Archive for the ‘Food & Health’ Category

December 17th, 2024 Blog, Education, Empowerment, Food & Health, Food Safety, Nutrition No Comments »

What Do “Best By”, “Sell By”, “Use By” Dates on Food Packaging Really Mean?

I love concise, direct and easy to understand information! And that’s exactly what I got from The Bulb’s, Lindsay Kappius, regarding food date stamping at a holiday nonprofit event at Patagonia, Charlotte, last week.

But first: confusion. I’m sure you’ve seen labels printed on packages like the red circled area on the yogurt container above that read, “May be sold until date stamped on package”. Right next to those printed words you see “FEB 01 2025”. What exactly do “May be sold…” and the stamped date mean? Is that yogurt safe to eat after that date?

Quick answer: yes, it’s safe to eat – as long as you keep it appropriately refrigerated and are aware of signs of food spoilage.

Now, concise and direct clarity; As you can see in the middle column at the top of the printed sheet below, “May be sold until date stamped on package” as printed on the yogurt container above translates to “Sell By” date. As defined by The Bulb, a Charlotte, NC, mobile farmers market and fresh produce conservation, education and distribution nonprofit source, the “Sell By” date is a suggested date “when the product should be sold, assuming its remaining shelf life will occur in your pantry” or, my edit, in your refrigerator, as noted above with the yogurt example.

Suggested? Yes, exactly – and definitely not hard and fast. As you can see in the “What Date-Labeling Phrases are Used?” image below from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) – and note the underlined first sentence about “no uniform or universally accepted use on food labels for open dating in the US”, The Bulb guidelines correspond directly with USDA guidelines. The same can be said about what I underlined in red in the section in the middle of The Bulb page above about the dates and whether or not a dated food is safe to eat.

Regarding food safety, always beware of signs of spoilage exactly as noted on The Bulb guidelines above and in the section labeled Are Foods Safe to Eat After the Date Passes? on the USDA site that reads:

As with most guidelines, it all comes down to common sense. The only problem: common sense isn’t common until you’re first introduced to that idea or sense. After that, you’re on the hook.

I hope what you saw above helped clarify food labeling dates. I know, even after many decades of life, food shopping and cooking, it sure helped me nail down what those dates really mean, and I agree completely that they should be taken as suggestions!

September 16th, 2024 Blog, Empowerment, Food & Health, How To & Tips Comments Off on Gotta’ Eat, Can’t Cook: Empowering Yourself Beyond the Kitchen

Gotta’ Eat, Can’t Cook: Empowering Yourself Beyond the Kitchen

Gotta' Eat, Can't Cook is all about providing the skills you need to empower yourself in the kitchen and beyond.

3 primary concerns determine your quality of life: what you eat, how regularly and rigorously you move your body and how you manage stress.

To illustrate that point, even though the photo below is fairly current, this is what we humans (homo sapiens) looked like 10,000 or so years ago.

Up until 10,000 to 12,000 years ago we homo sapiens were all hunter gatherers.

10,000 years is nothing relative to the 10 to 20 million years it took for us to develop as hominids (early forms of humans) from primates or even the 200,000 to 300,000 years since we started to develop as “modern man”, or homo sapiens, that we are today.

Now, fast forward to more “current” times. 10,000 – 12,000 years ago, we were all nomadic hunter gatherers. That meant we had to move our bodies – almost always a lot – to find or hunt for food. At the same time, we had to manage stress to survive periods when food couldn’t be found or avoid being eaten by the same wild animals we were trying to kill to eat to keep us alive.

The fact is: our bodies are still hunter gatherer bodies that developed over millions of years. I joke that despite food that’s now available 24/7/365 in developed communities around the world, we haven’t yet become “homo couch-us potato-us”. That means our hunter gatherer bodies still require foods that promote life, regular and vigorous movement (aka, exercise) and techniques to manage stress so that we can think and behave clearly when life demands it most.

