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To Your Health: Pomegranates
In Season, Colorful, Tartly Sweet, Versatile and delightfully healthy.
“Pomegranates are a good produce choice for December,” says Marisa Moore, a registered dietitian in Atlanta and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. “They’re in peak season, and you can store them in the fridge for up to two months.”
Consider Pomegranate Chutney: easily made & wonderfully flavored: …try this recipe.
The fruit’s vibrant red seed sacs, which hold a hard kernel surrounded by juice, offer a bit of Vitamin C and potassium, Moore says, and a half-cup serving provides a healthy 3.5 grams of fiber. Thanks to the antioxidants they contain, pomegranates may help fight some cancers and possibly slow the growth of prostate cancer.
Moore suggests adding the tangy-sweet pomegranates seeds to Greek yogurt; tossing them with golden beets, goat cheese and salad greens for a winter salad; or reducing the juice to create a sauce for chicken or pork. Simply prepare as with cranberries:
- one to two cups in a small sauce pan over low/medium heat until tender;
- add a teaspoon of flower or corn starch then reduce heat to simmer;
- put the lid on & allow to thicken (ten minutes or so);
- add a dash of dry agave & few drops of fresh lemon to enhance robust flavor
Part of the beauty of Stainless Steel cookware is retention of Nature’s Honest nutrients. ENJOY!
Pomegranate juice is tasty but not as good a choice as the seeds. Half a cup of juice has [about] 70 calories, just like half a cup of seeds, but most people drink more than half a cup, and eight ounces adds up to [about] 135 calories. The juice contains little to no fiber so much is lost without the seed.
To separate seeds from pod, Moore suggests cutting the fruit into quarters and placing the pieces in a bowl of water. “The seeds will fall to the bottom, and the rind and pits will float to the top.” You can freeze the seeds in an airtight container for up to three months. Handle them with care; they can stain hands and clothing.
Cook healthy, eat honestly, and thrive…
Greasless Fried Chicken
Retaining Mother Nature’s honest nutritive values, tastes, aromas and texture is easily preserved with Stainless Steel Waterless cookware; but the phrase itself, ‘Waterless Cooking’ can just as easily be misunderstood. For example, a question from a new user:
Comments/Questions:
My instruction book for waterless cookware has a recipe for greaseless fried chicken but it says to keep turning the chicken. I thought you were supposed to keep the top on and now I’m lost. How do you cook greaseless fried chicken?
Response:
The beauty of Stainless Steel Waterless pots & pans is that you have the option and capability to use the waterless cooking method if you want to; but that doesn’t mean you have to cook waterlessly. You can use these utensils in ways more familiar to you as you learn and become comfortable with waterless cooking.
We use the lid when searing meats to capture and keep the natural fluids (fats, oils & water) inside the pot or pan. I recommend keeping the lid on during the searing process to optimize the capture of these savory fluids. Once the sear is completed (3 to 4 minutes at medium heat), the lid can be removed to ‘fry’ meats. I again prefer to leave the lid on because doing so reduces cooking time and retains the natural moisture, but it’s not necessary.
I know the waterless cooking method recommends ‘no peek’ cooking—but that’s a common misnomer. Feel free to remove the lid, turn your chicken. Reapply the lid if you wish—but you don’t have to. Without the lid, some of the natural moisture is lost, and foods require a bit more cooking time. But this is not a huge concern. Over time, you will notice the difference between foods cooked without the lid (less moist, tender, savory & flavorful) and foods cooked with the lid on. Simply a matter of befriending your new cookware, becoming familiar with it over time and adjusting your technique to fit your tastes.
In the meantime, understand that you can cook conventionally with these fine utensils (the way most of us learned to cook), but you also have the capability to cook using the waterless method which has a host of tasty & nutritional benefits.
Cook healthy, eat honestly, and thrive
a good deed that costs you nothing
…yes, costs you nothing.
Many not-for-profit programs are vying for votes to secure a part of the CHASE COMMUNITY GIVING drive (awards up to $250,000).
Southridge High School Marching Band Program (Beaverton, Oregon) is just such a not-for-profit managed by a 501C3 booster organization.
Southridge is a registrant for the CHASE COMMUNITY GIVING drive. Simply take the following link to facebook, from there log in to your facebook page and vote for our cause by simply clicking your ‘like’ button.
That’s all we ask. That’s all Chase asks as well–there will be an announcement via facebook but you will not be contacted by either organization. Accept our HUGE & HEARTY Thank You in advance. Here’s the link:
PLEASE help us fund the extraordinary values of extracurricular learning–hard work, team work, mental and physical discipline, competition, and of course the natural motivating values of music and dance–the kind of learning not found in a seat in a classroom. …your help is just a click away
Thanks a bunch!
