I went back to researching fats and oils recently and came across an excellent chart for choosing the best oils for good health. But sadly, it omitted avocado oil, one of my favorites. So I did a little digging around to learn more about avocados.
Turns out avocado oil has many amazing qualities. First off, it has a fat profile almost identical to olive oil. As olive oil is generally considered one of the healthiest fats you can use, that means ditto for avocado oil. Check out all that avocados can do for you below.
While looking around, I found two interesting recipes featuring avocados and tweaked them both to my liking. The first one appears here. It’s my avocado and lime spread. It’s easy and can be made up to 4 or 5 days ahead. Store it in the fridge under plastic wrap pressed onto the surface to prevent exposure to air.
Versatile beets, as well as their leaves with stems, make delicious treats at any meal. Experiment with them to find ways to include them often in your meal plan. Your brain will thank you for it. Don’t forget. Eat beets.
As further encouragement for adding beets and beet leaves to your diet, here are three helpful tips for preparing and serving them deliciously and easily. This post follows on my previous two posts about beets’ bounty. Be sure to read them:
Vinny’s grandparents have told him that living with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia is one of the scarier prospects of growing older. So he has done a series of posts about some lifestyle choices that could make a positive difference to our mental health in later years. He’s all for starting these habits early, for a longer and more active life. Read on for his forth and final installment.
Super beets: Beets are the ideal brain food. These ones are large enough to use as weights in your exercise class. But for best effect, we suggest you eat them.
Part 4 – Beets are a good bet
Beets may be our best defence against Alzheimer’s disease
You might be surprised to know that beets are one of the healthiest vegetables you can eat. Their bright red color signals a wealth of antioxidants, which are potent fighters of inflammation in the body and, specifically, in the brain.
But beets offer the brain even more useful benefits. Betanin, the compound that accounts for the red hue of beets, disables a protein that contributes to Alzheimer’s disease. It is so effective that researchers are looking into betanin as a possible drug component for sufferers of this serious brain disorder.
Beets help keep the brain healthy in other ways, too. The rich red root contains nitrite, which when converted to nitric oxide, increases blood flow. More blood flowing into the brain means more oxygen, which increases the brain’s efficiency.
A tasty coffee cake that needs no extra sweetness can be had by making up this moist snacking cake. A wonderful treat if you have some green tomatoes on hand, a strong possibility if you were growing tomatoes at home this year, like Vinny was. It calls for 200 grams of green tomatoes, which is about two medium-sized ones.
Ginger is the healthiest spice in your pantry. It is one food that earns its reputation as a “super food” whole-heartedly, as has been proven by science. This recipe uses lots of ginger.
A Bundt cake studded with green tomato pieces and candied ginger, then spiced with masala tadka powder, is perfect with a cup of coffee or tea, or even with a glass of milk.
Spiced green tomato and candied ginger coffee cake Makes 12 modest slices
1 cup green tomatoes, chopped (200 grams, about 2 medium)
1 teaspoon masala chai powder or tadka masala spice*
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Preheat oven to 350F (180C)
Prepare a small Bundt pan (6 cups or 7.5 x 3 inches) by lightly coating the sides, bottom and center spindle with canola oil or other flavorless oil. Sprinkled some flour liberally around the sides and turn upside down over the sink to tap off any excess. Make sure the spindle is coated with flour too.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars with an electric mixer for a couple of minutes. Keep your fingers away from the beaters while they are beating, or else you might catch your fingers in the blades and faint! Vinny knows this from personal experience. No bones were broken, though…
Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat well.
In a smaller bowl mix the chopped tomatoes and chopped ginger together well. Add the 1/2 cup (50 grams) of the flour and toss with a wooden spoon, till the flour has coated the veggie pieces.
Sift 1 cup (100 grams) of the flour together with the baking soda, baking powder, and masala powder in another smaller bowl. Add this to the butter mixture in the large bowl in three parts and beat on medium speed after each addition till well mixed.
