Gazpacho
Quick and easy, blender Gazpacho hits the spot as temperatures rise . . .
It’s hitting over 100 degrees fahrenheit in Kuwait this week, and it’s time to make up your first batch of heat-quenching Gazpacho. Not only does it taste good – it has relatively few calories, and lots of vitamins and minerals. It is also very filling for those who are trying to watch their weight.
It was a steamy hot day in Washington DC the first time I saw this made or tasted it, and the heat serves as a condiment, underlining the cool, refreshing, healthy taste of this all-time favorite cold soup. So tasty, and so so EASY!
Beth’s Gazpacho
1 large clove garlic
1 peeled onion
2 cucumbers
2 tomatoes
1/2 large green pepper
1 can condensed consomme
1/4 cup wine vinegar (red vinegar in Kuwait)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 teaspoon tabasco
1 teaspoon salt
Fresh, coarsely ground black pepper
2 8 ounce cans of tomato sauce (small packets in Kuwait)
Cut garllic and rub inside of chilled pottery or glass bowl. then crush garlic and put in bowl. Add consomme and tomato sauce. Chop 1/2 onion and 1 tomato and puree in blender with some of tomato – consomme mixture. Pour all into bowl and add other ingredients except vegetables.
(I actually add all the vegetables to the blender and blend to get a thick soup, but I am giving you the original recipe above. I also add some fresh Kuwaiti cilantro – maybe 2 tablespoons)
Chop remaining vegetables as garnish. You can also garnish with some garlic croutons and a dollop of sour cream.
On a hot day, this thick soup can be a meal in itself, with a loaf of French bread or a mezze or two, or you can serve it in smaller portions as an appetizer.
Gazpacho photo courtesy of fotosearch.com.
The Best Tomato Salad
The best tomato salad starts with my friends’ home-garden-grown Kuwaiti tomatoes, little tiny cherry ones, that we cut in half. We mix up some of the best olive oil and balsamic vinegar, we cut some fresh basil leaves from their garden and chop them and throw them in.
Then we add cubes of this:
We grind fresh salt and fresh pepper, add the dressing, and oh! It is almost a meal in itself. Perfect with “sheem” and rice and zucchini. Coffee in the garden, while the nights are still so moderate and pleasant.
If there is someone making fresh mozarella in Kuwait, I haven’t been able to find him/her. This is about as close as I have been able to come. It is horrifyingly expensive, and worth every fil. You find it at the Sultan Center, in the dairy section.
Tudo’s Vietnamese Restaurant in Pensacola
While back in the U.S., we focused on Vietnamese food and Mexican food, two cuisines we miss while living in Kuwait. We ate several times at Tudo’s, and there are still many items on the menu we want to try.
Here is my very favorite thing – Vietnamese salad rolls. In France, they are served with a vinegar-y sauce, but in most places in the U.S., they come with this delicious peanut sauce:
My husband loves Pho, a big bowl of soup with either meat or chicken or tofu, plus tasty vegetables and lemon grass, cilantro, mint leaves, all fresh:
I like Pho, too, but this time I discovered a shrimp and meat dish served over vermicelli, utterly fresh and delicious:
Oh, how I would love to be able to eat Vietnamese food in Kuwait! It is all so fresh, so delicious, and (relatively) healthy food.
UPDATE: When I wrote this blog entry, I never dreamed one day we would be living in Pensacola; it wasn’t part of the plan. Plans change 🙂 Tudos is just one reason we are happy to be here.
Tudos telephone number for take-out: 850-473-8877
Tudo’s is located just north of Creighton on N. Davis, on the right hand side just after Ronnies Car Wash if you are going north on Davis. Coming South, you would have to make a U-turn at the Creighton and Davis light.