This site is about providing you with the skills you need to empower yourself to make the foods your body needs on your own. Like I’ve mentioned before, no one, no matter how well intentioned or influential they are to you, can empower you. Empowerment comes from within. That means only YOU can empower YOU. And this site provides picture book and video guidance and support to help you do just that in the kitchen – and beyond – because real empowerment begets more empowerment.

Ha! Then there’s the fun of it all. That’s up next!

July 15th, 2024 Blog, Eggs, Food & Health, Nutrition Comments Off on Freeing Eggs From a Bad Rap

Freeing Eggs From a Bad Rap

Bad Eggs

A month ago I wrote about the very undeserved bad rap bananas have gotten. And like I mentioned in that piece, I believed the negative hype and avoided bananas for a while. But life is about learning and adapting. I learned the truth about bananas and very quickly adapted my diet include them again, quite happily – and, actually, just had homemade banana ice cream with full-on flavor for dessert after lunch. Killer!

Picture book directions show how to take homemade banana ice cream from simple to exciting

Along with bananas, there’s another exceptionally popular food that, until very recently, has been unfairly criticized: eggs. Their crime: allegedly raising blood cholesterol and increasing the chances of heart disease. Wrong – and that’s based on objective scientific research, meaning scientific research that is not tainted by industry self-interest. Still, if you query “latest research on eggs and health“, and I urge you to do that on your own – and be sure to check both the source and date of what you find – you will still find continued “good vs. bad” controversy.

Regarding cholesterol, yes, eggs are high in cholesterol and are also extraordinarily rich in protein and other vital nutrients. As Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, author of The Clot Thickens , said in a January 2022 interview you can see by clicking this link or the image below and going to the 4 minute 40 second mark, an egg yolk is so rich in cholesterol “because it takes an awful lot of cholesterol to build a healthy chicken”. (My bold for emphasis.)

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick discusses the health importance of cholesterol

You can read more about Dr. Kendrick and his scientifically-based work by checking out my last blog. As I wrote in that piece, I’ve put his diet and health advice to practice – and love it for the foods I enjoy, how I feel as a young 66 year old and my consistently outstanding blood test results.

Next up: pan fried scrambled eggs – the first thing I ever tried to cook long ago but… Ha! I’m asking you to wait -not too long – to see exactly what that “but” means.

July 3rd, 2024 Blog, Food & Health, Nutrition Comments Off on “The Clot Thickens”: Dietary Fat Does Not Cause Heart Disease

“The Clot Thickens”: Dietary Fat Does Not Cause Heart Disease

Common sense isn’t common until you’re introduced to it. After that you’re on the hook.

But first a warning: just be sure to verify the source of that “common sense” before you believe it, internalize it and put it to practice.

Here’s a prime example regarding food and health. I just Googled “does eating saturated fat cause heart disease”, and this excerpt from MedlinePlus popped up as the first hit.

As stated directly on their website, “MedlinePlus is a service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the world’s largest medical library, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)”.

The only problem with the above excerpt from my Google search, especially considering its influential source and page title, “Facts about saturated fats“, is that it is largely incorrect. Saturated fats are not unhealthy fats. The only stumbling block for me are the vague words “too much” in the highlighted blue section, which then give the word “can” some validity because too much of any food (or anything) can indeed lead to negative consequences. (More about that in the “takeaway” bullets below.)

Here’s what I got when I clicked to read the full page.

Everything underlined in light turquoise is undeniably true. The lines underlined in red, however, are not true based on scientific evidence. Those lines instead support the completely scientifically debunked “diet-heart disease” hypothesis that holds that eating saturated fat can lead to raised cholesterol levels in the bloodstream, which then can lead to arterial wall cholesterol plaque buildup and eventual arterial blood flow obstruction resulting in heart attack, stroke and other associated life-threatening problems.

