Friday, September 12, 2014

Developing Tasty More Functional Food

When Nirvana sings, 'Just because your paranoid, don't mean they're not after you'.... it makes sense!

Yes, occasionally I did hear from someone he might have been on drugs.  But then there are times when so many of us feel when we are trying to develop an idea we too might be on drugs, without actually taking them.  When you come to an idea you think will make a difference or an idea you just want to bring to market, you realize to change or add something to the status quo is swimming against the tide of the system. But you have to forge ahead.  Those that do break through and make a significant impact.   Think light bulbs, and cars, computers, i phones, new tracking watches, biochemistry and digital technologies, things that make peoples' lives better. Being able to write this blog even though only a few people read it, helps me sort out ideas as I look for a break through, that point of significant change.

Mushroom Chile Taco with Goat Cheese
Creating a lifestyle cuisine based on form, function and nutrition in simple daily eating is the goal of Vegetable Alchemy. But it has to fit in the ways and times that people enjoy food. Transforming recipes, swapping ingredients, mapping nutritional information, finding significant ways to tie ingredients to smarter body health and putting taste into all of this is daunting, at least for me.  The commercial tide of the system starts with suggested taste preferences that are suppose to be healthy or fun, heads down the path of marketing, into home cooking, kids lunch rooms, and the manufacturing distribution food system. It has a large eyeglass to profit and holding on to control as well providing justifiability by all the taxes it generates.   Let the paranoia begin!
 
On the individual side, sure there are books out there on dieting and not dieting and eating nutritionally rich. They suggest a large divergence from traditional eating with drastic changes. After making a hundred or so recipes from those books, with flavor as king, I can easily say, I am not comfortable with the outcome. I am not looking give up flavor in drastic change.  As a result, I constantly think about how to alter each meal and the calendar of seasonal choices as I learn more about better body health.  Better is defined against the SOD, the Standard American Diet the commercially sold food system.  I want to be leaner, carry less weight, have more flexibility and just overall feel better than I did when I was simply eating suggested proteins, carbohydrates and fats.  Those ideas were justified according to Food Pyramids, ethnic recipes, fusion cuisines and magazine insights, that speak little to what the body actually needs in more important elements like phyto-chemicals, vitamins, and enzymes. In all this there is challenge but solution.

Adding nutritionally rich adjustments to easy, fun recognizable recipes like this simple taco is a perfect example.  Swapping lettuce for two hands of chopped, quickly warmed and seasoned kale adds 800 points of nutritional density, a lot of protein and vitamin I would never get from lettuce and the flavor is outstanding.  Suddenly I am not paranoid., and I look like any other diner so happy with the taste that I am hording my daily fare! 

Gently saute a pound of sliced mushrooms with a touch of chopped poblano pepper in a few drops of oil. Add a little tomato salsa with sliced serrano chiles to the pan.  Cook to warm.   Top to a tostada with lightly sauteed chopped and seasoned kale and a tablespoon of fresh goats cheese.  Don't eat it too fast as you will sure be wanting to make another.  Better yet, start with making two!  LOL!

 The Vegetable Alchemist.

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