Deaf Tranquil Life

Food Pyramid... Beautiful!

I came across one particular food pyramid aimed to reduce the chances of inflammation of the heart... I am copying and pasting it on my blog (hat tip to both my primary doctor's blog, http://drmaliareckons.posterous.com/dr-weils-anti-inflammatory-food-pyramid,  and Dr. Weil's blog, http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART02995/Dr-Weil-Anti-Inflammatory-Food-Pyramid.html.)  Both blogs I highly recommend for you to follow... yes, I have Dr. Malia as my doctor and he's awesome... he's the kind of doctor who'd spend an average hour with you, instead of a rushed 10 minutes... :-)

                            

For more information about this pyramid, check this link out:

http://www.drweil.com/drw/ecs/pyramid/press-foodpyramid.html

What catch my eye... DARK CHOCOLATE and RED WINE at the top of the pyramid :-)  But I am not too keen on fish and seafood, though.  It's interesting to make a note that there is no mention of white meats or red meats...so I'd add them to the pyramid, only in a sparingly small amounts, like once or twice a week.

Plus, I am venturing out to experiment with different kinds of grains.  Recently I made chocolate chip cookies, using only splet flour and almond flour, avoiding wheat flour.  It came out DELICIOUS... almond flour makes a lot of different, giving off a sweet moist taste.  Almond flour needs to be refrigerated.  Wheat products are one of the leading causes for health problems of Americans (white flour, mostly.)

For ones who want to compare this new food pyramid (it's NOT approved by the medical professional association) to the one we already have nowadays, here is the SAD's (S-Standard; A-American; D-Diet) food pyramid:

                                                                  

The problem with this SAD's food pyramid is the amount of wheat products... too much wheat products lead to diabetes 2, which we are seeing an alarming increase in Americans with diabetes 2 nowadays.

For more information about food pyramid, especially the one from Harvard U. which Dr. Malia recommends in his blog:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/pyramid/index.html

 

A New Bread Machine

   I used to have a bread machine and it died out on me last winter after it served me faithfully for almost a decade.  The old one was great with pizza dough, so we had a lot of pizzas.  I noticed that bit by bit the cycles of Wheat, Jam, European, etc. stopped working, leaving only a basic cycle and of course, a pizza dough cycle. Before I moved back to East, I regretfully tossed it out.

After several months of eating the store-bought bread loaves, I told my husband that I was stepping out to buy a new bread machine.  After checking the website of WalMart to learn that they did not carry the bread machines in the stores, but sold them online, off to Target I went.  It did not have any.  Then to Sears... surely it had EVERY kitchen appliances, right?  No... then with a little dismay, I went to Macy.  It had one... only one.  Seems the bread machines are not that popular anymore? 

Anyway, compared to the prices of the bread machines a more than a decade ago, the bread machine I just bought was CHEAP.... just barely over $50 dollars, not over $100 as I remember.  It had all desirable cycles that I was looking for: Basic, Wheat, Dough, Jam, etc.

I used it today, making California Dip Bread (dried onion soup, cottage cheese, and sour cream) and it came out really good.  So good that half of the loaf is gone :-)