Strange Fruit

A couple of weeks ago, I was on a treewalk in Garfield Park and witnessed my first female gingko trees. I LOVE ginkgo trees. They're the oldest known species of trees, thought to originate over 250 million years ago. They're perfect urban trees -- very resistant to pollution. Plus, I just love those leathery-smooth fan-shaped leaves.

The fruit-bearing females are rare on city streets. The fruit is messy and stinky so most cities, Chicago included, plant the sterile males. Yet the fruit is prized by many Asians. The moment I saw the fruit above, I immediately popped one in my mouth. They taste very apricoty, had the oddest aftertaste, and weren't quite ripe yet (and I fortunately wasn't sensitive to the pulp). And then I learned, it's not the fruit itself that's prized, it's the nut contained in the fruit (and the extract is made from the leaves but that's another story).

Today, I saw another female ginkgo, this one leafless and covered in really ripe fruit and began to wonder what people really did with that fruit and if it was any good for you. Nutritionally, ginkgo nuts are very low in calories (31 calories per oz) compared to other nuts like almonds (161 calories per oz). The nuts contain a number of unique compounds, including bilobol, ginkgol, ginnol, and ginkgolic acid (so unique that they're pretty much named after the tree) but research is not yet conclusive on the nutritional value of those compounds.

Maybe for now, until I learn more about the benefits, I'll continue to appreciate the trees and perhaps experiment with the nuts in small amounts. There are some interesting recipes on the web and I am intrigued by those who hunt the fruit.

Saving the World Auf Deutsch

To offer a more European green perspective today, I present The Sustainable Shopping Basket: A Guide to Better Shopping, published by the German Council for Sustainable Development. My German must have vastly improved since I had no problems comprehending this publication. Oma would be so proud.

Feeding Your City Baby

My friend Jolene has a fabulous new blog called City Baby for which I'm more than honored to serve as her nutritional consultant. Jolene's commitment to good food for her daughter and other city babies has inspired me to restart Veggiepalooza and further explore my love of veggies and all other foods.

She's planning on publishing weekly so check her out each weekend!!

Deep Purple-Red Heart Love

I love beets. I love them pureed in soups, love them in salads, love them grated and sautéed as side dishes, love them juiced mixed in with carrot, apple, and ginger. City Baby also highly recommends pureed beet cubes for baby.

Eating beets is definitely a smart nutritional move. Beets are an excellent source of folate and manganese and, like many veggies, a good source of fiber, vitamin C, potassium, and magnesium.

Yet there is some odd nutritional lore surrounding beets. The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia by Rebecca Woods states that, when eating beets, “pink urine may indicate an iron deficiency while magenta stool may indicate adequate iron. . . . As their color suggests, beets are a blood tonic and are good for anemia, the heart, and circulation. They purify the blood, alleviate constipation, aid the liver, and promote menstruation.”

The iron claim is pure myth. Beets only have 0.7 mg of iron per ½ cup serving, about 4% of our daily needs. And, as most beet eaters know, you’ll end up with both pink urine and magenta stool so you can hardly assess your blood iron levels from that (especially since iron isn’t pink or magenta).

The source of that blood tonic claim is likely the source of the beet’s purple-red color – betalains, a recently discovered class of dietary antioxidants, found primarily in red beets and prickly pears (nature makes for odd nutritional bedfellows).

Betalains include two classes of compounds: betacyanins, which are red violet, and betaxanthins, which are yellow, both of which were shown to have powerful antioxidant properties. Just small amounts were found to inhibit lipid peroxidation and heme decomposition. That’s a fancy way of saying that they reduce oxidation of blood fats, reducing the threat of clogged arteries, and they protect the iron that is carried by red blood cells. So in a roundabout way, beets really are a blood tonic since they protect against arterial and blood cell damage.

On a non-betalain note, another claim for beets that seems to be true is that eating beets is excellent for reducing constipation, probably due to the type of soluble fibers in the root.

So eat, enjoy, and don’t be alarmed when, later, things come out a little pink or purple.

What's in Season

Here in Chicago, the farmer's market season is only a few weeks old. My small northside farmer's market doesn't yet have a wide variety of veggies (but lots of strawberries and cherries). But I'm not despairing. The season is young. If you're wondering when to expect what veggies this season and live in Illinois, wonder no more with these official and unofficial Illinois lists. Here are some additional lists for my friends in California, Washington, New York , and Massachusetts – and for my mother in New Hampshire. If anyone else has some good seasonality lists, feel free to share.

If you're also wondering what it's like to be a farmer's market farmer, I recommend reading It's a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life by Keith Stewart. I was initially drawn to the book by its premise of a middle-aged man quitting his NYC job to become a Hudson Valley organic veggie farmer. I love all tales of mid-life career changes, especially those involving food. What the book ends up being is a very balanced, thoughtful, and well-written depiction of what your farmer's market farmers go through to bring their tasty veggies to a market near you.

Veggie Log

Behold, the shiitake log. I was doing some research today on shiitake mushroom nutrition and came across this very informational web site for the Lost Creek Shiitake Mushroom Farm and they sell shiitake logs!!!!

