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EAT YOUR VEGGIES

Seminars@Hadley

EAT YOUR VEGGIES

Presented byEd Haines, Jennifer Ottowitz, and Valeen Shaw; Moderated by Dawn Turco

May 25, 2016

Dawn TurcoWelcome to today's Seminars at Hadley. I'm Dawn Turco and I am moderating today's topic, which is "Eat Your Veggies." We are pleased to have with us today a panel of three Hadley instructors, Ed Haines, Jennifer Ottowitz and Valeen Shaw. They will be coming on in just a moment with a rather full outline of topics to fit under the "Eat Your Veggies" topic.

So, we'll get ourselves going. I've been charged at the get-go here to share with you some fun facts. Let me first say though, Eat Your Veggies Day is June 17th, 2016 this year, so that's a Friday. Who knew we had a national Eat Your Veggies Day? It is a time where we're encouraged to make a solid attempt to eat all of our veggies.

Nutrition experts may quibble over some things but the one thing that they have for sure, common advice, is eating our vegetables is good for us. Vegetables are

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amongst the healthiest food and considering the many ways in which we can prepare them, here's a list: sautéing, stir frying, steaming, roasting, grilling, especially this time of year, that's a good one, microwaving, we can eat them raw. Why is it that some of us are just resistant to eating our veggies? Well, hopefully after today, you'll be inspired to prepare more vegetables and what a good time of year it is for that.

That's why we're doing this seminar in May. We have the time now to plant vegetables, and Ed will touch on some of that, in containers. Our local farmers' markets are opening up and we have access to good, locally grown fresh vegetables, so no excuses. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Vegetable Laboratory, yes, we have one. Here are some things that they have told me and here are some facts. Of course, we know bell peppers are sold green, but they are also sold in red, purple and yellow, and I added to that orange because my local store has orange peppers from time to time. Most of the nutrients in a potato reside just below the skin layer. In the United States, more tomatoes are consumed than any other single fruit or vegetable.

Given our political gear related to that, because we know that tomatoes are actually a fruit, it took a ruling by the Supreme Court in 1893 to make the tomato a vegetable. Our Supreme Court made a decision on tomatoes; I found that very interesting. Florida is the number one producer


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of fresh market tomatoes. California produces almost all of the United States' broccoli. I think we’re going to touch on this a little bit later, but it is recommended that we eat, I saw five, seven, and in one place nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day. So, if you haven't had any yet, as soon as this seminar is over, I think we all need to go eat a vegetable.

Having said that and having touched upon the fact that we are in the beginning of the growing season in our containers, at least in the United States, Ed, I am handing this microphone off to you.

Ed HainesHere we go, let me lock it down. Alright, perfect. Thanks, Dawn. I appreciate that comment about the Supreme Court because as a gardener, I'm going to be talking about actual cultivation today briefly. As a gardener, I can tell you that “vegetables” is actually a culinary term and fruit is not, so when we talk about folks having a vegetable garden, that's actually not the right botanical nomenclature to refer to what we're growing. When we are actually growing what we think of as vegetables, we're technically growing roots and leaves and fruits and pods, et cetera. Those are all actual botanical terms, but vegetables really just have to do with what people cook. It's funny that the Supreme Court had to rule on that and they still were actually kind of wrong.


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At any rate, when Dawn put out the word she'd like to do a webinar focusing on vegetables, I jumped on board because I'm always excited about talking about growing vegetables. Of course, almost all vegetables can be grown in containers and there are tons of exciting options I knew I'd want to talk about. My big problem was, once I started thinking about it, I soon realized I'd really have to turn down the amount of content, if not my enthusiasm, because we could spend a whole lot of webinars talking about vegetables. So, I started to think, what plants would be fun to talk about in about in the 15 minutes that I have and what vegetables might I be able to expose listeners to that they hadn't really thought about planting before? I came up with some alternatives.

Therefore, I'm not going to talk about cultivating some of the things like peppers or cucumbers or lettuce or the common vegetables we think about, although that's not entirely true. I would like to talk about a few vegetables that really lend themselves well to containers that are virtually trouble-free. They're quick producers, fun to eat, and they're things that folks normally don't think about growing in containers.

