Articles in "Island Epicure"

I’ve just invented a new cookie recipe that my son pronounced, "Superb!" Here it is, below. It contains no cane sugar nor corn syrup product nor gluten, just great flavor and nutrition. You may want to clip it and glue or tape it into the back of your copy of my book, Wholegrain and Gluten Free, available at Minglement.

Nutrition buffs tell us we should eat fatty fish at least twice a week for the Omega 3 fats. You get them in salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna and walnuts. We used to be told to eat fish on Fridays. But why wait? It’s good any day. This quick easy dish is similar to the Pad Thai you know and love, but juicy with coconut milk and whipped together with albacore tuna. It’s pretty enough to serve to company, and delicious.

I do love lamb. It is expensive, but a couple of shoulder chops or lamb steaks can be made to go a long way, cutting the per-serving cost of a lamb entrée to a less budget-bashing amount.

What did the signers of the Declaration of Independence have for their dinner on the day they signed that important document we still celebrate every 4th of July? Did they spend so much time discussing Tom Jefferson’s words telling old England that her thirteen American colonies wanted their independence that they only paused for a quick cold collation?

One of my true-love’s favorite vegetables is the lowly cabbage. He’s happy with plain old green cabbage chopped in fairly large bite-size pieces and simmered with salt and plenty of black pepper. Sometimes we vary it sprinkling in a little turmeric to give it an enticing golden color. Even that little bit of turmeric should aid our aging memories somewhat.

If you were to draw your personal food pyramid, what would the bottom layer, the one with the foods you eat the most of, have on it? My five-layer pyramid would be constructed like this:

Tea is the worldwide beverage of choice, next to plain water--black tea, oolong tea, green tea, white tea, and herb tea. Teatime can mean anything from a simple cup of tea to a mini-meal with cake and sandwiches, or the elaborate Japanese tea ceremony in which every gesture is prescribed by a ritual centuries old. We drank it in Japan as powdered green tea, scarcely diluted with water, a strong, bitter drink sipped through tea candy.

St. Patrick probably ate his soda bread with butter and bogberry or blueberry jam, and drank mint tea with it. Ireland is too cool for wheat, but the Irish of St Pat’s time had oats and could have grown barley. Caraway plants grow pretty far north, so I believe the Irish recipes that contain their seeds are probably ancient.

Traditional winter menus of Rumania rely on root vegetables and such meats as pork and goat. Trust me, goat meat is very good. It can resemble venison or lamb, depending on what the goat has been eating. But today’s main dish recipe features beef, more readily available in our meat departments than goat and less expensive than lamb.

Keep moving, then. Our bodies were made for motion, not for sitting in front of a computer or TV screen for hours at a time. What you eat matters a lot, too. Choose raw or lightly cooked vegetables, and fresh or frozen vegetables and fruits instead of canned. Choose fruits for your desserts. Consider red berries and blueberries. They’re anti-cancer food, as well as anti-inflammatory.

All over the Island, thoughts of Christmas cookies dance in our heads. Gingerbread men prance across kitchen counters. But some of us are loathe to fill our bodies with sugar, wheat, and fat, knowing that we will suffer later if we indulge too freely. To some, chocolate is kryptonite. A reader has challenged me to provide for her a Christmas cookie free of gluten and chocolate.