OJ Beef/Veggies and Nutrition Thoughts

I am poor. Let me repeat that. I am poor from applications (**WEEPS** > $2000 just for apps) and grad school. I don't even want to look at how much I owe.

So my wallet now has $7 dollars and I can't find my car keys so I decided to work with what I have at home.

I have orange juice. I have ketchup. I have salt, pepper, and other condiments. Some veggies.

I also have beef in the fridge already thawed.

Excellent.

I found this recipe using orange juice to marinate beef. Let's try this!

Beef in Orange Juice

serves 4

Ingredients:

Beef - I had 2 pieces of sirloin

- I washed and then cut the beef into slices.

Marinade:

- 6 Tbsp orange iuice

- 10 Tbsp ketchup

- 1 Tbsp vinegar

- 2 tsp honey (again I was generous with honey)

- 2 tsp black vinegar (老陳醋)

- 2 Tbsp minced garlic

- 4 Tbsp minced onions

- Salt and pepper as desired

The hardest part was cutting up the onions. I just stood there and wept for a good 5 minutes. In retrospect, I forgot to do something to avoid that.

NO CRYING!!! D: D: D:

- Take onion and put in the freezer for about 10 minutes before chopping.

REASON: when the onion is cut, it releases volatile sulfur compounds into the air and comes in contact with the moisture of the eyes, where it forms a little bit of sulfuric acid irritating the nerve endings of the eye = PAIN... crying well help dilute the acid. Apparently, the drop in temperature will help to slow down the conversion of the compounds in the onion to volatile sulfur compounds.

Anyway, mix all those ingredients for the marinade and then marinate the beef for at least 3 hours OR overnight. I started in the morning and then stuck this in the fridge until I was ready to cook.

PREHEAT Oven to 425 degrees F.

ROAST beef for 10 -15 minutes. I would go for 10 minutes first and check it out. Serve.

WHY I AM AVOIDING THE GRILL:

My brother asks me why I've only been using the oven to prepare the meat instead of grilling.

My answer is this:

Although grilling is seemingly healthier than frying (less fat), there is potential of increased risk of cancer. I will always remember my nutrition professor from undergrad telling us to avoid eating charred meat because of the increased risk for cancer. A study in 2009 at U. Minnesota, led by Dr. Kristen Anderson, found that there is a 60% increased risk of pancreatic cancer by eating charred meat. Pancreatic cancer, not to scare anyone, is a death sentence (Steve Jobs, Patrick Swayze). There is no cure and it's difficult to detect b/c at first there aren't any outward symptoms. By the time pancreatic cancer is detected, it is already at an advanced stage.

Heterocyclic amines (HA) are formed from burning amino acids (building blocks of protein) in the meat. HAs are thought to increase the risk of cancer. These are found in high concentration in the charred parts of meat.

Grilling can be healthy though as long as you watch out for how hot the meat gets and avoid the smoke from bbq grilling. See link for tips.

Also note that the increase in risk is due to eating this over a long period of time.

BACK TO MY COOKING:

I decided to throw in bell peppers as well because something was missing and bell peppers provide great nutritional benefit.

BELL PEPPERS

- I remember reading in TIME or Newsweek a few years back that bell peppers protected against the flu or cold. It has vitamin C in it, a natural anti-histamine.

- I also read somewhere that it protected against cancer. The red bell peppers are full of lycopene, a red pigmented carotenoid, that might serve to have some protective effects against cancer as an anti-oxidant, although right now, the studies are inconclusive.

They look nice anyway :D

MORE VEGGIES: Shanghai Bok Choy -- yum.. :D

- Cooked in boiling water and olive oil with a little salt.

- This week in TIME: People who have genes that put them at risk for cardiovascular disease (aka heart attack), those who ate more fruits and veggies were 50% less likely to have a heart attack over a 4 year period than those who didn't eat much produce.

OLIVE OIL BENEFITS

- I only use olive oil because I think it tastes better and the health benefits are greater. Olive oil is naturally higher in monounsaturated fat which lowers LDL (bad) cholesterol and may possibly raise HDL (good) cholesterol so it may have some benefit for cardiovascular health. There might be a link with olive oil consumption and colon cancer prevention... studies have been done in rats which found that it reduced colon cancer when compared to rats ingesting safflower oil rich diets.

GREAT BACKGROUND MUSIC

- The whole time I was cooking, I was listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers full concert at Rock in Rio on YouTube. So good... so good because it kept me going and in a great mood.

RESULT

- I thought the food tonight was okay. My family said they enjoyed it. I thought I could have done better. I'm not sure if I really enjoy the taste of OJ in the beef... it made it kind of like a sweet and sour dish... I should have added more honey...

Dinner and Immunology Thoughts

Mom works late now so Dad does much of the cooking. Mom complained a lot... and concluded that I should do something and hands me pork ribs from the freezer and a squash.

"Sooo, Mom, how do you want me to cook this? I've never made ribs or squash before"

Mom: "You figure it out or call your sister"

Both were seemingly non-plausible options... so I looked at my poor graduate student wallet (yay $25 dollars) and poured through some old cook books of my mother's and found a really yummy looking recipes called "Squash Apple Bake" and "Roast Pork Ribs." I had the main ingredients but had to buy the rest of the ingredients, marinade, soup, etc. with the money I had to feed 4 people. I think I spent about $12.50 out of my own pocket to make dinner.