So, get ready, the first vegetable I'd like to talk about is actually a green. It is an Italian green, it's called cima di rapa and it's three words, C-I-M-A cima di D-I rapa R-A-P-A. That basically means "the tops of turnips" essentially, if you translate it from Italian. Cima di rapa is essentially a


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turnip green that makes a small kind of head like a little mini broccoli. The great thing about cima di rapa is that there are tons of varieties. It's an incredibly popular vegetable in the Mediterranean part of Europe, but we don't see it much here in the States. You can get the seeds for it, if you just Google "cima di rapa" seeds or there's several companies that sell Italian seeds. The great thing about it also, it's incredibly easy to grow. You can grow it any time of year, you don't have to grow it in cool weather, although you can. If you live in a mild climate, like Georgia or further south, Florida, you can plant it in the fall and harvest it throughout the winter, which is a great deal.

As I mentioned, there's tons of varieties. Also, you don't have to buy transplants, you just buy a packet of seeds for a couple bucks, you can direct sow them right into your container and the seeds are tiny, so you don't have to worry about spacing them. Just spread them all over, cover with a little bit of soil, thin the plants out until they're about two inches apart. Eat the small plants that you've thinned and then wait until they're about six inches apart, thin out again until they're about six inches apart. Here's the great thing, with certain varieties of cima di rapa, and they get about 12 inches tall, a really bright green color, you can have something ready to pick and harvest and cook in about 25 days. It's really hard to find a vegetable, that with that little investment of time, gives you a payoff of something you can cook. You'll have something, that


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unless you go to a fancy grocery store or an imported foods store, you won't have the opportunity to eat otherwise. How can you beat that?

When I mentioned cooking, there's lots of ways to cook it but the Italian standard treatment for greens, and this works well for all sorts of greens; blanche the leaves and then drain them, sauté them with some garlic and olive oil and there you have it. So, the first one, cima di rapa, I just can't say enough good about it. I planted a whole row in my garden last year and we were giving it away and it's so quick.

Next vegetable; and I'm going to be talking fast, I'm sorry, because I have so much information to hand out. Alright, here it is, kale. We've all heard too much already about kale, right? It's everywhere, kale salad, kale chips, you name it. Restaurants are cooking with kale, everybody brings some kind of kale thing to picnics and stuff. Here's the thing, conventional kale takes awhile to grow and it's also pretty strong tasting. It's really not for everybody, that's why people try to doctor it up in salads and deep fry it, whatever they do with it.

That being said, kale is packed with vitamins and nutrients; it really, really is good for you. If you don't like kale or you've never thought about growing it because it takes some time, there is a variety you might want to consider. Again, I'm going to go back to Italy with this.


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It's the only kind of kale grown in Italy, it's called lacinato kale. You might see it in the grocery store labeled as "dinosaur kale." It's also called cavolo nero, meaning black kale. This stuff is fantastic. The growth habit of this plant is entirely different from regular kale. If you've held a head of regular kale, you know it's small and round and densely packed leaves, but lacinato kale has this strong upright stalk, and it can grow almost two, two and a half feet tall, and the leaves of it are very long and plume-like and they radiate out from the stalk kind of like a palm tree or ostrich feathers or something. The leaves are dark blue-green, a really nice color. The great thing is, you can harvest the bottom leaves as the stalk keeps growing up and you can harvest them all season long and the thing just keeps growing like a palm tree, and you keep harvesting those bottom leaves and up it goes. It will grow all the way through frost and into winter, it's just an amazing plant. As I mentioned, they can get two or three feet high.

I direct sow the seeds right in containers, so it makes a really interesting looking container as well. The taste of this kind of kale is much nuttier and sweeter than regular kale. I think it tastes a lot better. You can substitute it for any kale recipe but again, I like it cooked the Italian way. I cook it down with olive oil, red wine, garlic, and it's just amazing. Also, this kind of kale, one of the things I love about it is that I discovered it freezes really well. When it looks like it's going to snow and you've used the kale as


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far as you can in the garden, cook all the leaves, remove the central stem. There's a vein in the middle of each leaf that gets tough, that's the only drawback to this kale. I don't even blanche the leaves, I just take the raw leaves, I put them in freezer bags, I put them in the freezer and compress them. I have kale to put in soups and stews, et cetera, all winter long. Lacinato kale, dinosaur kale, you can direct sow it in a container. It looks good, it tastes good, and it's really good for you.

