The Ins and Outs of Coconut Oil

November 7, 2014 / Kake2Kale | Culinary Travel Adventures

Did you buy a jar of coconut oil because everyone is telling you it has soooo many benefits and you should jump on the coconut oil band wagon? Now your jar is in the pantry, but you remember that its got a reputation as being a bad fat. Instead of using it, you eye it suspiciously as your hand reaches past it for the good ole olive oil. Fear not, I am here to answer your queries about the controversy around coconut oil.

Coconut oil has received bad press because it was studied years ago, but the oil that was used was hydrogenated. As we now know, anytime you hydrogenate an oil it turns into a trans fat, which we should all stay away from. So, naturally, those studies came to the conclusion that coconut oil was bad for you.

Some of the benefits of coconut oil are that it is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-parasitic, anti-fungal, and it also fights yeast (candida), because of its high lauric acid content. Coconut oil contains about 50% lauric acid. But, isn’t coconut oil a saturated fat and isn’t saturated fat bad for you? It is a saturated fat, but not all saturated fats are created equal. Coconut oil’s fat is made up of medium chain triglycerides (MCT), which behave differently in the body from other saturated fats. MCT’s get metabolized quickly and doesn’t get stored as fat, but gets converted directly into energy. There have also been studies done where high amounts of MCT’s help reverse Alzheimer’s. A doctor, whose husband was diagnosed with the disease, wrote the book ‘Alzheimer’s Disease: What If There Was a Cure?’ to document how adding coconut oil to her husband’s diet cured him.

Apart from the occasional times that you pull it out for frying and perhaps use as a moisturizer, what else is there to do with that fabulous jar of coconut oil that’s just sitting on your shelf like a Ferrari in a garage full of Chevettes?

Below are some of my favourite ways to use coconut oil. The following three recipes are vegan, gluten free and dairy free:

Dulse-licious Popcorn serves one hungry snacker

Ingredients:

1/3 cup popcorn
1 T melted coconut oil
1 ½ T Red Star nutritional yeast
1 T dulse flakes
sea salt to taste

Directions:

Pop the corn kernels in which ever fashion you desire, I use a hot air popper.
Melt the coconut oil.
Then pour oil over the popped corn, sprinkle with nutritional yeast, dulse flakes and salt.
Devour while watching your favourite movie.

Cheezy Toast* makes one slice
Ingredients:

1 slice of bread (Gluten Free if you wish)
½ T coconut oil
½ T Red Star nutritional yeast
pinch of sea salt

Directions:

Spread coconut oil on top of bread, then sprinkle yeast and sea salt on top.
Put in toaster oven for about 3 minutes.

Voila, delicious crispy cheesiness!

* When you see the words cheez or cheezy, most of the time it means there is no cheese in it, but still has cheesy flavour. Note there is a cheese cracker out there with the “z” spelling. But if you are in a health food store and see “z” spelling, chances are it is dairy free.

5 minute Chocolate Mousse serves 4
Ingredients:

I can (398 ml or 14 oz) pumpkin puree
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup maple syrup
¼ cup coconut oil
½ small avocado (mashed)
½ t vanilla extract
½ t cinnamon
½ t sea salt
sesame seeds for sprinking on top (optional)

Directions:

Put all ingredients into a blender and blend on high for 30 sec. or more if needed.
Portion into pretty bowls and serve. At this time of year we have pumpkins of all sizes everywhere you go, so I served the mousse in a hollowed out mini-pumpkin.
Note: This recipe was inspired by Must Have Been Something I Ate by Peggy Kotsopoulos.

Other Superfoods in my recipes:
Coconut oil: see above.
Red Star Nutritional Yeast: Full of B vitamins, nutritional yeast is really good for vegans and vegetarians because it has B 12, which comes mostly from animal products. I often use this as a substitute for grated cheese.
Dulse: High in vitamins and minerals, iodine (good for thyroid). Removes heavy metals from the body.
Pumpkin: High in Vitamin A, lutein, cancer fighting antioxidant and also beta carotene which is good for eye health. High in fiber as well.
Cocoa: High in vitamin B’s and magnesium, both of which supports the nervous system. It also has phenylethylamine, which stirs up happy feelings, and releases stress.
Avocado: Contains monosaturated fat which may help reduce bad cholesterol. It also contains lots of vitamins, in particular C, B’s and E and also minerals.

