Recipes tried so far....

Well, since my last blog I have tried a few more recipes from my new cookbooks and have had a successful trip to our local Asian Supermarket (well not too local, it's the other side of town).  One thing I didn't do when making my list for the supermarket is write down the chinese names for some foods I was looking for, so I am not quite sure if I got the right things.  I now have a cupboard and fridge brimming with all sorts of noodles, sauces, veggie meats and different vegetables.  I was super excited to do some cooking last night for my hubby and see how I fared.  I made rice, Spicy Sichuan Eggplant and my own creation of veggie shrimp, mushrooms and snow peas with Vegetarian Oyster Sauce (I had no idea there was a vegetarian version).

Here are a few pictures, again, sooooo not a good photographer, but hope you get the idea.

Those veggie shrimp are pretty good, we first tasted them at our local Buddist Veggie restaurant here in Calgary.  I was surprised how good they were in the restaurant and when I saw them at the supermarket I scooped up a couple of packs, they are in the freezer, I hope they freeze well.  The veggie shrimp is made from isolated soy protein, wheat fibre, paprika, konnyaku powder, vegetarian seasoning and water.  Hmmmm, no additives, perservatives, artificial colour, excellent!  The spicy eggplant was also something we had at the veggie restaurant and I was able to make it taste very similar.  Although spicy, it was finished off with no problem.  I am happy to report the hubby thought it was my best dinner in a long time.  He is right I have not been very creative lately and dinners have kind of sucked! 

Only a couple of things I would do differently next time, I would cut the eggplant a bit larger and use a bit less cooking wine for the spicy eggplant, but I think the veggie shrimp turned out pretty good.  The Spicy Sichuan Eggplant was from my "Authentic Chinese Cuisine for the Contemporary Kitchen".  I still have not made anything out of the baked seitan balls from the other day, actually a bit scared of that...I did see them at the asian supermarket and they are not suppose to deflate like that, now I am really not too sure what to do with them.  Also, the one thing I learned was to have everything on hand, there is no dilly dallying looking for ingridients, not having anything chopped, etc. once that wok is hot you better be ready to go.  I had everything lined up on the counter and was able to add it all in at the right time and that made a huge difference.

So tonight I am going to try a soup, the son has a T-Ball game so we need somthing quick, although, who am I kidding, he won't touch it with a 10 foot pole, he'll probably want mac and cheese.  Sigh!

So that's all I got for now, the little girl is sleeping and I actually have a bit of housework to get done.  Please pass along suggestions, recipes or thoughts.  Have a great day!

That's right, new cookbooks

Here are my new cookbooks, not sure if I mentioned already, but I LOVE cookbooks.  I have been wanting to cook more authentic chinese food for my husband, I read about these cookbooks and the fact it's vegan/vegetarian is great.  I have my list of ingredients that I will need to get at the chinese supermarket this weekend and I will be testing next week.

Well, acutally I have begun testing, I am trying to find recipes that I can make ahead and then freeze.  So today I decided to try the Baked Seitan Balls.  I have made seitan before and to be honest I am not sure what to expect as I had never tried seitan bought in the store.  These seitan balls can now be made into numerous dishes in the cookbook and freeze well.

Okay, here is what they looked like coming out of the oven...



nice big and fluffy

Here is what they looked like 20 seconds later, not so big and fluffy

I am not sure what I did wrong, if anything, the cookbook doesn't say anything about them deflating to pancakes.  Well I am going to give them a try, shall keep you posted on how they turn out.

Also I have been following a blog, http://www.vegandad.blogspot.com/ and he has some kick ass recipes.  I am not sure when he finds the time to do all this cooking, but thank goodness.  I am going to try the vegan hot "wings" this weekend and the vegan lunch meat. 

My other new cookbook, Buddha's Table has some great soup recipes and a few Satay sauces I am going to make ahead and freeze, LOOOOVVVEEEE satay sauce.  Not sure if I mentioned this as well, I love sauces.  My poor husband, I hope my making soups will appease him.