Let me look at the time, okay. I'm going to talk briefly about a vegetable we're more familiar with, radishes. Why radishes? First of all, radishes are about the easiest thing to grow in the spring and fall. In fact, if any of you have introduced children to gardening, radishes are the way to go because just like the green I was talking about initially, radishes grow fast. There's a huge payoff right away. The great thing about them in a container is that you can sow a bunch of radish seeds in the center of the container, ten days later, sow another bunch around the perimeter of the surface of the container. You can be picking the ones in the center while the ones in the perimeter are growing. You can repeat, repeat, harvest, repeat, harvest, repeat. It's just fantastic.

There's all sorts of radishes out there, there's tons of varieties. There's one called "watermelon" that's from Burpee seeds company, a well-known seed company, that's actually purple on the inside. There's all sorts of


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white radishes that look fantastic. Then there's daikon radishes and they grow almost like a carrot with a long, long taproot. Then there are French type of radishes, which kind of look like small little sausages almost. They're beautiful with red on top and white on the bottom. Like I said, they're easy to grow, fun to grow, and if you keep your container more or less moist and don't fuss with it, you can be harvesting radishes all year round.

One final thing, if you don't get around to harvesting them, this is another great thing about a lot of radishes, if you let the radish part get woody and let the radish go to seed, it has all these little small seed pods on top of the plant when the radish does to go seed. It's called bolting sometimes. Guess what? You can pick those pods and you can eat them, just in a stir fry, they're just fantastic. So, radishes do double duty, you can eat the root but you can let them go to seed and eat their pods, so what's not to like?

Okay, finally, I do want to talk about onions. Most of us, we don't grow onions in containers. We think of onions growing in long beds and you know what, onions take a long time to mature. Sometimes they take longer than the growing season we have. If you grow onions from seed, they might even take up to two growing seasons and they're not as fun to grow. You can't just pick one and bite into it like a tomato. Here's the thing, onions come in three different forms for planting and growing and they are


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seeds, transplants and something called "onion sets." You may have seen these in the grocery store or in a gardening center. Onion sets look like little onions, they're just little miniature onions, about the size of your thumb. That's what I want to talk about today. They're the easiest way to grow onions and sets are available in most grocery stores in the produce section, especially in the spring. They sell them by the pound, so they're really cheap. They're really cheap to grow.

Here's what I'd like to suggest; a lot of times people put onions in neat rows in the garden about six inches apart, et cetera. I'm going to suggest planting just maybe one inch apart, planting all these sets in your container, cover them with soil so just the top part is sticking out. You can feel which is the top and which is the bottom. The bottom has little hairy roots growing out of it. The fun thing is you're not really doing this to let them grow into big onions, you're planting this container full of onion sets because you want to grow green onions. In probably just three weeks, your container will start to look like a forest of green spikes. This is the fun part; you can snip off the green parts as you need them for salads or for Pad Thai or whatever you put green onions into. You can pull them up carefully so you don't pull up the sets around them, and you can do this throughout the growing season. Throughout the growing season, you'll have green onions whenever you need them.


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You know what, most of us, when we buy green onions at the store, at least for me, I end up using two or three and the rest stay in the fridge and they wilt and they don't do so well because normally, we don't need a whole bunch of green onions all at once for something. So, having a container of them means you can just very quickly snip some off, use them in your salads, and you can do this throughout your growing season until the sets are about four inches apart, which means you may have some left over to let mature into large onions.

Alright, those are my four suggestions. I know I'm going to be out of time and I talked too quickly, but I was excited about this and hopefully, this will inspire somebody to try one of these vegetables out. So, thanks a lot, Dawn.

Dawn TurcoWonderful, Ed. I'm handing it straight away to Jennifer.

Jennifer OttowitzThanks, Dawn and thanks, Ed. I'm really excited, I just planted onion sets yesterday in our garden. So, that's fantastic and it's great to hear about those other options, too.

