health Archives - Cheryl Brunette

2010-08-262017-05-19

Lactose intolerance

Sexy title for a blog post, no?

In 1971 I taught at the Seoul American Middle School on the military base in Seoul, Korea. It was during the Viet Nam war. My students were, as a group, the most physically beautiful humans I’ve ever been among, mostly because many of them were ethnically mixed. A large number were Korean-American. Their mothers were Korean, their fathers American, most Caucasian, some African-American.

Many of their fathers were in Viet Nam and the children stayed in Seoul, living with and in their Korean families. And this caused a problem in the classroom.

My students who were of European descent complained that the Korean-American students smelled of garlic. My Korean-American students complained that those of European descent smelled like sour milk.

We talked about it and decided, in a respectful way, that they could sit on opposite sides of the room, but there was to be no name-calling or complaints and when we did a project that involved mingling, they would simply have to deal with it.

Just this morning I ran across this in a report from the Food Empowerment Project:

“According to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, ‘The pattern of primary lactose intolerance appears to have a genetic component, and specific populations show high levels of intolerance, including approximately: 95 percent of Asians, 60 percent to 80 percent of African Americans and Ashkenazi Jews, 80 percent to 100 percent of American Indians, and 50 percent to 80 percent of Hispanics. Lactose intolerance is least common among people of northern European origin, who have a lactose intolerance prevalence of only about 2 percent.'”

Even though I have northern European background, I haven’t drunk cow’s milk in years. I don’t particularly like it and ever since the advent of rBST, I’m careful to choose dairy products from animals that haven’t been treated with it.

There is a lot of energy going into improving the food we feed to our children at schools. Milk is a major staple of the National School Lunch program. Here we have an opportunity to change public policy based on research. What a novel idea!

2009-11-032017-05-19

20 Food Rules

Last March, Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and some other great books, posted a request for readers’ rules about eating on the New York Times health blog, Well, written by Tara Parker-Pope.

More than 2,500 responses came back, more than any other post had ever received and here are 20 of Pollan’s favorites.

Don’t eat egg salad from a vending machine.
You can’t leave the table until you’ve finished your fruit (from an Italian family rule).
You don’t get fat on food you pray over.
From a Romanian grandmother: “Breakfast, you should eat alone. Lunch, you should share with a friend. Dinner, give to your enemy.”
Don’t eat anything that took more energy to ship than to grow.
Never eat something that is pretending to be something else. (e.g. no margarine, “low fat” sour cream, “chocolate-flavored” sauce without chocolate in it.)
“Don’t yuck someone’s yum.” Not a diet strategy but an important food lesson. There is someone out there who likes deep-fried sheep eyeballs, and, well, more power to them.
Make and take your own lunch to work.
If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you are not hungry.
The Chinese have a saying: “Eat until you are seven-tenths full and save the other three tenths for hunger.” That way, food always tastes good and you don’t eat too much.
Eat foods in inverse proportion to how much its lobby spends to push it.
I am living in Japan and following these simple rules in preparing each meal: GO HO – incorporate five different cooking methods (steamed rice, simmered vegetables, grilled tofu, sauteed vegetables, raw fish, etc.) GO SHIKI – incorporate five colors (red, white, green, black, yellow) GO MI – incorporate five flavors (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, spicy).
Avoid snack foods with the “oh” sound in their names: Doritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, Ho Hos, etc.
One of my top rules for eating comes from economics. The law of diminishing marginal utility reminds me that each additional bite is generally less satisfying than the previous bite. This helps me slow down, savor the first bites, stop eating sooner.
Don’t eat anything you aren’t willing to kill yourself.
No second helpings, no matter how scrumptious.
When drinking tea, just drink tea. . . I believe that it’s so much better for our bodies when we are present to our food.
When you’re eating, don’t talk about other past meals, whether better or worse. Focus on what’s in front of you. Good meals are more throroughly enjoyed this way, and lousy meals can yield their own useful information. . . .
“Don’t create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to help you feel in control.” I try to eat healthfully, but if there’s a choice between eating ice cream and spending all day obsessing about eating ice cream, I’m going to eat the ice cream!
“It’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor.”

I shortened some of the comments. You can see them formatted in their complete and graphic form at the NY Times site.

