Natural Ingredients for Health and a Chef’s Taste

Arrowroot:
Grown in the tropics, this natural thickening agent is made from the beaten pulp of the root. It is easily digested. It is an alkaline agent and can be used in gravies, sauces, cookies, and jellies. Arrowroot makes desserts tasty and wholesome. It is rich in the precious minerals such as calcium, potassium, and manganese. Use arrowroot instead of cornstarch which is a starchy and acid-forming flour that leaves toxic wastes in the circulatory and lymphatic systems.

Natural Sweet:
For any sweetening flavor, use raw, unbleached sugar. It is unrefined. The starched white sugar creates upheaval for the blood sugar level, acts as a corrosive to the teeth and bones, and also has loads of pound-forming calories. Other natural sweets include:

Maple Sugar - also sold as maples syrup and considered the aristrocat of health sweeteners. It will give a delightful caramel effect.

Blackstrap Molasses - rich in minerals, may be eaten raw or used in cooking and baking. The darker the molasses the more nutritious and flavorful it is.

Carob - a delicious substitute for chocolate. Also known as St John’s Bread, it is rich in calcium, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium and those wonderful B-complex vitamins that keep the digestive tract in good shape. Carob’s owner supply of B-complex means that it does not ‘devour’ there vitamins as do the commercial sugars. Carob tastes like milk chocolate and gives a wonderful taste to breads, rolls, muffins, and natural desserts. Try one tablespoons of carob powder in an egg-white meringue as a sugar substitute. This gives you a ‘chocolate’ frosting which can be eaten raw or browned in the oven for better keeping qualities.

Vegetable oils - suggested are cold-presssed oils. When oils are extracted in this manner, they are raw and more easily digested. Examples of good vegetable cooking oils are sesame, soya, olive, peanut, rice, bran, almond, corn, and sunflower seed. They are available at most product markets and health food stores. When storing these vegetable oils, keep them tightly sealed and refrigerated.

Yeast cakes - For any baking that calls for leaving, use yeast cakes or active dry yeast. You should avoid all baking powders and all types of baking salts. A baking powder is an artificial starch that contains tartrate, Rochelle salts, phosphates, slat and aluminum hydrate. When assimilated, baking powder or baking salts will cause inflammation of the stomach lining. All baking powder residues influence the intestines and cause irregularity. Very large doses of tartrates in baking powders may injure the kidneys. These create a ‘sharp’ taste in baked foods and should be eliminated. A good old-fashioned, natural leavening agent is yeast.

Whole Grains - Bleached, devitalized flours are dead foods. They are drenched with preservatives and pollute the food you eat as well as your system. Use whole grain flours. Unbleached flours should always be used.

Salt Seasoning - Common table and cooking salt (sodium chloride) has been known to raise blood pressure, increase heart palpitation, upset the delicate mineral balance of the bloodstream, and also lead to hardening of the walls of the arteries.

To enjoy a culinary seasoning from Nature, try vegetized powders, kelp or sea salt, and the wide variety of herbs available. Garlic powder is another longtime favorite for a salt substitute. The common variety of artificial table salt tends to draw moisture out of the foods; so if a vegetable is salted, its nutrient-rich juices and flavors are drawn out. You can enhance the good, juice flavor of vegetables with herbs and vegetized salt substitutes. The same applies to baking soda used to intensify the colors of vegetables. The flavors are destroyed and you eat lifeless, polluted foods. You may achieve a spicy tang in your foods with salt seasonings but, your heart and stock suffer as a result. Look to natural seasonings in the form of herbs and substitute instead.