Green Tea & Chocolate: The Cancer Slayer Chronicles

Magic Mineral Broth Recipe

After posting this picture of this morning's Mineral Broth-makings on Facebook & Instagram, I got a few requests for the recipe. I can't take credit for it. It comes from Rebecca Katz's The Cancer Fighting Kitchen. Both the book and the broth are life-savers!

This is my Rosetta stone of soup, a broth that can be transformed to meet a myriad of nutritional needs, serving as everything from a delicious sipping tea to the powerful base for more hearty soups and stews. So no matter a person's appetite, it can provide a tremendous nutritional boost. Chemotherapy often saps your strength due to dehydration, which pulls vital nutrients out of your system. This rejuvenating liquid, chock-full of magnesium, potassium, and sodium, allows the body to refresh and restore itself. I think of it as a tonic, designed to keep you in top-top shape. ~ Rebecca Katz

Magic Mineral Broth, makes 6 quarts

Note: This broth gets better with simmer time. You can cut the recipe in half and make it in a slow cooker if you like.

6 unpeeled carrots, cut into thirds

2 unpeeled yellow onions, cut into chunks

1 leek, white and green parts, cut into thirds

1 bunch celery, including the heart, cut into thirds

4 unpeeled red potatoes, quartered

2 unpeeled Japanese or regular sweet potatoes, quartered

1 unpeeled garnet yam, quartered

5 unpeeled cloves garlic, halved

1/2 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley

1 8-inch strip of kombu

12 black peppercorns

4 whole allspice or juniper berries

2 bay leaves

8 quarts (32 cups) cold, filtered water

1 tsp salt

Rinse all the vegetables well, including the kombu. In a 12-quart or larger stockpot, combine all the ingredients. Fill the pot with the water, ensuring at least 2 inches space is left. Cover, bring to a boil.

Remove the lid, decrease the heat to low, and simmer, uncovered for at least 2 hours. If you have 4 hours, let it go that long. As the broth simmers, some of the water will evaporate; add more if the vegetables begin to peek out. Simmer until the full richness of the vegetables can be tasted.

Strain the broth through a large, course-mesh sieve, then add more salt to taste. Let cool to room temperature before refrigerating or freezing.

Storage: Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 5-7 days, or in the freezer for 4 months.

Rebecca's note on kombu (which is a seaweed): Kombu contains a full range of trace minerals, which are often deficient in people with compromised immune systems, and is high in potassium, iodine, calcium, and vitamins A and C. It is also rich in a type of polysaccharide known as fucoidans, which may inhibit cancer cells.

 

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Bit By The Green Smoothie Bug

One hundred and fifty days of green smoothies.

What does that mean exactly? That means I kept my first New Year's Resolution. Ever.

It started off as a 30-day challenge and then I was hooked. A "green smoothie," by the way, is a smoothie containing some sort of dark, leafy green (kale, spinach, chard, bok choy, etc.). The idea is to drink your veggies (though there is plenty of debate between the juice versus smoothie camps -- a debate I won't get into today).

Back to the challenge: One green smoothie for breakfast every day since the weekend following Christmas -- and sometimes one for dinner or a late afternoon pick-me-up. It has helped that Joe's on the bandwagon, too -- and that we splurged and spent the Christmas bonus check on a Vitamix (which is like having two horses on your counter ready to spring into some serious action at any moment).

The challenge, hosted by Simple Green Smoothies, provided great support, inspirational recipes, and tips (like, to avoid gross-out start with Beginner's Luck).

And then I started experimenting on my own, tossing this and that into my blender. But not totally at random. I learned from SGS that you almost always have smoothie success if you keep these "rules" in mind:

~ Winning ratio: 2 cups greens, 2 cups liquid, 3-4 cups fruit (makes 2 servings)

~ Make one of your cups of fruit a frozen fruit and you don't need ice

~ Blend the greens with the liquid first, then add the rest of the fruit to avoid leafy clumps

~ A banana can save a smoothie that needs a little something to improve it

~ Throw a couple of dates in to sweeten a smoothie

And this is just me, but I also add a couple tsps of matcha green tea powder and a sprinkle of chia seeds to my smoothies for cancer-fighting super powers!

Some of our family-invented favorites:

Lime-tastic!

2 cups baby kale (ribs removed)

1 cup coconut water

1/2 an English (seedless) cucumber

1/2 a lime (peel and all)

1 banana

1 cup frozen pineapple

 

Blueberry Ginger Cooler

2 cups baby spinach

2 cups coconut milk

1 banana

1 cup frozen blueberries

1 pear

1 inch chunk of fresh ginger

 

Lime Vitell (named by Nia, and given 3 stars by Nia!)

2 cups baby kale

2 cups coconut milk

1 handful cilantro

2 bananas

1 avocado

1/2 a lime (peel and all)

a few pinches of unsweetened coconut

 

Joe's Honeydew Smoothie

2 cups greens

2 cups coconut water

2 generous cups of fresh honeydew

1 cup frozen pineapple

1/4 of a lime (peel and all)

 

Blackberry Zing!

