One Kale of a Mac and Cheese Recipe

Generally, eating dairy and kale together isn't the best idea.  As long as you get calcium in your other meals, you'll be alright.

I am surprised I haven't written about kale before.  Since I started experimenting with kale last spring, I've grown to like it.  Kale is one of the healthiest vegetables you can eat.  One cup contains only 35 calories and 5 grams of fiber.  Protein accounts for 16% of it's calories.  It also has vitamin B6, magnesium, copper, potassium, iron, manganese, vitamin A, vitamin C and vitamin K (important to remember for those on Coumadin).  Vitamin A, C and K are extremely important to health.  Plus, the high fiber content can help lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease.

Kale contains oxalates which block the absorption of calcium, so don't eat it with every meal. Generally spacing out your greens and dairy (eating them at different meals) is enough to prevent problems, but people with certain conditions should avoid oxalates all together. Some research has shown that people who have had oxalate kidney stones in the past should restrict dietary oxalate, but other studies have found dietary restriction does nothing to prevent stones.  Talk to your physician if you have kidney stones.

Kale can taste bitter, but it's not as bitter as some other greens (like mustard greens).  When it's cooked well, it's earthy and a little tangy.  When picking kale, pick bunches that are crisp, not wilted.  The more vibrant in color, the better.  Kale should be stored in the refrigerator.  My supermarket has bags of kale (near the bagged spinach) that I love. The bags are already trimmed and that makes it super easy to add a handful of kale to anything.  If you buy kale in bunches, you need to trim the greens from the stems.

Doesn't that look yummy?

Since I started to try to like kale, I've been tossing it in everything.  Today, I decided to make a healthy mac and cheese by tossing in a few cups.  The more times you can expose picky eaters to a vegetable in a non-threatening manner, the more likely they'll try it some other way later.  So, maybe people who think kale is ok in this will be more apt to try kale greens later.  I still don't like straight kale greens, but maybe someday I'll get there.

You could use whatever mac and cheese recipe you want, and just add the wilted kale after you make it.

Kale Mac and Cheese
3 cups of kale, chopped
2 cups of cheese (I used shredded cheddar, separate a handful)
1/2 pound of pasta (I used whole wheat twists)
1/4-1/2 cup of vegetable broth
1/3 cup sour cream
Salt and pepper to taste

The consistency of the blended sauce.

1. Cook pasta.
2. Wilt the kale with the vegetable broth. Basically, put them both in a saucepan until the kale wilts and gets a little tender. 
3. Drain the broth and set the kale aside.  Return the broth to the saucepan.
4. Add the shredded cheese to the saucepan and simmer on low until it's melted.  Add salt and pepper.  Remove from heat and add the sour cream.   
5. I had planned to leave the kale in big chunks.  When I tasted the sauce, the texture was not nice.  So, I added the entire sauce contents to my blender and blended it to make a smoother consistency with smaller chunks. 
6. Mix the sauce and the pasta together in a over proof dish.
7. If you like boxed mac and cheese, you can go ahead and eat it now.  I like baked mac and cheese.  For baked, just top the pasta with the reserved handful of cheese and cook it for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Even non-kale lovers told me they liked this dish.  You can taste the kale, but you can also taste the yummy mac and cheese.  This dish is really not a whole lot lower fat or calories than regular mac and cheese, but it has the benefits of the added kale. 

Nutrition Facts

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Amount Per Serving (makes 6)

Calories: 322
Total fat: 15 g
Protein: 15 g
Total carbohydrate: 33 g

• Dietary Fiber: 5 g
• Sugar: 9 g

It's Pi Day, Pi Day, Gotta get down on Pi Day

Happy Pi Day.  I thought I'd share my dinner. I made a pizza pi.  It's a little brown for most people, but since it was just for me, and I prefer my cheese to be extra brown, I made it extra brown.  Just in case you want to see the raw deal, I took a photo of that too. 

When I was a kid, a friend of mine and I tried to memorize pi to as many digits as we could.  We would quiz each other often about it, but I think we only got to about 30 before that got old.  Today, I only know about 6 without looking (it's not fair to quiz myself today, because I looked up pi to a million digits earlier today).  

In the spirit of my youth, I always celebrate pi day in some way.  Last year I just sported my pi shirt.  I think I was too busy to cook.  This year, I made pizza pi and bought a slice of pi pie.  Yum!

