Sunday, February 20, 2011

How to be creative with rice

Split peas have become a serious staple in my kitchen.

My favorite is cooking the peas with some apple and lime juice or just with celery and then pureeing them with rice. Makes for a great simple and hearty meal.



If you can tolerate chicken broth, Risotto is another great meal option. Arborio rice (it is a white rice) slow cooked with broth, plus a little lemon/lime juice and some cooked peas, pumpkin/squash, or asparagus (or any other veggie you tolerate) added in at the end. Pieces of chicken or ground chicken makes for a complete meal if you add that in too.



Also, a simple Spanish Paella would be another option. My electric stove top makes the use of my paella pan non-functional, otherwise this would be another staple. It's worth looking into.



Homemade rice milk....... rinse your rice before you cook it and save the first rinse water that now has rice starch in it. Use slightly less water than normal for rinsing and rinse longer on the first rinse. Add a slight bit of oil and sweetener (both opt) and shake well. Use within 24 hours.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi again,

(My first comment is posted in your December 2010 blog) -- am going through the same wild anxiety reactions due to various dietary issues -- mainly high sal foods, but possibly due to other things that stir up bad bacteria in the gut, and cause those bad bacteria to release toxins and aldehydes...possibly causing at least part of the anxiety problems.

I'm not sure if you allow links to be posted, but I'll try this one:

They talk about how their salicylate issues got worse and worse while on the Feingold (low sal) diet -- sounds like you and me (and many others) -- until they went on this "Specific Carbohydrate Diet" that's designed to heal the gut, by reducing the bad bacterial toxins.

Here's the link:

http://pecanbread.com/p/how/sal.html

I must tell you I haven't tried it yet. I'm very sick, and get extremely weak if I stand for too long, but wanted to pass it on, to see what you think. I'm skeptical, but like you, very frustrated, and feel like I'm running out of options.

Hope you'll see this and reply with your thoughts.

Dan

Alex said...

yes, stirring up the "bad guys" in your gut can be a huge problem, but I suggest looking into more common causes originating in your own body before exploring your gut flora/fauna (however, I don't want to belittle the importance of it either!). Its just that the human body is SO complex that chances are some of the root causes are in your own biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, and genetics/proteomics.

This diet may be helpful to you, so if you think it may be, than definitely give it a shot! For me, I have found (and observed) that spending years going from one diet to the next just causes misery and frustration. Luckily, my biochemistry/molecular biology background gives me enough leverage to be able to look at the raw data in the foods and design my own diets. Likewise, I have found targeting the missing links in my detox pathways and doing what I can (mostly via trial and error) to help reduce bottlenecks has improved my diet immensely.

Instead of focusing on what I CAN'T have and how I am ALWAYS miserable, I chose to accept that I will always feel sick one way or another and i was no longer going to let it affect me. Millions of people live each day with starvation and horrendous diseases and pain, yet they care for families and are often the happiest people on our planet. I chose to be one of them! I am consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude and living a life of simple abundance. Plus, a little bit of hunger makes me all the more thankful for 1200 calories worth of plain white rice each day!

Skepticism is healthy and useful. But you always have options, even if they are options you don't like. It only takes one to make a difference in your life, no matter how small. If you have several available to you, I would say I am jealous! Don't think of it as running out of options... rather think of it as joy that you have options that are waiting for you to explore! Abundance! :-D