Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and The... (48 page)

Mix cream, cream cheese, flax oil, lemon juice and pepper. Stir in radishes and cucumbers. Chill several hours. Place a spoonful in each endive leaf and garnish with watercress sprigs.

The groups that depend on the blubber animals are the most fortunate, in the hunting way of life, for they never suffer from fat-hunger. This trouble is worst, so far as North America is concerned, among those forest Indians who depend at times on rabbits, the leanest animal in the North, and who develop the extreme fat-hunger known as rabbit-starvation. Rabbit eaters, if they have no fat from another source—beaver, moose, fish—will develop diarrhoea in about a week, with headache, lassitude, a vague discomfort. If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat they feel unsatisfied. Some think a man will die sooner if he eats continually of fat-free meat than if he eats nothing, but this is a belief on which sufficient evidence for a decision has not been gathered in the north. Deaths from rabbit-starvation, or from the eating of other skinny meat, are rare; for everyone understands the principle, and any possible preventive steps are naturally taken. Vilhjalmur Stefansson
The Fat of the Land

EGGPLANT CAVIAR

Makes about 2 cups

2 medium eggplants

2 tablespoons sea salt

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2-4 cloves garlic, mashed

½ cup parsley or cilantro, minced

¼ cup
crispy pine nuts
, optional

2 tablespoons lemon juice

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

dash cayenne pepper

Puncture the eggplants in a few spots and bake at 375 degrees for about 1 hour or until skin is wrinkled and eggplant is tender. Let cool. Peel and chop into a fine dice, sprinkle with salt, mix well and leave in a colander about 1 hour. Rinse well with water and squeeze dry in a tea towel. Mix with remaining ingredients. Serve with pita bread, triangle croutons (
Pita Chips
) or Belgian endive leaves.

Variation: Tangy Eggplant Caviar

Add
2 tablespoons raw wine vinega
r,
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
, and
2 tablespoons small capers, drained, rinsed and dried with paper towels.

How many Americans would you guess eat french fries in fast food chain restaurants every year? After all, "billions of burgers sold" surely translates to an equal number of french fry orders consumed. Originally, the delicious fingers of deep-fried potato, which have been blamed on the famed French chefs, were cooked in, horror of horrors, old-fashioned tallow. Over the past several years, the public relations conscious fast food giants were pressured mightily by well-meaning advocacy groups, especially the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), who obviously knew nothing about
trans
fats, to make their french fries "more healthy." This meant that the famous french fry had to be cooked in "partially hardened vegetable shortening" cooking oil rather than a saturated animal fat. Never mind that a potato deep-fried in. . .lard may be cooked in less time at a higher temperature—thereby leaving less total fat imbedded in the finished, more thoroughly cooked, less soggy, less rancid food product.

According to Dr. Mary Enig, Research Associate in the Lipids Research Group, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, the nations' leading authority on the amounts of
trans
fats in foods, the new fast food french fries are loaded with the molecular misfits, the
trans
fatty acids. The fat in a fast food french fry cooked with partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening can have as high as 46%
trans
fat. Old fashioned tallows had zero percent
trans
fat. This means that almost half the fat in the french fries is now the worst kind for human nutrition! Tom Valentine
Facts on Fats & Oils

EGGPLANT RELISH

Makes about 5 cups

4 medium eggplants

4 tablespoons sea salt

4 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped

1 medium onion, finely minced

½ cup parsley, finely chopped

2 tablespoon small capers, drained, rinsed and dried with paper towels

2 tablespoons
crispy pine nuts

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

dash cayenne pepper

sea salt and pepper

2 cups
tahini sauce

Puncture the eggplants in a few spots and bake at 375 degrees for about 1 hour or until skin is wrinkled and eggplant is tender. Let cool. Peel and chop into a fine dice, sprinkle with salt, mix well and leave in a colander for about 1 hour. Rinse well with water and squeeze dry in a tea towel.

To peel tomatoes, see
Kitchen Tips & Hints
. Mix all ingredients and season to taste. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving. Serve with whole grain bread,
pita chips
or
triangle croutons
.

MUSHROOM CRUSTADES

Makes 3-4 dozen

½ recipe
yoghurt dough

½ cup shallots, minced

1 pound mushrooms, washed, well dried and finely chopped

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

juice of ½ lemon

2 egg yolks

1 cup
piima cream
or
creme fraiche

sea salt and pepper

dash of nutmeg

2 egg whites

pinch sea salt

Roll out dough thinly and cut into rounds big enough to line miniature muffin tins. Oil miniature muffin tins well and line with dough rounds, removing excess. Bake at 350 degrees about 30 minutes or until dough becomes slightly crusty.

Meanwhile, saute the shallots and mushrooms in butter and olive oil in a large skillet over a medium-high flame. Add lemon juice and let pan juices evaporate. Process in food processor until smooth. Mix with beaten egg yolks, cream and nutmeg. Season to taste. Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff and fold into mushroom mixture. Place a spoonful in each pastry cup and bake another 15 minutes at 350 degrees. These may be frozen and reheated.

It appears that if you want a dental law you can approximate it by saying that the most primitive people usually have the best teeth, but that no people of the past or present are known who had complete freedom from tooth decay unless they were hunting, fishing, pastoral in their way of life and got little or none of their food direct from the vegetable kingdom. You might add that in some cases a highly vegetarian people, while not attaining the 100 percent perfection of meat eaters, do, nevertheless, have very good teeth as compared with ours. Vilhjalmur Stefansson
The Fat of the Land

Dr. V. G. Heiser in a recent talk to the National Association of Manufacturers told of experiments on 4,000 rats in which half were fed on a natural diet and the other half received the kind of food the average family uses. At the end of two years, the first group was essentially free from disease while the group partaking of human diet was afflicted with a number of diseases including gout, gastric ulcer, arthritis and tuberculosis. Edward Howell, MD
Food Enzymes for Health and Longevity

The effect of fatty acids on serum cholesterol levels is dependent on the original serum cholesterol levels: high serum cholesterol decreases with most fatty acids including all saturates; low serum cholesterol increases with many of the fatty acids including saturates, monounsaturates and sometimes the polyunsaturates. Mary G. Enig, PhD
Know Your Fats