I would have to eat quite few of these to make up the circumference or diameter of a circle.  The pizza is homemade, so at least it's somewhat healthy.  The pie was store bought because I only need one slice.  Having a whole pie around is just more reason for my circumference to grow!

Cold Weather Comfort: Vegetarian Lasagna Soup

Lasagna in a bowl and a cheese crisp

I've went off my whole foods diet a little with Halloween. I ate more than my fair share of candy and cupcakes.  However, I'm sworn off unhealthy foods until Thanksgiving.  I think I should eat whatever I want to on the day of a holiday, so all bets are off on Thanksgiving day.  I'll write more about that later.  Now that the weather is getting cooler and fresh, local produce is harder to find I think it's soup season.

I saw a recipe for a soup that was supposed to taste like lasagna in a bowl.  Yum!  However, the soup was made for meat eaters (it was mostly meat, pasta and tomatoes).  I modified it and made it vegetarian and cut back a bit on the pasta.

I think modifying recipes is one of the things you need to learn to do when you're trying to eat healthier.  You can't be afraid to experiment in the kitchen, and soup is an easy thing to experiment with.  A lot of people still act shocked when I tell them I didn't use a recipe or that I modified a recipe.  A friend said, "You might as well just throw some crap in a bowl if you're not going to go by the recipe exactly."  Well, I agree with her.  You might as well throw some crap in a bowl.  What's the worst thing that is going to happen? You'll waste a few ingredients? The best thing?  You might end up with an awesome dish.

My problem is that since starting this blog, I've had to write down what I do.  Which is good, I guess. It means if I make something good I can repeat it.   For this soup, I just made a soup of what I normally put in my lasagna.

Instead of the goupy cheese the original recipe had on top, I made a crispy cheese "cracker."  I like a crunch in my soup.  I love goldfish crackers in soup, but they don't fit a healthy diet.  When I was a junk food vegetarian, I lived on goldfish.  I always had a bag around.  Straight Parmesan cheese "crackers" satisfy that goldfish craving nicely.  It's not the wheat I loved, but the crunchy, cheesy, saltiness.

My onions are big because I pick them out, but I like the flavor. I'm weird.

The first time I made this soup, I made it without the pasta.  I found adding just a little bit of pasta gave it more body (it mostly disintegrated and just made the broth more substantial). You could leave the pasta out entirely if you wanted to be gluten free, and it would still taste good.  I cooked my soup in a crockpot.  I love crockpots for soups.  The pasta would hold up better in a regular pot.


Vegetarian Lasagna Soup

2 tsp olive oil
3 cup chopped onions
2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 chopped bell pepper
1 cup of chopped broccoli florets
1 28-oz. can diced tomatoes (try to find one without sugar added, they do exist)
2 bay leaves
6 cups vegetable stock
1/2 c. finely chopped fresh basil leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 handful of crushed lasagna noodles
2 cups of spinach

1.  Add everything except the noodles and the spinach to your pot or crockpot.  It's that easy to make soup. Really.
2. In a crockpot, cook on low for 3-4 hours.  In a regular pot, you probably only need to cook it for an hour or so.
3. Throw the noodles and spinach into the pot in the last 30 minutes for the crockpot or the last 15 minutes in a regular pot.  
4. Remove the bay leaves before serving.
5. Top with a cheese cracker (below).  You can also toss in a tablespoon full of cottage cheese before serving if you want even more cheese.  Ricotta will work too, but cottage cheese is a little healthier and much better at satiating you.  For the amount here, it won't matter much. 

Cheese "Crackers"
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

Flat mounds

1. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silpat.
2. Mound the cheese in 4 separate areas. Flatten the tops so the piles look even.
3. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes, until starting to brown.  
4. Because of the mozzarella, these won't get "hard" like crackers, but I like them for soup.  If you want a harder cracker, straight Parmesan will crisp up. (just use a whole cup of Parmesan). 

This is how brown they should be.