Well I have a very squirmy 2 year old on my lap, so must dash.  Any suggestions, comments or recipes, pass them along.

STILL struggling

Hello again, I know it has been quite awhile since my last post, life has been super busy and super hectic and super crazy.  We bought a house, sold our house, purged, purged and more purging, packed, moved, unpacked and now starting renovations.  WHEW!

So I have been very, very, very bad at my eating habits, no, I haven't gone back to eating meat, but my nutritional intake has been horrible.  I have not been eating well and am really starting to feel it.  Yesterday was a bad day for feeling "out of sorts".  I felt like I do when I take cold medication, just not right.  So now it's time to get back in the swing of things.  With all the moving, packing, unpacking we ate alot of packaged foods, convinient foods and not enough fruits and vegetables.  Although, I always make sure the kids have enough fruits and vegetables, why doesn' that go for me too?  Hmmmm!  Also our grocery bill because of all the convinient foods was out of control. 

I am still struggling to make dinners for the meat eaters and for myself.  It ends up being alot of pots and pans, more dishes and the dishwasher going every night.  I had heard of a cookbook "Flexitarian Cooking", the cookbook was how to make two meals, one meat and the other vegetarian using the same ingredients.  I might see if the library has a copy and give it a try.  Maybe this will give me some ideas to help with the two dish meals.

I also need to stop skipping breakfast, although, I drill into the kids the importance of breakfast, most mornings I am too busy getting lunches ready, making sure they are eating to bother making my own breakfast.  I also need to start taking my vitamins again, I am prone to having love iron, so I need to make sure I take extra. 

I would love any suggestions from anyone with a two meal families, how they juggle dinnertime. 

Okay, Okay, I'm back

Okay, here I am back again.  It has been a busy month of cleaning, organizing and more cleaning.  Showing a home is alot of work, never mind constantly having to be out of the house, all at odd times, dinnertime, naptime or lunchtime.  But we are SOLD, so now back to daily life.

My meal planning was shot during this time as most days we had to eat out and for us that was fast food, eating out almost every night was expensive, we had to cut that cost down.  I ate alot of fries or the occassional veggie burger, which was always dry and bland.  So now that things are a bit more settleed I am trying to get rid of most of the pantry items, I don't want to pack and move it.  Also our new house doesn't have a pantry.  Yikes!

This week on the menu is alot of pastas and noodles, tonight is cold sesame noodle salad.  I also have alot of lentils, bulgar (which I am not sure what to do with), split peas and canned soup.  If anyone has an idea for bulgar, let me know. 

Last weekend I did manage to make big batches of sauces, Thai peanut sauce, miso gravy and Thai noodle sauce all from Ruth Tal's "Refresh".  I poured them into ice cube trays and put the frozen cubes into a freezer bag and defrost when I need them.  I am a HUGE sauce fan, love the sauce.  She has such great recipes for quick lunch ideas or an easy dinner.  I try to have most of the ingredients on hand so I can make anything from the book.  

I am still struggling to find a balance between my meals and the familes.  There are always alot of pots and pans and extra work to make two meals.  I am trying to make meals where I can substitute my faux meat with the rest of the families meat dishes.  My poor husband has been very patient while I try to figure this all out and has been having far too many vegetarian dishes to his liking. 

So I am sure the next month of packing is going to cut into the vegetarian meal planning and meal planning in general.  I hoping once we have moved I can get back into it and start posting menu's and recipes.

Any suggestions on combining meat and meatless meals, please pass them along, I would greatly appreciate it.

Stay healthy and happy.

Calgary Health Show

Well here we are again, the start of another week.  This past weekend my sister and I attended the Calgary Health Show, it was very interesting and overwhelming.  The venue was smaller, but they packed alot of vendors into the space. 

