Eating From Your Own Garden Promotes Wellness

Home-Grown Peppers and Tomatoes Keep You Healthy

Eating food that you grow yourself promotes your health and well-being

One of the best ways to promote health is to eat fresh from your own garden. Eating your own garden produce not only keeps you well physically, it also grounds you and promotes emotional health. Whether you live in the country or the city, there is nothing quite like the smell of fresh tomatoes, peppers and chives ready to be picked. And one day when Google invents wearable noses that convey scents online, we will have the bonus of being able to share the special aromas of fresh chives, dill, tomatoes, basil and sage with each other.

Growing Your Urban Garden on a Condo Balcony

Waking up to the dawn of the city surrounded by lovely flowers is a good way to start the day

A balcony garden is a feat, a fight to survive against the car fumes wafting up from the urban thoroughfare below. The glorious petunias in various shades of pinks and purples welcome you each dawn, a separation from the waking city beyond. For optimal results, nurture your balcony garden with high-grade potting soil, water it when the sun is down, and if you have southern exposure water it more than once a day.

Starting an Indoor Garden in the Autumn

Adapting outdoor garden techniques to an indoor garden takes skill

 Every summer as we get into August, thoughts start again about how to preserve this unique beauty that is an urban balcony garden. Will it be possible to continue my flowers indoors? Will vegetables grow inside a home? Should I get something that resembles a small greenhouse? Will my cat be safe nibbling at the leaves, and will my produce be safe if my cat does what cats do?

According to Pikes Peak Area Garden Help, the best way to create an indoor garden is the following:

• choose plants that can live on little light
• choose plants that will survive dry conditions
• grow herbs such as sage, basil, marjoram, oregano, and thyme (in sunny areas)
• cut most plants regularly
• give plants ample drainage, lots of water, and lots of light
• vegetables need a minimum of 6 hours of sun each day to thrive
• tomatoes, peppers and eggplants can all grow in potting soil, which is lighter than garden soil or topsoil and won't become too compact
• lettuce can grow indoors all year round, from seed
• some house plants act as air purifiers, like English ivy or spider plants

We would love to hear about your field gardens, balcony gardens, urban gardens or deck gardens. Send us your pictures and we will share them on our next post!

The Dangers of Visceral Fat

Is belly fat the same as visceral fat?

Is It Belly Fat or Visceral Fat?

The dangers of visceral fat are becoming known, but what isn't always known is how to tell the difference between regular fat and visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat, which is stored between the muscles and the skin, is regular fat. That's the fat that we can grab a hold of, say around the stomach or thighs. Here is a good comparison between the two fats:

"In comparison to visceral cells, subcutaneous cells are greater in number. But the visceral cells are actually larger in size per cell. And they get to be so big that they atrophy themselves—at which point they constantly, 24/7, produce cytokines. Cytokines are a hormone with known inflammatory properties. "They promote atherosclerosis, tumor growth, aging, oxidation, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease."

Visceral Fat is Linked to a High-Fat Diet

Science suggests that visceral fat is linked to a high-fat diet. According to Dr. David Haslam of the National Obesity Forum, "'Visceral fat may seem to be an inert lump of lard, but it's actually highly active and constantly pumping poisons into the bloodstream.' Visceral fat is known to cause inflammation in the colon and the artery walls, and is a major cause of heart disease, diabetes and some types of cancer. Research even suggests that visceral fat affects mood by increasing production of the stress hormone, cortisol, and reducing levels of feel-good endorphins. So, along with killing you, visceral fat, it seems, can make you feel low."

Sounds scary, doesn't it?  So how can we keep our visceral fat low? By eating low-fat foods and doing regular, moderate exercise at least 30 minutes per day. Other things to be aware of are:

• portion size
• more fruits and vegetables
• more whole grains
• more lean protein
• less refined-grain pasta and breads

A few years ago I noticed that during my yearly medical checkup it became routine for my doctor to measure my waist with a seamstress tape. I wondered why she was always picking the part of my waist that stuck out the most. It turned out that to properly measure visceral fat, or the dangerous fats stored around the liver, you have to measure one inch above the belly button. I was surprised at where my measurement was in relation to the 35 inches considered normal for women.

So I've started taking regular exercise of between 30-60 minutes per day very seriously. If you are concerned with your level of visceral fat, it's not too difficult to do something to reduce it.