I have to admit I'm intrigued. I'm not exactly known for my green thumb so I'm always happy to see something that looks difficult to kill. From the growing directions, it sounds like I could put this in my sun room and forget it -- until harvest time.

Supposedly, log-grown shiitake mushrooms are more nutritious than sawdust-grown shiitakes, which is what is typically sold in supermarkets. So if you know a shiitake lover, consider sending them a log as a gift.

If anyone has ever had a shiitake log, let me know how you liked it.

Cook It Up

The New York Times, hot on the heels of my lycopene post, has a good column today about how some veggies nutrients, like lycopene, become more bioavailable once veggies are cooked. You win some, you lose some nutrient-wise however you prepare your veggies so the nutritional solution is to just eat lots of veggies in different ways and it should all even out.

Today's column makes up for one earlier this week about organic baby formulas. I thought the issue the baby formula story raised was important – that just because a food product is labeled organic doesn't mean that all the ingredients are the healthiest.

What bothered me was the statement "All infant formulas contain added sugars, which babies need to digest the proteins in cow’s milk or soy." Sugars have nothing to do with the digestion of proteins. Protein digestion is facilitated by enzymes, produced by the digestive tract, specific to the digestion of protein. Infant formulas are modeled to be as close to human milk as possible and contain sugars, just as human milk does, as a source of carbohydrate energy.

So don't be using that old "I need the sugar to digest my protein" excuse to justify those extra cookies.

Supercharged Mutant

This weekend, I was in H Mart, a supersized Korean supermarket in Niles, IL, when I spotted orange cauliflowers and decided to bring one home. Orange cauliflowers are the tastier offspring of a mutant orange cauliflower found in a Canadian field 30 years ago. The mutant was smaller and less flavorful than regular cauliflower so food scientists labored to improve upon the mutation, a gene that causes the cauliflower to store more beta-carotene, to come up with an orange cauliflower as tasty as the white stuff. Because of the extra beta-carotene, orange cauliflower is much higher in provitamin A than white cauliflower.

Since the weather turned chilly yet again today, I was in the mood for soup. I started with a spicy cauliflower soup recipe in Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Cooking. The resulting soup lacked body so taking Julie’s Spinach Chickpea soup as my inspiration, I added a can of rinsed and drained chickpeas. Just what it needed. Now the soup is tastier and has more protein and fiber.

As you can see, the soup is a vibrant orange. Feel free to make it with white cauliflower. The soup will still be a light yellow from the added turmeric and carrot.

Spicy Cauliflower Chickpea Soup
Serves 4

Prep: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes

1 T olive oil
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 carrot, coarsely chopped
1 tsp chili powder
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp red pepper flakes
¼ tsp turmeric
1 large head of cauliflower, color of your choice, coarsely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 ½ cups cooked or 1 15 ox can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups water

Optional garnishes: plain yogurt or low-fat sour cream, cilantro

Heat oil over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, and spices and sauté until onion is soft, about five minutes. Add remaining ingredients, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes. With immersion blender, puree until coarsely smooth. Top with optional garnish. Serve immediately.

Nutrition Info (per serving): 182 calories, 30g carbohydrates, 11g fiber, 10g protein, 5g fat, 1g saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 422mg sodium

High-Fiber Flamingo Protector

Did you know that lycopene, the red carotenoid found in tomatoes, watermelon, and pink grapefruit, keeps pink flamingos pink? If they didn’t eat lycopene, they’d be white flamingos. Which begs the question, do flamingos eat tomato sauce?

In humans, lycopene is an antioxidant stored in our blood plasma, skin, and organs such as our liver, lungs, colon, adrenal glands, and, for those who have one, prostate gland. Studies are still ongoing but there is some evidence that lycopene may reduce our risk of vision loss, heart disease, and some cancers.

For reasons unknown, lycopene is best absorbed when we consume processed tomato products rather than raw tomatoes. One study showed 2.5 times higher lycopene absorption after eating tomato paste as compared to eating the equivalent amount of raw tomatoes.

Since it’s been kind of chilly here the last couple of days, chili is the best way I could think of consuming my lycopene this week. I like my chili vegetarian, yet meaty. I adapted this recipe from Robin Robertson’s Vegan Planet. She likes to use kidney beans but I prefer the pinto.

To supply the vegetarian meatiness, I used Lightlife Taco/Burrito Smart Ground, found in most major supermarkets.

Flamingo-Friendly Chili
Serves 6

Prep: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 45 minutes

1 T olive oil
1 large onion, coarsely diced
1-2 T chili powder
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp cayenne pepper
28 oz can crushed tomatoes
6 oz can tomato paste
2 cups water
2 cups soy veggie crumbles
3 cups cooked or two 15 oz cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large stockpot. Sauté onions for five minutes until soft. Add spices, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, and water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove cover, add veggie crumbles, beans and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 30 minutes. Serve immediately.

Chili also freezes well.

