vitamins

The Noble Pineapple


photo by Ian Britton

As a child, I have fond memories of eating fresh sweet juicy pineapple on the beaches of Southern Spain. Young gypsies were selling it, walking on the hot sands yelling "brrrrrrrrr pina!". I still love scoring a beautiful fragrant pineapple :-)

While visiting Mexico last winter, we would buy it from women selling it at the side of the highways, who would offer it to you as you crept over the massive speed-bumps designed to slow-down vehicles near towns. The women included a little pouch of chili spice to sprinkle on the fruit: I highly recommend eating fresh pineapple with chili spice!

Recently, I've rediscovered pineapple and have been enjoying it almost every day. First, it's a gorgeous thing, and I love spotting a particularly nice one at the fruit stand, bringing it home, and then staring at it for a day or two. Next, cutting it up is quite satisfying and easy to do - my partner usually gets to do this. Finally the booty: sweet fragrant juicy fruit! Besides being awesome tasting, pineapple is very healthy, full of vitamin C, manganese, and the enzyme bromelain that helps you digest protein - this is why it's particularly good with fish and meat.

Bonus: the noble pineapple happens to be the food of the week on the world's healthiest foods.

I will post some super pineapple recipes next...

Eggs... i love you

The Wonderous Egg

When looking for "healthy baking" recipes, I often come across ones calling for egg whites - rather than whole eggs. While egg whites are definitely healthy and high in protein - the whole egg offers more nutrition - not to mention flavour. Some recipes do call for egg whites because of their special physical properties. Other "healthy" recipes eliminate the yolk because of its high fat and cholesterol content.

Say Kimchi!

Kimchee in Korean

I can't get enough kimchi. I'll eat it as-is, like a pickle, whenever I have a savoury kimchi craving. I'll eat a pile of it with a can of tuna for lunch. I'll eat it with brown rice and adzuki or mung beans for dinner. I hear it's great on barbecued hamburgers too...

For those of you not familiar with kimchi, it's a traditional Korean side dish (as well as a condiment and a key ingredient in many dishes) typically made with fermented cabbage, chili pepper, garlic, onion, and various other vegetables. It has a wonderful spicy, sour, savory taste. There are many variations, for example, some kimchi is based on cucumber or radish. It often has seafood paste in it like shrimp, fish, or oyster - though I've tried fantastic vegan versions as well. Apparently, most Koreans love their kimchi and eat it everyday. There is even a Kimchi Museum in Seoul.

I picked up two kinds of kimchi (cabbage and radish) from a Korean-owned fruit stand in my old neighbourhood. It's the good stuff: home-made and packed with fresh ginger and leeks - so good that my partner is now a kimchi convert.

Whole-cabbage (Tongbaechu) and diced-radish (Kaktugi) kimchi