Add the green tomato mixture to the batter in the large bowl and fold in till well mixed using a wooden spoon. The mixture will be thick.
Scrape this mixture into the prepared Bundt pan and smooth the top.
Turn the oven setting to Bake and cook the cake for 45 to 50 minutes till a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for about 10 minutes. Then unmold the cake onto a rack to cool.
To Serve
No need to use a sugar glaze. Leave it plain and enjoy the moist delicious flavor of this spicy cake.
Note
If you don’t have a prepared masala spice mix on hand, add these to the flour mixture: ½ teaspoon cardemom and 1/8 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, and coriander. If you like a highly spiced cake, you can double these quantities.
Ginger and green tomatoes
Nutrition
A serving size of one-twelfth of the cake has 150 calories and 10 grams of sugar. It provides 11% of the recommended daily amount of Vitamin A and 5% of each of protein, vitamin C, calcium, and iron.
Ginger is high in gingerol, a substance with powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. It is said to help prevent nausea, improve osteoarthritis, and promote weight loss, among other things.
Spices add way more than flavor to foods. I like to add them liberally every time I cook.
To avoid all the hassle outlined below that I encountered trying to make jelly using the traditional sugar-activated pectins like Certo, this year I picked up something entirely different from a health food store. It’s called Pomona’s Universal Pectin, and it’s a dream to use.
It does not require sugar to set, so you can go ahead and make a low-sugar, or even a no-sugar jam or jelly with no problem. This citric-based pectin sets by interacting with calcium, which comes in a separate packet with the pectin and a wealth of instructions and helpful tips.
My red current jelly this year set with a minimum of fuss and with just a little sugar, supplemented by my home-made liquid stevia to taste. This product is highly recommended!
Making red current jelly: Adding the pectin/canning the jellyMy harvet from one bushBoiling the berriesStraining the berry juice from the pulp through cheesecloth
Why using Certo or other sugar-activated pectins is more trouble than it’s worth
For several years now, ever since I discovered that the mystery shrub on my property at the end of our hedge was a red current bush, I’ve been trying to make jelly from the berries. And every year I’ve ended up with a lovely syrup, instead.
In 2020, I finally succeeded in making three small jars of ruby red, sweetly tart jelly. But the following year, I failed once again.
Yogurt bowl with rhubarb, ginger, cinnamon, and walnuts
Fend off those “senior moments”
Vinny’s grandparents have told him that living with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia is one of the scarier prospects of growing older. So he has decided to do a series of posts about some lifestyle choices that could make a positive difference to our mental health in later years. He’s all for starting these habits early, for a longer and more active life. Read on for his second installment. Featured recipe: Yogurt bowl.
Part 2: Choose Mood Foods
The foods you choose affect your mood. And what is mood but your brain’s reactions to the world around you. Vinny’s yogurt bowl is a treat filled with probiotics and flavenoids to calm your brain and keep it firing on all cylinders.
Vinny’s grandparents have told him that living with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia is one of the scarier prospects of growing older. So he has decided to do a series of posts about some lifestyle choices that could make a positive difference to our mental health in later years. He’s all for starting these habits early, for a longer and more active life. Read on for his first installment.