I love these shows, I like to see what is out there, what is new and try all the products.  I have been looking for some new vitamins and anything that I can use to supplement my vegetarian lifestyle on days that I don't eat properly.  My sister made a good point, she was never sure if her vitamins were being absorbed properly.  The first booth we came across was Usana.   The rep right away starts in on how fantastic their vitamins are, the absortion is fantastic, yadda, yadda, yadda.  We are listening, rolling our eyes.  Then she pulls out this book, Comparative Guide to Vitamins and Minerals.  An independent study of vitamin and minerals and she showed us the absorption of their vitamins compared to the ones we take.  Well I use Kirkland (Costco) vitamins and was shocked to see that the absorption rate was 5.1%, Usana's 96.4%.  Wow, so I was paying for vitamins that were really not doing anything for my body.  Such a waste of money.  I am going to be doing more research on this company and probably making the switch.  96.4% absorption rate, amazing!

I also had my aura read and she told me alot about myself that was soooooo true.  Have a big change coming in about two months (hoping that's the sale of our house and our move) and some things I needed to do to align my chakra's.  I need to work on balancing my root chakra, I'm thinking that has to do with the stress I'm feeling about the house.  I had a Clearing your Chakra's book at home, so I have been doing some suggestions from that, listening to a CD of meditation at night, although I have fell asleep during it both nights.  I hope that's okay...

One of the event sponsors was Community Natural Foods, they had a big area full of food, drinks and supplements.  I was buzzing by the end, trying all the energy drinks, energy bars, water, etc.  There was so much to choose from, how do you choose? 

You do what's right for you....only you know how you feel after taking these vitamins, energy drinks or flavoured water.  If these make you feel better, go for it, it not, stop.  My husband says I am a sucker for events like this, yes I am and I LOVE IT!

Let me know what you think, any idea's, suggestions, anything, I love to hear from you.

some catching up to do

Hello out there, again with the craziness, I hope it ends soon.  I have been doing some diet changes, still a vegetarian, but supplementing my diet on those crazy days I'm not going to get all my nutrients.  First I gave up coffee, I was stressed enough as it was with packing, all the purging and the selling of our house, I didn't need anything to keep me awake at night.  Well, that lasted about 5 days, then right back on it, I have no will power, sigh!  But I have been taking melatonin at night to help me have a more restful sleep and that seems to be doing wonders.

I have also started taking Greens+ in the morning, although not the best tasting drink, I do feel better and have more energy.  These days have been hectic and anything to keep my energy up and keep me healthy is great. 

I found a great facebook page yesterday, Vegetarians Rock, I loved that the people commenting on the site were mostly vegetarians in a non-vegetarian family.  It gave me comfort to know I wasn't the only struggling to prepare meals with two different ingredients.  Like I have said before, I don't impose my new way of life on my family, I do a bit on the children, mostly the daughter, she is just starting out and want her to be on a good path.  My husband has given up pork, after viewing a video, so I can only hope that he comes to the same conclusion about beef and chicken as well, but in his own time.  Here is the website, I find their Facebook page as alot more stuff, plus I like to comment.  http://www.vegetariansrock.org/

My other experience this past weekend was a awards reception that I went to, to support my sister.  It was at a nice venue and I was hopeful for my vegetarian meal, sigh!  A big disappointment, there were four vegetarians in the group of about 100 people.  The waitstaff kept coming up to check my ticket to see that I was a vegetarian and checking if I was vegan, it seemed quite the relief that I was a just a vegetarian.  So what did I get for a main course, a big plate of roasted vegetables, piled on top of each other, I think they were trying to make it look appetizing.  Oh and a small triangle of scalloped potatoes.  Needless to say, I ate alot of bread.  GROAN!  I am going to write to the venue today, not to be nasty, but to inform them of all the other vegetarian choices besides vegetables.  As a beginner vegetarian, I could have made myself a much better meal with more imagination then that.

