When we think of super food, we usually think of blueberries or even exotic fruits such as acai berries coming from Brazil.
Dr. Zhimin Xu of Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in Baton Rouge has new promising research on the health benefits of black rice.
He stated, “Just a spoonful of black rice bran contains more health promoting anthocyanin antioxidants than are found in a spoonful of blueberries, but with less sugar and more fiber and vitamin E antioxidants.”
Anthocyanin antioxidants are commonly found in such foods that are red, purple, or blue in color. Such as strawberries, grapes, red onion, and more.
These antioxidants have been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer.
The only black rice I’m familiar with is Japonica Black rice and Chinese Black rice. We usually refer to them as purple rice. And it’s best cooked as rice pudding or other desserts.
Photo from The Prepared Pantry.
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Since I couldn’t get my hands on any lotus seeds, I was happy to find lotus roots instead. These were sold at the Asian market.
In Chinese medicine, lotus root is believed to improve appetite. Lotus roots is rich in iron, vitamins B and C.
I’ve always loved eating water lotus roots prepared as desserts. Usually mixed with black beans and coconut milk.
To prepare them all you have to do is wash it well. Scrape or peel off the skin. In this case, I just scraped it off with a knife. When sliced, the little air holes make for an interesting pattern. Reminds me of honeycomb cereal.
Once it’s sliced, you want to prevent them from turning brown. Just soak the slices in water with a bit of vinegar or lemon juice.
You can eat them raw as healthy snacks. The texture of lotus root reminds me of water chestnut. They are crunchy, but a bit bland. Tossing them into a salad would be a good idea.
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This is one of the first few bounty harvested from my mom’s garden.
We’ve always refer to them as Japanese pumpkins. The correct name is Kabocha squash, and it’s a type of winter squash.
The Kabocha squash took only four months to start producing. The seeds came from the squash she purchased at the market. I am always surprised to find that seeds from market produce can grow just as nicely in the garden.
My mom thinks they are one of the most easy to grow pumpkins. She just loves growing pumpkins and has three varieties in her garden.
One of which is almost white in color and grew by accident. But then it became a favorite for it’s taste. Her pumpkin varieties are known to be very creamy, nutty, and sweet. And the Kabocha fits right into the list.
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These are my new “Seabuckthorn & Green Tea Handmade Soaps”. Since I was having so much fun with hot process soaping, I decided to make these the same way.
You can usually tell if it’s hp soap by the little bubbles around the surface. This is noticeable even when I made sure to fill the mold all the way with soap. Hot process soap is tricky in that sense.
Ingredients: Olive oil, soybean oil, coconut oil, palm oil, distilled water, seabuckthorn oil, rice bran oil, green tea powder, and green tea melon fragrance. Because they are half circle bars, they fit well in the palm of my hands.
The last Seabuckthorn soap I made was was nice and I added lots of good ingredients. Including red palm oil, which gave it the deep golden color.
For this version, I just kept it simple. Except I also added green tea powder. Green tea is making it’s mark in many cosmetic products due to it’s benefits to skincare.
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Here is my latest handmade soap: Peppermint Poppy. Because I wanted to use it within a couple of days, I went with hot process soap making. With traditional cold process, the cure time would have been at least three weeks or longer.
When I was pouring hemp milk into my cereal, I immediately thought about making hemp milk soap. Hemp oil seem to be more common for soap making then with hemp milk. To make sure I didn’t mess up, I also added equal amounts of goat milk.
The hemp milk I got was from a natural health food store. Hemp milk taste a little like soy milk, but creamier and nuttier. It is naturally rich in omega 3, 6 and 9. It also contains minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, high in vitamins A and E.
Besides the hemp milk, I also added other stuff to this batch. There is fine Brazilian sea salt, peppermint essential oil, and poppy seeds. It’s going to be one difficult to name soap. So I just decided on “Peppermint Poppy Soap”.
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From nature’s world of cactus, we have sisal. It is part of the cactus family of agave (Agave sisalana).
It’s not only used to make sisal rugs, but also other products such as hats, bags, cat scratch post, and much more.
The leaves have very pointy looking tips. They also produce flowers too. Photo from Wikipedia.
