Want a Long Life? Cook and Eat at Home
Home Cooking Increases Longevity, Cambridge Study Shows
(from AOL News/ Huffpost Healthy Living)
For those of you who use your stove for shoe storage, nota bene: all that wasted time with an inactive kitchen could be shortening your lifespan. In fact, a new study found that people who cook up to five times a week were 47 percent more likely to still be alive after 10 years.
“It has become clear that cooking is a healthy behavior,” said lead author Professor Mark Wahlqvist in a statement. “It deserves a place in life-long education, public health policy, urban planning and household economics.”
The research team, made up of Taiwanese and Australian researchers, published their work in Public Health Nutrition, a Cambridge University journal after looking at a group of 1,888 men and women over age 65 who lived in Taiwan. At the start of the study, they interviewed each participant about several lifestyle factors, including cooking habits, household circumstances, shopping habits, diet, education, transportation and smoking.
During the initial survey, researchers found that 43 percent of participants never cooked, while 17 percent cooked one to two times per week, 9 percent cooked three to five times in a week and 31 percent cooked five or more times a week.
After 10 years, they followed up to see how many of the participants had died. They then matched lifestyle answers to the 1,193 participants who remained alive. The researchers discovered that frequent cooking was associated with survival. Also associated? Grocery shopping, taking public transportation, not smoking, and being a woman. Frequent cooking — and survival — was more common among women and most profoundly among unmarried women, though also among women with families.
There were limitations to the study: women generally live longer than men and, for cultural reasons, women were more practiced at cooking than men. Additionally, those who remained healthy were more able to perform errands related to cooking, like shopping for food, walking and taking public transportation. The truly ailing wouldn’t be able to cook because of their health — not the other way around.
But even after researchers controlled for these other factors, they found an association between frequent home cooking and longevity. “The pathways to health that food provides are not limited to its nutrients or components, but extend to each step in the food chain, from its production, to purchase, preparation and eating, especially with others,” added Wahlqvist.
AdventureMan Does Lobster
I don’t know if you remember, but when AdventureMan retired, it didn’t stick. He retired in April 2010, went back to work on contract to the same company in June – August 2010, retired, went back from October 2010 – February 2011. Finally, I think he has really retired. He hasn’t worked in a year. I think the last stint was ENOUGH! Thanks be to God.
I wasn’t sure how life would evolve, once he really really committed to retirement. And it definitely has been an evolution, starting with the day he told me he was going to re-organize my spice drawers (No! No! No, you’re not!) to yesterday, when he told me he had a yearning to broil some lobster for dinner.
You know those Red Lobster ads, like for a whole month they show these mouth-watering dinners featuring lobster, but if you actually go to Red Lobster, they are overcooked and pretty tasteless, sometimes even covered in cheese? We always say ‘never again.’
AdventureMan is a GREAT cook. Who knew? We had hints, back when our baby was born, and had colic, and AdventureMan took lessons in Chinese cooking on Saturday mornings and would cook Chinese food while I walked the squalling baby, but once the baby no longer had colic, we reverted to more traditional ways of doing things. (Pity, I still love his Chinese food!)
He started with simple things, and has become more and more daring. Lobster is expensive, but his lobster were PERFECT. He basted them with a mix of olive oil, a little sea salt and herbes de Provence. And he also fixed green beans, which were perfectly cooked, still just a little crisp, perfect.
Wooo HOOOO on you, AdventureMan!
The Best Gingersnaps Ever
I knew what I was going for. Not the pallid ‘snaps’ that pass in the stores, no, the real gingery cookies, with real snap.
I went to my old faithful, a book I got back many a year ago when I was a new bride, the Joy of Cooking. It is a great edition, and you can see, it is falling apart. I can’t part with it:
Here is the Gingersnap recipe, altered slightly because I wanted guaranteed ‘snap.’
Gingersnaps
(Makes about 10 dozen 2 inch cookies)
Preheat oven to 325°F.
Cream 3/4 cup butter
2 cups sugar
Stir in:
2 well beaten eggs
1/2 cup molasses
2 teaspoons vinegar
Sift and add:
3 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3 – 4 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon cloves
Mix ingredients until blended. Form dough into 3/4 inch balls. Bake on a greased cookie sheet for about 12 minutes. As the ball melts down during cooking, the cookie develops the characteristic crinkled surface. At 12 minutes, take the cookies out, sprinkle top with the decorator sugar (bigger chunky sugar that won’t melt down into the cookie) and return to the oven for 5 or 6 minutes.
Remove from oven, cool.