Also today I have my new favourite recipe, Gouda & Lentil Soup:

1 TB butter
1 C chopped onion
1 C celery or baby spinach leaves (I hate celery, so I use spinach, I have also used Kale)
4 C diced sweet potato
1 tsp cumin (I love cumin, so I sometimes add a bit more)
4 C vegetable broth
19 oz can of lentils (I usually use dried lentils, just eye ball it, I never have canned, you will need to cook it a bit longer)
1 C gouda cheese
1/2 C grape tomatoes

1. Over medium high heat, melt butter, add onions and celery (if using) saute for 3 minutes, stir in sweet potatoes, and cumin, saute for 2 minutes.  Add broth and dried lentils (if using) and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until lentils and sweet potatoes are tender.
2. If you are using canned lentils, once the sweet potatoes are tender, add the canned lentils, cook over medium heat until heated through.  At this point you can puree part of the soup, but I love the chunkiness of it just the way it is.
3. Remove from heat, add spinach and half the gouda, season to taste with salt and pepper, ladle into bowls and top with remaining gouda, ENJOY!

Hello again

Well it has been a crazy couple of weeks, first getting over being sick and then buying a house, who wants to buy our house???  The next couple of months are going to be crazy, as the last couple of weeks, the purging, organizing and cleaning has been endless.  Thanks to HGTV's home staging shows our house has to look perfect and with two kids that is a challenge in it's self.

So although I have been following my vegetarian lifestyle, it's not been a healthy one.  I have barely been able to get dinner on the table, I am so exhausted from the purging, organizing and cleaning.  We have had alot of slapped together meals, leftovers and ALOT of pasta.  My husband is not too keen.  So now is the time to get back on track.  I did make a huge batch of gouda and lentil soup, still have some in the freezer.

One thing I don't have a problem with is lunch.  The daughter and I love having what I call 'ala carte' meals.  I check what is in the fridge, grab about 4 things and we have a meal.  Today for instance we had some left over Teriyaki Tofu that I fried up, then some carrots that I fried in the marinade after the tofu, cut up tomatoes and a warmed wrap.  Little bits of everything, we can pick and choose, I like those kinds of lunches.  Thankfully our daughter eats anything, so we never really have a waste of food.

I am hoping this weekend to come up with about 3-4 meals that I can always have on hand for myself when I am in a rut, busy and need to make dinner fast.  If anyone has any suggestions, please pass them along.

A short blog today, I am exhausted and the daughter is napping and I am going to join her.

Night, night.

When is this going to end

I can't seem to kick this flu thingy...it's hanging in there at one stage, not getting any better or worse.  So I am going to delay any blog writing until next week.  On a positive note, the husband had decided not to eat pork any more, he was doing some searching on the internet and saw how they treat pigs and said he was crying at this desk.  Now if I can only get him to view video's on the cows and chickens, it's a slow but steady progress.  I try not to preach and give people information if asked and hope they make the right decisions for them and their family, on a good note, now I don't have to buy bacon (yuck) anymore.

Still feeling crappy

Good morning, another quick note to let my followers know that the daughter and I are still feeling crappy today, so I have no new post.  I didn't get out and do any comparison shopping this weekend, spent most of it sleeping.  I hope to do some catching up later this week, the menu this week will include alot of soups or stews. 

Hope your staying warm and healthy.

A new look

Just a quick note today to let you know that I am doing some rearranging on my blog.  I am testing out some new looks.  I also have a sick daughter so not much time to post anything.  Will update next week, this weekend I hope to get out and do some comparison shopping for the budget.

See you then.

Eating on a budget

I love reading blogs, I love to see how other people live, eat, design and what they think.  I follow one blog Balancing Beauty and Bedlam at http://inpassionatepursuit.blogspot.com/, at the moment she is eating from her pantry and spending $25 a week on groceries.  Wow, I am keeping a close eye on this blog, because that is fasinating that she can buy groceries for $25.  I was looking through my grocery receipts yesterday and I spend that much alone on fruit and vegetables for the week.  Most of the blogs I follow are in the U.S. and I know from living in Houston for a year that food is alot cheaper there then here in Canada.  But can we apply some of the same principals to our grocery shopping here in Canada?

When I lived in Houston the weekend newspaper had alot of flyers and they were full of coupons.  We are lucky here to see a couple of flyers with coupons and usually on name brand products that once you use the coupon the product is the same price as if you were to buy the store brand.  I know they have double coupon days, store matching coupons, etc. we have the first Tuesday of the month when Safeway gives you 10% off your grocery purchase.  Yipppeeee! 