I’d love it if you’d share your favorite food rules or beliefs here with me. The field is wide open and I don’t care about “politically correct.” I care about authentic. Thanks.

2009-09-292017-05-19

Arnica Montana . . . it belongs in your home

You need to keep these things with your first aid supplies:

The herb is Arnica Montana and you can buy it as a gel or cream. You can also buy it as little homeopathic pellets that you put under your tongue and let dissolve (those are in the little blue tubes). I use both the gel and the pellets.

The packaging says it’s for “Everyday Pain Relief” but it’s real magic is for bruises. The faster you apply it, the better it works.

I took a headlong spill a couple of weeks ago off my steps that ended with a dead cat bounce. I lay there a minute inventorying my body to see if I could feel if anything was broken. When I got up I immediately found the arnica gel and slathered it over all the parts that hurt and the bruises that were forming. I had run out of the pellets.

I was lucky. Just a cracked rib and a number of bruises. The rib is still reminding me to be careful where I put my feet but the bruises were gone within a few days.

Seriously! This stuff works! My bruises heal in miracle time if I find them right away and use both the gel and homeopathic pellets. I’ve even had a doctor and a physical therapist comment on how quickly they heal.

Of course . . . maybe you don’t need Arnica at all because maybe you aren’t as clumsy as some people.

2009-09-132024-05-29

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

This article was sent to me by a Blessings sister. Please . . . read it. This is not about economics (though it is). This is about the survival of our species. I’ve been following this subject for over 40 years and I’m grateful that it’s finally coming into the consciousness of popular media.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

Every time you put a piece of food in your mouth you are making a choice. Every time go to a restaurant or fast food place you are making a choice. Every time you buy food or drink at a grocery or other store you are making a choice. You have more power than you know.

Please . . . read it.

2009-09-052022-06-25

Roasted veggies once a day . . .

Fresh vegetables are everywhere right now. Summer squash, cabbage, green beans, peppers sweet and hot, broccoli, tomatoes, beets, new potatoes, garlic, onions, corn, cukes, turnips . . . it’s happy high harvest season on the island and at your local produce stand. And what to do with all this bounty? Roast ’em.

Singing the praises of roasting veggies

It’s a simple technique.
It can be applied to dozens of different kinds of vegetables.
You can do it in a toaster oven.
It brings out the best in every vegetable. Delicious!
It’s fast.
It’s foolproof.
Once you do it 3 or 4 times, it will become second nature for you.

The Process

Prepare the particular vegetable by washing and drying (or shaking the water off of it), peeling if necessary, and chopping into fairly small pieces. (Don’t worry. There are lots of pictures to follow this explanation.)
Put them in a pan and drizzle with a GOOD extra virgin olive oil. Dust with salt and pepper.
Swirl them around in the pan to spread out the olive oil and coat the veggie pieces better.
Put in toaster oven (or regular oven if you have a bigger pan and family) and roast at 425º for about 20 to 25 minutes. After about 15 minutes, remove the pan and stir and flip the veggies around a bit and put it back in until they’re “done.”

Some illustrations

Your basic tool besides a sharp knife or two and a cutting board is an oven. I live alone for now and use my trusty toaster oven. It’s pretty good sized and the pan that came with it, which you will see over and over, is about 9″ by 10″.

Then you need the three essential condiments:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I don’t care what brand (though Spectrum and Trader Joe’s have some great ones). I buy what’s on sale before I run out and have the new bottle in the cupboard. My favorite is First Cold Press and organic. Whatever you buy for this should be a deep, flavorful green. It’s expensive compared to other oils, yes, but it’s a great value and it will make the quality of your food soar for a small investment. A little goes a long way.
Salt . . . sea salt or kosher salt. These are real. The common, pourable “table salt” has other chemicals in it. Again, a little more expensive, but important for quality and health.
Pepper . . . freshly ground. As in, you should have a pepper mill. I bought mine in the Dansk store in Copenhagen in 1970. It still works smoothly and gracefully. Always buy the best quality tool you can afford.

I’ve told you before that there are dozens of online movies and illustrations to show you how to clean an onion or mushroom and I don’t want to duplicate that. I want to get you thinking about preparing food in a “global” way rather than thinking that you need to follow a recipe.

Roasting veggies is a technique that can be applied in a bajillion ways. Here are some examples to whet your imagination.

