Spice of Life

I like bold flavors.  One of the greatest gifts HaShem gives us is the immense variety of food. Do you ever stop to think about how many different foods humans eat compared to the animal kingdom? The sheer variety of all the single foods we can eat is one thing, but then think about all the amazing combinations with herbs and spices. The permutations are nearly infinite.  Then think about all the animals who have very little variety in their diets; or none at all.  Imagine being a Koala bear and eating nothing but eucalyptus leaves all of your life.

As if that were not enough, we humans aren't satisfied with taste alone, we have to make things pleasing to the eye as well.  Think about all the celebrations you've been to.  Every social activity that people engage in HAS to involve food. It's almost like a universal, immutable law, like gravity. Births, weddings, and yes, even funerals or wakes involve food.

But, back to the bold flavor thing. I dislike - er, I strongly dislike bland food. I like flavors that tend to jump up and slap my taste buds. As a kid I always wondered why deviled eggs were called that. What's so "devilish" about these things. Then I discovered cooking around age ten and I've been grateful for the knowledge ever since.  It never gets boring.

Today's post is about chili. Nope. Not the often incorrectly made, terribly abused stew that is misnamed. I'm talking about the basic genus of fruit from the nightshade family, everything in the genus Capsicum.  Believe it or not, "chili" includes everything from bell pepper to scotch bonnet or habañeros; jalapeño, poblano, chipotle, cayenne, etc.  All are chilis.  I like all of them. Aside from the heat, they each have their own distinctive flavor.

Two Jalapeños and a Cuke

I only grew five varieties this summer, actually they are still producing fruit. It will be interesting to see how long they go. I have banana pepper, bell pepper, jalapeño, mild cayenne, and Thai. I think the banana peppers are done but I'm not sure. They didn't get planted in the straw bales and they struggled to produce only 6 fruits.  The two jalapeños produced somewhere around 120 and are still loaded with fruit. The same goes for two cayenne plants and two Thai chili plants.  The bell pepper struggled because I didn't stake them as well as I should have and they were attacked by some insects.  This is because the bell pepper produces zero amount of the compound capsaicin (the pronunciation varies; "cap-sigh-a-sin" or "cap-say-shin"), which is the stuff that creates the burning sensation.

In the second photo are two jalapeños. Yes, the middle one really is a jalapeño; not a miniature bell. That's why I took the pic. One of the great things about growing your own, is that, like the bell pepper, you can let them ripen on the bush to that glorious red color, and thus you let the natural sugars develop that give it a sweet flavor and mellow out that pungent nightshade flavor.  The same goes for bell pepper. Green and red bell pepper are the exact same pepper. Red bells in the store cost so much more because it takes them a while to ripen on the bush. It doesn't take them long to get up to picking size, but it does take a while for them to turn red.  If you pick them after they've turned about halfway, they will typically continue to ripen on the counter at room temperature.

How hot a chili is depends on the amount of capsaicin in it's flesh. The relative "hotness" of chili is measured by the Scoville Scale. If you went to that link, you've read that some of the hottest peppers of common use can be as high as 200,000 to 300,000 units.  There are some peppers in India that go over the one million unit mark. The mild cayenne that I'm growing hits around 5,000 to 8,000 units. Jalapeños are anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000. The Thai chilis that I have are somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000.

Open Jalapeño showing the pith

Depending on the size and type of pepper, you can remove some of the heat. Jalapeño works best for this example. Most of the active ingredient, capsaicin, resides in the pith or "placental" material inside the pepper where the seeds are borne.  By removing most of this white, or lighter colored material, you can cut way down on how much burn you'll get.  When I make "poppers" for a snack, I shave out all that material plus the seeds, and fill the halves with cheese and let them simmer in a covered cast iron skillet for about 30 minutes.  Yummy!  Twyla and I keep a box of latex surgical gloves under the kitchen sink for all kinds of reasons besides the obvious medical ones, but one of the most important reasons is for when we want to cook using any hot peppers.  Usually we just wear one glove and are careful to only handle the pepper with that hand.  Even then, if you are using a really hot pepper and handling it a lot or chopping it really fine, the capsaicin can seep enough through the glove to still be a problem.

