At first, you might hear the term “food desert” and assume it has more to do with the environment’s ability to support crop growth. Not to worry, humans have made an impressive commitment to growing produce and livestock in unlikely places – often to the detriment of said environment.
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Protein: How Much is Enough?
I am not a vegetarian or a vegan or pescatarian or anything. I hate labels. They confine us into a box and if you stray a little, then people love to comment on it. My eating style varies and I have good days/bad days and good weeks/bad weeks. In the winter I really struggle, succumbing to the scourge of seasonal affective doom and gloom – plus, I think we are all just hairless bears, refusing to hibernate as we ought to do. My point is, I don’t ascribe to any diets or self-proclamations that would limit my options.
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Broccoli!
- Origin
- Modern Cultivation
- Impact
- Nutritional Profile
- Dietary Concerns
- How to Eat it
- Recipe: Roasted Broccoli
Origin
Broccoli is a member of the cole crops (also known as cruciferous vegetables), all of which are derived from a singular species known as Brassica oleracea L.. This includes kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and cabbage and each of these foods share a genome with the wild type, Brassica. As with so many things, it’s difficult to prove exact origin of species, especially when it involves human cultivation and migration; however, most studies indicate Europe, broadly, as the birthplace of these Brassica plants. Very little evidence indicates Asia as a potential origin and within Europe there is a slight divide between the UK and Greece, but there is stronger evidence for the rocky shores of England. There is a fascinating paper that uses linguistic terms for “broccoli” in various ancient cultures to help identify the origin that some of you might be interested in reading. In the end, broccoli is just one form, or cultivar, of a group of plants that has been selected for it’s specific geno-/phenotype that gives us what we, today, call broccoli.
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Welcome & Let’s Eat!
I’m not sure if I consider myself someone who LOVES FOOD. There are foods that I love, sure, and I do enjoy trying local cuisine when I travel. The joke always was that we travel to eat when we lived in Germany. It isn’t as though you couldn’t find any good food where we lived, but they definitely liked to “germanize” the ethnic foods and tame the spice level. It was actually amazing when we found a Thai place in Wiesbaden where “scharf” (spicy) really meant SPICY.
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