Mine are not the prettiest – next year I will know to leave more room between the cookies – but they are the BEST gingersnaps I have ever made. They have a little soft chewiness, and a little crispiness, around the edges. They are SPICY!
The original recipe, in the Joy of Cooking, uses a little less spice and a marshmallow topping. The Joy of Cooking is a wise investment, and if you can find one of the older ones in a used book store, you will have a treasure house of old, tried and true recipes. The authors are Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, and my edition is a Signet Special, first edition, printed in 1973.
. . . Hurray for the Pumpkin Pie . . .
“You’ve worked HARD!” our water aerobics instructor told us. “You get a free pass tomorrow; you can eat anything!”
I wish she hadn’t said that. We did work hard, but it wasn’t just one day of feasting, it was pretty much four days, and we enjoyed ourselves too much. No matter how hard we had worked Wednesday morning, it wasn’t enough to cover four days.
Arriving at Papa’s and Grammy’s we were welcomed with a bubbling gumbo, a combined effort of Papa and Grammy; Grammy did all the shopping and chopping, and PaPa worked the roux, which is the butter and flour combination that makes that smoky flavored base for the gumbo. They had just finished cleaning and deveining about 40 pounds of shrimp for Thanksgiving, and threw a few in the gumbo. Oh YUM. The next morning was full of preparations, and then, mid-morning, the feasting began, with all the guys shucking oysters and eating boiled shrimp. As you drive up, you can smell smoke from an outdoor fire, and chairs and tables are out everywhere, but the shucking goes on down near the creek:
The house is beautiful, spacious and welcoming for so many people. The happy baby, who is now a happy toddler, was in heaven – he was surrounded by boy toys – tractors and golf carts and a Model A and all sorts of age appropriate toys, as well as cousins, aunts, uncles and a lot of hilarious rough housing. Why is it kids just love the terror of being turned upside-down?
For me, this was the best Thanksgiving with the family; finally I am beginning to figure out who is who from year to year. I still have to ask questions, but they seem more comfortable with me, and I had some really good conversations, sort of beyond the polite-passing-the-time conversations. I’m not that great in big crowds, but now I am beginning to have some good one-on-ones, and for me, that’s a great Thanksgiving.
And on, man, the food. Tables and tables of food. I don’t know how they do it, but I saw the list of cakes, and there must have been twenty cakes on THE LIST. They each have responsibilities, and somehow, it all works.
Three turkeys, all carved, and so much dressing (which I grew up calling stuffing, it all depends on where you grew up):
That green container is AdventureMan’s first foray into cranberry chutney. This one was a little tart, but tasty. As are darling daughter in law so diplomatically put it, “I would probably like it more if my taste buds were accustomed to having cranberries without sugar.”
About half of the sides were sweet potato casseroles; you can’t believe how good these are. This year this front dish was one of the favorites, squash cassarole:
This photo doesn’t begin to do justice to the desserts – holy smokes:
So the biggest brother blessed the food and we ate around one, then we visited for a few hours, people going back and grazing a little. Then the next generation cleaned everything up and got all the food packaged up and put away. About an hour later, that broccoli salad started calling me, and I went out to try a little more and discovered it was all put away, but a partner in crime knew where it was, and we pulled it out and had some, which started a whole landslide of second-platers, just when everything had been all put away, LLOOLLL!
It was a great day, a day full of thanks for all the things in life that really matter.
Pocher’s in Breaux Bridge, LA
“Where should we eat?” we asked our guide, and laid out some of the recommendations we had received.
“Oh, Poche’s isn’t for tourists,” he said, “There are nicer places where tourists go, places with tablecloths and sometimes dancing in the evenings. People like us who live here go to Poche’s.”
Heh heh heh – that’s exactly the kind of places we want to go. We call them the Michelin Red R’s – good local food at reasonable prices. Off we go to Poche’s.
When we walk in, it’s like walking into a grocery store, but we knew we were in the right place. At the end of the counter is the serving line, and the daily specials. They still had rabbit. You don’t find a lot of rabbit served in the US, so this was a treat for the little French country niche in my heart.
AdventureMan had the Etoufee:
You can see, the portions are gi-normous. We could not eat our entire meals, nowhere near, no matter how delicious they were. We did buy some of the Poche’s Pecan Praline for the drive back to Pensacola, oh yummm.
This is a really fun place, a real people’s place. It’s just north of Interstate 10, outside of Breaux Bridge. You can even order from them online, or see what they’re serving for lunch today by going to Poche’s.
