It’s still raining zucchini!

Well, maybe not literally, but it can feel that way at this time in the year, when home gardens, farmer’s markets and fresh produce aisles abound with these versatile and prolific veggies.

There is something kind of funny about these little green monsters. It could just be the word ‘zucchini’, which by the way has its roots in the very food-associated Italian language. ‘Zucca’ is the Italian word for squash. Not to get bogged down in an etymology thing . . . the point is that zucchini has been party to many silly jokes, such as:

What is a zucchini’s favorite sport?

Squash . . . of course!

All silliness aside, the zucchini has some serious qualities as well. While we mostly use it in a savory capacity in cooking, it is actually considered an ‘immature fruit’. No. I’m not trying to be funny, although it does have a comedic if not sort of sarcastic sound to it. Even worse is the description of it being the ’swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower’!

Okay, now we’re going to get serious, really . . . the zucchini has a lot of nutritional punch per bite. One cup of raw zucchini is only 3 calories! Those three calories are high in folate, manganese, potassium and vitamin A. According to NutritionData.com, it also has a zero glycemic load.

The zucchini is an old standby in the Americas and archaeologists have traced its origins back to Mexico between 7000 – 5500 BC! An integral part of the pre-Colombian diet, it is still a staple in Mexican cuisine known as one of the ‘three sisters’ – corn, beans and squash.

Odd as this may sound, our current cultural introduction to zucchini did NOT come from our continental neighbors, but from europe! When early european explorers were bringing back booty (after some nasty looting often), they came back with what would make its way back to Italy and be named zucchini, where it quickly gained in popularity. It made its way to France and England too, where it is called courgette.  Along with some other squashes, it belongs to the species Cucurbita pepo and is also referred to as summer squash.

Click here for one of Green Diva Meg’s favorite Zucchini recipes!

eat. blog. be merry!
GD Meg

When one stands before a hive of bees, one should say quite solemnly to oneself, ‘By way of the hive the whole cosmos enters man and makes him strong and able’

Rudolf Steiner

I wrote this post last year and sadly, it is still quite relevant. Not much has changed . . . still no answer to the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Please read to find out how we all can help the honey bees!

What is Happening to Our Honey Bees?
I have been fortunate enough to make friends with my local ‘bee lady’, Landi Simone of Gooserock Farm in Montville, NJ. Her place is magical and represents to me a sustainable lifestyle that is in harmony with nature. The flowers all around are of course amazing. She has helped to educate me and countless others about what is happening with the honey bees.

There has been a lot of concern for continued decline in honey bee populations. The Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) Survey found the colony losses continue and the effects of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) have not abated.

A little perspective on how important honey bees are: According to the AIA, Honey bees in the US are responsible for pollinating more than 100 different crops worth $15 billion annually.

“It’s disheartening to have to report that the honey bee colonies continue to die at unsustainable levels,” said AIA president and Häagen-Dazs® Ice Cream Bee Board member Dennis vanEngelsdorp. “At least 70 percent of all colony deaths can be attributed to non-CCD causes, underlying the need for research, not only into CCD, but into pollinator health in general.”

AHHHHHH – don’t mess with my Haagen-Daz!!!!

What We Can Do to Help Honey Bees
I’m loving my Haagen-Daz even more now, because for the past two years, they have been very involved in supporting research and assisting in various ways to help promote growth among the honey bee population. They have a cool website dedicated to helping the honey bees that is a wonderful tool for learning more about how you can help, but most importantly, it is a fun site that has a marvelous audio component that sounds as if you are in a meadow with the bees. I have been leaving it on in my office during the day and it has a much-needed soothing quality.

One of the things Haagen-Dazs among others are suggesting we can do is to start planting bee-friendly plants. Landi said that while it does help if we plant some additional flowers in our gardens and let the dandelions grow freely (bees aparently love these), the bees need help on a much larger scale. She suggests that we need to get more bee-friendly trees, such as Linden or Black Locust trees, planted and that landscape architects and city planners needed to start to use more of these and less of some of the more popular ones, such as Bradford Pear, which are lovely, but don’t help the honey bees at all. The DailyGreen has a wonderful list of bee-friendly flowers, shrubs and trees for anyone interested.