It really does hit the lasagna spot, and look how healthy it is.  As with everything, these nutrtional values depend on the products you use.  I read the labels on a bunch of broth and canned tomatoes when I was at the store last.  The carb and calorie content varies widely between them.  Some of the canned tomato brands are loaded with corn syrup or other sugars.  I used my own stock (vegetable stock is easy to make), but canned tomatoes are one thing I buy.  There's no sense in making your own if tomatoes aren't in season, and not all canned tomatoes are loaded with junk.  You just really need to read the labels.

Nutrition Facts for Vegetarian Lasagna Soup

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Amount Per Serving (serves 6)

Calories:  192

Total fat: 10.7 g

Protein: 9.3 g

Total carbohydrate:  17.5 g

• Dietary Fiber: 3.3 g
• Sugar: 3.9 g

Nutrition Facts for Cheese Crackers

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Amount Per Serving (serves 4)

Calories:  105

Total fat: 8 g

Protein: 8 g

Total carbohydrate:  1 g

Broken Glass and Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

Bloody glass cupcakes

One of my guilty pleasures is Martha Stewart's living.  I don't think I've ever done one of her arts and crafts or even made a recipe straight out of there, but I love to look at it anyway.  Her Halloween edition has always been one of my faves.  This year, I saw her broken glass cupcakes and had to emulate it.

Similar to Martha's

I can't find them on her website.  Her website is notoriously hard to navigate.  The article in the magazine (the Halloween edition with "Mothra" on the cover) just had a photo of the cupcakes, and not even a how-to.  I went to the website to find out how she made her sugar glass, but no such luck.  I swear, you can search for the exact recipe title on her website and not find something.  She is pimping a new book on holiday crafts and baking, so maybe it's in there.  Who knows.  This is why I rarely visit the website or make anything she has in her books.  I did a Google image search for Martha Stewart broken glass cupcakes, and the ones pictured to the right look the most like them.  The shards of glass were clear and the "blood" was coming out of the cupcakes.  They're ok, but they don't look gruesome enough for me.

Sugar glass is easy to make, and lots of fun (but it can be dangerous), so I went to town.  Sugar glass is basically just a hard candy, spread out.  Since it's supposed to look jagged and broken for this, it's super easy. I have a low-cal version of a cupcake recipe too, but we'll do to the sugar glass first.   You can make sugar glass just as many ways as you can make sugar candy, so no recipe is incorrect.

Sugar Glass 
3 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 cup clear corn syrup
Red food coloring

You can tell my sugar wasn't heated smoothly,
but dirty glass works for this.

1. Before you start, get everything together.  Sugar glass comes together pretty quickly and once you start pouring, it's over in a second.  If you're making broken glass, get a baking sheet ready (either spray it with some cooking spray or rub it down with some oil or butter).  If you're going to do something more elaborate like a mold or form, get the materials you need ready.  For my prep, I also got the food coloring and a paint brush.  You'll need to spray a spatula and some spoons with some cooking spray too, to help you smooth out the glass.
2. Combine all the ingredients except food coloring (unless you want solid red glass) in a sauce pan and cook on medium heat until the mixture reaches 300 degrees on a candy thermometer.  If you heat the liquid too fast, the sugar won't be as clear but it's not that big of a deal in this prep.
3. Poor the liquid on the prepared surface and quickly spread out. This is the dangerous part.  Remember this sugar is 300 degrees! Don't touch it.  Use your tools to spread it out, but work quickly.
4. While the sugar is still a little wet, splash or paint the red coloring on to resemble blood drops. You should have the "glass" spread out and painted within a few minutes.
5. Let cool.
6. Crack into shards (this is the fun part).
7. Decorate as you wish.

Easy Vegan Cupcakes
Let's talk about doctoring up a cake mix.  For these, I used a whole can of pumpkin in a chocolate cake mix instead of the oil, water and eggs. So, you just take the dry cake mix, mix in the pumpkin and bake.  People love it, and it's an easy way to make a cake mix vegan.  Just make sure your cake mix is vegan.  Most are. Store bought icings are mostly vegan too, but read the label.  Let's be honest, these mixes and icings aren't animal or vegetable foodstuffs.  They're mostly fakey fakey processed ingredients and oils. But enjoying them every now and again won't kill you, just don't eat the whole dozen yourself.  