Breakfast at the Scenic Diner
We love places like the Scenic 90 Diner, in Pensacola, Florida, where local people go to meet and exchange news and gossip and to “chew the fat”. This diner was no exception. They had great breakfast foods – the $3.99 Scenic Special had two eggs, any way you like them, grits or fried potatoes, toast or biscuit, and you could add bacon or sausage for just a little more. They also had a fruit bowl and a granola/yoghurt special for the tennis Moms, but it looked to me like most of them were having the eggs special, too.
The outside looks like an old fashioned (but very modern and upscale) diner:
The interior was equally stylish:
And here were some friendly locals, willing to have their photos taken. They had never heard of “blogs” before:
You can see some of the black and white photos the owner has used to decorate the diner in the background. The food was excellent, individually prepared, the service was also good, and the entire experience reminded us of how good it is to have places in communities where people can gather or even just run into one another to catch up on local news. Prices were reasonable, although not as inexpensive as the chains – Denny’s, Waffle House, etc. We also really like it when the police are a part of the community, and not someone to be afraid of. The Scenic 90 Diner also serves lunch and dinner.
Easter Sunday 2007
For the second year in a row, we were able to celebrate Easter in the United States. Today was so special to us. We went to church surrounded by many families. Although we were strangers, people were very friendly and happy to see us. We were very happy because we were with family!
Although it was our style of worship, every church does things a little differently – and this church does two things I have never seen done before. As the priest entered the church, he knocked at three different doors and said . . . something, and the entire congregation responded with “Allelujia! Christ is risen!” and then as the priest and choir processed down the center aisle, they made a joyful NOISE – and it was a huge noise, every choir member and many members of the congregation had BELLS which they rang as they sang the opening hymn and it was unexpectedly marvellous!
Here is a photo from the entry to the church:
The church entry has several shadowboxed collections of crosses from around the world – totally gorgeous. This is just one part of the collection:
After church, we had a wonderful family dinner with the parents of our daughter-in-law. The dinner was fabulous. We are in the Southern part of the United States where the cooks have a reputation for being THE BEST. They are the best because they use all the ingredients that make food truly tasty – fat, sugar, eggs, real cream, etc, things that we forbid ourselves most of the year, and oh, how delicious everything was. We had a big green salad with a choice of dressings, green beans with slivered almonds, a big ham, scalloped potatoes and freshly baked biscuits with butter and jam.
I would have to say, this was a wonderful Easter meal; fabulous food, great conversation, lots of laughter. For dessert, the hostess made two of my husband’s very favorite things, coconut cake with a white/coconut icing, and banana pudding with a baked meringue topping – oh oh oh! We hated to leave.
A note of interest – my neice, Little Diamond says that this is one of the rare years when Easter is celebrated on the same day by all the major Christian religions – a rare occasion indeed.
And for those of you who are going to ask, no, I am not going to take up swearing again just because Lent is over. The whole goal was to break myself of a very bad habit that crept into my life on the roads of Kuwait. I will continue to strive to clean up my act!
Drinking Green Tea Might Prevent Absorption of Cholesterol
Found this fascinating and hopeful article on drinking green tea at E-zine articles.com.
There are many studies being conducted on the effects of drinking green tea and how it can benefit the body. Along with its possible antioxidant qualities, there are also studies pointing to the possibility that green tea can help you maintain and even lower your cholesterol levels.
Cholesterol comes in two forms, ‘good’ or HDL-cholesterol and ‘bad’ or LDL-cholesterol. Doctors are very concerned about the balance of these two types of cholesterol. Ideally, there should be more good cholesterol than bad. Also, there should only be very small amounts of the bad cholesterol in your blood.
Imbalances in your levels of cholesterol can lead to many diseases, one of which is atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a hardening of the arteries caused by damage caused by high levels of bad cholesterol and other factors.
Studies revealed that green tea consumption in rats appears to lower their levels of bad cholesterol and even prevents them from getting high cholesterol when they are on high cholesterol diets. This has significant implications for the use of green tea in humans to prevent high cholesterol and heart disease. There are still more studies and research to be done before researchers can confirm that green tea indeed has such benefits.
Now here’s the rub:
The author of this article is John Stout.