Thai chilis drying for storage.  HOT!

Of course, chilis and the active ingredient capsaicin is highly medicinal.  It is a tonic for the circulatory system. It is the finest expectorant you can use.  It is highly anti-microbial/antibiotic. It is anti-fungal and anti-parisitic. It is very good for the stomach and has even been used as part of the treatment for ulcers. Contrary to common belief, most indigestion is not due to spicy food, but is, in fact, due to a failure to produce HCl in the stomach.  Antacids typically do more harm than good.  So does drinking too much liquid during a meal.  Far too many Americans consume bovine milk and it's one of the worst things an adult can consume.  But that's material for another post.

We do love our spicy food.  Not just the chilis but horseradish and other types as well.  I would hate to have to eat sushi without my wonderful wasabi paste.  Twyla makes the most delicious spicy/sweet sauce for meats called "Jezebel Sauce"  It's a real treat. The main ingredient is horseradish.

Happy cooking!

So Sorrel

Back on the subject of herbal medicine . . .

For whatever reason, (our ancestors called it providence) I would pick this stuff as a little kid and eat it. I liked the tangy flavor.  Pretty amazing that I didn't accidentally kill myself by tasting different plants.  But again, that providence thing.  I have eaten stuff that made me sick, but didn't kill me.  In case you were wondering, daffodils are a powerful emetic. I learned that the hard way when I was 10. Ahhh, digression. But hey, this is my blog, not a Tolstoy novel.

Sheep sorrel in pot with acidic mulch

This little herb that I like so much is considered a nuisance weed by many.  Most people haven't got a clue what it is. To them, it's like crabgrass. This is called Sheep Sorrel.  Not to be confused with common sorrel or plain sorrel.  In reality, it's one of the most powerful medicinal herbs around. So much so, that it is one of the main ingredients in the Essiac® herbal tea treatment for cancer, even up to stage IV ("make sure your will is updated"). Burdock is another main ingredient and I'm pretty sure we have that around here and I will blog on that later.

Sheep sorrel, Rumex acetocella, is delicious in salads, but I even like it by itself.  Here is an excerpt from a website that sells the bulk Essiac tea:

Sheep sorrel is a rich source of oxalic acid, sodium, potassium, iron, manganese, phosphorous, beta-carotene, and vitamin C. The combination of these vitamins and minerals promote the glandular health of the entire body. Sheep Sorrell also contains carotenoids and chlorophyll, as well as citric, malic, and tannic and tartaric acids. 

The chlorophyll can serve many functions in the body. For one, it carries oxygen throughout the bloodstream. This is significant because cancer cells cannot live in the presence of oxygen. Chlorophyll closely resembles hemoglobin in its functioning: both are capable of carrying oxygen to every cell of the organism. When chlorophyll molecules carry oxygen through the bloodstream chromosome damage can be inhibited to effectively block cancer. Chlorophyll also helps block germs and harmful bacteria.

Single Sheep Sorrel leaf

Most of the other sites that I checked out say most of the same stuff. That first ingredient; oxalic acid, is what gives the sheep sorrel its distinctive tanginess, and it is also what gives it its one side-effect; diarrrhea.  BUT, and this is a big BUT, you would have to eat something like a couple of quarts of this stuff to get that effect, unless you have some parasite or other digestive ailment that reacts immediately to all this healthy stuff.  This tends to be true about a lot of things.  The FDA and other idiotic and unnecessary agencies are fond of telling the world that good things can be toxic if you take it in quantities that it would take a herd of cows to eat in a day  in high doses.  Don't get me started on the FDA.  Worse yet, don't get me started on people who think we should even have an FDA. Grrrrr!!