I think I stole the pumpkin idea from Hungry Girl (I saw it on a talk show), but it tastes better to me than a regular cake mix anyway.  It only works well with chocolate cake mixes.  You can barely taste the pumpkin in a chocolate cake mix.  Pumpkin and chocolate go well together anyway.  If you use pumpkin in a white cake mix, you'll have pumpkin cake.  It's good too, but people can tell it's pumpkin.  In chocolate, I normally get, "This tastes like something, but what is it?" 

According to Hungry Girl one cupcake made this way has 181 calories, 3.5g fat, 37g carbs (eep), 2g fiber and 2g protein.  I just think they taste better that way (they seem to be richer).  

You can make a homemade cake and icing and decorate it too, but I'm going to be honest again here.  If I'm going to make a cupcake for kids or people who I know will care more about the decoration and icing than the cake, I'm not going to go to all the effort of making the cake taste like the best cake ever.  It's like the time I slaved over a stove for hours making homemade pasta sauce one week, got rave reviews.  A few weeks later, I didn't have time so I brought in Prego ... also got the rave reviews.  Seriously, most people don't care, and if the cake is a box cake, I'm less likely to eat it all.

I'll have some healthy food next week, and maybe some unhealthy ones too. I'm thinking about making more Halloween treats.  I have several Halloween events to go to, and sometimes I like to bring snacks.  We'll see.

Mocking Macaroni: It's not a Laughing Matter

The real thing, it's not healthy.

My favorite meal of all time is probably macaroni and cheese.  I like mine best crispy on top, creamy in the middle and made from scratch.  I love it so much that even the Kraft blue box will do. I've been known to consume an entire box in one sitting.  I used to get those Easy Mac bowls and I would eat 2-3 of them before I felt like it was enough macaroni and cheese.

The USDA would probably consider macaroni and cheese a healthy food.  The box proclaims it to be a good source of calcium.  They even make whole grain mac and cheese.  If it's whole grain, it must be healthy, right?

Let's look at the facts:


Nutrition Facts for Kraft

---

Amount Per Serving (makes 4) of Kraft Whole Grain Mac and Cheese (prepared as directed)

Calories:  390

Total fat: 17 g

Protein: 8 g

Total carbohydrate:  49 g

• Dietary Fiber: 5 g
• Sugar: 6 g

Amount Per Serving (makes 4) of Kraft Deluxe Blue Box Mac and Cheese (prepared as directed)

Calories:  320

Total fat: 10 g

Protein: 12 g

Total carbohydrate:  45 g

• Dietary Fiber: 1 g
• Sugar: 3 g

Both of these "healthy" meals are almost your entire carbohydrate intake for the day (or over it if you're doing Atkins style induction).  One cup of macaroni as my entire daily ration doesn't sound great.  When I eat a whole box, I'm getting 180 grams of carbohydrate.  I can hear my pancreas cursing me for torturing it.

To give my poor pancreas a break, I decided to try mockaroni and cheese.  I admit, it doesn't look as tasty as the real stuff, but it's partially because I was too hungry to photograph it well.  It is a good way to cut those carbs down and still get a similar flavor and mouth feel as real macaroni and cheese.

It doesn't look like macaroni and cheese, but it tastes reminiscent of it.

Mockaroni and Cheese
(Serves Four)

• 1 head of cauliflower, steamed and chopped
• 4 ounces cottage cheese
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream
• 4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
• 1 ounce of mozzarella cheese, shredded
• Salt and pepper to taste

Optional:

• Some people like to add things like onion, cayenne, oregano, tomatoes and whatever else to their mac and cheese.  You can add those, but I prefer mine plain.
• You can really use whatever cheeses you want
• You can use frozen, chopped cauliflower instead of fresh if you want to
• I've seen some recipes that use cream cheese instead of cottage cheese.

1. Combine all of these ingredients, except a handful of cheddar, into an oven safe bowl. Make sure they are mixed well.  
2. Sprinkle the handful of cheddar on top.  
3. Place the bowl into an oven that's been preheated to 350 degrees and cook it for about 30 minutes, until it's your level of brown.  The top will get crispy just like traditional mac and cheese.

This is what it looks like before baking.  It tastes better than it looks.

It really makes a convincing substitute.  None of these substitutes have the gluteny goodness of real pasta, but I don't really miss it in this dish.  The mouth feel of the cauliflower is very similar to the mouth feel of pasta.  With mac and cheese, the pasta is just a sauce delivery system anyway.