Jon M. Stout is the Chairman of the Golden Moon Tea Company.
You can read more about how the study was conducted, and the positive results it found to drinking green tea and lowering cholesterol here, and keep in mind, the author sells green tea.
Fat scan shows up ‘true’ obesity
From BBC Health News.
Given that obesity is becoming a world wide epidemic, and kills more people than the bird flu, this can be a helpful tool.
Scientists say they have developed a 3D scanner that can accurately determine if a person is truly obese.
Currently, doctors gauge fatness with a calculation of body mass index (BMI). But BMI is flawed – people with lots of muscle are considered overweight.
Instead of relying on weight and height measurements, as BMI does, the scan takes into account body shape and how much fat a person carries.
Birmingham’s Heartlands Hospital has been testing this Body Volume Index.
Muscle or fat?
One human guinea pig who has tested the BVI scanner is 19-year-old rower Ashley Granger.
He is 6ft 2ins (1.88m) tall and according to his BMI of 28 is at the top end of the overweight category, borderline obese.
Muscle weighs more than fat does. And you can hide away fat but be quite thin looking
Fitness trainer Matt Roberts
His BVI scan correctly showed that he carries very little fat and that his weight is largely down to muscle.
Fitness trainer Matt Roberts said: “Muscle weighs more than fat does. And you can hide away fat but be quite thin looking.
“So it’s important that we don’t just use BMI alone.”
Dr Asad Rahim, a consultant in the obesity and endocrinology department at Heartlands Hospital, explained the work they had done with the BVI scanner over the last two years.
“We have completed the patient evaluation stage and are currently assessing the results.
“The scanner has certainly helped motivate some patients to manage their weight more effectively but there are also patients who were not scanned who lost weight.”
The next phase of testing has now been launched – the plan is to scan at least 20,000 people over the next two years as part of the Body Benchmark Study.
Select Research, the company which makes the scanners, said it hoped to make them available to GP surgeries at an “affordable” cost.
The Many Uses of Vinegar
When I wrote yesterday about being a mosquito magnet, Walzing Australiaquoted a recommendation about drinking vinegar every day to keep the mossies away. It tickled a brain cell, and I googled Vinegar and Health this morning and found pages and pages of information. Vinegar is amazing, even if it is HALF as good as all these articles claim.
From How Stuff Works: The Healing Power of Vinegar
Health Benefits of Vinegar Overview
Vinegar has been valued for its healing properties for thousands of years, and during that time, it has found its way from the apothecary’s shelf to the cook’s pot. Today, it can continue to play that dual role, taking the place of less healthful dietary ingredients and helping to regulate blood sugar levels while entertaining our taste buds with its tart flavor.
There seems hardly an ailment that vinegar has not been touted to cure at some point in history. And while science has yet to prove the effectiveness of many of these folk cures, scores of people still praise and value vinegar as a healthful and healing food. So let’s take a look at the history of vinegar, the healing claims made for it, and what science does and doesn’t have to say about those claims. Along the way, we’ll discover why vinegar deserves a place in every healthy kitchen.
The Healing History of Vinegar
For centuries, people from Asia and Europe have used different types of vinegar to add flavor and zest to their food. Read about how this tangy condiment was first discovered and then developed into a must-have for kitchens around the world. Learn the key ingredient that gives vingear its special sour taste and the basic chemical process used to create it.
Misconceptions About Vinegar’s Health Benefits
Although some people believe vinegar is a miracle cure, it can’t fix everything. Marketers have asserted that vinegar cures diseases such as diabetes, osteoperosis, cancer, and many other disorders. Some even claim that it halts the aging process. Obviously, these claims are exaggerated. Find out what’s being said, and learn the truth about the real nutritional value of vinegar.
How Vinegar Affects Digestion
Although vinegar can’t cure cancer, it can help improve your general health in many ways. Vinegar benefits the digestive system, improving the absorbtion and utilization of several essential nutrients. Learn about the different organ systems that are affected by simply adding vinegar to your diet, and find out how you can improve your health and the taste of your vegetables at the same time.