The reason I’m convinced that the diet-heart hypothesis is wrong – although I completely and incorrectly believed it as common sense for decades – is that I’ve read, listened to and agree with the breadth and depth of evidence laid out in The Clot Thickens by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, which is a must-read for anyone interested in the causes and prevention of the leading cause of human death, heart disease, or, more specifically, cardiovascular disease/coronary heart disease (CVD/CHD).

Dr. Kendrick is a Scottish general practitioner, who has spent decades rigorously studying CVD/CHD from an evidence-based, biochemical and physiological point of view. Here are some significant takeaways and quotes from The Clot Thickens that overwhelmingly debunk the diet-heart “eating fat leads to heart disease” hypothesis:

  • Most importantly, CVD/CHD is not caused by a single problem but is instead a process problem. (Dr. Kendrick adopted his “process” approach through insight gained from one of his professional mentors, Dr. Paul Rosch, Clinical Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College and Chair of The American Institute of Stress.)
  • “No-one actually has any such thing as a cholesterol level…because cholesterol cannot float free in the blood, as it is not water soluble, and therefore cannot be blood soluble. (This is due to) a somewhat inconvenient chemical fact: cholesterol has to be transported (through the bloodstream around the body in microscopic) spheres called lipoproteins (lipid + protein = lipoprotein), which are about the size of a virus.”
  • “Heart disease has nothing to do with eating saturated fat“. That means eating a diet rich in saturated fat and cholesterol does not cause cardiovascular disease/coronary heart disease (CVD/CHD). (My personal note: along with what I wrote about “too much” above, Dr. Kendrick’s entirely appropriate statement does not mean you can eat as much saturated fat and cholesterol as you want. Fats (more precisely identified as “fatty acids”) are high in calories, and those fats not used to maintain cell membrane integrity and support energy metabolism are stored in fat cells. Excessive fat storage leads to weight gain. Significant weight gain can then contribute to compounding problems that lead to CVD/CHD.)
  • The root cause of CVD/CHD is clotting (or thrombogenesis), which is why Dr. Kendrick’s book is titled The Clot Thickens. Initial arterial clotting is a multi-staged complex process and is the result of chemical, biochemical, physical and/or particulate matter damage first of the glycocalyx, the slippery blood flow-facing protective lining of arteries, and then subsequent damage to the single-cell-thick endothelial wall. (As defined concisely by US NIH, “Endothelial cells line the entire vascular system, from the heart to the smallest capillary, and control the passage of materials—and the transit of white blood cells—into and out of the bloodstream.”
    • Let’s cut the above bullet into two parts:
      • In the same way that your skin responds to a cut or abrasion by clotting and scabbing over until the skin heals beneath it, your body responds to damage to your endothelial cells, which cannot heal themselves, by initiating the above-mentioned clotting process and then absorbing and dissolving that clot deeper in the arterial wall to complete the healing – unless there are continued added injuries in the same location, which then allow the clot to grow ever-larger and restrict blood flow. A significant component of that multi-phase clotting process involves red blood cells (RBC’s) attaching themselves to a developing clot and thereby fortifying that clot – and here is where cholesterol comes in. RBC cell membranes contain about 40% cholesterol – and that is not unusually high, as all animal/human cell membranes contain on the order of 20-40% cholesterol. Most significantly, though there are other clotting components that also contain cholesterol in their structure (as noted above, cholesterol cannot flow freely in the bloodstream), the presence of red blood cells with their high cholesterol content is likely the reason many studying CVD/CHD incorrectly believed that cholesterol itself was the primary cause of arterial plaque formation.
      • To expand on the first bullet above, arterial clotting that leads to CVD/CHD is not a single “cause and effect” problem but a process problem, and that process is triggered by at least one or a combination of the following factors – and more (as discussed in the book):
        • Smoking and exposure to airborne micro-particulate contaminants
        • Diabetes
        • Raised blood pressure
        • Chronic kidney disease
        • Rheumatoid arthritis
        • Severe mental illness
        • Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)
        • Atypical antipsychotic medication
        • Steroid medication
        • History of migraines

