Maybe I'll head on over to the farmer's market myself.

i'm planning to work my way through them all. and i really like his hedonistic approach too.

good nutrition is important, and will go a long way [i take pollan's eat food, not too much, mostly plants to heart], but avedon's got a point here:

... when people who invented the Deep-Fried Mars Bar (and deep-fried pizza) are in better health than you are, it certainly isn't just because of your individual slovenly and immoral lifestyle choices.

Maybe I'll do the Julia and Julia thing, but instead of cooking my way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I'll make one of those salads every day.

Mmmmm...

that people who make so-called "slovenly lifestyle choices" should be denied care. I mean that's outrageous, and probably unconstitutional. Health care shouldn't have punitive strings attached, or be conditional, like public assistance has become.

But I also have a deeply held belief that real health is not to be found inside the contemporary American medical system. It's an old saw but it bears repeating: American health care is set up for acute conditions, but not for wellness. We throw pills at people instead of helping them heal themselves. We wait until something is broken before we fix it.

Yes, it's incredibly important to fight for healthcare for everybody, and to wrest the system from the hands of the bloodsucking insurers. But even if we can do that, it still doesn't change what for me is the central problem of American health care: that for the vast majority of us, it doesn't heal.

let me just put in a good word for this site, then.
http://www.stilltasty.com/ has six pages on fruits alone; there's another half-dozen on vegetables. Plus sections on dairy, eggs, meat, condiments, and so on.

Do let me just ask, though, about the costs of some of those luscious-looking salads and the ingredients. Mirin? Balsamic vinegar? Extra virgin olive oil? Those $4.99 a pound bite-size red potatoes, and those Jerusalem artichokes, fennel and asparagus yumminesses made of, on a single mom's budget, unobtainium? If your kitchen garden (provided yours is producing anything) isn't giving you tricolor bell peppers, where do you get them? Going farther down the page, where do you find Tuscan kale? Don't let me harsh your buzz -- designer food is beautiful. Just be aware that it's exactly that: designer food.

This is the best quote in the thread:

I'm totally against the idea
By MsExPat on Sat, 07/25/2009 - 12:46am

that people who make so-called "slovenly lifestyle choices" should be denied care. I mean that's outrageous, and probably unconstitutional. Health care shouldn't have punitive strings attached, or be conditional, like public assistance has become.

Schooling, housing, jobs in safe workplaces with decent wages for reasonable hours -- none of those things, let alone health care, free speech, the right to go to any church you please including none -- ought to come with strings attached.

This nation sent guys to the moon: this whole week's been about the anniversary of that, and we did that forty years ago. After that, with Medicare and Social Security in place beforehand, universal coverage for health care and disability pensions should've been a snap.

Full disclosure? I bookmarked the article on the salads...

The whole story -- how you shopped, made it, ate it... All of it! If for no other reason than vicarious satisfaction...

The whole story -- how you shopped, made it, ate it... All of it! If for no other reason than vicarious satisfaction...

To be sure, it's a long story, this kale salad. But you asked, so I'm going to start at the beginning.

Last March I went to Thailand, and ended up spending nearly two weeks at an American-run health camp in the mountains of Ko Samui. They run a supervised fasting program (not for weight loss but for, ahem, "cleaning out") I fasted for 8 days--and they teach you how to follow up the fast by eating, mainly, raw foods.

I'm not disciplined or good at following food "programs." I shudder at the thought of vegetarianism, or any -ism. (I live much of the year in Hong Kong, where roast pork is a food group) But the raw food meals at this camp were amazingly good. The counselors there told me that if I could just keep 40 to 50 percent of my daily diet "raw" that I'd continue to feel as great as I did coming off the fast.

So I started researching the "raw" world, and figuring out how I could adapt it to my own desires.

One of the challenges of raw food is making it more digestible. The point of eating raw is that the food holds onto more nutritional value (and so you get the most bang for your dear organic buck). But sometimes nutrients are "locked" in food, and not accessible to our bodies. A lot of vegetables--like kale--contain acids and enzymes that are difficult to digest without cooking, or at least blanching, them first.

But raw foodists have thought up some interesting techniques to get around that. One is to cut the veggies in extremely sliver-y pieces with a mandoline or with a terrific little gadget like this, which I bought a few months ago.

So, the kale. It came from this cool food coop located a few subway stops from my house. Like I said, it isn't a yuppie place, it's a community venture. When I got home I washed it, and then peeled the leaves away the tough stems. Then I rolled up the leaves into tight bunches, and sliced them into cole-slaw like frizz with a chef's knife.