When Dawn first brought up the idea for this presentation, I volunteered from the perspective of someone who grew up as a very picky eater. Growing up, I did not like a lot of vegetables, to be honest. Now, as I'm getting older, I'm


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finding new ways to enjoy them, to enjoy a greater variety of them, and I understand the importance of them for various health benefits, too. I'd like to say I'm at least in the beginning stages of being a veggie convert and it really is fun to grow them yourself, and they taste so much better. It's exciting to have them grow.

What I want to talk to you today about is how to prepare vegetables and some tips for that. Let's first talk about which is better, raw or cooked vegetables? So, some vegetables are more nutritious raw, while others are more nutritious cooked. For example, asparagus, mushrooms, spinach and tomatoes are more nutritious when cooked, according to Health.com, while other vegetables like onions, red peppers, broccoli and beets are better raw. They do also say that eating vegetables in any way is good, so whether you eat them raw or cooked, it's good for you. Consuming more vegetables in any preparation helps improve your health by reducing the risk for heart disease, maintaining your weight and improving blood pressure and cholesterol. Some nutrients, like water soluble vitamins and enzymes can be depleted when cooking, while others can increase. So, whether or not you want to cook your vegetables depends on your health goals, the nutrients involved and the cooking methods that you're using.

What are some benefits to cooking vegetables? Well, when you cook vegetables, it makes the cell walls less


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rigid, which makes it easier to absorb certain nutrients and also makes it easier to digest food. Carrots, for example, increase their level of beta-keratin when cooked, and beta-keratin is an antioxidant that can be converted to vitamin A, and this is helpful for eye, bone, and reproductive health. Cooked tomatoes have an increased level of lycopene and lycopene is associated with reduced risks of heart disease and cancer.

Some benefits of not cooking your vegetables would be that whenever you do boil or cook vegetables at a high temperature, nutrients can be lost. Vitamins A, B and C can be reduced, while potassium, phosphorous, calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc may be reduced by up to 60 to 70 percent. The amount of the nutrients lost depends on many factors, including the preparation, the cooking method and the cooking time.

Now, in order to retain the maximum amount of nutrients, you want to choose a cooking method that's going to reduce the amount of time the vegetables are exposed to heat. Dawn mentioned earlier steaming and microwaving and these are great options for cooking methods for that. You also want to store vegetables in the refrigerator. I'll say you want to store most vegetables, because some vegetables are better when they're not stored in the refrigerator. For example, potatoes are best stored in a cool, dry location, but not the refrigerator. Tomatoes are actually better when not stored in the refrigerator. You


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want to also buy vegetables, just as much as you may need at that time. You also want to buy things that are locally grown whenever possible, and in season to ensure the maximum amount of nutrients. Of course, when you're preparing vegetables, you always want to wash them and thoroughly dry them before you use them.

Let's talk about some of the cooking methods. Dawn had mentioned some of these and Ed mentioned at least one as well. We're going to start with sautéing. Sautéing is a wonderful way to enjoy vegetables. You cook them on the stovetop in a small amount of oil at a moderate to high temperature, and this is really good for tender vegetables, things like asparagus, snow peas, baby artichokes, sweet peppers, onions and mushrooms. They can all be sautéed very nicely. You want to cut them into pieces that are bite sized so that they cook quickly and cook evenly.

Just a couple of tips for anyone who has trouble with their vision, it's always most important to use a sharp knife whenever you're cutting. Sometimes you may be worried about using a sharp knife, family members may be worried about you using a sharp knife, but a sharp knife is best, it's safest. You also want to curl the fingers of the hand that's holding the vegetable under, so that you don't accidentally cut them instead of the vegetable. You can use a contrasting colored cutting board to make the vegetable stand out a little bit more, but you also want to use tactile


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methods while cutting. Getting close to try to see what you're doing can be very dangerous.

We have more information about safe practices when cutting vegetables, meat, a variety of things, in both our Independent Living course on cooking, as well as our Low Vision Focus at Hadley audio recording. We even have a video on our Low Vision Focus at Hadley website on slicing. We encourage you to check out those for more information.