I served mine here with a feta and tomato salad and some roasted kale.

Nutrition Facts for Mockaroni

---

Amount Per Serving (makes 4)

Calories:  166

Total fat: 10 g

Protein: 12 g

Total carbohydrate:  9 g

• Dietary Fiber: 3.6 g
• Sugar: 0.2 g

You see a lot of the values we like (fat and protein) stayed the same.  That's because they came  from the cheese.  We didn't cut that.  However, the values we hate (carbs and calories) came way down.  Calories are more than halved and carbohydrates decreased by 80%.  Eight-percent makes a big difference to your pancreas. It's still yummy too.

If You Can't Beet Them, Enjoy Them

Beets are another one of those foods that I think people only hate because they haven't really had them prepared properly.  I remember those pickled, salad bar type beets of my youth.  They tasted like dirt to me and made a big mess.  We ate them a lot in my house, and I'm not sure why.  I remember scarfing them down first, so I could get it over with.  Whenever I saw beets in the store or on a menu, all I could think of is that super earthy, nasty flavor.

They actually shouldn't taste like dirt at all.  They have a mild, sweet flavor, and the consistency of a cooked carrot.  However, cooking them is very messy and beets will stain everything they come in contact with.  I generally operate on beets on only glass cutting boards and right over the sink.

Beet greens are delicious, and I hate most greens.  They're something that I was never served as a kid, but I think I saw Paula Deen make a batch on television once.  I thought to myself, you can eat beet greens?  I didn't think I'd like them, but I tried them anyway.  They have a milder flavor than most greens and a little bit of sweetness.  They are the only greens that I actually like quite a bit.  Now, when I look for beets I try to find ones that have lots of leafy greens.

Besides healthy greens, beet should be firm, colorful and free of blemishes.  I prefer smaller beets.  I think they have a sweeter, more punchy flavor.  The larger ones, like many vegetables, don't have as strong a flavor.

Beets are actually pretty good for you.  We could all stand to eat more of them.  Ancient Romans used them as medicine, mostly for digestive problems and as an aphrodisiac.  Today, we know they're packed with antioxidants, particularly betanin, which gives them their red color.  Interestingly, it's a different red pigment than you find in most red fruits and vegetables.  Most have anthocyanins.  Overcooking can destroy the betanin.  I'm pretty sure it was destroyed in those sludgy beets from my youth.  A correctly cooked beet still has some texture to it. Beets are also high in folates, vitamin C and potassium.

Beet greens are high in oxalate, which can lead to kidney stones.  If you're prone to kidney stones, the health benefits of beets might not be as seductive.

Beets are relatively low in calories with just 27 calories per half cup.  They are also relatively low in carbs and high in fiber, with about 7 carbs per 1/2 cup and 2 grams of fiber.

Beet greens are delicious, and they add a great punch of color to a plate.

Roasted Beets

Beets

Olive oil

Salt

1. Wash beets well and trim the tops, leaving about 3 inches of stalk.
2. Drizzle the beets with olive oil and a few pinches of salt
3. Wrap in aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes to an hour, or until tender.  Time depends on the size of the beets.  Start checking them around 30 minutes in.
4. Let the beets cool.  When cool enough to handle, slip the peels off.  I normally use a paper towel or vegetable scrubber, but the peelings easily come off if you just rub them with your fingers or you can use a peeler or paring knife.
5. You can serve the beets whole or you can slice and serve in a salad.

Beets are delicious by themselves or in a salad

Beet Greens and Onions 

Modified from simple recipes

1 pound beet greens
1 teaspoon olive oil

1/4 cup chopped onion or to taste
1 large garlic clove, minced

3/4 cup of water

1 Tbsp granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1/6 cup of cider vinegar

1. Chop the greens into the bite size pieces.
2. Saute the onions in olive oil for about five minutes.  Add the garlic and saute for another minute.  Add water, sugar and red pepper.
3. Toss in beet greens.  Mix well.  Cook, covered, for 15 minutes or until tender. Stir in vinegar.

The vinegar is just a splash, really.  Don't make the mistake of adding too much.  I normally just add a few slices of onion.

Beet greens.

