This one is less about some shit that's been included in our food etc.
Having been brought up with the mentality of "he's a growing lad" and being routinely fed generous portion sizes, I find it hard not to eat too much.
It can be quite surprising to learn what actual portion sizes should be when it comes to an accurate calorific value of any given food.
So with that in mind, I'm lucky that my partner serves us smaller portions, but I also know that it's in my mind that I might be still hungry after a meal, so rather than picking at things I shouldn't I've been learning about stuff that is reputed to be good for us, but isn't necessarily high calorie.
Fermented foods are often done with salt i.e. one that comes easily to mind is sauerkraut. When I first tried some, it was "factory produced" in a jar. I can recall thinking that it wasn't too bad, just not something that I'd go out of my way to get again. Yet not so long ago, we had some veg in the fridge that was getting on a bit, so I had a dig around and as most of the veg that was degrading etc, was cabbage I found some recipes on the net and had a read.
A basic sauerkraut is just chopped cabbage, a few spices and salt. Basically it's 1 tablespoon of salt to 1.5 pounds of shredded cabbage - I make it a little lower i.e. 1 tablespoon of salt to 1 kilo of shredded cabbage. The cabbage can be shredded by hand (obviously remove any wilted and manky looking outer leaves, then quarter the cabbage and remove the stalk (but if you're patient, you can always grate that as well, as it's perfectly edible) or by machine/processor. Put it in a bowl, add the requisite amount of salt, use hands to mix the salt in evenly while giving the cabbage a good "scrunching to". Then just cover it and leave it for up to 6 hours. This helps some of the cabbage juice/water to come out making a brine. Then it's just a case of mixing in a table spoon of peppercorns and teaspoon of caraway and fennel seeds in. Mix the spices in to spread them throughout the cabbage.
The cabbage mixture is then packed into sanitised/sterilised jars - I use the end of a rolling pin to pack the veg mix in tightly. As you pack the cabbage in, you get some brine coming out on the top, which is fine. Then you just need something to keep all the cabbage below the level of the brine - I have some small glass jars (Lidl picnic portions of Pate) that fit in nicely. Some have suggested that the Gu pudding range make some small chocolate puddings in little glass dishes that work well. Hell you could even do like they do in Korea for Kimchi and find an appropriate sized beach pebble (easily sanitised/sterilised and just as easily reused for future batches). If you are using screw top type kilner (or Mason in America) jars, then once you see bubbles coming up through the kraut, you'll have to relieve the pressure (often called "burping" the jars) by unscrewing the lids gently (over a sink or bowl is handy as you can sometimes get some of the juice/brine pushed up and out). If you have the flip/clip top type jars it's a bit easier as the pressure will build up but then force the excess pressure out through the rubber seal - so just keep the jars standing in a bowl for any liquid that makes it out.
After about 1 to 2 weeks the ferment will have subsided and you can move the jar to the fridge (did I mention that during the ferment I keep them at room temp - in a bowl, on the floor of our larder). The chilling will halt any last fermentation and you can start digging in. If you leave it at room temp, it won't do any harm just that the fermented taste will develop to be a little stronger.
I like it with sausage in a sandwich or roll, maybe with cheese in a toasted sandwich, or even as an extra veg side portion with main meal. It's quite versatile and can be used where you might use a vinegar based sauce or condiment - it's not as acidic tasting and being only cabbage, spices and salt, will be lower calorie than sauces etc......
Monday, January 04, 2016
Hum ? Food for thought maybe ?
A recent programme which alleges to tell us which of the regional/national diets (not exact, individual ones, generally ones tied to location and it's culture) is best.
Now in fairness, I might have missed the point a bit as I didn't manage to catch the whole programme - I missed about the first 10 or 15 minutes. Whether than means I missed some explanation of the criteria of "best", I don't know.
Whether the conclusions are drawn purely from sources like WHO data on various illnesses, life expectancy and death rates I can't say.
What the programme did for me, was to demonstrate that there's no real, single answer. If you took the differences in the actual make up of the diet of the top 10, then it would seem that it's about money. More specifically economic inequality.
It showed to me, that in some places, it was about what was available to the people of that region/nation i.e. that in some places, it was more about what could be grown on the available land. The available land might vary and depend on the relative wealth of the individual/family thereof. In turn, what could be grown for consumption was relative to geographical location.