Now here comes the fun part. You put all this kale frizz in a bowl. Then you add olive oil, lemon juice garlic and salt and massage it into the kale with your hands. This helps break down the enzymes, and makes the kale less bitter, soft and edible.

Then you just let it sit and mellow for a while. (Meanwhile, wash your hands.)

Normally I do this salad with black olives and some cherry tomatoes. But the tomatoes I had in the fridge that day had strange brown spots all over them (was it blight?!) So I took a red pepper that was nearing its "sell by" date and "spiralized" it with my Benriner gadget. Then I blended that into the kale mix, again with my hands. The pepper juice added a nice sweetness and zing that worked well against the dry, oily and crunchy kale.

I thought it needed something else, so I threw in a small handful of leftover feta I found in the back of the fridge, and mixed that in, too. Oh, yeah, a tablespoon of pine nuts for crunch (really, any nuts or seeds would work). I was too lazy to toast the nuts, but you can do that.

Now, the raw foodists would probably object to the feta cheese. But I am a raw hedonist, and so I say, screw that.

The end product made a great visual, too--the green kale made almost green-black by the oil rub, with the bright orange-red pepper, and the snow white bits of feta and white pine nuts scattered throughout. (When I throw things together, I often instinctively reach for ingredients based on color as well as flavor). Sorry, I ate it all, so there's no picture.

for preventive medicine par excellence look no further than Ayurveda.

Ayurveda is the first medical system in the world to have attained the status of a complete science. It has strong philosophical foundations, unquestionable scientific veracity, ever lasting practical methodology and eternally vibrant innovativeness for modifications into allied systems. Ayurveda has a proven track record of success through the ages and we consider it our duty to bring this science into global focus, so as to make available the richness of its expertise to a larger population. We dream of a disease - free society and a healthcare mechanism which is self-reliant, self sustainable, autonomous, accessible and affordable. Read more

I have studied Ayurveda extensively. I have given Ayurvedic cooking workshops. Ayurveda is not some esoteric, obscure, foreign "healing through food" system but a solid theory of health that is grounded in the principles of planet Earth itself. In fact, to keep Ayurveda hidden or suppressed because of the West's arrogant and ethnocentric attitude is to deny the world a truly beneficial and inexpensive system of health.

Let me give you a few examples of Ayurvedic principles.

1. Ayurveda recognizes three different body types. We can be one type or the other or a combination of two, and rarely three. Foods can be balancing or aggravating for your type. Although you can consume all kinds of food, you should eat more of one and less of the other depending on what type you are. For example, I am a Pitta which means I should not consume too many tomatoes, but if I do, they should preferably be a: local, b: in season, and c: neutralized with a herb or spice that's beneficial to me, like cilantro. This principle is based on the fact that foods have properties which are either heating or cooling and have unique tastes. Since Pitta is the hot type, cooling foods are balancing for Pitta as well as foods that taste bitter or sweet.

2. The digestive system is the gateway to the rest of the body. If this system is healthy and functions at its optimum, you will keep diseases at bay. For foods to be absorped you need to consider this: when your stomach is trying to build a fire to enable the breakdown of food why would you want to pour ice cold water on it? And isn't this what we do in the West? The first thing you receive in a restaurant is a glass of ice water. How dumb is that? Ideally you should drink small sips of warm (or room temperature) water throughout the meal. Drinking a cup of tea during the meal is also good.

The 2nd, but equally important, function of the digestive system is to eliminate waste products. Regular bowel movements are crucial to a healthy body. A healthy stool floats in the toilet and is in one piece. A stool that is in too many pieces indicates poor absorption of food. Another way to find out if you are absorbing the food you eat is by looking at your tongue first thing in the morning, prior to brushing your teeth. Indentations on the edge of the tongue are indicative of poor nutrient absorption. A yellow tongue suggests that you have too many toxins in your body (A tongue that shows marked cracks in many areas is found in those who have psychological problems - depression, excessive anxiety etc).

I can give you more examples if you are interested including a list of foods that are beneficial for those who spend too much time in front of a computer screen.

For more information, I highly recommend the following three texts:

"Essential Ayurveda: What it is and what it can do for you", by Shubhra Krishan, an Indian journalist who lives in the West. It is one of the best introductions to Ayurveda - an easy and quick read.

The last two books are cook books that explain Ayurvedic principles in cooking with recommendations for all body types.

"Ayurvedic Cooking for Westerners" and "The Ayurvedic Cookbook", both by Amadea Morningstar.

Cheers!