Aubergine and Its Skeptical Introduction to Our Kitchen

By Lesley Jones 

Is it a fruit or a vegetable? Actually,neither. Botanically it's a berry. (Solanum melongena).

We'll call it a vegetable, as it's probably renowned for its addition to savoury dishes. One would think its origins are firmly rooted in the warm Mediterranean countries, but you would have to travel a lot further east.

Whilst it flourished in the hot Asian countries, and is thought to have originated in India, there are records that show it being cultivated in China around the fifth century.

We haven't always enjoyed this beautiful vegetable in Europe.

After the Moors introduced it to Spain and the Arab spice traders took it to Italy, Europe was a little more sceptical, mainly due to the fact that Aubergine is related to the "Nightshade family" which is renowned for its poison. It's no wonder that Venetians were afraid to eat them; in case they went mad, probably aided by the fact the Italian name for aubergine is "Melanzana" which is derived from the Latin name "mad apple".

Eventually in the 1500's aubergines were accepted by Mediterranean cooks, most likely due to the fact that the Jews fled from the south to the north of Italy taking their culinary skills including the aubergine with them and reintroduced it into Venetian cuisine.

Unfortunately, we in Britain would have to wait a few more years before we too could enjoy its delights, unless you were fortunate enough to travel to Europe in the 40's and 50's, which is very unlikely especially with a war going on.

Then following WW2 the post-war rationing began and Elizabeth David arrived on the scene with her cookery books, and her particularly caustic attacks on British food and the boring plain dishes we presented. She introduced Italian and French cooking into our homes, bringing a breath of fresh air into the kitchen, the aubergine came with her and has never left!  Here's my favourite Aubergine dish.

Stuffed Aubergine

Serves 2

Prep time 25 min

Cooking time 1 hour

Ingredients

* 1 medium aubergine, (eggplant) halved (top to bottom)

* 1/2 small red pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped

* 1/2 small green pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped

* 1/2 medium onion finely chopped

* 1 clove garlic, finely chopped

* 1/2 (14oz) tin tomatoes (or 4 fresh tomatoes, skinned and finely chopped)

* 1 tbsp tomato puree

* 6 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped

* Sliced mozzarella cheese

* Salt and black pepper

Method

* Cut the flesh out the aubergine leaving a lining inside the skin.

* Cut the flesh into cubes (soak in salted water for 30mins to remove any bitterness).

* In a large frying pan, fry the onions in olive oil until golden.

* Add the garlic and aubergine (you may need to add more oil as the aubergines really soak it up) and cook until the aubergine is golden.

* Stir in the peppers, tomatoes, puree, basil, salt and pepper to taste, then cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

* Place the aubergine skins into a lightly oiled baking dish and brush the insides of the skins with olive oil.

* Fill the two halves with the mixture and top with slices of mozzarella.

* Bake in a pre-heated oven at 350°F, 180°C, Gas mark 4 for 40 minutes.

Lesley Jones is just one half of the duo that makes CookingWithTheJoneses such a great place for finding delicious food recipes, and other 'foodie' information. She and her husband Barry, love cooking, and have been into creating amazing food for over 15 years.

If you have any 'foodie' questions, or would like to recommend a new recipe - visit http://www.CookingWithTheJoneses.com and let Lesley and Barry help you.

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Deliciously Cool Foods That Fight the Summer Heat, And Are Good to Eat

By Epic P Dee

If you are one of the millions suffering from the summer heat in the North American heatwave, spare a thought for those who live in climates where it regularly gets to a hundred in the shade, or where it stays that way almost all year round! Then again, maybe not, because being used to extreme hot weather, they know a thing or two about how to keep cool. Take a lesson from the kitchens and cupboards of some of the hottest places on earth, and learn what foods will keep you cool, while being pretty tasty too.

The Japanese are so attuned to heat and cold in their cuisine that most of the Japanese restaurants you go to will have a hot menu (for winter) and a cold menu (for summer). Noodles, for example, a diet staple in the country and all over Asia, can be served hot or cold. Another thing you will see is barley water. Barley water is prepared by toasting and grinding barley and takes advantage of the grain's well-deserved reputation for cooling the body. In fact, the Japanese often serve barley water hot in order to balance the cooling effect. You can drink it cold of course, by cooling it in the refrigerator after brewing.

The Japanese, as well as the Chinese, also know of the cooling effects of crab. Steamed or boiled fresh crab is mouth-wateringly delicious, with its sweet white meat that seems to lightly dance on the tongue. Beware of Western-style dips like lemon-butter though, because the oils in it will produce heat, negating the cooling effect of the crab. Many Asians just dip the meat in a light vinegar, with or without chopped onions, or enjoy it without any dipping sauces at all.

