I have never made nor eaten corn salad. Until today. Time to make a short story long.
The Two Tiny Tornadoes and Their Mom came to the house this past weekend. Along with the toys, stuffies and other assorted things Tiny Humans pack on trips our favorite Okie DIL brought a bag full of fresh cucumbers from her parents’ backyard garden. So what do you do with a bunch of fresh cucumbers?
The Boss was reading The Oklahoman and came across a recipe for corn salad by blogger Chula King in an article in the Tallahassee Democrat. I couldn’t find a link to the article in my local digital newspaper so I went to the source.
Lead author Yanni Papanikolaou and colleagues analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey’s What We Eat in America program to study how often U.S.-based adults consume beans. In their analyses, they focused on how often Americans consumed white and red kidney beans, black beans, chickpeas, and pinto beans. The researchers observed that adults who routinely consumed these beans had improved ratios of polyunsaturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, and saturated fatty acids compared to those who did not consume beans. Those who ate beans also consumed 30% more fruits and 20% more vegetables. Higher Intake Of Beans Linked To More Nutritious Diet — https://www.forbes.com/sites/anuradhavaranasi/2024/06/11/higher-intake-of-beans-linked-to-more-nutritious-diet/
In a cohort study of 2062 men diagnosed with nonmetastatic prostate cancer, individuals with the highest intake of plant foods in the overall plant-based diet index had lower risk of prostate cancer progression compared with those with the lowest intake.
On average, 86 percent of people surveyed for Statista’s Consumer Insights in 21 countries said that their diet contained meat – highlighting that despite the trend around meat substitutes and plant-based products, eating meat remains the norm almost everywhere in the world. To satisfy the world’s hunger for meat, 340 million tons of it were produced globally in 2021. Because meat consumption typically increases as countries grow wealthier, that number has been rising.
I haven’t been writing much lately. My personal journal shows numerous gaps. My blogs show numerous gaps and much longer gaps in between posts. The dearth of words scares me and the Master of Overthinking starts to ask the question why? The Mojo is not as strong as it has been in the past. Maybe it’s just from getting older. Or spending more time doing other things. I’m probably not writing as much because I AM spending more time doing other things.
Recently two different people who have known me a long time delivered the same message to me. One was my barber, the other a relative.
“You look thin. You’re keeping the weight off.”
“You’ve lost weight.”
The Master of Overthinking once more started to think. What changed? My weight is stable and fluctuates between 173 and 175. I’ve tweaked my diet many times but haven’t tweaked in quite some time. So what changed?
Towards the end of last year The Boss felt I needed to get out of the house more. She knows all too well I could go 100% hermit at this point in my life. The Boss posed a simple question:
“Why don’t you rejoin the Y?”
The Master of Overthinking thought about this. Too much togetherness? Does she need more alone time? Was I becoming a hermit?
Well, I guess I could use more exercise. So I signed up at the Y and started getting back into my old routines at the beginning of the year. Four years ago I cancelled my membership due to the Covid pandemic. I didn’t want to keep paying monthly dues for something that wasn’t going to be used. I had always intended to rejoin at a later time. But one month came and went followed by the years. It was time to get back to old ways.
Due to the long layoff I focused first on resistance training. I had been doing resistance work at home with light weights and bands. I convinced myself that was enough to keep what was left of my muscle mass from shrinking to nothing. But adding a circuit of resistance machines has made a difference. I weigh the same but Mr. Muffin is smaller. After three months the changes are noticeable. When your barber notices the change…
To make a short story long I’m spending more of my time going to the Y. I’ve also been reading more and writing less. But I feel the Mojo returning. I’m back.
“When fresh spinach sits during transportation over long distances or stays in your refrigerator for a week, its folate content drops so much that frozen spinach becomes the better source,” Mary Ellen Phipps, MPH, RDN, LD, wrote for CNBC in 2022.
This is because frozen spinach often goes through a flash-freezing process just hours after it has been harvested, which helps to lock more of its nutrients in. “One cup of frozen spinach has more than four times the amount of nutrients, including iron, vitamin C, and calcium, compared to a cup of fresh spinach,” adds Phipps.
I was super proud of myself this past week when I bought a clam-shell of organic spinach and ate the entire tub. Now I know I would have been better off nutritionally with one of the many packages of frozen spinach in my freezer.
I was mystified. Butter beans — or lima beans, as I grew up calling them in the Midwest — are the most banal of ingredients, a boring bean relegated to the darkest corner of every home cook’s pantry. Why, then, were food influencers drowning them in luxurious sauces, crisping them up as a crouton substitute, and braising them as if they were a fine cut of meat? What the heck was going on?
Beans, broadly speaking, are having a moment. The dry bean market is expected to grow to $8.7 billion by 2028, while the canned bean industry raked in $5.65 billion in 2023 and is projected to be worth a whopping $15.5 billion by 2033, according to the market research firm Fact.MR.
Beans are cheap and nutritious. More people will be incorporating this staple into their diets because they are unable to afford the more expensive foods.
It’s not the vegan/vegetarian/let’s save the world movement. It’s basic economics.
Netherlands-based designer Kyran Knauf has created a tabletop device that allows users to breed and harvest crickets as an alternative protein source.
Called Crikorama, the machine can host a continuous cycle of approximately 3o crickets through their lifecycles before they are harvested and eaten as a “sustainable” replacement for meat.
A recent study examined the effects of produce prescription programs in 12 U.S. states (1). Almost 4,000 individuals received produce prescriptions. About half were adults and half were children. They were all from low-income neighborhoods. Participants received paper vouchers or electronic cards providing from $15 to $300 per month to buy fruits and vegetables at grocery stores and farmers markets. They attended nutrition classes. The median length of program participation was 6 months.
Adults receiving produce prescription ate, on average, more than three quarters of a cup per day more fruits and vegetables; children averaged a quarter cup more per day. Both adults and children reported that their overall health status improved. Among adults with poor health, improvements were seen in blood pressure, glycated hemoglobin (a measure of diabetes control), and body mass index (BMI). These results suggest that produce prescriptions could have important benefits.
garyskitchen.net 