Modern Wife

Tag: farmers market

  • Quail Eggs

    Quail Eggs

    Aren’t quail eggs cute? Five of these quail eggs would have the caloric equivalent of one large chicken egg. They’re rich in vitamin A, choline, selenium, and iron. (Source)

    You may encounter raw quail eggs on top of tobiko in fine sushi restaurants. It makes my mouth water just typing those words up.

    I bought mine at my local farmers market. At home, I hardboil them for 3 minutes, peel, and serve with soup. Here’s a quick recipe that is done in minutes. You’ll spend more time peeling those quail eggs than cooking this meal. Ya!

    Noodles with Quail Eggs

    Miso Noodles with Quail Eggs

    Ingredients:
    1 tablespoon dulse
    2 tablespoons miso
    3 cups water
    6 oz. soba noodles
    1 nardello sweet pepper, chopped
    hardboiled quail eggs
    green onion

    Bring water to boil on high heat. Add dulse and miso. Once boiling, add noodles. Cook for 4 minutes. Toss in sweet pepper and quail eggs at the last minute. Serve with green onion garnish. Serves 3.

    Lunchtime!

  • What diet does Hulda Clark recommend?

    What diet does Hulda Clark recommend?

    Although Hulda Clark wrote a lot about food in her books, she did not recommend a particular diet. Whether you are on an omnivorous, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, paleo, or any other kind of special diet, you can benefit from Hulda Clark’s lifestyle recommendations.

    Let me simplify the rather dense books she published. Hulda Clark discovered that all diseases have only a combination of two causes: parasites and pollution. The more we avoid parasites and pollution, the healthier we can be.

    We can avoid parasites by washing our produce well. Lugol’s Modified Sodium Iodine can be used as a veggie wash. The Oxygenius Ozonator can also be used to purify water for drinking or for soaking fruits and vegetables. Ozone is FDA-approved for killing micro-organisms. For foods that cannot be soaked in water, such as liquids or cooked food, the Food Zappicator emits a positive offset square wave frequency in 1 kHz to shatter micro-organisms to death.

    Pollution in food is not as easy to avoid. Almost everything that is manufactured for mass consumption is tainted with toxic chemicals to some degree. At the very least, the manufacturing machines are greased with petroleum instead of the more expensive food grade oils. Bottles and jars are required by law to be sterilized with a petroleum solvent before food and drinks can be bottled in them. You can thank lobbyists for Big Chemical Companies for that.

    Then there are the ingredients of mass produced food themselves. If the long list of ingredients is populated with chemical names, you can bet it’s more pollution than nutrition. For instance, propylene glycol can be found on the ingredients list of many baked goods available in grocery stores. (Any chemical with “prop” in it means it is petroleum-derived.)

    Hulda Clark’s books go into it in more detail. Try not to get overwhelmed with the amount of information she lays out for you. If you are able to change one habit a week, think how far along you will be in a year… two years… twenty years! That’s how long it has been for me. I came across Hulda Clark’s book, “The Cure For All Diseases,” in 1997 and boy, did it changed my life!

    A few guidelines for food shopping:

    1. Certified Organic. This means the food is as free from toxic chemicals as it can get based on industry standards. For meats, this means the animal is not injected with hormones and antibiotics. This also assumes the fruit and vegetable is non-GMO.
    2. Kosher. This means the food satisfies the strict requirements of Jewish law.
    3. Farmers Markets are an excellent place to buy your food from. Bring home produce with no stickers! And you can talk to the farmers themselves about their process.
    4. Non-GMO.  This means that the food is not genetically modified. It still can have pesticides and other chemicals.

    Eat a variety of foods as close to nature as possible. Avoid processed foods. Use the Hulda Clark Zapper.

    Got any more questions about the Hulda Clark lifestyle? Leave me a comment below. I’ll try my best to answer it as soon as I can.

  • Duck Eggs

    Duck Eggs

    I received a flat of fresh duck eggs as a gift!

