Canadian Rockies Art

Zen Garden Frozen Vegetables by Europe’s Best

YUMMMMMMMYYYYYYY!!!!!!

That’s the only word I can use to describe these :)

I had purchased a bag of these Europe’s Best Zen Garden Vegetable frozen mix a few weeks ago and totally forgot about it. So today, for lunch, I wanted to do a quick stir-fry, and I went rummaging around and found them again.

I’m so glad I did!

One portion (3/4 cup, 85gr) is just 60 calories and the mixture of veggies in there is really lovely and tastes so fresh. I used 2 portions (1 1/2 cups or 170gr - I prefer to use a scale to weight frozen vegetables for a more accurate portion size), and I put a tiny dab of canola oil in a non-stick pan, and put the frozen veggies in there to heat up/stir-fry. They advocate other cooking methods on their site, but it worked really well for me to just stir fry them from frozen. Quick and easy.

The mixture is composed of whole Snow Peas (love ‘em!), Yellow Carrots, Orange Carrots, Water Chestnuts (my favorite!), Red Peppers, Baby Corn, and Bean Sprouts… so you get a really nice appealing variety of colors and textures in there.

There are no added preservatives or sauces or seasonings or anything.

It’s just plain super-fresh vegetables. Gotta love it!!!

So I put some of those (frozen) in my heated non-stick pan, and heated those up a bit, then I added in some cooked lentils (I cooked them with some spicy Taco seasonings yesterday and I had some leftovers), and added in a cup of cooked rice (leftovers too), and just warmed up everything in the pan and within minutes I had a really delicious and super healthy lunch :)

What I really liked about these frozen vegetables is that they actually felt and tasted ‘fresh’ as if they had not been frozen at all. I’ve had some frozen vegetable mixes by other companies before and I don’t care for most of them, but this Zen Garden mix by Europe’s Best really took the prize today. So much so, I had to blog about it :)

I will definitely make sure to keep a bag of Zen Garden vegetable mix in my freezer at all times. I love to stir-fry, so this is definitely a keeper :)

Glaucoma, eye health and a bit of everything

Yummy healthy cranberries!

Yesterday I went grocery shopping and found truckloads of fresh gorgeous cranberries from Nova Scotia in our store, so of course, my dehydrator popped in my head and said “Grab lots! Let’s dehydrate them!” – I couldn’t resist of course. I love cranberries and I want to make some tasty breakfast muffins with mixed fruits in them and Cranberries and Orange or Cranberries and white Chocolate just sounds too yummy to pass up :)

So they’re doing their thing now in my dehydrator.

It’s very quick to prepare them:

You just need to wash them and remove any stems that might have been left behind when they were cultivated (I found 3 stems out of two bag full, so it’s not bad). I washed them in a warm bath of water with a big splash of vinegar. They were not dirty, but it’s good to give them a wash like that before processing them.

Then, you just plop them in boiling water on the stove so that their skin will break (you hear a popping sound, it’s kind of musical and neat –it only takes a couple of minutes), and once they’ve all popped, you scoop them out with a spoon with holes in it to drain the water out and they are ready to go on the dehydrator shelves.

It takes a few minutes and a bit of patience to separate them so that each cranberry dries on its own and it’s not touching another one or not lumped up together (they won’t dry well if they are lumped together), and 2 packs of cranberries nearly gave me 4 shelves full on my dehydrator, so that’s pretty good. I made some apple leather on the 5th shelf that I placed on top with unsweetened apple sauce. I’ll let you know how I like it. I’ve never tried that one before.

Eyes & Glaucoma:

I’ve been quite busy this past week with various appointments for my father, my mom (they live with my husband and I), and for myself. Dad needed to see the chiro and get some xrays done, so we took care of that, and mom needed an eye exam as we figured she was developing cataracts (it runs in her family – her sisters all have them, and so did her mom/my grandma), and mom could see her vision changing lately and wanted to get that checked. So I figured that since I hadn’t had an eye exam for over 3 years, I should get one done too while we were at it.

It’s a VERY good thing that I did – The optometrist that we went to (they have 4 doctors there and lots of specialized machines to do really thorough eye exams) discovered that I may have Glaucoma (permanent/irreversible optic nerve damage that can lead to blindness).