Nutrition Info (per serving): 282 calories, 45g carbohydrates, 13g fiber, 21g protein, 0g fat, 0g saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 625mg sodium

Facing Your Veggie Fears

Despite the fact that many of my patients have told me they love them, I’d never eaten okra. No good excuse. The potential sliminess just scared me. So I brought in a special correspondent for this spring’s okra report. Citypixie lives in NYC but hails from Florida so she knows her southern veggies.

Okra is definitely worth a try nutritionally. It’s only 25 calories per ½ cup serving with 2g of fiber per serving. Part of that fiber is mucilage, a type of soluble fiber and the source of the potential slime. Mucilage (I cringe every time I type that) is also an effective thickener which is why okra is so essential in gumbo. In addition to the fiber, okra is a good source of vitamin B6 and folic acid.

Citypixie convinced me to buy okra and try her VERY simple recipe. It takes 30 seconds to prep (rinse okra – do not cut their tops off!!!!) and then ten minutes total on the grill (they'll give a little when you press them). The okra pictures you see are of my very first ever okra – and I loved them!!!!!!! Soaked in lime, I gobbled them all up. I always expected them to be bitter but they’re not. Okra has a very mild flavor with a little something different in the center.

Special NYC Veggie Report from Citypixie, Okra Guru

"FreshDirect has substantially streamlined my food procurement habits in NYC. If you're not familiar with it, FreshDirect is a fantastic NYC-based grocery-delivery service that offers New Yorkers just about everything they want in a slick click-and-buy environment. The only real downside to FreshDirect is that you're kind of on your own for meal-time inspiration as nothing can replace the sensory experience of wandering around the market and discovering something new and/or not generally a part of your standard grocery list. (The upside is that I can get my beer, juice and bottled water delivered to my door!)

This weekend I convinced my husband to take a trip to a real "brick and mortar" grocery store in Redhook, Brooklyn. Not just "a" grocery store, but the very beautiful and catacomb-like Fairway Market. For those of you not familiar with Fairway, Fairway appeals to foodie elites and local-yokels alike because of the sheer variety of offerings (there aren't many grocery stores that carry sea beans and saltines!) and totally reasonable prices. Fairway is piled high with a panoply of tempting seasonal vegetables and fruits. If you can't find inspiration here, you're in trouble.

Okra isn't exactly "off" my grocery list, as I grew up eating it, but it isn't firmly "on" it either. When I place my FreshDirect order, I tend to be a creature of habit, so once an ingredient finds itself out of rotation, I'm probably not going to be eating it for awhile! Luckily there was a boatload of fresh okra in the specialty produce section beckoning me at Fairway this weekend. It kind of cracks me up that okra is considered a specialty veg (or is it a fruit?) since it was such a staple of my Southern-style family supper, but everything is relative. I never heard of Fox's U-Bet soda until I moved north of the Mason-Dixon line, which apparently made me a food-philistine up until the point of that discovery!

As "specialty vegetables" go, okra is certainly an acquired taste. Most folks who've had and don't like it, have had their okra in a gooey (probably overcooked) stew with canned tomatoes. While this viscous texture is appealing in many non-western cuisines (i.e. the Japanese love their fermented soybean natto), it is understandably not so popular here in the states where "slime" doesn't conjure up the best images and experiences for most people. Honestly, I don't really care for stewed okra either. Fried okra is a different story, but I think a fried shoe (if it was fried and seasoned correctly) would probably be delicious. Indian and Southeast Asian cuisines incorporate okra into many of their dishes, and I'm thrilled to get my okra in a restaurant, but it isn't likely that I'll be whipping up a ghee, dal, naan or paneer at home anytime soon.

So what's a no-fuss cook to do when she finds a gorgeous pile of okra at the market? Grill it! I have to admit, I didn't come up with this concept on my own – I recently ordered the okra special at a quirky neighborhood Japanese-Vietnamese haunt, Hoi An. I was blown away with its simplicity and powerful unexpected flavor! Best of all, the gooeyness factor pretty low, which adds to the appeal.


Citypixie’s Grilled Okra
Serves 2

Prep time: 30 seconds
Grill time: 10 minutes

15-20 stalks of washed fresh okra
1 T canola oil
Sea salt (I like Halen Mon)
Fresh limes

Preheat a lightly-oiled cast-iron grill-pan. If not canola oil, be sure to use an oil with a high smoke-point. Get the grill hot, hot, hot, then place the okra on the grill. After about 5 minutes, turn the okra so that both sides get grilled. The okra should have grill marks, but still look vibrantly green and plump. Don't over-grill the okra or the okra will become a viscous gooey hot mess. Once the okra is cooked, plate it. Mix few pinches of sea salt with the juice of a lime. Dip the okra in the lime-salt mixture as you eat it.

Easy and yummy!"

Citypixie also recommends roasting the okra which I tried the next night. I tossed the okra with 1 T olive oil, sprinkled them with Aleppo pepper (pick whatever spice you like), spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet, and put them into a 450 degree oven for 12 minutes. Just as tasty as the grilled okra.

I now crave okra and need to get more. I bought mine at the local Indian grocer for $1.34/lb. If your supermarket doesn't carry fresh okra, check out your closest ethnic grocer.