Sun drying fruits and vegetables is easier than you think. Here’s the step-by-step guide for first-timers.

I’ve always wanted to sun dry my own fruits and vegetables, namely apricots, tomatoes, and apples. And I’m not talking about drying said fruits and vegetables in a low-set oven or a dehydrator – I mean in the actual sun, so that they are literally sun-dried. Try it yourself with this simple guide.

Sun drying foods is the oldest method of food preservation. In fact, it is documented to have been used in Egypt and Mesopotamia as far back as 4,000 B.C. It is an alternative to canning or freezing, and it is both safe and easy to do.

Sun Drying Conditions

I’ve learned that sun drying is a picky process – it is only a success under select conditions: dry, clear, hot, and breezy weather. This is the climate in Southwestern states and the central plains of the U.S. and Canada. The rest of us, however, have to wait for the perfect three to seven days when we know the stars will align and we have 85+ degree heat and relatively low humidity. Unfortunately, this means many of us won’t ever have the perfect weather to participate in sun drying and a food dehydrator or oven will have to do.

11 Steps to Sun Drying Fruits and Veggies

Fruits are best for sun drying because they have a naturally high sugar and acid content. Vegetables are low in sugar and acid and thus are at greater risk for spoilage. This doesn’t mean you should avoid drying your vegetables, it simply means you should take extra care of them in process. Here’s how to prepare for sun drying:

1. Choose the fruits and vegetables you want to sun dry. In the same way you should only cook with a wine you’d enjoy drinking, only choose fruits and vegetables you’d enjoy eating, particularly when it comes to quality. This means you should start with fresh, ripe, and clean fruits and vegetables, not ones that are rounding their last leg and looking in less-than-stellar shape.
2. Wash and pit the fruits and vegetables. Depending on the size of the fruit or vegetable in question, you may have to cut it. For large tomatoes, this would mean slicing them lengthwise into thin pieces and for apricots, simply cutting them in half or fourths. The key is keep their sizes uniform so that they dry at an equal rate. For vegetables, it helps to slice them very thinly so that they dry quickly and thus avoid spoilage.
3. Pre-treat fruits and vegetables. Besides cutting and pitting the fruits and vegetables, there is a treatment process. Light-colored fruits, such as apples, pears, and apricots should be soaked for five minutes in a lemon juice and water solution to prevent browning while drying. To avoid spoilage and browning of vegetables, such as tomatoes, you can add red wine vinegar or salt to them. You could also steam blanch vegetables to halt some of their active enzymes.
4. It’s time to lay them out and start the actual sun drying! The most important equipment here is the drying rack. Small wood slats, bamboo, grill grates, and stainless steel screen mesh are sufficient for the racks. You can also use cake racks or build small wooden frames covered with cheesecloth. The key here is that the racks cannot be solid, since air has to circulate around the drying food. Meanwhile, avoid grates coated with cadmium or zinc to prevent them oxidizing and leaving toxic residues on the food.
5. Place the cut and treated fruits and vegetables on the racks in a singly layer. Put the racks in an area that receives direct sunlight and a good breeze. Avoid an area that is near animals, traffic pollution, insects, and dust. Place cheesecloth or netting around the racks to protect them anyway.
6. Turn the fruits and vegetables once per day and be sure to bring the drying trays indoors at night to prevent moisture from returning to the food.
7. Place a small fan near the drying tray to promote air circulation.
8. Wait between three days and one week for the fruits and vegetables to fully dry. Transfer the racks to a shady area for the last day or two to prevent burning.
9. Let the trays sit indoors, allowing the foods to cool.
10. Place the dried goods in a sealed container and store for one week, shaking them daily to help distribute moisture.

Optional: To further pasteurize the sun-dried foods, spread them in a single layer on a baking sheet and let them bake in the oven at 160 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. Once finished and then cooled to room temperature, transfer to an airtight container.

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The post 10 Steps to Sun-Drying Fruits and Vegetables the Old-School Way (Duh, With the Sun, Of Course!) appeared first on EcoSalon.

It is popularly believed that raw fruits and vegetables are as healthy as it gets. However, cooking some vegetables may actually deem them healthier and more bioavailable to the body.

The fruits and vegetables that are better for you cooked than raw may surprise you. While eating vegetables raw maintains their enzymatic quality and high nutritional profile, there are some standout vegetables that are better to eat cooked than raw. Take a look at some of the fruits and veggies better for you cooked. Do they surprise you?