This doesn't take into account of political and geo-economic factors i.e. that X is easily grown in one place, so lets grow lots then make political deals for the "markets" to buy lots of the excess and then sell it to populations where it wasn't routinely available.
This point and many others were obviously used to work out this league table of diet.
If the programme is available to you for viewing, I'd encourage you to take a look. There is some obvious targets for the good, bad and indifferent. There are few surprises too.
A bigger problem is, that it's a populist bit of programming. Yes it may be that the programmes producers, presenters et al, are "food evangelists" trying and genuinely believing their content, but this whole subject is too big and important to try and put it into such a basic form.
Yes, it could be as easy as taking the currently held and understood knowledge about various foodstuffs, then "cherry picking" the best elements to try and get to a health based pinnacle. Equally, could that idea end up in giving us cross contamination of types/styles of foods that provide a negative effect ?
I'll just go with the position that it seems to be the case that the industrialisation of food production to make it cheaper and more convenient is a negative. Yes, it may be the case that many of the "E numbers" that are used by the food industry are indeed naturally produced, but if you take the analogy of difference between medicine and poison being the dosage or amount, then it would make sense to only use enough of anything to make "it" taste good when it's made in the normal (traditional ?) way. Routine seems to be important i.e. 3 meals a day but with no snacking in between (is that routine or maybe it's cultural/traditional ?). That where excessive amounts of an ingredient need to be considered as to whether it's really needed or not (sugar and salt are two good examples) i.e. what to the ingredients actually bring to a given recipe/food ?
Balance seems important to. Too much of anything is likely not healthy. The base mix of protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals etc appear to be a good mix. Many veggies contain enough of those. There are some diets that do have different make up than that, if you consider that that base mix is a "holy grail".
The programme is worth a watch, if for no other reason, to explain that "your way, isn't the ONLY way". That there are some ingredients we should consider reducing and others that would be beneficial in greater amounts........
Now in fairness, I might have missed the point a bit as I didn't manage to catch the whole programme - I missed about the first 10 or 15 minutes. Whether than means I missed some explanation of the criteria of "best", I don't know.
Whether the conclusions are drawn purely from sources like WHO data on various illnesses, life expectancy and death rates I can't say.
What the programme did for me, was to demonstrate that there's no real, single answer. If you took the differences in the actual make up of the diet of the top 10, then it would seem that it's about money. More specifically economic inequality.
It showed to me, that in some places, it was about what was available to the people of that region/nation i.e. that in some places, it was more about what could be grown on the available land. The available land might vary and depend on the relative wealth of the individual/family thereof. In turn, what could be grown for consumption was relative to geographical location.
This doesn't take into account of political and geo-economic factors i.e. that X is easily grown in one place, so lets grow lots then make political deals for the "markets" to buy lots of the excess and then sell it to populations where it wasn't routinely available.
This point and many others were obviously used to work out this league table of diet.
If the programme is available to you for viewing, I'd encourage you to take a look. There is some obvious targets for the good, bad and indifferent. There are few surprises too.
A bigger problem is, that it's a populist bit of programming. Yes it may be that the programmes producers, presenters et al, are "food evangelists" trying and genuinely believing their content, but this whole subject is too big and important to try and put it into such a basic form.
Yes, it could be as easy as taking the currently held and understood knowledge about various foodstuffs, then "cherry picking" the best elements to try and get to a health based pinnacle. Equally, could that idea end up in giving us cross contamination of types/styles of foods that provide a negative effect ?
I'll just go with the position that it seems to be the case that the industrialisation of food production to make it cheaper and more convenient is a negative. Yes, it may be the case that many of the "E numbers" that are used by the food industry are indeed naturally produced, but if you take the analogy of difference between medicine and poison being the dosage or amount, then it would make sense to only use enough of anything to make "it" taste good when it's made in the normal (traditional ?) way. Routine seems to be important i.e. 3 meals a day but with no snacking in between (is that routine or maybe it's cultural/traditional ?). That where excessive amounts of an ingredient need to be considered as to whether it's really needed or not (sugar and salt are two good examples) i.e. what to the ingredients actually bring to a given recipe/food ?
Balance seems important to. Too much of anything is likely not healthy. The base mix of protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals etc appear to be a good mix. Many veggies contain enough of those. There are some diets that do have different make up than that, if you consider that that base mix is a "holy grail".
The programme is worth a watch, if for no other reason, to explain that "your way, isn't the ONLY way". That there are some ingredients we should consider reducing and others that would be beneficial in greater amounts........
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