What is the significance of Fat Tuesday?

“Mardi Gras” is French for “Fat Tuesday,” and that this festive occasion is the last day before the Catholic observance of Lent.

Lent is a period of penitence before Easter. In the early Christian Church, the ritual of baptism was primarily performed on Easter Sunday, and people would fast and pray for several days or more before they were baptized. This practice and similar traditions grew into the Lent season that lasts 40 days before Easter. In the Middle Ages, faithful Christians eliminated meat, eggs, milk, and other luxurious foods from their diet during Lent, and spent additional time in prayer. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, so named because priests place an ash mark on worshippers’ foreheads to symbolize mortality.

Human nature being what it is, people began holding indulgent pre-Lent celebrations at an early date. The word “carnival” comes from the Latin for “farewell to flesh” — so Carnival (another name for Mardi Gras) can be seen as a time to say good-bye to fleshly pleasures that will soon be denied. Early Christians in Rome used the old pagan festivals as a model for their Carnival, and European Christians continued the celebration. The day before Ash Wednesday became known as Fat Tuesday because people indulged in the meat and fatty foods that they would forsake during Lent.

Fat Tuesday is also known as Shrove Tuesday. The word “shrove” is derived from the Latin scribere, meaning “to prescribe penance,” a fitting description for the day before Lent. Pancakes somehow became associated with this day, perhaps because people needed to use up the eggs and lard that were forbidden during Lent.

Article Source: Yahoo.com

The “Bells” Toll for You

Bell peppers are packed with several nutrients. They are a good source of vitamin C, thiamine, vitamin B6, beta carotene, and folic acid. Bell peppers also contain a large amount of phytochemicals that have exceptional antioxidant activity. Those phytochemicals include chlorogenic acid, zeaxanthin, and coumeric acid. When comparing the nutrient values of the different bell peppers, studies have shown that red bell peppers have significantly higher levels of nutrients than green. Red bell peppers also contain lycopene, which is a carotene that helps to protect against cancer and heart disease.

Possibly due to their vitamin C and beta carotene content, bell peppers have been shown to be protective against cataracts. Just like other nutrient-dense vegetables, bell peppers contain many different powerful phytochemicals. Bell peppers have also been shown to prevent blood clot formation and reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes probably due to their content of substances such as vitamin C, capsaicin, and flavonoids. Although chili peppers contain a higher amount of those substances, bell peppers should still be promoted especially for individuals with elevated cholesterol levels.

Sources:

Murray , Michael N.D.. The Encyclopedia Of Healing Foods.
New York: Atria Books, 2005.

Centers For Disease Control And Prevention-5 A Day. National Agricultural Library-USDA. usda.gov.

Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia

On Top of Spaghetti: A Few Facts About Meatballs

Meatballs anyone? Most people love em!

It’s the traditional start to the Sunday dinner in most Italian families, served warm with fresh mozzarella cheese, crisp italian bread and fried hot peppers. Whether they are fresh from the pot, or simply gracing a heap of spaghetti, nothing beats a meatball!

Here’s an amazing fact about making meatballs: Give ten people the same basic recipe and each batch will turn out differently. Go figure…

No one really knows the true origin of the meatball but in an 2003 article entitled “Ask the Chef” John Piso describes it this way:

“Meatballs originated in some Italian’s kitchen when she found that she had some ground beef left over. Hamburger meat was popularized at the turn of the last century, so it makes sense to assume that meatballs started then, as did meat loaf. I could just see some nice Italian housewife ready to make a tomato sauce and find some left over ground meat in her ice-a -box-a. Always having eggs, parsley, garlic, cheese, and hard bread around, she must have felt a surge of lightning that hit her with this idea. Ground meat, garlic, cheese, breadcrumbs, parsley, and some beaten egg to hold it all together. Fry it in oil; drop it in the sauce and Bingo! Two courses in one pot – pure genius!”