If you’ve gotten this far, please then look more closely at the caption under the YouTube screenshot at the top of this page regarding cholesterol and lifespan. If that caption and the short video interview you can see by clicking this link or the same screenshot picture, that pits Dr. Kendrick against a heart-diet hypothesis adherent, resonate at all with you, please read or listen to The Clot Thickens – or do both as I did. You’ll be greatly enlightened with extraordinary life-changing food and health common sense – and will certainly get what I mean by the last eight words in the paragraph below (and then do read the final NOTE at the bottom of the page, which surely got my attention).

Most of all, thank you, Dr. Kendrick for your integrity, inquisitive persistence and gutsy toughness blazing a trail focused on reducing CVD/CHD through common sense thinking and practice – all in the face of misguided and daunting academic, government and corporate opposition.

NOTE: Just before punching off this blog now, which took me days to write to get it right, I Googled the same query I started with at the top of this page, “does eating saturated fat cause heart disease”, and this time got a very different top hit titled A short history of saturated fat: the making and unmaking of a scientific consensus, first published online in December 2022 and posted by the same NIH National Library of Medicine that posted Facts about saturated fats noted above. What I find extraordinarily interesting is that the second article, “A short history of saturated fat”, is diametrically opposed to the first “Facts about saturated fats” article and provides a rigorous argument against the diet-heart hypothesis very similar to what Dr. Kendrick provides in his The Clot Thickens. I’m very glad to see that and now see hope regarding the daunting opposition I mention above, though, at the same, I certainly wonder how making that identical query within the timeframe of a few days resulted in a such a completely different response to my first Google query.

July 11th, 2023 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Anti-inflammatory Recipes, Blog, Breakfast, Cycling, Cycling Food, Drinks (no alcohol), Fitness Food, Food & Health, Fruit, Fruit Pancakes, Hiking Food, Nutrition, Pancakes, Running Food, Sports Nutrition Comments Off on Rocket Fuel Breakfast to Power Your Body in Motion

Rocket Fuel Breakfast to Power Your Body in Motion

Rockets, power, motion! Please tell me you find that “let’s go!” motivating! When it comes to fuel to power endurance exercise/any physical activity to keep your body in motion, the key is making sure to take in fats, protein, some carbohydrates and fluids – and having them all with full-on flavor.

Here’s what I had recently for the hop on the bike shown above with terrific good friends.

The fats, from whole milk Greek yogurt, whole milk kefir, almond-peanut butter and freshly made whipped cream, combined with protein from egg and whole grain flour in the fruit pancake, Greek yogurt and kefir gave me slow-burning sustained energy. The carbohydrates: a little sugar in my iced coffee/chocolate/coconut water drink, cookie spread on my pancake slice and fruit, dried fruit and jam in my fruit and yogurt mix, gave me instant energy to start my ride. And front-loading fluids with 30-40 ounces of iced coffee/chocolate/coconut water got me going well hydrated so that I just needed to top off with water while I rode, and the potassium in coconut water helped both prevent cramps and improve energy metabolism.

Of course, everybody’s body and fuel requirements are different, and only YOU know YOU. That means it’s most important to pay attention to what YOU eat and drink and how that affects YOUR physical performance, no matter what kind of physical activity YOU do. Still, though the fine details differ person to person, the base components are the same: carbohydrates for quick burning energy, a good shot of fat and protein for long-burning, sustained energy and plenty of fluids to start off well hydrated.

The next few posts, starting with iced coffee/chocolate/coconut water (killer good!), will show how to make each of the 3 pieces shown above that I have regularly – and always with a little improvised variety for flavor fun, before hopping out on the bike.

More soon!

June 9th, 2023 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Blog, Food & Health Comments Off on Maltodextrin: What Is It and What Does It Do To Food and You?

