The Benefits of Juicing

You have undoubtedly seen photos of Harvest Moon staff members pouring a rich colorful blend of juiced fruits and veggies into a skinny glass or convenient to-go cup; you most likely know that their juicing machine is always available morning, noon, and night for their beloved customers, but do you know the benefits of juicing?

Consulting The Garden Herb Shop, they gave me these points to consider when pondering the question, does juicing really make a difference? The answer was a resounding yes, and here is some reasoning behind their answer:

1. Juicing helps you absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables, which is important because most of us have impaired digestion as a result of making less-than-optimal food choices over many years. This limits your bodies ability to absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables. Juicing will help to "pre-digest" them for you, so you will receive most of the nutrition, rather than having it go down the toilet.

Consider it like an organic IV that puts the nutrients directly into your bloodstream. If your body is in dire need of nutrients, drinking juiced veggies is the best option.

2. Juicing allows you to consume an optimal amount of vegetables in an efficient manner. If you are a carb type, you should eat one pound of raw vegetables per 50 pounds of body weight per day. Some people may find eating that many vegetables difficult, but it can be easily accomplished with a quick glass of vegetable juice.

Eating a plate of vegetables is much easier said than done, right? The way is made easy by juicing.

You can add a wider variety of vegetables in your diet. Many people eat the same vegetable salads every day. This violates the principle of regular food rotation and increases your chance of developing an allergy to a certain food. But with juicing, you can juice a wide variety of vegetables that you may not normally enjoy eating whole.

A person's approach to vegetables may be indicative of how health conscious they truly are. It is my opinion that the person who is truly health-conscious will, in part, gorge themselves on a broad variety of veggies. Peas, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, all kinds of beans, eggplants, cabbages, olives, onions, asparagus, artichokes, garlic, peppers, spinach, squashes, turnips, and anything else I forgot to mention. There is a great list of veggies out there with numerous nutritional benefits (including protein) that unfortunately get overlooked.

Do some research for yourself and give it a try. I implore you to also come into Harvest Moon and try a juice or two before you spend the money on a juicer (You can watch them juice it yourself!), and be sure to talk to The Garden Herb Shop folk about juicing as well. 

ABC News on juicing
Livestrong on juicing
NaturalNews on juicing

Until next time.

~The Harvest Crier~

Foodview: Cafe Salad

Okay, okay, okay. I finally consented, dear readers, to breaking my anti-salad pledge. I'm not saying that I'm going to start eating salads every second of the day or anything; I'm just opening my mind to giving salad a chance to redeem itself.

If you're vegetarian or vegan, the salad you'll want to choose is the Autumn Harvest Salad, which I can  confidently say looks good (I haven't tried it yet). For those of you who like meat with your veggies, pick the Cafe Salad, which is what I went for.

Coming with sides of ranch and guacamole and laden with strips of juicy chicken breast, this salad brings a flavor-combination unique. I've never thought of using guacamole as a dressing before, but it turns out that it go excellent with the ranch and poultry. I feel that these two were a killer idea for sure.

Also on the plate were lush and earthy lettuce leaves (it wouldn't be a salad without lettuce!) as well as a sensational smattering of feta cheese and tomato. For you vegetarians out there, this is an idea you should try on your own: Feta cheese and sliced tomatoes with ranch and guacamole.

While the chicken, egg, bacon, and feta cheese give it a fullness, and the leaves of lettuce add a good earthy taste to the mix, it was the guac and ranch dressing combination that brought the two worlds of meatiness and leafy-ness harmoniously together, leaving me scraping nothing off of my plate and into the trash can! Well done, Harvest Moon!

But I'm still not a salad kind of guy.

~The Harvest Crier~ 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia!

Our sprouting chia at the Garden Herb Shop

All of us remember when Chia Pets were the rave. It's yet another reason why we wag our heads in shame at the 90s, that awkward decade of, um, interesting tastes and fashions. But there is a little bit of sunshine peaking out of a relic from that dark age. Do you remember Chia Pets? They're still around you know. In fact, there's actually a Barack Obama Chia Pet available on eBay!

That shimmer of sunlight is found in the sprouts coming out of your Mr. T Chia Pet ( pity the fool who actually got one of those as a gag-gift). It turns out, dear readers, that chia sprouts and chia seeds are actually really good for you! Chia recently went through a sort of renaissance of its own where people started realizing that it's more than cheesy 90s decor!

Its benefits include, but are not limited to:
~ Rich in protein,
~ Excellent substitute for eggs in baking (And all the vegans rejoiced!),
~ Assists in weight loss,
~ Fibrous,
~ Great for boosts of energy before and after workouts (and all the athletes rejoiced!),
~ Said to be the richest source of Omega-3 fatty acids, and water soluble dietary fiber (supplements that we commonly add to our diets for their health benefits),
~ Rich in calcium

So there you go, the chia is now redeemed. It's an excellent plant to start growing on your kitchen counter or window sill, seeing how you can throw it in practically everything! Don't worry, you can grow it in a simple flower pot. It's still chia even if it's not sprouting out of a Homer Simpson head! Nutrition tends to come in simple packages now doesn't it?

Oh, and it's a superfood. So there.

