A tribute

My grandma passed away last Monday. She was 95 years old.

Although I questioned whether or not to write about this in my blog I haven't been able to think of much else (understandably).

She was healthy almost up to the end. She had better than 20/20 vision and could race my husband up our staircase. She did not suffer from a horrible illness like cancer or Alzheimer's.  Unfortunately not too many people in this world can boast a long, healthy lifespan like she did.

Unlike me, she was not a vegetarian. I've never believed that a non-meat diet is healthier than a vegan or vegetarian diet, and long living folks like grandma support this belief.

She was the first person to alert me to the fact that many of today's farm bred chickens are exposed to cruel and inhumane living conditions. She spoke many times over the years about the cruelness of keeping chickens penned up in cramped pens for their entire life span. I remember her saying that she felt so bad for the poor chickens who never will  get to "feel the grass between their toes" or the "sunshine on their beaks". I remember at the time feeling that the statement was bit a whimsical; not realizing the reality of it. Being raised on a farm I'm sure that she saw her share of slaughtered animals, but it did not diminish her feeling of compassion towards animals.

I'm sure that hard core vegetarians and vegans will argue that you cannot have compassion towards animals while agreeing to kill them for food. Although I understand the sentiment (and I use that as my only reason for not eating meat) I understand that humans have been eating meat since the beginning of humanity—and I don't think it will stop anytime soon.

If you can't bring yourself to stop eating meat, at the very least you can educate yourself about the living  conditions of our farm animals. I know the thought is unpleasant, and it's easier to simply put it out of your  minds, but being educated may put in you in better position to make informed choices in the future that may help in the plight of our food stock farm animals. I know it helped me!

Thanks Seggie!

Miracle berries are...miraculous

If you ever have a chance to try miracle fruit, do it! It will be one of the most bizzarest things you will ever taste.

Miracle Fruit

The fruit is grown in Florida and when fresh, looks a bit like cranberries. I have never seen it for sale in Canada and have yet to try it fresh, but I'm hopeful!









The fruit has an amazing property—after you chew it, all food or drink for a couple of hours afterwards, tastes incredibly sweet, like candy.

Dried Miracle Fruit Tablets

I purchased a dried, tablet version last year from ThinkGeek and the food experiments began.

The most popular trial in our house—fresh lemons. After chewing on a tablet, a bite of fresh, sour lemon tasted like sweet, lemony candy. Quite amazing and delicious. It was so funny how everyone who tried it, kept on eating and asking for more lemons, exclaiming how delicious they tasted.

An interesting side note about miracle fruit is the theory about a conspiracy that prevented the fruit from becoming an accepted form of  low calorie sugar substitute.

CHOCOLATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know about you, but this is the time of year for me when chocolate cravings kick in. A few weeks after the new year and into the cold months of February, the winter blues or maybe a deep, Darwinian instinct to calorie load starts making the thought of chocolate irresistible.

Last week I gave in and made Alicia Silverstone's delicious, melt in your mouth, peanut butter cups! (Yeah chocolate!!)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

I made a few adaptions to the recipe.  The original recipe is vegan however I still haven't been able to get rid of dairy in my diet so here's my version.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
Filling:
1/2 cup of melted butter

3/4 cup of natural, crunchy peanut butter
3/4 cup of graham cracker crumbs (approx. 10 graham cracker squares)
1/4 cup of maple sugar or other granulated sweetener

Chocolate covering:
1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chocolate chips
1/4 cup of soy, rice, or nut milk

Line a muffin pan with 12 muffin cups.

Mix together the melted butter, peanut butter, graham crumbs, and sugar.

In an pan, melt the chocolate and the milk together. If you have time, paint the the inside of each muffin cup with the chocolate. I took the easy way and simply placed a small spoonful of chocolate in each cup, reserving the rest for the top of the cups.

Spoon the peanut butter mixture into the cups, dividing it evenly. Divide the remaining chocolate, spooning it onto the the top of the peanut butter cups.

Chill the cups for a few hours for them to harden. Store in a cool place—they melt easily.

Makes 12 servings
Nutritional information per serving:
   331 Calories
   25g Fat (62.4% calories from fat)
   6g Protein
   28g Carbohydrate
   3g Dietary Fiber
   21mg Cholesterol
   189mg Sodium

Mustard Oil—A tasty salad dressing or a really hot massage oil?

Mustard Oil

I recently came across a bottle of mustard oil at the Asian grocery store. I have used different types of oils before (olive, corn, grape seed, walnut, coconut, truffle) but I had never seen mustard oil. Speaking with the owner about it, I was told that it;s usually used in Indian dishes and can be used in a salad dressing.



