12 Food Additives to Avoid

Here is an interesting lineup of some health threatening food additives  - readily available for you at any place where food is sold:

12 Food Additives to Avoid

I started reading labels right after my first encounter with a morbidly obese person. Being born and raised in Eastern Europe, I have known only one case of an extremely obese person, who died in a very young and ripe age of 30 something, leaving two kids and her husband. She was a nice and friendly neighbour, liked life, but had some kind of hormonal disorder not easily detected by that day medicine, and keep gaining weight until it lead to her partial immobility, and later - death. 

But for me that was an exceptional case of a very ill person.

Many years ago, I find myself in a local California grocery store, stunned by a look of an enormous woman, pausing in front of a freeze foods section, with her shopping cart already bursting with food.

I barely bough anything that day, and upon return home, seriously contemplated boarding my refrigerator .  In a week I was a member of the local health club.  Later on, while moving a lot, I have never ever failed to find a local gym to attend, akin a believer, always finding her church. I kept my habit of cooking at home, from scratch. I interrogated my mom and mom-in-law on the subject of family recipes. While our Slavic cuisine may not be the lightest in the world, still, it combines easy, flavorful and recognizable by a human body ingredients. 

Oh, almost forgot! I did find the solution to my earlier jam obsession: I maid my own. It is fresh, natural, delicious, and preparation is a piece of cake.

Recipe below calls for strawberries and orange juice. I tried making it with strawberries and apple juice, and strawberries and white grape juice - both variations came out great. I want to work more on decreasing the amount of sugar, trying to reach a fine line where healthy does not negate delicious. Also, did not hulled strawberries the second time around, just increased cooking time up to 35 minutes. It works.

The other winning combination is apricots and white grape juice.  I picked up these hard, flavorless apricots from the local market, wondering, who would be eating those out of season. Surprisingly, the tasteless fruit yielded wonderful jam. I let apricots simmer for 45 minutes, and voila! Pancake ready, my healthy body worthy sweetness!

Fresh Strawberry Syrup

Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse

 1 pound fresh strawberries, hulled and diced, or thawed frozen unsweetened strawberries (about 3 cups)

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons fresh orange juice

1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest

 In a medium saucepan, combine all the ingredients and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the strawberries are soft and the syrup is thickened and reduced by one-third to one-half in volume, 15 to 18 minutes.

 Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature before serving. (If thinner syrup is desired, strain the hot syrup through a fine mesh strainer into a clean container and let cool.)

Yield: 2 1/2 cups