I say *may* because we are going to do further tests on Wednesday. But right now, the pressure in my eyes is higher than the highest normal range and the drop in my vision since my last eye exam certainly shows that losing so much of my eyesight in that time-period is not normal. So, as far as we show so far, it looks like I have Glaucoma. If that’s the case, I’m glad we’ve caught it now, so that it can be controlled/stopped at this level and not do any further damage to my optic nerves.

Having lost my tunnel vision about 18-19 years ago for several weeks (I was legally blind) from a chemical reaction to an antihistamine built-up in my system (according to the eye specialists I saw back then), I can tell you that this is no laughing matter. The current specialist here thinks that this may have done some mild permanent damage back then, and that over the years, it’s finally catching up with me.

I certainly have no intention of letting this damage go any further than it already has. Read the link on Glaucoma to educate yourself on this – it can go undetected for many years (because one eye can compensate for the other, so by the time you realise your vision is changing enough for you to notice, it may be too late).

Most of you that visit my blog are artists and rely on your eyes obviously a lot to do complex delicate work, etc… after the age of 40, if you are not at risk and age 35 if you are at risk (see the link to see some of the risks factors listed), you need to get an eye exam EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

So please, take care of your eyes. Get them checked once a year. We only get one pair of these precious eyes, and we need to treat them with great care.

I’ll let you all know what we find out during Wednesday’s tests. I will also be picking up my pretty new pairs of glasses as well.

Got my Food Dehydrator! Yahooo!

It’s Christmas for us today! This is my Christmas present – we decided to get our gifts now, and I’ll explain why in a minute.

Mine is one like this great Nesco Food Dehydrator – mine comes with 5 trays and I can add more, up to 12 trays, and it has a 700 watts motor on it:

 

As some of you may know by now, I’m extremely sensitive to certain things like chemicals and pesticides that are commonly used on fruits and vegetable crops, and I’m extremely allergic to Soy/soybeans and Tofu and all Soy by-products (such as Soy Lecithin, Soy Flour, Soybean Oil, Soy nuts, etc).

Unfortunately, soy and soy by-products are added into all sorts of commercial foods (from pasta sauce to deserts, chocolates, etc…) it’s really incredible to see where you can find this stuff when you start to read food labels. Having that stuff in about 90% of all commercial food products, means that I cannot eat those  things unless I’m in the mood to end up with an allergic reaction.

Allergic reactions to Soy and Soy by-products vary quite a bit, and go far beyond the intestinal troubles that one might think of when talking about food allergies. I’ve had everything from breaking out with hives, nausea, dizziness, rhinitis,  diarrhea, severe (very painful) stomach cramping,  etc. It’s really not pleasant and believe you me that I do everything in my power to avoid the stuff like the plague.

And since I’ve been avoiding the stuff, it’s funny how my “allergies” (seasonal stuff like Hay Fever, etc) have totally disappeared. If I eat something with soy lecithin in it, my nose starts to run within an hour and I start sneezing and blowing my nose, and I’m thinking that all these years of misery with “allergies” were in fact a problem pretty much with one single allergen: Soy.

How much money have I spent buying anti-histamines and taking them day in and day out for months at a time. I couldn’t function without the allergy meds, and I couldn’t function with them either (even non-drowsy allergy meds knock me out cold, they make me soooo sleepy it’s not funny).

I was miserable for ALL of my life, and earlier this year I successfully did the 30-day Go-Veg pledge from PETA for the month of January, and I was eating fresh foods and non of the usual commercial stuff and all my allergies totally VANISHED. Since then, I've remained about 70% octo-lavo vegetarian in my diet, and I really feel a difference (better) the less meat I eat (which, I'm sure also has to do with all the hormones, etc they pump into the poor animals).

I know for sure that I’m not the only person on this planet with allergies like this, and I’m wondering how many people think they have ‘indoor’ allergies (allergies to dust or pets, etc) or seasonal allergies, when they might be plagued with allergies to soy and soy by-products without even realising it!

It took me over 40 years to figure it out. That stuff is everywhere, it’s so hard to figure out what causes certain problems, and now I feel so much better from being rid of the stuff. It’s a definite improvement.

Anyway, wow, talk about taking the long way home to talk about my Christmas gift. I have a small organic garden in the backyard, and even with the nasty weather we’ve had this summer, I still managed to get a good amount of vegetables, including a few hundred tomatoes at least. And as nice as it is to make home made ketchup with them, it still doesn’t use up the bulk of the tomatoes mom and I collected a few days ago (some are ripening on our window sills and looking great.