1. Carrots

Cooking carrots break down their tough cellular walls. It’s hard to properly chew carrots and optimally benefit from the beta-carotene content. In the body, beta-carotene is converted to vitamin A, which is beneficial for bone health, the immune system, and vision. According to a 2008 report in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, boiling or steaming carrots made its antioxidants, most notably carotenoids, more ready available to the body.

2. Tomatoes

Tomatoes are packed with lycopene, which is a phytonutrient that provides tomatoes with its red color. Cooking tomatoes enhances their antioxidant power, making them more bioavailable to the body. Lycopene is helpful in fighting heart disease and cancer.

3. Cruciferous Vegetables

Cruciferous vegetables contain some chemicals that block the production of the thyroid hormone in the body. Hypothyroidism can cause you to gain weight, get cold hands and feet, become fatigued, reduce your libido, turn your hair dry, and cause constipation. By cooking cruciferous vegetables, you reduce this effect by some two-thirds. Cruciferous vegetables include arugula, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, turnips, collard greens, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, radishes, rutabaga, and watercress.

4. Leafy Greens                   

Oxalic acid is found in many leafy greens and can be an irritant. It also blocks iron and calcium absorption. By lightly steaming or cooking greens, oxalic acid is reduced in foods like spinach and chard.

Photo Credit: Grant Guarino

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It’s time to think about what you’re not eating. 

Your mother wasn’t kidding when she told you to finish your meal. It’s not that if you don’t finish your broccoli you won’t get dessert. If you don’t finish your broccoli you’re contributing to the huge problem of food waste.

In a culture where food is readily accesible to many of us, we’re busy throwing it away. In fact, according to a new report released by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40% of our food supply goes to waste every year, accounting for $165 billion. That is at the same time as hunger and poverty are on the rise, with one in seven American households dealing with food insecurity, as well as significant issues of drought and skyrocketing food prices.

Although grocery stores and other food sellers lose as much as $15 billion annually in unsold fruits and vegetables, the majority of food waste occurs in restaurants and household kitchens. Why? One of the factors is size; we’re serving ourselves more than we can eat. Today, portion sizes are two to eight times larger than the government’s standard serving sizes. We’re throwing out about 20 pounds of food per person every single month.

A few facts about food waste:

• The average American family of four ends up throwing away an equivalent of up to $2,275 annually in food.
• Food waste is the single largest component of solid waste in U.S. landfills.
• Just a 15 percent reduction in losses in the U.S. food supply would save enough food to feed 25 million Americans annually.
• There has been a 50 percent jump in U.S. food waste since the 1970s.

How do we fix the problem?

We need a change in infrastructure. The NRDC recommends policy changes to deal with the issue of food waste, including action from federal and state governments to set targets for reducing food waste as well as implementing programs that help address the problem.

But personal responsibility is just as important. Know what you’re buying, plan your meals ahead and buy what you need, not what you think you need.

In other words, start eating consciously. And finish your broccoli.

Image: jbloom

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Did you know that if you swallow your gum, it will hang out in your stomach forever? Such are the legends of childhood burned in our brain. But what’s truth, what’s myth, and what’s there simply to scare us into good behavior? After all, aren’t all the best nursery rhymes really about avoiding bubonic plague and possibly flesh-craving wolves?

But not all food is so frightening. We decided to debunk some of our strangest myths about food – check out what we found!

Double dipping your food is dangerous.

This is TRUE. Yes, many of us all familiar with George Constanza and his double-dipped chip. (And if you are not, click here immediately.) But will the double-dipped chip really make you sick? Yes, it turns out that it could. Experts say that double dipping a chip can transfer about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the dip. So if you at a party, that means 50 to 100 bacteria can travel from one mouth to another, courtesy of the dip. And sure, we like our friends. But do we really like them that much?

If you drop food on the ground, you have five seconds before it is contaminated.

And yet, this is FALSE. First of all, nasty bacteria such as Salmonella (which causes food poisoning) can live on surfaces for over four weeks. If you drop a piece of bologna on tile, 99 percent of the bacteria will practically instantly adhere to the cold cut. If you drop it on wood, around 68 percent of the bacteria moves onto the sandwich meat. If it is on a carpet, .5 percent of bacteria makes bologna its new home. And it all happens instantly. Still want to eat it?

Fresh fruits and veggies are more nutritious than frozen ones.

