Month: December 2012

Fruit Diet

In this interview, Dr. Gabriel Cousens discusses his personal and clinical experience on a 100% fruit diet based on his 40 years working as an MD and 28+ years as plant based only.

Doctor Sir Gabriel Cousens M.D., M.D.(H), D.D. (Doctor of Divinity), Diplomate of American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, Diplomate Ayurveda, visionary mystic, physician of the soul, and founder and director of The Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center and Tree of Life Foundation, is a leading author, world renowned spiritual teacher, expert in raw and living foods nutrition, and researcher on the healing of diabetes naturally, depression, manic depression, and some forms of psychosis (see mental wellness program).

Music courtesy of Beth Martens www.bethmartens.com

For more info please visit http://www.thecoolvegetarian.com

consuming milk does not improve bone health

Research Shows Dairy Does Not Improve Bone Health; Can Increase Childhood Obesity

WASHINGTON—A physicians’ group has petitioned the federal government to remove milk as a required food from the school lunch program. The nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine calls milk an “ineffective placebo” and says a large body of research shows that consuming milk does not improve bone health and does not prevent bone fractures and injury in children and adults.

Milk is also the number one source of saturated fat in children’s diets.

“Milk doesn’t make children grow taller and stronger, but it can make them heavier,” says PCRM nutrition education director Susan Levin, M.S., R.D. “We are asking Congress and the USDA to put children’s interests above the interests of the dairy industry. Focusing on milk as the single most important source of calcium in children’s diets distracts schools and parents from foods that can actually build bones, like beans and leafy greens.”

The petition, filed July 19, asks the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue a report to Congress recommending an amendment to the National School Lunch Act. The amendment would exclude dairy milk as a required component of school lunches. Milk, the petition argues, does not improve bone health or reduce the risk of osteoporosis and can actually create other health risks, especially later in life.

“The promotion of milk ingestion in children is, in effect, the promotion of an ineffective placebo,” the petition states. It adds that other products, including calcium-enriched soymilk and rice milk, contain calcium but, unlike dairy milk, are low in sodium and free of animal protein that can cause calcium to be excreted from the body.

One in eight Americans is lactose intolerant. More than 1 million U.S. children struggle with milk allergies, the second most common food allergy.

The federal government spends more money on dairy than any other food item in the school lunch program.

Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research,and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.

German dark rye bread

  • 3 cups All purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 5/16 oz active dry yeast
  • 1 tablespoons caraway seeds
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 cups water
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 31/2 cups rye flour
  • 8 teaspoons wheat gluten
  1. Place white flour, cocoa, yeast, caraway seeds, gluten, and salt in large bowl. Stir to mix.
  2. Place water, honey, and butter in a saucepan and heat until butter melts. When this liquid mixture registers 1050-1150F add to dry ingredients and mix until moistened, then beat very hard for 3 minutes.
  3. Stir in rye flour, enough to make a soft dough.
  4. Knead 8 to 10 minutes.
  5. Roll out and shape to fit 2 greased loaf pans.
  6. Brush tops lightly with oil and cover with a damp cloth.
  7. Raise in unheated oven over a pan of hot water for 1 hour until doubled.
  8. Punch down and allow to raise again until almost doubled.
  9. Preheat oven to 4000F. Bake 25 minutes.
  10. Remove from oven and immediately remove from pans; let cool on racks.

Roast beef

typically use a rump roast when making roast beef. You can also use a round roast or a sirloin tip with these instructions. This slow roasting method at low heat is good for tougher cuts of beef; the lower heat prevents any gristle from getting too tough. This method should not be used with choice or prime grades of beef, or the more tender cuts, as slow cooking more delicate cuts will make them mushy.

Roast beef made this way is easy, relatively inexpensive, and you get great leftovers for roast beef sandwiches.

Roast Beef Recipe

Cook time: 3 hours
Add to shopping list
INGREDIENTS
3 to 3 1/2 lbs (1.3 to 1.6 kg) of Boneless Rump Roast (pick an end cut with a layer of fat if you can)
Olive oil
8 slivers of garlic
Salt and pepper
You will need a meat thermometer

For the gravy:

Red wine, water, and or beef stock
corn starch
METHOD
1 Start with the roast at room temperature (remove from refrigerator 1 hour before cooking – keep it wrapped). Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).