 Once I got it home I popped the top off and took a whiff. It had a strong mustard smell; think of dry, powdered mustard dissolved in a light coloured oil—very strong! I parked it on the shelf with the other oils with the intent to use it within the next couple of weeks. The hunt was on  for a possible recipe.

I eventually found a recipe that I wanted to try - Borta. As I was looking for a recipe I kept noticing comments, posts and basically warnings about ingesting mustard oil. It seems as though are some cultural differences of opinion on whether or not it is acceptable to eat.

From BrightHub:
"Though, there are some benefits of mustard oil, it was once considered harmful for human health in countries such United States and Canada. This is mainly due to the high erucic acid content in the oil, which is about 42 percent. The ill effects of erucic acid from edible oils are controversial and yet to be confirmed. Hence it is always advised to consult a health expert or your doctor before using mustard oil."

When I checked out the bottle, I was stunned to see the statement: For external use only.
A bit more investigating and I found a site that quoted Health Canada's warning from 1998 regarding mustard oil. It turns out it that its not the mustard seed oil that is worry some, but a plant that looks similar to it and has been known to get mixed in with the edible crop.

From a food forum:
"It seems that there is a weed, which is almost indistinguishable from the mustard seed plant, which in some areas has contaminated the crops. Oil from this plant may contain the toxic substance."

Knowing that, my enthusiasm to try mustard oil in my next recipe has totally left the building.

A Maasai Perspective on Vegetarianism

Last October I had the distinct privilege to visit a Maasai village in eastern Tanzanian. My husband and I were the only Mazungas (white folk) there so we had the full attention of our host; the 23 year old son of the village elder—head of the village. The entire experience was surreal, to say the least, but what sticks in my memory is the time that the three of us spent inside one of the bomas, simply talking and asking questions about each other's lifestyles.

I found his choice of topics and questioning fascinating. He could have asked us questions about our jobs, our family life, technological advances in the Western world...even questions about the weather would have been expected. What he questioned us about (in great detail) was the availability of milk in Canada!

He had found through our conversation, that there were dairy farmers in our family history and I guess he latched on to that commonality.

We compared herd size ( I think that the number of cattle is an indicator of wealth). He then had a us calculate how much a litre of milk would cost (converted to Tanzanian shillings) then an estimate on how much of that money is actually given to the farmer/herdsman.

He told us that a typical diet of the Maasai is milk and blood. He drinks 10 litres of milk per day. Calculating the cost of milk (if he lived in Canada) he laughingly stated that he would not be able to survive in Canada.

On occasion meat is eaten in the morning, but typically blood is mixed with milk for the morning meal. According to him,  they do not eat vegetables or grains at any time. They do drink beer (which is probably made with grains), but he was adamant that eating vegetables "makes you fat and lazy" and therefore not a part of the Maasai lifestyle. Nothing was ever mentioned about the activity level of the Maasai. The fact that they are constantly on the move and not sitting in front of a computer or tv for hours on end has to contribute to their level of fitness and health.

I always thought that vegetables would not be included in their diet because they are known as a nomadic tribe—therefore they aren't settled in a place long enough to raise vegetables.

I have to admit, looking at this fit, lean young man who was telling us that vegetables are a no-no, I couldn't argue that their non-veg lifestyle was a detriment to their health.

Maasai herdsmen and their cattle

On the menu today—Thai Noodle Stir Fry

A recent cold snap in our area forced me to make a vegan dish that I hadn't made in a while.

I had been storing some excess vegetables—bags of carrots, onions, squash, beets and cabbages in my garage. I was experimenting with the concept of constructing a cold storage area in the garage. My grandparents used to have a cold storage in their basement. It was not insulated, had a dirt floor, no windows and I remember it being cool in the heat of summer. This type of storage is low tech, effective and environmentally friendly; so in my mind, worth investigating as an option for food storage.

I was attempting to figure out how much the temperature fluctuation could affect vegetables in the garage when bamm...temperatures of -29 C hit. Nothing uncommon for Canada, but too cold for the veggies.

The result of the cold snap was a bunch of frozen veggies. The two, 2lb bags of carrots were frozen solid. Instead of throwing them out, I decided to thaw and juice them. It was perfect because I have a vegetarian recipe for Thai noodles that need 5 cups of carrot juice. The 5 cups of juice = 2 bags of carrots juiced.

The recipe had been given to me from a friend at work and I was initially hesitant to try it because the main ingredients of the sauce are carrot juice, ground sunflower seeds and coconut. I wasn't sure if I would like the taste. That being said, it has ended up being one of my favorite vegan recipes so far.
Thai Noodle Sauce

3 inches of ginger root, minced

12 cloves of garlic

2.5 tbs sesame oil

2/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup grated, unsweetened shredded coconut

2 tbs chili powder

2/3 cup fresh lemon juice (~ 3 lemons)

2/3 cup tamari (or soya sauce)

5 cups of carrot juice

4 tsp paprika

                                                     1 stalk of lemongrass, one end cut off and smashed to release fragrance

Cook the ginger and garlic in the sesame oil for a few minutes in a deep pot.