This is FALSE, and score for the refrigerator set. (Like the jet set, but cooler.) Some of this has to do with fruits and veggies high carbon footprint. Fruit and veggies are at their best nutritional levels right after they are picked from the vine. So the farther they have to travel to your mouth, the more time they have to degrade. When you properly freeze something, you are essentially halting its degradation. But look for clumping in your frozen bag of goodies – if there’s clumping, it is likely the food thawed on travel.

Eating at night makes you gain weight.

This is FALSE and is really a matter of word play. And yes, before Oprah and her minions set upon me; allow me to introduce the science behind it. The time of day of consumption does not reflect on how much weight you will gain. The reason you gain weight is because you consume more calories than you burn. If you have consumed less calories during the day and have a larger meal at night, you’re not going to gain weight. Does that mean you should pig out right before bed time? Heck no, because if you want to maintain your weight, you should always budget your calories .

You can cure a hangover with food.

This is FALSE but man, I wish this were true. Now that I am older and learned, I drink less. (More emphasis on the older and less on the learned, but still.) But “back in the day” (I’m also holding an ear horn to my head right now) I used to party like it was 1999 for about eight years running. So I became well acquainted with epically-bad hangovers.

And I swore that slices of plain, whole wheat bread were the key to lessening my barf-marathon. But in actuality, they weren’t. You have a hangover because you drank too much and are dehydrated. (So, yes, drink a lot of water. But you’ll still going to feel terrible until the excessive alcohol is out of your system.) You’ve also over-taxed your liver, which is less able to supply glucose to all the needed parts and causing all these yucky feelings. The only true cure to a hangover is not to drink so much alcohol in the first place.

Image: Triple Tri

The post ‘Double Dipping Will Kill You’ and Other Strange Myths About Food appeared first on EcoSalon.

If you plan on stocking up on fresh produce at your farmers’ market this weekend, why not pick up a few items for your pets as well? Commercial dog food may be harmful to the environment, but you can lessen the amount of kibble you feed your pup by adding in-season produce (bonus points if you find locally-grown options).

So which of the summer produce work for your pets? Surprisingly, you have many options that add very few calories to your pet’s diet. Though you should introduce foods to your pet slowly to watch for any reactions, your dog or cat is bound to discover a fresh, new favorite.

Here are a few to consider when you’re shopping the market this week:

Vegetables:

• cucumbers
• summer squash (cooked and pureed is best)
• corn
• green beans

Fruits:

• watermelon (seedless)
• strawberries
• cantaloupe
• blueberries
• raspberries

Bonus: For a special summer treat to help beat the heat, freeze a variety of fruits to provide nutritious munchies that help keep your pet hydrated.

Image: The Left Field

The post Farmers’ Market Finds for Fifi and Fido appeared first on EcoSalon.

Besides being impossibly adorable, this painted enamel adaptation of the Asian field worker’s tacked lunch box is the ideal container for a dieter on the go.

I received one as a gift from my boss over a cup of Joe and a lesson on social networking. She said, “Here, take this and have fun with it. Maybe your kids can use it.”

Maybe, not! I’m not about to let them have another cool gift of mine so they can abandon it on the blacktop, allowing the contents to rot over the course of several months or convert it into a Barbie submarine bath toy.

Noooo. I’m going to pack healthy snacks in the tiered compartments because every dieter knows, failing to plan is planning to fail. If you don’t have those chopped organic veggies and fruits handy, you reach for the so-called protein bars (a.k.a. candy) or bagels (six points).

I know this sounds a bit crazy (’cause I am) but I even take it downstairs into the basement with me while I write so that I can keep nose to keyboard and not have to flee every time I get a craving for a chunk of jicama. I’ve also taken it with me when I have to drive a distance and get lots of looks from people who see me toting it. “That lady is stacked,” they’re thinking, and I like the fact they envy what I got on me, you know what I mean?

The best news is my bento is yet another way to eliminate throw-away bags and plastic and is awfully stylish compared to many of the reusable lunch containers made for work and school. It doesn’t leak and is dishwasher safe, too, for those who are sticklers about sanitation – and you should be.

And guess what? VivaTerra is even offering to give away this ultra-cool lunch box for you EcoSalon readers. Just post a comment on how you think you would use it to be entered to win one of your own!

The post A Bento a Day appeared first on EcoSalon.

No downer beef, if you please. But gimme slabs of chocolate and cheese –  and all of the other upper foods that help effect serotonin and dopamine, the two neurotransmitters in the old brain. Who says the Gods must be crazy? We’ve sampled the forbidden fruit and want more! Give us more!

