Yogurt

As proof of its status as a super food, Steven Pratt cites evidence that yogurt plays a role in improving a wide range of problems from cancer, to lactose intolerance, allergies, high cholesterol, inflammatory bowel disease, diarrhea, vaginal and urinary tract infections, obesity, and helicobacter pylori infections, which are involved in gastritis, ulcers, and cancers. It's the bacteria in yogurt which do all this work, and it's important to eat yogurt which has as many live active cultures as possible.

Our favorite brand, Stonyfield Organic Plain Fat Free, has no less than six different strains of live active cultures, and costs less than four dollars per quart. When I buy a new container, I always try to make extra batches from it with my yogurt maker using some fat-free milk because at the recommended cup consumed per day, one person can go through two quarts per week. Our Salton brand yogurt maker turns out a quart each time I use it, and it has been chugging along now for over three decades, saving us tons of money while providing an excellent source of calcium and protein as well.

Yogurt is really easy to make, too. Just heat your milk to between 180 and 185 degrees F and then let it cool to 120 degrees F. I use a cheap instant read meat thermometer with good results. Drop a teaspoon full of fresh yogurt in each 7 ounce reservoir and stir in the cooled milk, cover, place in the yogurt maker and cover with the lid. The yogurt maker "cooks" the yogurt by keeping it at a constant temperature somewhere between 105 and 122 degrees F. After ten hours you simply remove the containers and chill them before use.

My number one way to use yogurt is as a key ingredient in a smoothie, but it can be used to make dips and salad dressings, or as a substitute for sour cream, or to make yogurt cheese to stand as a substitute for mayo.

Green Tea

Like all things "super food," I did not come to green tea naturally, nor did it become a habit "just like that" because I read about it somewhere and decided it was the smart thing to begin drinking. I worked up to it gradually, to the point now where it is a part of my routine which I actually enjoy.

That's what all habits are, things which are routine which you do because you enjoy them. Good habits are not established overnight. And bad ones aren't broken of a sudden. I quit smoking over the course of a month one summer by drinking 1.75 liters of Bombay Sapphire Gin. Ten years later I stopped drinking booze while recovering from the after effects of a particularly nasty stay in the hospital because it was making me a fat slob. How people get to the point of making such decisions is as variable as their number. But in my experience what mattered was getting to the point of that intangible inner movement of the soul where one simply decides "enough of that." In other words, you have to get to that place and time in your life where you have really got to want to change something. Nobody can do that for you, nor can anyone else get you to that point. You have to come to it and want it for yourself.

For me, breaking a bad habit lead me to tea after dinner. At first it was herbal tea of one kind or another, without caffeine. At the beginning I think I was drinking five or six cups of the stuff in the hours before bed, just to have a glass in my hand. What this did for me was enormously important because it spelled death to the old patterns. As a consequence, I stopped the input of a tremendous number of useless calories. I naturally lost weight. Without alcohol to interfere, I slept better, which meant I lost more weight (you burn calories even while you sleep). I had more energy, to the point where this "morning person" now makes a good show of productivity also in the evenings.

Another thing hot tea does for you which is much underestimated is sabotage the hunger reflex. If you want to curb after dinner snacking before bed, hot tea is the way to do it. Any hot liquid will do this, which may be why so many people also fail to eat a good breakfast. The first thing I do every morning is make a hot cup of coffee, and I can go for hours without feeling hungry afterwards.

Green tea is not an "herbal" tea. It derives from the same plant as black teas. And "it's the antioxidant flavonoids in tea that give it its health-promoting power," according to Steven Pratt. Green tea is especially high in these, and its consumption is correlated with lower blood pressure, effective blood sugar management, reduced body fat, healthy skin, prevention of cancer and cataracts, and resistance to viruses, inflammation, and allergens. Pretty potent stuff for such a small, inexpensive package.

Not all green tea products are created equal, of course. Some, frankly, remind me of the smell of a freshly mowed lawn in my cup. Yuck. But not the Good Earth brand of green teas. I especially enjoy the decaf version blended with lemongrass in the evenings. The caffeinated version is also excellent, until two in the afternoon. Try them. I think you'll like them.

Flaxen Oat Bread

Two of three I baked today, one in a clay baker.

When I was a boy I'd wake up on Saturday mornings to the smell of fresh white bread baking in the oven, just one of my mother's many talents on routine display. When I'd finally come downstairs I'd find her in the kitchen with the loaves on the breakfast table, smearing melted butter across their already golden brown tops. There they'd glisten in our cozy Wisconsin home on a cold January morning, just begging to be sliced, and made into French Toast. Perhaps the memory of it is more vivid because of the sun streaming in the windows from a cobalt blue sky today, but I'm guessing it was the whole package made special because mom was at the center of it, the choreographer of our lives. No one will ever love you like your mother.

Shortly after she died in September 2008, a book arrived in the mail, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois (St. Martin's Press, 2007). I've been baking bread ever since. The following recipe is my adaptation of their recipe for oatmeal bread. Unlike them, I let the dough rise only the one time and in the greased pans I bake them in. I also bake all the loaves at once, and freeze them after they have been cooled and sliced. You can modify some of the ingredients from their original recipe as I have below, by using 2% milk, buckwheat honey, and flax, among other things, in favor of the super foods. Her highness loves it.

Flaxen Oat Bread

1.75 cups lukewarm water

1 cup 2% milk
2 T canola oil

.5 cup sugar, light or dark brown sugar, or buckwheat or clover honey, or maple syrup

2 T yeast

1 T salt

6 T ground flaxseed meal

1 cup oat bran

1.5 cups whole rolled oats

5 cups unbleached all purpose flour

1. Combine the water, milk and oil in the bowl of your KitchenAid Mixer.

2. Add the sugar, yeast and salt to the bowl and mix using the triangular head. Add the flaxseed meal, oat bran and whole oats and mix for a couple of minutes to allow the oats to soak up the moisture.

3. Scoop into the flour with your measuring cup, tapping with a butter knife and scraping cleanly across the top, and add one cup at a time allowing the mixer to incorporate the flour for at least a minute for each cup. I find that as you approach the fifth cup it takes longer to incorporate, and I move the bowl up and down as needed to keep the added flour from poofing out the top.

4. Scrape the dough off the hook into the bowl with a silicone spatula, and scrape the sides of the bowl, too.

5. Grease your baking pans (I use glass bread bakers) and then grease both hands with the Crisco. Grab a grapefruit size wad of dough and manipulate it with your hands and shape it to fit your pan, and drop it in.

6. When all the pans are full, I put mine in the microwave above the stove to rise, where the preheating oven to 350 degrees F below helps the bread rise. It takes about 45 minutes to rise.

7. Then bake in the oven at 350 F for about 40-45 minutes and when done turn out onto a wire rack to cool. I like a longish bake as opposed to a shorter one.

This bread is moist, and likes to be thoroughly cooked and thoroughly cooled before slicing.