Then comes what I call the “Christopher Columbus” question about meatballs…Why are meatballs round? Because it’s a meat-ball, silly. Actually, if meatballs were flat, they’d break apart when stirred in tomato sauce. Hand size is also a factor. Big hand, big meatball, small hand, small meatball.

Wikipedia, The Free Online Encyclopedia, describes a meatball as “a generally spherical mass of minced meat and other ingredients, such as bread or breadcrumbs, minced onion, various spices or eggs, usually fried in a pan or baked in an oven. Except for shape and size (there’s usually more than one meatball per serving), meatballs are very similar to meatloaf.”

That may be half true. A meatball is only similar to a meatloaf because of the ingredients that cement it togther. The meatloaf is a traditional American dish, made in a loaf form, sometimes stuffed, sliced and covered in brown gravy. A meatball is the stuff that dreams are made of because there’s a nostagia factor here: I recall sleeping in on a Sunday morning and waking to the most delicious smell in the world, then entering the kitchen and hearing that sweet sound of meatballs sizzling in a frying pan….it’s always so hard to resist grabbing one. Can’t get that feeling from a meatloaf!

 

Go “Bananas” and Spice Up Your Next Johnny’s Pizza

“Superfoods Rx” author Steven Pratt recommends peppers as a food that is as unusually good for you as fast food hamburgers are unusually bad. “Good Eats” host Alton Brown recommends the sweet and spicy banana pepper for dishes ranging from stir fry to ice cream. Regardless of what you do with your banana peppers, conscious eating requires knowing just what’s going on inside these colorful veggies.

Serving and Calorie Information

One banana pepper, approximately 4 inches long, brings 9 calories to the table. Only one of these calories comes from fat, reports nutrition resource website The Calorie Counter. According to Brown, typical recipes will call for anywhere between half a pepper to two or three. Printable Grocery List List is created from week’s worth of recipes. Organized by dept. www.FoodontheTable.com

Fat Profile

A typical serving of banana pepper carries one-tenth of one gram of fat, which is relatively low, compared with other foods. The fat in banana peppers is polyunsaturated fat, the healthy fat that contributes to production of heart-friendly HDL cholesterol.

Carbohydrate Profile

Only 1.8 g of a 30-g banana pepper consist of carbohydrates. That carbohydrate load consists of 1.1 grams of dietary fiber, known to contribute to circulatory and digestive health. Peppers in general are sweeter than many other veggies, and banana peppers are sweeter than many other peppers. Of the remaining carbs, 0.6 g are from simple sugars.

Vitamin and Mineral Content

Like most peppers, banana peppers are high in vitamin C. One serving provides 45 percent of the recommended daily allowance. It also delivers 2 percent of your vitamin A, 1 percent of your iron and half a gram of protein. Banana peppers are low in sodium, carrying only 4.3 milligrams per serving. They deliver 2 percent of the recommended allowance of potassium.

Micronutrients

Pratt’s research suggests that banana peppers contain micronutrients, especially carotenoids, that contribute to overall health. Specific effects of carotenoids include decreased risk of cancer and reduced rates of heart disease. They contain the same micronutrient found in carrots, and they also contribute to eye health.

Scoville Heat Units

The Scoville heat scale measures how spicy a food is by rating the capsaicin content, giving each food a rating from zero, not spicy at all, to a maximum of 16 million. Law enforcement pepper spray ranges in the 500,000 to 2 million range on the Scoville scale. Banana peppers rate a Scoville range of 100 to 500, spicier than bell peppers and less spicy than Anaheim green chiles.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/254286-nutritional-value-of-banana-peppers/#ixzz1DZdT7fjQ

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Where Did Stromboli Originate?

