D is for Vitamin D

 or You Won't Get Your Vitamin D from Fruits and Vegetables

"Just the facts, ma'am just the facts." 

--Vitamin D helps with calcium absorption and the building of strong bones. It also plays major roles in the life cycle of human cells.

--Our skin synthesizes Vitamin D with exposure to UVB rays in sunlight. (A window filters these out, so laying in a sunbeam with your cat in the living room won't work. Don't ask me if I've tried it.)

--We can also get Vitamin D from dietary sources including eggs, fish, and meat, as well as fortified foods and supplements. 

--It is not found in plants except:

    -Microalgae - fishes' diet of this is thought to be one of the reasons that fish are high         in Vitamin D

    -Mushrooms (technically not a plant, but a fungi) - especially wild ones that have been             exposed to sunlight.

    -Yeast - another fungi

    -Nightshade family plants (tomato, potato, eggplant, etc.) - it's been found in trace amounts in the leaves, but not in the parts we eat.

So basically, the only way you are going to get Vitamin D from fruits and vegetables is being in the sun while you are growing, picking, or eating them.

Disclaimer: This is a very simplified version of Vitamin D information. For example, there are two kinds of Vitamin D (D2, D3) that are formed and act in different ways. There have been many health claims for Vitamin D that have not panned out in studies, but may in future studies. Vitamin D in flora and fauna is a very complex subject which would be best understood with a good knowledge of organic chemistry and plant processes, neither of which I have. So I tried to stick to generalities to avoid confusion - mostly mine. :)

And one last thing. Ward and I tried to get a little Vitamin D recently, but unfortunately, we didn't beat the rain.

We visited High Rock which is on the Appalachian Trail in northern Maryland.  Ward had visited there before during a hike, but I hadn't. It has a beautiful overlook and is a popular hang gliding spot, but we saw no one trying to do that in the rain and fog. Now about the graffiti. I'm not sure how it started, but it is definitely covered in it. I am opposed to graffiti, especially on natural features, but if I'm being honest, I found it colorful and pretty.

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Sources:

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324590#getting-enough-vitamin-d

https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/can-vitamin-d3-come-plants/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3651966/#s1title

C is for Cucumbers

These English cucumbers actually have Asian origins.

Yesterday, I said that I was going to talk about a vegetable today--or maybe not. Cucumbers fit that bill since they are one of those items of produce that can be considered a fruit or a vegetable depending if you use a botanical or food use definition. But did you know that by law, cucumbers are vegetables? That's based on a Supreme Court decision in the Nix vs Hedden case in 1893 involving the Tariff Act of 1883 which placed a tax on imported vegetables but not fruits. The case focused on tomatoes and whether they were a fruit or vegetable. The court decided that the common use of the tomato as a vegetable would be the definition for the tariffs not the botanical definition. They also clarified the standing for cucumbers, beans, squash, and peas as vegetables. (Are peas and beans seeds or vegetables?)

And since I was on the subject of cucumbers, I decided to see if I could clarify the whole burping subject. It turns out that the naturally occurring, bitter chemical cucurbitacin in cucumbers is the culprit. Cucurbitacin causes stomach distress in animals to serve as a deterrent from being eaten before it has time to produce seeds. Over the years, cucumbers have been bred to contain less cucurbitacin and be milder tasting and friendlier to the digestive tract. Cucumbers advertised as burpless produce less cucurbitacin especially during hot and dry weather when production of it increases. (Note to self: Make sure to water cucumber plants when it is hot and dry.) Also, cucurbitacin tends to concentrate in the ends, so cutting them off may help with the bitter taste.

One last thing for this cucumber post, below I've copied a post I did a couple of years ago about cucumber soup. Soon the cucumbers will be everywhere and this might be a way to use some of them up. Enjoy.

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Cucumber Soup

Sunday I posted about cucumbers I had been given and the the cold soup I made from them. Anne at Cooking and All that Jazz asked for the recipe. I almost decided that the posting could wait for another day when I wasn't so wrung out from the heat. But there's not a break in the weather in the foreseeable future, so now is as good of a time as tomorrow or the next day, or the next day.  Too bad my husband finished the rest of the soup, because some cool cucumber soup would hit the spot right now. And I would have had a picture for you.  Oh, well. It was very easy, so I'll make some more. Here's the original recipe that came from Epicurious.com. I've cut and pasted so spacing, etc. may look a little wonky.

YIELD

 

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

1. • 5 cucumbers
   • 1/2 cup chopped parsley
   • 6 scallions, chopped
   • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
   • 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
   • 1 quart buttermilk
   • 1 pint yogurt
   • Salt and freshly ground pepper

   • PREPARATION

     1. 1. Peel cucumbers and cut them in half, scraping out seeds. Sprinkle the cucumbers with salt and let them stand 30 minutes. Drain excess water.
        2. Chop the cucumbers coarsely and put the pieces in the blender along with scallions, dill, lemon juice, buttermilk, and yogurt. Blend at high speed. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Chill well before serving.

My sister gave me this recipe. She and I both modified it with the these results. 

She used two small onions instead of 6 scallions. This had little effect on the taste, but the green tops were not there to add color. She left out all of the parsley. That did change the taste of the soup, but it did not suffer. It was just different. She used 7 oz of Greek yogurt instead of 1 pint of plain yogurt. These are roughly equivalent and didn't change things much. She did not add the whole quart of buttermilk.  She only added about 1 1/2 pints of buttermilk because she thought the soup was already too thin. Her version was very good and was both refreshing and filling at the same time.

