aspirin. Now a days, a simple trip and fall for a child means a trip to the emergency room followed by visits to an Orthopedic Doctor which will be followed by several weeks of physical therapy.

I know this only too well as my daughter had a spiral break of her humerus bone in her upper arm. Granted she did do a swan dive off of a bar stool while she and her best friend were practicing cheerleading moves, but I still think that back in the old days, it would have resulted in a sprain.

The number of broken bones our kids have as a result of a simple trip or fall is disheartening.

Why is it happening so frequently?

Here’s my theory. As the saying goes, we are what we eat. If we continue to drink soft drinks, eat nutrient deficient processed foods and consume growth hormone infested meats at the alarming rate that we do, what else can we expect?

I’m not a scientist or a nutritionist. I’m just an ordinary person who is sick and tired of being sick and tired. I believe it all goes back to balance. When I say balance I mean it in several areas:

pH balance: Our bodies function optimally at a certain pH level (somewhere between 7.3 and 7.4). Unfortunately, the current Standard American Diet (SAD) is doing everything in its power to move our bodies from our optimal pH. Our blood must maintain its optimal level, or else we’re a goner. As a result, our bodies will take what ever it can from wherever it can to ensure that our blood maintains the right pH level.

Guess where the blood pulls the nutrients to maintain its proper pH. (Hint: Calcium has a high pH).

Nutritional balance: I’m not going to get technical, because I’m not equipped to do so, but here’s what I’ve found (please do your own research).

Everything we eat eventually breaks down into either an alkaline ash (high pH) or acidic ash (low pH). The ash is pretty much what is left over after our bodies are done with what we’ve eaten. Sort of like a fireplace and burning wood.

Having an alkaline ash produces health and an acidic ash, well, promotes non health. The trick is to have a proper balance between alkaline ash and acidic ash. Following the SAD will produce an unhealthy amount of acidic ash. Too much acid lowers the body’s pH. The blood won’t stand for that so it pulls what ever it can to keep us alive…yep, the wonderful calcium content from our bones.

Feeding our kids candy bars, soft drinks and tons of processed foods, in my opinion, only contributes to the broken bone epidemic (this is one person’s opinion).

Summer is here and the grill comes out of hibernation and my seasonal meat eating debate begins. I love grilled food! I especially love grilled vegetables. Vegetables seem to gain a while new personality once they’ve spent a few minutes on the grill

That’s all well and good, but being raised in a meat eating family, a grill usually means lots of meat. There’s something about eating perfectly seasoned and grilled chicken wings on a charcoal grill. It really doesn’t get much better than that (in my opinion).

In my never-ending attempt to improve my health and eating habits, I decided to forgo my usual turkey burger this Memorial Day and make veggie burgers instead. Being that it was my first attempt I didn’t think they were quite ready to be unveiled on a charcoal grill so I cooked them inside.

For all of you veggie burger makers out there, I welcome any tips, pointers and ideas on how to make the veggie burger consistency better. They tasted just fine, but they weren’t ready to go on a grill because their consistency would cause them to eventually fall in between the bars on the grill and become fire starter.

Here’s what I used:

• Package of dry navy beans
• Package of dry pink beans
• Tofu
• Onion
• Red and green pepper
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Cayenne pepper
• Brown rice
• Garlic powder

This is what I did:

After washing the beans, I boiled them in water seasoned with Goya chicken bouillon in a pot until they softened. The brown rice was left over from a meal I served earlier in the week so I didn’t have to cook it.

In a food processor I processed the beans, tofu, onion, pepper and seasonings. Actually I pulsed it so that it wouldn’t turn into liquid mush. I seasoned to taste and then took a scoop full and cooked it in a hot skillet with a little oil.

Although they tasted very good, they were a little too loose so I threw in a little organic whole-wheat flower to tighten it up a little. All that managed to do was give it a crab cake type of texture.

I sprinkled a little cheese on top to make it a veggie cheeseburger and called it a day.

My daughter is hooked. She said that next to French Fries she thinks that veggie burgers are her favorite meal (this from the queen of chicken nugget and fries).

My goal is to create veggie burgers of a grilling consistency. I don’t want to be the one stuck in the kitchen cooking veggie burgers while everyone else is outside having a great time around the grill.

Any suggestions?

My daughter decided that she wanted to have a sleep over birthday party. It was a last minute thing so the preparations were done quickly. We decorated downstairs, came up with a theme and invitations went out the week of the party (it really was a last minute thing).

I ordered pizza and picked up a cake and ice cream from the local store.

It wasn’t until after the party was over that I happened to read the ingredients in the cake that I realized that I was killing my daughter and her guests. I almost called each of the parents to have them take their daughters to the local hospital to have their stomachs pumped, but I realized that was overkill.

Here are the first three ingredients listed on the cake container:

• Sugar
• Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil
• Enriched Wheat Flour (it wouldn’t need enriching if the manufacturers used whole grain flour instead)

YIKES! The total trans fat grams per serving: 3 grams. That’s right, 3 grams of trans fat per serving. The 10” round white cake was supposed to squeeze out 26 servings (according to the nutrition label).. That means that each piece of cake should have been cut .38 of an inch thick to get away with consuming only 3 grams of trans fat (ONLY 3 Grams!) per serving.

I probably should have given the girls a plastic bag to eat as it had the same nutritional value as the cake.

Lesson learned, no more last minute parties. It’s detrimental to the health.