Stir frying is another technique that was mentioned, and stir frying is wonderful. It is very similar to sautéing except it is on the stovetop, cooking in a small amount of oil over very high heat, and food is stirred constantly. It's important that all your vegetables are cut to a uniform size so that they cook evenly and don't burn or stick. You want to use canola oil or oil that has a high smoking point, like peanut oil. You can always toss the vegetables in a finishing oil, like sesame oil, once they're cooked. The canola or peanut oil is really good. A tip for telling how hot the oil is, because you want to make sure the oil is hot enough before you add the vegetables, and you can actually just add a drop or two of water to the skillet and if you hear sizzling sounds and the water's skittling around in the pan, that means that the oil is hot enough to add the vegetables.


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Boiling or simmering are other methods for cooking. Ed mentioned blanching and blanching is wonderful. It's basically just boiling vegetables for a very short amount of time. You do this over the stovetop, things like green beans or broccoli, this is wonderful for. It just involves boiling for only a couple of minutes.

Simmering is also cooking in water, this is really good for dry beans, potatoes, beets, other root vegetables. This involves bringing the water to a moderate boil but then turning down the temperature, so that the vegetables cook in water that's just below the boiling point. Of course, when you have trouble with your vision, how do you tell when the water's boiling? You listen to the sounds, you can hear the bubbles, you may also be able to feel the boiling through the vibration of the pot handle. There's even a device called a "boil alert," which is a small disc that you can place in the pot and it will make an increased sound to let you know when the water's boiling. You would take that out, of course, before you add your vegetables.

Roasting is another great method. Roasting vegetables involves cooking them in the oven with a small amount of oil. Usually you season them and then cook them at a high temperature, somewhere around 400 degrees. This is really good for things like squash, onions can be roasted, asparagus, a wide variety of root vegetables. It's a really nice way to cook them quickly and allow them to


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caramelize, which gives them a nice crust and brings out their natural sweetness, too.

When you are using the oven, you always want to make sure that you wear long oven mitts, not just when you take food out of the oven but when you insert it as well. You want to use long oven mitts that protect your hand and forearm, rather than potholders or shorter oven mitts. There are a wide variety of methods for marking your oven tactually, so you can set it to the correct temperature. We have more information about that in the cooking course, the Raised Markers course from Hadley, as well as our Low Vision Focus offerings. You also want to use an adaptive timer to help with timing your food and there are different options for that as well.

Steaming is another great option for vegetables like carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, spinach. This involves boiling your vegetables in a very small amount of water. You usually put them in a steamer basket and the level of water, it's very important that the level not go into the steamer basket, so it must be below the steamer basket. One trick that you can use is to use your pinky as a measuring stick. You can measure it against the leg of the steamer and then just make sure that the level of the water in your pan is not above that measurement before you start.


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Grilling, Dawn mentioned grilling, too. This time of year, it's wonderful. It's very similar to roasting. It's great for things like sweet peppers, onions, potatoes, zucchini, and you can either put these vegetables on skewers, you can put them in a grilling basket to help you locate them and flip them over more easily. You can even put them in foil pouches, too.

There are even some other great ways to enjoy vegetables, you can put them in sauces, all kinds of sauces for pasta. You can put them in salsas, salads, soups. Sometimes, like Ed mentioned, it's just changing maybe the type of green you use. I grew up with only iceberg lettuce, that's the only kind of lettuce I thought there was. There's so many different options. Sometimes, just changing out one thing that you're used to eating can be a great way to incorporate them more into your diet. Sandwiches are also great, you can just put some slices of cucumber or avocado on a sandwich and it's wonderful.

There are also some excellent ways, safety techniques for peeling vegetables. You can use a peeler that's comfortable in your hand, one that has a protective guard over the cutting edge is nice to use. There are excellent techniques to help you stay safe. You can tactually feel the difference between what's peeled and what's not. Again, there's more information on these techniques in our courses and our low vision focused audio recordings as


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well. If you're a little hesitant about cutting, you can buy pre-chopped frozen vegetables or even pick up already-cut vegetables from the salad bar at your grocery store, if your grocery store has one.

Regardless of how you prepare vegetables, they are so full of fiber, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, so it's important to prepare them in a way that you're most likely to eat them. I just want to recommend to incorporate more vegetables, enjoy them. I'm going to turn the mic back over to Dawn so Valeen then can finish us off.