Here are their daily specials:
DAILY PLATE LUNCHES
Monday-Saturday 10:30AM – 2PM
Monday
Smothered Beef, Pork Backbone Stew, Baked Chicken, Crawfish Etouffeé, Mashed Potatoes, Pork & Beans
Tuesday
Smothered Pork Chops, Smothered Rabbit, Meatball Stew, Crawfish Etouffeé, Fried Chicken, Smothered Potatoes, Green Beans
Wednesday
Marinated Pork, BBQ Ribs, Stuffed Pork Chops, Crawfish Etouffeé, Fried Chicken, Potato Salad, Field Peas
Thursday
Pork Roast, Sausage Stew, Crawfish Etouffeé, Fried Chicken, Corn, Yams
Friday
Fried Catfish, Fried Shrimp, Crawfish Etouffeé, Chicken Stew, Marinated Turkey, Potato Salad, Cole Slaw
Saturday
Pork Backbone Stew, BBQ Ribs, BBQ Chicken, Stuffed Pork Chops, Boneless Pork Chops, BBQ Ribeyes, Green Beans, Fried Potatoes
Sunday Menu
10:30AM – 5PM
BBQ Lunches – A Tradition for over 30 Years
BBQ Chicken, Pork Steak & Sausage served with Homemade Potato Salad, Rice Dressing, & BBQ Sauce, Fried Catfish, Fried Shrimp, & Crawfish Etouffeé
Dinner Menu
Monday – Saturday 2PM – 8PM
Fried Catfish, Fried Shrimp, Crawfish Etouffeé, Potato Salad, Cole Slaw, French Fries
Bon Creole in New Iberia
“OK, but I want to eat lunch at Clementine’s,” I replied, as AdventureMan is scheduling some Cajun Country Swamp Tours for the afternoon and the next day. We drive back into New Iberia, and make sure we are going in the right direction on the one-way Main Street, only to discover Clementine’s is closed on Monday. Oh, Aarrrgh.
But I love my iPhone. I love it because I can put in an address, and it shows me how to get there, when to turn, where we are . . . I love it. I love it because I can put in “great food in New Iberia” and up comes names – and ratings. The highest rating other than Clementine’s is a place called Bon Creole, and it is on the one way street, St. Peters, going in the opposite direction of Main Street, so we turn around and head back in the other direction.
We are HUNGRY. So when we miss it the first time, and have to go around the block, AdventureMan says “I think I saw it, but it looked closed.” I think I saw it, too, but it looked . . . like some dive. As we come around the second time, we see a button-down-shirt-and-chinos kind of guy coming out, so we know it must be open, and he looks like a working local, not some tourist like us. And did I mention we are hungry? We decide to give it a try.
You walk in and order at the counter. I can’t say we got a warm welcome. The woman behind the counter wasn’t rude, she was just working hard, and there really wasn’t a smile. I ordered the daily special, but it was already gone. “OK,” I say, “I’ll take the gumbo, and some potato salad.”
“Potato salad comes with it.” She doesn’t even look up from writing down the order. So far, we are not encouraged, but there are a goodly amount of customers inside, and as we wait for our food, we get to listen in on all the town gossip, which is not unlike town gossip in most towns, who drinks too much, who is going out on who, and can you imagine someone wearing that to church?
Our food arrives, a bowl of gumbo, a bowl of rice and a bowl of potato salad, plastic utensils.
And then, with the first bite, everything changes.
“Oh, WoW!” I say, and my eyes open wide. “Wow!”
AdventureMan is having the same experience. “This is REALLY good!” he says.
We are quiet now, eating this totally delicious seafood gumbo. We are both busy trying to figure out how they made it taste so seafood-y, lots of shrimp, maybe some crab, but the gumbo itself, essence of shellfish, it is SO good.
What if we had judged by the exterior and had ended up in some plastic and mediocre place? What if we had missed this totally awesome seafood gumbo? This gumbo was seriously GOOD.
If you find yourself in New Iberia, hungry and looking for some seriously good gumbo, here is where to find Bon Creole:
Bon Creole also has a lot of fried dishes; we were just looking for something not-fried, but if you like fried, you too will like Bon Creole.
“How Was Your Day?”
We were all standing in line, a very long line, at Pensacola’s Greek Festival at The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church when my son asked how our day was. (AdventureMan and the Happy Baby were off exploring.)
“Oh, it was GREAT!” I enthused. “Time passes so much faster when you’re retired and you spend your time having fun!”
“So what did you do?” he asked.
“Oh! We went to water aerobics, and stopped by the bank to cash a check so we would have money for the weekend. Then your Dad vacuumed so I can mop the floors tomorrow, while I cleaned upstairs, dusted, did the bathrooms, etc. At lunch we went to Chow Time, and drove down here to check out parking, and then I had a quilting meeting this afternoon, and then we met you!”