2 cups greens

1 cup coconut water

1 cup fresh squeezed orange juice

1 orange (peeled, seeded)

2 bananas

1 cup frozen blackberries

 

Cheers!

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Lunch: Feed Your Body Some Avocado Toast

My latest lunch craze is avocado toasts -- simply avocado spread on toast and seasoned. Delicious! And I feel great when I eat them. Maybe because avocados are bursting with 25 essential nutrients, including vitamins A, B, C, E, & K, copper, iron, phosporus, magnesium, and potassium. Avocados also contain fiber, protein, and several beneficial phytochemicals such as beta-sitosterol, glutathione and lutein, which may protect against various disease and illness.

Yes, avocados are high in fat, but it is monounsaturated fat which is a healthy fat variety.

I started eating avocados when I was pregnant. I'd read that avocados were helpful for fetal brain development. And now I eat them for their other healthful properties: regulating blood sugar levels, promoting anti-inflammatory properties, controlling blood pressure, curing bad breath, fighting cancer & free radicals, and skin nourishing.

On the cancer fighting note, the oleic acid in avocado has been shown effective in preventing breast cancer and inhibiting the growth of prostate cancer.

There are many more reasons to eat avocados -- these are just mine. Well, and they are delicious!

Recipe to follow.

Avocado Toast

Toast 2 slices of bread (my favorite for this is a Multi Grain One Bun or the One Bun sliders). Cut an avocado in half and scope out half the avocado, dividing it between the two slices of bread. Mash with a fork. Squeeze some lime juice over both slices (to taste). Next, sprinkle with red pepper flakes, add a twist of fresh cracked pepper, and a pinch of crunchy salt, like Fleur de Sel.

And enjoy... at home... in the office... in the garden...

... on a picnic...

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6 Tips for Creating Dinner Menus That Will Simplify Your Life

One thing I was looking forward to this weekend was curling up with Nigel Slater.

I was looking forward to going through Tender with a Post-It pad, marking off recipes to try, specifically ones for winter/spring veggies. Asparagus, broccoli, carrots...

This is a regular thing for me, curling up with cookbooks.

I do it for three reasons. First, I love this sort of thing. Cookbooks are right up there on my favorite reading lists. That's just me. Secondly, I'm always looking for new, simple recipes. And third, reading recipes inspires my menus for the coming week.

Yep, I'm that person: The woman who plans dinner menus.

And you should be, too. Hear me out...

When I'm really on it, I plan my dinners on Sunday for the whole week ahead. Sometimes getting started is awfully intimidating, like homework (in way it is quite literally homework, isn't it?) but as I get into it, it flows together & the best part is that it is a huge burden off my shoulders during the week because I already know what I'm cooking each day. I hate trying to figure out what to make moments before I need to start making it.  Also, planning ahead means I can grocery shop for a few (or all!) the meals at once and be done with it.

I've discovered a few tricks that make the meal planning process easier.

1) Planning ahead to have a dinner out (either at a restaurant or at a friend's house or simply taking burritos to the park/beach) breaks up the cooking (and planning). (Look, that's one day done!)

2) If I know a particular day of the week is going to be hectic, I can plan to have enough left-overs the night before to make that night easy -- or if you already know you tend to have left-overs that will need to be eaten, plan in a left-over-eating day. (There, that's two days done -- only 5 to go!)

3) Looking through the fridge in advance of planning can turn up some ingredients that need to get used up -- and thus inspire a meal or a side dish. For example, I have half a jar of tomato sauce from making chilli last week, which I'll use it up in a pizza this week. Alternatively, if you don't want to use up a particular ingredient, move it to the freezer to preserve it. Also, check the freezer for items to utilize (which will keep the grocery bill happily a little slimmer this week!).

4) Assigning certain food categories to days of the week can make planning less mind-boggling. For example: Monday/Pasta, Tuesday/Fish, Wednesday/Soup, etc.

5) Set up a Pinterest to keep track of recipes you come across during the week -- aren't all those food photos so inspiring?! My favorite online sources for recipes are Eating Well, 101 Cookbooks, Cozy Kitchen, Smitten Kitchen, and Sunset.

6) Curl up with a cookbook & a pad of Post-Its (preferably when you are not specifically looking for something to make in the next few minutes for dinner) and browse. Mark pages and then later, when you need inspiration for the week's menu, you need only pick up a cookbook and flip open to one of your Post-Its.

Another reason I plan my meals out is to ensure that over the week I'm eating as many anticancer foods as possible. For example, I know I should eat items from the cabbage family three times during the week,10g of mushrooms a day, plus aliums, herbs, red & orange fruits and vegetables, green tea, etc. Talk about mind-boggling!

So, to keep it all simple(r), as I choose recipes for the week, I read the recipe and add ingredients to my shopping list and I also check off the anticancer foods. Then, when my menus are set, I can go back through and sprinkle in anticancer-specific side dishes to cover any foods I still need.

I keep this list in my cupboard for quick reference. My kiddo loves me to read it to her for some reason!

Here is a link to my quick & dirty Anticancer Food Weekly Checklist.