Green Options

Going to a body and nutrition expert with my husband is one of the best things we’ve done for ourselves. What was the key take away? Warning! Turn Alkaline!

Turn Alkaline? Are we magicians? Well according to biochemists we are! You can change your body chemistry with what you eat!

Chemicals have seeped into foods, air, and water, which in turn lower our system’s ability to control the chemistry of our body fluids, increasing illness and chronic disease.

The sad fact is that most food consumption in the wealthiest nations has shifted from nutritious raw foods to low nutritional value processed foods and we need to shift it back. Now that our total biological terrain is at risk, we urgently need to do some clean up by shifting our body chemistry back to the raw, organic foods it was designed to function on as we’ve evolved.

Below I’ve listed out a quick list of the good foods (alkaline) to treat your body to often…

It’s sweet potato central here at my house now that they’re in the farmers market. But while sweet potatoes are very nutritious, they also have that sweet flavor that can overwhelm many diners. One option is to prepare them as though they were savory instead of sweet.

Sweet potatoes are just starting to show up at my local farmers market. The first sweet potatoes of the season are not as sweet as those that come later. Farmers will set some by to cure, thus developing the super-sweet flavor familiar from holiday dinners. Fresh from the ground, they’re still sweet. But they’re not so sweet that they should be called dessert.

Sweet potatoes have a lot of nutrition packed into relatively few calories. According to NutritionData, a single serving (1 cup) of sweet potatoes has 769% of the daily value of Vitamin A. They’re also high in vitamin C and several B vitamins, as well as minerals such as Manganese, Potassium, Copper, and others. The low glycemic load of sweet potatoes gets them into low-carb diets and many weight lifters include them in their meals.

My CSA box this week contained sweet potatoes…lots of sweet potatoes.  The ugliest sweet potatoes you’ve ever seen.

This is what a sweet potato looks like when it’s been damaged by voles.  Pretty ugly, eh?  But other than the obvious cosmetic damage, there’s no harm to the sweet potato — you can trim off the damaged parts and use it as usual.  Vole-damaged sweet potatoes even store just as well as perfect specimens.  But of course a lot of people would be put off by the visual and pass these up in favor of more perfect-appearing sweets.  So when you’re hitting the farmers’ markets at the end of the season, if you see some ugly sweet potatoes cheap, snap ‘em up!  They’re a bargain, and  you’re rewarding a farmer for using organic methods.

I also had some excellent-looking young spinach in this week’s CSA box, and a few onions.  I’d picked up some wonderful linguica from a local sausagemaker a few weeks earlier, and I always keep chicken stock in my freezer.  It’s a blustery day here in Southwest Ohio, with the first sleet of the season.  Soup seemed like the perfect choice.  So I made one of my favorite rustic autumn soups:  Linguica, Sweet Potato, and Spinach Chowder.

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When the summer heat breaks and the first cool days arrive, I feel melancholy, because it means the end of our local farmers market is nigh and the variety of summer produce will soon be gone.  While I savor the rest of our ripening tomatoes, my thoughts turn to fall’s produce, with its rich red and orange hues, mirroring the turning leaves.  Fall produce reminds me of rich, hearty dishes that fill you up during the harvest season.  Here are five fall fruits and vegetables (and meal ideas) that are great sources of nutrition and the basis of many delicious dishes.

Ah, comfort foods. Whether you’re snowed in with the winter blues, sick as a dog, or suffering from a sadness that only carbs can fix, comfort foods make us feel warm and relaxed. I had a painful run-in with the dentist this weekend, so not only am I craving a little comfort, but something soft and mushy… and potatoey, and buttery… Ok, I’ll stop drooling now. It’s mashed potato time!

And of course, what’s more comforting than knowing that you’ve bought local, quality ingredients to add to your dish as well? Comfort foods should be as easy to make, as they are pleasing to eat. The great thing about mashed potatoes is, there’s no exact science to it.

Peel your potatoes (7 russet potatoes makes about 5-6 servings) and cut them into medium sized chunks. Boil for about 25 minutes, or until soft. Add in small doses salt, milk product, and butter product (I use soy milk and Earth Balance margerine). Mash, and experiment with the ingredients until you’ve got the desired consistency and flavor.

While I tend to be a bit of a potato purist, I know that the same old thing can get a little bland after a while, so here are three mashed potato varieties: