Pass me the Seaweed!

My mom always tried to push me to eat seaweeds. She added them to stews and salads, but I hated them. They completely changed the flavor of the dish.
I forgot about them until I tried sushi not so long ago (as almost everyone in western cultures) and became adicted to Nori (the seaweed used in rolls). Now I don't care what kind of sushi I eat as long as it has Nori in it. I love the texture, the flavor, the consistency...and I know it's really healthy too!

the don't look so tempting in the ground :p

I made some research to sum up the benefits of seaweed:
Seaweeds contain every nutrient found in the ocean and every mineral found in the human blood. Thats something!:

<3

It contains B12 vitamin (it's one of the few vegetable sources), Vitamin A and Vitamin C, magnesium, iron, calcium, potassium.


It's great for weightloss, as it has almost no calories and its fiber content contributes to a feeling of satiety.


It helps in the digestion process, as it creates movement in the bowels helping the elimination of waste.


It is anti-cancerous and anti-inflammatory


It can substitute salt, reducing the risk of high bloos pressure (therefore, of heart attack and stroke)

Nori!

I leave you this series of videos to learn how to make california rolls, explained by a japanese boy :D

Honey I'm Home

Even before making any research I believed that honey must be much more nutritious than refined sugar, and I knew it can replace it almost always. But I wanted to know a little more so I learned a few interesting facts about honey:

Weight Loss: Though honey has more calories than sugar, honey when consumed with warm water helps in digesting the fat stored in your body.
Source of Vitamins and Minerals: Commonly, honey contains Vitamin C, Calcium and Iron, but it depends on the type of flowers used to produce it.
Antibacterial and Antifungal Properties: Honey has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties and hence it can be used as a natural antiseptic.
Antioxidants: Honey contains nutraceuticals, which are effective in removing free radicals from our body. As a result, our body immunity is improved.


I try to replace sugar everytime I can. For example, when making pancakes or sweet breads, I always use honey.
Here's a honey bread recipe I learned. It doesn't have any butter or oil, so it's light!

Honey and Ginger bread
3 cups of self rising flour
5 tablespoons of honey
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of grated ginger
1,5 cups of milk
Mix all the ingredients, you can add some nuts or raisins if you want.
Bake it and let it rest until cold, then cut it in very thin slices. The thinner, the better.


=)

Let's talk about Metabolism

What is metabolism? 


It's the breakdown of nutrients we have in the diet (fats, proteins, carbohydrates) to make the energy the body needs to build and maintain itself.
Metabolism rythm tends to slow down when we grow up and if we don't make excercise.
Increasing your metabolism can help you burn calories, replace fat with muscle and give you more energy!

Swimming is one of the favorite sports to speed metabolism

How can we speed up our metabolism?


Exercising! this will reduce body fat and increase lean muscle mass. Metabolism will increase and aid in the weight-loss process.
Aerobic excercise speeds up the metabolism even after you stopped excercising. Weight lifting does not speed up the metabolism but it burns fat and increases muscle tissue, which uses more calories than fat tissues.

Drinking green tea in the morning is essential

What can we eat to help metabolism?


Having breakfast is essential. The body has been deprived of food throughout the night, slowing metabolism downd. If the cells do not receive sufficient nutrients they begin to function less efficiently, and they actually store more fat to use during times of nutritional deprivation.
If you diet or skip meals your body's metabolism slows down to compensate for the lack of nutrients.
Green Tea is perhaps one of the best morning metabolism boosters you can drink.
Spices like chilli, ginger, garlic and mustard, are thought to raise metabolism by up to 50 percent for up to three hours after eating, due to increasing the heart rate.
Some other things to eat are: nuts, fish, vegetables, whole grains, proteins.

Sweet, sweet chocolate

After a little research I made, I concluded that the only reason to consider not eating chocolate is because it has a high percentage of fat, which will likely deposit on undesired locations, and its high number of calories packed in a little package (one ounce has 150 calories). 

Other than that, it has lots of benefits to offer:


It stimulates you central nervous system an relaxes your blood vessels. 
Dark chocolate has antioxidants (you would only need about one and one-half ounces of dark chocolate per day to get the antioxidant benefits)
Chocolate makes you happy (at least it makes Me happy). It raises the level of the serotonin in the brain, which elevates one's mood.
Chocolate may be a cancer preventative.
Chbocolate may decrease LDL (bad cholesterol) and raise HDL (good cholesterol)
Chocolate has beneficial cardiovascular properties 
Cocoa contains substances thay may inhibit the growth of the bacteria that leads to plaque and cavity formation.
Chocolate is not a direct cause of acne, contrary to what out grandmothers always tought us.


But beware, as not every chocolate you get in the market is good. Manufacturers often remove the healthy chemicals from chocolate (like flavanols) because these substances give chocolate its bitter taste and people tend to prefer sweeter chocolate. The problem is that what makes sweeter chocolate sweet, is sugar. And high sugar intake is unhealthy.


The conclusion is that if you like chocolate and you are in a general good health, you shouldnt stop eating, just control eating reasonable amounts, and always prefer bitter (and expensive) chocolate rather than cheap milky one.


And now, I present you my ultimate chocolate brownie recipe :D

oooooohhhhhh

1 cup (2 sticks) butter/margarine

2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
1 cup flour
¾ cup cocoa
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt

Heat oven to 350F. Grease 9×13 in. baking pan. Microwave butter until melted. Stir in sugar and vanilla. Add eggs, beating well after each addition. Add flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Beat until well-blended. Pour into prepared pan. Bake 30-35 minutes, or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan.

If you want to improve your healthy habits, you can start by many other aspects that are more harmful than eating sweet, sweet chocolate :3

The nicest way to introduce Alton Brown: Avocados

Avocados! They are considered only the world's healthiest fruit!

They are sooo pretty.

Avocados are a very important element of almost every losing-weight diet, due to the big amount of nutrients they are stuffed with and their large quantity of calories used to replace any fatty unhealthy food:
Magnesium
Postasium
Vitamin A, C, K, B6
Healthy fatty acids
Fiber
Folic acid
Copper
Many more :P


They are great in salads, not only for the flavor they add, but because vegetable's antioxidants (mostly carotenoids from carrots) are better absorbed when combined with fat.

I like some sushi in my avocado

Why are they so expensive? I've made this question so many times and just found the answer today. Avocados have to be kept 13 months in the tree until they can be harvested. Furthermore, they can only ripe after harvested.


I want to leave you this video featuring Alton Brown on its food network show: Good Eats. If you like cooking and you are also a geek, you will fall in love with him <3

=)

Stomach ache is in your head

I used to have stomach ache every other day. It was very frustrating because I had to stop with my normal routine until it went away.
I used to relate it directly with the food I eat, but then I learned it had little to do with that. The stomach is a muscle. There is people that under stress tend to tense the back muscles, or the head muscles. Bur people like me tense the stomach muscles and therefore have digestive problems.

The zone where the pain is located will help you know the reason it caused it

 If you suffer often from stomach ache, you can try and visit a gastroentherologist, and you can also try these steps.


First of all, you must try and free your tension. 
Lay down, put a pillow under your feet and breathe in and out slowly.
Try to forget about your problems for the moment.
Put some relaxing music.
Drink some ginger ale or 7up, and lie on your left side for 5 minutes on a comfortable couch or bed. The esophagus enters the stomach on the right side of your body, so the bubbles of gas can rise to that entry point and make a burp possible.
Take a warm relaxing bath.
Take some herbal tea, like chamomile or ginger tea, or a glass of water with half a lemon.
Go to the bathroom if you feel like it.
If you feel hungry, grate a red apple and let it sit for 10 minutes before eating it, or bake it in the oven.

Ginger-Lemon-Honey tea is a good medicine and it tastes great

Try not to eat spicy or seasoned elaborated food!
If the pain lasts for more than 2 days you should visit a doctor, because it may be the symptom of some disease like celiac disease or some food intolerance.
Another good advice is to chew your food several times before swallowing. Enjoy the moment. This takes up a lot of work from the stomach.

If life gives you lemons, make a lemon pie!

Lemons are used all over the world for a bunch of different purposes.
I used to drink ONLY lemonade until I got tired of preparing it :P 

Green lemons are unripe, choose yellow ones instead

Lemons, due to their high contents of citric acid, aid digestion and help dissolve kidney stones.
They also have a high content of ascorbic acid (vitamin C), which acts like a natural anticeptic helping the body resistance against infections.
Lemons lower blood pressure, so if you are hipertense its great to add some drops of lemon juice to your water. This also will help in your digestion and to clean your liver.
It is a good habit to drink some lemon juice (always mix it with water) regularly in the morning,as it will act like a tonic tothe liver and stimulate it to produce bile to digest easily.
Lemons are also good for the urinary tract. It's a diuretic, so it helps flushing out toxins and bacteria.
In pregnancy, it helps building the child bones. 
Lemons cointain potassium, magnesium, calcium and phosphorus. 
To obtain all these benefits, you should do as follows:
If you are in good health and weigh less than 150 pounds, squeeze the juice of half a lemon (one ounce) into a glass of water and drink this mixture twice a day (one whole lemon a day.) 
If you weigh over 150 pounds, squeeze the juice out of an entire lemon into a glass of water and drink this twice a day. 
The lemon juice can be diluted more according to taste.


Lemon pie is one of the most popular sweet recipes whith lemons as main ingredient. I'll leave you this nice and easy recipe :)

Easy lemon Pie


1 pie shell (or mix vanilla cookies in the food processor and add frozen butter until you can squeeze it and it doesn't fall apart)
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup lemon juice
3 egg whites


Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
Prick pie shell with a fork and bake in preheated oven for 8 minutes, or until crust is lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool.
In a medium mixing bowl blend egg yolks and condensed milk. Stir in lemon juice. Heat this mixture in a double boiler, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until it thickens. Pour into piecrust.
Beat egg whites with 1 teaspoon lemon juice to soft peaks. Gradually add the 6 tablespoons sugar, beating until stiff peaks are formed and sugar has dissolved. Spread meringue over the hot filling, covering completely. 
Bake at 350° for 12 to 15 minutes, until golden brown.
Refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving.


Enjoy! :3

The "Anti-diet"

Fit for Life or "anti-diet" is a diet created by a Northamerican couple. Its main premise is that nutrition depends more on how and when you eat rather than how much or what you eat.
It is a diet based on Orthopathy principles (alternative medicine philosophy that considers self-healing the only cure for disease, and emphasizes prevention over cure).
The diet claims that one can lose excess body weight and maintain good health via long term dietary and lifestyle practices, rather than short term dieting.


The main rules in the diet consist of:
-eating only fruit in the morning to detoxify the body 
-eating predominantly "live high-water-content" food
-avoiding to combine animal protein with complex carbohydrates (glucose and starch)

Fruits and Veggies ftw!

So, this is almost all about food combining. A wrong combination  causes fermentation in the stomach, and this destructs valuable enzymes and nutrients.
Fruits are best eaten fresh, raw, and alone (they should never be eaten with or immediately following anything)
Carbohydrates and proteins should never be combined in one meal ( meat and potatoes, eggs and toast, bread and cheese, or chicken and noodles)
Water dilutes digestive juices, so it should never be drunk at meals. As the diet consists of a lot of watery foods, you wouldnt really need to drink a lot of water in normal conditions.
Dairy foods are mainly restricted, due to their allergic capacity.

Be careful with dairy food :[

But be aware, as according to studies Fit for Life diet is low in calcium, zinc, iron, and vitamins B12 and D. So if you plan on following this diet, you will have to take this on account.

Ye Olde Carrot

I eat carrots at least once a day. They are one of the most nutritious veggies, an excellent source of nutrients and they taste great!

Different carrot varieties

The most known nutrient is the beta-carotene, you probably heard of it. But what exactly is beta-carotene? It is what gives carrots their color. It turns into Vitamine A when digested. Among other things, it helps the immune system to target and destroy cancer cells in the body. 
Beta-carotene is used to prevent tons of diseases: heart disease, cataracts, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, epilepsy, headache, heartburn, high blood pressure, and many more. 

Minerals found in carrots are calcium, potassium and magnesium. 

Carrot lowers bad cholesterol! Two and a half medium-sized raw carrots eaten daily willlower blood cholesterol by about 11%. 

Only 3% of the beta-carotene in raw carrots is released during digestion: this can be improved to 39% by cooking them with oil (as carotenoids are fat-soluble). But don't overcook, or it will all be lost. 

Here's an easy and quick recipe which will help you give your kids carrots and other veggies!

Veggie soy chicken breasts

Don't overcook sprouts!!

- 1/2 lb chicken breast (boneless), cut bite size
- 1 carrot, cut in bite size strips
- 1 red bell pepper, cut into bit size
- 2 cups sprouts, rinsed and ends picked
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 4 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 cup chives, finely cut
- 1 squash

Boil squash cut in pieces, peel it and mash it. You can use mashed squash as a healthy replacement of mashed potatoes! Heat a pan with the olive oil and add bell pepper and chicken breast. Mix and after three minutes add the carrots and chives. When the chicken is cooked, add sprouts and soy sauce.
Serve with mashed squash as side dish.

Enjoy!

Today in alternative medicine: The Alkaline Diet

I always try to avoid going to the pharmacy. I prefer trying different "natural" healthy alternatives that are more focused into preventing the illness instead of treating it. They are not as immediate as a pill, but in my opinion it's better to stay healthy than to be dependent on pills to feel okay. The alkaline diet sounded very interesting to me and I'm giving it a chance.

Almost all foods that we eat, after being digested and metabolized, release either an acid or an alkaline base into blood. We don't just have one pH level. For example, the stomach has a pH ranging from 1.35-3.5. It must be acidic to aid in digestion. However, blood must always be slightly alkaline, with a pH of 7.35 to 7.45. Our diet should reflect this pH level by being slightly alkaline. 

For most people, the typical diet is too acidic, which means the body will attempt to restore equilibrium by depleting certain minerals (such as calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium) from organs and bones. This imbalance is thought to make people prone to illness. By following the alkaline diet you could help your body to mantain these minerals and your immune system to focus back into dealing with disease.