Steve Denning – WaterlessCookwareBlog
Treasurer, Southridge Instrumental Music & Dance Ensembles (SIMDE)
treasurer2@simde.org
Visit us on-line: Southridge Instrumental Music & Dance Ensembles
Watch this year’s competitive show on youtube:
“The more things change…
…the more they remain the same.”
The Seasons change…
But when it comes to people, it has always been a belief of mine that change is more aptly embraced by this phrase “one step forward, two steps back.” After a flurry to new beginnings, tried & tested, we tend to step back and re-view. What we step back to of course, are more fundamental virtues:
- basic values
- centering attitudes
- helpful behaviors
- the more substantial and valued virtues
- the more substantive renewals
- less of ‘me’ and more of ‘us’.
This approaching Holiday season serves to remind us of our shared story, our truer nature, our greater good—a story about the birth of hope, about the renewal of the truly priceless, about our greater community at peace. We have work to do of course.
Cook healthy, eat honestly, and thrive…
Two Steps Back… to Related Posts:
“…to till and to keep”
Good News from last November to include:
How to Carve a Turkey Video
Turkey Prep: Brine Rub or Brine Bath
Cooks Illustrated on the Best Cookware Value
A Black Friday Discount code from ChoiceCookery.com for our readers
ENJOY a few things that stay the same through all the seasonal changes…
(Quality Stainless Steel Waterless Cookware for example.)
Stainless Steel Cookware – a little history
Why Stainless Steel Cookware? … a little history
Metal cooking utensils have been in common use for centuries. Stainless Steel cookware is a more recent development.
The smelting of Stainless Steel (an iron-nickel-chromium alloy) didn’t occur until 1910 when Harry Brearley (under the employ of John Brown Laboratories and Thomas Firth & Sons, England) sought to smelt a metal resistant to rust, erosion and corrosion—a metal adaptable to military use, capable of withstanding nature and the intense heat fluctuations common to repeat firing arms.
Metallurgical studies dating back to the early 1820’s (Berthier, France), the 1870’s (Woods and Clark, Britain), and refined in 1909 (Giesen, England) pointed Brearley in the direction of an 18/10 chromium/nickel blended alloy to meet his performance criteria. Brearly’s alloy, known today as t304 Stainless Steel (one of the 300 series of ‘austhenitic’ Stainless Steel) contains a host of additional benefits—durable, nonporous, mirror-like sheen impervious to stain, easily molded, cleaned, polished and chemically inert (nontoxic).
Given the unique character of surgical grade Stainless Steel, Brearly’s t304 alloy has proved over the years to be far more advantageous as surgical instrumentation and cookware than bullet casings. The unmatched properties of t304 Stainless Steel produce the most hygienic, impervious (non-erosive, non-corrosive, non-porous, non-toxic, non-stick) cooking surface available in the cookware marketplace.
- non-erosive (will not leach, flake, peel or degrade into foods)
- non-corrosive (will not rust, tarnish or react to water, air, salt; no seasoning or tempering—wash in soapy water)
- non-porous (will not house bacteria in microscopic pores as will cast iron or other soft metals—copper, aluminum, etc.)
- non-toxic (t304 Stainless Steel is totally chemically inert)
- non-stick (real foods contain all the essential fats and fluids necessary to release themselves from a hot surface—excessive heat causes sticking, charring & burning, not the cookware).
But this is just the character of Brearly’s base alloy. Advancements in the fabrication of Stainless Steel cookware over the past fifty years has evolved to a point where Stainless Steel cookery is the established, unchallenged epitome of safe, chemically inert, healthy cooking utensils.
Related Articles:
A Lifetime of Value: An Investment in Quality
The Healthy Cookware Choice: Multi-ply t304 Stainless Steel
…for more on the Real Story of Stainless Steel Cookware
Cook healthy, eat honestly, and thrive…
Cookware Sets
Stainless steel cookware sets is a smart investment for my kitchen. Stainless steel are tried and tested to withstand long term use while maintaining its distinct luster. Aside from its durability, stainless steel cookware retains its classic and elegant look over the years.
That is why when my husband asked me to choose a nice set of cookware for our new kitchen; I never had a second thought of choosing this one. Stainless steel waterless cookware sets was the best decision for my pots and pans. I even purchased a set for my in-laws.
Dollar for Dollar, the better choice is…real food
We are what we eat. More to the point, we are only as healthy as the health of that which we eat.
Stainless Steel cookware, and the Waterless Cooking method of preserving Mother Nature’s natural goodness, are two components of a heavenly marriage in the kitchen. But our long relationship to honest food didn’t begin in the kitchen, at the stove, in a pot or even at a grocery store. Food began where everything begins, in the soils of our ‘living earth’.