Other ways I like to use coconut oil, besides putting them in smoothies and chocolate peanut butter cups, I also like to put them in my coffee. There is a trend going around and perhaps you’ve heard of it – Bulletproof coffee. It’s coffee made with fat, either grass fed butter or MCT (a form of coconut oil). Drinking Bulletproof coffee in the morning is supposed to give you energy that will last until lunch. So essentially lunch would be your first meal of the day.

Well, breakfast is my favourite meal of the day so I can’t give it up. But I do make my own version, which is just coffee and coconut oil that is blended making a creamy satisfying drink that gives me a good boost through the morning.

One thing to remember about coffee is that it freezes your digestive system, so I wait at least 20 minutes after I’ve had my coffee before eating.

As for buying coconut oil for cooking and consuming, I use organic virgin coconut oil. It will have more of a coconut aroma/flavour, which I like. The version without aroma will be refined, which means more processed. If the oil is just for moisturizing skin then non-organic is fine and is less costly.

I leave you with a beauty tip, that is – I have been making my own exfoliator with coconut oil, which works really well. It has lactic acid containing yogurt, which has moisturizing and exfoliating properties. Yogurt also helps with lightening spots, as does the lemon juice. Coconut oil is moisturizing of course.

Coconut Lemon Facial Polish/Mask single application

Ingredients:

1 t coconut oil
1/2 t sugar
1/4 t lemon juice
1 T plain yogurt

Directions:

Combine coconut oil, sugar and lemon juice, then apply to face and massage the paste into face with a circular motion. Avoiding eye area.
Smooth yogurt over the polish and let it sit for 10 minutes and then rinse it all off.
Use this once or twice a week.
If you have sensitive skin test on a small area by your jawline.

What I’ve shared is just the tip of the iceberg of all that coconut oil can do for you and what you can do with it, so I encourage you to crack the coconut shell wide open to find out more of its benefits for your insides and your outsides.

Eat healthy, live and look great! {Kake}

Getting our Hands Dirty in SoMa

October 31, 2014 / Kake2Kale | Culinary Travel Adventures / 1 Comment

How would you spend a couple of hours on a drizzly, gloomy day in Vancouver with a good friend?

Binge watch Game of Thrones?

Find pins to add to my Pinterest boards?

Curl up by the fire and devour this year’s Man Booker prize winner?

Polish my silverware (this would take 5 minutes)?

Nope, {Kale} and I did none of those, instead, we donned our rain gear and braved the wild terrain of South Main Street, also known as SoMa in Vancouver. It is a multi-ethnic neighbourhood that is rapidly shedding its rundown image and becoming trendier by the minute. Old junk shops, used book stores, and second-hand stores are giving way to funky new eateries, one-of-a kind designer boutiques, and modern food shops. There are still lots of original shops to find, and hopefully the hip and the modern won’t crowd them out.

{Kale} and I headed to SoMa with the sole purpose of finding superfoodie fare that we could only eat with our hands. Because some say that foods taste better when eaten with your hands. So, armed with {Kale’s} hand sanitizer, we went ready to get our hands dirty and to give our taste buds a thrill.

First stop was a shop that I have driven by numerous times and have always found their name, Yek O Yek, amusing. How can you forget a name like that! It is a Mediterranean grocery store that also sells pastries and serves hot food. While perusing the pastries our eyes immediately landed on a pastry version of Princess Leia’s hairstyle. It even had the requisite superfoods in the filling – cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots.

It is simply called the “Veggie Pie”. Because the filling is rolled into the filo pastry there is quite a good ratio of pastry to filling. My motto is – “you can never have too much pastry”. We declared it simply delicious when we took a bit. What a great deal as it was only $3.99 and the serving was generous. Once the pie was devoured, we pushed on.

The Fish Counter drew us in, because we could see people happily eating in the window. That is a good sign in and of itself. It is half seafood shop and half fish & chips counter. But besides fish & chips, they also serve tacos, Oyster Po Boy’s and more. For the sake of this post, we ordered the Salmonito, as it was one of the few items not deep-fried. This tasty tortilla was stuffed with superfoods, from the omega-3 rich salmon, to a slaw made with fennel, onion, and cilantro. The crunch of the slaw balanced out the tenderness of the fish. Even though we shared the Salmonito, it was a handful, as they were very generous with the salmon!