She talks about the reduced for quick sale bins and I know we have them here and I do frequently check them out, but am now going to be taking a closer look as in the past they don't look very good and I had no plans to use what was there in the next couple of days.  I haven't seen a reduced for quick sale in the bakery section or the meat section regularly. 

Another blog I follow, Bankrupt Vegan http://bankruptvegan.blogspot.com/, talks about buying food at a Salvage store, not sure what that is, don't think we have any in Canada.  Maybe Liquidation World might be along those lines, unless I am missing something, please let me know.  She got some smoking deals at the salvage store, here is her blog about it http://bankruptvegan.blogspot.com/2009/12/salvage-your-vegan-pantry.html.  Note:  I just did a quick google search for "salvage groceries in canada" and got nothing in Canada, lots of links to the U.S., go figure.

So I am inspired, to cut my grocery bill in 1/2 within a three month time frame (at the moment I spend about $250-$300 every two weeks).  This will be feeding the husband and son meat, the daughter and myself vegetarian, eating well, eating our fruits and vegetables and staying on budget.  I am going to be checking out the Liquidation World tomorrow, it is right beside our dentist office, which we will be at also I receive an email from a bulk food company, so I will be looking at that closer and I will be checking out the delivery service for fruits and vegetables.  Not sure if that will save me money on gas coming and going to the grocery store, I will figure that out.

So here is my pantry and fridge at the moment.  Wow, when I post these pictures, it looks like I have a very full pantry, why do I look in here all the time and find nothing to eat. 

So my plan is to not buy any groceries until the 15th of January, weeellllll, I might have to buy some milk along the way.  Okay, I have put it in print so now I need to stick to it.  We have alot of fruit and vegetables, fresh and frozen, so we should be good.  I am always concerned about having enough fruits and vegetables

For a recap of our dinner last night, I made ravioli with mushroom sauce and corn.  I took a recipe from 1001 Low Fat Vegetarian Cookbook and tweeked it a bit.  I stuffed the ravioli with a goat cheese mixture that had sundried tomatoes, oregano and some sauteed garlic and onions and I used wonton wrappers for the ravioli part.  They turned out really good, the only thing was when I cooked the ravioli in batches and they stuck together when I put them on the plate.  The mushroom sauce was awesome, the husband liked it, the son wouldn't even look at it, this is why we had corn and the daughter had a couple of bits, but she is not feeling well.

With this post my menu will change a bit this week.  I will keep you up to date on what is happening.  Hopefully I can inspire other Canadians to do some digging out there to find cheap groceries, different places to look for groceries and smoking deals.  Send me any links, suggestions or comments with regards to this post, I would love to hear from you. 

Local eating

Since my post yesterday I have done some digging into local eating.  We have a couple of farmers markets in Calgary, not close to where we live and are only open on the weekends at which time they are a zoo to get in and out of.  So doing some online searches and I found http://www.spud.ca/about/whatsnew.cfm and http://www.freshorganics.ca/.  Both of these companies deliver bins of fruit and vegetables to your door, both seem to be the same cost.  Spuds also has organic and home products, bakery items, just about everything you would find in a store.  Farm Fresh Organics is a bin delivery service with Family Fare, Bachelor Box, Fruit basket and Salad bowl options.  I have tried Farm Fresh Organics before, but this was when it was my husband and myself and I found that we just didn't eat the produce fast enough before it went bad.  Now that we have a family of four, it just might work. 

Here are the options for both:

Spuds:  you need to register with the site, then you "go shopping", pick your produce for your harvest box and checkout.  You can set your preferences for your harvest box, how often you want it delivered and how much you want to spend and you can edit your selections at any time.  One options I like is that you can choose variety before local, local before variety or local only.  If you are looking to support local farmers this is a great option.  There is a calculator to help you determine how much produce you will need and how often, also a great feature.  I also like that this company will deliver other groceries as well.  This is a company out of California.