2 With a sharp knife make 8 small incisions around the roast. Place a sliver of garlic into each incision. Take a tablespoon or so of olive oil and spread all around the roast. Sprinkle around the roast with salt and pepper. Place the roast directly on an oven rack, fatty side up, with a drip pan on a rack beneath the roasting rack. This arrangement creates convection in the oven so that you do not need to turn the roast. The roast is placed fat side up so that as the fat melts it will bathe the entire roast in its juices.

3 Brown the roast at 375°F (190°C) for half an hour. Lower the heat to 225°F (107°C). The roast should take somewhere from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours additionally to cook. The shape of the roast will affect the cooking time, by the way. So if your roast is on the long and narrow side, versus a more round shape, it may take less time to cook. So keep an eye on it. When the roast just starts to drip its juices and it is brown on the outside, check the temperature with a meat thermometer. Pull the roast from the oven when the inside temperature of the roast is 135° to 140°F (57°C to 60°C). Let the roast rest for at least 15 minutes, tented in aluminum foil to keep warm, before carving to serve.

To make the gravy:

Remove the dripping pan from the oven and place on the stove top at medium heat. Note that if you are pulling the roast out early, for rare or a medium rare level of doneness, you may not have a lot of drippings. Hopefully you will have some. If not, you may want to leave the roast in a little longer at even lower heat, 175°F, to ease some more drippings out of it. Add some water, red wine, or beef stock to the drippings to deglaze (loosen the drippings from the pan). Dissolve a tablespoon of cornstarch in a little water and add to the drip pan. Stir quickly while the gravy thickens to avoid lumping. You can add a little butter if there is not a lot of fat in the drippings. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Yield: Serves 4-6.

blue cheese

Roquefort is a type of blue cheese that is renowned throughout the world as the ‘King of Cheeses, Cheese of Kings’. Named after the village of Roquefort in Aveyron, in the south of France, this blue cheese is especially infamous for its pungent smell and characteristic blue veins of mold. Equally fascinating is its unique production process. In fact, Roquefort falls under the ‘protected designation of origin’ (PDO) provided by the European Union Law.

The PDO defines that Roquefort must be produced following certain regulations, such as the use of milk from a particular breed of sheep, the location in which the cheese is matured, and the type of mold used for the maturation process. Hence, to guarantee the quality and purity of Roquefort, only milk from the Lacaune ewe is processed and cultured with a fungus calledPenicillium roqueforti and left to naturally mature in the Combalou caves in Roquefort village.

The story behind the origins of Roquefort blue cheese has been romanticized in a very old legend of the land. The legend begins with a young shepherd who was minding his flock of sheep in the hills of Roquefort when he suddenly sighted a beautiful maiden in the distance. Determined to find her, the shepherd left his dog to guard the sheep and hastily placed his lunch – bread and ewe’s milk curds – in the nearby caves to keep cool.

Roquefort (US /ˈroʊkfərt/ or UK /rɒkˈfɔr/; French: [ʁɔk.fɔʁ]; from Occitan ròcafòrt [ˌrɔkɔˈfɔrt]) is a sheep milk blue cheese from the south of France, and together with Bleu d’Auvergne, Stilton and Gorgonzola is one of the world’s best known blue-cheeses.[2] Though similar cheeses are produced elsewhere, European law dictates that only those cheeses aged in the natural Combalou caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon may bear the name Roquefort, as it is a recognised geographical indication, or has a protected designation of origin. The cheese is white, tangy, crumbly and slightly moist, with distinctive veins of green mold. It has characteristic odor and flavor with a notable taste of butyric acid; the green veins provide a sharp tang. The overall flavor sensation begins slightly mild, then waxes sweet, then smoky, and fades to a salty finish. It has no rind; the exterior is edible and slightly salty. A typical wheel of Roquefort weighs between 2.5 and 3 kilograms (5.5 and 6.6 pounds), and is about 10 cm (4 inches) thick. Each kilogram of finished cheese requires about 4.5 litres (1.18 gallons) of milk to produce.