The point I want to make here is: Why wait until cancer begins developing in your body before you change your eating habits?  And no, I'm not talking about eating like you live in a primitive country or giving up all your favorite things, but when I think of the average diet of most Americans, I shudder.  And don't get me wrong, I eat things that other health nuts wouldn't touch, primarily chicken, beef and fish.  But Twyla and I do eat kosher.  Certainly no pork or other animals not considered clean by Torah standards. I used to.  And I thought that giving up shrimp and lobster and oysters was going to be very hard, but guess what?  Not really.  Since I began eating kosher, I haven't had a cold, or any digestive stress or constipation.  I feel so much better.  Imagine that.  The creator of the universe actually knew what he was talking about when he told us what to eat and what not to eat.  For those of you Christians who think that Torah dietary laws are no longer valid, you need to go read Matthew 5:17-20, and then Acts 21:20-24, and those are just for starters.

Anyway, this is another herb in the long list that I will continue posting on.  See the archives in the right hand column to find my past posting on ginger.  If there's an herb you'd like for me to research and post on, leave a comment below.

B'rakhot Adonai,   Moshe

When There Is No Doctor

Everybody say hello to Ginger.

As a flavoring, I've always loved ginger.  It can go well with both sweet and savory dishes.  For versatility in cooking, that's hard to beat.  This has been my first attempt in growing ginger and so far, so good. Since ginger is really tropical, we will have to keep it in pots so it can move back and forth from the greenhouse.The following segment was lifted directly from the University of Maryland Medical school:

Ginger, the underground stem, or rhizome, of the plant Zingiber officinale has been used as a medicine in Asian, Indian, and Arabic herbal traditions since ancient times. In China, for example, ginger has been used to aid digestion and treat stomach upset, diarrhea, and nausea for more than 2,000 years. Ginger has also been used to help treat arthritis, colic, diarrhea, and heart conditions. In addition to these medicinal uses, ginger continues to be valued around the world as an important cooking spice and is believed to help treat the common cold, flu-like symptoms, headaches, and even painful menstrual periods. Native to Asia where its use as a culinary spice spans at least 4,400 years, ginger grows in fertile, moist, tropical soil.

All I did to grow these little plants was to break off a couple of "fingers" from a ginger "hand" that we bought at the local grocery store. I let the little root stub dry out for about a week and then planted it in my own mix of potting soil with just the very top edge exposed to the sun and kept the soil moist.  I've got about a half dozen of these plants in process now.

Since even the head actuary for the Social Security Administration has come out with his own report explaining how there is going to be a dramatic loss of doctors and available health care professionals and facilities once the new "health care" bill goes into effect, it would behoove one to start making plans for the kind of medical care one could expect in places like Cuba or Canada or Great Britain or Zimbabwe, or even worse, like  North Korea.  Add to this scenario the conditions that will exist under "cap and trade", and travel with anything other than bicycles and horse and buggy will be extremely rare, so getting to any kind of modern medical facilities will be a monumental task.

That means that out of sheer necessity, people are going to have to return to the tried and true methods of herbal medicine that have worked for millenia. In some ways, this is really a good thing, since man-made pharmaceuticals tend to make the "cure" worse than the disease.  If you pay attention to the side-affects of most drugs, any natural alternative is far superior.  In addition, many drugs don't really treat the cause, but merely treat or mask the symptoms.

Twyla is a nurse with over two decades of experience including surgical O.R. My university studies were in pre-med biology. I've been dabbling in the use of herbal medications since 1980, and I've often had success where the most help I've gotten from an allopathic doctor was "I don't know; maybe."

Therefore, I'm going to post from time to time on one or possibly two or more herbs or plants that have medical uses.  I'm going to try to give you the best possible pictures and descriptions to help you identify these plants. This is going to be about facts that can be verified.  I'm a big believer in epistemology and logic.  REAL science. Whenever possible, double-blind studies are the best way to verify the truth or falsity of a theory. Anecdotes are useful to discover possibilities, but they don't prove anything.  You must be able to isolate and control variables, and more importantly you must have enough understanding to distinguish between what is objective fact and what is subjective opinion, something that is sorely missing in the modern world.  Most people wouldn't recognize a faulty premise or a coherent syllogism if it walked up and slapped them. This is mainly why the world is in the mess that it's in.

Shalom,  Moshe