China and India, as well as many other regions of Asia are blessed with the very healthy karela, or bitter gourd as it is known in the West. True, the flavor is an acquired taste, but the body-cooling properties of the vegetable is lauded by chefs and nutritionists alike. Bitter gourd is also prized as a natural medicine against diabetes,so much so that enterprising companies are manufacturing capsules and tablets made from it, so that takers can get the benefits without the taste. As to taste however, the Asians have invented many ways to serve it which tone down, mask, or in some cases use the bitterness to good effect. Karela is served in India curried or with yogurt, stir-fried in China, stuffed with meat and well-spiced in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and it has even found its way to Japan, with Okinawan cuisine's use of it being hailed as some as one of the reasons the natives live so long.

Closer to the homes of Westerners who need its cooling effects the most, cucumbers are found in almost any grocery or supermarket in North America. It is very easy to prepare too: just wash and slice thinly and eat as a crunchy snack, or mix with a little yogurt or cream cheese as a salad. In the Philippines, thin cucumber slices are pickled in vinegar and pepper, with a little sugar to take the acidic edge off, and served cold.

More body-cooling foods: bananas, clams and oysters, lettuce, sugar cane, water chestnuts, watermelon, bean curd, egg white, pears, strawberries, tangerines, tomatoes, peppermint, and marjoram. These are just some of hundreds, maybe thousands of foods that can cool you down in the summer heat. If you notice, the list doesn't have red meat or oily items on it, because these two belong to the list that heat your body up.

Body-heating foods: pepper, cinnamon, oil, chicken, ham, mutton, brown sugar, eel, coffee, coconut, guava, grape, mandarin oranges, shrimp, mangoes, peaches, and cherries. Again, the list goes on and on.

Some of the items on these lists are obvious, but some may seem to be out of place. The Chinese traditional medicinal belief is that cooling foods are generally saltier than sweet, leaner (instead of fattier), soft and wet instead of dry and hard, and grow in little sunshine instead of needing to be under a hot sun.

We hope this helps you keep your cool in the hot summer months, and feast on something delicious to boot!

Epic P. Dee has been a writer for close to three decades, and has found new inspiration in publishing helpful articles on the internet. Visit his latest work at http://engravedpensinfo.blogspot.com/ which features information on engraved pens for the collector, the mass-marketer, and everyone in between.

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Vitamin D: Why It's Easy to Be Deficient

By Dr. Zen-Jay Chuang 

Have you ever seen pictures of children with extremely bowed legs? It is a condition called rickets and it's from low levels of vitamin D, causing the bones to become soft and weak.

Vitamin D is crucial for bone health. It helps your body keep a good balance of calcium and phosphate in the blood. With low vitamin D levels, children can develop rickets and adults can develop osteomalacia, a condition in which weak bones cause bone pain, fractures, and muscle weakness.

Vitamin D also has many other functions in the body. It helps control the growth of your cells, improves your immunity, provides nerve and muscle strength, and reduces disease-causing inflammation in your body.

Some studies suggest it may help with type 2 diabetes, weight loss, multiple sclerosis, high blood pressure, depression, heart disease, colon cancer, and other types of cancer.

Nursing home residents seem to have significantly fewer falls when they start a daily vitamin D supplement.

While the jury is still out on all of the studies related to vitamin D, we know it is essential that you have enough but not too much so that it becomes harmful. Simply put, you need to have optimal levels of vitamin D.

How Do You Get Enough Vitamin D?

There are 3 ways for you to get vitamin D:

1. Your skin makes vitamin D through sunlight

2. You can get vitamin D from food

3. You can take a vitamin D supplement

Let's start with the sun on your skin.

As a general rule, exposure of the face, hands, arms, and legs to sunlight 2 to 3 times a week may produce enough vitamin D to stay healthy. Exposure should be about 1/4 of the amount of time it takes for you to get a mild sunburn. Depending on your skin color, this can mean from 5 to 30 minutes of sun exposure between 10 am and 3pm.

It is the ultraviolet B radiation in sunlight that helps your skin make vitamin D. Complete cloud cover reduces this radiation by about 50%. Shade, including the shade from severe pollution, reduces this ultraviolet B radiation about 60%.

How about food?

Surprisingly, there are not too many foods that are naturally high in vitamin D. The following list includes the foods highest in vitamin D:

Vitamin D Measured in IUs:

Cod liver oil, 1 tbsp, 1,360

Swordfish, cooked, 3 oz., 566

Sockeye Salmon, cooked 3, oz., 447

Mackerel, canned, 3 oz., 214

Sardines, canned, 3 oz., 197

Tuna Fish, canned in water, drained, 3 oz., 154

Orange juice Vitamin D-fortified, 1 cup, 137

Milk, Vitamin D-fortified, 1 cup, nonfat, reduced fat, & whole, 115-124

The abbreviation IU stands for "international unit" and is what you will find on food and supplement labels.

