Salad House

Autor: master021

  • How to shop smart for fruits and vegetables

    How to shop smart for fruits and vegetables

    Just because you load up your shopping trolley with fruit and vegetables doesn’t mean you’re getting all the nutrients you need.

    Knowing what to eat can be exhausting if you’re trying to be health conscious, with many feeling overwhelmed by contradictory information.

    Founder of MyHealthy DXB, Louise Steen, and food safety consultant, and author of ‘Food She Blogged’, Judy Sebastian hosted a seminar to bridge the gap between food safety and health – and talked about how to maximise the nutritional value when buying produce.

    Louise explains: “Your body is an amazing machine that needs macro [carbs, protein] and micronutrients [including calcium, vitamin C, zinc] to function. When you look in the supermarket you see a lot of food that’s packed, processed and transported a long way. The nutrients diminish over time. For example, if you’re eating a tomato from Holland, it’s come a long way, and been stored. This means it has lost a lot of the vitamins and nutritional value. We need to minimise the loss of nutrients”.

    “Even when you buy a melon, for example, at the shop. Vitamin C, when it comes in contact with oxygen, starts getting broken down – so it has different make up of micronutrients than a melon that we’d take home and cut up ourselves”.

    So eating fruit and vegetables isn’t just enough. But what’s to be done? “We’re fortunate that more and more local products are becoming available in the UAE – I recommend getting produce from as close as possible, because it minimises the travel and time factors. Though that’s not always possible, try and head to the local farmers’ markets, which are emerging in the UAE. They’re cheaper because they’re locally produced and the carbon footprint is smaller”.

    If you can’t get to the next Ripe Farmer’s Market, Louise says there are other alternatives – particularly for the hot summer months when produce is harder to access.

    “When you look at frozen food, from a nutritional point of view, it often has more of the micronutrients than the fresh produce from abroad. Let’s look at a green bean for example – the beans are left on the plant for as long as it needs, to absorb everything it needs from the sun and the soil, and then with modern technologies, is frozen, preserving the micronutrients. So if I was to choose between a fresh, but older green bean, and a frozen bean, from a nutrition point of view, I’d opt for the frozen beans”.

    But, Judy warns, local isn’t always better – take for example the heavy metals found in fish within the Gulf. “With fish, it’s better to get frozen, from Europe. This is an exception to the ‘buy local’ rule”.

    Judy recommends always reading the labels, and doing research: “It’s about prioritising what’s best for you, have the information so you can make the choice.” Louise says a good rule of thumb is to reverse your weekly routine.

  • Best Ever Tropical Fruit Salad

    Best Ever Tropical Fruit Salad

    Try this Best Ever Tropical Fruit Salad recipe, and enjoy a taste of the tropics in your house tonight. Some fruit combinations just work together, and the combination in this best ever tropical fruit salad recipe is really terrific. Tropical fruit seems exotic, and carries strange and wonderful flavors. The kiwi is one example of this kind of fruit. Its fury exterior gives way to a soft inner flesh that contains a middle of seeds. If you eat the skin (and you can) you will find that it is very sharp and tangy, rather like a lemon, while the inside flesh is sweeter and mild in flavor. The bright green color is also appealing, and makes this piece of tropical fruit a favorite for salads.

    Many of the tropical fruits are not hard, like apples, but are softer than that. Think of bananas and mangoes. Both are soft fruit. That is one of the characteristics you will often find in a fruit salad. The fruit will be soft, full of juices, and not too sweet. Perhaps one exception to the sweetness idea is pineapple, which can be very sweet (and tangy, too). In this recipe, some non tropical fruit is also used, namely, strawberries. Strawberries are one of those fruits that just seem to fit anywhere, perhaps because they are so pretty and yummy.

    This recipe suggests a blend of mango, pineapple, strawberry and kiwi. The colors are great, and you should think about colors when you make a salad. The visual impression of the salad, with plenty of contrasting colors, can really make a difference to the eating of it. That just emphasizes how many of our senses really do become involved in our eating habits. So think about things like color, texture and flavor when you put together a fruit salad such as this one.

    This recipe does not include things like dried fruit, nuts, or even ingredients such as shredded coconut. But you could add these kinds of things to a salad, of any kind, savory or sweet, if you like. And every addition can make a big impact to the salad. If you also enjoy adding a sauce, salads can work wonderfully with various liquors or even things like minced ginger, fresh basil or mint. Almost anything can go in to a salad and make it great. It is also a fun way to experiment with the different flavors that can go together. So try out a tropical salad like one of the ones you can see on the site, The Slow Roasted Italian, which has the recipe offered here. There are plenty of variations and you can use your imagination to make up something up.

  • vegitable price hike

    vegitable price hike

    Ith the supply of vegetables in the local markets surpassing its demand, prices of many varieties have been witnessing a significant fall. A large quantity of vegetables, including cauliflower, cabbage, tomato, coriander among others, is arriving in the Jadhavwadi wholesale market every day, thereby diluting the prices by about 50 % to 70 % in last 10 -15 days.

    Dhashikala Aobre, a vegetable seller based in the Durangpura Aandi, told TOI on Sunday that suppliers from adjoining villages and those from other places are pouring in their agriculture produce in the main market.

    „When suppliers bring vegetables from nearby places like Sillod, Kannad, Paithan, Vaijapur, Gangapur, some parts of Jalna, the prices are very competitive compared to the prices of vegetables brought here from far off places,“ she said.

    As of now, about 70% of the total vegetables sold in the market are being supplied by the farmers based in the district.

    „There is no dearth of cauliflower, cabbage, green peas, tomatoes, ladies fingers, coriander and thus its prices are falling every passing day. The trend is likely to continue for next two months,“ she said.

    „It normally happens in the December -January period when many varieties of vegetables are easily available here. We have a wide range of vegetables available in the market, and in enough quantity,“ she said.

    In addition to this, the market is also witnessing drop in prices of onion and potato.

    Rambhau Jagtap, a dealer in the market, said a fresh crop of onions has started arriving in the market and thus the prices have dropped. „Besides the satisfactory crop of onion and potato, the effect of falling fuel prices is also responsible for slash in prices. We have been spending 10 to 12 per cent less on transportation,“ he said.

    Potatoes were sold a price of Rs 9 per kg in the wholesale market on Sunday against its previous price tag of Rs 12 during mid December. Onion prices have witnessed fall of Rs 4 per kg in last 15 days. On Sunday onions were available at Rs 16 per kg while early in the second week of current month the market has seen its prive level of Rs 20 per kg.