Sonia Tastes Hawaii

Drinking Lemon Water

 

Hydration is important. We're told our bodies can survive without food for 3 weeks but we cannot (normally) function for more than 3 days without water...

 

We've been told countless times we need to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day, and the recommended amount of water for emergencies to store is 1 gallon per person per day... If we're honest, we have to admit hardly any of us follow those recommendations, do we?

 

So we know that drinking water is good for us, but did you know that drinking lemon water is better?

 

 

Drinking lemon water on a regular basis can be just short of miraculous!

It can make our hair shine!

Helps with digestion by helping flush out toxins in the digestive tract which in turn helps cleanse our systems by stimulating the liver. Also helps eliminate bloating and reduces the chance of heartburn by eliminating those toxins.  So besides shiny hair, we can also have a radiant blemish free and clear complexion!

Believe it or not, it can help in weight loss.  Lemons have a little secret weapon called "pectin fiber"...and pectin fiber is known to help suppress food cravings that often cause us to reach for those 'no-no foods', so besides helping make our hair shine and give us a radiant complexion, lemons help in eliminating that nagging craving for something sweet.

Drinking lemon water reduces inflammation by reducing acidity levels in our body and also aids in removing levels of uric acid in the joints which is a major contributing factor to inflammation in those joints.  I know...right?  How can adding the acid of lemon juice help relieve acidity in our body?  Blows my mind!

It helps our immune system... we all know lemons are full of Vitamin C and everybody knows that  Vitamin C can boost the immune system, especially during times when we're stressed .  This is going to come in extra useful if we are stressed as it is known that when we are stressed our levels of this vitamin are going to drop, so drinking lemon water can help counteract that.

We all know that Vitamin C also helps when we have the sniffles...but if we make it a habit to add lemon juice to our water on a regular basis, we can fight the effects of colds and flu easier...and can even prevent us from coming down with a cold or the flu.

Sound body, healthy heart and a clear mind...we all want that, don't we?  Well, drinking lemon water can be a huge help with all three by providing healthy levels of potassium!  Yes, you can also get potassium from lemon juice and not just from eating a banana a day...

Do you do any kind of strenuous work or run marathons...or even work in the garden like I do?  When we do any of those things our bodies lose high levels of body salts and potassium by sweating... Drinking adequate amounts of  lemon water is going to help with that by keeping our body hydrated and replenishing it with salt and potassium, and the acidity of the lemon juice can balance out the pH levels in our body....and again...help by releasing toxins through body sweat.

So...in conclusion...if drinking lemon water can make our hair shiny, have radiant skin, reduce inflammation of joints, kick-start the liver to remove toxins from our bodies, up the levels of our immune systems, give our hearts and brains a boost and even help eliminate (at least some) of the temptation to eat too many rich and sugary treats and help us prevent getting a nasty cold or flu...shouldn't we all be drinking lemon water on regular basis?

Seems like a no-brainer to me...

Pastelitos de Carne - cooking lesson

One of our favorite treats are Pastelitos de Carne.  Because it is so humid where I live, I use store bought sheets of puff pastry.

Here is my simple way to make the popular Cuban pastelitos de carne (meat pastries)

For the Picadillo (ground beef)

1 lb ground lean beef 
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 small can tomato sauce
1/4 cup dry white wine
Pimiento stuffed olives, sliced

Capers, optional
Raisins

Ground cumin, to taste

Salt and pepper, to taste

In a large skillet, brown the ground meat, onions and garlic. If meat is not too lean, pour out whatever fat you render.  

Turn heat down to medium low. Add the tomato sauce and wine. While it simmers, chop up the pimiento stuffed olives and add to meat mixture, it is ok to add a little bit of the brine, if you wish. Add the raisins and adjust the seasonings.

 

I like my picadillo almost dry, not too soupy. For the pastelitos, let the sauce simmer almost to dry, so you will not have a runny mess on your hands.

 

Roll out the sheets of puff pastry to smooth the folds - then make cuts, into 4s if making large ones or into 9s (makes cuts as if drawing a tic tac toe game)

 

Place a spoonful of picadillo mix in the center, wet the edges and bring the upper corner down to the lower corner

Seal the edges with a fork

Bake at 350 F until golden brown and puffy - place on cooling racks

 

Serve...and enjoy!

 

More of the garden

I am so excited with how our garden is doing this time around (keeping my fingers and toes crossed!)

One of three banana stalks!  This is the largest one

 

Thai basil...I keep snipping the blooms off and it seems like in a couple of days it is blooming it's head off again!  This is one of two patches of this variety of basil...the other patch is still small.

 

Tilo - "Justicia pectoralis"... No Cuban household in Cuba that had a self-respecting abuela (grandmother) was lacking at least one pot of this plant...it is a very nice herb for making a calming tea...and used for lowering fevers and settling upset stomachs....Home remedies at their best!

The original of this plant was given to me before I came to Hawaii by the grandmother of a dear friend who has since passed.  I gave pieces of this plant to an herbalist friend here on the island.  In the meantime, through the years and due to many circumstances beyond my control, mine died (actually it was demolished by marauding wild pigs) and when my friend moved back to the mainland, she gave me hers...I transplanted it into a larger pot and it has taken off.