While we were waiting for our Salmonito we perused the seafood shop and saw they had a candied smoked sablefish…intriguing. Who hasn’t tried candied salmon? But sablefish? So we got a small piece and to be honest, it tasted very similar to candied salmon. Nonetheless, it was still scrumptious. We got our omega-3 dose for sure that day.

We saw this eye catching treat at Yek O Yek, called Bird’s Nest Pistachio Baklava, and just had to have it. It is aptly named, as it looks like delicate little eggs in a bird’s nest. It is a variation on the usual baklava that we normally see, with layers upon layers of filo, ground up nuts, honey and butter. This bird’s nest was less rich but just as satisfying, with the finely wrought circle of crispy filo cupping the honey drizzled whole superfood pistachios. Finger licking good!

The final place we bumbled into was Chocolaterie de la Nouvelle France, a mouthful to say, but if you are a serious chocolate connoisseur, this is the place pour vous! Having chocolate was the perfect way to our day, especially dark chocolate as it has a host of antioxidants, minerals and increases serotonin, which lifts your mood.

Once you are inside the shop you feel transported to a special place where you know they don’t take chocolate lightly. The décor is sparse in the compact space, with just a handful of chairs and tables. The chocolate is the star, whether in a display case or in wide-bellied glass jars. The owner makes them by hand and she really knows her stuff. You can tell she is passionate about what she does and it comes through in her chocolates. {Kale} and I decided to try her drinking chocolate (made with dark chocolate) with almond milk. I wanted to be adventurous and so I asked for my drinking chocolate to be infused with jasmine, as I love jasmine tea. My expectations weren’t too high, as I thought the pairing would be a little mismatched, but to my surprise the slight floral note to the chocolate was very uplifting. But I must say, though we each ordered the half size, it was plenty rich. {Kale} and I probably could’ve shared one order and be satisfied.

We each had a milk chocolate square. {Kale’s} was the coconut, almond and fleur de sel, and mine was the same but without the coconut. It was the perfect thickness, and melted in your mouth with the fleur de sel cutting through the sweetness of the chocolate. What a wonderful way to bring our hands-on adventure to a close. With our friendship and our bodies nourished, {Kale} and I bid a fond farewell and knew that not even the relentless Vancouver rain could dampen our spirits that day. C’est magnifique!

Eat healthy, live great! {Kake}

p.s. The places we mention above are just a small sample of places to explore in SoMa, which makes me want to go back sooner for another adventure.

I Dream of Cartems

October 10, 2014October 11, 2014 / Kake2Kale | Culinary Travel Adventures

I love donuts, OK, I said it. Who can resist deep fried dough drizzled with chocolate glaze, or dusted in cinnamon and sugar. Every major culture has their own version, from the Italian zeppole, to the French beignet. The Chinese even have different types, the savoury donut that is literally called an “oil stick”, or they have one similar to a cruller but puffy and round. As much as I love them, they are really just an occasional treat, unless it’s a donut from Cartems Donuterie. They take donuts to the next level.

The story of Cartems is the stuff of dreams, literally! Imagine you are in Korea teaching ESL, life is going along just fine and then one night you have a dream that you own a donut shop called Cartems. You wake up and you look up Cartems to see if it means anything, nope, nothing. But this dream sticks with you for a few years and one day you are back in your home country and what the heck, let’s make this dream a reality. This is what happened to the owner, Jordan, and now Cartems is a destination for visitors from around the world. With their use of local and organic ingredients and unique flavour combinations, they are considered to have the best donuts in Vancouver and we couldn’t agree more. Better yet, they have vegan, gluten free and baked donut options. How could you not like flavours such as Canadian Whiskey Bacon or Chocolate Pistachio Glaze? Check out Cartems’ story here:

{Kale} and I decided to focus on our favourite fall superfood, the pumpkin, for our next outing and showed up at Cartems with our fingers crossed that they would have a pumpkin donut. We were not disappointed. In fact their pumpkin donut, named Pumpkin Cheesecake, was truly inspired. It was filled with a pumpkin puree with cream cheese and then topped with a brown butter glaze and pecan crumble. The cream cheese they used wasn’t just any old cream cheese sold in foil bricks, it was a Neufchatel from Golden Ears, which is a local family owned artisanal cheese crafters. Oh boy was it scrumptious. The crunch of the crumble balanced nicely with the lusciousness of the filling. We were trying to describe our edible experience and agreed that eating the pumpkin donut was like eating a fluffy cloud! {Kale} and I practically inhaled our donuts, they were so good. We left Cartems with sharper eyesight and healthier skin from the antioxidants vitamin A, C and E, lutein and zeaxanthin from the pumpkin in the donut. What better way to nourish our bodies and our friendship than to spend a morning at Cartems!