    I grew up eating duck eggs in the Philippines. The infamous balut is hardboiled fertilized duck egg, with a half-formed baby chick on one side and a bright yellow veiny yolk on the other. Begin by cracking the balut on one end to make a little hole, sprinkle some salt in there and suck on the soup. Then remove the rest of the shell, salt to taste and dig in. I’ve never eaten the chick part, but the yolk is rich and protein-packed goodness in a gulp. There is also a hard white “bone” in there. Don’t eat that.

    Penoy is another duck egg delicacy. It is unfertilized duck eggs, not as gruesome as its counterpart. It is all yellow yolk the whole egg through. It comes either soupy or dry. The soupy kind was incubated in rice hay for 12 days. Incubated for more than 12 days and it dries out for those who prefer to eat the dry kind.

    I received a flat of #duck #eggs as a gift. That’s 30 eggs!

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    The duck eggs I received were unfertilized and not incubated. They were simple farm fresh duck eggs, and the first thing I did was hard boil some of them. Same as chicken eggs, I fill a small pot with water to cover the eggs, set the stove on high until the water reaches a rolling boil, then turn the burner off. I let the eggs sit in hot water for 15 minutes, then pour the water out and rinse the eggs in cold water.

    Hard boiled #duck #egg. A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    I love eggs of all kinds. They are perfection!

    Peeling a hard boiled #duck #egg. A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    Look at how much of the egg is yolk, and how rich and creamy it is. Duck eggs are bigger and more nutritious than chicken eggs. It has 52% more vitamin B12, 13% more selenium, 10% more iron, almost twice as much omega-3s than chicken eggs. The list goes on. Whatever nutrition chicken eggs have, duck eggs have more of it. And because there isn’t a huge duck egg industry, it is more likely that duck eggs come from humanely raised ducks that get to run around free at the farm.

    That #yolk is a beauty. Flavorful too! Hard boiled #duck #egg.

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    Duck eggs can be cooked every way chicken eggs are cooked. We used it for homemade pasta, green egg sandwich, and ice cream.

    4 #duck #egg #yolks. Can you guess what I’m making?

    A photo posted by Modern Wife (@modernwife) on

    So if you ever come across duck eggs at farmers markets or health food stores, jump on it. This richer and more nutritious egg is worth a try.

    Duck Eggs

  • To Haggle or Not to Haggle

    To Haggle or Not to Haggle

    When I was in the Philippines, I got a chance to check out the farmers market at Centris Station in Quezon City with my Mom. It is bigger than any of the farmers markets I’ve ever been to in the United States. From where the taxi dropped us off there were many stalls selling clothing and home items before we got to the cooked food and then to the produce and raw meats. Several of the produce stalls advertise certified organic fruit and vegetables. There was raw honey from Tagaytay and honeycomb in chunks brought in from Benguet. We had a field day shopping.

    What threw me off a bit was my Mom’s aggressive haggling style. I remember going to the wet market with my Mom as a child, but at that time I didn’t notice the finer points of market interaction. My senses were too immersed in the busy and noisy market, agog at the tables of meat being fed into metal grinders, old ladies cleaning fish on thick chopping blocks, colorful fruits and vegetables piled high.

    Now at Centris Station, my Mom haggled with every vendor she had contact with. She asked for a lower price, eyed products suspiciously, as if it wasn’t as good a quality as the value it was being quoted. If she didn’t get a lower price, she would ask that she get more than what was weighed. It made me cringe. Yet, it made me wonder if this was how it was supposed to be.

    I remember shopping in Thailand and the vendor being taken aback by me paying the first price she quoted. That “You’re supposed to haggle” scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian comes to mind.

    I don’t get to flex my haggling muscles too often. Grocery stores and mall shops sell products with pre-set prices on stickers or printed on packaging. Want a bargain? You need a coupon, or sign up for membership for future discounts. There is very little need to interact with any of the staff. In fact, some grocery stores now have self-checkout. Just blip the items and deal with the machine.

    I love the farmers market experience because I find interacting with farmers and vendors pleasant. I enjoy hearing about where the food comes from and the process of making it. I enjoy getting a free taste of the products. I like how freshly picked locally grown food is. I like handing my money directly to the people who grew my food, instead of funneling it through a faceless corporation.