As I finished, their faces were somewhere between blank and confused . . . and I realized my idea of fun was a relative thing.
Here is what is fun. Fun is getting to CHOOSE when you vacuum or mop the floors, or wipe down the blinds, or clean the bathrooms. Fun is having the time to do it even on a weekday, not having to scramble on Sundays to get it all done, like we used to. Fun is not having gobs of money, but having enough that we can go to the bank and take some out when we need it for the weekend. Fun is meeting up with our son and his wife and our grandson because our schedule isn’t full with business meetings, and working late at the office. Fun is having groups we belong to because we really want to.
The truth is, in many ways, we are busier than we ever have been, but it is busy-ness of our own choosing.
Fun is even babysitting your grandson when he gets sick, just because you can, or helping carry him around a big festival, taking turns, so everyone gets to eat. It’s fun because we can, and because this is what we have chosen.
EnviroGirl and I picked up the dinners while AdventureMan and L&O Man scouted for seats in the tent so we could sit and eat dinner – moussaka, chicken, lamb, all kinds of specialities. There was also a very long dessert line – this festival is all about the food, and the music and dancing. I’ve taken some photos for you, but once we had the food, I didn’t get a chance to get any more photos. We only had to stand in line about thirty minutes; although there is a huge crowd, there is also a system, and they get people in and through the serving lines very efficiently.
Taste of India in Pensacola – They’re Back!
I didn’t want to say anything. There is only ONE Indian restaurant that I know of in Pensacola, and it is just a short drive from where we live. When we moved here, it was really really good, and we went there often. Then it changed hands, and it was still OK, but not the same. Then when we went in, it was all different, and the food was NOT spicy – they dumbed it down! We were disappointed, but we didn’t want there to be NO Indian restaurants in Pensacola.
We think maybe it changed hands a time or two. We wanted to go back, but had been so disappointed by the dumbing-down that we just couldn’t do it. Today, we had decided to give it one more try.
We are so glad we did. Once again under new management, the Taste of India is great tasting food once again. The buffet had a good assortment of tasty dishes, mostly veg, which we like, but so rich and flavorful that you don’t even miss the meat. There were also several really good condiments, home made and delicious.
Yes. It is a little spicy, meaning tasty. It is not bury-your-mouth spicy, only tasty spicy. Only go to Taste of India if you like REAL Indian tastes, fresh fresh fresh and delicately made. It was a delight to be able to eat there and enjoy the food once again. Lucky lucky us, and lucky lucky Pensacola to have Indian food of this calibre. 🙂
There is a lunch buffet, and there is a dinner and take out menu. It looks like they are doing some improvements to the building, too. Welcome back, Taste of India!
Polonza’s on Palafox
We tried to go to Polonza’s on Sunday morning, after church, but it was closed. (It’s now open for on Sundays, hurran!) We tried to go during the Saturday morning, but it was closed (I think it still is.) Polonza’s is perfectly located in the middle of what we call ‘The Church Souk’, i.e. next to the Methodist Church, catty-corner from Christ Church Episcopal, just down the street from 1st Baptist, the Lutheran Church and the Presbyterian churches, and several others. It only makes sense to open on Sundays for brunch.
Service was attentive without being intrusive. (Very good!) He brought us extra sauce when we asked, and was quick at refilling our glasses and asking if we needed anything.
They do a booming lunch time business during the week. Great lunch specials, sandwiches, main dishes, lots of choices for sides, and BBQ, wooo hoooo.
Whoda thunk? The soup of the day was GAZPACHO, which AdventureMan said is almost exactly as good as mine, and mine is really good.
I couldn’t resist trying the BBQ chicken, which was good. I loved their BBQ Sauce, a little vinegary, not too sweet. You’ll notice I ordered the vegetables (in addition to the sweet potato fries 😦 )
AdventureMan ordered the BBQ Pork Sandwich, which he said was also really good.
Overall, a very positive experience. If you get there between 11:30 and 12:15 you will have to wait for a table on a week-day.
Cooling Cucumber Salad
I made this for the first time the other night; it was a big hit. It is also a great way to utilize all those cucumbers appearing in your garden 🙂
Cooling Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
3 English cucumbers, thinly sliced
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon dried mint
Mix the cucumbers and onion in a large bowl.
Combine the vinegar, water and sugar in a saucepan; bring to a boil. Pour vinegar/water/sugar over the cucumber and onions.
Stir in mint, cover, and refrigerate. Marinate half a day, and serve.
So simple! So easy!
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