Dawn TurcoSuper job and some great tips, Jennifer. Thank you so much. I love the progression of our panel today because we have Ed, who so enjoys growing his own. We have Jennifer, who admitted to stepping out of her comfort zone over time and trying more vegetables in different ways. Now we're moving onto Valeen, who has been a lifelong vegetable eater. Valeen, I am handing the microphone over to you.

Valeen ShawGood morning, all. After listening to interesting, fun facts from Dawn, Ed Haines grew vegetables for us, Jennifer cooked them, so why not eat these homegrown and homemade vegetable dishes now?

On that fun note, I'm going to tell you the benefits of


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veggie diets. I would like to specify that I am not trying to advocate any particular school of thought or way of eating. I am only going to emphasize the importance of veggie diets. If you are a meat eater, if you wish, you may continue, but add to your regular diet some vegetables.

Vegetarian is a word, not so popular in many countries. When my daughter went to Japan and asked for a vegetarian food, they did not understand what it means. Let's first understand what a vegetarian means. A vegetarian is a person who does not eat animal parts. That's the general definition but there are kinds of vegetarians.

Lacto-vegetarians are those who do not eat animals and eggs, so they just eat dairy products but they do not eat eggs and meats. Ovo-vegetarians eat eggs but do not eat dairy products. By dairy products I mean milk, yogurt, cheese and other products that we make out of milk. Then there are lacto-ovo-vegetarians, who eat dairy and eggs but not meats. There is another fourth category and that is called vegan.

I'm glad one of our participants has a last name "Vegan," that's interesting. A vegan means one who does eat meat, eggs, dairy products and honey. They do not think honey is the right food to eat because it's made by insects and it's not ethical to eat.


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So, there are all kinds of different vegetarians. Some vegetarians eat fish and they say that they are vegetarians. According to the definition as given by Christian Nordqvist in his article, there is nothing like semi-vegetarian. As someone who can never be semi-pregnant, there is nobody who could be semi-vegetarian. You are either vegetarian or not.

There are a number of benefits to being a vegetarian or at least having a good amount of veggies in your regular dietary practices. The first and foremost is that if you eat more veggie foods, you live longer. I think everybody would like that. There are many researches conducted in the U.K. and Canada, and they came to the conclusion through the studies that the people who eat veggie foods have a good chance of living longer than the people who eat only meat.

Also, if you are a vegetarian or if you have veggie diets as a part of food on a regular basis, you have a good chance of having lower cholesterol. Your LDL and HDL, I'm pretty sure most of you know what it means. LDL means bad cholesterol and HDL means good cholesterol, and we need a good combination of both. In that case, being vegetarian or eating veggie foods helps you lower your cholesterol. It also helps you lower the risk of getting type 2 diabetes. I call diabetes a broker. I'm sorry, that's my own way of thinking, you do not have to agree. I mean that the diabetes itself is not a disease but it brings many


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other diseases to your body. It's like an agent, so it will be really good to consider to eat more veggie diets in order to avoid diabetes type 2. It also helps you reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases. There are a number of benefits and these are not just told by some people, but these have been the research of multiple studies carried on in the United States, in Canada, Japan, Italy and United Kingdom, Germany and other countries.

Let's take a look at the history of vegetarianism. Going back to almost 600 B.C., which is 2,600 years ago, vegetarianism was popular in India, in Greece, and in the southern part of Italy, which was of course, at that time, a part of the Greek civilization. At the onslaught of the Roman empire, these vegetarian places were lost as Christian Nordqvist tells in his article, that in Europe, the vegetarianism was lost and it continued to be so. In India, the practice sustained. Until the 19th century, Europe and the United States or the western world as they call it, was not familiar with vegetarianism. Slowly and gradually, the idea picked up.

In 1847, the first vegetarian society was established in the United Kingdom and then in Germany and the Netherlands, and then it became popular. Of course today, there are hundreds and thousands of vegetarian societies and nearly three percent of Americans have chosen to be either vegetarian or vegan. I believe you remember the difference, the vegans don't eat meat and


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dairy and honey.

So, according to research, the vegans put on much less weight and the vegetarians, of course less, but the vegans are further down in comparison to meat eaters. Well, how much veggie to eat? It depends on several factors, the age, the gender, and the body weight. On an average, every individual per day should eat anywhere between three and four cups of vegetables. I'm glad that Ed Haines taught us how to grow and Jennifer taught us how to cook, so we have no problem eating three to four cups of vegetables every day. It doesn't matter what else you are eating, even if you are a meat eater, you can still have this veggie diet in addition to your food.

