Traditional fats are one of the building blocks of food: they carry flavor, they provide a creamy taste and texture, and they have more nutrients per gram than their cousins carbohydrates and proteins. (When I say “traditional” fats, I mean fats from whole foods — both plant and animal — not man-made, refined fats that [...]
Continue reading about Of Macadamia Nuts, Salad Dressings & Oil Labels
Dates are fabulously useful! Just don’t confuse them with figs, which are also lovely but which don’t have the staying power or sweetness of dates. (And don’t confuse fresh figs with the gritty stuff inside Fig Newtons — an actual fig tastes much lighter and fruitier, plus it beautifully shades from pink to cream to [...]
Now that herb gardens are in full swing and so is the hot weather, take advantage of both! Most leafy green herbs make a refreshing herbal “tea.” (I say “tea” because true teas by definition contain leaves from the tea plant, camellia sinensis. If it doesn’t have tea in it, it can’t really be tea…but [...]
Egg poaching is generally a three-step process: first, you boil water; next, you crack an egg into the boiling water, reduce the heat to medium-low, cover the pot, and simmer the egg for 3 minutes, occasionally skimming a slotted spoon around the edges of the pot to make sure the egg isn’t sticking; finally, you [...]
First it was omega-3s, then it was antioxidants; now, the food rage is probiotics. (Mind you, these have all been mainstay elements of whole, unprocessed foods for millennia, long before food scientists and genetic engineers and corporate interests got involved in our food chain. Thankfully, we’re now “discovering” that traditional cuisines contain plenty of foods [...]
Chocolate as we know it doesn’t much resemble the pod on the tree. (Chocolate is made from cocoa “beans” that are actually seeds, and those seeds are encased in pods that grow on cocoa trees.) A looooong process has to happen before the seeds of a tropical plant can become a candy bar: the pods [...]
In the world of natural sweeteners — i.e., unrefined sweeteners like maple syrup and molasses — there aren’t as many solid sweeteners as there are liquid ones. Normally, this works out fine when baking, because most baked goods include liquids (which allows you to tinker with the overall total amount of liquids), but some baked [...]
Continue reading about Creating Tasty & Healthy Chiffon Cakes (Amongst Other Things)
Grocery stores ought to have an aisle labeled “Truly Scary Food-Like Substances.” That aisle would contain low-fat flavored yogurt (the majority of which contains a host of unpronounceable sugars and fillers), low-fat salad dressings (ditto), breakfast cereals (up to 40% sugar), breadcrumbs (the ingredient list is the entire length of the can!), and croutons (more [...]
Pretty soon, we’ll all be grilling away into the wee, it’s-light-until-ten! hours of the night. Part of that grilling repertoire is bound to include the classic American hot dogs and hamburgers…which in turn will probably entail catsup and mustard. And while you can find decent mustard on most grocery store shelves — although watch out [...]
Driven by the craze for polyunsaturated omega-3 fats, we’re so busy making a mad dash for the flaxseed oil that we’re ignoring another oil that’s a great source of omega-3s and compliments everything from pancakes to salads: walnut oil. Although flaxseed is higher in omega-3s than any other oil, walnut oil isn’t too far behind. [...]