This delicious egg cassarole is easier than a quiche and twice as tasty. It sometimes goes by the name “Strata”, probably because it is a layered approach to eggy goodness. But as Shakespeare once noted, “a rose by any other name is just as sweet.” More
Vinny loves all things “eggs,” but a morning omelet is one of his favorites. So when he found a recipe for a truffle omelet from Bruno, Chief of Police of the fictional village of St. Denis in the heart of the Dordogne in France, Vinny couldn’t resist. More
Where does butter come from? Milk, of course. People discovered butter thousands of years ago. Methods for making butter all involve some kind of whipping or churning to separate the fat from the liquids in milk. We can make butter easily for ourselves at home. Seeing is believing! More
With much fanfare this morning, Prince Harry married an American woman whom he met in Toronto, Canada… the beautiful Meghan Markle. In honor of this marriage, a blending of two cultures, we’ve added a little color and spice to the traditional British scone. Easy to make, I whipped this up between hymns, while taking in the Royal wedding. Best wishes to the bride and groom! More
If you love sweets, this natural, no-cal sweetener from the leaf of the stevia plant is incredibly good for you. Unlike sugar, it doesn’t create an insulin response. Whereas sugar damages your pancreas, the organ that regulates blood sugar, stevia’s sterols and antioxidants actually nourish this essential organ. More
Here’s a terrific treat for the family on a day that celebrates all things close to the heart. Whether it’s for your valentine, for your mom or dad on their special day, or just to say I love you to someone special in your life, these pancakes are terrific because rhey don’t involve candy, but they taste wonderful, anyway.
This is an easy and impressive dish if you prepare all your ingredients ahead and save making the eggs till the end.
I saw these clouds while surfing for egg dishes and meringues last week. Then I discovered that Rachael Ray herself had copied my take on this idea (haha).
Although most people might like to serve egg clouds for breakfast, my spin involves crowning a lunch-time salad with them. More
This recipe, inspired by the Redwall Cookbook for kids, has nothing to do with pigs. For the life of me, I can’t come up with a reason that explains why they named it a hogbake. Perhaps it’s a typo, and they meant to call it a henbake.
Regardless, I loved its simple healthy ingredients. More
One more great reason to make probiotics a part of your daily diet. Probiotics may stop sadness from morphing into depression.
You can get it as a supplement. But you can easily add probiotics to your diet. Eat some yogurt, sauerkraut, sour dough bread, kefir, dill pickles or other naturally fermented foods during the day as a side or a snack. Or add these foods raw to a dish you’re making.
Read this great post from Our Better Health for details.
How four weeks of supplementation can help stop a sad mood getting worse.
Probiotics may stop sadness turning into depression by helping people let go of the past, a new study finds.
Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Brain and Cognition found that probiotics stopped people ruminating so much.
Rumination is when people focus on bad experiences and feelings from the past.
Dr Laura Steenbergen, the study’s first author, said:
“Rumination is one of the most predictive vulnerability markers of depression.
Persistent ruminative thoughts often precede and predict episodes of depression.”
In the study 40 people were given a sachet to take with water or milk every day for four weeks.
Half of the people received sachets that contained a multispecies probiotic.
The other half received a placebo for the four weeks.
Before and afterwards people’s so-called ‘cognitive reactivity’ was measured.
‘Cognitive reactivity’ is the extent to which a sad…
Once upon a time some friends formed a neighborhood reading salon. One night they slogged through the snow to sit by a fire together and discuss a book Michael Pollan wrote nearly 10 years ago — The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
Pollan’s story lifts the blinders to show where our food comes from, just as deftly as if he wrote it, well, yesterday.
I always make braided bread at Christmas… because what would a Ukrainian Xmas Eve be, without a steaming warm loaf decorated with ancient baubles handed down from our great grandmother?
But if you’re looking for directions on making bread from scratch, read no further. For this project, I have always bought frozen bread dough at our local grocery store. I usually have to ask at the cake counter, and someone disappears behind humungous stainless steel doors and emerges with the five stone-hard loaves I need. Easy!
This post is all about the presentation. Your results will look as mouth-wateringly delicious as the warm, fresh bread tastes. More
Trillions of bacteria live happily in our gut. The goodies among them help us digest our food and absorb its nutrients. They also help our body make vitamins, absorb minerals, and get rid of toxins. They make our immune system strong. And best of all, they work on our brain cells to help them battle anxiety, stress, and depression. Friendly bugs in our gut make up the army that protects us from disease, including mental illness.
Good bacteria, called probiotics, come to us in fermented foods. Buttermilk, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, sour dough bread, raw-milk cheeses and kefir all harbor the good guys. For many, though, probiotics march forth into our gut in yogurt. More
I’m not sure we should let the little dears in our lives in on this trick… But if you’re ever stuck in a hotel room with no cooking facilities and limited cash for eating out, you can get by with an iron!