May you all dream of donuts tonight. And, Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! – {Kake}

This is Rag’s hands, he is the pastry chef who is one of the founders of Cartems. “Love Pops” is his tribute to his father.

Keen for Zucchini

September 12, 2014 / Kake2Kale | Culinary Travel Adventures

Imagine you are a 10 year old girl from Hong Kong and tasting lots of strange food, like anemic cottage cheese, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, cheese with fruit, now throw in CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI CAKE??????? Chocolate with a vegetable? No, no, no! But once I had a bite and didn’t taste vegetable, just chocolate cake, my mind was boggled and intrigued. Later I realized zucchini essentially added moisture without flavour to the cake. This might have been one of my earliest lightbulb moments that delicious dessert can also mean healthy.

As part of the summer squash family, the zucchini, also known as a courgette in other parts of the world, orginated in Italy, hmmmm it seems {kale} and I are on an Italian theme this summer. We’ve got some growing to gigantic proportions as usual, because they grow so easily and sometimes we just forget the squash is secretly growing under their children’s umbrella sized leaves. It is best to eat them when they are smaller because they are sweeter, but alas. So with our bounty I’ve been making frittatas, baked zucchini sticks, zucchini muffins and stuffed zucchini blossoms.

One of the bonuses of having your own zucchini plant is having access to the blossoms. I remember the heavenly stuffed blossoms we had in Italy. The blossoms were filled with a creamy ricotta and then lightly breaded and fried. I did make a vegan version, substituting with tofu and mushrooms, which turned out quite nicely. But for a quick lunch, I dip the blossoms first in egg, then seasoned bread crumbs, and fry in a little oil. Now before you go and pluck off all the blossoms from your zucchini plant, pluck only the ones that do not have the actual zucchini ”fruit” growing out of them. These are considered the male flowers. They should be eaten on the same day as they are picked because of their delicate quality.

Years ago I had clipped a recipe out of a magazine that has served me well, a nutty seed quick bread. Hmmmm, what if I added zucchini to this classic. So I did and it turned out pretty well, I’ve cut down the sugar, but if more sweetness is needed, feel free to increase the sugar. I like to serve this bread with jam. And in this case, we’ve got {Kale’s} homemade blueberry jam.

The Superfoods in my recipe:
Zucchini – contain a high amount of vitamin C, vitamin B6, riboflavin, manganese, potassium and also lutein, which protects the eye against light damage and macular degeneration.
Black sesame seeds – are a good source of calcium, phosphorous, protein, magnesium, iron and is rich in vitamin E, which is an antioxidant. In Chinese medicine prescribed to reverse black hair going grey.
Pumpkin seeds – Good source of protein, minerals, Omega 3, tryptophan (which is an amino acid which helps with sleep). Because of the high amount of zinc in this seed, not only is it good for immune health, it can also have positive results for prostate health.
Flax – Has a high amount of Omega 3’s. High in soluble fibre, which lowers cholesterol, and a good of the bone strengthening mineral boron. Contains lignans which helps your body to rid itself of toxins ie. xenoestrogens (see broccoli). Make sure the flax seeds are ground/milled when you eat them, if not, the whole seed will just pass through your system undigested. Also, I store mine in the freezer, as they have oils in them and can go rancid quickly.

Zucchini Bread makes one 9” x 5 “ loaf

2 eggs
½ cup grapeseed oil (or any other vegetable oil)
1 cup light spelt flour
1 cup oat flour1/4 cup coconut sugar (can add more if desire)
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
1 cup grated zucchini
1/3 cup chopped nuts*
2 T. each: flax, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds*

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 9″x5″ loaf pan with parchment paper.
Whisk egg and oil together in a large bowl.
Combine the dry ingredients in another bowl.
Then add the dry to the wet ingredients until just mixed.
Then add the zucchini, nuts, and seeds to the batter, stir to mix.
Pour into the loaf pan and bake 50-60 mintues, or until toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Cool 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

*Feel free to substitute other nuts and seeds.
Eat well, live great! {Kake}