Maltodextrin: What Is It and What Does It Do To Food and You?

I’m just back from a coast-to-coast cross country car/bike trip (advocating safe streets for all – more later) and love being on the road for the terrific sights, “big smile” interesting people I meet and the fun of improvising meals on the fly.

Along the way, I picked up some fresh, homemade jalapeño cheddar sausage at a small meat market in a tiny Kansas town. Before buying the sausages, I checked the ingredients.

At the time, all looked fine, though seeing maltodextrin pricked up my ears. Still, I ended up having a blast putting together a very flavorful sausage, fresh vegetable and cheese dinner bowl. As you can see in the top left picture below, I used fresh salad dressing I’d made earlier on my trip to substitute for oil that wasn’t available in my Airbnb for the night before cooking the sausages in the pan.

Later, I looked up maltodextrin. To cut to the chase, maltodextrin is a highly processed food additive made from vegetable starch and used in lots of processed foods to preserve and improve the texture/mouth feel of those processed foods. I stressed “processed foods” in that last sentence because, as noted in Medical News Today, “if a person eats too many products that contain maltodextrin, their diet is likely to be high in sugar, low in fiber, and full of highly processed foods.” (Medical News Today: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322426#which-foods-contain-maltodextrin). For what that means to you, please see the last paragraph below.

For a deeper dive, here are some bullets and links about what Maltodextrin is, foods that contain it and some potential health risks:

  • Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide that is used as a food ingredient.[2] It is produced from vegetable starch by partial hydrolysis and is usually found as a white hygroscopicspray-dried powder.[1] Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose and may be either moderately sweet or almost flavorless (depending on the degree of polymerisation).[2] It can be found as an ingredient in a variety of processed foods.[2] (Wikipedia (and confirmed by other sources): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltodextrin)
  • Maltodextrin is a highly processed food product made from corn, rice, potato starch, or wheat (again, the key words are “highly processed”, which should always give you pause) and is considered safe for human consumption as noted by the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration): “the ingredient is used in food with no limitation other than current good manufacturing practice” : (https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=184.1444)
  • Here is a partial list of foods, also from Medical News Today and other sources, that can contain maltodextrin, all of which are processed foods:
    • pasta, cooked cereals, and rice
    • meat substitutes
    • baked goods
    • salad dressings
    • frozen meals
    • soups
    • sugars and sweets
    • energy and sports drinks
  • There is also unconfirmed speculation that maltodextrin, as a highly processed sugar, might play a part in decreasing good, healthy gut bacteria and encouraging the growth of harmful bacteria that can lead to intestinal inflammation and problems like IBD (Irritable Bowel Disorder). Regular table sugar can have that seem effect. (Personally, I had painful intestinal inflammation years ago, mostly due to mismanaged stress, that has been much improved by managing stress better and being vigilant about what I eat and drink.)

Bottom line, I ate and enjoyed the meals I made with the jalapeño cheddar sausages shown above. At the same time, after knowing what I know now, I’ll sure keep an eye out for maltodextrin and try to avoid it when I can – without making myself crazy (ha!).

But what about you? As I advocate regularly here, the key to eating life-promoting well is eating fresh unprocessed/minimally processed foods and always with full-on flavor – flavor ALWAYS rules – and I’m glad to help you with that right here!

May 19th, 2022 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Blog, Food & Health Comments Off on What is Kefir and What Are Its Benefits?

What is Kefir and What Are Its Benefits?

First, I call us “a life support system for bacteria” because we have more bacteria in our bodies, mostly in our gut, than we have human cells. But really, both our body cells and healthy bacteria are life support systems for each other as they work closely together in balance and need each other to survive.

But, sometimes that balance goes out of whack.

That’s my second point. It’s been at least 15 years since I learned about kefir and started adding it to my diet regularly – and I sure am a big fan!