Of course, balance is the bottom line. We must balance our food. Even if you are, or choose to be a vegetarian, balancing nutrients is a very important factor. A couple of things that I come across people asking and one of the things that the studies have published is that the vegetarians, if you are just purely a vegetarian, you run a risk of having vitamin B12 deficiency. That's where I think we can get help from Ed and Jennifer, they tell us how to keep the vitamins alive. The bottom line is that we need to keep a balance and find out how to get vitamin B12 in our dishes.

Yet another thing that I often come across people asking me, because as Dawn mentioned to you, I am a lifetime


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vegetarian. Since birth, I never ate eggs, fish, chicken and meats, no kinds of meats at all. In fact, my ancestors were vegetarians. In fact, some 2,600 years ago, when there was a promoter of vegetarianism who preached vegetarianism in India, since then, almost all my generations have been vegetarian. I could say at least we have been vegetarian for 125 generations. It is doable.

So going back to that, one common question that I come across is, "How do you get protein?" and friends, I have read some articles and it tells that you need just five percent of protein in your food. You don't need a whole lot, and if you would eat beans, you get that protein. That's what I do, in addition to vegetables, I eat beans.

One thing about the veggie diet is that you must keep a variety, a number of different things in your dishes. In Japan, they have a saying that you must eat 30 different things in your diet. That applies to the veggie diet, that if you would keep a good combination of vegetarian dishes, different vegetables in your diet.

Of course, back in India, that's where I'm from, I've been here now 25 years though, that we also add spices. Spicy vegetarian dishes are delicious, trust me. You would not miss your other dishes. That's briefly about being a vegetarian or eating veggie diets. If you would like to reduce your body weight or you do not want to go overweight or reduce cholesterol, reduce the risk of


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diabetes and risk of cardiovascular diseases, eating veggie diets is really, really helpful. Thank you everybody.

Dawn TurcoThank you, Valeen, and I agree with you in that Indian cuisine, there are some wonderfully spiced dishes. If you've not tried it, I encourage everybody to do so. Jennifer, you had me giggling. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have to agree with you, growing up, you didn't really know about other kinds of lettuces, other that iceberg. I got to thinking, I didn't know there were other mushrooms than white button mushrooms and those are fun now to explore and cook.

I'm going to add one more comment just before we go to Q&A, and here's something to look for, and it's this time of year that you look for it in your grocery or famers' market. I only discovered it last year in May, in South Bend, Indiana at a farmers' market, there was purple asparagus. I knew about green asparagus, I knew about white asparagus and I tend to think that when I buy asparagus, I would go for the real thin asparagus.

There were these purple bunches of asparagus and I looked at them and I said to the gentleman standing there, I said, "Oh my gosh, they're so thick. How can those be tender or tasty?" And he took one off out of a bunch and handed it to me and he said, "Bite into this," and I have to tell you, I am now a fan of purple asparagus. It was the


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most tender and delicious vegetable. I love all asparagus anyway, but now I can't wait to find purple asparagus, which I'm told it grows in the spring and into the early summer.

So, take a look at your store and see if you can find purple asparagus. It's one of those vegetables, you can cook it, it's going to change color a little bit and it's not purple all the way through, it's on the outside. It's one of those that is most delicious raw, so you can put it in your salads for example. I encourage people to go check it out. Alright, I'm going to open up for Q&A and our panelists are at the ready. Here we go. Goodness, gracious, dead air. All the questions in our minds were answered about vegetables, or else people are looking in their cupboards. Oh, we have a hand up, here we go.

SueHi, this is Sue. Ed, I want to find out about the greens you talked about. How did you pronounce it, cima di rapa, the turnip things. Does that bolt? I'm here in Alabama and we're in the 90s now and I don't want to plant something that's just not going to grow.

Ed HainesIt does bolt but if you pick it before it does, obviously that won't be a problem. The deal is just to plant it and within


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about 25 to 30 days, pick it all. If you stagger your planting, you can keep picking newer greens as you go through the season. It can grow in hot weather, it does in Italy. There are different varieties. I'll write down on the text box here the name of a company that sells the seeds here in the states.

