An Antidote for a BBQ 'Meat Festival'

Sweet and Spicy Summer Slaw

Abundant and inexpensive, cabbage is a longstanding dietary staple throughout the world
July 4th is a traditional American meat-eating competition; a day when folks see who can eat the most meat. If you plan to inhale large quantities of ribs, burgers and hot doggies and then chase them down with gallons of ice-cold beer, wine, or cocktails, then it’s a very good idea to include a cruciferous side-dish to protect your innards and to flush out your exhausted liver.

Fortunately for your colon and prostate, it’s only once a year. Red meat is associated with colon and prostate cancer; however cabbage helps to prevent it.
Why and How? Meat combined with alcohol is very hard for your body to digest. Cabbage induces the production of Phase II enzymes in the liver, which binds to potential carcinogens and removes them from your body. That way, perhaps you’ll not feel so bad the next day.

Cabbage is also an excellent source of vitamin K & C, fiber, manganese, folate, vitamin B6, potassium, and omega-3 fatty acids. Cabbage is also a good source of vitamin B1, vitamin B2, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin A.

To balance your meat consumption and support proper digestion, serve this bold-flavored cabbage salad. We using Bok Choy, but you can use whatever cabbage you prefer. Fresh is best, however. Bags of pre-shredded cabbage have been setting around for a long time and have lost their nutritional oomph.

Sweet and Sour Spicy Slaw -serves 12
1/4 cup rice vinegar

½ tsp. toasted sesame seed oil

2 teaspoons honey

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup slivered almonds

6 cups very thinly sliced bok choy (about a 1-pound head, trimmed)

2 medium carrots, shredded

1 red pepper, sliced thin

2 scallions, thinly sliced

Instructions:
Whisk vinegar, oil, honey, mustard and sea salt in a large bowl until the honey dissolves. Add bok choy, carrots, red pepper, nuts and scallions; toss to coat with the dressing. Chill for a while then dig in.

Every body deserves a happy colon

Onions and Health

The Odoriferous Onion

Stinking News Brings Tears to the Eye

‘If an onion rings in the forest, does anyone cry”?

As odd, whiff, honk… as it, drip, wipe ...may seem to you, an onion a day keeps the doctor away. And you thought it was your breath.

The National Cancer Institute peeled away some layers to report the 19 tear-jerking pounds of fresh onion the average American eats per year, scallions, leeks, sweet onions, contain antioxidants help block cancer, lower cholesterol, and thwart a horde of degenerative diseases. These soil-dwelling culinary icons belong to the lily, amaryllis, and Alliaceae family. The 145,000 acres planted each year by the 1000 onion farmers of America make sure that each Americans gets their fair share. Libya boasts the highest per capita consumption of onions at 66.8 pounds consumed per person each year.

Apparently our ancestors were not too far off embracing the underground bulb as so much more than a lowly root vegetable. Paintings of onions appear on the inner walls of the pyramids of the Old and the New Kingdom. Mummies were discovered with antiseptic onions stuffed in their pelvic regions, chest, legs, and the soles of their feet and tearfully within the eye sockets. It was believed that the pungency and magical powers would prompt the dead to breathe again. You think? The Israelites lament their Spartan desert diet enforced by the Exodus, “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks, and the onions and the garlic.” During hard times, onions prevent thirst and were dried then preserved for later use.

The Egyptians tallied 8000 aliments of which onions would relieve. Sixth century BC India wisely celebrated onion as a diuretic, food for digestion, the heart, the eyes, and the joints. In Roman times, Pliny the Elder, catalogued the Roman beliefs that onions cured vision, induced sleep, healed mouth sores, dog bites, toothaches, dysentery and lumbago: It had to be the antibacterial and antiviral properties of the healing onion, the edible bulb guards our health with vitamins B6, B1, Folic Acid, fiber, potassium, and selenium, along with Quercetin, an Antioxidants which delays or slows the oxidative damage to cells and tissue of the temple. Studies have indicated that quercetin helps to purge free radicals from our dark, inner ecology,
Onion, leeks and their other family members contain 25 magically active compounds which inhibit the growth of cancerous cells, combat heart disease, inhibit strokes, lower blood pressure, LDL, protects against cataracts, and incites the immune system.

The heroes are not simply the nutritious vitamins, but Alliums, which incidentally, are anti fungal and antibacterial.

Put a close pin your nose and start peeling! However, deep-fried, greasy, onion rings, regrettably, don’t count. Sorry.

How can I keep my breath fresh?
· Chew on fresh parsley, but check a mirror before smiling
· Remember Chlorettes Gum and the green tongue?
· Chew on a citrus peel, anis or dill seed.
· Slowly chew on a fresh apple. This also reduces cavities!
· Munch on roasted coffee beans.
· Rinse your mouth with equal parts lemon juice and water. Pucker up!
· Go suck a cinnamon stick or a clove.

Perhaps, we should un-pucker a bit and get over the misunderstood odor and focus the glorious, health enhancing, distinctive, pungent flavor of onions. If your friends are true, they’ll accept you with open arms.

Members in good standing of God’s magnificent apothecary: Scallions, Spanish, Vidalia, Bermuda, or leeks, allium cepa and family are at most an indispensable, tasty food, and at best, magical medicine nurturing our Holy Temple.







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