Gluten-free grains 1

by Ms H

A gluten-free diet can be very healthy by forcing people to cut back on processed high-energy foods like cakes, biscuits and cook more from scratch using naturally gluten-free ingredients including vegetables, legumes and lean meat. Anyone cutting back on processed foods and incorporating more natural ingredients is likely to get healthier.

Food manufacturers offer all sort of gluten-free foods. These certainly make life much easier for sufferers of coeliac condition. Some of these goods are made of using potato starch, tapioca starch or corn-starch instead of a gluten – free grains. Further on gluten free foods contain high level of corn mold toxins. Starches are refined, and this process reduces their nutritional value. Some products usually consist of high level of sugar and artificial chemicals. Gluten-free pasta and cookies, for example, can have more calories, fat, and salt in them in order to make up for the flavour that wheat and flour lends to more traditional products. They are not healthy, so you have to read the list of ingredients very carefully before you put one of them into your basket. The healthier option to cook and consume gluten-free grains instead of purchasing the substances provided on the shelves.

Gluten-free grains are good and healthier substitutes for wheat flour.

Quinoa

Quinoa has nutty flavour. Known as “mother grain”, often called the “perfect food”. It is a complete source of protein; including all nine essential amino-acids, minerals as calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, good range of vitamin Bs; B1,B2,B5 and vitamin E to keep the skin youthful. It is resource of anti-oxidant.

You can serve it as porridge, salad or soup. Approximate cooking time is 20 minutes.  Basic cooking instruction: Add 1 cup of quinoa to 2 cups of water boil and simmer for 20 minutes.

Millet

Millet can be used for breakfast, dinner and dessert. It contains high fibre and B vitamins. Millet grains are high in protein low in starch and containing all eight essential amino acids.

It has anti-fungal and anti-mucus properties.  Cooking time is 20 minutes.  Cooking guidance: add 1 cup of millets to 3 cups of water boil then simmer it for 20 minutes.

Perfect Winter Comfort Food That Warms Your Body and Soul

By Susanne Myers 

When the temperatures keep dropping outside, it's time for some winter comfort foods to warm you up. There's just something about a big cup of homemade soup or stew to warm your body and soul when it is cold and dreary outside. What is it about these winter comfort foods that instantly make us feel better?

Most comfort foods and especially those we enjoy in the winter have a fair share of carbohydrates in them. Think about Mac & Cheese for example which is a popular comfort food year around. It has plenty of starchy pasta in it. Quite a few other foods like lasagne or a big pile of spaghetti have plenty of pasta as well. Other winter comfort foods include rice (think chicken and rice soup) or potatoes (think beef stew or potato soup).

In addition to the carbs in the winter comfort food itself, we often serve it with some sort of bread. If you are making a pot of soup or stew you usually have a batch of biscuits, a cornbread or a loaf of homemade bread ready to serve along side it. This warm bread is a big part of what makes these dishes comfort foods and also adds some more carbs to the dish.

These carbohydrates can cause the human body to release a hormone called serotonin which is know to make you feel happy (along with preventing depression).

Stews and particularly soups have more liquid than other foods. In the winter time with the heat running everywhere you go, it is pretty easy to get dehydrated. Dehydration can cause headaches and I don't know about you, but I tend to get pretty grumpy when my head hurts. Getting that extra liquid from soups may be just enough to prevent this from happening. Not getting enough liquids also tends to make you feel tired and sluggish. Of course you should also attempt to drink some extra water to make sure your body has all the liquid it needs to function properly. But that can be easier said than done. While I'm find drinking cold water when it's warm outside, I just have a hard time getting it down in the cold winter months. In addition to eating plenty of soup, try drinking some warm herbal teas to get in your required eight to ten eight ounce glasses of water.

Last but not least, these winter foods make us more comfortable simply because they are hot. Eating soups and stews warms us up from the inside which is just what the doctor ordered after spending some time in the cold elements outside. Soups and stews are comforting to eat and will quickly bring your core body temperature back up. As an added bonus, you get to warm your cold hands on the bowl. Now that's what I call comfort.

And now I would like to share the recipe for my favourite comfort food with you. It's chicken and dumplings. It takes a little time to make, but is worth every minute of it. Give it a try and see if you don't fall in love with this dish as well.

Susanne Myers - The Hillbilly Housewife

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Top 10 Iron-Rich Foods For Your Diet - Know the Best Foods With Iron Now!