Dawn TurcoWe have a long message, so look through it, and a recommendation of a couple of books that are on BARD and one is called How Not to Die or there's another, Main Street Vegan, so we have some folks making some recommendations there.

Also, I wanted to remind everyone that we have the resource list associated with today's topic and we have a number of good resources on the web, so there's some links there for you. I have a couple of links, too. Jennifer referred to our Low Vision Focus videos, I have a couple links to those.

Then we have some recipes that some of the folks around Hadley, we always ask if anybody wants to submit a recipe, so there are some fun recipes there as well. As


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you know, we post these resource lists with the recorded version of today's seminar. It'll take us a day or two to get them up. Our technician cleans up any of the "ands, ums" or the breakings in the microphone. So, we encourage you to go ahead to the "past seminars" page to listen to today's seminar again, or if you want to recommend it to friends, they'll be able to find it there in a day or two. I'm opening up the microphone in case we have another Q and if we don't have another Q, we'll have the panelists put in a last word.

AnnaleeYes, this is Annalee in Florida, can you give us the name of the dinosaur kale again, Ed?

Ed HainesSure, it's called lacinato kale L-A-C-I-N-A-T-O. I'll type it in the text box, too. Most of the major seed company catalogs that I receive in the mail now do have it, it's getting to be more popular.

AnnaleeI wanted to comment about Jennifer. There's another form of cooking that I do and it is solar cooking, very easy


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because you can't burn yourself. Just make sure that if you're picking it up in the pan that you get the pan and not burn yourself on the pan, but the vegetables themselves don't go bad because they can't burn.

Jennifer OttowitzThat's excellent, wonderful. Thanks for sharing.

Dawn TurcoYou know, we didn't talk much either about the microwaving. Some of our students who are new to vision loss kind of get back in the kitchen microwaving. I have a steamer basket that came with my microwave, which makes it super convenient to keep those vegetables up out of the water so they're not losing nutrients. You can steam vegetables in the microwave as well, so that's a great way to cook them and cook them quickly. Last thoughts, panelists?

Ed HainesWell, thanks everyone for listening and if you can, just get one container and put some seeds in it. The payoff is huge.


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Jennifer OttowitzJust a quick story; when I was first living on my own, I went to the grocery store and I needed five green onions for my recipe and being blind, I went with a store employee and I did not know, and some of you that have been blind for awhile, if you don't experience something, you just don't know.

So, I did not know that green onions were sold in sets and when I asked for five, the employee put five sets of onions in my cart and I didn't check it and didn’t know until I get home. So, I would encourage you to check things out in the grocery store, even if they're things that you may not decide to eat. Just get a real feel, literally, for what's out there.

If you're maybe not sure about including more vegetables, try meatless Monday or just one day a week, maybe reducing or eliminating the meats and proteins that you're eating and getting it from vegetable sources instead. Thanks so much and appreciate everybody coming to the seminar.

Valeen Shaw


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Thank you everybody for coming to this seminar. If you're not eating enough vegetables and if you're not sure, get started with at least one cup of vegetables and keep increasing. Go at least up to three to four cups of vegetables and fruits every day. That will certainly help you keep your health better. Thanks.

Dawn TurcoThank you, Ed and Jennifer and Valeen for sharing with us today and participating as presenters in our seminar and answering my email call. You all were so quick to say "yes." I so appreciate that. We do a lot of our cooking seminars at 10:00 Central Time, so that we can go eat shortly after we've had them. Almost every time, you are hungry after talking about food for an hour, so I'm ready to actually go grab my salad and eat it.

I won't delay with the closing, let me just thank you as participants for joining us today at Seminars at Hadley. I've already mentioned the resource list and the "past seminars" page, but I also want to mention that if you have ideas for future seminars, we have a feedback line, [email protected] is the email address. You can drop us a line or if you think of a question later on, you can send it along and we'll share it with the presenters. So, we


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thank you for that. If you have any further ideas, send them along, check out the "past seminars" page, and some of those courses that Jennifer was good enough to mention today. Thank you and goodbye.

[End of Audio – 54:42]


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