If you go to the above website, there are additional articles that elaborate on the uses of vinegar. There are so many websites about the positive powers of vinegar!
There are hundreds of articles about the health benefits of vinegar. One of the most comprehensive was at Vinegarbook: Vinegar tips for health where there are topics you can click on to get to the full article, such as Treat Dandruff with Vinegar, Itchy Skin Soothed with Vinegar, Urinary Tract Infections and Vinegar, Soothing Aching Feet with Vinegar and several articles about fighting off colds and sore throats with vinegar. Vinegar has some known anti-fungal properties, and also anti-microbial and antiseptic properties. Fascinating, all from a cheap little bottle of vinegar found on any grocery shelf.
Oops – Hershey Sponsored the Study?
If you will remember, one of my key themes is “Who sponsors the study?” I love studies, and I also love going behind the scenes to find out where the funding is coming from (ok, ok, grammar-nazis, from where the funding is coming.)
So, checking around for the credentials on my previous story about chocolate being good for your heart, I found the below, which I excerpted from The International Herald Tribune. Let the chocolate buyer beware!
During a talk with analysts in October, the Hershey chief executive, Richard Lenny, called the dark-chocolate category a “major growth platform.” He told of a new Yale study sponsored by Hershey’s, and yet to be put through peer reviews, that found that eating Hershey’s Extra Dark chocolate improved blood pressure and blood flow because of the candy’s level of natural flavanol antioxidants.
In the study, 45 people were fed 2.6 ounces, or two servings, of Extra Dark, which also contained 26 grams of fat.
“These results enable us to better communicate with consumers the positive aspects of antioxidants and dark chocolate,” Lenny said.
Such claims are troubling to Mars’s chief scientist, Harold Schmitz, a driving force behind the development of CocoaVia. He said competitors were potentially misleading consumers by talking about antioxidants in chocolate when it was the level of flavanols that really made a difference.
Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that when it came to flavanols, “the marketing is getting ahead of the science.” She noted that two recent studies, including one from Harvard, had found no link between flavanols and any reduced risk of breast cancer or heart disease.
A spokeswoman for Hershey, Stephanie Moritz, denied that the company was exploiting the excitement over flavanols and said that a range of studies had linked dark chocolate to health benefits for the heart.
Bottom line: Sponsored by Hershey’s.
Chocolate: The Newest Truth
I heard this tidbit on today’s Good Morning America – Good news for chocolate lovers!
And Now Some Good News from the AAAS: Chocolate in Medicine, Tractors in Space
By John Tierney From the New York Times blogs.
I just spent five days at the Woodstock of science, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The theme at this year’s meeting, in San Francisco, was “sustainability” — not the most sprightly topic. But in between the lectures on environmental degradation, there were some cheerier discussions. A couple of my favorites:
The healing power of chocolate. The researchers weren’t quite ready to call chocolate a health food — they cruelly reminded the audience of its fatty content — but they did have good news about the flavanols found in cocoa (particularly some dark chocolates).
Norman Hollenberg of Harvard Medical School has documented that central American Indians who consume large quantities of cocoa have low rates of hypertension and of vascular dementia (caused by restriction of blood flow in the brain). At the AAAS meeting, he reported on a experiment showing people given flavanol-rich cocoa enjoyed a “a significant increase” in cerebral blood flow. “We hope,” he noted, “to explore the potential of flavanol-rich cocoa in preventing or ameliorating the vascular dementias.”
Another researcher, Ian Macdonald of the University of Nottingham, scanned the brains of women who’d been given flavanol-rich cocoa. He found it increased “cerebral blood flow to gray matter.” He and Dr. Hollenberg didn’t urge listeners to go out and gorge on chocolate, but they did raise the possibility of flavanols being used to help aging brains, perhaps being administered in the form of vitamins. Let’s hope these vitamins are the chewable variety.
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