Cold Summer Borshch

Cool Down With Vegetarian Borshch on a Hot Summer Day

4-5 beets
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 potato
1 onion
dill
1 can brown beans
sour cream

Chop up and cook beets, carrots, celery, potato, dill and onion in a large saucepan full of water. Add brown beans and simmer for 1-2 hours. Cool overnight in fridge. Blend mixture in a blender (optional). Add sour cream (or plain yogurt). Dress with more chopped dill and serve.

Red Hot Black Bean Casserole

Red Hot Black Bean Casserole

Preparing the black bean casserole

Easy Black Bean Casserole

2 cans black beans
1 can tomatoes,
3 cloves garlic,
3 stalks celery
1/2 cup red pepper
1 onion
1 tbsp olive oil
1 c. cheddar cheese
hot paprika
cayenne pepper

Cook the celery, onion, red pepper and garlic in a frying pan in the olive oil. Add the black beans, hot paprika and cayenne pepper and let simmer. Squeeze the water out of the tomatoes and layer the tomatoes and black bean mixture, topping it with the cheddar cheese. Cover and cook at 350° for 45 minutes. Serve.

Fresh Home-grown Basil Tops Home-made Wheatless Pizza

Home-grown basil grows beside tomatoes and petunias in thriving urban garden

Home-grown herbs and vegetables in your balcony garden

My fresh basil plant grew indoors for awhile, until I could tell it was time to put it outside. So I created a combined herb and vegetable garden in one of my long balcony planters this year, planting basil beside a tomato plant, and even planting a hanging petunia plant beside them for color. Everything grew together comfortably and each species seemed to thrive without killing off any of the other. A truly model ethos for an  urban garden!

Home-made gluten-free pizza with fresh red pepper, cheese, and fresh herbs

Home-made gluten-free pizza made with brown rice flour

Home-made gluten-free pizza, made without wheat, is made with about 2 cups of a combination of brown rice flour, potato flour, and sorghum flour; then 1 package of yeast, 1 tsp of sea salt, and 1 tsp of xantham gum - and that's pretty much it. You just add 2 eggs (or 2 egg-replacements, as I did), 1 1/2 cup warm water, 2 tbsp olive oil to the yeast, stir, and then mix it all together with the different flours and other dry products. Mix it well. Roll the dough into 2 balls, cover and let stand in a warm place for 1/2 hour to let it rise. 

Afterwards, flatten each into greased pizza pans, and cook just the pizza dough for 5 to 7 minutes. Then bring it out of the oven, spread tomato spread for pizza on the dough, cut red peppers, cheese, fresh sage and basil, and put on top. Bake the pizza for another 20 minutes. Makes two 12-inch pizzas.

The Best Dill Pickes

Health Benefits of Cucumbers

Cucumbers are a fantastic source of hydration in the summer months. According to Natural News, they are good for the skin, for your hair, for fighting cancer, for fighting bad breath, for curing a hangover, aiding in weight loss, and curing diabetes. Whether this is all true or not, they make great pickles.

Baba's Garlic and Dill Pickles

This is my grandmother's dill pickle recipe as told to my brother, John Pohran:

For 1 quart of dill pickles (these are "quick-eating" pickles)

1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
4-5 cups of cold tap water
garlic and dill...

Cut garlic and dill and stuff into jars. Put as many cucumbers into jars as possible. Fill with salt brine and cover all cucumbers. Let sit for 4-5 days until "fermentation" has changed the color of pickles. Refrigerate jars.

How to Avoid Preservatives in Food and Products

Preservatives can be avoided by reading labels, researching online, and finding suppliers who sell food and products without them.

BHA in Food

If you eat potato chips, lard, butter, cereal, instant mashed potatoes, preserved meat, beer, baked goods, dry beverage and dessert mixes, chewing gum and many other foods, you are eating butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) - a preservative that prevents food from going rotten. The latest environmental research reports that "the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies BHA as a possible human carcinogen, and the European Commission on Endocrine Disruption has listed BHA as a Category 1 priority substance, based on evidence that it interferes with hormone function."

You can avoid BHA by buying fresh food, cooking and baking yourself, and even making your own beer.

BHA in Skin Products

BHA is also in skin products, and is often recommended for aging skin since it has many of the same effects that estrogen does.  On Skin Deep, a cosmetic database, BHA is rated "highly hazardous" (9-10 out of 10).

Avoid BHA by reading labels

Wellness and Wheat

Anyone concerned with wellness is now concerned with wheat

There are many ways that wheat affects wellness - from weight gain, to raised blood sugar and many other adverse health effects including heart disease.