Farm Fresh Organics:  this is the service we used before, we liked it, but as I said didn't eat it fast enough.  Their website was down for some options, so I will go by what I remember.  You had a bin deposit, I believe $20 and the produce was $35?,then choose how often to have it delivered.  You filled out a form, told them what you didn't want in the bin (celery, yuck!) your top 3 vegetables and top 3 fruits.  What I liked about this service is you never really knew what you were going to get, which made us try new fruits and vegetables.  The bins always contained something I had never heard of or never cooked with before, I liked that idea.  This is a local company out of Calgary.

I am going to do a bit of crunching and see if this is a budget friendly option for us.  It would seem that $35 every two weeks for fruits and vegetables would be a good idea, but will it be enough to feed the family?  I will keep you posted.

So here is what I have been eating lately, a couple of nights ago the rest of the family had beef dip and I had seitan dip with gouda cheese and yams fries, I made a veganiasse dip with dijon mustard and garlic for the fries and the seitan dip.  I also added a tomato slice after I took the picture.

Last night I made Pasta with Enlightened Alfredo Sauce from Nava Atlas, The Vegetarian Family Cookbook.  The alfredo sauce was made from soft tofu, my husband, who is not a fan of cream sauces at all, liked this and when I told him it wasn't a cream sauce he was quite surprised.  I topped the pasta with left over tomatoes from the seitan dip, to add some colour and a different flavour.  This is our daughters dish, this picture turned out better.

Tonight's dinner is Herbed Cheese Ravioli with Wild Mushroom Sauce from 1001 Low Fat Vegetarian Recipes.  The ravioli is made from won ton wrappers, I will let you know how they turn out, sounds interesting

Do we really know what is in our food???

To begin with I have a soap box and frequently get on it. My husband bugs me about it, but I feel I need to say some things, want the world to know about them and that is partially why I started this blog.

I think the world is getting farther and farther away from family values and good eating. I admit I am big on whatever is convenient is easier, but is that the way to go? We watched a very interesting movie over the holidays, Food Inc. My impression when I heard of this movie was that it was about our meat and why you should go vegetarian or vegan. I was wrong, this movie was about our food, yes, it included meat, chicken and pork, but also corn, soybeans and other foods. Do we really know now a day’s where our food comes from and what goes in it? I know I don’t and this movie was an eye opener for me. Granted this was made in the U.S. about the U.S. food industry, but how much affects us in Canada? I have a lot of questions and over the next couple of weeks am going to be doing some research on the Canada aspect of our food industry.

Here is a brief summary of the movie: the way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years, then ever before. We have McDonald’s to blame for the way meat is now processed; they are the ones that moved away from the sit down diners, car hops to the fast food chains. This meant that food needed to be grown faster to keep up with the demand. Cows are fed corn, something they don’t normally eat, which is grass. The introduction of corn into a cow’s diet has led to E-Coli, they now “clean” meat with an ammonia mixture to kill the E-Coli before it is packaged for sale, YUCK! A company in the states has the market cornered on soybeans, they have patented the soybeans and if a farmer is caught using their own soybeans this company can sue them for copyright infringement. Sounds fair? Every time we go to the grocery store and our food is scanned, we are saying to the companies producing these foods that we are going to eat all the chemicals they are adding to our foods. We don’t eat in season anymore, fruits and vegetables are available to us 365 days of the year, which means they need to be shipped half way around the world for us to eat “fresh”, which leads to them being treated with chemicals to make sure they doesn’t spoil on the way. The movie is also about how the farm workers are being treated and it's not well.  It's hard to believe that companies still exploit their workers, but they do.  Okay, that’s enough of my soap box, I hope everyone watches this movie and starts asking questions.  Here are some links to the website:

http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-issues.php
http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-film.php

I decided that I am going to pull a convinience food out of my pantry, check the labels and start researching an ingredient. So today I am looking at "100% Whole Grain Ritz Crackers", the ingredients list didn't look too bad, the first few items are whole grain wheat flour, vegetable oil shortening, sugar and salt. Hmm, not too bad, but then there are a few I’m not sure of monocalcium phosphate, soya lecithin, amylase, protease and papain. Does anyone know what those are?

