Beta version for a gamer's cookbook. Release planned in 2013.
by Desert Jasmine House
Hello.
I am not a professional chef. I am a mom who loves to cook, and who has taken several cooking classes, for which I didn't earn any certifications.
Cooking and learning about cooking is an entire world of fun! This blog is about cooking to improve your brain health, an important subject in the world of cooking, that hasn't received its due.
Did you know that eating healthier food and doing the right exercises can make you a better gamer and a better student? This blog is about a real life strategy for how to quickly and easily feed yourself in healthy and interesting ways. With this blog, when you take a break during the game to get your food, you can make healthy recipes, in 15 -30 minutes. So, if you are playing a game, like The Sims, you can quickly and easily cook the recipes in the game. And, in fact, there are recipes from all over the world. So, if you are playing a game set in a country, like Russia (in the game Civilization -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series)), you can quickly and easily cook recipes from Russia, in 15 - 30 minutes. Then, if someday you get a chance to taste the same recipes made in the real country, you can compare your version to their version.
So let's see how healthy your brain is now. This link is to a free test to see how healthy your brain is now. If you can pass this test with a score of the same as your current age, you brain is OK. If your score is younger than your current age, you brain health is FANTASTIC!. If your score is older than your current age, your brain is not functioning at its best, and this could be affecting your gaming and school scores. Click on this link to take a free test:
http://www.freebrainagegames.com/
If you would like to improve your brain health, this blog is for you. If you would like to keep your brain health as it is, you can still have fun cooking these quick and easy recipes designed for people who can't cook.
If you scored low on the Memory Test you could try (for one week) eating fish for breakfast or whey protein and flax for breakfast, kale or spinach three times a week, food spiced with sage and rosemary before studying and on test day, and spirulina smoothies every day. For exercise you could try playing ping pong or practicing tai chi every morning, and completing non-physical memory exercises every day. Good sleep habits are extremely important for memory function. (If this regimen doesn't result in any improvement you can consult a naturopath, who may recommend something like magnesium citrate. Please don't use more magnesium citrate than recommend by a naturopath, or by the bottle).
If you scored low on the Attention Recognition test you could try (for one week) eating a breakfast that is 50% lean protein, and a low fat diet.
If you scored low on the Language Test you could try (for one week) eating plain yogurt and drinking green tea every day, eating with a little tofu or edamame recipes a few times a week, and eating lots of blueberries or acai berries. You could also try performing language brain exercises every day. You could also try these two free websites: http://www.visuwords.com/ and http://www.popling.net/.
If you scored low on the Reaction Test (the Hand Eye Coordination Test) or on the Visual Perception Test you could try ping pong or tai chi, quinoa and a small amount of avocados a few times a week.
Also, some people have different than average needs and food needs in order to get their brains working at optimal condition. For example, if you have sleep apnea, (whether you know it or not) you probably won't see much of an improvement by eating better food, until you deal with your sleep apnea. Constant oxygen deprivation, like with sleep apnea, is really hard on the brain. Or if you have diabetes, (whether you know it or not) eating anything too sweet or too fat you are probably not going to see much of an improvement because in spite of all of good food the sweets and fats will keep you lagging. Too much sugar and some kinds of fat in the brain makes it lag. If you've had a minor concussion at any time during your life, or if you've lived under constant stress or abuse, or if your mother lived under constant stress or abuse while she was pregnant with you, a S.P.E.C.T. scan and medication may be needed before you can really see a big improvement from eating better food. You can read the book, A Magnificent Brain at Any Age by Daniel Amen, MD to learn more about using S.P.E.C.T. scans to fix your brain.
Feeding Your Brain
The recipes in this blog are made to feed the brain because feeding the brain can make you a better gamer and a better student. The brain is one of the most nutritionally neglected organs in US nutrition. And even though the adult brain is only 5% of the weight of the body, it is a nutrition hog; burning 400 – 500 calories per day, (of a 2000 calories diet), and using 20% of all the oxygen breathed in. A brain working on a siege, or a brain taking an exam, burns even more than a brain that is not being challenged. Feeding the brain has a double benefit because, if you feed the brain well, you feed the heart well; preventing a heart attack by the age of 40; a new trend in American illnesses. If you would like to know the details of why fish, eggs, plums, spinach, avocados, or sesame seeds are good for the brain, there will be more information in the full-length cookbook when it comes out.