I love apples.

Unfortunately for me, I have tree nut and peanut allergies... and over the years, I developed Oral Allergy Syndrome... where I'm now have allergy symptoms to fresh apples, pears, cherries (I react to cherries like peanuts now T_T), kiwi, peaches, plums... gahhh...

Thankfully, even with these allergies, I can still eat some of these as long as they are cooked... minus peanuts and other tree nuts. The heat from cooking denatures (changes the shape of) the fruit antigens (some proteins) that may be triggering an allergic reaction. Antibodies in our bodies are created to be specific so that they attack only things that are considered foreign and bad. Antibodies can also cross-react (if you ever worked in a lab, you would know). This is the case for Oral Allergy Syndrome where immune system recognizes proteins in these fruits that are close enough to pollen so that you have symptoms. Sucks :(

What I find weird and fascinating is that although our bodies are very structured and everything is in check, the formation of antibodies is made randomly by a cut and paste method (fun stuff like V(D)J recombination, if you're really interested). Because it's made randomly, there are some that are made that attack ourselves, but those are usually destroyed by our bodies' surveillance system (if not, it leads to autoimmune diseases such as Diabetes Mellitus Type I, Lupus, Graves' disease, Myasthenia Gravis, etc). People with food allergies can blame overactive IgE antibodies and mast cells but you can ask me about that if you're really interested.

The heat from cooking/baking can destroy the structure of certain antigens rendering the person unharmed because the immune system can't recognized the changed shape, in other words, no allergic reaction. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for me for peanuts or tree nuts.

This is my train of thought when I'm doing things... I usually spend my time thinking.

Now for this recipe that I took out of Taste of Home magazine that my mom bought last year.

Squash-Apple Bake

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into slices

2 medium apples, peeled and cut

1/2 cup backed brown sugar

1 Tbsp flour

1/4 cup melted butter

1/2 tsp each of salt and mace**

**I don't know what mace is and couldn't find it in the market... I substituted by using cinnamon powder instead. Still tastes awesome.

The hardest part of this entire recipe is peeling and cutting the squash. I don't know if I need to work out a lot more but I had to watch a youtube video on how to peel and cut squash b/c I was having difficulty.

1. cut the squash and apples.

2. pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.

3. put the cut squash in a 2-qt baking dish and then put the apple slices on top.

4. Combine the rest of the ingredients and spoon over the apples.

5. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees F for about an hour or until the squash is tender.

You must try this recipe... the apples taste like apple pie and the squash was tender and amazing.

Roast Pork Ribs from Creative Chinese Oven Cooking

Ingredients

~Pork ribs ~1.3 lbs (I had about double this so I doubled everything for the marinade)

Marinade:

3 Tbsp black pepper sauce (I use the Chinese brand Lee Kum Kee)

5 Tbsp ketchup

1 Tbsp mustard sauce (Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard)

1 Tbsp vinegar

1 Tbsp honey (I was FAR more generous with this b/c I can't handle spicy)

1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce

1/2 tsp salt

2 Tbsp minced garlic

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 Tbsp wine

1. Marinate the pork ribs for at least 2 hours OR overnight.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

3. Roast ribs, thick meat side up for 45 minutes until golden brown.

*note you can use the marinade as sauce by putting the excess marinade in a pot, add a little water, and boil the marinade. I added more honey at this point because my mouth was on fire and I was starting to weep.

The soup you see in the top picture is from a kosher mix I got at the market with the remaining cash I had... It cost about a dollar something on sale and it fed a family of 4.

New Updates!

And I am back to cooking/baking good things. It's been a year since I last blogged and since then I've become more knowledgeable in biology and health b/c I've been taking medical school classes. Now I'm working (or supposed to be working) on applications and researching for my thesis, among other things like brushing up on my musical skills on dulcimer and guitar (my so-called skills right now make me weep).

I've met good people in my very intense academic year. We have had 2 baking get-togethers since getting out of class. I'm glad I met friends (J-Shwan, C-Sat, and V) that like to make food as much as I do!

PANDA COOKIES!!

We were originally going to make Panda Bread.. but it would require more time that we didn't have. We followed the same construction of the bread to make these cookies and they were delicious and super cute!! :D

Our panda cookie roll before cutting into slices and baking in the oven

Green tea powder for the outside and cocoa powder for the ears an eyes

(photos from stolen from C-Sat ;))

WATERMELON CAKE POPS!

(diabetes on a stick)

I think these came out too sweet... but they looked really cute: watermelon cake pops

We followed the recipe in the link... note: it was really hard to get the green food coloring to dye the white chocolate coating. Instead, we ended up dying the white frosting to make the outer layer. This took a lot more effort than we had planned and also turned out a lot sweeter than we had imagined. This is one recipe that we probably won't try again.

(photo from V)

I made brownies yesterday for my brother's birthday... those are definitely worth trying. They stay moist and awesome unlike the brownies made from a box. Just sayin'.