    After a while I become a suki, a loyal customer. Once they learn my patterns and my favorites, they start setting aside the best pickings for me, giving me good deals, even freebies. Like coupons and clearance sales, the discounts I get are initiated by the vendor. I never haggle. If I can’t afford it, I don’t buy it.

    I feel weird haggling for a lower price because it makes me feel as if I am insulting them. I know how difficult it is to keep a family farm going, and how very little money they make compared to how much work is involved. Of course I love getting a bargain, who doesn’t? But I don’t like feeling like I pulled one over another. Because I’m fostering a relationship with people I will be buying my food from repeatedly, I like to feel a mutual appreciation between buyer and seller, instead of feeling like one of us is being lowballed.

    Maybe there is a more savvy way to haggle that I’m not aware of. Do you haggle? Why or why not? How do you do it?

    Links on haggling:
    How to haggle
    How to haggle for anything
    How to haggle like your old man

  • How Does Your Garden Groove?

    Vacation comes, school is out
    Summer ends, year in, year out.

    -Neil Young

    I can’t believe the summer went by so fast. This summer marks Malaya’s first theatre production. My baby girl is all grown up and onstage! Here is a video (a little over 13 minutes) of their summer camp production of “How Does Your Garden Groove?” by Michael and Jill Gallina. She played Pea # 2. And the sweetest pea in the garden, she is.

  • Farmers Market Finds

    Farmers Market Finds

    Our local farmers market is back! The Coastside Farmers Market at Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, California is the best source of locally grown produce from May through November. Today was the first farmers market day of the year.

    It was great to see my favorite vendors again. There’s the Indian food stall, the only seller who accepts credit card payments. He also offered to give me cash back today, because everyone else at the farmers market takes cash only. Santiago has the sweetest fruit! He charms me with his rhymes and adds free fruit to my bag after what I selected has been weighed and paid for. Manang and Manong are organic farmers from Fresno who gives my daughter fruit in exchange for a Filipino song.

    I was also glad to see something new: springtime fresh local honey from nearby Montara, and the coveted honeycomb (my husband’s favorite!) from San Mateo. Honey grown locally is the answer to springtime pollen allergy. Honey from far away just does not have the same elements as what we are surrounded with, and therefore cannot do its job of providing our immune system with the key to dealing with the pollen in our environment.

    Farmers Market Honeycomb and local honey

    Sometimes we have eggs at the farmers market, but sometimes we don’t. Today we had some farm fresh eggs from free range chickens fed only organic feed and rainwater in Half Moon Bay.

    Farmers Market Farm Fresh Eggs from Free Range Chickens fed only organic feed and rainwater

    I mentioned to the farmer lady that my daughter’s kindergarten class kept eggs in an incubator and they recently hatched! The farmer lady gave my daughter a lesson about chickens and eggs: Did you know that you can tell what color eggs a chicken will lay by looking at the color of its ears? Fascinating, isn’t it?

    There are so many reasons to buy our food from the Farmers Market. We support locally grown food that has a smaller carbon footprint than those grown and transported from far away. We support our local farmers and put the money straight into their hands instead of funneling it through large faceless corporations. We support family farms and organic farmers. We get to talk to the people who grow our food, and learn firsthand from them about where our food comes from.

    Most of all, when we sit at the dinner table with our families, bless the food we are about to eat and bless the hands that made them, we can visualize the very people we are blessing before we enjoy the food they grew for us.

  • Essential Vitamins and Minerals in Foods

    Essential Vitamins and Minerals in Foods

    Essential Vitamins and Minerals in FoodSometimes I find myself in a rut, buying the same fruits and vegetables week by week. Not only is this boring to eat, it also provides a limited range of vitamins and minerals for me and my family. It might be easier to take a multivitamin pill, but so much more effective and enjoyable to eat nutritious foods. So I did some research on essential vitamins and minerals our bodies need to be healthy, as well as the best food sources for these.

    Vitamin A promotes vision in dim light, mucous membranes, bones, teeth and skin. Carrots, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, spinach, butternut squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, apricots, broccoli, watermelon, tuna.