Grind up the sunflower seeds. I used a spare coffee grinder that I keep around for grinding seeds or spices. You can pick up a cheap one for around $8.

Add the ground seeds and the remaining ingredients into the pot,bring to boil and then reduce the heat. Cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the lemongrass stalk.

Serves 6
Nutritional Breakdown Per Serving of sauce:
  368 Calories
  23g Fat (52.6% calories from fat)
  11g Protein
  36g Carbohydrate
  7g Dietary Fiber
  0mg Cholesterol
  1878mg Sodium

The recommended serving is to use the sauce in a stir-fry of rice noodles, chopped greens (kale,swiss chard and/or bok choy), chopped tomato, cubes of tofu or seitan ( marinated in 1/2 c tamari and 1 tablespoon of rice vinegar or teriaki sauce). Top with bean sprouts, roasted peanuts and a lemon wedge.

Home Roasted Coffee

Every now and then I like to take the time to roast my own coffee beans. My dad told stories of roasting coffee beans in a big frying pan so I always thought it would be something different to try. Knowing this, my son had bought me a few packs of "green coffee" from a friend at work (he was running a wholesale business on the side). When my son changed jobs I lost my "supplier" so I hadn't roasted in a while.

During a recent trip to Tanzania, I found myself in a huge, open air market on the hunt for green coffee beans. Tanzania is known for its coffee, so I absolutely had to get some.
  

Coffee beans from Tanzania—roasted and unroasted (bagged)

I roasted these in my air popcorn popper. I burnt out a previous popper by roasting beans in it, so if you intend on doing a lot of roasting, you may be better off investing in a coffee roaster Usually when you do this, you get tons of flying chaff that separates from the bean. It doesn't smell too nice!

For the Tanzanian beans, however the chaff didn't fly off and I resolved myself to "hand shedding" each bean. What a friggin pain! 

Removing some of the chaff by hand...

I gave up on that task and after checking out a couple of blogs that stated you could grind your beans with the chaff left on. I went ahead and ground em up.

The taste was quite good. Not too mild—something that I worry about when home roasting beans. They almost had a chocolate flavour.

Good news is that you don't have to go to Africa to get your green coffee. There is a supplier in Almonte, Ontario (Equator Coffee) that sells unroasted beans online.

On the menu today—Lotus Root Chips

I first heard about lotus roots when I was browsing through recipes on Alicia Silverstone's web site—The Kind Life. The sliced roots look beautiful and I was interested in learning how to prepare and cook them.

Raw Lotus Roots—Unpeeled and peeled

 The lotus roots that I purchased were a dark brown in colour—I later learned that this indicted age. Younger, fresher roots are lighter in colour. Guess that's what we Canadians end up with when we are dealing with imported vegetables.

I ended up buying 2 roots that each had 2 segments. When peeled, this produced a pound of lotus root.

The texture of the root is similar to a combination of water chestnuts and raw potato, but with a denser texture; more fibrous.

The recipe I followed was for Oven Baked Lotus Root Chips on the site Group Recipes reproduced here with nutritional breakdown. I used a cajun spice as indicated but I found the chips to be a bit to (spicy) hot. Next time I plan to use a BBQ seasoning with a bit less heat.

Oven Baked Lotus Root Chips
1 lb whole fresh lotus root
2-3 tsp of your favorite cajun or bbq spice blend
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp rice vinegar or lemon juice

Wash and peel the lotus root, removing any brown bits, just like a potato. Slice then 1/8 inch thick.

Raw lotus root slices, ready for blanching


Slide the roots onto bamboo sticks strung across a microwave safe bowl, as pictured. I added a bit of water on the bottom and covered it to keep the steam in.

Microwave on high for 2-3 mins to blanch. When the steam subsides, immerse immediately in a bowl of water with a tablespoon of rice wine vinegar or lemon juice, and a few ice cubes mixed in. When cool, drain and pat dry.
Preheat the oven to 450 F

Get a big spoon and mix the roots with the oil and spice. Spread out in a single layer on a non-stick baking sheet.
Bake for 10 mins. Flip them, then bake an additional 10 mins. You want them to be browned and golden just like a potato chip. Eat them warm or at room temp for up to two days.

Serves 4
Nutritional Breakdown Per Serving:
103 Calories
4g Fat (29.2% calories from fat)
3g Protein
17g Carbohydrate
5g Dietary Fiber
0mg Cholesterol
197mg Sodium