In Spring, mid-April, asparagus is in season. Crimini mushrooms (baby portabellas), onions and cabbage are always available. Notice the olive oil drizzled on top.

I stuck this pan into the oven set at 425º.

After about 15 minutes I took it out. Notice that there is steam coming off of it (fresh veggies have a high water content). The cabbage has begun to turn brown around the edges and the mushrooms have shrunk a lot.

Then I stirred and flipped it a bit, and put the pan back into the oven.

About 10 minutes later I had roasted veggies.

Here are more before and after pictures . . .

Asparagus+criminis+cauliflower beforeand after.

In May peppers were on sale for a dollar each. Beforeand after.

Here are zucchini and broccoli.still steaming . . . Zucc+-brocc after

Zucchini and green beans. Note the pepper. I was in a peppery mood that day.

One more combo: zucchini, cauliflower and red pepper.

Enough already!

. . . with the pictures. I have successfully roasted everything you see above plus carrots, eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes, black radish, and some I’m sure I’ve forgotten.

I started doing this only about a dozen years ago with potatoes, garlic and fresh rosemary and I fell in love with them. Because I’m basically a lazy cook, I eat roasted veggies 5 to 7 days a week as one of my meals.

If you don’t like canned or “boiled” vegetables, it’s a sign of your good taste. Now try these. I’m serious! If you’re still skeptical, start with the potatoes with big fresh garlic chunks or whole cloves and fresh rosemary if you have it. To die for . . .

I have to go. A gorgeous purple cauliflower is calling my name. She asked me to hook her up with the purple pole beans she met in the fridge. I’m throwing in a couple carrots to chaperone. ARE THESE THREE NOT GORGEOUS?

In food, as in all things, beauty counts.

2009-08-132022-06-25

Yogurt and Garlic Pasta

I took a 5-day gallivanting road trip a couple of weeks ago to play with old friends and knitting.

Before I left I cleaned out the refrigerator. The day after I got home I needed to hustle up a pot-luck dish to take to Blessings and I’m tired of driving so I looked at what I had on hand. This is a major theme in my food world. I ALMOST NEVER, EVER, SHOP FOR THE INGREDIENTS FOR A RECIPE. Instead, I keep things around that I know I like and ‘cook’ from those. I shop my cupboards far more often than shopping at the store. This saves me time and money, especially because when I cruise the grocery store I buy what’s on sale if it’s one of my staples.

I found four things I almost always have in the larder:

yogurt, salt, garlic, and pasta. The pasta is Trader Joe’s Organic Whole Wheat Penne, but you can use any type. The yogurt is plain Nancy’s Nonfat. Plain is important.

Next I got out my mortar and pestle and pulled some cloves from the garlic. A lot of cloves.

In my neighborhood garlic is planted in late fall and harvested mid-summer. That means that by late spring, most garlic has lost some of its flavor, and is softish. This garlic is a freshly harvested, very pungent rojo (red) variety. Small cloves but full of oil and hot stuff. Perfect for this dish.

Lay them on the cutting board along with your biggest and heaviest knife. Mine was hand made from an old saw blade and its blade is 8.5″ long. I lay it flat in on top of the garlic cloves and give the blade a thwack or two with base of my palm. This breaks the outer skins and makes the cloves easy to peel.

My mortar and pestle are not perfect for this job. They’re unglazed porcelain. They don’t have much bite for grinding anything other than dried herbs, but I use them anyway because they are what I have. I add the garlic cloves and some coarse sea salt and grind the heck out of them.

Now is the point at which enquiring minds will ask, “Why is she grinding the garlic rather than chopping or mincing it? ” And the answer is I want to smash the oil out of it, which gives it a stronger flavor. That and the oil mixes readily with the yogurt. You could also use a garlic press which crushes the cloves. You could also use a wooden spoon in a bowl, two wooden spoons nestled together, two forks and a plate . . . invent a technique using the tools you have on hand. I use this technique because this is how I learned it from a Greek lady.

Next, I put a large dollop of yogurt into a bowl, about a cup-and-a-half to two cups, [here’s another theme: I SELDOM MEASURE INGREDIENTS] and add the garlic-salt mixture:Then mix it all together with a fork or spoon or rubber spatula (or I suppose you could use your finger but it would be messy).

