Living Local on Martha's Vineyard and Beyond

Curry is good for you! Eat it three times per week. Turmeric is the spice that gives Indian curries that characteristic bright yellow-orange color and the benefits of turmeric seem endless.

<<Caitlin, at mermaid farm grew this turmeric. It is very difficult to find fresh turmeric outside the Chinese Grocery Stores. Don’t but it from the Chinese markets!

Turmeric is well-recognized as the best antioxidant, hypoglycemic, colorant, antiseptic and wound healer. Used in cooking as a spice for over 2,500 years, turmeric has a musty, nutty flavor similar to mustard.  I often think of the golden Buddha robes as being the color of turmeric.

Turmeric is a rhizome comprised of knobby underground stems that are known for their pungent and flavorful flesh. The rhizome family includes ginger, turmeric and galangal. It is generally a tropical plant that has been used in cooking since 600 B.C. It is native to the Orient and now can be found in India and the Caribbean. It has a bitter, pungent almost woodsy flavor.

Turmeric is used in the Indian medicinal systems of Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha. It is used in the treatment of digestive disorders such as flatulence, bloating, and appetite loss. Turmeric is used internally as boiled powder, fresh juice and externally as paste, oil, ointment, and lotion and also topically for ulcers, wounds, scabies and inflammations.. Turmeric also has a long history of use for its anti-inflammatory and anti-arthritic effects. It has also been studied for its anti-cancer properties and tumor-fighting activities known in nutrition-language as anti-angiogenesis. The active agent in the spice is a plant chemical, or polyphenol, called curcumin. Curcumin is a natural liver detoxifier.

Adding black pepper to turmeric or turmeric-spiced food enhances curcumin’s bioavailability (the rate at which it is absorbed) by 1,000 times, due to black pepper’s hot property called piperine. This is one reason it’s thought that curry has both turmeric (curcumin) and black pepper combined. So in simple terms, use turmeric with black pepper as it is used together in curries.

Curcumin, extracted from turmeric, has been shown to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and to reduce beta-amyloid and plaque burden in lab studies. Beta-amyloid is a component of the amyloid plaques that accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Make turmeric/ginger tea by boiling 4 cups of water, adding 2“ minced ginger, 1 Tablespoon ground turmeric, and 1 teaspoon black pepper then simmering it together for 10 minutes. Strain out the spices, and add honey and lemon to taste. Consume as much of this tea as you like. This will warm you all winter!

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Oysters are truly a sustainable food  – they are having a significant impact up and down the eastern coast .

They are saving our ponds on Martha’s Vineyard where excess nutrients from septic systems and lawn fertilizers have been slowly killing the ponds’ ecosystems. With the introduction of oyster farming, our ponds are coming back and oyster farming is becoming a lucrative and viable business. Oysters improve water quality because they take up excess nutrients. This process helps beneficial bottom plants thrive and helps in restocking of the wild species as well as other marine animals.

The impact of oysters can be seen economically, environmentally, and nutritionally.

Oysters have a good source of essential nutrients such as zinc, vitamin E, magnesium and potassium, as well as being one of the few foods we can get selenium from.  In addition, oysters provide an excellent source of protein and are low in calories.

Oysters are good for us!

Photo Credit:  julesjulesjules m

I was in my son’s high school this week and I noticed a person drinking a diet soda. I became irritated that we allow this in schools. I remember my days when I was a school teacher and teachers smoked in the school lunch room and all around the school grounds. In only 15 years, we have gone from designated smoking areas in public buildings to banning smoking in public places.

Perhaps, I can be hopeful that we will see diet sodas and sodas eliminated from public places and imagine a policy for such?

When I see my staff drinking a diet soda (or even a regular soda) I remind them that I love them and then tear into my poison rant: “That stuff really is poison.” – or – “We don’t serve poison” (I even tell clients this when they ask for the Splenda).

Products containing aspartame are poison.

Aspartame – a derivative of phenylanaline (other names for this group of sweeteners include Sweetex, Nutrasweet and Acesculfame K). These sweeteners are all mild neurotoxins, which means that in daily quantities, in certain people they can affect the brain and nervous system leading to MS or Parkinson’s-like symptoms including tingling, shaking and reduced vision.

Upon ingestion and upon heating, aspartame breaks down into Methanol and further breakdowns into Formaldehyde. Aspartame is addictive and has multiple debilitating affects on the brain.

I have a compelling interest in protecting children from a product which is not safe. There is scientific and documentary evidence that aspartame is a neurotoxic agent.

In 1980, the FDA recommended against approving aspartame, citing unanswered questions about cancer in laboratory rats.

In my catering business we serve raw fair trade cane sugar and stevia for those that must have something other than sugar!

Back to schools and diet sodas:  The only place aspartame should be is in science labs as a toxic chemical.

Photo Credit:  Steve Snodgrass

I was in the parking lot of our local grocer yesterday when a hunter/butcher friend of mine called out to me.

We got instantly excited as we anticipate the upcoming meat processing week. It is mostly deer and pigs, but it could also be turkeys, cows, or sheep. Together we share several pieces of equipment (at this point, I am not even sure who really owns what): we have a sausage stuffer, several meat grinders, a pulley, a scale, Cryovac and a dehydrator. Add string, butcher paper, Cryo bags, spices, garlic and lots of sharp knives and we have a fully operational meat packing plant!

We slaughtered our two pigs on Wednesday and will package them up on Sunday – perhaps have a pig roast Sunday night. We have put off doing it because the weather has been so warm but it is time and it is getting costly to keep the pigs. It is a lovely fit; venison and pork go well together for sausage making, as there is so much fat on a pig and none on a deer.

<<We had two pigs this year and here I am hanging them for three days before we butcher them. Our pigs were smaller this year as we did not get them until August.  They were Berkshire Old Spot heritage breed.

So we grind up the deer meat – three-parts deer meat to one-part pork shoulder or scraps to one-part pork fat, add spices and herbs, and we are on our way to stuffing delicious sausage.

<<We made three types of sausage this year, salami, bacon and head cheese. It is a satisfying project that makes me drool thinking about it!

It is a joyful time and we all vie for who has the best recipe, eating skillets full of sausages as we go (although this year I will not be eating, as I am still on my no animal protein diet and feeling pretty good about it!).

Frozen food companies have bought and bribed in order to make it acceptable for French fries and pizza to be available in our kids’ daily lunches! This move unravels school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year, which limited the use of potatoes and sodium and increased whole grains.

The bill that Obama signed last Friday, allows a slice of pizza spread with two tablespoons of tomato paste

to be counted as a vegetable, at least when it’s fed to schoolchildren. Food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers, requested the changes, and some conservatives in Congress say the federal government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat.

(YUCK! can you imagine what 2 tablespoons of tomato paste would taste like on one slice of pizza? !*$#!?  I would not be able to get 2 Tablespoons of sauce on a slice of pizza, let alone paste! “Really Congress?”)

Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said the changes would:

“prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations and to provide greater flexibility for local school districts to improve the nutritional quality of meals.” REALLY???!! (watch the video below to get the ‘really’ joke!)

Kermit the Frog can’t believe it either and you really need to watch this!

What can you do? Leave your representative a message saying that Congress has let us down.

Image Credit:  Ben+Sam