The third source of vitamin D is from supplements.

In general, there are two different forms of vitamin D on the market: ergocalciferol (also known as vitamin D2) and cholecalciferol (also known as D3). I will discuss their effectiveness in the following section.

How Much Vitamin D Do You Need?

Well, if you can get enough sun on your skin as described above, you really do not have to worry about getting more vitamin D from food and supplements.

On the other hand, food and supplements can provide a healthy dose of vitamin D if you have any (or a combination) of the following risk factors for low vitamin D:

·       You do not spend enough time outdoors, especially in the sun.

·       You live in a northern latitude, especially north of the Philadelphia-San Francisco line. For example, in Boston, there is not enough sunlight to make vitamin D in your skin for about 4 months of the year. If you go further north to Edmonton, Canada, your skin cannot make vitamin D for 5 months of the year.

·       You have been following your dermatologist's suggestion of liberally using sunscreen to protect yourself from the sun's radiation.

·       You have darker skin. Skin pigment reduces the skin's ability to absorb the ultraviolet radiation in the sun. In a bathing suit, a light-skinned person spending 10-12 minutes under peak July sun in Boston can make 10,000 to 20,000 international units of vitamin D. It will take an Asian Indian person, who has darker skin, about 30 minutes to make as much vitamin D. It will take an African American with very dark skin about 120 minutes to make the same amount of vitamin D.

·       You are obese. Fat cells hoard vitamin D. This reduces the circulating vitamin in your blood.

·       Your have a medical condition such as Crohn's disease, celiac disease, and cystic fibrosis that impairs your gut's absorption of vitamin D.

·       You are a strict vegetarian.

·       Your kidneys are impaired so they cannot activate the vitamin D you have.

·       You are older than 65. This means your skin makes less vitamin D, your gut may not absorb nutrients as efficiently, and your kidneys may not activate vitamin D as effectively. Even in sunny South Florida, as many as 40% of older people have low vitamin D levels.

If you have any of these risk factors, how many international units of vitamin D should you aim for a day?

This depends on whom you talk to. In recent years, various scientific authorities came up with different amounts of vitamin D that they consider good for your daily intake through food and supplements.

To spare you the confusing numbers and arguments, here is the bottom line.

If you are an adult, aim for 600 to 2000 IUs of vitamin D a day from your food and supplements.

And if you get vitamin D from supplements, keep in mind that unit for unit, cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) is better used by your body than ergocalciferol (vitamin D2).

In general, vitamin D3 is about 3 times more powerful than vitamin D2.

How Do You Know if You are Vitamin D Deficient?

If you are low on vitamin D, you may have bone pain and muscle weakness. But, often the symptoms of low vitamin D are very subtle. And even without any clear symptoms, low vitamin D can badly affect your health in different ways.

Your doctor can order a simple blood test, 25-hydroxy vitamin D, for you. Again, the normal range for vitamin D also varies according to different authorities. But here is what you need to know: a level of 30 to 50 ng/mL is considered optimal for bone health and overall health.

If your blood test suggests that you are very low on circulating vitamin D, your doctor may give you a prescription for high-dose treatment for a period of time. Make sure you follow his or her directions.

Can You Get Sick From Too Much Vitamin D?

Yes you can!

Too much vitamin D in your body can make you not want to eat, lose weight, urinate excessively, and have abnormal heartbeats. Even more seriously, it can make your blood calcium level too high, resulting in damage to your heart, blood vessels, and kidneys.

Unless you are under close monitoring by you doctor, do not take over 4000 international units of vitamin D from food and supplements a day. Exceeding this dose will increase your risk for having a toxic overload of vitamin D.

On the other hand, your skin will not make too much vitamin D from sunshine. Your body is such a marvelous creation that when you get too much sun, your skin actually rids itself of the extra vitamin D automatically.

Keep reading to discover the keys for defusing ticking health bombs that could be lurking in your body. Click here to discover the medical secrets necessary to know so you can live a better, longer, healthier life.

Don't miss your opportunity to discover the secrets to defusing ticking health bombs that could be lurking in your body. It is possible to live longer & better. Discover what you need to do NOW to keep you & your family disease-free.

Zen-Jay Chuang, MD, is a primary care physician and Chairman of the Whole Health Alerts advisory board. Click here to find out how Dr. Zen-Jay's biodynamic, cutting edge approach to ancient and modern medicine can help you achieve the best health of your life.

RE Health, Inc. 781-878-7114. 100 Weymouth St, Bldg D, Rockland, MA 02370

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