I changed a few things, also. My husband doesn't like onions, so I left out the scallions/onions altogether. However, I did add in all of the parsley. The parsley was pretty strongly flavored so it more than made up for the lack of the onion. In fact, I may add just a bit less next time I make it. It did add a nice light green color to the soup. I also did not add all of the buttermilk. I think that would have cut down on the cucumber taste too much and made the soup too thin.

My sister used her food processor to blend things and I used my blender. Both worked well.

I think this would be a fairly forgiving recipe to tweak with what you have or what you like.

I do know that I am going to make some again very soon. As soon as I get more cucumbers.

B is for Blueberries

Did you know that blueberries are the only naturally occurring blue food? You probably did. But did you know they were native to North America? I didn't, but I had never wondered about that before. Sometimes the world I live in is very limited. :)

We are very lucky that we get to pick from Uncle Billy's blueberry bushes every year. Over time he has carefully tended to them so he has several large, prolific ones. Blueberry season here starts at the end of June and goes for several weeks. During that time, we have blueberries for snacks, with our cereal, and some go into the freezer. However, my favorite way to eat them is in a pie mixed with sour cherries. I love a fruit pie.

I have also gone blueberry picking in Maine with Mary Ellen's family. We picked wild blueberries which were much smaller than the cultivated ones we find at Uncle Billy's house. Some of us were picking individual berries and others were using a blueberry rake which "grabs" the berries and leaves the stems and leaves. That was fun to use. I have also eaten wild blueberries while hiking. They were an especially welcome treat and a good excuse for me to get others to stop when I was tiring out before they were.

No discussion of picking blueberries in Maine would be complete without a mention of Wally's favorite book when he was little, Blueberries For Sal by Robert McCloskey. A favorite of mind, too. One reason is that I like to say, "kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk,"  when Sal drops berries into her bucket. :)

That's about it for today. See you tomorrow when I will switch from fruits to a vegetable. Or will I... 

A is for Apple

When children are learning the alphabet, the letter A is often featured with an apple. Did you ever wonder why a word that actually makes the sound of A (long A as I was taught) wasn't picked like ape? Oh, well. I guess it all works out because most kids eventually learn how to read.

But I digress. We're here today for me to ramble on about apples. Apples may be my favorite fruit. There's nothing better than a slightly tart, sweet, juicy apple.  If given a choice, I prefer my apples raw as opposed to cooked--unless, of course, they are cooked in a pie. 

In my apple world, life used to be simple. When I went to the grocery store to buy apples, my choices were red delicious, yellow delicious, and granny smith. Now it seems that there is a new kind every time I turn around. However, it's just not my imagination. There are over 7500 varieties of apples grown around the world and about 2500 of those are grown in the US. For many, many years, the red delicious apple was the most popular kind in the US. I never quite understood that because I thought they were tasteless. However, Uncle Billy grew red delicious apples for a while and I got to sample one right off the tree. It had a subtle sweet taste. Quite nice. Recently, the gala apple has overtaken the red delicious as the most popular variety in the US. The top five varieties are gala, red delicious, granny smith, fuji, and honey crisp.

When I was growing up, my apple world was simpler still. My father would pick up dropped apples that people would give him from their trees. He would bring home bushels of them that we would make into applesauce. Early harvest were his favorite variety with their tart taste. During the fall, we went through periods when my sister and I would have to make a canner load of applesauce every day after school until they were gone. 

Apples waiting to be made into apple butter at the Apple Harvest Festival
in the eastern panhandle of WV.

If we got apples from the store, we paid particular attention to golden delicious because they were discovered in West Virginia, not that far from where we lived. The golden delicious apple was found on the Mullins farm in Clay County and Mr. Mullin sold it to Stark Brothers who started marketing it in 1914. They called it golden delicious to market it with their red delicious variety. The golden delicious variety may have been derived from the golden grimes apple which was discovered in another part of West Virginia in 1832. West Virginia continues its apple tradition today with the eastern panhandle of the state being a large apple grower.

One of our old apple trees.

So what does my apple world look like these days? I have a gala apple most days. Gala is my apple of choice because of decent flavor and good prices. Unfortunately, even though we have two apple trees, they have not yielded more than an apple or two for various reasons, so we buy all of our apples. 

And as for what my apple world might look like in the future?  Last year we planted a small liberty apple tree that we hope will yield nicely for us in a few years.  

I think I'm about done with my apple ramblings. I will leave you with this one bit of apple trivia.

What was Johnny Appleseed's real name?

(John Chapman)

A to Z Blogging

Against my better judgement, I have decided to participate in the Blogging A to Z challenge this year. I have done it in the past and found it enjoyable because I often write about things that I might not have thought to write about during regular times.  That's some of the time. The rest of it, I get stressed trying to keep up with daily posting. I know, it's totally voluntary, and nothing bad will happen if I miss a day here or there, but when I commit to something, I like to follow through. So we'll see how it goes. I will either finish it totally as I have done other years, complaining along the way, or I will have personal growth and relax even when I miss a day of posting.

Many people have a theme when they do this, but I never have. However, this year I'm going to try a theme to see if that helps with posting. When I can't fall asleep, I play word games in my head often naming something for each letter of the alphabet--my version of counting sheep. My favorite category when I do this is Fruits and Vegetables. So that's what I've chosen. Join me each day, if you like, to see what I can come up with as I go through an alphabet of fruits and vegetables. 

See you again on April Fool's Day, otherwise known as The Beginning of the Blogging A to Z month.