Archive for category Vegetables
How to Store Lettuce
Posted by adoex in Food, Information About Food, Vegetables on December 30, 2011
If you have frequently found a sludgy gooey mess in your fridge vegetable drawer, then it is probably a lettuce that you threw into it some days ago, meaning to use, but somehow you never got around to it. You are not alone. Lettuces tend to rot rather quickly, especially if you have bought one that was pre-washed by those considerate people who sell them to your local supermarket.
There is an awful lot of rubbish written about how best to store lettuce, including some advice from top chefs, and while the advice is sound, it doesn’t take into consideration the fact that as son as a lettuce leaf is removed from its stalk it will start to lose its nutritional benefits. The sap in the large vein is the part you need to eat and if this is lost there is little nutritional benefit in what remains.
If you don’t care about this then the best way of storing a lettuce is to wash it thoroughly and dry it carefully, leaf by leaf and then to place each leaf carefully on a damp piece of cloth in the fridge drawer and cover the leaves with it, so you have a lettuce leaf parcel in your fridge drawer. That works but the nutritional value if lost.
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Will Eating Carrots Really Help Improve Your Eyesight?
Posted by adoex in Benefit of Vegetables, Information About Food, Vegetables on December 30, 2011
Even if you have kids who don’t like carrots, they are often tempted by the sight of whole baby carrots which are delicious steamed or boiled. There are many reasons why carrots are good for health, and one of these is that they really can help improve the health of our eyes. They can help delay age-related macular degeneration and yes, they really do help with night vision, along with other foods containing vitamins A, E and anthocyanins which make carrots and berries black.
The best types of carrots for health and vision are the purple, almost black ones and the red ones, both of which we have here in Pakistan. They look very appealing when seen on stalls freshly scrubbed and set against slices of pure white fresh coconut. They are a real feast for the eyes.
The problem with carrots as with most fruit and vegetables is that the nutrients which they contain lie just below the skin (in the case of carrots) or in the skin. To clean carrots so that they retain this layer of goodness you should gently scrub them with a slightly abrasive sponge or with a vegetable brush; this way you keep those beneficial substances.
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