The plants are grown in large plantations in such places as Brazil. Sisal prefer tropical warm climate and is drought tolerate. They are propagated from bulbils or rhizomes from mature plants. They take about 3 to 5 years to mature and can produced leaves for up to 8 years. And like hemp, chemical fertilizer is not used in growing sisal. So that is a plus for sisal farmers.
The top 3 sisal producing countries are Brazil, Tanzania, and China. Other countries that produce and export sisal include South Africa and Kenya.
In sisal production, the leaves are dried, then brushed with a machine, and finally pressed into bales to be exported. Pretty simple but I’m sure is hard work!
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Since blueberries are in season, I am only buying the fresh ones. They are so good, I don’t even bother eating them with anything else.
These blueberries are from British Columbia blueberries. I found them at our local supermarket. Very plump and tasty.
According to the BC Blueberry Council, British Columbia has close to 17,000 acres of rich fertile farmland ideal for growing blueberries. This makes British Columbia the largest producer of high bush blueberries in Canada and the second top producing region in the world.
Blueberries have gotten lots of attention since being named as one of “superfruits”. Blueberries can help slow down the aging process and reduce cell damage. They are also beneficial to your heart health and brain function.
Here is a list of studies on the benefits of blueberries:
According to a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry - wild blueberries are higher in antioxidants than it’s cultivated cousin.
1998 Rutgers University study found blueberries (like cranberries) help treat urinary tract infections.
I’m starting to think any fruit with the deep dark skin or color are all very for your health. Especially purple Acai, purple plums and purple grapes.
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“There came a Day at Summer’s full/ Entirely for me.” - Emily Dickenson
It’s August and I am taking in all the beauty of this season. The sun is always shining and flowers are in full bloom.
And one of the most unforgettable flower I saw in bloom are water lotus. It was just a few weeks ago when I took my mother to the local Buddhist temple and got to witness this for the first time.
So on my next visit to the temple I had my camera ready to capture some of the blooms. But sadly it looked like all the flowers were gone. But what remained was something just as interesting. There were pods after pods of water lotus seeds.
Here is a photo of the youngest pod. During the life cycle of the water lotus, the flower blooms, the petals die out and then the fruit pod grows. Eventually the dried pods drops off and float on the surface of the water flat side down. This way the seeds can sink to the bottom of the pond and a new cycle begins.
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Melons are a great way to cool down during the hot summer days. But if eating just plain melons is too boring for you, maybe try something different.
Here I have a good mix of sweet corn, cantaloupes, and black beans. I don’t know what to call it, so I’ll simply call it “Coconut Melons”. This is a popular Asian dessert. In Lao and Thai they call it, “nam wan” which translates to sweet water.
It’s a great way to enjoy what’s in season too. It takes a while to whip up, but it’s worth it and everything is made with really good ingredients. Except for maybe the sugar. Try substituting with honey or agave syrup.
Directions:
Soak 1 cup of black beans overnight. Rinse and cook in a pot until it’s soft. Once it’s cooked you then add 1/2 can of coconut milk and some sugar to your liking. I don’t like it too sweet as the melons and corn are sweet enough.
While that’s cooking, you can cut up 1/2 ripe cantaloupes into small pieces.
Steam about 4 ears of corn and then remove the corn kernel by trimming the corn. You can layer the melon, corn, then beans or just toss it all together.
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I first learned about jaboticaba from The Fruit Hunter. It’s probably one of the most interesting, if not unusual fruit I’ve ever knew is in existence.
Brazil would be a fruit lovers dream destination as it’s known for it’s many variety of unique fruits, especially the Acai berries. Jaboticaba is probably loaded with vitamins just by looking at the dark purplish color of the skin.
This reminds me of modern art where someone decides to place each giant grape along the tree trunks. Image source: Wikipedia/Jabuticaba
According to the California Rare Fruit Growers, this fruit is from the same species as camu-camu. It can also be grown successfully from Florida to Hawaii. Some are also grown in southern California and also as far north as the San Jose and San Francisco Bay areas. The plant grows well as a container specimen.
The fruit is described as tasting very similar to Muscadine grapes. But the skin contains tannin so it makes your lips pucker. The real treat is probably the sweet flesh. It’s described as being delicious eaten out-of-hand. And it can be made into jellies, jams and wine.
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