Next, cook your pasta per instructions on the package except you don’t need as much water as they say. I cooked the whole pound in my four liter pot a little over half-filled with water. That’s just over half the water they call for. Just pay attention and keep the lid ajar.Now if I had had company here for dinner, the table would have been set, the lettuces salad made but not dressed until the last minute, and I would have combined the pasta with the yogurt sauce and served it. It would be time to eat immediately after the pasta was drained.

As it was, I was going to a pot luck and a Blessings sister had called an hour earlier to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and she told me she was bringing fresh basil pesto. We decided it would be nice on the pasta as well, so I dished it out like this:

I had to drive about 20 minutes and we ate another half-hour after that but I didn’t worry. This dish does fine at room temperature.

LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES:

Unless the Fourth Hungarian Regiment is coming for dinner, don’t cook a whole pound of penne. It makes A LOT. I made 3 to 4 times more pasta than we ate. There was a pasta salad there (which doesn’t happen too often. We never plan who’s bringing what. We all just make what we feel like making that day) and lots of other goodies including a to-die-for-from-scratch-chocolate-birthday-cake. Even after I gave away some of it, I brought over a quart home.
Don’t mix the sauce with the pasta until you’re ready to serve it, otherwise it gets absorbed by the pasta which becomes bloated (i.e. no longer al dente) and starchy. Eeewwww. I learned this years ago but it’s relevant here.
Can you freeze cooked pasta? None of us knew so I came home and promptly put a quart of it into a yogurt container and popped it into the freezer. I’ll let you know the results when I take it out.
This sauce, with much less yogurt, is great medicine for a sinus infection or cold. It’s hotter than heck but safer for you, and for me more effective than, antibiotics. Serve it on crackers, hold your nose and dive in. Good (organic), fresh garlic is good medicine. I know this because my great-grandmother (and generations of my ancestors before her) was the village healer. Modern medical research is finally catching up.

p.s. It was a hit. I’d never taken it to Blessings before and most of the sisters loved it. A couple kept remarking that they never would have thought such an odd combination could be so good. That’s only because they haven’t hung out with the right old Greek ladies.

2009-07-112022-06-25

Yogurt cheese dressing instead of mayo

I seriously love fat. Not all types, but I’ve told my son that if I don’t get cremated I want to be embalmed in Challenge Unsalted Butter. I’m not sure it would work but I’d finally get my fill of it.

However, I don’t have as much muscle mass as I used to and I don’t always get as much exercise as I would like so I try not to have too much fat every day. One tablespoon of good, real mayo has 110 calories, of which 110 are fat. I love it and eat it but I often use something lighter when I’m dressing a dense salad. My favorite is nonfat yogurt cheese.

Nonfat yogurt cheese?!??

Yogurt is fermented milk. You take some milk from a goat, cow, camel, sheep, yak, whatever you’re milking that day, introduce some bacteria into it, keep it warm so they can multiply and bingo! In a few hours you’ve got yogurt.

Now that may sound gross to those of you who think that food grows in plastic containers, but if you stick around this blog long enough, you’ll toughen up. I was skinning rabbits with my grandpa when I was five and I raised beef cattle for 10 years. I’m not queasy when it comes to looking at real food sources.

There’s evidence that yogurt has been around for a long time. We can track it back about 12,000 years, and it makes good sense. Think about it. You milk the musk ox, leave the milk in a bowl near the hearth, bacteria floating by decide it’s an inviting place to land and the result is thick, tangy and delicious and it lasts a while. Refrigerated, it lasts a long time and it stays alive. Yogurt is a live food! This is a good thing.

Most of what’s sold in the U.S. as yogurt really just starts with yogurt. Then a whole lot of stuff is added to it: sugar, gelatin, high fructose corn syrup, fruit jams, pectin, pretend flavors, etc. Some of these “yogurt food products” have been heated in their processing in a way that kills the good bacteria. This is a bad thing. It’s not even honest to call them yogurt, but honesty is not a hallmark of the corporate food industry and, once again, I digress . . .

You can buy yogurt with the same fat contents as milk. Whole milk or yogurt is 4% fat content. Then there’s 2%, 1%, and nonfat. Nonfat organic yogurt is a staple at my house.

It can be gussied up a number of sweet and savory ways and is nutritious and satisfying. Oh . . . and one cup equals 120 calories. That makes it 15 times less fattening than mayo.