By Faviano Torres

Heme- and non-heme irons are the two types of iron. Heme-iron is derived from animal-based food while non-heme iron is taken from plant-based foods. Iron needs help in order to be ingested properly. Vitamin C is needed for non-heme iron to be absorbed. Moreover, iron is necessary for building muscles and keeping the blood healthy. For a person to be properly nourished with iron, eating iron-rich foods is highly recommended. The following foods make for an iron-rich diet:

1. Fish - Shellfish and fish like clams, mussels, oysters, anchovies, and sardines are known to be rich in iron. These foods also contain protein with little connective tissue which make them easy to digest and get absorbed by the body.
2. Yeast-leavened, whole- wheat bread - Whole-wheat bread or whole-wheat meal can be a great source of enzymes, vitamins, and minerals such as iron, copper, cobalt, and molybdenum.
3. Poultry - Livestock products such as chicken, turkey, duck, and liver have 40% iron content for both white meat and dark meat. 

4. Leafy vegetables- Broccoli has 0.6 mgs of iron for every ½ cup; turnip has 0.3 mg of iron, is rich in calcium, phosphor, and magnesium, yet poor in calories. Collards and kale are also rich in iron.
5. Legumes - According to research studies in Brazil, chickpeas and the common beans have the best iron content. Legumes, especially lima beans, dry beans, green peas, and pinto beans are significant sources of iron, especially for pregnant women and elementary school childre
6. Rice, pasta, cereals, white bread
7. Dark meat such as beef, pork, lamb, liver, and other organ meats - Medical experts recommend a moderate portion of these meats, as too much consumption may endanger the heart condition.
8. Dried fruits such as prunes and raisins
9. Artichokes 
10. Egg Yolks

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Polenta - From Rags to Riches

By Dorte Mikkelsen

Italy's cuisine can hold its own with any nation's. Yet, is has never worked its way away from the label of "peasant food" and rightfully so, it is not an insult, in many ways it is nothing short of a compliment that touches on the traditions and unevenly divided wealth that has been such a part of this storied land. Despite this distinction, the dish that is too often forgotten as a member of the peasantry trinity, along with pizza and pasta, is the one with perhaps the longest and most storied evolution. Simple, divine, humble polenta. Polenta is to the north of Italy what pasta is to the south.

The wonderful taste of today's polenta was in no small part inspired by greed. But that chapter will have to wait until the first grains to grace this dish are explained. Polenta's true beginnings began as no more than a mush, or porridge of medieval wheat, millet, faro, chickpeas, and water. With primitive milling techniques this course mix was often cooked on hot stones and certainly could not have been much more than a stop gap to the starvation that many of the northerners of Italy had to stave off each year. Polenta, with the scarcity of yeasts in pre-roman times may have even predated leavened breads in many parts of the countryside.

Throughout Roman times, despite the ready availability of bread, polenta was still consumed both by soldier and laborer alike. There was and is something familiar about this stodgy comfort food. Though during the times of the Roman empire there were advances in milling as well as the addition of a new ingredient, farina, a semi-nutritious flour that began overtaking the aforementioned grains in popularity. Farina, ultimately gave way to buckwheat. A gift from the Saracens, known in Italian as grano saraceno, still popular in the polentas of Tuscany. Saracen was a word Romans used to describe the non-arab dwellers of the deserts of Rome's province of Syria. This was the height of nutrition in polenta, for for all the manifestations and varied grains used through its history; buckwheat was the most nutritious and its use was responsible for a marked increase in the health of those who subsisted on it.

Somewhere in the 14th or 15th centuries polenta changed forever. It became less nutritious, yet tastier. An odd parallel can be drawn to the current dietary wasteland that many in the Western world now find themselves, and it comes from the same two-headed villain, corn and greed. Corn found it's way to Italy and immediately became a popular crop in the growing regions of the north. Farmers with land suited to its production were reaping huge profits while supplying their workers with a new taste made from the simple ground meal of their farmlands. Not unlike the heavily subsidized farmers of the United States' grain belt they fattened up their own people on less nutritious, tastier meals. Unlike their compatriots on the other side of the ocean whose corn goes into nearly everything bad for humankind, they gave the world polenta. Sweet, wonderful polenta.

Polenta really should only be prepared one way, slowly, with a 3 to 1 water to corn meal ratio, in a round copper bottomed pot (Paiolo), with a long wooden spoon (Tarello) used to stir it constantly for up to an hour. Okay, in this modern world you could probably use a double boiler, but fight this temptation, and never, not unlike a Southerner from the United States with their grits, use the instant product.

Polenta's uses either as a side dish or an integral part of a main course are too myriad to mention here. Cookbooks abound with uses of either soft polenta straight out of the paiolo or polenta spread and allowed to turn into a cake. It could even be cooled and grilled. These cookbooks run the gamut, from recipes 500 years old to today's five star restaurants owned by celebrities such as Mario Batali who are reinventing new ways to use this timeless classic.

Dorte Mikkelsen, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with Italian Wine Club Europe. If you have an interest in Italian wines or food, please go to our website now at [http://www.italianwineclub.eu].

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