The brain also needs brain-smart physical exercises in order to be in optimal working condition. Exercises like table tennis, Wii Fit, canoeing , and no-impact martial arts, exercise the brain because you have to strategize to do the exercises, and send more blood to the brain, at the same time, by increasing the heart rate. If you want to be a better gamer and a better student, I recommend that you do a brain-smart exercise at the beginning of your day. For a little more information you can click to this link from WebMD.com (http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/train-your-brain-with-exercise)
Will This Blog Work for You?
This blog offers a month's worth of fun and easy recipes from countries featured in several different video games like Civilization and Sims. Notes tell which part of the recipe feeds the brain, and how to make the recipe better for the brain, if it is not traditionally so. This blog is also loaded with trivia and a few jokes because these things enhance the health of the brain.
To test the effectiveness of this brain healthy diet and physical exercise program, you can buy the game Brain Age, or you can find a free test at the following link. Before you begin eating and exercising for your brain take this test. Then test yourself once a week for 5 weeks. If your scores are better each week, this blog is working for you.
http://www.onlinestrooptest.com/
If you would like to add non-physical brain exercises to your regimen, you can visit this website every day for 5 weeks.
http://www.brainready.com/brainflex/brainflex_games/
These Recipes Are Easy, but You Can Learn to Cook Harder Recipes if You Want...
The recipes are very easy. And if you would like to try the more talent-demanding versions of these same easy recipes, there are some hints on how you can try showing off your cooking finesse. Subjects mentioned include things like, how to boil an egg, how to make a pita pocket from a disk of bread, how to sear, how to lard, how to bard, how to brunoise, etc...
The hardest cooking skill used in the easy versions of these recipes is marinating. The kind of marinating used is wet marinating. Marinating is a great skill for meat cookers. All you do is put the clean, fairly dry, meat and sauce into a glass or microwavable bowl, and let the meat soak, covered in the sauce for one hour to 24 hours, in the fridge. This fills the meat with flavor, tenderizes the meat, and makes it safer to eat. It can take a boring recipe and make it taste wonderful. The hardest part to marinating is remembering to put the meat in the sauce before you go to bed, or 4 hours, or 1 hour before you start cooking your meal. Also beginner cooks should pour marinate down the drain when they are finished with it to prevent food poisoning. Experienced cooks can use marinate for other things. If you would like to know more about the benefits of marinating, there will be more information in the full-length cookbook when it comes out.
Controversies
There are a few controversial decisions I have made to make cooking healthier easy:
1.) I decided to write the recipes around Walmart.
2.) Most of the cooking, if there is any, is done in the microwave.
3.) Many of the ingredients call for canned foods.
4.) If I had to choose between authentic and fun, I chose fun.
5.) No alcohol is used in my recipes.
Walmart
Most of the ingredients to these recipes can be bought at Walmart or Walmart.com unless otherwise noted. This is because there are few situations worse than trying to learn how to cook, and not being able to find the ingredients. Walmart, (aka Walmex, Asda, Seiyu, or Best Price, ect...) is easy to shop at in most places in the world. I am trying to share recipes that will be easy for the average gamer or student to make.
Some other local stores may have a better selection of brain healthy foods than Walmart, but some don't. For example, about 25% - 50% of the healthy ingredients that you can't find at Walmart, like say, kombucha tea, you might be able to find at a Kroger Grocery Store (aka Baker's, City Market, Dillon's, Food 4 Less, Fred Meyer, Fry's Food Store, Gerbes, Hilander, JC Food Stores, King Soopers, Owen's Market, Pay Less Food Markets, Quality Food Centers, Ralph's, Scott's Food and Pharmacy, Smith's Food and Drug, and Turkey Hill ect...). Kroger is not a international grocery store, but they do have locations in about 75% of the US. If you find a Kroger store, or one of its affiliates, that has a better selection of brain healthy foods than Walmart, than feel free to consider shopping there instead of Walmart. Just because I have written my recipes around Walmart, doesn't mean you must shop at Walmart to make these recipes. In fact, you might be able to make healthier meals, if you can shop somewhere that has a better selection.
Whole Foods has most every brain healthy food you can imagine, even brain healthy food that you can't find anywhere else. It is an international grocery store that has locations in the US, Canada, and The United Kingdom. But, most small towns don't have a Whole Foods grocery store. So, I hope you can see why I have decided that the best way to write recipes that the most people can easily make, is to write recipes around what can be found at Walmart.
Microwave
Its OK to cook with a microwave all the time when you first start out as a beginner cook, but there is some concern that eating all microwaved foods for your entire life may not be healthy. Even microwaved healthy food is healthier than junk food.