One-third of my family are celiac, or disturbed by eating gluten, or allergic to wheat - that's 6 out of a group of 18 counting my mother, my three sisters, my two brothers, and our combined 11 children.

But none of us were remotely affected by wheat over thirty years ago when we used to gather at family celebrations and eat a wheat-based delicacy called "kutia". Most of our family's symptoms have since included stomach problems and breathing problems (kind of like hay fever).


Ways that wheat affect wellness are:

• increased appetite
• formation of small LDL particles, which combined with increased appetite, creates belly fat
• belly fat causes inflammation, higher blood sugar/higher blood pressure = risk of heart disease
• mood swings
• depression
• joint pain and swelling
• acid reflux
• irritated bowel
• peripheral neuropathy (numbness in hands and legs)

Eating fresh food, or real food that has not been processed in any way, is the best way to stay healthy. But for those days when I feel like making dough, I have a good supply of brown rice flour and soy flour. Home-made pizza was a hit at our house when I made this gluten-free home-made pizza.

Education About Food & Nutrition Increases Wellness

Many people I see in underground fast food malls at lunch in the financial center of Toronto are eating sushi, chicken salads with grains, or healthy full-course dinners with a salad. I noticed this as early as the 80s (except for the sushi) while enjoying my favorite hamburgers and cheese danishes at lunch each day. But over the decades, I became better educated about food. Other boomer friends seemed to know that 'we are what we eat', intrinsically, but I did not. I never ate healthy, and I rarely cooked.

I simply chose unhealthy food once I was on my own because it tasted so good - and it was cheap. For many years it didn't seem to register with me that what I ate had an effect on everything else in my life and how I felt about it.

Later, it wasn't Jamie Kennedy or any other celebrity who finally got me on the track to healthy eating. It was an allergy clinic! After years of suffering from allergies as a teen, my son was treated at The Allergy Clinic in 2006 when they looked at his diet rather than give him allergy injections. Our family went through intense nutritional counselling as a result and I now don't touch bread or wheat. My recommended diet now consists of 4-day rotations of chicken, shellfish, meat or legume, fish. With these 4 dinners go the following grains & vegetables: brown rice, buckwheat, sweet potato, quinoa. Then all kinds of vegetables and fruits are added like spinach, collard greens, romaine lettuce, lemons, apples, pears, bananas, blueberries, carrots, parsnips, etc. My son's allergies were corrected after 2 years on this diet.

I realized that there are a lot of resources about nutrition out there. Some of the ones I rely on are:

• http://www.drweil.com/
• http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/
• http://www.moosewoodcooks.com/cookbook-store/

How To Maintain Wellness Over 40

As a boomer, I am healthier now than I was at any point between age 17 (when I left home to attend university) and my mid-40's. When I recently summed up the reasons why, I realized that they all revolved around diet, exercise, stress management, yoga/meditation/therapeutic massage, mental stimulation, emotional connectedness/satisfaction, and finances. In fact, I would even put them in that order. And here's why:

1. What we eat seems to dictate how well we feel and how well we handle things - never mind all of the other associations connected to diet.
2. Exercise also has equal weight to food when it comes to being well - and this seems to increase with age.
3. Stress, or over-stress, is a wellness-killer. It eats up all of the mileage we get from eating well and exercising, so it has to be managed and kept in check.
4. Yoga, meditation, massage, dance, tai chi, and other forms of spiritual physicality are all tools to connect the mind and body and they all increase wellness.
5. Mental stimulation is not talked about much, but it's pretty well "use it or lose it" (use it and be well, or lose it and don't). Mental stimulation is more important for wellness than we think.
6. Emotional connectedness and satisfaction with oneself and others doesn't keep us well without the other 6 factors, but it plays a key role in keeping us well-balanced.
7. Finances are talked about a lot in this part of the world as an elixer to all troubles, but you can be a wealthy, top performing, emotionally connected individual who is positively challenged by your job and interests, but if you don't take time to unwind, exercise, keep your stress in check and eat right, these unattended elements will catch up with you. That's not to say finances aren't important, they are. But over age 40 the other key points start to matter just as much when it comes to wellness.

Stay tuned to Wellness Over 40 - we'll be discussing each of the 7 elements from the personal point of view of someone who found meaning and value in all of them. We will be telling stories of fantastic people and resources for achieving and keeping your own wellness, your own way.