According to some alternative practitioners, an acid-producing diet is the cause of a number of chronic diseases. They recommend the alkaline diet if a person has the following symptoms (and other illnesses have been ruled out).
Lack of energy
Excessive mucous production
Nasal congestion
Frequent colds and flu
Anxiety, nervousness, irritability
Cramps
Headache
Though this diet is not scientifically proven to cure any disease, it is definitely a healthy habit and will make you feel better in many ways.


Here's a chart that differentiates between food with acidic and alkaline ash:

If you can choose 80% of your daily food from the alkaline category and only 20% from the acid category, you will be on your way. In addition, you will be eating much healthier in general and you will most likely drop a few pounds.


I leave you a video that explains all this quite clearly:

Good Girl Almond

Almonds can commonly be found in cakes, chocolates or any other sweet recipe. But let me tell you, there are so many other ways of preparing them that its unfair to keep them stucked in the sweet area.

Almonds are rich in monounsaturated fat, which is very healthy despite of containing the word "fat". Let me explain this:

What "saturated" fats are saturated with is hydrogen atoms placed in every available bonding site on the molecule. Unsaturated fats have empty spaces instead, and have none of the adverse effects associated with saturated fats. Due to the lack of hydrogen, the fat chain is generally unstable and will eventually get oxygen in the empty spaces and turn it rancid. Products typically made with unsaturated fat will only last a few days on store shelves.

The reason why unsaturated fat is considered healthier than the other types of fat is due to the nature of the fat molecules once they reach the bloodstream: saturated fats have a natural tendency to bond with each other on contact, which leads to the formation of artery-clogging plaque. Unsaturated fat, however, contains larger molecules that tend to slide past each other in the bloodstream, which results in little to no plaque build-up.

So if 25% of our daily calories must come from from fat, we should always prefer the unsaturated kind.

That explained, what are the health benefits of eating almonds? These are the main ones:

• Lowers bad colesterol and increases good cholesterol.
• Excellent source of Vitamin E (antioxidant, good for skin and hair)
• Contains minerals like manganese, potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc and selenium
• Source of protein and dietary fibers.

Be careful with quantities! there are 100 calories in 15 almonds.


Now to the fun part: cooking!
Obviously you can add roasted almonds to almost everything to make it delicious: yogurt, cereal, salads, pasta, pancakes, chicken, and soooo on.
But I'm here to show you non-ordinary ways of consuming them.
First of all, toss a bunch of almonds in your food processor and use the pulse function to turn them into flour. Process them a little more for fresh almond butter.
Take this flour and make some Pancakes!

almonds: making your pancakes 10 times more awesome

1 cup almond meal
3 large eggs
1/8 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix it all together until a batter forms. Pour the batter onto a buttered or greased skillet. Cook over medium heat until both sides are golden brown.

If you prefer to try almond butter, this Chicken Sandwich is an awesome option

:droooool:

2 thin slices bread, toasted
1 to 2 tablespoons almond butter

3 slices chicken breast

2 slices tomato
2 thin slices red onion
1/4 bunch arugula or lettuce 

4 slices red pepper
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Lay slice of toast on a cutting board. Spread with almond butter. Top with 1 onion slice and some lettuce/arugula. Season with salt and pepper.
Cover with remaining slice of toast. Cut sandwich in half and serve.

Give Brown Rice a Chance

Being part of the few lucky ones with a vegetarian mother and an omnivore father, I have incorporated, since childhood, a variety of aliments that aren't very usual these days and in this part of the world. One of the most important, versatile and nutritious is brown rice.

Rice with zucchini, seeds and red onions :3

Lately I've learned that brown rice is more healthy than white rice, not only because almost any nutrients are removed in its process (white rice process destroys most of the the vitamin B3,  vitamin B1, vitamin B6, iron, manganese, phosphorus, and ALL of the dietary fiber and the essential fatty acids), but because it helps to maintain a healthy weight, lowers cholesterol and reduces the risk of several diseases.
Later I will talk about all these nutrients and why do we need them.


If you never tried brown rice and are interested in doing so, follow these tips for preparing and cooking.


1. Rinse it thoroughly before cooking.
2. Add one part of rice to three parts salted water, let it boil and turn down the heat, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes. You have to try it once on a while to check if it's already done. 3. Rinse it again, if you see the remaining water has a milky appearance.


Now you have cooked rice, you have to decide if you want to serve it cold (in salads) or hot, as a side dish, risottos, etc.
Personally, I like to mix it with chopped olives, red bell peppers, sauteed mushrooms and dried tomatoes :)

Rice with asparagus, carrots, bell peppers and eggplants :yum:

If you like it and you want to have a healthier diet, you can try like me, little by little, to replace all your white rice recipes with brown rice. It's not more difficult to cook than white rice, and it can be stored in the freezer for months.