Nutrition Facts

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Amount Per Serving (0.5 cup each of beets and greens)

Calories: 74
Total fat: 3.6 g
Protein: 2.6 g
Total carbohydrate: 9.6 g

• Dietary Fiber: 3.2 g
• Sugar: 4.3 g

Low Carb Peach Salsa

Salsa is a sneaky way to get some vegetables in your diet.

In my last post, I talked about growing okra.  Another vegetable I grow in abundance over the summer is tomatoes.  Salsa is dish that I like to make with them, because it's healthy, easily canned and helps punch up a low-carb diet.  I don't normally eat it with chips.  Most of the time I use it as a salad dressing, a topping or an ingredient.

Peach salsa makes a great, low-carb salad dressing.  If you leave out the peach, you'll have a really low carb salsa (3.7 grams per serving).   I use my Vita-mix to make salsa.  You can use a food processor or just chop the ingredients super fine.

This salsa has all sorts of fun colors and textures.

For 6 servings:

• 1 small peach
• 1 green pepper
• About 24 grape tomatoes, or about 6 oz of regular tomatoes
• 1 jalapeno pepper (I use the whole pepper, but I like it hot.  You can remove the seeds and the pith if you like.  With a whole jalepeno, it's too spicy for most people)
• A handful of fresh basil 
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tsp of lime juice

Optional:

• If you don't like basil, you can use cilantro

Just toss all of the ingredients in your blender or food processor and process to the chunkiness you desire.  If you don't have a blender or food processor, just chop all the ingredients to a fine consistency and mix them.

Before blending

Salsas taste best if you leave them in the fridge for at least an hour before serving.

Nutrition Facts

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Amount Per Serving (makes 6)

Calories:  21.7

Total fat: 0.1 g

Protein: 0.3 g

Total carbohydrate:  5.3 g

• Dietary Fiber: 0.6 g
• Sugar: 1.8 g

Okra: Delicious and Mucilaginous

Okra, an important part of traditional southern cuisine.

It's farmer's market season, so it's tough to buy things I don't like.  There are actually a few things I do like and they're all fresh and in season.  Okra is something I like.  Well, kind of.  I only like okra one way.  The traditional southern way: pan-fried.  It's not healthy at all, so I'm not even going to quote nutritional facts to pretend that it is.  Okra is generally low in calories and a good source of fiber and some vitamins, but deep frying it ruins almost all of that.

I've read in some, unsubstantiated, sources that since okra contains mucilage, it binds cholesterol and coats your colon enhancing colon health and lowing cholesterol better than other vegetables. I haven't found anything scientific to even halfway back that up, so I say bullocks.  Fiber, which okra does contain, of any kind is good for colon health and can help lower cholesterol.  It's not a special property of okra, it's a property of fiber.  Livestrong says eating okra may lower cholesterol.  Their reasoning is that if you eat okra, which contains no cholesterol or fat, you may be less likely to eat something that does have cholesterol.  Again, that's not a special property of okra.  We might as well say apples lower cholesterol.  We're pan frying it here, so let's not delude ourselves by saying, "At least by pan-frying okra, we're not eating all the carbs and fat in French fries."  Fried okra is not a health food.

I grow my own okra every year.  It's an easy vegetable to grow.  It withstands, even loves, hot Arkansas weather, grows easy from a seed and produces a ton.  Summer is the only time I eat fried okra, because I only eat it fresh.

Home grown okra.  This guy is too little to pick.

When you pick okra, either from the store or the bush, it needs to be bright green and pliable. If the pod doesn't have any give to it when you flex it, it's going to taste woody.  If you let okra grow too long or sit too long before prepping, the mucilage dries out and it gets fibrous.  It's not at all tasty at that point.  If you cut a piece of okra and it's black inside, it wasn't harvested soon enough and will be fibrous and woody.  The okra in the top photo is perfectly ripe.  Compare it to the photo below of over-ripe okra.  Notice that the over-ripe okra looks more fibrous and dryer than the top photo.  The good news is that you can save those black seeds and plant okra again next year, so the pod isn't a complete waste.

Bad okra.  May be ok for gumbo, but I probably wouldn't chance it.

Deep frying okra is like deep drying anything else.