So, I decided that a food dehydrator would be really nice to have – I can dehydrate my tomatoes, and then pulse some of it in my Magic Bullet to make a powder and use that as a base to make home made creamy tomato soup (the commercial tomato soups I can put my hands on all have soy lecithin, so I cannot eat them or cook with them). So now, I will be able to make my own fresh cream of tomato from scratch and not have allergic reactions.

I will also be able to dehydrate beautiful mushrooms and make home made cream of mushroom soup and use that to make dinner casseroles too (again, commercial canned cream of mushroom soups have soy lecithin in them so I haven’t been able to use that since the beginning of the year).

I also grow strawberries (I discovered I’m allergic to the chemicals and pesticides that they spray on strawberries – so my organic berries are safe for me to eat and I can dehydrate some of them and use them in muffins and cereals).

This food dehydrator will definitely be a great way for me to be able to by-pass the commercial food products and eat more safely and avoid the nasty allergic reactions I’ve been having in the past.

So, now you know why I am SO HAPPY and THRILLED to have this gift. We figured it would be kind of useless for me to get it in the middle of winter, at least by getting it now, I can process all my garden tomatoes and make all sorts of things, including some nice (different) home made soups, lentil stews,  and all sorts of sauces with my dried tomatoes.

So, “Merry Christmas to me” !!!!

(I’ll tell you about my husband’s gift in a separate post – this one is getting too long as it is!)

TGIF!!! Have a super evening everybody! I’ll be dehydrating a batch of tomatoes tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes :)

Recipe – Homemade Fruit Ketchup

Good morning!

It’s a lovely bright warm summer (ok, Fall) day here in Calgary, and as promised on the weekend, I have taken pictures of some of my jars of homemade fruit ketchup and I’m going to share the recipe here today.

I was telling Lisa yesterday that she was brave to put up a picture of herself in her jammies first thing in the morning on her blog. I’m not quite that brave (and I don't want to blind anybody, really! hahaha), but here’s a picture of me first thing this morning (in the glaring sun) holding a few jars of my ketchup…  Hi Lisa! (I don’t think you’d want to see me in my jammies, but shorts and T-shirt will do I hope! LOL) – I’m awake, but the sun is really bright so I'm squinting...sorry! :

And here’s a picture of a few jars of that delicious ketchup and a few of my organic garden tomatoes… yummo!!!

Don’t these look delicious? :o)

Now, let me teach you how to make some… it’s easy! It’s a traditional fruit ketchup that we do in Quebec. You can’t buy this in stores, although there is a company that sells it in Quebec (Habitant ketchup - not sure if they still do or not) which is somewhat of a commercial version of this, but I’ve never seen it sold outside of Quebec, and really, there’s nothing better tasting than the “homemade” version anyway. This recipe is from one of my old Quebec recipe books that dates back to 1978, but it's the same recipe that my grand-ma used to make when my mom was little (so, over 70 years ago).

So get out your chopping block, and let’s make a batch!

HOMEMADE FRENCH CANADIAN FRUIT KETCHUP

Ingredients:

10 red tomatoes

3 ripe peaches (you can also used ‘canned’ in their own juice or water)

3 ripe pears (you can also used ‘canned’ in their own juice or water)

2 onions, medium to large size, or 3 medium size

6 red apples, peeled & core removed (any kind will do)

1 sweet green pepper, large size

1 sweet red pepper, large size

2 stalks of celery, no leaves

2 cups of white granulated sugar

2 Tablespoons of salt

1 cup of white vinegar

1/2 a teaspoon of “mixed spices” *

(Note*: Mixed spices = a pinch of “all spice” + a pinch of “cinnamon” + a pinch of “nutmeg”)

Instructions:

You will need the following:

1 large stockpot (to cook your ketchup in)

1 large pot with boiling water  to blanch your tomatoes in.

1 cutting knife

1 cutting board

1 large mixing bowl to put in your cut fruits and veggies

1 mixing bowl to put in ‘garbage’ (I’ll explain below).

1 measuring cup (for the sugar and vinegar)

Some small measuring spoons.

