Last night I stayed in and whipped this up in my kitchen.  After a long week of work, I find many Friday’s are best spent (for me) at home making some food, sipping some wine, with my dog Ned waiting patiently at my feet.  Aaah, the things that change as I get older! Can’t fight it, as much as I try.

This is a very easy, healthy pasta dish that’s not at all heavy.  I used clams and shrimp, but you could also throw in some scallops. We received a bunch of fresh watercress in our Fresh Picks box, which was perfect in this dish – but spinach, chopped chard or arugula would do fine. Watercress is super nutritious – it’s full of vitamin C, calcium, Vitamin A and iron. If you haven’t tried some, it’s a versatile, delicate green you can easily toss in a salad, soup or pasta.

Ingredients:

~4 servings of dry spiral pasta (about a 350g bag)

1 dozen clams

3/4-1 lb peeled and de-veined shrimp

4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped

1  fresh red chili pepper, chopped, with seeds removed

Watercress (2 heaping handfuls) – rinsed

3-4 tablespoons olive oil

3/4 cup dry white wine

Juice of 1/2 lemon

To prepare:

Rinse the shrimp and clams. In a large thick skillet, heat a 3 tablespoons of olive oil and cook the garlic until it softens. Add the clams and wine, cover and cook on medium-high heat for 3-5 minutes or until the clams open up. Throw out any clams that don’t open on their own. Add the shrimp, watercress,&  red chili pepper – cover and let the shrimp slowly cook and the watercress wilt.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in boiling salted water. Drain the cooked pasta well and then throw it in the skillet with everything else. Drizzle with lemon juice, a sprinkle of olive oil, salt and pepper.  Serve with fresh grated Parmesan.

Bon appetit…..

I recently shared a recipe  “Post Holiday Detox Tea” on Chicagoist.  Why would one want to drink this tea?  The simple concoction is made with ginger, cayenne and lemon juice, which are known for their medicinal properties.  Ginger stimulates gastric secretions and supports healthy digestion and nutrient absorption. Cayenne encourages good circulation by making our blood less “sticky” and strengthens our immune system to ward off cold and flu. The addition of lemon juice makes the tea more palatable but also, according to traditional Chinese medicine, stimulates the liver to promote blood detoxification.

Now I’ve decided to add turmeric to the mix, making this tea even more healthy and medicinal.  Turmeric contains a phytochemical called curcumin that, over several decades of research, has been shown to promote cancer cell death.  In fact, studies have linked curcumin to the inhibition of several forms of cancer, including pancreatic, liver and multiple myeloma. Curcumin is also believed to lessen inflammation,suggesting its potential to help prevent conditions like cardiovascular disease and arthritis. Drink this tea often.  In Okinawa, the island with the world’s longest average life span, the locals drink turmeric tea daily.

Lemon Ginger Turmeric Tea

You’ll need: 4 cups water, ¼ cup peeled, grated fresh ginger root, 1 tsp ground turmeric (or fresh grated turmeric root if you can find it!), 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper, juice of one lemon, sweetener (preferably agave nectar, honey, or maple syrup)

To prepare the tea: In a saucepan, bring water to a boil. Toss in the grated ginger, turmeric and cayenne pepper. Reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat, then add the lemon juice. Strain the tea into a pitcher. Sweeten to taste and enjoy.

I’ve mentioned previously that butter is a weakness of mine.  But I may cut it out of my diet, eventually. That being said, my stance on this issue is….never choose margarine, occasionally choose real butter, and better yet try non-hydrogenated vegetable-based spreads, such as Earth Balance.

Dr. Andrew Weil wrote an excellent article addressing the Butter vs Margarine debate. Here’s an excerpt that may clear up some of the confusion.

The most significant area of comparison is the different chemical structures of the component fatty acids of the two.  Butter is basically a natural product, and its fatty acids are structurally similar to the fatty acids in our bodies.  The heat and chemicals used to transform vegetable oils into margarine change fatty acids into unnatural forms that may be most unhealthy to eat.

Unsaturated fatty acids have points of molecular strain, where carbon atoms are connected to each other by double or triple bonds instead of being fully occupied by hydrogen atoms.  These strain points determine the three-dimensional configurations of molecules.

In nature, all of these molecules have a curved shape that allows them to fit neatly into the membranes that enclose all cells and many of the structures within them.  Chemists call this natural shape the cis-configuration.  Heat and harsh chemical treatment can cause unsaturated fatty acids to spring open into a different shape called the trans-configuration, which looks jointed instead of curved.

The body cannot incorporate trans-fatty acids into membranes, and if it tries to do so, deformed cellular structures may result.  Eating trans-fatty acids in margarine, vegetable shortening, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils probably increases cancer risks, promotes inflammation, and accelerates aging and degenerative changes in tissues.  I am convinced enough of these possibilities to try to eliminate those fats from my diet.

Many people ask me whether I think it is better to eat butter or margarine.  They should be asking whether it is worse to eat butter or margarine, because both are concentrated fats that contribute to the unhealthy excess of fat calories that most of us consume.  I don’t keep either of them in my house.  But if I were forced to make a choice, I’d take the real thing in modest amounts, and I recommend that choice to you as well.

Check out the entire article here.