Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Ani Phyo’s Healthfully Decadent Raw Coconut Kream Recipe

Dessert has always been my favorite part of any meal (though I do love apps!) and while I’ve managed to tame my sweet tooth in the last few years, I’ve by no means eliminated it. (By tame I mean I can get my sweet-happys from maple syrup, honey, and desserts made with fruit and less sugar.) Frankly, I’d rather carry around an extra five pounds than skip desserts, in all their toothsome glory. But I try to concoct or uncover desserts that are healthy as well as tasty. Just because it’s dessert doesn’t mean that it has to be a nutrition wasteland!

So stumbling upon Ani Phyo’s wonderful raw dessert cookbook (with 85 recipes!) was a coup. As you may already know, raw foods retain all sorts of wonderful enzymes, vitamins and minerals, plus are less ‘predigested’ (I know it’s a bit gross, but that’s basically what cooking is; partial digestion of food before you eat it). That means your body has to work a bit harder to digest, which makes you feel full longer and is actually really good for your gut. All of which means you get more nutrition and eat less when you go raw. While I’m not a raw foodist by any means, I’m going on my 19th year of vegetarianism and love the way whole foods that are minimally processed taste and make me feel. And the more I’ve read about the benefits of raw, the more I try to incorporate it into my diet.
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Sunlight for Breastfed Babes

An interesting piece in the NY Times today discusses Vitamin D deficiency in babies and toddlers. According to the article, many breastfed children are lacking the nutrient due to many mothers’ insufficient quantity of Vit D in their breastmilk. Additionally, children are not exposed to the sun as they once were, which pediatricians feel could be contributing to the depletion. Many doctors don’t test children for Vitamin D, so the deficiency (which can cause bone deformations and rickets) can go without being diagnosed.

It’s rare, but no surprise that breastmilk can have a low level of Vitamin D, but many mothers are breastfeeding for longer these days, which means they need to be mindful of their intake of Vitamin D and monitor that of their kids. Those with darker skin, women who cover their skin for religious reasons, and those who don’t go outside at all are at higher risk.

In this day and age, when medicine is run by insurance companies, most pediatricians see many kids each day and office visits might entail only some measurements and a shot or two. It’s up to parents to be their children’s advocates if they see any reason for concern. As with most health issues, prevention is the healthiest and simplest way to solve this problem.

One way to cheaply and easily get enough Vit D is through exposure to sunlight (the body makes D naturally, but only when skin is exposed to sun). While it’s true that we need to be cautious of sun damage and prevent overexposure, spending a bit of time outdoors each day can be a good thing for both you and your baby. Less than 10-15 minutes of sun daily is safe (if you use sunblock of 8 or higher, you won’t be able to absorb the UV rays that help make Vitamin D) for most people.

Foods that naturally contain Vitamin D include: eggs (yolk only), fatty fish, milk and fortified cereal and milk products (like many soymilks). If you are vegan, there is good info about it here.

Loving, Naturally

A few great natural products i’ve recently fallen in love with for my uber sensitive skin:

Sunshine Spa’s Brown Sugar Scrub Mango Ginger: this organic brown sugar scrub is amazing! I have super sensitive skin and this scrub leaves my skin smooth and happy after shaving. Contains lots of great oils and organic sugar. Really tasty too!

Dr. Bronner’s Baby Mild Unscented: this uber mild soap with organic coconut, olive, jojoba and hemp oils is also great for sensitive skin and can be used for body, hair, cleaning floors, and pretty much everything else. Bronner’s other soaps are a little too harsh for my skin, but this one is a winner. Great to take camping and great for cleaning the floor!

Earth Science’s Chamomile & Green Tea Eye Makeup Remover: great for removing all sorts of makeup with green tea and chamomile extracts. Scored pretty low (meaning good) in the environmental working group’s cosmetic database. Doesn’t irritate my contacts either.

Pressure Cookers— an Energy Efficient Way to Cook

Growing up, the word “pressure cooker” brought memories of my grandfather cooking beets in his kitchen at Thanksgiving. Years later, I use a pressure cooker in my own kitchen. What many people don’t know about pressure cookers is that they’re a super energy efficient way to cook. Root vegetables which might take an hour to conventionally cook, take about 6 minutes in a pressure cooker and 90% of that time the stove is turned to “low.” On an average pressure cookers cook food about 70% faster than conventional cooking.

Pressure cookers are basically pots with elaborate lids that seal to allow pressure to build up inside them. A small amount of steam is released through a pressure regulator on the top of the lid to maintain the ideal PSI. Cooking food in one requires adding enough water to the pot, adding your food, sealing the lid carefully and turning on the heat. When the water comes to a boil, enough pressure is built up inside and heat is turned down to low to maintain that pressure.

Pressure cookers not only have the advantage of being an extremely energy efficient way to cook, but they also have nutritional advantages. Because food is cooked in less time and with less liquid that gets boiled away, more vitamins and minerals are retained. In addition to home cooking, pressure cookers are also used by mountain climbers at high altitudes to compensate for the low atmospheric pressure.

In the past, pressure cooking had the reputation of being an unsafe method of cooking with the risk of explosion. Since then, modern pressure cookers have drastically evolved to include 2 or even 3 safety mechanisms plus additional safety features, making explosion virtually impossible (obviously need to use common sense). Because of this I would NOT recommend buying a used pressure cooker or especially not using one you’ve inherited from your grandmother. The technology has changed enough to make a new one a really good investment, and you never know the history of an old one. If you do have an old one, I’d suggest keeping it and using the bottom pot part as a regular stovetop pot (without the lid).