Re: Re calcium and zinc

[Guest guest]

> > If ease of preparation is an issue for morning meals, then besides

> > the fruit smoothie idea, I can offer my own evolving habit of

> > microwaving a portion of my Indian style lentil dishes (with hulled

> > barley, carrot, spinach, and eggplant) and eating a modest quantity

> > of fruit. It doesn't get much easier.

> >

> > Mike

>

> Thanks for your suggestion Mike. What is the recipe for the above?

Well, it's really different everytime because I always try out new spice

combinations, but the basic recipe is to puree a bunch of onions,

possibly garlic, and possibly ginger and put it on low heat, adding whatever

spices you like, making sure to add enough water so nothing burns. I usually

cook that for about a half-hour. Then I add lentils (toor dal) or yellow

split peas (chana dal), hulled barley, and some kombu seaweed and asafoetida,

with enough water to cover everything by an inch or so, checking on it and

adding a little more water once in a while. I use hulled barley because of

nutrition, flavor, texture, and the fact that the cooking time is almost

identical to the lentils/split peas, specifically about 1 hour. I've been using

equal amounts of legumes and barley, by weight, but in the future I hope to get

more savvy and calculate an ideal amino acid balance for this and

everything I eat. Near the middle or end I add whatever vegetables I'm

using. I've been experimenting with shiitake mushrooms as well, but I'm

finding some flavor incompatibilities. I also sometimes don't use spinach

or other greens because it's not compatible with turmeric. Tomatoes in

some form generally work well too. At the very end I sometimes add lemon/lime/

kokum/dried mango slices, coriander leaves, fenugreek leaves,

etc, depending on the flavors involved, and, if the flavor is bad I

sometimes try to rescue it with a little salt and/or Splenda! The

traditional method would be to first fry whole spices in oil, then add

chopped onions, possibly ginger, and possibly garlic and fry them too, but

I've recently

abandoned this because I've cut my fat intake down to 10-15%, and I often

use such a large number of spices (as many as 10 or more) that it would require

way too much oil to fry them all effectively. I've been experimenting with

water frying, grinding, and just throwing the spices in and letting them

infuse, but since I unscientifically co-vary both method and content, I

can't confidently make too many generalizations yet. A typical meal for

me is a 200-300 calorie serving of the above, a 50-100 calorie serving of

raw vegetables in some combination, and a 100-200 calorie serving of raw

fruit. What I like most about these legume+grain " soups " is the

opportunity to explore the traditional aesthetic dimension of food (read:

it tastes sooo much better than the raw vegetable salads I eat with almost

every meal). Almost as appealing is the convenience of microwaving

small frozen portions. These dishes are also very filling. The major

potential drawback is the issue of nutrient degradation due to cooking,

such as AGEs, but this issue is very new to me and I don't have enough

information yet. I noticed that the AGE expert in Greg 's recent

post was agnostic on these sorts of dishes. I hope research is conducted

on this matter, because these slow-cooking dishes appear to be a

cornerstone of much of the world's diet.

Mike