“Oww. Yikes! Moan…” said Jack, clutching the source of his agony with greasy hands… his bloated belly.
“Hey, Man,” said a worried Vinny. “What in heck did you eat this time, to cause all this grief?”
“All I had was a bite of Mama’s fish and chips. You know I don’t usually eat fried stuff, Vinny. But Mama’s fish and chips? I just couldn’t turn that down, and…” Just then another cramp hit, sending Jack into spasms of pain.
Banana crepes banish the blues with just two ingredients…
No lie. This is the easiest pancake recipe on the planet. Make this gorgeous breakfast crepe from only two ingredients. Forget the milk and the flour. All you need are eggs and bananas. Sprinkle some cinnamon to garnish. Then wave good-bye to Little Boy Blue. More
Remember those little Chia sculptures that blew onto the scene about 30 years ago? We’d water them and give them a little love, and they rewarded us by growing hair and fur in all the right places. They were cute but decidedly not edible. More
Almonds are so super good for you, they deserve an ode. One well-known nursery rhyme featured a nut tree that bore nothing… except silver and gold that is, which, as everyone knows, taste awful.
But those who have been reading along with Vinny know that nut trees in real life bear many wondrous things, more precious than money. More
In my last post I came down pretty hard on refined white flour. I was referring to the silky white wheat flour that bakers love to use in cakes and cookies. That’s because upon contact with the acid in our stomachs, refined flour breaks down quickly into the sugar our body uses for energy.
What’s more, refined flour likes to hang out in baked foods with ordinary sugar. Thanks to refined flour plus added sugar, our favorite cakes, cookies and biscuits deliver sugar to our blood stream in double doses. More
Add sunlight and grow your own vitamin D! Mushrooms are the only item in your produce section that can provide this important nutrient.
Grow your own mushrooms
Enjoy Vinny’s photo story about the magical mushroom garden he grew in his own home. Put your store-bought mushrooms in a sunny window with the gills facing up and increase their vitamin D content in a 2 days by up to 1000 times. “Majic!!!” Then make yourself a tasty, easy mushroom omelet, packed with vitamin D.
Daily cup of warm water with lemon… a Miracle Worker?
I don’t like sour. But Dr. Mike of 17-day diet fame advises a glass of warm water spiked with the juice of half a lemon every morning…the minute we get up.
At first this sounded dire… like voodoo… a magic-potion sort of thing straight out of the pages of Lemony Snicket. But in the interests of scientific experimentation, I gave it a shot.
Brocky Lee is a fine fellow. He’s a member of a well-recognized vegetable family, the Cabbages. Many of Brocky’s famous cousins include such luminaries as Sir Cauliflower, Mr. Kale, the brothers Radish and Turnip, and the little Missies Brussels Sprouts and Arugula. More
Our elf Hazel is deeply wise.
Love her and she’ll quench your thirst for knowledge.
Then, she’ll bless you with a silver tongue,
for teaching others what you’ve learned.
So it is said. But is there any truth behind the power of Elf Hazel? What we know for sure: Hazel harnesses the strength of her namesake, the hazelnut. Like some other nuts and seeds, hazelnuts feed the brain. Hazelnuts are one of the most concentrated sources of vitamin E available, and vitamin E is associated with less age-related cognitive decline. More
Here’s a twist on a favorite recipe that has love written all over it… a heart-y breakfast to get the family into a peaceful mood for Christmas. It’s made with eggs, Vinny’s theme in recent posts.
Eggs often get a bad rap in the press. But they have lots going for them, More
Dates and cranberries make a good pair. Orange horsey likes oats, too!
Dates and cranberries are best friends. These squares make a super healthy breakfast or snack choice, with fuel that lasts and nutrients that are sure to brighten your family’s mood. More
Cook Up a Story 