Thirsty? How about juice? Or some Gatorade? Water? No thanks, don't be silly, only Vitamin Water for me. Or wait! I know what I'm craving! Mmm, how about some Age Defying Skin Balance Water? That's right, Borba!
According to the website:
"BORBA Age Defying Skin Balance Water contains a revolutionary cultivated bio-vitamin complex...
It may be obvious to my regular readers (my mom, my girlfriend) that I’m a bit of a salad guy. I love salad. And one of my favorite ways to start my day is with a breakfast salad. Here’s how it goes:
· Wash a few handfuls of fresh mixed greens. I like having some bitter greens in there, such as radicchio or frisee.
· Make a sharp, acidic vinaigrette: Mix two parts olive oil to one part vinegar. Equal parts of champagne and red wine vinegar add pleasant aromatics to the vinegar component of the dressing. Drop in a few dashes of Old Bay or Tabasco if you like – not too much, just enough to taste the spice. Whisk or shake...
photo by Loren Tama
I’ve eaten Cobb salads for dinner, breakfast, and lunch, sometimes successively and usually in that order. I love the crunch, the tanginess, and the complements achieved by the right balance of acidic tomatoes, sweet and smoky bacon, and fragrant blue cheese. A properly-seasoned chicken breast can make the difference between a lame Cobb and a gourmet delight.
I’ve been known to praise restaurants that use a traditional Cobb dressing, complete with blue cheese, garlic, Worcestershire, and vinegar. At the same time, I’ve often lambasted a Cobb served with something as pedestrian as thousand island dressing: pounding my fist on the table, I lecture my fellow diners, reciting my familiar phrase “it’s not a Cobb without Cobb dressing!” As much as I’d like to say that the dressing makes the Cobb, however, the reality is that...
This is a take on a traditional Caprese salad but with 4 different types of tomatoes and the addition of Lemon Cucumbers. Everything was given to us from our friend's garden (thank you Heather and Steve!), except the Mozzarella, thus the name Summer Garden Salad. If Lemon Cucumbers are not available...
What a perfect summer salad. The sweetness of the watermelon, the meatiness of the tomato, the salty feta cheese and the crisp, herbaceous mint all meld together like people dancing at a reggae concert. Each bite has a different character, unique and delicious...
Ugli Fruit - photo by GabeB
So New Years Resolutions are in full swing and the easiest, and most delicious, way to a more salubrious lifestyle is to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into your diet. Recently enough, the Center for Disease Control has set up a new website to promote the addition of fruits and veggies into the American populous, FruitsAndVeggiesMatter.gov.
They have their tips, but what's really cool is their recipe search function. You can enter keywords and ingredients, then select any or all of: Appetizers, Beverages, Breakfast, Desserts, Dips/Spreads/Salsas, Entrees, Finger Foods, Salads/Stews, Side Dishes, or Soups - and it will spit out recipes that match. This was more or less an idea spawned by friends of mine years ago, I'm glad someone did it.
Instead of entering a keyword, you can also pull down and select a specific fruit or vegetable and it will do the same. Cruising through their list I came upon a fruit I've never heard of... "Ugli Fruit?" Mind you, I've read Adam Leith Gollner's The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession
This piqued my interest, so I did some digging. I found the following information on ugli.com:
"UGLI® is the registered trade mark under which Cabel Hall Citrus Ltd. markets its brand of tangelos [a tangelo is a hybrid of a grapefruit (or pomelo) and a tangerine] from Jamaica.
This tangelo is a variety of citrus fruit grown exclusively in Jamaica and exported by Trout Hall Ltd. to markets all over the world. It was discovered growing wild in Jamaica over 80 years ago and has been developed by the family of the owners of Trout Hall Ltd. into the commercial variety now in production.
The original tree is believed to have been a hybrid formed from the Seville orange, the grapefruit and the tangerine families. Since 1924 when it was first discovered several improved scions have been used by Trout Hall Ltd. to produce the current variety which is so popular."
Unfortunately for us, FruitsAndVeggiesMatter.gov only has one recipe for the Ugli Fruit... yup you may have guessed it, Exotic Fruit Salad.
"My (little) garden" - photo by Erin Collins
I'm not a health food nut, but I do enjoy some foods many consider should be reserved for Hare Krishna feasts and rabbits. One of these delicious delicacies is sprouts. I love 'em. One really simple and delicious sandwich I make is just sprouts, honey, and peanut (or almond) butter. Mmm.
There is plenty of new age hullabaloo about the benefits of eating sprouts and eating raw in general. It is true that most enzymes are denatured, ergo useless, at temperatures above around 140 degrees Farenheit.
Enzymes are, on the other hand, also denatured by pH extremes like the acid in your stomach so... what's the point? Most of what I found on the internet is ranges between the wacky and the outright delirious, but there are some good articles especially on making your own sprouts at home.
I was reading www.wisebread.com (a website for frugal living) and they had this article on making your own sprouts. It sounds really easy. I want to experiment with sprouting different things, I'll bet they each have some different nuance.
Then I also found from www.living-foods.com there is a whole plethora of spout-it-yourself information in their article here. Not only do they discuss the basics, but they go into different methods of sprouting, and have a nearly exhaustive list of specifics for each type of grain.
This list includes: amaranth, barley, buckwheat, corn, millet, oats, quinoa, rice, wheat, almonds, cabbage, fenugreek, flax, psyllium, chia, mustard, pumpkin, radish, sesame, sunflower, alfalfa, clover, garbanzo, beans (including: Anasazi, Black, Fava, Kidney, Lima, Navy, Pinto, and Soy), lentils, Mung beans, peanuts and peas.
I'm not alone with my sprout sandwiches. Here are a few more that I found:
From www.thekitchn.com - their Alternative Sprouts Sandwich
From www.milkandhoneyfarm.com - thier Easy Tomato and Sprout Sandwich (at the bottom of the page)
And from www.goodmagazine.com here is a really good looking recipe for what they call Project 009: Avocado And Sprouts Sandwich
- Dave Koch