Deep Fried Okra

Oil to cover about 3 inches of the bottom of a pan

1/2 cup cornmeal

1 cup flour

salt and pepper to taste

Okra, sliced thin at moment of prep

Like any breading for frying, you want to mix the cornmeal and flour together with the salt and pepper (you can kick it up with some garlic powder, cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes or whatever spices you want).  I mix it all in a plastic bowl that is big enough to shake my okra around in too.  After the dry ingredients are well mixed, I toss the okra in and shake it up.  If you slice the okra right before you want to coat and fry it, it's moist enough to hold the breading and you don't have to worry about dipping it in egg or buttermilk.  Okra's mucilage is kind of sticky anyway.  Add the floured okra to hot oil and fry until you desired level of browness. I like mine well done and crunchy.

It's important not to mess with it too much in the pan or it gets mushy.  I let mine cook completely on one side, then turn it (as best as I can).  I try to only touch it once or twice during cooking.

Yum.

Nutrition Facts

---

Are you kidding me? There are none.  It's deep fried okra. Just enjoy it.

Purple Hull Peas: Southern Peasant Food

Purple Hull Peas

So far, I've been discussing things I don't like.  Today, I want to talk about something I do like.  Purple hull peas are a traditional southern food.  They're one of my favorite soul foods.  I found some some today at a roadside stand.  They were freshly hulled and bagged for just $3.  I was so excited I couldn't wait to get home and cook them.  I love purple hull pea season.

Purple hull peas are a field pea, and a cousin to the black-eyed pea.  Southern rich raised these guys for livestock back in pre-civil war times, but they would throw leftovers to the slaves (or poor whites).  They became soul food.  The poor would spice them up with leftover pork scraps and make them delicious.  Most traditional southern food is about making do with what you have, and these peas are no different.

There is legend that says when Sherman's Union troops raided Confederates food supplies, they took everything except the peas and salted pork.  Those were peasant foods, and not fit for the Union troops.  Their loss.  Purple hull peas are delicious and nutritious.

Purple hull peas are an excellent source dietary fiber and a pretty decent source of protein (about 13 grams of protein and 11 grams of fiber per cup).  They also have folate.  If you're low carb, they have about 36 grams of carbs per cup (they are a pea afterall), so depending on what diet you're following they may or may not be appropriate. 

I think purple hull peas are creamier and smoother than black-eyed peas.  They have a fresher, earthier flavor than black-eyed peas, but they taste similar.  If you like black-eyed peas, you need to visit the south and try some purple hull peas.  You'll like them even better.

Traditionally, you flavor purple hull peas with salt pork or a few strips of bacon.  You can avoid the pork fat if you're vegetarian.  I always add onions to mine, but you can cut that out too.

Cooking peas (keep the lid on while they cook.  I just took it off for the photo)

There is a Purple Hull Pea Festival and World Championship Tiller Race in Arkansas, where I'm from.  I've been a few times. The tiller races are a sight.  They have a grand championship purple hull pea recipe.  I'll post it here, because I can't make up a better recipe than a championship recipe from a pea festival:

Purple Hull Peas from Emerson

5-6 cups shelled purple hull peas
6 oz. centercut smokey bacon (use a good brand)
Salt to taste

Cut bacon into inch size pieces and lightly brown in a dutch oven or deep saucepan.  Do not drain bacon grease.  Add washed peas and enough water to cover plus one inch.  Add 2 teaspoons salt.  Boil over medium heat until tender (about 45 minutes).  Taste and add more salt if needed.  Serve with hot, buttered cornbread.

Here is what I do.  As I mentioned, I add onions, omit the pork and use half water and half vegetable stock to cover the peas. I like to chop my onions big so I can pick them out. I don't like onions, but I like the flavor they impart.  If you like onions, a finer chop than you see above would be good so you can bits in your peas.  I also add pepper and a few pinches of red pepper flakes to mine.

Peasant food? No way,  these are fit for royalty.

You want to make sure the peas are tender, but don't cook them for too long.  If you cook them for too long, they turn into mush.  You want them to have about the same consistency as al dente pasta.  Don't be afraid to taste one or two to see if they've got the right bite.  Alternatively, you can smash them between your fingers to see if they're done, but why waste them?

Nutrition Facts

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Amount Per Serving (makes 5-6)

Calories: 198
Total fat: 1 g
Protein: 13 g
Total carbohydrate: 36 g

• Dietary Fiber: 11.1 g
• Sugar: 5.64 g