Honey: Important Health & Healing Aid
Aside from being a vital part of our agricultural system, honey bees are the producers of one of the original wonderful tasty, nutritional and healing products ever discovered – honey, of course.

These industrious and productive little fellows work hard to bring us a substance that has been touted for its healing qualities for centuries. The ancient Egyptians used honey as an embalming material and treated cuts and burns with it. The Greek physician Hippocrates cured skin disorders with honey, and the Romans cleaned wounds with it. Even as recently as World War I, doctors treated wounds with honey. With the advent of antibiotics, honey fell out of use for its healing properties, but scientific research is now rediscovering honey’s natural healing power.

Medical science is coming back around and there are numerous studies now showing how effective honey is in wound care in particular. Once ScienceDaily report, Healing Honey: The Sweet Evidence Revealed is worth a quick read.

Another great article on NaturalNews.com has an extensive list of the various ailments and health problems honey has been known to help with, including: anemia, osteoperosis, stress, conjunctivitis, burns and quite a few others.

A Case of Mistaken Identity
It is important to learn to recognize a honey bee and be able to distinguish her from a yellow jacket, bumblebee or other insect. People frequently refer to yellow jackets as ‘bees’ when they’re actually a species of wasp. This particular case of mistaken identity causes a lot of problems. Yellow jackets are highly defensive insects and are involved in a multitude of unpleasant human-bug encounters. Honey bees get blamed for the stings of their ornery cousins. In truth, unless a person lives near a beekeeper, there’s a good chance they’ve never even seen a honey bee; they’ve become that rare. Here’s the wikipedia page on honey bees.

Ah, the Sweet Nectar of the Gods
Of course, one cannot talk (or write) about honey and not discuss its delicious qualities. There are so many wonderful recipes out there. As it turns out the the National Honey Board has a section of their website devoted to honey recipes!

I learned that local honey can help in combating pollen-related allergies, so I drink raw honey from Landi’s bees every morning with hot lemon water and it seems to keep the allergies away!

Please send along any great honey recipes, honey bee stories, or honey healing stories.

And, don’t forget to be grateful to our busy little friends, educate yourself about the crisis and do what you can to help – hey, having a great excuse to plant more flowers or not fight with the deandelions or isn’t so hard!

Brown rice has always been a staple in our household. From fall to spring, we cook at least one pot of brown rice per week. My kids have come to regard it is the basis of a quick and delicious meal and have since they started eating solid food and I mashed it up for them, which was a fairly long time ago, since my baby is 16 and my oldest is 24. So, as I ate my 12,526th bowl of left-over brown rice for lunch, I was inspired to consider a wee bit more on this potent grain.

Great for girls!
There are many reasons to love brown rice. According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition who published a Harvard Medical School / Brigham and Women’s Hospital study, women who consumed regular whole grains, including brown rice weighed consistently less and were 49% less likely to gain weight compared to those eating foods made from refined grains.

Good for everyone
1 cup of brown rice offers over 27% of the DV of selenium, which is essential to thyroid hormone metabolism, antioxidant defense systems, and immune function. Selenium has been shown to repair DNA and synthesis in damaged cells, it inhibits the production and spread of cancer cells, and induces an awesome self-destruct sequence that the body uses to eliminate bad or abnormal cells. Go Selenium! But wait, there’s more! Selenium teams up with vitamin E to create a powerful antioxidant system that not only helps to prevent cancer, but also heart disease, and decreases symptoms of asthma and the pain and inflammation of rheumatoid arthritis. Oh yea, the oil in whole brown rice lowers cholesterol. Can it eliminate cellulite and bad hair days too?????

There are many good nutritional reasons to eat more brown rice, but I’m not going to get into all of them here and now, but I will offer you a good link to learn more about the nutritional analysis of brown rice. And of course a couple of recipes . . .