Blue cheese is a general classification of cow’s milk, sheep’s milk, or goat’s milk cheeses that have had cultures of the mold Penicillium added so that the final product is spotted or veined throughout with blue, blue-gray or blue-green mold, and carries a distinct smell, either from that or various specially cultivated bacteria. Some blue cheeses are injected with spores before the curds form and others have spores mixed in with the curds after they form. Blue cheeses are typically aged in a temperature-controlled environment such as a cave. Blue cheese can be eaten by itself or can be crumbled or melted over foods.
In the European Union many blue cheeses such as Roquefort, Gorgonzola and Blue Stilton carry a protected designation of origin, meaning they can bear the name only if they have been made in a particular region in a certain country. Similarly, individual countries have protections of their own such as France’s Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée and Italy’s Denominazione di Origine Protetta. Blue cheeses with no protected origin name are designated simply “blue cheese”.
The characteristic flavor of blue cheeses tends to be sharp and salty. The smell of this food is due both to the mold and to types of bacteria encouraged to grow on the cheese: for example, the bacterium Brevibacterium linens is responsible for the smell of many blue cheeses,[1] as well as foot odor and other human body odors.



Honey Wheat Bread

A 100% whole wheat bread will have a coarser texture than bread make with a mix of Whole Wheat and All Purpose Flour
Bake: 375 Fo  for 30 – 35 minutes.

  • 1 packet active dry yeast
  • 2 cups warm water
  • 1/3 cup honey or dark molasses
  • 2 tablespoons soft shortening
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 51/2 – 6 cups Whole wheat flour
  1. In mixing bowl place in order all ingredients except flour.
  2. Add flour gradually to make a stiff dough.
  3. Knead on a well-floured surfaced until smooth and satiny, eight to ten minutes.
  4. Place in greased bowl.
  5. Cover. let rise in warm place until doubled, 11/2 – 2 hours.
  6. Divide in half. Shape into balls.
  7. Cover with bowl;  let rest 15 minutes, shape into loaves.
  8. Place in well-greased pan, 9×5 or 8×4.
  9. Cover; let rise until light and double, about an hour.
  10. Bake at 375F0 for 30 to 35 minutes, or until deep golden brown.

Mixed flour bread


Ingredients:

1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup boiling water
1 package active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm (105 – 115 degrees) water
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup rye flour
2 1/4 – 2 3/4 cup all purpose flour

Instructions:


  1. Mix cornmeal, brown sugar, salt and oil with boiling water, cool to lukewarm (105 – 115 degrees).
  2. Dissolve yeast in 1/4 cup warm water; stir into cornmeal mixture. Add whole wheat and rye flours and mix well. Stir in enough all purpose flour to make dough stiff enough to knead.
  3. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 to 10 minutes.
  4. Place dough in lightly oiled bowl, turning oil top. Cover with clean towel; let rise in warm place until double, about 1 hour.
  5. Punch dough down; turn onto clean surface. Cover with clean towel; let rest 10 minutes. Shape dough and place in greased 9 x 5 inch pan. Cover with clean towel; let rise until almost double, about 1 hour.
  6. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake 35 to 45 minutes or until bread sounds hollow when tapped. Cover with aluminum foil during baking if bread is browning too quickly. Remove bread from pan and cool on wire rack.

Beignet

Beignet (pronounced /bɛnˈjeɪ/ in English, /bɛˈɲɛ/ in French; French, literally “bump“[1] ), synonymous with the English “fritter”, is the French term for a pastry made from deep-fried choux paste[2]. Beignets are commonly known in the U.S. as a dessert served with powdered sugar on top, however, they may be savory dishes as well and may contain meat, vegetables, or fruits.[2] They are traditionally prepared right before consumption to be eaten fresh and hot.
Variations of fried dough can be found across cuisines internationally, however, the origin of the term beignet is specifically French. In the U.S., beignets have been popular within New Orleans Creole cuisine and are customarily served as a dessert or in some sweet variation. They were brought to the Louisiana in the 18th century by French colonists[3], from “the old mother country”[4],and became a large part of home-style Creole cooking, variations often including banana or plantain–popular fruits in the port city [5][6]. Today, Café du Monde is a popular New Orleans food destination specializing in beignets with powdered sugar (served in threes), coffee with chicory, and café au lait[7]. Beignets were declared the official state doughnut of Louisiana in 1986 [8].
The tradition of deep-frying fruits for a side dish dates to the time of Ancient Rome, while the tradition of beignets in Europe is speculated to have originated with a heavy influence of Islamic culinary tradition[9]. The term beignet can be applied to two varieties, depending on the type of pastry. The French-style beignet in the United States has the specific meaning of deep-fried choux pastry[10]. Beignets can also be made with yeast pastry[11], which might be called boules de Berlin in French, referring to Berliner doughnuts which have a spherical shape (i.e. they do not have the typical doughnut hole) filled with fruit or jam.
In Corsica, beignets made with chestnut flour (Beignets de farine de châtaigne) are known as fritelli.