Our Surinam cherry tree - Eugenia grandiflora - has been loaded for weeks.  I've harvested three times.  There are not as many now, but still some stragglers are showing up.  There are two varieties of Surinam cherry that I know of...

The taste ranges from sweet to sour, depending on the cultivar and level of ripeness (the darker red to black range (as ours is) is quite sweet, while the green to orange range is strikingly tart). Its predominant food use is as a flavoring and base for jams and jellies. The fruit is high in vitamin C and a source of vitamin A.  Our small trees will produce fruit twice a year...late spring/early summer and late fall/early winter.

I like to eat them out of hand, make jellies, syrup and vinaigrette...  In the photo there is one ready to eat (which I did right after I took the photo) and one that will be ready in about 4-5 days.

 

This morning's garden walk

It rained off and on most of last night and the garden is happy...but the sun keeps playing peek-a-boo...I took a little stroll through this morning to check how things were going..

 

Almost spent gardenias are still perfuming the air...

Some are barely opening...

 

...and more to come in the near future...

Volunteer wild begonia blooming away...

 

...as well as anthuriums

 

The nasties are going crazy...they have even dropped seeds to the ground, plants are coming up and those are also now blooming...

 

Hawaiian chile peppers are loving the rain...

...and the grape tomatoes are bursting out again...

This orchid, given to me by a friend on my last birthday, keeps sending out blooms from the end of this long stalk...this is about the 5th one in almost a year....and if you look at the bottom, by the blue pony tail plant pot, there is another shoot with a yellow bud, which will probably open within next week...

Loving my wet garden walk!

The first day of the rest of the life of my fig tree...

I have had this fig tree (if you can call it a tree) for several years...in fact, I can't even remember when I got it... so long ago I have even forgotten what variety of fig it's supposed to be!

Photo: The original tree got potted and some of the side branches cut (and planted) after this photo was taken

 

A foodie friend, food writer & cookbook author Wanda Adams, commented recently in Facebook, about her fig tree and the bountiful harvest they were experiencing this year after several years of producing less than a handful of figs for several years...and the delicious treat she was working on with their fig harvest...she halved them and trimmed the stem ends, put 'em on a rack in the oven and after several hours at 170 degrees (lowest most home ovens will go), the figs started to 'weep a port wine-colored syrup' into their empty centers and in her own words "the smell is some kind of heavenly caramel. Well, as Miss Piggy would say, we all do love a Figgy Pudding."

Photo: our potted fig at it's very best three years ago.

 

Photo: three years ago...we had figs!

Photo: Fig in the pot, after my 'talking to'...it had two tiny figs forming in the branch with the healthier looking leaves, but I nipped them off to give the plant a chance.

I mentioned how I had planted my fig in the ground and it did not like it at all...in fact, it got punier and punier, to the point that it just about died.  I moved it into a large planter and the fig loved it...and that first year, we had more than a handful of figs to enjoy...but...after that, it got leggy and it started throwing these low branches without leaves or secondary branches to the side and the main branch in center just...disappeared... This thing was looking like something out of a horror movie.

After Wanda's posts, showing the oven roasted morsels, I decided my tree needed a good talking to, which took the form of cleaning out the pot, cutting the side branches off, trimming them down, refilling the pot with fresh compost, chicken poop and garden soil...and replanting the trimmed branches...there were a couple of tiny little keiki coming up from what was at one time the center trunk.  

After watering well, and a stern "you better do well or else", I am hoping the plant will listen and do something!

 

From Soup to Nuts at the Hilo Library...

 

I have been invited to give an 'author talk' about my cookbook "From Soup to Nuts" at the Hilo Library on Wednesday, May 18th from 5 to 6 pm...

 

 

I will be talking about writing the book, the inspiration behind some recipes or sections of the book...we will be sharing delicious tastings on my Gazpacho (page 18) 

 

Plus I will be signing books...no hard sell, but 10% of all sales will benefit "The Friends of the Hilo Library"...

Hope to see some of my friends there...even if they don't buy copies!

 

Yes, we have some tomatoes!

A couple of months ago, we planted 3 small Hawaiian Currant tomato plants in the pig through...or what we believed to be the currants... but it turns out they are a bit larger than currants...more like grape tomatoes.

 

and in no time at all...they started producing lots and lots of little tomatoes!

 

We also planted two Roma tomatoes in another area - which has since been weeded, after the pics were taken ;-)

These Romas are not as good as the ones we had last year, for some reason.  They tend to fall off before they're fully red and ripe.  So I've started harvesting when I notice a 'certain turning of color'

 

This morning's harvest is a combination of both...

 

 

I cut the small ones in half and the Romas in quarters or smaller, if they were too big, and put them in my Dutch oven with about 1/2 cup of white vinegar and 3 cups of sugar, to make a sweet-savory jam / confit...loosely following a recipe from this old blog post

It is cooking at this time and the house already smells delicious!

 

 Got two pints of delicious goodness!