The reason: For a good chunk of my life, my gut and gut bacteria had been abused by fairly frequently prescribed antibiotic use – and probable overuse – due mostly to repeated ear and sinus infections. And then there was family and work-related stress I didn’t handle well. That nasty combination caused significant gut pain that just wouldn’t quit.

To turn that around, I learned to deal with stress and continue to stay on top of it through daily, disciplined, moment-to-moment applied mindfulness practice. More about that later.

At the same time, I learned how to take care of my gut by adding a combination of probiotics (foods full of healthy bacteria) and prebiotics (foods rich in fiber, that those bacteria need to eat to survive vibrantly to benefit us best) to my diet. The result: no more gut pain and a greatly improved quality of life.

I can, therefore, sure understand the big smile “Champagne of Dairy” line from the side of a kefir container…

…for both its pleasingly zesty, dry, bubbly taste and how it can help you feel. After all, the word “kefir” word comes from the Turkish word “Keyif”, which means “feeling good after eating”. 

All excellent! But what is kefir, and why do people, like me, who drink or mix it with other foods regard it so highly?

Kefir is a fermented (bacteria activated/bacteria rich) yogurt-like drink made from the combination of milk (or milk substitute, like coconut or almond milk) and kefir “grains” (cauliflower-shaped bacterial colonies) that look like this:

The beneficial (“good guy”) bacteria that make up the dozens of kefir bacterial colonies eat and convert the milk sugar in milk (lactose) into lactic acid, which gives the drink its sour yogurt-like taste, and at the same time, allows those bacteria to multiply incredibly rapidly. That rich number and diversity of beneficial bacteria, in much greater numbers than yogurt, gives the drink an equally rich array of health-promoting properties like a boosted immune system, an enhanced ability to fight and prevent infection and disease, improved digestion, stronger bones and much more.

Regarding more, here are two excellent resources for detailed information about kefir health benefits:

9 Evidence-Based Health Benefits of Kefir (Healthline)

Microbiological, technological and therapeutic properties of kefir: a natural probiotic beverage (National Center of Biotechnology Information, National Medical Library)

Based on my health history noted above, I strongly recommend giving kefir a shot both for it’s flavor and how it helps support your richly diverse and vitally important microbiome (community of good, life-promoting bacteria).

January 24th, 2022 Blog, Fitness Food, Food & Health, Pasta, Side Dishes Comments Off on High Protein-High Fiber Pasta Picture Book Cooking Directions

High Protein-High Fiber Pasta Picture Book Cooking Directions

High protein-high fiber pasta is an easy to make great addition to any meal routine

Last post showed how to cook great tasting, highly versatile wheat-based pasta to perfection. Future posts will show how to make fully flavorful easy pasta dishes, though you can certainly get a jump on that by clicking this pasta recipe page.

But, what if you’re wheat intolerant and can’t eat wheat-based pasta? Or, what if you want to add more fiber to your diet, which, as mentioned in another recent post, What is Fiber and Why Do We Need It in Our Diet?, is a great idea?

No problem.

There are now many wheat-based pasta alternatives in stores, and here are two that I use regularly, edamame (green soybean) and black soybean pasta.

Edamame and black soybean pasta

Here’s how these pastas clearly separate themselves from each other regarding carbohydrate, fiber and protein content. Serving for serving, traditional wheat-based pasta has more than twice the carbohydrates, which is no problem if you live an active life, and…

…only a fraction of the fiber and protein content of high protein-high fiber pasta as shown in the nutrition label comparisons above and below.

Click this link or the picture below for easy to follow How to Cook High Protein-High Fiber Pasta picture book directions.

How to Cook High Protein-High Fiber Pasta picture book directions

Next post will be a bit different: What is Mindfulness and What Can It Do For You? I’m a year into daily practice, and it has made a terrific difference. More soon!