Similarly, a ‘diet’ isn’t about losing weight; it’s really about honoring and serving a body’s nutritive needs. The essential complex of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, fats & fiber of a healthy diet has evolved over eons. Our diet didn’t just ‘happen’. To believe today’s mega Agribusiness and it’s food outlets honors this complex balance of original nutrient value is, of course, pure fiction. Consider what tens-of-billions of annual taxpayer subsidies buys (80% of today’s agriculture subsidies are consumed by 4% of American farms):
Both piles cost us $20. At 18,585 calories, the pile on the left is roughly nine days worth of worthless fat if you ate nothing but. The produce to the right is about 2,500 calories of nature’s honest efforts to balance a body’s nutritive needs.
At a time when one in three school-age kids are overweight or obese, should our tax dollars
subsidize mega agribusiness – the primary product of which
is cheap, highly processed, nutritionally bankrupt junk.
There is a bill moving right now that can end the worst of the worst of these subsidies — and save taxpayers $28 billion over the next 10 years. Take action now. Contact Congress re: H.R. 2487: REAPS Act of 2011.
“Here’s an Easy One,” The New York Times, Jan. 15, 2011.
RELATED POSTS:
Waterless Vegetables: Quick Start Guide to Health
Veggie Wars
Veggies Wars (Part II)
Cook healthy, eat honestly, and thrive
Inquiring Minds
On occasion, those who visit us ask good questions worthy of sharing. Here’s one from Mike:
“What is the thickness of the bottoms of your cookware? What is their makeup beside the surgical stainless, e.g., nickel, titanium, etc.”
Good questions.
#t304 Stainless Steel is a century old—still the safest, most hygienic non-porous, nontoxic surface available for cooking. #t304 was developed to avoid both erosion and corrosion—an 18/10 blend of chromium and nickel. We all have concerns about nickel in our diet, but the nickel in Stainless Steel is bonded to the iron atom undisrupted by temperatures that exceed the melting point of steel.
The Maxam Family of Brands utilize a base plate that will vary in thickness depending on the number of ‘elements’ (or layers of heat conductive metals like cooper, aluminum, titanium, up to 12 different layers of metal). Heat conductive (or soft) metals naturally erode, corrode, leach into and taint foods. An obvious health hazard.
Maxam base plates double insulate these heat conductive metals from the cooking surface—both by the encapsulating plate itself, and by the multiple layers of Stainless Steel between the base plate and the cooking surface.
To answer specifically, the thickness of the base plate varies between ¼” and ½”. Base plates do not add significant weight to pots & pans. Utensil weight comes from the # of Stainless Steel Plies used in fabrication. 9-plies of Stainless Steel, for example, offers relatively heavy cookware (without greater heat-retentive benefit in my opinion). 5-Ply is the minimum # of Stainless Steel layers needed to assure desired heat retention and thus waterless cooking efficiency and performance.
Hope this responds to your questions. I’d be delighted to chat at your convenience, or visit us on our blog where many more questions are answered.
Respectfully,
Steve Denning
1-866-200-1973 – toll free
Maxam, Chef’s Secret, HealthSmart, Precise Heat, Wyndham House, Yorkville–Quality to last a Lifetime–ChoiceCookery
Backpacking Means Traveling Light!
Backpacking is a time-honored tradition that places man in the wilderness with nothing but his wits and what he brings with him. Unlike camping, when backpacking you’re often separated from civilization by several miles of wilderness. It’s important to travel light to preserve your physical condition in case of an emergency, and for the general purpose of comfort. For backpacking you want to carry equipment that is designed for backpacking specifically; for example, backpacking stoves are made of lightweight metals, and gasoline for the stoves can be carried in a small plastic container.
It’s also important to avoid carrying heavy equipment like a stainless steel stock pot and pans, books, and excess clothing. You can save a lot of hardship and even increase your movement on the trail by traveling without the weight!
Choosing the Best Cookware Set
Cookware is now constructed from an array of materials, and each person has their opinion as to which is best. When you go to purchase your set, you can take advice from all of your friends and the experts, but you won’t find any answers. The truth of the matter is that the optimal cookware set for you will depend on how you cook and what features you’re looking for.
If you are looking for versatile, durable cookware, it’s best to go with cast iron. You can use it on the stove, in the oven and even transfer it to the fridge. You only have to wipe it down to clean it, but you will have to reseason it from time to time, which is rather labor intensive. Stainless steel offers a sleek, modern look, but food does have a tendency to stick to it. Non-stick stainless steel cookware sets are obviously easy to clean, but you have to be careful with what utensils you use with them and how you clean them.
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