GD Meg’s Favorite Brown Rice Recipes

Easy Brown Rice Pilaf

Ingredients
1 – 2 Tbs. olive oil
1 bunch scallions – cleaned and chopped, using as much green as you like
several mushrooms – sliced (optional)
1 red pepper – chopped finely (optional)
2 – 3 cloves garlic  – crushed (not optional as far as I’m concerned, but amount certainly is)
2 cups long grain brown rice*
2 – 4 cups chicken broth*

Instructions
Saute the veggies till they wilt slightly (adding scallions last unless you are using only scallions). Add the crushed garlic with the rice and stir it all well so that oil is relatively evenly distributed. Don’t wait too long to get the chicken broth in there. I use the ‘knuckle’ method for figuring out how much fluid to cook my rice in as taught to me by my big sis Lisa – have enough fluid so that when you stick your first finger (pointer) straight into the mix, the very tip of your finger should touch the top of the rice and the fluid should come to your first knuckle. I know you’ll want to know how to adjust for different sized fingers, but honestly, it seems to work for ALL sizes. I have no idea what magic makes this work, but it does – every time.  Bring the mixture to a good rolling boil and jam a good tight lid on and reduce the heat to it’s lowest setting and set the timer for 1 hour. Don’t peek at the rice until it is done.

*don’t really have to measure if you use the knuckle method described above.

What to do with leftover brown rice you ask?

Meg’s Leftover Fried Rice!

Ingredients
Scrambled Eggs – enough for each person being served to have at least 1
1 Tbs. Fresh Ginger – or as much as you like
1 – 2 Cloves Garlic – or as much as you like crushed
1 – 2 Tbs. Coconut Oil (the kind best for high-heat cooking)
Veggies! (choose your family favorites – we like carrots, peas, onions, mushrooms, peppers and sometimes even corn – try to proportion slightly less than amount of brown rice)
Cooked Brown Rice – as much as you like, proportion according to veggies
Cilantro – chopped to taste
Chopped/Slivered Almonds or Nuts – to taste

Instructions
First thing, whip up your scrambled eggs as per your favorite method and put aside in a covered dish to keep warm. If you have a wok, this is a great time to use it. If you don’t, just get out your biggest, best saute pan. Warm up the garlic and ginger in the coconut oil and add in the veggies one at a time till they are all cooked, but not overly so. Add the rice and eggs and stir it good making sure everything is heated thoroughly. After done cooking, add cilantro and slivered almonds or nuts as you like.

Please share your favorite easy brown rice recipes!

eat. blog. be merry!
GD Meg

This delicious wintry salad/slaw was concocted by committee – myself, Dorothy Mullen and Cynthia Mutterperl – a couple of Sundays ago. We were all in Dor’s kitchen on a very snowy Sunday for her monthly Suppers dinner. Usually there is a larger group, but Cindy and I were the only silly (and fortunate because we had an awesome dinner!) souls that didn’t stay home because of the weather.

We had a great discussion about blood sugar issues and the benefits of being gluten free. We are all working on eliminating wheat and gluten from our lives. Dor has developed some fascinating curriculum about her work with nutrition and blood sugar among other health concerns. Go to the Suppers website to learn more about what she is up to.

The rest of the meal consisted of delicious jazzed up rice and beans and roasted butternut squash with roasted onions and garlic – yum. But, here’s the recipe for:

Sunday Supper’s January Root Veggie Slaw Recipe

Ingredients
4 – 5 cups shredded root veggies cleaned/scraped (carrots, parsnips, beets – we threw in green beans for fun. I suspect kale would work too.)
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup sesame oil
2 T. ginger
3 T. toasted sesame seeds
10 drops liquid stevia (or to taste)
1/2 head roasted garlic

Instructions
We used a food processor with the shredding thing to pretty quickly get the veggies prepared. We happened to have roasted garlic prepared for another part of dinner, so if you don’t have time to roast garlic (which takes almost an hour), just use a couple of heads of crushed raw garlic. Mix it all up and enjoy!

eat. blog. be merry!
GD Meg