Canned Food
According to the US Food and Drug Administration or the FDA, It's also OK to eat canned food. However, since there are so many health problems that scientists say are caused by canned food, the FDA is still researching the safety of canned foods. Many scientists, including those at the top-rated Mayo Clinic for cancer, are saying that if you have cancer, are on psychiatric medications, or are having problems with illness caused by malfunctions of your endocrine system, you should not eat any canned foods at all from cans that are not free of bisphenol A or BPA. This is most canned foods. The few cans that are made without BPA will say BPA-free on the label.
So, for the recipes in this blog, if you are health, it's OK to cook with canned foods when you first start out as a beginner cook. However, as chef who specialize in healthy foods say, (such as the chefs that belong to the National Association of Nutrition Professional), "Fresh or frozen food is healthier than canned food," so as soon as you become a more experienced cook, it's better to switch to frozen or fresh foods, even if you are a healthy person, right now. If you have cancer, more problems behaving than your average person, or an illness of your endocrine system, you should stay away from regular canned foods. If you can find BPA-free canned versions for these recipes, you can (no pun intended) use those. Otherwise, it's much wiser to graduate yourself to cooking with frozen or fresh foods.
I put canned foods in these recipes because canned foods are quicker easier to prepare, my recipes are easy and interesting recipes for beginner cooks, and cooking with canned foods is so much easier. Learning to cook even a little bit, even if its from canned food, is a big improvement to junk food and party snacks. So in this case, even canned food, can (no pun intended) turn "nube" cooks into better gamers and better students.
If you must start out with frozen or fresh foods, frozen foods are easier and fresh foods are the healthiest. For frozen foods, you only need to add the spices. Fresh foods require cleaning, cutting, cooking, and adding spices; way to much work for most beginners. So, for the purposes of this blog the recipes have been written around canned foods, for healthy beginners, side notes are added, for cooking with frozen foods. (If they aren't added yet to the recipe you are looking at, they will be added soon.)
If you find that you like cooking and you plan to become a serious chef you must know that fresh food taste so much better than canned or frozen food. If you don't believe this is true, try the following two experiments; hummus and red peppers, and peanut butter and Cheerios.
Ordinary, not freshly made from scratch hummus (a popular food in Egypt, Arabia, and for US Vegetarians) with fresh red peppers tastes so much better than hummus already mixed with red peppers. This is especially true if you don't eat processed sugar. Sugar tends to dull the taste buds, so those who don't eat sugar can appreciate the taste of fresh vegetables so much more than those who do. From any deli, say Walmart's, purchase one container of ordinary hummus and on container of hummus mixed with red pepper. Then from the produce section purchase one red bell pepper. Cut or rip the pepper apart so that you can use it like a chip to dip out the hummus. Try the two versions side by side, the fresh red pepper dipped in hummus, and the hummus made with the red peppers already in it. One should taste way better. If you eat sugar, don't despair. You can still run a test on the value of freshness. Purchase one box of regular Cheerios, and one box of the new Peanut Butter Cheerios. Then purchase one jar of your favorite kind of peanut butter and enough milk for two bowl of cereals. When you get home, heat the milk in a microwave safe bowl, stir in one or two tablespoons of peanut butter. Pour cold milk into another bowl. Fill the bowl of hot milk and peanut butter with the regular Cheerios, and the bowl of cold milk with the Peanut Butter Cheerios. Which one taste better?
Authenticity vs. Fun and Ease
My emphasis is on fun, easy recipes, not on authenticity. Many authentic recipes are very difficult to cook that they are no longer fun to cook, (unless you are such an experienced cook that hard recipes have become fun). If the authentic recipe is not easy, I chose a recipe that is an easy approximation to the real thing. So, if you ever get to travel and taste the real recipe, my recipe will be similar, but not exact.
There are some smoothies and breakfast parfaits amongst the recipes. These are not authentic cultural recipes. They are modern American, healthy, good for the brain, and very easy and quick to make; as long as you own a blender. These smoothies take the authentic ingredients from the cultures, and make them into a smoothie.
And there are some historic recipes and some historic recipes didn't really survive history. There are modern recipes that are similar, but no one can say for sure how they were really cooked in the past, so some authentic re-enactment cooks will refuse to cook them. Well that's no fun. So, if there wasn't enough archeological evidence to support a recipe, or if the recipe was lost to history altogether, and all that remained was some reference to the dish in a ancient report, I just used complete artistic license and used a modern recipe that is probably the descendent of the historic one.