Stromboli, often referred to as a stuffed pizza or a boli, is a type of turnover filled with mozzarella cheese along with various fillings, often pepperoni. The dough is pizza dough and a stromboli is cooked in the same way as regular pizza. Stromboli is reported to have originated in Essington, just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at Romano’s Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria, by Nazzareno Romano. There, William Schofield supposedly gave it the name, after the movie “Stromboli,” starring Ingrid Bergman. Other sources claim the stromboli was the brainchild of Mike Aquino, Sr. and that he created it in Spokane, Washington in 1954, while other sources say that it originated in Stromboli, an island in Italy.

Stromboli are similar to calzones, but traditionally the two are distinct dishes, as stromboli usually contain only mozzarella cheese, while calzones contain a cheese mixture (often including ricotta) and tend to lack marinara sauce. Moreover, stromboli is rolled to resemble a loaf, whereas a calzone is folded to resemble a semi-circle.

Health Benefits of Pizza Toppings: Mushrooms




Mushrooms have been used for thousands of years both as food and for medicinal purposes. They are often classified as a vegetable or a herb, but they are actually fungi. While there are over 14,000 mushrooms, only about 3,000 are edible, about 700 have known medicinal properties, and fewer than one percent are recognized as poisonous.

Many people enjoy going to the woods to pick their own mushrooms. However, identifying mushrooms can be a real challenge. The color, shape and size of the fruiting body can vary tremendously. It is important to properly identify the mushroom that is collected, so as to avoid a poisonous species.

The Pharaohs prized mushrooms as a delicacy, and the Greeks believed that mushrooms provided strength for warriors in battle. The Romans regarded mushrooms as a gift from God and served them only on festive occasions, while the Chinese treasured them as a health food.

Today, mushrooms are enjoyed for their flavor and texture. They can impart their own flavor to food or take on the flavor of other ingredients. Their flavor normally intensifies during cooking, and their texture holds up well to usual cooking methods, including stir-frying and sauteing.

It is popular to add mushrooms to soups, salads, and sandwiches, or to use them as an appetizer. They also add an appealing touch to vegetable-based casseroles and stews. In the US, mushroom extracts are increasingly being used in nutraceutical products and sports drinks.

Mushrooms contain about 80 to 90 percent water, and are very low in calories (only 100 cal/oz). They have very little sodium and fat, and 8 to 10 percent of the dry weight is fiber. Hence, they are an ideal food for persons following a weight management program or a diet for hypertensives.

Mushrooms are an excellent source of potassium, a mineral that helps lower elevated blood pressure and reduces the risk of stroke. One medium portabella mushroom has even more potassium than a banana or a glass of orange juice. One serving of mushrooms also provides about 20 to 40 percent of the daily value of copper, a mineral that has cardioprotective properties.

Mushrooms are a rich source of riboflavin, niacin, and selenium. Selenium is an antioxidant that works with vitamin E to protect cells from the damaging effects of free radicals. Male health professionals who consumed twice the recommended daily intake of selenium cut their risk of prostate cancer by 65 percent. In the Baltimore study on Aging, men with the lowest blood selenium levels were 4 to 5 times more likely to have prostate cancer compared to those with the highest selenium levels.

The most commonly consumed mushroom in the United States is Agaricus bisporus or the white button mushroom. A. bisporus has two other forms – Crimini or brown mushrooms with a more earthy flavor and firmer texture, and Portabella mushrooms with a large umbrella-shaped cap and meaty flavor.

All three mushrooms, but especially the fresh button mushrooms, possess substances that inhibit the activity of aromatase (an enzyme involved in estrogen production), and 5-alpha-reductase (an enzyme that converts testosterone to DHT). The latest findings show that white button mushrooms can reduce the risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer. An extract of white button mushrooms decreased cell proliferation and decreased tumor size in a dose-dependent manner. The chemoprotective effect can be seen with an intake of about 100 grams (3.5 ozs) of mushrooms per day.

Shiitake mushrooms have been used for centuries by the Chinese and Japanese to treat colds and flu. Lentinan, a beta-glucan isolated from the fruiting body of shiitake mushrooms, appears to stimulate the immune system, help fight infection, and demonstrates anti-tumor activity.