From Wikipedia:

Monocalcium phosphate: Calcium dihydrogen phosphate is also used in the food industry as a leavening agent to cause baked goods to rise. Because it is acidic, when combined with an alkali ingredient – commonly sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) or potassium bicarbonate – it reacts to produce carbon dioxide and a salt. The carbon dioxide gas is what leavens the baked good. When combined in a ready-made baking powder, the acid and alkali ingredients are included in the right proportions such that they will exactly neutralize each other and not significantly affect the overall pH of the product.

Apart from acting as leavening agent, it also inhibits microbial activity because of the phosphate ions present in the molecule.

 Soya Lecithin: Lecithin is used commercially in foods requiring a natural emulsifier and/or lubricant, and in pharmaceuticals as protective coverings. For example, lecithin is the emulsifier that keeps cocoa and cocoa butter in a candy bar from separating. In margarines, especially those containing high levels of fat (>75%), lecithin is added as an 'anti-spattering' agent for shallow frying.

 Amylase: Amylase enzymes finds use in bread making and to break down complex sugars such as starch (found in flour) into simple sugars. Yeast then feeds on these simple sugars and converts it into the waste products of alcohol and CO2. This imparts flavour and causes the bread to rise. While Amylase enzymes are found naturally in yeast cells, it takes time for the yeast to produce enough of these enzymes to break down significant quantities of starch in the bread. This is the reason for long fermented doughs such as sour dough. Modern bread making techniques have included amylase enzymes (often in the form of malted barley) into bread improver thereby making the bread making process faster and more practical for commercial use.

When used as a food additive Amylase has E number E1100, and may be derived from swine pancreas or mould mushroom.

Workers in factories that work with amylase for any of the above uses are at increased risk of occupational asthma. 5-9% of bakers have a positive skin test, and a fourth to a third of bakers with breathing problems are hypersensitive to amylase.

Protease: I couldn’t find on Wikepedia what this food additive does, but it did say that protease is used in many laundry detergents. Interesting!

Papain: Its utility is in breaking down tough meat fibers and has been utilized for thousands of years in its native South America. It is sold as a component in powdered meat tenderizer available in most supermarkets. Papain, in the form of a meat tenderizer such as Adolph's, made into a paste with water, is also a home remedy treatment for jellyfish, bee, yellow jacket (wasps) stings, mosquito bites, and possibly stingray wounds, breaking down the protein toxins in the venom. It is also the main ingredient in Stop Itch and Stop Itch Plus, a DermaTech Laboratories first aid cream popular in Australia.

Papain can be used to dissociate cells in the first step of cell culture preparations. A 10-minute treatment of small tissue pieces (less than 1 mm cubed) will allow papain to begin breaking down the extracellular matrix molecules holding the cells together. After 10 minutes, the tissue should be treated with a protease inhibitor solution to stop the protease action (if left untreated papain's activity will lead to complete lysis of the cells). The tissue must then be triturated (passed quickly up and down through a Pasteur pipette) in order to break up the pieces of tissue into a single cell suspension.

It is also used as an ingredient in various enzymatic debriding preparations, notably Accuzyme. These are used in the care of some chronic wounds to clean up dead tissue.

Papain can also be found as an ingredient in some toothpastes or mints as teeth-whitener. Its whitening effect in toothpastes and mints however is minimal, because the papain is present in low concentrations, and will be quickly diluted by saliva. It would take several months of using the whitening product to have noticeably whiter teeth.

So there you have it, some ingredients are used in laundry detergents, are made from swine pancreas or mould mushroom or used to clean up dead tissue, yummy!  Oh, don't get me wrong, I have all sorts of convinient foods in our pantry and I am eating these ingredients as well.  But this is something to think about...

I will post my menu for the week later today, but for now, think about what you eat and where it comes from.