Dopamine is related to pleasure and euphoria while serotonin has to do with mood, memory and sleep. Both of these pathways can be stimulated by food, as well as by exposure to light and exercise.

No food, of course, should replace prescribed medication for serious depression (unless your doctor and nutritionist sign off on it). But for many of us, who are only slightly depressed from the realities of life, they can provide a little boost (yippee!) as well as antioxidant properties and nutritional fiber.

To compile a list of those happy foods, I went to Mindy Dopler Nelson, a post-doctorate research fellow at Standford University specializing in nutrition biology. Before handing over her list, she told me not all foods affect people the same way.

Mindy Dopler Nelson, PhD, Stanford University

“What gives you comfort is going to vary across culture, age, gender and psychological factors as a result of your life experiences,” says Nelson. “Each hormone or neurotrasmitter in the brain has to bind to something to make it active. What it binds to are called receptors and they aren’t the same in everyone.”

Researchers have found that if you are exposed to high fat and sugar early in life, you tend to develop more of a craving for it to boost your spirits. There also is a genetic factor. Some of us (35% of the population) simply don’t have as many receptors and tend to be overweight due to a need for more happy foods to get the same effect as those with ample receptors. In other words, you might be satisfied with just one piece of California Brittle from a box of Sees Candies while gluttons like me must devour the box. I love you Mary! I love you soooo much!

“One food across the board everyone is going to agree with is chocolate,” adds Nelson. ” That’s because it contains the chemical phenylethylamine which releases dopamine.” The compound is thought to be  responsible for the high you experience after eating chocolate because it releases natural feel-good chemicals called endorphins in your brain.

According to All Chocolate, PEA is released by the brain when people are falling in love, and this might explain why chocolate and Valentines Day are so closely linked.

Here is Nelson’s breakdown of what you can choose to beat the blues:

Image:  Suavehouse

Chocolate: Chocolate is a stimulant that will release the dopamine that creates that pleasure feeling. It’s in the cocoa. There’s more of it in dark chocolate than in milk chocolate. But there’s something about the fat in the milk that also will make you feel good. Some people associate a comfort food with a high-fat food. There also are antioxidants in the dark chocolate, but watch the dosage! Excess can be harmful for your liver and pile on the pounds. Dopamine has an amphedamine effect, hence the term chocoholic. You also cannot ignore the fact it contains mucho caffeine that will keep you up at night. (And if you don’t get enough sleep it will effect your serotonin level.)

Image:  FotoosVanRobin

Cheese: The thing to be careful about is the fat, but if you go with the potent tasting cheeses, you can usually still get the phenyl while eating a moderate amount. You eat less because it is so strong. And remember, go organic when you can.

Image: Saquan Stimpson/Monstershaq

Almonds: As a raw snack food, they have good fats associated with reducing the risk of heart disease. But eat them in small doses because they also can promote weight gain and headaches. Many amines can cause headaches triggered by foods like almonds, so people prone to migraines are told to stay away from them.

Image: hikljgk

Red Wine: Wine has the phenyl in it, as well, and you also get the benefit of the antioxidant resveratrol, which helps your heart. Many people like to pair wine with other upper foods like chocolate and cheese. Although we think more is better, when it comes to wine and beer, this is a case where you need just enough. More is not better.

Image: Avlxyz

Tomatoes: In addition to having phenyl, they have lycopene, an antioxidant associated with reducing the risks of some types of cancer, especially prostate cancer. Imagine a glass of wine with cheese and tomatoes, sliced apples and chocolate to top it off!

Image:  Beeside

Apples: The skin, especially in red apples, has antioxidant properties, plus the benefits of fiber which is a tectin that can help lower cholesterol. It binds it. That’s why the American Cancer Society touts apples as a great snack. You can overdose on these, too, because of the natural sugars. But they are an ideal choice when you eat a reasonable portion.

Nelson adds that additional foods high in tyrosine get converted to dopamine, but there is no guarantee that just because a food is high in these compounds, the tyrosine or tryptophan will cross the brain barrier to increase dopamine or serotonin.

Among these foods are chicken (390 mcgs of tryrptophan); salmon (250 mcgs of tryptophan); tofu (280 mcgs of tryptophan); eggs (200 mcgs of tryptophan); milk (220 mcgs of tryptophan) and yogurt (140 mcgs of tryptophan).

Main image: Zara

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