January 14th, 2022 Anti-Inflammatory Foods, Blog, Breakfast, Food & Health, Nutrition Comments Off on High Fiber Flaxseed, Chia Seed & Nutritional Yeast Boost

High Fiber Flaxseed, Chia Seed & Nutritional Yeast Boost

This mix of flaxseeds,chia seeds and nutritional yeast is an excellent fiber and vitamin B boost to any meal

Last post talked about fiber and why we need it in our diet. This post shows how to make a practical mix of high fiber flaxseeds and chia seeds with the added optional benefit of nutritional yeast.

As I mention in the “Tips” section of the picture book directions you can get here, the mix of ground flax and chia seeds with nutritional yeast you see here is no “magic bullet”, but it sure helped improve both my gut health and vitamin B12 levels. My gut was in bad shape years ago due to poor stress management and a long history of prescribed antibiotic use, mostly for frequent middle ear infections. My vitamin B12 level was low due to not eating much animal protein.

I’ve since learned – and continue to learn – a lot about what goes on in our gut, how to manage stress much better and have changed my eating habits. More about both gut health and stress management soon. Regarding food, once I got “clued in” to the very new science of gut health 10-15 years ago, I’ve been eating a varied, well-balanced high-fiber whole food diet that is mostly plant based but is also strong in fish, poultry and meat. And I still use the mix of seeds and nutritional yeast you see here everyday as a fiber and vitamin B complex boost. Here’s how I had it this morning for breakfast with fresh fruit and yogurt.

Here’s how I’ve used it recently with both sweeter or more savory meals – all fully flavorful.

Sweet and savory meals topped with a mix of flaxseeds, chia seeds and nutritional yeast

Click this link or any picture on this page for picture book directions that show how to make this flaxseed, chia seed and nutritional yeast boost.

March 17th, 2019 Blog, Breakfast, Cycling, Cycling Food, Fitness Food, Fitness/Health, Food & Health, Grains, How To & Tips, Nutrition Comments Off on How to Cook Quinoa on the Stove Picture Book Directions

How to Cook Quinoa on the Stove Picture Book Directions

Stove Cooked QuinoaQuinoa (pronounced “keen-wah”) is one of my favorite…seeds. Yah, right away, that’s one of the things that makes it stand out. Quinoa is not a member of the true grain family, like wheat, barley, rye and other “grass grains”. Instead, quinoa, which comes in white, red, and black color variations, is really a seed, and, specifically, it’s the seed of the goosefoot plant shown below.

Goosefoot PlantGoosefoot gets its name from the shape of its leaves and is related to spinach and Swiss chard. Quinoa grows in the South American Andes Mountains, mostly in Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, where it’s been cultivated for over 5000 years. Historical legend has it that Incan armies sustained themselves during long marches on “war balls” made of quinoa mixed with fat. Yes indeed, EMMMMM… Actually, after what I’ve recently learned about fat and how good a lot of it is for us, the idea behind those “war balls” makes good sense.

As you’d probably expect from a relative of spinach and Swiss chard, both exceptionally nutritious leafy greens, quinoa also packs a potent nutritional punch. It has about twice the protein content of barley, corn, and rice. Quinoa is gluten free and easily absorbed by the body. It’s a good source of manganese, magnesium, iron, copper & phosphorous making it particularly noteworthy for people affected by migraine headaches, diabetes, and atherosclerosis. It’s also exceptionally high in dietary fiber and is rich in “good” unsaturated fats like Omega-3. Here are the numbers I got regarding quinoa’s nutrition from a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) table.

My favorite way to prepare quinoa is to make a batch with what you see below that yields about 2 ½ – 3 cups cooked quinoa. I then put the lion’s share of what’s left over in a sealed container either in the fridge for at least a week, or in the freezer where it lasts like any other frozen food.
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Needed to Make Stove Cooked QuinoaClick any picture on this page for a complete, easy to follow step-by-step picture book “How to Cook Quinoa” recipe.

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