~The Harvest Crier~

Sources:
Andrew Weil M.D.
Yahoo Voices
Huffpost
Washingtonian

Miso Happy!

The Garden Herb Shop tends to transform from a shop to a school in the blink of an eye. Just today, not too long after I stepped out of the blustering outdoor weather, I was handed a book and recommended (ordered) to write a post on the wonders of miso (mee-so). So how could I say no to that? I mean, it's miso!

Are you saying to yourself, "Miso confused"? Are you insisting, "Permiso, can you tell me more about the miso?" Well fear not. Click any of the misos in this post and you'll find yourself in a swamp of miso-info. I'll just give you a light sampling of the information available out there, most of it taken from the book I was handed: The Way of Chinese Herbs, by Michael Tierra.

Miso is essentially soybeans aged to flavor by being fermented with salt and sometimes other ingredients such as rice. It's beginnings are from China, where its predecessor (chiang) originated sometime during the Chou Dynasty (722-481 B.C.). The use of soybean became more popular during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) through the spread of Buddhism and the vegetarianism therein. Today, it is a staple of consumption in Japan.

Learning from my reading, miso is one of the most perfect foods, reason being because the fermented soybeans are rich in easily assimilated high-quality protein. It also aids  the assimilation of other foods and should therefore be eaten with something else (pretty easily understood, seeing how it's a paste. I'm not too  partial to eating straight paste myself). You can make sauces with it (add almond butter, a little bit of water, and ground sesame) as well as salad dressing, or even a base for your soup.

The consensus around here, due to its rich nutritional wonders, is to eat it with everything! Just make sure you look up how to cook or prepare it correctly so that your experience is a positive one in both taste and nourishment (it is not to be boiled, for example).

Because the salt is fermented, it has less of a negative effect on the individual as table salt does. This is peculiar for those of you who've had miso before, because you know that it has a pleasantly salty flavor to it (making it an excellent condiment). But that's one of the insistent beauties of this dish. Its pungency in positive flavor does not come at the loss of healthiness.

Give it a shot and you'll most certainly be squealing "Miso happy!" by the end. Unless you absolutely hate it.

~The Harvest Crier~

Foodview: Turkey Chili and Half a Grilled Cheese

So there's this deal going on now: a bowl of soup and half of a grilled-cheese sandwich for somewhere between seven and eight dollars. I ordered it under the recommendation of the crew behind the counter. After giving them the go-ahead, they asked me the peculiar question of what veggies I wanted on my sandwich!

Whoa, whoa, whoa! I thought. How dare they desecrate the sacred grilled-cheese! I mean, how can you put anything other than cheese on it? But it didn't take longer than the first bite for my eyes to be opened to how scrumptious veggies in a grilled cheese sandwich truly is! My taste buds were seriously jigging it out!

The sandwich was crisp and grilled with cheese melted just perfectly in between thick wheat bread speckled with oats on the crust (I loved the crust). Cool tomato and curls of red onion were trapped in the melted goodness of the cheese, giving the sandwich an incredible new flavor I've never experienced before. Really, I'll never eat grilled cheese the same thanks to this place!

After getting half way through the sandwich, I decided to spladoonk it into the bowl of turkey chili. It was phenomenal!

The turkey chili has a lot of pep to it, making me sweat after only a few sips of the sensationally potent broth. I hadn't even gotten to the chili's  meat and whole veggies (beans, tomatoes?, corn, and onions) and I was already experiencing so many strong flavors! Dipping the spoon down to the bottom (it's a big bowl), I excavated the quarry of veggies and ground turkey and enjoyed the bounty!

Really, the chili is hot! Really hot! I was sweating! And while it has a fair amount of broth to it, it's also a very big bowl. I assure you, dear readers, that most of you will be full before the end.

~The Harvest Crier~

Foodview: Truffled Mushroom Flatbread

This flatbread pizza I would recommend for those who like to sing Born to be Mild while driving their mother's station wagon down the road at a heart-racing 5 miles below the speed limit. Is it flavorful? Yes. Bold? Yeah, kind of. It definitely has a perk to it with certain ingredients, but I would say its primary adjectives are: calm, unique, chill, and flavorful.

Don't get me wrong, it was an excellent flatbread. I thoroughly enjoyed it particularly because I feel that it's ideal for a soothing meal. Need a relaxing entree by chance? Give this one a shot.

While it's not intense in spice or pep, it is unparalleled in taste. You'll need a desire to taste something different if you want to enjoy it. I only recommend this to those who want to branch out and try something new. Let me tell you that the reward of curiosity is discovery! Bleu cheese and oven roasted tomatoes aren't like my favorite things to eat, but I would have never known how flawlessly they go together unless I sheepishly said, "Truffled Mushroom Pizza, please."

~Very strong yet cool flavors.

~The mushrooms have a very thick and meaty texture to them.

~The oven roasted tomatoes complement the crumbled blue cheese. The crumbled bleu cheese causes the tartness of the tomato to come out, giving a sweet taste to the meal.

~The green onion and red onion were for garnishing but also enriched the texture of the meal.

~It also has Ricotta Aioli in it, but I couldn't taste that part.

~Recommended if you're the cool, calm type who doesn't want your mouth to feel on fire yet wants to try something new and exciting. :)

~The Harvest Crier~