Well, I am into the fourth week of the Veggie Cure protocol I wrote about back on Nov 1st. Cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, and onions every day are needing a little variety to keep life interesting. I have been doing interesting things like stir frying the kale salad blend I bought at Costco and making konjac noodle soup. I have even played with frying some spiraled Oriental yams. But these foods are all foods I am accustomed to eating. How about something really new?
I was picking up some fresh veggies at Raley’s the other day when I spied a table piled high with these giant celery root things. I have never eaten celery root, so I bought one. I had no idea what one does with celery root, but I figured that if they were selling them then there must be recipes for their use. While I was looking online for recipes I came across a recipe for leeks, another vegetable I have never eaten. Being somewhat distract-able I wandered down that path to learn about leeks. Soup seems to be a favorite way to use leeks, although any way you use onions they say you can use leeks as a milder form of onion.
So today, on our way back from a movie with friends, I decided it was time to make something with that celery root. And what the heck, lets throw in leeks with it. While shopping I also got seduced by some rutabaga and they made their way into my shopping basket headed for the soup pot at home. My approach to vegetable soup is super simple – throw a little perilla oil and some bone broth into the pot and throw the veggies in on top and let them steam/fry. I stir until they are tender then add real salt, fish sauce, and better-than-bullion, along with more bone broth, until it tastes right. A sprinkle of roasted pepper usually finishes off the soup, but today I replaced the added bone broth with a can of coconut milk for a nice cream soup finish.
The final soup was delicious, but very thick – almost like a casserole. Because I used my new spiralizer toy to chop up the vegetables, they cooked very rapidly and ended up looking like a pot of creamy noodles. To break up that bland appearance, I threw in a bunch of chopped cilantro. Now the final product looks as good as it tastes.
Why am I writing about my supper? The idea is that doing a Vegetable Cure is real and doable. I was concerned that the cravings for my usual foods would be a big obstacle, but after the second day I have not had any cravings… almost. Two weeks into the veggie cure I added protein into the process to trigger stem cell proliferation. This is part of a rejuvenation process I am writing about that I will put out in some official form later. Certain specific amino acids trigger what is called the m-Tor pathway which, among other things, stimulates massive amounts of stem cells being produced as well as up-regulating growth hormone production. However, it also seemed to trigger all sorts of other food cravings. I will be testing this observation further with my next protein cycle this coming week.
A different special veggie treat I made a couple days ago was Oriental yam chips. I don’t recommend this on any sort of regular basis, but as a couple time a month special treat it should be fine – with a couple special tricks to make it fine.
Generally I consider deep fried anything to be amongst the most toxic foods in any diet. The chemical interaction between the double chemical bonds in the polyunsaturated oil and the starches in the food being cooked produces some seriously bad stuff. Not to mention that virtually any and all frying oil in this country is rancid. It turns rancid the instant it gets hot enough to cook with it – if it wasn’t already rancid to begin with. So why or how could I eat chips that have been deep fried? Yes, I deep fried these babies. None of that lets pretend we are making chips by baking them in the oven stuff. No, the trick to making healthier deep fried foods is to never use vegetable oil. Get rid of that poly-unsaturated time bomb. It lurks around just waiting to go off and create inflammation in your body. Vegetable oils are the dreaded omega 6 oils that promote inflammation. The reason we take omega 3 fish oil is to combat its effects.
So what do I do? Personally I use avocado oil because it has stability at a higher temperature than lard or coconut/palm oil – but technically the ideal oil to cook with would be a fully saturated oil. Fully saturated means that it has no space to chemically interact with your food. Our culture has demonized saturated fats for the last 40 – 50 years, when in fact they are the safe oils – not the vegetable oils. The demonization of saturated fats has primarily been industry driven for industry profits. Now in fair review of the data, it is important to recognize that saturated fats that have been processed or hydrogenated to extend their shelf life are like almost every food that has been processed – not fit for human consumption. Unprocessed saturated fats like red palm oil, coconut oil, and butter in their natural state are very healthy, as are the mono-saturated fats like olive and avocado oil.
Avocado oil is stable to 500 degrees and is therefore ideal for deep frying safely. At that temperature most of the saturated fats smoke and burn.
The second trick for making healthy chips is to use a healthy vegetable to begin with. I stay away from potatoes because of their solanine content – a lectin that attacks the joints in the body. I stay away from grains like corn and wheat and even rice for similar reasons. I want to simply cook healthy veggies into a crispy form. I have tried regular yams and found them to have a hard time getting crispy without burning. Sweet potatoes are ok, but not as tasty as the Oriental yams. Cassava is good, but hard to find. I have not tried beets or rutabagas yet, but I did try a few slices of the celery root. It tasted good, but I did not cook it long enough for it to get crispy.
To be truthful I had a deeper reason for making chips. I have been looking for ways to increase my consumption of the trace minerals found in real salt. Well, what better way to get real salt into my mouth than as a lovely seasoning on a tasty chip? I did blanch my broccoli in a sol (a saturated salt solution) of real salt and that came out delicious.
The big message is that vegetables are good for us and they can be prepared in ways that also taste good. The American idea of preparing vegetables (probably borrowed from the British) is to boil them in water and eat them… boring. Most any food is boring if all you do is boil it in water then eat it. Being on a vegetables only diet for a month now, other than adding protein in for a week, is teaching me to develop a new appreciation for these wonders of the healthy diet. So eat your vegetables!