How to make the ketchup:

1) Blanch the tomatoes in hot water to remove the skin. While you wait for the water to boil on the stove before putting in your tomatoes, you can set up your cutting station at your kitchen table:

I take my cutting board, my small sharp knife, and my 2 mixing bowls to the table. I use the larger mixing bowl to put in all the fruits and veggies that I cut up in medium bite size pieces. The 2nd mixing bowl is for putting garbage in (skins of apples, seeds from the sweet peppers, etc… ). That keeps my cutting board clean and it’s easy to just get rid of the garbage when it’s all in a bowl – like Rachel Ray does on her 30-minutes meal show (she uses a mixing bowl as her temporary garbage bin on her kitchen counter).

Blanch your tomatoes (click on the link to see step-by-step pictures I found on a site, if you don’t know how to blanch tomatoes, but only remove the skin – don’t remove the seeds). Set aside in the big stock pot where we will cook the ketchup. Don’t start the cooking process yet. Blanching tomatoes is necessary to prevent botulism when canning tomatoes, and it’s the easiest way to remove the skin – but be careful not to burn yourself. Tomatoes get really hot inside when they’ve been in boiling water. Once your tomatoes are skinless, chop them up in bite size chunks.

2) Wash, then peel and seed your fruits and vegetables. Chop them up in nice bite size chunks, and accumulate them in your large mixing bowl. (I turn on the TV in the living room – I can watch it from the kitchen table while chopping away… it’s a lot of peeling and chopping, so might as well put on something to watch while I’m at it!). Add your prepared fruits and veggies to the large stockpot where the tomatoes are waiting for you.

3) Add in the rest of the ingredients (sugar, vinegar, salt, spices), stir with a wood or plastic spoon and start the cooking process on “Medium-Low” (once it start boiling a bit, you can put it down to “SIMMER/LOW”), uncovered (no lid), then from that time, let it cook very slowly, uncovered, on “simmer-low” for a good 2 hours… and stir occasionally.

Then you’re ready to can your fruit ketchup!

The above recipe makes around 4 “1 litre jars” (the tallest mason jars), or around 6 to 7 medium size jars (not sure on the actual size), all depending how much juice your fruits and vegetables have, and also the size of your fruits and vegetables. Things vary a bit, but any extra leftover that can’t fit in the jars will be eaten up quickly anyway :)

There’s a truckload of information online for safe canning procedures, but be mindful of where you get your information – some procedures aren’t safe and you could get very sick.

If you don’t know how to do canning, then I suggest you do a search online for SAFE CANNING procedures, or you can start by reading from this site here.

Alternatively, you can simply cut the above recipe to only do 1/3 of it, and that would give you a small enough batch that you can just store it in the fridge in a clean sterilized jar with a good sealing lid on it, and as long as you eat it fairly quickly, then you wouldn’t have to worry about having to do a bunch of canning, etc.

Just remember to really use ‘safe’ canning & storage techniques, or else you could end up being very ill, or worse.

Enjoy!

Hungry Girl – Free Easy Healthy Recipes Online

Wow! I just had to share this right away…

I'm obviously not just about Handmade Metal Jewelry... I'm also slowly but surely working on losing weight and improving my health :)

Well, this morning I stumbled upon this awesome website called Hungry Girl when I read a review on Amazon that not only her “200 under 200 calories meals” cookbook is pretty awesome (scroll down on the right hand side of my blog for the cover and direct link to Amazon.com), but the author has a website and you can not only sign-up to receive free recipes, healthy products reviews and other tips by Email, but you will also find a lot of easy healthy recipes (including regular, vegetarian and vegan recipes/options, so there’s lots of choices) directly on her website.

You can find lots of FREE healthy quick to make recipes here along with some great product reviews - these are basically the info she has sent out in past emails, so I would suggest that you sign up for the email delivery and then check back in her archives for those you have missed out on. There's some great products that she talks about as well as lots of recipes mixed in that section of her site.

Also, what I like the most about it is that there’s an educational process to all this - you get the healthy recipe on the left of each recipe page and it is compared to the original/higher calorie recipe on the right, on the same page. That way, you can learn how to trim back some calories and make some old favorite recipes much healthier – that’s a great tool for men and women alike to learn how to improve some old favorite recipes, or to learn how to cook in a healthier way without sacrificing taste.

It’s really educational, it’s super easy, AND you get the calorie counts and Weight Watchers Points as well for each recipe, and you get loads of healthy recipe and healthier products ideas! What more can a person ask for? And I'm just talking about the one section of her website. There's lots of great info throughout, so make sure to check it all out :-)