Spring greens, crackling and tuna
Now that I'm harvesting just about a meal's worth of greens every day, at least those I can wrest from the appetites of the resident slugs, I am starting to think about what to do with them. It's mostly rocket/arugula/rucola, a bit of kale, and a bit of spinach. (This picture includes purple sprouting broccoli which is done now.)
Spinach is a funny one. It used to be the champion green, loaded with iron... until we discovered (back in 1937) that someone had misplaced a decimal point and it's not the Popeye dream after all. Now I learn that its oxalic acid content makes it hard to digest what iron it does contain; and tea and coffee can also make it harder to absorb. Apparently drinking a Vitamin C-rich drink with your meal will help your body along.
I am always entertained by other people's scientific experiments with food, so I enjoyed this quest for the perfect pork crackling.
And as seafood generally becomes more problematic, I am particularly leery around tuna. The popular wisdom is eternally contradictory. For example, I hear that bluefin is out, but troll-caught albacore is ok due to sustainable fishing methods (so says the 'impartial' advice from a website called PR web, and a number of albacore fishery websites). Then I read this article which explains that sushi grade albacore is the worst for mercury levels. I think I will have to go on mostly avoiding it.
Spinach is a funny one. It used to be the champion green, loaded with iron... until we discovered (back in 1937) that someone had misplaced a decimal point and it's not the Popeye dream after all. Now I learn that its oxalic acid content makes it hard to digest what iron it does contain; and tea and coffee can also make it harder to absorb. Apparently drinking a Vitamin C-rich drink with your meal will help your body along.
I am always entertained by other people's scientific experiments with food, so I enjoyed this quest for the perfect pork crackling.
And as seafood generally becomes more problematic, I am particularly leery around tuna. The popular wisdom is eternally contradictory. For example, I hear that bluefin is out, but troll-caught albacore is ok due to sustainable fishing methods (so says the 'impartial' advice from a website called PR web, and a number of albacore fishery websites). Then I read this article which explains that sushi grade albacore is the worst for mercury levels. I think I will have to go on mostly avoiding it.
Labels: sustainable seafood
posted by Rhona McAdam at 9:09 a.m.
2 Comments:
I am green with jealousy about your greens. This afternoon we PLANTED our mesclun, beets and chard, four rosemary plants, with trepidation, as it is prior to the traditional May 24th weekend..... It will be weeks before we can eat anything we have grown, if it grows.
Oh, well you know yours will grow that much faster if the weather cooperates. I remember the speed with which winter switched to summer back in Edmonton. We've had a chilly spring (which with those hungry slugs has made things harder). But I am very, very grateful for the purple sprouting broccoli and the kale that we can overwinter here, for early garden greens. Susan in Calgary has a handy dandy Aerogarden, that grows lettuce and greens under a domed light in her kitchen year round. Not the same I know, but still: fresh greens...
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