    (Vitamins B)

    Thiamin keeps carbohydrate metabolism and nervous system in good condition. Pasta, peanuts, legumes, watermelon, oranges, brown rice, oatmeal, eggs.

    Riboflavin takes care of the skin, and fat / protein / carbohydrate metabolism. Milk, avocadoes, tangerines, prunes, asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms, salmon, turkey.

    Niacin promotes effective use of oxygen by our cells, fat / protein / carbohydrate metabolism, and the nervous system. Peanut butter, legumes, soybeans, whole-grain cereals, broccoli, asparagus, baked potatoes, fish.

    Vitamin B6 is for protein metabolism. Soybeans, avocadoes, lima beans, bananas, cauliflower, green peppers, potatoes, spinach, raisins, fish.

    Folate is the same as folic acid, which is good for red blood cell tissue growth and repair. Legumes, mushrooms, oranges, asparagus, broccoli, spinach, bananas, strawberries, cantaloupe, tuna.

    Vitamin B12 promotes new tissue growth, red blood cells, the nervous system and the skin. Eggs, salmon, swordfish, tuna, clams, crab, mussels, oysters.

    Biotin metabolizes fat, protein and carbohydrates. Peanut butter, oatmeal, nuts, cauliflower, legumes, eggs.

    Pantothenic Acid aids in the metabolism of fat, protein and carbohydrates. Whole-grain cereals, mushrooms, avocadoes, broccoli, peanuts, cashews, lentils, soybeans, eggs, fish.

    Vitamin C builds collagen, healthy gums, teeth and blood vessels. Oranges, grapefruit, bell peppers, strawberries, tomatoes, spinach, cabbage, melons, broccoli, kiwi, raspberries, blueberries.

    Vitamin D is good for calcium absorption, bones and teeth. Sunlight, cereals, eggs, milk, butter, tuna and salmon.

    Vitamin E protects cells from damage. Nut and vegetable oils, mangoes, blackberries, apples, broccoli, peanuts, spinach.

    Vitamin K prevents blood clotting. Spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, parsley, carrots, avocadoes, tomatoes, eggs, dairy.

    Calcium builds strong bones and teeth, muscles and nerves, and prevents blood from clotting. Broccoli, green beans, almonds, turnip greens, orange juice, milk, cheese, yogurt, salmon and sardines with bones.

    Chloride aids in digestion. It works with sodium to maintain fluid balance. Salt.

    Chromium assists in metabolism of carbohydrates. Whole grains, broccoli, grape juice, orange juice, black pepper.

    Copper is good for the blood cells and connective tissues. Nuts, cherries, cocoa, mushrooms, gelatin, legumes, oysters, shellfish, fish, eggs.

    Flouride protects the tooth enamel. Tea, fish.

    Iodine promotes thyroid function. Spinach, iodized salt, lobster, shrimp, oysters, milk.

    Iron brings oxygen in blood and is good for metabolizing energy. Asparagus, spinach, pumpkin seeds, soybeans, tofu, clams.

    Magnesium protects the bones, nerve and muscle function. Molasses, nuts, spinach, pumpkin seeds, baked potatoes, broccoli, bananas, seafood, dairy.

    Manganese is good for the bones, connective tissues and fat / carbohydrate metabolism. Nuts, legumes, tea, dried fruits, spinach, green leafy vegetables.

    Molybdenum helps in nitrogen metabolism. Legumes, whole-grain cereals, dairy.

    Phosphorus metabolizes energy. It works with Calcium for healthy bones and teeth. Cereals, fish, eggs, dairy.

    Potassium keeps acids balanced. It also works with Sodium to maintain fluid balance. Baked potatoes, avocadoes, dried fruit, yogurt, cantaloupe, spinach, bananas, mushrooms, tomatoes.

    Selenium works with Vitamin E to protect cells and body tissue. Whole grain cereals, mushrooms, Brazil nuts, dairy, fish and shellfish.

    Sodium keeps the fluid balanced and the nervous system in good condition. Salt, soy sauce, seasonings.

    Zinc aids in wound healing, growth, appetite and sperm production. Lima beans, legumes, nuts, oysters, seafood, dairy.