No Alcohol Policy
Well, this policy may seem boring, but this is a cookbook to feed the brain, and alcohol doesn't feed the brain, it harms it greatly. It is such an assault on the brain that it give you a headache, worse than a flu headache. This headache is called a hangover. Actually, being a hard core gamer is hard enough on the brain without adding the assault of alcohol. For more information on the effects of alcohol on the brain see this link: http://www.webmd.com/balance/ss/slideshow-hangover-myths
Recipes for One
I've assumed that you will be cooking for one. These recipes are for one, often with leftovers for later. If you don't already have the ingredients around the house, and you need to shop, when you shop you will have to buy enough to cook for four people even though you are only cooking for one person. This is because most ingredients (except TV dinners), don't come in the size of cooking for one, but for at least four.
If you want to cook for two, or if the recipe is only for one bowl of soup and you want to eat two bowls of soup, you can double, triple, or quadruple the recipe simply by adding 2 times, 3 times, or 4 times the ingredients. For example, if the recipe calls for 1 cup of milk and 2 eggs, to double the recipe you mix 2 cups of milk and 4 eggs; to triple 3 cups of milk and 6 eggs; quadruple, 4 cups of milk and 8 eggs, etc... If you double one part of the recipe, you should double everything.
Desert Jasmine House is a boarding house. We cook meals for many types of people including gamers.
ICONS For Brain Test and More Brain Exercises
If you click on the link under this icon, you can take the test to see if your brain is getting quicker. This icon will be offered at the end of each week. You should score better if you are eating brain smart foods and doing brain smart exercises like ping pong, Wii Fit, or no impact martial arts. If you take the test before you start, you can test your progress as the weeks go by.
http://www.onlinestrooptest.com/
If you click on the link under this icon, it leads humor from that country. Since laughing is good for the brain and heart.
http://publishing.yudu.com/Library/Au7bv/PhilogelosTheLaughAd/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yudu.com%2Fitem%2Fdetails%2F18287%2FPhilogelos--The-Laugh-Addict---The-World-s-Oldest-Joke-Book
Near or behind the click to this icon is trivia about a wise saying from that country. (Since trivia exercises the brain and keeps it working well even when you are old.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself
If you click on the link or links under this icon, it leads you to trivia about a secret sunken treasure that has something to do with that country.
http://www.museum-security.org/?p=1484
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Pr5a8lYHs
If you click on the link or links under this icon, it leads you to trivia about a land-locked secret treasure (mostly landlocked anyway)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PvpOFbksA
http://www.suite101.com/content/phidias-the-most-famous-sculptor-of-ancient-greece-a255214
If you click on the link or links under this icon, it leads to a beauty secret from that country.
http://www.prairielandherbs.com/scrubingredients.htm
http://www.mybeautyrecipes.com/olive_oil.html
http://beautifulwithbrains.com/2010/03/03/beauty-history-cosmetics-in-ancient-greece/
Cautions:
...if you have a weak immune system, kombachi tea may give you a sour stomach, you may need to eat something else instead to help boost your brain power. If you have a sensitive stomach, new foods may upset your stomach. You may need to eat more yogurt.
If you don't get good results, or you have any questions, just post your questions and comments here on the blog, and I'll do my best to help you or, if not, refer you to someone who can help.
If you have asthma sesame seeds and squash seeds might possibly make your asthma a little worse, even if you are not allergic to them, or they might not affect you at all. These foods are very high in tryptophan. Tryptophan is very good for the brain, but it can cause asthma attacks.
Sugar is bad for the brain, not natural sugar, but white sugar or corn syrup that has had all of the vitamins processed out of it. Stevia is better. These recipes show you how to use stevia instead, if possible. I personally don't eat any processed sugar, but buy products made with fruit juice or rice syrup or I make everything that I want made with stevia from scratch. Sometimes I use erythritol, which is safe for the brain, but it is not as natural as stevia because it is a form of processed sugar from the sugar-alcohol group (low-calorie sweeteners made recipes for fermenting sugars). I even make ice cream from scratch.
This is a Beta Run
Since this is a Beta test run, we would like your feedback. Anyone can give feedback. We would like to know things like; when did you try to recipe? how did it go? Were the instruction times off? Did something not happen the way the instructions said it would? How did it taste? Did anyone else in your house like it? Were you able to impress anyone with your new healthy cooking skills? Do you have any great stories you would like included in the upcoming cookbook? Etc...
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